Unarmed: A Post-Apocalyptic Thrill Ride (The Main Event Series Book 1) Read online

  Besides, if I turned myself in, I’d get the maximum sentence. Hundreds of thousands of people—in India and China too—saw me stomp the Horseman’s head in cold blood. And what was my excuse? A voice in the back of my head told me to do it? That was psycho stuff. Some quack would run a brain scan and claim that years of fighting had caused irreparable damage to my prefrontal cortex, or whatever the hell was the part of my head that governed morality. The prosecutors would show the jury the medical records about my “lack of a sufficient response to stress-inducing stimuli” and they’d get me locked in a padded room without parole for decades. I’d be on the first train to the crazy house—talk about a loco motive.

  But it’s not like I could outrun these cops. They were armed and had vehicles.

  My heart sank. I was a disappointment yet again. It was over.

  “I’m unarmed,” I said quietly.

  The cop in the rightmost cruiser opened his door. He got out, pulled his revolver, took cover behind his open door, and pointed the gun at me. The two others followed suit.

  The three guns were all pointed at my head.

  “I said I’m unarmed!”

  The first cop made a circling motion with his gun as if he were trying to site down the barrel, but couldn’t get control over his aim. Then he fired. The report echoed in my ears and the bullet struck the brick over my head and showered me with dust.

  I waved my hands.

  “What are you doing?” I said, “I’m unarmed!”

  The two other cops fired. The bullets whizzed past my ears. Their aim was just as bad as the first cop’s and one of the bullets struck the door behind me. There was a loud metallic thwap as the bullet ripped into the steel.

  They all fired again. Three more shots. All the bullets missed and the night was hazy with the fog of debris. Either they had graduated last in their class at the academy or something else was going on.

  My big toe tapped the pavement.

  “Practice the combo,” the voice said. “Two quick taps, a slight jerk to the left. Be quick.”

  I lowered my hands. My fists clenched. I was not in control.

  “No,” I said.

  I was going to get myself killed.

  Before I knew what was happening, I ran toward the middle cop. I was gangly, my limbs flailing, like some novice puppet master had my strings but kept jerking me too hard.

  I told my legs to tighten up, told my arms pump straight to back, but they didn’t listen. He fired at me twice, but missed again. Then my whole body launched at the open car door as if someone had tossed me against it.

  The whole time, I was sitting inside my own head watching my body do whatever the hell it wanted.

  I lowered an arm in time to keep my ribs from striking the glass and I hit the door with my shoulder. It closed on the cop with so much force, it was as if an alligator had chomped his body. The door bounced open and the cop crumpled on the ground.

  I stood and rubbed my shoulder. It hurt like hell. The cop moaned on the ground. It was reckless, but effective. I never would have thought of doing that.

  The other two cops whipped around and fired. But they were on either side of me and fired at each other. Talk about stupid. There was no way that anybody in his right mind would have done that. The bullets winged past me and struck the light bars and there was an explosion of plastic and blue light. They damn near blew each other’s head off.

  Suddenly, I was climbing up on the roof of the middle cruiser. I took three quick steps and leapt onto the roof of the leftmost one. The cop windmilled his gun around, but before he could take aim again, I spun around and kicked him in the face, the instep of my foot connecting under his jaw. There was a loud crack and he launched backward into the door of the middle cruiser and the passenger window shattered at the impact.

  The rightmost cop shot at me twice. Both bullets missed the mark and ripped through the leaves behind me. I leapt onto the roof of the middle car and then took another leap onto the last car as if I were jumping between platforms in a video game.

  The cop took aim and tried to keep his gun steady, but I pivoted my front foot so my heel was pointed at his head, dropped, planted my hand, and did a low spinning sweep kick as fast as gumball light and connected with the side of his head.

  He went down. His gun flew from his hand. I hopped off the roof, right down to the pavement, and ran to the curbed island where a baby tree had been planted.

  The gun was lying in the mulch. It would definitely come in handy. I went to slip it into my waistband, but suddenly, my hand jerked away and I tossed the gun toward the vehicles. It skittered beneath a white van.

  I looked at my hand. What the hell? If this was really happening, if I was really running from the cops, then I needed something to protect myself.

  My hand slapped me across the face. It was a hard hit and my cheek stung. The remnants of that concussion jostled inside my head and sent another wave of nausea into my throat.

  “You’re an unarmed combatant,” the voice said. “Those are the rules.”

  I stood there, stunned. I flexed my fingers. In, out. Then one by one. I had control again. Behind me, the cops were groaning. As soon as they regained their senses, they’d be radioing for backup. I had just attacked three officers of the law who had recklessly fired at me. And yet none of their bullets had hit me. Nothing made sense.

  Maybe the Horseman had knocked me out. Maybe I was back in the ring, lying there unconscious, all of this a bad dream. Maybe I’d wake up in a hospital bed somewhere, my perfect record broken.

  I’d take it. I’d give up all my records to be free from this nightmare. I pinched my arm. There was a tiny prick. If this was all a dream, then it was the most realistic one I’d ever had.

  The most sadistic one too.

