by Sam Sisavath
The roar of engines preceded a pair of vehicles by a good ten seconds, and Keo was opening the driver side when they slashed up the street—two trucks, both technicals, with men in the back. If they even knew Keo was in the motel parking lot, no one glanced over or slowed down, which prompted Keo to think, What’s their hurry?
The answer came in the form of a series of pop-pop-pop sounds from farther up the road. Half a mile, at least, and the gunshots echoed in the crisp afternoon air for a long while, mingling in with the sounds of engines.
It went on for five, then ten, seconds before going silent.
Keo was sliding into the truck when the gunfire started up again, and this time someone opened up with a machine gun, the brap-brap-brap sending a slight shiver up and down his spine. He got (mostly) through it by slamming the door shut and turning the key in the ignition.
The Ford leapt to life without a problem. The gas gauge was half empty (Let’s go with half full this time, shall we?), and the mileage was in the six digits.
“What’s going on?” Lewis asked in the front passenger seat. He was turned slightly to the left in the direction of the gunfire that had just stopped again.
“I don’t know,” Keo said, “but I’d rather hear it from a distance than up close and personal.”
“What the hell was that?” a voice asked.
Keo exchanged a look with Lewis before they both turned around and discovered the portable two-way radio jammed into the armrest on Lewis’s side.
Lewis pulled it out, just as the familiar voice said, “What was all that shooting?”
The voice was slightly distorted coming through the tinny speakers, but it was the same guy from Winding Creek.
My old buddy Buckaroo.
“Found a ghouls’ nest in one of the strip malls, sir,” someone answered through the radio. “About a dozen black eyes in the back of one of the buildings. They didn’t want to come out, so we had to do a little convincing.”
“You done?” Buck asked, sounding slightly irritated.
“Just about, sir.”
“Finish up. We’re heading back to Fenton in an hour.”
“Roger that.”
“That’s a hell of a lot of silver ammo just for a dozen black eyes,” Keo said.
“Buck’s not hurtin’ for ammo,” Lewis said. “Neither is Fenton.”
“Silver?”
“They’ve been stocking up, raiding the surrounding towns for whatever they need. Fenton is a booming city, getting fat off everyone else.” He had said that last part like a man who knew from first-hand experience.
Keo grabbed the truck’s gear stick. “So, where we going, Lewis?”
“South, out of town,” Lewis said.
“Then what?”
“I’ll let you know when we’re safely out of town.”
Keo thought about Buzz Cut and Failed Mustache, waiting for him at the south end of Princeville. “Can you shoot?”
“Yeah…”
“You sure?”
“Point and pull the trigger, right? Not rocket science.”
“Not what I was referring to.”
“Oh.” Then, after a moment, “I’ll manage.”
Keo put the truck in reverse. “Just make sure the gun is pointed out the window and not at me.”
“Gee, is that how it works?”
Smartass, Keo thought, while Lewis drew Wagner’s sidearm and put it in his lap, forefinger in the trigger guard.
Keo backed out of the parking lot. “How many men did Buck take Winding Creek with?”
“He brought forty or so of his own, and about twenty or so more from Fenton,” Lewis said. “It was overkill. Winding Creek never stood a chance.”
Tell me something I don’t already know.
Keo stepped on the brake and lingered with the back bumper almost in the street, but not quite. He glanced left, then right—then stared up the road where the shooting had come from. There hadn’t been any more communications through the radio, so he figured whatever ghouls had been unlucky enough to run across Buck’s crew were long gone and things were back on track for the raiders.
“You were in Fenton,” Keo said. “You and your buddy back there in the motel room.”
Lewis nodded. “When we learned they were going to hit Winding Creek, we volunteered. Vince and me.”
“To warn them.”
“Yeah…”
“Why didn’t you just send a message?”
“Like what, pick up the phone and call them? Send a homing pigeon?”
Keo chuckled. “Good point.”
