Luke Irontree & the Last Vampire War (Books 8-10), page 52
“Do you think we actually got away with it?” Rhonda asked.
Roxi slowly turned her head, staring at Rhonda.
Luke shook his head. “I sure hope you haven’t jinxed us. I know you’re probably excited to try this thing out, but I’d rather a nice smooth trip home and a nap on the way.”
“Old people always like naps.” Rhonda shrugged, grinning into the rearview mirror for Luke to see.
“I’m too old and tired to think of a comeback, but I’ll get one for you later.” He covered his mouth to hide a yawn. “I didn’t get my beauty sleep last night.”
“Don’t worry, dōšagīh, you’re pretty enough for me well-rested or exhausted.” Roxi turned her head and winked at him.
They made it barely two miles before a pair of cops flew up onto the freeway from an on-ramp, their flashing lights sawing into the darkness. The closer they pulled up on their tail, the stronger Luke's sense of foreboding and vampire became stronger.
“Fuck. The fangy fuzz has found us.”
“You sure?” Roxi asked. “Yup. There it is.”
“At least they’re causing the other cars to pull over and clear some space for us,” Luke said, pulling down the seat to see what all Jorge packed for him. “This might do.” He pulled out a forty-millimeter grenade launcher. It had a strap hanging from it with a few reloads.”
“You want the caltrops?” Rhonda asked.
“No. Let’s save those for where they’ll be more effective than a wide freeway where they can swerve around them. This feels more like a personal touch situation.” He unlatched the roof and pushed it back.
The wind of their slipstream caught it and moved it slowly backwards, the installed springs countering the force. As the hatch opened, the armor ring deployed, rising smoothly. Jorge was a talented engineer indeed. He cracked open the grenade launcher, finding one already in the pipe. He pulled one from more from the strap and tossed the rest on the shelf behind the seat.
“Keep her steady, Rhonda.”
He stood up, leaning on the ring, trying to keep from rising too high. Making some mental calculations, he kept the grenade launcher shielded against his side, then pulled it up quickly and fired it at the front bumper. The grenade flew just under the bumper and hit the ground, catching the cop car from underneath. He laughed, the wind whipping through his hair, as the car flipped into the air and into its pal, who was rolling right behind him with no room to maneuver. The fiery heaps tumbled and flipped away, flames growing over both of them.
Luke, a smirk on his face, pulled the handle for the hatch and it moved up on its own. Plopping down, he faced forward. “There’s nothing us old guys love more than a two for one early bird special.”
Rhonda groaned. “We warned you about quipping, Luke. Just because Sam and Delilah aren’t here doesn’t mean you get to say shit like that.”
Roxi smiled at him. “I thought that was rather good.”
He winked at the woman he loved. “Thanks.”
“You don’t count, Roxi. This must be reported to the banter police.” Rhonda shook her head solemnly.
Luke snorted, folding his arms across his chest. “ACAB includes the banter police.” Sighing, he reached down and grabbed a beverage. “Those two probably radioed in our location and appearance. If they suspect it’s us—and let’s be clear, who else could it be?—they’re going to expect us to haul ass straight south for Portland.” As he saw a sign for the exit to I-90, he watched it for a second and did some quick mental math. “Rhonda, pull into the next lane and mash it. We need to get in front, then signal to take the I-90 exit. We can resume our southerly course on I-405. We just need to get enough space and time to make it to the hideout.”
“I don’t want to be stuck on the bridges.” She pulled over anyway.
“I know. It’s not ideal. But we need to make a snap decision. They’ll assume we’re still on I-5. This buys us time. We’ll be off the bridge before they even think to look elsewhere.”
The car surged forward, its engine roaring as it burned through gas. That needed to be a consideration, too. They might not have a normal range on a beast like this. Rhonda slid in front of the other road runner and signaled for the right turn they’d almost missed, whipping the wheel over to make the turn onto the off-ramp. Luke turned and watched as Patrice made the turn, as did their armored vans.
“When we merge onto 90, drift back to the rear of the caravan.”
