The Forsaken - The Apocalypse Trilogy: Book Two (36 page)

Driver pulled the car up to an intersection.
The Skyway ramps looped down from the east and west. Felon hissed
in the back seat. Across from them, Tiny spotted the Authority
Cruiser too. There were two uniformed Enforcers in it looking right
at the Nova.

“The car!” Felon grumbled.

“I reckon she caught their eye,” Driver said
patting the dashboard.

“Drawing attention,” Felon growled.

They watched the Enforcers lift a
radio-telephone.

A spotlight burned out of the cruiser, slid
over the car.

“Reading the plates.” Felon’s ire was
growing.

“I ain’t got none,” Driver chuckled.

“AUTHORITY!” boomed a mechanical voice. “Turn
your engine off and exit the car.”

“Do you think I’d draw attention to myself?”
Driver glared into the rearview mirror. “If I couldn’t do somethin’
about it.” The Texan hit the gas and the Nova’s tires screamed.

The acceleration pressed Tiny into his seat
as the car burned through the intersection sliding under the rusted
rear corner of a flatbed. They flew toward the Level Five Skyway
ramp. Sirens came to life behind them.

“Down to Zero!” Felon shouted.

“I figured a scenic route!” Driver chuckled
as he worked the gearshift. The car’s engine roared and the tires
squawked as they caught on the slippery asphalt. The Skyway incline
rose rapidly to forty-five degrees.

“The Nova ain’t one of them elevator cars,”
the Texan drawled. “She’s stylish, and she’ll run straight up a
tree.”

Sirens wailed behind them as Driver shoved
the Nova up the ramp with both hands, weaving in and out of slower
traffic—really pouring it on as they crested the top. The engine
howled at the wide lanes ahead and Driver opened the Nova up to
merge.

Because there was no night and day in the
City the Skyways were always crowded. The Nova tore into the thick
traffic with ease—still squawking through gears as Tiny watched the
speedometer hover at eighty.

Skyway 4 North ran twelve lanes across,
depending on cables and struts some forty feet below Level 5. It
was a distracting place with tons of traffic and lights and signs
warning of turnoffs and rest stations, turnpikes and merging lanes
and advertising coffee and hotels and Formalin. Tiny read somewhere
that designing the Skyway system to move the City’s 150 million
people around was considered a feat greater than building the wall
of old China. And he could believe it too. The roads swung and
looped and crossed. There were multilane and multilevel sections
too—and the traffic was relentless.

Driver wove and dodged keeping to the two
center lanes. The noise of traffic was overbearing—echoed and
magnified by the proximity of Level 5’s heavy bulk overhead.

“See,” Driver said searching the rearview for
Felon’s eyes. “I could paint her red with silver stars and leave
them fuckers in the dirt!”

Crunch
! The Nova suddenly bucked to
the right. Driver glared out his window. A heavy sedan had made its
way through the traffic. Inside fedoras were backlit by
headlights.

“Plainclothes!” Tiny shouted, reaching for
his gun. The nun shrieked.

“Well, all right,’ Driver drawled.

The sedan slammed into the Nova again. Metal
shrieked.

“My paintjob!” the Texan growled, touching
the wheel and tromping on the gas. The Nova lurched powerfully to
the left and locked fenders, shoved the other vehicle across a lane
until the plainclothes had to brake and do some fancy steering or
hit a truck from behind.

Driver swung the Nova back to the center
lanes.

“There!” Felon snapped and pointed over the
seat at a sign: Level 4 down ramp - six miles.

The Nova rocketed forward. Traffic flew past
the windows.

Tiny was watching the plainclothes car
keeping pace two lanes over and burning to catch them. Then he
spotted the marked car’s lights dodging through traffic behind
them. He swung his head to the other side. Felon was watching a
long black car with a dash light coming up that side.

“Fuck, Driver they’re all over our ass!”

Driver’s eyes squinted into the rearview
mirror, and he tilted his head and quickly turned to make the
count.

Glaring red taillights suddenly filled the
windshield. Driver braked. There was a loud bang and scraping sound
as the Nova slid right under the solid steel bumper of an Authority
Transport. Its big armored backside was blue with a thick yellow
stripe.

“Nice!” Tiny braced himself against the dash.
“They dropped back to seal us in.”

