by Dalton Wolf
“Some of the armor seems to have melted and refilled the holes or something,” she explained to them. “What is that? There’s more metal in there.”
But then she felt around some more, and her brown eyes lit with energy. Pulling her fingers from the wound, she quickly reached into the pouch and, after some fumbling around, pulled out a little tube with what looked like white gauze wrapped around it. Twisting and squeezing brought forth a tinkling snap of glass. She held the little vial beneath Calvin’s nose and waved it back and forth a few times.
Suddenly Calvin jumped up in Athena’s lap screaming.
“I’m sorry!” he screamed. “Owwww! Oh holy hell!” he added, coughing and clutching his chest in agony. “Oh hey,” he gazed dazedly up at Athena, before promptly passing out again.
“What?” Athena asked Scaggs in utter shock, tears still falling, arms still clutching the man she thought she’d lost.
“The bullets did penetrate his leather armor. But the chainmail armor in combination with the leather and padding underneath seems to have stopped all of the energy and flattened out the lead so much that it couldn’t break through.”
Athena somehow held him tighter and cried silent tears.
“So, he’s going to be ok?” Tripper asked.
“I don’t know. I’ll have to check him out a bit more. He could still have broken ribs that have penetrated something or internal bleeding just from the impact. I just don’t know. But he’s not dead yet, and that’s a better sign than we had when I got here. We can at least take him back to the doctor now.” She leaned over and took his pulse again.”
“Respiration good. Vitals stable. Pupil response brisk. I think he might be ok,” she ventured.
“Ok you guys, let’s get our stuff together and get back to work,” Tripper snapped in a breathless gasp of relief, wiping tears from his eyes. “We need to get him to Doc, and I think we’ve outstayed our welcome,” he nodded at the gathering crowds of armed people assembling at the ends of each isle eying the party with concern.
The group closed ranks and pushed the full baskets side to side, in front and to the rear to potentially use as a barricade.
“We didn’t start it!” Gus yelled down the isle. “But we finished it, so back off!”
Some of the people nodded understanding and brusquely walked away, but others quickly filled the empty space to glare menacingly down the aisle.
“Maybe we should just take what we have and go,” Brick suggested.
Scaggs waved the ammonia under Calvin’s nose again and he again woke up, this time cursing. “Oh, shit. Oh my God that fucking hurts!” he exclaimed, still clutching his chest and rolling back and forth in Athena’s arms.
“Do you think you can get up, buddy?” Tripper asked, beaming with relieved joy.
“Are you kidding?” Calvin huffed between gasps. “I can’t believe I’m not dead. Hey…I got shot, dude.”
“I know. I saw it. Thought you were a goner, pal.”
“No…no. I think I’m ok, Trip,” he announced in pure wonder.
“You sure?”
“I can feel everything. Are my feet moving?”
Athena nodded, unable to speak, tears running down her cheeks under the shadow of her raised visor.
“Wow. I’m serious. I think I’m ok. I’m alive. I need to get up and prove it.”
“Let’s help him up,” Trip motioned to Boomer and Gus and they stood on the other side, placing armored hands under his armpits and pulling Calvin bodily to his feet. Athena stood back a step and put her hand to her mouth, waiting to see if he really was ok. He pushed the others away and stepped over to her, looking deep into her beautiful black tear-filled eyes and smiling, before falling right back to the floor with a heavy clank. The others helped him back up and he once again pushed them away and stepped over to Athena, this time leaning against the shelves for support.
“I should have asked you to marry me a long time ago,” he said. “I’m so stupid…and I’m sorry.”
“Don’t worry,” she laughed and slapped his armored shoulder. “You’ll get around to it.”
