Читать книгу Allied Zombies for Peace - Craig Nybo - Страница 31

Chapter 24

Schecky spotted a 1962 Impala parked on the side of the road. The car offered more than enough room for him to comfortably crawl underneath and wait out the storm. He pushed himself up to his haunches with his one good hand and glanced around, perched like a baboon, looking for the right moment to make a break for cover.

Most of the combat had broken out in the middle of the street with small skirmishes towards the curbs. He spotted hoards of parade spectators who had been unable to escape the area. People of all walks, families, businessmen in suits, children with toys and pennant American flags, stood huddled together in the nooks and stairwells of businesses banking the wide sidewalks. They had come for a show, and a show was exactly what they were getting.

Schecky broke into a low trot. His bad hand, a mess of coagulated scab tissue, ached with every step. He peeled to the left to allow a wide birth between himself and a pair of scrappers, a Vietnam vet and a hippie with horse-sized front teeth and tan skin. The veteran dominated the fight, delivering three calculated blows. Karate, Schecky thought, those war-pigs all know karate. But Schecky knew that the numbers were on the side of the NRPL. No amount of kung pow could compete against four or five on one.

He half ducked, half slid under the Impala, perhaps a bit too anxious. The cheese grater road rubbed through his silk shirt and bit into his chest and belly. He winced, forced to use his bad hand to push his body under the carriage of the Impala. With a little squirming and wriggling, he made it to cover and flipped onto his back. He positioned himself so he could watch the show from the street-facing broadside of his new hiding place.

He heard the clocks of leather-soled shoes coming from up the parade route. He craned his neck and spotted a police officer, clad in blue with an eight-point cap. The officer stopped near the Impala and swore to himself as he surveyed the carnage that was unfolding before him. He unsnapped the holster of his service revolver and drew the weapon free. A radio, clipped to the officer’s shoulder strap, clicked and the voice of another officer squawked through the tinny speaker. “Holster your weapon, Fern.” Schecky looked across the street for the source of the voice. A black officer stood almost directly on the other side of the brawl, holding a wieldy nightstick, drawn from a loop in his Buster Brown belt. The black cop held his radio handset and angled a stern look across the street at Fern.

Fern unclipped the handset from his shoulder and thumbed down the button. “Ain’t you lookin’ at what I’m seeing? It’s a battle zone.”

“How many times I gotta’ tell you,” Smash said, “The Serge said to contain the riot, but to do so without firearms. Until someone in this crowd starts smoking heavy iron, there ain’t gonna be no trigger-happy cops on my watch.”

“What do you call that pop goes the weasel hippie with the old glory pants?”

Schecky looked at his meaty hand and hissed out a little chuckle.

“A zip-gun. The little S.O.B. only had one shot. Now put your service pistol away.”

Fern complied, dropping his .38 into its holster and snapping the release shut. “Smash, if we get through this, you owe me drinks. And I don’t wanna go to that spook bar with the jungle music.”

“Watch your mouth, cracker.”

Fern laughed and drew a baton from a loop on his belt.

The fight between the veteran and the hippie with the horse-sized front teeth had spun out of control. The vet jammed the hippie down and kicked him in the head. Schecky could only imagine what the brain damage might have been if the veteran had been wearing combat boots instead of Tom McCann sneakers.

“Back down, cowboy,” Fern said to the vet. “As much as I want to let you keep bustin’ that piss-pot’s head in, I gotta ask you to stop.”

“Lousy pig,” Schecky said to himself.

The veteran looked at Fern and grinned.

“We got innocent people here; I don’t want you or any of your friends within ten feet of the sidewalk or I’ll be forced to retaliate.”

“You mean you ain’t going to stop me?” the veteran asked.

“I’m only here to contain the situation until more help arrives,” Fern lied; the truth was, there was nothing he, Smash, and the other handful of cops—whom Fern hadn’t seen since running into the fray—could do to stop the spread of violence. “Get out of the fight before it goes bad for you,” Fern said to the veteran.

The veteran coughed off a smokers laugh then ran back into the fight, plunging an elbow into a meaty hippie at the outer rim of the brawl as he entered the fray.

Fern bit down hard and shook his head. That damn commissioner Stillman had neutered the cops by cutting their presence at the parade.

The horse-toothed hippie pushed himself up onto all fours and vomited a stream of white bile and half digested sandwich onto the tarmac.

Fern winced.

The hippie rocked over to his butt and hugged his knees up to his chest. He looked over his shoulder at Fern, his face forlorn, beckoning.

Fern pointed to the pool of vomit and raised his baton. “You stay right where you are. When this storm passes, I’m gonna make you clean that up.”

The hippie hugged his knees up tighter against his chest and looked away.

Schecky bit down hard and imagined kicking brave officer Fern’s face in with a steel-toed boot. Maybe officer Fern would make the hippie clean up that little pool of vomit; but, if he could help it, Schecky would make it so that somebody would have to clean officer Fern off from the road as well. Pigs were just like baby-killers, always out for violence and subjugation.

Spilled oil, which had pooled under the Impala, soaked through the butt of Schecky’s American flag pants. He felt the slick stuff collecting in his crack. He wanted to roll out from under the car and take his chances with Fern, but he knew that he’d lose against the pig. It was okay; Schecky was resourceful; he would wait for the right opportunity, then he would go to the aid of his brothers.