“I sure hope not,” Samuel said, taking a step down so that he was fully in the garage. The door behind him swung closed with a practiced kick of his foot. “What’s wrong with your friend? He not scared of Old Lucy?”
The guy with the hammer glanced over his shoulder at his friend, who was clutching his shoulder and had kept his hands down. Blood coated the man’s fingers. “I can’t,” the wounded man said. “I’ve been shot. My arm doesn’t work.”
“Is that why you’re looking for a band-aid?” Samuel smirked.
The man with the hammer flushed, making his eyes glitter with the beginnings of anger. “That’s right.”
Samuel stepped closer and finally a ray of light strengthened through the dirty garage door windows, enough for him to make out the tattoos lining the man with the hammer’s fingers. Some of them sloppy, as if they’d been done in prison. Not too professional. The other one had the same markings, except all of them looked as though the ink was turning blue even though the man appeared to be fairly young.
“I could just shoot you both,” he said conversationally. “Won’t matter much to me. I don’t think anyone would miss a couple of fugitives like you. Where’d you break out of?”
The wounded man hissed. The man holding the hammer tightened his grip around the handle.
“But that would leave quite the mess in my garage,” Samuel said, raising the barrel until it was pointed straight at the wounded man’s forehead. “Not to mention the damage I’d do to my yard having to bury the both of you. So why don’t you tell Old Lucy what you’re really doing here. If I like your story, I might give you a band-aid. Probably has dinosaurs on it, though.”
The man with the hammer looked to his friend, and it seemed as though in their wordless exchange, they came to a decision. The man with the hammer turned back and met Samuel’s eyes.
No fear. Samuel liked that.
“Yeah, okay, we’ve been to prison,” the man growled and lowered his blunt weapon, “and we were here on a job. Help some poor low-level nobody get revenge on his friend. Colin, though, he’s crazy. Kidnapped a kid, for god’s sake.”
“The friend’s nephew,” the wounded man added in helpfully.
“Shut up, Jimmy. Yeah, the nephew. Makes all these threats that he’s gonna beat the kid up, do awful things to him if his uncle doesn’t show. Well, when his uncle does show, he brings his whole mountain-family with him and opens fire on us. Me and Jimmy, we barely made it out with our lives.”
“Killed the rest of our gang, didn’t they, Dean? Took Colin out with a shot to the stomach. Brutal way to go, man. Brutal.”
“Shut up, Jimmy. Yeah, got Colin in the gut, and the rest fell to the ground. Hit Jimmy straight in the shoulder, but hey, we don’t got skin in that game. No point giving our lives for some crazy nobody who kidnaps kids. Wasn’t my hostage situation, and if it was, I would’ve handled it a whole lot better than Colin.”
“Not that we haven’t kidnapped kids before. Right, Dean?”
“Shut up, Jimmy. Yeah, we’ve done crap like that before, but only because it came from up high. Colin meant nothing to us, and now here we are in some backwoods hideout, trying to stop Jimmy from bleeding out. I’d rather be back in Chicago, man, I haven’t seen that kind of firepower in a long time. First time Jimmy has been hit, too.”
“I’d like that dinosaur band-aid,” Jimmy said helpfully.
Samuel didn’t speak for a moment, mulling over their story in his mind. “You don’t know who this family was?” he finally asked.
“Nope,” Jimmy said. “Didn’t know any of them. Did you, Dean?”
“Shut up, Jimmy. Of course I didn’t know any of them. Never even been out of Chicago this far before. The fresh air is giving me hives.”
Jimmy laughed. “Good one, Dean. Good one.”
Samuel eyed the two men up and down again. Fugitives, yes. Idiots, also yes. But he could work with guys like these who seemed to take orders and yet knew how to get their hands dirty. “You feel like getting a little revenge before you head back to Chicago?” he asked. “Might want to take out that mountain-family for what they did to your friends?”
“Colin wasn’t our friend,” Jimmy said, clutching his wound tighter. Blood started to spread down his arm. “But the others were. Remember Big Ollie? He was good people, Dean. Good people.”
“Jimmy, seriously. Shut up. Yeah, Big Ollie was good people. Honestly. we can’t go back to the cartel without something to show for it or they’ll think we’re the ones that bungled everything.”
“Or that we ran away,” Jimmy pointed out.
“Which we didn’t,” Dean said heatedly.
“Might be able to get some of those guns they had, do you think, Dean? Lots of firepower.”
“Yeah, Jimmy. First good idea you’ve had all day.”
Samuel rolled his eyes. “Are you a married couple or mob men?” he demanded. “What’s it going to be, yes or no?”
For a blessed moment, the two fugitives did that eye-communication thing. Dean turned back to Samuel. “Yes,” he said. “Not for Colin. But for Big Ollie.”
“Good man,” Samuel said and lowered Old Lucy. “Come on inside, then. The beer is warm, but we won’t let that stand in our way. Nothing will stand in our way now.”
End of Erupting Danger
EMP Catastrophe Book Two
Erupting Trouble, April 14th, 2021
Erupting Danger, May 12th, 2021
Erupting Chaos, June 9th, 2021
PS: Do you love unputdownable fiction? Then keep reading for exclusive extracts from Erupting Chaos, Undaunted and Survive the Chaos.
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(EMP Catastrophe Book Two)
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