“No pedestrians on the ramp!” Don implored forcefully.
The obviously drunken duo were nearly to the point where the undercarriage of Childress’s Audi had left a fresh gouge in the cement floor.
Eyes locked on the trespassers, Don reached blindly for the phone … to call security, not to order tamales. He didn’t have time to do either, because simultaneously, three things happened at once. His fingers brushed the handset, knocking it off the cradle. A coppery odor, like a jug full of old pennies, hit his nose. And just reaching the bottom of the ramp, the pair hit the light splash from above, affording Don a clear look at what had just wandered in from the street.
If he had been staring into a mirror, his face would wear the same twisted mask as the riot cop and Childress, who owned the entire top floor of the building resting over his head. The man who had almost pasted these two street denizens who looked more dead than alive.
Suddenly the notion of calling Portland Police Homicide trumped either building security or ordering lunch from La Carreta de Rosa. In fact, the latter was put on permanent hold. One eyeful of the two from a couple of yards away had forever spoiled his appetite.
The teenager nearest Don had a horrific wound on his neck. The kind he would have pegged as the work of the Columbian Cartel if only Portland wasn’t the most unlikely of places for a guy to have his neck slit ear to throat. Don rose off his seat, a roll of paper towels in one hand, the phone clutched in the other, and saw that the injury was jagged and likely not created by a quick swipe of a straight razor.
A moist growl came from the kid’s mouth, causing a fresh wave of blood to sluice from the yawning half-moon above his bloody shirt collar.
“Have a seat on the floor,” Don insisted, as he swung his gaze to the phone and stabbed 9 on the keypad.
“I’m getting you help.” Focused on the task at hand, he punched 1 and then cried out as a stabbing pain erupted in his right elbow. A meteor shower’s worth of tracers clouded his vision as, acting against his will, his right hand snapped full open, letting the handset fall away. A grating sound reached his ears as incisors cut through flesh and tendon alike. The wet growl persisted and his knees grew weak as the gnashing teeth slowly made mincemeat of the soft flesh under his forearm. Then a dull vibration, starting in his ulna—the foot-long bone running from wrist to elbow—coursed up his arm and a cold hand palmed his face, the fingers briefly probing the openings there before worming their way around back and snagging his gray pony tail.
His weak call for help was drowned out as the silent one of the pair clambered overtop the first attacker and their combined weight crushed the air from his lungs and started a symphony in his head consisting of rushing blood and his waning heartbeat.
With the dead weight of the two crushing down on him, Don heard animalistic grunting and tearing of cartilage as his ear was rent from his body. He screamed. A guttural wail to wake the dead echoed off the ceiling as hot blood poured into his ear and cold skin pressed against his exposed neck. A tick later the kid Don didn’t know from Adam, and certainly had no beef with, grew tired of the nub of ear and went for the underside of his neck, trapping several folds of hanging jowl there in a crushing, grinding bite.
A pain like no other hit Don and his body went limp as he slipped from consciousness. And as his brain was shutting down from lack of oxygenated blood, the last figment of thought: a lament about dying and not attending the Blazer’s Big Man Camp in Vegas this year jumped synapses. Oh how he enjoyed sharing his vast knowledge of post moves and footwork with the willing incoming centers, even if he could no longer hold his own physically among the tall trees.
Then the spark of life left his staring eyes and his large frame slid off the chair, dragging the attackers inside with him. The last thing Don saw as darkness edged out the world around him were the gray wads of chewed gum pressed to the underside of the wraparound counter.
Chapter 9
Duncan had returned from Charlie’s kitchen clutching not one fresh bottle of Bud, but two. Mesmerized by what was taking place in downtown Portland, he took a long pull from the bottle and set it beside the first, which was already empty.
