Home Invasion - J. A. Johnstone [98]
“It still baffles me why they’re trying to take over the town.”
“I don’t know, but we’re going to stop them.”
Delgado flashed her a grin. “I share the sentiment, Chief, but not the confidence. We’re about as outnumbered and outgunned as anybody could be.”
“We need reinforcements,” Alex said, thinking about the people she most suspected of hiding guns from the FPS. “I think we’re going to have to split up, J. P.”
He didn’t like the idea, but she named half a dozen families in town and told him to go to their houses and see if they had any weapons.
“If this is war, then we have to start putting together a resistance,” Alex said. “Get all the guns you can, and people willing to use them, and head for the high school. If it hasn’t been taken over, we’ll use it as a staging area.”
Delgado nodded. “That makes sense, I guess. What are you going to do?”
“Scout out the station. I’d still like to get in there … if they haven’t taken it over already.”
“I don’t suppose it would do any good to tell you to be careful.”
“I think we’re well past that point,” Alex said.
“Better take it slow and easy,” Jack cautioned as Rowdy turned the pickup onto Main Street.
“Slow just means you’re givin’ the bad guys more time to aim at you,” Rowdy said. Before Jack could warn him again, he tromped the gas pedal.
The pickup surged forward, heading toward the municipal complex and the police station. Too late, the three occupants saw the heavily-armed men posted along the street to keep everybody inside and traffic at a standstill.
“Look out!” Jack yelled. “They’ve got guns!”
“So do we!” Rowdy let out a whoop and stuck his left arm out the window so he could blaze away with the pistol in that hand.
He wasn’t a very good shot with either hand, and his bullets went wild, ricocheting off the pavement. That was plenty to make the invaders return the fire, though.
When they got back in the pickup at Jack’s house, Jack had put Jimmy in the middle, even though the dispatcher was bigger. Jack wanted to be at the window so he could shoot if he needed to.
He needed to now. He put his left hand on Jimmy’s shoulder and pushed. “Get down, Jimmy! Get as low as you can!”
At the same time he stuck the other pistol out the window and started squeezing off shots. All that time he had spent on the firing range with Delgado paid off now. He saw one of the invaders spin off his feet, and another dropped his gun, clutched his shoulder, and staggered backwards as the pickup raced past.
“We’re runnin’ the gauntlet, boys!” Rowdy yelled. The pickup’s engine roared. Rowdy had the truck moving at eighty miles an hour down the deserted street.
The sheer audacity of it probably saved their lives. By the time some of the gunmen realized what was going on, the pickup had already zoomed past them, through the hail of lead criss-crossing the street. Jack heard some of the bullets thud into the truck, but the hits didn’t slow them down.
The police station came into view. Rowdy said, “Holy crap!” and Jack thought that was putting it mildly. A couple of big trucks were parked in front of the place, and there had to be at least fifty or sixty of the invaders waiting for them, including several manning something that looked like—
“Oh, my God!” Jack said. “That’s a machine gun! Left, Rowdy, left!”
Rowdy’s reaction time was the only thing that saved them. He spun the wheel and sent the pickup plunging into the narrow driveway between the saddle shop and the drugstore just as the machine gun opened up. Slugs chewed great gouges out of the pavement mere inches behind the pickup as it slewed out of the street. The driveway was only wide enough for one vehicle. Rowdy floored the gas pedal.
An SUV started to pull across the far end of the driveway. Rowdy never slowed down. The right front fender of the pickup slammed into the left front fender of the SUV. The impact threw all three young men in the pickup to the side, but Rowdy managed to hang on to the wheel and powered on past the SUV they had hit. The mirror on that side was gone, scraped away by the collision, along with