16
We know time is short, so we hustle over to the bank across the street. It’s not some national branch like Chase or PNC. It’s some local joint with a funny name that I can’t make out. The sign has been half torn down. Federal something or other, I don’t know.
The inside is dirty. Leaves and splotches of mud everywhere. The windows are broken, and the walls and floors are swollen with collected rainwater. They look like they’re close to bursting. The poles and rope dividers that used to guide the customers to the bank tellers’ desks are tipped over and stringy with decay. It’s cold in here.
Bruce leads us through a backdoor and a series of hallways. They’ve seen better days, but they’re not bad, compared to the lobby. There are no windows back here; that would be a security risk. We pass a cart full of saran-wrapped cash. Old bills featuring long-long-dead presidents. The wrapping has preserved the money, but it’s just worthless paper now. Still, even after all this time, I’m in awe of the bills. I want to grab them and run away. Buy a house in the Bahamas, and forget all of this ever happened.
Of course, that’s impossible. But old habits die hard.
Around the bend we go, and we’re face-to-face with the heavy, metal door of a vault. It’s cracked open. Probably can’t work without power. If it did work, I don’t think Bruce would know how to unlock it. These things were pretty much unbreakable back in the day.
He opens the door wider. It creaks loudly. Needs its hinges oiled. The inside walls are covered with drawers on each side. I’m not sure what’s in them, but I’m guessing it’s more cash. More useless paper. The wall opposite the entrance is lined with safes, the old dial kind. There’s long, aged gashes in the metal, like someone tried to take an axe to the lock mechanism and failed. Again, they’re probably full of useless paper.
The stuff worth anything is splayed out right in front of us on the tables: rifles, bullets, vests. It’s a small armory. It doesn’t take my breath away or anything like that; I’ve seen some truly great armories in the apocalypse. At Haven, we had quite the weapons cache before the District attacked us and cleaned us out. Rocket launchers, flame throwers, machine guns with bullets that probably could’ve turned the vault door into Swiss cheese. There’s nothing like that here, but what is here is a start and it’s certainly better than nothing.
Abby picks up one of the rifles. Examines it like it’s some fine piece of art and she’s a collector, ready to drop tens of thousands of dollars on it. “Good stuff,” she says.
“This all you have?” I ask.
He nods. “Not including the weapons strapped to the mannequins. Those are empty. Didn’t see the point of loading them.”
“So it was you who shot at me,” Lilly says. “Not some timed mechanism, huh?”
Bruce looks away, guilty. “I’m quite sorry,” he says. “I was nervous. It has been so long since I’ve had guests that weren’t District, I didn’t want to lose you. And then…when you turned out to be the very people the District is looking for, I had no choice. They would bring ruin to my town if they found out I harbored you and didn’t report it.”
“They wouldn’t have found out,” Lilly snarls. She lunges at Bruce.
It’s a halfhearted attempt, but it makes him stumble backward. He hits the table, and knocks off a Desert Eagle. It clatters loudly on the bank floor.
Taking a look at this bean-covered, urine-soaked man, I wave my hand and tell Lilly that Bruce has had enough.
“So, what, we’re just gonna let him go after this is all said and done?” she asks me.
I shrug.
Abby shrugs.
“He ratted on us!” Lilly says. “We should be miles away from here. At least let me kill the son of a bitch.”
“We’ll need him when the Black Knights get here,” Abby says. “After that, I don’t give two shits about what happens to him.”
“Me either,” I say.
But, like I said before, I feel for him. I don’t know why exactly. He did technically rat us out, but what can I do about that now? What’s done is done. If I kill him or let him die right in front of me, that’s just more blood on my hands.
I walk over to the table and grab one of the rifles and a few magazines. “All right,” I say, “let’s plan. We don’t have much time.”
“Well, it’s your idea to fight back,” Lilly says, “so you give us the plan.”
