The End is Coming

Chapter Forty-four

In the darkness—total darkness except for the headlights and the few working dashboard lights—he could feel Natalia’s right hand reach across him, searching his breast pocket for a cigar. “Lit?”

“Not with that auxiliary gas tank,” he told her, swerving sharp left, nearly piling up in a divider, the car bouncing away from it as he avoided a pile of cement blocks in the middle of the road. And suddenly the cavernlike underground drive was illuminated, an almost surreal blue wash of light, sirens loud in the distance behind him—more of the expropriated police squad cars. And there were single headlights too—motorcycles, he guessed.

Rourke stepped hard on the gas.

Beside him, the headlights of the police vehicles and the motorcycles growing fast now, Natalia had an M-16—she was leaning out of the passen-ger window— “Watch out when I run close to the tunnel walls!” He heard it, felt it—the pelting of hot brass against his bare skin, his hands, his neck, his right cheek.

A set of headlights behind them swerved mad-deningly to the right, a blinding flash in the dark-ness, a bright orange wall of flame, but punching through the wall—one set of headlights, then an-other, and then a single headlight—a motorcycle. The sidecar visible in the light of the fire was aflame, a man shape moving in it, arms waving, arms like torches, then the single headlight seemed to jump skyward as Natalia’s M-16 loosed a long, ragged burst, sidecar and motorcycle separating, crashing into opposite sides of the tunnel walls—flames. Two police cars, their Mars lights flashing blue in the darkness as Rourke took a sharp curv-ing right, police cars and motorcycles coming fast from his right flank as he passed another entrance into Underground Wacker.

The entire tunnel was washed in the blue light of the flashers now as Rourke made the Ford acceler-ate, swerving the wheel left, right, left again, evad-ing abandoned automobiles left everywhere in the narrow confines of the underground, dog packs running across his lights, yelping, snarling, some of the animals leaping upward as he passed them, fangs bared.

A massive animal—almost too large to be a dog, Rourke thought—it leaped from the hood of an abandoned car, Natalia screaming as he looked right, the dog half inside the vehicle, Rourke’s right hand snatching at the Pachmayr gripped butt of the Detonics, his thumb jerking back the trig-ger. He fired the pistol once, twice, a third time, point blank into the chest of the animal as it lunged for Natalia’s throat.

His ears rang with the gunfire, but the animal still moved, a low roaring gunshot, partially muf-fled, the animal slumping as Natalia pushed close to Rourke—her face normally had a paleness to it, an almost unnatural whiteness—what men an-other time would have called alabaster. But her cheeks were flushed bright red now—and her eyes were larger-seeming than he thought human eyes could be.

“That—”she gasped.

“Did he break the skin—at all—” Rourke shouted, not looking at her, swerving to avoid an overturned green dumpster spilling out from the sidewalk backing the underground entrances to buildings and restaurants.

“No—thank God—there—I said it again,” she laughed.

Rourke glanced at her, then back at the tunnel. It was coming into a sharp right—Rourke cut the wheel hard, shouting to her, “Push the dog out af-ter I finish the turn.”

He felt Natalia clinging to him as he cut the wheel all the way right, the Ford’s rear end fishtailing, Rourke’s hands moving over the wheel as he recovered fast, straightening out, the squealing of tires behind him, headlights dancing maddeningly along the tunnel walls in his rearview mirror. He felt Natalia moving now— “Heavy,” he heard her gasp, and he heard the car door open-ing, then after a moment slamming shut.

He looked across at her—one of the L-Frame Smiths was in her right hand still. It was her shot that had finished the dog, he realized.

The Detonics still in his right hand as he held the wheel, cocked and locked, Rourke hammered down on the accelerator. It was narrowing ahead, and pylons dotted the roadway, pylons that, under normal conditions at normal speeds would have made driving difficult.

Gunfire echoed from behind them—the police cars closing, and more of the motorcycles coming up in the rearview as well. The bullet hole spiderwebbed windshield, smeared with the blood and brain matter of the wild dog that had climbed onto the hood, the windshield wiper scraping screechingly across it—Rourke peered ahead.

Somehow he’d lost one of his headlights and the velvet darkness beyond the single yellowed beam was blacker still.