Vegas let him bluff it out. The Councilor paused instead, checking back at him with a cheeky, you-really-sure-about-this look on his glossy black showman’s face.
“Vegas. . . .”
“I didn’t have no beef with Tom Vanicek until last night,” Vegas said. “I don’t care what your problem’s with him. Guy’s a fuckin’ killer, man. We got no use for that here. Why you think I split with Burroughs’ crew?”
“Funny you should say that,” Wilhelm said, then added a secret smile.
“What?”
“Where is Vanicek now?”
“Are you gonna back me up?”
“If you can help,” Wilhelm said.
“Then what was that little secret smug shit I jus’ saw on your dial?”
The Councilor looked back in denial.
“Vanicek?” he asked again instead.
Vegas narrowed his gaze. Then it was his turn to check on the two guards.
“You remember where you come from, Ernest?”
Vegas tried to hold his eyes. Wilhelm chuckled.
“I somehow do not think you mean the Air Force Base.”
“You forgot what it was like, before, for our people,” Vegas said. “We have to stick tight, brother.”
The Councilor fired back a sarcastic chuckle.
“I remember it fine, thank you,” Wilhelm said. “I had a good life.” He motioned to include the security goons. “I still do.”
“Yeah,” Vegas said slowly. “Maybe you’ve had it too good here for too long. Makes a man forgetful.”
“If we are going to get a search underway for your friend’s killer, I need you to tell me where he might be.”
Wilhelm held out his hand as if he expected something handwritten. Vegas slowly shook his head, eyes lifting from the hand to meet the Councilor’s.
“Winter’s coming, yo,” he said. “You need me and the people I can bring across. I’ll tell you what I can, but you’ve got to cut us in. Your City Council’s just another racket, brother. I know that. Deal me in.”
For once, he couldn’t read the Councilor’s reaction. Wilhelm stood assaying him, speculative fingers wreathing towards his chin before he finally snapped his eyes to the security detail and back again.
“I am afraid there will be a problem with that,” he said.
“Oh yeah?” Vegas replied. “What’s that?”
“The table is already full.”
Wilhelm motioned towards the bearded sentry.
“You can answer Trooper Rothwell’s questions if you will not answer mine.”
“Wait,” Vegas said.
Now Wilhelm strode away for real.
“Wait,” Vegas called out with rising panic. “We’re in this together, Wilhelm. What’s one more seat at the table?”
The Councilor nodded to the other trooper as he reached the far exit, and then turned back towards Vegas looking sorrowful.
“Because no one else wants you there.”
Wilhelm didn’t say anything else. Instead, he stood aside as the door opened and several more troopers sauntered into the room.
Vegas recognized his ex-Brotherhood comrades Sandler, Romano and Zardoz – and the smiles on their faces too.
*
SHOCK AT WILHELM’S betrayal ran a long second behind the urgency which gripped Vegas bodily as he pounced on the tall guard between him and the door they’d come in through.
The trooper beside Wilhelm stupidly went for his rifle, and though the blonde-bearded guard had a few inches on Vegas, he was gangly in comparison. Vegas grabbed the trooper’s shirt front and hauled him around to block the three Brotherhood stooges. Then Vegas opened the door and slammed it into the trooper before backing out, leaving him in a tangle blocking the way.
The three Brotherhood men piled out the door after Vegas as if each was slightly more careful than the last, which gave Vegas a lead as he sprinted for the stairs with Romano, then Zardoz, then Sandler coming after. The other two armed troopers followed behind.
Vegas shrunk down at the expected gunfire as he ran through the offices, but one of the men yelled caution and then it was just Vegas and them and their pounding boots and breaths.
He came alongside the rails at the top of the stairwell and astonished his pursuers by vaulting up one-footed and then stepping off, disappearing from sight as he leaped down and across to the far opposite side of the stairs as if he’d been doing it his whole life. Just as briskly, Vegas rose from his crouched landing and grabbed the next closest rail, and he swung himself over that edge too, landing on his sneakers on the far rail, diagonally below, keeping his momentum fluid, and then streaking a further half-flight down before even the first of the men started down from the top.
