Pistol out, she walked toward the driver’s side of the truck and waved her two friends to the other side. She wanted the driver, who was likely the ringleader. The man inside wasn’t looking at her as she neared. He was looking at his partner, laughing, unaware of her approach.
“Get your asses out of the truck!” she ordered, pulling the door open.
The pair inside squealed, completely surprised. “Oh, God! Don’t hurt us! We didn’t mean nothing by it.”
When the door opened, she was torn between lowering her gun or using all her rounds. Grace desperately wanted to make an example of the scofflaws, but it was going to be a problem.
“We were only having some fun,” the driver complained, almost in tears. “We found the truck. We didn’t take nothing!”
Asher’s shocked face appeared on the far side of the cabin, gun drawn as well. But their targets didn’t require heavy ordnance from multiple angles. They were two young boys, hands held high, and not a day older than twelve.
St. Charles, MO
The man with the pistol on his lap was otherwise unremarkable. He had a button-down short-sleeved shirt, cargo shorts, and wore a red St. Louis Cardinals baseball hat. He looked like he was at a backyard barbeque, rather than a place that may have been a homeless camp. Fortunately, he didn’t pick up the gun or aim it at them. He did, however, point at Ezra.
“You boys smell like a skunk did some cartwheels in a latrine.”
“It’s all him,” Butch said with a laugh.
“I’m sure,” the man replied. “Smell aside, you boys are going to want to hide those rifles. If the St. Charles police catch you with them, they’ll red flag your asses faster than I could eat an Imo’s pizza right now. Believe me, that’s fast. I haven’t seen real food in over two days.”
Ezra’s stomach rumbled noisily at the mere mention of food. “Thanks for the tip. We’re heading into town to do some shopping.” He had it in his head to search for boat supplies, like epoxy to permanently seal the duct-taped bullet holes, but he also hoped for a hot dog stand, hamburger shack, or taco trough. Any real food would do.
Rather than attract the attention of any of the thousands of other campers, he nudged Butch to return to the woods. Once they had a bit of cover, he pulled out his rain poncho. “Here, we’ll put these over our rifles and packs, so it looks like we were trying to keep our gear dry. No one will think twice about what’s under them.”
Butch ripped off his weapon and re-positioned it. “It’s going to be a little uncomfortable, but if you sling your rifle upside down, the barrel won’t stick up and broadcast you’ve got American steel in the house. Ironically, this is called African carry.”
Ezra considered himself a weekend warrior and wasn’t ashamed to admit it. Since his AR-15 wasn’t powerful enough to reliably take down a deer, he’d always hunted with his .308 Weatherby. That rifle was longer, and he used the sling to carry it with the barrel facing up. It never occurred to him to haul it upside down. When he flipped his AR as Butch showed him, it felt unnatural, but it immediately cut down on the profile.
Butch turned so his back was toward Ezra. “Mind putting my poncho over this mess? It’s in my pack.”
They took turns straightening out their gear, then headed back to the man at the edge of the tent camp. He didn’t stop to talk again, but nodded knowingly to him. The guy was the only person who knew they kept rifles hidden under their ponchos. Their encounter left him thankful for the helpful tip, though he wondered if it was a mistake to carry the rifles at all. If the police in the city were searching for guns, it could come back to bite them. He had to balance stop and frisk with the threat of being shot by pirates or other criminals.
“Got any food, mister?” a little girl asked.
A small boy was nearby. “Me too!”
Ezra smiled. “I’m sorry, we’re looking for something to eat ourselves.” He walked purposefully to the nearest edge of the camp, anxious to get to the main part of the riverfront town. As best he could tell, the park was about a hundred yards wide and more than a mile long. Colorful tents and loitering campers filled the entire space. Many of the people stood by the shoreline watching the trash-clogged river flow by.
Before they got outside the camping area, Ezra spotted a group of three older men standing around talking. He caught the eye of one of them, then asked, “Hey, what’s with all the junk floating on the river?”
