End of Days (9 page)

His words were cut off by a hail of rocks that rained down on them from above, bouncing off walls, steps, and shins. A shot rang out with a deafening crack and the bullet ricocheted as it hit concrete. Ramsey had felt the bullet whiz by his ear! It had just missed him. He smelled the gunpowder and looked around to see the smoking gun of one of the officers who was right behind him. He had to fight the
urge to turn around and slug the guy. Instead, he realized that the shower of rocks had stopped. The shot had had the desired effect.

“Come on, and be careful that we don’t shoot each other!” he hissed.

They crept up to the next landing, Ramsey leading, all of them with their guns drawn as if they could hide behind them. There were rocks and hunks of brick littering the stairs and landings. Judging by the quantity of rocks that had been hurled, there were a whole lot of people waiting at the top.

Ramsey approached the apex of the final flight of stairs. Carefully he peeked over the last step, bobbing his head up and down until he had a complete picture. Where there should have been a door there were boards nailed in place with only a small opening—almost like a doggy door—at the bottom, and that was blocked by a piece of heavy cloth. There was no way to see, or know, what was on the other side of the passage.

“You, to the left,” he said to one of the officers. “You, to the right,” he told another.

Reluctantly, the two officers scaled the stairs to the landing and took up positions on opposite sides of the boarded-up doorway.

In the olden days this would have been easy, Ramsey thought. In the olden days, he would have had the use of tear gas, bullhorns, SWAT teams with tactical equipment, trained negotiators, radios, and even a helicopter. He doubted there was now any tear gas left anywhere. There had been so many
riots, so many out-of-control crowds over the past few years. Police had tried to subdue the outbursts … then they’d given up even trying to do that. Things had calmed down only when the crowds had begun to thin out. People had abandoned the cities in droves, and those who had remained … well, so many had died.

“What now, Sarge?” Gordon asked. “Should we put a few rounds through the wood?”

“Let’s try talk first,” he said. He edged slightly toward the opening. “Hello in there!” he yelled.

There was no response. No surprise.

“This is the police!” he called out. “We don’t want to hurt anybody, but I need to talk to somebody in charge!”

Still no answer.

“If there is no response, if you don’t want to start talking, then we’ll start shooting, and I’m not guaranteeing the safety of the people inside. Actually, I can guarantee there
will
be casualties.”

This was not so much a promise or a threat as an inevitability. People were going to get hurt—people on both sides. Ramsey had no desire to harm kids, but he wasn’t going to let anybody harm any of his officers. His blood was blue.

“We have weapons too!” called out a voice from behind the boards. It was a boy, trying to sound older. Was that the boy they were looking for?

“That only means that we’ll have to use ours,” Ramsey said, “and ours are a lot more deadly than stones and rocks.”

The reply came back instantly. “So are ours.”

Ramsey had spent a lifetime assessing people. There was no threat, no bluff in that voice, just a calm statement of fact. It made him think—what did they have? Probably not guns, although that couldn’t be ruled out entirely. More likely something that was explosive or flammable. Molotov cocktails wouldn’t have surprised him. They were easy to make, requiring no real technique or expertise, and the ingredients were common and easy to get. A number of street gangs had been using them.

The best way to fight fire was with more fire—let them know that the police had more firepower. It was shock-and-awe time.

“You should all move away from the doorway,” Ramsey said. “I don’t want to hurt anybody, so step away and take shelter!”

He turned back to his men. “On my signal I want two shots each.”

The officers all dropped down or kneeled, putting themselves in a firing position. Ramsey pulled up the double-barrelled shotgun and pumped it, finger on the trigger.

“Now,” he said.

There was a deafening hail of gunfire, punctuated by the blast of the shotgun, and the centre section of the boards splintered and disappeared. The smell of gunfire filled the stairwell.

Ramsey waited for the echo to die down. “That was our warning shot,” he said.

“That was probably half the ammunition you brought with you,” the voice called back.

“You’ll soon find out. If we have to come in there’s going to be a lot of people getting hurt.” He paused. He thought he’d take a chance. “Is that what you want, Billy?”

