The Road Sharks (26 page)

Eli and Shell were waiting at the head of the stairs, with Gordon sitting against a wall.

“You two are quite mad, if you think you’re going to make it out of here without my help,” Shell told them, quite calmly. “No one could sneak out past that garage without being seen.”

“I seem to remember doing that very thing on the way up, Darwin,” Eli said. “And as I remember, there was an actual guard on duty.”

“That’s debatable.” Shell looked with disdain at Gordon.

Ghost Wind looked back toward the room and saw Cook and Carly coming down the hallway. The girl was dressed in a man’s suit pants that only stayed up because of the belt of rope from the bed decoration. She also wore a baggy black dress shirt with fancy rose embroidering, the shirt hanging on her like a tent. Cook carried her bloody bat.

“That’s my best shirt!” Shell yelled.
 

“Go ahead, make noise, Darwin,” Eli told him, “Die quick.”

“Sorry, sorry,” Shell said cringing slightly. “I’m just not used to my new station in life. Axyl was going to leave me here to fend for myself and I find I must throw myself upon the mercy of strangers.”

Ghost Wind and Eli exchanged a flat skeptical look.

“Gordon.” The guard looked up at Ghost Wind’s call. “Up. Over here.”

“Okay, lady. What do you want me to do?”

“Open your mouth.” She took a perfumed handkerchief, one of several she had pilfered on the way out of Shell’s room, wadded it up and stuffed it in Gordon’s mouth. “Eli, you have that tape?”

Eli pulled the remains of a roll of military tape from his pocket, peeled off a short section and carefully laid it over Gordon’s lips. The Road Shark’s pained expression said volumes about how that felt.

“Be glad you’re still alive, dipstick,” Eli told him. “Now, walk with Ghost Wind to the bottom of those stairs. You make a break for it, or do anything to make us nervous, and you know what happens, right?”

Gordon nodded, and started down the stair. He stopped when he felt a sting on his throat and looked down. Ghost Wind’s knife was pressed against it.

“Just so we understand each other, Road Shark,” she said. Gordon started down VERY carefully.

“You’re next, Darwin,” Eli said.

“How am I supposed to get this damned…” Shell shut up as Eli lifted him chair and all, and began to follow Ghost Wind down the stairs. The two women followed.

At the bottom of the stairs, the warrior scout already had Gordon tied to the railing and was peeking out the doorway. Her eyes were calculating and as she turned back to Eli she gestured towards Shell’s mouth.

“I assure you, that the Road Sharks have thrown me over for Axyl, I have no reason to…” His sentence was cut short as Eli slapped more tape over his mouth.

“Darwin, you do ANYTHING to give us away, and I’ll turn Ghost Wind over there loose on you with her big knife. You dig me?” Like Gordon, Shell nodded.
 

“Good. Most people like to think they’re brave, but facing grisly death usually disabuses them of that notion.” Eli looked at Ghost Wind, who gestured for him to roll Shell out the door. He glanced out, saw there was no one in the section they were in.
 

Moving across the floor, they came to a side door leading back to the way they had come in. When they reached the blocked fire door, Eli quickly moved much of the furniture out of the way and rolled the former Shark boss into the darkening twilight.

“I think we’re done here,” he said as Ghost Wind joined him.

“Not quite,” she told him as she reached into his pocket. She pulled out the detonator, and led the group through the broken remains of the parking lot. They reached the cover of an adjoining building, one that has been half destroyed by fire at some time and she turned back to look at the Road Shark’s headquarters.

“Mind if I do the honors, Eli?”

“Please, be my guest.”

****

Axyl was thinking to himself that thirty men was still a fairly formidable force at the moment when Hell came to Sharktown.

The first indication that anything was wrong was a tremendous BOOM from the other end of the building, and he and most of his men were knocked off their feet. The follow-up to that was the sound of windows breaking and bricks and debris falling off the building.

“What the FUCK!” he screamed, as everyone began to get to their feet, looking apprehensively at the ceiling of the garage. The building rocked as if in the aftershock of an earthquake and everyone looked upward as a slow moving fissure made its was steadily across the ceiling.