All three turned to face him. The first guy replied. “Where have you been? It’s all we’ve been talking about since this morning, when the worst of it started. The fire department folks think this is all coming from Kansas City. Black rain, too. Rumor has it the entire city was burned to ash by one of them space rocks. Hell, the Missouri practically stopped flowing for a whole day before it picked up again. When it did, this stuff came with it.”
The other two men held beer cans. They took swigs to wash away the bad news.
“Thanks,” Ezra said, continuing to walk by.
As they left the camp and entered the town, Butch spoke in a low tone. “We saw the…uh, man in the water. He wore a Kansas City shirt. Do you think another whole city is gone, like Paducah?”
He shrugged, considering an important detail of his trip up the river. Since he had no map to work with, he tried to remember the route of the Missouri River. There was a memory gap around Kansas City. He couldn’t recall if it went through the city, or around it. If a fireball had incinerated the whole metropolis, that small fact would make all the difference.
Denver, CO
While Dorothy was in her meeting with Stricker, Petteri had a few moments to speak privately with Howard. They were on the tenth floor of the empty office building they’d commandeered, which gave them a prime view of the asteroid fragment in the street, the wrecked buildings where it had rolled in, as well as the massing number of people and trucks beyond the police cordon a few blocks down the street. He could see what was going to happen soon. “You bolstered the police presence like I asked?”
Howard nodded immediately. “I assured them we would pay quadruple time to any officers who maintained the security line around us. The captain on duty promised me his remaining men would stay, given the amount of money, but I don’t know if they counted on so many people coming into the city.”
“This is all Asher Creighton’s fault. He convinced that chief to go on TV and claim ownership of the piece of my rock that fell on their land. Creighton has had it out for us from the get-go. Who’s to say he didn’t really sabotage the Petteri-2?”
“You’re right, of course,” Howard agreed.
He’d used Creighton as a scapegoat in the news, blaming him for the destruction of the ship knowing full well it wasn’t true. He’d done it to get back at the young man for trying to expose Petteri’s company as the real culprit for the disaster. The problem with dueling narratives, he’d later learned, was after the asteroid slammed into the beltline of America, there were too many rumors and too little truth in broadcasting. The talking heads didn’t take Mr. Creighton’s warning seriously, but they also didn’t seem to buy the sabotage story, either. All they talked about was Nashville and the recovery efforts there. They also loved talking about rumors of the aliens who must have changed the trajectory of the rocks so they would bounce, rather than blow mile-wide craters in the Earth’s surface. Plus, they loved the feel-good pieces about survivors. But they were beginning to take the Crow guy seriously; his face appeared onscreen at least once an hour.
Howard went on. “I’ve authorized our offices to recruit as many workers as possible. They’re paying cash bonuses on the spot, which has swelled our numbers almost overnight. They have money to buy guns, trucks, whatever they need to protect your investments.”
“Excellent work.” He glanced down the street, toward the fleet of trucks lined up beyond the cordon. “Denver has shown us the danger of relying on the police. We have to follow the example set by…ugh, it pains me to admit this. Misha Gagarin has done superior wor
k at the rock to the south of Yellowstone. Can you confirm he still has control of it?”
“He does. His team uses their helicopter to scout the roads for miles around them. There are some local rock hunters sniffing nearby, but no other mining companies are threatening their location.”
Petteri was impressed, despite himself. “And where are we with a team hunting him down?”
Howard hesitated. “Given his experience, I had planned to use the Venezuela team to liquidate Mr. Gagarin after they took care of Mr. Creighton. I admit, I thought the team would already be here and your problems would be solved.”
He’d ordered a strike team to terminate Misha, which Howard had smartly assigned to the professionals, so he wasn’t going to hold the Venezuela team’s delays against his assistant. The extra time actually gave Misha the opportunity to finish his task at the dig site, proving he still had some value to the company. Everyone could be used, at least for a while, even those who betrayed him.
