HENTY'S FIST 1: GAUNTLET RUN: birth of a superhero by Andre Jute, Dakota Franklin and Andrew McCoy. 60,000 words in 76 chapters
CHAPTER 13
The glass cage jerked and rose into the air with the chopper. Henty nearly fell out in her surprise. The capo grabbed her arm. Henty snatched at the handles. She tried to scrunch herself onto the narrow seat and into the glass wall as her feet swung free over the dark, terrifying void.
“I told you, hang on,” the capo shouted above the rush of air. “Keerist! I’m glad this pilot got it right. Last week the idiot forgot to switch off the gravity lock and instead of lifting the cube, the cube pulled the chopper down. Splat!”
“What happened to the mob?”
“We’re burning the boats they came in. There’s a battle at the quay.” He took one hand from its handle to point.
To Henty, the battle was mainly spurts of fire around the eleven points of old Fort Wood. From this angle, the Statue of Liberty looked odd. “There were so many of them,” she said.
“One of these clays a mob’s gonna tear the Statue down just to have standing room.” The capo didn’t seem greatly concerned.
Part of the crowd either realized the battle at the quay was a diversion, or couldn’t get near enough to fight the Finest on that narrow front. They ran underneath the free winging glass cube, throwing up lighted torches. When one struck Henty’s foot, she suddenly didn’t think they were flying too high. A man in the mob started shooting at them with a machine pistol. The capo hung on with one hand while trying to get the attacker lined up with his zipgun. The glass cage swung wildly as the inexperienced chopper pilot took it up vertically. Bullets were crashing around inside the cage. At last the capo managed to single out the attacker and get a bead on him long enough to zap him.
“How long did the fool think he'd keep the Fist before the mob tore him apart?” the capo raged. But now Henty was more concerned with the dogfights in the sky above them. “Does your chopper jockey know not to take us up into that? I don’t want to be shot down by my own side.”
“Yon ain’t got no sides, Sister. Everybody’s against you. Don’t forget that or you’ll lose me my bet.”
“You bet?”
“Hundred credits ay-en-oh.” ANO — parlance for the Runner making it to Arizona. Nevada or Oregon but not into California. Henty was so delighted, she nearly let go the handles to clap her hands — and now they were really high, just underneath the dogfights in the tricky light of the dawn sky. “Hey, the Syndicate inside betting is I’ll make Nevada. huh?”
“Yeah.”
“Cover yourself with a bet I make it all the way to the Mint,” Henty said bravely.
“Naw ain’t nobody ever made it.” He ducked instinctively as a fighter in WWII camouflage dived at them from the melee above, cannons blazing, tracer passing perilously close. “Down!” he shouted into his throat mike at the chopper pilot.
The glass cube dropped sickeningly. From nowhere a USAF jet appeared, seeming to throw incandescent lines of smoke forward as it fired both rockets. Both rockets scored, blowing the bounty hunter’s surplus plane out of the sky. It was so close to the glass cube, Henty watched in horror as pieces of the shattered plane crashed right next to her face. The Air Force pilot, only feet away as he pulled out of his dive, gave her a big toothy smile and a split second later was gone, zooming back up to the fray overhead.
“The vidi never shows this bit, where the government keeps the Runner from being killed,” Henty said shakily.
“Course not. All the people got a constitutional right to hunt the Runner, but Liberty Island and the Mint are the only fixed places the Runner absolutely got to go. Stands to reason, if the government don’t rearrange things a little, all the Runners’ll get themselves killed in New York and nobody else gets a go, see?”
“I just never looked at it like that.”
“You’re going to have to look at a whole lot of things different, Sister. Where do you want to be dropped?”
Henty tore her eyes from searching the skies for more lucky bounty hunters to look at the carnage on the New York and New Jersey shores. “I can choose anywhere—”
“—reasonable.”
“Intersection of Interstates 80 and 95,” Henty said promptly.
“Trying to shoot straight across on 80 ain’t so smart. It’s been tried plenty times and nobody ever made it.”
“All routes have been tried, nobody made it by any of them,” Henty said. “I reckon 80 is the shortest route with the least exposure.”
“There’s The Trouble.”
“I thought you said you weren’t going to drop me in New York.”
“Yeah, sure. But last week we had a big battle with The Trouble and drove most of them across the river.”
“But there are three million of them!”
“Naw. that’s just vidizaggeration. Maybe mil.”
“And the Finest beat them?”
“Sure. Those kids are only programmed to destroy; we’re trained to destroy efficiently.”
“And now they’re between me and ten million dollars and a free Presidential Pardon?”
“Don’t get paranoid. It just happened. One of my men caught an unlicensed drug pusher and cracked his head and there was a riot and then they burned a bank and we had to act and from there it just escalated out of nothing and all of a sudden it was a pitched battle for survival, us or them.”
“So where are they now?”
“Well, the Syndicate didn’t want any million-and-a-half unemployed juveniles wrecking their sweet state, so they pushed some into Pennsylvania and they’re negotiating with the Mayor for us to take some back. Meanwhile, New Jersey is tough.”
“What about cutting into upstate New York for a bit and turning back into Pennsylvania behind the problem?”
“Thing is, they didn’t want The Trouble upstate either, so the state troopers are dug in all along the borders with New Jersey and Pennsylvania, together with the National Guard. You go up there, you’re just looking to be hunted by disciplined and organized men.”
“Okay. Drop me as far south as you can and then I’ll turn west again. What about them?” Henty jerked her head up at the planes still whirling above them.
“The flyboys will take care of them. They’re just amateurs. The real pro bounty hunters with planes will pick you up later.”
“How?”
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• MORE ABOUT THE AUTHORS AT:
Andre Jute http://coolmainpress.com/andrejute.html Andre’s latest book is DREAMS Book 1 of COLD WAR, HOT PASSIONS http://www.amazon.com/DREAMS-COLD-WAR-PASSIONS-ebook/dp/B00A3BSJM2 Dakota Franklin http://coolmainpress.com/Dakota%20Franklin.html Dakota’s latest book is NASCAR FIRST http://www.amazon.com/NASCAR-FIRST-RUTHLESS-WIN-ebook/dp/B00A72A556 Andrew McCoy http://coolmainpress.com/andrewmccoy.html Andrew’s latest book is STIEG LARSSON Man, Myth & Mistress http://www.amazon.com/STIEG-LARSSON-Myth-Mistress-ebook/dp/B004GXAZAM
Copyright © 2012 André Jute, Dakota Franklin, Andrew McCoy. The authors have asserted their moral right. Published by CoolMain Press 2012 www.coolmainpress.com. Editor: Lisa Penington. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or performed by any means without the written permission of the publisher.
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HENTY'S FIST 1: GAUNTLET RUN by Andre Jute, Dakota Franklin, Andrew McCoy
ActionThe Gauntlet Run is the toughest race ever run by man: across America with every man’s hand turned against you from the statue of Liberty to the old US Mint in San Francisco. There the prize awaits you: $10 million and a full and free Presidential P...
