On The Run

by Scott Medbury

  We watched as the line of vehicles sped past. For a second, I thought we were safe and then I saw one slow and turn onto the snow-covered grass strip that separated us from them.

  Luke and I craned our necks watch it.

  “He’s definitely coming for us,” said Luke unnecessarily.

  Sonny didn’t need any more encouragement and immediately planted his foot. We put some distance between us and them as the Hummer slipped and slid across the grass before finally skidding back onto the tarmac. The truck’s engine whined in protest at Sonny’s heavy foot and maxed out at 65 mph.

  The headlights of the Hummer closed the gap quicker than seemed fair and I found myself leaning forward as if trying to help propel the truck.

  The wind whistled through the broken windows. My ears were numb and I wished I was wearing a beanie and earmuffs. Miraculously, once it caught up with us, the pursuing vehicle slowed so it maintained about a two-hundred-foot gap between us.

  “Why aren’t they pulling us over?” I shouted.

  “I think they called for assistance!” Sony yelled over the howling wind. “There is another set of headlights coming up behind the first.”

  That explained it. They were waiting for the second Hummer before they ran us off the road. If their commanders had put two and two together, they would know we were the same truck which had busted up their roadblock and that we had struck again at the bar.

  I reloaded the empty chambers of my gun and Luke held his crossbow cocked in his hand. The rocket launcher was at his feet, along with the remaining two grenades.

  I felt a sinking feeling as the headlights of the second Hummer caught up with the first. The first one moved into the left lane and sped up as both vehicles began to close in on us.

  “There’s the ramp!” Sonny called.

  I turned back to the highway and was surprised to see we were closing on the off-ramp pretty quickly. Just another two minutes and we would make it.

  Sonny stomped the accelerator to the floor of the truck and managed to eke out another few miles an hour. It wasn’t enough. The Hummer in the left lane drew up beside us and matched our speed.

  Sonny twisted the wheel sharply, crashing into its front fender. Metal screeched for a few scary seconds and then the Chinese vehicle braked and slowed as Sonny veered back into his own lane, swerving this way and that to prevent the Hummer coming up on us again.

  His evasive driving bought us the time we needed and he waited until the last second before he took the turn onto the off-ramp without slowing. Luke and I gripped the dashboard but we were still thrown in the air hard enough to bump our heads on the ceiling of the cab. I heard muffled squealing from our people in the back.

  Sonny sped towards a set of blacked out traffic lights and slowed only slightly as he took a wide turn onto the two-lane road that bisected Lincoln and the freeway. The truck leaned sickeningly but righted itself with a heavy bump. Luke took a quick look back through his broken window.

  “They’re still hot on our tails. The good news though is their Hummers don’t have machine guns on the top,” he reported.

  I was thankful that he hadn’t thought of trying to take a potshot at them with the rocket launcher. We couldn’t afford to waste a shot – I was pretty sure we were going to need everything we had very soon.

  I was thinking furiously. We had to lose these guys or we were screwed. We couldn’t continue to outrun them, and pretty soon they’d probably call in air support. I made a quick decision.

  “Sonny, take a right into the next alley you see.”

  “Are you sure that’s a good idea? We’ll be trapped if it’s not open at the other end ...”

  “We have to try something, we can’t risk them calling in air support.”

  “Alright, what do you have in mind?”

  “Luke, make sure your rocket launcher is ready to fire. If we can disable the one in front, it will block the second from following us. Here, take this one Sonny!” I gestured wildly to the narrow alley coming up fast on our right.

  The tires screeched as he swung us into it and I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw that it was open at the other end. The truck narrowly squeezed past a large dumpster.

  “Pull up here!” I yelled.

  Luke and I jumped out just as the first Hummer pulled into the alley and he began to bring the rocket launcher up into firing position.

  “Wait! Help me move the dumpster first.”

  We heaved it into the middle of the alley as the second Hummer turned in behind the first. The lead vehicle screeched to a halt about fifty feet away and Chinese soldiers began to pile out as we ducked back behind the dumpster.

