by Dixon, Chuck
She dropped in the bucket seat on her side and reloaded the shotgun from the remaining rounds in her jacket pocket.
“Promise me,” Doe said in a hoarse whisper.
“Promise you what?” she said.
He turned his eyes from the road to look into her face, brows beetled, breathing through his teeth.
42
Caz sat atop the roof of the OP watching the night.
The past few days, he could feel something was coming. There was a dark trifling at the edges of his thoughts. Guys he knew downrange called it “radar,” “psychic,” or “spider-sense.” A lot of those guys survived their deployments. Caz had learned to listen to that little voice.
Tonight the voice was constant. Insistent.
His growing feeling of unease didn’t exist in a vacuum. The noise level around Tool Town had grown in volume and frequency. It started with the music and gunfire weeks before. Then there was the massive fire that burned for a whole week, turning the sky dark with smoke. Jim Kim told Caz that it was the arena and surrounding neighborhood that went up. Blocks of densely packed row homes. In the following days and nights, they heard gunshots in isolated exchanges and extended firefights. Most of the concentration was from the north.
Something was sorting itself out in the city. Something that could turn their way at any time.
He lay back on the roof to look up at the stars. The sky was clear and black. There was a snap to the air. He could smell winter coming.
Caz closed his eyes and listened to the night. Silence.
Even the brush of wind in the trees was missing since the last leaves had fallen a few days before. He imagined the range of his hearing expanding, reaching out beyond the parking lot, spreading to the woods and interstate behind the store and toward the city to the north. In his mind, he created an imaginary dome that covered fifty square miles of urban sprawl.
Out of the quiet, he heard a purring sound. The purr rose to a grind. He sought the source in his imagined sound space. East heading west. Growing in volume. Closing on the center.
He opened his eyes and sat up. It was a motor noise. Over-revving. It was somewhere on Western, the road that the shopping center fronted on. The motor’s roar was accompanied by one, maybe two, sources of a higher-pitched whine. The vehicle racing toward him wasn’t alone. Close enough now to hear the chirp of tires.
Caz keyed the two-way. Two presses.
Smash’s voice crackled from the handset. “It’s not my watch yet.”
“Get up here. Right now.”
“Both of us?”
“Smash first. Jim Kim, stay down there in case I need something.”
“What is it?”
“Just get your ass up here,” Caz barked.
43
“I can’t. Doe, I can’t,” she said in a little-girl voice.
“You’re the only one who can,” he said and looked through the pocked windshield in time to see a school bus parked athwart the lanes ahead. He cut the wheel hard to the right, taking them down a gully along the road verge. The RV bucked and charged up a grassy slope, where they bounded onto a parking lot next to a Starbucks.
He fought the wheel around and gunned into the skid to bring them up straight with a jerk. Mercy slammed forward and back and sideways to bang her head into the window, starring the glass. The Coachman roared over the lot, snagging the rear corner of a Mercedes and sending it spinning.
Doe got them on a lane between the landscaped islands that dotted an enormous open parking area. It was littered with cars and the stumbling scarecrows of the once-living. The high front end of the RV plowed a few of them down, sending a gooey spray of dark fluids up the broad expanse of the windshield.
The bikes barked and tires squealed behind then, closing on the larger vehicle as it lost speed in the turns. The Coachman whipped past the fronts of dark monoliths of big box stores, looking for a path out of the maze of bare trees and scattered cars. The RV’s lights swung onto a tangled collection of shopping carts and struck them. Most went flying, but one went under the wheel, its mangled frame lodged in the well.
44
Caz let the two-way drop back to the lanyard on his vest. He hopped down from the OP roof and raced to the curtain wall at the roof ’s edge. He got there in time to see the beams of headlights sweep over the lot, throwing the shadows of trees before it. The big vehicle had turned onto the lot but was still invisible to him, gears grinding. The pair of lights grew to four. The mechanical whining sound rose to a burring screech. The lights made crazy patterns in the dark. Down on the lot, the gomers swayed in their endless march to approach the shifting array of lights.
Caz braced his rifle on the curtain wall and zeroed on the lights racing over the lot. He heard metal on metal and breaking glass. Smash dropped down by him with a spray of gravel.
“Shit,” Smash whispered.
Caz pulled the Glock from his waistband, jacked in a fresh round, and handed it to Smash.
“It’s live. Just keep you and me behind the part the bullets come out of,” he said and turned to sight down the M4.
An RV came into view. It hopped the curb surround of a landscape bed. It was up on two wheels on a tottering course toward Tool Town off the Toys ‘R’ Us lot. It settled back down on all four wheels with a shudder. Two dirt bikes were in pursuit. It was a chase, not a race. Each bike swung out to flank the RV. One of the bikes had two riders mounted in tandem.
“What do we do?” Smash hissed.
“We watch,” Caz said.
“Whose side are we on?”
“Ours.”
The brakes locked up on the RV, a big old Coachman bus model. It shimmied and swerved. The rear end swung forward, wheels locked. It swung into a sideways progress, kicking up gravel as it ground over the lot. The rear swept into a pair of gomers who splattered up the sides of the vehicle. Shopping carts were struck spinning. It continued on broadside toward the front of Tool Town. The near wheels leapt the curb in front of the store, the tires bursting in twin explosions.
