The Service Centre (Zombie Transference Book 1)

by Tom Germann

  Tracy sniffled. “In pain? You really scrubbed my face down and it hurt. But I feel bad.”

  Janice nodded. “Why do you feel bad, Tracy?”

  Tracy stopped sniffing and looked at Janice. “Because he’s right.”

  “Who, the Sergeant?”

  Tracy nodded shakily. “Yes. I don’t want to be in charge and make those decisions. What if someone makes a mistake and then someone dies? That shouldn’t happen here! This is the US! I’ve been working here at the service centre for the summer and it’s supposed to be boring and not much fun. But I made good money so I could go back to school. What he said hit me, though. I want to be angry at the soldiers, and I am. But what if something bigger is wrong? I don’t want to make those decisions. No one should have to make those decisions. Why are they making those decisions? Are they better than the rest of us?” The last was said with some defiance.

  Janice sighed. “Well, they are right on that. Unless you deal with a large company and multiple employees then dealing with a larger situation like this is harder to handle. Simply put, they are the best trained to work together and have the organization to make it work. The boss makes the decisions and everyone follows orders. The senior people will talk about it a bit and make sure that the boss has the right information to decide with. You just need to hope the boss is competent. That warrant officer and sergeant both seem competent. Steven is as well, even if he is not motivated enough to do everything that needs to get done.”

  Janice looked at Tracy. “Look, stiff upper lip and all that garbage. You have a job to do that will help keep us alive in the worst case. I don’t think we are on an alien planet. I think there was a bad accident. That brown on the ground and the damaged parking lot? A chemical spill. We got a whiff of it in the building, which is why everyone passed out. A lot of it was dumped out here and then it caused the damage we saw. I think we are all still suffering some hallucinations and that we were passed out for more than a day.

  “So stop worrying about what you cannot change, and instead finish your job so we can figure out where we are going from here.”

  Tracy nodded and stood. “Thank you, Janice.”

  “You’re welcome, dear.” Janice watched Tracy walk back to the privates and start taking notes down from them. She said very quietly, “Young people today are so stupid.”

  Janice looked at her watch. At almost ten in the morning, it was too early for food, but not too early to see what else was going on and could be done. She stood up and started walking toward the trucker section.

  Sergeant Cassion came out of the washroom. Janice veered over toward him.

  “Sergeant Cassion, I just wanted to let you know that I talked to Tracy. She’s a frightened young girl that’s not too smart. I mean, she doesn’t have a lot of life experience, and she is being terrified by some of the conversations that you men have had about being gassed. She just needs to settle down and stop worrying so much. There is a logical reason and I doubt it’s a terrorist attack. So I think she is better now, though. I don’t think you’ll have as much trouble with her in future. She’s just scared like the rest of us.”

  Sergeant Cassion considered Janice. “I know. Change is scary and she does seem kinda naive that doesn’t know what the real world works like. It just got to me that here we are, trying to make everything work nice and smooth, and here comes someone with no more common sense than a shoe. At least she got it when I pushed back.”

  Janice glared at the Sergeant. “Just don’t push so hard that you start breaking people. Sal is a wreck and if Tracy goes, that is going to make this harder for everyone. Just keep that in mind!”

  “Hmm. Good point. I’ll keep it in mind and try to tone it down a bit. What are you up to?”

  “I am going to look around for containers so that after the inventory is done, when all the men in charge decide what they are doing, we can quickly package it up and carry it off.”

  Janice turned and went into the back storeroom while the sergeant walked up to the front of the building. He looked from side to side out the front windows then stopped, frowned, and went back to the trucker part of the centre. He grabbed a map for the local area from the map stand and flipped it open, starting to work through it.

  The Workshop

  The door opened smoothly until the very end, when it emitted a metallic screech.

  Jimmy called out, “Gonna have to get some oil for that.”

  Corporal Vajjer countered, “It won’t do any good. The door is grinding against the frame with that last inch here.”

  Wagner shook his head. “Can we just go on in and check this out, please? If this looks worthwhile, we just close and lock the door and go through the inside of the building.”

  Everyone filed in. It was a dark room that still had the smell of burnt oil and metal. They had walked in from the far side of the building and could see why the building was such a strange shape.

  The farthest bay was much deeper because it could handle cars or big trucks. The back of the building had a filthy rollup door big enough for a tractor. The front doors were no cleaner or clearer and almost no light was filtering through.

  Susie pulled out the two lanterns she had grabbed from the store and turned them on. Handing them to Sam and Jimmy, she said,. “Here you go, guys. I’ve been in here before and you really need to have light before you go anywhere. This first bay is a truck bay and there are these big jack and a hoist. But there is a big pit for mechanics to go under and work from there. So don’t fall in. The other two bays don’t have that, they just have the big metal hoists.”

  The lights helped a bit but not enough for everyone to really see what they had.

  Wagner and Vajjer pulled out flashlights and turned them on. Everyone moved out, being careful to stay away from the long pit in the truck bay.

  Jimmy and Sam had walked to the back and Jimmy called, “This place is really well equipped for some place that was supposed to be abandoned. They still have tires here and a bunch of batteries. These tool chests are locked up, but we can crack those off if we need to. If we had our vehicles, we could do some good work on them here.”

