Instead of blowing a hole in the killer’s chest I dropped the muzzle. When I fired the metal-jacketed slug smashed his balls. It might have chewed off his dick, too, I don’t know.
With that high-pitched squeal you only hear when you accidentally stand on a dog’s paw, he dropped down into the soil at my feet. There he rolled from side to side, both hands clutching the blood-soaked mess between his legs.
I didn’t have time to put a second slug in his head.
I knew what remained of the hornet gang would be running as hard as they could to reach the people with the newborn baby. Now was the time… I started the Harley’s motor, revved it until it howled like a phantom war cry, then blasted down the track, the back wheel throwing up a geyser of dirt as high as the treetops and coating the fallen man in filth as he writhed in agony.
It took seconds to reach the group. They hurried along the track. Some helped the mother, whose thighs were still slick with blood. A girl of around thirteen carried the baby. And there, cutting them off from going farther, hornets ran out of the wood. The young guy dropped a couple of them with the shotgun. Then he started fumbling with the thing, trying to reload.
Slowing the bike, I fired my last shot. The hornet went down with a hole in the back of his head you could have shoved your fist through.
There were still more than half a dozen left. I had to slow the bike, but I cut past the little band of survivors. I had nothing but air in the ammo clip now. Instead I accelerated toward the surviving bunch of killers. They were still intent on claiming their original prey and sidestepped me. One wasn’t fast enough. I caught him across the forehead with the rifle butt. He went down onto his back. Down but not out, he started to sit up. Whipping the bike ’round, wheels throwing out dirt like a smoke screen, I rode toward him. The front wheel bounced up over his chest, pinning him down to the ground. Slowly, hardly touching the throttle, I eased the bike forward until the rear tire pressed down deep into his belly. Frantically, he beat at my legs. His eyes bulged wide; spit bubbled through his lips in fast, glistening gobs. Bye, bye, freak boy. I opened up the throttle until the engine screamed; the back wheel blurred, spun and ripped out his intestine as efficiently as a chainsaw.
That left me with the other hornets who closed in on the group. The guy still fumbled shells into the shotgun breech, dropping them on the ground in the process, picking them up, dropping them again, picking them up again, panic distorting his face into a mask from which jutted two terror-stricken eyes
But then it was over.
In a blur motorcycles buzzed past me. Zak, Michaela and Tony rode alongside the surviving hornets. Balancing their shotguns in the crooks of their elbows, they fired. And, man, you knew they’d done this be-fore. In less than ten seconds the half-dozen-strong bunch of bad guys lay dead in a growing pool of their own blood.
Down in the valley the other hornets would have heard the bikes and the shooting. They’d come looking for us now. It was time to get that tired bunch of people with the newborn baby up the hill, then the hell out of there.
Twenty-seven
On the road again. There was ample saddle space for the group we’d rescued. The mother (who couldn’t have been more than sixteen herself) was another matter. No way could she ride double after giving birth just hours before. There was the newborn baby, too. Despite Zak’s joke, you couldn’t let it ride in the pannier. Finally Michaela and Ben worked out a way to seat her on the two-wheeled trailer that Tony pulled behind his Harley. They created a kind of armchair from boxes of food, spare gas cans and blankets. She sat looking backward with the baby in her arms. The girl seemed dazed by it all and didn’t comment on the strange traveling arrangements. She just sat with the baby wrapped in towels, staring into its face. Incredibly, there was an aura of calm about her. I don’t think she even realized a battle had been fought down on the dirt track.
There were six of them, if you counted the baby. There was the mother, the thirteen-year-old girl (the most self-assured of the group), twin Malaysian women in their twenties who’d been vacationing in New York when the Fall happened along and smashed civilization to crud and Ronald, a guy of around thirty, with a goatee that looked more like brown froth than hair. Constantly, he looked ’round with these scared blue eyes that you’d swear were close to bursting clean out of his skull. All the time, as we loaded the bikes at the barn, he’d repeat over and over, “We’ve got to get away. Those things down there are killers. We’ve got to get away.”
