by N. W. Harris
“Nice toy you got there,” the tall guy in the middle of the group shouted. “Where y’all headed in such a hurry?” Shane noted he had a black police utility belt around his waist with a gun holstered on it.
“Downtown,” Shane replied firmly, while also trying to keep threat out of his voice. “Would you please be so kind as to step aside and let us pass?”
The guy smiled, revealing a gold grill over his upper teeth. He rested his arm on the smaller kid next to him, who held the shotgun.
“Name’s Shamus,” the tall guy said. “Downtown is my jurisdiction. Nobody passes without my permission.”
“Great,” Shane replied, still hopeful this could work out. “Maybe you can help us.”
“Oh, we’d be glad to help you,” Shamus mocked. A chuckle passed through his large and intimidating gang. “Just exactly what would we be helping you with?”
Shane glanced at Steve, who had the Stryker’s machine gun trained on Shamus. Steve shrugged as if to say, Tell them everything—maybe they will help us. Shane decided they had nothing to lose, and he sure as heck didn’t want to have a shootout with these kids, even if the armored vehicle put the odds in his favor.
“We know why the animals killed the adults and why the adults attacked each other,” Shane began. “There’s a top secret weapon downtown causing all this to happen.” Shane paused and tried to read Shamus, whose golden smile reflected the dim sunlight passing through the thick, green clouds overhead. The city was eerily silent as they stared at each other, and yet the tension made the quiet seem to roar.
“Go on,” Shamus said.
“Well,” Shane continued, “we’re gonna shut it down.”
Shamus’ eyes narrowed. He pulled at the scruffy, dark goatee growing on his chin. After a moment, he said, “No.”
“Uh… what do you mean, no?” Shane asked, resisting the urge to reach back and grab his rifle.
“I mean, no, you ain’t going downtown to shut the weapon off,” Shamus replied, his tone ominous and threatening, though the malicious grin never left his face. He stood straighter and put his hand on the pistol strapped to his waist. “You see, ever since the animals and the adults went crazy, we’ve been living like kings. We own this city now, and we ain’t planning on stepping down from our throne any time soon.”
“But you don’t understand,” Shane said, trying to salvage the negotiation. “The weapon is going to cause the animals to go after younger and younger people soon. Any moment now, you could be attacked, or you guys will turn on each other like the adults did.”
“Yeah? I ain’t buying it,” Shamus said casually, slipping his pistol out of its holster. He crossed his arms over his chest, the barrel of his gun resting over his elbow. “Now turn this thing around and get out of my city. Get on back to your fantasyland, talk’n secret weapons and such. What’s next, we’re gonna be jumped by a bunch of unicorns?”
The gang laughed at their leader’s joke. Shane heard a nervous undertone in their chuckles, and several of them glanced at their weapons, perhaps shifting the safeties off. Not wanting to appear intimidated, he stared at the tall and skinny kid for a long moment, deciding what to do next. Steve could probably mow most of them down with the machine gun in a matter of seconds, but Shane didn’t have the stomach to order their execution.
“Alright,” Shane said, holding his hands up in defeat. “Suit yourselves. We’ll leave.”
Steve gave Shane a, What the heck look. Shane put a hand on his shoulder and shook his head. Then he dropped through the hatch into the Stryker and crawled forward to where Tracy sat, in the driver’s seat.
“Turn it around,” Shane ordered, hoping he was doing the right thing.
“We can’t let these punks stop us,” Tracy snapped. “We got them out gunned, and their bullets can’t even penetrate our armor.”
“Yeah, but I’m not ready to slaughter them,” Shane countered. “Are you?”
“Well no—of course not,” Tracy replied. It seemed she hadn’t thought about the fact that they might have to kill a bunch of kids. Her brow furrowed and she blinked her eyes, refocusing on Shane. “But we have to get down there and shut the weapon off.”
“And we will,” Shane replied. “Just turn around, and we’ll drive a few blocks away, then take a different route.”
“Okay,” Tracy said, reluctance clear in her voice. “But you know they’re gonna come after us when we turn back.”
