Wet hands slapped the metal side of the car, and soon, the car was awash with blood. More infected beat the windows, decorating it in gore. Tess slammed her fist on the lock button three times in succession. Click. Click. Click.
Bill patted his other pockets. He forced a hand into them, grasping everything he could. He opened his palm holding only silver and copper coins. In the center was a short cuff key with a circular base having a thin protruding double lock tip sticking off the back, but nothing in the shape of a car key. His breathing labored and his mind had a shadowy tinge around the edges like he’d drank a dozen beers at Flannagen’s.
“I don’t.” He let the coins fall on the passenger side mat.
“Bill.” His name sounded foreign on her tongue as if she didn’t believe it was his real name. “We need keys.”
“Westman drove last.” Each word was harder than the last. He gulped acidic fluid back down his throat. He sucked arduous air through his nostrils.
Tess rested her head on the steering wheel. “Oh my God. What the hell are we going to do?”
His chest ached like someone was sitting on it. He grunted a response as he closed his eyes. The pain was taking away everything life had to offer and crushing it in its ghostly palm.
“Bill?”
He sighed. His chest made a gurgling sound like a wet flag snapping in the wind. “Yeah.”
“What are we going to do?”
It was a labor to look at her. “I dunno, but you’re going to have to do it on your own.”
Her voice came out frantic. “What in the hell is that supposed to mean?”
His eyes darted at her in anger. “I’m bit. You seen it last night. I seen it today. That’s the connection.” He coughed and spit, not caring as some of it landed on his chin. “I knew there was something. Something making ’em killers.”
“Doesn’t mean you’re going to die.”
“Westman didn’t have long after he got bit.”
“He wasn’t dead.”
“You want me to turn out like that in here?”
Her hands gripped the steering wheel as she stared forward. “That’s not the way this works. You’re supposed to ride off into the sunset, not turn into a blood-crazed monster.”
He laughed and coughed at the same time. “Not for his old-timer. Listen. I’m going to turn. And if I’m like these poor sons of bitches, I’m gonna try to kill you. Those are the facts.”
His gun felt heavy in his hand. Redness soaked his pant legs, running in a steady flow out of his arm and into his cheap work suit. They exchanged a look.
“This gun is single action.”
Her voice was softer. “What does that mean?”
He clenched his jaw. “You have to pull the hammer back for the first shot. You can leave the hammer cocked so you don’t have to remember. There’s a safety so you can move with it cocked and locked.”
She blinked. “Hammer cocked?”
He ran a thumb over the hammer, pulling it backward. “In this position.” She nodded furiously. He studied the weapon. “Holds seven rounds, .45 caliber.” He reached into his shoulder harness and removed one of his extra mags and pushed it into her hand.
He bent down, feeling up his pant leg and slipped his hand underneath. He removed another magazine from its strap holster. “All I got.” He gulped down the pain, little heartbeat-style electric shocks, that emanated from his wound and pulsated through the entire left half of his frame.
He eyed her. “Mag comes out like this.” He pushed a circular button on the side of the handle. “When you go to reload, you’ll need to rack her again like this.” He pulled the slide back. “But harder, like you don’t like it. You understand?”
“I guess.”
“Better or you won’t last long. Headshots, girl. Headshots. Body shots didn’t do anything earlier.”
“I can do that.”
He wasn’t so sure, but he didn’t have time to teach her. He coughed, wet fluid building in his lungs. “Harder than you think. Keep your sights level. Smooth on the trigger. Rush your trigger and you’ll miss.”
He hacked again, feeling like he was going to die. He didn’t have time to make peace with the entirety of what his life had been. Two failed marriages. A lackluster career. Few friends. Or was it the other things? The murderer he’d caught six years back gave somebody justice. It never brought the victim back, but maybe it gave their family some sort of closure. He doubted it. The missing void in their lives would never be filled, the only solace safety from the murderer if only to die in a car accident later. He’d put his fair share of criminals in prison. A few for life but most were probably out by now.
In the end, the most important piece of his life boiled down to the men and women he’d risked his neck for every day. His brothers and sisters wearing the blue uniform. Overworked, unappreciated, and stressed. They made it worth something. They were his real family and bound to him not through blood but through common cause and purpose. Most of them had good hearts and wanted to make a difference despite what the old-timers already knew: making a real difference was a long shot and worth the fight.
He’d find out soon if he’d done enough to earn him anything in the afterlife. Better not to dwell too long on it because he was about to run full speed into death, or in his case, seated in the front seat of an unmarked police car. Instead, he focused on the task at hand.
“Headshots.”
Pain knifed his body in a hundred places at once. When it died down, exhaustion cloaked him. “I’m tired.” He closed his eyes again, his voice dropping to a whisper. “You’re going to be okay.”
