by JJ Zep
She turned back toward the yard. Juno was down, thrashing and convulsing on the floor. The man was down too, a crumbled smoldering heap, mercifully dead. As she would have been had she tried to scale the fence.
The remaining creatures, Minerva and Quirinius, were squabbling over the remains of the man. Each had hold of a leg and now they pulled, ripping the corpse in two, spilling its half-cooked innards into the dirt.
sixteen
They left Manhattan at fifteen minutes shy of ten o’clock, crossing via the Brooklyn Bridge. They were in Hooley’s beat up old Dodge truck (a vehicle Hooley called a classic and Joe referred to as a rust bucket, piece of crap). Hooley was at the wheel, Joe at center, Chris at the passenger door, looking out while Hooley and Joe debated the relative merits of the Yankees and the Texas Rangers.
“What do you say, Chris?” Hooley said, sparking him from his reverie.
“Huh?”
“Yanks or Rangers?”
“What do I know?” Chris said. “I’m a Mets fan.”
“Man loves an underdog,” Joe said. “Even so, I’ll bet the Mets would give the Rangers a good ol’ New York ass-kicking.”
“In your dreams Yankee boy,” Hooley said. And so they continued, to and fro, as the Dodge rolled along the rutted, litter-strewn streets, working the grid they’d mapped out. They stopped at a number of bars and speakeasies, a few of which ran regular fights. Most of the proprietors and barkeeps regarded them suspiciously, gave monosyllabic answers, claimed never to have seen Ruby.
By mid afternoon, Chris was starting to believe that Ruby had never been to Brooklyn, or worse, that Ferret’s premonition was right, and Ruby was dead.
“We’ll find her, compadre,” Joe said, and when Chris didn’t respond, “I know that look. We’ll find her.”
Hooley spun the wheel, taking them onto yet another street lined by crumbling brownstones, burnt-out wrecks at the curb, garbage and debris piled high everywhere, weeds warping and lifting the paving.
A redheaded woman in a dirty overcoat was pushing a shopping cart piled high with equally dirty blankets, working her way between the rubbish on the sidewalk. She kept the truck under constant surveillance as it rolled alongside. Something stirred among the blankets and a boy of about four, dressed in a faded Spiderman t-shirt, popped his head out. He grinned at Chris through a mouthful of rotten teeth. There was something else in the cart - Chris spotted it as the kid moved the blankets aside - rifles, magazines and what looked like a claymore landmine. Chris kept the woman in sight as they passed, saw her lift the kid from the cart and lower him to the sidewalk. The kid scampered into a lane running between the houses, moving as surefooted as an alley cat. The woman watched him go, then set to concealing her cache of weapons under the blanket before pushing off again.
“Not a lot we can do about it, compadre. Just the way of the world.” Joe had always been good at reading his thoughts.
“Is it, Joe? Why can’t we clear the rest of Manhattan of Z’s, why not Staten Island? That’d create space to take a lot more people in.”
“Ah, the Rosenthal Plan,” Joe said. “It won’t work.”
“Why the hell not?”
“How many Z’s you reckon there are in the wastelands? How many on Staten Island? Other than dropping a nuke on them, there’s no way that we can clear them out.”
“No way isn’t a phrase I’ve heard you speak too often, Joe.”
“Okay then, let’s say we could find a way to get rid of the Z’s, how are we going to feed all the refugees, power them up, maintain law and order? Most of these folks have been feral for over a decade, a lot of them like it that way. It’s a new age of savagery, compadre. We just happen to inhabit a little island of civilization in the midst of a wild and untamed land.”
“Chris?” Hooley cut in. “Left or right?”
“Take a left here,” Chris said. “We’ll start working the clubs along Atlantic Avenue.”
Hooley angled the Dodge into the corner, mounting the curb to avoid a deep puddle in the road. “Seems to be some kind of blockade up ahead,” he said as soon as he’d straightened the wheel.
“Yeah,” Joe said. “Surprised we haven’t come across one of those sooner. Like I said, feral.”