I think about this for a moment. I realize I don’t have much of a plan. When it comes down to this stuff, this warfare stuff, I rarely ever do. Except, you know, besides just going out in the battlefield and shooting the bad guys until there are no more left. That usually seems to work for me.
This is when we hear the rumbling of engines in the quiet of the town. Engines that could only belong to the Overlord’s Black Knights. My stomach drops somewhere far below the earth’s surface. Looks like a plan is out of the question.
17
The rumble of the engines shakes the night away. We walk outside, and the sun is beaming through a haze of clouds.
“You’re up, Bruce,” I say.
We don’t have time for a fully formed plan, but we have enough time to regroup.
“Where we going?” Abby asks. I nod in the direction of the parking garage. “Genius,” she decides.
I shrug. “I guess I’m practiced in the art of warfare… Kind of.”
We have three rifles between us.
We push Bruce forward into the street. He’s still covered in beans and his own urine. He looks like he’s had quite a night.
“Remember,” I say to him, trying to make my voice deeper. “You’ll be in our crosshairs. First sign of foul play, and…” I squeeze my trigger finger in front of his face, “blam.”
“You won’t shoot me,” he says.
I shrug. “I might not, but I can’t say the same for these fine ladies beside me.”
Abby smiles. “It’s been a while since I’ve seen someone’s head explode—”
“No, it hasn’t,” Lilly says. “It’s been, like, less than twenty-four hours.”
“Too long,” Abby says. She looks at the rifle like it’s her long-lost lover.
Bruce nods. I see he knows she means business. And she does. She craves blood like a zombie craves flesh.
Like I’ve said before, Abby is not one to mess with. You don’t want to get on her bad side. Bruce has been on her bad side since he ratted on us.
Poor Bruce.
“All right, let’s go,” I say.
I estimate that we have about three minutes before the Black Knights roll through the town. I can see them up ahead on the lonely road. Dust billows out from behind them. There are three cars, all of them black—the apocalyptic equivalent of a knight’s trusty steed. They’re polished and waxed, shining brightly in the morning sunshine. The Overlord takes care of his own.
The one thing we have going for us is the element of surprise. If the Black Knights and Mason Storm are as bad as Abby makes them out to be, though, the element of surprise pretty much means jack shit.
Still, I like our chances up there on the parking deck more than down here. But can we trust Bruce? Will the threat of his death make him shut up?
I doubt it, but time will tell.
We go up the parking deck, which takes a lot longer walking. The damn thing seems like it’s gotten bigger since we drove up here in Abby’s truck, but we eventually get to the top, where we have a clear view of the town. I see more mannequins on the opposite buildings. In the daylight, it’s funny to think that we were actually threatened by the things. They’re just regular old mannequins, the kind you’d see in a department store. Featureless. Sexless.
I shake my head and crouch down with Lilly and Abby.
“This is crazy,” Lilly mutters.
“Wow, you really haven’t caught on yet, have you?” Abby says. “You gotta be crazy sometimes.”
I nod. “She’s right, but that’s a rarity.”
Abby doesn’t smile, just sighs
and goes to her position, which is on the opposite side of the deck, where she can look down on the bank. Lilly goes to the other corner, and I stay somewhere in the middle. We have a really good vantage point over the main drag of the town. Bruce is in the middle of the street, waving his arms back and forth, trying to flag down the cars.
They’re coming in hot, too, like they don’t see Bruce standing there. Like they’re going to run him over just for the hell of it.
Bruce notices this, and just at the last moment, he jumps up to the sidewalk. It’s not a graceful movement.
The black cars stop with a screech, burning rubber. White tire smoke drifts up from their rears. Their engines are idling loudly, like race cars.
Nice cars.
Suddenly, the engines shut off.
I aim down my sights at the driver’s side door. If this Mason Storm is as bad as Abby says he is, he’ll be the one driving.
But the driver’s door of the lead car isn’t the one that opens. It’s the passenger’s. A heavy fellow leans out; he looks too big to fit inside the cab.
