The building, with all the hundreds of frightened spectators speaking at once, trying to shove their way outside, could be described as raucous on the verge of riotous. So it was that the single gunshot in the enclosed room had scarcely been heard but when Rizz went to the door and saw the guard, Bobby returning, the noise his AR made while gunning him down set off a panic.
After two tremendous explosions, the sound of shooting inside the building sent people climbing over each other to escape what they thought was an attack of some sort.
"He saw me!" Rizz said as way of explanation, finally shutting the door.
"You could have just shut the door!" Chesser yelled. "Now we're fucking screwed."
"We've been screwed," Grey said, trying to think his way out of their predicament and coming up short. They were trapped in a room which was trapped in a building which was trapped on an armed base. The only thing he could think of doing with such odds against them was to simply make a run for it. "Ok, forget the door, forget the guards, we have to get out of here, fast. To stay means being cornered."
Grey grabbed the bearded fighter before he could finish off the wounded guard. "Don't. He's going to suffer, trust me on this. Besides we'll need every bullet."
The fighter spat on the guard instead of shooting him, and said, "You'll get yours in hell."
"Enough," Grey barked. "Chesser, watch our six. Everyone else, eyes out. Don't waste ammo by spraying it around. Let's roll."
He led them out the door that opened onto the side lobby and ran into trouble at once. The place was still crowded with hundreds of fight spectators—their panic to get out had actually caused the exits to become mostly blocked as people were trampled and fights broke out. Scattered among them were the River King's guards and all it took was one of them seeing the prisoners escaping.
Keyed up by the gunshots, a guard raised his rifle and without regard to collateral damage he let loose a long burst almost as if he was trying to hose the prisoners with lead. As his fellow prisoners dove for cover, Grey dropped to one knee, sighted, and squeezed off a single round. The guard flailed backwards, one hand clutching his chest.
Before the man hit the floor, Grey was already up and moving. "Let's go," he growled over his shoulder. The time for any sort of stealth was gone; more guards were racing to the sound of the shooting. Grey sprinted with the rest following him down a long corridor lined with doors. The first guard that showed his face was shot down; the second screamed and held up his hands. Grey snatched his weapon, slung it across his back and then continued to sprint.
Behind them guards turned onto the corridor and began firing. Chesser went down with a bullet through the back. The bearded fighter tried to run and return fire at the same time, but he too was hit. He slumped against the wall and went on shooting. Grey knew the man wouldn't last, as well he knew the corridor was too narrow and too empty for the guards to miss their marks so he took the first door he came to and rushed through it only to find himself once again in the theater. They were down low, close to the stage where the cage sat empty and silent.
The theater seemed to loom above them threateningly.
"We're trapped," Rizz said. He sounded hollow as though there was nothing left to him. He had the look of a man who was certain he was about to die. Grey had seen the look before. It occurred sometimes in newbies who'd been thrown into the fire too quickly.
"Not at all," Grey shot back, trying to sound confident. Once a newbie lost his nerve it was hell to get it back. "Come on, we'll double back and come out behind our pursuers. Then we'll lose ourselves in the crowd. We'll be home free in a few minutes."
It was a good plan, however fate intervened and destroyed it. They ran up the aisle only to stop cold as three more guards came rushing in from the front lobby. With ice in his veins, Grey raised his rifle and drilled the first guard through the heart with a half-second snapshot. He tracked his weapon to the right and fired again sending his round through the left shoulder of a second guard who was just then trying to duck away.
In the next moment, Grey was down on his knees between the rows of chairs as the third guard raked the auditorium with lead, sending seat cushion fluff and splinters flying.
"Follow me, and keep low," Grey ordered. He started crawling along the row on his hands and knees. Ahead of him was the main aisle: five feet of zero cover. When he got to it he peeked his head around it, only to shy back as a bullet whizzed past. A second looked confirmed what he guessed, the guard with the shoulder wound was camping at the top of the aisle with as fine a field of fire as one could ask for.
Grey looked back to his two fellow prisoners. Rizz was directly behind him, but with his eyes wide and unblinking, Grey spoke to the next man. "Grimes, I need you to lay down some cover fire. Take a couple of shots at the top of this aisle."
"It's O'Dell, and give me a second." The space between the rows was cramped, not fit for big men with big weapons. Grey too had to sort himself out before he whispered, "Ready."
"Yeah."
O'Dell hopped up fired three times in quick succession, as he did, Grey jumped up and launched himself across the center aisle. A fraction of a second too late, bullets zipped his way, but he was able to scramble into the rows on the other side without getting hit."
"Rizz, you're next," he commanded.
Rizz scooted up the edge of the aisle and looked at the distance across as if it was a mile wide. "No, it's too far."
"Listen to me, it's not. It's only a couple of feet and me and O'Dell will be laying down covering fire. It'll be nothing. Now come on, please. We're running out of time."
"No, I can't."
"Then move out of my way, you son of a bitch!" O'Dell yelled, trying to pull Rizz back. At that exact moment the lower stage door to the theater came open and in came two more guards.
