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The Effacing (Book 1.5): Valley's End Page 3
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A ponderous thud, followed by crashing sounds shook the entire apartment, and the crackling sounds of another fire broke out from somewhere in the building. Five long seconds that had the young thugs twisted on edge.
Jim and Girder both acknowledged each other in shock, not knowing if it were their eclipsed foes that hunted them, found their hideout and now trying to flush them out with grenades – maybe even a rocket launcher – their enemy wanted them to suffer, die from smoke inhalation. Or maybe it was Billy Rain; not even. If it had been big bad Billy Rain, he would have used a Molotov cocktail to extract his damage. No boom there, just glass and gas. Plus the fact, which Jim and Girder were not aware of, their infamous leader, Billy Rain?! He was already dead.
Jim and Girder grabbed their weapons.
Jim blew out the candles. “Im’a kill the first mu’fucker come through that door,” he cautioned his lightly wounded partner.
Girder took aim. “Get ready, main!”
The rumbling stopped.
It was silent.
“We need to get outta here.” Jim whispered, looked over to the window.
The sun had fully diminished.
“Main, I ain’t leaving till I hafta.”
Jim stood, slowly crept over to the window, hoping it wasn’t anything he’d made up just seconds ago. Before he could get a look at the ground level, he heard footsteps near the door, raised his firearm and took three steps back.
CHAPTER 7
Rebekah stepped on the square wooden board and cautiously maneuvered through the busted window, landing softly in silence. She clicked the button on the homemade flashlight attachment, aimed her rifle at the closed door and defensively awaited the rest of her brave trio making their way through. Trivo, the last in, looked over to Rebekah. She pointed to the door. He boldly crept toward the door and timidly placed a sandpaper-rough hand over the dirty metal knob, waited for Rebekah’s signal.
Rebekah’s head slightly rose and lowered, then Trivo gripped the knob and flipped his wrist in one motion, jumped back, and another warm heat wave of a Shit-Chunk special ice-cream cone rushed the room.
Rebekah was first out, discreetly made way for the front door. Ann followed, while Trivo, his mind on investigating and being cautious, made his way deeper into the apartment.
“Strange,” Ann shook her head to the barricade before her. “Everything in the house is pushed up against the door—”
It was true, everything that could be moved, mountain-stacked in front of the metal door which led out into the building corridor, from the kitchen fridge to the living room furniture, dressers to bed mats. Besides that, the rest of the apartment was fairly neat. From the spotless floors and bare walls to the kitchen appliances placed on acrylic countertops, and the two animal dishes, one red the other blue, that sat in a corner; the red one full of Whiskers cat food, the other, just a nauseating milk stain. A tell-tale that only the residents would know of that transpired, a Chris Angel vanishing act mystery in itself.
“They must have had their reasons. We need to find another way through.” Rebekah said.
Then, coming from the back room, aggressive eyes locked to Rebekah. Trivo declared, “Follow me,” gazed to Ann before he about-faced.
In the backroom, red bricks, a mega dust cloud and nip-tuck pieces of plywood strewn across the grey, carpeted surface, a crowbar, and an iron mallet that would instantly remind any comic book superhero fan of the mighty hammer of Thor; and a huge, forced opening in the back wall of the room that led into the next apartment. Yes indeed, a way out… but what the hell from?
“Wow…” Ann gawked.
“Tell me about it.” Rebekah walked toward the damage, felt the brutalized edges. Alleged, “They were surrounded. Barricaded themselves in and busted their way out, maybe.”
“Why the ply over the bricks?” Ann examined, surprised.
Trivo strode to the wall. “Cuz… the city ain’t paying to break it down and build it back up. So instead, they do this.” He slapped a piece of ply from its place over the free brick. “They make it look new, raise rent, kick out the poor and rehouse this bitch… loses less, makes more cheddar. Ain’t it obvious?”