He reversed completely into the street, then turned right, back in the direction he had come. Fading sunlight reflected off a technical parked along the curb in the rearview mirror, but the vehicle wasn’t close enough for him to get a better look. Which meant they couldn’t see him any clearer, either.
Keo stepped on the gas anyway, comforted in the knowledge that speeding wasn’t going to get him noticed in Princeville, considering how every vehicle he’d seen so far was hauling ass for one reason or another.
“You left Winding Creek five years ago,” Keo said. “After The Walk Out.”
“Yeah,” Lewis said.
“Why?”
“It wasn’t our home.”
“Where is home?”
“Dallas.”
“So how’d you end up in Fenton?”
“It was on the way, but Vince and I decided to check it out. Then one week became a month, and before we knew it, it’d been a year. But that Fenton isn’t the same as the Fenton that’s out there right now.”
“What was it like before?”
“Decent. In a lot of ways like Winding Creek, but bigger. Copenhagen changed everything.”
“Copenhagen?”
“He’s the one calling the shots. Has been for the last five years. He’s the guy driving that place. What it is now is because of him. It mirrors his personality. His…ambitions.”
“I thought Buck was the HMIC.”
“Buck’s like his general; he runs the paramilitary group. The ones with the circled M.” He glanced over at that emblem now, on the front of Keo’s assault vest.
“It’s not mine,” Keo said.
“Where’d you get it?”
“The owner didn’t need it anymore.”
Lewis nodded, understanding.
“Why did they take the kids?” Keo asked.
“Not just the kids. The women, too,” Lewis said.
“But not the men?”
“No. Not the men.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?”
Lewis shook his head. “This is the first time we volunteered for a raiding party. We never knew they were taking women and children from the towns until we got to Winding Creek and we got our orders. We always thought it was just supplies and guns.”
“I didn’t see any of them in Princeville. The women and children they took from Winding Creek. Where were they keeping them?”
“They’re not here. They took them on ahead of us almost as soon as the fighting ended,” Lewis said. “Buck’s men. They’re the only ones he really trusts. Guys like Vince and me are just volunteers. They don’t tell us much.”
“How is it you didn’t know they were bringing people back with them from the raids?”
“Fenton is separated into two areas—the one where Copenhagen and Buck live and operate, and the rest of town. We don’t have a clue what goes on in the restricted area. Not a clue.”
“And you never volunteered until you found out they were targeting Winding Creek?”
“Yeah.”
“NIMBY, right?”
“What?” Lewis said.
“Not In My Back Yard. It’s fine when it’s the other guy’s backyard, but when it’s yours, fuck that shit, right?”
“I guess.”
Keo didn’t have to ask Lewis about this Copenhagen. He knew guys like him—men who stepped i
n to fill the vacuums of power. If it weren’t Copenhagen, it would have been someone else. The names changed, but the men didn’t.
Same shit, different day.
They drove past the Walmart where Keo had seen all the activity earlier, but it was now a barren wasteland of abandoned cars. There were no signs of the trucks or U-Hauls attached to horses or Buckies looting what was left of the superstore.
Something crunched under the truck’s tires—probably more bones—but Keo didn’t stop or slow down.
“Who is he? Buck?” Keo asked.
“I don’t know,” Lewis said. “He showed up one day about two years ago with that little army of his.”
“When did the raids began?”
“Only a few months ago.”
“You could have warned Winding Creek earlier.”
“I know,” Lewis said, and didn’t say anything else.
And Keo guessed there was nothing else to say. He had a feeling Lewis had been thinking about that for some time now. Keo had seen the aftermath of the slaughter in Winding Creek—the bodies in the streets, the ones he could spot through windows inside buildings, people like Wendy—but Lewis and the now-dead Vince would have seen it up close.
Shoulda, woulda, coulda, pal, Keo thought as he slowed down when he saw a pair of familiar figures slowly growing in size in front of him.