Hooley pulled the truck forward, running her at no more than five miles an hour. The blockade that he was talking about was a barrier of broken brickwork and twisted metal, including several wrecked cars. Chris counted ten men manning the barricade, all of them armed with automatic weapons, all of them with red bandanas drawn across their foreheads. One of the men was holding up his hand in a cop stop signal.
“Joe?” Hooley said uncertainly.
“Be cool. Just play along and leave the talking to me.”
Hooley brought the Dodge to a halt and rolled down his window.
The man approached the car cautiously, combat-walking, an M-16 pressed to his shoulder. At the barricade his companions had their rifles raised too, all of them trained on the truck.
“Howdy friend,” Joe said as the man approached the driver’s side window.
“I ain’t your friend,” the man snapped. “I ain’t your bitch and I ain’t your homey, so shut your hole and pay attention. I’m the one doing the talking.”
“Fair enough.”
“Where you from? The island?”
“I’m from Boise, Idaho myself,” Joe said. “How about you?”
“We dating? I look like I’m interested in your personal history? What I’m asking is where you’re coming from - today?”
“Is that important? Why don’t we just pay the toll and be on our way?”
“You hard of hearing feller? I asked you a question.”
“And I told you –”
“You done told me shit. Out of the truck.”
“Now, wait a minute.”
“Out of the truck old-timer, you too Forest Gump, and you tough guy. I have to repeat myself, I’m apt to get angry.” He turned and whistled and his companions scrambled down from their perch.
Chris slipped from the truck, leaving the AK behind. They were outnumbered and outgunned, a shootout would only end badly.
“Right, how about you gentlemen all line up in front of this piece of shit, rust bucket you’re driving. That way, we have to shoot you, we don’t go spraying the entire neighborhood, killing innocent bystanders.”
As if on cue, the woman who Chris had seen earlier, rounded the corner, her shopping card rattling along the creviced sidewalk.
“So what’s it gonna take?” Joe said. “How about –” He reached for his pocket.
“Stand down, feller! Stand down or we shoot!”
“Okay, okay, geez, chill Winston, just fetching my billfold.”
Chris realized what Joe was doing now. It was a tactic they’d used before, splitting the attention of the men facing them, drawing their focus towards Joe, allowing Chris and Hooley to get the drop on them. Except, in this case, it wouldn’t work. Chris had a 9 mil shoved into the back of his waistband, Joe, as far as he knew, was wearing an ankle holster, all of their other weapons were back in the truck. They’d have zero chance against the firepower facing them.
“Look,” Chris said. “How about we take a step back here, start from scratch?”
“You doing the talking now, tough guy?”
“Name’s Chris, how about you?”
“My name’s fuck you,” the man said, eliciting sniggers from his crew.
Chris let it slide. “We’re looking for a girl, think she might have come this way – fifteen years old, about five four, slim, short dark hair.”
“Lotsa whores in Brooklyn.”
“This is my daughter.”
The man half-turned towards his companions. “Any of you boys know a whore like the one he’s describing?” A chorus of no’s. “No one here knows her, feller, so how about you –”
The man lurched suddenly and his hand when to his throat. A cascade of blood trickled through his fingers. Chris caught
a flash to his left and threw himself to the ground, rolled towards the cover of the truck. He could see Hooley crawling furiously through the dust in the same direction. Now the stillness of the day was shattered by the humorless chuckle of machinegun fire.
Chris dragged himself under the truck and slipped the 9-mil from his waistband. A rocket whooshed overhead, its flight followed shortly by a low percussion as it expended itself again a low wall.
“Where’s Joe?” he shouted to Hooley.
“Took off running when the first shots was fired,” Hooley said. “Towards those buildings over there.” Hooley pointed towards the tenements lining the right sidewalk.
The Dodge roared suddenly to life. “Guess he worked his way around,” Hooley said.
Chris rolled from under the truck and stood aside while Hooley scampered on board. Then he vaulted into the cab and shrugged himself into the seatbelt.
“Thought you chuckleheads were camping out,” Joe said. He slammed the Dodge into drive and floored her, racing directly towards the barricade where a rusty old station wagon blocked the path.
