White Out: A Post Apocalyptic Thriller (23 page)

This is the time, Annie. This is the stopp
ing point. This is where you pull off the road and face those bastards, one on one.

She couldn't help but stare at the sign, wishing for a bowl of
spicy coconut soup, fantasizing that things would be okay with Christian again, that he would reach across the table, grab her hand, and squeeze it so tight that it hurt. She wanted him back. The way things used to be, before everything had gone to hell.

That won't happen if you don't face
what’s coming.

"
Shut your mouth," she said, unsure of who she was actually talking to. She was going crazy and it was easy enough to blame the storm.

Face the music, Annie. Face it!

The motor halted, releasing oily fumes into the air as the skids on the bottom of the snowmobile slushed through a frosty bank of snow.

"No. No."

You don't have much time. Face them or you'll never face anybody ever again.

Annie tried to turn the engine back on, but it refused.

That isn't going to work. You're out of gas, dumbbell.

S
he cursed beneath her breath, lifting her leg over the seat. She leaned in closer to the gas gauge to find that it was true. Her inner voice wasn’t just blowing smoke up her ass. It had some salient points.

Annie
was out of gas.

And in the distance, the hum of two engines slowly came into earshot.

The Shiny Bald One and The Yeti were coming to eat her.

Annie decided that she wouldn’t let them.

Chapter
Four

It looked pretty convincing
-- not the most craftily formulated deception she'd ever created (
likethosetimesyoufuckedTonyyouslut
), but it might work.

She didn't have much time
to spare, moving frantically between sobs of fear that they would be coming around the bend at any moment. Something frenetic was rising in her chest… something she couldn’t get a grip on.

Her
snowcrow
(as she decided it would forever be called, whether it saved her ass or not) was composed of her jacket, zipped and stuffed with a burly block of snow. It was hunched over the handles of the snowmobile. From a distance, it could have easily been a woman to any onlooker. It would be more obvious to the approaching marauders that she wasn't reacting to the sound of their approach. They didn't come off as the brightest pair of dunces, but surely, they wouldn't fall for an immobile
snowcrow
. By the time they realized that it wasn't her, she'd have to take her first shot at them. She only had four bullets left, so they'd have to be true and straight.

Annie couldn't help but recall the old "trickster" tales that the slaves used--their way of
undermining their white superiors, in telling tales that would sink deep into the conscience, fueling eventual rebellion. Or at the very least, it might break their power in a way that felt good enough to allow the slave a warm night's sleep. Here she was, trying to play the role of trickster, no different than the Tar Baby and the Br'er Rabbit, hoping to catch a couple of nasty monsters.

She couldn't see The Shiny Bald One's face, but she could feel electricity in the air, preceding him on his path to destroy her.
He was on his way.

With a huff of cold air, s
he planted her knees in the snow, clutching herself tight to repel the cold. The nearly useless sun was just beginning its descent. The world was covered in shadows from the trees on either side of what was once a major thoroughfare.

Annie steadied herself, staring at the darkening horizon.

Something inside of her told her to act just like the ice, to be like the snow, to emulate the whole damn world. It was the only way she’d survive—through pure coldness.

The copse of trees sheltered her, providing
a clear line of sight to her snowmobile. The moment they stopped, she'd unload on them. Any hesitation and she'd be dead, same for if she jumped the gun. Timing, more so than ever before, was the essence of her survival.

A buzz filled her ears as the snowmobiles came closer, side by side, scooting along the surface of the snow, fighting to avoid
what she now called “The Sink.” Annie had less of a problem with the sinking, mostly due to her light-as-a-feather frame and she considered that it may have saved her on this occasion, giving her enough of a leg up in the race so that she could prepare herself.

"Come on, you bastards," she said, eyeing the horizon as the two tiny dots became bigger, now about the size of a nickel, and then about the size of a quarter, and then they stopped. They turned their engines off, almost in unison.

This was it.

Any moment they would figure out that huddled mass on the seat was a
snowcrow
; a dummy to attract a couple of even bigger dummies. Annie smiled as she honed the revolver on the pair. She squinted one eye tightly, aligning the notches at the opposing ends of the barrel, breathing in slowly in an attempt to keep her hands steady.