“Not if we can steer far enough around them.” Shane feared she was right, but they couldn’t just start shooting—they had to at least try to avoid a fight.
Tracy started the diesel and backed up a block. When she was well clear of the thugs, she caused the tires to rotate in different directions, pivoting the machine one hundred and eighty degrees so fast it made him dizzy. The Stryker lurched north. Shane grabbed his M-16 and stood through the hatch, worried the gang would attack the rear of the vehicle as they drove away. Still holding his gun in one hand, Shamus waved at him, smiling broadly with his gold teeth.
They drove over a hill and out of sight. Then Shane dropped inside and told Tracy to turn left and go ten blocks before heading downtown.
“You know they’ll still catch up with us,” Aaron yelled, reiterating Tracy’s warning when Shane sat down on the Stryker’s bench seating across from him.
“I think we’ll have a better chance of busting through them. They won’t have time to set up a barricade,” Shane replied, agitated by how both Tracy and Aaron naysaid his ideas but didn’t offer any other options.
What they would do once they made it past the thugs, Shane hadn’t figured out yet. It was going to be hard to get out of the Stryker at the capitol building if an angry mob surrounded them.
He crawled forward and looked at the GPS—four miles to the capitol building. Not very far, but Shane expected it would be the roughest drive he’d ever take in his life.
“Better go topside,” Tracy said. “Just saw a motorcycle cross the intersection up ahead.”
“If we run into any trouble, just keep driving,” Shane ordered. “Don’t stop until we make it to the capitol.”
“Got it,” Tracy replied.
Shane took a deep breath and crawled to the rear of the Stryker. He tapped Aaron on the shoulder and pointed at Kelly. “Take her place.”
Aaron nodded. Shane climbed on the bench and stood up through the hatch next to Kelly.
“I need you to go below,” he yelled.
“Why?” Kelly asked, her forehead crinkling in confusion. “I’m fine here.”
“Please.”
“What, you don’t think I can fight?”
“It’s not that,” Shane stammered. He’d insulted her, not his intention. “It’s just that…” Shane couldn’t find the words.
“Fine,” she shouted louder than necessary to be heard over the roar of the Stryker’s diesel engine. She glared at him and dropped below.
Aaron popped up a moment later, giving Shane a, What did you say to her look. Shane shook his head and picked up his M-16. Kelly proved herself in action; she could hold her own. His behavior was as much of a surprise to him as he supposed it was to her. It was an instinctive action to send her below, done without premeditation. He didn’t care if he got killed, but he couldn’t stand the idea of her getting hurt. Whether she hated him for it or not, that couldn’t happen while he was alive.
“Heads up!” Steve yelled, pointing in the direction they headed. He hadn’t moved from his position on the Stryker’s machine gun since they entered the city.
Shane leaned forward and saw a group of motorcycles cross an intersection two blocks down. He glanced at Aaron, clicked the safety off on his gun, and saw him do the same. They went three more blocks, Tracy swerving around deserted cars so fast that Shane got slammed against the edges of the hatch, adrenaline masking the pain of the bruises he sustained to his ribs through his bulletproof vest.
They swerved through another intersection. Shane glanced left in ti
me to see the word MACK on the chrome grill of a dump truck, the shiny, little bulldog hood ornament glaring down at him. It slammed into the side of the Stryker, knocking Shane off the bench, making him fall down the hatch and into the armored vehicle. He blinked in the dim interior, stunned. Kelly lay crumpled on the floor in front of him. The dump truck hit them so hard that it caused the Stryker’s engine to stall.
“You okay?” she groaned. A red stream flowed away from her split open lip.
“I’m fine—what about you?” Shane wiped blood off her chin with his thumb.
A deafening explosion went off before she had a chance to answer. It sounded like it came from beneath them and felt like the Stryker jumped into the air and slammed back down onto the asphalt. When the armored vehicle came to a rest, Shane scrambled to his feet and rose up out of the hatch, his M-16 ready. Aaron and Steve dumped rounds into the street behind the dump truck, and Shane heard pings and saw flashes as kids hiding behind cars returned fire. The Mack truck idled sickly just behind the Stryker, its front end smashed and its driver leaning forward with blood running down his face from a hole in his temple, a precision kill no doubt delivered by Aaron.