“Mind my truck!” Hooley shouted, but Joe wasn’t slowing. At the last moment he veered right, connecting the rear of the station wagon with a glancing blow, that sent it into a spin. Joe rumbled the Dodge through the gap, scraping its side in the process.
“Son of a bitch!” Hooley screamed. “That’s the original paintwork.”
Joe hung hard on the wheel, bounced the Dodge into alignment with the road and accelerated.
“Look out!” Chris shouted as a child, the one he’d seen earlier, sprinted into the road in front of them. The Dodge veered right, burning rubber, rounding the kid, straightening. The earth seemed suddenly to disappear before them and the truck plunged downhill. Chris heard the squeal of brakes being applied, felt the truck sliding. An ancient car wreck rested in the bottom of the pit and the Dodge met it in an embrace of steel. He was pitched forward towards the windshield.
seventeen
The door was jammed shut, the windshield shattered. There was blood in his mouth and his ear felt like it had been pummeled for twelve rounds. The seatbelt in Hooley’s “classic” Dodge had failed, slowing his forward lunge but disengaging at the last moment, slamming him into the windshield. Hooley was out, slumped against him. A trickle of blood ran down the side of Hooley’s head and pooled in his ear. But at least he was breathing, chest rising and falling like he was in a deep slumber. Chris could hear Joe’s breathing too and it didn’t sound good, a grating rasp that probably indicated broken ribs.
“Joe? You okay?”
“Just Jim Dandy, amigo,” Joe slurred. “Other than my ankle feels like it’s bust and I may have cracked a couple of ribs.”
“Can you move?”
“If moving means wiggling my eyebrows then, yeah. Hooley?”
“Out. How’s the door on your side?”
“Give me a minute.”
Joe shifted in his seat, angled his arm towards the door handle. “Arrrghh! Jesus Christ that hurts.”
“Leave it. Hang in there, I’m going to kick out the windshield.”
“Hooley will be pissed,” Joe chuckled. He broke into a coughing spasm, spat. “Blood, shit.”
“Okay, hold on,” Chris said. “I’m doing this.” He leaned away from Hooley, pressed himself up against the door and maneuvered his right leg so that it was above the level of the dashboard. Then he placed his heel against the windshield, drew his knee back towards him and kicked out. On the third try he’d loosened the windshield enough so that he could push it out.
“I’m going to climb through and pull Hooley out,” Chris said. “Be back for you in a sec.”
Joe didn’t reply.
“Joe?”
Still no answer.
Probably passed out, Chris thought. He leaned forward, got a handhold on the frame of the truck and scrambled out onto the hood. The truck was listing towards the passenger side, now it leaned further in that direction. Chris was certain that it was going to tip over. He slid to the ground, landing in ankle deep garbage. A large, brown rat scurried for cover and regarded him suspiciously from under a stained mattress.
He wasn’t going to be able to pull Hooley and Joe out from through the windshield without tipping the truck over, and he wasn’t going to be able to yank open the passenger door either. The best bet was the window on that side. He picked up a piece of rusted angle iron and shattered the window with a couple of blows. The firing from above had become sporadic. He hoped they’d move on soon.
But there was no time to worry about that now. He had to get Hooley and Joe out of here. It was likely that one or both of them needed medical attention. He reached in and snagged Hooley by the collar, pulled him towards the window. Hooley was a scrawny 170 pounds and the going was tough. Before long Chris’s military green t-shirt was drenched and discolored with sweat.
He had Hooley’s head and shoulders through the window. One more heave should pull him all the way out. He slid his arms under Hooley’s armpits, laced his fingers together across Hooley’s chest and yanked, losing his balance and landing on his back in the process, Hooley crashing down on top of him. Something, a piece of metal perhaps, scratched at his lower back. He barely noticed it.
He looked up at the cobalt sky, framed on every side by buildings that seemed to be still standing by pure force of will. It was mid-afternoon and hot. A swarm of black flies bothered at his face, his arms, his back. He swatted them aside and turned his attention back to the truck. Should he get Joe out of there or pull Hooley up the embankment first? He decided on the latter course. There was no scent or trace of fire from the truck. Joe was better off in the cab than lying among the garbage, especially with the number of rats he’d seen scurrying about.
