The Effacing (Book 1.5): Valley's End Read online

  Neshia kept an open eye on her mother and brother through the rear view, holding a tight grip on Rebekah’s .40 caliber semi-automatic. She was more concerned of her father at this point. He’d stayed back with the resistance, attempting a heroic mission in which he might not return, against Sworn’s fortified group of elite scum.

  But Baker, what nobody knew, he went back to the 4x4, rummaged through the compartments and found a fully loaded .9mm in the dash. He’d shoved it in his pants and quickly calmed. Relaxed, he thought of a way he could prove his worthiness to the group, seeming the resistance demanded he travel to safety with the women and other children. He still had his thoughts fixed on vengeance.

  “We should get everyone off the streets for a while. I’ll go through the apartments, find Rebekah and the others.” Maria finished.

  A stone thunder shook the pained streets. The lightning struck, revealing its blood redness through the unsympathetic night. The frightened passengers of the small convoy were dampened and cold. The children, their whimpers rattled Neshia’s concerns.

  “Where are we supposed to go?”

  “Come with me!” Maria exclaimed, opening the door of the white pick-up.

  They were in another business section of the city, surrounded by boarded breakfast shops, a row of brick duplexes across the deserted streets, a few lone vehicles, clothing stores and other small company buildings ten blocks away from Maison. Locked and boarded, abandoned or destroyed, in their desperate time of need, breaking into one of the establishments or bugging out in a few vehicles for shelter and security was considered a priority on the To Do list, equivalent to finding Rebekah, Ann and Trivo.

  Maria led the group of survivors, sprinting toward the dupes across the street, the safest place, she figured, for the group to hideout while waiting on the resistance to catch up. And the perfect opportunity for her to solely recover her missing allies.

  “I need one of you to kick the door in.” Maria exclaimed, to the M16 wielding hoods through the bails of rain. “Two of you go in! The other two get to the rear and cover us!”

  Two of the hoods hustled to the rear of the huddled group, one of them passed Maria his M16 and pulled a Glock .45 with a small custom flashlight attachment from underneath his sweater, kicked the door.

  BOOM!

  Two entered.

  The house, cleared. The rest hurried inside flicking Bic lighters and flashlights. And Maria, after everyone was accounted for, addressed the group.

  “Everyone needs to stay here until I return. Barricade the door and stay as quiet as possible. Hell, light a fire to keep warm. If I’m not back by the time the guys get here… don’t wait up.” Maria said, in a convincing tone, passing the M16 back to its owner.

  “How will they know where to find us?” a woman called out from the crowd.

  “The vehicles are parked across the street. I should see them they come my way.” Maria finished, made her way back out into the storm. The hood began closing the door behind her.

  “Hey!” Neshia exclaimed, as Baker pushed pass her.

  Baker zipped for the dupe’s front door as it was being shut, slipped through the just-big-enough crack in route behind Maria, fast. But if he wanted to prove himself worthy to the group, then he should have stayed with the group and not run off behind her. Rebekah mentioned that to him earlier, but Baker was too big-headed to listen.

  “Stop him!” Neshia called out, as she attempted to stop Baker, dashed behind him, keeping hold of Rebekah’s gun.

  The thug at the door missed him flying by, extended his arm across the crack preventing Neshia from going out.

  The beefed up gangster said, “Let him go. You go out there...” he shook his head, “The nurse chick catches up with the others and he’ll be alright.”

  Everyone else looked on, listened and observed, but none disputed, not a mouth-drop in the building. Clearly they’d been panicky, now pushed into a corner waiting on their salvation.

  “It’s not right!” Neshia said, Chase and Brea now by her side.

  “It’s okay, baby.” Brea said, to her daughter, hand braced upon her shoulder. “They don’t move much in the rain anyhow. He’ll be alright.”

  CHAPTER 12

  “We can get outta here from off the fire escape.” Jim pointed at the window.

  “Great.” Rebekah stated, moving toward the frame, lifting the window. “Everyone should be together by now.”

