Darius laughed, sitting back in his seat, bouncing to the beat and shifting gears as if he didn’t have a care in the world. “This isn’t even a big truck, really. It’s only got 54-inch tires, instead of 60s, so it fits in the lanes. It may seem like we’re blocking traffic, but it’s only because we’re sitting so high.”
“So, we can’t get in trouble?” Ezra asked cautiously.
“Oh, we’ll still get pulled over. The po-po see this and they think what you do: we have to pull him over since he looks too wide. I carry a measuring tape, just to be safe. Of course, if the cop is itching for some scratch, they’ll bust me for not having mud flaps.”
It didn’t make him feel any better, but they were already driving by the grand staircase, and the police weren’t sprinting down the hill to get them. When they neared the watery blockage, he pointed where he wanted Darius to drive. “I’m right down there. By the water.”
“Oh, got stuck, did you? Even my Orange Fury couldn’t go out in that water. You must have been tripping if you got close to the river. Where’s your vehicle? I don’t see any.” The road at the top of the cobblestone incline had vehicles parked there, but there weren’t any down by the water.
Ezra noticed a helicopter swooping in over the water. After a brief pause above the disaster site, it continued under the Arch, making to land on the wide grassy field where the police had set up their collection point. He guessed it was the police bosses, come to check on their underlings. There was no more time to screw around.
“Yeah. About that.” He pointed to Susan’s Grace. “We’re actually in a boat. We need you to drag us out of the water and along the cobblestones so we can put back in above these fallen bridges. My daughter is far upriver, and I have to get to her. Preferably before those officers come take both of our rifles.” He and Butch still had the rifles on them, as discussed.
The black man worked the wheel and spun them around on the empty cobblestones above where his vessel was tied up. After seeming to consider his options, Darius pointed to the passenger door. “You two get out and guide me in. I have a tow strap in the cargo bed. I’ll throw it down when I’m in position.”
“You’ll do it?” Ezra asked, surprised. It hadn’t been his plan to hide the nature of the tow, but it didn’t come up naturally in their discussion and he didn’t want to turn Darius off to their deal without seeing it.
“I’ve never towed anything quite like this. It should be cool.”
A few minutes later, music blaring obnoxiously, Orange Fury pulled the yellow tow strap taught, then Susan’s Grace came out of the water. As soon as it did, the screech created by the hollow tubes instantly eclipsed the music, becoming the loudest thing on the riverfront.
“Good God! We have to hide our rifles!” Ezra spoke the words, but no one could have heard him over the jet-engine volume of grinding metal. He exaggerated his movements in front of Butch and stashed his rifle on the boat’s deck. Still within reach, but out of sight. When the other man did the same, he gave him the okay sign.
It was the right call. Every person on the street and the giant staircase looked their way to see what was responsible for interrupting the peaceful afternoon. People ran to the edge of the hill up by the Arch to check it out, too. They’d gone perhaps fifty yards when the familiar light-blue uniform shirts of the policemen appeared at the top of the steps.
“I knew it,” he said to himself. Butch was walking on the right side of the boat, checking for leaks. He’d chosen to walk on the left, where he knew there were holes in the pontoon. As the two officers came down the steps, a second pair of men followed them down, indicating they were all together. He figured those must be the men from the helicopter.
Unwilling to let anyone stop his boat from reaching its destination, Ezra broke off and tried to intercept the gaggle of police officers. He put up his hands to get their attention. “Hey, I’m sorry for the music and noise!” Away from the scraping metal, he was able to talk over it. “We’ll be out of your hair soon.”
The officers didn’t look as concerned as their pace suggested, especially the two in uniform. They watched the boat drag along the cobblestones but made no move to stop Darius and his truck. He’d almost come to believe their interest was more for the laughs than professionalism, but then the closest man spoke to him.
“While we’re down here, we’re going to need you to surrender your rifles. Weren’t you two just up at the top of the steps? We saw you turn around and go back down.”
