Tribe, page 10
The man chasing them wore a suit coat, his tie whipped by the wind. His face was covered by a sleek black helmet. The motorcycle was futuristic with a red paint job. Some kind of Japanese sports bike. Whatever it was, it was fast, and had no trouble maneuvering through traffic.
“Unless,” Henry said, pulling the handgun from the back of his pants, “you just want to stop. Either way.”
Sarah eyed the gun. Distracted, she thumped a car as they passed it, the owner’s angry shouts fading behind them.
“Sorry!” she shouted, glancing in the rearview. “He was with the police, right? Probably one of them?”
“A detective,” Henry guessed. “Or an FBI agent. That would be cool.”
“Shooting an FBI agent would not be cool!” A mailbox exploded away from the Duck truck’s front end, envelopes fluttering through the air. “Damnit!”
“Then go where I tell you,” Henry said. “Turn’s coming up.”
“Fine.” Sarah focused on the road ahead, dodging a cocky pale man with a shaved head, dressed in Celtics green from head to toe—Boston’s native species. “Fine!”
They raced down School Street, approaching a congested intersection. Turning at the T-junction would be…impossible. Best case scenario, they’d plow into a few cars. Maybe kill a few people. But Henry had other plans.
“Turn here!”
“I don’t see a street!” Sarah shouted.
“That’s the point!” Henry reached out, took hold of the wheel, and turned it clockwise. The Duck truck jounced as it drove up onto the curve. Tires squealed as they tore around an expanded section of sidewalk. Outdoor restaurant tables with big red umbrellas were lined up beside an impassable garden of flowers and trees.
People scattered as Sarah crushed her palm on the horn. ‘Quack, quack!’
“Get out of the way!” she shouted, waving people to the side.
And then it happened. They plowed into the line of tables, chairs, and umbrellas. Some were crushed underneath. Some launched to the sides, and the umbrellas twisted through the air above.
It was a mess. Henry smiled. A well-planned mess.
He knew the city better than most. Even other locals. Spent a lot of time walking the streets, sometimes because he was bored, sometimes to be away from foster families, and sometimes to pick pockets. He’d sat at these tables just a week ago. In fact, it was where he’d first thought about robbing a bank.
He twisted around to watch the bike strike debris and topple to the pavement.
But that wasn’t what happened.
The bike hopped up onto the curb, zig-zagging around his glorious debris field like the rider had memorized the course. Whoever this guy was, he wasn’t a chump.
Ooh, Henry thought, maybe he’s a real assassin? He imagined it was John Wick pursuing them, and smiled.
“Where do I go?” Sarah shouted as they approached the curb’s far side, careening toward an intersection.
There were three options. Head right into a grid of city streets with no unique features to help them escape. Banging a hard left would bring them right back to the congested intersection they just avoided. And then the obvious choice—a less dramatic right turn that would take them toward the Norman B. Leventhal Park—where Henry had slept on occasion—and the main event beyond.
It was going to be awesome.
“Right!” Henry said.
“Which right?!”
Henry pointed, and Sarah guided their floating behemoth toward the turn. They thumped back onto the street, quacking at traffic.
As they bounded through the intersection at an angle, the Duck truck’s front end slid up over the hood of a car that didn’t stop in time. The big front tires struck next, crunching metal and bouncing the truck into the air.
They landed with a jolt, unharmed, but no longer facing the correct direction. Instead of racing down the road, they careened headlong toward the Old South Meeting House. The old brick church was similar to the Park Street Church—a massive brick church and steeple with a black clock on the side—but its historical significance was not just central to Boston, but to the entire country. A little thing called the Boston Tea Party kicked off inside its ancient walls…and they were about to plow through its front door in a Duck truck.
Sarah fought the wheel, turning hard to the right.
Tires shrieked, spewing the scent of burned rubber. The vehicle came off the road again, nearly tipping. Once they were facing the right direction, Sarah turned the wheel in the other direction, slamming them back down to the pavement.
Henry laughed. “They totally should have hired you to drive these things! This is the best Duck tour ever!”
