Ever Onward (38 page)

The two couples set out early on the
morning of August 17
^th
. They took Josh’s old camper, the
dog Princess, and headed up to the Adirondack Park. By noon they
were in the little town of Keene, where they stopped at a
self-serve. It was while siphoning gas from the station’s
underground tanks that the two bikers went by.

The bikes, both big Harley’s, roared
through the town, vanished round a bend, then came back slowly and
stopped at the station’s entrance. The larger of the two seemed to
be speaking into a microphone.

Flame, standing beside the van, looked
over quickly at Josh.

“Stay loose, Lover. I know how to
handle them.” She then moved several paces in front of the
van.

Josh, watching the two men approach,
hoped she was right. He unsnapped the strap over his Beretta just
to be sure. Eddy and Trina came out of the station. Seeing the two
bikers, Eddy put the bag he’d been carrying down and walked towards
Josh.

“Friends?”

Josh frowned. “We’ll soon see. Go to
the back and wait for my signal.”

“’
I don’t give a shit’,
right?”

“You got it.”

Eddy smiled, walked to the rear of the
van and opened the door. While pretending to repack the camping
gear, he slipped a sawed-off shotgun out of a hidden case. Trina
had put her bag in the van and came back out with Earl’s old rifle
cradled in her arm. Princess growled quietly beside her.

“Hey there, sister! What’s
happening?!” The first biker, balding, overweight and with long
graying hair and beard, directed his question to Flame. The second
one, younger and much thinner, sat silently drinking in Flame’s
beauty.

Josh inwardly cursed that he hadn’t
insisted she wear something a little less revealing. The cut-off
jeans and red tank-top she had squeezed into left very little to
the imagination.

“Not much, Curly,” Flame casually
remarked. “Things have been a bit slow of late.”

The fat man seemed to find her wit
amazing. “’A bit slow of late’!”, he cackled. “That’s rich! Hear
that, Pick? ‘A bit slow of late’!” His deep laughter made his belly
shake. Pick’s cold eyes stayed glued to the red
tank-top.

The fat man’s gaze shifted to take in
the others. They widened slightly when he saw Trina. Josh wondered
if it was her long legs or the long gun that did it. Probably
both.

“This here is Toothpick,” the balding
biker smiled, jerking a gloved thumb in the skinny man’s direction.
‘Pick’ for short. Me, I’m called Gut.” He slapped his ample
stomach. “Easy to see why. I like ‘Curly’ better, but you can call
me anything ‘cept late for dinner.”

Another burst of laughter shook him.
Pick continued to stare at Flame’s chest.

Still looking at Gut, she nodded
towards Pick. “You better tell your friend to close his mouth, the
drool’s going to rust up his carb.”

Gut frowned for a moment as her
sarcasm sank in, then his piggish eyes brightened and another belch
of laughter erupted. Slapping his meaty thigh, he weased. “’The
drool’s gunna rust his carb!’ Soften his hard-on more likely!
You’re okay, sister. Who’s your friends?” Gut was suddenly all
business.

Flame swayed over to Josh and leaned
against him. “My old man, Josh. That’s Fast Eddy back there. The
one holdin’ the cannon is Trina, his old lady. I’m called Flame.”
Her smile was dazzling.

Gut nodded. “I just bet you are.” He
glanced at Pick, who nodded. “We ride with a dude called Sloan,”
Gut continued. “Over a dozen of us now. More joining up all the
time. You interested?”

Flame turned to Josh, winked, then
turned back. “Maybe. Where’s your base?”

“Up the road a piece. Nice little town
called Lake Placid. Got boats and shit. Sloan even got the movie
house working. What say you come along and have a look? Pick and
me’ll be your escort.”

Flame moved seductively against Josh.
Her smile was still dazzling. “Maybe later. Right now we’re on a
kind of honeymoon.”

Pick started to laugh, until Gut cut
him off. “True love, eh? Well, that’s fine by me, but the problem
is that Sloan aint gunna like it none. He told us to bring in
anyone we see, especially females.”

