'Til Death Do Us Part

CHAPTER TEN

BT, Gary & Mrs. Deneaux

“Would you mind if I drove?” BT asked.

“Have you seen the size of you? You can carry this thing if you want to,” Gary told him.

“No…seriously, I haven’t driven in a very long time. Without any traffic on the roadway I should be alright.”

“Well doesn’t that just make me feel all confident in your abilities,” Mrs. Deneaux said. She was silent for a moment as she cocked her head.

Gary pulled over to the shoulder, BT got out to walk around the car as Gary scooted across the seats.

“Do you hear that?” she asked from the back seat, as they got rolling again with BT at the helm.

BT couldn’t hear anything over the churning of the Pinto’s engine. Gary rolled down his window and stuck his head out much like an over eager Golden retriever; so much so, BT felt the need to grab Gary’s jeans by the waist line.

“I’m not going to fall out,” Gary told him.

“Not now you’re not,” BT told him, with one hand on the wheel. “This car is all over the road. Driving this thing is like the Flight of the Bumblebee.”

“BT, you have culture?” Deneaux asked.

“I don’t get it?” Gary asked as he pulled his head in.

“It’s part of an opera,” BT explained.

“Like the rock opera Tommy from The Who?” Gary asked.

“Something like that,” BT answered.

Deneaux scoffed.

BT glanced up into the rearview mirror, mostly wishing he hadn’t. “Motorcycles.”

Gary stuck his head out the window nearly as far as he had the first time. “Coincidence?” Gary asked coming back in.

“You do know you could have just turned around while inside the car and have seen them, right?” Deneaux asked cynically.

“What do you think?” BT asked Gary, ignoring Deneaux’s remark.

“Any chance this thing can go faster?” Gary asked, finally heeding Deneaux’s advice and looking through the rear windshield.

“I could probably push the pedal through the rusted-out floorboard, but I don’t know if that would make it go any faster. Plus, if the CV joints in the front end are gone and I go any faster, we hit a bump and we’ll catch air…then we’ll be screwed,” BT said.

“I think we already are,” Gary said, sitting back in his seat making sure that his rifle was fully loaded. “There’s seven of them.”

“I don’t remember seeing zombies in any of the Mad Max movies,” BT said grimly.

Gary looked over at his friend; Deneaux for once was silent not able to think up a retort.

“Mad Max.” BT said again as if that short statement would explain everything.

Gary shrugged his shoulders.

“Come on, man, it was a classic. A post-apocalyptic world? Had a shitload of car chase scenes with motorcycles?”

“Okay,” Gary said. “So?”

“There were no zombies in those movies is all I’m saying. How many dangers should we have to face on any given day? We’ve got zombies, vampires, rednecks and now a biker gang. Enough is enough already!” BT yelled as he slammed his fist down on the steering wheel.

The car pitched hard to the left.

“How about not breaking our ride,” Mrs. Deneaux snapped. “Our friends are getting closer.”

“You don’t say?” BT said sarcastically. “I figured at fifty miles per hour I’d be able to lose them.

“Really?” Gary asked. “How fast do motorcycles go?”

Deneaux rolled down her window. “It came down to you or Shortie, I wonder if I chose correctly.” She answered.

“We’re not entirely sure if they’re the bad guys,” Gary said hopefully. The timing was impeccable as his side view mirror blew apart into fragments.

“I guess that solves that dilemma,” Mrs. Deneaux said as she stuck her head out the window.

BT hoped a particularly large breeze would catch her and carry her out of the car. At least that was what he was thinking up until her first shot caught one of the rapidly approaching motorcyclists. The motorcycle’s front wheel violently cut back and forth until the bike flipped over itself, the rider skidded along the ground and was still. The remaining six, instead of backing off, came up even faster. Gunfire peppered the back of the small car.

Deneaux pulled her head in, a look of smug satisfaction across her features as she along with the other occupants in the car ducked down. Glass shattered, and the sound of metal being punctured dominated above all else.

“Isn’t the Pinto the car that used to catch on fire!” Gary yelled.

“They have automatic weapons!” Deneaux yelled. She had tried to poke her head up to get some shots off, but the suppressive fire from their pursuers was too intense. They drove a few more miles like that. The rear end of the car had become so riddled with holes as to become nearly non-existent.