  I remembered the phone call. I remembered my father’s face as he put the cellphone to his ear. I patted my waistband. The phone was gone.

  I found the cellphone lying by one of the cops. He was out cold.

  I stooped to pick it up and looked at the history. The number didn’t have a name in the contacts but it said, “Virginia.”

  I didn’t need a name. I recognized the digits. It was the number for a landline I had memorized all the way back in junior high.

  Sirens broke the night. I still had to get downtown. There was no use sticking around. As bad as it was, this was a gift, a second chance. I’d worry about the consequences later.

  I slipped the phone into my waistband and turned my foot and touched the pavement with my toe as if I were testing the water.

  It didn’t tap.

  I took a tentative step toward the parking lot and then I ran like hell.

  Boss Two - The Blast

  Chapter Seven

  I ran between the cars, looking for my father’s pickup. It was a late 90s Chevy, red and rusted around the wheel wells, the hood a dull matte finish from countless layers of spray paint. He had bought it for my mother about twenty years ago. At the time, she was working as an assistant in one of the pop-up dialysis centers at a Bedford County Hardee’s. “In Congress,” the first words of the Declaration of Independence, was scratched into the paint on the passenger door. You couldn’t miss the dumb thing. It stood out like a bloodshot eye in a press conference.

  And yet I couldn’t find it. I ran down one row. And then down the next, tiptoeing to keep the gravel from cutting up my bare feet. We had driven to northern Virginia from my childhood house in the Blue Ridge Mountains, the ranch where my parents still lived—together I might add, a remarkable feat given their history and the disintegration of the rest of the town.

  After Mikey’s funeral, I had spent the entirety of the last week with them. We had done a whole lot of nothing on the back porch, just enjoyed the October breeze and reminisced about my brother’s antics. All week, I had subsisted on a steady intake of my father’s moonshine from a mason jar, not enough to get drunk, just enough to wet my lips and keep my head from sinking into darkness. />
  It drove Brian nuts.

  Then this afternoon, my father had driven Brian and me up to Fairfax for the fight. It was about an hour and a half. The leaves had turned golden red and the hills along Route I81 rolled like fire, the roofs of the gas stations orange in their reflected glare. My father had dropped us off at the loop before going to park and I had no idea where the truck was hiding.

  The sirens kept getting louder. After about ten minutes, I found the truck huddling behind another larger pickup, this one black. My father’s truck was such a piece of shit that I to jiggle the door handle to get it open. Even though I had bought both my parents matching Mercedes for their sixtieth birthdays, my father still insisted on running this truck into the ground.

  I climbed in and turned the ignition. The radio came on first. It was tuned to the local variant of public radio, cranked all the way up so my father could hear it over the open windows. The truck coughed and then came alive, and I tore out of the lot.

  The fans were leaving the arena now. My tires squealed as I swerved around a gaggle of them and made a left toward the main road. The arena’s entrance had been cordoned off for the fight and a line of security personnel were standing guard at a semicircle of cones. I took the curve fast, the old tires screaming, and they jumped back.

  I made a hard right onto Braddock Road.

  “…we’re still monitoring the international response to the President’s words this evening,” the radio announcer was saying. “At tonight’s rally in Phoenix, he said, ‘The United States will respond to North Korea with fire and brimstone, the likes of which history has never…’”

  I turned off the radio. My dashboard glowed red and blue. I glanced in my rearview. Five cruisers were flying down Braddock, getting larger. Two of them turned into the arena and the other three cut ahead of the exit and chased me.

  I floored the gas. The headlights chased my taillights. Braddock Road was mostly clear, but in about two miles, I would have to turn onto Route 66, the main artery for Washington D.C. It was traffic liability even on the holidays and at midnight. Route 29 would be better, but it was littered with traffic lights, and I thought it best not to play red light mayhem.

  I knew these streets pretty well. In high school, my friends and I would borrow this very truck and drive up here to mock the rich half of Virginia. We’d get take-out—Mexican and Vietnamese and Afghan, the stuff we couldn’t get back home—and cruise through the expensive neighborhoods and make fun of the matching Mercedes. The irony was not lost on me.

  The needle in my speedometer touched 65, 70, 75. I whipped into the left lane and pushed it past 80, the whole truck shuddering.

  The cruisers followed. They came up fast, their lights growing larger and brighter. I was pretty sure those cruisers had supercharged engines and there was no way I could out run them.

  A shot rang out and my side mirror exploded. The shards whipped behind me as if caught in a wind tunnel.

  “Jesus!”

  What was with these cops? They had no regard for the rest of the traffic. There were more shots and my back window blew open. Safety glass pelted the dashboard and the back of my head.

  I roared past a compact car in the right lane. One of the stray bullets hit its rear tire and there was a screech and it veered onto the shoulder and crashed into the embankment.

  This was not protocol.

  I glanced behind me. One of the cops was leaning out his passenger window, trying to get a better shot. I took my hands off the wheel. I wiggled my fingers. I was in control. It was all me.

  Where was that voice? Where was my stunt driver?

