The End is Coming ts-8

by Jerry Ahern

  “Before you get the guns—burn these—” and Rourke fisted the papers in his overcoat pocket, making sure he had them all, handing them across to Natalia.

  “Right—” She bent to the floor as he looked at her, lighting them with her cigarette lighter—the papers were on fire.

  He turned his attention to the road—an auto-mobile—with Chicago Police markings obliter-ated by a red star. It was moving diagonally across the highway, cutting them off. He could hear Na-talia stamping her feet— “Nothing but ashes.”

  “Now get us some guns—we got friends comin’ up on the left.”

  Rourke started steering right, the police car cut-ting them off. Natalia—at the edge of his periph-eral vision he could see her going over into the back seat to start getting the weapons. The blue and white car was too close— Rourke cut the wheel hard left, shouting over the wind of the slipstream, “Hang on—collision!”

  The right front fender—he could see it, hear it, feel it as it smashed against the right rear fender of the police car, the sounds of metal twisting, tear-ing, the bumper of the police car twisting up to where it was visible over the LTD’s hood, the Ford straining, dragging at the police car, Rourke accel-erating, another tearing sound, louder than be-fore—the LTD shot ahead.

  In the rearview mirror he could see the police car, making a high-speed reverse, flick turning, the twisted bumper breaking off, the blue light flash-ing from the roof. There was the rattle of assault rifle fire, Rourke shouting to Natalia, “AKMs—keep low!”

  The rear windshield shattered out, Rourke swerving as more gunfire poured toward them, Rourke hearing it pinging against the body of the Ford. He cut sharp right, onto a ramp—he didn’t know where he was heading, no time to look and Chicago streets and expressways not that recent a memory. He fought the wheel, shouting, “Natalia—are you all right?”

  The rear end of the Ford was fishtailing as he curved the entrance ramp at nearly fifty, sideswiping the guardrail, the Eisenhower Expressway opening up before him—the post office inter-change coming up fast—they were passing the post office now, Rourke shouting again to Natalia as he picked up more blue lights in the rearview mirror.

  “Natalia!”

  “Yes—I’m all right—I almost have them!”

  Rourke cut the wheel hard left, shouting, “Hang on!” a police car starting toward them going against the direction of the lanes—but there was no traffic, just abandoned cars flanking the ex-pressway in both lanes on both shoulders. Rourke stomped the accelerator to the floor, shooting an intersection, into the Loop now, the police car on a collision course with them.

  Gunfire—from behind him, the police car sud-denly swerving, its windshield shattered, another shot, the police car accelerating, Rourke cutting a sharp right to miss it, in the rear view seeing Nata-lia, holding one of her revolvers, and the police car crashing into an underpass abutment behind them. Rourke started to edge left, turning toward State Street. “It was made into a shopping mall—it could be cut off,” Natalia shouted.

  Rourke cut back right— “Back seat driver,” tak-ing the next left—Wabash. Police cars—four abreast—were coming down Wabash, against him, he cut left at Jackson Boule-vard—heading against the flow of traffic had there been traffic—a one-way street, the signs half down but still visible.

  “Just as well,” he shouted to her— “High speed on Wabash with the elevated train platform—sui-cide.”

  And he stomped the gas pedal, crossing State, Dearborn, heading west, the city empty, ghostly, one out of every ten or so street lights burning—Rourke guessed the Russians had gotten power restored at least to parts of the city. But the street lamps were mostly shot out or otherwise shattered, it seemed, as he sped under them.

  Natalia was back beside him now— “The rest of our gear—it’s in the back seat—here,” and she handed him a pistol—one of the little Detonics stainless .45s—she knew what he liked, he thought.

  “Chamber’s loaded, hammer down,” she advised.

  Rourke rammed the pistol into his belt, ripping open the overcoat buttons, swerving to avoid the body of a dead dog—and suddenly, behind him, there was a pack—the animals running after the car, the police cars two blocks back not frightening them off—Rourke swerved close to a curb to avoid a wrecked car in the middle of the street—he almost lost control of the Ford as a huge dog leapt out toward the car from the roof of an abandoned car—it was on the hood, snarling, foam dripping from its mouth— “Shoot it, for God’s sake,” Rourke shouted to Natalia.

