He started the car and headed for Data Terminal. The traffic was light, he should be there before they got much of a conversation going.
Sammy and Don
Sammy listened.
Don continued. "First, I know you've been trying to unload the drugs, we know about Dean. He's dead, you know, him and his girlfriend. They even killed his two young daughters. I figure Dean set you up to make a deal with Ronnie lee, but Ronnie lee is dead. And a young girl too, nearly a second young girl. Most likely the same guy that killed Dean, his girlfriend and daughters. The same guy that killed Alice, April. And he wants you. He's looking to get what you have. That stuff was stolen from two different organizations. And they both want what's theirs back. One the money. One the drugs. It's a mystery. They're looking for you. There's fifty grand on each of your heads. No conditions, alive or dead." Don sighed. He lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply.
"April, let me come get the two of you. You can get a good lawyer and walk away from this. I'd bet that you won't see any charges against you at all... Maybe Billy, but you can both explain how you had to run. You had to, to stay alive. With all these people after you, you had no choice. I'm sure you'll walk. Hell, probably Billy will walk too, but if this guy gets to you he'll kill you both, April. He'll kill you both," Don said.
Jimmy West
Jimmy pulled close to the back of the Burger Joint, and stopped. He was not about to get himself trapped in there. He had to be ready. A hundred feet and a left turn would take him behind the building, but that would have to wait. Right now he had to handle the pain. He could only afford a little. Just enough to take the edge off. He fumbled his kit out, fixed himself a small shot and put it to work: As small as it was it nearly put him out anyway. He took six of the little red pills on top of it and dry swallowed them. He sat and waited for those to work. About ten minutes and they would kick in. He needed a clearer head. He needed the pain leveled out, but he needed to be able to think too. He sat and waited.
Billy Jingo
She covered the phone with her hand. "He says Ronnie Lee is dead. He thinks the same psycho that killed Dean and his family is coming after you and me. He says it's a set up," April told Billy.
Ben Neo
A tractor trailer was backed into the loading dock. There was no way to get close enough to go over the fence. He jumped from the car and ran quickly to the fence. All quiet, but this was not going to work out. In fact if he'd been in here, where he had wanted to be, he would have been stuck. He cursed his luck as he jumped back into the Taurus, punched the gas pedal, and slipped around the front of a pickup that had pulled into the back area as he had been checking the fence. Maybe it was a little to open after all, he thought. He hurried back out of the Data Terminal's parking lot and onto the main road: As he picked up speed his phone rang.
Sammy and Don
"Hold on... Hold on," Don got the car to the side of the road. "Tell me and I'll be there. Just tell me... What... I can't do that... You know that... I... You leave the drugs and I'll let the two of you go. I'll let you drive away. That's all... That's all, April. I'm a cop. That's my ass right there... Leave them and drive away. That's all I can give you... I don't care about the money... From what we heard it's not enough to cause that big of an uproar. If I have the drugs to show and that psycho, that's a lot to me... Do You have it? April, don't you deny it, you have my word that I can fix this for both of you or let you go. My word. Now, do you have it?" Don asked again. He listened, hurriedly snatched his pad out of his pocket and wrote on it. He turned in his seat to see how far he was from the exit number she had just given him. Two, he saw, and he was already pointing in the right direction. He shot the car into drive, cut off two cars as he shot out onto the roadway and headed for the Burger Joint. "I'm on my way... Stay in the car, April, I'm on my way." Don said.
Billy Jingo
"Fuck," April said, "I lost him. He got cut off. He may not have heard how to get here," she said.
"Calm down, baby," Billy said. "Call them back. Probably just lost the connection."
"Here," April said. She pulled two guns out from under the seat and gave him one. "It's loaded. Just in case that psycho gets here before the cop," she said.
Billy looked at the gun, flicked off the safety and watched the mouth of the alley the car would have to turn into.
April punched the number in and listened to it ring.
"Yeah?" Ben asked warily. He listened, then folded the phone and tossed it onto the seat. The smile that had been missing came up on his lips and loosened his face up a little. He punched the gas and headed back as fast as he could get the car to move.
