DISCLAIMER: I had my bid to own Zootopia all drafted up. But somehow, Fear got ahold of someone's emotions console and decided I was a threat to HIS universe, so he took the bid and burned it in Anger's hair flames. So now I don't own Zootopia, and am trying to figure out a way to get back at those little gremlins.
Thanks to TheoreticallyEva for editing this chapter and keeping me grounded!
Judy couldn't help but feel a little nervous. OK, maybe more than a little nervous. Her heart was pounding so hard, she half-expected that the mammals of Tundratown could hear it. In any case, she wondered why Nick couldn't. She could hear his, but that may be because they were right next to each other.
None of them spoke a word, their tactical armour making plenty of noise as it was. As they neared their target, Bogo pulled them all to a stop at the corner of the neighboring building, where they couldn't be seen. "Fangmeyer, let me know what we're dealing with."
The tigress nodded, then slid up to the corner, peaking around it. After a second, she pulled back and turned to her officers. "One hundred feet to the door. Cameras over the door and on both corners of the building. I saw someone moving around in one of the office windows. Looked like a ram. We gotta make this quick, though. They've got a clear line of sight to us."
Bogo nodded. "Thank you, Fangmeyer. Hopps, make sure Wilde doesn't fall too far behind."
"Hey, 'quick as a fox', chief, that's us!" Nick gave the highest-ranking mammal in the ZPD his signature smirk and a wink.
Bogo rolled his eyes.
At that moment, the chief's phone vibrated, and he pulled it out of his pocket to look at it, confirming that all of his teams were in position. More disconcertingly, however, the city water crew that had hidden their entry had been ordered offsite, against the demands of the fire captain who had been on-scene. That wasn't a huge issue as far as he was concerned, since it had accomplished the task of getting them in under the radar. He checked his watch, waited for a moment, then nodded at his officers.
Judy, Fangmeyer, and Wolfowitz nodded and readied their weapons, while Nick gave the chief, who was now sending a message to the rest of his officers, a two-fingered gun and a wink. Overhead, one of the ZPD's choppers moved into a holding pattern above their target.
Bogo himself put his phone away and squared his shoulders. "On me. Three… Two… One… Go!"
In the building, Doug frowned. "That city utilities van is gone."
Hornby looked up. "Interesting. How long does it take to flush pipes out?"
The ram shrugged. "Don't really know. I never had to do it. I mostly worked the plants. I would expect that it wouldn't take too long. What I'm concerned about is the fact that the fire department is still there. Why? Why haven't they moved on to the next site? They aren't the roadblock. I can see the ZPD cruisers for that on the other side. What are they doing?"
The two mammals stared out the window, before Hornby responded. "I don't know, but I don't like it."
As if to taunt them, Doug's cell phone began an incessant ringing that caught both mammals off-guard and caused them to jump. The ram grabbed the device, looked at the caller ID, and answered. "Doug here."
He listened for a few seconds before his eyes went wide. He hung up without a word and turned to his colleague. "They're on to us!"
No sooner were the words out of his mouth when a crash and yelling came from the warehouse, and Hornby spotted a column of five officers headed right for the front door, the unmistakable form of the police chief at the front.
"Shit!"
Hornby grabbed his laptop and yanked the cord out, slamming it on the ground in hopes that the data would be destroyed, then made a break for the office door, just as a loud banging came from the front entrance, followed by the sound of shattering glass.
On the police chief's first attempt to get through the door, he'd tried to take it easy to avoid losing his balance if the door gave way. The second time, he was much more successful, the glass of the door exploding inward, leaving just the frame and the handle.
His officers followed him into the reception area, their armour's footwraps protecting them from the razor edges of the shattered doorway. A quick glance around the spartan room was enough to confirm that there wasn't anyone else there, so the five turned their attention to the hallway leading off to the side, just in time to see one mammal, a Texas longhorn, bolt for the warehouse and a ram emerge from a side office.
