Chasing Echoes (The Fallen Republic Book 3), page 33
The two women looked out the windows at the buildings passing to either side. They saw only the occasional moving car on the street, and most of the few people on foot were just sitting in the shade or wandering aimlessly, with no direction. “It’s a ghost town,” Susan marveled.
“What do you think they did with all the tourists stuck in the hotels?” Raquel asked.
“Maybe they’re still there. They don’t have cars.”
“Yeah, but do they have any food? Is there anybody still working in the hotels?”
“Some, I think.” The casinos, of course, had been closed for weeks. “But I heard they’re having trouble getting paid. The government promised to subsidize the hotels, but…”
“The government’s shut down,” Raquel finished for her.
Susan pointed off to the right, and between gaps in the tall buildings they saw towering columns of black smoke somewhere off to the southeast from a huge fire. Here and there along the Strip were abandoned or crashed vehicles, most of them missing windows, a few burned down to the frame. Raquel’s hands tightened once more around the AR-15, which was sitting on the floor between her knees, and she was carefully eyeing every person they passed. She all too well remembered what had happened last time. But the aimless crowds which had filled the Strip a few short weeks ago had disappeared. Las Vegas truly did look like a ghost town.
The tan Hilton drew close on their right-hand side, the forever under-construction mirrored-blue monstrosity of the Fontainebleau, which everyone would forever misspell, on their left behind chain link fencing covered with blue plastic to keep in dust and keep out prying eyes. Raquel leaned over and saw Susan had a quarter tank of gas left. “You want to head back?” Gas stations with actual gas were getting scarce, nearly as scarce as food. If the President hadn’t shut down an estimated forty percent of the nation’s privately-owned vehicles, likely there’d be no gas to be had anywhere in the city.
The three south-bound lanes of Las Vegas Blvd. in front of them were narrowed with abandoned and derelict/vandalized vehicles. Susan slowed down to fit in the open lane between them, and a vehicle idling at the curb pulled out in front of her, abruptly enough that she had to stomp on the brakes. The vehicle then stopped, at an angle, blocking the street. And a big pickup truck and a minivan raced out of a service driveway just behind them, blocking their retreat. Men with guns got out in front and to their rear. Raquel swore under her breath even before Susan realized what was happening.
“Ladies,” said the man walking up the driver’s side of Susan’s Honda. He was loud and acting friendly, but he had a pistol in his hand, although it wasn’t pointing it at them. There were two guys in front of the Honda, and four more coming up behind, some of them with rifles. “We appreciate the delivery.” Susan made a squeaking sound, her eyes wide. She froze in place, as if she was afraid to turn her head. The man slowed down as he reached the rear of the Honda and looked inside. He saw all the bags in the back seat. “Is that groceries? Did you bring us…take out?” He laughed. He looked like he hadn’t bathed or shaved in a week. He stepped up next to Susan’s open window and leaned down. “Get out and fuck off,” he said, relaxed. “We’re taking your car. I—hey, shit, she’s got a gun!” he said, spotting the AR-15 between Raquel’s knees.
Raquel leaned over toward him, reached out, and shot him in the face with her pistol. Susan screamed and jerked wildly at the noise, and the man fell backward, out of sight. “Drive!” Raquel shouted, but there was nowhere for them to go—vehicles in front and back, a blank building wall just to their right, and closely-spaced palm trees running down the narrow median to their left. Maybe they should have surrendered, but those groceries were for their children. For Ricky.
The men in front and behind were surprised by the gunshot, and then all eyes turned to the man on the ground as he started screaming, hands clamped to his bloody face, kicking his legs against the pavement like a toddler having a tantrum. Susan was frozen behind the wheel.
Filled with sudden anger, Raquel shoved open her door, jumped up, and started shooting wildly at the people all around. They ducked and scattered, shouting as the pistol jumped and barked in her hand, scrambling behind the cars for cover. She fired and fired, blowing out a window, shouting as she shot, and then the pistol’s slide locked back on an empty magazine. She stood there in the open door and stared stupidly at the pistol. The ambushers peeked out from behind their vehicles, then stepped out, guns in hand. They looked at each other in disbelief, and burst out laughing at her. Until she dropped the pistol into the passenger seat, bent down inside the vehicle, came out with the AR-15 in her hands, murder in her eyes, and resumed shooting.
