911: The Complete Series

by Grace Hamilton

  He closed his eyes. Addicts were liars. He was a liar. Addicts were selfish. He was selfish. And addicts were fearful all the time; fearful of discovery, fearful of losing the means to get high, and fearful of people getting too close. He was a coward.

  Selfish, lying, coward, he thought. Sounds about right. Ava’s right. If there’s a hero here, it’s not me. Somewhere along the way in the mess that was his life, he had changed, and he was dragging Ava and Finn down along with him. Oh sure, Ava had said she wanted to help him, but she never would have known about Sara if he hadn’t brought her up. And Finn. She’d follow Ava into hell if it meant staying with her.

  They ate MREs for breakfast. The girls, lifelong friends, had already begun the process of healing after their argument. They said nice things to each other, being overly thoughtful. Finn’s love for Ava was obvious, but he saw how Ava loved the other girl, too, if not exactly in the same way. He was the odd man out, the third wheel on his own rescue mission.

  He dry-swallowed an Ativan/Percocet combo to even himself out while the girls packed up, and they soon started pedaling.

  For the most part, they stuck to county access roads that at least roughly paralleled the interstate. It was pleasant enough travel and they didn’t push the pace too hard, making frequent stops.

  Most addicts chase the high, the first high, the unobtainable high. After a while, they take their drug of choice to feel normal. Non-addicts, upon hearing that well-worn truism, often misunderstand “normal” to mean “straight.”

  But it wasn’t like that for Parker.

  He chased the high, and the high was still there. It was just, as someone once sang, that a little might have done it, but when a little didn’t do it, you took more and more. Not to feel “straight,” because fuck straight—straight was what you were avoiding in the first place. No, you took more to feel normal. The new normal, which was high.

  By twilight, blood pumping through his system from all the exercise, Parker was rolling along in a light, euphoric cloud, feeling warm and fuzzy. Feeling safe.

  “What the fuck was that?” Ava said suddenly.

  They all immediately stopped, Parker swimming up out of his buzz and trying to sharpen his senses. Then he heard it, too, in the distance, the high-pitched whine of ATV engines. More than one, and maybe a whole bunch.

  “Come on!” Finn shouted. “Get to the tree line.”

  Parker looked up and saw a shallow draw full of slippery elm, beech, and sugar maple less than a mile away. It was a dense stand and, in the twilight, dark. It was a good call, but the approach began on a hilltop and it would be a hard sprint for them to get there before the ATVs were on them.

  “Go!” Ava shouted.

  The three of them pushed hard against their pedals, pulling the hill beneath them in what felt like slow motion. Parker panted, his side aching, and he was almost immediately drenched in sweat. The opioids and narcotic analgesics played hell on his body. Adrenaline release was delayed, heartbeat slowed even after exercise, his muscles sluggish and unresponsive.

  He fell behind and the girls reached the top of the slight incline well ahead of him. They stopped at the crest of the hill and turned back, clearly worried about him. Behind him, four 4-wheelers and a Polaris Ranger Side-by-Side with a third man in the cargo space ripped out over the hill like something out of Mad Max and headed straight toward them.

  They’d already have gone if it weren’t for me. “Go! Go!” Parker shouted at them as they hesitated. Sweat dripped from him, and his throat was thick with mucus. Behind him, the motors on the ATVs whined as throttles opened up, having spotted him.

  “Come on!” Ava pulled at Finn.

  Finn looked torn, turning from Ava and looking back at Parker. He was gaining, but his chest was tight, squeezing off breath and sending ragged jolts of pain into his side. Ava jerked Finn’s arm again, and Parker caught her eye.

  “Go,” he said. He couldn’t shout anymore, but she could read his lips.

  Finn made up her mind and jumped off her bike, followed almost instantly by Ava. The two sprinted for the tree line and he topped the hill just as they made the cover of the woods. More to buy himself a chance to catch his breath than out of any hope of killing their pursuers, he turned the Ruger .357 on the approaching band and triggered three rounds.

  The hand cannon roared in his grip and immediately the cluster of ATVs fanned out. Then the third man in the rear of the side-by-side opened up with an AR-15, laying down a 10-round fusillade of semiautomatic fire.

