by Mark Tufo
Mike dived to the side, hitting the wall hard. A bullet grazed his cheek as another man showed. Mike fired back twice. The first missed. The second hit the man in the side. He stared down the barrel of the man’s weapon and closed his eyes in preparation for the meeting with his maker. He was surprised at how little it hurt when he heard the next few gunshots.
“You can open your eyes now,” Tynes said, coming around the corner.
“I’m not shot?” Mike squinted through his right eye.
“A little bit. Come on, I hear engines.” Both were afraid it meant gang reinforcements were coming; it was quite the opposite. The D Streeters, having come across an opponent willing to fight, were doing what most bullies do: they were leaving faster than they’d come. Shots still rang out as the gang tried to cover their retreat, and Tynes’ neighbors were still flush with battle adrenaline. Dutch was the first out, getting to his hose and desperately trying to get some water on his neighbor’s house. How much longer they had with the gravity fed systems was anybody’s guess. Mike figured it was a lost cause then realized it wasn’t Dutch’s neighbor’s house he was trying to save but rather his own. Some of the residents came out as if in the midst of a daze. Some immediately went to Dutch to aid in his firefighting efforts. Others cried for help as they or someone they loved had been hurt.
“Holy shit.” Mike looked over the mayhem. The battle hadn’t lasted more than ten minutes, yet thirty-two D Streeters were on the ground, dead, dying, or injured enough that they were out of the fight. “I’m going to help HOA man.”
“Not yet. Some of these scumbags could still be plenty dangerous. We need to restrain those still living.” Almost as if to reiterate this point, a gangly, unkempt man with a bullet hole in his leg stood and took a shot at Dutch. Tynes and Mike made quick work of putting him down. Dutch waved when he realized what had just happened.
“That’s like that cop sixth sense shit, isn’t it?” Mike asked.
“More like common sense. They’re injured and pissed off, makes for a bad combination. In my garage, above the worktable, there is a container full of zip ties. Could you please grab me a handful?”
“A cop with a garage full of zip ties. There’s another shocker.”
“It’s not a damn garage full—just get them.”
Mike was back in less than a minute. He was about to comment on how that was the cleanest, most OCD garage he’d ever seen, until he came out. Tynes had his weapon trained on one of the gunmen and was yelling at him to drop his gun. Mike came up alongside him and began to advance, all the while firing his rifle, spilling what little blood remained in the man onto the street.
“Mike, you can’t just keep shooting them!” Tynes was beyond angry.
“What are you planning on doing with them anyway? Not like we can send them to county for lock up,” Mike returned with just as much heat. Mike’s outburst did have the added effect of knuckling under the gang members who had not yet dropped their weaponry. Those that could, put their hands up in the air to signify they were surrendering peacefully. Within five minutes, they had twelve of the wounded bound up. Three more had died from their injuries.
“Murk is going to tear this place down, man,” Rill said as he laughed. Heroin blackened teeth shone dully from his mouth.
“Shut up.” Tynes tied the man’s hands together behind his back.
“Gonna burn just like that house.” He nodded his chin toward where Radley’s house was really engulfed. Tynes could feel the heat midway across the street. He wondered how those closer were able to withstand it.
Tynes had moved on to the next. When he turned the man over, the flat fish-like stare told him that there was no need to use one of the strong plastic ties.
“Hey man, I’m...hurt bad,” Rill wheezed “You gotta fix me up. That’s like, the rules of engagement or some shit.”
“I’ll fix you up all right. Shut up.” Tynes went to the next man, this one a shade deader than the previous. Whatever this man had witnessed at the end had terrified him. His lips were pulled back in fright and his mouth was the shape of a silent scream.
“You got a ladder?” Mike asked Dutch.
“Garage.”
Mike ran and set it up. “Give me the hose!” The roar of the fire making talking difficult, Mike shot up the ladder, dragging the hose behind him. Fire-igniting embers rained down all over him as he thoroughly soaked down the roof of Dutch’s home. The other close-by neighbors began to attach extensions to their hoses so that they could get water on the blaze as well. Mike thought it would be as effective as pissing on a wild fire, but possibly, if enough people had to urinate, you could really do some damage. Saving Radley’s home was out of the question. The strategy had shifted to saving the houses on either side and, in effect, saving the neighborhood. For four hours, they alternated between dousing the burning house and soaking down the ones that weren’t.
When Mike finally came down, his legs felt like rubber, and though he was drenched, he was close to dehydration due to the heat. Mrs. Padilla from a street over handed him a large bottle of water, which he greedily drank down. It was four in the morning by the time the house had been reduced to a smoldering ruin, posing little danger to the surrounding homes. Dutch thanked Mike and those that had helped profusely. Mike wearily made his way back to Tynes’ home. He was halfway across the street when he realized that the bikes and bodies were gone. His right foot came down into a large sticky pool of blood and shook the remembrance of the earlier events free.
“How the hell did I miss this?”
Tynes sat on his stoop, watching Mike’s approach. “Good work tonight.” He handed Mike a beer.
