Fail State, page 28
part #2 of End of Days Series
"Time to go," Dale said. "Come on."
Jonas was perplexed to find he couldn't move. He couldn't make his legs work. Part of him wanted to see what came through the breach in the gate.
"Come on!" Dale hissed, smacking him upside the head and dragging him away by the collar. Jonas finally got moving. But his legs were jerky and unreliable beneath him.
"That’s not the main attack," Dale said.
The fuck you say, Jonas thought, but nothing came out of his mouth save one strangled obscenity.
"Look," Dale said, hitting him again, directing his attention to a side street between Big Al’s diner and the boarded up façade of Ginger McCauley's Get Fudged storefront. He was running now, panting and out of breath, and it was dark, but he could see what was happening over at the Wall. Even more gunfire, and explosions. Not the dirty concussive blast of hand grenades, like Wolfenden's men had used. Something else. Something exotic, and fiery,
"Molotovs," Dale said.
Oily blossoms of orange-yellow flame erupted up and down the length of the Wall. Tracer fire reached down from the hilltops, raking across the fields where schoolchildren and seniors had planted green beans and potatoes. Jonas forced himself to turn away from the spectacle. It was enthralling and terrible but something worse was coming up behind them. He recognised the sound of dozens, maybe hundreds of big motorcycles. They were heading for the breach in the Seattle gate.
“JONAS! DALE!”
Sheriff Muller called out to them from the steps of his station house. He was carrying a shotgun and clad in body armour. He had some sort of night vision goggles strapped to his head but the monocular lens was flipped up, pointing to the stars above. Muller looked grim. Both men stopped, their flight interrupted by the command in his voice.
"They're coming through the gate,” Muller shouted.
"And the wall," Dale shouted back. "You need to bring up the reserve from the Cascade Gate, Dave.”
Deputies Millfull and Tilly appeared behind him, hurrying out of the station carrying rifles and ammunition. They looked as though they had just woken up. Probably had, Jonas thought. Half of the town’s watch was stood to, while the other half rested and waited.
Gunfire crackled and the roar of bikes grew closer.
"They'll hit the traps soon," Muller shouted, just as the volcanic rumble of chopped hogs and Japanese super-bikes gave way to a confused heavy metal crash.
Jonas flinched. He looked back over his shoulder towards the Seattle gate, which was now aflame. The burning structure gave off enough light to see that the first wave of attacking riders had hit the wire and the hastily dug trench line about twenty yards inside the shattered fort.
Big bikes clattered and fell, sending up showers of sparks.
He saw one machine, eerily piloted by a headless rider, veer left and avoid the pitfall, carrying on for at least thirty yards before hitting the gutter outside Get Fudged and flipping high into the air, coming down with a bone-juddering crash.
The trench was not deep, three-foot at most. Nor was it very wide. But that didn't matter. When the wheels of the motorcycles passed over the edge and onto the camouflaged tarpaulin the riders were instantly unseated and thrown clear, creating a chaotic pileup. Defenders poured deadly fire into the tangle from both flanks. Most fired from cover but one went striding, or rather staggering down Main Street holding an oversized revolver in one hand and what looked like a bottle of Jack Daniels in the other. Everyone's favourite town drunk, Colin McFarland, had somehow laid his hands on a live weapon and an open bottle – neither of which he was supposed to be anywhere near. Muller and his deputies, and Jonas and Dale stood gape-mouthed as McFarland unsteadily advanced on the interlopers, chugging lustily from his bottle, bellowing drunken defiance, and popping off shots.
“Fill your handsome bitches,” he roared, or rather slurred at maximum volume, before correcting himself, “I mean sumbitches… I mean… Fill your hams…”
Whatever he meant was lost in the mouthful of liquor he poured down his throat, all the while continuing to blast away with the old cavalry pistol.
It was enough to sow confusion and a temporary panic among the attacking bikers, adding to the train wreck just inside the gate. Jonas stood with his mouth hanging open, slowly shaking his head. The bikers were in utter disarray. Their machines piled up on top of each other. Men—they were all dudes—scrambling over the broken, twisted metal and the bodies of fallen or crippled comrades to escape. If you looked closely enough you could start to make out different club colours. He recognised the wings of the Hells Angels on some of the men’s riding leathers.
