Kingdom of the Seven (21 page)

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Authors: Jon Land

BOOK: Kingdom of the Seven
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Thomas J. Bodine woke up with a start. Better known as the mayor of Buford Highway to those who frequented this stretch of road, Bodine had been homeless longer in life than he’d had a roof over his head. Of course, that didn’t mean he had to suffer. Not when he had access to a lot crammed full of the most luxurious roofs money could buy.
Thomas J. Bodine, the mayor of Buford Highway, referred to the various Winnebagos in which he made his ever-changing home as “Win-a-bag-ofs,” because that’s what the name sounded like to him. He was sleeping stretched out on a fully made-up water bed when the shattering series of explosions roused him bolt upright. Thomas J. had had his sleep interrupted before, sure, but
usually by an enthusiastic salesman in the midst of a pitch who had just entered the camper.
The mayor of Buford Highway needed his sleep, especially after a night that had seen him swipe a fresh bottle of Absolut vodka from the front seat of a car parked near the pizza joint just down the road. After the first few hot swallows, the stuff became cool and smooth. Before Thomas J. knew it, the bottle was gone, and he had found his way onto the water bed to sleep off the effects.
Now, after the blasts had ended, the mayor of Buford Highway did what came naturally.
He curled up and went back to sleep.
 
McCracken could see the three wires running across the whole length of the ten-foot chain-link fence from ten feet away. He hadn’t expected it to be electrified, and their presence threw him. There was no time to short the thing out without leaving himself exposed for an unaffordable length of time, even with his pair of submachine guns. That left him with the campers that filled out most of the rear portion of the Flash Pot’s lot in neat rows.
McCracken took cover behind the front tires of a huge Winnebago in the very rear and stooped to peer beneath its frame. He could see the feet of several of the gunmen approaching deliberately in the near distance, steering clear of the smoldering remnants of the Flash Pot’s four-by-four inventory. Blaine stayed low and pressed against the Winnebago’s frame as he reached up to the driver’s-side door. Incredibly, it was open. The keys, however, were not in the ignition nor anywhere to be found in a quick search.
McCracken tucked himself low beneath the dashboard and started on the wires.
 
The members of the assault team bringing up the front were the only ones to hear the roar of a powerful engine kicking in. But with the sirens of the just-arriving fire trucks blistering their ears, they couldn’t pin down exactly
where it was coming from, at least not until they saw the huge Winnebago bearing down on them.
It slammed through a row of smaller campers without so much as a waver and rolled forward, gaining speed. The men closest to it opened fire and watched its windshield shatter.
The Winnebago kept coming.
The first line of gunmen dove in desperation from its path, while a trio farther back aimed their fire at the vehicle’s tires. One of the Winnebago’s front tires blew out. The vehicle bucked one way and then the other, ultimately banking right and surging straight for the Flash Pot’s vaunted showroom.
“No!” screamed Jumpin’ Jack Woodrow as he stood outside near the befuddled firemen. “Holy …
shit … Noooooooo!
”
His agonized howl ended just before the wounded Winnebago crashed through the remnants of the glass wall on that side and made a shambles of every vehicle in its path. Some of his most prized models piled up before it, collectively driven backward until the line of wrecks had nowhere else to go.
“Shit!” Jack roared, and kicked at the ground. “Shit, shit, shit, shit …”
A segment of the assault team followed the Winnebago into the ruined showroom and began firing away. Bullets chewed into its steel sides, obliterating its logo, custom body moldings, and accent stripes. Windows blew out and the optional shades flapped helplessly behind them. The engine was still revving, though the tires had stopped spinning at the end of its charge. The passenger-side front door was hanging off its hinges, and two team members lunged through what was left of it to find the accelerator tied to the floorboard with a rolled-up length of plastic that had previously been protecting the seat covers. They looked at each other, grasping the ruse, and headed back down the steps.
No sooner had they reached the bottom than the still intact
center sunroof of the Winnebago blew outward behind McCracken’s determined thrust. He held his salvaged pair of submachine guns in two hands and opened up with both barrels simultaneously, firing at anything that moved with virtually no pause. The twin bursts lasted just under five seconds, an eternity when hot death was flying through the air. The enemy barely got a shot off before their target hurtled from the ruined camper and escaped down the hall that ran parallel to the office area.
 