“No. I’m asking you now.” He pulled out a small silver box—from where no one ever found out, and tried to drop to one knee, but his momentum pulled him to the side and he fell over to lay face first on the floor, laughing and then groaning from the pain of laughing. After a few seconds he motioned to his friend and Tripper helped him back up to his knee and he stretched the ring out to her and said:
“Athena Hannah Rosenthal, the world may be ending around us. But I’ve loved you since the day you spilled your tray on me in the cafeteria and nearly masturbated me to fulfillment in front of a hundred people while you cleaned the spill from my pants and apologized profusely. Your have the most caring heart of anyone I’ve ever met. You’re intelligent, witty, wise and my best friend in the whole world. Sorry, Trip,” he shrugged to his friend and turned back to Athena.
“It’s an unfortunate reality that you also happen to be the most beautiful woman who has ever walked the face of this Earth, but I’m willing to overlook that in light of your many positive attributes. There is literally no one in the world I would rather spend the end of eternity with other than you. Will you marry me?”
She could only nod as too many tears had pooled together, blocking her voice. From forlorn and alone to happily engaged in less than five minutes. It was too much. He slid the simple silver and titanium ring on her finger and they hugged and kissed passionately while the others looked on with tears and grins.
After a few minutes, however, when it became more than a little uncomfortable, Tripper finally broke them up with a loud harrumph. “Hey, if you two would rather be alone, we can leave you under the guns of the rest of those kind looters there,” he suggested.
Sarah doubled her fist and punched him in the shoulder, hard. Unfortunately for her, he was wearing armor, and she was wearing chain gloves and the resulting crash of metal severely bruised her knuckles and sent her into a profanity-laced tirade.
“Damn it, Trip Grissom! You are a jackass and a dirty rotten son-of-a-bitch and you have the emotional capacity of a fucking toilet, you...you…Ooh, you make me so mad sometimes!”
“I’m just saying, this is a nice little scene and all, but we need to get moving before we have our own little war break out in the camping isle. Those guys might not have been alone.”
“He’s right,” Calvin coughed again, still hunching over in pain, grimacing with every attempt to stand upright.
“We’d better not stay too long or others will get the idea this group had and try to take what we were smart enough to gather. Brick, Boomer, replace any items that were shot and then get on this end and push.”
The two men instantly kicked off a few boxes riddled with holes and replaced them.
“Trip, Gus, grab that handle when we’re ready and start pulling. The rest of us will bring the baskets.”
“Which ones do we leave?”
“I can take two baskets,” Boomer said.
“You three can move this flatbed,” he looked at the trio, sizing them up.
“You sure you can push a basket, Scoot?” Trip asked.
“No, I’m not. But I’m gonna do it anyway.”
“I’m glad you’re not dead, buddy,” Tripper said, patting him on the shoulder fondly, but giving him an intense stare, trying to tell his friend with his eyes just how important he was. He tried to say more, but couldn’t find the words and instead kept holding his friend’s eyes with his own, completely failing to express whatever emotion he was going for.
“Hey, you’re not waiting for a kiss or something are you?” Calvin asked quickly. “Look, Buddy… I can’t propose to you, too. I’ve already given my ring away. You love me. I get it, but we just can’t ever be together in that way. I’m spoken for.”
Everyone else laughed, but Tripper blushed and flipped Calvin off.
“Jackass,” he turned away from his friend
�
��Hey, don’t let me stand in your way,” Athena leaned in, handing Calvin his helm. “Me and Sarah have a bet going on how long it’ll take for one of you to propose to the other. I could still win if it’s today.”
“I should have let them keep shooting you,” Trip muttered, leaning into the flatbed and pushing with the others.
The cart rolled easily under the combined might of the three men and the group slowly progressed towards the exit, one hand on weapons trying to keep the other ‘shoppers’ at a good distance and hopefully double-thinking any martial move on their position. The other gun-toting citizens seemed content to just intimidate the group from a distance and herd them from the store. No one really wanted to attack this oddly armed and armored gang that had already taken out six armed gunmen without losing anyone. Several people had seen Calvin get shot in the chest and get up again and were passing the story on to anyone who would listen. There was already enough trouble with what seemed by all accounts to be zombies trying to eat their families; they certainly weren’t going to mess with this new type of resurrection if it wasn’t trying to harm them.
