There was a ripping sound; the man was distracted. Finn had his teeth wrapped around the man’s ankle, a cut of cloth already torn from the trouser leg. As the man fought off the dog, Alex staggered to his knees. They were weak, could hardly hold his weight. Forming a fist, Alex fell forward and caught the man’s jaw. Together, they fell into the dirt, the dog chasing after them, barking.

  They were locked together, arms tucked under arms, trying to find an inch of space. As Alex tugged one way, the man’s knee hit him hard in the hip. Without any limbs free, Alex jutted his head forward, breaking his opponent’s nose. It only made him angrier.

  The two fell apart, a foot or two between them. There was a pistol tucked under the man’s arm. Every time he swung a punch or ducked out of the way, the jacket flapped loose. Don’t let him get it, every one of Alex’s instincts screamed. Keep him close. Lunging with a tackle, he took the man back to the ground.

  Finn was struggling to find a grip. Biting, snapping, growling, he tried to take the professional’s leg in his mouth and drag him away. A polished shoe jerked out, catching the dog right on the shoulder, knocking him back against the wall. The dog lay down, toiling under the blow.

  As the two men tussled and tangled on the ground, neither able to find any purchase, the professional’s hand reached out, searching. As Alex found himself pinned down to the ground, unable to pack any weight behind his punches, he saw the man lean back, one arm stretched up into the sky. There was a rock in his hand, a sharp one, as big as a baseball. It was aimed right at Alex’s head.

  The hand swung down. It stopped.

  The man cried out in pain. Seizing his moment, Alex snatched the pistol from inside the holster, held it up toward the chest and fired. And fired again. And again. The rock fell from the hand, which dropped down to the man’s side. The face contorted, staring at Alex. Confusion, fury. Shock. It was all there to read.

  Without a word, his eyes glazed over and the man collapsed. Finn still had a huge chuck of thigh in his mouth, shaking it back and forth.

  “Finn. Finn. Stop. He’s dead. Come on.”

  The dog’s ears pricked up, able to distinguish Alex’s voice even in the commotion. The pistol was still in Alex’s hand. Looking closely, he saw that there was no branding. No serial number. It was quite unlike every other gun Alex had ever seen. He unclipped the magazine to see that each round had a red tip. Unexplained.

  “Who the hell are you guys?” Alex asked the dead man.

  Throwing the pistol to the ground and fetching his own rifle, Alex was about to run. But an idea struck. Kneeling down beside the body, Alex traced the white wire as it looped out of the man’s ear and down inside his jacket. It didn’t seem to have an end. Checking around for signs of life–no one in sight, everyone too busy shooting one another in the main street–he grabbed hold of the wire and pulled.

  A long, white worm sprang forth. Alex kept tugging, dragging a longer and longer length of wire from deep down inside. And then something caught. It wouldn’t budge. Lifting the lapel of the jacket, he saw a small black box, caught beneath a button in the inside pocket. He released the button and the entire device, attached to the wire, came free.

  He turned it over in one hand, and it buzzed occasionally, sharp bursts of static from the dangling earbud. Alex pocketed the device. But there was something else. Further inside the pocket, peeking out over the top, were pieces of folded paper inside a plastic wallet.

  Without reading them, he slipped the papers from the dead man’s pocket to his own and turned back to the alley.

  Rifle perched between two hands, Finn padding at his heels, limping, Alex marched along the alley. He didn’t run. It wasn’t far to the gate, to the entrance to the hideout, but the route might be lined with danger.

  As if to prove his point, Alex spotted a gang member crawling along the rooftop of a building above him. Raising his rifle, he positioned the man in the crosshairs, aiming just below his bald head, right at the spot where his vest met his chest. Finger on the trigger, Alex watched him move.

  The gang member was young. Younger than Alex, almost certainly. A revolver in his hands, the man was firing wildly into the street below. He was laughing, a sound which was taken up by his friends in the town. But every time the gang member looked down, adjusted his feet, a moment of worry passed over his face. Even in a firefight, he was afraid of slipping.

