Maxwell Cain- Burrito Avenger

by Adam Smith

  The fishtailing of the cars behind theirs proved too powerful for the safety mechanisms. With a rending snap, the rearmost car tumbled over the side of the tracks and plummeted out into open air. The tension yanked at the next car and dragged it over the side, too.

  “Run!” Kate screamed. She shoved Max toward the front of the car. He turned and raced for safety with Kate close behind.

  Screeching metal from behind informed Max the cars continued to tumble. Terrible crunching sounds and explosions assaulted his ears as the rear cars smashed into the cityscape below and rolled, causing untold destruction and killing any civilian in their path.

  Even as car couplers snapped under the strain, the tension of the falling cars was still enough to yank their partners over the side of the railing. One by one, cars crumpled off the track and wreaked havoc upon the city below.

  Soldiers appeared in the car ahead. The black-clad men raised their guns, but Max and Kate mowed them down with automatic fire. They couldn’t pause for cover as more enemies returned fire. Bullets whizzed by Max’s face and missed his skin by inches.

  Max had hoped he and Kate could outrun a train crash, but now they had nowhere to go. Their original goal, the lead car, had been hit by a rocket attack. Max had no idea where to run. His only option was to fight until the crash killed him or the enemies gunned him down.

  He glanced back over his shoulder at Kate as she ran. Her long legs pumped and her breath came in ragged gasps as she followed him without question. Max’s heart tore in half knowing he had no plan and was leading her to nothing.

  As Max crashed forward through another car, he was met by a hail of gunfire so fierce he and Kate were forced to drop to the side and take cover behind a metal bench. Bullets rained continuously down on their position and smashed the wall behind them to dented rubble.

  The car behind Max and Kate went off the tracks. Their car struggled to stay on the track, but with a tremendous lurch, they were tossed into open space. The car flew through the air as it plummeted toward the city below, and the soldiers in their car screamed as the rolling of the car hurled them through shattered windows into open air a hundred feet above the street.

  Max and Kate screamed together. She wrapped her arms around his neck, and he gripped the metal bench, sandwiching her between his body and their cover.

  A hideous cracking sound rang through the car as the vehicle impacted against something solid. Max and Kate were jostled as the car rolled and smashed its way across the new surface. Max’s arms were nearly torn from their sockets as he sought to keep himself and Kate from being hurled out the windows and crushed under the train.

  Finally, the car rolled to a stop. Through the windows, Max could see an upside-down city looking up at him, and he wondered what they had landed on. Before he could investigate, the train began sliding backward. A horrible crack split the air, and the slide stopped.

  After a few seconds, Max let go and stood. He pulled Kate up with him and started to run forward through the train. “We need to—”

  More cracking sounded, and the train slid backward with a lurch which yanked the floor from beneath their feet. Max and Kate sprawled and slid backward as the train tipped up at a ninety-degree angle.

  The back of the train cracked against something hard and caved in, and the whole back side of the train car blew off. Max grabbed Kate’s hand as they freefell toward the wreckage-strewn street a hundred feet below.

  On the way down, Max snagged an aluminum bracing pole. The abrupt stop threatened to yank his arms from their sockets again, but his grip held, and Max managed to stop their plunge toward death.

  Max hung in a vertical train car, clutching Kate’s blood and sweat-slicked hand. Around them, the monorail car groaned and quaked in a high wind which whipped Kate’s long blonde hair back and forth. Every few seconds, their car vibrated and shifted downward as if yearning to plunge toward the street.

  “Climb!” Max shouted to be heard over the wind.

  Beneath him, Kate reached up with her empty hand and grabbed hold of his belt. Max noted that she still had her shopping bag slung over one elbow and a pistol tucked into her belt. She squirmed and crawled up his body until she could reach one of the backrests of the row of benches. The weight eased off Max’s arm as Kate settled into her dangerous perch, and with the shift he was able to swing himself over to another row of benches and seat himself on their edge.

  Both looked down at the broken end of the car and certain death below them. Then the train car shuddered again. They looked up and made eye contact.

