Scarier than Evil: Chapter 3 – Deadly Pursuit

Chapter 3 – Deadly Pursuit

It’s been four hours since we started searching for Edoardo, setting up checkpoints, and nothing has happened so far. All I’ve heard on the radio are teams getting set up at their assigned points and other teams investigating buildings and caves in the city's mountainous forest and hilly outskirts and finding nothing. Alex and Kurtis have been talking back and forth on our personal radios about how cool it is we get to ride these fast cars with the deadly pursuit force outside of our jurisdiction. While they talk, I can’t help but think about the day not too long ago when a police precinct was taken over by a group of criminals and saved by Salvatore and his friends at Coronamento. I was informed about it when it was happening, but because we had to scramble and go to further precinct to arm ourselves, Salvatore and his friends were able to clean up everything long before we got there.

I then think about how we were embarrassed because of that event and Edoardo’s motives. He plans to invalidate the police by getting away with crime and making us look bad compared to other groups who enforce justice but aren’t tied to the law as much as we are. I wonder if he had anything to do with that takeover of the precinct and dead-end cases that we can’t figure out where no one was killed except for shady officials. It’s then that I remember reading in Edoardo’s journal that he admitted that the prison break was an inside job and told his allies in there to get their fellow prison guards to leave. The guards of those shady officials also quit their jobs and joined other groups to enforce justice, so he was likely the reason for their deaths, too, especially since I remember him knowing and protecting those particular officials while he was still a cop.

My reflection on past events is woken up by the sound of something rushing past me and a bad feeling. Turning on the heat vision of the vehicle, I see that a convoy of vehicles aided by superhumans has passed me invisibly, so I quickly inform everyone else and chase after them. Minutes after my call, our superhuman companions fly or run at the speed of sound to my aid, and our target has just uncloaked themselves since they know we’ve found them. Our superhuman allies clash as the rest of my backup starts to come and, unfortunately, crash and get mixed up in their fight. I activate my car's machine gun and start firing at the people in the other cars and trucks who are firing back at me. I’m able to blow up and make a few of the vehicles crash, but I’m still taking heavy fire, so I call in for support.

“I need backup now!” I say while continuously firing my car’s gun.

“Don’t worry, bud. I’m close to you! Just hang in there!” Kurtis says.

Kurtis’ words are reassuring, but I need something now. I use another weapon in my car, which fires out small projectiles that hit a few of the cars in front of me. The projectiles allow me to hack into their systems and give control of them to me and Chief Bernardo, who also has access to my car’s controls.

“You have control over the enemy vehicles, chief. Want to take them for a ride?” I ask.

“I’ll give them a ride they’ll never forget,” Bernardo says with a laugh.

The cars under Bernardo’s control crash into the cars that we don’t control, taking some of them out and damaging the others before being wrecked or taken out by their own.

“Make sure they head towards our roadblock! We’re ready to stop them there,” Alex says.

“Roger,” I say.

Switching my car’s weapons, I fire rockets at the vehicles in front of me so they go exactly where I want, the tunnel that runs under the hills. Out of the smoke of my rockets, Kurtis makes a stylish entrance by ramming one of the cars into the tunnel so it doesn’t make a turn down a tight service tunnel.

“Your backup has arrived!” Kurtis says as his car speeds ahead to ram our targets into the walls.

While this is happening, they are still firing at us, and we’re swerving through the traffic that was on the road before our roadblocks were set up.

“Be careful, Kurtis!” I say.

“I got this. Remember, I was part of the deadly pursuit squad!” Kurtis says as he begins to show off.

He crashes cars and even trucks into the walls and columns in the tunnel while also using his car’s guns and missiles accurately to destroy them or flip them over, all the while avoiding the civilians on the road.

“Woah! I still got it,” Kurtis says. “Eight targets remain.”

“We’re ready at the checkpoint with an additional surprise. Back off a bit and let me have a chance to show off next,” Alex says.