  Seen through the crosshairs, it made Alex pause. A tiny sliver of humanity at the worst possible moment. To get back to the hideout, passing under this man was essential. Readjusting his stance, holding his breath steady, he knew what he had to do.

  A bullet hit the man’s shoulder, knocking him off balance, and he fell from the roof. He landed right in front of Alex, the crash snapping his neck with ease; the man’s death mask was fixed with that moment of panic, the worry of slipping to the street below.

  A river of blood began to pour out from under him and Alex had to check the barrel of his gun for warmth, worried that he had been the one who had shot. He didn’t remember pulling the trigger. The metal was cold. It had been someone else.

  Turning back to the alley, Alex could see the gate at the rear of the house.

  This time he ran.

  Chapter 37

  One hand held the rifle strap tight across his shoulder, the other pushed against the peeling paint of the gate into the walled garden. He’d left it open, only expecting to be out for a short spell, searching around the town. That felt like hours ago.

  In reality, barely twenty minutes had passed since the cars had rolled up the street. The sun was high in the sky, sitting behind a blood-colored cloud. The fall light bled into the afternoon.

  In through the gate, the dog in quickly, Alex slammed it shut. The sounds of gunfire still roared through Rockton. They grew more intermediate, more spread out. The two sides were carrying the fight farther than the main street. Pushing the bolt across and locking the world out, the garden felt more secure.

  The walls were a lie. Tall enough, Joan said the original owner had been a private man, not well liked in the community. His tumble-down yard, the weeds and overgrown grass, seemed to be all that was left of him. That and the walls, designed to keep the world out. But they were only one brick thick. Symbolic more than secure. But everyone inside felt safer inside.

  Alex ran through the abandoned area of the house and up the rickety stairs. His hands pounded so hard against the door of the apartment, the sound could wake the dead. Too loud. It didn’t matter. Fists rained down faster, desperate to be let in. “It’s me, it’s me,” Alex announced. “Joan, open up.”

  The sound of the locks moving stopped the knocking. As she inched open the door, noticing there was only one person on the other side, Joan seemed to sigh. Finn ran in through her legs, searching for Timmy. The two were inseparable, the patient and the puppy. Both hoped to grow out of the titles soon.

  “What the hell is happening?” Joan motioned to the closed curtains, to the packed bags. “We heard the guns.”

  “That gang. They’re back. Them and someone else.”

  “Oh my God, you’re bleeding.” She ran toward Alex, taking a towel from the kitchen to tend to the wounds.

  “It’s not my blood. I’m fine.” Alex knocked her hand away. “You’ve put everything together?”

  Joan recoiled, her hand snapping back as though she’d touched a hot stove. Alex moved to the bathroom, washed the blood off his arms and removed his scarlet-stained shirt. Why wasn’t he worried about infection? If he hadn’t been slowed down by anything else, surely this latest spillage wasn’t going to hurt him.

  “As soon as I heard the guns, I got worried.” Alex shouted as he scrubbed away the blood. “Timmy told me what to pack. We’ve got everything, I think. The rest is already with the car.”

  Clean, squeezing into a fresh t-shirt, Alex entered the kitchen, holding up his hands for inspection.

  “We’ve got to move fast. Is Timmy fine, can he move?”

  Still walking with a limp, Timothy Ratz stepped into the room. He was thinner than Alex had ever known him. Now, in the dim of the apartment, the scantest of light creeping in through the blinds, the full ravages of the disease were apparent.

  Whatever muscle there had once been–and it had never been much–had wasted away. The skin was drab, blotchy. The red hair, once an electric mess, was flat and plain. Rusted, rather than radiant. The one eye, the left one, was gray and drained, just like the others. A walking corpse, but walking, at least.

  “I’m ready as I’ll ever be. Just give me a gun.”

  Alex threw him the rifle. Stumbling, stepping back on a heel, Timmy caught the weapon. Tired fingers checked the rounds. He stood up tall. Ready to move.