  High-velocity rounds skipped off the ground around him and burned through the air past his head.

  “Shit!” he cried out, ducking as he was hit by sprays of dirt from the bullets.

  Leaving his bike where it fell, he spun around and ran for the trees. His pack weighed him down now; it was unpleasant enough riding a bicycle with one, but running was a nightmare. He almost dropped it, but the thought of the ammunition inside stopped him.

  He burst through the edge of the woods and immediately entered something out of a fairytale. Twilight having descended, in the hollow it was almost fully dark. Branches slapped his face as his foot caught on roots and he went down to one knee, ripping the skin under his pants. He struggled up and pushed deeper, following the sounds of Ava and Finn as they crashed through the woods ahead of him.

  First the guardsmen, and now these assholes. Was this my plan all along, to move out in the open and hope to hide every time, as I pop from one encounter to the next? Eli was right; I should have listened to someone who knew what they were talking about. Just like in New Albany, I’ve put everyone in danger because I was too proud to change my mind.

  He made a decision, reflexes still slowed from the drugs. “Ava, Finn!” he shouted., “We can’t outrun them.” We, he thought, but don’t I mean me? The girls could scoot on to an escape just fine. It was the addict who couldn’t keep up with them. If he’d had one of the better weapons, the SCAR maybe, or even the Mossberg, he might have yelled out immediately for them to keep running. But he only had the Ruger, and he hesitated long enough to hear them respond from only a little way ahead of him.

  “All right,” Ava shouted back. “We’ll fight.”

  “Maybe we can negotiate with them,” Finn said.

  Liking Finn’s plan, Parker pushed past a slippery elm and slid out of his pack to move faster. Slippery elms had eight-inch oblong leaves and down-facing twigs growing close together; it was more like a bush at lower levels, with dense leaves closer to the forest floor. At first glance, his pack looked like a mound of earth in the gloom.

  He left the pack hidden beneath some branches and moved to the better cover of a maple. On one knee, he quickly reloaded the Ruger to its full nine-round capacity.

  In front of him, he heard the muffled whine of ATV engines approaching, and then they shut off. Moments later, men began crashing through the woods. Even in his somewhat dulled state, he could easily see that these weren’t soldiers or LEOs. They moved out of sync and in no formation; on the other hand, he knew, firsthand, that they were well-armed.

  “Come out, come out, wherever you are,” one of the men sang out.

  “Real fucking original. Go eat ass!” Ava shouted, quoting Eli.

  “Come any closer and we shoot,” Parker yelled.

  “We got better guns,” another one yelled.

  “Yeah,” shouted a third. “So send out your womeeen.”

  This witticism brought out a burst of jocularity from the entire band. Parker heard them rustling and caught flashes of their bodies moving through the brush. He cursed himself in sudden realization. He was outnumbered, and located in a position where he could easily be flanked to either side. That had been one amateur decision. Thinking he could negotiate with a band of scum like this when they thought they had the upper hand was another one.

  Simply, James Parker was tired of making mistakes.

  “You may have better guns!” he shouted out.

  He spotted a blond-
haired kid in a sloppy manbun and patchy beard. He carried an Ithaca 37. The .12 gauge was a solid weapon at this range—maybe even more so than the AR semi-auto.

  “We may have better guns, but what?” the voice hollered back.

  Parker lined him up in his sights. His finger took up the slack in his trigger and he slowed his breathing from what it had become since his crashing run through the woods.

  “Nothing!” he shouted back. “You may have better guns, full-stop.”

  Patchy Beard’s head snapped to one side at the sound of Parker’s voice being so close. Their eyes met across ten yards through the broken foliage of the hollow. Eyes widening, Patchy Beard tried turning. Parker stroked the trigger.

  The .357 roared in his hand. His senses, dulled by the pills, had caused him to squeeze the trigger in a clumsy manner. Instead of a slow, even pull, he’d jerked a little at the last moment and his round was off-mark.

