I pushed on farther down the street, getting us away from the carnage and the smell, wondering if we should have searched the buildings for survivors and knowing that it was pointless. I rounded the corner ahead and that’s when the first shot rang out.
16
I hit the ground with the others, crawling towards the safety of an overturned car. Bullets zipped around me, thudding into storefronts and street signs. Whoever was doing the shooting was not real precise. Another shot rang out and punched through a plate glass window, knocking a dusty cobwebbed mannequin over.
“Hole in one,” Texas Slim said.
“Coming from that building over there, Nash,” Carl said, pointing to a brick walk-up across the street. “See the glint of the barrel? Second story window?”
I did. The window was gone and pink curtains were blowing out.
“Sounds like a medium caliber. Maybe a thirty-thirty or a thirty-ought.”
“You, sir, are a violent man,” Texas said. “Such a knowledge of firearms. Shame on you.”
We were effectively pinned down. Other than a few wrecked cars the street was wide open. A perfect kill zone. The only thing we had going for us, way I saw it, was that the sniper out there wasn’t much of a shot. The bullets came intermittently and always pretty wide of our position as if the shooter was just trying to scare us off or keep us contained.
“Well, what do you think?” Carl asked, sighting on the building with his AK.
“I’m not sure,” I said.
“Maybe they’ll just go away,” Janie said.
“And maybe Carl’s mother should have kept her legs closed, child,” Texas Slim said.
“You better shut your fucking hole,” Carl warned him.
I put a hand on him. “Easy.”
“I’m all for waiting until they run out of bullets,” Gremlin said.
Carl laughed. “You would be.” He turned to me. “Let me see your Savage.”
I wasn’t sure if it was a good idea or not. Carl had a way of stirring up the hornet’s nest and particularly when he had a gun. And then another shot rang out and punched into the hood of the car and I handed Carl the rifle.
Carl jumped up, sighting as he did so. He fired, ejected a shell, and repeated the process twice in quick succession. I couldn’t have done it in a matter of seconds like that and even if I did, I wouldn’t have had any accuracy. But Carl did. His first two rounds punched into the face of the building mere feet from the window and the third went right through it.
And then a figure-a woman, I thought-leaped in front of the window and fired twice, the slugs hitting the street in front of the car. She kept trying to fire, but she was out of rounds and that was obvious by the temper tantrum she threw at that moment before crying out and jumping away from the window.
Carl handed the. 30.06 back to me and took up his AK. “I’m going to get the bitch.”
“Leave it,” I told him.
“Leave it? Full moon’s not far off, man. We need something before then if you know what I mean.”
I just nodded and Carl raced off. I felt the guilt cut into me as it always did and I could feel Janie next to me, disapproving. She just didn’t get it.
Texas Slim said, “Well, I’d better go accompany him. Boys do get into trouble when unsupervised.”
I sighed and leaned up against the car. Sometimes I felt like I was leading and sometimes I knew I was being led. Janie was looking at me. Her face was unreadable.
“If nothing else, they get her she might know where a car is.”
“Oh, is that what you want her for?”
I lit a cigarette to keep my nerves in check and probably so I didn’t slap her right across the face. “Listen to me, Janie. Do me a favor and pack away your fucking morals and ethics, okay? In case you haven’t noticed we’re at war here. We’re fighting for our lives. Do you think I care about some crazy bitch who’s trying to kill us? Well, I don’t. I care about Texas and Carl. You, me. Gremlin. If she dies so that we live, fuck it. That’s how it has to be. You think she cares about us?”
Janie was ready to answer that, of course, but in the building across the way there was the distinctive staccato of Carl’s AK-47 doing some talking over there. He wasn’t cowboying it…just two rapid three-shot bursts and that was it.
“Well, he either got her or she got him,” Gremlin said.
Then we waited. The silence was heavy, almost crushing as we watched the building, listened to the wind make things creak and groan in the deserted street. Dust devils whipped around. Birds cawed in the sky.
I crushed my butt. “Hell are they?”
And then they appeared, pushing a woman before them. Carl shoved her out the doorway and Texas took her by the arm and guided her down the stairs and out into the street. I figured she was probably in her twenties, tall and long-limbed, very attractive. She was tanned and fit, swearing and bitching and fighting the whole way. Texas Slim and Carl, being quite resourceful, had torn up some bedsheets and tied her arms behind her back.
And she didn’t care for it much.
They brought her over and Carl shoved her to the ground. She twisted and squirmed, struggling up to her knees. “You fucking asshole! I said I’d go with you! Quit fucking pushing me, you prick!”
“Quite a mouth on her,” Texas Slim said.
“We caught her in the corridor. She was making a run for it. I convinced her otherwise.”
She was wearing a pair of cut-off jeans and a yellow shirt with a picture of Sesame Street’s Cookie Monster on it extending his middle finger. EAT SHIT, was printed above this. And that pretty much summed up her feelings concerning her captors.
Carl put a hand on her shoulder and she jerked away and spit on him. He laughed.
“Settle down,” I told her. “We’re not fucking crazies. We’re not going to hurt you.”
“Oh no, I can see that.”
“You shot at us first, honey. Not the other way around,” Texas reminded her.
She sat there looking at us with big dark eyes, lips pulled away from white teeth that wanted to snarl. Slowly, by degrees, she mellowed. She was still breathing hard, but she wasn’t as predatory.
Her T-shirt was ripped and I could see a fine expanse of flat belly and a pierced navel. I cleared my throat, dug a water bottle from my pack and gave her a drink. “They didn’t…ah…hurt you, did they?”
She shook her head.
“I’m Nash,” I said and made a quick round of introductions.
She licked her lips, still looking ready to claw out eyeballs. “Mickey. Mickey Cox.”
Texas Slim giggled. “Cox, did you say? I like women named Cox.”
Carl started laughing.
Gremlin was just staring, his mouth hanging open. He wasn’t drooling at our captive, but he wasn’t too far from it.
Janie went to her, pulled a jackknife from her pocket and cut the knotted sheets from her wrists. “Are you all right?”
“Yes.”
Janie smiled at her and Mickey relaxed almost instantly. No one could refuse Janie’s eyes, I knew, when she put them on you. There was such honesty and sincerity in them she could have melted a rock. “Are you sure these idiots didn’t hurt you?”
“They were rough. But I’ve been handled rougher.”
“I’m certain you have, child,” Texas said. “And often.”
I thumped him on the arm to shut him up.
Janie looked her up and down. “You sure they didn’t…touch you or anything?”
Mickey shook her head. “They’re still walking aren’t they?”
“C’mon,” Carl said. “Nash, you know I wouldn’t do something like that. I might kill her ass, but I wouldn’t fuck it.”
“True, very true, that’s our Carl,” Texas Slim said. “He’s a noble sort. And you all know I wouldn’t hear of such a thing. I would never assail a woman’s virtue unless she asked me to.”
“Comedians,” I said by way of explanation.
Mickey drank her water, kept an eye on us. Particularly me. The others she didn’t much care about, but she kept her eyes on me. I was very aware of it, but pretended I didn’t notice. She was eye candy. Or maybe, and more bluntly, hand candy. Unlike Janie who was petite and fair and porcelain doll-pretty, Mickey was tall and dark and long-limbed. She was pretty, too, but in a blatantly sexual sort of way. She had the curves and the legs, the high tits, the big dark eyes and full lips. The sort of girl who could talk about eating a salad and make it sound positively sensuous and carnal, make you want to dash out and fuck your hand. Here was a girl who’d gotten along on her looks her whole life. She knew what men liked and she knew she had it, knew how to use it.