by Chris Lowry
“If it's just me, you can take the guns and food back to the others.”
“I'm not leaving Hannah,” Byron argued. “We can move in under the cover of darkness, take out their guards with long range rifles and make them pay.”
“What if they have night vision?”
He tilted his head and spat.
“There's got to be a better way than just waltzing in,” Brian stepped in.
“There are probably a dozen better ways,” I told him. “But I'm working on a fast-moving front here. It's a lightning strike. I drive up to the front gate, ask to speak with the boss and offer him a two-ton truck full of weapons and food in exchange for our people. And the bus.”
“When they say no? And shoot you?”
“I'm hoping he respects my audacity.”
“I'm going with you,” said Byron.
“Me too.”
Wasting time. The more we argued, the later it got, which put me another day behind. I could just take the truck back to the fort, pick up Anna and leave it all behind. We could scavenge food and supplies, heck I could turn the back of the pick up into a camper so we would be safe at night. Like a travelling fort.
But I wasn't going to abandon them, or I would have done it.
Instead of bickering with myself or with them, I nodded.
“Put samples in the back of the pickup,” I told them. “Food. Weapons. Uniforms. Then get the deuces out of the way. Hide one near here. Send the other back to the fort. With all of the boys.”
“What about the soldier?”
“Him too.”
We loaded the truck then hid one and watched the other drive away before we settled into the cab of the recruiters pick up and started for the gate.
I saw activity on the stands the moment we pulled out of the woods. The dots that were guards at the top multiplied as more heads popped up, more guns trained on us.
I kept the speedometer locked at ten miles an hour, a tortoise approach to the guarded fence. I slowed as we approached and crunched to a stop as two armed men stepped out of the shack next to the fence.
It had formerly been used by the parking lot attendants to collect cash for race day so there couldn't be more than two inside. With that many, it was still a tight fit.
They had to like each other. And use breath mints.
I leaned my head half out of the open window.
“We've got a delivery.”
That confused them.
“You guys didn't order take out?”
More confusion. One of the men played with a radio on his belt, the kind cops used with the microphone clipped to their collar.
We didn't even check for communications back at the armory and I felt a twinge of disappointment.
“We didn't order no take out,” said the radio man.
“Did you check on it? I mean you really called that in?”
“Course I did.”
“I was kidding,” I told him and showed him both hands. “We brought food. And guns.”
They spread on either side of the truck and peeked in back. The radio man got back on the airwaves and called it in.
“This isn't a charity run,” I told him while he was talking. I wanted whoever was on the other end to hear. “We brought to trade.”
I eased off the brake and let the engine coast us toward the gate. Both of them jumped back and raised their weapons, but they weren't told to fire on us, just on Z or anyone attacking.
Nobody ever shoots the delivery guy.
Radio man scrambled up to the gate and hauled it open.
“Keep going to the inside track,” he relayed instructions. “They'll meet you there.”
I gave him a salute and kept moving back up to ten miles per hour. Up closer we could see the rifle barrels over the back of the stands and the heads behind them.
A group of men opened the inside gate that led to the infield and we drove through the shadow of the stands, under a tunnel and out into the sunlit clearing surrounded by a mile of black asphalt.
Overalls was waiting. So was Bubba. Guess they survived the run in with Malik, but they didn't look happy to see me.
Bubba raised his rifle.
This could go down a couple of ways and I really wished Brian and Byron had stayed out of the truck. I could see a whole Bonnie and Clyde scenario when they encountered the sheriff in Louisiana, or that scene in the Godfather where Sonny Corleone gets caught at the toll booth.
We were all armed, and could fight back.
But the hillbilly army was surrounded by civilians. Curiosity built the crowd.
“Bubba!” I shouted. “We brought you something.”
I stopped the truck and opened the door.
This is when it would happen. One itchy trigger finger would start a cascade of bullets. I left my rifle on the seat but kept the pistol at my waist. I reached in the back of the truck and lifted up a can of industrial sized pudding.
It was the closest at hand.
“Food!” I shouted.
The crowd surged forward.
Now the hillbillies were concerned with crowd control and not our imminent demise. Or more concerned.
Then a golf car drove up with a giant man behind the wheel, like he was two sizes too big. He was dressed in a suit, shiny black shoes and a matching shiny black pistol under his armpit.
He had blond hair, a smile as big as his head and looked like he was perpetually happy.
Except for the eyes.
They were as haunted as mine.
He nodded to me, I nodded to him and there was that moment where when you meet someone, you were sure you could be friends. Sometimes it was a shared laugh, or an inside joke, or a fondness for a football team.
“Pudding?” he boomed and the crowd stepped back.
Or at least they didn't rush forward.
Bubba glared at him. So did Overalls.
When a second golf cart rolled up filled with what could only be described as bodyguards they stopped glaring. At least so overtly.
