The Nation Chronicles: Book Two (The Nation Chronicles Trilogy 2)

by Wendell Sweet

  The blonde haired man fired the shotgun at the same time Delbert began to fire from the back seat. Joe saw the flash from the gun, and heard a rattle from the front of the Suburban that sounded like hundreds of stones hitting the front bumper.

  The machine pistol continued to chatter from the back seat, and Joe watched as dozens of holes appeared in the body of the blue Bronco, almost in a straight line along the driver’s side. The front driver side tire blew out, and the truck veered sharply toward their lane.

  "Hold on!" Joe yelled, as he spun the wheel and they left the road. The truck bounced when it left the road and entered the ditch, but Joe kept the truck under control, and without letting up on the gas angled it back toward the highway just as the Bronco began to flip into the ditch. A line of trees flew by on the passenger side of the Suburban, scant inches from the glass, and then the truck lurched once more as it left the ditch and rocketed back up onto the highway. The two trucks missed by only inches, and Joe had found himself looking into the lifeless eyes of the blonde haired man, hanging loosely out of the window, for just an instant, before the truck was by him and rolling into the ditch.

  Joe brought the Suburban back up onto the road, and floored it. When he came to the dirt road he almost blew right by it, but managed to slow enough to slide into the entrance somewhat under control. He barreled through the first curve at better than fifty miles an hour. Once he was around it, and hidden from the road, he slowed down. He rounded two more curves before he stopped the truck, and turned around facing back toward the main road. Thick choking dust from the dirt road rafted up into the air. No way are they going to sneak up on me, he thought, as he watched the road and strained his ears to listen. A few seconds later he heard the high whine of a vehicle on the highway, but it didn't slow down, and the high pitched whine of the motor dwindled away to silence in a few seconds as it continued onward, apparently, Joe thought, looking for them.

  "Must not have seen the dust we kicked up," Bill said.

  "Or pretended not to see it," Becky said. As she spoke they heard a muffled explosion in the distance.

  "Think that was that Bronco?" Peggy asked.

  "Could've been, probably was in fact," Delbert said, "hope so anyhow."

  Becky was studying the map once more. "It's a good thing we didn't break off to the left," she said.

  "Why?" Joe asked.

  "River," she stated calmly, "about a mile or so in the opposite direction, we would have been trapped if we'd gone that way. It looks like we got open land ahead here. At least it looks that way, it's hard to tell."

  Joe looked back along the dirt road. Thick dust still hung above it. "There's no way they missed us," he said, "unless they're blind. They had to see that dust hanging in the air, and if we keep going we're going to kick up even more, and they'll be able to follow it right to us."

  "I think you're right, but what the hell else can we do?" Delbert asked.

  "Turn around and go back," Joe said. He held up his hand to silence the outburst that erupted at the suggestion. "Listen; if we sit here they're going to come back, probably with more men. If we head back to the road block now we have the advantage. I would bet the sound we heard of a passing car was one of the police cruisers. If so that leaves only one, and less men to contend with back there. If we wait the odds will only get worse. See?"

  "He's right, I think," Becky said, "I don't want to die any more than any of us do. Sitting here isn't going to help us at all, going back before they have a chance to regroup might."

  "Only thing to do," Delbert sighed from the back seat, "if I gotta die, I'd rather die fighting than get trapped and slaughtered like an animal."

  "So?" Joe asked.

  "We go back," Peggy said decisively. Bill grunted a short "Yeah" which they could all tell he was not enthusiastic about.

  Joe dropped the Suburban back into drive and they began to move down the dirt road, gaining momentum as they neared the highway. Joe slowed to turn onto the highway after looking in both directions and seeing nothing. Ahead, approximately where the Bronco had wrecked, they could see greasy black smoke billowing into the hot still air.

  "Could be some of 'em there too," Delbert said, as he stared toward the greasy smoke in the distance. "If so, I'll be ready for 'em." Joe nodded his head, and brought the truck up to speed slowly to hide the whine of the motor, which would hopefully allow them to take the road block, or whoever might be at the Bronco, by surprise.

