Chapter18

 

 

Ponci watched the truck, too, acutely aware of moving world around him.

Somewhere, beyond the truck, up the block, a horn honked with the urgency of some impatient driver trying to get through a traffic light more quickly than traffic would allow.

Beyond that came the usual backdrop of rising and falling sirens, police cars pursuing calls to other parts of the city, ambulances rushing to car crashes newscasts mistakenly called accidents, and fire trucks rushing to put out blazes sparked by lack of heat and make shift heaters in parts of the city that could least afford new disasters, or in buildings junkies and other scavengers have taken refuge in against the cold.

The driver fished out the package from the back of the truck, and – still whistling – started to emerge.

Something else moved, out of the deep shadows of the doorway across the street. The shadow emphasized the muzzle flash, although no sound of gunshot accompanied it. A small red hole appeared at the driver’s temple. The whistling stopped and for an instant, the driver looked puzzled, at which point, the other side of his head exploded out.

His fingers let loose the package and it fell with a thud into the gutter between the truck and the curb, as the driver’s body – propelled by the impact of the bullet – fell back into the truck against the far door, one arm striking the steering wheel and setting off the horn.

Inside the store, Sara panicked and rushed towards the door.

“Don’t!” yelled Gizmo.
But she already had the door open and the buzzer added bizarre harmony to the unrelenting horn.

A shadowy shape pushed along the sidewalk from the right, swooping down to grab the package as a second shape came behind it.

Something like the sound of a bee buzzed in the air.

The first figure froze. A perfectly round hole appeared in his forehead and he fell, dropping the package just as the driver had, only this figure fell along side the truck.

The second figure whiled around with a pistol in his hand

But the sound of the bee came again, freezing him as well, then he fell, too.

Ponci appeared, popping out as if out of nowhere, one hand holding his side, the other a still smoking pistol of his own. His forehead showed beads of sweat, despite the cold.

“Get the package,” he hissed through clenched teeth and he settled into the liquor store doorway beside Sara. His gaze swept around the landscape, over the parked cars and the passing cars, whose startled drivers stared back with horror. “But stay low.”

Sara headed out of the doorway, bent so slow that she had to slick her feet over the rough concrete to reach the truck. The dead driver had fallen back against the far side of the cab, his arms outstretched as if he had south in his last moments of life to keep from falling so that he looked like a pathetic Christ figure, missing only the cross.

The package again had fallen into the gutter and Sara snatched it up, her longer fingers slipping slightly on its blood-splattered surface.

She paused, looked down at the blood, and grimaced.

“Hurry up,” Ponci yelled from the doorway as he continued to look this way and that.

“What’s the hurry?” Sara hissed back. “You killed them, right?”

“Killed some, maybe not all,” Ponci said, with even more urgency in his voice. “Besides, we also have to worry about the police.”

Sara gave him a stiff nod, then tucked the package under her arm, the light weight computer feeling heavy against her side, causing her to walk duck like as she made her way back towards the doorway.

A zing sounded.

A hole appeared in the glass just above her head, creating a web of cracks that spread out across the clutter of advertisements.

Ponci grabbed her free hand and pulled her deeper into the doorway.

“Time to go,” he said. “You have to tell your friends they have to get out of the store.”

“Why?” Sara asked, looking both scared and confused. “Won’t they come after us?”

“Yes, but your friends have already seen too much. These guys aren’t going to leave any witnesses.”

Then a new sound came, a different kind of humming than that of bullets. Ponci glanced up. Above them, an array of objects floated in the morning air, looking like insects but much larger.

“Damn,” he mumbled.

“What is it?”

“Fucking drones.”

“Is that bad?”

“It is for a number of reasons, especially if they’re armed, which I suspect they are. Hurry. Warn your friends. Things are going to get a lot worse especially when the cops start showing up.”

Sara, still bent with the weight of the package, shoved through the door back into the liquor store.

The shooting changed the sleepy atmosphere, although nothing had altered otherwise. The men in the rear corner of the room sat alert, and wary, each holding a weapon as they stared in the direction of the door.

“Luis, Gizmo, Leroy, Ponci says you’ve got to leave,” Sara told them.

“How?” asked a clearly agitated Gizmo, standing slowly, but using the side of the bullet-proof cage as shelter from a possible assault at the front of the store. “Our cars are out front.”

Sara glanced at Ponci.

“Can they come with us?” she asked.

“Not unless they’re planning to provide a lot more targets,” Ponci said. “ “We can climb in there,” Gizmo said, pointing towards the bullet proof box with his pistol.

Ponci leaned in, looked at it, then shook his head.

“They’ll blow it up. The best thing you can do it get out the back and run like hell, and hope those outside and their drones aren’t waiting for you.”

“What about you two?” Luis asked.

“We’re going back out the front,” Ponci said. “We have a car up the street. If we move quick enough, they won’t get us – or the package.”

“No way,” Luis said. “If you’re going that way, so am I.”

Ponci sour expression said more than he did, although he glared at Sara as if to say: “Talk some sense into this fool.”

Sara, knowing how stubborn her friends could be, shrugged back.

“All right,” Ponci mumbled. “Let’s just do this.”