“Thanks, is this a good time to ask about a raise?” Mike sat down next to him and spun the cap off. “Yummy, warm beer.” Mike grimaced.
“Just be happy they even had any on that last grocery run.”
“Where is everything?” Mike asked.
“We cleaned it up.”
“Yeah I get that, but there were thirty or forty bikes and the bodies to go with them, and that’s not even including the wounded.”
“Dump truck,” Tynes said sourly.
“Oh.”
“Fitzgerald over there owns a construction company, he went and got one of his trucks and took the bodies.”
“Do I want to know where?”
“I don’t see why you’d want to.”
“The bikes?”
“We rolled them into Henrietta’s backyard.”
Henrietta was an octogenarian, near as anyone could tell. Physically, she was in great shape. It was her mind that resembled the portrait of Dorian Gray. It had rotted away almost to the point of no longer functioning. She’d had a live-in nurse, but the woman had disappeared, along with a few choice items, the day after Boston had been destroyed. Henrietta was now staying at her neighbors’, though she believed herself to be on a cruise to Ecuador, and the inhabitants of the house were the ship’s crew. She complained that the service was inadequate and that the alcoholic drinks were watered down to an unacceptable level.
“The prisoners.”
“We let them go.”
“You do realize those were the same guys who said they were going to rip your tongue out through the hole in your neck, right?”
“One in the same.”
“Okay, just wanted to make sure we were all on the same page.”
“How long you figure before they come back?”
“Wouldn’t doubt it if they were on the way.”
“This wasn’t a big enough lesson for them?”
“How many of those guys have been in and out of prison?”
“Most of them multiple times, I would guess.”
“Seems to me they aren’t too big on the whole learning from their mistakes thing. They’ll be back. I’d say we should get the fuck out of Dodge, but I’m too damned tired to do much more than sit here.” Mike took a long swallow, finished his beer, and stood with the assistance of Tynes’ shoulder
. “I’m going to reload my magazines, and then wherever my head hits, that’s where you’ll find me asleep.”
Tynes nodded and popped another beer open. “How did we come to this?” he asked the wind as he looked upon the bullet holes strewn across his neighbor’s house, the still smoldering ruins of another, and the dark, wet patches that nearly covered the entire end of the street. He knew it was just the beginning of much bigger and much worse things to come. A battle, a fucking life or death battle, had just been waged in Manhattan. On his goddamned street. Neither the cops, nor the Guard, nor the armed forces, nor any other governmental agency had shown up to aid in any aspect. They were truly on their own. The very sheer fabric of society had not only been torn, but shredded, and the scraps had been thrown in the world’s largest dumpster. Tynes stood, finished his beer, and thought about throwing it into the street. “No, I’m not there yet.” He brought it into the house. He nearly tripped over a prone Mike, who had fallen asleep on the floor not more than ten feet inside the door on a large throw rug. Tynes went to the couch and grabbed the blanket Mike had been using and threw it over him. He contemplated standing guard. That lasted long enough for him to rest his eyes.
He awoke some eight hours later. Mike was looking down at him.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
I-70
“To be honest, this took a lot longer than I thought,” Herbert said. He put his hand up when the pickup truck came down the driveway. It had been nearly two weeks since Boston and Los Angeles had been nuked.
“That’s far enough,” he yelled.
Darlene watched as an elderly man stepped out of the truck, carrying a pistol. His passenger, whom she recognized as one of the men from the gas station when this all started, stayed in the cab.
“Herbert,” the man said.
“Dusty.” Herbert glanced at Darlene. “Be ready,” he whispered. Herbert walked down the steps but didn’t go any further.
The other man took his time, looking around as he walked. He pointed at the pile of trees. “Doing some landscaping?”
“What do you want, Dusty?”
Dusty smiled, but Darlene didn’t think it was pleasant. He made a dramatic motion of putting the pistol in the holster at his side. “I came to talk.”
“There’s really nothing to talk about. You do your own thing, and we’ll do ours,” Herbert said.
“I want my kin back.”
Herbert nodded. “I’ll put them on a trailer with all their stuff within an hour. How’s that sound?”
“It’s a start. There needs to be reparations, too,” Dusty said.
Herbert nodded and smiled. “You’re right. For trespassing on my land and forcing me to waste ammo on the two thieves, I think I deserve a box of ammo for this rifle.”
“You know what I’m talking about. I’m head of a vast clan, and the Sawyer clan remembers things. All things. Like who killed one of them. There are a lot more of us than there are of you.” Dusty stared at Darlene for the first time. “She’s not even blood, and neither is the other fella hiding out back in the tree. I see Rosemary and her brats are here too. You can’t protect all of these women, and you know it.”
“Are you threatening my family?” Herbert asked. His rifle dipped slightly.
“I’m telling you we need to work together. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few,” Dusty said.
“You went to school with me, Dusty, so you know I’m not the sharpest pencil in the box. I’m not following your logic,” Herbert said.
