He hit that ground hard. The impact took him mostly in the shoulder, the rest of his athletic frame slamming down in the wake. Vegas lay on the road a long few seconds as the Humvee slowed beyond his pained vision, and moving like his neck was broken, he fought the pain to scope the path to the Bastion’s front gate.
The Humvee screeched to a halt and the driver hurriedly negotiated its turning circle. A handful of shouts concealed by the bulk of the nearest tenement didn’t augur well. The urgency forced Vegas upright, against protests from the rest of him, blood dripping from his chin in time with his pulse as he cast hooded eyes across the access road and started away at a limping shuffle as if they were still precious seconds to be saved.
There were no alarms, no klaxons, nothing to explain the Humvee’s squealing brakes behind him as Vegas picked up the pace into a stumbling jog.
The high barricades to the east and the last stand of lonely trees the Bastion allowed itself concealed him from the gate sentries for about a hundred yards. Then the boundary softened and the gates themselves hove into view.
The engine noise grew behind him, and Vegas broke into a full run.
The troopers at the gate had plenty of chance to gun him down, but the lack of alarum meant the two men up on the machine-gun turret had their backs to the scene. A third trooper lifted rheumy eyes from rolling a cigarette, and the fourth trooper, at the foot of the metal staircase for the platform at the side of the gate, was a startled-looking black woman who simply stared at Vegas as he ran breathlessly, as much a fugitive as his younger self, running from the law, merely locking eyes with the woman and shaking his head with as much solemnity as his pace allowed.
Then the growling Humvee came around into view on the road behind him and Vegas reached the guard post and tore past the female sentry.
The middle-aged man with the cigarette dropped his makings and went for the M14 on its strap just as Vegas ploughed into him, forearm first, taking practically no dent to his momentum as he continued on and up and around the metal stairs using the ever-reliable railing to haul himself up so fast it seemed perverse. He tucked aching legs into his chest as he vaulted the top rail, ducking and then twisting like the running back he could’ve been, had life been something else.
Now Vegas used that grace and hard-won athleticism to come up behind the first of the two men at the top just as the pair swiveled about and registered him.
The time for keeping things friendly had long passed. Vegas clutched a fistful of the first trooper’s collar, and a knee shove and a scoop-like forearm bar made it comically easy to hoist the soldier right over the edge of the barricade.
The startled man fell to the unyielding ground outside the front of the gate with a shout of realization, and his comrade turned, working the pistol at his hip like it was glued there.
Vegas remained in motion, a snake-fast hand clutching the trooper’s wrist clutching the Sig Sauer’s holstered grip. Their other arms clashed. Vegas battered the trooper’s weak grab aside with his elbow, then stabbed his right hand at once like a pincer clutching the soldier’s throat as he then drove his knee into the man’s balls, and pushed him backwards down the staircase as he snatched the pistol from the gargling trooper’s holster as he tumbled away.
Vegas barely heard the shouts. He kept in motion as the woodwork exploded to his right.
More gunfire tore around him as Vegas tossed the silvery handgun into the air and caught it with his other hand at the same time his left clutched the barricade’s edge and he vaulted over it, and away from sight.
*
HE TOOK THE eight-yard fall a lot better than the other man, landing soft and going into a primitive movement cutting short of a full roll as Vegas tumbled free across the dirt and the fallen trooper moaned from where he lay, splayed, his legs no longer working for him. The man had his sympathy, but not much else. Vegas started running before he was on his feet, barely halfway across the clearing north-east of the gates before they cracked open.
Troopers with rifles charged out, one after the other.
“That’s him!” one yelled.
“Go! Go! Go!”
Vegas threw himself into flight and reached the first of the nearest shantytown homes fast enough to stay any temptation for gunfire.
He twisted sideways to force through an unconventional gap between the two closest shelters, and stomped through an awning-covered laneway kitchen to hit the hard brick foundations of the most immediate old Columbus domicile. At a little after 9am, a few Citizens were about their chores, dodging out of the way as Vegas reoriented on the crowded, muddy concourse, sprinting deeper into the settlement as the troopers called to each other somewhere behind him.
