5
I peeled away from the others, heading towards the fire. I stopped at the edge of the trees as I tried to figure out what had happened. The clouds were parting overhead, the moonlight giving the whole scene a pale blue glow. A massive vehicle was moving west of the trees, turning slowly towards us. The buggy was upside down, a hundred metres of open space away. Flames licked up at the sky around it, lighting the immediate area where Pig-Tails was spread across the ground. At least a bit of her was, her head and most of one arm were still attached. The buggy’s rear wheel was gone, the frame distorted like popped gum. The driver was crawling on his belly. I couldn’t see if he was injured, but he wasn’t going anywhere fast.
The vehicle on the horizon moved past the trees and turned in the direction of the buggy, excited voices rising above its rumbling engine. From their surprised shouts, they hadn’t been the ones to cause this. Their headlights lit up the field, revealing a charred crater a short distance from the buggy, chunks of earth all around it. The dumb fuck had driven right over a mine. He’d saved himself and positioned the girl over the explosion as he steered to avoid it.
The bandits’ approaching vehicle was a rolling fortress, a school bus covered with corrugated iron, a couple of crow’s nests on top with the barrels of massive weapons sticking out. The thing must’ve housed a dozen raiders, half of them hanging out the windows pointing guns towards the buggy.
“Oh my God,” Mouth Braces gasped as she drew alongside me, seeing her friend’s remains. I clamped my hand over her mouth and held her close. I hissed, as the others caught up, “Not a sound, any of you.”
The bastards in the war waggon started shining torches around the field, scanning towards the trees. I told everyone to hide. They ducked behind tree trunks as the torches shone past us. The bandit bus stopped and the engine died down. Without that noise, their shouts became clearer.
“Look in the trees!”
Then came the sound of a horde of armour-plated gun-swinging punks jumping off the bus and running towards us.
“What do we do?” Granny asked.
The time for disappearing into the night without a fight had passed. I was okay with that. Realistically, those guns on top of the bus were the only hope of stopping them. I said, “Distract them. Kill anyone you can. I’ll take care of the rest.”
The first of the bandits reached the trees as a battle-ready muscle car pulled up near the bus, complete with over-sized wheels and an overcoat of what looked like boilerplates. Its rooftop searchlights dazzled our rooter driver, a bunch of the bandits already surrounding him.
A guy in home-grown armour, concealed in metal like a kitchen-ware knight, passed into the trees near Fat Walter and his kid. Everyone was rigid, little hope of them taking care of him. The bandit swept his machine gun from side to side, mounted torch lighting up trunks and branches, but he somehow missed the father and son. He crept on as his mate walked by me.
I holstered my pistol and drew my knife. As this bandit stepped in front of me I jammed the blade into the centre of his neck. He dropped into my arms without much beyond a gargle, and I was ready to lower him with no one noticing, but discovered too late that I had a squeamish audience. Mouth Braces yelped like it was her own mother I’d stuck. Half a dozen torches turned my way. They let rip, shredding the trees, and I clung to my bodyguard as his armour soaked up the love. As bullets hit the guy the force flung me back into a tree and to the ground.
A moment later and the salvo was over. I was under a shredded corpse, drenched by his blood, and the lunatic gunmen were closing in on me. My team were hiding in the shadows, too terrified to move.
So much for the strength in numbers.
6
The earth exploded around me as they started shooting again.
I fired with the dead man’s gun, they fired back, and the woodland lit up in a nightclub strobe. Flashes of bandits flitting between trees, people falling, sprays of blood and splinters. I took out two men using their friend for cover, then rolled out from under him and ran for a tree. Two more came pummelling what was left of my body-shield, not realising I’d got out. It was all too damn loud for them to coordinate. I caught another chump in the neck as I moved again, shooting without aiming, and the sheer fluke of it made me shout my name in triumph, “Scully takes the win!”