  As they neared the burning Bronco Joe could see one of the patrol cars off to the side of the road, along with the red pickup that Delbert had pointed out to them. "Looks like it," Joe said calmly, as he leaned back into the seat to give Becky a clear shot through the driver’s side window.

  The young blonde haired kid from the Bronco was lifeless on the side of the road along with two other crumpled forms that Joe assumed must have also been in the truck. A small group of three men stood over the bodies. They heard the approaching truck and suddenly jumped for cover as Joe roared by. Becky's pistol chattered briefly, directly in front of his face, and the tires of the red pickup exploded with a loud popping noise. Joe pressed the gas pedal as close to the floor as it would go as they passed, and almost simultaneously heard the sound of breaking glass from the rear of the truck, along with a steady, plunk, plunk, plunk, as bullets slammed into the rear of the fleeing Suburban. A sudden cry of pain came from the rear a split second later, as several small crystals of glass flew forward striking the dashboard, and the back of Joe's head.

  "What happened?" he shouted. "You guy's okay?"

  "Got Bill," Delbert shouted back, "it don't look good, Joe."

  "Shit," Joe muttered, as he tried to press the gas pedal further into the floorboard. "Shit."

  The intersection, where the road block had been, appeared in front of them a few seconds later. Whatever had gone by them on the highway had not been the second patrol car. It still sat across the road, blocking the right hand lane. The left hand lane was blocked by four men, who were not armed with shotguns, Joe noticed as they neared, but some sort of machine pistols similar to the ones they themselves carried. He was just about to slam on the brakes and try to turn around once more, when a quick glance in the mirror showed the other patrol car coming up behind them. Its blue bubble light pulsing as it came. What the hell, Joe thought these guy's must think they're playing some sort of fucking game with us. Aloud he said. "We're screwed they're in front of us and behind us... To hell with it, we're going through. Hold on."

  Peggy pushed Bill aside, and took his place at the rear passenger side window. She leaned out facing back, and began firing at the closing patrol car, as Becky leaned out and began to fire at the four men blocking the left hand side of the road. Delbert was aiming at the four men as well from his side of the truck. Two of the four dropped immediately, but the other two were returning fire even as they ran for the cover of the patrol car, and Joe could feel, as well as hear, the bullets slamming into the Suburban, both front and rear.

  The patrol car behind them suddenly swerved and then flipped, and Peggy let out a scream of triumph as she turned back to the front, knelt on the rear seat, and began to fire over Becky's head at the other patrol car. The side of the car began to take on a chewed-appearance within seconds, as all three machine pistols were trained on it. Still, the men behind it returned fire.

  They were now less than a hundred feet from the car, Joe saw.

  "Sit down!" he suddenly yelled into the truck, "Now!" As he yelled he swung the Suburban toward the cruiser, just close enough so that he could clip the front end of it as they went past. The two men behind the cruiser realized what he intended to do too late.

  The Suburban hit the front of the cruiser harder than Joe expected, so hard in fact that it sent it spinning into the ditch like a toy. The collision ripped the front fender from the truck, along with most of the passenger door. The heavy bumper of the truck, torn half off in the collision, let go with a shower of sparks and the Suburba
n bounced over it leaving it behind in the road. Joe kept the gas pedal jammed to the floor boards, even though steam was beginning to pour from the front of the truck, and the motor was starting to wheeze ominously. A heavy vibration ran through the truck, and as the Suburban gained more speed the vibration became a heavy shuddering, that threatened to shake the truck to pieces. Two miles down the road he spotted a Dodge dealership and slid the dying truck to a stop in the wide asphalt parking lot.

  "OUT!" he shouted, as he quickly jumped from the truck. The others piled out behind him, and Joe dropped back to help Delbert who was struggling to drag Bill along. Becky and Peggy reached the glass doors of the showroom, and quickly held them open to allow them to hurry inside with Bill.

  Joe stared back out at the wide parking lot expecting to see the remaining patrol car come screaming in, he did not know that Peggy had taken care of that problem.

  "The ammo," Joe said turning toward the doors, "no way should we leave it in the truck, that other car will be along any minute."

