The Last Town (Book 3): Waiting For The Dead

by Knight, Stephen

  “Oh man, the nigger’s dropping mud puppies all over the place!” cackled the fat guard as Doddridge grunted, farted, and strained. “Is that how you treat your babies, Doddridge?”

  “Keep laughin’, man,” Doddridge muttered.

  “Hey, Vincent, take a look at the squatting porch monkey!” the guard jeered, looking over at the old guard. The older guard shook his head and looked away, as if embarrassed. The fat officer cackled and clapped his hands as if applauding a command performance.

  “Keep laughin’,” Doddridge said again.

  “You say something?”

  “Yeah, I asked if you got any paper,” Doddridge said.

  The guard smiled broadly. Sweat was beginning to bead on his forehead. “You got some bushes there, Doddridge. Use all you need.”

  Horns blared and raised voices carried over the desert. The old guard turned toward the front of the bus, where cars and trucks were jockeying for the space there. The fat guard turned and looked over as well.

  “Damn, what’s going on up there?” he asked.

  Doddridge saw his opportunity. If the world’s goin’ to hell, might as well make the most of it.

  He grabbed a sizeable rock from the desert before him and rose to his feet, feeling one last piece of important business slide out of him and plop to the ground. The light breeze was chilly on his exposed ass, but it didn’t deter him in the slightest. Standing in the midst of his own stink, he clenched the rock hard in his right hand and twisted at the waist. It was hard to adopt a proper throwing stance with the leg irons, but he did the best he could. As a youngster, he had been a pitching star. Had it not been for the Bloods that ruled over Watts in the 1980s, he might have gone on to be the starting pitcher for the Angels—instead, he’d gone into the crack trade, then the heroin trade, and then the murder trade. But his body still remembered how to throw, and as he lined up with the older guard, he reversed his twist and let the rock fly.

  The older guard turned back from the traffic just in time to take the rock right in the forehead. He went down like a pile of bricks, the shotgun slipping from his hands as he fell over in the creosote bushes. He hit so hard a cloud of dust rose up in the air, like when Wiley Coyote fell off a cliff chasing after the Road Runner.

  The fat guard gawked, uncertain of what had happened—he hadn’t seen Doddridge pitch the stone. He craned his short neck toward the fallen man. “Yo, Vincent? You okay, man?”

  Doddridge was slowed by his leg irons, but he crossed the ten feet that separated the two men in an instant. The guard sensed his approach and tried to step back, drawing his baton. Doddridge was faster. He looped his manacled hands over the man’s neck and pulled him close, at the same time delivering a head butt that almost knocked both men out. The guard groaned, but didn’t fall, so Doddridge hit him again and again, delivering three head butts in rapid succession. The fat officer let out a strangled cry as his nose, sunglasses, and front teeth broke. And then, he’d had enough. He collapsed to the ground, taking Doddridge with him. Doddridge pulled his hands away from the man, then punched him twice in the throat with both fists, as hard as he could.

  Then, he helped himself to the guard’s Glock pistol. With his pants puddling around his ankles, he crept back to the bus. The driver was still in the cage, watching the traffic struggle to get past the bus’s bulk. He’d seen nothing. Doddridge raised the pistol and fired three times. One round hit the steel mesh and ricocheted through the bus’s roof, blasting a small hole through the sheet metal. The other two ripped through the man’s body, causing him to jerk and shudder. The bus’s diesel engine went from low idle to high-rev wail as his foot briefly came down on the accelerator, but the rig was in park, so it went nowhere. Doddridge fired again, just to make sure the guy was out of business. The bullet hit him in the head and continued on through the driver’s side window, taking pieces of hair and bone with it.

  Doddridge sensed the older guard was coming to. He turned and saw the man was fumbling about in the bushes, trying to sit up. He was bleeding badly from the gash the rock had left in his forehead, and his sunglasses were knocked askew. Doddridge stepped away from the bus, raised the Glock, and shot him right between the eyes. The guard flopped back to the ground and lay still. Doddridge bent over and picked up the fallen shotgun, then turned his attention back to the fat guard, lying on the ground beside the bus. He was still moving, which Doddridge thought was too bad for him.

  Told you not to laugh, motherfucka.

  The guard must’ve sensed his approach, and his hand went to his empty holster. His mangled sunglasses hung from his right ear, twisted and useless, as blood streamed from his nose. Doddridge watched the guard piss himself as Doddridge shambled closer, and he laughed.

  “How’s it feel to lie in your own piss, fucka?” he asked.

  “Stay away from me,” the guard croaked. His voice sounded broken and scratchy. “You’ll burn for this!”

  “Sure. Hey, ’scuse me for a second.” Doddridge crouched down beside the fallen guard and pulled the key ring off the man’s belt. He found the key to the manacles and unlocked them, letting them fall to the ground. He then pulled the guard’s uniform shirt out of his belt, and used its shirttail to wipe his ass. The man groaned, his thick mustache soaked with blood.

