After Days (The After Days Trilogy) (15 page)

The Chinese Army was on all of our minds, but it was the Red Tigers that Sonny said we really needed to watch for. The parking garage was well inside their territory, and they were bound to be angry about losing some men the previous day. He seemed to know a lot about them, but I didn’t think anything of it at the time.

              Thinking about the Tigers made me realize that it had been less than twenty-four hours since I killed my first man. Well, I’m pretty sure he was the first; the looter that I had shot in front of the Foster’s home had already looked in a bad way, maybe the leg wound had sped up his demise, but I’m certain it wasn’t fatal.

The thought of meeting up with one of the friends of the man I had killed
chilled me in a way that the cold night couldn’t.

I also worried that others
might have to suffer as a consequence of my actions. I didn’t say anything though and walked through the darkness in near silence. Moving carefully, and by a circuitous route, it took us nearly an hour to reach the parking garage. As we arrived, the first flakes of a fresh snowfall began drifting down from the now completely dark sky.

             
The plan called for Arthur and me to stay near the parking garage entrance, out of sight from the street, but where we could keep an eye on things. Sonny and Luke would continue down to the truck, make sure everything was okay and disable the GPS using Huian’s instructions, before picking me and Arthur up on the way out.

Sonny and Arthur were dressed in their black
uniforms
, while Luke and I wore normal clothes and parkas. Nodding farewell to Luke and Sonny, I found a car to crouch behind that afforded me a good view of the entrance. Arthur followed the others as far as the stairwell that led to the other levels and faded into the shadows. I realize of course that he was not a
real
ninja, but he sure made a reasonable replica of one.

             
The next five minutes passed with agonizing slowness. While I knew that it must have been a least a little warmer inside the parking garage, I honestly didn’t feel it. I was as cold as I had been since we had left my home town, and I placed my weapon on the concrete floor as I rubbed my hands together for warmth.

I
t had seemed very dark outside, but now that I was crouched in the darkness of the parking garage and looking toward the entrance, I could see just how much lighter it was out there. As I looked I saw movement. Four figures, who from their size appeared to be either in their late teens or adults, stood out there staring into the garage. Tigers.

Although the darkness meant I couldn’t make out their ethnicity, the fact that they were not wearing uniforms and that one of them was holding what looked like a spiked baseball bat confirmed that they were members of the Red Tigers.

They were speaking together but try as I might, I couldn’t make out any of their conversation. They were too far away. After a time, one pointed towards the stairwell and two of the men moved towards it while the others two began to move deeper into the parking garage. I felt myself tensing up; the two moving straight into the garage would be passing directly by me.

             
Moving as slowly and quietly as I could, I picked up the .38, slightly comforted by the cold, heavy weight of it in my hand. One of the men coming towards me was holding a baseball bat studded with nails, and as he got closer I recognized him as the one Luke had christened Bat-boy, the Tiger who had run from the alley.

With him was another tall Asian teenager with a youngish looking face. Both of them had automatic pistols shoved in their waistbands. I slowly scooted back,
keeping the car between me and them as they passed. The last thing that I wanted to do was have to use my revolver; I knew that any shots would bring their other two friends running and if they were armed too, as they undoubtedly would be…I didn’t like my chances in a four on one gunfight.

             
That last thought, of the other two Tigers, brought Arthur to the front of my mind. Hopefully he would be able to avoid detection somehow, but the tight confines of the stairwell did little to buoy my hopes for him.

Daring to cast a quick glance in that direction, I realized that the other two Tigers must have
already entered the stairwell, as they had been lost from my sight. I took the relative silence from that direction as a positive sign that Arthur had somehow managed to evade them. Quickly switching my focus back to the two that were walking past, I noticed that they had stopped no more than ten feet away from where I crouched.

             
“Are you sure it was them?” The younger looking Asian teenager said to the man with the bat. “The bastards that killed Sammo and Jack?”

             
“At least one of them,” Bat-boy said. “I recognized the jacket of the kid with the crossbow.”

             
“Come on, let’s keep going… and keep an eye out, Chen doesn’t want them to slip past us and get out if they hear him and Hammer on the stairs,” the taller teenager said. “We better not slip up; I’ve never seen him so mad as when you told him that Jack was killed. I feel sorry for the poor son of a bitch that stupid enough to gun down Chen’s little brother…”

             
“Yeah, that little shit had better hope he dies fighting, because if we capture his ass…” He slapped the nail free part of his bat into the palm of his hand. I jerked at the meaty sound and almost fell over backwards.

Chen’s brother? The way they were talking, Chen was obviously the leader. And it turns out I had killed his brother. Great! No wonder they were so pissed.
The two Tigers started walking again, and were soon far enough beyond where I squatted for me to feel a slight relief.

             
That feeling was short lived however, as I realized that Luke and Sonny were in real danger. I had no way of getting past the Tigers, either set, to warn them, and even if they finished with the truck and got it up and running before the Tigers got to their level, they would have to drive right by at least two of the armed thugs to get out.

I hoped that
Arthur had managed to zip down the stairwell to warn Luke and Sonny before the two gangbangers that went that way had seen him. Even that would only be a small comfort, as getting out would still be a hell of a problem, but it would be something at least.

             
Looking down the parking garage toward where the two Tigers had vanished into the darkness, I strained my ears and could hear the faint sound of their footsteps getting further away. When I judged them to be distant enough, I broke cover from where I was crouched and quickly and quietly moved to the stairwell.