Except they weren’t alone this time: A technical sat on the curb nearby with a tall lanky man in black, like a specter of death against the setting sun, staring back at Keo from behind a mounted machine gun.
TWELVE
“DAEBAK,” Keo said.
“What?” Lewis said.
“Nothing.”
He had two options: Speed up and make a run for it and risk getting skewered by that MG, or slow down.
Keo slowed down.
“What are you doing?” Lewis asked, his voice rising with alarm. He fidgeted in his seat even as his one good eye peered out the windshield at the group of men.
“Relax,” Keo said.
“Relax?” Lewis repeated, as if the word was completely alien to him.
“Yeah, relax.”
“That’s a machine gun.”
“I noticed that, Lewis.”
“So what are you doing?”
“Relax,” Keo said. “And let me do the talking.”
“What are you going to say?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“You don’t know yet?”
Keo sighed. “You need to calm down and don’t do anything stupid.”
“Like what?”
“Like start shooting.”
“Okay,” Lewis said.
“Okay?” Keo said, glancing over at him.
The other man nodded. “Yeah, okay.”
Now why don’t I believe you? Keo thought, watching how Lewis continued moving around in the front passenger seat.
Keo didn’t really blame the guy. In his shoes, after what he had been through at the motel, he wouldn’t have been all that ready to “relax,” either.
Easy does it. Easy does it.
It wasn’t much of a blockade, with just one truck and two guys on foot. There might have been two more inside the truck—a red Chevy that, as Keo neared, had bullet holes along the sides and Kansas license plates—but two or three (or even ten) didn’t really factor into his thought process.
He focused almost entirely on the tall guy in the truck bed standing behind what looked like an older model belt-fed M240. The gunner wasn’t actually pointing the weapon at Keo as he approached in the Ford, but it wouldn’t have taken very much for him to swivel that thing over and pull the trigger. The prospect of a torrent of 7.62 rounds making even bigger holes in the windshield in front of him left Keo feeling a little…cold.
He might have shivered slightly and hoped Lewis didn’t notice.
“We can outrun them,” Lewis said suddenly.
“Them, but not that machine gun,” Keo said.
“I can take him.”
Keo glanced over at the Glock in Lewis’s lap, at the way the man was nervously clutching and unclutching it.
Yeah, right, Keo thought, but said, “Just relax, Lewis. And remember to let me do the talking.”
Lewis didn’t answer, and he also didn’t put the gun away.
“Lewis…” Keo said.
“Yeah, I know, let you do the talking,” Lewis said.
“Exactly,” Keo said as he continued slowing down, before stopping completely in front of Failed Mustache, who stood in the middle of the road with one hand raised and the other holding the AR slung in front of him.
Keo kept one foot on the brake but didn’t put the gear into park. Instead, he leaned out the window as Failed Mustache walked over. Buzz Cut had remained near the Chevy, chatting with the driver. There wasn’t a second man inside the other truck, Keo saw now, which meant four in all—Failed Mustache, Buzz Cut, the driver, and the machine gunner.
But that machine gunner, though…
That very dangerous man, visible just a few yards in front and to the right of Keo’s line of vision, had glanced over momentarily to get a better look at the Ford from his high perch. The man either didn’t find anything overly interesting or wasn’t alarmed, because he glanced back up the road while leaning back against the Chevy’s cab with his elbows draped lazily over the roof.
Keo turned his focus to Failed Mustache as the man approached his side of the truck. All the while, Keo had picked up the MP5SD and laid it across his lap, with the muzzle pointed toward the door. Not that he expected to shoot through the door, but with one hand on the weapon, it wouldn’t take too much effort to lift the submachine gun and squeeze off a round or two out the already open window.
“You again,” Failed Mustache said.
“Me again,” Keo said.
“Where you going now?”
“Patrol.”
“Looking for more trees?”
“You know how many trees there are out there? Buck wants me to check every single one of them.”