A torch caught my face from the side. I dropped back just in time, felt the air of the bullets passing my face. Then came footsteps behind me, lots of them. I turned and found three brutes with guns trained on me, their crooked-toothed leader shouting prematurely, “We got him!”
The gunfire opened up again. The guys turned towards the sound, startled, the last mistake any of them made. One of them was cut down by an anonymous shooter, the other two I took care of, aiming high to avoid their armour and obliterate their faces. The guy at my flank twisted back from the distraction just in time to get a bullet in the eye. He snapped against a tree like a doll.
The woods were still, then. Smoke hung around us like fog, swirling between silhouettes of trees and making the light of the fallen torches look solid. A man stood about ten metres down from me, gun raised stiffly.
“This,” I told Walter, pointing a finger, “Is a magical Christmas card scene. Right here.”
I headed back to the treeline to take in the field. The lights out there weren’t moving. Most were pointing our way, shapes of people amongst them. I could hear Fat Walter’s unsteady breathing as he joined me, unsettled like he’d never had to kill a man before.
“You take my son,” he whispered, “Get him to his family in New Oak City. I’ll hold them off. Please. I’ll never make it.”
I wasn’t listening. With that many bandits, and their vehicles, no one was running anywhere, no matter how much of a distraction this selfless idiot could cause.
I squinted at the enemy through their glaring lights. They were lined up like a firing squad, maybe ten of them left. From the size of their war bus, I’d expected worse. Between the Ambush Arseholes and the Tree Invaders, I must’ve already made a serious dent in their army. They had two prisoners kneeling in the field in front of them, so it looked like diplomacy was on the cards.
“Tough guy,” the prat from the radio shouted, from somewhere in the middle, “You there?”
The famous Laslo Mayer, of the Plunderers, who no one had ever heard of, stepped into view, a rake of a guy in a long coat. His long-barrelled pistol, held at his side, was straight out of a comic. He walked up behind one of the hostages with a swerving, look-at-me gait. A theatrical type, he’d want to be heard.
I said nothing, and he let out an exaggerated sigh, “Too slow.”
The gun went off. The hostage kicked sideways, head popping across the ground. The driver’s body flew out of the glare, bounced once and came to a halt. Mouth Braces started screaming again.
“So we’ve got a girl,” Laslo sounded pleased with himself, approaching the other hostage. A slighter guy in a cheap suit. Business Trip. Laslo pointed the revolver at his head.
“Come out with the girl, and whoever else you’ve got.”
Business Trip was shaking, clear even at that distance. Probably pissed his pants.
I looked at Mouth Braces. Granny was whispering something in her ear that had quietened her. I was hoping it wasn’t promises that I was gonna save them.
“Tough guy!” Laslo shouted again, “No one wants to be out here hurting people on Christmas Eve. No one wants to die before they get to open their presents.”
The instinct to provoke worked my mouth for me: “I got a present for you right here.”
Laslo let out an unconvincing blackboard squeak of a laugh. He moved away from Business Trip, waving his gun about, “What’s that accent? London? Didn’t want to fly home for the holiday?”
It was a shit joke, and no one was laughing, so I didn’t say anything. A guy like this, not responding is about the most frustrating thing you can do. He paced, looking our way, trying to pinpoint where I was
standing. He said, “Alright, England. You don’t want to talk. You want to live? You’d better have more to offer than one girl.”
“Got a big cock too,” I replied on instinct. I use that quite often. It’s not even true.
“Well, we,” Laslo said, pointing at the war bus. “We’ve got a .50 Cal and a flamer.”
The message being they could level the whole area without coming near us. He looked cowardly enough to pull a dick move like that.
“I’m not going to pretend you can still get paid,” Laslo kept going. “But you can survive. Hand them over and I let you walk.”
Let me walk? They were every bit as amateur as those first prats in the street had looked. A homemade-armour brigade, playing at thuggery. He didn’t want a fight. In the face of this scourge that was supposedly plaguing Southern Indiana, Laslo and his men appeared to be an easily curable blight. I didn’t have the firepower, though. Just me and a bunch of scared civilians.