A big, red-faced trooper burst in on him with an AR15 drawn as Vegas ran, still half-caught in the hovel’s tattered plastic sheets.
They crashed into each other and Vegas pushed the other gun barrel aside, driving his elbow up and into the trooper’s face. He tried a grab at the weapon as its owner crumpled, but it was hooked tight by a crosswise strap. Shouts filled the air like radio crackle. The improvised homes crowding the street between the old buildings made the other troopers impossible to trace. He only had half a handle on his panic anyway, thrust back into the fight – or the foot race – between life and death so fast it was like no time’d elapsed at all since Jay was butchered at his feet. Vegas clutched the stolen handgun like a counterfeit reassurance. He’d crippled one of Wilhelm’s men already, but not left anyone dead – not yet – and he desperately wished for an exit before any of it got worse.
He heel-stomped the collapsed trooper’s face for good measure and left him trampled into the muck as he resumed his northwards push, batting aside ropes and the flaps of weather-torn tarpaulins intruding on his path. But the way ahead lay blocked by a clusterfuck of wooden construction, old boards and doors and forklift pallets and random timbers built-up over time into something akin to a medieval hall which borrowed the corner building of the old City block for its foundations.
“I can’t believe this shit,” Vegas muttered to himself.
The air reeked of urine and decay and mud and stale beer, and within a dozen yards, the back row of shelters gave way to a trampled enclosure on his left. A few dozen looted bookshelves corralled an open-air, al fresco back yard sheltered by an old marquee tethered to the dead powerlines. A filthy man in a filthier apron watched Vegas stonily as he blundered into the space, nearly slipping in the clay-thick mud, very little of it natural, a 44-gallon barrel on its side hacked open to make a barbecue, and work tables in the middle of the squamous open ground slathered with offal and animal fat that hung from the benches like wax from candles, adding itself slowly to the grime.
The bookcases yielded through to a plastic-flap doorway and the gizzards of an old transportable school room. The butcher at the work bench clutched a cleaver, but did nothing to stop Vegas barreling on inside.
A dozen-or-more bedraggled Citizens snatched looks at his sudden entrance, but they eyeballed Vegas with little more than natural suspicion. Several resumed their desperate meat trades, crowded in by those waiting. The far side of the sodden unit revealed more daylight coming through the street entrance. A skeletal man clutching a toddler to his chest flinched out of his way. Vegas slowed just enough to gauge the man’s intent for the child he carried, but the kid’s black eyes followed Vegas back, disintegrating his concern.
The daylight led into the corner precinct, a few dozen people moving about the front of the timber fort of the alehouse. Several jostled aside as more troopers forged through, shouting dire threats. Vegas took his chance to break north again, then veered around the front of the badly-built barn, more faces inside lost to the gloom, though they watched as he passed by with the Sig Sauer concealed at his side.
He checked around as he moved, hesitating slightly as a woman with a baby swaddled between her breasts led a horse tethered to a wagon carved from the remains of an old Buick Roadmaster.
Ve
gas bolted across the woman’s path, jogging around behind the wagon as cover while the first few troopers reached the intersection with their guns raised, still sweeping about themselves as the citizenry got wind of the newsflash and folks started getting out of the way.
The cart halted and the woman called to the troopers.
“He went back there!”
Vegas sprinted free again, rushing into and through a dozen more people drawn to the commotion even as others hurried away.
He cut the next side street to head towards The Mile, with more and more people filling the streets the closer he got. Citizens looked more focused on the realities of survival than any lapsed Curfew. A dark-skinned man begged something from him as Vegas blew past. An elderly couple loaded their things onto two equally aged bicycles as if preparing to quit, while two tween girls wrestled in a gutter beside them near a spilled bowl of gruel. A one-armed man with a shotgun stood chuckling and encouraging the pair, and he shot Vegas a rueful look as if inviting him to join the fun. Instead, Vegas pushed him aside, forever making rearward checks as the first of his pursuers appeared, and then another, bigger trooper appeared blocking the way ahead.