“You’d think so!” Driver bellowed. “Whoa
now!” He slammed on the brakes and revved the Nova’s engine tight,
started jumping traffic to the left. “We got to make that down ramp
pronto.” He watched the transport’s massive body slide across
Tiny’s window. Its driver suddenly poured on the fuel; its engine
howled keeping pace with the Nova.

“Fucker’s fast,” Driver said wistfully. “Be
fun to drive.”

Suddenly the rear window made a snapping
sound—and crackled.

“Gunfire!” Felon shouted.

“Bullet proof!” Driver winced, putting the
gas to the Nova. Tiny felt the car’s acceleration as they topped a
hundred miles an hour. The Nova shot across six lanes of traffic
toward the down ramp. Other cars were passing and moving that way
too.

The transport sped up as they passed its nose
and just brushed the trunk with its high front bumper. Then it
opened up with a nose-mounted machine gun. The Nova’s fenders
rattled and sparked with the onslaught.

“Kevlar fenders!” Driver reassured his
passengers. “They gotta try harder than that.”

There was a deafening boom and the Nova
rocked forward. The vehicle lurched like its back wheels were
airborne. Driver momentarily lost control and rear-ended a van but
he wrestled the car into trim. It was rocking like a spring was
broken. Driver glared into the rearview.

“Cannon!” Felon barked.

“You win!” Driver accelerated across the
final two lanes. He wove and swerved, ready for more cannon
fire.

And Tiny felt his stomach jump as the down
ramp collector lane suddenly dropped away to many street lit miles
of Skyway ramp. To either side of the ribbon of blacktop the City’s
lights burned. Interesting, yes, but the biggest thrill was the
traffic. Four lanes of cars and trucks hurtled down the
forty-degree downgrade.

“It’s like we’re falling!” Tiny said to
himself and smiled.

“Them too,” Driver hissed at the
rearview.

The transport was recklessly matching their
speed hurtling downward—on either side of it, Authority cruisers.
Tiny knew the sedans would be back there somewhere too.

“Plan?” he yelled. There were more cars to
either side.

The Nova continued to weave. “I was
rememberin’ a dirty stock car driver!” Driver shouted. “See—I
thought it was dirty at the time—cars had bunched up to win a race
and one fella got creative.”

The Nova squawked and lurched between a pair
of slower moving cars ahead. Driver floored it and shot down the
ramp toward a knot of cars past them. He gunned the Nova up to a
sedan and hooked his chrome bumper in the car’s rear left wheel
well. He hit the brakes and then tramped on the gas.

Tires squealed as the sedan fishtailed to the
left into a van. That van rammed the car ahead of it—which hit
another. The van continued to slide, rubber and engine screaming.
But the incline was too much and the vehicle shuddered and rolled.
It started over sideways—but its front bumper hooked another car
that careened to the left, and the first sedan suddenly went end
over end, sparks flying.

Driver gunned the Nova, breaking and
alternately gassing the engine. Tiny grit his teeth as the Nova
roared through an opening. A van flipped into another car that
lurched across two lanes and almost hit the Nova’s tail before it
lodged under the transport’s front wheels. A flame of sparks
started. The transport was three tons of armor on tall wheels. It
tipped nose down and couldn’t steer. The front tires turned wildly
and one broke off.

Tiny watched through the rear window as the
transport started to tumble. Cars behind it flipped, and rolled,
were crushed by the mammoth vehicle or knocked off the ramp.

The salesman clapped Driver on the back as
the behemoth rolled over cars ahead and then slid and bucked over
the cruisers. Lights were flashing; sparks flew. Heavy metal
slammed. The Skyway shuddered under the Nova’s wheels.

Driver gunned the engine and the car whipped
to the bottom of the hill away from the carnage rolling, smashing
and burning behind them. The Nova’s tires squawked and the
undercarriage thumped at the bottom of the incline.

Driver eyed the wreckage behind him before
turning the Nova toward Skyway 3 down ramp.

“See that worked well,” he drawled, throwing
a smile at his companions.

50 - Moneylenders

No one would ever convince Able Stoneworthy
that this wasn’t an army. The fact that the force consisted for the
most part of walking dead somehow increased its potential for
violence. It was terrifying to behold.