  * * *

  The bags were heavy, full of medicine and food. Most of the guns were already in the car, fitted to the gun racks Timmy had designed. The tow-hitch, dumped somewhere back in town, meant they would be deserting the bikes. There was no other choice. The car might just about be ready, if Alex had followed instructions to the letter, but there was no time to fit the trailer.

  Together, the three of them moved down the stairs and into the garden. They went over the plan again. Timmy to lead, carrying the rifle. Joan next, with one of the bags. Alex would follow, watching the dog, with the final two bags heaved on his bag. A beast of burden. But there was no other choice. Who else was going to carry the supplies? Timmy, the sick note? The pregnant woman? The dog? This was it.

  The route was simple. Run from the hideout straight to the rear of the church. They stood in the yard, between the two Triumph motorcycles, ankle deep in overgrown grass, and the ricochets and gunshots whirled around. There was fighting in every direction. But no time to avoid it.

  They ran straight through the gate. Timmy, taking the lead, already with the rifle stock up against his shoulder. Any shot, Alex wondered, and he might be knocked off his feet. Joan ran behind him, trying to hide her heavy belly from the world. The barrel of the rifle cleared a path before her and she ran on and on.

  It took a minute to reach the chapel. Looking up, they could see pockmarks and bullet holes all up the wall, covering the steeple. They stole a quick look down the main street, where the professionals had taken charge of the street while the gang were roving through the back alleys, doing as they pleased.

  Sprinting around the walls of the church, they reached the building where the car was stored. Not quite a garage, not quite a workshop, it had been perfect. They entered through a side door, Timmy leading with the rifle and then checking everyone in after him. Once the full complement was inside, he scanned the outside once more and tugged the door closed, slotting an axe handle through the latch.

  Inside, there was the car. Painted a pale green, they’d not been able to fix the color. But they’d changed plenty else. The bull bars fitted to the front, the jerry cans clipped to the roof, and the cooling holes cut roughly into the hood transformed the soccer mom aesthetics. The style was still there, underneath, but it had mutated into an entirely new beast.

  The interior of the car had been stripped. There were four seats left: the two front seats had been kept, but one of the rear seats had been ripped out. More space for supplies. As Joan clambered into the car, Finn sat on what was left of the middle seat and she held him tight.

  The changes under the hood were less visible. As Alex threw the bags into the trunk, tying them in place, he fished the keys from his pocket and hoped he’d done everything right. No testing. No second chances. It had to work perfectly right now. He’d turned every screw, tightened every bolt, just as Timmy had told him. Trust in the technique. He turned the key.

  The engine started. Just. It turned over but there was no monstrous roar. Alex remembered the first time he’d started up the motorcycle. It had felt like riding a thunderbolt. As Joan’s old SUV ticked over, sitting behind the wheel was like teetering on top of a pile of loosely tied together junk. He had to hold it all together.

  With the car alive, there was one barrier left to overcome. Clearing his throat, pausing for the ceremony, Alex reached up to click the switch which opened the garage door. Silence reigned supreme in the car, even the dog watching the finger press against the red switch.

  Nothing happened. He tried the button again and again, but the door obstinately refused to raise even a millimeter.

  “Chinese piece of—” Cussing to himself, Alex leapt out of the vehicle and slammed the door behind him. They’d ripped so many pieces out of the bodywork that it didn’t give a satisfying thud. After he searched for and found the local switch, the garage doors began to heave upwards. In crept the sound of gunfire, of shouting and screaming. People dying.

  Sliding back into the driver’s seat, Alex felt his grip on the wheel. The vulcanized rubber, the way the grip had been knotted to fit into the fingers. Fine for a leisurely drive about town. In sweaty palms, it felt slippery. No time to change it now, though.

  Foot hit pedal and the car lurched forward. Just as the door creaked open, the car slotted underneath. A second sooner and the roof would have scraped against the hanging metal. Instead, they slipped under the door, out of the garage, and into the yard at the rear of the chapel.

  Only a small chapel, the bodies were buried on the town limits. They had a proper graveyard out there. But the back yard was still home to statues and apple trees. Alex had to wrench the wheel this way and that to keep the car on course.

