Jose screamed as the reanimated big cop’s teeth sunk into his forearm. Mancini spun around and saw the now resurrected cop’s corpse grab the trucker by the throat and drag him to the floor. Jose wriggled but couldn’t escape the vice like grip.
Mancini tore open the evidence bag at the point where the bullet had left a hole and wrenched out his handgun. He aimed at the big cop’s head but refrained from firing when he heard shouts and heavy footfalls in the corridor beside the bar.
Jose screamed as the big cop tore through the muscles in his forearm, ripping flesh from bone with his teeth. The two remaining truckers picked up broken chair legs and battered the big cop around the head.
Mancini herded Trey, Leticia and Jorge towards the rear door, leading to the bathroom block.
“The backup cops are in the building, we need to get the hell out of here,” he hissed, as they drew closer to the door. “Let’s just hope they’re not on their way around the back of the building.” He shoved Jorge, Trey and Leticia outside and turned towards the truckers. “Come on, we need to get moving,” he called.
The two standing truckers turned to glance at Mancini. Behind the melee, Mancini saw the younger cop staggering to his feet, reanimated and blinking heavily. His eyes looked like gouged black holes in the dim light in the bar.
“Watch out!” Mancini warned, pointing to the lurching, younger cop.
The truckers spun around. The younger cop snarled and staggered forward on unsteady legs. Mancini aimed his firearm but saw movement from the internal doorway, twenty feet ahead of him to the left. Two of the backup cops cautiously entered the bar with their handguns drawn. Mancini ducked through the external door before the cops spotted him. He heard several gunshots ring out as he ran around the building towards the accommodation block.
Trey was busy loading his baggage into the Thunderbird when Mancini approached the second building. Jorge and Leticia sat in the backseats with expressions of panic on their faces.
“Got the cash?” Mancini panted.
“Yeah,” Trey hissed, leaping into the driver’s seat. “We’re good to go. Where are the truckers?”
Mancini glanced back to the main motel building as he opened the passenger door. “They didn’t make it out. I don’t know what the hell is happening in there but I heard a few shots. Let’s hope the cops shot all those infected bastards.”
Trey gunned the engine as Mancini climbed into his seat. The Thunderbird reared forwards, sending a wash of gravel churning in its wake.
“Be careful when you pull back onto the highway,” Mancini said. “There may well be more than one backup cop car out front.”
Trey nodded and turned off the Thunderbird’s lights as they skirted around the edge of the parking lot. He drove slowly onto the blacktop on the highway. Two police vehicles sat outside the front of the motel with their emergency lights flashing. A dark colored box truck was parked on the far side of the police cars and a lone cop stood beside the cab. He was looking through the front windows and talking into his radio microphone.
Trey drove slowly but the muffler rumbled noisily through the still night. Mancini glanced back but the cop seemed preoccupied with what was going on inside the motel. Another gunshot popped from inside the building and Mancini saw two figures emerge from the motel’s front door. One of the figures leapt at the cop and he heard a scream as the pair disappeared from sight.
“Go, Trey,” Mancini hissed.
Trey put his foot down on the accelerator pedal and turned on the car’s lights. The long road was illuminated in front of them and the motel receded into the darkness.
“Shit, that was a total fuck up,” Mancini groaned. “Now we’ve unleashed more of that green shit onto the world.” He tilted his head back against the headrest. “Stop and let the girl out when we reach the next town, Trey.”
“We can’t just dump her, man.” Trey took a sideways glance at Mancini. “I feel kind of responsible for what happened back there.”
Mancini closed his aching eyes. “We can’t take her with us, Trey. You know that. Don’t beat up on yourself for something you couldn’t control. You didn’t know those gangbangers were going to show up and start snorting that green shit. My main worry is one of those infected cops gets loose and starts getting bitey with somebody else. You seen how quick that shit spreads.”