Sarah gave him a wild-eyed glance. “No. It’s not!”
The biker swerved between cars, keeping pace.
He’s waiting for us to make a mistake.
“Okay, see up ahead? Where the buildings open? Where the trees are?”
Sarah waited for the Duck truck to stop quacking and said, “Yeah…”
“Hard right,” Henry said. “Through the park.”
Sarah frowned. She knew the city, too. “There’s a fountain there!”
“And a short wall around it. With our angled front end and big ass tires, we’ll fly right over, but that guy...” He looked back at the biker. “Well, you get it.”
“I don’t kn—” Sarah was interrupted by a pop and a crack. “What was—”
They saw it at the same time. A bullet hole in the windshield. Henry looked back. There was a matching hole in the back. A large caliber. The assassin was growing impatient.
A look of determination filled Sarah’s eyes. She pressed the gas pedal and quacked at traffic.
Henry didn’t consider himself a thrill seeker. He found things other people were afraid of fun, but he didn’t get the rush normal people experienced. There was fun and not fun. He knew about adrenaline, and its effects on the body, but he’d never felt it himself.
When a second gunshot rang out, the bullet embedding in the ceiling of lifejackets, Sarah steered to the right, bouncing over a curb corner, back into the street and then onto the brick walkway, framed by trees. The park wasn’t large. You could walk across it in a minute. Driving took less time.
“Hold on!” Sarah shouted.
The fountain was dead ahead. A short, round wall surrounded by small arching fountains encapsulated a large ring sitting atop four posts. Beams of water sprayed up from the ring, merging in the middle and falling to the brick walkway as a cone of water. It was a good place to wash off in the middle of the summer.
But not for long, Henry thought, as Sarah sped up.
A screech of metal on stone rang out as the front end slid up the wall. Then the front tires struck and heaved them upwards. Momentum carried them, and then the double set of back tires launched them into the air. The fountain shattered, the large ring spinning through the air like a coin toss.
When they landed on the decimated fountain’s far side, Henry looked back. The biker drove a straight line through the park, zipping forward even as the large ring hit the concrete and spun on its side, directly in his path.
The assassin crouched and then bounced up, pulling the bike into a hop as he ducked down. Motorcycle and man passed through the spinning ring, a precisely timed maneuver.
Henry sat up a little straighter. “Holy shit.”
“Where to?” Sarah asked. They were about to careen out of the park.
“Left, then straight on until the end.”
“What’s at the end?” Sarah asked.
“You’ll see.”
“Not a good time to be vague!” Sarah shouted, turning left onto Franklin Street.
Two more gunshots punched through the back window and windshield, hitting who-knows-what ahead of them.
“Seriously!” Sarah shouted, looking back. “Fucking asshole!”
Then she hit the gas. Really hit the gas. Traffic was light here, and the cars ahead had no trouble seeing the bright pink behemoth racing toward them. A path was cleared, and Sarah took advantage. Unfortunately, the motorcycle was far faster.
The assassin buzzed up beside them, gun raised.
“Do something!” Sarah shouted.
Henry rolled down the window, leaned half his body outside. The sudden dramatic move made the assassin flinch. When Henry fired two rounds, the man braked hard and swerved back behind them.
“Good news,” Henry said. “That put the fear of God into him. Bad news…” Henry pointed the gun at himself.
“Stop!” Sarah said, reaching for him, but was too late.
Henry pulled the trigger, again and again. It clicked empty every time.
“Dude,” Sarah said. The look of panic in her eyes bothered Henry, but he wasn’t sure why.
“It was empty,” he said.
“I didn’t know that!”
“Right. Cut across that park,” Henry said.
“What?”
“Right!”
Tires squealed for a moment as they raced across to Atlantic Ave, tearing through a patch of grass and narrowly avoiding destroying another fountain.
“Hard right!” Henry shouted.
Sarah slammed on the brakes, leaving a cloud behind them as they turned ninety-degrees to the right. Then Henry was thrown back in his seat as they accelerated down Long Wharf, toward a wall of blue—sky above, ocean below.