“You came here to trade pudding?”
I set the giant can on the side of the truck and lifted up a twenty-five-pound pouch of meat with red sauce.
“And Spaghetti.”
He smiled.
“Pudding and spaghetti? Now that's Italian.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
His bodyguards disarmed us and we rode with him in the golf cart back to an elevator powered by a generator that carried us up into the box section. He led us into a box that was luxuriously appointed with living, office and sleeping areas. One wall was solid windows and looked out over the track. There was a long bar against one wall and his bodyguards leaned against it.
“I respect your audacity,” said Wynn.
He held out a well-manicured hand that peeked from a pinpoint cotton sleeve under a tailor-made suit. I shook it.
“You look like a rough customer to deal with. Perhaps we should just shoot you to avoid the trouble.”
His bodyguard took a step forward and lifted his pistol. I bounced forward on the balls of my feet as it was rising, dropped into a stance and kicked him as hard as I could in the nuts.
I caught the gun as he dropped it and pointed it at Wynn.
“It's no trouble at all,” I told him.
Wynn smiled and clapped his hands together like he had just seen a show on the Strip. The corner of his eyes crinkled in joy.
“That was magnificent,” he crowed. “It's like you practiced it.”
His man was turning red and purple on the floor. I might have popped something.
“You come in here, offer a trade and here I am thinking you are negotiating from a position of weakness,” he turned to one of the other men in the room. “Get us a couple of drinks, will you?”
The man with no neck nodded and put his pistol back into a shoulder holster. He went over to a bar and began pouring drinks from a single decanter.
“It's a rough world out there,” said Wynn as he took one from the bodyguard. I to
ok the other. “Only rough men can survive.”
He toasted me.
“And rougher men lead,” I toasted back.
He nodded at the compliment.
I watched him sip first, then took a sip myself. Warm, smoky.
“Knob Creek,” he said. “I had some boys go grab all they could from a distributor nearby.”
“We ran into some of your boys earlier this week.”
“I sent them on a gathering mission and they did not disappoint. I hear you had something to do with the depot.”
“They told you that?”
“I have my eyes and ears everywhere.”
I nodded. How much did he know about the armory? Or Overall's plans?
“Of course it's tougher to see and hear now. We lost contact with Chicago, of course. New Jersey first, then Vegas. They all fell. I turned to my compatriot and asked a question. This question was where could we marshal our forces for the greater good?”
“And you chose the speedway.”
He shrugged his massive shoulders and made his chins giggle.
“It is a Mecca for the masses down here,” he smiled. “I had a box which limited access, it's behind layers of security and the track makes for great walls.”
He was smiling so big because he was right.
“You have a nice set up,” Byron said beside me.
His eyes roamed all over the track spread out below us, taking in the features, the armed men on the towers on each corner, looking out over the clear grass parking lots that stretched three football fields in length in each direction.
The sections in the infield full of tents and campers, each a small village on its own.
The food section, the medical, the daycare and play yard.
“I appreciate your appreciation.”
“My people came to save the children,” said Brian. “Your army captured us and told us horrible stories about what you were doing to them.”
He gestured through the window.
“You see the children.”
Brian nodded.
“Do they look well cared for?”
Below us, a group of twenty or so kids played in the daycare area. It was cordoned off with a fence, a smiling couple standing at the gate to control access, three more young adults inside with the children. Laughing. Playing. They didn't look like they were being treated bad.
They looked like the kids at our camp watched over by Hannah and Harriet.
“Then we can take our people and go.”
Wynn nodded and took a sip of his whiskey.
Or bourbon. I think if it's over twenty dollars a bottle it's called bourbon.
“I wish it were that simple.”
“It is,” I assured him. “We brought you food and guns. You let our girls come back home.”
“You brought enough food and weapons to let you go. I'm afraid there's just not enough for all of you to go.”
The corners of his eyes wrinkled again.
Wynn was a business man, and he was hoping for more. He said it himself, negotiation.
I sipped my whiskey/bourbon and rolled it around my tongue. Damn it was good. I tried to avoid the brown stuff because it made me aggressive. I would need to be careful because we hadn't had food in a while and drinking on an empty stomach was a recipe for killing everyone in the room.
I had a plan for it, I just didn't want to execute.
Yet.
“What if I said we had a truck full of food and weapons and clothing to cover everyone in the cold weather that's coming?”
“That would be a start.”
“Then let's start there.”
“You just got you and your two men let go,” Wynn sipped again. “Without the truck.”
The level of liquid in his glass stayed the same. The conman was trying to get me drunk so he could put his hand up my skirt.
I put my glass to lip, turned it up and let him notice I wasn't drinking either.
His eyes sparkled.
“That sounds fair,” I told him. “Except we're three people shy of where we want to be. I'll take your men to the truck we have nearby, and I'll stay with them while the rest go home in the bus.”
