Green Ice: A Deadly High (51 page)

Sonny inspected the front of the pickup truck as he walked by. The crash bars and solid front had prevented any damage to the vehicle. Slight scraping on the chrome work across the crash bars was the only evidence of the collision. Sonny nodded to himself in approval. He glanced up the driveway at the Lexus. He’d managed to shunt the vehicle a few feet down the track and the trunk lid had opened up under the impact.

“Well, what do you know?” Sonny muttered to himself.
“I love that damn truck.”

Screams of the infected rushing down the driveway alerted Sonny to the impending danger. He aimed the Uzi beyond the Lexus and fired off a couple of short bursts. The leading infected fell
to the ground and Sonny returned his attention to the open trunk in front of him. He stuffed the Luger into his waistband, rooted around the contents of the trunk and opened a cardboard box. Inside the box, he found a clear plastic bag, the size of a pillow, stuffed full of small green crystals.

“Well, praise this ship and all who sails in her,” he said.

Sonny stuffed the large bag of crystals into the inside of his oversized combat jacket, liberated from Blake Peabody’s clothing closet, but was alerted when he heard the sound of one of the Lexus doors opening.  

Logrono dabbed at his bleeding nose and groped for the
Lexus door handle. He fell out of the open door, his head was groggy but he knew he had to try and get away. The growls of his infected former employees and good time girls rang in his ears. The ungrateful bastards had returned to bite the hand that had fed them for all these years. He stumbled around the back of the car and met the gaze of a big tall guy, dressed in baggy combat fatigues, who aimed a small machine gun at him.

Chapter Seventy-Nine

“Howdy,” the guy said, smiling.

Logrono muttered something Sonny didn’t catch. Sonny shrugged and squeezed the trigger for less than a second. Logrono’s face screwed up in a brief state of pain as the 9mm rounds ripped through his chest. He fell on his back onto the ground, with his eyes open in death, blood from the bullet wounds seeped through his white shirt.

Sonny glanced back up the driveway and saw more of the infected rapidly approaching. He’d have to hurry if he wanted to find more booty.

Mancini heard a brief rasp of fire and knew they were in serious trouble. Luiz coughed and hacked next to him in the driver’s seat and moved to open his door.

“Don’t get out of the car,” Mancini grunted but it was too late.

Luiz staggered out of the Lexus, retching and coughing.

“Well ‘
aint this nice,” Sonny chimed, aiming the Uzi at Luiz.

Mancini heard the southern drawl outside the car
and glanced in the side mirror.

“Ah, shit,” he croaked. “Not that guy again.” He also caught sight of Logrono’s body lying beside the car. They needed to keep
Luiz alive if they were going to mass produce and deliver a cure for the infection. Luiz was in imminent danger and Mancini had to try bargaining with Sonny.

“Any more of this green produce, Senor?” Sonny asked.

Luiz held up his hands in a surrendering motion while he coughed the dust from the air bag out of his lungs.

“Come on, hurry it up,” Sonny snapped. “I ‘
aint got all day here. Those crazy heads are going to be on top of us any second now, boy.”

Luiz
took a quick glance over his shoulder and saw the infected hurtling in their direction.

“I can get you some more,”
Luiz croaked. He saw the bag of crystals poking out from inside Sonny’s jacket. “I can make as much as you want. I am the manufacturer.”

“Well, now. That
is
interesting,” Sonny said with a sneer.

Mancini had on
e last search for his Heckler and Koch handgun but couldn’t find it. He gave up, he had to save Luiz. Mancini opened his door and crawled out of his seat. He raised his hands above his head and saw Sonny re-direct the short Uzi barrel towards him.

“So, we meet again,
Hoss,” Sonny said. “I guess you were the guy who busted my nose back out there in the desert.”