Her hands, gripped tight to the weapon, wouldn't stay still
, like she had drank several cups of coffee.
No, no, no
, that sickly voice, refusing to go the hell away, said inside of her head.
You're scared shitless because this might be the last moment of your life if you miss them.

The Shiny Bald One and The Yeti trudged away from their transports, calling out, "Get off that thing before we mow y
a’ down." They both held weapons in their hands, ready to react if she took off again, but it was too far away for Annie to be sure. She wasn't exactly an aficionado on modern weaponry, but Shiny had a shotgun and she was pretty certain that Yeti was carrying something smaller, like a police officer's service weapon. One thing she could see for certain was that Yeti didn't look as comfortable with the weapon as his partner in crime.

Get Shiny. Get Shiny because the other one isn't
nearly as crazed. He's just going along for the ride. Yes, he raped you just the same, but that is pack-animal behavior. He might be the biggest in size, but he's the smallest in power. Kill the leader. They were always trying to assassinate Hitler. Know why? Not because of scope, but because of influence. Because of the meaning in the effort. Because a bit of crazy makes everybody else around them crazy.

Narrowing
her focus on The Shiny Bald One (who looked less shiny than ever, more bleak and gray in the stormy clouds and flutters of snow), Annie pulled the trigger.

It was a
direct hit, but not on the one she was aiming for. In the last nanosecond before the bullet flew, Annie eased to the right with her weaker, numb elbow. The trajectory found The Yeti's chest, right between the pectoral muscles.

The harsh sound of the gun firing hurt Annie's ears, but she was still able to decipher the popping sound of Yeti's chest. Even from afar, she could see the tiny spray that soaked the snow, as if her eyes had zoomed in
(as an eagle would) on the destruction she wrought, wanting to bask in it for a blink of the eye. When the big lug fell to his knees, she couldn't help but smile. It was a
beautiful shot
, albeit unintended. Annie would have much rather taken down Shiny, but this takedown was still progress.

There was only one
more remaining between her and her freedom.

And
with that thought, she trained the weapon on Shiny. She pulled the trigger. She missed by a mile. Then came another popping sound--just like Yeti's chest--reverberating in her ear. It seemed to be a bullet passing by, followed by a second pop that she was sure had burst her eardrum.

The Shiny Bald One was shooting
back at her. He'd quickly calculated the source of the attack after his partner was hit, abandoning the
snowcrow
that Annie had positioned as a trap. His reaction was quicker than she would have expected, with all the snow and wind clouding his view.

The sound in her ear buzzed louder now, growing in intensity as she realized the fact that he had returned fire.

Annie dropped to the ground, losing her gun in the process, though for a moment, it sounded like another shot had rang out of it, with what may have very well been her last or next to last bullet (she’d lost count). The weapon itself sunk into a deep bank of snow, just out of her reach. As she rolled on to her side, the ringing sound in her ear would not leave her as she hoped it would. The cruel sound tormented her, like somebody banging a steel pot in her ear over and over again, with unrelenting intentions. She was nearly certain that she was deaf. Her thoughts drifted back to someplace that they didn't belong in this moment, back to an old war movie that her father used to watch, where a gaggle of American troops struggled along the beaches of Normandy. In a moment of first-person perspective, they recreated the sound of the buzzing and ringing shrieks that filled a soldier's ears after a mortar shell landed only a few feet away. The sound, Annie now realized, was spot on.

A third bullet hit the tree. He was toying with her. He could have taken
what hunter’s called “the kill shot” already, with her wallowing about the icy trees only a few dozen yards away, begging for her hearing to return so that she could fully realize the sound of her demise.

Get up. Get up
. He won't toy with you for long!

*  *  *

The bitch was getting lucky, plain and simple. There was no way she could have taken any of his men out. No way on earth, no matter what or who she had on her side. She was either really lucky, or she had a secret stashed up her sleeve. A secret agent in hiding, perhaps? A retired green beret with breasts? No, none of the above. This wasn't a fucking television show. This here was real life, which meant she was just plain lucky. Lottery lucky. Stock market lucky. Luckier than a goddamned leprechaun.