  “Climb,” they said in unison.

  The two climbed up carefully through the rows of seats. The car was completely vertical, and the slightest wrong move meant falling a hundred feet to the asphalt below.

  An agonizingly incremental climb brought Max and Kate to the halfway point. A sudden lurch spun the car, and Max had to cling to a metal bar and shut his eyes to deal with the vertigo. When the car settled again, the windows along the right side of the train showed a concrete wall.

  As Max climbed up another row of seats, they gave way with a crack. A gut-wrenching moment of freefall ended abruptly as Kate wrapped her legs around a crossbar and grabbed him with both hands. She grunted as the fall yanked her flat against the edge of a seat, but she was able to help Max swing to a nearby cluster of seats.

  Max grabbed hold of the benches and clung to them for a moment. His heart thundered in his ears as he panted. He looked up at Kate several feet above him. “Thanks.”

  Kate smiled down at him. A real smile. “You’re welcome.” Despite the blood and bruises, hers was still the most beautiful face he’d ever seen. Possibly because she’d just saved his life.

  Max and Kate resumed climbing. As they neared the top, the shuddering of the car grew worse. Even though they sped up, the car began to slide backward along the stone wall. Above them, metal screamed and twisted.

  Kate made it to the top of the train car and pushed through the door. Max followed, and the two sheltered in the tiny alcove between vehicles. The next car was tipped at a forty-five-degree angle, so the climb would be easier.

  The couplings holding the cars together snapped, and the car Max and Kate were resting on plummeted into open space.

  Max pushed off with his legs and leaped for the next doorway. His hand found purchase.

  Kate was a moment slower and couldn’t reach the door, but he caught her hand.

  As the other car fell through open space beneath them, the wind slammed into them and tossed the two climbers around. Max and Kate held tight to each other’s hands. Her blue eyes were open wide, wild with barely-restrained panic, but she kept them fixed on him. Max could feel her trust burning through her gaze.

  A hundred feet below, the other train car slammed into the pavement with a deafening crunch.

  Kate climbed Max’s body until she reached the doorway. Max gave her a boost up, and she pushed through the doors into the car. When she was inside, she dropped to her knees, braced against the corner of the wall and floor, and helped pull him inside.

  Max heard groaning, and when he looked up through the forty-five-degree slanted car, he spotted five more soldiers clinging to posts. As he opened his mouth to warn Kate, one of the soldiers, a young man with dark skin and a mop of curly hair, spotted them.

  “The targets are still alive!” the soldier shouted. His hand was on his ear. Max had seen plenty of rookies do the same stupid hand motion with earbud communicators, as if pushing on them with a finger improved the sound. The young soldier drew his sidearm from his belt and tried to aim at Max.

  Kate’s pistol snapped up and spat fire. Her two shots blew the soldier against the side of the seats he was braced on. As the light left his eyes, he released his arms and plummeted toward them. Max and Kate had to dodge aside as the body smashed down and tore the door off the back of the car, turning t
he center of the floor into another wide-open window to the street below.

  The other soldiers drew their sidearms and opened fire. Max and Kate were forced to duck down into cover behind seats as bullets pinged off the walls and benches.

  Kate returned fire and dropped another of the black-clad men. He fell past them, but his body got wedged in the doorway. Max yanked the pistol out of the soldier’s dead hand and returned fire up the train car.

  The gunfire drew more attention as the helicopter returned. The rookie soldier’s earlier message had gotten through, and the hunt was back on.

  Max and Kate fired at the three remaining soldiers as the helicopter drew near. From the corner of his eye, Max saw the helicopter door open as a gunner with a mounted machinegun took aim at their car. “Get down!” he shouted at Kate.

  Without hesitation, the blonde baker dropped and wedged herself into the corner of the wall and bench just as the gunner opened fire.

  Automatic gunfire tore through the shattered windows and drenched the inside of the car in a storm of bullets. The gunner raked his barrel back and forth, and the avalanche of impacts cause the tilting car to shudder and slide backward over the side of the building they were perched against.