"Targets, nine o'clock!" At the chief's yell, those of his officers who weren't already facing that direction swung their weapons toward it. "Hornby, Ramses, stop!"
"Gun, chief!" Judy yelled as she dove for cover, Nick following suit. Her warning came none too soon, as Ramses drew his pistol and let off a hip shot that went right through the space the cape buffalo had been standing just an instant before and punched a nice neat hole in the drywall on the other side of the reception area.
The chief's command went unheeded. Instead, the two mammals ran into the break room, slamming the door behind them just as a report from Bogo's pistol rang out, grazing the door itself and ending up somewhere in the room beyond.
"Wolfowitz, cover the entrance! Fangmeyer, stay with me, we're clearing the offices! Hopps, Wilde, you two cover the hallway! Go now!"
Nick and Judy immediately assumed positions on either side of the hall, both keeping their weapons trained on the closed breakroom door. Bogo advanced forward with Fangmeyer right behind him. At the first pair of offices, Fangmeyer went right, as Bogo turned left. The pair took a second to survey the rooms, then entered, and the sound of overturning furniture quickly followed as they searched every nook and cranny for any hiding spots.
Judy met Nick's gaze and gestured to her fox to move forward. They advanced down the hallway, taking refuge in the doorframes of the offices occupied by their colleagues. Gunfire erupted in the warehouse, adding to the cacophony of shouting mammals.
"Clear!" Bogo and Fangmeyer shouted at the same time as they exited the two offices and moved on to the next ones, Nick and Judy covering the hallway.
The lone washroom was on Judy's side, and she gave a signal to Nick to cover her as she opened the door and levelled her weapon, only to find the room absolutely empty. "Washroom's clear!"
"Clear here, too!" came the call from Fangmeyer as she exited the room she'd been searching.
"This room's clear! Move on the break room!" At Bogo's order, the four officers began advancing on the closed door of the only other room in the office area. Gunfire continued unabated, and Judy couldn't help but wonder who was firing at whom, though she knew her comrades and Doug were somehow involved.
Reaching the break room, Bogo stood to one side, twisted the knob, and swung the door open, jerking to the side as he did so. When no return fire came, he peeked inside. The exit to the warehouse had been left wide open, and the shouts and screams of the mammals in it came through uninhibited.
"Pennington, Rhinowitz! Report!" Bogo needed to risk it. A radio call was the only way he could be certain that they had room to move into the warehouse to join the firefight that was taking place.
There was a blast of interference before anyone responded. "Rhinowitz here, chief! They got Pennington with a Night Howler! One of the old ones! We had to knock her out! She's down for the count! The others, they have a couple dozen or so mammals pinned near the southwest corner, furthest from you. A few are firing on our guys. What about you guys?"
"Office area clear! Targets must have escaped into the warehouse. We clear to enter?"
"Standby!" There was a moment of comparative silence. "Snarlov and Andersen are covering the breakroom door, you're clear to enter!"
The chief stood next to the door and peered into the huge open area before pulling back. "Crates and machinery at our eleven o'clock. Hopps, Wilde, when I give the word, you two get your tails over there. Fangmeyer, you stick with me, we're going to take cover behind the forklift at one o'clock. Once we're in there, move towards the gunfire. Stay in cover until you have a clear shot!"
For once, Nick didn't have a snappy comeback, likely because his eyes were on Judy, but he nodded, indicating he heard. Judy was more vocal.
"Yes, chief! Come on, Nick!"
The gunfire continued, along with the sounds of rounds impacting something solid. All four mammals moved in close to the door and took stock of the large room beyond. The chief waited a second, then barked out, "Three… Two… One… Go!"
Like a well-oiled machine, the four mammals burst into the warehouse and ran to their ordered positions. Taking cover behind a large metal box, Judy took a breath and peeked around the side.