Grey lifted his weapon over the seats and pointed as best he could in their direction without actually raising his head. His shots went all over the place, missing everything but the walls, still it had the effect of sending them into cover. "Now," Grey hissed to O'Dell. Rizz was a lost cause and only trembled on the floor right where O'Dell had to try to crawl through.
Again Grey lifted his weapon—it was someone's homemade version of an AR, yet it worked just fine—and fired toward the lobby. Five shots right in a row. O'Dell jumped up, stepped on Rizz's back with one foot, took another awkward step to reach the aisle and dove for the protection of the seats on the other side.
He landed spitting blood.
The guards had not been idle. The two at the top had O'Dell's position pinpointed. He'd been hit in the left hip and lung. "Fuuuuck!" O'Dell cried, holding his chest and grimacing.
Grey took a single look at the wound and saw there was no saving the man, even if he could drag him out of there, O'Dell would die, drowning in blood in the next few minutes. They both knew it and O'Dell being a hard man gave Grey the "nod" telling him that it was ok to escape if he could. O'Dell even went so far as to struggle into a leaning position and began shooting up the place, holding his AR one-handed, pistol style.
Rizz, who was still hunkered down hiding his face from the gunshots, was a lost cause and Grey left him without a word or the least guilt. He crawled to the far aisle and slithered down it as fast as he could until he came to the stage door opposite from the guards. Without hesitation he burst through it and slammed it shut behind him.
He found himself fifteen feet from the box office door he had left not even two minutes before. The sound of muted voices told him there were still people inside. He bypassed it heading for the one place he hoped was empty: the River king's office.
With the majority of the guards behind him he made it without being seen.
"Got to find something to wear," he whispered, heading to the closet. "Ha!" It was empty save for a filing cabinet and a dusty, tan raincoat that was clearly far too small for him. After dropping the second rifle he slid the coat on and found that it wouldn't button across the chest.
The only question now was: did he carry his gun? No one but the guards had been armed, meaning it would be awful suspicious looking for a big a man in way-too tight raincoat sporting an AR to be walking around. He couldn't chance it and with a sigh, he laid both weapons down on the River King's desk.
"Now to act casual." Setting his face into a calm mask as if the evening was like any other, he opened the door only to come face to face with the River King himself. The king had been wearing a nasty scowl but that changed to surprise and fury the moment he recognized Grey.
There was a second where both men simply stared at each other, but then the River King started to bring up his right hand which held something with a silver shine. Grey slammed the door in his face, but so angry was the king over the loss of his bridge that he kicked it back open. Grey dove for the desk, rolling over it and snatching his guns as he did. He came up on the other side with a rifle in each hand.
"That was slick," the River King said from just around the corner in the hall. "You're a regular Indiana Jones. But let's see if you can beat this trick. I found a certain someone wandering the halls and was just going to stash in her in here. See who it is."
He had assumed it would be Sadie, but when he peeked over the desk he saw it was Melanie. The River King had his pistol to her head; the hammer was back and there couldn't have been more than a quarter-pound of pull left on the trigger before it was irretrievably set into action.
"Careful," the River King warned as Grey brought his rifle to bear. Grey's target, the king's right eye was so big and close that he couldn't miss. "If you fire, she will die, too," the king said.
"So?" Grey asked, trying for the second time in the space of a minute to be casual.
"So we both know you won't shoot. You've got some hang up about heaven or some such nonsense. You think you have to be good, whatever that means. And for some reason it's rubbed off on Sadie."
Grey's position didn't budge a millimeter as he asked, "And you want to change that? You want to change the fact that she's good."
"Yes! Now that Jillybean has blown up my fucking bridge, it's more important than ever. You see, I need Sadie to be on my team, to see that losers like you have no future, that the good guys always end up dead."
"So you're proposing I put my gun down so you can later kill me?" Grey asked incredulously.
"Yes. That's one choice. The other choice is you shoot me, and I shoot snaggle-tooth, here."
"And then I escape."
The River King smiled. "No. Sure you might live, but you will never, ever, for as long as you live, escape the fact that you killed a perfectly innocent life so you could survive."
"I could do a lot of good in the world if I live," Grey said, trying to convince himself that killing the River King was the right thing to do.
"The road to hell is paved with good intentions," the King taunted. "Pull the trigger and I'll save you a seat."
Chapter 39
Neil Martin
The Bridge at Cape Girardeau
Of all the prisoners in the three five-ton trucks only Neil could claim to be at peace. He had run his race, he had fought all that he could fight, and he had loved to the fullest he was capable of. Looking back there wasn't a single decision of his that he questioned. Despite all the pain, he would have done it all over the exact same way.
He was going to be able to face his death with a clear conscious. But then Jillybean ruined it. The second he recovered from the initial blast and realized he was still alive he swore to himself. The others in the truck began to yammer useless questions to one another and as usual only Neil seemed to have any answers "It's just Jillybean. Her rescues tend to be over the top."
"It sounded like the bridge was blown up," Fred Trigg said. "I doubt that is part of any rescue. It's probably some sort of turf battle and we're stuck in the middle."
