“Is everyone okay?” Cricket felt for Sister’s hand and heard Diesel whimper and come over to her.
“Yes, we are,” came Sister’s frightened voice. The children answered as well.
“I’m taking you into the office area. Some of the rooms are connected and face the driveway to the tarmac. I’ll find a safe place for all of you. Follow me. Diesel, let’s go.”
They all stood and Cricket walked them down a dark hallway.
“Everyone hold on to each other. We won’t see anything until I get you to a room with windows. Ethan, do you have your gun?”
“Yes,” he replied.
“Me too,” was Lily’s response.
Cricket passed her extra pistol to Sister.
She led her group into an office with a carpet and a couch. The shades were pulled, but light from a single generator illuminating a stand of road crew lights one hangar over made the room comfortable to walk around in and not crash into something. There was a bathroom and closet, and Cricket made sure the windows allowed for exit if needed.
Screams came from inside the building, the wounded and the dying. With the National Guard presence, there were perhaps two dozen fighters. Would Predator, Fritz, and Lawrence prevail? Predator Jones not only had the fight of his life on his hands, but he had to know that his pards were never returning to lay their beautiful hands on the flying machines they all loved so dearly.
Lee Ann ran up and hugged Cricket before she left the office.
“Please, come back to us. We can’t lose you, too. I loved Mrs. Givens. She was so kind.”
Cricket also loved PJ and Cub Bob. Both girls knew nothing of their deaths.
“I’ll do my best.” She picked Lee Ann up off the ground and held her tight, whispering in her ear, “You know what to do if I don’t come back? Sister and I’ve said it all along.”
Lee Ann whispered back, “Love my family and all my friends. And above all, love God.”
73
Last of the Grenades
Quietly moving down the hall, her hunting skills on tap, Cricket turned to see Diesel standing outside the office. She wouldn’t yell or whisper, so she gestured for him to get back in the room. She got a chill when the Lab didn’t move. This wasn’t obstinacy, this was communication, and a slew of canine warnings came from the dog’s body language and eyes that glinted in the meager light.
Most of the gunfire had moved to outside the hangar. Good, holding our turf, protecting our planes, though she was sure there was some damage from all the shooting.
Glass broke near the entrance. Someone was coming through the front doors.
Cricket ducked into a utility room, its door missing but not the mop that smacked her in the face. She grabbed the handle. The ropey strands were stiff and felt like the legs of a very large spider. She wanted to avoid using her gun if she could. Standing still, she held the gravity knife and mop.
She heard two attackers arguing in the lobby. Defying orders?
The end of her hallway was poorly lit, but where Cricket stood and behind her, she saw only pitch black.
“Move it, asshole,” the team player said to his reluctant friend.
“I can’t see anything. That means anything can happen.”
Cricket searched the shelf for something to throw at the slavers. She settled on a metal dustpan. Either of their reactions would be to her advantage. She found a plunger and pulled the head off, making a weapon for striking and gouging.
“She expects us to get through the building and into the hangar.”
“We already shot up the planes.”
“Not good enough, weasel. You know that.”
A female in charge. Cricket shook her head in the dark, wary of her new opponent. The Brazilian, of course, came to mind. Deranged women were the worst in this post-EMP world, their savagery accelerating with the breakdown of civilization.
Cricket, back to the wall, made her way to the entrance of the lobby and flung the dustpan in the semidarkness. It actually whistled through the air, and she heard one creep gasp before the explosion of the metal banging across the tile floor and skidding into a glass window.
Of the two possible reactions, the fools performed her favorite: they shot wildly in the lobby and at the entrance leading to the offices and hangar. Cricket waited and heard the moans of one of the slavers. His buddy had shot him.
“You asshole, you killed me,” the slaver cried out, the more reckless of the two.
“You shot first. I followed you.”
The dying man spewed the worst of obscenities. No confession and no asking forgiveness before “the final dream,” Predator’s phrase on the process of dying. The last foothold in this life, a final accounting through dream.
The two argued briefly, and the mortally wounded man killed his slayer with a single bullet. The man was in midsentence when his breath was snatched away for all time. The surviving man called for help, and soon it arrived.
Cricket moved back into the dark broom closet and waited.
Several men arrived, questioned their downed comrade, and then promptly stomped him to death for shooting his partner.
Cricket took the mop and laid the handle atop the shelf so that the head was centered in the doorway, giving a tall or average-size guy a face of something ugly and gaining her a few seconds. A heavy metal door at the back of the utility room led to a smaller room for breaker boxes and storage.
In the dark she handled the last of the grenades given to her and Fritz by his grandfather Hank. She felt for the pin and gripped it in her left hand, and walked out to the small room, where one man was instructing the others to start down the hallway. Cricket greeted them with a full magazine of .45 rounds. Screams followed, along with curses from the living, as return fire came at Cricket while she ran back to the utility room and waited.
74
Bad Luck
Lucy’s instructions had been clear: kill everyone, including Cricket, and destroy the aircraft. Once this mission was accomplished, they were then to pick up dozens of small herds—six to twelve persons—and regroup with their catch at the stadium.