Trey sighed. “Yeah, those cops and that big guy got infected and they didn’t even take any of that shit. It spreads from person to person through the damn bite, man. It’s almost like a damn disease, like the plague or some shit. Wow, shit like that, I’ve never seen any stuff like that before.” He shook his head and glanced in his rear view mirror. He watched Leticia’s head rock with the car’s motion as she fought against sleep. “We can’t just ditch her, man,” he whispered.
Mancini heard but didn’t answer. He wasn’t sleeping, only resting his eyes, trying to think. He needed to reload his handgun, Jorge needed to call Luiz in La Paz and they needed to lose the girl someplace. A straightforward assignment was becoming a total pain in the ass.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Mancini felt himself drifting into the realms of sleep but jolted awake when Trey spoke.
“Yo, so like, what are we doing, man? What’s the big plan now?”
“Keep going towards La Paz,” Mancini croaked. His mouth and throat were both dry and parched.
“What about stopping up for a break? I’ve been driving since six o’clock yesterday damn morning.”
“We need to put some distance between us and the cops back at the motel. Who knows what the hell happened back there? One of those truckers might describe us and the cops could be on the hunt for us. This type of vehicle isn’t exactly hard to spot.” He twisted in his seat to look behind him. Jorge and Leticia both nodded in slumber in the back. The road ahead and behind the Thunderbird was deserted and the landscape each side of them was barren and uninhabited.
“All right, pull over onto the shoulder and I’ll take over driving awhile,” Mancini said. “We’ll park up someplace off the main highway. We could use a couple of hours sleep at least.”
“Amen to that,” Trey sighed, slowing the Thunderbird and pulling onto the gritty side lane.
They swapped seats and Trey rested his head back and closed his eyes. Mancini pulled away, continuing the journey. Trey fell asleep within a couple of minutes, snoring slightly as his head lolled against the headrest.
The Thunderbird ate up the miles but Mancini struggled to keep his eyes open. He had to park up and rest or he’d fall asleep at the wheel, total the car and probably kill all of them. The headlights picked out some kind of settlement on the roadside in the distance. Mancini slowed the Thunderbird to a slow crawl to inspect the low standing buildings either side of the highway. A line of shuttered up food shacks and stores stood behind a few parked cars and trucks. Mancini pulled the car off the road and parked outside a deserted green and yellow colored building, standing to the right of the highway. He sighed and rubbed his eyes, fatigue ebbing through his body. All the other people in the car sat sleeping in their seats and Mancini desperately wanted to join them.
Mancini got out of the car and walked around to the trunk. He reloaded his weapon and checked the holdalls containing the cash were still in place. He found an unopened can of soda in the trunk and popped the tab, then downed the contents in a few long gulps whilst thinking about their predicament. Somebody would have to stay awake and keep a watch out. They had an excessive amount of money in the trunk and couldn’t afford to get robbed on the lonely, dark highway.
Mancini crawled back into the driver’s seat and lit a cigarette. He decided he’d have to try and stay awake until Trey woke and could continue driving. His eyes drooped closed and he burnt himself with his smoke as his hand drooped.
“Shit,” he hissed, tossing the cigarette butt out of the car. “Maybe just twenty minutes shut-eye.”
The red dawning sunlight and cool morning air awoke Mancini several hours
later. He felt annoyed with himself for sleeping so long and leaving them exposed and unguarded, something he’d never have done in his time in the military. Several people milled around the settlement, opening up their food stalls for the working day. Mancini shook Trey awake.
“Hey, come on. Wake up, we need to get going.”
“Huh?” Trey muttered, still in the realms of slumber.
“We’ve wasted too much time here,” Mancini growled. “We need to get back on the road. The cops might show any minute.”
“Can’t we at least get a cup of tan first?” Trey whined. “My throat is as dry as the damn desert, man.”
Mancini sighed, thinking he could use a cup of coffee himself. “Okay, go grab some coffees from that guy’s stall over there.” He pointed to an elderly man opening up the shutters on the front of his wooden booth. “But hurry it up.”