Wilhelm’s private guards now led the chase, exchanging loud frantic professional questions as they lagged behind Vegas’ parkour moves. Bootfalls crashed down from nearly two flights above.
Vegas hurtled groundwards – and then came the first gunshot. It echoed painfully in the concrete stairwell and Vegas took the chance as he ducked out of sight to dive over and roll into the next landing, and from there then slithered on fast-moving hands and feet around the corner, tucked up with his back to the wall holding his breath and ready to leap back into action in case the rampaging Safety officers failed to continue on past.
He could afford a single shaky breath as he strained, frozen, as the booted feet crashed down the laminate stairs and then continuing on for the building’s ground floor below.
He didn’t have time to spare. Various options and strategies duked it out for supremacy in his thoughts as Vegas got back to his feet as quietly as he could and started scampering along the next corridor scanning for another exit.
It was Sneaky-fucking-Sandler in his risk-avoidant rearguard role who checked each landing on the way down and caught the back of him as Vegas hurried to the corridor’s end. And like the coward he was, Sandler yelled to the others rather than follow himself.
Vegas checked the closest door handle, but it was locked.
“Don’t fucking move!” Sandler yelled.
The narrow-faced man swept his pistol at Vegas, a moving target back-lit by the tall windows at the hallway’s end. Vegas ducked and threw himself at the last door on the other side, committed to the act only for the micro-seconds it took to feel that handle locked as well.
Zardoz charged in from behind Sandler whose trigger finger hesitated just a fraction.
Survival instinct alone drove Vegas twisting for the nearest window, but he fumbled the grab at the window’s latch, and continued on with his momentum into and through it. The best Vegas could do was heft one brawny shoulder, turning his face as glass exploded into the daylight to reveal a metal fire escape he crashed hard down into.
Pain like a ruptured spleen lit through him, but Vegas was too afraid to pause as the glass rained and clattered around and off him. He grabbed the rusted metal scaffold, and hurled himself on a fresh vector down the side of the building with hands covered in blood. He was halfway down to ground level before the sliver of broken window frame jutting out of his side caught his attention when it tore free, catching on a passing strut as Vegas stumbled out and onto the street circling the rear of the tenement along the southern face of the Enclave.
Just above the hip where his Glock should’ve been, Vegas instead grasped a bleeding wound. A distressing amount of blood ran from it, soaking his cargo pants and close-fitting shirt.
The Bastion had his gun and his ax and his backpack and his five favorite books.
And Wilhelm’d betrayed him to the City’s white elites just like he was one of them.
Anger at himself for not expecting Wilhelm’s betrayal was the only thing left to Vegas apart from fear for his life. He steadied himself with a bloody hand print against the outside wall and heard a commotion somewhere out of sight. He would’ve started running then and there if only a Humvee didn’t barrel around the corner of the access road and gun the engine towards him.
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Broad daylight cast Vegas in a role he’d long hoped left behind.
The armored vehicle grunted forward in spurts from the gas. Still clutching his side, Vegas forcefully exhaled, demanding the adrenalin obey him, rather than make him its bitch. Instead, he judged the Humvee’s speed and trajectory as it hammered towards him.
Vegas ran – but towards the vehicle, not away from it.
There was no time to scan their wider surrounds or the view towards the front gates or any other security measures deploying against him – nor anything else but focus on the military vehicle as it slowed a little, anticipating the cut-off maybe as it veered onto the tenement’s crumbling sidewalk as Vegas came at it down the middle of the road.
He and the driver locked eyes. The Humvee’s tires chewed the dirt and roared forward and Vegas gathered all his strength and leaped up with a foot towards the vehicle’s bull bar.
The jeep came on hard in the last instants and the windshield caught Vegas’ foot as he launched off the bar towards the roof, and the force of the clip flipped him spinning onto the hard-packed ground as the vehicle’s tore through.