Within fifteen minutes the friends had both vehicles loaded and were halfway back to the Fortress. If Calvin’s attackers had any friends, they wisely chose to remain unseen within the store. Another ten minutes brought the group in front of the Fortress. Athena sent Calvin in to get checked-out by the doctor immediately so he ran ahead in a hunchbacked stoop and opened the iron gate for the others, stopping briefly under the shower to wash off while they pulled the vehicles into position.
As with the last time, they pulled the Hedgehog quietly into the middle of the street first and when its riders were inside the gate, they backed the Wagon to the columns. The group spent the next hour unloading the supplies acquired at the cost of six Human lives. Athena steeled herself, staying to help the others instead of running in to make sure Calvin was ok. She breathed a sigh of relief when he eventually stumbled back outside with a note from the doctor that said he was on light duty and could only watch and give orders. Calvin blew a whistle as he saw the last box being lifted from the bed of the ambulance and with cheers and hoots of pleasure, everyone stomped up to the cafeteria for refreshments.
“That’s all we can do until we hear from anyone needing a ride,” Calvin informed them with a pale face, sinking down next to Athena so she could wrap her arms around her favorite new fiancé.
“So…let’s get baked. El Supremo demands an audience!” Trip announced in a powerful, bold Latino accent, holding up a large bag of brownish-green with orange hairs and his favorite steel and glass mini-bong.
“Calvin?” he asked.
“Go ahead,” Calvin conceded. “I think everyone needs a break after losing Lola.”
“And nearly you,” Sarah added, since he seemed to have forgotten he had been shot barely more than an hour before.
“Oh yeah…I actually almost forgot about it.”
“How could you forget about it?”
“I mean, I’m not thinking about it. It was real strange when it happened, like it happened to someone else.”
“It didn’t,” Athena squeezed him tightly until he groaned in pain. “I’m sorry!”
“I’m…a little sore,” Calvin admitted. “Just hug my arm. Yeah, that’ll do it. But you guys go head and float away. I’ll stay straight until the doc checks me out fully. In fact, I guess me and the Doc can keep watch the rest of the day when we’re done.”
“I don’t feel like smoking right now,” Athena said quietly, hugging Calvin’s arm. “I’ll share watch.”
“I’ll help,” Felicia chimed in. “I don’t drink or smoke—but I don’t care if you do,” she added quickly to Joel, who had been moving over to sit next to Tripper and Sarah out on the balcony, but had jerked up short on hearing of her abstinence.
Boomer eased along behind them, already wearing a pair of black sweats and a clean blue t-shirt. Brick had stomped downstairs for something and no one really cared if he came back. He wasn’t spending much time with the others unless he had to and there wasn’t a nerve present that he hadn’t stepped on at some point.
Gus’ grey eyes asked the question of Scaggs with raised brows. “Dude, I totally blaze,” she replied. “Just socially, though. I’m not a pot-head or anything.”
“Cool. Let’s blaze.” The new couple followed the others out to the patio, hand in hand.
Lucy eyed the group for several minutes, looking to her side and then outside as if waiting for the end of a conversation with Lola about whether or not they should. She eventually shrugged and headed out to join them. Felicia relieved the doctor of his watch on the surveillance cameras and nodded to Calvin who, after a look of regret at the gang smoking on the terrace, let Athena drag him down to the medical room. The doctor entered a few minutes later wearing the same white lab coat he’d had from the beginning, though the blood and other stains had been washed away and it shone once again with its original splendor and the pungent odor of bleach lightly stung their nostrils.
“I have your x-rays. A few cracked ribs. I’ll want to keep you under surveillance for a few days. I wish we could do an MRI or CT, but we have to take what we can get.”
“I want him to have a full workup,” Athena declared firmly, undoing the straps on Calvin’s armor and helping him painfully slip it over his head.
“Oh, he seems to be doing fine.”
“He was shot, Doctor.”
“Well, the armor seems to have absorbed most of the energy. I’m surprised he was even bruised.”
