Pavement Ends: The Exodus

by Kurt Gepner

  "Listen, TJ," Silas intervened, "This ain’t a democracy. If that’s what you’re looking for, then you should look for a different unit."

  A crease formed between TJ’s brow. "Shut up, Silas! I’m sick of you bullying us around!"

  Silas’ eyes bulged from their sockets. "You’re out of line, Mister!"

  "No I’m not!" TJ’s face began to blotch red. "You’ve been out of line for days. We’re not soldiers and this isn’t the Army."

  "Hey!" Hank shouted from the back of the Duck Truck. "Let me make this clear for everybody. I am not taking any votes. Anybody who helps me has my support. Anybody who disagrees with me is entitled to express their opinion. Anybody who challenges me can go to Hell!"

  Snapping shut his dangling jaw, TJ said, "So, that’s it? I do it your way, or walk?"

  Hank was climbing down from the bed of the Duck Truck with a bucket. When he reached the ground, he turned and limped up to the younger man. His fat walking staff, made of a lacquered, gnarled limb, clacked distinctly on the asphalt. TJ was not short, but with Hank standing so closely to him, he was forced to crane his neck in order to look the larger man in the eye.

  Taking full advantage of his looming stature Hank said, "That’s it, TJ. You have a choice. It’s not a pretty little choice, like whether you want a steak or chicken quesadilla …. Instead you have to decide whether to stay with a dictatorship, or deal with the end of the world all alone." Hank turned his back on TJ and walked away. Over his shoulder he said, "You’d better figure it out, quick, because the next time you challenge me, I’m not going to use my words to have this discussion."

  In the back of the U-haul, Hank spooned a little honey onto some leftover potatoes and heated them in a skillet on the wood stove. Evie let her husband busy himself in the kitchen, because she knew it would help him to calm down. "I think you handled that well," she told him.

  "I’m not worried about how I handled it," he said. "I’m feeling betrayed by Lexi. She shouldn’t have sided with that punk."

  "Hank," she said cautiously. "TJ is really not bad. While you were gone, he worked really hard doing whatever he was told. I don’t think he’s a punk."

  "He’s a punk," Hank spat, "as long as he’s on my bad side. And that’s as long as my daughter is on his side!"

  Evie cringed inwardly as she pressed him on the subject. She didn’t want to tell him, but she didn’t think there was a choice. "They’ve kind of become an item, in the past few days."

  Hank had just scooped the potatoes onto a plate and he slammed the skillet down on the wood stove. "THIS," he hissed viciously, "is not the time for romance!" He clamped shut his jaw and drizzled some more honey over the potatoes.

  "I know," Evie said bitterly. "You think romance is something that you plan for. But you may have noticed a distinct lack of cozy little cabins along the sea shore. And can you look up the number for that travel agent we booked our last cruise through? Oh… that’s right…" Sarcasm laced her words venomously. "We’ve been too strapped to do anything like that in the last five years. How do you say it?" She snapped her fingers a few times while looking at the floor. Then held up her index finger and shook it triumphantly. "Oh yeah! There’s always next year." Her words were mocking and wickedly biting.

  Hank’s mouth hung agape as he absorbed his wife’s tirade. Shaking his head in disbelief, he said, "I can’t deal with this, right now." He left his wife to stare at his back.

  In the dim bunk-house, Theresa had made John comfortable in her bed. Hank gave her the plate and squatted to the level of her patient. The old man began shoveling food down his throat in huge gulps. "John," Hank said after a minute. "We’ve got to get moving, so it might get a little bumpy back here. Where were you headed?"

  John lowered his shaking fork to the plate and wetly smacked his lips before answering. With a rattle in his chest, he smiled happily and said, "This pretty girl told me your name." Then his face fell as he continued. "But I already forgot."

  Pressing his lips tightly together, Hank sadly looked up at Theresa. The nurse returned her neighbor’s expression and shook her head. Looking back at John, Hank introduced himself with faux cheerfulness. "Is there anything we can do to make you more comfortable?"

  Reaching out, John rested his yellowed hand on Hank's arm. "You go do what you need to do. I’ll be fine," he reassured.