“I’m coming, too,” said Leroy.

“Me, too,” said Gizmo, but sounding less confident than the other two.

“Move quick, and stay low,” Ponci told them. “Those guys know how to shoot.”

Gripping Sara’s arm, Ponci yanked her out the door way as he ran, both of them moving ahead in a crouch as she clutched the package. They kept below the level of the cars parked along the curb.

Still, a spit sounded and the glass in one of the cars exploded, sending glittering dust over them.

Ponci halted, and stared down the street.

This time, the flash showed first, then the sound, resulting in a web of lines in the side rear window of the car behind which they hid.

Behind him, huddled behind another car, Luis, Leroy and Gizmo halted, too, each with a different kind of weapon gripped in his hand, each staring through the window of their car in the direction of the last flash.

Luis moved, rushing passed the opening between the cars to settle beside Ponci.

“We can get them,” he said.

The others inspired by Luis made the transition, too, until all five were huddled behind the same car.

“No, we can’t,” Ponci said. “At least, not before they get some of us.”

“There are five of us.”

“We don’t know how many of them there area. And we don’t have a lot of cover from here to the car.”

“So what do you propose to do?”

“We run as fast as we can.”

“run?” Gizmo said, staring again in the direction of the doorway out of which the gun fire had come.

“yes, Ponci said, “And you’ll have to spread out. We don’t need for them to hit us all in one clump. If they’re going to shoot, we need them to shoot at five different moving targets. Sara is going first, then me, after than you figure out which order you want to come in, as long as you count to five before the next one starts to move.”

“Why are you sending Sara first?” Luis asked.

“Because she has the keys to the car. And she’ll have to have it open and started by the time the rest of us get there.”

“And if she doesn’t make it?”

“Then I’m going to have to snatch up the keys from her hand when I reach her and get the car ready instead.”

“What about the package?” Sara asked, holding up the Fed Ex box. “I’m going to have a hard time opening the car while holding this.”

“Give it to Luis,” Ponci said, then turning to Luis. “That means you’ll have to come after me.”

“Why” Luis asked.

“Because if you get shot, whoever is behind you will have to grab the package and bring it to the car. Now let’s get going.”

Luis glared at Ponci, but took the package.

Sara took a deep breath and then, still keeping low despite the fact that there were no more cars as cover – and ran as fast as she could towards the place twenty feet away where the cars started again.

A flash came from the doorway, then another.

But Sara made it to shelter unscathed, halting long enough to fish the keys out of her pocket, then hurried on along the line of cars to the space where the Honda was parked. Something hummed above her head, slowing descending towards her like a large mosquito.

Ponci’s pistol spat, and the drone broke apart in mid-air, parts of it raining down on the car tops in a clatter of plastic.

Sara clicked open the Honda doors, easing open the passenger side. She crawled in, and then with more difficulty, crawled over the gear shift. The tinted glass apparently kept her movements from observation outside the car, allowing her to settle behind the wheel. She inserted by did not turn key.

Ponci arrived a moment later. But he stayed outside the car near the open door, positioning himself so he could peer through the glass in the direction of the liquor store.

Flashes of gun fire erupted near where the others were hidden. Spits of gun fire from a dozen directions aimed at the trio still trapped behind the cars. Their return fire reverberated. Several drones dropped down behind their shelter, flashing something as well.

Luis arrived carrying the package, and slid into the narrow back seat, looking scared, but defiant, clutching his pistol against the cardboard box. Red showed on the box, smeared across it like a brush stroke of paint.

“You’re hit,” Sara said.

“So are the others,” Luis said. “They’re pinned down. We gotta go back for them.”

Ponci climbed into the car.

“No,” he said. “Just drive as fast as you can and as far as you can and don’t look back.”

“What about the others?”

“They’re dead,” Ponci said.

“No they’re not,” Luis yelped. “At last not Gizmo. He was still moving.”

“He’s dead,” Ponci said. “or soon will be. And we’ll be dead if we try to save him.”

“We have to try,” Sara said.

“No we don’t,” Ponci said, turning to Sara. “Drive!”

“Not without the others,” she said.

“You want revenge. You won’t get it by getting us killed.”

Sara made no move to start the car.

Then, the glass cracked on the driver’s side door – a perfect round hole as a bullet passed before her face, and then through the car, forcing its way out the passenger side window of the door Ponci had just closed.

“Drive, damn it!” Ponci yelled.

Sara stared, and then started the car, her hand moving so quickly on the gear shift she seemed ready for a stock car race, she banged the car behind them as she backed up, and then twisted the wheel to free the car from the spot – as more bullets struck the hood and lower portions of the driver’s side. More flashes came as the car rushed down the street. But no more bullets struck the car.

On the sidewalk – in the space between the parked cars – three bodies were sprawled, none now moving.

Luis stared out at them as the car rushed on, then bodies, the liquor store and the shadowy shapes emerging from doorways vanished in the rear view mirror as the Honda plunged ahead.

“What now?” asked Sara.

“Just keep going until I tell you to stop,” Ponci said. “They’ll be coming after us shortly and we need to be out of sight before they do.”

 

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