  He looked to his right—already she was leaning out the passenger side window, one of her revolvers in her right hand, the dog snapping at the wind-shield, somehow balancing itself on the hood. There was a loud shot—felt in his right ear. The dog’s head seemed to explode, the animal’s body flopping to Rourke’s left, blood and gray material that was brain splattering the windshield. The body slid from the hood of the car as Rourke swerved right.

  He found the windshield wiper switch—only one wiper blade—in front of the driver’s side. The other was bare metal. He punched the washer but-ton on the wiper control switch—nothing— “Aww, shit,”

  Rourke rasped—the blood and brain matter were smeared now like grease, all but ob-scuring the windshield—he kept the wiper blade going, hoping to at least scrape some of the mess away. More police cars—closing from the streets he crossed, falling in, almost like a formation, be-hind those already in pursuit.

  Wacker Drive—Rourke turned right, accelerat-ing, police cars behind him now but still nothing ahead—the Civic Opera House—he had given a lecture there once, he recalled—police cars now blocking the street ahead of him.

  He shouted to Natalia, “Did you ever block out underground Wacker Drive?”

  “No—we couldn’t leave workers down there—the Brigands—some of their bodies—they were eaten partially—arms cut off and legs—and our pathologists said they weren’t dogs who had done it—people.”

  Rourke looked at her, sucked in his breath, rasping, “Reach into my pocket and find me a ci-gar—soon as I do this,” and Rourke cut the wheel hard left, half bouncing over a lip of concrete curb, turning sharp right, fishtailing, skidding, his lights making bizarre patterns as he drove into the velvet blackness of the underground.

  Chapter Forty-four

  In the darkness—total darkness except for the headlights and the few working dashboard lights—he could feel Natalia’s right hand reach across him, searching his breast pocket for a cigar. “Lit?”

  “Not with that auxiliary gas tank,” he told her, swerving sharp left, nearly piling up in a divider, the car bouncing away from it as he avoided a pile of cement blocks in the middle of the road. And suddenly the cavernlike underground drive was illuminated, an almost surreal blue wash of light, sirens loud in the distance behind him—more of the expropriated police squad cars. And there were single headlights too—motorcycles, he guessed.

  Rourke stepped hard on the gas.

  Beside him, the headlights of the police vehicles and the motorcycles growing fast now, Natalia had an M-16—she was leaning out of the passen-ger window— “Watch out when I run close to the tunnel walls!” He heard it, felt it—the pelting of hot brass against his bare skin, his hands, his neck, his right cheek.

  A set of headlights behind them swerved mad-deningly to the right, a blinding flash in the dark-ness, a bright orange wall of flame, but punching through the wall—one set of headlights, then an-other, and then a single headlight—a motorcycle. The sidecar visible in the light of the fire was aflame, a man shape moving in it, arms waving, arms like torches, then the single headlight seemed to jump skyward as Natalia’s M-16 loosed a long, ragged burst, sidecar and motorcycle separating, crashing into opposite sides of the tunnel walls—flames. Two police cars, their Mars lights flashing blue in the darkness as Rourke took a sharp curv-ing right, police cars and motorcycles coming fast from his right flank as he passed another entrance into Underground Wacker.

>   The entire tunnel was washed in the blue light of the flashers now as Rourke made the Ford acceler-ate, swerving the wheel left, right, left again, evad-ing abandoned automobiles left everywhere in the narrow confines of the underground, dog packs running across his lights, yelping, snarling, some of the animals leaping upward as he passed them, fangs bared.

  A massive animal—almost too large to be a dog, Rourke thought—it leaped from the hood of an abandoned car, Natalia screaming as he looked right, the dog half inside the vehicle, Rourke’s right hand snatching at the Pachmayr gripped butt of the Detonics, his thumb jerking back the trig-ger. He fired the pistol once, twice, a third time, point blank into the chest of the animal as it lunged for Natalia’s throat.

  His ears rang with the gunfire, but the animal still moved, a low roaring gunshot, partially muf-fled, the animal slumping as Natalia pushed close to Rourke—her face normally had a paleness to it, an almost unnatural whiteness—what men an-other time would have called alabaster. But her cheeks were flushed bright red now—and her eyes were larger-seeming than he thought human eyes could be.

