Green Ice: A Deadly High (33 page)

“
Quien es usted
?” the guy croaked. “
Que esta pasando
?” He was solidly built and wore a white string vest and striped short pants. He held a small wooden Billy club in his hands.

“You’re going to need more than that damn club, dude,” Trey muttered. “There’s one hell of a shit storm heading our way.”

“What did he say?” Mancini asked Leticia.

“He wants to know who we are and what is happening in the city,” she answered.

“Tell him to go back inside and lock all his doors and windows,” Mancini said, glancing over his shoulder. “Those goons are going to be on our asses any moment.”

Leticia conversed in Spanish with the old guy and he made surprised sound
ing grunts between her sentences. Mancini was keen to get going and not hang around the alley. Every moment they stood still was more ground gained by the chasing infected pack.

The old guy took a backward pace and gestured towards the open door in the wall recess. He grunted something to Leticia and repeated it to the others.

“He’s offering us a place of sanctuary,” Jorge explained.

Mancini was hesitant but the reverberating shrieks and howls from somewhere close behind changed his mind.

“Okay, we stay until they pass and then we’re out of here,” he hissed.

Leticia stepped through the doorway first and the others followed. The old guy closed the gate behind them and engaged the bolts at the top and bottom. He ushered them
through a paved yard, towards the back door of his small house, where a dim light shone from the ground floor window.

The back door stood open ajar and a thin ginger and white cat poked its head through the gap. The animal sniffed the air then turned and fled back into the house as the old guy
waved the party inside.

Leticia entered the dwelling first, followed by Trey, Jorge and Mancini at the rear. The old guy came into the room behind them and closed the door. They huddled further inside with their feet clattering on bare wooden boards. Mancini glanced around the
small, sparsely furnished room. An old TV set sat on a table, propped up by a packing crate where one of the legs had broken. The TV and table stood opposite a worn leather backed chair. A ceramic lamp without a shade sat on the window sill, dimly lighting the room.

“Tell him to turn off that lamp,” Mancini instructed Leticia, pointing to the window sill. “Those creatures seem to be able to home in on anything that
produces a smell or any kind of lighting.”

Leticia passed on the message and the old guy complied, blinking out the lamp and plunging the room into darkness.  

“I just hope we’re not making a big mistake by coming in here,” Trey groaned.

Mancini thought the same but didn’t say as much. “Let’s keep the noise down to a minimum and hope th
at bunch of freaks pass us by out there.”

The old guy muttered something in Spanish and Mancini resisted the urge to tell him to shut the fuck up.

“He says the news has been on the local radio that some sort of illness has taken hold of the surrounding area but the reports are very vague,” Leticia translated.

“All right
, but tell him to keep quiet for now,” Mancini hissed. He worried now the outbreak was out in the open, the military and law enforcement departments would be all over the city. They couldn’t hang around too long without being caught up in a quarantine situation.

They stood huddled in silence in the old guy’s living room, listening and waiting for any sounds of the infected horde.
A shrill shriek pierced the night air from outside the gate in the alleyway beyond.

The sound of the gate rattling in its frame caused Jorge to gasp aloud and flinch. He stumbled into Mancini, who propped him back upright again.

“Stay cool,” Mancini growled quietly in Jorge’s ear.

The sound of something scampering across the wooden floor alerted Mancini’s senses. He saw the silhouette of a cat appear on the window sill next to the lamp.

“Gus, Gus,” the old man whispered at the cat.

The cat responded with a yowl and brushed its head against the unlit light bulb on the lamp.
The heat from the bulb startled the cat and it leapt from the window sill back into the darkness, knocking the lamp from the flat surface.

Mancini held his breath for a fraction of a second before he heard the ceramic lamp shattering on the floor.

Chapter Forty-Nine

The shrieking and screeching sounds from the alleyway increased with fresh impetus after the lamp crashed onto the floor.
The old guy murmured under his breath and stumbled through the darkness towards a doorway leading to another room in the house. Mancini knew their cover was blown. They had to move to anyplace away from their compromised position.

Trey
moved to the small window and peered out into the backyard. He saw the silhouettes of shadowy figures appear at the top of the wall in front of the alley.

“They’re climbing over the top of the wall,” he hissed, turning his head back to the others. “We have to get out of here.”

“Where did the old guy go?” Mancini asked Leticia.

“I don’t know,” she whispered. “He said something about getting his gun.”

“It’ll take more than some old pop gun to stop those fuckers,” Mancini grumbled. “Let’s try and see if we can get out through the front of the house.” He led the way, stumbling through the darkness towards the doorway where the old guy had disappeared through.

Jorge immediately followed Mancini and Trey grabbed Leticia’s hand before they tagged along at the rear.
They padded slowly through a narrow corridor towards the front of the house. Screams and throaty growls echoed from the backyard as the infected closed in on the property.

The old guy emerged from a room to the right of the corridor, causing Mancini to flinch. He carried a flashlight in one hand and an old, long barreled revolver in the other.

“No good,” Mancini said, pointing to the pistol. “We have to leave.”

The old guy shone his flashlight towards the far end of the corridor, illuminating a wooden door, which Mancini presumed led out of the front of the house.