McCracken sped down the corridor linking the Flash Pot’s massive service department to its body shop, both abandoned now due to the fire. Blaine remained nonetheless cautious as he moved through the bays, contemplating his next move. The sharp scent of auto paint found his nostrils as he reached the body shop area. The key now was Woodrow. If he could come up with a way to get the remainder of the assault team out of here, he could deal with Jumpin’ Jack alone.
Blaine had barely considered his options when the door to one of the smaller Winnebagos parked in a service bay creaked open. He spun and fixed his SIG on a disheveled lump of a man who looked like he had just climbed out of bed.
“Can’t a man get his sleep around here?” murmured a slowly stirring Thomas J. Bodine.
“How’d you like to go for a ride?” McCracken asked him, forming a plan as quickly as he spoke.
The mayor of Buford Highway smiled.
The remaining nine members of the assault team moved through the Flash Pot lot tentatively. The foe they had faced had turned out to be even more formidable than they’d expected. Only a few moments remained before they would have to abandon the property and disappear. The disastrous gunfight inside the showroom had led the few terrified policemen on the scene to summon every bit of available backup, including a SWAT team. Momentarily, the place would be swarming with a well-armed force that would pose an instant threat to them.
None of the assault team were facing the service bays when a small model Winnebago crashed through one of the garage doors and sped through the lot. Its tires spun deftly to avoid all but a few minor scrapes en route to thumping over the front curb and onto Buford Highway.
No tricks this time. This time there was definitely a driver behind the wheel.
The men charged for their own vehicles, McCracken in their sights.
As police cars poured onto the scene, a quartet of the assault force’s sedans tore away from it, giving chase to the Winnebago that was weaving its way through typical Buford Highway traffic.
 
Jumpin’ Jack Woodrow took refuge in the back of the Flash Pot’s auto body repair shop, trying to lose himself in the clutter amidst the aromas of auto paint and steel. The cops were everywhere, looking to ask questions; looking for him, no doubt. He wished he were anywhere else, and decided to stay hidden until he got his story worked out.
Goddamn fucking Harlan Frye …
Thanks to the way the Reverend had chosen to handle this, the fire department was trying to put out the second burning of Atlanta, while cops were arriving from all directions. How was Woodrow going to explain a gunfight involving maybe thirty men, leaving most of them dead or wounded, not to mention an entire row of trucks on fire and a smashed-to-smithereens showroom? Jumpin’ Jack had to come up with something that the authorities would buy. Attempted kidnapping seemed his best bet, make himself out to be the victim. Or, better yet, maybe the bodies, plenty of them charred beyond recognition anyway, belonged to terrorists who had tried to destroy the nation’s biggest car lot. Found it listed in the
Guinness Book of World Records
and here they came. Made a twisted kind of sense. Jumpin’ Jack Woodrow could almost make himself believe it.
Story needed work, though. He needed to ask himself the questions the cops would ask and have enough answers to satisfy them. Boy, had things gone bad.
And then they got worse.
Jumpin’ Jack Woodrow, the Flash himself, felt something round and hard jab into the small of his back at the same time a hand closed over his mouth.
“I think we should talk,” said Blaine McCracken.
 
 
The remainder of the assault team couldn’t believe their eyes. There it was, the Winnebago, wedged diagonally across Buford Highway between the four cars that had slammed into it when McCracken had tried to run a red light just past the on-ramp to Route 285 two and a half miles down from the Flash Pot. They approached its dented shape cautiously, expecting the same type of counterattack their quarry had used back at the dealership. For this reason, a trio crashed through both access doors simultaneously, while the remaining men kept their eyes and guns on the sunroof.
The six heavily armed men burst into the Winnebago to find the driver’s seat empty and a shabbily dressed stranger spinning the channels on a television set in the camper’s rear.
“Hey,” called out the mayor of Buford Highway, “any of you guys know what station Oprah’s on?”
 
