Dawn of Destruction

by Ronald Williams

  Shit. If Sam's heart had raised a notch, now it fell back even deeper into his gut than before. All he had was the name, gleaned from the lips of the man now lying headless directly behind him. One name, and three killers – one of whom he hadn't even seen.

  Sam closed his eyes. The only one he could remember clearly was the skinny guy who'd leaned over him, the one who'd knocked him out with the crowbar. The guy with the Mohawk and the neck tattoo. He took a deep breath and opened his eyes. All four men were staring at him intently.

  “He don't know,” Thomas said. “He's full of sh–”

  “Shortish,” Sam blurted. “But thick. All muscle, no brain. He got shot in the arm last night.” The words came out in a rush of wind. Ricky told us about it while he was patching himself up, the dead guy, Skeez, had said. Patching himself up. It had to be the one he'd shot in the arm.

  Sam waited breathlessly, all semblance of calm gone. He was beginning to panic. If he was wrong, he was dead. The men looked at him. Thomas glanced over his shoulder at the blond man, who in turn looked over at Tim. The younger National Guardsman watched all of them, still nervous.

  “All muscle, no brain...” the blond man said, then burst into a raucus laugh. “That's Ricky alright!” Tim joined him with a series of short, wheezy cackles. Thomas lowered his rifle's muzzle several inches.

  Sam felt like he might faint with relief, but he forced himself to laugh along with them. Dear God, that had been close.

  “Okay, officer,” the blond man said. It still came out as an insult, but there was no threat in his tone any more. “Ricky might still be with the crew at the Marriott, but we'll just go back and wait for him, whaddya say? No, no, keep those hands up, bub. I ain't askin'. If Ricky don't know you, I'll put a bullet in your head myself, after I knock every one of those white teeth out of it. Tim, run back and tell the boss we're bringing company. Larry, frisk the guy..”

  The young African-American Guardsman stepped forward, while the blond man turned back to the street and lit a cigarette.

  “How you doing, Larry?” Sam asked softly as the young man approached.

  “Been better,” he replied. Thomas looked at him with disgust and said, “Don't talk to him, Larr,” then turned and bummed a cigarette off blond-beard.

  “Place your hands against the wall there and spread your legs,” Larry said. He still looked nervous, almost ashamed. He would only meet Sam's eyes briefly before his own flicked away. Sam did what he said, but made sure to take a few steps deeper into the alley as he stepped up to the wall. Tim was gone, and the other two were smoking on the sidewalk at the mouth of the alley, guns hanging loosely at their sides.

  “You don't have to do this,” Sam whispered.

  “Not doing anything I don't want to do,” Larry said stiffly. He found Sam's hatchet and pulled it free of its duct tape loop.

  “I don't believe that,” Sam answered softly. “This is illegal. You'll be court martialed. You think when all this blows over, Thomas is going to have your back? He'll turn you in to save his own skin. You're a good kid, Larry. I can tell just by looking at you.”

  “You don't know anything about me,” the young man said with a twinge of bitterness.

  Sam glanced toward the street. Thomas and the blond man were laughing about something, their backs to the alley. Sam sighed.

  “Well then I'm sorry for this,” he said. In one fluid movement, Sam spun, knocked the rifle barrel away from his torso, and smashed an elbow into Larry's throat. The young man's eyes bulged. He gasped for breath wordlessly. Sam drove his elbow into his temple, and his bulging eyes slacked and rolled up into his head.

  Sam caught him before he could fall and slipped the rifle's sling over his neck, then laid him gently on the ground. The other two hadn't heard a thing. Sam eyeballed the revolver he'd dropped earlier, still resting on the dead man's stomach, but resisted the urge to grab it. He'd gotten greedy twice today already, and both times had almost gotten him killed.

  Instead, he slipped backward, into the dark alley, watching the two men until he was fully covered by shadow, then turned and ran with silent footsteps into the darkness. He was nearly at the other end before he heard their shouts ring out after him, and he was completely out of the alley before the first gunshot boomed.

  Chapter 8

  He was getting weaker. He could tell that beyond a shadow of a doubt. One of his stiches had come loose when he'd attacked Larry, and the side of his gray t-shirt was now spotted with blood. He hadn't had a sip of water in nearly twenty-four hours, let alone food.

