After Days (The After Days Trilogy) (16 page)

             
“Let’s give it another hundred count, at least.”

             
“Sounds good to me,” I answered, silently beginning to count upwards from one in my head. I took my time, carefully regulating my count speed so as not to finish too quickly. It was a long hundred seconds, but we didn’t hear a sound outside. That didn’t ease the tension and fear I felt at the prospect of leaving our little safe haven. Arthur finished counting before I did, switching his flashlight back on while I was still in the low 90s.

             
Holding the light in his mouth, Arthur stepped over to the door and began to slide it open. The inner door opened easily, but the outer door required more work and I began to appreciate just how difficult it had been for him to get in here, and then to reopen the door to allow me in. We got the outer door open a crack and I stepped forward and put my eye to it. I couldn’t see anyone waiting to ambush us so I gave Arthur a nod. We grabbed one door each and slid them open enough to allow us to get out. He hopped out first and I followed him, the stairwell alcove was empty. Glancing out onto the garage floor I could see that the body of the man I shot had been pulled to one side.

             
“I bet they’re still around here someplace,” Arthur said quietly. “The Tigers aren’t known for giving up that easily.”

             
“That is not gonna help their mood either,” I replied, nodding my head toward the dead man regretfully. Now that we were back out of the pitch darkness of the elevator, I had to ask him something that I was curious about.

“How did you know?” I asked. “How did you know that I was going to shoot in there? There was no way you could possibly have seen me in the
dark.”

             
“You stopped breathing,” Arthur said. “Sonny taught me that holding ones breath is often a sign that violent or stressful action is about to be undertaken.”

“
Oh. I wonder how Luke and he are doing.”

             
“Yeah, but we can’t think too much about it, we have to decide what to do,” Arthur said. “As I see it we have three options – we can try and make our way down to the truck and the others, we can bail and go back to the Academy, or we can stay here and basically do nothing.”

             
“Option two is out,” I said. “I’m not going to leave Sonny and Luke in danger.”

             
“If we stick to his plan, we should stay here,” Arthur said. “That’s what the plan called for.”

             
“Luke likes to say that no plan survives first contact with the enemy,” I replied. “I think we’ll need some revisions to Sonny’s plan.” I looked at the stairwell, and then turned toward the parking garage. “We’re going to take the long way round,” I said, “the way that vehicles normally go. If we try the stairwell there’s always the chance that we’ll miss Luke and Sonny leaving in the truck, and we can’t take that risk. If we walk down the driveway and they happen to be on the way out, we can just jump in.”

             
“Fine, if that’s what you want to do, let’s do it,” Arthur replied. I wasn’t sure, but he sounded a little peeved that I was taking control, and tried to wrest it back. “We are going to move quick and quiet, stay low and keep a good lookout. Try not to be seen, and for God’s sake, don’t shoot anybody.”

             
“I’ll do my best,” I said, shrugging my shoulders.

             
Creeping along the inner wall of the parking garage, we moved as swiftly as we could while still being stealthy. I knew that I didn’t want to be taken unawares by a couple gangbangers and I was sure that Arthur felt the same way. Mom, my real mom, used to say
if wishes were fishes we’d walk on the sea
, as a way of telling me that I wasn’t always going to be able to get everything that I wanted. Back then, when I was just a kid, I never understood what that meant, but I do now. Nobody always gets what they want.

             
We had just made the first turn in the garage when the guy with the bat stepped out from behind a car right in front of me. A shot of adrenalin hit me so hard that it almost hurt. I ducked as the bat whistled through the air where my head had just been, slamming into the cars fender, the nails denting and scratching the metal. I tried to bring the .38 up, but the gangbanger’s foot caught me in the pit of my stomach and I was knocked backwards to the ground, the air whooshing out of my lungs. The revolver slipped from my grasp and skittered a dozen feet across the cold pavement.

             
“I got one!” he shouted, stepping over me while I lay there gasping for breath. “It’s the guy that gunned down Jack! I bet you wish you had a machine gun now, don’t you, you little punk ass bitch!”

             
I raised my hands in some sort of hopeless gesture of self-defense as he raised the bat over his head with both hands,
shit this is going to hurt
, was the only thing passing through my mind. I waited for the blow to come, but it never did. Instead, I heard a grunt.

I glanced up and saw him stumble to one side. Still holding the bat with his right hand, he reached down with his left and felt his side; his hand came back up holding a bloody knife, about five inches long and flat. His face, etched wit
h hate only a moment ago, was now white and shocked as he looked at the object in his hand. I had seen throwing knives like it before on the racks in the Academy attic. While he was distracted I scrambled desperately on my hands and knees, trying to get to my handgun.

             
Arthur hit the man with a vicious kick to the same place the knife had struck. Roaring with pain and stumbling with the force of the kick, the gangbanger turned to face Arthur while feebly swinging the bat one handed.

Arthur dodged it
, and the thug’s arm, rather than his bat, slammed into Arthur’s side. Allowing this to happen was evidently part of Arthur’s plan, because he then brought his right arm down to trap the wrist of the Tiger and at the same time gave him a brutal palm strike to the chin. The gang member didn’t even groan as he dropped to the floor.

             
“Are you all right?” Arthur asked, as I scooped up the revolver and scrambled to my feet.

             
“Yeah, thanks,” I gasped. I was trying to regain my breath, and stood partially bent over while I sucked wind. “Is he dead?”

             
“Not yet,” Arthur replied. “But we should finish him off before we move…” his words were cut off by four loud shots.