  I had no choice. It was evade them or go to jail with suicidal regret. I pulled my seat belt across my bare chest and slammed on the brakes. My truck screeched and I lurched forward. The cruiser charged behind me. At the last second, it slammed on its brakes and skidded toward me. Fifteen feet. Ten. There was a crash, a puff of metal and plastic, and the cruiser jolted forward.

  The cop behind it had rear-ended it.

  “Got you,” I whispered.

  Two down. I floored the gas and peeled my tires and pulled away. The third cruiser whipped around the crash and closed in on my tail.

  Up ahead, was the exit for 66. I took a hard right and careened down the exit ramp.

  So far, so good. It was open. I came off the exit fast and checked my blind spots and merged onto the highway, the concrete median and guardrails whipping past my window.

  With the windows broken, it was cold in the cab. Behind me, the cruiser followed, gaining ground, its headlights growing larger and larger in my rearview. The cop flicked on his high beams, trying to blind me.

  I blinked away the spots of light and darted in between the traffic, my truck nearly torquing with the effort.

  My phone dinged I pulled it out.

  An amber alert.

  I tossed it on the seat and looked up in time to see a solid wall of bright red.

  Chapter Eight

  “Shit.”

  A sea of brake lights. The highway was all backed up. I knew better, but had rolled the dice. A beetle crossing the road was enough to turn Route 66 into a parking lot.

  But it was too late now. I had two options: stop and turn myself in. Or head for the shoulder.

  The choice was clear. Those cops were so trigger happy that turning myself in might be a death sentence.

  I had to keep going. I yanked to the left and roared under the sign that said the entire highway would become an HOV lane during rush hour.

  I floored the gas pedal and made the shoulder my own express lane. Fifty. Fifty-five. Sixty. My mirrors rattled. The rotten bed in back trembled under the speed and my tires spat gravel and safety glass at the median and peppered the stalled cars on my right. The heads in the drivers’ seats turned and scowled. Some shouted. Some gave me the finger.

  “Sorry,” I said.

  The cop followed me onto the shoulder, his siren wailing.

  On my left, there were more bright lights. The Metro. The train ran between the two directions on the highway. It was coming right at me, blinding me. There was a whoosh as it streamed past my window, all the heads turned, watching the chase.

  Back on the right, the drivers were standing on their horns. A blaring ripple chased us down the highway.

  Ahead, was the exit. Two miles to go. But then I realized my mistake. Stupid, Jake, stupid. I had listened to my lizard brain instead of reason. My right side was a solid wall of traffic. There was no way to turn off, not unless these motorists in their Land Rovers with their flaring nostrils and shaking fists would give me room to cut over.

  My chest deflated. I slowed down. I shrunk in my seat like a third-day birthday balloon. There was no other choice. It was time to give in.

  The cruiser came up on my tail.

  Forty. Thirty-five.

  But then, out of nowhere, the sea of red brake lights parted. It was a gap to let me through. It was big enough for my truck, about a hundred yards from my exit.

  “What the hell?”

  The universe had granted me one last chance. I hit the gas and headed right for the gap. I yanked to the right, fish-tailing and clipping someone’s bumper, and cut across the three lanes of traffic.

  Behind me, the cop slammed on his brakes. He didn’t follow.

  I grinned in the rearview.

  “Gotcha!”

  And then I saw why the sea had parted for me. A white flash crossed my windshield. Reverse lights. Everyone was reversing. They were closing in on me, trapping me. My fellow Americans were doing their civic duty and upholding my namesake against all domestic enemies. The entire line of vehicles was reversing into me, like rats suddenly scared of a flame.

  They were trapping me.

  Chapter Nine

  I closed my eyes. Squeezed them. Thank you, America.

  But I wasn’t angry. I would have done the same. If some lowlife had zoomed past me on the shoulder with the cops following him, I would have would hav
e tried to help.

  Metal crunched. My truck skidded, pushed toward the cars behind me.

  I didn’t bother opening my eyes. Then the insides of my eyelids blazed red and veiny and they flooded with white light. Even with my eyes closed, it was so white it was blue, like a burst of flaming magnesium. The skin of my lids wasn’t enough. I needed a welder’s mask, maybe solar eclipse glasses. I covered my eyes with my hands, but it blazed through the cracks between my fingers and I had to turn my head away and bury it in the seat cushion behind me.

  A millisecond later, the flash was followed by a percussive boom. A grenade might as well have exploded beside my head. The boom sent a wave of energy through the air that made me more nauseous than the concussion. My remaining windows shattered and covered me with aquarium-blue pebbles of safety glass.

  The cab of the truck filled with a blast of hot air. All around me, the windows shattered, a successive breaking in a rush down the highway, like beer bottles dropped off an assembly line. Every car in front of me, still reversing, struck me next and drove me into the cars behind me and pinned me between their bumpers.

  Then everything went still. My head was spinning. I retched on the floor and wiped my mouth. I waited for the nausea to settle and then I raised my head and slowly opened my eyes.

  Purple spots danced on my vision, eclipsing everything. A pinkish light in the sky crept out of what was left of the whiteness of the blast.

  The night was as bright as day.

  Behind the purple spots, people climbed out of their cars. They climbed onto their roofs. They shielded their eyes and looked toward the city.