  Not wanting to press the old man, Hank pushed himself to his feet. He felt as if a giant hourglass were swiftly pouring its sand into the wind. Time was against them and he needed to get the Caravan moving again. "All right, John. Theresa, let me know if you need anything."

  "I will," she said. "All I can do is make him comfortable and wait for…"

  Hank nodded and left. Ignoring his wife, he climbed down to the blacktop and made his way to the front of the Caravan. The pushers had cleared the road up to the bend before the bridge and they were resting against the dead cars. Since the highway had no residences or other buildings for people to hide behind, Hank wasn’t concerned by the gap between the crew and the Caravan.

  Camille had gone ahead with the others, so Hank climbed behind the wheel and brought the ’65 Ford to life. He dropped it in low and eased off the brake. The truck groaned, but made no move. Slowly, he applied pressure to the throttle and the engine responded with a growl. After a long moment, the Caravan began to inch forward and pick up speed.

  They were approaching ten miles per hour when a car rolled out into the road, forcing Hank to stomp the brakes. The U-haul closed the gap before Salvador could respond and the Duck Truck was smashed forward about three feet. Just as Hank reached to open his door, two men with rifles popped up from the far side of the impeding car.

  Instantly, Andrea responded and one man dropped behind a fine red mist that erupted from his forehead. A shot rang out from the left and right. In his mirror, which he kept at an angle to view the top of the U-haul, Hank saw Andrea fall.

  When he looked forward again, the other man had taken a bead on him. Just as Hank realized he was about to die, a crimson eruption sprouted from the man’s chest and he bucked forward, dead on the hood of the car. A split instant later, Hank heard the report from the pistol that Silas carried. The former soldier had scored a killing shot from nearly five-hundred yards away.

  Behind him, children were screaming as Bertel ushered them under the trailer and U-haul or wherever they could hide. More shots cracked from their flanks and a hole appeared in Hank’s door, by his foot. They must be using hunting rifles. They need a few seconds to reload and aim… he thought and tumbled out of the cab. Scrambling to his feet, he ran to the concrete median and ducked just as cloud of dust exploded above his head.

  Hunkering down with his back to the barrier, Hank realized that Whisper was in his hands. He looked up and saw Andrea crawling toward the front of the U-haul’s roof. Two shots were fired from behind him. One ripped a hole along the front edge of the U-haul, the other missed. Hank turned toward the barrier and peaked over the ledge. Several shapes scuttled behind some trees. He saw a rifle barrel emerge. A woman wearing a white ball cap followed the barrel and took aim at Andrea. Hank stood, full frontal, and fired at her. The bark from the tree exploded in her face and she fell backward with a scream.

  Dropping back behind the barrier, Hank saw that Andrea had managed to crawl down from the roof and fall prone on the pavement. For a moment, he thought she was injured, but she quickly crawled a few feet and rolled under the U-haul. Relief washed over him, then he saw the trail of blood she left across the hood. Hank’s heart stopped beating and his throat closed. Not another one, he thought. Please, God! Don’t let me lose another person!

  He waddled about fifteen feet to his left and jumped up again. The gunmen were waiting for him and a hot lance of pain sprang from his left shoulder as dual blasts cracked from behind trees, about thirty feet apart. He didn’t hesitate. Hank hopped the median and sprinted toward the small cloud of smoke that revealed his nearest attacker. Even through his adrenaline
rush, the pain in his leg was excruciating.

  When he saw the barrel of a rifle poke out from behind a tree, Hank fired and pumped another shell into the chamber. Behind him, he heard two shots in rapid succession. In front of him, the gunman rolled out again to fire, but Hank blasted at him. Pumping Whisper again, he closed on the gunman’s position. From his right, he was tackled into the ditch.

  Twisting his body to the left, Hank landed with the tackler under his back. Instantly, he smashed the back of his head against the person, three times. He ignored the explosion of pain that came from his wounded shoulder. The grip on his arms slacked, but as he started to stand, the barrel of a rifle pressed against his left nostril.

  "Don’t move!" The man at the other end of the rifle growled. His grey sweatshirt was stained with dirt and dried blood.