I dove back to the ground, and looked under the car, scanning for feet on the far side. I saw Arthur dropping out of the corner of my eye. “Are you okay?” I whispered. There was no response and I glanced at him. He was lying on his side with his eyes open and unblinking, a deep crimson, almost black, pool of blood was forming around him.

“Shit…Arthur?”

A noise brought me back to reality, and I quickly scanned under the car, my gaze falling on a pair of red leather cowboy boots moving cautiously toward the car that I was lying behind.

Figuring the other Tigers were probably already on their way, I decided that this was it, I was going to go out in a blaze of glory. I aimed the .38 at the cowboy boots; the wearer had stopped for a moment, almost perfectly lining them up for me. I pulled the trigger. The roar of the handgun was deafening.

The bullet struck the boot wearer’s right ankle, and continued on through his left heel. There was a cry of agony and the teenager fell to his side on the other side of the car, using his gun hand to break his fall.

I saw his wrist bend in a way that it wasn’t designed to bend in, and he let out a sharp yelp of pain. His eyes locked on mine, and for a second or two we stared at each other under the car. I knew the fear I saw in his eyes was mirrored in my own. Then he reached for his pistol with his good hand and I shot him in the chest.

I’d taken my first human life less than twenty four hours before, and now I had taken two more. It seemed I was on a roll. Mayb
e I was responsible for another as well, I reminded myself.

Arthur was only here because I had wanted to come this way. It may sound strange, but right at that moment, Arthur’s death weighed on me more heavily than the lives that I had personally taken. As I lay on the cold concrete in shock, I thought about Karen. If I managed to get back to the academy in one piece, I was going to have to tell her that her love, Arthur, was dead.

I remembered watching them during the week and thinking, how lucky they were to have each other as the world was falling apart around them. Now, because of my decision, Karen was going to have to face this shit-hole of a world alone.
Is this really what being a leader is
?
Getting people killed with the choices I make
? The thought frightened me, who would ever willingly accept such a responsibility?

I waited a minute but didn’t see any feet rushing my way. Warily, I slowly pulled myself up to into a crouch and peeked over the hood of the car. My luck ran out. In the gloom of the garage ahead I could see two more figures approaching.

They were moving slowly, one holding some form of handgun and the other a rifle or shotgun, I couldn’t tell which. I swung open the cylinder of my .38 and with trembling hands shook the four spent cartridges into my hand. Carefully setting them on the floor so as to make very little noise, I reached into my pocket and pulled out four new shells and reloaded the revolver. I had been trembling so much, I was almost in disbelief that I hadn’t dropped any as I closed the chamber. Staying down, I moved towards the back of the car, trying to find a better position with which to make my last defense.

They kept coming, walking to the middle of the lot, slow and deliberate. They were about twenty yards away from whe
re I looked over the trunk of the car, ready to duck if they aimed at me. I knew instantly that one of them was the leader Chen, the brother of the one I had killed in the alley. How did I know? I’m not sure, except to say that his slow deliberate walk and his self-confidence marked him as a leader. He was tall and well-built and despite the cold wore a black, sleeveless muscle shirt.

“Don’t come any closer,” I yelled, trying to sound more confident than I was.

The man walking with Chen stopped instantly but the leader kept coming forward at a saunter.

“Stop!”

This time he did, but not in a submissive way. He planted his feet apart, and kept his hands down by his side, the shotgun pointed safely at the concrete. I took in his hard face and slicked back hair. Then he laughed at me. Of all the things that I expected, this was not one of them. I felt myself cringe;
as a child I hated kids at school laughing at me when I wasn’t in on the joke, it sometimes made me feel weak. In the vulnerable state I was in right then, it succeeded in doing just that.

“Well what have we here? A little man with a big gun. Why don’t you come out and we’ll talk about all this nonsense.”

He actually sounded reasonable and I almost stood up, but then I spotted his cohort take a step and I yelled again, firing a warning shot into the air. It hit the concrete above me and the bullet ricocheted dangerously close. As the dust fell onto the car and into my hair, I was gratified to see a look of uncertainty flash across Chen’s smug face.

“No need for that little man. I just want to talk to you; I believe you knew my brother?” Unexpectedly he crouched and put his shotgun on the floor and then began to walk towards me again, this time with his hands up. I raised my gun and pointed it at his head.

“Now, now. You wouldn’t shoot an unarmed man would you?”

He judged correctly, I wouldn’t, couldn’t shoot a man who was unarmed with his hands up. My hand was shaking and I knew he could see it.

“Stop…I said stop.” It sounded weak and he didn’t stop.

“It’s okay, we’re just gonna talk little man,” he whispered, as he reached the other side of the car. I felt like I was under the control of a snake charmer. I knew he was lying and that as soon as he was within reach of me I was as good as dead.

That was when the truck screeched around the corner behind them and the parking garage was flooded with light. Chen spun around as the fast moving vehicle sped towards us.

Chen’s partner raised an arm to shield his eyes from the bright headlights as the rifle in his hands barked. He was too slow. The truck’s front fender struck him and, even though it was a glancing blow, he flew off to the side like a rag doll as the truck came barreling on. Chen was a lot quicker. He glanced at me, the soothing look on his face now
one of venomous hatred.

“Not over bitch!” he yelled, before sprinting to the safety of the stairwell. The truck locked up its breaks and screeched to a stop beside me. The passenger side door opened and Luke
held out his hand.

“Hurry up, get in!” he yelled. “Where’s Arthur?”

I grabbed Luke’s arm and he helped pull me up into the cab. A rifle shot sounded behind us and we heard the whine of a bullet ricochet off the back of the truck.

“Where is Arthur?” Sonny repeated, glancing over from the driver’s seat.