The rifle was so much louder than the pistol there was no comparison. Susan screamed again, then she was out of the car and running across the street in a blind panic. Raquel fired again and again, seeing one of the men fall down, then crawl behind the minivan blocking the street behind them. She blew out a window in a cloud of glass, and one of the truck’s tires popped with a bang that would have been loud but was drowned in the gunfire echoing off the buildings and vehicles. “Susan!” she shouted, but her voice was nearly lost in the gunfire as the men at either end of the impromptu blockade finally started shooting at her. Raquel ducked inside the open door, then ran around to the front of the Honda, shooting at the two men she could see on that side who were just standing there, stunned by the sudden violence. They looked surprised, and ducked or fell down behind their car.
Crouched down beside the Honda’s grille Raquel saw Susan leap the curb and then dart through a gap in the chain link fencing.
“Shoot the bitch!” she heard, and looked to see the man she’d first shot crawling away from her, bright red blood dripping rapidly from the hand pressed to the side of his head. Raquel popped up and fired over and over at the men behind the minivan and the truck, blowing out more windows and showering everyone with glass. Then she was sprinting across the road as well, chasing after Susan.
She heard more shooting, and felt bullets whipping past her as the man shouted, “Get that crazy cunt!” Raquel darted through the opening in the fence and found herself standing on packed dirt. Twenty feet in front of her the blank white side of the Fontainebleau stretched upward at least four stories—not a window to be seen, so this was probably the casino side of the property. She looked left and right, but the narrow verge between the building and the fence was empty in both directions. But straight ahead of her was an open door, leading into the building. Susan had to have gone that way. Raquel plunged into the darkness.
She stopped almost immediately, because she couldn’t see anything. She tore the sunglasses off her face, but it still took a second for her eyes to adjust. Stretching out before her was a huge open space. There were bare steel I-beams at regular intervals, and a concrete floor, but no walls. The space was very dim, the only light coming in through distant openings in the walls and far above her head. “Susan!” she called out, jogging forward. Her ears were ringing from the gunfire, but she was sure she heard shouting coming up behind her. She sped up. “Susan!”
She saw wires, and a lot of work lights, but none of them were illuminated, and narrowly missed tripping over tools and cables as she darted between the steel beams, looking for her friend. “Susan!” she shouted, and there was immediate gunfire behind her. A bullet spanged off something nearby. She ducked reflexively and looked over her shoulder. She could see several forms in the dim light, coming after her. She put on a burst of speed and immediately tripped on something half-seen in the murk of the half-made building.
She rolled across the hard surface, either packed dirt or concrete so covered with blowing desert grit she couldn’t tell the difference. When she came up she was disoriented, not sure where she’d come in—all the bright spots in the distance, doors, windows, perhaps missing sections of wall, looked the same. Someone shot at her and she dove behind a pallet of drywall sheeting and crouched there. She looked around, trying to see something to shoot at, or Susan, and was about to open her mouth to shout for her again when moaning figures rushed past her on both sides. Confused for a second she raised her rifle, then realized they were zombies, hiding in the quiet darkness of the construction site, now enraged at the noise. Maybe six of them, then a few more. She heard startled shouts, then shooting.
Raquel jumped up and ran in the opposite direction. She jerked sideways as a snarling zombie appeared out of the gloom ahead of her, but other than swiping at her with a hand it didn’t pause in its run toward the gunfire, which was now increasing. “Susan!” she hissed, no longer wanting to shout, or run, although she couldn’t make herself slow to a walk. There were zombies everywhere in the gloom, she saw, rushing toward the noise. She jogged deeper into the huge building, then banged her shin on an outthrust pipe and nearly fell down.