There was no immediate response—no “Who is Billy?” He’d probably guessed right.

“Come on, Billy. I hear you take care of everybody. Do you really want some of them—a
lot
of them—to be hurt because of you? I am talking to Billy Phillips, aren’t I?”

“Who am
I
talking to?”

“Ramsey, Sergeant Ramsey. I just want to talk. Why don’t you come out?”

“Why don’t you come in?”

“That won’t be happening, Billy. You need to come out so we can talk. I’ll give you thirty seconds to make up your mind.”

“And if I don’t come out?”

“Then we come in … all of us … and the lives that will be lost, the kids we’ll have to shoot, will be on your head.” He paused. “Aren’t you at least interested in how I know who you are and what I want to talk to you about?”

There was no response. What Ramsey didn’t know—couldn’t know—was that a heated but quiet discussion was taking place on the other side of the shattered divide.

Billy knew that he and his “troops” could inflict damage on any intruders. He also knew that there was nothing they could do to stop a squadron of armed officers. They could fight back, harm, even kill some of the officers, but in the end there’d be many, many more dead on his side. And ultimately, they’d either kill or capture him anyway. There was no
advantage to anybody in fighting. If only his top lieutenants felt the same way. They were trying desperately to convince him not to go out, not to give himself up. They lost.

“I’m coming out!” Billy yelled.

“Put your hands in the air,” Ramsey said. “Make sure we can see that you have no weapons!”

Billy turned to his closest friends. “Whatever happens, make sure things run the way they’re supposed to run … okay?”

The three boys, all around his age, nodded silently. They weren’t happy, and they didn’t agree, but they’d learned to listen to Billy even when they thought he was wrong.

“Before I come out you have to give me your word that you’re not going to harm anybody, that we’re just going to talk!” Billy shouted.

“You have my word.”

Billy took a deep breath and stood up. He wanted to appear confident and hoped the shaking in his legs wouldn’t betray him. And Ramsey was right, he
was
curious—what did they want to talk to him about?

Slowly, with hands raised high above his head, he moved to the opening. He stopped, peering through the hole in the boards that had been created by the gunfire. He looked out and saw half a dozen guns pointed at him. The officers looked scared as well.

“I have to lower my hands to climb out through the passage at the bottom,” Billy announced. “I have no weapons.”

“Slowly, hands first,” Ramsey said.

Billy dropped to his knees. He started to crawl, pushing through the blanket that covered the opening and then poking
his head free. He continued to crawl until he was free and then got to his feet.

“Lift up your shirt!” Ramsey said.

“My shirt?”

“I want to make sure you have no weapons. Lift up your shirt and turn around. I want you to walk backwards toward us.”

Cautiously he edged toward them, careful not to trip for fear that the sudden movement would be met with gunfire. Suddenly two pairs of hands grabbed him from behind, a pair of handcuffs was snapped onto his wrists, and he was pulled down.

“Just take it easy,” Ramsey said.

“I thought we were going to talk,” Billy snarled.

“I lied about that part,” Ramsey said. “But I did tell the truth about you being the only one we wanted.”

Billy was dragged backwards by two officers, one on each side, his legs banging against the stairs as they hauled him down. Behind him were another two officers and Ramsey, still holding the double-barrelled shotgun in front of him, aiming back up the stairs. They moved quickly, hitting landings and flights of stairs in rapid succession until they reached the ground floor, where they headed through the foyer and out the front door, toward the waiting police cars.

As they approached the vehicles there was an explosion just outside the building. A Molotov cocktail had been thrown from one of the upper windows and it burst into flames on the pavement.

“Quick, everybody run!” Ramsey yelled.

The officers, two still dragging Billy between them, raced across the open space as another, and another, and another gas-filled bottle smashed down and burst into flames! A direct hit would have incinerated anybody in its path.

The officers at the cars fired up and at the building, and as the other officers reached them they too joined in and started shooting. The Molotov shower stopped.

“Cease fire!” Ramsey yelled. “Everybody in your cars and let’s get out of here!”