Caz and Smash dove away as the big bus slammed sideways into the storefront.
45
Doe shouted a wordless cry of warning or rage and cut left, forcing the locked wheel against the concrete curb around a landscape section. The shopping cart came free, launched into the wake of the RV to tumble back toward the bikes that were speeding nearer. The Coachman’s tire climbed the curb, and for a few breathless seconds, the big vehicle hung poised on two wheels. Mercy screamed as the universe shifted and anything not secured in place sprung into the air. She hugged the shotgun to her and braced for the inevitable impact.
The RV dropped to level once more with a painful lurch and went into a sickening fishtail spin that propelled it sideways to a sudden catastrophic stop. Mercy was thrown against the seat belts, the shoulder strap nearly knocking the wind from her as the airbags exploded from the steering wheel and dash to halt her forward momentum.
The next few moments or hours or seconds were a blur. Mercy was free of the restraints. Her head was filled with an agonizing pressure as if she had dived to the bottom of a pool. The world was suddenly still. Her universe shrunk to the inside of a place without motion or sound. The air was filled with fine choking powder from the exploded airbags. She sensed rather than heard the muffled roar of gunfire. Doe’s hand reached for her, palsied and weak, to grip the cloth of her jacket.
He was shouting at her, but she couldn’t hear the words. His eyes, rheumy and blood-red, pleaded with her. She shook her head and screamed back words she could not hear. His grip tightened. His eyes burned with a furious but waning light. He mouthed the words, releasing her jacket.
“Promise me.”
She stumbled back, aware for the first time of the shotgun clutched in her fists.
Mercy raised the shotgun, vision blurred by tears.
Doe leaned toward her, smiling and nodding slow and easy. Nothing to it.
She willed herself to keep her eyes open,
trained on his. She owed it to him to make it clean for the first shot. She pressed her eyes closed for the second and third.
Mercy turned away to move on unsteady legs into the kitchenette. With the strap of the shotgun looped over one arm, she braced a foot against a drawer front and another on the back of the bench seat. She reached up to unlatch the sunroof hatch. She poked it open with the barrel of the shotgun and tossed it out onto the roof.
Hands braced on the lip of the open hatch, she hauled herself up with nothing on her mind except escape from this place.
Escape into this world or the next. At this point, after everything else, it didn’t matter to her which it would be.
46
Metal screamed.
Caz and Smash could feel the impact through the roof beneath them.
The RV’s engine roared then died choking.
Caz crawled back to the curtain wall for a snap peek over the edge.
The dirt bikes had come to a stop farther back in the lot, idling, motors burping. The tandem rider climbed off his bike and, leaving his partner behind, approached the stalled Coachman. The walking man had a rifle in his hands, raised to assault position and trained on the RV.
The walking man traversed his sights to bring down a gomer staggering his way. Two well-placed shots turned the gomer’s skull to a shower. The walking man ignored other gomers heading his way over the lot. This guy was used to this environment. He wasn’t wasting ammo on anything that wasn’t an immediate threat.
Smash was by Caz, cradling the Glock like a baby bird.
“Put the front sight on the walker,” Caz said in a hush. Smash looked confused.
“Cover the guy with the rifle. I’m on the RV,” Caz whispered. All the attention on the ground was focused on the stalled RV. Caz levered up to aim down at the roof of the vehicle, its motor popping and hissing, stuck fast against the front of the store. The big bus rocked. Someone was moving inside. Muffled voices, shouts, came from within. A boom from the interior of the RV followed by two more booms. The walking man’s pace increased. The bikers revved their rides, ready to move in at a whistle.
47
“That was a shotgun,” Caz said.
“What’s that mean?” Smash said.
“It means this fight is between them. We stay out of it,” Caz said.
A hatch atop the RV clacked then flew open. A hand tossed a pump shotgun up onto the roof. Caz came up on his knees to sight on the black square of the open hatch.
A head appeared in the hatch.
A spray of blonde hair under a knit cap. A girl.
Caz followed her over the front sights as she levered herself out of the hatch and slid along the roof surface, reaching for the butt of the shotgun.
The walking man either saw or heard her. He sprayed quick bursts at the RV. Sparks flew off trim along the roofline. Rounds spattered on the bricks.
“Drop him!” Caz roared and stood to train on the bike rider farthest from him. He flung the man from the saddle with a double-tap to the chest.
Smash was up on one knee and blasting away with the Glock, his mouth open as if waiting for a scream that never came. His shots went wild. The walking man fired upward as he moved, hunting for the new threat from above. Tracers whizzed overhead.
Caz traversed his aim, hunting for the second biker. The biker was on the move, drifting toward the front of Tool Town on a curving course. He was racing for the cover of the RV. The walking man was humping for the RV as well. Caz pumped rounds toward the approaching biker. The front wheel turned at a radical angle bringing the rear of the bike into the air. The sudden stop sent the rider over the bars to tumble hard over the asphalt. He came up hard against a curb and lay still.