“If he has the rock under TKM ownership, and there are no threats around, I think we can reassign him, don’t you? I believe the rock out our window could be more secure.” He looked down at the blackened asteroid fragment hogging the street below. The rounded sides of the rough orb had been sheered by blasting, making it look like a herd of cats came through and clawed off the rounded edges to make them vertical. His men worked feverishly to cut off more and load it in dump trucks, but the police line wouldn’t hold forever. Having one more expendable warrior at his side couldn’t hurt.
“I’ll order him to come here—” Howard started, until Dorothy came out of the conference room.
Petteri was going to ask her how it went, but the young woman barely looked at him. She turned and fast-walked across the hall and into the stairwell. “Hey—” was all he got out before the heavy fire door slammed behind her.
Stricker strode from the conference room a few seconds later. Compared to Dorothy, he appeared as if he’d been crowned king of the realm. When he noticed Petteri, he flashed a curt nod. “We’ve struck a mutually beneficial deal.”
Chapter 7
Thornton, CO
Grace stepped outside her body as she stood at the open door of the abandoned truck. She looked down on herself pointing a handgun at the face of a twelve-year-old boy. It took her a few seconds to think through whether it was right or wrong, but her brain worked slowly, mired in molasses. Finally, after what could have been minutes, Asher caught her attention.
“Hey, Grace! It’s okay. We got this.” His gun was already out of sight.
She lowered her pistol, but questions poured out as if a dam had burst. “What? How? Do you kids know what you’ve done? Where are your parents? I just—” She had no idea what to say.
Shawn Runs Hard pulled open the far door and spoke in a bellowing tone. “I know what we need to do with these two little criminals. Get out of the truck right now!”
The boy closest to Grace looked up at her, weighing his chances between the two sides. In the end, he chose to get out by her.
“Hold him!” Shawn yelled.
When the boy slid out, he tried to slip past her. Fortunately, Shawn had given her a heads-up on what to expect, so she grabbed his belt. It wasn’t her first time dealing with unruly children, and the belt was a non-violent, yet firm way to keep a grip. “Where do you think you’re going?” Grace spoke the words, but she heard her father in her mannerisms.
“Let us go! We didn’t do nothing!”
She scanned the roadway, wondering if it was possible she made a mistake, but there were no other people anywhere in sight. The bridge overpass led to the grasslands to the north; absolutely nothing was up there. To the south, there were houses, but they were a few hundred yards away. No one could have run there in the short time it had taken to exit the truck and run up the hill.
Logan arrived late. He gave Grace a crooked smile, enamored by her pose as she pointed a gun at two big-time criminals. Then, he broke into laughter when he saw the two kids. “Seriously? You two are so screwed. Why didn’t you stay home and play on your game consoles or phones or whatever you rich kids have?”
The second boy, who appeared the youngest, spoke through barely contained sobs. “There’s no power. We were bored, so we hiked down here, but we didn’t throw the rocks. Honest.”
“What are you going to do to them?” Logan asked with curiosity, looking at his dad.
Shawn’s face was grim, and he spoke with utter seriousness as he dragged the younger boy around the front of his vehicle. “We have to kill them.”
Everyone burst out in disbelief. “We’re absolutely not doing that,” she replied.
The boys fought against their bonds. The driver and oldest boy, a blond with a video game T-shirt, cried out. “You’re the police! You have to take us to the station, right?”
Shawn’s face tightened and he ground his teeth. “What would you have us do? You probably killed the people in those cars. You almost killed us.”
“Most of ’em walked to the houses,” the gamer boy pleaded. “We saw them.”
The second kid added, “Uh-huh.”
Grace wanted to believe them, but it didn’t alter their situation. She’d been attacked. Her truck was almost knocked out. Someone could have died. Their thoughtless behavior needed a penalty, for certain, but death seemed extreme.
