Dark End of the Street

His boys comin’ from the other bridge started firin’, all heaven and hell started breakin’ loose like that book in the Bible when the dang beast and the four horsemen and all them critters come barkin’ out from the center of the earth.

All Jon could do is cover his head and start prayin’ to E where he sat with the Lord way up high in a jumpsuit made of gold.

Ulysses Davis laughed hard from the top of the hill where he’d parked the Expedition. As soon as he saw the crew from the Sons of the South wearing night vision goggles and camouflage, he really started laughing his ass off. He smacked the steering wheel looking through his own binoculars and laughed a little more.

“You want to see?”

“Fuck ’em,” I said. “Let ’em play it out.”

“I tell you, Travers. This was one hell of an idea. What did you tell those boys?”

“Just told their commander that I knew where to find the folks who’d killed one of their finest men in arms, Bill MacDonald. Said those communists would be here in his state for a drug drop with a local gang of Jamaicans.”

“Jamaicans?”

“They needed an additional incentive.”

U shook his head and put down the binoculars. He took a big swig of water and watched the battle, sparks flashing from the muzzles of the automatic weapons. “Wasn’t that fancy with Beckum? Just told him that I’d sell your old tired ass out for a quarter.”

“How much, really?”

“I’m not sayin’. Let’s just say you were on special.”

We both laughed for a while and then he cranked the car and we started to pull away. For some reason, though, I decided to glance down the hill and maybe catch a bit of that fucker Ransom getting sliced in half. I wanted it. I did. But part of me also felt disgusted for following through on my fantasies. I’d killed those bastards, just as if I’d stalked them and knifed them in the gut.

We could only pray that the Sons of the South would take a hard hit for wiping them out. U planned on calling the police as soon as we got back on Poplar.

I couldn’t see much. As U turned the car and started to drive away, I saw more camouflage dudes running through a war that they thought they’d never fight. The chance for an actual mission had to have been irresistible.

One image did catch me, though. A person that sure as hell didn’t belong in the battle. A young girl was walking through the men – as if she was supernatural and impervious to bullets – head up and hands at her sides. Abby.

Chapter 61

U TOLD ME HE’D meet me at the base of the bridge after I grabbed Abby; so I bolted from his truck searching. I tried to keep my footing on the steep weedy hill with my boots while I watched about half of the Humvees load up with soldiers and peel out, high beams scattered under the bridges and over the darkened dirt road. But several others remained, waiting to be loaded with wounded men. Among them, I found Abby again, she was walking, but kind of stumbling, over the broken ground near the place where I’d found Clyde James. A million years ago.

I ran after her, my Glock tight in my hand. Safety off. Seventeen shots ready to go.

I called her name.

She seemed deafened by all the gunfire from a few minutes ago. She stared straight ahead, still wearing my tattered blue jean jacket, looking stubborn and unwavering past a bunch of bodies. One of the dead men raised his head.

It was Jesse Garon in a white suit with an older man with a beard. The man yelled off something, fired at two of the SOS soldiers, and dropped them both to the ground. The crack of his gun sounded like a breaking whip. After the shots, Garon and the man got to their feet, saw me pointing my gun at them, then looked to the north at a cliff and then south at four more SOS soldiers racing toward them.

They launched into a run back onto the bridge; Abby didn’t even break stride as I yelled for her.

She reached down to one of the dead soldiers, grabbed his handgun, and began chasing the man and Garon onto the darkened bridge.

After waiting for a break in the firing, I ran onto the old bridge. My feet thumping and nearly tripping over the old wooden slats. Brown water swirled several hundred feet below. Cars passed on the new bridge to the south. I could hear their engines buzz and the whoosh of water under me.

Minutes later, I found Abby.

Running from behind, I grabbed a good chunk of the jean jacket like it was a quarterback’s jersey and pulled her into me. She was so determined to track Garon and the man she hadn’t even heard me follow. Her breath was loose and ragged.

She grunted and fought, but I twisted her close, trying to catch my breath, and at the same time hug her. She continued to wriggle and hit and finally I had to pin her arms to her sides and said, “Slow. We got ’em. Slow.”

She slowed the wriggling, didn’t hit me again, and her eyes began to register a little less wild light through her scattered blond hair. To the north, the humpbacks of the Hernando-Desoto Bridge burned in broken patterns of small white lights.