The day after: An apocalyptic morning (3 page)

              "You can't do this!" the teenaged girl cried hysterically. "You just can't do this!"

              The leader chuckled a little. "We can do anything we want now, sweet piece. The law done blew up with the comet. Ain't you figured that out yet?"

              "What about the little shit?" one of the other bikers asked, pointing at the young boy. "Think we oughtta just kill him now? He ain't good for nothin', is he?"

              While the boy in question trembled in fear and his terrified mother and sister moaned in terror, the leader seemed to consider this question very carefully. Finally he answered, "Let's keep him for now and take him back to camp. Zipper and Turbo like to slam little dudes once in a while, don't they? Reminds 'em of when they was in Folsom."

              "I guess you're right."

              "I can think of a few uses for him too," said one of the women with a lascivious grin.

              "Shut the fuck up, bitch," the leader said, casting an evil glare at her until she dropped her gaze. He then turned back to the teenage girl. "You ever give a blowjob before, sweet piece?"

              Skip watched all of this, unseen from his perch up the hill from them, his mind whirring as he tried to think of what he could do. He certainly had no desire to stand by and watch a young girl get raped by a gang of bikers in front of her mother and brother, but he had nothing more than a hunting rifle and a pistol and they had automatic weapons. He hardly had a chance against that, did he?

              But on the other hand, he had just been willing to take his own life a few moments ago. So when you came right down to it, what difference did it make if these biker assholes were the ones to kill him? Wouldn't dying in a firefight to save a helpless family be preferable to blowing his own brains out? What could be nobler than that?

              Though he was not particularly worried about the state of his own skin, Skip nevertheless was not reckless in his attack. Being shot in the first volley would not help the family down there. Utilizing his army training and his experience as a cop, he waited, watching the developments below in search of the best possible time to make his move. It came a few moments later.

              "Hold this, Ricky," the leader said, handing his M-16 to the biker next to him.

              Ricky took it from him and slung it over the opposite shoulder from his own.

              "And keep those two in their places," he added next, unholstering a semi-automatic pistol and walking towards the terrified teenage girl. Beside him, Ricky advanced a few paces and kept his rifle trained on the mother and the son.

              The leader stopped right in front of the girl, towering over her.

              "You're gonna do exactly what I say, ain't ya, sweet piece?" he asked, pointing the pistol at her head.

              Before she could answer the mother spoke up. "Just do it, Christine," she told her daughter. "Just do it and it'll be over soon. Try to stay alive, honey. Just try to stay alive."

              The leader glanced over at the mother and grinned, nodding his head a little. "That's right, Christine," he said, unbuttoning his pants and letting them drop. His small cock was already hard. "You just do what I say and we'll get along real good. You might live long enough to starve to death. Now suck my cock, bitch. And make it a good one."

              As a trembling Christine leaned forward to do what she had been told, and as her weeping mother buried her face in her hands, unable to watch the degradation of her daughter, Skip saw his opportunity. Everyone was distracted by the goings on with Christine. Though none of them had dropped their weapons, except the leader of course, it couldn't possibly get any better than this.

              He brought the rifle to his shoulder and peered through the telescopic sight. He aimed at the head of Ricky, the biker closest to the mother and son. He was the most dangerous at the moment since he was packing two automatic weapons. Skip's scope was designed to sight in on deer more than three hundred yards away. From a mere sixty yards, Ricky's head, in partial profile and mostly facing forward, filled the entire field of view. He centered the crosshairs just above his right ear. Though the wind was blowing at nearly forty miles an hour it was not a particular concern at this range. It wouldn't throw the bullet off by more than a quarter inch or so. He took a deep breath, whispered a silent prayer for the lives of the family he was trying to save, and then smoothly squeezed the trigger.

              The rifle bucked against his shoulder and the sound of the shot rolled across the landscape like thunder. In the scope, Skip saw Ricky's head explode into a spray of blood, brain, and skull fragments. Before his body even hit the muddy ground Skip was working the bolt on the rifle. The ejected shell casing shot out to his right and he slammed another round into the chamber. A quick glance down into the clearing showed exactly what he had hoped to see.

              Ricky was down and the other three bikers were still trying to process exactly what had just happened. They were all standing still, looking up towards him, trying to identify the direction from which the shot had come. The two behind Ricky, those that still had rifles in their hands, were not even aiming at the spot.

              He quickly sighted on the farther of the two men, centering the crosshairs on the middle of his chest. As soon as they were steady, perhaps four seconds after the first shot was fired, he pulled the trigger again. The gun bucked and the second biker suddenly had a hole in his muddy shirt. He looked almost comically surprised at this for a moment and then he fell to the ground.

              The second shot got the bikers moving. The leader and the one remaining man with the rifle, finally realizing they were in mortal danger, both dove to the ground and began firing up at him. The leader only had his pistol and his shots were nothing to be concerned about from sixty yards, but the other biker was firing short, controlled bursts from the M-16. Bullets began to slam into the mud and the trees around him, sending little sprays of water, bark, and dirt flying through the air. Skip knew instantly, by the way the man was firing his weapon, that he had military experience. A novice would not have shot a rifle that way.

              He slid down the hill about ten feet and crawled quickly to the left, hoping to catch them on the right flank before it occurred to them to turn their attention back to the family they were tormenting. Above him bullets continued to whiz by in groups of three and four, smacking the trees or flying off into space. He found another tree that overlooked the ground below and inched on his belly up to it, his body coursing with adrenaline, the rifle dragging behind him.