Lucy’s day started off on the right foot when she executed a troublemaker captain before a group of twenty captains and many of their soldiers and catch. The man had tried to stop others from having their way with a group of small children. At first he was beaten badly and run off, only to return with a knife and methodically take down all four molesters. He took off toward the river and was captured before he could make his escape in a small rowboat.
Lucy explained to her audience, including the man tied to a heavy stake and gagged, that there was no room for outside morality, only what Ajax determined, saying that if tomorrow children were off-limits, then they’d be off-limits. If he was to change his mind again after issuing that statement, then they were to accept the new order. She told the doomed man that he could be saved right now if Ajax arrived and declared the man guilt-free. But Ajax had also passed judgment.
Lucy took a spear from the hands of a young woman and held it over her head for several seconds, as if posing for a picture. She walked behind the captain, who unsuccessfully tried to follow her with his eyes. Sweat poured down the man’s face in spite of the freezing temperatures.
To everyone, especially to the doomed man, she said that tomorrow Ajax would issue a new law: any slaver caught injuring or molesting a child could be immediately executed by another slaver. A few applauded. No one disputed the man’s bad luck, or his being used as an example on the Rule of Ajax.
Lucy tossed the six-foot spear into the air, where it twirled like a baton, and then caught it and swiftly threw it into the man’s back, the spear digging in between the lower ribs. Then she did something even more extraordinary. She leapt and seemed to use the spear as a step for a nanosecond, before landing on the man’s shoulders. Even though the man’s body slightly jerked from the fatal wound, his movements were limited from being tightly bound. Lucy easily negotiated his movements wi
th fancy footwork in order to stand tall.
A cheer went up as Lucy the gymnast arced into a backflip and again stood upright on the man’s shoulders, flinging his severed right ear to the crowd. She did another backflip and the other ear disappeared. She seemed not to be breathing hard and continued to somersault and land expertly upon the dying man’s shoulders, leaving him with less of himself each time.
The men pointed and gasped and yelled expletives, enjoying the slow death by torture of one of their own.
Lucy dismounted from the bloody mess and beckoned one of her staff to bring her a machete. She jogged some fifty feet away and pointed the gleaming blade at the man, who jerked his head back and forth and yelled something—asking for mercy, saying he couldn’t see, and asking for someone to bring him water. One eye had disappeared; the other hung from its white muscles. No one dared move to help the man, and Lucy remained frozen, a dancer letting the music fade, awaiting the next movement.
She never made a sound. One of the men said it was like watching a great warrior in a dream aim for her enemy without the slightest noise; even the wind had ceased. Nature gasped at artistry greater than its own.
Ten feet from the man she went airborne, spinning, becoming a blur, a gleam of metal, delivering one deep cut across his midsection that emptied his steaming guts onto the cold ground. The man screamed and everyone else howled with pleasure.
Her final pirouette had put all her energy into the swing of the blade, and she left the “stage” exhausted and to the cheers of her men. The man still showed signs of life minutes later as the dogs fought over his entrails.
75
Lucy
She didn’t want to lead the attackers down the hall to Sister and the children, so she took her chances with the room marked “No Exit.” She had the grenade, a full magazine that she immediately had snapped in during the chaotic aftermath of her surprise attack, and one extra magazine. She’d lose in hand-to-hand combat against a slaver. Cold sweat replaced the hot sweat as they came running down the hall, screaming for her blood and firing away.
She pulled the pin and waited for their arrival. The first visitor stumbled, hit the mop, cursed, and fired, missing her. Sitting on the floor with her foot on the door when two more arrived, she fired, rolled the grenade, and slammed the door shut as they opened fire in the dark room.
Lying flat, pressed alongside the wall, Cricket stayed on her belly, waiting while bullets drilled holes into the door. With the explosion came high-pitched screams from the one who didn’t die right away.
Nearly deaf, she waited on the floor, breathing hard. Cricket prayed to God that everyone was safe.
“Bill,” someone pleaded, “I’m hurt bad.” The boom that followed was the living Bill’s reply.
One to go.
She heard lonesome Bill swear and shuffle off toward the lobby. Opening the door slightly, she listened for someone “snoring” near death with enough energy to arise one last time. But no sounds, only random gunfire from the front of the hangar.
She walked out slowly, stepping over a red mess, facedown and motionless. Another body blocked the doorway. Trying to control her breathing, which sounded heavy and scared to her, she tried to see if there was another survivor in the hallway. She stepped on the mop handle and it rolled under her foot, and she crashed into the wall.
She leapt from the room and ran down the hallway for the office where she had left Sister and the children. The place suddenly became quiet, front to back, but her anxiety didn’t lessen. She had been in other difficult situations, several serious gun battles, but this was different. A secret weapon was nearby: Ajax.
The office was deserted, and she started for the hangar when a voice called out to her. She froze.