  The two men, Thomas and the blond gang member, had tried to chase him, but he'd easily slipped away. All in all, it hadn't been a bad exchange. In trade for his rusty hatchet, he'd gotten an M16A1 assault rifle with 30 rounds in the magazine. And a name and location: Ricky, who the blond guy said was at the Marriott.

  Sam didn't need his police experience to know where the Marriott was. Everybody knew the high-rise hotel at the center of the city. It was another long shot, but so far Sam's luck had been good. Almost too good, he knew. It was time to start acting a little smarter. Linda would expact that from him, at least.

  He angled toward the hotel, but as he moved, he dug periodically into the public trashcans at every street corner. Most had already been scavenged of anything edible, but in one of them, he found an old cheeseburger. It had been eaten halfway and then balled up in the wrapper and tossed. Sam grimaced as he peeled back the paper. The cheeseburger was smushed into a ball, with mold already forming on the bun. He poked at the beef patty in the center, and in the moonlight saw a small white grub wriggle away from his finger. He would have gagged, but nothing in his stomach was working the way it should. All he knew now was hunger, thirst, and survival. This represented two of those things. Sam brought the burger to his lips, knowing at least not to sniff it, and bit down on it. Something wiggled on his tongue, and Sam forcibly shoved the rest of the cheeseburger into his mouth, chewing furiously to kill anything that might want to move, and swallowed.

  For a few moments, he did think he would gag and retch it all back up, but he eventually managed to keep it down. He was sweating. The small morsel of food sat like a lump of lead in his belly, and he was even thirstier than before. He kept moving.

  Three blocks down, another trashcan held a bottle of water with about two ounces still sloshing around inside. Sam drained it in a gulp, and stashed the bottle in the laundry sack still looped over his neck and shoulder. A block down from there, and he had to cut through an alley to avoid a fairly large mob with torches – torches! – trashing a designer clothes store. In another three blocks, he spied the Marriott rising over the surrounding buildings, its black shape outlined against the dark blue, moon-lit sky.

  Thirty floors. Maybe sixty rooms per floor, at a guess. Sam really had no idea how many rooms there were, but he knew it had to be a lot. More than a dozen entrances. It was a massive building, and as Sam covered the remaining blocks, he tried to guess where a focused band of looters like the ones operating out of the Helios Tavern would target. The kitchen? Most likely, but every room probably had a mini bar with water, snacks, soda, and alcohol. They might be combing the place floor by floor, grabbing everything. Unless Sam went through the hotel shouting for them, it would be like finding a needle in a haystack.

  Sam reached the hotel with no concrete plan and slipped through a broken window into the lobby. The area was dark and lifeless. For all he knew, Ricky had already left to go back to the tavern, and he'd missed his chance. At the far end of the lobby, past a few toppled stuffed chairs, he could just make out the check-in counter. Beyond that, a bank of steel elevator doors glimmered slightly in the ambient moonlight. The lobby was deathly quiet...and then came the tinkle of glass hitting the concrete outside, and a burst of gunfire.

  Sam raced back through the broken window and looked up, up the towering side of the building. A muzzle flash strobed through the night, followed closely by the boom of the gunshot. Somebody yelle
d, then laughed.

  Sam counted windows quickly. Fourteenth floor. That's where the muzzle flash had been. He sprinted back inside and angled toward the back of the lobby, bursting through the stairway door that stood just beside the elevators. He took the stairs two at a time, racing up the stairs in pitch black, using his intuition as much as the handrail to guide him through the darkness, , his metabolism feeding off the maggot-riddled half burger he'd eaten, burning energy. He was close, so close. Someone was joy-shooting out the window of a high-rise hotel. That kind of brazen behavior only fit a single profile he'd seen this side of the EMP: a Sundog.

  Fourth floor. Fifth. Sixth. Sam pushed through the pain in his side, pushed through the burning in his lungs. Ninth. Tenth. He had to be right about this. Had to be. In another twenty-four hours, he'd be shriveling up from the inside out from dehydration. His kidneys would start to shut down. He'd begin the long, slow process of dying. So he couldn't be wrong about this.

  Thirteenth floor.

  Fourteenth.