“I think it would be very fair and generous of you, since you killed two of my kin, to give us half of your food and supplies. You have less than a dozen to feed while I’m responsible for nearly thirty mouths. And I know you’ve been hoarding food and other stuff for as long as I’ve known you, so I’m guessing a couple of those barns are packed with it. I’m a reasonable man,” Dusty said.
Herbert snorted and raised the rifle, aiming in Dusty’s general direction. “You’re a crazy man and you always were. You know damn well I’d never agree to any of this. I’m guessing you’re bluffing to see what I’ll do or you’re stalling because the rest of your inbred family is circling the block. Either way, you already know my answer.”
“I’ll give you six hours to give me the bodies and half of your food. No more,” Dusty said.
“You can set any crazy time limit you want. You know it isn’t going to happen. I don’t know what you’re up to, but you’re not going to fool me. If I came to you, would you give up half your food?”
Dusty shrugged. “If I thought it would save my family, I would.”
“There you go threatening me again,” Herbert said.
“That isn’t a threat, you old fool. It’s a damn promise.”
Herbert raised his rifle and aimed it at Dusty. “What’s to stop me from ending this right now and putting a bullet in your head, Dusty?”
Dusty smiled but he looked scared. “Nothing would stop you. But it won’t end, and you know it. There are too many Sawyer members who would like nothing better than to have yet another excuse to kill you. And we outnumber you quite a bit, in case you forgot. You kill me, and Buck will be on your doorstep. And he won’t just shoot you. He’ll let you watch while he has his way with the innocents. Understand me?”
Darlene wanted to shoot the bastard herself.
Dusty put up his hands. “Either put your finger on the trigger and pull or get the damn rifle out of my face, Herbert. I came to talk to you.”
“You came to threaten my family.”
“I came to offer you a dose of reality. Look around. This farm is way too big for three of you to defend it and worry about two old women and two kids. I am offering you something you desperately need: protection,” Dusty said.
“The only thing I need protection from is the Sawyer clan.”
“I’ll wait by the end of the road and let you talk it over with your family.”
“You might as well go back home, Dusty. I told you I would hand over the bodies. But nothing else is leaving this farm.”
“We’ll see,” Dusty said.
Herbert had lowered the rifle an inch and taken a step back, ready to retort when they all heard the gunshot.
Dusty frowned and went for his pistol.
Herbert shot Dusty in the face, blowing off a chunk of flesh and watching the body drop to the ground.
As the Sawyer in the truck opened the door, Darlene began firing, blasting the windshield and door window out. Herbert moved to the driver’s side as Darlene stepped forward and shot at an angle, trying to get the bullet through the door and into the Sawyer.
It worked and she heard a scream before he fell out of the truck, holding his side. The blood began pooling around the man.
Herbert stood on the other side of the truck and opened the driver’s door, aiming his weapon.
Darlene stepped up and kicked the man’s gun away.
“How many more are out there?” Darlene asked. She knew they didn’t have much time. If this was a full-scale attack, they’d need to prepare.
“You got this?” Herbert asked.
“Yes.”
“I’ll go see what happened with John,” Herbert said.
Darlene still hadn’t heard another shot, and she was worried. What if John had been killed and even now a line of Sawyers were marching up the field?
“How many?” Darlene asked, putting the rifle to the man’s head for emphasis.
“There’s two pickup trucks about a mile away.” The man closed his eyes and grimaced in pain.
Darlene nudged him with the barrel, just above where she’d shot him. “How many are trying to attack from our rear?”
“None. I swear. Dusty didn’t want to fight you. He was here to scare you into giving in without a fight. He doesn’t want a war. He wants to steal from you and be done with it,” the man said.
“You’re lying,” Darlene said. “He sent two men to kill us.”
“He sent my brother and
cousin to take whatever was in the barns. He didn’t want you to see them at all.”
“Look at me,” Darlene said. She needed to see the lie in his eyes before she ended his miserable life. He was a liar.
The man opened his eyes and looked up at Darlene. “I’m not lying. Dusty said you weren’t the enemy. Herbert and his family are locals, and nothing bad was going to happen to you. There are men in the fields at night breaking into homes and killing us. They come and go like ghosts. Dusty was too proud to ask you to join us in the hunt.”
“I don’t believe you,” Darlene said but pulled the rifle away. She couldn’t believe him. It didn’t make sense. Who had attacked them then?
“Darlene,” Herbert yelled as he came walking up quickly, John twenty feet behind.
Darlene moved away from the shot man but kept an eye on him.
Herbert walked up, out of breath, and bent down to catch it.
“What’s going on?” Darlene asked and looked at John as he walked up. “Tell me what happened.”
John shrugged and looked at the dying man. “I thought I saw someone near the creek. It was just a deer. We’ll have meat this week, though.”
Darlene couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “You’ve started a war.”
“The war was already upon us. We just took the first few casualties,” John said. “The odds are not in our favor.”
“This is bad,” was all Darlene could say.
John aimed his rifle at the man on the ground. “We need to put him out of his misery.”
“He is not the enemy,” Darlene said.