  "I don't think so," Peggy replied icily, "it flipped. I blew out the front tires, and I'm pretty damn sure the driver was dead at that point."

  "Okay," Joe said, he didn't question what she said at all, "Dell, let’s go get the ammo. Becky, can you and Peggy see what you can do for Bill?" Becky nodded her head, as Joe turned and ran back out of the showroom toward the Suburban, with Delbert right behind him.

  The truck was totaled Joe saw.

  The plastic grill-work was gone along with the bumper, and he could see now why Becky had jumped through the window when they stopped, instead of opening the door. The door was crushed shut. Along with that both of the front tires were rapidly going flat. Probably from running over the bumper, he thought, a bullet would have blown them out immediately. A huge puddle of oil was spreading from under the truck, and green anti-freeze dripped from what was left of the radiator.

  Joe opened up the rear of the truck, and Delbert held out his arms as Joe piled the first three boxes on them, and then managed to take the remaining three himself. As they trotted back to the showroom Joe mentally wished he had thought to pull the truck out of sight. The wrecked Suburban, with steam still rising in the air from the hood area, would almost serve as a beacon if there were others behind them. There were, he knew, remembering the sound of a vehicle screaming by on the highway when they had been hiding on the dirt road.

  He reached the relative safety of the showroom just behind Delbert, the glass door whooshed shut behind them as they entered and set down the boxes. Becky stood and slowly shook her head as he approached her. She and Peggy had been kneeling beside Bill on the floor. "He's gone, Joe," she said.

  He could see she was close to tears, and Peggy was more than close, she was openly weeping. Delbert walked over to Bill's body and covered it with a carpet runner he had taken from near the front door. The old man seemed close to tears himself, Joe realized. Joe said a quick mental prayer to God, before he spoke.

  "Listen, I don't want to sound hard, or as if I don't care, but we can't fall apart now," he struggled to keep his voice calm as he spoke. "Right now, unless we want to just give up and die, we need to get ourselves in gear. If it wasn't one of the patrol cars that blew by us while we were on that dirt road, and we also know it wasn't that red pickup... someone is still out there, and once they get their shit together they'll come back for us. I for one don't want to be here, and if we intend to be gone I need help. Crying isn't going to bring Bill back..."

  "What do you need me to do, Joe?" Delbert asked.

  Joe looked around the showroom. "We need another truck, Dell, and I don't see any here, which means we're going to have to go back outside to find one. Which means," he looked at Becky and Peggy, "I need you both to keep watch in front. We're going out the back." He walked over to a small plywood board to one side of the double doors, and began to search through the key-tags that hung from it. "Dell, take a quick look out front and tell me whether or not you see a light green Durango out there, a new one," he continued to search through the keys as Delbert looked.

  "Yeah, out next to the road," he replied.

  "How about a two-tone red and white one?"

  "Nope, not out here anyhow."

  "Good," Joe said, as he dropped the remaining keys in a heap by the board. He had kept two sets apparently there were two two-tone, red and white, Durangos out back somewhere. "Okay Dell, let’s go find it," he said, as he turned and walked down a hallway in the direction of the back of the building, he turned back. "Becky?" he asked.

  "Go, babe, I'll be waiting, we'll be fine."

  He turned, and Delbert followed him down the hallway through a set of double steel doors and into a large garage area. Joe searched the garage quickly with his eyes, but no red and white, two-tone Durangos resided in the shadowy interior. They walked to a set of double steel doors set into the back of the garage, Joe pressed the bar handle, and they walked out into the back lot.

  They found the first Durango directly behind the rear of the garage, Joe checked the stock numbers and after determining which set of keys went to it, he opened the door and got in. A low chiming greeted him as he opened the door. The Durango was one of the upper level models he saw, and it was also not four wheel drive. The tires were not much more than passenger tires, and when he turned on the ignition to check the gas gauge, the needle stopped just above empty.

  "Let's see if we can find the other one," Joe said, "this one isn't going to do us a hell-of-a-lot-of good, Dell."