“Fuck.”
The fool with the shotgun grabbed Vegas by the arm. He was easy to fight off. The wisecrack complaint was still spilling from the man’s broken teeth when Vegas wrenched his arm, twisted the old man about, and forced the shotgun to fire at the trooper coming up behind.
Vegas took the ensuing chaos as his chance to change vector, leaping over the fighting girls to push aside a filth-encrusted lattice, breaking most of it as he stepped through.
A narrow space ran along the brick wall of the original Columbus streetscape. Permanent campers blocked the broad entrance to an old office complex. Vegas kept hurrying along the concealed channel, past nailed-shut doors, until finally he came to where one stood open, revealing a corridor and interior staircase exposed to The Mile’s street life.
A burst of automatic gunfire seared the air. Beyond the shelters, people started to scream, the dude with the shotgun yelling in terror or anger or pain, and then Vegas rushed into the building and up the carpeted stairs.
A woman stared at Vegas blankly, holding back a teenage boy, and reassured when Vegas ignored them and he swept to the right, his mouth hanging open as he sucked in mighty breaths and scanned around as he spotted and dismissed each unfolding option while continuing on and up and into the second level.
Another corridor yielded onto a second, tea-stained by daylight at its end. Vegas hurried forward, and hollow noises shook the stairs below. A man yelled out. Vegas checked the nearest window latch and got the damned thing open fairly easily, with another fire escape outside – and then he was on it, the iron frame shaking as Vegas took a hard tack and clattered up to the next floor. Seeing an option and with no time to lose, he then leaped from the fire escape to the sill of an open bedroom window. Three stories above ground, he clutched the ancient frame by fingertips until he could get a toehold. Then he crawled over and dropped inside.
Musky carpet greeted him as he broke furniture tumbling into a private room, mercifully empty for just a second, until the door flew open and a Puerto Rican woman began screaming at him in cursive.
Vegas pulled the gun and she shut the fuck up at once, backing out of the room with her hands up, and allowing him to pad into the squalid living room like a panther, two kids and an old man hiding behind the couch. Vegas ignored them to check towards the front door just in time to hear more pounding footfalls in the corridor outside.
He headed through into the survivors’ gutted kitchen. Tattered awnings like cellophane curtained off a gap where exterior bricks had collapsed in the outside wall.
Another fire escape passed overhead, just at the edge of his vision through that view. Vegas made a show of stashing the pistol into his blood-soaked pants, glowering at the old woman with a laser beam stare. Then he pushed through the plastic sheets, squinting not to wince as his wounds made themselves known. He angrily wiped half-dried blood from his chin instead and focused on the best means of egress as he blinked the sweat from his eyes, took another breath, and leapt across to grab the underside of the rusting metal steps passing overhead.
Vegas hung from his hands with the effort sending fire through his forearms and shoulders, but he managed to bull his way across to the far side and haul up just enough to catch a lower railing and start spider-climbing around. The Puerto Rican woman, abandoned with her family back inside the apartment, took her chance to throw her front door open and Vegas heard her hollering for help.
He was halfway up the next landing and headed for the roof when the fire escape shook with fresh pursuit. Sorely tempted to hold his ground, instead Vegas continued up, performing a lazy dip to vault from the top of the stairs and onto the cluttered roof.
Incredibly, a half-dozen tents dotted the top roof surface of the building. Several men and women stood up from their communal cooking fire featuring the half-butchered remains of a starved-looking dog. But Vegas ignored them too. He hurried back from the building’s edge, gun at the ready again, scanning around for better options as the rooftop Citizens backed away from him.
The next tenement on the block sat a few feet lower, but campers crowded it too. Vegas checked the fire escape again, saw no one coming, and picked up his pace, ready to make the easy jump across to the next rooftop just as the blonde-bearded trooper Rothwell clattered up behind him armed with an Ak47.