“Ballsy! Take Skunk and Beau and find out what the hell just happened. It came from the other end of the building. Move! Everyone else, finish gettin’ your shit together, that ceiling don’t look too stable,” Axyl commanded. “Cooler, get out and tell the guards to get in here and get ready to roll. We leave in a half hour!”

Axyl put the last few items worth taking into his saddle bag and was stopped in his haste for a moment by thoughts of Shell. The old man was probably laying up there in his own filth, and Axyl began to have second thoughts about leaving him there. The old man had taken him in when he was just a punk and Axyl had once thought him the smartest dude alive.

“Not so fuckin’ smart lately though,” he said to himself. “Couldn’t listen to me when I gave him some good life-saving advice. And he shouldn’t have been such an a-hole when he was the one that caused most of our problems.”

He looked at the two vans, now filled with food, parts and supplies, realizing to take Shell now would mean dumping a load of stuff. His second thoughts ended at that moment.

“Axe!”
 

Axyl looked up to see Ballsy bringing Gordon down from the far end of the garage, the guard looked worse for wear. Then he saw the man’s hands were still tied behind him and felt a chill down his spine.

“Gord, why the fuck are you tied up?”

“It was that Ghost Wind, Axe!” Gordon whined, “Her and that damn Eli said to tell you they’re still in the building and to expect more booms.”

Axyl stood for a moment, staring at the wall while his men waited with varying degrees of patience for him to give them orders. Men like these needed orders to do anything besides their baseline debauchery, and their leader’s lack of leadership was making them very nervous.

“Hey,” Ballsy said, “Anyone smell smoke?”

“Shit!” someone yelled, “There’s smoke comin’ from the stairwell! We’re on fire!”

Axyl’s head snapped up. “Everyone on their bikes! Anyone not ready in five gets left behind.”
 

“Looks like Shell is staying here,”
Axy thought.
“Tough break, old man.”

Ghost Wind watched as the north end of the building developed a decided sag and began settling. Pieces of building, glass and brick and plaster fell out of empty window sills and exterior facades crumbled. She noticed one more thing. There seemed to be smoke coming from where the bomb had gone off.

“The C4 somehow set all that cordwood afire’” Eli said softly. “Ain’t NO one gonna be using that headquarters again.” Ghost Wind didn’t answer. He saw she had retrieved her carbine and was gripping it tightly, her expression intense.

“If you take a shot at Axyl when they run, they might veer off on a side road and miss Kita’s ambush all together.”

She turned to him, deep anger on her face, but she didn’t reply.

“Take the shot.” Shell told her, with his mouth tape none to gently pulled off he was in an even more foul mood. “Little shit was going to leave me there to starve in an empty building. Give the bastard what he deserves!”

She lowered the rifle. “Were I you, I would be cautious about speaking of what people deserve. I intend to see you get what YOU deserve, and it won’t be kind or pretty.”

“Isn’t it enough that you’ve made me a cripple for life? I’m stuck in this wheelchair for the rest of my miserable days.”

She walked over to where he sat and placed her face inches from his. He looked into her rage blazing eyes for only a moment before having to look away. Suddenly, Shell found he couldn’t stop shivering.

“I wouldn’t invest too much time,” she said very softly, “into planning the rest of your days.”
 

****

“C’mon, dammit!” Axyl screeched, “Get on your fucking bikes! We are leaving now!”
 
The Axe Man was a true expert when it came to looking out for his own ass, and the last minute loading of crap on to bikes had exhausted his patience. He gave the signal to the drivers of the vans, and aimed his fusion cycle for the front garage door. “Guess we won’t need to close that this time.”

Gordon jumped on his bike just as the group roared up the ramp onto the road leading to the highway. He was last leaving the burning building and Axyl was in the lead, the two vans right behind him. The remaining Road Sharks spread out in front of the abused guard, all likely wondering what their future was going to be and how things had gone so wrong so fast.
 

Gordon, who was Tail-End Charlie, was feeling very bitter indeed. He’d had only a very short time to gather belongings, and compared to the bulging saddlebags and packs that other ‘brothers’ carried he had only a few items and half full saddlebags. He was not a happy camper.