  I took a breath, about to scream ‘fire’. I didn’t need to. The launcher was already nestled against Luke’s shoulder.

  When the soldiers saw Luke, they stopped in their tracks and turned. One of them managed to squeeze off a burst from their weapon as they retreated; I ducked as bullets whizzed by and thunked into the dumpster. Luke didn’t flinch at the hail of bullets, and calmly pulled the trigger.

  The rocket launcher jerked in his arm and the grenade zeroed in on the front grill of the Hummer. There followed an almighty whump and a burst of heat as the front of the Hummer exploded, the whole vehicle jumping into the air a few feet before crashing back to the pavement.

  Without exception, all the soldiers who had jumped from the vehicle were cut down by the blast. The twisted, smoking wreckage of the vehicle now blocked the alley. I heard shots being fired from behind the smoking wreck.

  “Quick! Back to the truck,” I yelled to Luke. He looked a little dazed so I grabbed his arm, dragging him along as we ran for the truck.

  As we passed, I could hear voices calling from inside the cargo bay.

  “Stay down flat on the floor until I give you the all clear!” I yelled.

  Luke and I piled back into the truck cabin and Sonny had it moving before I’d even pulled the door shut. He took a sharp left at the end of the alley, causing the truck lurch treacherously again.

  Once more, I heard muffled screams in the back and was thankful I wasn’t in the cargo bay. Indigo would surely be regretting her decision to ride in back. If we managed to get out of this, they would again be a bruised and sorry group of people. Luke gasped audibly as the truck righted itself.

  “Are you okay?” I asked.

  Luke was a pale guy at the best of times, but his face was the color of ash now. He smiled ruefully at me and pulled his heavy parka open.

  “Honey, I forgot to duck ...” he said.

  My heart sunk when I saw the bullet wound. The round had taken him in the abdomen and blood was seeping steadily from the wound. Sonny took another left and Luke flinched. We were headed back to the main road.

  “I don’t think it went through, man.”

  He lifted his parka at the back and turned so I could see. He was right, it hadn’t. I felt tears sting my eyes. My best friend was shot and we had no way to care for him. Even gut shot, his crooked smile was still in place.

  “Don’t worry, Chief, it’s going to take more than a little lead to bring me down.”

  “Get something on that to staunch the bleeding,” Sonny ordered. “The first aid kit is in the glove box.”

  We turned right onto the main road and Sonny again floored the accelerator. There was no sign of the second Hummer, but I knew it was only a matter of time before they were tailing us again.

  I pulled out the kit and sopped up the blood as best I could. His wound didn’t seem to be bleeding too badly, thankfully, but I knew an abdomen shot was supposed to be one of the worst. I put two gauze pads against the wound and covered it with an adhesive bandage. Luke didn’t crack a joke, which told me how bad it really was.

  “We’re almost out of Lincoln,” said Sonny. “We need to dump the truck, it’ll be harder for them to trace us on foot.”

  I argued for a driving on, debating it would be too hard on the wounded, but, in the end, a pair of headlights in
the distance behind us won the argument for him.

  Again, luck was on our side. One of the last buildings on our side of the street was a three-story office building and we turned down the side street and then down into its underground parking garage. Sony pulled up short of the boom gate.

  “Jump out and put it up Isaac, I don’t want to smash through it as it will leave them a clue if they happen to look down here.”

  I jumped out and pulled up the boom gate, allowing the truck to drive past before easing it back down, and then followed the ramp down into the darkened garage. I joined Sonny and Luke at the back of the truck as they pulled the door up. We were greeted by a rush of questions and did our best to answer as we ushered our shaken passengers out. Thankfully, Indigo took my hand when I offered it, but we separated without saying anything once she was on her feet.

  Luke was surprisingly mobile considering his wound. He had been shot and was still trooping on – it made me ashamed of the groaning I had done over my bruised ribs.