  Sam opened a locker and something large fell out and crashed to the floor. Jimmy jumped. “Sam, try to be a little careful and not scare me to death, alright? Remember if I have a heart attack, you’re giving me CPR.”

  Everyone else had moved through the three bays, looking for whatever could be useful. The office door was locked and no one could see through the dirty glass. Vajjer tried to open one of the bay doors, but it was locked. When they checked, they found that all the rest of the bay doors were completely secured as well.

  The door to the service centre was also locked. The bathroom was old and in bad shape.

  Everyone headed back to the door and stopped just inside so they were out of the sun.

  Vajjer, Sam, and Jimmy looked at each other with Jimmy speaking. “This place is a functional shop. Those tool chests maybe were stripped out, but you wouldn’t lock them up and chain them down unless they still had some stuff in them. There are enough spare parts and fluids to top up a few cars. I just don’t know why they left this much stuff here.”

  “It looks like they sealed up for a long weekend when no one was going to be around and then it just stayed closed. There are always extra bits lying around. I bet there is stuff that was still on inventory left and this is the left over bits,” Vajjer said.

  Jimmy nodded. “Yah, probably. Well, whatever, we have a stocked shop. There is a generator so we could have power if we needed it as well.”

  Wagner looked at everyone. “We lock this door. We only go in through the building entry from now on, and we try to get into the office to see what else is there. We also figure out some way to secure this door better from the inside, just in case. That lock doesn’t look too sturdy.”

  Sam put his hand up. “I saw some c
hain inside. We could tie it off to the door and the hoist there. That should hold it in place.”

  Wagner nodded.

  Vajjer spoke next. “Why bother going into the office? What could possibly be there that could help us out?”

  “Well, a few rifles with ammunition would be nice. Otherwise, we won’t know until we go in there, you know?”

  Vajjer shrugged. “You’re the warrant, sir.”

  Steven looked at Vajjer. “Why are you carrying a fire extinguisher? It looks kind of old and heavy.”

  Corporal Vajjer grinned. “It is old and very heavy. If the aliens show up, I can always smash their brains in with this instead of trying to use a bag of beef jerky or an umbrella.”

  “You did see the other tools though, right? There are a bunch of long ones in there that you could use. Why a fire extinguisher?”

  “That’s easy.” Vajjer stuck one finger in the air. “This is completely useless, so it doesn’t matter what happens to it.” He stuck the next finger up. “I used one of these in a fight a long time ago, I was sort of drunkish.” The third finger went up. “How cool would it be to beat the living hell out of an alien with a fire extinguisher?”

  Steven shrugged while Wagner put both hands on his head in frustration. “There are no aliens. DON’T say that when we get back inside or everyone will start freaking out that we lost our marbles. I am still hoping there is a normal, happy explanation for the last twelve hours. I’ll embrace whatever really happened when we know, okay? No freaking anyone out.”

  Susie piped up, “It couldn’t have been aliens.”

  Everyone looked at her and Jimmy asked, “How do you KNOW it wasn’t aliens?”

  “Well, I know for a fact that I wasn’t probed, and I haven’t been for a while!” Susie giggled.

  “Well, I could probe you, if you want?” Vajjer suggested cheerfully.

  Wagner sighed. “STOP! It’s too hot for this and I REALLY don’t want to have to fill in whatever weird sexual harassment paperwork that someone will hit me with when we get home, okay?”

  Vajjer tried and failed at looking innocent. “But she asked! Well, sort of.”

  Everyone had a laugh at that, then exited the shop and gulped in the fresh air. Even with the shade, outside was better than the inside of the shop. Susie locked the door and they made their way back to the front door.

  Steven stopped halfway there and called to the others. “Did you see that? On the far side of the road? I think I saw someone!”

  Everyone stopped and looked at the distant tree line.

  Sam spoke up eagerly. “Want to go check it out?”

  Wagner replied, “NO! If someone IS there, they can come over here and say hi. I don’t like what is going on so far and don’t want to risk anything until we know what is going on or who did this to us.”

  Jimmy nodded in agreement. “Not only that, Steven, but we just came out of a nice dark garage that wasn’t too hot and then we come out here into this heat. I know I ain’t feeling too good. Maybe you just saw something, you know? Like, do you still see it or is it gone? I think we all need to go inside, drink something, and take it easy. We can always go looking later.”

  Steven nodded, but didn’t look convinced.

  Everyone carried on into the building and closed the door after them.

  Back Inside

  The Service Centre

  Everyone came back inside the service centre, which was slowly warming up but still providing relief from the sun and was cooler than the outdoors.

  Sergeant Caisson greeted them as they walked in. “Everyone, grab a drink. We think we figured out how screwed we are.”

  Everyone grabbed a drink, including some coffee that had been left behind, and moved in around the table where there was paperwork strewn around.

  Sergeant Caisson put a hand up to stop questions. “This is just a quick briefing based on what we figured out in the last bit. First point is good. Tracy, let everyone know please.”

