Green Ice: A Deadly High (23 page)

“Where are we headed?” Jorge gasped.

“Any place but here,” Mancini sighed. He slid alongside the Thunderbird, glancing up the street the way the vehicle faced. “I can’t see any movement up ahead; the direction the shot came from.”

“Why are we going that way?” Jorge asked, shimmying behind Mancini.

Mancini turned his head. “You said that crowd from the bar is headed after you. They’ll be following from the other direction, Jorge. Do you want to head straight back into their open arms, you dumbass?”

Jorge pulled a pained expression and shrugged.

“There has to be some working vehicles parked up around here someplace,” Mancini said.

“What about the other two?
Aren’t we going to wait for them to come back here?”

“No time,” Mancini huffed. “They had their chance.” He moved quickly from the cover of the Thunderbird, stealthily
zigzagging in a hunched motion, keeping an eye on the building’s windows along the street ahead.

Jorge groaned and followed Mancini’s path.
Mancini looped around in an arc, ducking into the cover of the shadows of the first side street on their left. He stopped when he reached the building at the corner of the main thoroughfare. Holding his handgun pointed to the ground, he peered around the corner, still wary of a hidden shooter laying in wait in one of the buildings in front of them. Jorge tagged along behind, not sure how to move but still keeping an eye out for any armed assailants up ahead. He took a glance back behind them and performed an unintended double-take.

“Mancini,” he hissed. “Take a look behind us.”

Mancini turned his head and glanced back down the main street. Around two dozen shambling figures roamed the width of the road, heading towards them.

“Looks like your bar crowd have our scent,” he whispered. “They haven’t spotted us yet or they’d be heading our way at speed. Keep to the shadows and follow me.”

Mancini turned so his back was flat against the building behind him. The cool stone pressing through his shirt was a welcome relief in the blazing heat. Jorge slowly backtracked so he was against the wall alongside Mancini, facing the oncoming infected horde. Mancini slowly side-stepped, moving further down into the side street. Jorge followed suit. 

“Don’t make any sudden movements,” Mancini warned. “Once we’re out of sight of the main street, we need to move
, real quick.”

“Got it,” Jorge whispered
, keeping his eye on the slow moving figures, roughly thirty yards from their position.

Mancini briefly glanced at the small store fronts and private dwelling windows in the buildings behind him as he shuffled along the street. He remained cautious of a secondary attack from
the infected, lurking inside one of the structures to his rear. His main focus lingered on the blood encrusted figures ambling along the main street, drawing closer to his and Jorge’s position.

Mancini stopped moving when the leading infected male’s gaze drifted across the corner of the side street. The contaminated man
stood still and Mancini noticed horrific injuries to his throat and the right side of his face. He wore the remains of some kind of brown colored uniform, which Mancini didn’t recognize nor was concerned with. The main worry was if the guy had spotted them amongst the shadows. The infected guy’s ebony eyes seemed to drift over Mancini and Jorge as his head turned from right to left, scanning the area. Mancini briefly wondered how effective the contaminated people’s eyesight remained. Did they rely on scent alone?

The infected man in the brown uniform turned his head away from the side street and carried on shuffling forward. Mancini tapped Jorge on his thigh and motioned with his head to
continue moving alongside the building walls. Another fierce gust flicked a coating of sand through the center of the main street, allowing Mancini and Jorge a brief moment of cover.

“Okay, let’s move,” Mancini hissed and bolted along the
sidewalk, further down the side street. Jorge followed, moving awkwardly and lagging behind.

Mancini slowed
to a brisk walking pace when he decided he was far enough away from the main street. He glanced at the buildings on each side of the road, watching out for any stray infected or a gun totting human being. Jorge caught him up, breathing heavily and gasping in huge gulps of air.

“You’re out of shape, Jorge,” Mancini muttered without turning around. “Too much partying and living it up isn’t good for the body.”

Jorge mumbled something incompressible as he wiped sweat from his face and continued to heavily suck in the warm air. He wished he was relaxing on a lounger beside a swimming pool in Cancun or Acapulco, drinking cocktails and mingling with stunning bikini clad girls, the scenario he’d planned before the ongoing crisis. He wished he was anywhere but marooned in the hell hole of
Chorro de Arena.

Jorge struggled to keep pace with Mancini
, watching the back of the ex-Ranger’s long, blond hair sway in the breeze. He knew Mancini’s reputation in LA as a ruthless bastard and realized he’d have to precariously plot his actions if he was going to stay alive. Jorge turned back to take a glance back towards the main street and a sudden thought occurred to him. 

“Don’t forget about the cash in the trunk of that Thunderbird. We can’t just leave it where it is. Eventually, somebody will come through here and start rooting through the car, looking to loot it.”

Mancini stopped walking and spun around to face Jorge. “There’s more at stake here than you’re stolen booty, Jorge. I’m just trying to keep us alive right now. If we can, we’ll go back there and get everything we can out of the T-Bird, before we get out of here. But at this moment in time, I mean right here and now, we need to find a roadworthy vehicle or we’re going to become like those goons back down the street.
Comprende
?”

Jorge’s eyes bulged as he furiously nodded in acknowledgment. “Yes, yeah, I hear you,” he stammered.

Mancini turned and continued walking down the side street at a rapid pace. He turned and glanced back towards the main boulevard every few yards, checking to see if the infected were on their tail. Jorge followed, half running to keep up. The muscles in his thighs and calves ached and he longed to stop for a breather. The days when he was physically fit and active were long in the past. He nearly bumped into his accomplice’s back when Mancini abruptly halted in front of him.

“That could be our
way out of here,” Mancini said, pointing across the street with his handgun.

