by RW Krpoun
“I dunno. We barely been set up here.”
“Yeah. How would you let them know if you found the RV? You had to have a number to call so you could collect your bounty.”
“Hermie had it,” Gato jerked his head towards the faceless man in the concert tee shirt, then winced at the pain in his ear. “This was business, man.”
“Yeah. Who gave that girl in the trailer the business?”
Gato made a clicking noise, shaking his head gingerly. “Man, don’t sweat some bitches.”
“Good point.” Marv brought his sap down on Gato’s ankle, blasting the bones into gravel.
Stepping away from the convulsing gang-banger, he waved Dyson over. “You find anything on black tee shirt?”
“Phone, personal junk.”
“Is the phone locked?”
“Nope.” Dyson tried not to look at the maimed Gato.
“Did the two holed up at the sign have a radio or phone, anything to communicate with?”
“No, why?”
‘There’s five more roadblocks, all manned by this same crew, and all of them watching for us. Get Gato here strapped in and let’s move things up a notch.”
“You’re…a lot meaner than I thought, Marv,” Dyson said frankly.
“I’ve gotten a lot meaner,” the Ranger admitted. “Today was a couple firsts for me. But I think I have to get meaner to get through all this. And to be honest I’m getting real sick of people like Gato here; the reason I’m alive and was able to take out those FASA guys on I-75 was because an old Marine and his wife bought the farm trying to stop them. A bunch of people caught it at the RV park because they had the bad luck to be there when we arrived. And these assholes passed the time waiting for us to show up by raping, robbing, and murdering. I’m developing a real complex about FASA and the people who take their pay.”
“I see your point,” Dyson nodded. “I’m not the same guy I was a few days ago.”
The gang-bangers had gotten to the roadhouse in four vehicles, and had used seized vehicles for the roadblock. One of the vehicles in the roadblock was a dually pickup pulling a trailer with a Ditch Witch on it; Bear backed the stubby little front loader off the trailer and used it to dig a trench behind the trailer where they buried the twelve people the gang members had murdered.
“Sixteen hundred,” Marv shook his head. “This is taking forever.”
“We’re almost done,” JD patted the air in a calming manner. “We just need to sort out the women and we’re good.”
“Yeah,” the Ranger turned in a half circle. “Am I forgetting anything?”
“If you have, everyone else has, too.”
“So, now what are you guys going to do?” Sylvia asked as Chip scrubbed the shoe polish off his face in one of the roadhouse kitchen’s sinks.
“Head west. We’ve got business in Texas.”
“Business like this,” she swept a hand which took in the entire situation.
“No, this is sort of…targets of opportunity. What’s in Texas is different. I can’t tell you the specifics because its classified.”
“So you’re like CIA?”
Chip paused, honesty fighting against the way she was looking at him. “Different set of letters,” he tried to keep his voice casual. “You’ve never heard of the agency,” he added truthfully.
“So the Yard Gnome thing is just your code name?”
“For the team, yeah, kind of an inside joke. You did a great job on the logo, by the way.”
“Thanks, I take art classes.” She stuck her hands in her back pockets. “So, listen, my car is screwed up, and I really don’t have anywhere special to get to, the place I worked at burned down in the fighting in Little Rock, so maybe I could tag along with you guys until you get somewhere safe?”
“Let me ask-a team like this, there’s protocol,” Chip said carefully, hiding the way his hands shook in the towel he had used to dry off. “I’ll have to get clearance. But I’ll certainly try.” He realized he was babbling and shut up.
“Look I’ve been real helpful,” Chip announced as he marched up where Marv was talking to Bear and Dyson. “I thought of the gravel truck and I came on this mission. I got hurt, dude,” he jerked a thumb towards his bandaged ear.
“Yeah, that’s true,” the Ranger said carefully, absently rubbing at the boot polish on his face. “Your point being?”
“Sylvia wants to come with us, and I think she should.”
“Yeah, about that,” Bear ran a hand through his pony tail. “I got a request along those lines, too.”
