Her eyes widened. “Like what?”
“Poison the water supply?”
“Most people drink bottle water and there’s a plentiful supply of that.”
“Gas maybe, but again they would have to cover every square inch of Florida to be absolutely sure… or…” His face clouded over.
“What? What is it?” she asked with trepidation.
“We need to get to Quinn Martell fast.” He marched from the kitchen. “Let’s see what sort of vehicles they have in the garage.”
“Why, where are we going?”
“The only certain place we know there is a link to the outside world.”
“Where?”
“The late President’s compound.”
Luke walked amongst the beautiful cars, the Lamborghinis, Ferraris and Porsches, with admiration. Sophie asked, “How are we going to get there without being caught?”
“We’ll go as far as we can through the Seminole Reservation like you did and keep to tree-covered areas as far as possible — to avoid the drones and spy-planes.” His eyes lit up as they fell on the perfect vehicle. “Ah, we have a winner.”
Sophie cast her eyes over to Luke past the Ferrari, past the Rolls-Royce, the limousine, and her face dropped. “Oh.” She scrunched her eyes. “what is it?” She asked staring at the old, mud covered motorcycle.
“This will be our salvation, the BMW 1200 GS, one of the most powerful dirt bikes ever made, we can go off-road, through water, everywhere our pursuers can’t.” He smiled broadly but she seemed unconvinced. He cocked his leg over, kick-started it and revved the engine. “Jump on.” She appeared reticent, but eventually clambered onto the back, Luke open the throttle and they shot from the garage, into the scorching hot sun.
He pulled a wheelie, fighting to get control of the powerful beast, as the off-road motorcycle ploughed across the beautifully manicured lawn, down to the river, where the wreckage of the naval vessel still smoldered, and onto the tow-path and away.
“Can you slow down?” she asked as the motorcycle bounced over a protruding tree root, that shook her bones and jarred her teeth.
“Not yet, we need to put some distance from the mansion.”
“How so?”
“I thought I’d set a decoy.”
“What did you do?” But before Luke could reply a massive explosion answered her question. She glanced back to see the mansion on fire and chunks of debris falling down into the river beside them.
“I left the gas taps on, rigged a cigarette lighter in another room, so when eventually the gas met the flame — ka-boom!”
“How do you know how to do these things?”
“I did an in-depth report on Militia and guerrilla warfare,” he said with a smirk. “Who knew one day it would save my life.”
Sophie watched in awe as a plume of black smoke billowed up into the heavens and the glorious plantation mansion burned with a ferocity she did not expect. The flames caught the nearby tinder–dry trees alight and flames from the trees licked the clear blue sky.
She was about to look away when something caught her eye, in the distance a black dot appeared, but within moments the dot had become an army helicopter circling the burning mansion. She tapped Luke on the shoulder and pointed. He saw the chopper and his shoulders sagged. “That was quick! Still, it will keep ‘em busy for some time. Maybe we should do some more. Get them thinking that a band of vigilantes are striking back. Tie up more troops and confuse them. What do you think?”
“Sure let’s do it.”
He grinned and drove the motorcycle up a well-worn path from the river into a trailer park. He saw the devastation the Bubonic Plague had caused in the tight-knit neighborhood environment, the Happy Pines Trailer Park, as its welcoming sign announced, was anything but happy. It appeared the Black Death had spread like wildfire amongst the community. The inhabitants had crawled outside to die in the fresh air rather than stay inside the stifling metal tombs. Luke could only imagine what the incessant heat inside the steel boxes must have been like. Even now in the early morning, the tops of the trailers shimmered, distorting the tree line as heat rose from the sheet metal.
He parked the dirt bike and he and Sophie walked amongst the dead in the hope they might find someone alive. Luke shook his head at each corpse, detecting from afar that they had passed away. In the distance, they could see dogs and rats fighting over the carcass of an elderly person.
As Luke and Sophie entered each trailer, they tried to ignore the darkened remains of the occupants. The boil-ridden bodies of children upset Sophie greatly and the putrid smell of death made her gag. She took a couple of silk scarves from a dresser and handed one to Luke who gratefully copied her and tied it over his nose. He quickly turned the gas taps on the stove, and then closed the door of the rancid smelling trailers, to fill each one with the explosive gas.
Sophie tried the door of a double trailer, but she found it locked, “Don’t worry,” said Luke. “They’ll be a chain reaction that’ll catch all these babies alight.”
When he finished, Luke wheeled the dirt bike near to the river ready for a quick getaway. He used the kick-start to fire the engine, entered the last trailer evidently occupied by potheads. The stoners were dead on the floor, and the trailer littered with their drug paraphernalia, including a fruit-bowl full of disposable lighters. Luke helped himself to a liberal amount of the cigarette lighters, taped one open so the flame burned continually, set the gas jets of the stove and closed the trailer door slowly so as not to put the flame out.
Sophie stood with her hands up with dust whipping up all around her as Luke left the trailer. He heard rather than saw the helicopter above. “Put your hands up!” instructed a metallic sounding voice from the chopper’s loud hailer. “Do not move!” Luke slowly raised his hands and signaled with his eyes for Sophie to move as far from the trailer as possible. He shuffled backward as did she. “I said stay where you are!”
“Get ready to run to the river,” Luke said. “I’ll ride the bike the other way draw their fire.”
Inside the chopper, the four man crew watched them shuffle back, “Do they really think they can outrun a chopper?” the gunner chuckled at the absurdity. “Go on, let them try, it’ll be more sporting.” He cocked the M-16 side-mounted machine-gun and pulled back on the handle of the sliding door. “I’ll put ten bullets in each of them before they hit the floor, any bets?”
The pilot said, “She’s a darkie for sure, you can see her skin color from here.”
“What about him?”
“Execute him too, she would’ve passed the disease onto him.”
The military camouflaged helicopter turned in midair, hovered sideways and the gunner spun around to get them in his sights.
“Now!” Luke yelled, running for the motorcycle, he hopped on and pulled back on the throttle and was surprised when Sophie threw herself onto the back and wrapped her arms around him, instead of heading for the river as arranged.
“I’m coming with you,” she told him in a tone of voice that broached no argument. He kicked down on the gearshift lever, engaged first and released the clutch, when the gunner sprayed bullets in front of them kicking up dirt.
The metallic voice from above said. “Say your prayers, suck—” Suddenly the trailer erupted, and orange-red flames shot upwards with large sections of the roof striking the rotor blades, putting the chopper into a spin. The engine coughed and spluttered and a crash landing was inevitable.
Luke did not think twice and spun the bike away from the river, as he roared down the main avenue of the trailer park, the mobile homes exploded to the left and right of them with differing ferocity. Behind them another fragment of roofing shot up into the undercarriage of the helicopter, rupturing the fuel line and the chopper exploded mid-air into a hovering ball of flames.