Mancini nodded slightly before he spoke. “Listen, I know we don’t have much time but you can’t shoot this guy.” He pointed at
Luiz. “He has a cure for the infection and we need him alive. I’ve got a shit load of cash in the trunk of the Thunderbird out the front there. It’s all yours if you let this guy live.”

Sonny’s eyes widened.
“How much?”

“About two million dollars.”

Sonny broke into a smile. “Hell, I wasn’t going to shoot him anyhow. He promised to make me as much of this shit as I wanted. But thinking about it, who am I going to sell it to anyhow? Two million dollars in cash sounds a whole lot more appealing.” He swiveled his aim and fired a burst at Luiz.

Luiz
jerked backwards as the nine millimeter Parabellum rounds tore through his internal organs. He hit the ground hard, coughed out blood in one gurgling retch before he took his last breath.  

Mancini held the top of his head, breathing heavily in shock and disbelief. “What the hell have you done?” he gasped.

The smile on Sonny’s face slipped away. He returned his aim to Mancini’s chest. “Get the fuck in the truck,” he ordered.

Mancini had no choice but to comply and reluctantly made his way to the passenger seat. Sonny remembered his scattered firearms in the cab and shook his head at Mancini.

“Get in the back of the bed,” Sonny instructed. “And stay sitting right in the center where I can see you. I can still shoot you through the back window, you know.”

The infected crowd began to swarm around the wrecked Lexus. Mancini heard pained screams from the interior as he crawled onto the pickup truck’s rear bed.

“Sorry, Pablo,” Mancini muttered.

The infected also leapt on the bodies of Logrono and
Luiz, ripping and tearing them apart with their teeth and fingers. Sonny aimed the Luger pistol directly at Mancini as he rapidly reversed back down the driveway towards the open gates.

Trey crouched on top of the gatehouse roof, aiming down the rifle scope. He’d seen Sonny ram the Lexus and execute one of its occupants - a gray haired guy who fell out of the backseat. He’d heard more gunshots but couldn’t see who Sonny had shot from his position. He couldn’t find the angle to get a clear shot away at the guy he now realized had killed Leticia. Trey’s arms were weak and shaky and he felt as though he was on the verge of a fever. Sweat rolled down his face yet he felt cold and shivery.

That bastard Sonny was also reversing back down the driveway, so
Trey couldn’t even fire a shot at the windshield. Mancini was in the back of the truck with his hands held over his head as though he was a prisoner. Trey didn’t want to take a shot at the cab in case he missed and hit Mancini by accident.

“Ah, man, this fucking sucks,” Trey hissed, holding back the tears in his eyes. He couldn’t believe they’d come unstuck after getting so close.
He tried to gulp away a sorrowful lump in his throat.

Mancini glanced up at the gatehouse roof as the truck
whined while reversing along the driveway. He saw Trey crouching down and a sudden thought crossed his mind. Luiz was gone but Jorge would probably know all the places they’d made batches. Perhaps Jorge could lead them to the cure for the disease. As long as Jorge was alive there was still hope. Mancini looked directly up at Trey as they neared the gatehouse.

“There’s a cure and Jorge might know where it is,” Mancini yelled. “Get back to the Thunderbird and get out of here.”

“Shut the fuck up,” Sonny shouted, tapping the glass with the Luger barrel. In normal circumstances, he’d have shot Mancini in the face through the window but he wanted to torture him a little after he handed over the two million in cash. The guy was going to pay for busting his nose.

Mancini thought he saw Trey nod. He turned around and scurried along the gatehouse roof and back along the top of the wall. Sonny fired a few token rounds
with the Luger at Trey but missed, his shots flying high and wide.

“Damn it, should have reloaded that Uzi,” Sonny spat.

Sonny stepped on the gas, eager to catch Trey before he escaped in the Thunderbird. He’d have a shock when he got back there anyhow, Sonny thought. The kid obviously didn’t know Jorge was already dead. Sonny swung the pickup truck around in the turning circle outside the front gates. Mancini almost tumbled out of the truck bed and had to grip hold of the sides to stop himself falling out. He considered throwing himself out of the truck and making a run for freedom but Sonny was now traveling too fast. He’d almost certainly sustain an injury and either Sonny would come back and shoot him or leave him for the pursuing infected.