  "Just shoot him!" The woman with a ball cap ran up, breathlessly. A fringe of blonde hair splayed out from beneath her hat and streaks of sweat left creamy pale lines through the grime on her face. She turned and tucked the butt of her rifle tight against her shoulder and took aim at something across the road. Suddenly, she doubled over and fired at the ground. Hank recognized the sound of the thirty-ought-six pistol a split second later.

  As the woman slumped to the ground, her accomplice spun. "Mary!" He cried and knelt to help her. Hank lifted Whisper and jabbed its barrel up under the man’s ribs. The man looked down at the barrel as Hank pulled the trigger. Guts and gore blasted out of the man’s chest and he fell over on the woman, both dead.

  A ringing silence permeated the terrain. Hank found his feet and listened. Footsteps faded into the trees. Silas lead the rest of the men running toward the Caravan, his pistol held at the ready. Andrea came out from behind the microbus and climbed over the tongue of the trailer. She had a pistol in her hands. Hank pumped his shotgun again and listened. No more threat was forthcoming.

  On the ground, the man who had tackled Hank was groaning. Hank poked the man’s shoulder and pressed the tip of Whisper’s barrel under his bloody nose. The man’s eyes flicked open and he tried to sit up. Hank pushed him down.

  "How many people in your group?" Hank demanded of the man.

  "Uh…," his eyes scanned over the nearby bodies. "Just a few of us," he answered.

  Hank whipped the barrel across the man’s cheek. "Wrong answer!"

  "Eight…, no! Nine!" He pleaded. "Nine of us."

  "Okay, Mister, you’ll want to get this one right the first time," Hank said, pressing the barrel against the man’s broken nose. The man grimaced and squealed in pain. "How many guns did you have?"

  "Five," he said. "We had five."

  "Okay," Hank said with a sigh. "Tell the rest of your friends that we have more than five guns. Now get out of here."

  "That’s it?" The man said with disbelief. "I can go?"

  "Yes," Hank said. "Go. Now."

  The man disappeared into the woods while Hank gathered up the rifles and quickly searched the corpses of his dead attackers. Everything of value, he stuffed into a small back-pack that the man had worn. He wanted to get away from his vulnerable location before the bandits had a chance to regroup. Moments later, he was trotting back to the Caravan. As he ran, he shouted instructions.

  "Theresa! Help Andrea!" He pointed at the crew who were searching the bodies by the car. "Get that car out of the way!" They wasted no time following his orders.

  Evie appeared out of the back of the U-haul and ran toward her husband. "Hank!" She cried, desperately. "Oh My God! Are you all right?"

  "Evie!" He shouted with an incontestable warning in his voice. "Help Andrea! Get everyone back into the U-haul!" He commanded her. She complied without a blink. Hank bee-lined directly to the idling Duck Truck and dropped the transmission in low. "Get on!" He shouted at the men as he eased forward, giving as much gas as he thought the Caravan could handle.

  Weaving down the road as far as could, risking the tires on debris, he was finally forced to stop where a five car accident blocked the road. They had covered about two miles.

  The whole assemblage climbed out of the Caravan and took stock of one another. There were three casualties among them. Andrea was shot, twice. Both wounds were superficial. One passed through her left bicep and the other carved a deep trough across the back of her right leg. Hank got his own bullet track across the top of his left shoulder, as well as tearing open the stitches on his shin.

  The terminal casualty was John. So recently they had brought him into their midst and so quickly he had died. Theresa believed that the excitement had killed him. Hank had him wrapped in a tarp and tied atop the last trailer. Later, they would bury him at a time and place when they were safe. His wheelchair was added to their inventory.

  Evie fawned over her husband, after he had mobilized the men to clear the wreckage impeding their progress. Wrapping her arms around her husband, she pressed her check against his chest. "Will you please stop trying to kill yourself? I don’t know what I’d do without you!"

  Hank held his wife and kissed her forehead. He asked, "Does this mean that you’ve given up on taking that cruise?"

  She pushed him away to arms length and looked up at him. Incredulity painted her expression. "Oh, Hell no!" Hank blinked at her. "If you think, for one minute, that I don’t expect a nice long vacation after this mess has cleared up..." She left her words hanging. Then she looked him over critically.

  "What are you doing," he asked.