Charlie’s television was a flat screen plasma item nearly as wide as the battered steamer trunk it was sitting upon. Scratch and Dent sale, he had said when Duncan inquired as to how a man pulling in a measly five hundred dollars a week—before taxes—could afford such a monstrous thing. And though it likely cost his friend a week’s worth of wages earned the easy way, sitting on his butt and breathing automotive fumes, its glossy screen was host to a fine sheen of dust. Whether that spoke to its lack of importance to Charlie, or the man’s disdain of physical labor, Duncan hadn’t a clue. Besides, with all of his worldly possessions languishing in a storage locker on Holgate and one bad bet away from being auctioned off to pay the rent, who was he to judge?
Duncan’s resolve to keep his eyes open and watch the ongoing coverage some of the talking heads were calling “Riot in the Square” was taking a hit after the first beer. Now, halfway through the third, he was getting his second wind.
For the third time in ten minutes the nicely coiffed female newscaster was back on the television droning on about the flare-up of violence and pointing out how area hospitals were beginning to receive the injured. And each time she handed off the airtime to other affiliates around the country, she made sure she recapped the numbers of dead and injured already removed from the Square, the latter, for now, far outnumbering the former.
Broadcast on a screen behind the anchor, at the edge of a full city block paved in red bricks and filled with jostling bodies, was a picket of columns reminiscent of the once mighty Acropolis. Maybe the architect had thrown the intricate spires in as a way to thumb his or her nose at the establishment and city planners who had commissioned the design. Whatever the case, Duncan mused, he was struck with an uneasy feeling that just making the connection, however subliminally, was a subtle harbinger of things to come. Hell, throughout history many powerful societies rose and fell, Rome, principle among them. And much like the United States, which currently manned garrisons around the world and was embroiled in two wars in the Middle East, the Romans had also spread themselves very thin towards the end of their reign. He also noticed that over the last three decades, much like the hubris of those lording over Rome had grown concurrent to the Empire’s sphere of influence, so, too, had the attitude of invincibility shared by the career politicians entrenched in the highest levels of government. Gone were the days of “for the people by the people.” And as sad as it was for him to admit, the country he once knew and still loved was close to the point of no return.
Rome was burning, literally, judging by the images on the television.
Though not as serious about prepping as his brother, Duncan shared the same gut feeling that be it a rogue nation getting a nuke or device capable of producing a crippling electromagnetic pulse into the country, one of these days people were going to wake up to one hell of a big surprise.
Almost capsized by the financial crisis of 2008, the country was slowly clawing its way back. However, the prosperity and change promised by the new administration was coming much slower for the rank and file. Millions were out of work and, like a slow-moving train wreck, victims of the housing bubble were suddenly finding themselves in foreclosure and in danger of being homeless.
It was already one hell of a recession they were in and Duncan was finding it harder than ever to stay above water both financially and emotionally. Then along comes a spate of deadly terrorist attacks immediately followed by a riot in his home town.
Jogging Duncan’s morbid train of thought, a wide-angle aerial shot of downtown Portland replaced the anchor who was just finishing her latest body count. The incoming video feed was jittery, the people on the ground ant-like until the person panning the camera found something on the ground worthy of scrutiny and tightened in on it. And every time it did the plasma screen would be filled with the frenzie
d movement of civilians piling onto one another or the practiced precision of police officers rushing in to break up the brush fires of violence springing up on the Square’s periphery.
The one constant was that blood was in no kind of short supply. If it bleeds, it leads—the unspoken tenet of those in the media beholden to ratings to keep their lofty titles—was being taken to a whole new level as the camera passed over a clutch of leather-clad forms tearing into a prone officer. Hands flashed in and out of the writhing man’s midsection and came out clutching ropes of shiny intestine.
It was clear to Duncan the carnage was being recorded by a camera mounted to a helicopter orbiting slowly above what looked to be no more than four square blocks. And at all four points of the compass around the Pioneer Courthouse Square, police in riot gear and soldiers in tan uniforms were actively engaged in deadly games of cat-and-mouse with a seemingly feral mob. Then, even from the elevated vantage the moving aerial platform afforded, for a quick second, the entire scene below was obscured by white smoke pouring from dozens of metal canisters shot into the crowd from the officers’ stubby black rifles.
