himself facedown into the dirt and lay still. The hornet struck him once more in the head with the bar. Then moved on without looking back.
I found myself staring at the old guy lying there with his open mouth pressed against the road, willing him to get up, grab the gun and blow those bastards to shit. But he didn’t move and his gray hair turned the color of cranberry juice.
While this happened I’d been locked into my own world, staring through the binoculars. I turned and ran back to where Zak readied the people near the bikes.
I grabbed one by the handlebars and rocked it forward from the stand.
“Hey!” Zak shouted. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“There are hornets down there we didn’t see before. They’re going to find Michaela and Tony.”
I was ready to punch my way through Zak if he argued. Instead: “OK. Catch.” He threw me a rifle. “It’s loaded with ten rounds. And it’s a semiauto. Just point and squeeze.”
He swung a pump-action shotgun over his shoulder, then made as if to start the bike’s engine.
“Zak. Freewheel down there.”
I didn’t want to signal those hornets with the sound of motors that their blood enemies were on the way. And I hadn’t told Zak everything, of course. I hadn’t mentioned the woman who’d just given birth on the road. Or the old man’s murder. Or that right now I planned to give those murdering sons of bitches a little taste of something they’d never forget.
Twenty-six
Dammit if the track didn’t have enough bumps to nearly throw us clean off the saddles. What’s more, it was steep enough to bring us close up to forty without having to fire up the Harley engines. Gripping the handlebars tight, the grass banks rising high and over-grown at either side of us soon made it look as if we were whistling through a green tunnel that blurred as we moved faster and faster.
I glanced at Zak. He concentrated on the track ahead, avoiding ruts and holes in the ground. The thing is, it was so quiet. All I could hear were the whisper of air by my ears and the hiss of tires on dirt.
At the bottom of the track Zak braked to bring himself to a stop where Michaela and Tony now shot us surprised looks. Only I didn’t stop. No way was I going to even touch the brake. I passed them in a blur, keeping the momentum going.
Now the track had leveled out. Bit by bit the bike began to slow, but I was still doing thirty when I passed the bunch of men and women with the newborn baby.
The guy with the shotgun looked as if he was making up his mind whether to shoot me or not when I called out, “Keep moving! You’re being followed!”
Temptation started to bite now. I wanted to fire up the motorcycle and power up to that bunch of killers that must still be heading along the track. But I fought it down. When I arrived I wanted surprise on my side.
The bike slowed as the track began to run uphill.
Twenty miles an hour… fifteen.
I saw a curve ahead.
Ten.
I put my feet down, my soles brushing the soil.
Five miles an hour.
I stopped. Then, with my feet balancing me I slipped the rifle off my shoulder and aimed along the track.
For a while I sat there. The sun shone down. I heard birds in the trees. Butterflies flitted among yellow flowers in the meadow. Honeybees buzzed through the long grass. Sweat trickled down my face; my heart pounded with a dark funereal rhythm.
The track ahead lay deserted. Maybe they’d gone back? Or cut through the trees into the field?
But then I got it. The Twitch. Not for the first time I wondered if bread bandits, hornets or whatever you called them carried some smell so faint I didn’t consciously sense it. But the old dinosaur brain locked deep inside the folds of primate brain still sniffed it bright and clear on the hot summer air. My stomach muscles twitched. In my neck and back more muscles snapped tight. So tight the contracting neck muscles pulled my head back and forced my chin up.
The bastards were here. They were right around the…
Then they walked ’round the bend. I pulled back the bolt. I’d only have to do that once because this little beauty had a self-cocking mechanism. OK, Valdiva. All you need do is aim… squeeze the trigger… aim and squeeze… aim and squeeze…
Muscles twitched like they danced in my gut. Blood sparkled through my veins. My whole being squeezed into that cubic inch behind my right eye. The one that looked through the sight and along that gleaming barrel. I concentrated on nothing else now.
There they were. A group of guys in their twenties and thirties, I figured. They moved purposefully toward me. Not running. Their eyes locked on me.
But they wouldn’t spook me.
I waited until they were maybe fifty yards away before squeezing the trigger.
The first shot punched clean through the chest of the one in the lead. The bullet tumbled out through his back to smash into the mouth of the guy behind him. His teeth vanished in a cloud of red glory and enamel splinters.
Both dropped down into the dirt. Two with one bullet! There was an angel on my shoulder today.
Forty-five yards away I dropped the next guy with a chest shot, too. He went down kicking his legs, vomiting blood. That bastard was dead meat.
I’d expected them to charge. There were still seventeen of them. I had eight rounds left in the clip. Do the math; I’d have to cut and run in the next ten seconds.
Forty yards and closing.
Bang… dropped the next with a head shot. A bald guy. The top of his scabby dome lifted off in one piece like you’d slice the top off a boiled egg. His comrades didn’t flinch when the guy’s brains spattered their faces.
Thirty yards. Bang, bang. I dropped two more with head shots through their eyes. One round exited the back of the sick fuck’s skull to slice off the guy’s ear behind him. The one who lost the ear bled like a pig but it didn’t stop him. I had to drop him with a shot through his lungs. He sat down on God’s earth to cough blood into his cupped hands.
Four rounds left. Thirteen mad fucks remaining.
They were twenty yards away. If they ran now they’d reach me in maybe ten seconds.
I fired again. Lousy shot, Valdiva. The bullet gouged out the hornet’s eye, but it exited through the side of his forehead, just below the temple. Most would have gone down with the sheer trauma of an injury like that. But his expression hardly flinched. His good eye still burned at me. And even though blood turned the righthand side of his face into a red mask he kept moving.
Where have you gone, sweet angel of mine? Now I had to use another precious bullet on Senor Solo Eye. It caught him in the throat. He went down gurgling to claw at the ground like it was the earth itself that hurt him.
Fifteen yards.
Then the goddam sly bastards went and did it. They cut and ran.
The twelve that remained burst through the bushes at the side of the road to disappear into the trees. They left the tail-end guy, though. The one who’d killed the old man back along the track. He still had that steel bar, too. He ran straight at me with the bar raised above his head. Old man brains still stuck on the end. Christ, he was so close I could see the moles on his face that bristled with black hairs.
I aimed at the center of his chest.
But I didn’t fire the gun. Not then. What got into me, I don’t know. Maybe the angel on my shoulder moved over for a devil to settle there to whisper in my ear.