“Never been okay.”
“You are. Just don’t know it.” They sat in silence for a moment. “Are you going to do this?” He opened his palm little by little, offering her his gun that felt like it weighed fifty pounds. His eyes watched her for a moment. Her dark eyes shied away from his, scanning the outside.
“Suppose it would be easier if you did it. Never understood doing yourself in.” His voice trailed off. In life you had a chance. Death. Well, death was just that. The end. No chances in the end. Only the end.
The snake of fire bursting through his blood vessels was forcing its way into his neck. He squeezed the handle of the gun, his hands whitening his knuckles. He groaned. “Goddamn.”
Veins bulged in his neck, straining. He turned his pistol around backward and forced the barrel into his open mouth. He didn’t think. He didn’t have to. He needed to die. He supposed there were many worse ways to go. Being whipped to death. Poisoned. Drowned. Or the slow death brought on by tuberculosis. At least it wasn’t some gang of dumb punks, making a name for themselves trying to squeeze him for an ounce of street cred. My hand. My life.
If she couldn’t do it, then he had to give her a chance. Life was the only chance anyone had, and it was only a chance.
He slid his thumb through the trigger guard and it settled on the trigger with unfamiliar purpose. It didn’t feel right. Neither did the burn of a hot metal barrel on his tongue or the taste of sour sulfuric gun smoke in his mouth. Neither did dying, but he did it all the same.
TESS
Grand Rapids, MI
Smoke tendrils snuck from the exit wound in Detective William DeYoung’s skull. The smoke swirled into wispy little ringlets like someone had taken his head off a hot grill and set it on a plate like an overcooked ribeye.
The hole itself was a mash of hair, whitish cranial bone, and grayish brain matter that had apparently escaped at a high enough velocity that smatterings of Bill had struck Tess in the driver’s seat. She streaked the blood on her cheeks, trying to wipe it off, transfixed by his slumped over mannequin-like body next to her. She backed up into the armrest trying to distance herself from his mess.
Bill’s mustached face lay on the dash of the police car. His mouth hung ajar as if he were dumbstruck in the middle of telling a story because someone interrupted him. His cheek smeared on the glove box, pulling his face ta
ut.
His brown eyes were still open although now they were a milky shade of chocolate. It was as if they couldn’t decide what color they wanted to be, white or brown chocolate, indecisively ending in a swirled mess.
The bullet had gone through the ceiling along with a fair amount of brain matter. Patches of hair stuck around the hole.
Pounding on the glass behind her made her shift frantically toward the center console and closer to the body of the detective.
Unblinking bleached white eyes stared from the other side of the window. Its face thudded into the glass. Its skin screeched as it rubbed and streaked along the clear surface. Bloody fingernails scratched the window. More people wandered toward the car.
The detective’s worn-out piece lay on the floor between his feet. She gave him a shove on his shoulder. His body rocked. “Clint, old buddy? You gonna get up?”
Red fluids leaked from his open mouth, forming a stretchy string that bounced from his lips to the floor until it finally let go and dripped. She took a deep breath, plunged her hand beneath his head, and picked up his firearm. He didn’t protest.
The gun was way heavier than she would have thought. She pointed it at the people outside.
“Get out of here, you freaks!” The 1911 wavered in her hand as if it shook her instead of the other way around. “I’ll shoot. I’ll fucking do it.”
The people ignored her and continued to beat the car with fists, faces, and fingernails. Mouths gnashed at her and let out mournful wails. The more she yelled, the more agitated they became.
Yet none of them had tried the doors. None of them had attempted to break the glass with rocks or sticks. Enough time had passed that she came to an understanding with the bloody and battered people outside her window. They weren’t going to be able to get inside the car and she wasn’t able to leave the confines of the vehicle.
After a minute, she set the gun down in her lap. “Thanks a lot, Clint.”
Bloody fluid continued to ooze from his open mouth, his milk-chocolatey eyes never blinking.
“What the fuck am I going to do?” She shook her head. Shoot through the windows and the others will grab me. No keys, so I can’t drive this bitch like I stole it. Ironically, it would have been stealing.
“I just wanted to go out and tie one on with my friends and the goddamn end of the world starts.” Her head still pounded from what was the wicked onset of a hangover. She would have killed someone for a bottle of water and a handful of anti-inflammatory meds or at least a Bloody Mary, one with bacon and chunks of cheese, maybe a dill pickle.
The car was beginning to stink like sulfur and whatever Bill was holding inside him before he shot himself. “Bill, is that Thai food?”
He said nothing and stared back at her with glass eyeballs. It was as if he were never real but always a lifeless plastic in the shape of a man. The smoke had settled around the hole in his skull, dissipating into the air. The heat from the midday sun beat down on the car in an attempt to cook her like she’d hopped into an oven.