Trey yawned and nodded then slid out of his seat. Mancini watched him engage in a brief conversation with the old guy in the stall. Trey returned a couple of minutes later with four paper cups and a cardboard box.
“Got donuts,” he said, with half a smile.
“Come on, get in,” Mancini grunted, starting up the Thunderbird’s engine. “I want to get to La Paz by sundown tonight.”
Trey hopped into the passenger seat then handed Mancini one of the coffee cups. “You okay to drive, man?”
Mancini nodded. “I guess.” He reversed the car onto the highway.
“I still feel a little shook up after last night,” Trey sighed. “Man, I can’t believe that happened to us back there. We were real lucky to get away.”
“Get used to it. Things are going to get a whole lot rockier when we catch up with those new friends of Luiz.”
Jorge and Leticia stirred and awoke in the backseats as Mancini engaged the transmission into drive, then headed south. Trey handed them a cup each and offered the box of donuts around. Jorge gratefully delved into the box but Leticia shook her head. Her face crumpled and tears rolled down her cheeks.
“I can’t get that image of my poor grandfather out of my head,” she sniffed. “I hoped it would all have been a bad dream.”
Mancini took a sideways glance at Trey. “We need to drop her off someplace,” he whispered. “We can’t afford passengers on this trip.”
Trey huffed and looked away.
Mancini slipped on his sunshades as they sped through the early morning air. “Jorge, you need to call Luiz as soon as possible. We’ll stop in a short while and you need to find out exactly where he is.” He glanced between the rear view mirror at Jorge and at the road ahead.
Jorge tried to avert his gaze as he ate his donut and sipped his coffee. He was glad to still be alive but knew he was still in a perilous situation.
“You better hand me over that bag of green crystals as well, Jorge,” Mancini said, holding out his hand. “We don’t want that stuff falling into the wrong hands again.”
Jorge reached into his pocket and slapped the bag into Mancini’s outstretched hand.
“I was going to destroy that. You should get rid of it as quickly as possible,” Jorge said.
“Don’t worry. As soon as we see a garage with a restroom, these damn crystals are going right down the pan,” Mancini said, tossing the bag onto Trey’s lap. “Check the map,” he said to Trey. “Let’s see where the hell we are.”
Trey pulled the map from the glove box and unfolded it on his lap. He struggled to locate their position. Mancini groaned and leaned across the seat.
“Looks like we’re here.” He pointed to the highway running south, next to a river. “Still a long way from La Paz.”
“Will we get there by sundown?” Trey asked.
“I’m certainly going to try. We can’t afford to hang around too long or that damn ice will be shipped out onto the streets and everybody will be turning into those damn creatures or whatever the hell they are.”
Leticia leaned over the front seat. “I have to go back to the motel and explain what happened to the police. Will you take me back there?”
Mancini shook his head. “No can do, I’m afraid. We’re on a tight schedule and we have to be someplace. We can drop you off at the next town we come to and you can hitch a ride back there.” He wouldn’t have offered her that choice if Trey hadn’t been with him. A witness would be able to identify him and provide the cops a good description of himself and his accomplices.
They drove for another hour before they saw any signs of habitation. Mancini slowed the Thunderbird on the small village’s outer limits. He looked around the sporadically built, tiny white washed houses for some sort of store or bar or someplace that would have a public payphone. The village appeared to be deserted or the occupants of the dwellings were hidden away behind closed doors. Mancini brought the vehicle to a halt.
“Where the hell are we?” Trey sighed, glancing between the map and the village buildings. “This place looks like a ghost town.”
“And it looks like some ghosts just showed up,” Mancini rumbled, pointing straight ahead through the windshield.
Trey looked up, following Mancini’s line of sight. He saw a horde of people approaching, moving quickly towards the front of the Thunderbird. Each one of the gathered throng snarled, emitting guttural throaty sounds as they rapidly drew closer.
Chapter Twenty-Five
“They look like they’re infected,” Jorge stammered from the backseat.