  "Well," she answered distractedly. "I figure you must have hit your head, if you think you’re getting out of taking me to the Caribbean!"

  Hank smiled wanly. The weight of the day, and the several preceding it, were drowning his spirits. "You’re right, Evie," he said. "After everything clears up, I’m taking you on the longest, best ever, vacation that you could hope for. You deserve it."

  Evie smiled wickedly at her husband. "Good," she said as she headed back to her own duties. "I’m glad we got that straight."

  Hank briefly chuckled and then gave his attention back to the progress of the Caravan. As soon as she was patched, Andrea reassumed her position atop the U-haul. Hank questioned her fitness, but she assured him that nothing would stop her from performing her role as top-guard.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  After a much needed rest, the wreckage was cleared and Hank had the men continue down the road according to their usual practice. The recently acquired weapons were distributed equitably and a certain order returned to the people of the Caravan. In less than an hour, they were rolling again.

  They returned to their previous habit of moving in short hops. It was clear that they were in jeopardy, regardless of their seemingly placid surroundings, and Hank didn’t want to repeat his mistakes. As he was rolling to the third stop in just under an hour, he saw a figure dart from the bushes to his right and run toward the U-haul. He slammed on the brakes and then regretted doing so just a millisecond before the U-haul rammed into his rear bumper, again. A half-second later, he felt the jolt of the microbus and its overloaded trailer crashing into the rear of the U-haul. Hank slapped the transmission into Park and threw open his door. In a heartbeat he was limping around the front of the Duck Truck and dashing after the person who had appeared from the bushes.

  Norah had just jumped out of the passenger side of the U-haul and was shouting and gesticulating furiously. Seeing his daughter coping with the event in that way gave him a wash of relief. If it were a threatening situation, he assumed, she would not be confronting someone in that manner.

  Near the back of the U-haul stood Miguel, Enrique’s eldest son, looking completely mollified over the chaos he had just caused. In his fist was clenched a long tail as bare and thick as a man’s thumb. Attached to the tail was a creature that looked like a rat, was almost the size of a medium dog, easily weighing twenty-five pounds. Blood still dripped from its mouth, indicating its recent demise.

  "What the Hell are you doing?!" Hank shouted at the adolescent. Miguel held up the animal, as if to answer Hank
’s question. "No! I mean, what are you doing running out of the bushes like that?"

  Miguel bit his lip. "I see Coypu. Uhm… Take stick… Chase? Good for eat."

  Hank looked at the dead animal. It was a nutria. Originally brought over from South America, they had come to thrive along the banks of nearly every temperate river and pond. He once knew a man who had made his living by trapping them for meat and fur. "That’s all fine and good," he said to the youngster. "But I told you not to get out of sight of the truck. If you had fallen, we may not have found you!"

  Suddenly the matriarch of the Escobar family, Felina, appeared at Hank’s side and had the boy’s ear in her iron claw. She beat him across his other ear with a switch. As she relentlessly belted him, she flayed him with an avalanche of verbal scolding that out lashed the physical one she was administering. All the while he teetered around backward, screaming, "No, no, mi Abuela! No, no!"

  Hank’s instinct was to intervene, but he overrode this impulse and allowed the old woman to administer her own form of discipline. When the boy finally fell on his back, she lashed him a few more times and then stabbed her finger at him with another surge of words that Hank’s basic grasp of Spanish couldn’t begin to follow. After giving her great-grandson his lesson, the old woman produced a small, wicked looking knife from a fold of her dress. Grabbing up the nutria, she began skinning it off to the side of the road. She called out a few words and her great-granddaughter, brought her a bucket and a bowl.

  Meanwhile, Miguel humbly picked himself up and stood meekly before Hank. "Senĩor Shumway," he said with eyes fixed upon his feet. The boy searched for a moment to find the words he should say. Finally, he settled on just one. "Sorry."

  After what the boy had just gone through, Hank wanted to reach out and console him. Instead, he scowled and said, "Get up to the front and push cars with the men!" Miguel instantly ran to do the task bid him. Hank, in turn, pulled the Duck Truck ahead, just a few feet and surveyed the damage. Mostly all of it was cosmetic, but the steps on the back of the U-haul were destroyed when the VW Bus smashed into them.