He didn’t try to lie. They’d been paying attention. “We were up top, but we’ll be out of your hair in a few minutes. You won’t even know we were here. I’m heading to Denver.”
“It applies across the whole state. It’s been ordered by the mayor for the St. Louis area and the Secretary of Homeland Security for the counties in the rest of the state.” Belatedly, he added. “It’s for your own safety.”
His head spun as he considered how he wanted to play it. He’d told Butch he didn’t want to fight with the police, and he still didn’t, but if he was going to lose both rifles, maybe there was no choice. Being unarmed while society collapsed around them was its own death sentence.
While he thought about it, a spurt of gunfire erupted from less than ten feet away. The two guys standing behind the policemen fired repeatedly from compact under-folder AK-47s. As the ambushed men crashed to the ground, their clean blue shirts now bursting with red, the men in the rear put another couple of rounds into them.
Ezra’s heart moved into his throat, and he couldn’t blame it for wanting a fast exit. The men reoriented on him, smiling wryly, knowing they’d caught their prey.
“Recognize us, asshole?”
CHAPTER 23
Cheyenne, WY
Grace peeled out of the parking lot, working hard to prevent the truck from fishtailing out of control. It wasn’t simply a way to get away from the gang of criminals looting the jewelry store; it made her feel good to abuse the tires. She wanted to make it known to them: I’m not playing around.
“They’re like the men who killed N-noah,” Logan stuttered.
It couldn’t have been the same men, she reasoned. Every town across America probably had its small group of opportunists who saw the asteroid disaster as an excuse to belt on their bad-guy pants and cause some trouble. The people at the Billings mall were part of it. Whoever killed those firefighters in the fast-food restaurant were part of it. Now, they’d run into another group of wreckers.
Someone shot at them several times. The distinctive cracks were noises she’d heard far too many times lately. She didn’t have time to look back at the shooter. Grace brought the truck into a tight left turn, then a fast right. It put her back on the main road. “Hang on!” she shouted after all the turns were over, but before she thrust the pedal all the way to the floor.
By the time she was at seventy miles per hour, Logan yelled. “There’s two cars coming out from the parking lot. We have to lose them!”
Looking back, the cars were obviously in pursuit. They had no fear of her and Asher, despite the uniforms and guns. In barely three days, Cheyenne had descended into a messed-up world where bad guys chased law enforcement.
Her breathing went racehorse fast as self-preservation mode took over. Her friends carried weapons, so she watched for opportunities. Grace couldn’t drive and shoot, so it had to be one of the others. “Ash, get ready. When I find a right turn we can use, it will give you a chance to shoot from your side.”
“Are you sure?” he asked, tentatively pulling out his semiautomatic pistol. “I’m not a great shot.”
Shawn reached forward and tapped Asher on the shoulder. “You get down. I have a rifle, and I know I’m a better shot than you.”
Asher glanced toward her, then returned the pistol to his police holster.
Shawn Runs Hard spoke sternly to his boy. “Logan, for the love of springtime, stay down on the floor. If they shoot back, you’ll be safer down there. And, if you disobey me again, I�
��ll throw you out the door myself.”
The native elder leaned back, then jammed the butt of the rifle against the window of the welded-on door. It popped with the first hit, shattering against the pavement outside. “Calvin didn’t hook this door’s window controls into the electrical system,” he said nonchalantly.
Grace gripped the wheel, wary of the thieves and how fast they were gaining on her. The late-model pursuit vehicles weren’t sports cars, exactly, but they were sleeker and faster than her beat-down park service utility truck. As she approached the upcoming right turn, she yelled back, “Here we go!”
The truck’s tires screeched under the strain of the hard turn onto the new road in the quiet residential neighborhood. The home on the corner of the two streets had a broad lot with few shrubs, giving what she hoped was a clear field of fire for Shawn.