  Luckily, he’d anticipated the shot, and his round still struck the man. He caught him in the left shoulder so that he grunted and staggered under the impact as his blood blossomed red and flesh tore under the force. The shockwaves of the 158 gr. Hydra-shok JHP round had traveled into Patchy Beard’s body easily, his flesh rippling like water as the kinetic energy jerked him around like a ragdoll. He staggered, dropping the Ithaca 37 to the ground.

  Parker re-sighted and pulled the trigger a second time, almost losing control of his grip because the nerves between his hand and his brain weren’t cooperating. Because of this, his second shot was off-mark, as well, but it still managed to strike the man high in the gut, putting him down.

  Patchy Beard went over backward, squealing in agony and crying out animal noises of hurt as he bled out. Over Parker’s right shoulder, Ava unloaded with the Glock as the band of men returned fire. Pivoting, Parker tried counting muzzle flashes to locate enemy positions, but his adrenaline was losing its battle with the Ativan and he lost track of where everyone was after only a moment.

  Ava fired another tight burst, the semiauto .40 cal. rounds going off in a firecracker line. The AR cut loose then, forcing Parker behind his tree as a virtual wall of lead chewed through the woods around him.

  Patchy Beard grunted as two of the high-velocity rounds struck him, and with those he finally fell silent. A hunting rifle, maybe an old school .30-06 Springfield, boomed several times, and the trunk of the sugar maple beside Parker vibrated under the impact. Hearing rustling behind him, he spun around even as he lifted the .357, but only saw Finn running away through the woods, half bent over, Bersa .380 in her fist.

  He hoped she made it.

  He rolled back over on his stomach as Ava fired, and he heard someone scream and knew she’d tagged one of them. He felt a barbaric rush of triumph, remembering Eli quoting Robert E. Howard on the night of the Event: Barbarism is the natural state of mankind. Civilization is unnatural. It is the whim of circumstance. And barbarism must ultimately triumph.

  Considering the actions of people after the collapse of the state in every country from Czechoslovakia to the Congo, it seemed an accurate belief. Civilization was a thin veneer; he’d seen that for himself as a cop. Man could rise above it, but not always, and not all men.

  A heavyset man burst through the branches in front of him. Parker caught an impression of an H&K platform with Aimpoint sight in the moonlight. Then Parker was pulling the trigger on the .357 and the big gun boomed in his hand, its muzzle flash dazzling his eyes. Unprotected, his ears began whining in protest at the sonic assault, and the heavy recoil almost ripped the heavy pistol from his grip. Even shooting at almost point-blank range, he missed with all four rounds; his reflexes were simply too off-kilter to adjust.

  The man turned, sweeping up the barrel of his rifle. Parker never heard the shot that did it, but the top of the man’s head burst open in a blood halo. The man, falling, shook under three more impacts and finally Parker heard Ava’s Glock booming.

  Killed instantly, the man sagged to the raw earth and went tumbling as his momentum dissipated. With his eyes still dilated from the muzzle flash, Parker saw the man’s fall as more of an impression than anything else. He blinked, trying to recover his vision, and worked his jaw to pop his ears and offset the booming discharges.

  The blow struck the back of his head in a solid thump that jerked him forward. A muzzle, burning hot, pressed into the back of his head as a brutal knee dropped into the middle of his back. Thinking this was the end, he squeezed his eyes shut.

  “Move, you die,” the man hissed.

  Disorientated by the blow, still compensating for the effects of firing the .357 so rapidly, and with his senses still dulled by drug use, Parker went limp. Face pressed close to the ground, he looked around for where his pistol was. He couldn’t find it.

  “Cease fire!” the man on top of him shouted. “Cease fire! Cease fire, goddamnit!”

  In a ragged, sputtering cadence, the firefight came to a halt. Parker’s ears popped and, though still ringing, he could hear better. The muzzle at the back of his head never wavered.

  “I got your daddy, little girl!” the man shouted.

  Like wolves answering the howl of another wolf, the voices of surrounding men came laughing out of the forest in response. In reply, Ava opened fire, but with only her weapon firing, it was easy to pinpoint her location. The AR cranked open and the man fired eight times into her area.