One side of the warehouse was taken up entirely by machinery and mixing stations. The doe supposed that this was where they had manufactured all of their products. There certainly was a lot more than one cube van in here, and she guessed that this was the result of large number of smuggling operations, in addition to whatever chemicals they used that they couldn't find in the city and surrounding area.
That was a question for another day, however, and she turned her attention back to surveying the room. There were two cube vans parked on the side with the open loading door, one sized for larger mammals, one for medium. The larger one had taken a few hits and lost the air in its tires, but the other looked relatively undamaged.
A dozen mammals had taken refuge behind a set of steel drums, and the doe immediately recognized Doug. The ram popped up out of cover, brandishing a pistol and making to fire off a shot at his attackers, only to duck back down to avoid the cover fire from one of her colleagues.
He must have seen her, though, because next time, instead of firing over the top of his cover, he popped out the side and shot directly at her. Judy pulled back behind her own protection, breathing heavily. She looked at Nick. "I saw Doug. Back of the room, behind a row of steel drums."
The fox nodded, peeking around the corner himself. He didn't see Doug, probably because he was hiding, but he did see Hornby, glancing from the same place Judy had pointed out. His attention was on Fangmeyer and Bogo, who had run to a position closer to their target's hiding place, raising a gun and clumsily firing off a few shots that went wide of their mark. The fox ducked back into cover, nodding to Judy. "Didn't see Doug, but I saw Hornby. And from the looks of things, he's never had any weapons training. He might be even more dangerous without it, though."
That was the unfortunate truth. Mammals without weapons training were often more dangerous, both to themselves and others, than someone with training. You never knew what would happen with them. One moment they might be shooting at you, and the next you realize they hit something or someone else, and things would all go to hell in a pawbasket.
Peering out again, Judy noted that two others seemed to be firing on Bogo's position, and she pulled back just as one looked her way. "Two more shooters. I recognize them from Rivers' briefings, but I don't remember their names."
"So, four shooters?"
Judy listened to the gunfire coming from the direction of the targets, picking out the sounds of four individual weapons. Her own colleagues' return fire came from a different direction, which made that easy to catalogue and ignore.
She nodded. "Four shooters for sure. Different weapons, whatever they are."
Nick nodded. "You know, given what they were doing in here, I'm a little nervous something might get hit that shouldn't. Who knows what's in those steel drums?"
The doe nodded and tried to radio the observation to the chief but was drowned out by another round of gunfire. Peeking out of her hiding spot, she noted Hornby and Doug firing off a few rounds at her colleagues. She ducked back behind the machinery when Doug turned the focus of his fire on their position.
As if to drive Nick's point home about the unknown contents, there was a comparatively loud clang of a large round connecting with one of the drums, and a splash of blue-violet liquid released from within. The gunfire turned to yelling, and at least two voices started snarling and growling. Two shots later, shots not from her colleagues, and those two voices went silent.
The doe's stomach dropped. She knew what had happened, even without seeing it. The drum had contained raw Nighthowler extract, and at least two mammals had gone savage, and their own people had shot them. They had to end this.
Nick frowned as Judy popped out of cover and tried a return shot of her own. "Geez, you'd think they would have run out of ammo by now," he said as he moved towards the other side of the equipment they were hiding behind. Once he got to the edge, he glanced out, then was forced back into hiding by a tranquilizer round that went whizzing past.
Judy nodded in agreement. "That must be where they have their stash of ammunition." She briefly looked around her side of their shared cover, only to watch as one of their suspects threw something at Bogo's group. She wasn't sure what it was, though, and she opened her mouth.
"MOVE!" Bogo's voice boomed through the warehouse, just as Judy herself had been about to yell out. Apparently, he'd seen it, too. Her colleagues scattered, and the doe pulled back behind her cover as well, expecting an explosion any second. The gunfire ceased.
Nothing happened.
In confusion, she waited a few seconds before peering out. No one fired back at her and the… whatever they'd thrown lay on the ground where Fangmeyer had been taking cover. A dud?
