BRAKING HARD To Load Read online

  “Should we split up?” Erik asked.

  “No,” I said, shaking my head and added, “It might take more time, but staying together is the safer option.”

  The three nodded and offered a trio of “affirmative”s then. I felt a moment of relief at knowing that, even being vampire-ninja-badasses, they seemed just as reluctant to split up and go it alone as I was. A part of me wondered how much of this was out of nerves and how much of it likely reflected how stupid it was to ever go into such a situation alone. Again, I flinched inwardly at how I’d been going about things in the past. I glanced back at both doorways, trying to see if I could see any sign of which way we should go.

  Then I saw it.

  It was faint and nearly impossible to see with the bright green glow the night vision goggles gave, but it was there. Two partial footprints pointed in the direction of the right doorway. I started to wonder why we hadn’t seen any other prints until that moment, and then I saw that each print had been made by the owner’s right shoe, which appeared to have stepped in a pile of nearby ash and sawdust from some long-since bonfire. I figured it wasn’t uncommon for homeless people to use this building as a safe place to spend the night, so I wasn’t about to worry myself about the evidence of indoor fires, but the boots that had left those prints weren’t the sort that a hobo would be wearing. With how abandoned this property looked, I couldn’t imagine it had any kind of occupants for years. There was no way those footprints belonged to the previous occupants, which could only mean one thing…

  “Look there,” I said, pointing to the footprints. “This is the place.”

  “Those are definitely fresh,” Erik said as he crouched down over them. “Dust hasn’t had much of a chance to settle.”

  “Be alert,” Marcus said, moving his hand to his hip once again. “These footprints only point one way, which could only mean…”

  “Whoever left them is still here,” I said, finishing the sentence for him.

  The three nodded. I sighed, turning towards the right doorway and began to lead the others. I made sure to look around and noticed that the footprints were getting clearer as we walked into a hallway, leading to a set of stairs. We made our way up and stopped before entering a room filled with multiple built-in walls that would’ve been used to separate cubbies in an office.

  “Fuck,” Erik said, looking around at the room.

  “If anyone’s in there, they got plenty of hiding places,” Marcus said, running a hand through his hair.

  “Arm yourselves,” I said, pulling out my own handgun and pushing the safety off. “This could very well be an ambush.”

  The three nodded, taking out their own weapons and when I was confident we were as prepared as we could be, I led the group inside. It was quiet and I couldn’t see any sign of activity in the room. We began to explore, staying together as we walked through the room. I frowned, wondering if we had been wrong, if this wasn’t the right place. As my mind began to question the location, I heard one of the men curse under his breath. I turned, looking to see what he had found and wished I hadn’t.

  Another two bodies.

  These two bad been butchered.

  I leaned on my knees, feeling like I was going to be sick. There was barely anything left of the body that was recognizable and I glanced over at the others, seeing that they, too, were disgusted from the sight. Whoever had done this had not been gentle and this was definitely another warning. As if the confirm my thoughts, I saw the same message written above the body in blood and shook my head.

  “They’re fucking playing with us,” I said, not bothering to hide the growl of frustration.

  “What now, boss?” Erik asked.

  “Let’s get outta here,” I said, turning towards the exit. “This is just the same as last ti—”

  “INCOMING!”

  I wasn’t sure which of the ex-Marines had made the call, but I knew it was Erik who got a hold of my jacket and started to pull me out of the line of fire as a series of silenced gunshots began gasping a short distance away. I cried out as sudden pain seared through my arm and I glanced down, seeing that I had been shot. To the right of where we’d been standing, three men had begun to take fire. My eyes widened at the sight and I looked to the other three.

  “TAKE COVER!” I called out, taking cover as I looked out from my hiding place.