Smash stood helpless. The Glock’s action was locked back. The weapon was empty, and the spare magazine in his cop belt was down in his room. The radio was squawking. Jim Kim in a panic.
“What’s going on? Somebody talk to me!”
The walking man made the cover of the RV. A squeal of protesting metal. The RV rocked and dipped at the driver’s side door. The walking man was inside.
Caz trained the M4 down at the RV roof. The girl was only thirty feet below them. She was on all fours now with the shotgun in her fists. She turned her head to look up at Caz, standing with his rifle on her. The Coachman moved under her like a boat in a gentle current. Caz motioned with the barrel of the M4, pointing her toward the rear of the RV. She lowered her head in a slow and deliberate nod, keeping the shotgun barrel aimed away.
She stepped back, sneakered feet pressing flat and firm on the steel roof. A muted roar from inside the RV. Jagged holes appeared in the roof. A hot round skimmed off the bricks just below Caz’s position. The girl moved back as far as she could, stumbling against cargo tied down on the RV roof with bungees. More rounds came up through the roof in search of her. Holes punched through the metal, spraying vaporized insulation that hung in the air like snow. Caz judged the angle of fire. He sent a long burst down to where he thought the walking man might be in the Coachman’s interior. The girl froze against the stack of cargo.
No response. A squeak. The RV canted a bit. Movement inside. Caz emptied the M4 in a pattern all around the place where he’d heard the squeak. He loaded another magazine and charged the rifle.
“Get on the two-way. Have Jimmy get us a ladder,” Caz said to a wild-eyed Smash without taking his bead off the RV’s roof.
The girl looked up at him. Her eyes were big, whites all around. Nostrils flared. She wasn’t scared. It was adrenaline. She kept the shotgun lowered.
“First things first. I need you to see you pump that gun empty,” Caz said, eyes on her. Sights still fixed on the last place he heard the walking man move.
The girl said nothing. She locked her gaze on his and pumped three times, sending one spent round and two live ones bouncing over the steel roof. The pump locked open when the gun was empty. She held it up over her head to show him the open action.
“Any other pieces on you?”
She shook her head. Eyes on his. Blue eyes watching him through a loose wing of blonde hair that swung in her face. He noticed that the jacket she wore glistened with fresh blood. Back splatter. Not hers.
“You stay there. We’re going to get you up off of there.”
Caz remained in place while Smash and Jim Kim managed to muscle a painter’s ladder up through the hatch. The second biker was dragging himself from where his fall had taken him. A half dozen gomers, drawn by the light and noise, were making best time over the dark lot. The biker was busted up, unable to stand. He made mewling noises through his helmet.
“Friend of yours?” Caz said, indicating the crawling man with the barrel of the M4.
The girl glanced over and shook her head.
“Fuck him then.” Caz shrugged.
With some difficulty, the boys got the ladder up through the hatch and the door of the OP and onto the roof. They extended it full length and levered it over the curtain wall. The girl slung the shotgun over her shoulder and guided the foot of the ladder to the roof of the RV. She braced the plastic feet against the heap of cargo.
“Come on up,” Caz said.
When she was four rungs shy of the roof, Caz reached out his hand.
“Now hand up that shotgun. Real slow and by the barrel.” Her eyes narrowed, but she did as he told her and held the gun, butt-first, for Caz to take.
He handed the shotgun off to Smash and held his hands to brace the ladder top as she climbed the last rungs. She came off the ladder and dropped to hands and knees on the gravel.
“Mercy,” she said.
“We’re not going to hurt you,” Jim Kim said and held a hand out, offering her help to stand.
She batted the hand away and eyed them all. “Mercy’s my name, stupid.”
48
They moved out of Gomer Manor to let her have the house to herself. After a long hot shower, she slept the clock around. The boys stayed busy in those hours. There was w
ork to do.
“We need to clean up down there,” Caz said. He stood with Smash and Jim Kim on the roof of Tool Town looking down at the lot.
Gomers were gathered around the front of the building in greater number and concentration than they’d seen before. A mass of over two hundred of the dead had shown up in the hours between the girl’s arrival and sunrise. Drawn by the noise and light.
And the promise of food.
The three bikers were nothing more than greasy stains on the parking lot by now. The feeding frenzy around them had broken up, leaving platoons of gomers wandering back and forth around the RV jammed against the storefront. Two gomers languidly fought over a helmeted head like kids over a popcorn bucket.
“What the hell, Caz?” Smash said. “We can’t do shit until these gomers wander off.”
“That could be days. Whoever that girl is, she pissed someone off. I’m betting there’s more of them, and they’ll come looking for their friends,” Caz said, a foot on the curtain wall, his rifle resting across his knee.
“Maybe they were alone. Or people she knew and fell out with,” Smash offered.
“No. They’re part of whoever’s been making noise in the city. She can tell us more when she wakes up.”
“We can climb down the ladder into the RV to move it,” Jim Kim said.
Smash turned to him, astonished. “You Rambo now, Jimmy? Batman? Move the RV where? Get back how?”
“The gomers need to be drawn off first,” Jim Kim said, eyes on the one-handed mom running broken nails along the metal shell of the Coachman.
“By something more attractive than where they are right now?” Smash said.