“Jesus,” Jack Woodrow moaned, as the man who had proven himself to be even more dangerous than he had been warned strapped Jack’s limbs into the frame-straightening mechanism. “Jesus Christ …”
Blaine gave the control wheel some torque and instantly Jumpin’ Jack’s arms and legs were drawn in opposite directions, stretched to the near full capacity of his tendons, ligaments, and muscle.
“What do you want to know? Just tell me!” he heaved.
“This is to make sure you don’t lie. I haven’t had a good morning. I’m running out of patience.”
“Jesus,
anything
!”
“You knew I was coming today, didn’t you?”
“Frye’s people called me last night. Said they expected you. Said they were sending some help—for my own good. I didn’t know it would be this many. I didn’t know they would do—” his eyes searched out a window “—
that
.”
“Then do you know what Frye’s going to do?”
“What are you talking about?”
“The hundred million dollars you invested with him … in Judgment Day.”
When Woodrow didn’t respond, Blaine worked the control wheel another full turn. The fat man’s jacket ripped and his pants split. He wanted to scream, but all that emerged was a low rasp because of the strain the stretching placed on his lungs and throat.
“I didn’t believe him!” he gasped at last.
“Didn’t believe what?”
“What you said before—Judgment Day. He never called it that, though.”
“What did he call it?”
“Just told me not to worry about the future. Told me the Key Society would be preserved when the time came.”
Woodrow tried to gaze about him, hoping someone outside may have heard something. Maybe the cops were coming now. Fat chance, he realized, with all the commotion going on. Until things got reasonably settled, he doubted they had even noticed he was missing.
Blaine kept his hand on the frame straightener’s control wheel but didn’t spin it. “Keep going, Flash.”
“Frye called it the final sowing of the fields of civilization,” Woodrow continued. “Said he was gonna plow over the dead crops and turn the soil so fresh ones can come up. Said I was gonna be one of the ones left whole.” Woodrow tensed, as if expecting the tightening wheel to be turned again. “Look, I never paid any attention to that shit. Frye’s crackers. Crazy fucking nuts, all right? That hundred mil bought me a lifetime’s worth of advertising on his Future Faith channel, got me God-fearing people from all over the South driving a couple hundred miles to one of my dealerships when they coulda gone to the one down the street from them. That’s all I was in it for, I swear!”
“Didn’t seem strange, the Reverend sending an army here today?”
“I told you, he said it was for my own protection. Told
me I was on one of his enemy’s hit list, on account of my support, financial and otherwise.”
Blaine felt his spine arch. “Tell me about the otherwise, Flash.”
“More crazy shit I didn’t bother to find out about. Just another of his whims.”
“What?”
“Had me deliver a whole bunch of cars. Told me to make them different makes and models and where to bring them. Even gave me a list of people to register them to. Funny thing was, all the addresses were in the same goddamn town.”
“What town?”
“Give me a minute to think about it, okay?” Woodrow’s face crinkled in consternation as he pushed his thinking. “
Something
… Falls! That’s it! An animal name, I think. Badger or, or …
Beaver!
Beaver Falls. Beaver Falls, Arizona!”
“How many people?”
“‘Can’t tell you that, and that’s the God’s honest truth. A little over a hundred cars, though. I remember the pile of registrations … .” Woodrow managed to tip his eyes upward. “Hey, wait a minute. You don’t think Frye was serious about all this shit? You don’t think he really believes Judgment Day’s coming?”
“He does because he’s the one who’s bringing it about.”
Woodrow looked like he was about to say something, swallowed it down, and then looked at Blaine. “There’s something else,” he started hesitantly. “I never really gave it much thought, but now …”
“Go on.”
“The paperwork for the car deals, shipping invoices and all that, was routed through a company in San Diego. Van, Van, er, Van something.”
“Van
Dyne
?”
“That’s it!”
The information sent a slight quiver through Blaine’s stomach. Van Dyne was an international pharmaceutical
giant, the biggest in the country, if not the world. But how was it connected to Harlan Frye?
“Frye be mighty pissed off he ever finds out what you told me,” Blaine advised Jack Woodrow. “Means it would be a real bad idea to run straight to him about our little talk.”
“Count on that, mister,” the Flash said gratefully as Blaine turned the wheel toward him to release the pressure. Jumpin’ Jack felt the pain in his joints replaced by numbness. His limbs felt wobbly and weak. “I never knew about any of this Judgment Day shit. Damn, if he’s half as nuts as you say he is, I wouldn’t’ve given him the change in my pocket.”
The chains around his legs rattled off and then Woodrow felt his arms being unlaced. Slowly, very slowly, he tried to stretch the life back into them.
“Only wish I could get my money back,” he said. “Only wish—”
Jack Woodrow looked up and stopped. The body shop area was deserted.
Blaine McCracken had disappeared.
 