As if to prove his point a smattering of rifle fire could be heard from a little further up the bridge. Though Fred said, "See?" Neil didn't think it sounded like a real battle. A minute later the gunfire stopped, there was the sound of running feet and then their truck started backing up at top speed.
"This isn't going to end well," Neil said sardonically. They crashed and Neil, who was in the very back, was flung to the end of the chain. His wrists smarted where the chain wrapped through, but other than that, he was fine. The truck driver gave it one more try before he too started running.
Everyone looked at Neil for an answer to what was going on, but all he could say was, "Must be bad."
When the second bomb went off and the concrete undulated like an ocean wave, and their hearts froze in their chests and once the prisoners stopped screaming and only sat like beaten puppies whimpering, Neil said, "See?" to Fred. "I told you it would be bad."
It was bad. Unhinged from the land and with all its load bearing cables severed, the remains of the bridge began to sway and as it did it groaned like a dying leviathan.
"What kind of plan is this?" Marybeth Gates asked.
"She's just trying to top herself," Neil said. "First she sinks a boat with me tied to it and now...whatever this is. We should all probably just relax and let it play out."
"I am so sick of you telling us what to do," Fred snapped. "I think we can all assume that you've been voted out of office."
"Leaders are still leaders whether they're in office or out," Michael Gates intoned in his heavy voice.
"Thanks for the vote of confidence, Mike," Neil said with a smirk. "That means so...much...did you guys hear that?"
The six or seven whispered conversations quieted and in the silence they could hear someone yelling from below them, but the words were muffled.
"They said something about string," little Joe Gates said. "And I think rope was another word."
"We need to get the back flap opened," Neil said. "Everyone on the right I need you to stand up."
The method of their imprisonment was simple: their hands were zip-tied together at the wrists, and to keep them from trying to leap out of the truck, one long loop of chain had been snaked through their arms with both ends attached to a ring bolt on the floor of the bed near the front. There were two such chains, one for each side.
Neil's group stood and held their arms at the best angle possible to give him the most chain to work with. He could just reach through the gap between the canvas and the gate to work the ties securing the back flap loose. When he got one end up he looked out and was about to yell to Jillybean when the full destruction of the bridge hit him.
From his position, he could look almost straight down at the river. Everything else was just gone.
"Jillybean!" he yelled, a touch more stridently than he meant to. "You broke the bridge!"
"I did." Her little voice floated up from what seemed like far below. "I shot up a rocket with twine on it. You have to pull it up gently. It's attached to some climbing rope."
"We can't we're chained inside the truck!"
There was silence from below. "What did she say about the chains?" Marybeth asked. "I couldn't hear very well."
"Nothing so far. Maybe..."
Just then Jillybean started yelling again: "Tell me how you're chained."
"Who cares how we're chained?" Fred griped. "She won't be able to get us out. We're going to starve up here. Or the bridge will crash. Is it swaying even more?"
It was. And the groaning of the structure was louder than ever. Neil figured if a stiff wind sprung up the whole thing would go crashing down. The other prisoners began to babble and cry.
"Please, shut up," Neil said with a deep breath. He then yelled down to Jillybean explaining how they were chained in place.
"Ok good," Jillybean said.
"Did she say good?" Marybet
h asked hopefully. Everyone crowded down the end of the loop towards Neil who had to hush their whispering to hear the little girl.
"We're all about to feel stupid," Neil said when he heard what they had to do. "Starting from the back everyone on that side needs to take that side of the canvas off the truck. It's attached down near the bottom of the rail." Without question Michael began untying. When the canvas was partially off and the full view of the river struck them, each of them gasped and stood up to see the damage.
"Now what?" William Gates asked when the entire driver's side of the canvas had been peeled back.
"You don't see it yet? Everyone over there get real close together. You have to give Michael as much chain as possible."
"Son of a bitch," Michael said with a grin. With the canvas off the truck, the access to the cab, where the keys sat in the running engine was six feet away. As the last person on the chain Michael had the most freedom of movement. He went to the front of the bed, dragging the chain behind him, awkwardly climbed to the cab, and after a little fumbling came back with the keys set firmly between his teeth.
In seconds, the chains were unlocked. Michael went to free the other prisoners while Neil, still with his hands bound together, hurried to the rail and smiled down at Jillybean and Deanna. His smile faltered a little when he saw the size of their raft; there was no way it would fit sixty people.
"Hi Neil," Jillybean called. "You gonna pull that rope up or what? Ipes is getting antsy. He's afraid the bridge might fall on us."
It sounded like a joke. High up on the groaning, swaying structure it was far from it. "Not yet. We got to find some way out of the cuffs." He turned to the group crowding close. "Someone find a knife or a saw or something. Look in the glove compartments."
The three trucks were devoid of anything useful and the crowd at the rail looked down at Jillybean in expectation. "I don't want to use my rockets unless I have to," she said. "What kind of cuffs are these? Like normal handcuffs?"
"They're zip-ties," several people shouted down to her. A few even hung their bound hands over the rail as if she would be able to see the zip-ties in the dark.
The Apocalypse Fugitives Page 37