I had been in the stairwell before, when we had left the garage after burning the first Chinese truck. The street level of the parking garage was the top floor; the other six floors were located underneath, so from here the stairs only went one direction – down into the darkness.

              The stairs were located at the back of a small alcove with an elevator door in one wall. The stairs wound around the elevator shaft’s column as they descended. There was a landing and elevator door on each garage level. The elevator was not working, of course, no electricity. I was listening at the entrance to the alcove, trying to hear the two Tigers on the stairs below, when I instead heard the sound of shoes slapping on the concrete behind me.

I spun around to
the sight of a middle aged Chinese man sprinting at me from the exit to the street. He pulled a gigantic Bowie knife out of the sheath on his belt as he  ran toward me.

             
Adrenaline kicked in, and abandoning any notion of stealth, I brought up the revolver and squeezed the trigger twice. The booms echoed through the parking garage. The first shot missed, I’ve no idea where the bullet went. The second shot struck the onrushing man just above the sternum, and about an inch to the left.

I expected him to be knocked backwards by the force of the shot, after all, it always happens that way in movies, but he just jerked slightly and kept coming. I stepped back against the wall, watching in disbelief as he came at me. The thought that he might be wearing a bullet proof vest crossed my mind and I was preparing to fire again when, two steps later, his legs gave out and he slammed down onto the cold pavement in front of me.

              Hearing a noise, I turned with the .38 raised, to see the elevator doors opening slowly. As they slid aside I could see that the elevator itself seemed to be stuck someplace between this floor and the one below, about a foot of the carriage could be seen along with its roof. Arthur was crouched on that roof, forcing the doors open from inside.

             
“Hurry up and get in here,” he whispered fiercely. “Before every Tiger in the neighborhood shows up.”

             
“What about Luke and Sonny?” I asked as I clambered onto the top of the elevator car next to Arthur.

             
“I already warned them, they should be hiding in the bottom of the shaft,” he whispered back, as he let the elevators doors slide shut behind me. Darkness, absolute and impenetrable, cloaked the elevator shaft when the doors closed. “Keep your gun handy in case somebody tries to open those doors, but try not to move around or talk too much, we don’t want to give them a reason to search here.”

             
It didn’t take long before we could hear agitated voices talking loudly outside the elevator doors. Although we couldn’t make out exactly what they were saying, the man I’d shot had been found, not exactly surprising since I’d left him lying out in the open. The adrenalin was still pumping through me and I was feeling more than a little bit jittery, so much so that when something banged against the door I was about to fire my gun, when I felt Arthur’s hand touch my shoulder.

             
“No,” he said, his whisper barely audible in my ear. “Shoot only if you can see light from them sliding the doors open… and make every shot count.”

             
The voices outside the elevator died down, and after a while stopped altogether. I thought that they had left to continue their search through the parking garage, or perhaps went out to comb the streets thinking that we’d slipped out after shooting their rear guard. But I couldn’t be certain, for all I knew there could be a Tiger standing in the alcove, waiting for somebody to stick their head out.

             
“Should we try the door?” I whispered to Arthur.

             
“No, too risky right now,” he said, producing a small flashlight from the pouch on his belt. He flicked it on. The cone of light played over the walls and floor of the shaft, and then he pointed it up.

             
The building that the parking garage was located under was a four story office building that had held mostly law offices and accounting firms, if the sign at the front was any indication. The shaft continued up into the building above, I assumed all the way to the top floor, although I couldn’t be certain, as Arthur’s light gave out before reaching that high. It did however illuminate two more sets of elevator doors above us, so we knew it rose to at least the second floor.

             
“Do you think that they’ll be searching the upper building for us?” I asked.

             
“I doubt it,” he replied. “Not at the moment, at least, the only door from the parking garage into the building lobby is closed off with a chain and a padlock; I found that out when Sonny had me scout this place in case we ever wanted to dump a truck here. As long as the chain’s in place on that door, they won’t think we went in there, and the stairs only lead down further into the parking garage.”

             
“Do you think we can get up there?”

             
“I don’t know,” Arthur said. “I was hoping that there would be some sort of maintenance ladder or something, but there isn’t. Somehow I don’t think climbing the cables would be that easy, and even if we did, I’m not sure how we could get the doors open while clinging to them.”             

             
“I see what you mean,” I said, following his light beam with my eyes. “Although, the doors have rails they slide on… Maybe, we could stand on the rails to one side of the door and push open the other side.”

             
“Yeah, maybe…” Arthur said, not sounding overly confident. “Another option would be to hide in the elevator car itself. There is an access hatch over there,” he shone the light over to illuminate a trap door a few feet from where I crouched. “With the narrowness of the hatch, I don’t think that any Tigers checking the elevator shaft from above would look for us in there.”

             
“Yeah, but if they did climb down and find us inside… well it would be like shooting two bunnies in a bucket. Not sure I want to be a bunny.” Arthur switched his light off and we squatted there in silence for a few moments.

In my mind it seems that the question was mostly theoretical, at this point anyway, as we seemed to be safe enough where we were for the time being. The adrenaline was beginning to wear off, and a vague sense of exhaustion was replacing the jittery excitement that I had been feeling. “How long do you think we should wait, before we do
something
?”