Joseph Love - Kill Town, USA

Welcome to Marshall, North Carolina, All-American City 1958, 1978, 1998.

But it had been hastily covered with thick red spray paint:

Welcome to Kill Town, USA.

A SENTRY SHOWED UP TEN MINUTES AFTER WE DID. His headlights floated through the woods, splashing the snow with a dull glow. We hid in the woods and watched the sentry examine our abandoned truck. Audrey wanted me to keep the Winchester trained on the patroller, but he wasn’t armed.

After fifteen minutes of pacing, he picked up his radio and spoke into it briefly. He walked back to his truck and sat in the dark. Ten minutes later, faint headlights appeared up the road. The sentry got busy loading a shotgun from the floor of the truck.

Audrey sighed. “Shit. He was calling for backup.”

A train of lights burned the road. Trucks lined up behind his, all loaded with dirt bikes and ATVs. Several men unloaded from the trucks, rifles hanging across their chests. Slowly, I put my face into the snow. I kept it there until it burned. I took my head out of the snow and wiped the water from my eyes.

“Audrey?”

“Yeah?”

“I don’t think I know what to do.”

“What are you talking about?”

“They aren’t law. They’ll kill you. And I’m not a prisoner.”

The ATVs and dirt bikes sputtered in the darkness. Their headlights pointed to the woods where we hid.

“Twelve of them,” Audrey said slowly. “They’ll kill both of us. Because they are lawless. And we are nobody.”

Click. Slide. Click.

The hand of God struck one, two, and took out another with a shot through the hip. The night exploded with gunfire and filled with the smell of black powder. The dirt bikes launched into the woods. I aimed at the single headlights. The bulbs burst and sparked. In darkness, the riders veered into trees. They landed face first into trunks. The bikes tumbled through the brush. Left for dead, the men squirmed in the cold and lonely.

The floodlights reached deep into the woods. They were aimed right at us. I ducked into the ditch and waited for them to move the lights. Over our heads hung the excruciating yellow light. They were torturing us.

Finally, they aimed up the road. Audrey and I scurried downhill, half rolling and half sliding on our asses.

We followed a riverbed, stumbling over cracked shale slabs. The shallow river ran under a bridge then on for a quarter of a mile before being blocked by barbed wire. We scrambled up the bank, following the wire, and got back into a thick patch of trees. We were well out of breath. We listened. There was nothing to hear except the faintest trickle of lazy water. No ATVs. No trucks. No guns.

Audrey dropped the pack and collapsed against a tree trunk. Her breathing was dry and labored. I grabbed the pack and emptied it in the snow. I tossed what we didn’t need. I kept my thermal underwear, the sleep sack, the remaining half-box of ammunition, the pistols, clips, and what little food remained. I released the clips from the nine-millimeters and emptied the chambers. I reloaded them and handed one to Audrey.

“Don’t let anyone touch you,” I said. I showed her the release for the clips. I pressed it several times and slid the clip in. “Then you pull, like this,” I pulled the slide. I zipped the pack and stood. “I think this is it. We’ve run ourselves out.”

“You’re giving up?”

I shook my head. “The strong do what they can. The weak suffer what they must.”

I cinched the pack tightly to my arms and waist and climbed the hill to the road at the top, the same road that crossed the bridge just a quarter-mile back. It had been plowed recently. I stood on the centerline, waved the flashlight, and emptied the nine-millimeter into the air. The echo barked from the trees. I dropped the clip to the road and reloaded, pulled the slide and swung the flashlight around.

Shortly, the headlights flashed. The maniac trucks appeared up the road. I set the flashlight on the asphalt aimed at the vigilantes. There was a heavenly silence to the headlights. They almost looked like stars. And then the monstrous growl of the engines emerged over the silence. They were still a long way off. The tinny exhausts howled.

And then they were closer. Closer still. The centerline glowed. The asphalt looked like glass. I emptied another clip straight into the cross-eyed beams. I stepped over to the shoulder as I reloaded. I emptied the second clip at the line of trucks. I raised the Winchester and aimed, but the first truck had run off the road.

Repent.

This is your God.

Your Salvation.

The next truck screamed past, out of control. It soared over the ditch and into a cedar fence post. The rear whipped around and the truck tipped on its side. The third truck had stopped up the road with a flat and a busted light. The fourth stayed back. Far enough back it didn’t matter. I jogged to the third truck.

“I think I seen him in the ditch here,” I yelled to the men in the third truck.

“He alone?” Someone yelled back.

They let me get to the driver’s door, the window down. They scrambled inside for extra rounds and radios.

“Do you believe in God?”

God almighty.

There is no other.

I took the nicer of the rifles, a Remington .270 with a modest scope, and a tackle box of bullets. A hundred yards away, the fourth truck was in the middle of a three-point turn. I hit the driver in the neck and the truck rolled lazily into the ditch. Two other men piled out of the truck and returned fire in my direction, bullets ricocheted off the road and whizzed past. Bullets sank into tree trunks and pinged off the tailgate, but the men were only shooting in the dark. One leaned over the bed, illuminated by the third brake light. The other took cover behind an open door.

The Remington .270 showed them the way.

As fast as it started, it was quiet. And in the silence, Audrey shrieked from the ditch.

“What are you do ing?”

I pointed up the road. “The strong do what they can.”

“Are you insane? Are you?”

I hadn’t made a woman that angry since Mom. I almost felt bad for Audrey. There was no use.

“Answer me, Jack.” She was on the road, storming toward me in the dark.

I pointed to the trucks as if they were on display. As if my whole plan was obvious. “No one would believe one man did this,” I said. “They won’t think to watch out for a guy with a bum leg. They’ll be looking for a gang.”

“What good is it, you trying to get killed? Leaving me at their mercy?”

“You’re at your own mercy, aren’t you?” I reached into her coat and pulled out the pistol. “Aren’t you? If you know what’s going to happen?”

She shook her head. “I don’t believe in that.”

“You don’t believe there’s an easy way out?”

“What about you?”

“What about me?”

“Why come this far and let me tag along? Why try? Why not kill yourself?”

I had no answer. I wasn’t going to mention Dad. Wasn’t going to mention as I stood in front of her, swallowed by the blackness of the road and the cold of night, I was thinking of shooting myself in front of her. That I’d already thought it ten times over.

“I just want to make it as far as possible,” she said at last. “That’s all.”

“I…” my mouth hung open.

“What?” She demanded.

“I like your company. And I’m outraged at this,” I grabbed her arm. “I’m furious about it. I’m alone again. I was enjoying not being alone.”

The argument was over. We walked up the road in silence. We walked to the vanishing point. We disappeared into the wooded shoulder and the darkness of trees.

“How is your arm?” I asked finally, calmly.

“My what?” She asked the ground. “Oh. It doesn’t really hurt. I haven’t thought about it much. It’s numb mostly. I like your company, too.”