Under a Tell-Tale Sky: Disruption - Book 1 (26 page)

Bill nodded and began to study the left side of the road. He saw Jamestown Road about half a mile later and made the left. They hadn’t gone a hundred yards when the center of the windshield shattered with a heart-stopping crack. He slammed on the brakes, throwing them forward against their seat belts, staring at the hole in the middle of the shattered glass.

“Crap!” Bill said as he jammed the gear shift into reverse and stomped the gas, looking over his shoulder as they raced backwards and another round struck the front of the car.

He slammed on the brakes again when he hit the highway, barely managing to avoid crashing into the opposite ditch as the tires squealed and the car shuddered to a halt. He slammed the transmission into drive and raced east on 55, not stopping until they were a mile out of town with nothing on either side but trees. He sat there, afraid to let go of the wheel because he knew his hands would be shaking.

“Are you all right, Tex?” he asked.

“I … I think so, but what the hell was that? No ‘turn around’ or ‘halt’ or anything.”

“I guess the cop was right,” Bill said. “That’s a town full of pissed-off people. One thing for sure, we’re not going through any part of Front Royal. Is there any other way to get over to the river?”

She shook her head and reached for the map. “I don’t think so, but I’ll have another look.”

“Okay. I’ll see if that second shot hit anything vital.”

Bill got out and was relieved to find the second round buried in the composite bumper. Had he been just a bit slower, the bullet would have likely gone through the radiator and then done more damage in the engine compartment. As it was, they got off light with a hole in the windshield and a bullet in the bumper. A few inches either way and one of them would be dead or the vehicle disabled. He was beginning to appreciate Levi’s caution. It was amazing how being shot at clarified the mind.

He got back in the car. Tex was frowning.

“We’re screwed,” she said. “Like the cop said, in a couple of miles this road veers north and converges with I-66, running right beside the interstate for almost six miles, in places no more than a hundred yards away. Whatever bad guys came out of DC likely used the interstate, and a lot of them might still be there. If we run that gauntlet successfully, then we head back north on US 17 to Paris, where we can take US 50 a few miles west and get back on our ‘parallel the Shenandoah’ plan. The problem is, US 17 is also a major road, so I’m thinking it may have attracted its share of desperate people leaking off from the interstate. That’s the bad news.”

“There’s good news?”

“The whole distance back up to Paris is like eighteen miles on good straight roads. If you wind this baby up to seventy or eighty and bob and weave around any obstacles, and I get ready to hang out the window and pop some warning shots off at anybody who looks like they might even be thinking about stopping us, we could be back on track in half an hour.”

Even under the circumstances, Bill couldn’t suppress a smile. “Wow, you’re getting into the postapocalyptic stuff. That’s like Mad Max in a Toyota Highlander.”

Tex bristled a moment, then chuckled. “Eat your heart out, Tina Turner.”

“How about access points to the AT? Given what’s happened in the last hour, I’m a bit less skeptical about Levi’s paranoia.”

“The next one’s actually on this road, about four miles east and smack in the middle of the area where this road parallels I-66. The AT emerges from the woods and crosses under the interstate, running due north on Turner’s Lane, then branches off back into the woods about a quarter mile north. Then it runs through two state parks. The next access is where it crosses US 50, west of Paris and after we run the gauntlet.”

“How about behind us?”

“All the way back by Front Royal and back up Skyline Drive about five miles, which would mean we’d have to hike at least a half day to get back to the I-66 crossing just ahead of us, and still have to cross under the interstate in the open and on foot,” Tex said.

“Well, that’s not happening,” Bill said. “I guess it’s Mad Max. You ready, Tina?”

“Ready as I’ll ever be, I guess.”

Bill nodded and pulled back on the road, accelerating eastbound. The road was empty and he was doing eighty a few minutes later when Tex pointed out the AT crossing at Turner Lane. Almost immediately thereafter they began to encounter stalled cars, a few in the middle of the road, mixed with scattered pedestrians, forcing him to slow. However, he was able to maintain a steady fifty miles an hour as he slalomed around the obstacles, hoping no pedestrian wandered out from between the stationary cars. Not that they seemed so inclined. In fact, their heads rose sharply at the sound of the approaching engine, and the refugees hurried away from the roadway.

