by Alan Janney
“Wait, why can’t you walk?”
“Outlaw. Focus,” Samantha ordered.
I focused just in time to witness a shift in the crowds. They started screaming and running. That can’t be good. They flew past me. I pulled the bike into the shelter behind a car, out of the stampede. Beyond the fleeing mob, in the light of a streetlamp, I caught sight of men in masks. Four of them calmly approached, carrying guns and axes.
“Bingo. Four masked gunmen heading north,” I said.
“Don’t let them see you.”
“Too late,” I said and I dove behind a blue Honda Accord. They opened fire with pistols, unloading into the car from a range of fifteen yards. Civilians screamed, cowering anywhere they could.
PuckDaddy asked, “Were those gunshots?”
“Yes!” I shouted. “And they’re aiming at me! And I hate it!”
“The war has begun.”
“Stop being dramatic! Now what do I do?”
“What do you mean?” PuckDaddy asked. “You’re the Outlaw. Kick ass.”
“Chase! Stop screwing around and put those guys down,” the Shooter yelled.
“This is my first time,” I grumbled.
Clunk! Something bounced off the car and hit me in the helmet. A grenade! Where’d they get a grenade?! No time to think. I grabbed the explosive and hurled it straight up. I can throw hard. The grenade was a hundred yards in the air when it ignited. The four gunmen were staring up at the fire in the sky when I descended on them. Nothing fancy. I hit them each as hard and as quickly as I could. That worked. “Okay. They’re down.”
“Identify the explosion I heard,” Samantha said.
“Grenade. I think these guys are dressed like me. Or at least they tried.”
PuckDaddy mused, “Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.”
“They look stupid,” I said. “I hope I don’t look stupid.”
I took several deep breaths. I needed a weapon. The situation was escalating quickly. Far off to the east, two helicopters were roving southwards, their searchlights stabbing into Compton’s fringes. The whole world was converging on this section of greater Los Angeles.
I left my bike. I could move faster on foot and I didn’t want to ride into an ambush. I really needed a weapon! Something to throw. I found a box of heavy bullets in an unconscious gunman’s pocket. I took the bullets and tossed their weapons off the interstate. Then I pulled off their masks.
I said, “These guys look like they’ve been snorting something.”
Shooter answered, “Chemist’s new compound. Probably causes delusions, immunity to pain, aggressiveness, and other fun stuff. Don’t get close to them. Put them down.”
“Put them down? But they’re people. People unfortunate enough to be addicted to a drug.”
“Chase!” she shouted. “You’re entering enemy territory. Thousands of people, probably tens of thousands of people, have sided with the Chemist. They’ve put on masks, picked up guns, voluntarily snorted a drug, and now they’re hurting innocent people. You want to get Katie out? Worry about morality later. Ten thousand guys with guns stand between you and her. It’s you or them. It’s her or them. We need to get the Chemist out of there, and that means going through whoever gets in our way. Understand?”
“Yeah,” I said. “It’s them or Katie. I get it.”
I proceeded south steadily but cautiously, peering into cars for possible projectiles while on lookout for Chemist gunmen. Could there really be ten thousand guys waiting for us? That didn’t seem possible. Shooter announced that she reached I-105, the northern boundary of Compton. She met enemy resistance in the graveyard of vacated vehicles, all with punctured fuel tanks. Sporadic gunmen were waiting in the cars, but she quickly dispatched them. Still no sign of Carter, although we knew he was nearby.
After half a mile I’d scavenged a pocket full of bullets, two lacrosse balls, five golf balls and a baseball. Better than nothing. I hoped. I could probably take someone’s head off with the baseball.
“Be advised,” PuckDaddy announced. “Lakewood Police have engaged enemy forces on the southern side of Compton. Seven miles from your position. Sounds like the Police are outgunned. That should wake up the entire world.”
“Not our problem,” Shooter said. Nothing was my problem until Katie was safe.
Gunfire! I didn’t see the guys laying in darkness underneath a semi-truck until they fired. Angry bullets snapped at the cars and ripped through the air. I fell back.
“More contact,” I reported. I pulled out a lacrosse ball, crouching in the safety provided by a Toyota’s wheel well.