Athena glared at Calvin. She had no doubt he had ordered the doctor to sugar coat his injuries to the others. Calvin’s green eyes looked innocently up at her, so she turned her powerful gaze on the doctor instead. No chill he had ever received had shaken his spine as violently as the insistent glare from those dark, shapely eyes. He relented. “Perhaps it would be better that I give him a full exam then.”
“I don’t think that’s really necessary, Doc,” Calvin said, trying to pull away from them both.
Two pairs of arms gripped his shoulders firmly, forcing him roughly down onto the table. The doctor did do a full workup. He did as complete an examination as he could without the aforementioned machines. Other than two cracked ribs and some serious bruising, he proclaimed Calvin in perfect health, though he gave him some meds to take just in case. After a quick discussion Calvin learned that none of these medicines would cause any negative side effects when combined with marijuana, so after he and Athena took an extended watch to give the doctor a good nap, Calvin decided to exchange one of his pain meds with a more natural treatment and he and Athena joined the others.
As it turned out, the radio and phones remained mostly quiet for the rest of the day, so the gang sat around smoking, telling their favorite Lola stories, and ultimately watching two of her favorite movies, Apocalypse Now and Super Troopers using Joel’s Ipod Classic on the company video system.
Occasionally they were able to hear a brief news broadcast sent to everyone on the inside from the government over the Emergency Alert System explaining the 100 mile wall around Kansas City to those stuck inside the Quarantine Area. Each time the EAS broke in, they would pause the movie and everyone would lean in a little closer to the others, hoping this wouldn’t be the message stating to the rest of the country that they were being forced to bomb Kansas City out of existence.
“The Governors of Missouri and Kansas, the CDC and President of The United States of America have declared National Bio Emergency number One,” the message stated.
“This Emergency affects a one-hundred mile radius around the joint Metropolis of Kansas City, Missouri and Kansas City, Kansas. Until further notice, the metropolis will be designated a Quarantine Zone. A one hundred mile perimeter has been placed around the affected area.”
“Notice to all citizens within the Quarantine Area: No persons will be allowed to exit the Zone until the All Clear is given. Any citizens inside the Quarantine Zone approaching
the Quarantine Wall within 50 yards will be aggressively refused further approach. Vehicles approaching to within sight of the Quarantine Wall will be neutralized. This is a legally mandated Quarantine Area. All American laws apply unless following a specific law would endanger the safety of citizens within your community. This is a localized event and this Quarantine Zone comes into being in the hope that the Quarantine will be obeyed in an effort to protect the rest of the country, and potentially the rest of the world. Supplies will be dropped into population centers at designated drop points and as many outer areas as can be reached. Stay tuned for drop point locations and times. Communications within the Quarantine Zone will be affected for several days. The Red Cross will be setting up bases around the Quarantine Wall and developing shipping schedules into the Zone…”
The message went on to list the counties affected and some other rules and regulations of living under a martial law where the guns are on a wall pointing inward instead of within the community. All but the stupidest of listeners understood that they were now in a prison of sorts until ‘someone’ could get things straightened out. Despite the dire warnings, the group decided that no one and no thing would dampen their spirits this evening, and the party continued.
Later in the evening even Calvin and Athena took their turns before the hookah while only Felicia, Brick and the doctor split the remaining watches. Just after nightfall, Quinn and Hephaestus arrived and the party really got under way. The two wizards of metal had completed what work they could on the escape vehicle that day and were waiting for parts to print on Hef’s custom 3-D metal printers. After taking their turns on the Hookah, both men sat in one corner with everyone else gathered around while Quinn showed them how to make chain mail armor. The men had made enough supplies for another eight suits, but he would not have time to make them without help.
Soon everyone was sitting around wasted, watching Star Wars, and ultimately cutting and smashing their fingers as they crafted the easier jacket parts in an assembly line process with the small metal rings and tools the two men had brought. Being stoned seemed to make the process operate smoother until Joel went one toke over the line, forgot what he was doing and had to have it all explained again…and then the others began faltering.