“You think you're worth three women?” he scoffed.
“Do you know how much the youngest could go for as a wife?”
Byron lunged at him growling. Wynn danced back. No neck drew his pistol and aimed at the boy.
He might have pulled the trigger until the gun I threw into his forehead cracked open a gash and dropped him like a bull in a slaughterhouse.
Wynn let out a long low whistle.
“I knew you were trouble,” he smiled and took a real sip of bourbon this time.
“I like you. Tell you what. I'm going to keep you around, and your two friends here because you keep dropping my men. I need replacements. The women can go home in the bus.”
I nodded.
“I accept that deal,” I said over Byron and Brian's objections. “On one condition.”
“Son,” said Wynn even though we were close to the same age. “I like negotiating but there is a time to stop.”
“I can get you more guns, more food, more uniforms.”
He paused.
“I'm listening.”
“I'll take six of your men back to the armory, refill the truck and they'll know how to get there and access the supplies, and we leave in the truck.”
Wynn laughed out loud.
“Let me get this straight, you come in here, leave with the bus, your women, and your men in the truck I was negotiating to get and all I get is all the supplies in the armory?”
“It's what you wanted. Food for your people. Weapons to protect them. There are clothes there to cover them, more trucks if you need them so I assume fuel for the generators.”
“I like that plan,” he said. He had to try for one more tactic though. I could tell in the way he was holding his breath.
“But why don't I just kill you and we take it all?”
I nodded to the men behind him. One was bleeding out on the floor with a gash in his head, the second was finally catching his breath but he was out of the fight if there was one.
“I think the better question is why don't you survive.”
Wynn glanced over his shoulder at the two fallen men and the others arrayed behind him. They were loyal, maybe tested. But looked soft.
His eyes crinkled up and he held out his hand again.
“Damn I wish you were working for me.”
We shook.
“But your friends stay here until you get back.”
I thought he might play it that way.
“Can they at least see their wives?”
“I'll escort you all down myself.”
And he did.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
I saw Brian and Byron reunite with Hannah and Peg. Harriet saved her best glare for me, then Wynn led me to Overalls and his squad.
“Go with him,” he ordered. “Get the rest and bring it back.”
He turned back to his golf cart and missed the look Overalls shot his way.
“He can leave half these men here,” I told Wynn's back.
Dividing them up.
Wynn turned.
“You don't need them all?”
“Not on the first run,” I said. “You can send them tomorrow once they know the way.”
Before he agreed, I started pointing.
“Bubba, you and you,” I counted out three more of his men. “Stay.”
“You ain't giving the orders,” Overalls growled.
“But I am,” said Wynn. “Go get my guns. Go get my food.”
He waited.
Overalls glanced at the five men he had left and waved them toward the truck.
“Go on now. Get,” he barked.
They climbed in the empty truck bed and I stepped in front of Overalls to take the wheel. I could hear him grumbling as he walked around to the passenger side.
I cranked the
engine, dropped it in gear and took off before they were settled in back, before his door was shut. They howled as they fell over each other, dropped one of the rifles over the side in exchange for hanging on tight. Overalls cursed.
I didn't slow down as we barely cleared the track gate. They must have radioed the guard shack because they had it wide open when I roared through a few seconds later.
“Why you in such a damned hurry,” Overalls yelled over the wind through the window.
His gun was pointed at me across his lap and I didn't like it.
“Racing daylight,” I told him.
He glanced at the sky, looked at the watch on his hand.
“We got time.”
“I'm getting my people home before dark.”
“Buddy,” Overalls growled. “You ain't making it outta this alive.”
He moved the gun. I jammed the pedal lower and raced up to ninety. It was stupid fast, but I'd been on this road today.
There were no wrecks to navigate around, nothing but a straight shot until we turned north into camp. But he didn't know that.
“Slow down,” he grunted, wide eyes on the road.
A Z shambled out of the ditch and in our path. I plowed into it like a deer, scattered the bones and guts across the hood and dropped black gore and goo into the truck bed as it bounced off the top of the truck.
I tried not to laugh at their screams in the back.
Even Overalls snickered a little.
I slowed when we made the turn and raced for the armory gate. We stopped in front of it and the guy who had a broken nose from our earlier encounter jumped out to wheel it back.
The yard was full of dead Z, flocks of crows and ravens arguing loudly over who got what tidbit and morsel of flesh. It was a medieval scene out of a Poe nightmare.
“Who killed all them?” Overalls stared.
“I did.”
He didn't have to know the truth.
I drove the truck toward the brick building and did a K turn to back it in.
“Drop the tailgate boys,” I told them as I hopped out.
“When we going to kill this asshole?” Nose whined.
“When we done,” Overalls promised.
I opened the door to the armory and jumped back.
They scrambled out of the way, five rifles aimed at the darkness, the sixth man hiding behind his buddies.