  “That—”she gasped.

  “Did he break the skin—at all—” Rourke shouted, not looking at her, swerving to avoid an overturned green dumpster spilling out from the sidewalk backing the underground entrances to buildings and restaurants.

  “No—thank God—there—I said it again,” she laughed.

  Rourke glanced at her, then back at the tunnel. It was coming into a sharp right—Rourke cut the wheel hard, shouting to her, “Push the dog out af-ter I finish the turn.”

  He felt Natalia clinging to him as he cut the wheel all the way right, the Ford’s rear end fishtailing, Rourke’s hands moving over the wheel as he recovered fast, straightening out, the squealing of tires behind him, headlights dancing maddeningly along the tunnel walls in his rearview mirror. He felt Natalia moving now— “Heavy,” he heard her gasp, and he heard the car door open-ing, then after a moment slamming shut.

  He looked across at her—one of the L-Frame Smiths was in her right hand still. It was her shot that had finished the dog, he realized.

  The Detonics still in his right hand as he held the wheel, cocked and locked, Rourke hammered down on the accelerator. It was narrowing ahead, and pylons dotted the roadway, pylons that, under normal conditions at normal speeds would have made driving difficult.

  Gunfire echoed from behind them—the police cars closing, and more of the motorcycles coming up in the rearview as well. The bullet hole spiderwebbed windshield, smeared with the blood and brain matter of the wild dog that had climbed onto the hood, the windshield wiper scraping screechingly across it—Rourke peered ahead.

  Somehow he’d lost one of his headlights and the velvet darkness beyond the single yellowed beam was blacker still.

  Chapter Forty-five

  It was as though he was trying to thread a surgi-cal needle, Rourke thought, sides wiping a pylon as he zigzagged his way through the underground. The police vehicles were closing. One of the mo-torcycles in the opposite lane now, coming up faster than he could risk driving the LTD through the obstacle course. Besides the normal obstacles of the pylons, abandoned cars littered the roadside on the building side to his right and the opening to the Chicago River on his left. Trash dumpsters, garbage cans, the bones and half-devoured bodies of dead animals—and men—were sprinkled about the road surface like discarded toys.

  “Watch out for the seat there—if that dog left any fleas behind they could be carrying God knows what on them. This is contagion city—”

  “We have sprayed—”

  “Even the neutron bombing wouldn’t have done any good—these dogs couldn’t have survived that—like you said, they came from outside the city bringing fleas and ticks with them—stay as clear as you can of that part of the seat—and don’t touch your hands to your face or hair—I’ve got stuff in my pack that you can use to clean up.”

  “That motorcycle—it’s coming up fast—the man in the sidecar—I think that’s an RPK light machine gun he’s got.”

  “Wonderful,” Rourke rasped, glancing into his side-view mirror—the M-72 motorcycle/sidecar combination was a car’s length behind him now—the man in the sidecar manipulating a weapon, getting ready to fire.

  Rourke still grasped the Detonics .45 in his right fist. He rammed it out the open driver’s side win-dow and fired it out, three rounds, the pistol rock-ing hard in his hand, his wrist bent to aim the gun. The motorcycle swerved, but wasn’t stopped.

  Rourke gained a single car length.

  His right thumb worked the slide stop down, the slide running forward as he rammed the pistol into his belt, empty.

  Ahead of him, the tunnel seemed to be open-ing—it would be the underground section of the Michigan Avenue bridge, he realized. He started cranking the wheel left, machine gun fire hammer-ing into the driver’s side door, the rear end of the LTD fishtailing right, Natalia shouting, “Don’t move your head—”

  The muzzle of an M-16 was shoved in front of him, between his face and the cracked and smeared windshield, fire from the muzzle, Rourke craning his head back, glancing left—Natalia had knocked out the LMG on the motorcycle/sidecar combination, the motorcycle itself spinning out, crashing against a pylon.

  He started recovering the wheel, accelerating as he straightened out into the underground level of the bridge.

  There was a humming sound, rubber tires over metal gratings, bouncing and thudding sensation as the Ford shot ahead.