“I think you’re both liars. Now you two have to pay.” Shawn pushed the little kid against the side of the truck.
Blood pounded in her temples as the tension built up to full-throttle levels of insanity. If the man wanted to make good on his plan to implement street justice, she couldn’t stop him. Not unless she fought back. But should she?
“Dad, you can’t!”
The boys were in a state of abject terror. The one in her arms now sported a wet stain all the way down his pant leg. He tried to stay away from Shawn, though he also seemed to hug her at the same time. It was a contradictory behavior that made it impossible for her to think clearly.
All at once, Shawn stashed his gun behind his back. He winked at Grace after he was sure the boys weren’t watching him, then he acted like he accidentally let go of the boy.
She took it as her cue to do the same. Grace whispered in the kid’s ear. “Quick! Run! I’ll keep him from shooting you. Don’t come back!”
Both boys ran away from the truck at full speed, heading for the houses.
“Cover your ears,” Shawn advised.
She glanced over. Mr. Runs Hard pointed his pistol in the air, but tilted away from the houses, then he fired it a few times.
The boys screamed. One of them fell to the pavement before getting back up and continuing his escape. They didn’t look back a single time. In a minute, they disappeared behind the first row of homes.
“I didn’t know what you were doing there,” she said to Shawn. “That was fast thinking.”
He ran fingers through his hair, clearly relieved at the outcome. “I’ve dealt with wild boys my entire life. We have a whole nation of them, or at least it feels like it sometimes. I find it most effective to scare them straight, though I have to admit I’ve never dealt with any kids who behaved as dangerously as those two.”
They all walked back to the edge of the bridge. A few cars continued to pass under them, but the westbound people slowed to weave around her truck, and many in both directions braked to see the burning Corvette. There was a total of six disabled vehicles, plus her parked Chevy. The boys had been busy.
“Do you think they’ll come back?” she asked. “Can we get rid of that truck full of rocks?” She figured if the pickup was gone, they wouldn’t be able to get the cinder blocks to the top of the bridge as easily.
In the end, their solution was simple.
“Go with the wind,” she said, putting one of the cinder blocks on the gas pedal. They’d started it up and aimed it into the wide-open field next to the roadway. She put it in gear while Asher held the brake pedal. On cue, she backed out and he let go. T
he truck shot off the road and headed away from them.
“Are you sure this will work?” she asked, watching as the truck sailed across the wild grasses, bumping a little as it went.
Shawn replied, “Just watch.”
The truck could have been doing thirty or forty miles an hour, though as it increased in speed it seemed to bump over the irregular terrain with greater intensity. When it was about a quarter of a mile away, it appeared as if it had struck something and slowed to walking speed.
“There,” Shawn said, more relaxed. “The bouncing knocked the cinder block off. Now we don’t have to worry about the truck going over the horizon and killing someone. It would have been on us.”
“Well, I hope it’s enough to keep those kids from getting more blocks.” She slapped her hands together, washing herself of the encounter.
Shawn seemed satisfied. “Not every kid learns his lesson, but I believe those two will think twice before trying this again. Short of tracking down their parents, there isn’t anything else we could have done. Be thankful they weren’t adults.”
“Why’s that, Dad?” Logan asked.
“Because we would have been forced to kill them.”
St. Charles, MO
“Aside from the beach party at the river, this town looks like it’s been spared by the destruction we’ve seen so far,” Butch remarked as they walked along a quaint street, which could have originated in a Mark Twain novel. The two-story stone-and-brick buildings were old and butted against each other, but they were also narrow. Most had two windows and a door on the first story, with two big windows on the second. A few cars were parked along the cobblestone main street, and a smattering of people window-shopped, but there wasn’t much going on. It contrasted greatly with the activity a block over in the park.
Crush: Impact Book 4: (A Post-Apocalyptic Survival Thriller Series) Page 5