She didn't have time to ponder that, though, as everything clicked into place with her partner's next words. "Carrots, they're making a break for it! They're going for the cube van! I don't have a good shot!"
Judy grabbed her mic and relayed the information to Bogo, while crawling over to her fox. She peeked around the corner to see two sets of hooves and a pair of feetpaws running for the smaller of the two cube vans. The larger one blocked any decent shot, though, and wasting ammunition wouldn't do anyone any good. The set of feetpaws stumbled, then the mammal—a large hare, much to Judy's surprise—collapsed, a feathered dart clearly belonging to one of her fellow officers sticking out of his side.
Unfortunately, that still left the two pairs of hooves, now climbing out of sight, likely into the cab of the smaller cube van. Thinking quickly, Judy risked a glance out of their cover and, not seeing any threats or hearing more firearms reports, she gestured to Nick to follow and ran around the side of the larger, disabled vehicle. The sound of an engine starting was all she needed to hear. They had taken advantage of the chaos caused by the thrown object to create an opening for escape.
Something tugged at Judy's mind, though. Where was the fourth shooter? She looked toward the stack of barrels that had been their cover and didn't see anyone. Her colleagues were busy either advancing on the moving vans or rounding up a group of suspects.
The doe nearly jumped out of her fur when the larger of the two moving vans, the one near which she was standing, roared to life. Her brain was quick to put two and two together. Whoever the fourth shooter was, they had managed to get into the cab of the larger moving van and started it up. The doe scrambled out of the way as whoever was driving put the vehicle in gear and floored the gas, the inflated tires on one side making an ear-piercing shriek on the smooth concrete.
The smaller of the two vehicles waited for the larger to pass before pulling in behind them. Judy took off in pursuit, hoping to at least be able to jump onto the tailgate or get to her own cruiser. Bogo's voice came over the radio link. "Rhinowitz, tell me that you have the alley blocked!"
"I got my end covered, but we got no one on Francine's end." The vans both made a sharp right turn and stepped on it again, starting to pull away from the pursuing officers. "Fuck it all, their heading that way! I'm in pursuit!"
"Officers Hopps and Wilde in pursuit as well! He's heading north!" Judy yelled into her radio.
The two vans tore down the alley ahead of the three chasing mammals. Judy suddenly pulled to a stop as a sickening crunch and the sound of shattering glass filled the air. The lead van veered off to the left and slammed into a house on the opposite side of the intersecting street, coolant pouring out of the bottom of the vehicle and an explosion of steam emanating from under the hood. Francine's cruiser, meanwhile, spun around 140 degrees, leaving a huge hole through which the smaller of the two moving vans was able to slip through unscathed.
Judy grabbed her radio, on the run again. "Chief, the larger of the two vans just wiped out Francine's cruiser and hit a house! Smaller one's on the go, Wilde and I are still in pursuit!"
Rhinowitz had peeled off to investigate the wreck of the larger van and check on the occupants of the house, if there were any. The smaller van, meanwhile, headed westward—an odd decision, Judy noted, since the only way out of the subdivision was east.
Judy pulled to a halt as she felt Nick's paw on her shoulder. The fox was running low on breath as he pointed in the direction of their own parked vehicles. "We'd… be better off chasing them in those, Carrots."
Judy nodded sheepishly as she changed directions and headed back to their cruiser. Nick picked up the radio call. "All units, Superbunny and Wonderfox are heading to grab our ride. Can't chase down this guy on foot!"
"Can the snark, Wilde! Which way was the target headed?"
"He went west, Chief, deeper into the subdivision!"
"Chief Bogo, Officer Hopps, HAWC2 has eyes on your suspect. Will update if he makes any new moves."
Judy breathed a sigh of relief. With the chopper on the target, they could take their time catching up. Reaching their cruiser, Judy ripped open the door and hopped into the driver's seat, with Nick running to the passenger's side and climbing in. Starting the engine, the doe pulled out of the parallel park before flooring the gas. "Call in, Nick!"