  Sam finally stopped at the stairwell door, his breathing coming out in quick, pained gasps. He pulled the necklace from his pocket, then Jeremy's ratty, crumpled baseball card that wasn't worth ten cents, and yet the boy treasured it like a shipful of Cortez's lost gold. Sam brought each one to his dry, flaking lips and kissed them, first the cheap, fau-gold of the necklace, then Ken Griffey Jr.'s faded, smiling face. If he made it out of here alive, perhaps some small part of their souls would be laid to rest.

  Sam put his hand on the doorknob. He turned it, pulled open the door…

  …and found himself face to face with blinding light.

  Chapter 9

  Sam was temporarily blinded by the light on the other side of the door, but his training kicked in immediately and he spun away from the doorway. Just in time, because a gunshot roared through the stairwell, almost drowning the surprised shout that accompanied it.

  Sam blinked rapidly, seeing dark blue spots, and pulled the trigger on his M16. His shoulder jerked with the recoil, and a three-round burst slammed into the wall beside the door.

  “Someone's here!” a voice shouted beyond the stairwell door.

  Sam dove to the floor and slid across the polished concrete up to the open door. On the other side, three feet away, he saw a pair of legs looming over him. He pulled the trigger again, aiming just above the legs, and was rewarded with a spray of blood. The man went down in a heap, gripping his crotch and screaming. The gas lantern he'd been holding clattered to the carpeted floor. Sam used the light to switch his rifle from three-round-burst to single fire, and then put a single round into the man's head. It wasn't Ricky.

  Sam raised himself to his knees, then stood up in a crouch, swiveling from side to side. The stairwell entered the middle of the hallway, and the pool of light from the lantern faded equally on both sides of him where the hallway stretched away into darkness.

  To the left, a door squeaked on its hinges. Sam scooped up the lantern and lobbed it toward the sound. Rifle fire immediately filled the hallway, sparks crackling off the flying lantern. Sam shot down the hallway after it, rifle pressed against his shoulder, moving low. The lantern thumped to the ground in front of an open door. Sam saw the toe of a boot protruding through the doorway. He fired one shot at the foot, then raised the barrel and put another round through the wall four feet off the ground. A body fell into the hallway, blood streaming from the chest. The man's head thumped against the lantern.

  Sam had been counting the shots as he went. Nine shots fired. Twenty-one remaining in the magazine. He liked his odds.

  “Axel? Mario? Who's out there?” someone yelled from inside the open room. The voice had a hint of panic. Sam froze. He'd heard that voice before. Baritone, but whiny at the same time.

  “Ricky?” Sam called from the hallway.

  Silence. Then, “Who's that?”

  “Your friends are dead,” Sam answered.

  “Who's out there?” the voice repeated.

  “I want you to say something for me,” Sam said. “I wan't you to say 'Skags had it coming.'”

  Another silence. This one seemed to stretch into infinity.

  Finally: “Jesus, you're that guy. It can't be. You're dead. I saw you die.”

  “That's right,” Sam said. “You saw me die. And then you saw my wife die. And then you saw my son die.”

  “No, no, no. That wasn't me, man. I swear. Zeke shot the kid. I told him not to. I swear. I wasn't even up there in the room.”

  “Then how do you know Zeke shot my son?” Sam asked calmly.

  Silence again. Sam didn't wait for it to end.

  “Tell me one thing, Ricky, and I'll go easy on you. Are you right handed or left handed?”

  “R-r-r-right.”

  “Good.”

  Sam swung around the doorway. A bullet embedded in the plaster over his right shoulder. Sam ignored it and walked into the dark hotel room. Another bullet thudded the wall even farther away from him. Sam saw the muzzle flash that time and aimed at the floor below it.

  BLAM.

  Ricky screamed. Across the room, bed hinges squeaked. Sam let his legs buckle and dropped to the floor, and this time he heard a bullet whiz passed his ear. Sam thumped to the carpet and rolled away from the doorway, straining his side as he did it. Ricky was still screaming, covering the sound of whoever was over by the bed.

  Why couldn't anything be easy?

  Sam had rolled into a small kitchenette by the feel of the linoleum underneath him, and he bunched his legs under him and rocked to his knees. He fired two rounds toward where he'd heard the bedsprings, then ducked and rolled again.