“Fucking Axyl. If he hadn’t fucked things up so bad, we wouldn’t be in this predicament,” he growled to himself. “If Shell hadn’t been knocked down so far, we’d still be on top. Now we gotta run like a buncha pussies from some stupid-ass farmers and we got young Shit for Brains in charge. We’re so screwed.”

They had just reached the intersection with the main highway when he learned how screwed they actually were.

Gordon actually heard the whine and the thwack as his fellow rider, Cooler, seemed to leap sideways from his bike and rolled on the ground. Gordon veered to miss him and looked down as he passed. Cooler’s bike was still rolling but Cooler himself actually had flopped to a halt, a large bloody hole in his chest.

“Ambush!” was the last thing he said, screaming it out at the top of his lungs. The next moment, he felt a burning impact in his ribs that caused him to hunch over in pain, losing control of his bike. He hit the pavement hard, the heavy machine on his leg and realized he couldn’t get a breath in. He looked down his body and saw a growing pool of blood, and it was spreading fast.

“Oh… no… please…” he said, as the darkness claimed him.

****

Axyl realized something was wrong the second he heard the yell of ‘ambush!’ His hands gunned the throttle before he even thought of looking back.

The van that had been following him veered suddenly to the left, impacting an old Volvo rusting on the street. The larger vehicle seemed still intact, except for a few crumples on the left fender…

And a windshield full of new bullet holes.

“Gun it! Go! Go! Go!” he screamed. This was the third ambush he’d been in today and each had only made his survival reflexes faster. It seemed to have improved the timing of many of his men as well. The remaining van almost popped a wheelie as it jumped forward, and it was all Axyl could do to get out of the way. The remaining Sharks didn’t hesitate to open up their throttles as well.

Speed wasn’t going to save all of them though. He glanced back and saw fusion cycles going down left and right. The ambushers were doing a hella better job leading their targets now that they were using firearms.
 

“Move it! Unless you want to stay here forever!” he yelled and turned back to the front. He narrowly missed a small tree and rolled up on the right sidewalk. As he jumped the cycle back onto the street, he heard a large thump and felt a shock wave pass him and looking back and saw that the entire north end of the garage was on fire. Something must have been flammable, explosive or both.

That home was a goner.

“Goddamn it! I WILL be back, and you fuckers will PAY!” he screamed. He looked back and what he saw dismayed him. They had cleared the ambush and were heading south on old 97, the ones that were left anyway.
 

A quick head count of his remaining men told him he now had one-quarter the manpower he’d started the day with. Anyone who’d gone down in that last barrage of bullets, even if only wounded would probably never be seen again. The Sharks had been yanking the people of this area’s chain for a long, long time. They tore down the now-empty highway, leaving their dead and wounded to their fate.

Axyl noted, even in the dim light of the headlights, some of his men were directing semi-covert looks at him, and the looks were not kind. The men knew since he’d taken over everything had gone to piss and he was sure some of them were going to try to make trouble over it.

“Better sharpen my axes when we stop,” he said. “May have to do some culling.”

The pitiful remnants of the once mighty Road Sharks zoomed south through the night and their pitiful leader thought dark thoughts all the way.

They watched the building burn with deep satisfaction.

Ghost Wind made sure to roll Shell’s wheelchair to a clear vantage point so the Road Shark’s former leader could see not only the end of his former base of operations, but also the bodies lying in the street in front of the burning building.

“It’s all gone.” His voice was bitter with regret. “Everything I built, everything I worked for. Goddamn it! So fucking unfair!”
 

She looked at the pathetic creature beside her, complaining of the unfairness of his life and anger came up from her chest like magma.

“Unfair? UNFAIR!?” she snarled at him. “If you want to know what unfair is, ask that poor young girl you had chained to your wall so you could rape her whenever the mood took you. Ask the people whose lives you ruined when you sent them off to be slaves! Ask everyone who had to worry every moment of their lives when your bunch was going to come along and destroy everything THEY worked for!”

She leaned close and Shell tried to move back in his chair, ignoring the shooting pain in his vertebrae. Her hand went to the big knife at her belt and for a moment, he thought she was going to decapitate him. But he saw Ghost Wind master herself, slide the half-exposed blade back into its sheath, take a deep breath and look with cold fury into his eyes.