HENTY'S FIST 1: GAUNTLET RUN by Andre Jute, Dakota Franklin, Andrew McCoy

15 HENTY'S FIST 1: GAUNTLET RUN by Andre Jute, Dakota Franklin, Andrew McCoy

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 15

Freedom from scruple, from sympathy, honesty and regard for life may, within fairly wide limits, be said to further the success of the individual in the pecuniary culture. — Thorstein Veblen

“Get her!” the man from the Syndicate shouted. His soldiers and button men leveled their zipguns and he screamed. “Don’t shoot. Get her back here!” The confusion gave Henty just that moment she needed to push her way through the men and gain a few paces. They thundered after her but Henty had been a track star in high school and the work on the chicken farm had kept her fit. Henty vaulted a storm drain and landed on the eastbound carriageway. A twenty-four wheel haulier shrieked its air horns and air brakes and Henty rolled frantically to get away from the monstrous, thumping wheels. As she rolled she saw flashes of the driver’s contorted face alternating with visions of Syndicate soldiers and button men falling into the storm drain.

Henty frantically stopped herself rolling before she cannoned into the next lane. The lights of the hurtling trucks blinded her. She had to get to the westbound carriageway. East would return her to the metrops. Horns shrieked. One played The Star Spangled Banner. The Syndicate thugs were climbing out of the storm drain. They were now only the width of a single lane from Henty. Twelve feet. She could see them between the trucks.

One was tempted by her proximity and ducked into the traffic. A huge truck splatted him against its armored windshield that reached almost to the blacktop. Automatically jets of steaming, detergent-foaming water sprayed from the nozzles and the huge pantograph wipers flashed into action to remove his remains from the driver’s vision. The driver didn’t even touch his brakes.

For a moment Henty stood horrified, her hand to her mouth, big trucks whizzing twelve inches either side of her, rocking her in the crosscurrents of air they set up with their bulk and their speed. Then she saw the Syndicate soldiers and buttons through the moving fence of trucks, standing there, judging their speed, preparing to dash into that deadly maelstrom to grab her.

Henty turned. For a moment her nerve failed her. If she misjudged any one of the three lanes she still had to cross she was going to be splatted against a windshield and wiped off like a bug.

She looked over her shoulder. A Syndicate thug hunched himself, then launched bodily through the gap between two speeding trucks towards her.

Henty had been planning to let the gap in front of her pass and take advantage of the next one. Now the optimum moment to dash forward between the hurtling goliaths had passed. But if she delayed, the button man would cannon into her and they'd both go under the merciless wheels of the onrushing juggernaut.

Henty squirted forward, the big truck clipping her heel as she pulled herself up sharply in the narrow safety between the lanes. Behind her she heard the splat! as the haulier collected the button man. Involuntarily she looked over her shoulder. Of the button man so recently sent to the infinite silence of Omerta there was no sign: the truck had carried his remains with it. But no fewer than five Syndicate bullies had made it across the first lane and were watching her through the gaps between the speeding trucks with burning, calculating eyes.

They moved. Henty moved. 

Close up she saw the distorted face of a driver, lines of fatigue stretching from his eyes like a highway map. He didn’t even notice that she came within thousandths of an inch of sudden death against the panoramic windscreen of his truck. At the regulation hundred twenty-five miles per hour his gaze was hypnotically fixed on the brake lights of the truck thirty feet in front of his own nose. He was looking out for his own life.

Henty felt a jerk at her jacket. One of the button men had caught up!

As she turned to try and free herself, the next truck tore him away. But already another had arrived to take his place. Without looking, panicking, Henty headed into the fatal traffic-stream, shouting at the top of her voice and not knowing it. For the first time in her life she knew real fear.

She was alone, without a friend in all the world, hunted even by those who had every reason — money — to help her.

“Yaaaargh!” Henty shouted and bounded the lane in one concerted spurt of careless speed that carried her right over the divider and on to the westbound lane where she halted her impetuous momentum a millisecond short of annihilation by the speeding mass of malevolent metal. She stood swaying, trying to catch her balance and keep it.

The syndicate thugs, now reduced to four, scrambled over the divider.

Henty screamed in fear and rage. She didn’t want to be forced to run the gauntlet of these four lanes as well but none of the trucks even slowed to her frantic waving.

The button closed on her. One reached for her, his fingers squirting towards her like a living fire hose.

MORE SOON! A NEW CHAPTER ALMOST EVERY DAY!  Add GAUNTLET RUN to your Reading List (click “Manage” in the right hand column, then tick “Reading List” and “Done”). 

• 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.