  Three rounds answered his gunfire, the bullets biting into the wall behind him. Then he heard running footsteps, a pause, and something slammed into him. He fell onto his back, arms up, and a hailstorm of punches whacked into his forearms.

  “Get him, Jace,” Ricky's voice screamed. “Get that bastard!”

  A fist hit Sam's face, and he replied with a wild jab in the dark. It crunched into something solid, and Sam immediately whipped his knee up against his attacker's back. The angle was wrong. His thigh just pressed against the man’s lower back. Another fist whaled against Sam's forehead, casting a kaleidoscope of shooting stars over his vision. Then another fist. And another.

  Sam's eyes were failing. He couldn't see anything. He felt his nose implode, felt hot blood stream over his lips. He dug his hand into his pocket. Another blow landed on his mouth, spraying blood and splitting his lip. The assault rifle hung uselessly at his side. The man's knees were pressed against the strap, keeping him from lifting it.

  “Kill him, Jace! Kill him!” screamed Ricky's voice.

  Sam felt hard metal in his pocket. He pulled it out. Another fist crashed against his already broken nose, sending pain knifing into Sam's brain. Sam gasped and tasted coppery blood rolling down his throat from his broken nose, filling his sinuses. He was going to choke on his own blood. He was going to drown in it. He tried to flail against his attacker, but his side was burning with pain, and his arm would barely move. Another blow, crushing his forehead. He just wanted to curl up into a ball and make it end.

  He imagined his arm going up, slapping the man's neck. And then...

  ...the man fell off of him. Sam felt like a three-ton weight had been removed from his chest. He sucked in air, metallic and sweet, then gagged He rolled over and spit out a glob of blood from his throat.

  Sam pushed the man all the way off of him, seeing the glint of his multitool jammed into his neck. Sam tugged it out, and realized that he hadn't even pulled open the knife tool – it was the corkscrew that had punctured the man's neck.

  Sam grabbed his rifle from the kitchenette floor and struggled to his feet. Ricky was still moaning on the other side of the room. Sam staggered to the hallway, grabbed the lantern from the floor, and walked back into the hotel room. He shut the door behind him. Walked across the room to where Ricky was lying on the floor.

  Shor
tish, but thick. All muscle and no brain. Ricky saw Sam coming and whipped up a handgun in his left hand. The shot went wide, and Sam kicked the gun out of his hand. Righties never could shoot southpaw. Ricky was wearing a tank-top, and a thick swathe of bandages were wrapped around his right bicep, where Sam had shot him in the yard the night before. His right hand was useless.

  “You're alive,” Ricky said in awe when he finally saw Sam's face.

  “And you killed my family.” Sam said. He shot Ricky's other foot. The man doubled up in pain.

  “Zeke! Zeke did it! You gotta believe me” Ricky wailed.

  Sam pointed the barrel of his rifle at Ricky's face. “What does Zeke look like?”

  “He got a eating problem. Real skinny. Got a dumbass Mohawk, like it's the '80s.”

  Creamed corn. Sam nodded. “Where's Zeke now?”

  “Helios. It's this bar, over on...”

  “Shut up. I know where it is. And what about the other person?” Sam asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You and Zeke, and I killed two. There was a fifth person. Who was it?”

  “Fuck you, man. Wasn't nobody else there.”

  Sam raised the rifle to the right and shot out the floor-to-ceiling window that looked out over the street. He dragged Ricky over and raked him across the shards of glass until the entire upper half of his body was hanging out the gap. He knelt at the gap beside Ricky's legs. Wind whipped Sam's hair.

  “Who was the fifth man?” Sam shouted.

  “NO fifth man, man,” Ricky screamed.

  “Who was he?” Sam slid Ricky farther out the window, gripping the collar of his shirt. A hundred and forty feet below, the asphalt waited in darkness.

  “You're crazy!” Ricky's eyes were red-rimmed in fear. “Just us four.”

  Sam held onto Ricky's collar and leaned back into the hotel room to grab the rifle. Holding it with one hand, he put four rounds directly into Ricky's left shin. The rifle roared against the wailing wind. Ricky's eyes went glassy, then refocused and stared into Sam's face.