Nick wasted no time in getting on the radio. "HAWC2, Zulu 240 is on frequency. Where can we meet our celebrity?"
"240, copy, you're on frequency. Suspect is making a beeline for the roadblock. Will be intersecting you guys in three seconds."
Judy counted off the time as she raced down the road, and at two and a half seconds, the cube van blew past in front of them, going way faster than any vehicle of that type should be going on a mixed residential industrial street, especially one as poorly maintained as this. Judy pulled out behind the van, keeping her distance.
Contrary to what she expected, though, whoever was driving decided to avoid the roadblock entirely by climbing onto the sidewalk, levelling a bus stop, news stand, and someone's roll-out garbage cans, leaving a trail of carnage behind. The van escaped onto the open road beyond the block by squeezing in between one of the cars and the wall of the boarded-up restaurant next to it.
In the passenger seat, Nick shook his head. "I'm not sure if I should be impressed or worried that whoever's driving that van apparently knows it well enough to slip through that narrow opening."
Judy nodded in agreement as she slipped the cruiser through the same opening. Beyond, she could see the bulky delivery van blazing a trail down the road in the direction of the highway. "It's probably Doug driving, then. Woolter did say that he did the bulk of the driving with that thing and that they were the only three that did. Hornby never drove it."
"240, Chief Bogo here. We've got a headcount. Only mammals missing are Doug Ramses and Damian Hornby. They must be in that van. What's your status?"
Nick grabbed the radio. "Nice to hear your friendly voice, chief. We're eastbound out of this subdivision and heading straight for the Deerfoot freeway. Any takers on bets that Doug wants to re-enact the chase from a month ago?"
The cab of the cube van was cramped with one oversized mammal and one mammal just the right size, but neither one cared at the moment. All that mattered was losing the police and getting hold of the elders.
"How the hell did they know our names? Where to find us?" Hornby frantically dialed Dade Walker's number once more, only to have the call go to voicemail again.
Beside him, Doug was concentrating on the road. "Stang. She must have blabbed to her relatives. She's the only one, unless someone else got cold hooves. I don't know who that would be, though."
"None of the lines to the elders are picking up. Could the cops have gotten them, too?"
"You didn't tell me who the elders were. Did you tell Stang?"
"No."
"Then she wouldn't have known. Anybody else?"
"The only other ones that knew the elders were the mammal financing all of this and Stevens back at the warehouse." Hornby shook his head. Too bad they had to leave the jackrabbit behind. His crew had been instrumental in getting the equipment set up for yesterday's test.
"And since Stevens was with us all night, that leaves the elders themselves and the financer. Who was he?"
Hornby shook his head. "I have no idea. They kept that from me."
Doug pulled out onto the freeway, thankful that the police hadn't thought to set up a roadblock yet. Other than the cruiser behind them, he figured most of them in on the raid would probably still be back at the warehouse. He couldn't do anything about the helicopter that was buzzing around overhead except lose them in a tunnel, and there weren't any tunnels between them and his desired route out of the city.
The ram had done his homework the day before and had found a service road that led out of the city to the northeast out of Tundratown. It had originally been built to service a dam upstream from the old Cliffside Hospital, but when the river was rerouted, the dam was no longer needed, and was left to decay. The service road eventually met up with the old Highway 2 roadway, and from there, he could just floor it north.
If he could lose the chopper and that blasted cruiser. And the backup that cruiser had no doubt called. The ram cursed as he drove, wishing he hadn't left his police scanner in the office, as his passenger tried yet again in vain to reach any of their associates. How had it come to this? Did Stang really have the nerve to do this? If she did, Doug would make sure her days were numbered.
In the meantime, he needed to deal with the cops on their tail.
"Copy that. Thanks for the backup, McHorn. Still heading Northeast on the Deerfoot freeway. Things are about to get a bit chilly."