“Are we suddenly taking apps for camp followers?”
“Look, you may be buoyed by your endless devotion to God and Country, but I would like to get laid,” the biker explained. “I’ve walked, ran, ridden, and fought my way from ratbag central Florida to the middle of Arkansas against zombies, terrorists, and gang members, and we ain’t done yet. I lost my hog in the process and so far I haven’t seen squat in the way of pay or compensation. As I’ve mentioned before, I’m not in the Army.”
“Well, first point, none of them get read into our operation,” Marv held up a finger. “Tell them we’re going to Texas and leave it at that. What they don’t know, they can’t leak. Second, how the hell are we going to handle the logistics? That RV is big, but there’s seven already, and the last thing I wanna hear is you guys getting it on.”
“No problem. That quad-cab dually that was pulling the front loader is a diesel, and there’s a nearly new Eddie Bauer Airstream trailer behind the old gas station-why they stashed it there, I have no idea. It’s a twenty-five footer, plenty of room for any female companionship we happen to encounter.”
“The pick-up would certainly give us more carrying capacity,” Chip jumped in. “The RV is overflowing.”
“OK, but I want this clear: they follow orders, they don’t start trouble, and you guys are responsible for their behavior. I’m not refereeing domestic squabbles, and I’m not accepting drama. You guys still stand night watch same as anyone else. No special privileges because you’re in love.”
Bear snickered. “It ain’t love I’m feeling, chief. Another couple days and Dyson is gonna start looking good.”
“I’ll show you something you’ve never seen before,” the Georgian advised him. “The other end.”
“Yeah, OK, so long as you guys understand,” Marv shrugged.
“No sweat, road boss,” the biker grinned. “I’ll still tote my load.”
“How are we on the other women?”
“We’re setting up a van,” Dyson waved towards the vehicle, where Brick was checking under the hood. “They would like an escort, but frankly I think they’ll be safer on their own.”
“All right, get the pick-up and trailer on line.” Marv checked his watch. “We roll in fifteen minutes whether the pleasure palace is a ‘go’ or not. FASA will be getting a read on our location by then, and we can’t afford to screw around.”
Chip and Bear promptly set off.
“We’ll have to sort things out on the move,” Dyson warned.
“So long as we’re moving, that’s OK. How’s Addison doing?” Marv addressed that last to JD, who was coming up.
“Almost done,” the promoter said. “What’s with Chip and Bear?”
“We’re bringing along a couple of the girls, a pickup, and a trailer-we’ll sort it all out down the road.” Marv handed JD a road map he had found in one of the vehicles. “Are we clear on all the particulars?”
JD unfolded the map. “Yeah. Things are a lot simpler with zombies. Kind of cleaner, too.”
“I agree. But we have to work with the hand we’re dealt.”
The promoter nodded bleakly.
Chapter Eleven
Sophia marked the positions listed in the readout onto her map and picked up her sat phone. “Team twelve-six? This is Prime, prepare to copy.” She read off the coordinates. “They were heading straight for Checkpoint Five. No, five is not responding, but I have a group from their parent organizati
on en route to assist you. What is your ETA? They should be there a few minutes ahead of you. Let the street people do any heavy lifting-we just want that box, intact.” She listened. “Good. Prime out.”
Setting the phone in its charger, she leaned back in her chair, thinking hard. The payload had passed through the checkpoint-of that she was fairly certain. Why the hired guns hadn’t stopped it she wasn’t certain, but undoubtedly they would have extracted a measure of harm whatever the final outcome.
Now all it boiled down to was waiting-these Gnomes were wounded prey, and her wolves would follow the trail of blood to its conclusion.
She looked at the poster on the wall above her computer, a black and while aerial shot, a grainy image of Hamburg burning in July 1943, the aftermath of Operation Gomorrah. Over thirty thousand people dead, slightly more than that maimed, and one million rendered homeless in a matter of hours. Let her get her hands on that payload and she would personally burn up a dozen cities; just the thought of it made her feel giddy.