“Get down!” he bawled.
People complied – as did Vegas.
He jumped the short distance to the next roof anyway, going into a deliberate roll across concrete he didn’t quite manage right, though he did reach shelter behind an old defunct air-conditioning cluster as planned. The shoulder he’d injured before now redoubled its pain, transfixing his grim visage, but the silver handgun remained in a death grip in his right hand.
Vegas scoped back towards the trooper just as he came into view.
He shot the man at a distance of about fifteen feet.
The bullet hit the side of the trooper’s turned jaw and blew the whole thing off. Staggering, Rothwell grabbed for his face only to freeze in horror at the wound itself, the entire jaw bone gone, his tongue hanging down loose, grotesque and seared like from a barbecue. The choking man rolled dying eyes towards Vegas and went down on a knee and didn’t stop there, tipping over the far building’s edge and plunging down into the narrow space between them.
The campers on the second rooftop registered the fatality with a shared sense of Vegas rising to his feet and staring back hard. Uniformly, the closest five people backed away. An older man picked up a little girl by one arm and ducked out of sight behind the nearest shelter.
Vegas eyed the next rooftop and tried to ignore the pain.
*
IT WAS MIDDAY before he felt safe enough to unfold himself from the old laundry chute, and an hour after that before Vegas hobbled through the tent city south of his old apartment block on lawns long-since trampled into dust churned into muck by the light rainfall flung repeatedly by the passing squalls.
Everything ached as he traveled, paying the price for his earlier heroics. He pressed a folded old t-shirt to his wounded side and prayed no one paid much attention to the deep layer of bloody grime plastering the side of his dark cargo pants as he made his way unerringly towards and then into his abandoned apartment block.
Squatters in the lobby eyed him with suspicion as he entered.
“What the fuck you all lookin’ at?”
The destitute Citizens hunkered down. Vegas’ irritation did a slow boil.
“Motherfuckers oughta be out there lookin’ to yourselves,” he spat as he closed in on the stairs where he paused. “Ain’t no one comin’ to rescue you. It’s fuckin’ crazy out there.”
He didn’t plan to start a lecture, but one of the nearest women halted him as he turned. She stood with a shaky voice.
“Is the Rations depot still clos
ed?” she asked. “We’re all owed clicks.”
“Rations?”
He left a laugh behind as an answer and trudged up the stairs with the slow, deliberate pace of a Frankenstein monster, managing to maintain his dog-tired propulsion until he finally reached Latisha’s door where he weakly thumped his palm a few times before resting his forehead against the jamb and nearly passing out.
“Tisha,” he said quietly, though he had to bellow to say anything at all. “Open up. It’s me.”
The locks rattled and Latisha appeared with a strained, worried look.
“Vegas, you OK?”
But he could only blow his cheeks out now rather than chide the stupid question.
“We got to move, yo,” he said. “Like, now. Right now.”
“What is it?”
“They took all my stuff.”
“Your stuff?” Tisha answered. “What stuff?”
“Fuckin’ books an’ everything,” he told her. “Pack light. We got to move.”
The blunt news delivered, Vegas stumbled along to his own abandoned rooms. The door was shut, and for a moment he feared someone’d taken roost. But it eased in on its broken mechanism to reveal the somnambulant living room and the stink coming from the bloodstain pride of place in the middle of the floor.
“Fuck.”
“Baby, you have to tell me what’s happening.”
Spooked, it was only his tiredness giving Latisha stealth as she followed.
“What’d I tell you?” he said angrily. “Pack your fuckin’ things, yeah?”
Tisha started another protest. Vegas cut her off. He stepped into the apartment and she followed as if he’d said nothing.
“They’ll come for me here,” he explained. “Wilhelm knows where I live. Should’ve cleared out o’ here long before.”
“Wilhelm?” Latisha gasped. “I thought it was Tom Vanicek you –”
After The Apocalypse Season 2 Box Set [Books 4-6] Page 64