The concussive bang of the rifle almost made her lose grip of the wheel. Her stomach clenched with each shot, worried one of those bullets might come back inside the truck, boomerang style.
“I didn’t hit them, but they’re slowing,” Shawn said with excitement.
The two cars looked like they were going to turn, but they instead kept going straight on the other road. The popping rattle of gunfire resonated for a few seconds, suggesting the thieves had fired as they drove by. Fortunately, she didn’t hear the corresponding whizzes and clangs of shots hitting her truck.
“I’m going this way.” She tilted her head forward, indicating she meant straight ahead. The residential area conformed to a grid pattern, giving her an opportunity to put some distance between them and the chasers. “Toward whatever is down there.” It wasn’t south, which was the way to Denver, but it was wide open, so she could go fast.
She sped along the street for a minute or so before having to choose between going left and right at a T intersection. The cars were somewhere on her left side, she was certain, so she chose to go right.
The speedometer read eighty-five before she needed to make another turn. “Oh, jeez. We can only go right. We’re going in a circle.”
“I’m ready,” Shawn said dryly.
“God, what did I get us into?” she hissed. Grace’s heart had never come out of the red zone. Her body was tense and rigid, and she sat at the front edge of the seat, as if seeing the road from a foot closer would help her make better choices.
As expected, the powerful truck roared by the jewelry store again. This time she didn’t slow in the least. Shawn leaned out the window and squeezed off a couple dozen rounds, spraying the men lingering in the parking lot. Out of ammo, he leaned out and shouted into the wind. “You don’t mess with the Crow nation!”
Grace’s mind was singularly focused on keeping the truck between the white lines of the highway. The speedometer was up to ninety-five and she would have gone faster if the truck would have responded to her efforts. “Dang, I think this is as fast as she’ll go.”
Asher was crouched on the floor in front of his seat. “I think we’ve damaged her so bad she can’t go any faster.”
“Sounds about right,” she agreed.
While sharing a tense smile with her friend, Shawn had been looking out through the plywood partition window. His groan made her think he’d been shot at first, but that wasn’t it. “I think I pissed them off. I see more cars pulling out of the lot.”
Grace didn’t care. She was glad the old guy had taken his shots at the bad guys. They were the skid marks on society’s underwear, and she felt no sympathy for them. The more she thought about it, she’d been harboring resentment toward men and women like that since seeing those dead men in the lobby of the restaurant. It angered her down to the primal base of her brain.
I want to kill all of them.
The truck couldn’t go any faster, though she continued to press the gas pedal into the floorboard. Should she turn right again? Go off road? Try to hide? Stand and fight?
“The first two cars are back. They found us.” Shawn relayed the news.
“How many are out there?” she wondered aloud.
“I count five. Three cars. Two SUVs.”
She didn’t need to ask if they were gaining.
The highway ahead was long and straight, heading out of town to the south. The wide-open grasslands of Boringville spread to the horizon in that direction. Somewhere soon, they would catch up to her and the final battle would commence. Grace had no reason to suspect they could hold off all of them.
Asher was back in his seat, buckling up. She was looking over at him to make sure he was safe and snug, when Logan nearly hit her face as he pointed ahead. “Look!”
“Sit in your seat!” she yelled back, sure he was unbuckled.
A row of Humvees sat in her path about a mile away. The last few buildings of Cheyenne were close by, forming the southern border of the town and creating a convenient place to set up a roadblock.
“I see people,” she declared.
“You do?” Asher asked. “Oh, yeah. I see them, too.”
Grace closed the distance, getting a better picture of what was coming. They were Humvees, probably military. At least nine of them, blocking all four lanes. And they sported lots of guns.
Behind, the thieves were close. She only glanced in the rearview mirror but couldn’t miss the arm hanging out one of the car’s passenger side windows. A man pointed and fired a small gun at her. That one did ping off metal, meaning her truck had suffered one more indignity.
