“I’ll be fine. God bless both of you,” Sister said.
Fritz kept the canopy open until the engine was running for a few minutes. Cricket ran through the checklists: engine oil and temperature were normal; flight controls free and correct; flight instruments, altimeter, and directional gyro, set.
Cricket lined up for takeoff. The man of her dreams was in the seat behind her and she was smoothly pushing the power up on the Rolls-Royce engine. What a feeling, she thought, running fourteen hundred horses in one direction. Now that’s a roundup!
She banked steeply after clearing the trees and headed south and overflew the Ledges, dipping her wings in love for the priest who had married them only hours ago.
The day was clear and so would be the night. There were no signs of a frontal system with high-level clouds or vertical movement producing mid-day buildups and the attendant turbulence and scattered storms. It was late afternoon, and the world of late summer was a golden world. While over the Ledges she aimed for the east entrance and buzzed the hundred-plus souls who would make it their winter home. She sighted a fist of gray rock only briefly before departing to the northeast.
Fritz said, “Two o’clock. Smoke.”
Cricket spotted a curling tail of dark smoke as she rose to their altitude of two thousand feet. “A structure on fire? A car?”
“Cricket, drop to a thousand feet and be ready with evasive maneuvers. Bring the speed back to two fifty.”
With the smoke on her left, the sun reflected brilliantly off the burning wreckage. Her eyes teared. It was Frank’s Mustang.
“Oh, God, should I climb?”
“Stay here. I need to see the spread of the wreckage. Stay sharp. I’ll tell you when to climb.”
Like a doctor opening a patient to find them terminal, but needing to make an accurate accounting of the horror, Fritz said, “The tail isn’t there. It was shot off. Fuselage in pieces. Climb! Shouldered fired missile—”
Full power and they were through five thousand feet when the pinging of small arms struck the bottom of the fuselage. Cricket glanced at the floor expecting to see ugly bullet holes, but the cockpit was safe. Soon, they were at eight thousand feet and over Lake Erie.
“Head to the Falls and then the freeway,” Fritz ordered, and Cricket banked to a southeast heading.
“Altitude?”
“Three thousand.”
They didn’t speak during the short flight to town. She was now partnered with Captain Fritz Holaday and she knew her instructions. Over Little Falls they spotted movement along the residential streets and no one fired. They headed west.
The sun intensified during its descent and they lost some forward visibility and had to wait until they were nearly overhead the freeway, looking straight down to observe any movement. They found plenty, and her husband’s expletive answered her own anger. Motorcycles, trucks, cars aimed for the Falls. This wasn’t the National Guard.
“Back to the field. Land east. We have no time.”
A cloud of black smoke appeared at the western end of the field.
“Oh, Fritz,” Cricket moaned.
“Keep flying the plane. Get your speed back—you might have some tailwind—” And she did.
Minutes later the Mustang floated above the grass even though the plane was at the proper landing speed. “Put her down,” Fritz said impatiently.
Forward stick and the mains firmly contacted the ground. They landed two thousand feet from the flames and smoke, which Cricket figured was the van and the Cessna. The fuel truck was gone.
Fritz had the canopy back as they slowed to walking speed. “Shut down—we’re going back on foot.”
They scrambled from the Mustang and pulled their guns out and ducked inside the woods, moving toward the wreckage. There were no voices; the forest was still.
Near the smoking van they halted and watched for any movement, another ambush. The van exploded and Cricket exhaled her terror.
Fritz touched her arm. “The gas tank. The bastards just left. Let’s go, slowly.”
The smell of gasoline and burning plastic was strong. Cricket turned her head left and right, trying to avoid the fumes without success.
They were inside the forest and still able to see the burning van and Cessna at the western boundary.
Cricket pointed. She saw a body and then another not far from the van.
She couldn’t tell who it was but knew it wasn’t Sister Marie from the size. The bodies were partly clothed and where they weren’t she saw blood. Two men, but which two? A fistful of bloody hair hung off to the side of one man’s head. He had been scalped.
Fritz still wouldn’t go directly toward the bodies and made a semicircle inside the trees, when they both spotted a third body, minus its head.
Cricket drove back a guttural sound by bringing her hand to her mouth. From the long legs and clothes she knew it was one of the mechanics.
“Where’s Sister?”
Fritz said nothing, scanning ahead and behind them for more attackers.
When they were maybe twenty feet from one of the men closest to the van, Fritz said, “Stay here and cover me.”
Cricket’s Glock bobbed slightly. Yet she held it with two hands and did her best to keep her field of vision wide open.
“It’s Dennis,” Fritz said.
For another ten minutes they scoured the area. The Barracuda was gone and there were other signs: ruts and tracks of motorcycles and pickup trucks probably carrying heavy armaments and plenty of beer, from the empty bottles and cans strewn about.
“They have Sister,” Cricket said, her own voice sounding distant. Fritz held her by the shoulders.
“Snap back, Cricket. Shock is a refuge, my love. We have no time for that luxury.” She took a moment of comfort in his arms.
“What do we do next?” she asked.