He hit that ground hard. The impact took him mostly in the shoulder, the rest of his athletic frame slamming down in the wake. Vegas lay on the road a long few seconds as the Humvee slowed beyond his pained vision, and moving like his neck was broken, he fought the pain to scope the path to the Bastion’s front gate.
The Humvee screeched to a halt and the driver hurriedly negotiated its turning circle. A handful of shouts concealed by the bulk of the nearest tenement didn’t augur well. The urgency forced Vegas upright, against protests from the rest of him, blood dripping from his chin in time with his pulse as he cast hooded eyes across the access road and started away at a limping shuffle as if they were still precious seconds to be saved.
There were no alarms, no klaxons, nothing to explain the Humvee’s squealing brakes behind him as Vegas picked up the pace into a stumbling jog.
The high barricades to the east and the last stand of lonely trees the Bastion allowed itself concealed him from the gate sentries for about a hundred yards. Then the boundary softened and the gates themselves hove into view.
The engine noise grew behind him, and Vegas broke into a full run.
The troopers at the gate had plenty of chance to gun him down, but the lack of alarum meant the two men up on the machine-gun turret had their backs to the scene. A third trooper lifted rheumy eyes from rolling a cigarette, and the fourth trooper, at the foot of the metal staircase for the platform at the side of the gate, was a startled-looking black woman who simply stared at Vegas as he ran breathlessly, as much a fugitive as his younger self, running from the law, merely locking eyes with the woman and shaking his head with as much solemnity as his pace allowed.
Then the growling Humvee came around into view on the road behind him and Vegas reached the guard post and tore past the female sentry.
The middle-aged man with the cigarette dropped his makings and went for the M14 on its strap just as Vegas ploughed into him, forearm first, taking practically no dent to his momentum as he continued on and up and around the metal stairs using the ever-reliable railing to haul himself up so fast it seemed perverse. He tucked aching legs into his chest as he vaulted the top rail, ducking and then twisting like the running back he could’ve been, had life been something else.
Now Vegas used that grace and hard-won athleticism to come up behind the first of the two men at the top just as the pair swiveled about and registered him.
The time for keeping things friendly had long passed. Vegas clutched a fistful of the first trooper’s collar, and a knee shove and a scoop-like forearm bar made it comically easy to hoist the soldier right over the edge of the barricade.
The startled man fell to the unyielding ground outside the front of the gate with a shout of realization, and his comrade turned, working the pistol at his hip like it was glued there.
Vegas remained in motion, a snake-fast hand clutching the trooper’s wrist clutching the Sig Sauer’s holstered grip. Their other arms clashed. Vegas battered the trooper’s weak grab aside with his elbow, then stabbed his right hand at once like a pincer clutching the soldier’s throat as he then drove his knee into the man’s balls, and pushed him backwards down the staircase as he snatched the pistol from the gargling trooper’s holster as he tumbled away.
Vegas barely heard the shouts. He kept in motion as the woodwork exploded to his right.
More gunfire tore around him as Vegas tossed the silvery handgun into the air and caught it with his other hand at the same time his left clutched the barricade’s edge and he vaulted over it, and away from sight.
*
HE TOOK THE eight-yard fall a lot better than the other man, landing soft and going into a primitive movement cutting short of a full roll as Vegas tumbled free across the dirt and the fallen trooper moaned from where he lay, splayed, his legs no longer working for him. The man had his sympathy, but not much else. Vegas started running before he was on his feet, barely halfway across the clearing north-east of the gates before they cracked open.
Troopers with rifles charged out, one after the other.
“That’s him!” one yelled.
“Go! Go! Go!”
Vegas threw himself into flight and reached the first of the nearest shantytown homes fast enough to stay any temptation for gunfire.
He twisted sideways to force through an unconventional gap between the two closest shelters, and stomped through an awning-covered laneway kitchen to hit the hard brick foundations of the most immediate old Columbus domicile. At a little after 9am, a few Citizens were about their chores, dodging out of the way as Vegas reoriented on the crowded, muddy concourse, sprinting deeper into the settlement as the troopers called to each other somewhere behind him.
