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As they drove, it looked like every third or fourth business had been looted. Some made sense: the hardware store, a corner grocery store, a bar. But, when they passed a pet store which had been burned down with most of the animals still inside, Cooper could only shake his head in wonder. Later, an art store’s windows had been smashed and the contents of the store trashed, but one large pane remained intact. In blood-red spray paint, someone had written, “Devilish Art Played Its Part!” A large cross of black paint lay directly beneath this graffiti. Dranko and Cooper exchanged confused looks at that.

Cooper shrugged, “I guess you could say this plague is of Biblical proportions?”

“But, it’s hard to see how a store selling paint-by-number kits and paint brushes caused this.”

“True,” Cooper said as they drove onward.

At 32nd Avenue, they encountered a roadblock. It looked similar to theirs. An old pickup and an even older station wagon were parked nose to nose to block the road. Three people, two men and a woman, were in position behind the vehicles. One man trained a bolt-action hunting rifle on them, the other a shotgun, and the woman held a pistol aloft.

“Hold it up. No fast moves,” she shouted to them when they were about thirty yards away.

Dranko slowly raised his hand from the steering wheel and leaned his head out of the driver’s side window, “We are from up near Tabor and heading downtown. How can we get through?”

She pointed north with her pistol, “You can go up to Hawthorne. No roadblocks there that I know of. You can squeeze through here and take a right, but don’t try anything stupid.” They both saw the gap she was referring to, as the vehicles formed a V to block anyone coming further up Division, it did allow enough space for a pickup to pass north up 32nd. He considered their strategy. On the one hand, it allowed a car to pass dangerously close to their barricade. On the other, it could prevent a confrontation by having a safety valve of allowing people to continue moving without having to turn around.

“Pretty clever, eh?” Dranko said, echoing his thoughts.

“It has its pros and cons,” Cooper caught the glint of light on a scope and now saw two rifles trained on them from a windows across the street, as they rounded the barricade. He nodded appreciatively in their direction so that Dranko spotted them as well.

“I stand corrected, mostly pros. These guys know what they are doing,” Cooper said as it became clear that anyone trying anything untoward as they drove past the barricade would have two high-powered, scoped, rifles to contend with. At the range of less than fifty yards, even a minimally trained shooter would be able to hit whatever he was shooting at.

Cooper leaned over so he could shout out of Dranko’s window, “Nicely done. We’re up on 58th and Lincoln if you need anything.” The woman, who was clearly in charge, held a nickel-plated revolver in her left hand. Her ears were festooned with piercings, and her nose had two. Her black hair was shaved to a coarse stubble. She wore a denim jacket with the sleeves cut off. Her arms were alive with vibrant-colored tattoos of various animals and symbols. The unbuttoned jacket revealed a faded black t-shirt announcing a long-ago Joan Jett concert. Her black leather pants and motorcycle boots completed the garb of hard-knocks. Dranko appraised her as well as they passed. Something on his face must have given away his thoughts.

“Yeah, some of us carry guns too, my boys!” she called after them, laughing at her own humor. “We might call on you yet. Name’s Lucy if you need anything from us.”

Cooper gave her a broad smile, admiring her aplomb, “Mine’s Cooper. Likewise and good luck.”

“You too,” she shouted as Dranko completed the right hand turn and drove up 32nd. That short drive was without event and all looked normal, save for the noticeable absence of anyone on the street and a few windows that had been boarded up by their occupants. I wish people knew that a two-by-four won’t stop most bullets.

Dranko took the left onto Hawthorne and they immediately began passing wrecked cars, some burned, and a series of looted storefronts. They both wrinkled their noses as they smelled before they saw dead bodies in various places.

A bevy of motorcycles parked out front of a still functioning bar immediately caught their attention. A score of leather-clad bikers were scattered in front of it, some sitting and some standing, but all drinking.

“Take it slow, but be ready. Let’s see what they do,” Cooper whispered to Dranko, as if they could hear him.

A few bikers stood up and others turned toward the pickup truck as they approached. Cooper’s grip grew tighter on his rifle. He counted it fortunate that the bar was on the right-hand side, giving him a good line of sight.

Suddenly, like ants on a threatened hill, the bikers swung into frenzied action. Tables were lifted onto their sides, hands went for guns, and one biker stepped into the street and yelled at them to stop.

“Gun it!” Cooper shouted as he trained his rifle on the biker spokesman.

A loud report thundered inside the truck’s cab and the lead biker’s chest exploded as he was knocked backward from taking the .308 round from only twenty yards away. Cooper marveled that he could hear the spent shell casing making a loud metallic ring as it bounced off the rifle’s ejection port and landed inside the truck.

Cooper quickly moved to lay down shots intended to keep their opponents’ heads down, as opposed to aimed fire. His finger squeezed as fast as he could as he stitched fire from one end of the clustered bikers to the other. Dranko swerved the truck to their left, putting as much distance between them as possible. Cooper had only fired a few more rounds before they started receiving return fire from the bikers.

The loud crack of pistol fire shouted back at them. Half of their windshield spider-cracked as a round hit just in front of Cooper. He felt a round impact the passenger-side door and pass into the cab. Thankfully, he felt no burning sensation of being hit. Dranko didn’t cry out, as the round passed harmlessly through. Near simultaneous ting—ting-tings told him the pickup’s bed was being pockmarked by shells.

Cooper emptied the FAL’s magazine in this random-fire mode, hitting at least two bikers. When the last round had been shot, the bolt locked back open, telling him the weapon was empty. He dropped the rifle between his legs and grabbed the M-16. A shotgun blast destroyed the passenger-side mirror, and Cooper winced as shards of metal and glass impacted the right side of his face and head.

He cursed loudly as he switched the selector to full-auto and brought the M-16 to bear. He yanked the trigger back, firing controlled bursts, in rapid succession. He prayed the buzz of automatic fire would force the bikers to seek further cover. Having been on the receiving end a few times, he knew first-hand the terror that automatic weapons fire could instill even on those trained to withstand it. The sheer volume of bullets flying nearby instinctively made anyone believe the next one was guaranteed to hit them. He hoped its effect on untrained civilians would be even greater.

It worked. The volume of fire lessened dramatically as bikers scrambled for cover behind the tables or back into the building, desperately trying to avoid the buzzing rounds, the splintering wood, and the cratered pavement as the M16’s rounds struck home. Adding to the effect, one of his rounds struck a biker in the leg and he tumbled over, shrieking in a frenzy of pain.

Dranko’s hand jabbed him in the side, holding a fresh magazine, just as the M16 ran dry. Damn, he knows his stuff. Cooper hit the magazine ejector button, keeping his eyes on the bikers. The truck was now past them, as Dranko expertly drove around a burned out car using only one hand. Cooper’s eyes flew wide open as he spotted a biker, hovering just inside the bar’s doorway, covered in shadow. Enough light made its way inside that Cooper could see he held a scoped rifle and he was carefully sizing up his target on the moving truck; gauging speed and trajectory.