  The gate was shut. A wide wooden farmer’s gate, it lay between two stretches of waist-high wall. The gardener could drive his mower in and out; it made repairing the chapel roof easier. Today, it meant space to charge through, the steel bull bars chewing up the rotten beams and leaving only splinters and dust behind.

  Inside the car, the people bounced around. Joan held Finn tight. The bags stacked into the back acted as walls, barriers to stop the dog being hurtled around the interior. Seatbelts bit into shoulders, the stiffened suspension shaking bones and bodies as Alex hit every pot hole in the road.

  They were in an alley, speeding around the corner of the chapel and on to the main street. As they reached the top of the town, the car stopped. Alex watched out through the windscreen. The battleground.

  The circle of Cadillacs was still there, now riddled with bullet holes. A few of the cars had been driven away, giving chase to the gang members. In the distance, the black Escalades rumbled through thin alleys. Even from a few football fields away, the professionals were still obvious. Short, clipped movements.

  But their opponents moved like scattered animals. Darting this way and that, arriving from every angle. The white shirts and bald heads they all shared stood out. Their own armored trucks crashed all over, trying to mow down the professionals and slam into their Cadillacs.

  Alex spied the big man again, often at the center, directing his men. The dirt bikes whirled around like dervishes, some with two men: one steering and one shooting.

  Watching the chaos, Alex tapped a hand on the wheel. A conductor before the orchestra settles. Baton beating the rhythm.

  “Are we all ready?” he asked.

  No answer. The silence was all the agreement he needed.

  Chapter 38

  There was one route out of town and the only way out was through. Through the gunfire, through the fighting. No one had spotted them yet. The car began to move down the street, the tires warming. Hit the end of the road, take a few turns, and they’d be on the highway. It sounded so simple.

  The car picked up speed. The digital needle skipped numbers as it arced upwards. Twenty miles an hour. Thirty. How fast was fast enough? If he had to ask, Alex decided, it wasn’t fast enough. Out the window, the sights along the Rockton high street began to blur. Home for weeks, blurring into the background.

  “Spot the gap, spot the gap,” Timmy shouted, taking hold of the handle above his door.

  The space between the remaining Cadillacs was limited. Aim for the excavated spaces. The circled wagons were porous, so find the spot when the cars had left. There were two. One on the right, one on the left. The left was larger, but the right seemed to have no one nearby. Right it was.

  Faster and faster in the quickening car, they were just thirty feet from the first Cadillac. A face turned. And another. The professionals switched their attention from the gang members, turning to face the car careering down the road. Alex felt the wheel twitch in his hands. He didn’t trust it to react quick enough even if he wanted to turn. Hold the course. Drive straight into the space.

  The first bullet chimed against the roof. Finn barked. Timmy shouted. Alex began to bellow, leaning down over the dash and tightening his grip. Another chime. The professionals were shooting at them. But the car was moving too fast.

  They made the gap. A mirror cracked and smashed as it hit against a Cadillac. Adjusting the wheel, Alex straightened them out. The scrape of metal on metal meant the car was just about getting through. Pedal farther to the floor. Faster. The only way. The bellow continued, rising in volume.

  Level with the professionals, Alex could see straight into their eyes. Not wearing sunglasses anymore. They were sweating. Worried. Not expecting this car. Trying to figure out whether it was even a target. One wasn’t thinking, his gun raised. The muzzle flashed. More bullets chimed against the car. But all along the roof. Too fast to hit.

  Passing, through the gap, Timmy waving, Finn barking: they were out the other side. Halfway down the Rockton street and heading for the horizon. The car picked up speed, more gunshots echoing around them. One caught the rear window, cracked the glass. Another followed it up, smashing its way through and burying deep in one of the heavy black bags.

  A sitting duck heading in one direction. Alex turned left and then right, snaking the car. Harder to hit. Still a quarter of the road to go, still a distance before they could turn off the main street, the car was cornering sideways, the contents leaning one way and then the other. Almost there. Time to take back control. Time to slow down, make the turn.

 

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