Nick hung up the radio as Judy kept pace behind the cube van. The highway was relatively empty, given the lockdown in the city, but the extra backup would be handy to contain the armed mammals they knew to be inside the van they were chasing. Judy had considered, then discarded the possibility of performing a PIT maneuver, knowing that even if they were successful, Ramses and Hornby could just take off in the opposite direction before she had the chance to turn around.
The air in the cruiser got noticeably colder as they neared the transition to Tundratown, and Nick reached down to turn on the heaters. He didn't fancy turning into a foxsicle.
Judy stayed right on the van's tail. When the driver of the van suddenly wrenched over a lane, the doe followed. The driver tried again, and she mimicked his actions, staying in the blind spot offered by their large rear and out of the line of fire. As long as Judy stayed behind them, the occupants couldn't shoot at the two cops.
"240, I'm at your four o'clock." The radio call from McHorn was a welcome one, although her hunch about keeping in the van's blind spot was proven correct when she heard the sound of gunfire. "Shots fired! Shots fired!"
"Horns, you OK?" Beyond the nickname, Judy could detect a genuine note of concern in the fox's voice.
"Everything good here. Windshields a mess, but he missed me. Glad I don't have a passenger, though."
The van swerved to the right, into McHorn's lane, leaving Nick and Judy's cruiser exposed. An arm appeared out the driver's side window with a black—
"GUN!" At the doe's yell, Nick instinctively ducked. Judy did too, but only enough that she could still see the road. It didn't make a difference anyway, since the shots went wild, thunking into their grille and sailing overhead. Doug wasn't able to aim backwards and drive at the same time, apparently.
"I guess we should count ourselves lucky that Doug isn't one of those action hero stars that can drive backwards at forty-five miles per hour using only the rear-view mirror while also shooting forward and somehow not wreck half the world," the fox in the passenger seat quipped.
Judy snorted and nodded her head. Doug apparently thought the same thing, because he suddenly swerved all the way to the left and slowed, preventing Judy from taking up residence behind him, and his passenger's window came down.
Doug had put himself in a prime position to pit the cube van, though, and Judy was quick to capitalize. She used her cruiser to start pushing on the van's high back end and rear wheels, hearing them grind against her brush guard. She pushed, sliding the van's rear wheels out of alignment.
Unfortunately, that opened up the passenger's side of the van, giving the mammal, Hornby, a clear shot at them, and the Texas longhorn took advantage of it. Nick and Judy both ducked as a flurry of bullets spiderwebbed their windshield, and the doe backed off.
"Sweet cheese and crackers, how much ammunition do they have?!" Judy cursed as she was forced to back away.
The van that had pulled ahead of them made a sudden sharp turn to the right, crossing four empty lanes in a second to make an offramp. The doe wrenched the wheel, feeling herself pulled to the side by inertia. The tires squealed in protest, and Nick braced himself on the dash and the door handle of the passenger's side.
"Wow, that was a hard move! How did he not flip over? Wait, he's getting back on the freeway. What's he doing?"
Judy had slowed, expecting the van to turn as soon as it reached the intersection, but instead, it had taken advantage of the folded diamond design and blown right through its red light and back onto the onramp. Judy slowed even further and made a quick check for oncoming traffic, saw she was clear aside from a bus a good distance away, and proceeded through, accelerating up to match the speed of their suspects.
Behind them, McHorn noted that the traffic light for his direction had turned green—likely a result of the traffic pre-emption system in their cruiser—and he, too, proceeded through the intersection. It wasn't to be, though. The rhino had just enough time to glance out his window and see the bus driver looking down at something and not paying attention at all before the larger vehicle slammed into him. The noise was incredible as tons of steel cracked, crumpled, ground, and tore, windows shattered, tires protested. The rhino didn't even register the gunshot bang of the airbags going off, but apparently, they did. His cruiser did a full 180 degree spin and ended up resting against the traffic light, while the bus glided to a stop on the other side.