Raquel hopped on one foot, grimacing, and thought she heard a whimper deeper inside the building. “Susan?” she hissed, and then a zombie appeared out of nowhere, hands up like claws, and Raquel backpedaled to get away from her dirty, jagged nails. “Susan!” Raquel shouted, then stabbed at the zombie with the end of the rifle. It ignored the steel flash hider slamming into her ribs. Raquel used the length of the rifle to fend off the zombie, then another appeared out of the darkness, coming right at her, snarling. Raquel cursed and started firing.
The roof had lowered, now seemingly right above her head, and the rifle was even louder inside the hollow building. The muzzle flash lit up the dirty, deranged infected as they came at her. Raquel fired several times at the woman, then the fat man dressed like a tourist lunging at her, and they fell at her feet.
Panting, she ran a dozen steps and then found Susan cowering behind a portable generator. “Come on, we’ve got to go!” Raquel shouted, grabbing her arm. There was shouting and shooting behind her, and the howls of maddened zombies all around.
Raquel kept firm hold of Susan’s sleeve and pulled her along, worried she might suddenly dart away in the gloom in a panic. She aimed toward a bright rectangle in the distance, presumably an open door, but fifty feet along they found themselves blocked by a tangle of piping and several pallets of drywall, with a jumble of equipment scattered on the floor all around. There was no way through.
“Shit, go around,” Raquel said, but no sooner had they spun to leave than there were zombies in front of them. Raquel shot them both, the muzzle flash dazzling her eyes, but only hit the second one once before her rifle stopped working. She put the rifle up between her and the dirty fat woman who tried to claw her eyes out, using it to keep her at bay. Susan was no help, cowering and whimpering behind her. Raquel shoved and kicked at the obese zombie woman until she fell to the ground, eyes goggling and mouth working. Maybe she was having a heart attack. Past her the building, dark as an unlit basement, was alive with sounds and movement—howls, shouting, gunfire, darting shadowy figures, and the occasional scream.
Raquel looked down at the rifle, wondering what had gone wrong. She’d looked up how to load and unload it, work the controls, but she didn’t know how to do any repairs. She—wait a minute! She looked at the hole in the side of the thing. It was open. That meant it was empty, she was pretty sure. Her purse was still slung across her body and she dug in it frantically for one of the loaded magazines.
“What are you doing?” Susan sobbed. Raquel looked back at her, then forward, seeing several zombies coming their way. She found one of the magazines, hit the button to get rid of the empty one, and tried to shove the loaded one into the hole in the bottom, but it didn’t want to go. She looked, and saw the cartridges were facing the wrong way. She pulled it out, stuck it in the right way, then jerked the rifle up and pulled the trigger at someone running at her. Nothing happened.
It wasn’t a zombie, it was one of the men from the roadblock. “You dumb bitch,” he panted, glanced at the rifle in her hands, then he took cover behind one of the pallets, hiding from the zombies. He had an AK in his hands, but he’d blown through the magazine, and struggled to pull a fresh one from his pocket while watching for zombies.
Raquel looked from him down to the rifle in her hands. She’d put more bullets in, why wasn’t it working? She could see them right through the hole in the side. Wait, she was supposed to do something else….
Heart hammering in her chest, she found the little button on the side. The metallic sound of the bolt slamming home sounded loud. The carjacker looked up, a fresh magazine for his AK in his hands. “Hey,” he said, and Raquel shot him twice in the chest, then opened fire on a zombie running at her. Susan screamed again at the gunfire. The area in front of them was swarming with zombies, and she could hear the other men with guns. They were out there, and maybe coming her way. Raquel looked behind her, then up. “Climb!” she told Susan.
“What?”
“Climb!” She pointed at the drywall stacked on the pallet. “Get to the next level.” The floor above them was not too far above the top of the pallet, and there was a huge opening in the flooring.
With some difficulty Susan clambered up onto the stacked drywall, reached up, then said, “I can’t, it’s too high!” Raquel risked a glance over her shoulder, then frantically looked around. She found a plastic five-gallon bucket and tossed it up to the other woman. “Stand on that!” she said, then had to start shooting at four zombies running at her.