  “We don’t know what’s down there.” Girder warned.

  Rebekah held half of herself out the window, pulled back a dripping wet upper-body. “You can stay here if you want.”

  “I’m right behind you, girl.” Ann mentioned.

  Rebekah continued onto the fire escape, into the stormy night.

  Jim looked to Girder. Girder shrugged his shoulders.

  Ann made her way out.

  “I ain’t stayin’ up in this bitch witcha. You better getcha ass up.” Jim ordered, moving to the window.

  “Main, we don’t know what’s out there.”

  “We know the building’s burning down. Sworn an dem gotta be gone by now.”

  “Main… we don’t even know what’s at the bottom.”

  As Jim reached the window, Ann shot back through. Rebekah followed. Both girls were drenched, Ann was panicking.

  “We do now!” Rebekah exclaimed, slamming the window shut. “We need to put anything that moves against the windows… like now!”

  “What is it?” Jim asked in a hurry.

  Rebekah grabbed the overturned loveseat, rapidly slid it to the window. “You already know! Just hurry! We’re going to need some light.”

  Jim and Ann both grabbed the plaid sofa, leaving Girder no choice but to stand up. They lifted the couch to the window. Rebekah pushed the refrigerator to the front door.

  Girder struggled his way to the candle, flicked his lighter.

  “We need another way out!” Rebekah said. “Is there anything in here that we can break through the wall with?”

  “What?” Jim frowned. “Fuck all that. Let’s just shoot our way out.”

  “Not if we have a chance.” Rebekah responded.

  Girder would have rather died of intense smoke inhalation than being a victim of carnage. Deep down inside he did not mind going out in a shootout, he just didn’t want the blaze of glory thing if he had another option. He thought for a quickie, wasted no time hopping right over to the corner of the living room removing the curtains from over top the dumbbells. He picked up a fifty pound weight seven inches off the ground and held it. “Here you go.”

  Ann and Jim charged to the back and threw the beds in front of the windows, the dressers behind them – in record time of 15 mere seconds – the room darkened and they could do no more. The tiny apartment was temporarily secured, and when they finally returned to the front room, there was just enough light to see everyone’s silhouette.

  “Perfect. Jim, wrap the weights in a bed sheet and bang out the brick wall in one of the bedrooms as quickly as possible. Girder, you should go with him and watch the windows while we keep watch here. Shoot on sight.”

  Girder attempted to pass Rebekah the candle.

  “You’ll need the candle, we can handle this.”

  “How are you—” Girder began, before being cut off by his buddy.

  “Come on, man.”

  Jim hustled to the back room. Girder limped.

  “How much time we got?” Ann asked Rebekah.

  “When they start banging I’m sure they’ll come flying up to greet us.”

  “You know I can’t see, right?”

  “Hold my sleeve. We’re going straight back and furthest from the outside window.”

  BOCK! BOCK!

  Jim and Girder commenced to knocking down the wall.

  “We’ve been in tougher situations than this.” Rebekah smiled, so bright it cleaved through the black.

  BOCK! BOCK!

  “Yeah, tell me about it… but with more people and ammo.”
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  The banging continued. You could hear the plywood and pieces of brick hitting the floors in the bedroom, and the umps made by Jim and Girder on every strike. Then, the howl of a dog arose from the ground level, across the street.

  Girder’s attention was deeply drawn to the howl. He knew it must have been the dog they’d seen earlier, and that beast, indeed was a people chaser who worked for Sworn. Girder thought that damn Akita had been outside all along, and he so wished they’d have killed the animal when they initially set eyes on it.

  Jim broke a sweat, he-hoeing the whole while, breaking through the wall. His only intention was getting out the building, away from whatever was on its way up the fire escape. He didn’t respond to the howl, he knew if they did not break through the wall in time they’d end up with their backs against the wall going out in a true blaze of unwarranted glory without ever being heard of in the history to come.

  “We don’t have much time!” Rebekah called out.

  “We’re moving… as fast… as we can!” Jim hollered back, not wasting a second, taking a deep breath before every swing of the 50 pounds of brick busting steel. “We’re almost… through!”