BT knew it was only a matter of time before bullets made their way into the car, then they’d go out much like the infamous Bonnie and Clyde—in a hail of bullets. He began searching for something, anything to help them out of their predicament. The gang was keeping a respectable distance of around twenty-five yards, but it would be sooner rather than later when they became emboldened enough to come alongside and finish them off.

“Hold on!” BT yelled, not really giving anyone enough time to prepare as he took a hard left, never slowing. The car screeched like a white trash woman who’d realized her man had just gotten another woman pregnant. If BT had not been fighting for their lives to hold the car onto the dirt roadway, he would have found great mirth in Deneaux’s futile efforts to pull herself away from her door. The car bounced and jostled, a loud twanging signaling the death throes of one or more of the rusted out leaf springs. The wheel whipped back and forth in BT’s hands; trees came dangerously close to ending the group’s forward momentum.

A large leafy branch struck Gary against the side of the face as he tried to pull back further into the car. Gunfire was still erupting from the bikers, but it had become more sporadic as they fell back, the choking dust of the dirt road having the desired effect. BT did not think the old Ford would be able to take much more of the pounding the surface offered, but his choices were limited at the moment.

“Take the next right!” Mrs. Deneaux shouted.

BT didn’t know how she could see anything from her vantage point but he did as she said.

“Now stop!” she practically shrieked.

BT thought she might have seen a tree up ahead, he laid on the brakes which, of all the mechanical things on the car, seemed the least likely to fail. The car came to an abrupt stop just as the roar of motorcycle engines was almost on top of them.

“What now?” Gary asked.

“Quiet,” Mrs. Deneaux said through clenched teeth as dust settled all around them. “Take your damned foot off of the brake you’re going to give us away.” She extracted herself from the car quickly.

“Nice we’ll just let them race on by, then we’ll get out of here,” Gary said enthusiastically.

The first motorcycle raced past the Pinto’s detour before Mrs. Deneaux started firing. Gary threw his hands up to his ears, unprepared for the noise of the reports.

“What are you doing, you crazy old fuck?” BT shouted. “They would have driven right past!”

“For what…another hundred yards before they figured we weren’t up ahead?” she answered between shots.

After Gary recovered from the initial shock, he opened his door and grabbed his rifle. At least one motorcyclist had met his demise, and the rest still didn’t know what was happening through the kicked up dust. Gary fired three shots—the last of which caught the front of the motorcycle or possibly the driver, either way the driver planted his bike into the nearest tree. The gang banger behind him had been following too closely and crashed also. He was not dead, but his cries of pain most likely put him out of this battle.

Then it was quiet as the rest of the gang discovered the ruse. The bikes throttled down from their surge to an idle. The bike that had gone past was now slowly coming back. The roadway was settling and the carnage was visible to all. The man who hit the tree was twisted with his legs bent backwards and up over his head; the world’s most flexible gymnast could not have struck that pose.

“Ah fuck, Teets and Dogger are dead,” one of the men said.

“Come and get me.” The one that had wrecked yelled. “My arm and my leg are busted.”

One of the trailing men got off his bike.

“Don’t!” the man up ahead yelled. “It’s a trap.”

“Fuck man it’s Deuce. I’ve got to get him,” The first man replied.

“Give me your rifle,” Mrs. Deneaux said softly to Gary. The words were barely out of her mouth when she grabbed it from him.

“What are you doing?” he asked as he handed it the rest of the way over.

“I’m giving Deuce’s friend a little incentive,” she said as she fired a round off that caught the fallen man in his broken arm.

“Oh fuck!” he screamed. He was writhing in agony, the intense pain from his shattered elbow all he could think about. “Help me!” he screamed again. “Get me out of here!”

“Q-ball, I’ve got to get him, we go way back,” the man on the left said.

“Come on, come on,” Mrs. Deneaux whispered as she kept her eye to the rifle’s aperture.

“You sure are one cold bitch,” BT said as he came up alongside her.

“The Viet Cong were famous for this,” Deneaux replied.

“What is she talking about?” Gary asked.

“The Viet Cong would wound a soldier and lay in wait until other soldiers would try to rescue him, then they’d kill them all,” BT explained. “It was some pretty sick shit.”

“That’s what’s going on here?” Gary asked incredulously.

“Mike understood the value of a well-placed ambush,” Deneaux said.

“Not like this,” BT said.

“Really?” she asked finally looking up at BT long enough to arch an eyebrow. “Michael knew the aspect of our fair advantage.”