Steve pumped rounds out of his machine gun, yelling the entire time. Aaron had an eerily calm look on his face, like he was in the woods hunting deer. He lined up his sights on a target, smoothly pulled the trigger, and then shifted his gun to the next target, not waiting to see if the bullet hit its mark. A boy fifty yards out dropped.
Before Shane could level his weapon, the armored vehicle’s diesel engine grumbled to life. Tracy pulled the Stryker forward through the intersection. Shane couldn’t see the damage the dump truck caused, but the Stryker still seemed to be working fine at the moment. There was a large hole in the road and charred marks where the explosion occurred, and Shane realized the thugs must’ve set off some kind of bomb under the Stryker after they’d hit it with the Mack truck. Sparks erupted where a bullet ricocheted off the metal hatch next to him. Without really aiming, Shane returned fire at the cars where he saw puffs of smoke from the gangsters’ guns.
“Use short bursts,” Aaron shouted, slamming a new clip into his M-16. “We have to save our ammo.”
Steve clearly didn’t hear Aaron’s advice, still yelling and spraying bullets. Tracy got them across the intersection and onto the next block. The Stryker’s engine roared, and she drove it up onto the sidewalk to get around the cars blocking the road.
A flash came from inside the darkness of a second floor window of a building they passed, and Shane felt a sharp burn across the side of his neck. He put his hand up to the spot and felt something wet.
“You’ve been hit!” Aaron yelled.
“Hit?” It took a second for it to register—he had been shot.
“Go below,” Aaron said, his expression full of concern.
The Stryker pulled through the next intersection, and a barrage of gunfire made Shane duck inside before he could respond. Aaron and Steve dropped inside to take cover as well.
“Close the hatches,” Kelly yelled over the pinging of bullets hitting the vehicle’s armor. “Stay inside. We can shoot out of these little holes.”
Shane reached up and pulled his hatch closed, as did Aaron and Steve, muffling the sound of the guns outside. But when the bullets hit the Stryker, it sounded like they were inside a drum. Kelly shoved the barrel of her M-16 out of a gun port, and fired. His ears felt like someone set firecrackers off in them. Shane slid a narrow port open next to Kelly and put his gun through it. When he pulled the trigger, the gun’s report didn’t seem as loud, he assumed because he was going deaf.
Taking aim at a boy who held a shotgun on his waist about fifty feet from the Stryker, Shane pulled the trigger. He could see the boy’s eyes go wide, the fierce look on his face replaced by a limp expression of shock. Dropping the shotgun, the boy stood for a moment, an eternity for Shane. He seemed to stare into Shane’s eyes, suddenly appearing young and innocent. Then the boy dropped dead to the asphalt.
The boy’s slack expression seared itself onto the inside of Shane’s eyelids. Every time he blinked, the dying, young face was there, staring blankly at him. Shane’s rifle clicked—its clip empty. Unable to focus on another target, he pulled the barrel out of the gun port and slid the narrow door closed.
Sitting back on the bench on the opposite side of the Stryker, he gritted his teeth to hold back a surge of vomit. When he’d shot the juvenile delinquent in the gym with his crossbow, he hadn’t seen his face like that of the boy he’d just killed. And this kid looked so innocent just before he died; maybe he’d never really done anything wrong to deserve getting shot. How many good kids had been recruited by Shamus, kids who had the same reservations about killing that Shane did? Maybe they had nowhere else to turn, or the gangster didn’t give them an option.
Knowing he had to keep fighting, Shane crawled forward toward the green, canvas bag filled with M-16 clips sitting just behind Tracy. His ears ringing, he couldn’t hear very well, but he felt a disturbing change in the vibration coming from the diesel and knew something was off. He leaned over Tracy’s shoulder and saw the oil pressure dropping to almost nothing and the engine temperature climbing into the red.