Jorge followed Mancini’s gaze and outwardly groaned when he saw what he was indicating to.

Chapter Thirty-Two

“They gone yet?”

Trey
turned his head and took a peek through the garage window behind him. He turned back to the gunman and reluctantly nodded his head. Mancini and Jorge had disappeared from view, scuttling away down a side street to the left of the garage.

The gunman, a rough looking thick set guy with a square, unshaven jaw and long black hair, clasped one hand over Leticia’s mouth and held a
Beretta M9 handgun to her temple with the other. He had the physical appearance of a Mexican but Trey recognized his accent as a drawl from one of the southern U.S. States. The three of them huddled near the back wall of the garage workshop, behind a pickup truck with its hood raised open.  

“Look, man, I don’t know what your whole angle is, but we’ve got no beef with you, so why don’t you just let us go, dude?”
Trey glanced at Leticia. Her eyes were wide in fear as she was entangled in the muscular and heavily tattooed arms of the gunman standing behind her. Trey’s eyes flicked to his own firearm and cell phone sitting on top of the oil stained workbench beside the gunman and Leticia.

The gunman shook his head. “Nobody is going anyplace,” he muttered. “Nobody moves without my say so.”
He followed Trey’s gaze to the workbench. “Oh, you want to go for that gun, don’t you, Sweetheart?” He licked his lips, relishing the challenge. “Well, go for it, if you think you’re quick enough.”

Trey would have loved nothing more than to seize his Heckler and Koch from the work bench and pop a round
right between the rough guy’s eyes, but he knew he wouldn’t cover the few yards separating them quickly enough to perform that particular task. He switched his gaze back to the gunman and noticed what he first thought was a smudge of oil below his right eye, was in fact a teardrop tattoo. Trey knew the symbol was a common ink impression for an inmate who has committed a serious crime. He felt his heart bang against his chest and his panic levels raised another couple of notches.

The big, tattooed guy tilted his head backwards, as though he was inviting Trey to try his luck at retrieving his firearm from the work bench. Trey sighed in defeat and slumped back against the side of the pickup truck
, which stood over one of the two garage inspection pits. The second pit was empty, except for a stack of tires beside the trench. Trey knew the guy was dangerous and wouldn’t hesitate in killing both him and Leticia, as he
’s
witnessed the shooting outside the garage a couple of minutes after Mancini left the scene to make his phone call. Two guys had bundled out of the garage in front of him and Leticia and the tattooed guy had simply shot the other man in the head. He’d swiveled around and pointed the firearm at Trey and Leticia then quickly ushered them inside the garage. After a quick body search, the gunman had relieved Trey and Leticia of their cell phones, cash and of course, Trey’s Heckler and Koch. The cell phones were immediately turned off and the gunman had been particularly impressed with Trey’s German made firearm. 

Trey
decided on an alternative tact. He’d attempt to talk to the guy, maybe he’d respond to some friendly banter.

“So…what’s your situation?” Trey inwardly winced after he’d spoken. He knew the question was lame.

“My situation?” The tattooed guy’s eyebrows rose then he emitted a wheezy snicker. “My situation is getting out of this shit hole town alive. There’s some fucked up shit going down around here and I’m getting the hell out. I didn’t come all this way to get attacked by those crazy sons of bitches out there.” He jutted his chin towards the garage’s front windows.

Trey
looked over the guy’s ragged clothes, which consisted of baggy, ill fitting denim jeans and a gray and black checkered shirt, with the sleeves rolled up to his biceps. The shirt looked like something Trey’s grandpa might wear.

“You on the run?”
Trey asked.

The guy returned a steely glare that Trey recognized as an offensive expression.

“I’m only asking that because we may be in the position to help you, man,” Trey quickly added, holding up his hands in a surrendering motion.

The gunman’s eyes flicked towards the windows once again. “Hush
, now,” he hissed. “There’s somebody else out front. Get down and stay out of sight.” He pulled Leticia down with him so they both sat in a crouching position, leaning against the rear wall.

Trey
moved away from the pickup truck and closer into the dim shadows beside the tool racks and work benches. The stench of old oil and gasoline burned in his nostrils as he hunkered down close to the back wall. He still could see out through the front windows and made out several figures shuffling along the main street outside. More than a dozen heads bobbed by the window, stopping to sniff at the wrecked Thunderbird parked at the sidewalk.

“It’s more of those crazy bastards,” the gunman whispered. “Don’t make a sound
or they’ll hear you.”

Trey briefly thought about hollering or hurling some of the spare tools at the windows to alert the infected gang to their position. Which was worse, facing the contaminated horde or held hostage by a
deranged and dangerous desperado? He quickly weighed up the situation and realized the gunman would probably have time to shoot both him and Leticia before the infected even found a way inside the building. He’d have to bide his time, for the moment.

Human shaped shadows ghosted slowly by the garage front windows and Trey tried to stifle his anxiety induced heavy breathing. The gunman kept his eyes fixed on the windows while Leticia shuddered in his arms.

They waited in absolute silence until the figures shuffled by and the bobbing shadows receded. Trey’s mind whirred, trying to think of a possible escape plan. Mancini was his only hope but had left the scene and didn’t know Trey was inside the garage.

“All right, it looks like they’ve gone,” the gunman whispered
, hauling himself and Leticia to a standing position. “What kind of condition is that T-Bird in out front? Is it drivable?”

Trey
shook his head as he also stood upright. “It’s totaled, man. I ran into a bunch of those infected goons further back on the road. The water pump hoses are trashed or some shit, I don’t know for sure. But it isn’t drivable unless we can fix it up somehow.”