“So,” Flame beamed. “Don’t tell
him.”

Gut’s piggish eyes widened. Something
close to fear shown forth. “Sister, you don’t know Sloan. We aint
the only scouts he’s got out.” He patted the portable CB strapped
to his bike. “Besides, I already called it in. Sloan himself is on
his way here right now.”

Josh decided to end the dance there
and then. “Do what you think best, friend. I don’t really give a
shit. As for us, we’re going our own way.”

Pick stiffened, his hard eyes shifting
from Flame to Josh for the first time. Gut leaned forward, his easy
smile transformed into a sneer.

“What have we got here? A Hard Ass?
Sloan just loves Hard Asses.”

Josh countered with a smile of his
own. “Like I said, friend, I really don’t give a shit. Your man
Sloan isn’t here --- but my man Eddy is.”

On cue, Eddy stepped out from the far
side of the van, the shotgun pointing directly at the two bikers.
At the same time Trina swung her rifle at Gut’s ample
namesake.

“What’s this shit?”, Gut
demanded.

Josh walked forward, casually drawing
his Beretta. “Call it life insurance. Step off the
bike.”

Before Gut had swung his meaty thigh
over the seat, Josh fired point-blank into the CB.

“Christ, man!”, Gut exclaimed, half
falling off the big Harley. “You nearly took my bloody leg
off!”

The dark barrel of the Beretta found
its way into Gut’s left ear. Josh smiled. “I’d worry about my
brains if I were you.”

Suddenly a heart-stopping roar split
the silence and Pick flopped backwards off his bike. Half his
shoulder and all his face was blown away. The chopper followed him,
crushing his already dead body. His hand still clutched the pistol
he had drawn. Eddy, face pale, eyes wide, stood holding the smoking
shotgun.

Gut was sweating now. The sardonic
twinkle was long gone from his piggish eyes. “What do you want,
man?”

Josh shrugged. “World peace. An end to
hunger. Right now, though, I want you to haul your fat ass out of
here!”

Gut glanced to where Pick lay beneath
his bike, then nodded. As he moved towards his own bike, the
Beretta found his ear once again.

“On foot,” Josh said. With his free
hand he relieved Gut of the automatic he had thrust in his belt.
“You won’t be needing this either.”

Gut seemed about to reply, but
obviously thought now was not the time for a snappy retort. He
settled for, ‘Later, man!’, then left at a belly bouncing
trot.

Josh watched him till he was around
the bend, then turned to the others. Trina was beside Eddy, who had
developed a bad case of the shakes.

“He was going for his gun, Josh. I had
to...”

“You did right, Eddy.”

“Ya, sure.” Eddy looked down at the
sawed-off weapon. “But I blew his whole face away!”

Josh moved over to his friend. “You
had no choice. It was them or us. And it still is, so let’s get the
Hell out of here.”

They took the 73 south out
of Keene, away from Lake Placid, where Gut had said Sloan had his
base. The fact that this Sloan himself was supposedly on his way
played on their minds. What bothered Josh, however, was the mention
of other scouts. They could be anywhere.

Six miles south of Keene, they passed
through the sister town of Keene Valley. On the outskirts of the
tiny hamlet a tractor trailer had jackknifed, its serpentine bulk
all but blocking the road. While slowly making their way around the
overturned truck, they saw two more bikers heading straight for
them.

“Shit!”, Josh swore, slamming on the
breaks and shoving the van into reverse. As the camper picked up
speed, racing back the way it had come, the bikers swerved around
the wrecked truck. The roar of their bikes reached them over the
steady chugging of the smaller Volkswagon’s motor.

“They’re gaining, Lover. Want me to
slow them down a bit?” Flame was already leaning out the passenger
window.

“A couple of rounds over their heads,”
Josh replied.

Flame smiled and emptied her Smith
& Wesson directly at the trailing bikers. Of the six shots,
three missed, one shattered a headlight and two drew blood, though
nothing serious. The bikers swiftly dropped back. Flame popped back
inside, beaming. “That should hold them!”