I gave him the best counter offer I knew, “You want to throw down? You and me. No weapons. No one else gets hurt.”
Laslo laughed nervously at this. Not a chance in hell. He said, “I’ll trade four people for your life, that sounds like a good deal to me.”
Mouth Braces was shaking her head while Fat Walter moved closer to his mute son, hands on his shoulders. The boy was still holding his pathetic brown box. I kept an eye on them as I tested Laslo, “We’ve been having a party. What if I told you they’re all dead?”
“Then you get to join them.”
“Take my son,” Walter whispered, “Please. Save him and I’ll go quietly.”
The boy was completely still. Mouth Braces went to say something but Granny took a hold of her and shook her head. She turned to me and said, “Can you protect the boy?”
“Tick tock,” Laslo called out in a sing-song voice.
All I wanted for Christmas, right then, was to punch his face.
“Please,” Walter said again. “It’s this or they’ll kill us all.”
Granny took the initiative, shouting to the bandits, “There’s only three of us left.”
Laslo paused. He turned to his line of goons and said something to one of them. Needing to confer, what a joke. He turned back and said “Tough guy. Send out all three and you head south. You come back through Indiana, you die, hear me?”
“No no no,” Mouth Braces started complaining, seeing where this was heading. It was my best bet, if this lot kicked up a fuss they might get themselves killed, then there’d be no dealing. Granny tried to soothe Mouth Braces, told her things would be alright, told her to think of the boy. She said, “It’ll give him a chance to come back for us.”
I didn’t say anything to refute it. It couldn’t hurt to give them hope.
I shouted to the bandits, “You’re not gonna hurt them?”
“Of course not,” Laslo answered, voice softening as he sensed I was about to take the deal. “They’re worth more intact.”
7
Mouth Braces left with nastily accusing eyes. She demanded, “You come back for us.”
We all knew I wouldn’t be coming back, though. The three of them walked out of the trees towards the bus as I watched. The kid kept quiet, unmoved, like a little sociopath.
Laslo waltzed out, careful to keep the civilians between him and me. He started looking them over. At a closer distance, he was even more flamboyant than I’d thought. His thin beard clung to his face in immature patches, like spider-web. He had long hair, gold chains around his neck, a chest of gaudy brooches and bracelets halfway up one arm. His pistol was a polished chrome revolver, gimmicky as hell. The guys flanking him weren’t much better, machine guns painted with dumb symbols, hats like pirates; one guy even had an eye patch. They belonged in a pantomime.
Laslo shouted, “You didn’t say one of them was old.”
“Didn’t ask, did you?” I told him. I pushed the kid and whispered, “Move. Quiet as you can.”
Laslo focused on Fat Walter, nodding with satisfaction, and said, “Oh yes. You’ll do.” He pointed his gun down the treeline, back to where I’d been standing, and shouted, “We could use a man like you.”
“Shove it,” I called back, already sneaking through the trees, “Hire someone that just butchered a bunch of your men? You’re not the sort of guy I’d wanna work with.”
Branches broke under the feet of the kid as he moved ahead of me. Laslo and his boys were close enough to know the noise wasn’t near my voice, then. I cursed as they looked our way, the kid staring back at me, knowing he’d done wrong.
“Tough guy,” Laslo said warily, “If you’re holding out on me-”
Mouth Braces kicked off. She twisted and screamed my way, “You bastard! You fucking bastard, how could just leave us, you said you’d help!”
She squirmed away from the bandits, making for the trees. I watched for a second, caught a look in her eye that told me to move, get away. The butt of a gun caught her face and knocked her down. I shoved the kid ahead of me as they started to defuse the commotion, Laslo yelling at his men.
The kid was looking back towards his dad as the bandits started bundling their prisoners towards the bus. I caught a twinge of sadness, finally, in the boy’s eyes. He whimpered, “Are you going to help them?”