“Colin! No!” Muller cried out. But too late. One of the bikers laid his sights on the stupidly brave, disastrously shitfaced drunk and cut him down with a burst of fire.
Dale Juntii brought up his own weapon, the one he had used to kill Renken the previous day, and returned fire, dropping McFarlane's killer. It was enough to break the strange, suspended moment. Muller and his deputies, got moving again. They hurried across the street to the Red Apple, where a dozen or more of Darren O’Shannassy’s supporters were holed up, taking advantage of firing slits cut into the heavy steel shutters that secured the building.
"Get reserves from the other gate," Muller cried out. “Plug the breach.”
"Will do," Jonas called back, flinching as Jacques Loubert’s glasshouse shattered into thousands of crystal shards when a biker road directly into it. Loubert appeared from the darkness, running at the man, holding a shovel over his head. He charged into the wreckage of his treasured project, swinging the heavy spade like a mediaeval axe. Jonas heard it strike home with a sick wet crunch.
“Jesus Christ,” he muttered.
A massive explosion to the north-west lit up the whole town.
“The wall," Dale said, as though that explained everything. He suddenly spun and fired blindly into the darkness to the east, where the terrain dropped away precipitously.
"They’re climbing up the rock face," he said matter-of-factly.
That was enough for Jonas.
"These fuckers are coming from everywhere,” he shouted.
And they were. He could see it. Could see where this was heading. Bullets sparked and flashed off the road surface just a few feet away. Jonas and Dale started to run again, but sprinting this time. Towards the Cascade fort, or simply away from the Seattle Gate; he had no freaking idea. All he knew was that he was running, he was still alive, and if he stopped running he would probably die.
He heard music. Fucking music! And he recognised it. Let the Gods Decide. By Manowar. It wasn’t fair. He fucking loved that album, and now these assholes trying to kill him had chosen it as their battle hymn. It just wasn’t right. So he ran.
Dale ran with him. That made him feel better. If a stone killer like Dale Juntii knew it was time to rip and run, who the hell was Jonas Murdoch to second-guess him? They charged the length of Main Street, sprinting past the Farmers Mutual, the Wells Fargo, Tewes Realty, the statue of John Mullen Jr, the neatly planted beds of winter vegetables, the shuttered shops and darkened windows of the local retailers and Dr Cornwell's surgery, finally reaching the Cascade gate where a dozen men waited with longarms and worried expressions. The sounds of battle from the far end of town were growing louder, more chaotic.
The small cluster of residents at the Cascade Gate had been detailed as a Quick Reaction Force, which would have been laughable, if Jonas was in the mood for lulz. Leo Vaulk was down here, of course, having been banished from Sheriff Muller’s presence after yesterday’s fiasco, and Leo was by far the most combat ready of Silverton’s Quick Reaction Force. Next to him, Paul Tisevich leaned on his WW2-era rifle, using it as a walking frame rather than a weapon. Professor Boylan, retired agronomist held a pitchfork at port arms. And a clutch of old Bob Shapcott’s checkers crew shuffled about looking as though the excitement might hurry them on to rejoin Bob long before the barbarians at the Seattle Gate did.
They all looked massively relieved to see Jonas and Dale run up.
“What’s happening?” Tisevich demanded to know. “We moving up the line?”
His martial spirit was not in doubt, but his sense of balance was, and he nearly fell over when he tried to come to attention.
“Are we out of here? Are we bugging out?” Leo Vaulk wanted to know. Leo looked ready to jump off the gate and go tear-assing into the mountains on his own.
“What do you mean bugging out?” Tisevich protested. “We’re moving up the line.”
Jonas stood dumbly in front of the small crowd of armed yokels, lost for what to do next. He had assumed they were cutting and running as soon as Dale had… well, cut and run. But confronted by this last line of the town’s defenders he realised with horror that they were all looking to him for leadership.