PuckDaddy said, “Lots of guys in masks heading your way, Outlaw, pouring in from the next exit. Dozens. You’ve been marked. I’m watching them on satellite.”
Squeezing the ball, I grinned. “It’ll be a bowling alley.”
I was already throwing as I rose. The red ball ricocheted hard off a guy’s face with a hollow ‘Thunk’ sound and bounced violently under the trailer. I didn’t want to kill anyone, but that ball was screaming.
I jumped over the car and got shot squarely in the chest. Boom! The gunner rose from the top of the trailer at the precise moment of my jump and cleanly picked me off with a heavy semiautomatic pistol. The impact wholly reversed my momentum, tossing me backwards. Before I landed, another shot connected with my helmet, effectively shattering it.
Owww! I gasped and prodded the dent in my kevlar plate. I felt like I’d been sacked on a football field. Shouldn’t it hurt more than that?
Maybe not. I’m Infected. The Outlaw.
And I’d stumbled upon another Infected! No one else could’ve shot me twice that quickly. My helmet was a mess. The interior bluetooth headset was busted. I had another earpiece in my pocket but now wasn’t the time to switch. I pulled the helmet off, and then I got lucky. The Infected was a young guy, about my age. Young and stupid. He brazenly walked around the car, confident I was dead. His gun was twirling around his finger.
I didn’t have time to be scared and he didn’t have time to be surprised. I smashed the helmet shell into his jaw. The pistol clattered to the road and blood spurted out of his mouth. The astonished gunmen behind him opened fire again, firing wildly. I had enough warning to duck behind the car again. He didn’t. He caught bullets in the shoulders and in the back of his skull.
He hit the ground already dead. I looked away in horror.
“Oh jeez oh jeez oh jeez,” I repeated, trying not to gag at the ruined body.
I’m the worst hero ever.
I jammed the backup bluetooth headset into my ear and called PuckDaddy.
He shouted, “Holy crap, dude. I thought you died!”
“Almost,” I said. I was shivering. Gallons of adrenaline were surging through me. “I’ll be fine in a minute.”
“What happened?”
“Infected shot me. I’m okay. Or I will be in a sec.” I ripped open a trembling fistful of granola bars and shoved them all into my mouth.
Shooter asked, “What’s the status of the Infected?”
I choked out a muffled, “Dead.”
“My man!”
“He was just a kid. So young.”
“Outlaw, you gotta move, dummy. Gonna be be swarmed.”
“Okay,” I said, thinking. “Okay.” I didn’t want to get off this road. It was the straightest shot to Katie. But what about incoming guys with guns? I could barely think over the roar of the disease.
“Big explosion in south Compton,” Puck said. “Don’t know what it was.”
Just how much adrenaline did I have pumping? Didn’t that heighten my strength? Let’s test it out.
I squatted and got my fingertips under the Toyota Camry. “One two three,” I grunted, shoved my shoes into the ground, straightened my legs, and hauled up on the car as hard as I could. The vehicle flipped, landed on it’s side with a tremendous crash, and rolled into the semi-truck ten fifteen feet away. The last I saw of the hidden gunmen they were cowering again
st the oncoming Toyota that wrecked their hiding spot.
“Fun fact,” I said. “I can throw cars.”
“This is the best night ever,” PuckDaddy hooted.
That took care of a couple of them. Maybe. But dozens more were approaching.
Quickly I scavenged for busted car parts and used them to destroy every streetlamp within a hundred yards. I threw nuts and bolts and scraps of metal in streaks that ripped through the lights in a shower of sparks. My aim was deadly. There were still car headlights, but now I could hide in shadows. The playing field was level.
“Watch your back! Group of ten un-friendlies, just beyond that big truck,” Puck warned.
The Outlaw smiled. The night is mine.
I fell on them from the sky. The slowly advancing mob of poorly dressed Outlaws didn’t know the authentic terror stalked them until it was too late. I knocked them unconscious and kicked them down and jumped away from their bullets and landed on them from above and threw their own guns into their faces until it was over. They were destroyed. I crouched in a starburst of prone, immobile, wheezing, weaponless drug addicts.