“Not now,” I told him.
8
We headed south, as the bandit wanted, along the edge of the road. I scanned the vast, flat, boring countryside as we walked. What a place to end up with no wheels and a dumb kid, whilst my mates were getting blitzed back at the Shack in New Oak. A few minutes down the road, with the bandits’ vehicles having disappeared on their way north, back towards the rooter, the kid finally revealed he was fretting, behind his eerie calm. “What’s going to happen to my dad?”
I gave him the honest answer, “Nothing good.”
“You’ll get him back in time for tomorrow, won’t you?”
I gave him a look like he’d vomited from his ears, “You simple or something? It’s okay if you are, just tell me so I know.”
The boy stopped. He folded his arms to show how serious he was, and said “He has to be there. He’s been talking about it for months. I’m not meeting Auntie Lee on my own..”
“Jesus kid, take notes. Your dumb son of a bitch dad just paid for our lives with his.”
The boy bit his lip, arms unfolding. He knew it, of course, but he didn’t want to process it. He tried to reason, “He needs to be there…it’s Christmas. When people are happy. All people. Together.”
“No,” I said, “People with good lives have good Christmases. Poor pricks who’ve been suffering their whole lives don’t. Don’t worry though, you’re in the majority now.”
“Dad told me,” the boy said quickly, “He said everything would change at Christmas!”
“Well that was true, I guess.”
And that’s how I made a kid cry on Christmas Eve. Fists tight, eyes trembling with tears as he tried to hold it in, panicked elk noises trapped at the back of his throat. Punching him, as I’d do to end a grown man’s blubbering, seemed wrong. I reasoned, “With or without your dad, we need a motor, right? So first we’re looking for a ride. Okay?”
He stopped crying. I pointed over towards a barn in the distance and said, “We’ll start there.”
Before he got a chance to protest or negotiate or anything I tore away. He called out for me to slow down, but he ran, too.
By the time I reached the barn, he was struggling to follow, wheezing to regain air. That’d stop him crying for a while longer. I went to the front of this place, another burnt out hint that someone used to live here. Then I saw something weird on the horizon, rising in a silhouette against the night sky.
The boy came up behind me, completely out of breath. Before he could start whining again, he stopped and saw what I was looking at.
“What is that?” he asked.
“Ever heard of a roller coaster?”
There’s a lot of abandoned theme parks sprea
d across the former America now, all as creepy as you’d imagine. In the early days of the peace, bandits hid in them for the kitsch, but soon realised actual towns are more comfortable than fake ones. The result being theme parks got abandoned twice over, the second time with booby traps and dismembered body parts left behind.
I had no desire to go through this one, I just wanted the cars sitting outside. They were laid out in a staggered zig-zag pattern, though. Like someone had set up a gauntlet. I approached an old Chevy and hesitated, looking at the door handle. There was something attached to it, running down under the car. A wire.
“My dad said everyone used to enjoy Christmas,” the kid interrupted my investigation. “Even people who say they didn’t.”
I had nothing but bad words to say to that, so didn’t respond. I backed away from the trapped car, towards the road we’d entered from. I didn’t bother to explain, and the kid didn’t ask. His mind was on other things, “Are your family in New Oak City, too?”
I said, “Don’t you know better than to ask about people’s family, kid?”
He asked, “Why?” I ran a finger under my throat, figuring he’d get that. But he said, “You’re smiling.”
“All the family I ever needed was people I don’t mind drinking with,” I said.
“That’s sad,” he told me.
Again, my mouth reacted before my mind, not the most eloquent response: “You’re fucking sad.”
He shut up.
We passed a medieval castle on the side of the road, one of its turrets shattered across the ground like it had been hit by a low flying plane. Behind the castle façade, which was a metre or two deep, was a long low building with a triangular roof like a greenhouse. A partially charred sign at the front read Call Center.
A Most Apocalyptic Christmas Page 2