“No shit,” Trey snapped. “Look at their eyes. The infected always have those weird black eyes. What’s that shit about?”
“Never mind that,” Mancini hissed. “We need to get moving in one direction or another. There must be at least a dozen of those guys.”
“I don’t like it,” Leticia said, with a tremor in her voice.
“We’ll have to turn around and go back,” Trey said. “We won’t get through that whole bunch of blood suckers.”
“No way,” Mancini growled, revving the Thunderbird engine. “We don’t turn back for anything.” He pulled out his handgun and rolled the vehicle forward to meet the approaching crowd head on.
“Ah, shit,” Trey wailed, as Mancini dumped his foot hard on the gas pedal.
“Keep your arms and anything else inside the car,” Mancini yelled. “I’ll try and get us through this as quickly and painlessly as possible.”
The Thunderbird jolted forward, gathering speed. The snarling infected horde padded across the blacktop towards the onrushing vehicle. Trey drew his Heckler and Koch handgun, aiming the barrel out the side of the car. Jorge and Leticia slid down the backseats, huddling into the foot wells.
“Just try and not bust up my ride, man,” Trey pleaded.
Mancini fired the first shot at a tall, athletically built man, dressed in a green, soccer shirt. The infected man was leading the pack and the first to reach the side of the car. Mancini aimed and fired. The round zipped into the guy’s open mouth and blew out the back of his head, producing a red mist that hung briefly in the air.
Three more of the infected mob raced towards the front of the Thunderbird. Mancini swerved from side to side, doing his best to avoid slamming into the main cluster of the crowd. Trey fired two rounds, missing with the first and clipping a woman’s shoulder with the second. The gunshot put her down on the tarmac and her legs were crushed beneath the Thunderbird’s wheels.
Mancini fired again at a bulky guy who tried to leap into the car’s interior. The round grazed the side of the infected man’s head, tearing open a bloody stripe in his scalp. He clung to the side of the car but couldn’t hold his grasp on top of the door. The forward motion of the vehicle caused him to roll forward across the blacktop, bowling over a few of his cohorts.
Mancini fish tailed the car but managed to keep control of the steering wheel. Gnarled finger nails scraped along the exterior paintwork as the infected swiped at Trey and Mancini in the front seats.
Trey fired another shot at a middle aged woman with long black hair, who grabbed at the side of the
windshield. The round pierced the woman’s forehead and caused the back of her skull to erupt with the exit wound. She released her grip on the windshield and flopped to the blacktop.
Mancini swerved again, driving through the space between the last two infected people. He righted the car and kept his foot firmly on the gas pedal. Trey turned his head and watched the remains of the contaminated horde turn and give chase. They sprinted along the road after the Thunderbird.
“Shit, they’re still following us,” Trey yelled.
“They’ll keep on coming,” Mancini said, glancing in the rear view mirror. “Looks like your pal, Luiz sold a little more of that green shit to somebody in that village, Jorge.”
“Man, this is getting way out of hand,” Trey sighed, rubbing the side of his head.
Jorge crawled out of the foot well onto his seat and looked behind the Thunderbird. He turned back to Mancini with an expression of terror on his face.
“How many did you kill back there?”
“Not enough,” Mancini snapped. “There was too many of them to take them all down. You’re going to have to hope that the Mexican law enforcements or the military can put a lid on this whole situation before it becomes a fucking national disaster.”
“Is there any cure for this infection?” Leticia asked, nudging herself back into her seat. “Surely, those people can’t stay in that state forever?”
Mancini turned his head slightly towards the backseats. “You saw for yourself back at the motel how quick that disease spreads. It seems to only take a bite from one of those infected people to spread the disease.”
“Yeah, it looks almost as if they physically die first before they turn into those damn ugly bastards,” Trey added. “I know it sounds crazy but I saw those guys convulse on the ground after they snorted those green crystals. They looked like they were dead and then they just got up again and started ripping each other to shit.”
Green Ice: A Deadly High Page 13