“We have to go,” Mancini repeated, pointing to the back door.

Leticia translated but the old guy shook his head and muttered a reply.
His eyes were wide and his face was fixed with grim determination.

“He says he is not leaving,” Leticia said. “This is his home and he is going to protect it.”

“Well, good luck with that,” Mancini hissed. “Come on, let’s go.” He pressed forward to the front door and heard the windows rattle at the rear of the house.

“Go, man,” Trey whispered. “They’re at the back door.”

Mancini continued as the old guy brushed by Jorge, heading in the opposite direction on his way to the back room. Leticia thanked the old guy for his hospitality as he swept by. The back door rattled on its hinges and they heard the small window shatter as they reached the front door. Mancini depressed the latch and opened the door a crack. He peered out onto an open deserted street, similar to the one where they’d abandoned the Thunderbird.

“All clear
out there,” Mancini whispered, turning back to the others.

The four of them instinctively flinched and ducked their heads when a loud booming noise reverberated through the corridor. Mancini saw a brief orange flash
of gunfire from the back room and heard the old guy yell something inaudible and several shrieks and groans from the enclosing infected.

“Let’s roll,” Mancini hissed and pushed his way through the front door.

The others followed through the doorway as another loud boom sounded behind them. Trey shut the front door once the whole party was outside the house and into the street. Mancini waved them forward. They turned right along the street and started running in a light jog.

“Sounds like the old guy is re-enacting
The Alamo
in there,” Trey said, jabbing his thumb in the direction of the house. 

“That
battle was when the U.S. was fighting off the Mexicans,” Mancini sighed.

“Whatever, man,” Trey whispered.
“Which way now?”

Mancini studied the street and tried to gather his bearings in relation to where the Thunderbird was parked.
“We need to try and backtrack somehow and hope the street is clear where we left the car. Trouble is, these god damn streets all look the same in the dark.”

“Do you have that other gun with you?” Jorge asked. “I saw you take two guns from that Sonny guy back on the roadside.”

Mancini shook his head. “I left it in the trunk of the T-Bird. And…no, I wouldn’t let you have it anyhow, Jorge.”

Jorge muttered under his breath and glanced back down the street.
He sweated heavily and his breathing was wheezy. “They’ll be coming after us soon enough. I don’t know how much longer I can keep up with this pace.”

Mancini turned to look at him. “I’m keeping to a slow pace so you can stay with me. Get your shit together, man
,” he growled.

“Where is everybody?” Trey sighed. “It seems like the whole population in this vicinity just disappeared, man. I thought we’d see some people out on the streets. So far, we’ve only met that kooky old guy, seen a few dudes before that road closed sign and a bunch of people in their cars back on the main highway.”

“They probably blocked this part of the city for a good reason,” Leticia said. “This may well be where the center of the outbreak is. That old man said he’d heard some reports on the radio. That’s why they tried to contain this area.”

“And we’re stuck right in the center of it all,” Mancini groaned. He noticed another darkened side street to their right. “Let’s try that route.
With any luck, it may take us back to where we need to be.”

Mancini
led the party on a right turn up the side street, which inclined slightly. A bar and a general
store stood on either corner of the road. Both establishments were dark inside, the windows covered with meshed wire grills. Nobody walked the streets and the shrieks of the infected from somewhere in the distance cut through the night air.

Trey turned to Leticia and flashed a forced smile, hoping to uplift her gloomy demeanor. He felt an emotion of impending doom wash over him and wondered if they would manage to even get out of this city, let alone make it all the way to La Paz further
to the south. The murky bar interior seemed to reflect his thoughts. He longed for a place full of life, banter and happiness but the bar was desolate and deserted, dark and gloomy with no merriment and nobody inside. Were they simply refusing to admit the inevitable and soon meet with a grisly fate or join the ranks of the infected creatures?

Trey
glanced at Jorge, shuffling along the street alongside him and felt like shooting him, several times over. Jorge and his cronies had single handedly managed to cause the whole disturbance and probably the deaths of countless people who didn’t have anything to do with the drug scene. Innocent people were being attacked by the infected and turning into monsters themselves. Trey thought Jorge wasn’t even showing any kind of remorse for his actions, seemingly only concerned with saving himself. He wondered what sort of gruesome end awaited the thief and drug trafficker, if and when the situation was finally resolved. A bullet in the head would be a too quick and painless death for that motherfucker.

Trey was no stranger to narcotics himself. He’d smoked a hell of
a lot of weed and snorted the odd line of wacky dust now and again, but he’d never indulged in anything too heavy and vowed never to try after witnessing the results of the green ice, which had been chemically enhanced to deliberately shoot the brain to shit.

Mancini led the way to the end of the side street but stopped in his tracks when the reflections of flashing blue and red lights blazed across the plate glass windows of the surrounding stores. He held up his hand in a stop motion for the benefit of the others behind him. Trey, Leticia and Jorge recognized the signal and willingly complied.  

“Cops,” Mancini hissed. “And it looks as though they’re heading this way.”

Chapter Fifty

“Why don’t we just go and meet up with them?” Leticia whispered. “The police might take us back to our car and allow us to drive away through the city.”