Captain Jack Updike stood beside him beaming
joyfully at the ranks of dead soldiers. They had come from the
villages and towns where they’d awaited this call to arms. For
decades, rumors had circulated about settlements for the dead, and
the coming conflict and thousands came from all over Westprime to
see if it were true. They carried weapons of every make and
antiquity, with the addition of relics like sword and spear that
gave the dead army a look of gothic terror and epic
undertaking.

Stoneworthy was still getting his bearings.
He and Updike had just returned from their visit with the mayor of
The City of Light. A little more than twenty hours had passed since
they first met.

Their trip from the airport had been
uneventful. While the limousine threaded its way over the busy
Skyways, Updike radioed ahead. They exited the City and some ninety
miles into the countryside they reached the glass towers of the
Rebirth Foundation. Updike left him in the care of doctors with the
assurance that he would return for him. The living and dead
physicians began Stoneworthy’s treatment immediately.

He soaked in chemical baths while being
probed with questions by technicians before being transferred to an
operating theatre. A repair team set to work. Broken ribs were
inspected, trimmed and screwed into place on a plastic sternum; his
skin was cleaned; the wound site was filled with a flesh-colored
caulking and heated; and the ragged edges were heat-sealed with a
flesh-toned plastic. After four hours under the knife his chest
looked “healed” despite some discoloration.

Stoneworthy was awake during the procedure
but felt no anxiety. His pain-free state allowed him clarity of
thought and calm that he had yearned for his entire life. He was
not displeased with the “afterlife” he still had in him.

After the treatment, Stoneworthy experienced
tremors of sensation ranging from a mild tickling at the small of
his back to prickly heat over his left arm. He felt strangely
energized. A doctor assured him that the sensations would vary
randomly until his body got used to its new state.

“Afterlife requires no sleep, for reasons we
do not yet understand. We do recommend an enforced period of
relaxation. Your mind will not wear out, but your body will.” He
also reassured Stoneworthy that the psychiatric tests performed
indicated that he had lost none of his higher brain function.

Updike had arrived in his room after
midnight. The man’s big frame and powerful features were electric
with purpose. He wore a tight-fitting uniform of military cut with
clerical collar: it was dark green, with brown boots and a peaked
hat over his stiff gray brush cut.

“My brother,” he said. “You look better.”

“Thank you,” Stoneworthy had replied. “I’m
ready to serve the Lord.”

“And you shall.” Updike grinned. “In fact, I
need you this night. Do you feel up to ministering? It is late, but
time moves past us. We must make our declaration of purpose to the
evil that controls this city. Now, is the time that the meek shall
inherit the earth.”

“I am ready.” Stoneworthy took his hand.

A black suit was brought to him, with
clerical collar and shirt. They took an elevator down to the
waiting limousine, this one bearing the Rebirth Foundation logo on
its doors. A dead man dressed in blue held the door for them. They
were soon speeding toward the City.

Stoneworthy knew that Mayor Gregory
Barnstable had ruled the City uncontested for fifty years. He was
an employee of the International Credit Co., as was the rest of
City Council after they determined it was insensible to waste
valuable resources on the electoral process. A company would be
foolhardy to invest millions in a candidate and then throw the
entire selection process to the unstable whim of the voters. A
state of undeclared martial law had been effect for years.

International Credit Co. held mortgages on
the City of Light and most of the populated property left in
Westprime. The man who held the office of Prime, Oscar Del, was the
company’s Chief Executive Officer and owner. Politicians, local
Authority Enforcement Services and the Westprime Defense Command
were his property. The Prime had appointed Mayor Barnstable many
decades before.

“The City donated money toward the
construction of Archangel Tower.” Stoneworthy pointed out. “Not all
things are corrupt.”

“The City bought a piece of the Tower.”
Updike frowned. “And I fear that Archangel has been poisoned by
drinking from such a wellspring. Does not the Prime use many
Sunsight floors?”

“How shall we strike at the heart of this
evil?” Stoneworthy’s mood had darkened.

“By striking where it lives.” A vein bulged
on the preacher’s forehead. “What is more evil than loaning the
poor money, only to charge interest on it? What is more evil than
the rich controlling what is God’s to control?”