“Yeah,” Ann inserted. “But who preps a breakout in their own home? If whoever did this was a doomsday prepper, I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t get many points.”
“Come on,” Rebekah declared. “The sun’s faded.”
They stepped into the next room, stayed on guard as they made it to the front door. It was open. And the three inspected the entire level for anyone that could have survived.
The floor was vacant.
The trio made their way out, and up an old, cockroach infested concrete stairwell, headed toward the rooftop, when in between the second and third floor they encountered a pile of burned logs – more ashes than wood – positioned dead center, under the raised window, its seal used as an ashtray, defaced – like what part of the building wasn’t – with a mob of cigarette butts that were extinguished along the brim.
“Wonder what that was for?” Ann muttered, about the logs.
Small concrete rocks and pebbles, followed by sand and dust fell from above, created popping sounds that echoed on the concrete below.
Trivo glanced up for a second. Replied, “After the lights went out and we were forced to stay indoors… this is how some people lived.”
“But wouldn’t the plywood and bricks keep the place warm if they’d kept the window shut?” Rebekah asked.
“This is how they ate. Fire alarms ‘round here don’t work. They kept doors open and windows up. The busted windows and building fires came from the Molotov cocktails, gunshots and rocks.” Trivo informed them.
“How do you know so much?” Ann asked.
“Because… we the ones that did it. There was so many sick in these buildings, nothing we could do for ‘em. We thought we could kill ‘em all, but we were wrong.”
“That’s horrible!” Ann exclaimed.
“Yeah… sounds bad. But we didn’t have any other choice then. If a swarm of that many were to hit the streets… it would have been lights out for a lot of the people traveling with us now, for sure.”
“Where are the corpses?”
Where were the bodies? True, the Centre City hoods bombed the location of their rivals, but if the building had been overcome with ill residents, then their bodies should have been visible all throughout the projects. In their travels, they had only seen demolition and barricades, not one dead body or a single speck of blood. Everyone, at least some, must have come together and escaped. But the question still stood. Where were they?
“Back where all the fire and busted windows are.” Trivo answered.
“Then there are other survivors.” Ann winced.
And the ground beneath their feet rumbled. The building shook, more debris fell.
Rebekah shifted her sight up the stairs and proceeded to climb. “We need to hurry.”
The concrete steps were fractured in many different sections, couldn’t hold more than three hundred pounds of pressure. Rebekah stopped just before they touched the third floor, spotted a brown, paper Kiwi grocery bag filled with assorted canned goods and spring water bottles near the last step. As much as she wanted to quench her thirst, she knew they were at war and kept it moving. Ann followed, not trying to appear needy, even though the goods and fluids would have come in handy for the younger members of their group.
Trivo bent over to pick it up. “Shiiit… I ain’t passin’ up no free food and water.”
“No!” Rebekah spun around to warn him, swinging the AK around with her, shining her flashlight back down the stairs, illuminating his scarred, ruffled face.
Trivo stopped in his tracks and threw a hand up to the light’s blinding beam. “What?”
“Who leaves a shopping bag in the stairwell? Leave it there.” She continued up, Ann right behind her. “Didn’t you say your gang ambushed the place?”
Trivo stood erectus, watched as t
he girls walked through the exit door. He thought of what Rebekah said (Who leaves a shopping bag in the stairwell?), and thought, someone in a rush. He stretched back down, put a hand in the bag, and just as he grabbed a can of Pineapple Tidbits, he hollered, “Holy shit!”
Who else would have been that fucking improvident? It was a trap. The pin on a hand grenade had already been pulled, and the weight of the can goods preserved the detonation.
BOOM!
The floor opened up and Trivo’s body parts were scattered throughout the stairwell during the discharge, donating his plastered remains on what was left of the nearby brick walls. The floor beneath him crumbled and formed a blockage at the main level. The explosion caught Rebekah and Ann off guard, the strength of the impact chucked them into the third floor level of the structure, skimming across its sooty floor.