“Right-o,” Rhonda said, slowing to the speed limit. Steady driving and a smooth adherence to the speed limits would hopefully preserve their fuel for when they needed it.
The Lacey V. Murrow Memorial Bridge to Mercer Island kept Rhonda checking her mirrors for anything coming up on their tail. Luke forced out his senses, focusing as hard as he could despite his burning exhaustion. Even a quarter mile’s early warning would go a long way to allowing them time and space to make critical decisions.
Rhonda’s fingers drummed on the wheel, annoying Luke, but he ignored it as best he could since it was useless to be irritable with his team when they were all tired after putting in a lot of hours and hard work. When the water disappeared behind them, they collectively heaved a sigh of relief as they pulled onto Mercer Island. If they needed to, they could exit and find a place to hole up or make a last stand. It wasn’t the best option, since the only ways off and on the island were the I-90 bridges or a boat. Fortunately, the bridge taking them off Mercer Island was short.
A bit further east brought them to the off-ramp leading to I-405. So far, they hadn’t seen hide nor hair of any cops, vampires, or wolfish allies. Despite only having the one encounter, Luke’s anxiety grew. He’d always preferred a clear and visible threat. Not knowing where it would come from was worst. He couldn’t plan around what he didn’t know.
Five minutes after merging onto 405, a car weaved recklessly through traffic, speeding and swerving from lane to lane.
“Luke…” Rhonda said.
“I see it.”
“Asshole driver or trouble?”
The closer the car got, the more his vampy senses tingled. “Trouble,” he said at the same time as Roxi.
“Keep steady, Rhonda. Let’s see if he actually picks up on us. Who knows what we’ve done to their communication network. We might have taken out some important vamps in that vault.”
As the car approached, Luke grabbed the grenade launcher and cracked it open, pulling out the spent shell and tossing it aside. Snapping it shut after loading in a new round, he waited patiently to see what would happen. Out of the corner of his eye, the car, a bland-looking family sedan that was likely stolen, pulled up next to them. Looking over, Luke caught the gleam of fangs and a handgun being raised as they passed under a light.
Luke reached over, rolled his window down, and pointed the grenade launcher toward the vampire. He snorted as the vampire’s eyes flew open and the car swerved recklessly. Nearly losing control, the vamp dropped the gun to put two hands on the wheel then jammed on the brakes, sending the cars behind it swerving to get out of the way.
With the launcher in hand, he unlatched the top hatch and shoved it out of the way, but by the time he stuck his head out of the top of the car, he’d lost the vampire in a sea of bright headlights and boring family cars. He closed the hatch and sat down.
Rhonda chuckled. “Looks like he might have wet his pants staring down the barrel of a grenade launcher.”
“Yeah, but now he’s behind us and probably outside our jamming range. He’ll call us in. Next time, it’ll be more than a solo fanger in a stolen sedan.”
“When is sunup?” Roxi asked, pulling out her phone. “Never mind. My phone is useless.”
“The jamming is great, but certainly not without its faults,” Luke said. “Sunup is about six a.m. The vamps will probably seek shelter by four-thirty or five at the latest. That would put them awfully close to dawn.”
“So, we don’t have too long to go then. Maybe thirty minutes or slightly more?” Rhonda asked.
“But they have proxies. Werewolves, thralls, and maybe cops that are on the take or themselves thralls. We still have a long way to go.”
“Mr. Gloomy back there,” Rhonda mumbled.
Roxi reached over and patted her knee. “You’re doing great. Just keep it steady. We’ll worry about what comes along when it actually does.”
Luke nodded, wondering if it was just as much for him as for Rhonda’s sake. She was right. They’d deal with whatever was thrown at them. They always had before. He just hoped they didn’t draw enough attention to bring down the ire of the Seattle pack. They couldn’t afford to move them fully to the enemy column.