  Doddridge stood and pulled up his pants, then bent over and released himself from the leg irons. He picked up the shotgun and hefted it in his hands. The weight of the weapon felt good. He then used its butt to bludgeon the guard to death, viciously hammering on his skull until it broke open, spilling gray-white brains onto the ground. Doddridge stood straight and reviewed his handiwork, impressed that a guy so stupid had so much gray matter in his head.

  By now, the motorists near the bus were starting to panic. Several cars and trucks pulled away and drove off into the desert, bouncing and jouncing across the uneven terrain. Doddridge laughed, watching them. It was like a comedy movie. Chevy Chase in National Lampoon’s Desert Vacation.

  He returned to the bus, which smelled like death. The driver was slumped over the wheel. Doddridge considered cracking open the cage, tossing the body, and just driving on, but the last thing he wanted to do was tool around in bumper-to-bumper traffic in a prison transfer vehicle that probably had GPS on it. Rummaging through the locker in the guard area, he found duffel bags full of clothes. The driver was about his size, so Doddridge took off his prison uniform and slipped into the man’s jeans, socks, and black T-shirt. The purple plaid long-sleeve shirt wasn’t exactly his style, but he put it on, anyway. The man had also packed a denim jacket, which Doddridge thought would come in handy at night. He knew it got cold in the desert, and it was October, after all.

  The rest of the prisoners looked at him with hooded eyes as he dressed. Doddridge put the Glock in his waistband and leaned the shotgun against the locker door.

  “Any of you fuckas want to hit the road?” he asked after a moment. “I figure since the world’s goin’ to hell’n all, we might need to stick together for a while.”

  “And go where?” asked Auto.

  Doddridge pointed out the bus’s big windshield, where the small town of Single Tree sat in the distance. “I figure that town, there. It ain’t much, but it’s a start.”

  “You with the Bloods, ese?” asked a stern-faced Latin man in the back. His eyes were hard, the eyes of a prison lifer. Even if he’d been paroled, Doddridge knew a guy like him would be back in the joint in a week. He had no chance outside. His gray-streaked hair was slicked back from his forehead.

  “Bounty Hunter Bloods. You?”

  The older man smiled. It wasn’t very welcoming. “Latin Kings, ese. We’re allies.”

  Doddridge returned the smile. “Yeah, okay.” He looked at a skinny, tall black kid sitting up front. He had big-frame glasses on his face. “You, who you with?”

  “No one, man. I’m independent.”

  “How old are you, boy?”

  “Nineteen.”

  Doddridge guffawe
d. “Nineteen and already in the federal system? Must be one badass mothafucka. What you in for?”

  The boy shrugged. “It don’t matter. I’m here.”

  Doddridge considered that for a moment, then bent forward and unlocked the boy’s manacles. He remained cautious though, just in case the kid went for the pistol in his belt. The boy rubbed his wrists when they were freed, and looked up at Doddridge with neutral, hollow eyes.

  “You in the fed system if you wanna stay, boy. You choose.”

  “I didn’t say I wanted to stay,” the boy said, still rubbing his wrists.

  Doddridge gave him the keys. “Take those, and unlock anyone who wants to come.” With that, he turned and picked up the shotgun and headed back outside. He stripped the dead guards of their spare ammunition and magazines, and dumped it all in one of the duffel bags. It didn’t take long. By the time he was done, all seven prisoners stepped out of the bus, Auto and the Latin King in the lead.

  “So what’s the plan?” Auto asked. He was absolutely gigantic, at least six inches over six feet in height. His long blond hair hung down to his shoulders. He was pale too, like Nordic pale. Doddridge thought he wasn’t going to love being out in the desert after a while.

  “We’re going to need a place to hole up and figure out what’s next. That town up there ought to do aight by us.”

  “What about the cops there?” the kid with the glasses said. He was rail thin, with a tightly packed afro. His dark skin was practically glowing beneath a sheen of sweat.

  Doddridge lifted the shotgun he held in his right hand. “That’s what this is for, boy. Got a problem wit that?”

  The boy just looked at Doddridge and didn’t say anything.

  “What about the rest of the guns, ese?” asked the Latin King.

  “Where you from, man? Who you run with?”

  “Pasadena. I’m Tone.”

  Doddridge searched his memory. He’d been inside for five years, but the name Tone rang a bell. “Big Tone? One of the vice kings from the PLK?”

  “Yeah.”

  “We’ll walk for a bit, see what kinda ’rangement we can make. Rest a you, start walkin’.” Doddridge nodded toward the town ahead. “We got us a town to take.”

  TO BE CONTINUED IN

  THE LAST TOWN #4: FIGHTING THE DEAD

  TO BE CONTINUED IN

  THE LAST TOWN #4: FIGHTING THE DEAD