  Shots began to fire, not all of them silenced this time, and I watched as the three began to return fire. I hadn’t had a chance to see them even retrieve the small automatics that had been tethered at their backs, but in an instant of near-synchronized perfection they were armed and ready. The bursts of fire came in tight, practiced groupings—the clusters of Brr-brr-brrap! Brr-brr-brrap! exploding out in counts of three followed by a one-count before starting over again—and found their targets before I’d even managed to spot one. Despite not knowing where to even begin shooting, I hurried to draw my own nine-millimeter and began surveying the area for anybody that the three hadn’t already shot down. On two occasions, I’d started to get a bead on one of the firing Carrion members, only to have them stagger back and fall under a fresh burst from one of the three ex-Marines.

  I was about to resign to not getting a single shot off when I spotted a dark mass, ducked low and sprinting on wobbly legs, as it worked its way to the other side of the room for a different vantage point. Noticing that the three’s fire was still focused ahead of us, I took the initiative and fired after the bogey—tailing him with three rounds before finally planting the fourth into his left temple.

  The thud of his body seemed to cue another Carrion Crew member who’d been hiding behind a stack of discarded filing cabinets to make an appearance. I put a round between his eyes and, more feeling than seeing the three sets of eyes from my “escorts” appraising me with sincere admiration, I smirked, glad that I had taken Danny up on target practice the other day. I watched with growing relief as the other two were dealt with by the others. I stayed crouched as I glanced around the room, wanting to make sure there were no others hiding.

  A few more Brr-brr-brrap!s later and everything fell once more into silence.

  Gun fights, I marveled, were rarely as cinematic as people tended to think. The only time they seemed to last more than a few seconds was when everyone involved was a shit shot.

  “Status?” I called.

  “All clear,” Erik said as he moved out of his hiding area.

  With the threat taken care of, I slid out as well and winced as I moved my gun back into the holster at my chest. I had completely forgotten I’d been shot and as I glanced down, I saw the growing moisture forming through my leather jacket.

  Well, shit!

  That couldn’t be good.

  I blinked a bit, wondering when the room had begun to spin.

  Had it ever not been spinning?

  “Boss?” a distant voice called out to me. “Hey, boss, you—”

  I wanted to say something somewhere in the vicinity of bold or brave. I wanted to be calm, cool, and collected; to express solidly a need for medical attention—discreet, prompt, and affective medical attention—and to do so in a way that would inspire confidence and pride from these three ninja-vampire-badasses.

  I wanted to say all of those things.

  What I heard myself say, however, was, “Fuuccckkkk…”

  ****

  I’d been here before.

  I’d be here again.

  On my old bike, a toss-away Honda with a clanking exhaust and worthless shocks, and peaking the needle. It still wasn’t fast enough. Piece of shit was never that fast to begin with, but on the night I needed it to be even halfway decent it was a miracle I got it over fifty.

  Not that it matters.

  I didn’t get there in time.

  And I never would.

  Blacktop pavement. Blacktop sky. Even the edges of my vision were going tar-black; tears streaking the only thing that wasn’t black: the flashing blues and reds tailing me.

  Cops.
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  Fuck them.

  I might’ve been inching along at a pitiful and painful sixty-three, but they’d still never catch me. Not on that night. And not on any of the times I came back to it.

  Sixty-three miles-per-hour…

  I told myself I might’ve made it if I’d reached sixty-five, but really I was lying to myself. Best case scenario: I might’ve wound up watching it happen. Still, I told myself—as I’d keep telling myself—that I could’ve done something.

  Sixty-three miles-per-hour…

  I knew that because of the pursuing officer who’d tried to make the speeding charges stick. He’d said I was doing sixty-three in a thirty-five. He’d said I’d run stop signs, screamed through red lights, endangered other motorists, and even nearly run down a pedestrian making use of crosswalk. He’d said all this while I watched a mortician’s gurney roll on squeaky wheels from my home; a round, familiar bump swelling upward at the halfway point. I remembered thinking that she always looked better on our bed and under our sheets, but the sight was oddly serene all the same.

  Then I caught sight of a few red dimples as they kissed the bleached whiteness of the sheet and began to grow, expanding across the clean cover and staining it. Then I was screaming, shrieking in blind, raw terror, and clamoring to make it to her side even as they were hoisting her into the back of the…

  … the back of the…

  Christ!