I took a deep breath and said, “That might have been the best sixty seconds of my life”.
“Hundreds more, heading your way,” Puck reported. “Wow, where’d he find all these guys?”
Hundreds?!
I went hunting, stalking them like a bad dream. The Outlaw impostors watched their friends disappear with helpless inevitability, the shadows moving faster than they could aim. I landed on them, slid under cars in ambush, incapacitated them with flying debris, ran through clusters like a fiery bowling ball, and tossed them over the highway’s guard rails. They shot at nothing. They shot each other. Their bullets whined by, not even close to me. I was impervious within the night’s cloak.
Despite my impressive trail of destruction, I was losing the battle. More kept coming, a never-ending waterfall of evil. Eventually I’d be unable to swim upstream through the dark tide any longer.
“Okay,” I panted behind a school bus, momentarily alone. “There’s too many.”
“Outlaw,” Puck said. “I was watching. That was… indescribable. I have no words. You’re a wizard.”
“Counter productive,” I said, hands on knees, trying to catch my breath. “There’s always more. Violence isn’t the answer here.”
“Abandon the road,” Puck suggested. “Head east. It’ll take you longer but you’ll get there eventually. Puck’s your eye in the sky, Outlaw. Puck will guide you.”
It had been almost two hours since Katie’s phone call! I was furious and frustrated. I lowered the mask to my chin and shouted in anger. Really shouted! I roared. The sound rattled the bus windows and hurt my ears. I could hear it echoing for miles.
PuckDaddy called me. I answered and he said, “I think you shouted so loudly the phone disconnected.”
“That was you?” Shooter asked. “Shouting? I heard it way over here.”
“Where are you?” I grumbled. “Deep in Compton. Roving. Looking for the serpent’s head.” Her voice was hushed.
“I guess I’ll have to abandon the interstate,” I sighed. “It’s too popular right now.”
But I heard the helicopter before I moved. The beat of blades pulsed on my ear drums. Emergency medical and news aircraft were hovering far up in the sky, but this helicopter was close. There! It was skimming the interstate, maybe fifty feet in the air.
“That chopper is heading due south,” I said. Into the storm. Towards Katie. “And I’m hitching a ride.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Friday, March 3. 2018
Katie
I knew nothing about the Chemist. I hadn’t listened to Lee’s rants and I didn’t watch the news. But I knew him when I saw him.
A caravan of SUVs came rumbling out of the gloom. The pack of trucks drove with their lights off, presumably so they could travel in stealth. But what caught my attention was the man standing on the foremost Toyota Sequoia. The vehicle was traveling around twenty-five miles an hour but he stood rock solid on top, feet shoulder-width apart, holding a staff that was braced against the roof. He was tall and thin and he wore an old-fashioned trench coat. His long white hair was tied in a ponytail and at second glance he looked shockingly old. At least his face looked old. He appeared to be eighty? Eighty-five? WAY too old to be standing on the roof of an SUV. But when the caravan stopped near our bus he gracefully walked down the roof and jumped off, as a teenager would. He moved like a gymnast. Everyone on my bus was staring at him. His staff was apparently made of metal, because it sparked occasionally on the sidewalk.
We had pushed open a few of the windows to circulate air through the bus, having been imprisoned in it for over ninety minutes. One of my fellow captives was on a continuous call with a 911 operator, relaying everything we saw and heard but it had been an uneventful hour and a half.
Hannah texted me every twenty minutes to tell me how bored she was. I stopped replying.
I surfed the news on my phone. This act of terrorism had gotten world-wide attention. It isn’t easy to take a small city like Compton hostage. The police made several attempts at entry but they’d been rebuffed. There were thousands of guys with guns waiting for them. I saw our bus once from a helicopter’s point of view.
The old man with the staff approached a committee emerging from a nearby building to receive him. But he wasn’t an old man! Was he? He looked lithe and alert.
“Everything is ready,” the man said. It wasn’t a question. His assistants assured him that all was prepared. We pressed our ears against the window openings to listen. “Good. Alert the Sheriff. Inform him I will call an hour from now.”
He had a multi-racial retinue that jumped whenever he spoke. He sent them on errands to fetch spotlights and food and water and other things I couldn’t hear.