April smiled and closed the phone. "I got him, he's on the way," she said.
"April," Billy said softly. "Why after all of this are we suddenly giving up?" Billy asked. "Why not just drive out of this lot and go?"
"You're sweet, Billy." April frowned. She looked at him. "But you're not too bright." She bought the gun up and pointed it at him. "Billy, Neo is coming too... Ben Neo didn't die in that car. That body wasn't his, complicated, but true... The cop is crooked. He probably only wants to fuck me and then steal the money. He'd say anything to get me to give it up. But, see, he fucked Neo over. And so Neo has to take care of him. The second call I just made was to Neo, not the cop. I knew he was around. I left him enough goddamn clues, including you buying a truck in his name. And who else but me could make you look like him? So I knew he was around. He's coming,” she frowned deeply. “ He'll kill you, Billy, he'll have to. And he won't be happy with me if he finds out I actually fucked you. So I'll do it now. It'll be better for you, Billy. Really it will. Don't hate me, Billy," she said. She pressed the gun against the middle of his forehead.
"You're not April," Billy said.
"Nope. Killed the little bitch the day before when she walked up on me hiding in the woods. Crazy bitch. I made her tell me all about her life... She had a thing for you, Billy... I guess you didn't know, but she did,” she shrugged her shoulders and fixed him with her eyes. She smiled sadly, and then the smile slipped away, a grim frown replaced it. “Nothing personal, Billy. Same as this.”
She pulled the trigger. The gun clicked.
Billy smiled, lifted his own gun and shot her between the eyes. Her head bounced off the side glass and it shattered.
He looked at her. "I switched clips... Baby. Guess I'm not as stupid as you thought." He reached over, pulled the keys from the switch and walked calmly around to the trunk. He unlocked it, pulled the two pink backpacks out and slipped one over his shoulders. The second one he held on to by the straps. He looked around: Spotted the six foot fence behind the dumpster and headed for it. A few seconds later he was on the other side of the fence, running past the end of a tractor trailer.
Sammy and Don
Don forced himself to pull into the parking lot slowly. He passed a car whose driver looked to be passed out, rounded the end of the building and swung out past where the dumpster sat.
At first the Camaro looked fine, but then he saw the glass and blood on the driver's side of the car. He stopped the car and jumped out: Sammy coming out of his side at the same time. He looked through the open passenger door at the girl's body, slumped against the door. The back of her head was gone. A small, blood-spattered hole in her forehead. One eye stared, sightless: The other was closed. His eyes went to the ignition switch, empty, he saw. Sammy passed by on his way toward the back of the car.
"Somebody killed her," Don said as he came to the back of the car. The trunk lid was up and a blue duffel bag rested inside on the floor. Two large taped bags of pot sat close to it. "We got it," Don said.
He looked up into the barrel of Sammy's gun.
I got it," Sammy said. He fired and Don fell backwards. Sammy hurried back, got the keys from the rental car, unlocked the trunk and then hurried to load the two huge bags of pot and the blue duffel bag. He had held that same goddamn bag in his hands just nights before, and a few thousand miles back,
and he'd lost it. He had it now though. He threw the bags into the back of the rental car, straightened up to slam the trunk lid home and the man was right in front of him. Leaned against the side of the car: His gun up and aimed at Sammy.
"You killed her," the man said. "Why?"
"Hey... Hey," Sammy said, "Easy... I'm a cop... You don't want to..." The guy bought his gun up and shot Sammy twice in the chest.
"That's for killing her you fuck. You bastard," Neo said. He stood for a second looking down at him. In the background he could hear sirens growing closer, he had to move. He had to go. He turned and walked right into Jimmy's gun. He bought his own gun up and fired once before the two rounds from Jimmy's gun took him down. He found himself on the pavement staring at a small white stone that was caught in the tread of the back tire of the car the cop had been driving. He blinked. He blinked again and then closed his eyes.