“Not exactly Mad Max,” Tex said as they wound through the obstacle course, “but I guess it’ll work.”

Just as she finished speaking, the woods on the right opened up on a vast expanse of pasture jammed with refugees and a mass of crudely constructed shelters.

“What the hell—”

Tex glanced down at the map. “Water,” she said. “Looks like a pretty substantial creek parallels the road. I guess all these poor bastards gravitated here for the water.”

A sickening smell wafted through the open windows, redolent of too many humans living together without benefit of basic services or hygiene. They shuddered as hundreds of refugees turned toward the sound of the car, their body language telegraphing anxiety, even at a distance.

“I’m not liking this at all,” Bill said as he swerved around another car. “What’s ahead?”

Tex glanced down at the map. “There’s an interchange just ahead at a wide spot in the road called Markham. There’s not much there but a vineyard. Then we’ve got three or four miles of this before we head north on US 17. No guarantee what we’re gonna find there either.”

Bill nodded and kept driving, pushing the speed up to sixty as he wound down the highway.

They saw a sign announcing their approach to State Route 688, then passed a large attractive building on the right, with a sign identifying it as the vineyard sales office. There were multiple vehicles in the parking lot. They whizzed by and then heard engines cough to life behind them.

“Motorcycles?” Tex asked.

Bill glanced in his mirror as two motorcycles rocketed out of the parking lot, engines snarling.

“Motorcycles,” he confirmed, and accelerated.

Tex turned in her seat. “Maybe they just want to talk—”

They both cringed as the back window of the SUV shattered.

“Or maybe not,” she finished, unbuckling her seat belt and crawling between the seats into the back. “I guess this really is Mad Max shit.”

The back of the SUV was piled high with stores, and Tex crawled across on elbows and knees, pitching with the car as Bill swerved around stationary vehicles. She steadied herself with her right hand and balled her left fist to hammer at the shattered safety glass, managing to dislodge a large sheet, which hit the pavement behind the car in a dazzling display of flying glass shards flashing in the sunlight. Only then did she reach behind and draw the Glock from its holster and assess the situation.

Which sucked.

She was on a swaying, bouncing platform, shooting a handgun at equally (and unpredictably) mobile targets. The only upside was the targets were getting closer, but since they were armed, that was a somewhat dubious benefit. But their attackers had challenges as well. Steering a motorcycle one-handed while negotiating obstacles and shooting with the other hand wasn’t easy. When they shot, they had to slow a bit, negating the added agility of their vehicles and allowing Bill to draw ahead. After their initial (and lucky) fusillade with no return fire, they’d apparently decided to concentrate on closing the distance. That would change as soon as they started taking fire. She had to take them out quickly.

Tex watched a moment. They were mobile, but the obstacles they were negotiating were not. If she concentrated her fire on the front corner of a stalled car just as one of the motorcycles swerved around it, they’d move into her field of fire. She steadied herself as she felt Bill swerve around a car, and as it came into view behind her, she targeted the right front headlight. When the lead cyclist was almost abreast of the front of the car, she fired a half-dozen shots in rapid succession just as the man swerved back toward the middle of the road—directly into her field of fire.

She’d been hoping for center-mass hits, but she was a bit high. A single round penetrated her attacker’s face shield, driving him backwards off the bike directly in the path of the remaining cyclist. The front wheel of the second man’s bike struck the body of his fallen comrade and the driver fought to maintain control—and lost. He slammed into a stalled car straight on at over fifty miles an hour and rocketed through the air to land some distance away, unmoving.

Tex holstered the Glock and clawed her way back to the front, squeezing between the seats just as they flew past the highway interchange. She glanced forward to see the road was suddenly free of stalled cars, and felt the SUV accelerate as Bill split his attention between the road ahead and quick glances in the rearview mirror.

“Damn! Remind me never to piss you off.”

“Lucky shot,” Tex said.

“Uh-oh! Let’s hope your luck holds.”