They cruised along, a vague sense of vampire nearby, but no further sightings, except for an occasional glimpse of the fanger who’d decided his pistol was no match for Luke’s grenade launcher. He would have liked to deal with them, but he was doing too good of a job blending in with the steadily increasing morning traffic. Then he disappeared, no doubt seeking shelter from the oncoming sun.
Luke breathed a sigh of relief, reveling in the lack of vampiric presence. He knew the vampires’ henchpeople would be out soon, but they didn’t trigger his nervous system and sit on his brain like a dark miasma. Sometimes the ability to feel vampires nearby worked well for him, but it was involuntary and didn’t go away until they did. While it could be convenient, it was a mark of his servitude to Mithras’s mission.
“Hey Luke…” Rhonda said, her eyes flicking up to the rearview mirror.
He turned around. Behind them in the distance, several sets of flashing lights weaved through traffic, pressing cars off the interstate. The glow to the east was too strong for the cars to be filled with vampires, but then they could be corrupt cops, of which there was no shortage—or something unrelated, though he doubted it.
Luke kept an eye on them as they moved closer. Once they drew close enough that he could see other cars weaving through traffic just as recklessly as the cops, he marked off “something unrelated” from his list. He knew people could be assholes on the freeways, but this felt too coordinated around the movement of the cops.
“Roxi, do we have any kind of signal to turn off the jamming so we can communicate for a minute?” Luke asked.
“Sure do. Rhonda, drift to the right.” Roxi rolled down the window and stuck her hand out of the window, holding a flashlight.
She flicked it off and on with a steady pattern, repeating the same pattern for a minute. When it stopped, she acknowledged receipt of a message and sent out their request. Reaching over the seat, she handed Luke a radio handset.
“Just push to talk. It’s the one the whole team is set to.”
Luke pushed the button. “This is…” He let go of the button. “Do we have a unique call sign for this mission?”
“You’re Mad Max,” Roxi replied.
Luke nodded. “This is Mad Max, calling the other war rigs. We have some trouble inbound behind us. We have three lanes and two shoulders. Let’s use them. Trucks in the middle. Road runners on the edges. We’ll take the left. Confirm.”
When he received the confirmation, he directed Rhonda to the carpool lane as they waited for the other road runner to fall back from their position in the lead. Once the other car had dropped back, he called for the vans to hog the road, taking up all three lanes.
“Hold position for now. And don’t fire until we’re out of your way. We’ll stay in our lanes until we’re sure what’s coming up behind us. Now go back to silent running. Out.” Luke handed the radio back to Roxi.
While they waited, Luke pulled out the various weapons Jorge had stashed in the arsenal. His trusty AK-47 was there, as well as the AR-15 they’d stolen from the vampires. There were also plenty of magazines ready for him if he should need them, though the grenade launcher was probably going to be the most devastating weapon against cars and their drivers. Reaching in deeper, he found another box of grenades and a satchel full of hand grenades. With a little good timing, those could also work nicely against the vehicles chasing them.
Grabbing the hand grenades, he handed them over the seat to Roxi. “These should keep you busy.”
“This car has a lot more going on for it than just the engine. How long should I hold these before releasing them?” she asked.
“Just pull the pin and drop them out wide. They’ll bounce along, and if they make it past the front line of cars, they’ll blow for the second. And as many cars as I see making a move through traffic, there will be no shortage of targets.”
Since they were blocking all three lanes of traffic, the cars that they’d blocked honked and weaved, hoping to get around them somehow. Luke couldn’t blame them for their annoyance. This maneuver was far from polite and certainly violated the rules of the courteous road. But they soon backed off, pulling into the right lanes or off the road onto the shoulder as they registered the cops coming up behind them. Soon, it was just Luke’s armada and those in hot pursuit.
“Luke…” Rhonda said.
“I see him.”
In one of the cop cars, a man had rolled down the window and was now positioning himself to lean out of it. He wasn’t wearing a uniform or anything that looked official. Making grabby hands, the driver took one hand off the wheel and handed him a long gun of some type.
“Luke… What do you say? Caltrops?” Roxi asked.
“Not yet. Let’s let them get a bit thicker.”