I glance at Abby, but she shakes her head. That’s not Storm.
Shit.
My strategy is to cut off the head of the snake. You cut off the head of the snake, the rest of the body dies. The Black Knights won’t fight without their leader. Or so I hope.
But now there’s this fat guy. He’s looking at Bruce, and they’re having a conversation. I thought I’d be able to hear it in the quiet of the town, but up here, the wind’s picking up and rippling through my ears, drowning out any chance I have of deciphering their words. I just hear the ‘S’s and ‘Th’s.
My heartbeat is slow, but it’s thudding pretty hard, hitting my ribcage like a man buried alive would hit the inside of his casket. This means I want the fight, want the kill. Like Abby, I’m going through a withdrawal. I need to spill blood. It’s a bad, bad thing, but that’s life now.
The talking stops. I see the fat man shake his head. Then—
Bruce, the rat bastard, points up to the parking garage, and the fat man follows the old man’s finger with his eyes. Looks directly at our vantage point.
His expression never changes. He knows he’s in my crosshairs right now, and he doesn’t even frown.
“We’re blown,” Abby says.
“I know,” I say.
“What do we do?” Lilly asks.
“We start shooting,” I answer.
And I pull the trigger.
18
The first shot hits the mark.
The rifle has a hell of a kickback, but I’m able to keep my aim steady enough to bury two shots in his head for good measure before he collapses in a bloody heap. He hits the ground without much of a face. I don’t think they’ll be having an open-casket funeral for this fellow.
Abby and Lilly pump rounds into the side of the cars. The back most sedan turns and revs; the tires squeal and send up more smoke, burning black tracks in the old road and maneuvers around the other two cars, which aren’t moving.
This is unfortunate for Bruce, because he doesn’t move out of the way fast enough. He tries, but it’s pretty much pointless. Even over the sounds of the gunshots and the growling engines, I can hear the snap of his leg shattering, then the crunch of his torso as the car gallops over him. He lies like roadkill, a flattened possum that crossed at the wrong time.
In my head, I’m going, Oh man, but there’s not much time to linger on this horror. I can’t feel bad for Bruce anymore; he would’ve died anyway. If Abby or Lilly didn’t put a slug in his head, the Black Knights would have for letting us get the drop on them.
The car that gets away sharply turns right and takes out a row of trash cans and recycle bins. Nothing comes out of them. I think they’ve already been picked clean, or maybe whatever contents they once possessed have rotted away with the years.
Lilly sends a few shots at the car’s tail end. There’s a rip-roaring screech as the car drifts to the right, speeding up, then a sonic boom as it crashes into a nearby brick wall.
“Got ‘em,” Abby says approvingly.
Nice.
Lilly and I concentrate our fire on the two other cars still in the road. More glass shatters. A taillight busts. A tire pops, but the car doesn’t even lurch forward. They don’t seem to be in much of a hurry.
I squeeze the trigger until the gun clicks empty, then pull out another magazine and jam it in. Cock it. Abby sends out her last round, too. Lilly is fumbling with her own ammunition.
I pop back up and I see the car doors hanging open. Empty.
The Black Knights have escaped.
“They’re gone,” I say.
“Shit,” Abby says. “We gotta run now. We lost our chance.”
“We should’ve never been in this situation in the first place!” Lilly yells.
“Not the time to fight. Shoulda, woulda, coulda—it happened. Time to regroup,” I say, pointing toward the garage’s exit. “Come on!”
We run out and down the slope. Go around and around for two levels before we’re greeted with a barrage of gunshots.
The bullets whine off the concrete, and thud into a service door at our backs. We dive out of the way. My heart stops because I could feel the hot air around the bullets, they were that close.
“Abby Cage!” a voice says. “Jack Jupiter!”
Abby’s baring her teeth. She recognizes the voice. I don’t know who it is—don’t care, either.