Failed Mustache chuckled. “Hey, don’t worry about it. It’s all just hazing. You wanna join the main crew, you gotta do the grunt work first.”
“I got no problems with that.”
“Well, at least you’re not walking this time.”
“Got that right.”
The man peered past Keo and at Lewis in the passenger seat. “What the hell happened to you?”
“Ran into a doorknob,” Keo said.
“Must have been a big fucking doorknob,” Failed Mustache said.
Keo grinned and was about to say, “You bet your ass it was,” but before he could open his mouth, there was a deafening bang! from his right and Keo thought, Well dammit, Lewis, now you’ve done it!
The sound of the gunshot was thunderous inside the close confines of the truck’s front seats. Keo didn’t even want to think about how loud it might have been if their windows weren’t open, because even now he thought he might have gone slightly deaf.
Outside his door, Failed Mustache was collapsing out of view when Keo gunned the gas.
Buzz Cut, in front and to the right of the truck, was whirling around, reaching back for his slung rifle, when Keo hit him with the grill of the Ford. Keo wasn’t entirely sure what had happened—had Buzz Cut been fast enough to turn and jump into the truck’s path or had Keo swerved into the guy, knowing that two Buckies was better than three?
Either way, just as he glimpsed Failed Mustache going down with the corner of his left eye, this time he saw Buzz Cut going up and back with the corner of his right.
“Drive, drive, drive!” Lewis was shouting in the passenger seat.
What the hell do you think I’m doing, Lewis ol’ pal? Keo thought as he bent forward and slightly over the steering wheel even as the accelerator slammed into the floor and stayed there.
The Ford lurched under him, the two front tires threatening to give way, but broadsiding Buzz Cut must have done something, because the truck quic
kly righted itself and they were blasting up the road—
Then Keo heard it, the noise he’d been dreading:
Brap-brap-brap! Brap-brap-brap!
“Shit!” Lewis shouted.
“I told you to fucking let me do the talking!” Keo shouted back.
“I did! I didn’t say a word!”
Keo smirked (Well, I guess technically he’s not wrong.) when the rear windshield behind them shattered and the ping-ping-ping! of rounds smashing into the back and right-hand side of the truck filled the air.
And technically I’m about to get my ass shot to ribbons!
Keo didn’t take his foot off the gas and kept his body almost completely slumped over the steering wheel as he struggled to maintain control while the Ford picked up more and more speed, even as the machine gun continued, the ping-ping-ping! overwhelming Keo’s eardrums. That last part was a hell of a feat, given that both his ears were still ringing from Lewis’s very close-quarters gunshot.
“Drive faster!” Lewis shouted.
“What the hell do you think I’m doing?” Keo shouted back.
He had put thirty meters—forty—on the blockade and the still-firing M249 when Keo finally risked a quick glance at his side mirror. It was still intact, which made sense since the machine gunner was positioned on the other side of the vehicle when it opened up.
The driver of the Chevy was standing in the street looking after them while screaming into a radio. Or, at least, Keo assumed he had to be shouting into the two-way; how else was he going to be heard over the brap-brap-brap of the machine gun firing nearby?
And then, mercifully, the MG fell silent.
Hallelujah!
Keo glanced down at the speedometer. Seventy miles and climbing. He took his foot off the gas and the truck slowed down, the speed decreasing about the same rate as Keo’s racing heartbeat.
Close one. Christ, that was a close one.
Let’s never do that again!
“You could have at least given me some warning,” Keo said. Then, when Lewis didn’t respond, “You hear what I said?”
He looked over at Lewis, only to see a lot of blood.
Aw, shit. And things were going so well, too.
Lewis was slumped over his seat, held in place only by his seat belt, or else he would have been crumpled on the floor right now. Blood pumped out of the side of his neck in thick clumps, spraying the upholstery and dashboard. Keo would have noticed the massive amount of blood loss earlier if he wasn’t so concerned with trying not to get tagged himself.