David Robbins - New York Run

He’d done it!

Elated, Hickok didn’t perceive the danger he posed to the mass of trikes occupying the avenue beyond the parking lot until the truck had jumped a curb and slammed into their midst. Chaos resulted. Screams and shrieks rent the air; battered bodies were flying everywhere; trikes and travelers alike were squashed beneath the huge truck tires, trikes crunching and their drivers and occupants being mashed to a flattened pulp; and random gunshots from the Technic police and the soldiers punctuated the general din.

Blast!

Hickok slammed on the brakes and the truck ground to a rocky halt, the motor idling. He saw dozens of trikes and four-wheelers crash as they wildly endeavored to avoid the melee.

Cries of torment and anguish were voiced by the injured and dying.

Dear Spirit! What had he done? The gunman vaulted from the cab, landing next to a demolished trike with an elderly man prone over the handlebars. Hickok gaped at the man’s vacant brown eyes, appalled by the needless deaths and misery he’d inadvertently caused. To his left was a young boy, lying in a pool of blood. He was shocked to his soul, and the gunman’s senses swirled.

He’d killed innocent children!

Children!

A blast from a pistol brought Hickok back to reality. He saw one of the Technic police sighting for a second shot, and whipped his right Colt clear and fired.

The policeman pitched to the tarmac.

Hickok turned, seeking a way out. Six feet away was a lone man seated in an idling four-wheeler, apparently stunned by the destruction, gaping at the Warrior.

Just what he needed!

Hickok jogged to the four-wheeler and shoved the Python barrel into the driver’s chest. “Move out!” He climbed into the four-wheeler beside the driver. “Move!”

The driver, a man of 40 with a bald pate and jowly jaws, his green eyes fearfully locked on the Colt, nodded. “Yes, sir!”

“Go!” Hickok goaded him, glancing over his shoulder. The police and soldiers in the parking lot were prevented from reaching him by the gigantic traffic jam blocking the avenue.

The driver of the four-wheeler pulled out, slowly wending his way through the maze of trikes and other vehicles. “Which way?” he asked.

Hickok alertly scanned the avenue for threatening soldiers or Technic police, but the highway ahead was filled with civilians. Very few of them had seen him jump from the truck, but one or two glared at him as he passed.

“Which way?” the driver nervously queried.

“Just keep going,” Hickok told him.

“Yes, sir.”

The four-wheeler reached an impasse, thwarted by a veritable wall of vehicles halted by the wreckage and the truck.

“We can’t go any further,” the driver wailed.

“Yes we can,” Hickok said, wagging the Python to the right. “Use the sidewalk. It’s not as crowded.”

“But that’s illegal!” the driver objected.

Hickok rapped the driver on the temple with the Colt. “Take your pick.

A spell in the calaboose or a bullet in the brain?”

“Calaboose?”

“The hoosegow,” Hickok explained.

“Hoosegow?” the driver repeated, even more confused.

“The jail, dummy!” Hickok snapped.

The driver gingerly wheeled the four-wheeler onto the sidewalk. Shouts and oaths greeted this unprecedented action, but the civilians moved aside at the sight of the blond man in the strange buckskins carrying an arsenal.

Hickok glanced back at the carnage he’d caused. He remembered that little boy, dead, awash in crimson, and he shuddered. He thought of his precious Ringo, and he could vividly imagine the grief the parents of the boy would feel when—

Wait a minute!

That boy didn’t have any parents! Not natural ones anyhow. Would his surrogate parents feel the same way a natural parent would?

“What’s your name?” Hickok demanded of the driver.

Pale as the proverbial ghost, the heavyset man looked at the gunfighter.

“Spencer.”

“Do you love your parents?” Hickok asked.

If complete consternation was comical, then the driver was hilarious.

But Hickok didn’t feel much like laughing.

“My parents?” Spencer said. “You want to know about my parents?”

“Yeah. I know you folks in Technic City ain’t raised by your true mom and dad,” Hickok stated. “But what about the people who do rear you? Do you love them?”

“Of course not,” Spencer responded while circumventing a squat blue box in the middle of the sidewalk marked with the word “MAIL.”

“You must not be from Technic City if you can ask a stupid question like that…” Spencer’s voice trailed off as the enormity of his own idiocy sank home. He’d called this crazy man stupid! What would the lunatic do?

Hickok disregarded the insult. “If you don’t love ’em, how do you feel about them?”

“They raise us,” Spencer replied. “That’s it. Why should we feel anything? Emotion is for simpletons.”

The lunatic, amazingly, grinned. “Thanks. I needed that.”

Spencer, perplexed, shook his head. “I don’t get it.”

Hickok waved the Colt. “No. But you will if you don’t quit flappin’ your gums and pick up speed.”

“I’m going as fast as I can,” Spencer protested.

Hickok rammed the Python into Spencer’s ribs.

The four-wheeler increased its speed.

The three soldiers and the pair of Warriors reached the end of the corridor and came to an abrupt stop.

The hallway was a dead end.

“The Zombies are on our level!” Private Kimper shouted, the pulse scanner held next to his face.

“We’re trapped!” Captain Wargo exclaimed.

Blade surveyed the corridor. There was no sign of Gatti. Where was he?

“Where’s Gatti?” Wargo demanded.

Blade ran, retracing their steps. He reached an open doorway on the right and peered inside, his helmet lamp revealing the interior. It was a room, perhaps 10 feet by 12, littered with the inevitable cobwebs, dust, and an antiquated wooden chair with two legs missing lying on the left side near the wall. Blade was about to pull away, when his lamp fell on the rear wall. Or what had once been the rear wall. Because now a large hole beckoned, providing access to an adjoining chamber. “This way!” Blade yelled, and took off, Geronimo dogging his heels.

The Warriors hastened through the opening and discovered another room exactly like the first. But instead of a dilapidated chair the chamber contained some newer additions: Private Gatti’s blood-soaked helmet and Dakon II on the floor in the middle of the room.

Blade scooped up the weapon and checked the digital readout. A full magazine!

“I could use one of those,” Geronimo mentioned as the trio of troopers entered the room.

“Where the hell did you get that?” Captain Wargo remarked, pointing his Dakon II at Blade.

Blade returned the compliment. “It was Gatti’s. There’s no sign of him.”

“Hand it over!” Wargo commanded.

“No way.”

Captain Wargo’s features contorted into a furious mask. “When I give an order—”

“The Zombies!” Private Kimper interrupted. “Ten yards and closing fast!”

The five men spread out, facing the way they came, their rifles trained on the opening.

Blade looked over his left shoulder. There was a doorway five feet away, lacking a door. Good. They had a way to escape if the Zombies—

Two Zombies rushed into the room, hissing, their arms extended. A barrage of fragmentation bullets ruptured their chests and heads and they collapsed, spewing green fluid.

“Hold them!” Captain Wargo yelled.

Four more Zombies were framed in the opening, and a hail of bullets dropped them on the spot.