“This is murder,” BT said.

“How are you so dense?” she asked. “It is our survival or it is theirs, by any means necessary.”

“She’s right, BT,” Gary added. “Mike understood that. There are more than just zombies now. It is a struggle of good versus evil. The zombies have just marked the lines of delineation. Instead of scouring the earth of the scourge of humanity, those same lowlifes have risen to the top and are taking over. While the good people stay hidden protecting themselves and their own, these assholes take whatever they want and destroy whoever they want.”

“That man is defenseless.” BT pointed to the wailing figure on the roadway.

“And if he wasn’t?” Gary challenged.

“That’s not the point!” BT said, letting anger begin to inflect his voice. “He’s a human being and we’re treating him like a zombie.”

“You mean like this?” Deneaux asked as she drilled the man’s forehead with a shot. His head snapped back and his crying ceased.

“Q-ball they killed Deuce!” the distraught man yelled.

“How would I have missed that, Digger?” Q-Ball yelled. “We didn’t want to hurt you,” he added.

Deneaux started laughing in response. “Neither did we.”

“You’ve killed six of my men, this isn’t over!”

“It could be,” Deneaux said. “Just step into the clearing.”

“Yo, bitch, what is your problem?” Digger yelled. “That was my friend.”

“Well now I gave you a reason to pour some of your forty ounce beer on the ground. Isn’t that what you do? Kind of as a homage?” Deneaux cackled.

“I’ll fucking kill you!” Digger screamed as he began to run to the clearing, his rifle chattering from the multiple rounds he was expending.

BT shot him before Deneaux had an opportunity. The bullets had come dangerously close to their location.

“And then there were two little Indians,” Mrs. Deneaux said cheerily.

“Fuck you all!” Q-ball said as he hopped on his bike and headed down the dirt path. It was moments later and the last remaining man got on his bike and headed back the way they had come.

“Well that was fun,” Mrs. Deneaux said as she began to brush broken bits of glass from her hair.

BT was still at a loss for words. Gary was approaching the dead men.

“What are you doing?” BT asked him.

Gary bent over and grabbed the assault weapon.

“Oh,” BT said as he came over, “any ammo?”

“Check the bikes. At least one of them had saddle bags.” Mrs. Deneaux reloaded her pistol and Gary’s rifle. “We’ve got a problem.”

“Huh?” BT asked.

Gary was opening the bike’s bags. “Damn, looks like a brass factory in here!”

Mrs. Deneaux pointed to the ground where a spreading pool of liquid was emptying from the bottom of the Pinto.

“Shit,” BT said as he ran back to the car.

Mrs. Deneaux was going over to Gary. “Help me lift this bike,” she said to him. Him helping turned out to be him lifting it.

Mrs. Deneaux straddled the machine; she held the clutch in and pushed down on the starter. The bike stuttered and died, she pushed again the bike started up. She got off and started to inspect the front end. “It should be fine,” she told Gary.

“Fine for what?” he asked her.

“For you or BT. I’m taking Digger’s motorcycle,” she replied.

“Taking it where?” Gary asked, obviously still confused.

“The Pinto is dead, so unless you want to walk, this is our option.”

“I don’t know how to drive a motorcycle,” Gary replied in alarm.

“First off, one does not ‘drive’ a bike, they ‘ride’ it, and you’d better hope BT can, then.”

“You’d really leave us then?” BT asked as he came over.

She didn’t reply as she went over to Digger’s bike and gave it the once over.

“And you do?” BT asked in reference to her knowing how to ride a bike.

“I belonged to a motorcycle club back in the late sixties,” she said with a smile.

“Of course you did,” BT responded. “This bike has some front end damage.”

“It’ll be fine, it’s just going to be a bumpy ride for you is all.”

“You know how to ride then?” Gary asked BT hopefully.

“I’ve had experience, I’m not great. With my size and the damage to the front end you should ride with Deneaux.”

“Fantastic!” she cackled. “You will be my bitch!”

They grabbed their meager supplies out of the Pinto and stuffed every available pocket and saddle bag with it and started off. Gary was reluctant to wrap his arms around Deneaux, but when she started and he almost pitched off he thought better of his hesitation. Deneaux was laughing madly as they started for the road. BT was cautious on the rough dirt road and was already a few miles behind Deneaux as she was screaming down the highway.

Gary had his head huddled into her back and was holding on for dear, dear life.