The man leaning out of the window took aim and fired a shotgun. It peppered off the bullet resistant glass and the trunk. He took aim and fired again, doing no real damage to the beefed-up cars.
“Roxi, dear, mind dropping a grenade for me? Hold it for a long two seconds.” Luke grabbed a box of grenades for the launcher and set it nearby. With the grenade launcher in hand, he twisted around and unlatched the top hatch.
Roxi rolled down the window and pulled the pin to the grenade, sticking her hand out. She counted two with a slight pause at the end, then dropped it. Luke waited to poke his head out of the top of the car. Their timing was perfect. The grenade bounced once, twice, then rolled under a cop car in the middle lane and exploded, creating mayhem.
The cars on either side of it swerved away, though only one managed to complete the maneuver successfully. The other car didn’t make it, and the car the grenade exploded under slammed into its rear fender. The next line of cars slammed on their brakes to avoid being hit. The guy hanging out of the window, since his driver had swerved in time, gestured that they should move up closer as they drifted to the left to avoid any more of Roxi’s window grenades.
“That was an exciting minute,” Luke said. He took a couple quick breaths and burst up through the hatch.
The man hanging out of the window of the police cruiser grinned and took aim until he saw the grenade launcher pointed at his ride. Luke fired the launcher straight into the windshield of the car, sending the man flying out of the window and bouncing along the pavement until he fell under the wheels of a car in the row behind. The car wobbled and weaved until it plowed left into the concrete barrier at the edge of the freeway, sparks and shattered glass flying into the air around the burning heap.
Another cop car on the right side popped into the air, flames flaring out from under it as the wind caught it after being lifted off the ground and tumbled it end over end into the car behind it. Luke laughed, the wind whipping through his hair. Looking over, he saluted Pieter who’d just fired the grenade launcher that had flipped the car.
The mayhem and explosions had inspired the civilians driving too close to the row of cop cars and others in their caravan to back the fuck off, drifting further and further back. Without all the random cars behind them, the pursuing vehicles flared out wider, drifting over the solid lines into the shoulders, making room for more of their compatriots.
Luke ducked back inside and reloaded his grenade launcher. “Rhonda, let’s flare out to the left. I don’t want them thinking they can make a run and get in front of us.”
“Got it.”
“Hold off for one moment, Rhonda,” Roxi said, pulling out the signal light again. She flashed it over toward their other road runner.
Once she received the confirmation, she opened the glove box, but instead of a compartment, a control board folded out. She looked for the button she wanted and pushed it. The sound of tinkling metal hitting pavement and bouncing along drew Luke’s attention. Jumping up into the hatch, he wanted a front-row seat as the caltrops flipped and bounced down the road, some settling.
The row of cars behind them was so close and packed together, none of them had a chance to evade the growing field of caltrops both cars had dropped. One car took a pair and slammed on the brakes. The car behind hit it, bashing into its trunk. Another careened to the right and into the concrete barrier, ripping off its wing mirror and throwing up sparks.
Another car or two appeared to have taken at least one as they wobbled and swerved a bit, struggling to keep control as one tire bled air like an arterial spurter. While they paid attention to the road and trying to stay on it, Luke took the time to draw a bead on the car in the middle with his grenade launcher.
He fired, but at that angle, it deflected off the windshield. Fortunately, it slammed into the driver's side window of the car next to it. The cabin of the car exploded, the roof bursting open like a too-full stove top popcorn. He’d need to be more careful. If a grenade got away from him, it could do some serious damage if it landed in a building off the freeway.
Bracing himself, he held the launcher inside the car as they passed over the rumble strip onto the shoulder. As soon as they were out of the way, the armored van teams poked their machine guns through their holes and opened fire. Luke took a second to reload, stuffing a couple grenades into his pocket, and popped back up. Cars flew all over the freeway as the gunners focused their fire on the drivers. Six heavy caliber machine guns could do a lot of damage to modern cars with their lightweight panels. Cars were made to protect their passengers from vehicular impacts, not from machine guns.
