Apocalypse - Keith R. A. DeCandido [12]
So he probably thought that he didn’t have to stop at a stop sign, either.
But the truck wasn’t slowing down.
Neither was the man in the gray suit.
Until he saw the large truck.
“Jesus Christ!”
Everything happened quickly after that. Angela couldn’t see anything except the back of the seat right in front of her. It was all sounds.
She heard a squealing noise.
Then she heard a sound like a hammer hitting a wall.
Then she heard a sound like crumpling paper.
Then she heard screams.
She also felt things: like she was on a roller coaster. She got bounced around the big black car.
No matter what happened, though, she made sure that she held on to the Spider-Man lunchbox.
And as she heard a screeching sound that was just like fingernails on a chalkboard only much, much louder, she wondered if she’d ever see her daddy again.
Six
Lloyd Jefferson “L.J.” Wayne had been arrested so many times that he could practically handcuff himself.
It was almost a weekly ritual. Either he’d get nailed for some shit he was involved in, or someone else was involved in some shit that the RCPD needed the 411 on, and they’d bust L.J.’s ass on some bullshit charge so they could get him to roll.
L.J., not being a fool, usually rolled. All part of the dance.
He knew he was small-time. L.J. liked it like that. Yeah, the cops’d bust his ass, but it was never for hard time. Shit, he’d only done gone up in the joint but once, and that was only six months.
Stick with the misdemeanors, a few cheap-ass felonies, and his black ass was home free. He made some good cash, kept a roof over his head, and was his own boss. Shit, he knew what times were like. He was sellin’ dope to white folks that didn’t have it as good as L.J.—losing their jobs and shit, buyin’ smack with their severance pay ’cause life was so fucked-up.
Today, though, today was no fuckin’ day to be rotting in RCPD’s cage, dog.
Today there was some serious shit goin’ down, and this was the last place L.J. wanted to be.
All day there’d been all sorts of weird shit happening. People stumbling around like they were in some drive-in monster movie shit or something, not sayin’ nothin’, just biting people.
At first, L.J. figured it was just some crazy-white-folks shit, right up until he saw Dwayne.
Dwayne was a punk who thought he was the big nigger on the block ’cause he’d done hard time as a juvie. Least, that’s what he said. L.J. didn’t buy that shit for a minute, but he let Dwayne talk the talk, long as he paid the cash money for the goods.
Today, though, Dwayne came stumblin’ up to L.J.’s three-card game. L.J. was a little light in the wallet, and it was the end of the month, which meant Junior Bunk was goin’ around makin’ sure everyone was all paid up in time for this month’s shipments. L.J. owed Bunk two large, which L.J. didn’t have on account of the fucking Colts losing to the fucking Saints, so he figured he’d take some money from some tourists. He set up a cardboard box on the corner of Hill and Polk Avenues, took out his lucky deck of cards that he stole off the newsstand at the bus station, pulled out three cards, and started shuffling.
So what happened? L.J. was takin’ some mad money from two dumb-ass white folks, including one motherfucker who thought he knew “all the tricks these people pull,” and Dwayne came up all quiet-like and bit Gomer and his wife and knocked down the cardboard box L.J. was using for three-card.
What got L.J. was Dwayne’s eyes. His eyes were dead. He was also pale and shit—his skin was more gray than brown.
Then Dwayne shuffled off, the white folks ran away screaming—with their money—and L.J. was left cleaning up the fucking mess.
L.J. saw more of this kinda shit for an hour, before one of his