The hornets had heard the gunshots and the roar of the engines. Around forty of them began prowling their way up the hill like a pack of dogs looking for a rabbit. But they were on foot; we had the bikes. We got away with time to spare. By late afternoon we were miles from the valley with its lakes. We didn’t see what happened to the group of ordinary Joes the hornets were pursuing. Only it took no genius to surmise what did happen to them when they found their way blocked by the river merging with the lake. A few shots fired, then hundreds of hornets would overwhelm the little band of survivors. End of story.
We figured the best route would be simply to head away from the valley where the hornets had clustered. By late evening we reached a garage. One of those backwoods outfits with a couple of gas pumps, a tiny store that sold everything from toothpaste to ammo and fish bait. It had been picked clean, of course. Although Ben did find a single pack of gum behind the trashed counter. Alongside the store was a repair shop. Here a few cars sat gathering dust in varying stages of repair. A big old Chevy in strawberry red with a cream stripe down its side and whitewall tires stood on blocks. Someone had been lovingly restoring the old girl when civilization rolled over and died. The vast back seat made an ideal bed. Michaela guided the new mother to it and settled her and the baby down there. As Michaela got busy arranging blankets, fixing her a hot drink, finding clean towels for the baby to keep it warm, I found myself watching. Hell, I admired Michaela. She was so together. She always moved in a purposeful way, as if even the smallest chore was an important link in the survival chain. Which I guess it was. She cared for people, you could see that. A warm sensation flushed through me as I watched her slip a pillow she’d found in one of the cars beneath the new mom’s head. Despite Michaela’s external toughness she had a tender heart.
She caught me staring at her. She said nothing. Her let’s-get-down-to-business expression didn’t falter, but I found myself blushing when she made eye contact with me. So I did what I was good at: I found firewood.
By this time the sun had all but set. Zak arrived back from his search of the neighborhood. “Quiet as a grave,” he told me as he climbed off the bike. “No sign of hornets or any ordinary Joes like us. But the houses nearby have either been picked clean or torched.” He slapped the dust from his pants with the cowboy hat. “With luck there might still be some gas in those cars, or in the underground tanks.”
Then it was business as usual. Tony rigged up the bread oven where the fire would be. The others did chores-making supper or mending clothes. Ben dug out the tub of flour ready to make more of the pancake bread.
With plenty of trees nearby firewood was easy to find. Soon I had it piled in the yard (well away from the gas pumps, just in case). Once it was lit people gravitated toward it as darkness crept like a hungry ghost through the forest. Ben baked bread as Zak fanned the flames with his Stetson. The new arrivals got to know their rescuers. People made a fuss over the mom and her baby. Michaela made use of the rearview mirror in another car; she sat brushing her hair. I found myself staring again. But then, there was something compelling about the slow, rhythmic way she ran the brush through her long dark hair.
“Supper’s ready,” Ben sang out while he set the flat loaves to cool. Before, mine had come out black; his were pale gold. They smelled good, too.
Zak crouched down to look at them. “What have you done to these?”
Ben looked anxious. “Is there something wrong with them?”
“No, they smell great… hmmm. How you do that with bread and water?”
Ben’s face switched to a boyish grin. “I found some garlic growing wild in the hedge bottom.”
“Garlic! Hey this guy’s a genius. Garlic! Sweet Jesus! Oh, boy, did you hear that?” He laughed as he clutched his stomach. “My belly’s rumbling.” He called out to the others. “Come on, let’s eat.”
I’d packed enough beer for a stubby apiece. Michaela said it was a good time to pass these out and celebrate the birth of the child and the expansion of our group by six-if the new people wanted to join, that is?
Yes. They were all keen to hook up with us. Rowan, the thirteen-year-old, said that the hornets had been