Bob Hoskins stowed the sat phone in his tactical vest and set the destination on the GPS. Andre, his driver, checked the path and sped up a little. Bob disliked his new controller-Prime sounded like a seriously sick woman. Not in what she said, but the way she said it, sort of breathless and wet-mouthed.
Bob didn’t have any problem with violence-when you’ve done a solid dime in Louisiana’s penal system you get used to it fast, nor even with killing if the money was right, but he distrusted freaks who get hot over the idea, and loathed those who did the deed by proxy. Prime, in his opinion, was both.
He had four more besides Andre in the Lincoln SUV, all Nigerian muslims that FASA had recruited from the Georgia prison system, none of them too bright or too educated, but they were fine with violence without getting too into it, and none were too upset over taking orders from a creole brother from the Big Easy. They were all true believers, rapping away about jihad and all that; Bob, on the other hand, was in it for the money, same as always. FASA had helped him get out of prison two years ago, and kept him on the payroll since and that was cause enough for him.
He considered calling the team working their way towards them, but decided against it. The outfit coming from District 13 was Aryan Brotherhood and the less he had to deal with those assholes, the better. The only color Bob concerned himself with was green and his only religion was wealth and the good times it could buy, and while that made him very useful to FASA, it meant he had to spend a lot of time with a lot of uptight SoBs who couldn’t see any further than their own version of the world.
Andre blurted something in Igbo that sounded like profanity as they pulled up to Checkpoint Five, and Bob certainly understood why. Over a dozen corpses were lashed to fence posts on the east side of the roadhouse parking lot, and a door had been wired to the fence roughly in the middle of the display with ‘RAPISTS AND MURDERERS” spray painted into it. A stylized symbol had been spray-painted into the front of the roadhouse: a red peak with a white looping half-circle under it, red and green lines ending in black lines doubling back. YGAT was in red, white, and blue letters next to the symbol. Bob realized that the symbol was a yard gnome: red hat, white beard, red shirt, green pants, dark boots.
“Red, white, and blue,” he muttered as he climbed out of the SUV. “Great. We’re up against a bunch of patriotic rednecks.”
The roadblock had been cleared, the vehicles used in it having been parked any-which-way in front of the roadhouse at the road’s edge, forcing Andre to park in front of an old gas station across the road. Four had YGAT spray-painted across the sides-the security team’s vehicles, he guessed.
The Los Lobos reaction team had already arrived and were cutting down their friends’ bodies, while three more were digging on the far side of the fence.
Bob picked out the leader and walked over, Andre tagging along. “I’m Bob, Recon team Twelve-Six,” he offered his hand to the grim-faced gang-banger, a rough-looking guy in his thirties with his crew’s insignia tattooed across his bare scalp.
“Maddé,” the banger was so pissed he was shaking. “Who the fuck are these guys, man? I had fourteen people here. You assholes told us they were a bunch of pinche bastards, and now I got thirteen corpses and a cripple, man. They disrespected them hard, dog.”
Bob held up his hands in a peace gesture. “Hey, man, I’m just a little cog in the machine. They told me the same thing, like taking candy off a baby. This is a surprise to me, too.”
Maddé spat something in Spanish too fast for Bob to follow, but seemed slightly mollified. “I find those bastards, they gonna pay, pay all the way.”
“I wish you all the success in the world-these guys have it coming. What are your guys digging?”
“Graves-we got two of them, and now I’m gonna dig them up and diss them back.”
“Graves….how do you know your guys got them?”
“Because they had markers, that YGAT stuff and…”
The explosion wasn’t loud, not like they showed in the movies, no ball of fire or things like that; Bob had been turning to look when there was a whump like a giant door slamming and dirt fountained up, bodies sailing into the air like soda cans when a firecracker goes off underneath them.
“Sonofabitch,” Bob gasped, turning back to Maddé just as chunk of the gang leader’s forehead popped off and a jet of blood and brain matter slapped the recon leader across the face and chest like someone had thrown a bowl of stew at him. There was an odd noise a sort of tak-tak-tak that seemed high-pitched and yet dull at the same time to his right, a noise he couldn’t quite place.