She was deaf from the gunfire by the time she’d killed all four, the last one actually falling on her feet, and turned around to see what was going on. Susan had managed to climb up to the next floor, and was looking down at her, terror on her face. Raquel tossed the rifle onto the pallet then climbed up next to it. A zombie grabbed her foot and she shot him in the forehead, then slung the rifle over her shoulder, stepped up onto the bucket, and reached up. With Susan helping her she climbed up onto the next floor. She laid there on the floor for a few seconds, gasping, then climbed to her feet as more shooting erupted nearby.
“Come on,” Raquel said, she thought quietly, but couldn’t tell as her ears seemed to be broken. The two women jogwalked across the dusty floor toward daylight. What Raquel thought might be a bank of windows turned out to be empty window frames stretching from floor to ceiling. They looked out and saw a narrow side street before them.
“Here, over here,” Raquel said, pointing. They moved down thirty feet. Directly below them was a big piece of construction equipment, and the roof of its cab was barely six feet below them, although it was maybe six feet away from the building as well. “Jump down.”
“I can’t jump that,” Susan said.
Raquel shook her head in disbelief. “You going back through the zombies? It’s zombies, or jump.” She glanced back nervously. No zombies had climbed up through the floor after them. She didn’t even know if they could climb. And didn’t want to stick around to find out. Susan was still dancing around the edge, biting her lip.
Gritting her teeth, Raquel backed up several steps, then ran to the edge and jumped. She was scared, flying on adrenaline, and actually put more energy into the jump than she should have. She landed on the far edge of the tractor’s roof but still had forward momentum. She windmilled her arms, then fell off the far side.
It was farther from the roof of the tractor to the sidewalk than it had been from the second floor to the roof. She landed on her leg and hip, but badly, and laid there for a while, panting from the pain.
“Raquel? Raquel!” She was out of sight behind the tractor.
Raquel stood up so Susan could see her, favoring one leg, but didn’t think anything was broken. “Thank God for a fat ass,” she muttered. “It’s easier than it looks, I jumped too hard,” Raquel told her. She waved. “Come on!” Unslinging the rifle she looked left and right down the street in both directions, and realized she was on Elvis Presley Boulevard, just east of the Strip.
Working up her courage, Susan tippy-toe danced back and forth on the edge, then finally jumped, awkwardly. She fell to her knees on the hard plastic roof of the tractor’s cab, and cried out in pain, but she didn’t fall.
“Good. Climb on down,” Raquel told her.
“Where are we going?” Susan asked, once she’d made it down to the sidewalk. Both women were panting and covered with dust and blood from small cuts. Raquel’s hip ached horribly from the fall.
“Come on,” Raquel said, limping along the sidewalk next to the Fontainebleau. It stretched out before them for at least a hundred yards, with only one distant door in sight, and nobody in view.
“Wait, isn’t this the wrong way?” Susan said, after they’d gone fifty feet.
“We need a car,” Raquel told her. And she wanted those groceries.
“Are you crazy?” Susan squeaked. Raquel ignored her. She didn’t hear any more gunfire inside the building, but the angry, disturbed howls and dozens of zombies floated out through the open door as they reached it. Both women eyed the open door nervously, then darted across it. They reached the corner just a few seconds later and peered out, past the fencing. The cars were where they’d left them on the Strip, and Raquel didn’t see any movement.
“Stay here, and come when I say,” Raquel said. She didn’t wait for a response, she just ran out into the street as fast as she could, trying to use the palm trees and cars to cover her approach.
She found two men behind the blocking car in front of Susan’s Honda, lying in pools of blood, dead from gunshots. Hers, apparently. Susan’s Honda was sitting in the middle of the street, still running, the back window blown out but otherwise seemingly fine.
Raquel approached the truck and the minivan at the rear of the roadblock carefully, her rifle up. The man she’d shot in the face was sitting on the pavement, leaning against one of the truck’s tires. He was pale, his shirt covered in blood, but he was alive, and stared at her in fury, one hand still clamped to the side of his face.
