Read Online Zompoc Survivor: Exodus by Ben S Reeder - Free Book Online Page B

on the trailway,” I said softly. “Go slowly.” Porsche nodded and switched the lights off. The trees grew thick enough overhead that the trail was mostly in shadow, but the streetlights gave us enough illumination to see where we were going. I stayed hunkered down by the back window as we coasted along. Off to our left, a row of apartments loomed, the windows darkened and eerily silent.  We crept past quietly, and an agonizingly slow two or three minutes later the trail led back into the trees. Sunset angled closer on our right, and I could see more movement on the road through the trees. Porsche kept the headlights off as she sped up a little, trusting to the narrow bands of light that bled through the leaves to show us where the trail was. Ahead, we could hear the screeching of tires; it ended with the unmistakable crump of cars hitting each other at speed.
    When the trees began to thin out, we could see a knot of cars stopped on National and the sound of raised voices. The road itself looked clear on either side of them, and as we got closer, it looked like your average pileup. A light colored little hybrid was on its side in the middle of the road, with the rear end of a Caddy sticking out from behind the front of it. I could see the back end of a truck jutting out from behind the rear end and another car with its nose buried under the truck’s rear bumper.
    Gunshots shattered the argument, and I saw a body fall to the pavement on the far side of the truck as I looked under it. A skinny guy with a jumble of tattoos on his lanky arms in a loose wife beater shirt and ripped jeans that threatened to fall off his hips walked around the back of the Caddy while someone else walked behind the truck. The tattooed gangster wannabe peered in the windshield of the hybrid, then stepped back and pulled a chromed revolver into view. The gun boomed four times as he pumped his arm into each shot. Five more pops from another gun corresponded to five flashes of light from the other side of the car jammed under the truck’s bumper.
    “You’re dead, bitch!” the skinny guy crowed as he gestured with the gun. The other guy came around from behind the far end of the pile up with an automatic held high and sideways in his right hand. He was wearing loose pants of his own that drooped around his hips, and a button down shirt over a white wife beater, with a baseball hat worn with the flat bill off to one side.
    “Killed that motherfucker!” he yelled to his friend. The two examples of Rule Twelve met near the middle of the vehicles and started talking. From fifty yards away, I couldn’t make out what they were saying, but they gestured at the cars. I was guessing their wannabe pimp-mobile was totaled. Judging by the headshaking that was going on, I was willing to bet that the other three cars were out of commission, too. Porsche and I stayed still as they started looking around. The skinny guy with the revolver pointed to the north, and I glanced that way. Movement caught my eye, and I uttered a whispered curse.
    “Dumbasses,” Porsche hissed from in the cab. I agreed silently and hoped they were going to take off running. But then the kid in the button down shirt turned toward us. He started walking our way and raised the pistol homey-style, gun sideways, held up almost over his head.
    “Bitch, you better get out my truck!” he yelled as he strode toward us sounding like a walking stereotype. It was time to introduce this would be bad-ass to Dave’s Rule Number Fourteen: Guns are not magic wands. Pointing one at someone didn’t mean they were automatically going to do what you told them to.
    “Get down,” I whispered, “and light him up.” She leaned across the seat and reached for the light controls on the steering column. The headlights caught Hat Wannabe flatfooted and he squinted against the sudden light. Then he started popping off rounds our way.
    “You did NOT just flash that shit in my face, bitch!” he said as