Only seconds after, another explosion sounded from nearby, and it all began to settle into the ladies heads by the time Rebekah had a very precise intuition that the worst had yet to come, the worst was yet to come.
“RUN!”
The girls were 50 feet away from the other side, a cracked window at the end screaming, jump out here, the smoke, abruptly intensifying around them. The surface began to break away from the staircase, the bricks from the walls. Ann scrambled to her feet, sneakers kicking dust while racing through the hallway.
Rebekah followed, just inches away from the falling rock, leaving the AK to fall with the flooring. An explosion from inside one of the units left a scorching blaze seeping underneath the door before the base gave out there. Then it was on the lower level, and little by little, growing.
By the time they reached the window, Rebekah and Ann stood side-by-side, the demolition, creeping up on their heels.
Then, it brusquely stopped.
CHAPTER 8
Z2: Did you catch that, Zone One?
Z1: Roger that. Just blow it, Zone Two.
Z2: Copy. Okay… do it!
The age-worn city sewage worker in a reflective vest hit the red button on a detonator that triggered a dynamite explosion, creating a twenty foot deep, hundred feet wide crater crossing hole through all eight lanes of Maison Parkway. After his task was complete, he turned to the man that ordered it be done, and sadly nodded as if he was a traitor to his own neighbors. He wasn’t, although anyone who did not know the man’s family’s lives were at stake would have suspected so.
Sworn, the cold hearted son-of-a-bitch who’d ordered the highway imploded did it to keep the resistance from reaching their ultimate destination. The one road leading to the only possible exit out of the city, and he knew it. A muscular giant, standing 6ft 5in and weighing in at 250 some-odd pounds, wore all black fatigues underneath his Dragon Skin level IV body armor. Only a Master Sergeant of the privately owned militia he claims is above the government, he strutted in the company of two of his best men, outfitted in his likes. Their only difference, the riot helmets and the fully operational, heavy XM-29 OICWs (Objective Individual Combat Weapons) they carried as they marched on each of his sides, just one step behind him.
Sworn stopped at the edge of the two-story building rooftop, bodyguards in tow, lifted his third generation night vision binoculars and admired his damage from a mile out with a wicked, one-sided grin that would have infuriated the holiest of saints. The disaster made, evident. Murky clouds encompassed the flickering streetlights of that surrounding the point of contact.
He scanned toward the right, observant to the falling city of his mass destruction – dark clouds, sparks and flames through the darkness – pleased by the effect of his four day pillage to the innocent victims he’d tortured beforehand. He panned up north. The headlights of his brethren’s convoy; they were still on assignment. He scrolled back west, to his freshly made hole in the gravel, viewed the headlights of a vehicle approaching, placed a finger in his ear and gently pressed down on the talk button of his earpiece.
“Zone One, this is Zone Two.”
“Go ahead, Zone Two.”
“Vehicle approaching Maison…”
“Confront, arrest, and transport to base, Zone Two.”
“Acknowledged—”
A light drizzle splattered on the guards helmets.
CHAPTER 9
“That didn’t sound too good.” Neshia shifted her sights from the road to The End. “Some of us should go check on them.”
“N-No…” Maria revved up the engine of the white pick-up. She’d figured it best that Baker and she be separated to keep the peace, so she took Rebekah’s place in the lead while he continued to ride shotgun in the blue pick-up, soon to be driven by one of the armed hoods from the taxi. “It’s dark. The noise will attract them.” She looked to the road ahead of her. “It’s clear now. We need to get to the other side of Maison and meet Ann, Rebekah, and Trivo there.”
“But what if—” Neshia said.
“They said if anything happened to meet them on the other side.”
A second boom erupted, but this time, more devastatingly explosive, shook the earth around them. Their convoy instantly rattled with questions and concerns that went left unanswered as the four thugs that bordered their entourage each tensed to the rumbling surface. The children leeched to the women, and the women looked to the men.