Three other individuals had arrived in the caravan but they were different. These three were unquestionably subordinate to him but they didn’t jump at his every word. They lounged against their truck instead of trailing him. Two girls and a guy. They looked young and fearless and…sinister. Instead of goofy masks, they wore battle fatigues. They were tall and strong and well-armed and one of the girls was absently juggling knives without looking. They terrified me. I started to tremble again.
“Walter,” the man with the staff said. One of the sinister three, a young black man wearing stylish sunglasses in the middle of the night, pushed off the SUV. “Arm yourself with the launcher. I anticipate requiring several rounds.” Walter nodded and walked to the rear of his vehicle. “Carla, take up position on the roof. Stay hidden. Carter is near. I want to know where. And I want to know who he brought with him.” Carla, an attractive black girl with braided hair, nodded and jumped onto the roof of a mini-market. Jumped! Our bus filled with gasps.
“The Outlaw was right,” I whispered, my breath fogging the glass. “There are others like him.”
The white-haired man with the staff walked back to his perch atop the Sequoia. Only now did I notice that a girl was sitting in the passenger seat. She looked my age, and she hadn’t moved. The man with the staff said, “Turn on the news. I am anxious to know if our masked friend The Outlaw has made an appearance yet! Him I’m eager to meet.” The girl inside clicked on the radio. Walter, now carrying heavy hardware, and the other sinister girl settled by the open window to listen.
Uh oh. Oh no. Was this just a trap for the Outlaw?? And who was Carter?
After that, nothing happened for ten minutes. The old man sat crosslegged on the Toyota, his staff across his lap, and he stared into the sky. That was all. Everyone around him looked anxious but he appeared to be enjoying the helicopter movements above. He was a very handsome man, for his age.
After a while the man glanced sharply to his left, peering down the road at something we couldn’t see. Twenty seconds later the rest of his posse looked in that direction too. A car was approaching. Fast! I could hear the engine roar.
“Don’
t shoot,” the man said and he stood up. “It’s the ogre. We want him alive.”
A green Hummer charged into the intersection and rammed the old man’s SUV, completely t-boning it! The collision was earth shaking, metal and glass erupting like a volcano. The white-haired man calmly hopped off the Sequoia just before impact and landed deftly nearby. Both trucks threatened to flip over but managed to stay upright.
As the vehicles resettled, hissing air and spraying liquids, the old man raised his staff and whipped it down on the Hummer’s crunched windshield. Again and again, and the noise was awful. A huge man bailed out of the driver’s seat just before the glass fully shattered.
I couldn’t believe my eyes! It was Tank!
The old man hopped easily onto the Hummer and smiled. “Hello, Tank,” he said. Behind him, Walter and the other sinister girl were helping free the passenger from the destroyed Sequoia. She was a thin and shockingly beautiful girl, maybe my age. And furious.
“Got a bone to pick with you, Chemist,” Tank said darkly, getting to his feet and dusting himself off.
The Chemist! The old man was the Chemist. I knew it! And then I knew with certainty that I was going to die.
“You wear gloves,” the Chemist noticed. “Just like Carter. How tawdry. Now listen, young man. Without a doubt, you are owed an apology. I attacked you mistakenly several weeks ago. I presumed you were the Outlaw. I apologize,” he said politely. “But to be fair and honest, had I known about your condition I would have ordered you executed instead of kidnapped.”
“You tried. Didn't work,” Tank growled. Someone tried to kill Tank? That’s terrible!!
“It was not me that tried to execute you. Most likely Carter,” the Chemist mused. “I cannot blame him. You’re a wild bull.” Without warning, the white haired man struck with his staff. He was fast but so was Tank. Tank caught the staff in his fist and yanked it. Instead of letting go, the man jumped over Tank’s shoulder and landed on his feet, still holding the staff. The Chemist’s skin was saran-wrapper tight, exposing all of his wiry muscles and tendons when he moved. Tank looked unnerved. This had clearly been a bad idea. One of the sinister girls had an assault rifle trained on Tank. “Remarkable. You are stronger than I assumed. Melissa, shoot him. I want to see what happens.”