A big, red-faced trooper burst in on him with an AR15 drawn as Vegas ran, still half-caught in the hovel’s tattered plastic sheets.
They crashed into each other and Vegas pushed the other gun barrel aside, driving his elbow up and into the trooper’s face. He tried a grab at the weapon as its owner crumpled, but it was hooked tight by a crosswise strap. Shouts filled the air like radio crackle. The improvised homes crowding the street between the old buildings made the other troopers impossible to trace. He only had half a handle on his panic anyway, thrust back into the fight – or the foot race – between life and death so fast it was like no time’d elapsed at all since Jay was butchered at his feet. Vegas clutched the stolen handgun like a counterfeit reassurance. He’d crippled one of Wilhelm’s men already, but not left anyone dead – not yet – and he desperately wished for an exit before any of it got worse.
He heel-stomped the collapsed trooper’s face for good measure and left him trampled into the muck as he resumed his northwards push, batting aside ropes and the flaps of weather-torn tarpaulins intruding on his path. But the way ahead lay blocked by a clusterfuck of wooden construction, old boards and doors and forklift pallets and random timbers built-up over time into something akin to a medieval hall which borrowed the corner building of the old City block for its foundations.
“I can’t believe this shit,” Vegas muttered to himself.
The air reeked of urine and decay and mud and stale beer, and within a dozen yards, the back row of shelters gave way to a trampled enclosure on his left. A few dozen looted bookshelves corralled an open-air, al fresco back yard sheltered by an old marquee tethered to the dead powerlines. A filthy man in a filthier apron watched Vegas stonily as he blundered into the space, nearly slipping in the clay-thick mud, very little of it natural, a 44-gallon barrel on its side hacked open to make a barbecue, and work tables in the middle of the squamous open ground slathered with offal and animal fat that hung from the benches like wax from candles, adding itself slowly to the grime.
The bookcases yielded through to a plastic-flap doorway and the gizzards of an old transportable school room. The butcher at the work bench clutched a cleaver
, but did nothing to stop Vegas barreling on inside.
A dozen-or-more bedraggled Citizens snatched looks at his sudden entrance, but they eyeballed Vegas with little more than natural suspicion. Several resumed their desperate meat trades, crowded in by those waiting. The far side of the sodden unit revealed more daylight coming through the street entrance. A skeletal man clutching a toddler to his chest flinched out of his way. Vegas slowed just enough to gauge the man’s intent for the child he carried, but the kid’s black eyes followed Vegas back, disintegrating his concern.
The daylight led into the corner precinct, a few dozen people moving about the front of the timber fort of the alehouse. Several jostled aside as more troopers forged through, shouting dire threats. Vegas took his chance to break north again, then veered around the front of the badly-built barn, more faces inside lost to the gloom, though they watched as he passed by with the Sig Sauer concealed at his side.
He checked around as he moved, hesitating slightly as a woman with a baby swaddled between her breasts led a horse tethered to a wagon carved from the remains of an old Buick Roadmaster.
Vegas bolted across the woman’s path, jogging around behind the wagon as cover while the first few troopers reached the intersection with their guns raised, still sweeping about themselves as the citizenry got wind of the newsflash and folks started getting out of the way.
The cart halted and the woman called to the troopers.
“He went back there!”
Vegas sprinted free again, rushing into and through a dozen more people drawn to the commotion even as others hurried away.
He cut the next side street to head towards The Mile, with more and more people filling the streets the closer he got. Citizens looked more focused on the realities of survival than any lapsed Curfew. A dark-skinned man begged something from him as Vegas blew past. An elderly couple loaded their things onto two equally aged bicycles as if preparing to quit, while two tween girls wrestled in a gutter beside them near a spilled bowl of gruel. A one-armed man with a shotgun stood chuckling and encouraging the pair, and he shot Vegas a rueful look as if inviting him to join the fun. Instead, Vegas pushed him aside, forever making rearward checks as the first of his pursuers appeared, and then another, bigger trooper appeared blocking the way ahead.
After The Apocalypse (Book 6): Resolution Page 18