  Somebody’d called it a “meat wagon.” They hadn’t known I’d heard, but they’d called it a “meat wagon”…

  It took me a long time—too long—to realize I was being held back; held down; held away from going after her.

  Then, assuring them I was fine—“I’m good. I’m cool. I’m… I’m cool.”—they let me up again, loosing me onto a world that wasn’t quite level; let me stand up on a ground that wasn’t quite flat. In my mind, I could still see the spreading stain across the plain white sheet of my life, and standing seemed downright impossible.

  Then the cop said “sixty-three” again.

  He said “sixty-three,” and I punched him.

  I heard “sixty-three” echo in my mind, watched the words marry the vision of the spreading stain, and suddenly I knew—fucking KNEW!—that if I could turn that cop’s face into hamburger I might turn the clock back a few minutes and coax that fucking Honda to do sixty-five, maybe even seventy. If I could just beat every last “sixty-three” out of the face that had been assigned to the badge and gun I might never have to see those stains at all.

  Then I was being held again. Then I was being beaten.

  And—sweet Jesus!—nothing had ever felt so goddam good in all the world!

  Then, too soon for anybody’s liking, some cop with an actual brain between his ears tore his buddies off of me, reading them the riot act about the scene we’d all just rolled up to—“Chris’sakes, you assholes! That’s the man’s wife! His wife! And, in case you fucking nitwits can’t see for shit, either, that wasn’t a Thanksgiving dinner she was carrying in her belly, either! Get the fuck off him before you get the whole force sued!”—and I was alone with nothing but the emptiness.

  The emptiness and…

  And a voice.

  The voice!

  Over the din of everything else, I heard my name.

  “Hey! HEY! Jace? Jason Presley? That you, you son-of-a-whore?”

  None of the cops seemed to notice the random figure standing amidst the chaos until they all heard that last part.

  I guess they figured very few people would be throwing around words like “whore” in the middle of a scene like that.

  But then, just like that, they were all looking.

  I was a bit late to look, and maybe that’s what saved my life.

  Suddenly, Mister “Sixty-Three”—likely trying to make up for his fuckup—was coming at me like a bullet.

  No…

  Not like a bullet. I suppose it was the bullet that was coming at me like a bullet. The bullet was faster. Of course. Cop could’ve been an Olympic runner—could’ve been running sixty-three miles-per-hour—and he still would’ve been too damn slow. But the sight of all that uniformed authority barreling at me gave me a start; nearly knocked me right on my ass without laying a hand on me. And that was how a shot that should have built a lovely little retirement home right in my heart was, instead, forced to settle in the meat of my shoulder a few inches off.

  “T-BUILT SENDS HIS CONDOLENCES, PRESLEY,” the shooter had cried out at me as he was dragged away towards a flashing Cruiser. “THE CROWS IS DEAD! LEARN IT, KNOW IT! THE CROWS IS DEAD, PRESLEY, DEAD! THE CROWS… IS… DEAD!”

  Turning away from my would-be murderer, I watched the “meat wagon” holding everything I’d known as my life pull out and begin to put distance between us.

  “The Crows is dead…”

  “The Crows is dead…”

  “The Crows is…”

  The Meat Wagon’s brake lights burned, it rolled to a lazy stop at the end of the road. There, seeming to tease me, it lingered—it’s right blinker winking knowingly at me—and it finally turned and vanished into the night.

  There, at the end of the road, standing where the “meat wagon” had been waiting a moment earlier to wink at me, her ghost stood.

  She stared back at me.

  She held her round belly in one hand, supporting its great weight and all the potential it represented.

  She waved—a casual, lazy gesture aimed more towards the home we’d built and everything we could have had than at me.

  She stared back at me… but she did not smile.

  There’d be time enough to smile at me from the end of the road in the years to follow. But nobody smiled on the night that they died.

  Nobody.

