Marty shot the leader in the face at nearly point-blank range, blowing his teeth out the opposite side of his face. Someone stabbed him a glancing blow to the shoulder from behind and he spun around, shooting the youth in the belly as the rest of them dragged Susan off at the run. She screamed for help as they lifted off her the ground and Marty ran after them, shooting two of them in the back before the gun jammed.
Three of the teens turned on him immediately and began to assault him in a flurry of fists and feet, beating him quickly to the ground and stomping him. Marty blacked out, and they left him where he lay on the pavement.
Susan was shrieking now, clawing at her young assailants as they hauled her off toward an alley, kicking furiously in a futile attempt to get her feet back on the ground.
A rescue-green Jeep Rubicon suddenly came streaking into the lot and mowed four of the teens over in one blow. The driver hit the brake and cut the wheel hard, gunning for the rest of them. The gang panicked, dropping Susan to the ground and running for their lives from the Jeep.
The driver stopped and jumped out, firing a single shot after them to keep them running.
“Are you okay?” he asked, offering Susan a bloody hand to help her to her feet.
She was sobbing and trying to remake her shirt and bra in order to cover her exposed breast.
“Come on,” the man said, walking her toward the Jeep. “We need to go.”
“Marty!” she said. “Where’s Marty?”
“That him over there?”
She saw Marty getting to his feet, staggering and bleeding from a gash in his head, and she ran to him, grabbing him and bawling.
“I’m okay,” he said hazily, seeing their dark-haired rescuer walking up in black jeans and a blue denim jacket, his cowboy boots spattered with droplets of wet blood.
“You gave a good account of yourself, partner.”
“Thanks,” Marty said, holding his head.
The cowboy cut the men in the doughnut shop a hard look and they turned away from the windows. “Don’t mention it,” he said. “You two had better mount up. We can’t get caught flat-footed in the open.”
The Jeep had a hard-top cover, and there were four red five-gallon fuel cans strapped to the roof.
Susan climbed into the backseat on the driver’s side and Marty rode shotgun. The cowboy belted himself in and wheeled the Jeep around toward the highway, where the traffic now headed into the desert wasn’t a great deal busier than it would normally have been at that time of year.
“Where ya headed?”
“Mesa.”
“Well you’re in luck,” the cowboy said. “There’s enough gas for the run. My name’s Joe.”
“Where are you going?” Marty asked.
“Down the road a ways,” Joe said, shaking a smoke from a pack of Marlboros and lighting it with the lighter from the ashtray.
Marty glanced into the backseat at Susan. She shrugged her shoulders. There was an M-1 carbine on the seat next to her along with a green bandolier of extra magazines.
“What’s down the road a ways?” Marty asked.
“More desert,” the cowboy said, exhaling a large cloud of smoke, which was blown quickly away by the wind.
“More desert?”
The cowboy stuck the cigarette between his teeth. “Here,” he said, taking his .45 automatic from the small of his back and giving it to Marty. “Better acquaint yourself with that. You’ll likely need it.”
“I don’t understand,” he said, glancing again at Susan.
“The magazine holds seven shots,” Joe went on. “You pull back on the slide to load a round into battery. There’s a slide lock on the side there. It’s like a safety. It kicks some but you and your girl can handle it. The carbine in the back is easy too. I’ll show you how to use that in a bit. Right now we just need to put some real estate behind us. I’ve got some pretty bad hombres after me, and if they ask around back there, somebody’s bound to tell ’em which way we went.”
“Why are they after you?” Susan asked.
Joe dragged deeply from the Marlboro. “Well, let’s just say I gave ’em a good dose of the same medicine I gave those spics back there.”
“Were they trying to rape somebody?” She couldn’t help asking.
“No, they’d done raped her already,” Joe answered quietly. “I killed all seven of ’em, but I didn’t know the bar was full of their friends. It was a Mongol bar.”
Susan gasped. “My God, they were Chinese?”
“The Mongols are a biker gang, Sue.”
“Outlaw biker gang,” Joe added. “And they’re already rapin’ and pillagin’ their asses off.”
“They raped a woman outside a bar?” Susan said, quietly aghast.
“In the back of a pickup.”
“About how many bikers are after you?” Marty asked, looking into the side rearview mirror, half expecting the horizon to be filled with motorcycles.
“A lot,” Joe said. “But don’t worry about it. Where this Jeep can go, their Harleys can’t follow.”
Marty could see Susan sitting forward now with her head in her hands, and he wanted badly to climb into the backseat and hold her, but he didn’t want to do it in front of Joe.
“Where’s the woman now? Did you have to leave her behind?”
“She’s dead. She needed a hospital bad and there just wasn’t one to be found.”
“You mean you had to…”
Joe nodded. “That’s what I mean.”
Ten miles farther on, Joe pulled off the highway, drove right through a fence onto a dirt road and then down into a dry arroyo where they couldn’t be seen from the road.
“End of the line,” he said, climbing out.
Marty looked at Susan and then noticed that Joe’s seat was soaked with blood.
“Oh, no,” he muttered, and got out to find Joe sitting in the dirt behind the Jeep, against a rock.
“Get me that carbine outta there, partner. I need to show you how to work it.”
“How bad are you?” Susan asked, getting out of the Jeep with the carbine.
“Bad enough, darlin’. Lemme see that.”
He made sure they knew how to operate both weapons and had them each take a few practice shots.
“Okay,” he said, lighting up another cigarette, this time with a disposable lighter from his jacket. “Off you go now.”
“No,” Susan said, “we’ll stay with you.”
“Get on,” Joe said. “I need time to talk with my wife before I die.”
“The phones aren’t working,” Marty said. “There’s too many people making calls.”
“I don’t need a phone to talk to the dead. Get on now. And ride parallel to the highway whenever you can. Most road warriors won’t be able to follow you off road. Those that can, you just shoot ’em with the carbine.”
Susan knelt beside him in the dirt and gave him a hug. “We’ll never forget you.”
“I don’t envy either of you what lies ahead, honey.”
Marty offered Joe his hand and then he and Susan reluctantly got into the Jeep.
“Hey, partner! Come back here a second.”
Marty got back out. “What do you need?”
“Don’t you let that girl be taken alive again, hear?”
“It was your wife back there, wasn’t it?” Marty said, his eyes filling with tears, his voice thick. “They shot you and took her, didn’t they?”
“Biggest mistake they ever made was not killin’ me,” Joe said. “Love her long as you can, partner, but don’t you be afraid to do what needs done. Hear?”
“I won’t,” Marty said, wiping his eyes with the tail of his tattered shirt and turning to get back into the Jeep.
“Why are you crying?” Susan asked. She looked out the back window to see Joe resting his head against the rock, eyes closed. “What did he say?”