The sun was setting and he said, “I need to take the Mustang to Cleveland and bring back the cavalry. I’ll be back in the morning. We’ll meet at my parents’. The Brazilian probably has Sister Marie at that compound of hers, and that’s the cavalry’s first stop. Cricket, there’s nothing you can do until they arrive. Stay safe. Don’t go near that place. And stay away from Saint Andrew’s.”
“Once you take off I’m headed to your parents’.”
He pulled her close and she buried her face in his neck.
“God, be safe, stay off the roads,” he pleaded. “I hate leaving you, but I know you won’t come with me.”
“A lot of precious souls here.”
“I know.” He looked down at the murdered men and Cricket saw his anger, an anger he had to harness in order to function with precision. “Let’s find something to cover the bodies.”
All they found were plastic garbage bags. They used airplane parts, a cylinder, and a couple of heavy tool boxes to hold the plastic down. “I’ll get back to you, fellas” was all Fritz could say. Cricket prayed silently for each man.
A final hug, tears mixed with kisses, and they were off in different directions. With daylight soon ending, Cricket watched her husband take off toward the east and circle to the west. The horror at her feet didn’t stop her from waving goodbye. Like a dream without words, the Mustang’s wings picked up the sun’s last rays and gracefully disappeared over the trees in a climbing turn. She stood and listened until the sexy rumble of the Rolls-Royce V-12 faded and she was alone.
In the woods night had already arrived. Cricket kept her gun out and moved in and out of the forest, sometimes walking down the middle of the road that led back to town. A car approaching made her duck for cover. An old DeSoto coupe, late forties, sped past. Drunken savages sung loudly, arms out the window banging the sides in time with their lyrics.
She was stepping out of the woods when a voice called out. She brought the gun up and heard the cry for water. Sitting against the tree was an old man sporting a dirty Santa’s beard and a silver lady’s wig, highlighted with sprays of blood. A ponytail hung below the wig. He was wearing
a tuxedo jacket and no shirt beneath. His leather pants were full of blood, and he held his abdomen with blood-covered hands. Cricket stared at him and he stared back.
He gurgled his words and Cricket said she had some water.
“First, come here,” he moaned. His eyes were bloodshot and he was crazy with pain and his coming death. “Do you see them?” came with intensity, but only enough energy for a whisper. He pointed at the forest floor. “On the ground in the leaves. Crawling.”
Death. He was seeing his own death approach. Then she noticed his dark fingers were full of rings: diamonds, gold rings, mostly the large rings and stones of men, men he had killed.
He barked something unintelligible and she could smell his waste. She backed away. His right hand moved to his side and she brought the gun up and he smiled. He understood showdowns. She started to walk around the tree and he tried to shift himself to see her, but he was in too much pain to move. On the right side of the tree she saw a large Bowie knife he gripped with his right hand, the blade flat against the ground.
He whispered, “Water,” and she whispered, “You’re dead.”
She couldn’t use her gun and chance being discovered. Furious, she looked for a rock, a heavy stick, anything to finish him off. She upbraided herself for offering a drink. He knew how to concentrate his power. He had a lifetime of hurting and destroying, and in his final breaths he was capable of one more act of violence.
She found nothing large enough to do the job and she approached the savage, who was now rocking side to side with the knife raised slashing at the air, kicking the leaves at his feet. Then she knew what had to be done.
She ran to where she had seen a long, thin branch torn from a tree. She hurried back and, using it like a whip, cracked the man’s hand several times. He howled, dropping the Bowie knife. She ran up behind him and snatched the knife and stood in front of him. He was enraged and his end couldn’t be far off. The wound was bleeding freely.
With the blade pointed at his heart, she walked slowly toward him and then stopped and flung the knife behind him, far into the woods.
She looked into the woods and studied the forest floor the way he had, saying:
“You’re right. They are coming.”
Cricket jogged and hid off the road. The darkness protected her. Many of the cars were from the forties and fifties. Perhaps some car show had been raided, along with a Halloween store. The cars passing were full of the Brazilian’s troops in monster masks: Scream, Frankenstein, various zombies, and lots of drag ideas at work. On a residential street she came upon two houses side by side. The occupants were spread out across the front lawn, like vandalized ornaments: summary executions.
She went out to the main road and waved down the next car. The two drivers were in skeleton masks and Afro wigs. She walked to the passenger side.
“Where’s the party, boys?”
The two disco skeletons looked at each other. The bigger one, the driver, leaned on the wheel and looked past his partner, saying,
“Party’s right now, sugar.”
Cricket made no plans. She simply watched their hands. She was running on instinct.
When the quiet one wrapped his hand around her wrist, slow and snakelike, she drew the Glock and fired into the mask. She kept firing into the car, hitting them multiple times.
Both Afro wigs were full of splatter, and she found an undamaged skeleton mask behind the seat. Mask on, she pushed the partiers out the door, took their ammo and a fully loaded .38, and got behind the wheel looking for bigger parties to crash.
She didn’t have long to search. A few blocks from downtown she spotted a car on the front lawn, an old Ford with its headlights illuminating the front of a Colonial. She drove past, honking the quaint old horn of the DeSoto, waving the gun like she was down with whatever they were down with. A couple of guys on the lawn dressed like English gentleman were standing over two naked women who were screaming, hands raised to defend themselves from another blow—they looked like a mother and daughter. At the bottom of the porch steps another attacker, dressed in a dark business suit, stomped a man who no longer moved. He paused in the beating and gave the man some instructions, waited, and then kicked him again.
