Dying for Rain (The Rain Trilog - BB Easton Page 0,8

ears.

Ka-boom!

Ka-boom!

Ka-boom!

Ka—

Thud.

The car stops shaking.

The bullets stop flying.

And the sounds of downtown Atlanta fill the air again as Ramirez hops back inside and slams the door.

“Goddamn, I hate those motherfuckers!”

I sit back up to find King Burger slumped against the bulletproof glass, his lifeless eyes halfway open as blood trickles down his mask, filling every crack in the shattered windshield.

“That’s the third car we’ve fucked up this week! The chief is gonna be so pissed.”

“If he’d buy that damn helicopter, this wouldn’t keep happening!”

Officer Friendly turns to look out his side window. “’Bout fucking time.”

I follow his gaze and notice blue flashing lights reflecting in the broken shop windows on MLK Jr. Drive as a behemoth of a SWAT tank comes barreling into view. It’s two lanes wide, and it has a metal blade on the front that’s at least a foot thick. People on the street scatter like rats, jumping into their parked cars and trying to get the fuck out of the way before they get smashed.

Officer Friendly flips on the PA system and grabs the microphone. “Thanks a lot, good buddy,” he announces through the loudspeakers as the tank grinds past. Then, he throws the car in drive and turns left onto MLK once the intersection is clear, leaning all the way to the left to see around the shattered windshield and the dead body on the hood.

“Why don’t we ever get to drive the Scorpion?” Ramirez whines.

“Because we weren’t military, remember?”

“Hawthorne should at least let me shoot the cannon some time.”

Officer Friendly drives a few blocks and turns left onto Central Avenue where a huge crowd of people is gathered in a park.

“Oh shit! We got a dead man walkin’!”

The cop car slows to a crawl, and I do the stupidest thing I could possibly do.

I turn and look out my window.

The left and right sides of the park are lined with spectators, standing behind metal barricades and kept at bay by at least a dozen riot cops holding machine guns. On the far side of the plaza, a woman in a burlap jumpsuit is standing with her back to me. A row of freshly planted saplings stretches out to her left, and Governor Fuckface and a TV crew are standing to her right.

My guts twist.

No. No, no, no, no, no.

Keep driving!

But they don’t. They pull to a complete stop and watch as the woman’s head suddenly snaps backward. Her body jerks, her knees buckle, and the earth swallows her whole.

Stomach acid claws its way up my throat, but I swallow it down and squeeze my eyes shut. I tell myself that it’s not a bad way to go. It’s instant. Clean. There are way worse ways to die. Cancer is worse. Disembowelment, terrible. I could be burned at the stake or locked in an iron maiden. I could be—

Ramirez lets out a low whistle. “There goes Nora. What a waste of a good pair of tits.”

“Didn’t she bite you?”

“Fuck yeah, she did. Had to get a tetanus shot and everything. But you know I like ’em feisty.”

As Officer Friendly chuckles and shifts into drive, I take a deep breath and one last look at the place where Nora used to be.

And that’s when I see him.

The executioner.

Black mask.

Black police uniform.

Black fucking soul.

And when his head follows our car as it pulls into the police station across the street, I know he sees me too.

Wes

“Goddamn it, Riggins! That’s the third car this week!”

“It wasn’t my fault, sir! We got stuck in traffic, and the Bonys swarmed us!”

“I told him not to take Northside Drive, sir.”

“Shut up, Ramirez! Y’all are lucky you still have jobs, you know that?”

I drum my fingers against the molded plastic armrest of the 1970s-era chair I’m handcuffed to as Ramirez, Officer Friendly—who I guess is named Riggins—and their police chief argue about the dead Bony they rode in with. The lobby of the Fulton County Police Department feels like a DMV waiting room from 1975—other than the flat screen TV glowing on the wall. Reporter Michelle Ling is interviewing Governor Fuckface in Plaza Park right down the street. The sound is off—thank God. But even without being able to hear his pompous-ass voice, that jowly grin and puffed-out belly speak volumes. He’s as proud of his “duty to protect the laws of natural selection” as Michelle Ling is nauseated by the sight of him. I can see it on her face. Either she polished off a fifth of gin before this interview or