What the fuck was he supposed to do? Cry havoc and lead a column of walking frames into the breach?
Even Juntii was staring at him, panting for breath, waiting for orders.
The roar of motorcycles, the bark and snarl of weapons fire, and the music pounding out of a mobile sound system, the crashing din of it all shattered and scattered his thoughts into a thousand jagged shards.
“Shit,” he said. “Come on.”
He meant, ‘Come on. This isn’t fair. Find someone else.’
But they heard his plaintive “Come on,” and that was enough to get them moving.
Perhaps they might have shuffled into battle and allowed him to quietly slip away in the confusion. But as the Quick Reaction Force moved out, they ran headlong into another, larger group moving at much greater speed for the Cascade gate.
Not the marauding bikers.
Tomi Yates and her besties.
And their families. And their friends. About thirty peeps in all.
Shit, he’d forgotten all about Tomi. But she hadn’t forgotten about him, or his escape plan.
“The fuck are you doing?” he asked her, his voice raised to be heard above the din.
“Getting the fuck gone, Jonas. What d’you think? Open the gates now. We gotta get to Rausch’s place.”
Tisevich and his crew came to a confused halt.
“We’re falling back to Brad Rausch’s place?” he asked. “But that’s a mile out of town. We can’t fight them from there.”
The furious noise of the gun battle at the far end of town seemed to spike up fiercely, and everyone crouched lower. A heavy industrial din, crashing and discordant, rolled over them from that direction. Jonas peered back along Main Street. His balls contracted.
Two pick-ups had forced their way through the shattered gate structure. The attackers had mounted heavy machine guns on them.
“Fuck me,” Dale Juntii barked. “Technicals.”
“Jesus. Okay. Just the women and children through the gate,” Jonas improvised. “It’ll be safer at Brad’s place.”
Tomi actually smirked. Jonas could have slapped her. The gaggle of mean girls she’d brought with her were too terrified to notice the exchange.
“Open the gate,” Jonas ordered. “Get the women and children out.”
It was completely fucking crazy of course. Tomi’s raggedy ass band of bitches and all their hangers on wasn’t going to fit into the three vehicles Rausch had ready to go, and they were in no shape to hold off a siege of the auto repair yard if the bikers chose to try one.
But what the fuck was he supposed to do? Everyone was looking to him. Even Dale.
Some kid started to unlock the little postern door, causing a rush to the gate.
Dale looked at Jonas with a confused and questioning expression and Jonas could only shrug.
The whole debacle might have collapsed into panic and rout had not Sheriff Muller come running up at the moment, puffing and red faced, sweating like a wheel of cheese and barely able to speak.
“Where’s...” he started, before bending over to catch his breath, “…reinforce…”
Paul Tisevich pushed through the crush of refugees.
“Ready to move out and kick ass, Dave. We were just coming up with Jonas and Dale when the women folk and kiddies turned up.”
“What?” Muller asked, with a confused, breathless gasp.
He ducked, they all did, as the gun wagons started to service targets on the roofline of Main Street. The children screamed and their carers didn’t do much better. Most of them sheltered under the firing platform of the Cascades Gate.
“Later,” Jonas said. “It’s not important.”
“Keep that gate closed!” Muller shouted at the kid who had been about to unlock it. He sucked in a deep draught of air and spoke again, forcefully but not as loudly this time. “They’re… trying to flank us…All round. They’ll be out there.”
Anxious protests flew back at him, but the gate stayed shut.
“We need to hit back hard, now,” Muller said.
“You need to take out those technicals,” Dale said, nodding at the up-gunned vehicles about four hundred yards away. Long ropey streams of tracer fire licked out of the mounted weapons, raking at the topmost brickwork of the Savings and Loan. No return fire answered the attack.
Muller sucked at his lower lip. He cast a skeptical eye over the so-called Quick Reaction Force and shook his head.
“Dale, Jonas, it’ll have to be us. O’Shannassy’s guys are pinned down. Joe Wolfenden is in the forest trying to dig out the shooters on the high ground. If we can get up on top of Ginger’s fudge shop, we can fire down into those pickups from behind.”