  “I left the rocket launcher in the truck,” Luke said. “Sorry, I won’t be able to carry it.”

  “What’s wrong?” asked Brooke, weaving her way to Luke.

  “I got shot,” he said, the same way he might have said he’d stubbed his toe. He pulled his parka open.

  Brooke clapped her hand over her mouth and immediately began fussing over him as the others joined.

  “Don’t worry, I don’t think it hit anything vital,” I heard him say as I went to the front of the truck to grab the rocket launcher.

  Indigo came up to me and we looked at each other awkwardly as I put its carry strap over my shoulder.

  “Are you okay, Isaac?”

  “Yeah, I’m good how about you?”

  “Yeah, shaken but not stirred,” she said with a small smile, before we headed back to the others.

  My people gathered what we could carry from the truck and then headed to the rear of the small parking garage. My people. I think I had finally come to terms with the fact I had a new place to belong. Well, not a place exactly, but a family of sorts. It’s funny how adversity can bring strangers closer than blood.

  We talked quickly about heading as fast as we could to the tree line and then made our way up a set of steps into the lane behind the building and began walking. We froze in place just before we emerged from behind the building when we heard the engine of what could only be the second Hummer speeding down the main street. It passed our position speeding along the highway, its occupants assuming correctly that we were headed in that direction, but not realizing we had ditched our transportation.

  “They’ll be back before long,” said Sonny. “Once they work out they should have caught us up.”

  We continued to follow the road, sticking to the tree line even though the travelling was much harder. We had been trudging for about ten minutes when we heard the rumble of a motor, coming back down the mountain.

  “Quick, everyone down,” I yelled.

  We all managed to get down to our knees in the scrub and behind trees before the same Humvee that had passed us came back towards Lincoln.

  It was travelling much slower this time, the occupants obviously scanning the area as they retraced their path. It seemed to take forever for them to pass and I didn’t realize I had been holding my breath until my lungs began to burn.

  I counted out two minutes before I waved everyone to their feet and we set off again. There were a few farmhouses along this part of the highway, but they were few and far between and dwindled away as the road got steeper and gave way to light forest.

  Even with our wounded people and loaded up with what we were carrying, the walk up the mountain was not as bad as I thought it would be, but despite the relative ease, I could see Luke’s strength beginning to fade, even as he leant against Brooke.

  I moved in beside him and ordered him to put his free arm around my shoulder. He looked like he was going to protest but did as I asked. We walked on and I prayed desperately that the safe haven we had travelled so far for actually existed ... there was no backup plan.

  It had to be there.

  17

  It had begun snowing lightly when we arrived in Lincoln and now, as we trudged through the trees, our shoes crunching through about six inches of snow, it began to fall harder. That was when I heard the unmistakable sound of a helicopter coming from the direction of the small city we had left behind.

  I shook my head in resignation as we all stopped and looked back down the mountain and over Lincoln. Brooke pointed out the searchlight, which was sweeping from left to right as it followed the highway through the small city.

  Luke reached over, wincing at the movement, and tapped the rocket launcher.

  “You might need this soon,” he whispered.

  I nodded and we set off again, a little more purpose in our steps. I tried not to look back as the noise of the chopper got closer and closer, but eventually the sound changed slightly and I realized it was now taking a more direct route. Straight up the mountain.

  We were all puffing hard, both through exertion and fear, when we finally reached a sign that read Drake Mountain Ski Resort. We left the tree line of the highway and hurried across a long concrete bridge. The chopper sounded even closer now and, when I looked back, I could also see the splash of headlights illuminating the trees from road level. The second Hummer.

  Goddammit! We were so close!

  We rushed across the bridge and around a bend, and there it was. Our supposed ‘safe haven’. The ski lodge sat a couple hundred yards away in a natural depression. Its windows were dark; a lot of them broken. The lodge was clearly abandoned. Brooke began to cry softly and Luke cursed under his breath.