“Don’t dogs and babies die in shit like this?” She stripped off her top down to her bra and wiped her forehead.
“What ya think Clint? Good view from down there?”
Although his mouth was open, no words rolled off his dead tongue. She edged her hand closer to his face and quickly shut his eyes as if he could wake up at any moment and assault her. “There you go, Clint.”
She laid her head back down on the steering wheel and closed her eyes. There has to be a way out of this. I can’t just die locked in a car next to a dead body. Not how I imagined I would go. She imagined something dramatic or epic being her end. Something explosive. She had never been under the illusion she would live forever. She knew eventually her hard-partying lifestyle would catch up with her, but she never imagined anything like this.
She sat, letting the sweat run down her bony back into her shorts. The salty droplets, probably containing alcohol from the night before, coursed off her chin, splatting on the car floor mats. The moans of the disgusting people clambering outside mocked her with their outdoor freedom for at least twenty minutes.
Gunshots rumbled from the street in rapid almost automatic succession. She flinched in fear and instinctually ducked lower in the vehicle.
The people surrounding her car slowly turned away from her. “Get. Get.” She shooed them. They staggered and started for something else. Her back window shattered and she scrambled flat.
“Oh, what the fuck?”
Rapid gunfire blasted quick short notes. Bodies collapsed in the parking lot. After another bout of shooting, it grew silent.
A man’s voice carried over to her. “Anyone in there?”
She snuck a look in the side door mirror. A heavily stubbled man held what she perceived as an Arnold Schwarzenegger-style machine gun in his hands. He stood on his toes, trying to steal a look inside the unmarked police car.
“Anyone still alive?”
She was scared, but who wouldn’t be. This guy was a ticket out. Throwing her jacket on, she hammered the unlock button of the car door and flicked open the handle. She stepped out, clutching the handgun.
He raised his long gun an inch in a fashion that let her know that he was very comfortable using firearms on other people.
She held the pistol in the air in submission.
A small red pickup idled next to him.
“Hey! Hurry up!” He gestured toward her. “Come on.”
She sprinted through fallen bodies. A hand reached up and scratched her leg. She suddenly got a whole lot heavier. A woman grasped at her legs. Tess pointed her pistol at the woman and ran a thumb over the hammer, making sure it was cocked. The woman showed no fear. She squeezed the trigger. A bullet drilled through the woman’s head. Tess kicked her leg free.
He ripped open the passenger side door and scanned the street as he curled around to the front of the pickup. He was handsome with two-weeks worth of stubble peppering his cheeks and an athletic build. Not one of those muscle types, but like a professional MMA fighter in the welterweight division. He motioned her inside the truck.
“Come with me,” he said. Urgency shrouded his every word. His eyes held truth in them. They hardened as he peered behind her. He slapped her seat with his hand. “You want to live? Get inside.”
She hopped into the passenger seat and slammed the door, cradling Bill’s gun in her lap.
The wheels spun as he punched the accelerator with his foot, filling the tiny pickup cab with the smell of burning rubber.
“Any cops still in there?”
She shook her head. “No, I don’t think so.” That didn’t seem like it was a possibility, but neither was any of this.
He took a deep breath, avoiding a car with both driver and passenger doors open. He twisted the wheel, clipping a man in the street with the side of the pickup. The man threw his arms in the air as he was thrown onto the pavement.
Shaking his head, he checked his mirror and whispered under his breath. “Motherfucker stood up.”
“Why’d you stop?”
He took a quick look at her and watched the street again. “Cause right now with whatever this is.” He ducked his head, watching a helicopter thunder overhead. He focused back on the road. “There are two kinds of people. People with guns and the rest.”
Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoyed Books 1-3 and the bonus short story from The End Time Saga. As you may have gathered, there are more books in the series. Please consider jumping into the fourth installment, The Departing, as more apocalyptic action and adventure awaits! Looking for the rest of The End Time Saga? Click here.
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About the Author
Daniel Greene is the award-winning and bestselling author of the apocalyptic thriller series The End Time Saga and the historical fiction Northern Wolf series. He is an avid world traveler and physical fitness enthusiast with a deep passion for history. The works of George R.R. Martin, Steven Pressfield, Bernard Cornwell, and George Romero provide him with endless inspiration. Although a Midwesterner for life, he’s lived long enough in Virginia to call it home.
www.danielgreenebooks.com
Books by Daniel Greene
The End Time Saga
End Time
The Breaking
The Rising
The Departing
The Holding
The Standing (Coming Soon)
The Gun (Origin Short Story)
Northern Wolf Series
Northern Wolf
Northern Hunt
Northern Blood
Northern Dawn
The End Time Saga Box Set [Books 1-3] Page 120