“I lost my rifle when they hit the gate,” Jonas confessed. Not mentioning that he’d left it on the parapet when he went to take yet another piss. Also not mentioning that the last thing he wanted to do was drag his ass back into that unholy shitfight at the far end of town.
“You can have mine,” Leo Vaulk said, handing him an assault rifle that looked like a fucking prop from a video game. “You familiar with any military grade systems?”
“I go to the range,” Jonas said. And he had, when he could afford to. That felt like a million years ago.
“Well that’s an FN SCAR battle rifle,” Leo said proudly. “Only serving military and licensed security professionals can load out with these bad boys. Gas-operated, self-loading. Full auto, 7.62mm. You take this one. I got some other toys in the bag I been wanting to break out.”
He jerked a thumb over his shoulder, back toward the Cascade Gate.
Jonas forced a rubbery smile onto his numb face as he stepped up to take the weapon. You had to admire Leo. A legitimate Hell regiment of apocalypse bikers overrunning his hometown and he could still find a moment to give his dick a little squeeze over a centrefold in Guns & Ammo.
“Thanks,” Jonas said, and then more quietly. “You be ready, Leo.”
Vaulk nodded.
They stepped away from each other.
“Safety selector is on,” Leo said. “You flick it off like this.”
“Got it,” Jonas said.
His eyes shifted to Dale Juntii.
Dale was waiting to see what Jonas did.
“We should sneak around the back way,” Jonas suggested. “Less likely to get our asses shot off in the alleyway behind those shops than charging down Main.”
Muller nodded.
“Good idea”. He turned to Paul Tisevitch. “Paul, can you get these kids to shelter? Right now.”
“I’ll wrangle them into Doc Cornwell’s place,” the old soldier said. “Be careful, Dave, you boys.”
Jonas was about to leave with Muller when someone gripped his arm. Tomi. She dragged him aside, just far enough away that nobody could listen to them. Not that anyone did. They looked like a couple in the torrid throes of an affair da-fucking-amour.
“What about me. What about our deal?” Tomi hissed.
Jonas leaned in close and glared, “You fucking broke it, you dumb bitch. Who the fuck are these cripples? Why’d you bring them?”
Tomi narrowed her eyes.
“That was Lisa, not me,” she hissed. “She told her stupid mother, and her mom brought all these other assholes. I couldn’t get rid of them, baby. Not with everyone watching.”
Shit.
This was getting worse by the second.
If Lisa Dees and her mother knew Jonas was looking to cut free, half the fucking town would know by now, and the rest by morning if they survived.
“You want to get out of this, you need to get rid of them,” Jonas said through gritted teeth.
“Problem, Jonas?” Dave Muller called out. He was clearly pissed. He and Dale had already stepped off and moved towards the nearest side street - a narrow walkway between Doc Cornwell’s surgery and Kinsella & Fetterly’s Secondhand Bookstore.
“Nope, coming now,” Jonas shouted back.
Jonas peeled Tomi’s thin, strong fingers off his bicep.
“You keep your shit together and your mouth shut,” he said quietly, through clenched teeth. “We are done here, and you are done if you can’t rid of your little entourage.”
He could see from her expression that she was this close to dropping a dime on him to Muller, and making a run for it anyway. On her own.
Treacherous fucking bitches.
How did they always find their way to him?
He finally started using his brain, instead of his dick.
“Get rid of all the old women and children. Your bitches can ride along. We got room for them. Nobody else.”
Jonas didn’t have time for any more, and Tomi seemed satisfied with that. He didn’t doubt she would find some way of ditching them. She was a devious whore. The heavy automatic weapons fire from the back of the pick-ups had moved on. The gun trucks poured it into the front of Darren O’Shannassy’s Red Apple now. Two ribbons of tracer fire, yellow and green, snaked across Main Street painting the storefront in a spectacular, pyrotechnic display. He turned away from the light show and followed Dale and Muller into the darkness.
“I’ll get these women and kids to safety, Sheriff,” Tomi called out.
Dave Muller waved in acknowledgment but did not turn around.