  Feeling as hopeless as anyone, I urged them on with Sonny bringing up the rear and shouting words of reassurance. Even if the safe haven didn’t exist, we still needed any protection the abandoned lodge would afford us.

  We had just made it through the open gates in the stone fence of the lodge when the chopper’s engine made a high-pitched whine as it picked up speed. They had spotted us.

  “Keep going!” I screamed at the others, pushing them ahead as it roared toward us. Luke and I turned to face the enemy. Sonny paused too, but I told him to get the others to shelter.

  “Be careful, Isaac!” Indigo called as she passed me. I looked at her, wondering if it was for the last time.

  “Help me get this thing loaded, Luke.”

  We squatted on the ground and I handed Luke the grenade. Even though clearly suffering, he deftly loaded the weapon and pulled out the sight before falling onto his backside, panting. He pointed at the trigger.

  “Don’t pull it too soon, and aim a little above the chopper ... the trajectory ... will drop after the initial ...”

  I didn’t hear the rest of his words. I turned as the chopper closed in. The bright circle of light from the spotlight trailed over the uneven ground, heading right toward us.

  I placed the rocket launcher against my shoulder. I looked quickly down at Luke in time to see him collapse face down on the ground, a bloom of blood soaking the snow around him.

  At the sight of my friend, a sob wrenched my throat and my eyes blurred with tears. I raised the weapon and took aim at the chopper as the distant screech of tires indicated the Hummer had also arrived. I didn’t allow my concentration to waver, even as the Hummer’s headlights illuminated the entire area.

  18

  I squeezed the trigger and was promptly knocked to my ass by the concussion of the blast. The weapon fell from my hands and sizzled in the snow beside me as I watched the trajectory of the grenade with my ears ringing. It flew at the chopper and… MISSED IT COMPLETELY.

  Frustration and anger burned through me as its fiery trail etched a line across the night sky before it arced back to earth and exploded harmlessly in the forest.

  The chopper pilot had veered needlessly away from the wayward shot and I was climbing to my feet as he steadied the aircraft; its spotl
ight found me. I’d had enough. I was done. I pulled the revolver from my pocket and stalked toward the chopper, firing shot after shot until the firing mechanism clicked on empty chambers ... even then, I continued pulling the trigger.

  “Come on!” I screamed up at it and waited for hot lead to tear me apart.

  That’s when the world exploded. Again, I found myself on my backside, staring dumbfounded as the helicopter, now in flames, began plummeting to the ground with all the grace of a brick dropped from a ladder.

  I registered the white clad figures running in from all directions, even the fact that one of them was carrying a smoking rocket launcher, but I didn’t pause to look more closely. I scrambled to my feet and ran back to Luke, falling over him just as the chopper hit the ground a hundred yards from us, throwing up debris and snow.

  When I felt it was safe, I started to climb off my friend and found myself staring into the muzzle of a machine gun. I looked up, half expecting to see a Chinese face standing over me. It wasn’t. It was a middle-aged American man. The first non-Chinese person over the age of sixteen in more than a month.

  “Do not move!” he screamed down at me, as I looked up at him with wide eyes.

  Behind him, the enemy Hummer screeched to a stop and soldiers began to pile out. The man standing over me didn’t even flinch and it became obvious why soon enough. The Chinese soldiers weren’t aware of the danger they were in and were cut down mercilessly in a one-sided firefight that lasted all of five seconds. The men in white camouflage immediately secured the area.

  “Throw down your weapons and place your hands on your head!” yelled a gruff voice from the direction of the lodge.

  I looked over. My people were placing their guns on the ground and putting their hands in the air as the men in white closed in on them.

  “Do it, now!”

  I could see Sonny still held his semi-automatic and I held my breath, not exhaling until he finally bent over and placed it carefully on the snow-crusted grass in front of him. I snuck a closer look at the man standing over me. He was armed with what looked to me like a U.S. military-issue M16 and also had the telltale haircut of a military man.