  Scratches were heard from outside the window of the front room. Whoever was out there toyed with them? Rebekah shushed Ann through the dark. Ann grabbed Rebekah’s sleeve, and together, they backed up, raised their guns when a thump came from the opposite side of the front door.

  Rebekah looked to Ann and whispered, “Quiet.”

  BOCK! BOCK! BOOM!

  “We’re through” Girder yelled from the back.

  Rebekah and Ann rushed toward the rear area just as the fridge-freezer plunged to its side.

  THUMP! THUMP!

  Their trackers were trying to break through the front door. The rumbling irritated the already concave hallway, pieces of rock crashed on the floors below. The scratches at the window, pounding, shattered.

  As the young ladies made it into the back room, Jim had kicked out the last of his breach point, Girder easily slid through. A gap, just big enough for the girls and Girder to breeze through one behind the other; Jim had to position himself sideways, shove his way through the brick last. He ended up getting stuck, and emerging footfalls scarcely grew near the room within the darkness behind him.

  “Pull me through!” Jim demanded, his hand stretched outward, staring at Girder holding the wax-dripping candle.

  Girder stood stock-still, looking as if wanting to smile, but squeezed it back waiting for Jim to get what he had coming, just as planned. Ann and Maria immediately jumped to assist, grabbing Jim by his huge arm, yanking him through the slit, making a dash in route to ground level.

  There was only one of the two things they’d all feared more than Sworn and his brigade, more than burning to death in the fiery project building. Now they were on the run from it, within a searing building kept aflame by the devil himself. Sworn could have been anywhere outside.

  And that’s where they were headed.

  CHAPTER 13

  She didn’t realize Baker watching her. If she did, she’d probably spank his rebellious ass like a newborn baby all the way back to the group. But in the heat of their situation, she would most likely keep him along, scream on him after the one-cut event was finally over.

  The rain continued to pour. The clouds from the implosion were finally settling into a wrapping mist as canals of rain water sped along the curbs and into the city’s drainage system. Maria stood on the corner of Piper and Alder street, just behind an open drain cover, where the downpour’s rapids waterfall-splashed below. She was lucky to see the opening before her. If she hadn’t stopped and looked both ways before crossing the street, she would have almost certainly ended up underground.

  She checked her ammo and skipped over the hole, trotting off in route to Valley’s End, The – burning – End, between the lightly fuming or battered vehicles for extra cover, keeping her eyes and ears open to what may have been up or down the street lying in wait.

  Baker followed Maria precisely – to the detail – in her footsteps, keeping low and being observant from about four eye-straining yards back. He moved when she’d nearly vanished through the mist, doing well until he crossed Piper and Alder. He didn’t see the hole, swallowed rain, gasping as he dropped. It was all too unexpected – how he’d wanted to be a part of something and ended up being a part of something he did not want to be a part of – although he did instigate his predicament. It may have been too soon for him to truly think, but if he would have, his thoughts would have been, I should have stayed in the house, while with the assistance of his body’s immediate-rejoinder self-preservation mechanism, he forced his palm-print into the concrete, and like a fresh load of clothes hanging out to dry, he hung loose.

  His infamous, one-second lived cry alarmed Maria. She whirled her head around, gun stretched outward. She did not, could not, see anything more than ten feet through the fog and thought the yelp was a mind-teaser and about-faced, content with her mission.

  While feeling the prickling of hard rubbles eating away at his submerged skin, dirty rainwater on top of whatever else poured down slapping his head as a note to self, if you ever get out of this, promise you’ll listen to your elders for now on. He could have just fell and found his way back to the surface, but he was afraid of what he might have encountered below the city, in a dark and creepy, wet tunnel, filling with more of the filth that collected on his baggy attire. Plus, if the water reached above his 5ft. 7in. height, he couldn’t swim, and he would have perished, succumbed in a shitty departure. Then, the loaded gun in his waist slipped down his leg, and plopped into the underground river. A sign he didn’t require the company, perchance.