After driving by a second time, Cricket swerved onto the grass next to the old Ford, aiming her headlights at the mayhem in the front yard.
“What do we got here?” one drunk in tails announced.
Cricket lifted the mask and they hooted their approval. When she got out of the truck she had a Glock in each hand.
“Wooo-weee,” one of them laughed at Cricket’s double-fisted gunplay.
Cricket said, “I want a taste of that bitch on the ground.”
“Sure. We got one in the house too, but you’d have to like the cold variety,” the one said laughing, his ascot full of blood and his gun every bit an extension of his arm as his own hand.
“I want the one at your feet.”
The mother screamed, and the smallest of the thugs struck her hard.
Cricket fired both guns. Mother and daughter screamed, and the mother yelled for her daughter to lie still. Both men were severely wounded but still alive as she drew her gun on the suit who was running up the porch. He turned, yelled something, and shot high. Cricket also missed and finally found her target several shots later and dropped him. The father got to his knees and stared at his wife and daughter and the two wounded attackers rolling on the ground, moaning, holding their stomachs. Cricket emptied both guns into them. It seemed like they took forever to die. The father crawled over to his wife and daughter and the three huddled together. The wife stared at Cricket.
“Are you going to hurt us?”
“Of course not.” The skeleton mask sat atop her head like a baseball cap. “I have enough guns and ammunition. Take theirs, take the car, and get away from here, fast.”
“You could have shot me,” the father said.
“Sorry for the close call. Guess I didn’t want to see your family die. I’m sentimental that way.” The banshee in her broke loose: “Protect your family!”
Before she got in the DeSoto, she checked the other car and found a12-gauge pistol-grip shotgun and a box of shells, which she kept. She left, looking for more action. She imagined the Brazilian laughing and Sister Marie crying. The yin and yang of death and love.
I’m sorry, Sister, my sweet friend. It’s all terrible, but I have to keep killing, keep moving, until I find you. Every savage I kill is one less that can harm my loved ones.
47
Lost Among Savages
The car and mask were a great disguise amidst a flood of gangsters who had brought mayhem to the Falls. Cricket raced to the Holadays’, and the street was quiet and the family home empty. The next street was being worked over. Several attacks were in progress, and she didn’t stand a chance of surviving with so many savages in and around the houses. Gunfire and screams smashed against the night. She picked a house at the end of the street where it appeared the gangsters were all inside. The racket up and down the street was so intense, she had no worries of drawing attention when she unleashed her weapons.
She scouted around the house and didn’t see any family members on the first floor. Then she heard their cries from the second floor and decided to end her romance with the old DeSoto. Around back she found a garden hose and cut a six-foot strip and siphoned gas from the tank into the front seat and left the hose. She tossed a match through the open window and heard the fire exhale into life. She ran to the side of the porch.
The explosion lifted the car off the ground, and flames shot into the air. The screen door flew open and two young men in their underwear rushed out laughing, firing wildly. She answered with the shotgun twice, cancelling their performance, heading to the back of the house, reloading. She walked in the back door and heard excited voices coming from the living room and someone running down carpeted stairs from the second floor. She figured three to go.
She mowed down an older guy
completely naked with his own pistol-grip shotgun. She had five shells left and a pair of holstered 9-millimeters.
Somebody started firing before they rounded the hallway connecting the kitchen and living room, sending bits of drywall and wood fragments that struck and cut both hands but spared her eyes. She returned the favor by taking out the corner of the wall with two quick shotgun blasts. Screams and cussing said she found her target but there was more work to be done. The wounded partier announced his final attack with a rebel yell—one thousand one—and she fired as he rounded the corner, destroying his chest and neck.
Two were left and they were each egging each other on without success, so they both started shooting frantically. Cricket retreated to the backyard and headed for the front porch. The car was still on fire and no other partiers, along the street, seemed to care.
Thank God.
She climbed onto the front porch and felt all the aches and cuts ignite as she hoisted herself up and over the railing. She stood to the side of the picture window and saw movement amid candles strewn about and one kerosene lantern. Two young men stood near the window carrying on frightened talk—the nightmare they had brought the family had been visited upon their heads. There was a brief, religious moment when she heard one of the men say that a really bad angel was coming for them. He started to cry. His friend laughed.
Cricket edged close to the glass and saw two forms, and flew into full view and presented them with their very own angel of death. She unloaded three shells rapidly and then moved to the railing and checked the side of the house for someone coming after her. She climbed down and reloaded the shotgun and left it behind the bushes.
Cleanup time.
Glock drawn, she moved through the dark kitchen quietly and down the hallway, and caught sight of a few candles that had survived the shotgun’s blasts.
Two dead in the living room and one moaning with his back to her. An unexpected voice from upstairs:
“Dwight, is that you I hear?” The moaner only moaned a little louder. A vague response.
Pulse of the Goddess: American Blackout Book One Page 24
