Page 40 of Puck
Without taking his eyes off the road, Ivar reached out with his right hand and opened the glove box, withdrew another pistol, and handed it back to Layla.
Puck eyed Ivar. “Yo, you got any heavy iron in this ride?”
Ivar smirked. “Reach under your seat.”
Puck bent over, reached under his seat, and straightened up, holding a compact black machine gun. “Hell yeah, now this is what I’m talking about!”
“And what you do call that?” I asked.
My time in a gang had only exposed me to handguns, and even then, it never really mattered what type or brand, since they all shot the same to me, and I hated touching them regardless of what they were.
Puck checked the magazine, pulled back a slide, and extended a shoulder butt thing. “This, hot stuff, is a Heckler & Koch MP5K. A fully automatic ultra-compact submachine gun.”
I just blinked. “Oh.”
Puck laughed, opening the window, Layla following suit. “Just means little boomstick shoot many bullets very fast.”
I rolled my eyes at him. “Jackass.”
Ivar cut in. “Traffic around us is minimal. Time to make the move. Ladies, the shooting will be very loud in the auto. You should all lie down on the floor, for maximum safety, and cover your ears as well.” He glanced over his shoulder, then at Puck and then Layla. “Ready?Eins . . . zwei . . . drei.”
Ondrei, Ivar swerved to the left and jammed the brakes hard, and we were thrown forward, tires skidding. A black four-door sedan shot forward on our right side, and Ivar floored the gas pedal, pinning us back against the seats as we rocketed forward once more. We were parallel with the sedan, and Puck had the ultra-auto-submachine gun aimed out the window. He squeezed the trigger, and three loud concussions blasted the air, making my ears ring from the deafening reports, and then Layla’s gun barked. Temple was on the floor between the seats, and Lola and Kyrie were flat on the floor of the trunk. There wasn’t anywhere for me to go, so I leaned forward a little, at least I felt like I took some kind of precaution rather than just sitting there all nonchalant while bullets flew. The other car had their windows opened too, and a figure leaned out the window, with a gun similar to the one Puck had.
As seemed normal, Puck’s shots hit first, shattering the driver’s window and painting the interior red, and then a split second later, one of Layla’s shots hit the guy with the gun, and he vanished in a spray of crimson. The sedan continued forward for a few seconds, and then the dead driver slumped to one side, and the steering wheel twisted, and the sedan veered away, turned sharply at speed, and then bucked over into a roll.
“Left side,” Layla said. “Another one.”
“Colbie, roll down your window and get out of the way,” Puck ordered. “Layla, get ’em.”
I depressed the button to lower the window and then pressed myself as far back against the seat as I could. Layla, rather than trying to switch spots, a laborious and time-consuming process, just draped herself across both Temple and me, bracing one hand on the bottom of the window opening, extending her pistol with the other hand. I heard a deafening concussion, and then another, and then another, making my ears ring. A slightly more distantBANGBANGBANG,and I felt the door panel jerk as bullets hit, and then again, and again, and then I felt something hot sting my calf. I scrunched down as far as I could, and kept my eyes shut, waiting for something horrible to happen. Layla was pressed against me, her frizzy, curly, crazy black hair tickling my nose, her shoulder against my chest, and I felt her body jerk every time she shot her pistol.
I heard a window shatter, and Puck cursed. “SHOOT THE FUCKING DRIVER, GODDAMMIT!” Puck shouted.
“I’M FUCKING TRYING!” Layla bellowed back, her voice muffled in my ears.
“TRY HARDER!”
Layla actually stopped what she was doing to level an icy fuck-you glare at Puck. “Think you can do a better job of shootingata moving vehiclefroma moving vehicle while lying across two people?”
Bullets plinked into the side of our car, and smashed another window.
“Shiesse ihn—JETZT!” Ivar barked.
That didn’t need any translating. Layla turned back to the window, hesitated, took aim . . . and fired once. The silence from the absence of gunfire was deafening. I opened my eyes just in time to see the sedan go into a flat spin and then into a bouncing, glass-shattering roll.
Layla shifted awkwardly off Temple and me, returning to her seat behind Puck. “Well that was fun,” she said, without a trace of irony.
“You two bicker like children,” Ivar pointed out.
“That’s because she’s basically like a really ugly, really annoying little sister,” Puck said.
“I’m sexy and you know it, bitch,” Layla snarked back.
Puck twisted and stuck his tongue out at her. “I’m not a bitch; you’re a bitch.”
“Pussy.”
“Dick.”