  In the rearview, he could see three police cars and two more motorcycles. He kept accelerating. Natalia screamed, “The bridge—there’s a nine-foot section out at the far side—John!”

  “Shit!”

  Rourke hammered the accelerator to the floor—his eyes searching through the darkness to find the hole in the bridge—and ahead, a darker patch than the darkness of the roadway, to his right a high curb. Rourke cut the wheel hard right, then left, the LTD skidding, the rear end swaying, the steering all but gone as he accelerated, the rear end impacting the curb as he turned away, two of the police cars coming at him, skidding as they tried to brake—one swerved left—crashing into the bridge supports, the second rocketed past him, Rourke nearly crashing the LTD into it broadside, the headlights there one instant then gone the next. As he fought the wheel, a fountain of river water sprayed up, spraying the LTD for an instant, but then the wheel was all the way left, Rourke heading away from the hole in the bridge, the third squad car and the two motorcycle units coming dead on, the biker units flanking the police car, consuming the entire width of the bridge.

  “Gimme a gun!”

  He reached out his right hand, feeling the mem-ory-grooved smooth Goncalo Alves stocks of one of her matched L-Frames coming into his palm. He switched the revolver to his left hand, ramming the hand out the driver’s side window, his right fist locked at the top of the wheel. Natalia was rolling over into the back seat, an M-16 in her hands as he glanced at her.

  The LMG on the M-72 combination to Rourke’s left was firing, and then the LMG from the sidecar to his right—AKM fire streamed toward them from the passenger side of the solitary police car. Natalia’s assault rifle fire—it reverberated from the back seat, the sounds of empty brass pinging against the frame of the open window, Rourke’s left fist clenched tight on the L-Frame, his right rock-steady on the wheel to give as sure a firing platform as possible—he was aiming for the police car—aiming the LTD

  straight at it.

  The L-Frame in his left fist—he pumped the trigger, double-actioning two rounds toward the M-72

  combination to his left. He fired twice more—the motorcyclist threw his hands out from his handlebars, slumping back, the machine gun-ner in the sidecar reaching for the bike’s controls suddenly, then jumping clear, Rourke shouting to Natalia, “Watch out!”

  He cut the wheel hard left, evading the motorcy-cle, the combination crashing into one of the bridge supports to his left, Natalia’s M-16 still fir-in
g as they passed the squad car, AKM fire ripping across the driver’s compartment, his windshield shooting out, the rearview mirror gone, the speed-ometer, the gas gauge—all of it shattered, a ribbon of bullet holes across the dashboard. Rourke accelerated—past the underground tun-nel running parallel to the river, into what looked like a box canyon of building walls ahead of him, shouting, “Natalia? You all right?”

  “So far,” he heard her shout back to him.

  “Hold on—flick turn,” and Rourke dropped the L-Frame to his lap, holding it between his legs, cutting the wheel sharply to the left as he stomped the emergency brake, locking the rear wheels, then popping the brake as the car rotated a full one hundred eighty degrees, accelerating as he fought the wheel, then flooring it as he aimed toward the last of the motorcycle combinations, the police car turning behind it. Rourke could see the face of the machine gun-ner in the sidecar—and then it was gone, Rourke rocking the wheel hard left, into the combination, then hard right and away, hearing a scream die on the slipstream, blood splattering the few shards of glass left in the windshield, Natalia’s M-16 firing again toward the oncoming police car, the AKM firing from the passenger window, Rourke’s left hand finding the L-Frame—two shots left.

  He stabbed the revolver through the open wind-shield ahead of his face, his right fist white-knuck-led on the top of the Ford’s steering wheel.

  He fired once, then once again, the windshield of the advancing police car shattering, Natalia’s M-16 fire increasing its rate—she had to have shot through a full magazine in seconds, he realized, but the gunfire continued, sparks coming from the police car’s hood, a stricken face suddenly visible behind the wheel as Rourke swerved the Ford to avoid a head-on collision, the LTD’s single head-light catching the face in freeze frame.

  A bridge support—Rourke fought at the wheel—there was no response—he stomped the brakes, the rear end of the Ford fishtailing right, Rourke shouting to Natalia, “Hit the floor! Hit the floor!”