Dead Six

It took him a second to respond. “Fine,” he grunted as he emerged from the shadows, holding his old Randall knife in one hand. His other hand was clamped against his side. “He stabbed me. Not too bad, though.” Despite his injury, Hawk helped me to my feet. I wobbled but was able to stand.

Is it Gordon? My deceased attacker was wearing a suit and was about the right size. I swung my rifle around and thumbed on my flashlight. I don’t know who the man was, but it wasn’t Gordon Willis. Probably one of his flunkies. The side of his neck had been split open from his collarbone to his ear. Damn. Hawk spat.

Gunfire echoed from the direction of the garage. Beyond that I could hear the noise of an engine turning over.

Gordon was getting away.

LORENZO

Reaper was in front now as we hurried back toward the garage, trying to stay in the shadows as much as possible. We could see a stream of tracers flying from the side of the garage up into the hillside where we had left Bob. I stumbled along, one arm over Jill’s shoulder as she kept me upright. The mess hall was burning bright, and the flames had spread to the surrounding buildings. The camp was coming down.

I avoided taking a mental inventory of my injuries. Nothing seemed to be bleeding very fast.

We all instinctively ducked as we were suddenly illuminated by car headlights. Somebody had made it back to the vehicles. There was a sudden roar from a powerful engine, and one of the Suburbans sprayed gravel as it turned around and tore away from us.

That’s when I saw Valentine emerge from one of the buildings on the other side of the horseshoe. “Gordon!” he screamed, running right into the middle of the road, oblivious to danger. He snapped his FAL to his shoulder and fired at the Suburban. Several holes were punched in the back of the SUV before Valentine’s bolt locked back. He rapidly reloaded, once again flinging the empty magazine away and rocking in a new one, but it was too late. By the time he dropped the bolt on a live round, the Suburban had dipped into a gully and disappeared from view.

Valentine slowly lowered his rifle. He stood there quietly, seething, staring at the horizon as if he could will the Suburban to come back. Hawk appeared behind him, limping badly. His rifle was slung, his .44 dangled from one hand, and his other hand was pressed against a wound on his side.

Hawk caught my look. “Keep moving! I’m fine.” Another burst of machine gun fire tore into the hillside. All of us flinched in that direction. Bob. I was running now, the others right behind me. Valentine saw us and followed. My 9mm was at the ready as I moved around the corner of the garage.

The MG3 was braced over the hood of a sedan. A giant white shape was manning the gun, firing short bursts onto a patch of darkened mountain where my brother had gotten pinned down. It was the Fat Man. The back of his white suit was shredded from my grenade. Blood ran from dozens of injuries. Maybe he had on some kind of body armor, or maybe he was just that tough, but somehow the son of a bitch was still alive. I could feel the others behind me, five of us in a row now. I settled my front sight on him and fired, still walking forward.

He grunted, raising the machine gun off the hood of the sedan. I fired again. Valentine’s rifle bucked off to the side. The Fat Man began to turn, surprisingly enough, a strange smile on his face even as our bullets struck home. Jill was shooting her pistol now, cranking off shots as fast as she could pull the trigger. I kept shooting, but impossibly the Fat Man stayed on his feet as bullets puckered into his bloated frame, tearing him apart. Reaper’s buckshot rocked him slightly, sending the MG3’s muzzle into the dirt. I kept firing, front sight tracking back down; now I was shooting for his head. One of Hawk’s .44 slugs erupted through his cheek, and he spit teeth but stayed upright. Still closing, Reaper hit him again, the buckshot in a tighter pattern now, taking the Fat Man’s kneecap off.

His ponderous weight hit the hood, sliding inevitably toward the earth, leaving a trail behind him. He was reaching into his coat, somehow finding the strength to go for his gun. Jill fired her last shots into his neck. He was still smiling a toothless death’s head grin, one eye missing now, as he hit the ground.

“Fucking die already!” Reaper shouted, stepping on the Fat Man’s arm, pinning the gun, extending the stubby 12 gauge toward that nebulous smile. BOOM BOOM! Point-blank range. It wasn’t pretty. Reaper stepped back and wiped his arm across his blood-splattered face. “You ain’t coming back now!”

I shoved a fresh magazine into my STI. “Get Bob on the radio.”

“He says he’s okay,” Reaper answered. “And—”

“Down!” Valentine shouted. He was closest to Jill and shoved her aside. I hit the deck as another sedan tore past us, muzzle flashes strobing out the open window, bullets whizzing past. Eddie’s maniacally grinning face was illuminated for a brief instant. He must have gotten into the car while we were distracted by the Fat Man. Hawk fired his .44 one-handed at the speeding car as it bounced down the road. The concussions were deafening, but then the car was around the hillside and out of sight.

“Everybody okay?”

“I think so,” Jill answered from the ground.

“Reaper?” No answer. I scrambled over to my friend. He was on his back next to the headless body of the Fat Man. “Reaper? Reaper!”

A bullet had smashed his chest plate. He was bleeding badly from the side of his head. I shook him. He opened his eyes, looked around in confusion, then grimaced. “Ow, shit, that hurts.” He rolled over and put his hands on his skull. “He shot me, and I hit my head on the car. So quit yelling at me! Oh, man, he shot me in the arm too.” Sure enough, there was a wound on his bicep. Jill knelt by his side and put pressure on it. “I hate getting shot!”

“You’ll live,” Jill said.

I could be relieved later. I pulled Reaper’s radio off his vest. “Bob. Can you hear me?”

“Yeah, bro. I’m good. That was close.”

Somehow we had all survived. “If you see another car moving down the road, kill the driver.”

“He’s already around the hill. I can’t acquire.”

I swore as I keyed the radio again. “Get down to the road as fast as you can. We’ll pick you up in a minute.”

“I’m on my way,” he answered.

I stuffed the radio in my pocket. Valentine had picked up the big MG3 and taken up a defensive position. I started for the closest sedan. The door was unlocked. No keys of course. I whipped out my multitool and cracked open the cover beneath the steering wheel. It took all of thirty seconds to get the car hot-wired, and that was between bouts of violent coughing and blood trickling down my arms and making my hands slippery. The engine turned over as I struck the wires together.

The others were already cramming into the sedan. Valentine had to maneuver the German machine gun to make it fit. The entire prison camp was burning bright now, and we needed to get out of here before the authorities showed up. I slammed the car into gear and floored it as soon as everyone was inside.

The car was dying. Something must have been hit as we were unloading on the Fat Man. All the warning lights were on. The engine was coughing almost as badly as I was. Jill was squished against me, with Bob and his body armor taking up most of the front seat. All of us were filthy, sweating, and half of us were bleeding. Bob’s shocked reaction to seeing me under the car’s interior lights when we had picked him up told me about how horrible I looked.

“We’re almost where we left the vehicles,” Bob stated calmly. He was covered in desert dust. His rifle was between his knees. The fire from the work camp was just a visible glow over the hill behind us.

“Status back there?” I asked. “Hawk? Reaper?”

“It’s a shallow cut.” Hawk had his shirt open and had shoved a pressure bandage on his side. “Nothing bad.”

“The kid’s going to be okay. Bullet grazed his bicep, missed the brachial artery. I’ve got the bleeding under control,” Valentine said from the backseat.