She’d been scared sick for three days straight, but she was tired of the worn-out emotion. All the adrenaline had coursed through her blood, changing the fear into a more potent mix of anger and desperation. If she needed to ram into the roadblock to escape the horde of bad men, then so be it.
Her vision became a narrow tunnel.
“Slow down!” someone yelled from the back seat.
“Grace!” Asher called out.
Ahead, men waved their arms to get her attention. She found that a little odd, but it was also strange to see the big machine guns on top of the military trucks swing in her direction.
“We have to stop!” Asher yelled out. “Please, Grace, don’t do it!”
A deep booming rattle came from ahead. The machine gun’s explosive gunfire thrummed in her chest, though the shooter had it pointed up in the sky. However, as she continued toward them, the soldier angled the gun in her direction.
That made her mad, too.
“We’re dead,” Logan said to his father.
“Stay down,” his dad snapped.
So mad.
Through the fog of hostility, she imagined her mom sitting next to her in the passenger seat, teaching her how to drive. They’d gone to the country, of course, rather than some street in Paducah, but Mom sat patiently as she instructed her how to work the mirrors, the air conditioner, and, she joked, how to use the cupholders. Grace being Grace, she only complained about how it was dumb and boring and how Mom’s instructions were beyond obvious.
Mom took it all in stride, but at one stop sign she spoke like she was revealing the secret of life. “Grace, let me give you the only lesson you really need. As long as you keep both hands on the wheel, and both eyes on the road, your chances of getting into an accident go way down. Wherever life takes you in a car, remember: when you’re driving, you’re responsible for the lives of your passengers. Someday, the person sitting here is going to be your boyfriend, or husband, or a daughter you love more than anything…”
Her anger fizzled as the memory played out. Grace stuffed both feet against the brake pedal and pushed down with all her weight. This time the anti-lock brakes had no hope of reining in the screaming tires as they baked rubber onto the cement.
“Don’t fire. Don’t fire. Don’t—”
St. Louis, MO
Ezra raised his hands in surrender as the two criminals pointed black battle rifles in his face. Seconds ago, there’d been a smattering of people on the street and hillside watching Susan’s Grace get dragged up the shore, but most of them
had gone running after the police officers went down.
“We don’t want any trouble,” Ezra said in a loud voice. Darius hadn’t stopped pulling the boat. His motor sounded like it didn’t have a muffler, and he also played his stereo at maximum volume, so he might not have heard the gunshots. The thought of dying while his friends were oblivious to his plight was almost comical, but it did make him feel alone.
“You should have thought of that before you killed our friends out on the boats.”
He realized who they were.
“I see you recognize us now,” the guy on the left added. His face was sunburned and covered with stubble. He’d never win a beauty contest; the man had a thick brow and a warped nose from lots of fights. Ezra didn’t recognize him by his face, but he knew he was one of the pirates.
The other man nodded to the orange truck pulling the boat. “That’s a nice solution to get away from us. Good thing our group has access to all kinds of misplaced equipment. We even have a helicopter. Your days of running are over.”
“We didn’t want any trouble,” Ezra remarked, desperate to not sound scared. “If you’d left us alone, we could have gone by without anyone getting hurt.”
Ugly dude got close to him. “You don’t get it, do you? We don’t care what you want. We only care about what you’ve got. Once we put a bullet between your eyes, we’re going to kill your friends for sport, then sink your damned boat to teach you a lesson.”
“If I’m dead, do you think I’ll learn the lesson about the boat?” He sensed his cheeks turn red with anxiety at speaking with maximum sarcasm, but he still refused to let the bullies get the better of him. He was one trigger squeeze away from rejoining Susan. He wasn’t going to go out on his knees.
Ugly’s friend pushed his rifle barrel into Ezra’s stomach. “You killed three of our friends. You messed up another three. Your shooter friends back in that town killed another of my buddies while we were on the Maggy May. The lesson is you don’t screw with us and get away with it.”
Impact (Book 3): Adrift Page 19