  “The Crows is dead…”

  “The Crows is dead…”

  “The Crows is…”

  “Jace…?”

  “Jace!”

  A familiar-yet-distant voice rang out and I tried to turn away from it. I just wanted to sleep more, to enjoy the peace the darkness brought for me then. Apparently, the voice hadn’t gotten the memo and I felt myself being shaken.

  Dammit.

  Guess I’d have to sleep later.

  I blinked a bit, glancing into the worried eyes of Mia and immediately, I was awake and alert. I glanced around, looking around for any sign of danger only to see Danny and Erik standing behind Mia. We were at the condo and I frowned, trying to remember how I’d gotten back here.

  “What… what happened?” I asked, looking back at Mia.

  “Your dumb ass got shot is what happened!” she said, shaking her head, her face still twisted with worry.

  “More like ‘pansy-ass,’ if ya ask me,” Danny said, poking at my arm.

  I winced as a bolt of pain shot through my arm and I glanced down, seeing a white bandage wrapped around my bicep.

  Oh yeah.

  I had been shot, hadn’t I?

  Last I remembered was taking out the three men who’d been shooting at us and then…

  “I passed out?” I asked, glancing over at Marcus, the only one who’d been with me at the time.

  “It happens,” he said, though it felt more like a statement made out of pity. Seeming to sense that I’d heard it that way, he clarified with, “You did lose quite a bit of blood, in your defense.”

  “Nice save,” I grumbled.

  “‘Cuz ya worked yerself too much after gettin’ shot, ya dumb ass! That, of course, is why I sent the others with ya,” Danny said, shaking his head.

  “I couldn’t have them do all the work,” I said, wincing at how defensive my tone had grown.

  “You dumbass!” Mia said, narrowing her eyes at me. “That’s what having others there with you is for! For support!”

  “Right, sorry,” I said, nodding in understanding.

  Mia was right, and I couldn’t deny it. The three would’ve easily taken the other man off and I’d pushed myself too hard after being shot in an effort to having
them not do all the work. It wasn’t a one-man job and they’d been there for that exact purpose. In helping me, especially if any of us had been hurt in the fight.

  “Tomorrow I’m sending more men with ya, including Marcus and the other two,” Danny said, shaking his head. “An’ I’m comin’ along too.”

  “Huh? What for?” I asked.

  “‘Cuz I can’t trust yer dumbass in not doing somethin’ stupid again,” he said, shaking his head. “So I’m gonna go and make sure ya don’t.”

  “Thanks again, Danny,” Mia said, turning away from me, sliding out of the bed towards Danny and Marcus. “And it was nice to meet you, Marcus.”

  “Nice to meet you too,” Marcus nodded towards me. “Make sure he takes it easy tonight, Danny and I will come get him tomorrow.”

  “Come get me?” I asked.

  “Ye’re damn right! Ye’re ridin’ wit’ me tomorrow,” Danny said, offering a big grin. “See ya then, boss!”

  “Hey! Wait!” I called after him, but all to no avail.

  I watched Mia see both Danny and Marcus out. I glanced down, deciding there was no point in fighting how things were going. A moment later, Mia had returned to the room and was sitting back in bed next to me.

  “Jace, you really can be an idiot sometimes, you know that,” she said, sighing softly.

  “Sorry,” I said, glancing down, feeling ashamed.

  “Be more careful, okay?” she said, moving her hand to my arm. “And you’re staying in tomorrow.”

  “Does that mean you’ll pamper me?” I said, grinning wickedly.

  “Nope, Danny is actually dropping Candy off and her and I are going on a girl’s day,” she said, grinning coyly back at me. “But I’m sure Danny will help anyway he can.”

  “Help in being a pain in my ass, maybe!” I said, pouting. “Come on, Mia… stay home with me, please?”

  “Nope! This is your punishment,” she said, smiling wickedly.

  “You are a wicked woman,” I said, not bothering to hide the smile as I said it.

  “How’s your arm?” she asked, running her hand gently over the bicep.