Scott Mariani - The Doomsday Prophecy

He debated it for an instant. Could he do it?

These are US Government agents, and there are five of them. You won’t make it .

He hesitated.

Fuck it. Go for it .

The move took less than a second. He grabbed the end of the barrel and jerked it sharply back towards Jones’s face. The curved edge of the revolver’s ebony butt caught the agent right in the teeth and smashed through them into his mouth.

Jones screamed, blood spraying from his lips. Ben yanked the gun back the other way, tearing it out of the man’s fingers. Jones went down onto his back in the dirt, writhing and clutching his face, pieces of teeth spilling out from between his fingers.

Then before anyone could react, Ben was hitting the deck, rolling fast in the dust, grabbing his bag, reaching for the latch on the Chrysler’s door. He ripped it open and threw himself behind it, using it as a shield, just as the agents pulled their guns.

There was a ragged volley of gunfire. Bullets thudded into the door.

He cocked the gun and was about to shoot back, but then hesitated. Did he really want to do this? Getting into a gun battle with government agents was a lot more trouble than he’d reckoned on. He didn’t want to hurt anyone unless he had to.

But something was telling him he had to. One of the agents was in his sights. No point in shooting to wound with a gun like this. Going for the shoulder would tear off an arm and kill the guy anyway from blood loss and shock. He fired, dead centre of mass. The gun boomed and kicked savagely, and the target went down like a tree.

Five-shot gun. Three rounds gone .

More gunfire tore through the bodywork of the Chrysler. Ben half stood up behind the bullet-riddled door. The woman had her pistol levelled at him. She was looking right down the sights at him. Only had to pull the trigger.

But something told him she wouldn’t shoot. So he shot the agent next to her instead. The bullet sent the guy spinning violently back against one of the big black SUVs.

Two more agents had spilled out of the black Chevrolets and were tearing guns from holsters.

Time to go .

Ben leaped into the Chrysler, threw himself down into the footwell. He twisted the key, threw it in drive, one hand on the wheel and the other punching down hard on the gas. The big car lurched violently forward, wheels spinning, door flapping open. He drove blind for twenty yards, staying down as bullets smashed through the bodywork and shattered windows sprayed him with broken glass, then hauled himself up into the seat as the Chrysler swerved wildly down the road.

The agents were running back to their cars. The woman was helping Jones to his feet. Then the black SUVs were spinning their wheels in the dust and coming after him.

The twisting country road was empty and Ben used all of it, clipping the apex left and right as the heavy car slewed on soft suspension. The windscreen was an opaque web of cracks. He used the barrel of the revolver to knock away the shattered glass. Wind roared into the car. A straight opened up ahead of him. The needle climbed. Eighty. Ninety.

They were still right behind him. The revolver had one round left. It wasn’t a gun he could reload on the move, like any modern automatic. It was a hunter’s gun. A gun for a patient man. Every cartridge case had to be hand-ejected and reloaded one at a time. No good at all.

A shot boomed out and Ben ducked as the wing mirror and most of the window pillar was torn away in a storm of plastic and metal fragments. He threw a glance over his shoulder and saw the agent hanging out of the window of one of the SUVs, the wind tearing at his hair and clothes, bringing a stubby shotgun back to aim. Another shot, and a wad of lead pellets ripped through the Chrysler and took a bite out of the seat next to him.

Swerving all over the road, Ben reached out behind him with the revolver. Last shot. He fired without aiming. The recoiling pistol almost took his hand off as the huge bullet cannoned through what was left of the back window and smashed into the front of the SUV. In the mirror the big vehicle skidded, slewed sideways and rolled. The shotgun shooter was spat out of the window as the car flipped over, wreckage spilling across the road. The second vehicle swerved around it and kept coming.

Ben was driving like he’d never driven in his life. More shots rang out. There was a bend up ahead in the narrow road, trees and bushes on both sides. He threw the Chrysler into it.

An old man was leading a mule across the road, right in front of him.

He instinctively twisted the wheel and the car sailed off the road. It smashed through the foliage. Branches speared through the broken windows. He was almost shaken out of the seat with the juddering impact as the Chrysler hurtled down a bank.

For a second he thought he could see a way through, and that he was going to make it.

But then, too late, he saw the fallen tree-trunk. There was nothing he could do.

The Chrysler was still doing about fifty when it crunched into the trunk. Ben was thrown forward violently into the inflating airbag. The rear of the car rose up, wheels spinning, engine roaring. The Chrysler turned right over on its nose and then came smashing down on its roof.

The impact stunned him for an instant. There was ringing in his ears and the taste of blood on his lips. He was upside down, wedged against the steering wheel with the buckled roof pressing hard on his shoulder.

Running footsteps, a cracking of twigs. Voices. A cry of ‘Down there!’

He kicked against the dashboard, forcing his body out through the buckled window. He somehow managed to get himself twisted round, and crawled out of the wrecked car. Then he reached back inside the window and grabbed his bag and the empty Linebaugh. An unloaded gun was still a better weapon than bare hands.

He was in dense thicket, tangled thorn bushes sprawling all around him like coils of barbed wire, tearing at his hands and face as he struggled to get away. He broke free of them, staggered to his feet and glanced around him, breathing hard, heart pounding, forcing his brain to focus after the numbing impact of the crash. Trees and bushes blocked his view in all directions. He could hear voices through the screen of vegetation behind him. He slung the bag over his shoulder and broke into a sprint, ripping through the scrub and darting through the narrow gaps in the trees.

He beat back a low branch and suddenly there was an agent standing there, gun raised. Ben didn’t slow down. He slid to the ground and skidded through the dirt with his right leg straight out in front of him. His foot caught the man’s knee and brought him down. The 9mm pistol in the agent’s hand went off, the shot going wide. Then Ben was on top of him, and clubbed him hard over the head with the butt of the empty revolver. The agent went limp in the dirt, still clutching his pistol. Ben tossed the hunting revolver into the bushes and ripped the 9mm from the guy’s fingers. The magazine was full. The ugly black steel was comforting in his hand.

But now the echoing report of the gunshot over the treetops had drawn the others. He could hear the voices converging on him, and the crackle and rustle as they came chasing through the bush. They were close.

He ran on. The dry red earth underfoot turned to slippery mud as he stumbled into a stream. He leaped over rocks and scrambled up the opposite bank, fingers raking in the dirt.

The woodland was thickening now. He clambered over fallen trees and through sprawling thickets of thorns. Then the foliage parted and he could see a grassy rise up ahead. He made for it, away from the voices. There was still a chance of escape.

The thump of his heart was met by the deafening chop of rotor blades. A helicopter burst out from over the knoll, banking steeply, only twenty feet from the ground. It roared in towards him like a bird of prey, nose down and tail up, the wind from the blades tearing at his hair and clothes and flattening a wide circle of grass. A pair of shooters hung out of its open sides, wedged in tight with automatic rifles trained on him. Gunfire ripped a swathe of earth at his feet. He turned and ran back the other way, threw himself behind the husk of a fallen tree and rattled off three double-taps at the helicopter as it roared overhead, punching a line of holes in the black fuselage. The blasting wind of the rotors blew up dust, tore up vegetation debris and made his eyes water. The chopper veered sharply up to avoid the tree line and began banking to come in for another pass.