Detour to Apocalypse: A Rot Rods Serial, Part Two by Michael Panush Read Free Book Online

keep this up.
    The guy with the pencil moustache tugged at his tie. “I don’t know. I like a dame with meat on her bones.”
    “Is that so?” Betty asked. “How interesting.”
    While Betty kept the guards distracted, Roscoe, Angel, and Wooster snuck down the hall. When they got closer, Wooster raised his Thompson. Nobody looked at him―until Wooster slammed the butt of his gun between the biggest guy’s shoulder blades. The guard let out a croak and fell. Wooster raised his weapon. The other two turned and stared at it, their eyes going straight to the muzzle of the machine gun.
    Wooster spoke quietly, with an edge to his voice. “Drop your goddamn heaters. You go for them, you die. I swear to Christ, I will paint these walls with your guts if you give me a reason. Now drop your guns.”
    They didn’t listen. The guard in the middle, a portly fellow with a porkpie hat, tried to raise his shotgun. Angel and Roscoe reached him first. Roscoe grabbed the gun and tugged at it, wrenching it away from the guard’s fingers. Angel whacked him with the butt of his pistol, planting the automatic right between the gunman’s eyes. They rolled back and he drooped. The fellow with the pencil moustache reached for his rifle, but Betty pulled her snub-nosed revolver from her purse and pressed the gun to his nose. He kept the rifle up for a second and then let it fall.
    “Please,” he said. “I didn’t―”
    “I told you not to go for your guns,” Wooster said. “You ought to know better.”
    He stepped next to the guy, grabbed his throat, and rammed his skull into the wall. The goon let out a slight, whistling moan and collapsed―out cold. Roscoe pushed aside their guns while Wooster rolled them over and put on the cuffs. Betty and Angel kept them covered with their pistols while Wooster and Roscoe worked.
    Roscoe glanced up at Betty. Her knuckles were white around the grip of her pistol and another bead of sweat had appeared. “It’s okay. You did good. The blonde ditz gag―it’s a good act.”
    “Thanks,” Betty said. “I’ve seen it often enough.”
    “Well, you pulled it off swell.” Roscoe stood. Now it was time for them to split up. “Everything copacetic for your job?”
    Angel pulled an electrician’s tool belt from his satchel and tugged it on. He was going to ask for directions to the casino’s power station, bluff his way in while pretending to be a maintenance worker, and pull his pistols on anyone there and cut the alarms. “It’s cool, man.” He let his automatic rest in his satchel. “The men they have here, they think they’re in some sort of gangster paradise, where they ain’t gotta worry about the law or rival crews or anything. It makes them complacent. I put a pistol in their face and they become real cooperative.”
    “Don’t take chances.” Roscoe patted Angel’s shoulder. “You’ve got ten minutes to do your job. That’s all we can spare.”
    “I’ll be quick.” Angel paused and looked over at his friends. “Good luck to you guys too.”
    “Thank you kindly,” Wooster said.
    “See you in a bit,” Betty added.
    Angel hurried down the hallway. Roscoe waited until he left, and led the group down the stairwell. They walked to the basement level, headed through the little corridor, and reached the vault door. It loomed over Roscoe, seeming even bigger than when he had seen it with his disembodied eye. Roscoe and Betty stared at the complex locks and spiked iron wheels, like the workings of some strange engine spread across a wall. It didn’t seem possible to remove.
    Wooster set down his satchel and got to work.
    “You can handle this?” Roscoe asked.
    “I surely can.” Wooster removed a pair of dynamite sticks and fuses. He went back to the door and set them up, and moved back for two more. He worked quickly, and soon had the entire door wired. “That’s what folks like Fink don’t understand. You can spend all the dough you want on a fancy security system, a