Tex turned back to the road, to see a big tractor trailer rig moving across the road from a side street a quarter mile ahead of them. Two cars pulling across the road in front of the big rig left no doubt it was a roadblock.

“Looks like they have radios!” Tex said as she felt the SUV decelerate rapidly, and another round punctured the windshield and several more struck the front of the car.

“And assault rifles! Get down!” Bill yelled as he stomped the brakes even harder and twisted the wheel, causing the SUV to swap ends, skidding backwards toward their attackers as Bill once again stomped the gas and smoke billowed off the screaming tires before they finally grabbed and the car shot back the way they’d come.

“Where the hell did you learn that?”

“Empty parking lots when I was a teenager,” Bill said. “There’s not a hell of a lot to do in small towns in the middle of the Maine woods.”

Tex twisted in her seat and stared back at the roadblock.

“More cycles?” Bill asked.

“Negative. Looks like a jacked-up four-wheel-drive pickup with a bed full of shooters,” Tex said.

Just then, steam or smoke billowed from under the hood, and Bill glanced down at the dash.

“The engine temp’s going straight up! They must have hit the radiator,” he said.

“What are we gonna do?”

“What can we do but ride and hope? How far ahead is that AT access we passed?”

“Three miles at least. Can we make it?”

“Who the hell knows. I should be able to stay ahead of these assholes through the obstacle course as long as we can keep moving. I’ve had a little experience now and that jacked-up truck has a high center of gravity. He can’t bob and weave too quickly.”

A round shattered the passenger-side mirror, and they both flinched.

“Should I return fire?”

Bill shook his head. “Not much point now. We don’t really have a fighting chance to escape unless we make the AT. If they do end up catching us, it might be better if we haven’t killed quite as many of them.”

Tex watched as Bill hurtled down the road, all caution gone now as the SUV caromed along the congested path, missing some cars by inches and glancing off others. She twisted in her seat and stared back.

“You’re opening up a lead, a pretty good one.”

Bill nodded, then frowned as horrible sounds started coming from under the hood. He glanced down at the instrument panel again.

“We’re red-lined on the engine temp and the oil pressure isn’t looking too great either. Say a little prayer this’ll all hold together long enough to make Turner Lane. Maybe if we can build up a big enough lead, we can be out of sight when we make the turn. What’s the road look like there, you remember?”

Tex jerked out the map and pulled it open. “Mostly straight and open, but there is a slight curve. It’s not much, but we might be out of their sight a couple of minutes. The only problem is when they round that curve, the road runs straight for a long way. If they don’t see us, it’ll be obvious we turned off somewhere and Turner Lane is the only option.”

“Let’s just hope they aren’t as smart as you,” Bill said.

Tex twisted back to watch their pursuers, shutting out the ever-increasing din of the dying engine and willing their lead to increase. Finally she watched the truck fade out of sight as the angle between the vehicles changed. She snapped her head to the front. Turner Lane was in the near distance.

“There it is,” Bill said. “Can they see us?”

“No. We just lost visual contact.”

“I make it a quarter of a mile to the turn. Were they further back than that?”

“I don’t know. Maybe,” Tex said.

“Just keep looking. Hopefully we’ll be under the interstate before they spot us.”

Tex kept her eyes fixed behind them and felt Bill braking hard as he ran up to the intersection at almost full speed, the engine shrieking, accompanied now by a burning smell. She gripped the seat back as he cornered on two wheels, then whipped her head to the right to look out the passenger window back the way they’d come. They roared north on Turner Lane, and were almost past a farmhouse when she glimpsed the nose of the truck rounding the curve.

“Did they see us?” Bill demanded.

“I don’t know, but I saw them for a second, so we have to assume they did. Besides, if they get much closer, they’ll be able to track us by sound. We’re not exactly inconspicuous.”

Bill nodded as they sped under I-66, engine shrieking and smoking. “How far is the AT access?”

Tex was fumbling with the AT guidebook. “Should be just after Walker Ridge Road forks off to the right. I don’t know how well it’s marked. It might be just a blaze on a tree or something.”

“Guess we’ll find out. We’re going to go off road whether we find it or not. If they see the abandoned car, they’ll just run us down—”