Luck
scared
Marcus, more so than anything else. Luck, at its root, was unpredictable. If he ever believed in God, he might have thought that
luck was God
and
God was luck
, but he wasn't so silly as to subscribe to bullshit like that.

Luck was luck
… sometimes it showed you a head, others, it showed you tails.

And he thought that Sanford Pepper was going to be a pain in his ass. How wrong he'd been. The old man shriveled up and died like a slug with salt poured on its back. But this one-- this one was a cunt of a different color.
A surprise, and not the good kind like an unexpected blowjob. This was more like a “surprise, you’ve got gonorrhea” sort of surprise.

"Come on back to the cabin, sweetie pie. It's just you and me now," he said, staring
down at her, closing in step by grueling step. The snow was mostly packed hard beneath his feet, but the upper crust was loose and heavy, causing resistance in every footfall. He'd noticed a considerable change in the texture of the snow during the last stint of his rabbit chase, but on foot, it was an entirely different kind of hurdle.

She didn't say anything
, not a damn word, and Marcus wondered for a moment if he'd actually hit her with one of the bullets. He hadn't tried to snipe her directly, afraid that he might spoil her pretty face or pierce one of her perfect breasts. That would ruin the whole damn day. If he was going to be a solo act from here on out, (
a man without a gang is no man at all
, some drunk had once told him) then he'd be damned if he didn't at least score an old lady out of the debacle. He could break her if he didn't decide to eradicate her first. That remained to be seen. Any woman, as Marcus had found time and time again, was fragile when you applied enough pressure. Marcus’ mother had been no different, broken by pop at a tender young age, so much so that she never formulated a thought or personality of her own.

Marcus stood only a few feet away from her now.
It felt good to know she hadn’t gotten away. She clutched her purplish hands to her ears, squinting her eyes. She was in pain, or so it seemed at first. Had the impact of the bullets against the tree been enough to damage her ears? It seemed silly to think that. She'd already played the scarecrow once, so it was possible she might play possum just as well.

The tears in her eyes, though, told another story.

He’d fucked her hearing up good. It was an extreme sort of pain and he was glad he’d served it up for her. She deserved it for what she’d done to his men.

"Ears hurt? I wasn't
even that close to you. Geezus H. Christ, I guess that’s why they call you the weaker sex, right? Get the fuck up."

She said nothing, but she opened her eyes enough to look at him
, gazing at him intently. While her lower face was held in something of a tight rictus, her eyes were smiling. Marcus felt an alarm rising in his chest for a moment, because of those eyes. Bitch was
smiling with her eyes
.

"Fuck
are you smiling at?" he asked. He looked around him, expecting something to pop out of nowhere, like a jack-in-the-box or one of those whack-a-moles you hit in the head at the arcade. She was up to something. Marcus had seen that kind of smile on dozens of occasions, usually right before something went all unhinged. When somebody started smiling like that, it meant that they were privy to something that nobody else knew. It meant that the game was up.

Marcus inched backward, just a step or two, almost unconsciously. He looked down at his feet, disbelieving the strange fear that she created in him.
Was there a deadfall beneath his feet? Had she planted a trap? He couldn’t be sure how long she’d been here, plotting to take them out.
Why in the hell
was she smiling?

Fuck that
, he thought.
Kill her kill her kill her kill her. For them, for you, for all the sons of bitches that have ever been wronged by chicks like this, for all the guys who can’t get ahead in the world because of this women’s lib bullshit, fuck it fuck fuck fuck it and kill her.

Marcus growled, shifting all of his weight in her direction, diving at her and wrapping his hands around her throat. He didn't squeeze, but he stared right through her. "What the fuck are you smiling at? You hear me?
Tell me!"

Kill her kill her kill her.

Still, no answer.

He tightened his hands now, pulling back his lips so that she could see
his teeth. She smiled broader in response to this gesture, and a low giggle escaped her chest. Now she was laughing. For Chrissakes, she was laughing in his face. He spat on her cheek, just to see if it had any effect on that unnerving look.

"Stop
laughing!" he blurted.