“Well,” Sarah said, “Why the hell not?” She pushed the gas pedal to the floor, accelerating down the brick wharf that ended with a ten-foot drop into Boston Harbor.
17
There were three things Sarah remembered about The Dukes of Hazzard. First, her father had loved it, despite it being ‘a show about inbred, white honkies.’ It reminded him of home in the South, and that was enough for him. She also remembered the General Lee, a bright orange car with a confederate flag emblazoned on the top. She didn’t find the flag offensive at the time, but she was also ignorant of its history. And last—her favorite part of the show—when the General Lee would launch skyward, leaping a river or a road to escape Rosco P. Coltrane and his basset hound, Flash. The car would hang in midair while a Southern charm voiceover would explain the situation to the audience.
Reality was so different.
The Duck truck slammed into the foot-tall granite wall at sixty miles per hour. The angled front end slipped up and over the stone, but not without consequence. Metal shrieked and ground as they slid forward. Sarah worried that the hull had been torn up, but then the front tires struck and compressed until the round, metal wheels slammed into solid granite. The jolt knocked Sarah’s head into the steering wheel. Then the front end—propelled by the rear wheel drive—sprang forward, slapping her back in the seat.
She had time to think, Why aren’t there airbags in this thing? and then she was looking at the Atlantic Ocean.
It was less of a jump, and more of a topple. The Duck truck lunged out, tipped forward, and plunged into the ocean. Water rolled up over the hood and struck the windshield. The glass held, but laser beams of high-pressure water sprayed through the bullet holes, striking Henry.
Some distant part of Sarah’s subconscious loved that he’d been sprayed, but the rest of her was distracted by the seatbelt biting into her chest.
The back end splashed into the water, leveling them out.
Henry sat up, spit saltwater from his mouth, and had a look around. He pumped a fist. “We made it!”
Worried shouts chased them from the pier. A woman and her daughter looked down at them. “Are you okay?” the woman shouted, but then she made eye contact with Sarah. Anger took over. “You could have killed us!”
Sarah hadn’t seen the woman or the girl when she plowed down the pier, but she also hadn’t been looking.
She ignored the woman, not because she didn’t want to give her a piece of her mind—Sarah had a verbal beatdown on hand for all occasions—but because the sound of an approaching motorcycle was growing louder.
Fast.
They were about to have company.
“I’m on a boat!” Henry said. “Everybody look at me, ’cause I’m—”
“No Lonely Island!” Sarah barked. Once upon a time, she enjoyed Andy Samberg’s comedy. Then a boyfriend—now an ex—who turned out to be an asshat, became obsessed with all things Samberg. So the comedian, his TV series…and his weirdo, pervy rap band were memories-non-grata. “Not now. Not ever.”
She pushed the gas pedal. Tires spun. Frothy water sprayed into the air. The starfish on the sea floor below them could move faster.
“You need to transform,” Henry said. “Like Optimus.”
“Bumblebee,” Sarah said, locating a button with a boat on it. She pushed it. “Optimus is self-righteous.”
The Duck truck rumbled. Something inside the metal beast was changing.
Henry made a Transformer sound effect, “Cheechoochhchecheh!”
He could be annoying as hell, but he was also kind of endearing. He’d seen a lot of shit. Lived through worse. But there was something about his personality that made him refreshing. Other people were repressed. Henry could do and say anything—including act like a little kid—and not care what people thought.
Blessing and a curse, I guess, she thought, and then she tried the gas again.
The Duck truck, now a Duck boat, sprang forward, kicking up water behind them. She didn’t think the tourist vehicle could move fast in the water, but all they had to do was steer clear of the pier and drive away faster than their own personal Rosco could swim…assuming he didn’t steal one of the yachts docked nearby.
How embarrassing would that be? Chased down and run over by a twenty-million dollar boat called Golden Poodle or something…
The motorcycle’s whine built to a high pitch.
Henry opened his side door. Leaned out.
