Free City of Heretics by Heath Lowrance Page B

Crowe back in his seat. He handed a tranq gun to Chester, who took it with a sneer. They loaded them up.
    Crowe could see the speedometer over D’s massive shoulder. They hit ninety miles an hour, just coming around a wide curve, and the transport van was suddenly in front of them, doing about forty.
    “Do it,” Crowe said to D. “Just like you see on the cop shows.”
    “Oh yeah,” D said. “I always wanted to do this. Brace yourselves.”
    About five car lengths behind the van, he swung out to the left, ready to slam their left rear with the right nose of the Hummer. Crowe held tight to his seat.
    Right about then, their plans took a slightly unexpected turn.
    From the corner of his eye, Crowe saw a flash of steel through the trees off to the right, heard the deafening roar of a horn, and an enormous eighteen-wheeler carrying a full rig roared out of a hidden road and crashed full-speed into the side of the transport van.
    D slammed on the brakes, slid out of control off the road.
    Chester’s head smashed against his window and he dropped behind the seat, out of Crowe’s line of sight.
    They were spinning, but Crowe was peripherally aware of the terrible screech of shattered glass and metal and wood as the eighteen-wheeler squashed the transport van against the line of trees like a bug.
    And then they were hitting the trees themselves, only feet away. The airbags deployed, burying D and Chester, but the only cushioning for Crowe was the headrest in front of him. His head slammed against it and he dropped his tranq gun and everything went fuzzy and red.
    For what seemed like a long time, nothing happened. He could only hear a kind of dim ringing in his ears, and couldn’t get his head around what had just happened. An accident?  Where we in an accident?   And then, A semi… a fucking semi-truck just came out of nowhere...
    Chester was saying, “What the fuck?  What the fuck?” over and over again, weakly, but he sounded far away. D-Lux groaned, his huge fingers groping at the air in front of him.
    Crowe wiped blood away from his eyes with the back of his hand and pulled himself up from where he’d fallen on the floorboards. “Chester,” he said. “You good?”
    “What the fuck?” he answered. He was good.
    “D?”
    D turned his head to look at him, and his eyes were glazed. Crowe said again, “D?  You good, man?”
    He nodded, and Crowe became aware then of noise outside the Hummer, voices raised, people yelling, and a flurry of activity.
    At the same time he heard the crack of a powerful rifle shot, the front window of their vehicle shattered, and D’s head exploded all over him.
    Crowe dropped behind the seat, his hand instinctively going to the .38 in his pocket. Chester screamed something unintelligible and war-like, and before Crowe knew it Chester had bolted out of the Hummer and was firing like mad at someone. Crowe heard a volley of gunfire matching him.
    Chester was providing cover. Crowe was sure that wasn’t his intention, but that’s what the jack-ass was doing. Crowe peeked over the headrest.
    He counted seven of them. 
    One, a guy wearing a dirty yellow parka and snow boots, was firing a sawed-off shotgun at Chester, who was busy diving behind the tail end of the semi-truck.
    There was a younger man dressed all in black, with a long trench coat and long, unkempt black hair. He too, was shooting at Chester, with a long-barreled revolver.
    There was a muscular guy wearing a white tee-shirt and jeans a la James Dean. There was another, older guy with a red cowboy hat propped on his head. Another in a rusty metal mask. And two more in very ugly business suits right out of the mid-70’s.
    And Crowe found himself mimicking Chester, at least in his head.
    What the fuck?
    Five of them had guns, and were firing at Chester. From his angle, Crowe could see him crouched behind the semi, frantically reloading. He looked pretty panicked. Understandably.
    The two businessmen didn’t have guns.