“But their still following,” Trina
added, clutching her old rifle. Eddy was reloading the shotgun.
Princess lay on the floor, clearly disturbed by both the shots and
the mood of her human masters.

“Once back in Keene,” Josh said, “we
can take 9N east back to the Interstate.”

“If this Sloan guy isn’t already there
waiting for us,” Trina put in.

No one had any response to
that.

Sloan wasn’t waiting for him, but two
of his men were. A green 4 by 4 was parked across the 9N exit,
blocking it completely. A bearded man holding a rifle in one hand
and a walkie-talkie in the other stood beside the truck. Another
man was across the street at the gas station bending over Pick’s
body. Both started shooting as soon as they saw the van. Bullets
wined and pinged into the camper. The side right window shattered,
spraying the inside with glass. Eddy, a jagged cut on his cheek,
shoved the shotgun out the hole and fired both barrels. The man in
the gas station went down. On the right, Flame emptied her heavy
revolver at the man by the 4 by 4. The front windshield exploded
and the man dove behind the truck. Seconds later they were past,
now having no choice but to continue westward towards Lake Placid
--- the one place they did not want to go.

Chapter 30
: ‘PUSSY POWER’

The Adirondacks

New York August
17

Sloan thumbed the mike again, got
another blast of static, then tossed the thing at the Pathfinder’s
dash. He hadn’t heard from Gut or Pick since they’d first spotted
the white van and now he couldn’t raise any of his other
teams.

“It’s these fucking mountains!”, Sloan
growled. “Screws up the goddamned CB!”

Tiny the only other survivor besides
Sloan of that seemingly long ago drug buy in Toronto, clenched both
the wheel and his jaw and kept on driving. He’d learned the hard
way that Sloan was like a junkyard dog, and when he got pissed off,
it certainly didn’t pay to yank his chain.

Sloan looked over at Tiny. The big
Chink was hunched over the wheel like a Sumo wrestler with a bad
case of piles. Sloan’s angry gaze swept forward to his point man,
Hicks, then out the rear window to the two trucks and three bikes
following behind. At least something was going right.

Tiny dropped the Pathfinder into a
lower gear. As the road steepened, they passed the twin towers of
two concrete ski jumps. Sloan was totally unaware that the sleepy
little town of Lake Placid had once been the sight of the Winter
Olympics. Even if he had known, he wouldn’t have given a shit.
Right now, Sloan had more pressing matters to deal with; like who
the Hell were these strangers in a white van and where the fuck
were his scouts?!

Since waking up in Toronto almost two
months ago, Sloan had been trying his damnedest to stay alive. Not
an easy task in a world suddenly gone mad. Of the two groups at the
drug buy, only Tiny and himself had been alive to greet the dawn,
and they had been on opposite sides.

Sloan had been there as the
Brotherhood’s enforcer, head man for the New York Chapter. Tiny had
been No-Lip Sing’s personal body guard. After the deal went down,
No-Lip had invited them to a party. Broads, booze and blow. All you
could take for as long as you could take it. Sloan could take a
lot.

In the morning only he and Tiny had
been left. They’d taken a good look around, seen the shriveled
bodies lying helter-skelter about the penthouse, eyed each other
suspiciously, and got the Hell out fast. They’d been together ever
since.

They’d stayed in Toronto for a few
days, but the place had turned into a madhouse. Bags of grey ash
that had once been people littered the street. A storm off Lake
Ontario had scattered the ash, turning the air into thick soup that
clogged the lungs. One in a hundred might have survived whatever
the fuck it was that had happened. By the end of a week, Sloan
thought that number had changed to one in a thousand. Those that
had outlived the Death, were quickly killing each other.

Sloan and Tiny had decided to get out.
Weapons and wheels were there for the taking, along with anything
else they wanted. Picking up all the young, healthy survivors they
found, Sloan’s little group had grown rapidly. Of course, he’d left
behind far more that he took with him. Oldies and Crazies he had no
use for, and there was a shitload of those! He’d already had to
kill a few of the younger ones he did bring along. Bleeding fucking
hearts every one.