“The engine must’ve taken a hit,” Shane yelled into her ear. “It won’t make it much longer.”
“What do you want me to do?” Tracy asked. Her expression frantic, sweat drenched her face as she jerked the steering wheel back and forth to get around obstacles in the road.
Looking out the slit of bulletproof glass that comprised the windshield, Shane could see Shamus’ gangsters running ahead of the Stryker, ducking into buildings and shooting at the armored vehicle. There had to be hundreds. If they broke down here, the gangsters would encircle them, wait until they used up all their ammo, and then crawl all over the Stryker until they found a way to break in.
“Get us out of here,” he ordered.
“What?” Tracy glanced back. “Shouldn’t we just plow through and try to make it to the capitol building?”
“We’ll never make it,” Shane replied, giving in to his instincts. “We have to lose these guys before our engine dies. Turn us around. Now!”
Tracy looked at him again, like she planned to object. But his expression must’ve convinced her, because at the next intersection, she spun the heavy vehicle around and gunned the engine. After heading a few blocks in the opposite direction, the pings of bullets hitting the armored hull diminished and then stopped altogether, the thugs seeming satisfied they had won the fight.
Kelly leaned back from her porthole with a confused expression on her face. She crawled over and shouted into Shane’s ear. “What happened? Why did we turn back?”
As if to answer, a loud, banging noise came from the diesel and an acrid stench filled the cabin. Shane knew the smell all too well. It was the odor of metal grinding against metal. There was no oil left in the engine to lubricate or cool it. The smell meant the overheated engine was about to seize.
The armored vehicle limped along for a few more blocks before a loud thunk came from the engine compartment, followed by grinding. The Stryker jerked to a stop, and silence fell over the interior, seeming thick enough to drown them after all the noise of battle.
“Damn,” Tracy hissed. The ignition system whined a couple of times. She tried to get the diesel restarted.
“It’s seized,” Shane told her. “The only way this beast is going anywhere is with a new engine.”
“Why the hell did we turn around?” Steve asked, sounding frustrated.
“If we hadn’t, we’d be stuck down there with all those thugs trying to peel this thing open and get at us,” Aaron answered before Shane had a chance. “Or worse, they might have lit the Stryker on fire and cooked us in it if we refused to come out.”
“Too bad,” Kelly said, leaning her head back and looking at the ceiling. “We had to be so close.”
“Yeah,” Tracy agreed, climbing out of the driver’s seat and
back into the passenger compartment. “We only had about two miles to go.”
“What now?” Aaron asked, looking at Shane.
“Now we get the heck out of this coffin before they come to see if we left town,” Shane said, trying to sound like he had a plan.
The truth was, he didn’t have a clue what to do next. But his four friends looked at him like they’d fall apart if he didn’t have the answers. As soon as he gave an order, a subtle look of relief came over their faces, and they grabbed their weapons and gear, climbing toward the rear hatch of the Stryker. His football coach told him once that he had the makings of a great leader, that he just needed the right circumstances to bring it out.
Too bad this hell was what it took.
The last one out of the Stryker, Shane raised his M-16 to his shoulder and took up position on the left side of the smoking vehicle, pointing down the street from which they’d just come. The others had done the same, all acting like he guessed seasoned soldiers would in the same situation. Again, he sensed they awaited his orders.
He glanced around, trying to think of the best move. The sound of motorcycles approaching from the south jolted him into action.
“Let’s take cover in there,” he waved his gun barrel at a ten-story building with a granite façade. “Quickly.”
Shane jogged behind the others, keeping his gun trained down the street. They made it into the building before he saw the motorcycles. He led the way up to the third floor, and they positioned themselves by the windows, aiming their guns down into the street.
“Stay in the shadows,” Tracy whispered, “so they won’t see us if they look up.”
The motorcycles’ drone grew louder, and then they appeared on the street below. Shane counted fifteen, but more could have been close to the building or down the block. They came to a stop around the Stryker and killed their engines. With guns aiming at the armored vehicle, they surrounded it and peered in the back door.