He opened the back door to his car. “Put him in here!”

Billy was swung and then thrown into the back, so that his head hit the far side. The door was slammed behind him. Within seconds Ramsey and Gordon had jumped in and they raced away.

Awkwardly, Billy pushed himself up to a sitting position. He was sealed in the back, separated from the two officers by a metal screen.

Ramsey turned around. “You did the right thing, kid. No point in anybody getting hurt back there.”

Billy couldn’t help thinking that maybe nobody back there had got hurt, but what was in store for him now?

Ramsey sat sideways in his seat so he could see both the road and Billy in the back seat. He didn’t know what this kid had done, but it had to have been something important to have set all this in motion, and he didn’t want to underestimate him. Maybe he was a kid, but there had to be something about him that merited this special attention.

“You must be wondering what this is all about,” Ramsey said. He was fishing for answers himself.

Billy stayed silent, staring at him through the metal grating.

“I’d tell you if I knew,” Ramsey said. He turned to Gordon. “Take the next left.”

“The station isn’t that way.”

“We’re not going to the station. Just do what you’re told.”

Gordon wasn’t about to argue. He slowed down and took the curve.

“What if I told you that you have the wrong person?” Billy asked.

“I’d tell you that you can’t bluff your way out of this.”

Ramsey held out the photo and pushed it against the screen so Billy could see it. Billy tried not to react—it was him—but why, and how had this cop got a picture of him?

“That’s not me,” Billy said.

“Don’t you know it’s not nice to lie?” Ramsey asked.

“Look who’s talking about lying.”

“Sorry about that, kid.”

“Yeah, right. Real sorry,” Billy snarled.

“Sorry I had to lie to you. I’m
not
sorry that nobody got hurt on either side. But I’ve got a question, kid. What exactly did you do, and who did you do it to?” Ramsey asked.

Billy didn’t answer. He didn’t know, but even if he had he wouldn’t have said anything.

It was impossible to live on the streets as he had without doing lots of things that were all kinds of wrong, but there was nothing he could think of that would have brought all of this down on him.

What he did know was that he was scared, and that he had reason to be. What he needed to do was calm his nerves and think … think of a way out of this. Right now he was handcuffed, hands behind him, in the back seat of a moving police car, and two men with guns were in the front seat. All he could do was bide his time, look around, listen, try to figure out what was happening, and wait for the right moment to make his move.

“Do you know what’s going to happen to me?” Billy
asked. He was trying to sound innocent, young, and scared. He
was
the last two, but he couldn’t let the fear mar his judgment.

“Don’t know much, kid. Just know we’re meeting somebody and handing you over to them.”

“Do you know what they want with me?”

“I don’t even know
who
they are,” Ramsey replied. “I’m just following orders.”

“You can’t think that’s right,” Billy said.

“I didn’t say it was right, just told you what it is. Besides, it’s important that somebody follows orders.”

Ramsey tried not to think about it. He
was
just following orders—for which he was going to be handsomely rewarded.

They drove along in silence, leaving behind the worst parts of the city first, and then the city itself. As the apartments turned to houses, and then the houses got farther and farther apart until they were replaced by forest and fields, Ramsey began to feel more relaxed.

It was all having the opposite effect on Billy. He kept his eyes open, trying to memorize the route, figuring out how he was going to get back after he’d made his escape.

“How much farther?” Gordon asked.

“Not much. Take the next left … a small road. There should be a car waiting.”

Billy’s ears perked up. Soon would come his best chance. He didn’t know how it was going to happen, but it would happen between this vehicle and the next. He’d make a run for it. He just had to break free. He knew they had guns, but he was willing to bet that they hadn’t gone to all
this trouble just to shoot him in the back as he ran away. Although that still didn’t answer the question of why anybody had gone to so much trouble to begin with.

The car slowed down and turned onto another road, not much more than a narrow dirt path. There, just along the path, was a car … a big black car. Gordon brought the squad car to a stop directly in front of the other vehicle, the two cars nose to nose.