Trey was first to reach the Thunderbird. He held the keys in his hand ready to fire up the engine.

“Come on, Jorge, we have to go. The whole plan has gone to rat shit but you might be able to help us find a…”
Trey stopped talking when he saw Jorge and realized he wasn’t capable of hearing anything anymore. Jorge looked as though he had a second mouth, stretched wide open in a blood soaked smile where his throat was slit. His eyes remained open and his face was pale white.

Trey
slammed the side of the Thunderbird with the flat of his hand. “That motherfucker,” he yelled.

Trey spun around when he heard the rumble of a vehicle engine approaching. Sonny was going to pay. He slung the rifle off his shoulder, crouched in a kneeling position in front of the Thunderbird trunk and aimed down the scope. The pickup truck was fitted with dark tinted windows and Trey couldn’t see Sonny inside the cab. Fuck it, no matter, he thought.

Trey fired a shot. The round cannoned off the crash bars and ricocheted away. Sonny obviously knew he was being fired at and began to weave the truck in slalom, left and right, whooping in ecstasy as he reloaded the Uzi.

“I love this shit!” Sonny hollered, punching the cab roof.

Trey fired again, this time hitting the windshield but the round hit high up in the top left of the glass. It wouldn’t have troubled the driver.

Sonny laughed aloud, ducking behind the wheel as the bullet whipped through the cab, high over his right shoulder. 

Trey attempted to compose himself and try to shake off the fatigue and the increasing effects of a fever. He aimed to the right side of the windshield and squeezed the trigger. The mechanism clicked but didn’t discharge a round. Trey cocked back the slide and saw the magazine was empty and he had no full spares. He’d given them all to Leticia. 

“Ah, shit,” he groaned.

Sonny read Trey’s body language as he rolled the pickup truck to a halt, with the front crash bars six inches from Trey’s head. Sonny jumped out of the cab and waved Mancini down from the truck bed with the reloaded Uzi. Mancini clambered down and Sonny ushered him to stand beside Trey.

“I’ll take that, Punchy,” Sonny growled, tearing the semi automatic rifle from Trey’s grasp. He tossed the rifle over the side of the ridge beyond the front of the Thunderbird, where the sea lapped over the beach.
“And I thought you and me were best of buddies.”

“Why didn’t you go?” Mancini hissed at Trey. He glanced into the Thunderbird’s rear and saw Jorge’s corpse, sprawled across the seat. He turned back to Sonny. “You got to him first, huh?”

Sonny nodded. “We had a nice little talk. He didn’t speak very highly of you guys though.”

Shrieks and squawks drifted from further back down the road as the infected crowd poured out of the open gates and pounded over the blacktop towards the parked vehicles.

“Okay, we don’t have a whole lot of time to waste, so open up that T-Bird trunk and hand over the cash,” Sonny commanded, flicking the Uzi barrel up and down. “Jeez, I can’t believe it was right under my nose all this time.”

Trey flashed Mancini a glance before he reluctantly turned to the Thunderbird trunk
and unlocked it with his keys. He opened the trunk lid revealing the two holdalls inside.

“Toss me the keys, kid,” Sonny demanded.

Trey pulled the keys out of the lock and hurled them at Sonny, thinking he should have thrown them over the side of the embankment before he’d unlocked the trunk. At least, that way Sonny wouldn’t have got away with the cash. The bunch of keys hit Sonny on his shoulder and fell onto the dusty shoulder.

“Now, that wasn’t too polite
, Punchy.” He bent down to pick up the keys and Mancini took a step forward. “Uh-uh, don’t you fucking dare,” Sonny growled, aiming the Uzi at Mancini’s chest.