  “Maria!” Baker called.

  She looked back, and although she did not see anyone, this time she recognized Baker’s plead to be Baker, and waited to hear where his hollow voice arose.

  “Help!” he whimpered, struggling to maintain his grip until help arrived.

  The water was not going to let up as long as the rain continued, and even then, it wouldn’t stop for some long period of time after. Baker begun to slip further, lost his grip. Caught the tarmac just at the edge, straining, tugging, as if he’d done more than enough reps on a pull-up bar and unable to stick his chin above it, while the H2O played Crabs in the Bucket with his hoe-card.

  Then he lost his clutch entirely.

  Maria grabbed his wrist just as he let go, pulled him up and out the manhole, coldly looked him in the eye and said, “Come on. Maybe next time you’ll listen and stay put. Now stick with me, we have to hurry.”

  Baker nodded in agreement. Maria thought of whacking his ass one good time, and then decided to chew him out later.

  She turned back to The End.

  Baker gazed to the heaven above, lipped, “Thank you!” and took off behind her.

  He’d gotten to the center of the street, behind a doo-doo brown, antique car-truck, abandoned, doors ajar and sitting on flat tires, looked inside the driver’s side door to find the mustard yellow leather upholstery had been repeatedly sliced, as if someone knew about 50K being stashed somewhere in the bucket seats but was never found. Maybe it was. The damp padding unleashed a foul odor and a couple loose singles that he picked up and shoved in his soaked pocket. How many people do you know would have done that? Who could blame him? What would you do?

  He looked up at the fiery apartment complex he’d barely recognized from the damage, face showered with the driving rain; and a notorious rumble shook the dampened ground. A quaking thunder followed by an intense strobe-affecting lightning that struck harder than before.

  During the strike, he witnessed heavy smoke begin to exit the building from its furthest, tailed by more increasing flames. He looked to Maria. She neared the entrance of the leading connecting building. He rushed to keep up.

  The furthest building began to crumble from the inside-out. Maria stopped in her tracks, from beyond the inconvenient darkness of the apartments open
ing, dust and pebbles sprinkling on the concrete before her. Heard the voice of her cousin’s squealing echoing from a distance, and growing, “We’re almost there!” through the doorway.

  Maria charged the door, stood amid the shade and night, hot dust and burning debris. “I’m here! Through here! Hurry, the building’s collapsing.” she yelled, more anxious of her confidant’s returned than fretful of what dangers the wave of sand and rock fragments could instill upon her life.

  “Run!” Rebekah spilled back, as they closed in.

  Maria stuck her wet head deeper into the darkened doorway, a heavy smoke seeped out of the hall. At the end of The End, the whole building, falling apart, the heavy smog attached to it, spreading out across the vicinity.

  Then, a small, wet hand grabbed her wrist.

  “Let’s go!” Baker squeezed and tugged.

  Maria, in shock, angered. “No! What are you—” She jerked back, looked down the street. A dense smoke traveled in her direction. She stared back into the darkness. “Huurry!” she screamed.

  A howl came from somewhere inside the building… and another.

  The dark grey smog from inside the building thickened just before Maria and Baker acquired the first glimpse of their companions. Ann was first, Jim and Rebekah only a few paces behind, holding up Girder in between them. Maria and Baker backed away just as they made it out of the building, and they all sped from the dying neighborhood, dust and debris of the disassembling structures pulling up on their hind parts faster than a chronic ejaculator to a three dollar whore.

  With ray being aided by two people, there was no time for the Six to make it back to the rest of their group before the cloud caught up. After crossing the street from the apartments, in between Piper and Alder Street, Baker had led the way to the porch of a boarded up duplex on the left side of Piper. The downstairs windows, boarded from the outside, and oddly, upstairs, the boards were inside. He leaped at the hardwood door, a thudding kick toward the lock, but was rejected completely without creating even the slightest dent. That was odd. The thug that power kicked the exact same door on the other dupe a couple blocks over made it look easy.