  They found the other truck farther back in the lot. It was a low end model, built more with a hunter, or some other type of sportsman, in mind, and much better suited to their needs. Plain stark vinyl interior and the gas gauge leveled out at half when Joe checked it. Not great, he thought, but a lot better than the other truck, and he felt they didn't have the time to pick and choose.

  "This is her, Dell," Joe said, "let’s go. Delbert climbed in as Joe started the truck and drove out of the back lot toward the front of the dealership.

  Joe had been tensed, expecting to hear the chatter of machine pistols while they were out back, and when he drove by the glass encased showroom and saw Becky and Peggy crouched by the side of a car on the showroom floor, he breathed a sigh of relief. He just caught Becky's waving hands out of the corner of his eyes, before two men jumped out from behind one of the trucks in the front row and opened fire.

  Too late, he thought, as he realized he had left the machine pistol lying on the front seat instead of keeping it in his right hand where it should have been. Delbert had held on to his though, and nearly kicked his side door open as he leaped from the truck and opened up on the two men. Joe could hear the sound of machine pistols behind him as well, as Becky and Peggy also opened up. He aimed the Durango at the two men, levered the door-handle and jumped from the truck, just as the windshield, hit by several of the rounds fired by the two men, was blown inward.

  As the truck lumbered toward them, the two men opened up on it in an effort to stop it. Joe rolled, re-gained his feet, and opened up on the two men. They were both dead before the truck rolled over them, dragging one of the men with it, as it crossed the road and crashed into the ditch on the opposite side, a long red smear marked its trail across the road.

  Joe turned to look back for Becky, but she was already stepping through the shattered front windows of the showroom and running toward him with Peggy close behind. He turned to look for Delbert. He had lost track of him after he had jumped from the truck. The old man was walking toward him, limping Joe saw, an alarming amount of blood seeping from one leg, staining that leg of his jeans nearly red. He became aware of a stinging sensation on the side of his cheek, and just as he raised his hand to touch his face, Becky raced up.

  "Let me see," she said, pushing his hand away from his face, "damn, Joe, you got hit."

  He thought at first that it had been the flying glass from the windshield, but Becky quickly crushed that train of thought when she said. "Loo
ks like one of the rounds that took out the windshield got you, Joe. It's gonna scar, but you'll live." She sounded calm as she spoke, Joe was surprised when she suddenly burst into tears, and threw her arms around him as she spoke. "Joe, it could have killed you, j-just a-a l-l-little b-b-bit..." she broke down and couldn't continue. He held her as Delbert walked up.

  He raised his eyebrows, and said, "Dell, you okay?"

  "Took one in the leg, I think," he replied.

  Becky let go of Joe and tried to stop the tears as she turned to Delbert. Joe looked over Becky quickly with his eyes, and then moved on to Peggy, finally allowing his eyes to fall on Delbert's leg. Becky and Peggy appeared to have only a couple of minor cuts, probably caused by flying glass, Joe told his questioning mind. Delbert, however, was losing blood at an alarming rate. The entire right pant leg was shredded as well as being soaked with blood, and as Becky carefully pulled the material away from his leg to get a better look, Joe could see the torn flesh beneath. It doesn't look good, he thought. He had Delbert lean on him as they hurriedly headed back toward the showroom.

  The one side, closest to the side lot, was untouched. They entered through the double doors, and Joe helped ease Delbert down onto the floor. He pulled out a small pocket knife, and quickly cut away the remainder of the pants leg.

  The wound was bad, he could see, but thankfully it didn't look life threatening. With all the blood, he had been convinced he would find that one of the large arteries of the leg had been nicked, or even severed. That wasn't the case however, and the flow of blood was already beginning to slow. Becky folded the pant leg into a small square, and held it over the wound to further slow the bleeding. "Joe," she said, "I need the first aid kit from the truck."

  "Going," he said, as he trotted out the side doors and headed toward the wrecked Suburban. He kept his eyes searching as he went, but saw nothing, and the only sound was of the Durango, which was still running in the ditch across the road. He pulled the first aid kit from the back of the truck, and ran back into the showroom. He handed it to Peggy who was kneeling with Becky beside Delbert.