“What are you doing?” Sarah asked, annoyed that he was still goofing off.
“I want to see,” he said, and she realized that she did, too.
Keeping a foot on the gas, she shoved open her door. Water seeped in over her left foot and slid down the floor—not nearly enough to worry about, though. She craned her head around, just as Rosco reached the end of the pier. He lifted the front wheel up and over the short granite wall, but the back end struck it hard. Rosco was catapulted into the air.
For a moment, he flailed, out of control. Then he found his equilibrium and sailed up in an arc that would bring him straight to the boat.
“Whoa,” Henry said. Then Rosco reached inside his sports coat, drew a pistol, and aimed it at them. “Are you seeing this?! He’s like a superhero!”
Henry was right. The man in a suit coat and motorcycle helmet looked…epic. What he was doing was super-human. The total control. The lack of fear. It was like they were being chased by one of those agents from The Matrix. Sarah had no trouble picturing him landing on the Duck boat’s roof, turning his head toward her, and asking for Mr. Anderson.
The first gunshot shattered the side mirror behind Sarah. A foot lower and she’d be dead. He might look inhuman, but his aim still wasn’t perfect. Close enough to drive Sarah back inside the vehicle, though.
Henry lingered, even as Rosco fired two more shots. Sarah wasn’t sure where they hit, but she took some comfort in the sound of metal being struck, and not flesh. She leaned over, grasped Henry’s shirt, and yanked him back inside.
“Here he comes!” Henry said.
A meteorite of man-meat struck the Duck boat’s ceiling—
—and passed straight through!
An instant skylight lit the man, as he punched through metal and life jackets to crash on the floor in a heap. Bones snapped.
The man was still and lifeless.
Silence filled the Duck boat. For a moment, they just bobbed in the water. Then Henry thrust his fists in the air. “Ohh, ha! Hell yes! That was wicked awesome!”
Sarah crept toward the man, hands open, ready to grapple, ready for him to spring up—inhuman to the last.
Rosco didn’t move.
But he wasn’t dead. He laid on his side, limbs bent at awkward angles, but his chest rose and fell.
“Hey,” Sarah said, nudging him with her foot. “Hey, asshole.”
A groan.
Not dead, but probably dying, Sarah decided. She crouched down. Lifted his helmet’s visor.
Her hand snapped back upon seeing his face. Blood poured from his mouth and nose.
He grinned up at her. “Blessed be the Forgotten One. May She be restored to her rightful throne.”
“What the who now?” Henry said. “The Forgotten One?”
Rosco turned his cold blue eyes toward Henry, his smile growing wider. A wheezing chuckle escaped from his broken lungs.
“Is it Helen?” Sarah asked. “She’s who you nut jobs were after. Is she the Forgotten One? Why are you after her?” Anger swelled. She took hold of the man’s jacket. Pulled him up, oblivious to his groan. “Why are you after us?”
A bloody cough spritzed Sarah’s hands. She dropped the man, who moaned in pain and then laughed again. It wasn’t a maniacal sound. More like joy. “Cut clean and deep. Extend judgement to all the Earth.”
“This guy’s a fruitcake,” Henry said. “Been drinking some kind of Kool-Aid.”
“You think they’re a cult?”
“Have to be,” he said.
“Blessed be,” Rosco said, closing his eyes.
Henry thrust his hands at the man. “You see!”
“Blessed b…” Rosco’s eyes froze, mid-close, staring up at Sarah. His smile fell flat, chest no longer moving.
He was dead.
“Unless you like the smell of shit,” Henry said, “we should probably get the hell out before this guy’s bowels void.” Henry winced, snapped a hand up to his nose. “Ugh. Too late.”
Before Sarah could move to the steering wheel and turn them back to the shore, the front end dipped down.
“We’re sinking,” Henry said.
“No duh.” The ocean swallowed up the front end. They were going down fast.
“No duh? Who says ‘no duh’ anymore?” Henry stood. Took a life preserver from the ceiling. “Can you swim?”