Wayne Denbo knew what he had to do. He had known it for the long hours recently he had pretended not to be aware of anyone else in the room. They couldn’t help him. No one could help.
Only he could help himself.
Even the darkness no longer helped. Every time he closed his eyes, Beaver Falls appeared as he had last seen it: wasting away in the desert and missing its people. He saw himself driving the patrol car in, Joe Langhorn bitching and Frank McBride starting to stir in the backseat. The stop at the sheriff’s station, the restaurant, the post office, the bank, and finally the school. People just up and vanished in the middle of their lives. For a time when they got him to the hospital, Wayne Denbo was convinced it was only a matter of time before it happened to him. He was pretty sure now that wasn’t going to happen, not with
a highway patrolman in his room at Tucson General at all times. But that didn’t mean he was safe. Sooner or later,
they’d
be coming.
The figures from the dust.
Wayne Denbo could explain all this to the people who filled their days hanging over his bed, could describe the men in weird suits driving space-age trucks with all kinds of steel sticking up from their roofs. But then the doctors would move him up into the crazy ward, where getting out when the time came would be much, much harder.
Where the darkness had been his refuge, now it became his ally. He used it to map out a plan in his mind. First he stayed calm and quiet so they’d keep the needles away. Needed to be sharp, needed to be quick. No funny juice to slow him down, at least no more than was already pumping through his system. Then he laid the plan all out so he could see. Ran it over and over again just like the Beaver Falls videotape, so when he finally got to it, it wouldn’t seem like the first time. Wasn’t really going to be that hard, once he got round to making things happen. Hightail his ass out of here and get back to where it started.
Back to Beaver Falls.
 
Jack Woodrow was still trying to ease the feeling back into his limbs and joints when the two figures entered the body shop area. A boy and a girl, barely old enough to drive.
Woodrow watched them swing their stares about in unison, paying him little heed and seeming disappointed. The boy advanced his way ahead of the girl.
“Where is he?”
“Who?”
“McCracken.”
“Never heard of the guy,” the Flash said, hoping the police and fire police were still looking for him. “You must have—”
And before he could finish the sentence, the boy had
him by the soft flesh of the throat. Kid moved like a cat, the girl already right behind him.
“I’m going to ask you again,” the boy said, so calmly it scared Jack Woodrow. “Where is Blaine McCracken?”
The pain in his throat was worse than anything he’d felt on the frame straightener. He just wanted it to end. “Gone,” he choked out. “Just before you got here.”
The boy and girl exchanged glances.
“Where?” the boy asked. “Where did he go?”
“’Ow the fuck should I—”
The next burst of pain made him gasp, filled his eyes with tears. Jack Woodrow sank to his knees, sick to his stomach.
“I know who you are,” the boy said from over him. “I know what you’re a part of. McCracken knew and I know too. You told him something. Tell me what.”
“Beaver Falls,” Jumpin’ Jack whispered, because that was all he could manage. “Town in Arizona. Told him about a bunch of cars I shipped there, a hundred of them … . Let me go. Please.”
“My pleasure,” Woodrow heard the boy say.
A popping sound followed as a final squeeze severed the cartilage lining his throat and sent the Flash writhing to the floor.

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