  The three soldiers in the car screamed for their comrade to stop, but the hail of gunfire went on without ceasing.

  As the car tipped over, Max grabbed Kate’s arm. “We need to climb before they tear the car apart!” he shouted.

  Kate nodded, then poked her head up over the metal bench with her pistol ready. As machinegun fire stormed through the car, she opened fired and killed all three of the panicking soldiers in the car above them. The men dropped like lead weights toward Max and Kate and hurtled through the broken door out into open space.

  Max got up and charged ahead up the forty-five-degree slope, using benches and metal bars to assist his climb. He heard Kate’s boots thumping on the metal floor behind him.

  Halfway up the car, the helicopter gunfire traced up the side of the car and disappeared. Max wondered what the gunner was doing until he realized the man was pouring fire at the coupling compartment that tethered Max and Kate’s car to the next one. Bullet impacts reverberated down the walls, and the car slid backward over the edge of the building.

  As they neared the end of the car, Max slowed down to let Kate pass. He shoved her hard in the back, and the blonde baker flew through the air. She managed to latch onto the door frame with her fingers. She pulled herself up, lay down against the door frame inside, and reached back through for Max.

  A hideous cracking rang through the car. Max leaped. He caught both of Kate’s hands and used her support to pull himself upward toward the doors. He landed halfway inside the sheltered alcove as machinegun fire tore up the coupling compartment just feet away.

  Max picked up Kate around the waist and flung her toward the other door. She landed halfway inside the doorway and grabbed onto a metal beam. Max was about to leap inside as well when the car lurched and fell out from beneath him.

  Time slowed as Max watched the other car drift out of reach. He leaped and managed to catch hold of Kate’s kicking legs as the slanted car slid over the edge and plummeted toward the intersection below, Max hung on to Kate’s legs for dear life.

  “Ugh! You’re heavy!” Kate gasped.

  Max swung his legs and started to climb. He slid one hand up Kate’s leg to get ahold of her belt, but the motion caused the palm of his hand to slide briefly over her rear end.

  “I swear I’m not doing it on purpose this time!” Max yelled up to her.

  “Enjoy it while you can, you bastard, because I’m shooting you when you get up here!”

  Max finally reached the edge of the doorway and took hold with both hands. Kate gasped in relief as Max climbed aboard.

  Max and Kate rested inside the blessedly empty car. Max tasted blood with each panting breath. Through the windows on either side, he saw that the car rested on the rooftop of a wide building.

  “Okay,” Kate growled between gasping breaths, “where’s my pistol?”

  Then the roof of the building crumbled under them, and the monorail car fell through the ceiling.

  Chapter 19

  You Have Failed Me for the Last Time, Commander Cole

  Johnny Legion tapped his foot. Just once. He was not a man given to foot-tapping or fidgeting. But, as time on the windy monorail platform dragged on, and the soldiers around him shifted back and forth on their booted feet, Johnny found himself annoyed enough to tap his foot.

  The hulking brute checked the gold watch on his wrist. When he looked up, his gray eyes met the nervous gaze of the commander leading the militarized gangsters. The middle-aged man in black fatigues and matching beret had a headful of white curls and a livid scar across his nose.

  “The train was supposed to be here two minutes ago,” Johnny rumbled in his gravedigger voice.

  “Yes, sir,” the commander agreed. “I haven’t been able to get a response from my troops yet, but something seems to have happened.” As he finished speaking, the commander’s phone beeped in his breast pocket. Surprised, the scarred man pulled out the phone and answered the call on speakerphone. “Commander Cole here. Go ahead.”

  “Sir,” chirped a youthful sounding voice, “communication equipment got damaged in the explosions so we’re using phones. We’ve got the fugitives trapped in a train car on top of a hotel roof.”

  The scarred commander’s face twisted up in confusion. “On top of a roof?”

  “Yes, sir. One of the helicopters hit the train with a rocket and blew it right off its track! Should have seen it, sir. Cars raining down all over the place.”