Jimmy took two steps back and sat down hard. The pain was incredible again. The shoulder and now his chest too. He fumbled his kit out and got the syringe ready. He could do it. He would do it he told himself. A second later he found himself looking up into the clear blue sky. No clouds... He was... He was going to do something, but it seemed unimportant now. Like it didn't matter. He swallowed. He could taste blood in his throat. He tried to bring his good arm up to shade his eyes, but it stopped halfway up and then slowly sank back down to the pavement.
Sergeant Alice Tetto
There were sirens screaming, the cops couldn't be far behind. Alice pushed the dead trucker to one side and jumped down from the tractor trailer: She ran at the fence. She had tracked Ben Neo halfway across the country. It had started as a game: Kohlson had put her on to him, one of the last bits of information he had given up. Ben Neo was a curious man who wanted to know more about things that he had no business knowing about in the first place. Kohlson had spilled his guts for a few beers and a little money. She had begun to watch Neo after that, hoping to find the missing virus and the REX agent. After all, if he was looking for the same items, she may as well let him do the work for her.
She had bugged his cars in Rochester, and she had been more than a little surprised when both of them had left for Watertown the previous Thursday. The one had sat seemingly abandoned, hidden off Lott road since early Thursday morning. The other had hovered around the public park, waiting for something it seemed. She had been unsure, but she had finally made the trip out Lott road early Friday morning and found the car hidden on one of the service roads. She had waited, the girl had come and gone, making her sure that something was happening.
When late morning rolled around and nothing had seemed to happen she had nearly written it off. She had decided to get the bug back, electronics were expensive, they were also inventoried, and just maybe he was dumping the car: By that time she had a pretty good idea what Ben Neo did for a living. She had nearly made up her mind when the second car had suddenly began tracking in the same direction. To her way of thinking there was only one reason for that, to ditch the first car and pick up the second car. Had to be, but as she had made her way through the woods on foot, she had happened along just in time to see the touching scene between Nikki Moore and Ben Neo in the panicked moments right after the crash. It had nicely filled in the balance of the picture for her.
She had not had the name to put with the girl at that point, but she had figured out fast enough that the girl was the one on the run with Jingo. She had also yet to lay her eyes on the items, but she felt satisfied that if Neo was chasing along behind the girl, it was safe to assume the girl had the items.
She made the fence and lunged for the top, the rubber soles of her boots digging into the weathered wood surface of the boards. She had heard gun shots from the other side as she had jumped from the tractor cab: She wouldn't be far behind those shots, whatever they had meant. She had seen the kid jump from the top of the fence, but she could have cared less about him. What he had been carrying was not what she needed.
She had tracked Neo from New York to Alabama. One long drive, he had driven as though he had known exactly where he was going, and maybe he had: Maybe the girl had been in communication with him, she didn't know. She had simply kept him in range and the satellite linkup had done the rest. Military tech toys. They could be great at times, but she had accidentally followed him into the back lot of the Computer Depot and she had been afraid that he had caught her tailing him, but his eyes had swept over her as if she hadn't existed. She had parked as though she had every right in the world to be there and then she had strolled casually over to the fence to see what had bought him there. She had seen all she needed to see through a small knothole in a warped board before the trucker had interrupted her with a friendly hello. Bad luck for him. She had a motto she lived by. A dead witness was a good witness. She had followed him back to the cab with a promise of a better look at her. It was funny how easily a woman could tempt a man into an untenable situation.
A quick chop to the throat and the trucker had folded. She had slit his throat afterwards to be sure. She had just been about to jump down from the cab when the kid had sailed over the fence like a pole vaulter. Lucky for him she had not been on the ground and in view. She had checked herself, waited the split second while he cleared the back of the rig, and then dropped to the ground on a hard run for the same fence.
She scaled the fence in less than a second and easily dropped to the ground from the top. She pulled her knife from her sheath, letting it travel restlessly from hand to hand as she stood to her full height. The place looked like a war zone. The car nearby, the girl, obviously dead; the rental car the cops had been driving, and the car Jimmy West had been in.