“Load up and let’s head out!” Maria called, ready.
“We can’t just leave!” Neshia exclaimed.
“We’re not. We’re going to the other side, get everyone in a safe place… and then I’m going to look for them.”
A raindrop tapped at the windshield.
CHAPTER 10
“I was just beginning to like him.”
The quake left most of the third floor gutted. Just three badly beat-up doors remained, and they were on loose fragmented rock. The cracked window, a light rain, pecking at the glass behind them was permitting the smut to linger out. But it gave oxygen to the fire.
Ann shook her head at Rebekah’s comment and looked around for the emergency exit door leading to either the roof, or back down and out the crumbling project building. She moved to the window, sagaciously peeped out making sure she would see whatever was outside, before whatever lurked below noticed her. What she saw left her eyes wandering. The land, missing, replaced with a dark fog that traveled amuck. Freighting, considering what skulked on the city streets had to be seen to have been dealt with appropriately.
“Nothing’s down there.” Ann whispered.
Rebekah’s nose went up in the air. “You smell that?”
Ann turned from the window. “Weed?!” she said, confused.
Rebekah tapped her thin index finger across her lips, pointed to the door she’d suspected the aroma came from, stood beside it and reached into her lower back. Ann moved to the other side, her .45 lowered; nodded.
“Hello?” Rebekah said, waiting for a response; nothing. “We’re trapped… the floor collapsed.” She waited. No response. “We know you’re in there, we can smell the weed. Can you let us in? We’re not with Sworn.” She waited; nothing. “We were looking for survivors… make it to the roof to see if there is a clear path for us to leave the city. Now we just need to get out of here before the place goes down.”
That, looking for survivors, and, leave the city, and, before the place burns down, caught Jim’s attention.
“You the resistance?” his muffled voice shot back,
Rebekah released her semi-auto. “Part of it...”
“Prove it.”
“Open the door.”
He grunted.
“It’s just two of us here. We just lost one in the blast.”
“That don’t sound like no rescue squad.” Jim shot back.
“The rest of us are close by. A larger group should be on their way from cross city now. This’ll work a lot better if you would open the door. A fire is burning below us. We need to get out of here! And yourself as well!”
Ann inserted, “We have a convoy close by waiting on us. My cousin’s a nurse, if you’re hu
rt she can help. Please…”
There was a brief moment of silence.
Jim’s voice broke out closer to the door.
“Are you sick?”
Ann replied, “We’re all healthy. And you?”
“We’re fine. Are you armed?”
Ann looked to Rebekah.
Rebekah looked at Ann, then back to the doors crack. “What do you think? Of course we are. I’m pretty sure you are too.”
“Where’s Rain?”
If for any reason the hoods behind the door suspected the girls had anything to do with Rain’s death, they’d for sure blast right through that fucking door with no hesitation.
Rebekah took a few seconds to answer, not knowing if what she would have said would have started conflict. How was she to know if Jim was from Centre City? He may have been one of Rain’s rivals since they were camped out in rival territory. How could she configure a way to determine exactly what side of the field Jim was really on?
“Billy Rain!” she said, with a crafted delivery. You wouldn’t know if they were friends or enemies. “He helped to assemble the resistance for the city, not just for his own people. He’s a hero to us all… lost his life defending the ones he cared about.” She looked to Ann. “In the end, he was a brave and fearless leader that won’t be forgotten, no matter who hated or loved him.”
There was a long pause.
CLICK!
The door unlocked, the knob twisted, and the door cracked open.
“Step in… slow… hands first.” Jim instructed.
CHAPTER 11
The light drizzle turned into a well necessitated shower. The dense smoke from Sworn’s explosion lingered across the deserted land. It had been more than an hour since Rebekah took Ann and Trivo on an expedition through the destroyed projects. The three of them still hadn’t returned, but Maria worried about just one in particular. Her cousin… Ann.