She swore the voice had come from behind her, but now standing in front of her was a child! At least, in the dim light she saw a kid the size of Caleb. She was holding a spear with two hands. It was the girl from the party of savages who had cornered Boots.
Ajax, a small girl?
“Turn around and head towards the lobby. The games are over,” her captor said, businesslike.
“Are you Ajax?”
“Are you crazy?” The diminutive girl added with a phony, high-pitched laugh, “But I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express for the last two nights. Had a real blast. Damn, I’ve been waiting to use that line for years.”
“I have a gun,” Cricket said, exasperated by the weirdo. “And now that I’ve figured out you’re not a child, I’m going to shoot your sorry little ass.”
“No you’re not.” The voice came from behind her. It was Bill the survivor. “Drop the gun and turn toward me. I’m not supposed to shoot unless…”
76
A Spear and a Revolver
Caught between a spear and a revolver aimed at her face, Cricket did as told. She lowered her weapon, held it by two fingers, crouched to the floor, and Bill took ownership.
“What else you got?”
“A knife inside my right boot,” Cricket said, looking up at her captor covered in shadows. She prayed for sounds of her friends coming to her rescue. But she heard only silence. One side or the other was mopping up on the tarmac, but at this end of the hangar, she was definitely on the losing side.
“Hand that to me, too,” Bill commanded. “Slowly.”
“Hurry up, bitch,” the gymnast from hell added, “or I’ll poke you with my spear.”
“Poke her?” Bill laughed. “You hardly know her.” Both sociopaths laughed loudly.
Cricket’s first movement was instantaneous: two fingers to a full grip. The two captors were still laughing when she performed the second movement of her four-part series: she executed an upward slash using the side of the blade, catching Bill’s palm and fingers. His howl signaled the third move: the knife plunged straight into his throat. Finally, she ran to Bill’s right side and pulled him in front of her as a shield. In the fourth movement, her shield took only a glancing blow from the spear and she felt the spear graze her.
Lucy screamed her frustration and climbed up the dying body of Bill, spear in hand.
An amazed Cricket pulled both bodies down on top of her. Hitting the ground, she heard her gun slide across the floor.
“Now what?” the angry gymnast screamed, covered in Bill’s blood, which was still spurting straight in the gymnast’s face. The tiny acrobat yelled how disgusted she was and lost her balance more than once, her hands greasy with blood as she tried to spear Cricket.
Lucy rolled off Bill and stabbed at Cricket, who used Bill’s body to shield herself from the spear, scrambling to her feet and aiming for the lobby. A man just inside the glass doors screamed for Lucy to stop and then fired several times. Lucy’s scream expressed displeasure at having to die in a manner she found unacceptable. The woman swore with gusto and performed a series of wobbly cartwheels across the lobby floor and into the next life, which bared its teeth and howled, anxiously awaiting her.
“Cricket, get down and stay down,” a man’s voice called. It was John, Becca’s driver. “Don’t look up.”
A strange command, but she did as told once again. Exhausted, she turned her head to see the gymnast twisted in a pretzel, whether due to the agony of dying or just a final demonstration of her unusual skills.
77
Capture
Cricket moved her hands into push-up position and started to lift herself off the floor. John ran to her and yelled at her to stay down.
“Put your arms behind your back,” he insisted.
“John, it’s me, Cricket.”
“I know.”
Another man kneeled alongside her and roughly grabbed both arms, crossed her wrists, and handcuffed her. They lifted her to her feet, and she saw that a half dozen men had encircled her with drawn weapons.
“Whose side are you on?” she yelled, staring at John.
“The only side.”
78
Revelations
Two men flanked Cricket in an old
bread truck. She climbed a steel step that had been lowered for ease of entering. The back of the truck was walled off from the cab. No lights, only a small window peeking into the cab. A wooden bench along the left side was her seat, and a guard who did little more than issue commands by pointing kept an eye on her. A man in shadows sat in a single seat facing the rear. The door slammed shut.
She couldn’t make out the man, but she knew instinctively it was Angel.
“What happened to my family, my friends?” she asked.
“They’re still fighting. Protecting the children and the airplanes. A very noble endeavor. So far, they have what they want and I have what I want.”
“You don’t seem too worried about losing. Lots of power in slavery, Mr. Ajax, Beast of North America.”
“I like the title. Very dramatic. You should know that the slavery thing is a hobby for me. Although you’re right, it does make our new world go round. And we do have to earn our daily bread. My interests are elsewhere, like yours. Ultimately it’s about power. But magnificent power, not the power tied to the mundane. I thought you understood that and I waited, but now I know that your soul is very ordinary.”
“You mean I don’t enjoy using people as pieces of meat.”
“That sounds good, but it’s a reduction of the world we’ve both entered; you accidentally, and me through years of practice and a certain natural talent.”
“Ajax the Humble.”
“I prefer Angel the Wise.”
“Sorry, I like calling monsters by their proper names.”
“A college nickname that stuck. I became very enamored when you spoke it. Ajax the Terrible, the Impaler, whatever descriptions you used.”
American Blackout (Book 3): Gangster Town Page 22