He traced his eye along the embankment he’d have to climb, twenty steep feet over uneven, litter-strewn ground that might slide away at any moment.
“You’ve had worse,” Chris muttered under his breath. Hooley lay at his feet, his breathing uneven, an ugly, purple lump the size of a baseball blossoming on his brow. Chris stooped and threaded his arms under Hooley’s armpits again, locked them across his chest. He took a faltering step backward, got a foothold and pulled. Hooley slid towards him. He took another backward step and repeated the action, then repeated it again.
By the time he eventually dragged Hooley onto the cracked surface of the road, every muscle in his body was quaking. He hadn’t heard any sounds from up here for a while and prayed that the combatants had concluded their engagement and fled the scene. If they decided to come at him now, he doubted that he’d had the strength even to raise the 9-mil.
He looked down towards the truck and drew in a breath. Hooley had been the easy part. Joe was some eighty pounds heavier and, from what he’d deduced by the tone of Joe’s breathing, he’d have to handle Joe a lot more gingerly than he had Hooley.
He was about to slide down into the pit again when a voice spoke behind him, a woman’s voice with an accent he couldn’t quite place. “Mister,” the voice said. “You’ve just got yourself a mess of trouble.”
eighteen
Chris looked from the woman holding the gun, to the truck, standing askew at the bottom of the pit, then back to the woman and beyond, to her companions, all of them armed and grim faced.
“You hold your position,” the woman said. “Been enough killing here today. No need for you to get yourself killed playing the hero.”
“My friend is still in the truck,” Chris said. “I need to get him out.”
The woman peered over the edge. “You think I was born yesterday,” she chuckled. “There’s no one in the truck. Likelihood is you’ve got a rifle down there. You figure you can slide on down, retrieve your weapon and then open fire on us. We ain’t dumb, mister. Not dumb enough to trust a Montague, anyway.”
“A what?”
“The dumbo act ain’t going to wash. What I need to know is, what are you doing on Capulet turf?”
> “Okay, here’s the thing,” Chris said. “I have no idea what the hell you’re talking about. I’m from Manhattan. I‘m looking for my daughter. My friends and I got held up in that roadblock back there, next thing we know we’re in the middle of a firefight. That’s one of my friends lying at your feet. The other is down there in the truck, seriously hurt, maybe even dead. I’m going to get him out now.”
He stepped from the pavement into the pit. “Hold your ground, mister. I will fire on you.”
“Well, if that’s your plan you’re going to have to do it then. My friend is dying down there and I’m damned if I’m going to leave him to the rats. So you want to shoot, be my guest.”
He scooted onto his haunches and scurried down the incline, bringing an avalanche of loose sand and shale with him. The muscles of his back tensed involuntary, half expecting the bullet the woman had threatened. If she was going to fire, she’d fire. If she was the kind of person prepared to shoot a man in the back he was done for anyway.
But by the time he’d reached the truck, no bullet had been fired. He peered into the driver’s side window and saw Joe slumped over sideways on the seat. Joe was still breathing, which was a relief, but also a concern. Each ragged breath produced a blood bubble from between his lips.
The truck stood on a slope angling away from him, the front wheel suspended in mid-air. That was going to make it tough to pull Joe through the driver’s door, but he was going to have to try. The other options, trying to pull him through the windshield or the passenger window were likely to be even harder.
He grabbed the door handle, triggered the catch and pulled. The door angled open in a screech. He pushed it to its furthest extent and then leaned into the cab.
“Joe?”
The only response was another of those disconcertingly red-tinted bubbles. He reached and slipped his fingers under Joe’s belt and yanked. Joe barely moved, but he heard the rattle of debris shifting and for a moment was sure that the truck was going to flip over. He grabbed for the door, steadying the truck. A hand closed on his shoulder and he shook himself loose and turned to face a large, moon-faced man with coarse, sandy hair.