Kurtis and I do as he says as we exit the tunnel and see the checkpoint in sight. The checkpoint is comprised of pursuit cars and barriers with cops wielding armor-piercing rifles and explosives. There’s a single hole in the defenses that a large truck drives through that Alex is driving. The truck drives almost as fast as our pursuit cars and drives through two of the cars we’re pursuing and makes them fly into two other cars. Ahead of us, the firepower of the checkpoint stops an additional two cars while the largest and most heavily armored truck drives through the hole of the checkpoint, not even being stopped by what hits it or the spike strips behind it and helicopters that come in to shoot at it. Kurtis, Alex, and I continue to chase after it and empty the remainder of our car’s weapons into it, to no effect.

“This stubborn bastard won’t go down. I’ll have to go in and plant a melting charge to give us a shot at the interior,” I say as I launch a grappling hook that pierces the armor of the truck and attaches my car to it. “Chief, take control.”

“Be careful, Renzo!” Bernardo says.

I press a button, make the car's front windshield retract, climb out of my car, and crawl on top of the truck. Taking one of the melting charges meant for the toughest of armor and superhumans, I plant it on the truck and back off back into my car as the charge explodes and melts through the truck's armor as if it contained lava. After releasing my car’s hook from the truck, I tell everyone to fire into the hole, and this makes the truck drive around more erratically, off the road, and crash into a barn in the middle of nowhere. Kurtis, Alex, and I stop outside of the barn with other pursuit cops who have just now caught up to us. However, backup arrives for our targets as people in cars and superhumans. Chaos ensues as both sides clash, and someone throws smoke grenades to add to it and separate me from my friends.

I don’t have a second to try to regroup with them before a superhuman comes out of the smoke and attacks me with his sharp claws on his arms, legs, and face. Using the shotguns I took from my car, I duel wield them and shoot at his arms and legs until I blow them off along with his head after several shots to that as well. Before I can take a breath, I’m punched by another superhuman so hard that I fly into my car and through its windshield. The wind is knocked out of me, and my armor is shattered. However, I still force myself to move, hoping that there’s no serious damage to me. Getting to the back of the car, I take a heavy, light-machine gun and unload the gun into the superhuman and others who come at me. It seems like I killed them all until one last superhuman steps out of the smoke and dust. I try to fire at him, but my gun is empty, and I don’t have another box magazine to refill it.

“Ha!” the superhuman says. “You don’t have anything left for me?”

Overconfident bastard. I draw my magnums and fire at the superhuman, each shot landing on her face, and I don’t stop until it pops like a pimple. With her out of the way, I walk through the smoke and dust of the battle that now seems to be calming down as the noise subsides and it becomes eerily quiet. I keep my submachine gun and magnum up with my finger on the trigger on the lookout for trouble until I find it in the ruined remains of the barn that the armored truck crashed into. Our primary target, Edoardo, sits on a lawn chair with a TV next to him on a table. He’s wearing a casual jean jacket, blue shirt, jeans, and boots with no guns on him. His hair is a light blonde with bits of white in it, and his clean-shaven face makes him look younger than he actually is.

“I figured that out of every cop in the area, you would be the one to find me. It would be either you or Bernardo, but I was leaning more towards you because you have your dad’s persistence,” Edoardo says.

“Shut up!” I say before holstering my guns, cuffing his hands, and telling him his rights.

“And you're by the book to the letter as he was. It’ll look good on your resume when the police department merges with a hero group or some other government-approved association. You couldn’t have gotten me without their help, you know?”

I ignore his words as best as I can, make him get up, and walk him back to my car. Now that the dust has settled and the smoke has faded away, I see that my friends and allies are alive for the most part, with many injured and many others dead.

“See what you did, Edoardo?” I say. “You’re not the same uncle I looked up to as a kid.”

“I am, my dear nephew. I’m just a bit wiser, as you should be, and know that this isn’t the end,” he says.

As Edoardo is taken away and put in the back of a heavily armored truck, he smiles at me. Alex comes up to me to tell me how relieved he is that everything is over, while Kurtis talks about how it felt like being in an action movie. Meanwhile, I feel empty and drained and just want to go home and pass out.