In response, the helicopter bled off altitude and side-slipped to cut the corner. As the ground-hugging smoke drifted over the crowd, Duncan picked up on what looked like winks of gunfire, the star-shaped eruptions illuminating the slow-roiling cloud in shades of red and orange.
The firing continued and the glitter of tumbling and bouncing brass was obvious as individuals squirted from the rank and file and the cops on the ground parted their lines to allow the soldiers to move forward.
“Holy hell,” Duncan muttered. He moved to the edge of the couch and craned forward as the camera zoomed in to frame a lanky twenty-something clad in cargo shorts and hoodie. There was a wild sneer parked on the kid’s bearded face and his lips were drawn back over white teeth. Then, as though a switch had been flicked, his eyes went wild and locked onto a nearby officer brandishing a shiny clear shield in one hand and eighteen-inch baton in the other. And like a fire-and-forget missile, ignoring everything around him, the unarmed protester covered the yard-and-a-half toward the officer in a herky-jerky-gait that seemed to catch her completely off guard. The millisecond of hesitation during which a battle between training and normalcy bias waged in the officer’s head proved to be fatal for her as the kid wormed around the shield and got inside of the metal baton’s downward sweep. In the next beat the officer’s mouth snapped open in a silent scream and the kid’s fingers on one hand plunged under the face shield, going for the woman’s eyes. The two fell in a heap, the protester on top and clawing frantically under the visor, the officer beating at his back weakly with the baton. Barely a second elapsed before the officer’s legs shot straight and, as if the baton and shield were totally forgotten about, both gloved hands released the items and went for the attacker’s hooded head, clawing at it wildly as spritzes of red that could only be her blood pulsed onto the blacktop around her helmeted head.
“Kids today.” Duncan slumped back into the couch. He kicked off his boots and stretched out prone, eyes locked on the television as other shield-carrying officers surged forward to help their downed comrade. From outside the frame a number of helmeted cops on bicycles outfitted with yellow placards that read POLICE swarmed in silently only to be overtaken by the crowd, many of them, their signs forgotten, now empty-handed and exhibiting the same bloodlust as the kid kneeling over the cop and jamming a double handful of human flesh into his maw.
The new round of tear gas was now roiling above the melee and then breaking like waves as it met the rotor wash from the hovering helicopter.
The urge to get up and fetch another beer hit Duncan fast and hard. In the next moment, just like the gas from the fired canisters, he felt his resolve dissipating. Though he was comfortable in the present state, his will wasn’t his to command. He hinged up and froze in his previous position on the edge of the sofa. “Here comes the cavalry,” he said, as a low-flying jet somewhere outside made the window behind him dance in its aluminum frame. The rattling continued and, as quickly as the thought of another beer had arrived, it was edged out by the sight of dozens of uniformed soldiers pouring around the corner off of what Duncan guessed to be Fourth Street. Someone knows their stuff, he thought as the troops came to a halt and fanned out, their numbers shoring up the outmatched police force and causing the majority of the moving mass to disengage and continue marching east.
Sensing the direction the unruly crowd was likely to take before the seemingly single-minded organism pulled back, whoever was operating the camera—likely a FLIR item mounted on a gimbal under the helicopter’s nose—panned right, then zoomed in on the middle of the pack as it picked up speed and fanned out across the four-lane. On both sides of the street, split down the middle by deciduous trees planted in red brick and cement medians, were numerous bars with neon signs framed in painted-over windows. Lured by the freight-train-like cacophony and buzz of the hovering chopper, people spilled from the bars and onto the sidewalk and were instantly caught up in the tide of swinging batons and gnashing teeth.
Left in the wake of the moving orgy of violence and rage, dozens of bodies lay sprawled on the roadway and sidewalks, their blood running and pooling on the west/east running arterial that spilled thousands of cars and bikes into the downtown core each morning.
