John Miller - Death Draws Five

John Fortune pulled over to the side of the street. He put it in park, and slid over on the seat. The Angel lifted herself up to scoot over him, but suddenly she felt his arms around her, pulling her down to his lap. He kissed her, half on the lips and half on the cheek. His skin was warm, as if he were burning with fever, but dry. He wasn’t sweating.

“John—” she said, pulling away.

“I know, I know. I just couldn’t help myself.”

“Help yourself to a seat over there,” she said, indicating a spot next to the passenger side door. “There’s a time and a place for everything, and this is neither.”

“Will it be time when we get to Branson?” he asked hopefully.

The Angel bit her lip as she pulled away from the curb. He was her Savior, but he was just a boy. A good-looking boy, but a boy. She felt nothing for him but awe coupled with an instinct to guard and protect that was surely maternal in nature. But she couldn’t bring herself to disappoint him completely.

“We’ll see. Things will be hectic when we get there. You’ll be an important figure, with a lot to do.”

“I’ll always have time for you, Angel,” John Fortune said, and she smiled a smile of genuine affection.

They made it back to the highway in minutes. She pulled off to the side of the entrance ramp, turned off the van’s engine, and checked her watch.

“What’s going to happen now?” John Fortune asked.

The Angel shook her head. She was as mystified as he was. But whatever was going to happen, she knew that it had better happen soon. They waited five or six minutes, and then a dark shadow suddenly appeared on the side of the overpass buttress, though there was nothing to cast it.

“Angel—”

She nodded. “I see it.”

The gate had opened again. Blood and his handler came through the hole in the concrete buttress first. The joker ace lifted his head up to the sky, his snout sniffing. Cardinal Contarini followed, as did the Witness. The Angel’s heart sunk further when a squad of well-armed minions a dozen strong followed. They fanned out and slowly approached the van where it sat at on the highway verge.

Contarini smiled, but there was nothing of good will in it. “I told you that we’d be better prepared this time.”

The Angel clenched her teeth and tried the engine. “Don’t flood, don’t flood, please don’t flood,” she pleaded as she pumped the gas pedal.

“Take your foot off the gas and your hands off the wheel,” Contarini ordered, “or we’ll shoot you down right now.” He gestured and his Allumbrados took braced firing positions.

The van’s engine suddenly caught and purred quietly like a cat. The Angel took her hands off the wheel. She could think of only one plan. It wasn’t much of one, but it was the only hope they had.

“John,” she said quietly out of the corner of her mouth, her lips unmoving. “I’m going to floor it on the count of three. I want you to open your door and fall to the ground. Roll. Roll hard and far away.”

“What are you going to do?” the boy asked. For the first time ever she heard fear in his voice.

“What I have to,” the Angel said quietly.

“You’d better get out of that ridiculous vehicle before I count five,” Contarini shouted.

“Angel—”

“Please.” She looked at her Lord. She loved him like she never loved anyone else, with pure, undying affection, and the taste of her failure was bitter in her mouth. “Please, John—”

“One,” Contarini said.

“One,” the Angel whispered.

“Two,” Contarini shouted.

“Two,” the Angel whispered.

John Fortune looked at her, his face fixed with fear, and suddenly his eyes went wide and his arm flew up, pointing back down to the highway.

“Look!” he shouted.

When The Hand had said it would take twenty minutes for help to arrive, it was one of the few times in Angel’s experience that he was wrong. It took eighteen.

The southbound lanes of the highway were empty but for a roaring wind and flashing lights that had no apparent origin. Suddenly, as if it had broken through a landscape-painted canvas, an eighteen-wheeler pulling a silver trailer just appeared as if it had been placed there by the hand of God.

Perhaps it had, the Angel thought.

It was highballing maybe a hundred miles an hour and it hardly slowed down as it took the Yazoo City exit. It was upon them like an angry behemoth before they even realized it, flashing past the van in a New York minute. She saw a heavy-set man with a cigar clenched between his teeth and a cap on his head behind the wheel, which was on the wrong side of the cab, and she saw Billy Ray grinning like an idiot next to him and then they went by.

Contarini screamed like a woman. Blood pulled away from his handler and was running like a dog from the highway. The Witness stood mute and astonished as it barreled down upon them and Contarini shouted, “Shoot you fools, shoot!” and automatic gunfire split the morning like continuous rolls of thunder, only to whine and ping against the glass and grill of the cab’s front.

The Allumbrados scattered at the last moment as the driver downshifted and fought the wheel with consummate skill, throwing the truck into a skid that swung the trailer among the gunmen, tossing bodies like tenpins. Only a few escaped. Before the truck came to a screeching halt in a swirling cloud of dust the passenger side door opened and Billy Ray was among them.

The Angel blinked. He moved like a dancer, but his graceful steps brought pain and destruction to his partners in the bloody ballet. He struck with hands and feet, elbows, knees, and head. A single blow to each opponent. That was all it took. Some tried to shoot, but they missed him. Some tried to run, but they weren’t fast enough. Contarini was among the first to go down. The Witness the last. He towered over Ray like a giant. He swung his powerful right arm at Ray, but it moved as if in slow motion. Ray dropped to the ground. He put all his weight on one leg, doubled under him, and lashed out with the other. His foot caught the Witness on the right knee cap and the Witness screamed like a horse with a broken leg, and went down rolling in the dust clutching his leg and shrieking.

“It’s only a dislocated patella, pussy,” the Angel heard Ray sneer.

“Wow...” John Fortune said.

The Angel woke from her trance. “Come on!”

She threw open the door and grabbed John Fortune’s arm and hauled him after her, half dragging him as she ran towards the waiting truck, passing bodies, groaning and silent, that littered the ground. The Witness watched her go with his face clenched in pain. He mouthed gibberish at her and tried to crawl toward her and John, but suddenly Ray was between them.

“Back off, asshole,” he said, and the Witness stopped, groveling in the dust.

Ray looked up at her and she saw his face gleaming like a saint’s in an ancient icon.

“Ray—” she said, and before she knew what she was doing, she’d grabbed his shoulders and pulled him to her and covered his mouth with hers. He returned her kiss with equal fervor until the driver shouted out from the cab, “Time enough for that later. We’d best be getting on,” and he gunned his engine for emphasis. He had an English accent.

Ray broke the kiss and looked at her with startled eyes. She looked away, blushing at her terrible boldness. She didn’t know what had gotten into her, but she did know that she’d savor the memory of that kiss for a long time.

“Come on, come on, I ain’t got all night. Manchester United’s on the telly in”—the driver checked the wristwatch on his beefy, hairy forearm—“half an hour and I got a ways to travel to get home.”

The Angel jumped into the cab after John Fortune, and the wheels started rolling as Ray leaped up and slammed the door shut.