  Cole’s face visibly paled as Johnny’s eyes bored into the man. “You hit the train with a rocket?”

  The owner of the voice on the other end didn’t catch the quiver in Cole’s tone, and the young man came back cheerfully, “Yes, sir! Worked like a charm, too. They’re up on top of a hotel and waiting to be picked up. Just as soon as— Oh, wait a minute…” The voice trailed off for a few seconds, during which Cole withered further under Johnny’s burning stare. “Cancel that, sir. They are not trapped. The train car just fell through the roof and the whole rooftop is crumbling. We’re gonna have to go in after them.”

  “Storm the building!” Commander’s Cole’s voice was frantic. “Every man we’ve got, get them in there! Terminate them with extreme prejudice, do you hear me? Throw everything we have at the bastards!” Cole’s shaking finger missed the Call End button on the first try. After he’d hung up, the scarred man turned to Johnny. “Sir, I—“

  “Your team hit the train with a rocket?”

  “Sir, I don’t—“

  “We had them cornered. All we had to do was wait and they would come to us. But your men blew the trap and gave them a way out.”

  “Sir, please—“

  “Who’s second in command here?” Johnny’s voice thundered across the windy train stop.

  A dark-skinned man in black fatigues raised one hand and approached two steps closer.

  “Perfect.” Johnny drew his gold-plated .50 caliber pistol from his hip and shot Commander Cole in the heart. The scarred commander was hurled off his feet. He hit the ground and clawed at the gaping wound before collapsing dead into a growing pool of blood.

  Johnny turned to the dark-skinned man. “Name?”

  The man swallowed. “Darrell, sir.”

  “Congratulations, Commander Darrell. You’ve been promoted.” Johnny holstered his pistol and stuck his finger in Darrell’s face. “Contain those fugitives. Kill or capture them if you can, but keep Cain and Valentine stuck in one place so I can get to them. No more excuses.”

  Darrell nodded firmly. “Yes, sir!” He turned and began issuing orders to the soldiers on the platform. Gangsters in fatigues ran to the stairwells, headed for vehicles to take them
into battle.

  The hired killer in the crisp white suit strode down the winding stairwell to ground level and slid into the driver’s seat of his blue convertible.

  “If you want someone killed,” Johnny said as he gunned the motor, “you’ve got to do it yourself.”

  Chapter 20

  Hotel California

  “Get out!” Max shoved Kate toward one of the train car windows and dove after her as the rooftop broke apart. Kate scrambled to obey, and the two hurled themselves through the shattered window just as the train car broke through and plummeted into the building.

  Metal screamed, cement cracked, and the forward car still linked to their car was dragged toward the hole. The added stress caused the entire roof to groan.

  A spiderweb of cracks covered the gritty rooftop. Max’s palms burned and bled as the course material cut into the skin, but he scampered on hands and knees as far from the train as he could. Kate rushed along beside him.

  The cracks spread too rapidly, and only seconds after the train car fell through, the roof under Max and Kate crumbled apart and dropped them into freefall.

  Beneath the layer of cement and metal, the first thing Max saw was oak beams and pillars above a polished wooden floor. Everything inside the building was beautiful, gleaming oak. Once the two train cars entered the scene, however, the delicate oak construction was shattered into splintered kindling and sharpened stakes reaching to skewer Max as he fell.

  Above him, Kate screamed as she also fell into the hole. The two of them dropped several feet before hitting a wide wooden beam and rolling along toward a greater drop.

  Max’s fall was arrested with a hard jerk. He glanced up and saw Kate clinging to him with both hands. Her body and both legs were wrapped firmly around one of the oak support beams and her eyes were shut in agony as Max’s weight pulled on her arm sockets. The handle of the shopping bag looped over her arm fell down their linked hands and settled around Max’s bicep.

  The building shuddered around them as the two linked cars fell. Splintering wood and shattering glass rang out all around them. The beam Kate was wrapped around jumped up and down and caused the blonde baker to scream in pain as Max’s weight pulled at her delicate frame. She gritted her teeth and clenched her athletic body around the wooden pillar.