The camera continued panning left-to-right before finally settling on the Burnside Bridge four blocks east of the marchers. Inexplicably the span’s two halves were canted skyward. Dozens of busses and cars were lined up nose to tail against the near vertical roadway. To make matters worse, scores of black-clad agitators were held at bay on the sidewalks by striped gates automatically triggered to drop in the event of a bridge lift.
“This ain’t gonna end well for you,” Duncan muttered, his grip loosening on the near-empty beer bottle. In the next beat his head tilted back and, just as the standoff on the bridge was escalating, his eyes fluttered once, then twice, after which they remained closed.
Chapter 10
Nate glanced at the cursive writing on the tinted windows. Mickey Finn’s sounded Irish and, judging by the snippets of action he’d seen each time the side door his fare had gone through opened, it sure looked busy inside. The long wood top bar was full and the people perched on tall high-backed stools and hoisting mugs and bottles craned toward the intrusion of summer light each time someone came or went through the door.
The parking lot to the north directly across Woodstock was still a scene to behold. Like sharks circling prey, cars, trucks and SUVs patrolled the four aisles in search of an empty spot. On a waiting car, flashers winked yellow, putting a rush on a lady loading her trunk with paper sacks brimming with supplies. Last time Nate remembered Portlanders storming the stores en masse was three years prior when a rare winter storm rolled in and the weather guessers predicted over a foot of the white stuff—a rare occurrence in the City of Roses that led to one hell of a busy three days for him. And as he thought back on it, he could almost feel the nonstop thunka, thunka, thunka of tire chains pounding the road and the resulting vibrations and impacts with buried potholes shredding his lower back yet again. Almost seventy-two hours of shuttling drunks to and from bars and driving scores of little old ladies to the grocery stores only to hear stories of them finding bare shelves inside.
He looked at his watch as the imagined drone of unhappy geriatrics edged out the equally imagined thrum of nonexistent tire chains. Seventy-two long hours.
“Five minutes, dude,” he muttered aloud over the air rushing through the dusty vent slats. “Time’s up.” He tooted the horn. Watched the second hand on his watch sweep another thirty seconds into the past.
Start the meter, or park and go inside and hold the fucker to his word? he thought to himself.
Deciding that the wait in the old cop car with its laboring A/C was not worth the wasted gas, reluctantly, Nate came to a decision. Seeing the door yawn open and disgorge an older couple, which allowed him a
nother peek inside the dark and no doubt air-conditioned interior, had helped him make it.
Choosing the latter, he called in to Dispatch to tell them he was going off duty, and was taken aback to learn it wasn’t his decision any longer. Apparently President Odero’s National Security Advisor had decided to shut down everything. Rail, air, public transit and public livery services. A little pissed at the dispatcher’s inability to tell him the real reasoning behind the decision, he racked the transmission into Park and killed the engine. Then, just in case the guy whose name he couldn’t remember suddenly turned asshole and decided not to make good on the promised drink, he started the meter running one last time, set the flashers strobing, and left the taxi parked in the loading zone.
Starting to calm down a little, he locked the cab and walked to the side door where he paused to take a final look at his illegally parked car. Screw it, he thought, hauling the side door open, dude can pay the ticket.
The door at Nate’s back hit the bell above it producing a tinny jangle as it closed. Strangely, it was very quiet inside the air-conditioned bar.
Funeral parlor quiet.
And cold as a morgue.
He could hear the whoosh of air moving through huge ducts overhead as he waited for his eyes to adjust to the dim interior. When he could finally make out more than just human-shaped blue blobs, he spotted his fare standing shoulder-to-shoulder with an unusual assortment of people. Charlie! he thought, the name popping into his head the moment he spotted the older man. To Charlie’s left was a middle-aged man with one arm draped around a red-haired woman who looked to be a decade younger. To Charlie’s right was a thirty-something guy with spiked rock-and-roll hair. Sporting a mosaic of tats on both crossed arms, he reminded Nate of the brash Mötley Crüe frontman. And partially hidden behind the leather-clad rocker was a petite young blonde woman who couldn’t have been a day over twenty-two.
ocalypse (Book 10): Drawl (Duncan's Story) Page 5