  There was silence after that.

  “You dead?” the man shouted. “Or are you reconsidering the idea of shooting your way clear?”

  “I sure hope that was the slope-looking bitch you shot up, Caleb,” a voice laughed. “I liked the look of the blonde.”

  More rough laughter, on cue.

  “Well?” the man shouted. “Are you alive?”

  The remaining men moved into position around them, but Parker wasn’t sure how many were left. He watched one of them picking up the H&K from the man he had killed. Eli had had one. It was a civilian version of the G3 currently carried by the German army. It fired a 7.62 mm. round and could drop a man easily. Ava didn’t stand a chance against it with only a handgun.

  “Fine!” she shouted. “I’m still alive, dickbreath.”

  “Come on out or your daddy takes a round through the back of his black head.”

  “Run!” Parker shouted.

  The man slammed the butt of his weapon into the back of Parker’s head. His skull exploded in pain and starbursts of agony detonated behind his eyes as his face snapped forward and bounced off the ground, filling his mouth with dirt.

  “Yes,” the man shouted. “Or, by all means, keep fighting six guys with rifles using a handgun, thus revealing your position so we can blow you apart from a safe distance. Or run and we’ll kill this joke of a hero here and shoot you after we’ve had our fun.”

  “Four,” Ava shouted back. “I count four! There were six, but now you have four.”

  “Yeah, congratulations on being able to count,” the man shouted. “But that doesn’t really change what my lieutenant in Afghanistan used to call ‘the truth on the ground,’ now does it?”

  “Are you the blonde?” one of the men hooted. “I sure hope you’re the blonde!”

  The pain in his head left Parker nauseated, his vision spinning like he was going to vomit. He thought about the bag of pills hidden in his pack. If he could get a couple of those in him, he’d be okay. He still hadn’t located his gun, though—that was a problem.

  “Last chance, bitch,” the man holding Parker down shouted. “You fucking answer me in five seconds or he dies.” He promptly began a five-count. “Five, four, three—”

  “All right!” Ava shouted. “I’m coming out.”

  The man pinning Parker lowered his voice and asked one of the others, “You spotted that other girl yet?”

  “Not yet,” the man who’d picked up the G3 answered.

  “Hot damn!” someone out of Parker’s vision shouted. “It is the blonde!”

  The man on his back stood, leav
ing the sole of one boot on the back of Parker’s neck. “Toss that mean ole gun into the bushes, blondie!” he shouted. “I wouldn’t want you thinking you can go all John Wayne on us before we get a chance to talk proper.”

  The pressure on the back of his neck eased and the man walked around in front of him. It was the AR shooter, and apparently the crew’s shot-caller.

  “Hey, nigger,” the man said.

  Parker looked up. The toe of the man’s boot slammed into the side of his skull. His head jerked to one side under the impact and the world spun like a tilt-a-whirl. He groaned in pain and tried pushing himself up.

  “Run!” he tried yelling again, but his words were slurred, sounding slushy in his own ears.

  He fought his way to his hands and knees, trying to take the opportunity to grapple with one of the gunmen, but he heard Ava screaming even as the shot-caller kicked him again. This time the toe struck him in the side of the neck and pain lanced down his spine, his body flushing hot even as his belly burned cold from adrenaline.

  Then two people were kicking him, and his nose started bleeding. A boot caught him low in the gut and he instinctively curled up on his side. Hugging his body to protect himself, he took the butt of the falling rifle directly on his temple and that put him out. He lay there in a twilight state.

  “Hard head,” he heard someone say.

  He was struck again and he lay there dazed. He felt blood rushing out of his ear and figured that was a bad sign.

  The shot-caller loomed above him. He raised his rifle above his head. “I don’t know how a fuck-up like you ended up with two pieces of ass, but that time is over.” The rifle butt came down and this time it did its job. Parker saw only darkness.

  7

  Parker drifted in and out of consciousness. He got impressions of sights and sounds, and shuffling men jostling him un-gently. Propped up into the front seat of the side-by-side, he faded in and out. At one point, the dull pounding in his head woke him long enough that he realized he was being dragged into a building.