McHorn shook his head, his ears ringing, and looked around in a daze before trying to open his driver's side door. It didn't budge. He quickly grabbed the radio. "Hopps. Wilde. I'm out of the chase. Go get those guys. I'm fine. Dispatch, we'll need some ambulances at Kananaskis Way and Deerfoot. Officer-involved collision with a bus."
Finishing his radio call, McHorn turned his attention to trying to get out of the vehicle.
With their backup down, Judy and Nick had to come up with another option. The van ahead had accelerated to over one hundred miles an hour and seemed to top out there.
"Got any ideas, Nick?"
Nick gripped the safety handle and hummed, a frown on his face.
"Only a couple, Fluff. We can wait till he overheats. We can taunt him until he runs out of ammunition. We can try to pit him again. Or we can give up the chase. But I think neither of us wants that." He grimaced. Up ahead, the van made a beeline for another exit, and Nick called it in to dispatch.
This time, the driver actually did turn off, and he headed north along a side road, before making an abrupt left turn.
Nick stared out the window as Judy dutifully followed, keeping on their tail. "What do you suppose they are trying to accomplish?" the fox wondered aloud. "They have to know they can't outrun us. Or our eyes in the sky."
Judy shook her head. "I don't know. But we may have to peel off." She pointed to the temperature gauge on her dashboard. Instead of the halfway mark, or even slightly over, the needle was riding dangerously close to the red, and the low coolant warning light was on. Unbeknownst to them, one of Doug's shots had damaged a coolant line and embedded itself in the battery, causing both to leak. As coolant drained, the system depressurized, and the engine temperature rose.
Ahead of them, Doug made a few random turns, with the buildings around them becoming sparser and more rundown. The temperature needle was buried in the red by this point. "How can we stop him?"
Nick scratched his chin. "Not sure, Carrots… Except… Maybe…" He looked around for a moment, then grinned. "We could shoot out his tires."
Judy thought about that, and her face lit up. "Go for it, Slick! But don't waste too many shots."
Nick nodded, pulled out his lethal, flipped off the safety, and rolled down his window, letting in a blast of frigid air. Instead of leaning out and making himself a target, he used the mirror as a brace and aimed.
The first shot caused a fountain of the compacted snow that caked the road to spring up, and the second one pinged off the delivery van's bumper. The third and fourth were true, and the van's two rear tires on Nick's side rapidly deflated.
Judy backed off as the van began to skid and slide, twisting sideways and leaning up on two wheels before slamming back down to the snow-covered pavement. Nick fired off one last round, deflating the front tire and rendering the vehicle immobile.
The pair knew they had little time. The chopper overhead had a bird's-eye view of the area, so if the targets ran, they wouldn't get far, but they were also armed, so they might try to shoot their way out, too. Judy stopped the cruiser and shut it off. They shoved open their doors and dove behind them, using them as shields. "HAWC2, you got eyes on the suspects?"
"Negative, 240, no one's left the vehicle."
The two snuck around to their trunk and opened it. Judy grabbed the megaphone from the stash. She put it up to her mouth and turned it on.
"Doug Ramses, Damian Hornby. You two are under arrest. Don't make this difficult. Give yourselves up!"
A/N
What's this? ANOTHER cliffhanger? How dare I, the evil cougar writer, leave you with another cliffhanger! The nerve! The gall! *Runs for a nuclear bunker in anticipation of the incoming death threats*
All kidding aside, this was one of my favourite chapters to write.
Thank you to everyone who went to Koraru-san's DeviantArt page to offer a coffee or a word of support. Please keep sending some hugs and support her way!
No one found the Mass Effect reference in the last chapter! Can you find any in this chapter?
Coming up on March 20: Game Over!
Questions? Critiques? Did that pesky gum commercial from your childhood invade your mind again? Leave a comment!