She tried the Camaro first. The trunk lid was up and the space empty. The sirens were screaming in her ears now, but she forced herself to remain calm. She ran toward Jimmy West's rental car, but stopped at the car the two cops had been driving instead when she saw the lid up and the two bags shoved partway into the small trunk space. In a few seconds she had the knife plunged deeply into both bags. She felt the resistance in the first bag, ripped savagely, pot flying out of the trunk to the ground: Two silver cases slid forward onto the floor of the trunk. A moment later and the last case was freed from the second bag. A few seconds after that and she was launching herself from the top of the fence as somewhere behind her a deep voice had screamed at her to freeze. She felt the bullet graze her shoulder before she heard the shot. A split second later she was on the ground rolling, and then running for her life around the tail end of the tractor trailer.
She made her truck, threw herself inside, and less than a minute later she was blending into traffic on Airport boulevard, watching the police cars streaming into the area from all directions. A glance in the rear-view showed her, her wound: Torn at the shoulder level, a small patch of blood seeping into her blouse. She reached down, retrieved her jacket from the seat and shrugged it over her shoulders hiding the wound from view. She made the turn off for I 65 calmly, signaled, and left the jammed traffic behind her as she came up to speed.
The three silver cases gleamed in the early morning light from the front seat where she had dumped them as she jumped into the truck. The job was over for her.
Rebecca Monet
The truck rolled into the parking lot and people poured out of it. The satellite dish came up, aligned itself, and acquired its signal. The techs began un-spooling cable as inside, others set up the monitors, finished establishing the feed to the station and got ready to go live.
Rebecca Monet stepped out last, Cindy with her, brushing a few errant hairs from her suit coat and straightening the collars.
"Remember, sad. No smile. The body count is three, two critical are in route to the hospital. You can't say two of them were New York cops, you can say sources tell us blah blah blah... It's unclear who shot who first. The janitor says there was one shot before the cops came in..." She circled janitor and his name and then handed Rebecca the pad. "It's gonna be a break in and Bob is s
tanding by to give you a ten second lead in," Cindy said. She placed Rebecca so that the edge of the Camaro could be seen with a spray of glass and blood on the asphalt. It was far enough away so that it would not be too gory, but close enough to be an attention getter. The yellow police tape fluttered in between them, closing off the back of the Burger Joint. She told the camera operator to pull the focus out a little so that it caught the tape clearly. She looked at her watch. Clicked her own MIC and said, "Okay." She waited until Bob was going, then... "... And, eight... Seven... Six... Get rid of that smile, Becca, sad, sad... And three... Two... One." She pointed at Rebecca Monet.
"Thanks, Bob," Rebecca said. “We're here at the scene of a tragedy. The young woman who is believed to have been held hostage in a drama that has played out over the last few days across several states, is dead. Seventeen year old April Evans..."
Mobile General Hospital ICU
The surgeon looked up and shook his head. "Don't. You won't be doing him any favors." He looked to his assistant who had grabbed a set of paddles. "Too much damage. There isn't enough left..." He looked at the wall. "9:47 AM... How are they doing with the other one?" he asked.
"Hanging on... Bullet missed the heart, nicked an artery below... Spinal damage. No way to tell how bad it is yet. It'll be touch and go, I guess." His assistant said.
"Well, we'll let them know. I hate it when we lose one of the good guys though." He took one more look at the body and then stripped off his gloves and gown, dropped them to the floor and left the operating suite.
Tuesday night
Billy Jingo
Billy stepped down from the cab of the tractor trailer and waited for the truck to take off before he crossed the road and came onto the lot. He glanced at his watch, almost 9:00 PM. The place looked deserted still. He walked up to the office, cupped his hands to the glass and looked through the windows. Empty. There was a garage out back. Maybe he was there. He walked toward the back of the lot, one hand holding the gun inside his jacket pocket. Just before he got to the door it opened and the kid stepped out into the darkness. He fired up a cigarette, apparently not seeing Billy standing a few feet away in the darkness.
Earth's Survivors: box set Page 162