He staggered back a step, absently wiping at the gore on his face, and saw steam curling up from the around the SUV’s hood; it dawned on him that he had been deafened by the blast and that the strange noise was rifle fire aimed at the Lincoln’ radiator.
He looked at the tree line to the west, the purpose in the positioning of the parked vehicles suddenly becoming painfully clear, just in time to see a single muzzle flash blossom deep within the trees.
Sophia picked up the sat phone as it buzzed. “Prime.”
“Hello, Prime. How are you doing?”
She frowned at her screen. “Who the hell it this?”
“My friends call me Marv the Maniac, Prime. But you can call me Marvin.”
She jerked the phone away from her ear to check the number, but she did not recognize it. “How the hell did you get my number?”
The man chuckled. “Your organization is springing leaks, Prime.”
She shook her head. “Look, Marvin, I don’t know what the government told you, but what you are carrying could help a lot of people. We will pay you five million dollars in gold for that payload.”
“You forgot the inoculations.”
“There is no inoculation, Marvin. You know that.”
“Make it ten million.”
She hesitated. “I can go to eight on my own authority, but I can get ten cleared in five minutes.”
“So ten is a go.”
“Yes,” she tapped the mouse and Marvin’s file appeared on her screen.
“I’ll think about it.”
“Look, what is your pay compared to that kind of money? They have used you like an animal, Marvin, fighting their wars, carrying out their dirty jobs, but no matter how much you sacrifice, no matter how much you suffer, you’ll still just be an expendable piece on the game board to them. Isn’t it time you started thinking for yourself? Started building a future for yourself?”
“As a matter of fact, I have been thinking along that very line for these last couple days. You’re right, I do need to start creating my own future.”
“Then let’s make this happen. You tell me a time and a place, and your gold will be waiting.”
“I don’t think you’re getting the picture, Prime: I’m used to being on the winning side, and you bozos aren’t that.”
“Do you really see a victory around you, Marvin?” Sophia leaned forward. “Cities are burning
.” She smiled up at the grainy picture of Hamburg.
“Oh, you guys are doing a lot of damage, but anyone can break things, Prime; the thing is, winners build. And besides, you guys are like the Keystone Cops-remember that helicopter on fire? How about that big trap at the RV park?”
“You can’t run forever, Marvin.”
“Heard from your ground team lately?” There was amusement in his voice, she realized. “We’ll talk about this later, Prime. See, I’m going to make you a hobby of mine. Once I deliver this payload to where it belongs I’m going to look you up. You won’t have to send them after me, Prime: I’m going to come for you.”
The line went dead.
Sophia stared at the silent phone. For the first time since she had set fire to that dumpster so long ago, one of her potential victims had reached out and made contact with her. It was unnerving on a very deep level.
“Any luck tracing it?” Marv asked as Addison disconnected the cell phone from the computer.
“Major blocking on the system. Good stuff,” The dark Gnome began packing up the laptop and his other gear. “Maybe Georgia, but I can’t be sure. I’ll play with the data, see what I can sort out.”
“Well, I rattled her cage at least,” Marv opened the passenger door to the sedan they had taken from the roadblock as Brick climbed in behind the wheel. “Let’s catch up to the others. You got all the numbers off this phone?”
“Yeah.”
The Ranger tossed the phone out the window as Brick pulled out onto the road.
Sophia knew the Doctor was irritated when she entered the room by the way he was using the mouse. “Sir.”
“In a moment.” He scrolled through more reports. “An engineering unit? Who could expect a Reservist engineering unit to put up such a fight? Do they even issue them weapons?”
“I believe it’s usual, sir.”
“Insane.”
“Yes, sir.”
“All right, report.”
“The payload…has slipped through my screen in Arkansas. I have a light plane looking for them, but we have lost them for the moment.” She hesitated.