              When he reached his new position he poked his head out a little and trained the barrel of his rifle down over the scene, looking first and foremost for the biker with the M-16. He saw him immediately. He was in a crouch, moving right to left towards a stand of trees that would provide him with relative cover. Yes, Skip thought, this man, despite the fact that he had not reacted to the first shot, knew what he was doing.

              Intending to snap off a shot at him before he reached the tree line, Skip took a quick glance at the rest of the players before he did so, just to make sure that they were all where he thought they were. The two women that had come with the bikers were nowhere to be seen, apparently smart enough to run off into the woods once the shooting started. The leader of the group was crouched behind a rock, having taken the time to pull his pants back up into the combat position. He was reloading his pistol with a fresh magazine he had pulled from his pocket. The young boy was cowering where he had last been, as was the young girl. But the mother, that was another story.

              "Oh shit," Skip muttered, seeing what she was doing, knowing he was helpless to prevent it.

              She had decided to take a little initiative in the gun battle by creeping forward and pulling one of the M-16s from Ricky's body. Crouching next to the former biker and obviously having never fired a rifle in her life, she socked the weapon into her shoulder and took aim at the leader just as he made a sprint towards the tree line where the other biker had gone.

              She pulled the trigger and unleashed the entire clip at him. It took about four seconds to fire all thirty rounds. The barrel of the gun jerked upward in her arms and at least twenty of the rounds flew harmlessly into the air above. But the first five or six rounds cut the leader's legs out from beneath him as he ran. He dropped sprawling to the ground, his pistol flying out before him, his body landing facedown in the mud and sliding about ten feet.

              This immediately drew the fire of the biker with the M-16. He stopped in his tracks and trained his weapon on the woman, firing a three-round burst directly into her chest. The rifle dropped from her hands and she clutched her chest, falling forward over the body of Ricky.

              "Momma!" screamed her kids simultaneously, their voices filled with fresh horror.

              The biker ignored them. So did Skip. He only had a second or two before his target started running for the tree line again. He sighted in on him until his torso was the only thing in the crosshairs. With a smooth tug of the trigger, the bullet was fired through his body, a good portion of his internal organs spraying out behind him with the exiting projectile. The M-16 clattered to the mud and a moment later, he joined it, dropping face down.

              Skip did not take any time to celebrate his victory or marvel over the fact that he was still alive. He quickly shouldered the rifle and stood up. Moving as fast as possible in the thick mud, drawing his .40 caliber as he went, he ran down the hill. As he went past the man with the military experience, the one who had shot the mother, he put a single bullet into the top of his head, turning it into pulp and insuring that the man would pose no further threat. He did the same for the second biker he had shot, the one who had taken a round in the chest at the beginning of the battle. Ricky, he didn't bother with. Ricky's head had exploded from the .30 caliber round, unequivocally ending his days of posing a threat to anyone. Besides, the mother of the two children was still lying over the top of him.

              The leader of the group was still very much alive. His legs were both virtually useless, the knees shot out by the rounds from the M-16, but he crawled relentlessly forward, dragging himself through the mud towards his .45 pistol that was lying about five feet in front of him. Skip did not put a bullet in his head. Instead he ran up behind him and put his hunting boot between his shoulder blades, pushing his head down into the mud.

              "Don't move, motherfucker," he said, "or I'll stick this gun up your ass and pull the trigger."

              The leader stopped instantly, his hands still outstretched.

              "I oughtta do that anyway, you piece of shit," Skip told him, pushing a little with his foot. "You like to rape little girls, do you? How'd you like a nice piece of lead up your ass?"

              The biker said nothing. He only whimpered pathetically.

              "Roll over," Skip said, stepping back a few feet. "Keep your hands in sight at all times."

              He did as he was told, his face miserable with fear. Skip was glad to see it.

              "If you so much as twitch, I'm gonna gut shoot you and let you lay here until you die, do you understand?"

              "Yeah," the man breathed, looking up at him with terror. His face recognized something in Skip's, something he had undoubtedly seen many times before. "You a cop?"

              "I'm worse than a cop," Skip told him. "I'm a cop with no fuckin' internal affairs division or Supreme Court to tell me what not to do. Do you dig it?"

              The biker nodded, not saying anything.

              "Good," Skip said. He stepped back a few feet, keeping his pistol leveled on the biker and diverting half of his attention to the tree line where the two women had disappeared. There was really no telling whether they had been armed with concealed handguns or not and there was really no telling just where they had gone. He looked over at the two kids he had rescued. They had pulled their mother off of Ricky and were cradling her in their arms, sobbing over her. Even from twenty feet away, Skip could see that she was still alive but fading fast.

              He walked over and picked up the pistol the biker had been trying for. It was a Colt .45, one of the newer models of a timeless firearm. Its surface was caked with mud. We wiped a little of it away, unplugging the barrel. On the grip were the initials: EDCSD followed by a serial number. Skip, as a California law enforcement officer, knew that meant the weapon had once belonged to the El Dorado County Sheriff's Department. Strange.

              He stuck it in his belt and walked over to the family after a quick warning to the biker of what horrible fate awaited him if he moved. The two kids were still cradling their mother, telling her that she was going to be all right even though it was plainly obvious, even to them, that she wasn't. Blood was running freely from her mouth and her skin was pale, almost gray. Her breath was ragged in her mouth. But still she was awake and alert, her eyes locking onto him as he approached.