Abby is way ahead of me, though. She dives out from behind the concrete pillar, clutching the rifle in her good hand and balancing the barrel on her bared stump. She executes a somersault. The movement is smooth, she looks like an action movie star. To say I’m jealous would be an understatement.
I peer out from behind the pillar now, trying to pinpoint where the shots have come from. My left hand is back, resting on Lilly’s shoulder, holding her steady.
Abby has posted up behind the opposite pillar. She has a better view. She sticks her head out and around, looking at the long-forgotten, dusty cars parked on this level. As she does, three shots punch holes in the concrete near her head, sending chunks spraying. The shots were close, much too close, but Abby is okay. If anything, this just pisses her off. I stick my own head out just as the last shot’s echo dies.
I see the man ducking behind a blue Ford Taurus. He’s got a helmet on, and streaks of black face-paint under each eye and down the bridge of his nose. He’s an ugly son of a bitch, but most of these hired guns in the District are. Hell, the world is an ugly place.
It’s funny. Seeing this guy with his Army helmet, flak jacket, and war paint, you can tell he takes his job seriously. Too seriously. This guy woke up and smeared crap on his face, got all gussied up for a day of hunting and killing with his Black Knights, just so he could end up getting killed by yours truly.
I don’t have the clearest of shots, and I know if I lean out too far, he’ll put a bullet in my head, so I take what I got—which is not much—and go for it. That’s what Norm would do, hoping the shrapnel from the shot car will take him down.
I pull the trigger of my rifle, feel the rounds spray out. It’s a good feeling, a powerful feeling, but it’s nothing compared to the feeling that comes over me when I hear Warpaint scream.
“My eyes!” he yells. “My fuckin’ eyes!”
That’s real pain I hear in his voice. Real terror. You couldn’t fake this. So I come out from behind the pillar, much to Lilly’s displeasure. She grabs the back of my cloak, but I pull away.
Abby comes out, too. We stand there in the wide open with our weapons drawn, ready for another gunfight.
We don’t get one.
Warpaint rolls around on the concrete, body writhing, hands on his face. Between his fingers, blood seeps out. His own gun is out of reach.
“Jesus, Jack,” Abby whispers.
Warpaint moves his hands away from his eyes and I’m filled with a mixture of grim satisfaction and terror. My plan worked, and that’s great—I really
didn’t think it would—but seeing what I’m seeing now, the pain this man is going through, makes me sick to my stomach.
I had shot the tail end of the car he was hiding behind with the intention of spraying enough shrapnel in his direction to drive him out, which is what happened, except the glass and the old, rusty metal hit him mostly in the face.
In the eyes.
“Sorry,” I say as I raise my rifle and point it at his head.
The guy stops screaming for a moment. His last moment. That ruined face looks back at me like some terrible beast from the depths of hell.
“Hail the Overlord,” the man says.
I pull the trigger.
The sound of the shot is monstrous in the confines of the parking deck. The guy’s head busts open, and his brains—pink and healthy—leak onto the concrete. He is dead-dead; he will not come back as a zombie. There’s some mercy in that, I think, probably more than he deserved.
“Lilly, come on!” I shout.
She does, grimacing at the dead man whose brains she must step around. We’ve got to get back to the truck and get the hell out of here. It’s what we should’ve done in the first place; Lilly was right, but now I fear it’s too late.
We turn the corner, come out on the ground level of the parking deck, and stop at the edge of the attendant’s booth. I lean out and look down the street. There’s Bruce’s mutilated body, and there’s one of the cars the Black Knights arrived in…but no Black Knights.
“Clear,” I say.
Of course, as soon as I say this, a pair of rough hands grab me.
19
“Don’t move,” a man’s voice says.
My gun is jerked out of my grip. A hand slips under my chin, squeezes so tight that I’m forced to cough, but the cough can’t even escape. My eyes bulge from my face, and I feel my cheeks growing hot with blood.
Abby, of course, doesn’t listen to this guy, and because she doesn’t, neither does Lilly. They both have their rifles trained on this faceless man who has captured me.
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