  Tracy stood up, clutching her notepad. “We finished the inventory check. Then I did some math figuring eating and drinking so much per day. We have enough food for three weeks and enough liquid, if we are careful, for five weeks. Our problem is that some of that food will go bad unless we start a generator and hook it up to the fridge and maybe a freezer. But we do have lots of long shelf-life dry goods.” She sat back down.

  Sergeant Cassion nodded at her. “Thanks, Tracy. The next point is Richard’s, with an update on the building.”

  Richard stood up from the roller chair he had brought from the back. “I checked some of our systems. The emergency lights in the building will only work for maybe an hour before they go dead. The batteries look damaged. I also checked some of the other systems. We can cook on the gas stove until all the food is gone, but we need to be careful because of the fumes as we have no exhaust. I went and pulled out the ‘emergency preparedness checklist’ that was put here a couple of years ago. We have more stuff that needs to be counted. When it all came in, I left it in the containers and put it into the office in the shop and locked it up.”

  Wagner and Steven looked at each other and nodded.

  Richard continued, “Everything there should be good still. Finally, I realized something. By the time we woke up this morning, there should have been around ten to twenty people driving through the area and stopping in here. I haven’t seen any vehicles. Has anyone else?”

  Everyone slowly shook their heads.

  Richard grunted. “And the last thing. Our replacements should have been here hours ago, but no one is in. All I can think of is that the road is closed both ways for some reason.” He sat back down, completely obvious to people’s nervous sounds. Sal was twisting his hands together at the table again.

  Warrant Officer Wagner spoke up. “Calm down, everyone! If they closed the road, how would anyone get here?”

  “Um…” Sergeant Caisson smiled and waved. “I thought about our drive in last night and I remembered some stuff, even though it was late. I had been up on the rooftop checking the local area out. I came back down and then checked the map. We are NOT in the same place that we were last night.”

  The statement was greeted with silence and blank stares. Then everyone started talking at once.

  “Wait! Before you ask, on the drive here, we came from the south, that way,” Caisson said, pointing. “The road was long and winding and very wet. This was the only really straight stretch for a while and this service centre sits on that route in the centre of the straight stretch. On the roof, I can see that the road is straight both ways and the vegetation all looks brown and worse farther down the road. Finally, on the local map, it shows all the built up woods and conservation areas locally. Behind this building is a subdivision that looks like it came out of the fifties with those little bungalows. It looks like it has been there a LONG time. So we aren’t where we started. Maybe that’s why no one came here?”

  Jimmy said, “We saw those houses. I’ve been here before and I always park in the back in the shade of some of the larger trees. There ain’t no houses back there. This road is a bit windy for kilometres both ways. So where are we then?” He looked at Sergeant Caisson.

  The sergeant shrugged. “That’s harder. I have no clue. If any of us had a smart phone with signal, we could just track our location, but we don’t.”

  Steven looked at Wagner. “Okay, sir, we need to plan what we do for the next bit then. Any ideas?”

  “Yes, I think I have some. We are going to lock every way into this building and arm ourselves. That means going into the shop and grabbing some of those tools and then breaking every box open if we have to. Next, we need to open the office and check those supplies. I want to go check out those houses and see what’s there and if we can figure out what there is in the area. We need to eat lunch and take it easy today, as a few people are not feeling well and it
is hot. If someone shows up, great. If we find people, great. Otherwise, I think we prepare and get up early in the morning and a few of us try walking out.”

  A buzz of conversation started.

  “TOMORROW?” Janice’s voice drowned out everyone else’s. “We have to stay here another night? There are houses right behind us! Go and use one of their phones! I don’t want to sleep in here another night!”

  Wagner spoke quietly, “I don’t want to stay here any longer than I have to either. But those houses, well, they are not supposed to be there, and, Sergeant? Did you see anyone around them?”

  “No. The place looked abandoned but really well kept, and there are cars parked on the streets.”

  Private Tocker started, “Excuse me, sir. When the breeze started, some of the trees were moving. I could see a gas station a bit further in. I could see the big sign.”

  “Did you see any movement or anything that indicated life, Private Tocker?”

  “No, sir.”

  The warrant officer nodded. “The last and first thing we need is information. Some of us will go to the houses and check out what is going on. Maybe everyone is at the town’s big party, but we’ve been moving around for hours and there has been no movement. So we find out.”

  The conversations started immediately and grew louder. Sergeant Caisson looked at Steven and Wagner and shook his head while smiling. “GUYS! Relax! We have food, water, and shelter. Heck, we even have toilet paper and clean toilets. So let’s eat and we’ll figure out who is going to go and knock on doors.”

  Sergeant Caisson looked around. “Andries, can you help them getting food ready? Maybe burgers and hotdogs along with some sandwiches for those who want them and anything else that Tracy tells you to use before we have a problem with it going bad.”

  Tracy, Susie, and Andries headed for the back to prepare lunch.

  Wagner looked at Steven. “We should work up a plan for the afternoon. It’s a military kinda thing that you need information and then you need stuff. We have some stuff but we only have information on what we know right here. Therefore, we need to gather that information. Sergeant Caisson, would you be okay doing a quick local reconnaissance of the area?”