by Mark Clodi
“Thanks, Stewart. Your usual compassion is appreciated.”
“It’s here.” Stewart said, pointing her light into a darkened recess at one wall that was covered with hooks that had numbers above them.
“Look, a high tech vehicle key solution.” She pointed to the wall.
“It works, why mess with something effective?” Ruben asked.
“You’d think they would have an Apple app or something.” Stewart said.
“A what?” Ruben asked.
“An Apple…never mind old man. Something on the computer.”
“I know what an iPhone is. But why would anyone make a program for state patrol cars?” asked Ruben, genuinely puzzled.
“Really Ruben, I was kind of joking.”
“Oh, I don’t think I get your sense of humor.”
“It’s the age difference.”
“Cut it out you two, let’s just find the keys and get out of here.” Bill said.
Stewart turned the handle of the door and swung it open to step into what was really just a closet sized space. She took the paper Ruben handed her and looked for the numbers on the board and came up with four sets of keys. She kept looking about after that, even rifling through the desk set at the back of the closet.
“I can’t find any keys marked for the gas pumps.”
“They are probably in the shop. That’s where I would keep them, closer to the pumps.” Ruben said.
“Probably, do we want to go check or see if we can get any of these cars started first?” asked Bill.
“Yeah, let’s check the cars first, we can fuck around with the pumps afterward, if the cars are out of fuel.” said Stewart.
The three of them wandered around the garage looking for anything useful, but found nothing they wanted to carry out with them.
“We should check the armory, see if they got anything left.” said Stewart.
“If we can find it.” Bill said, “Lead the way.”
Stewart took the lead and they walked back across the lobby of the state patrol station into what looked more like an office area. Looking down the hallways at the ‘T’ intersection beyond, Stewart shrugged and chose to go left. Luck was with her and they came to an open doorway with concrete steps leading down.
“Dark.” Stewart said, pointing her light down the stairs.
“Max said the place was empty. So I guess this feeling of unease is just nerves?” Bill said, flicking his light over the walls and floor ahead of them.
“Dark and man don’t mix well together.” Ruben added, as he turned on his own small light back on.
The three headed down the stairs and found a sign with directions on it, one arrow pointed towards a ‘Gym and Locker Room’, the other arrow said, ‘Shooting Range’. Stewart hardly paused before heading towards the shooting range. There were two doors at the end of the corridor; both had small rectangular squares that ran parallel to the door frame just above the latch. Stewart shined her light into the area directly ahead of her and took a quick look.
“That’s the range, it’s built out underground, it must extend beyond the walls of the building. Pretty nice really, for a headquarters built out in the middle of nowhere. So that must mean this other door is the armory.”
Stewart went to try the latch, expecting it to be locked, but the handle gave easily, and she gently pushed it open. Inside was what looked like a workshop, with heavy benches, vises and tools for servicing firearms neatly stacked on shelves around the perimeter of the room. Directly across from the door they had come in was another open door, this one was made out of a fine mesh of metal, backed by iron bars.
“Looks like someone beat us to it. Maybe they left us some ammo?” said Stewart as she moved forward cautiously.
“Why would the police have assault rifle ammunition?” asked Bill.
“After all the civilian shootings, are you kidding me? Every department has a few assault rifles around. Hell, even a few of our cars in Denver had military grade assault rifles. The only difference is the rifles civilians have, even law enforcement, fire .223 ammo. The rifles Draper gave us are the real deal, they are chambered for 5.56mm ammunition. But for those of you who were asleep during Draper’s mission briefings, he told us we can safely fire .223 ammo out of them. So maybe, they’ll have bullets we can use.” Stewart stepped into the open doorway of the armory and said, “It looks pretty cleaned out…wait, hey, pay dirt! C’mon Bill, let’s put your muscles to use, I think I found us a few reloads!”
Bill joined Stewart in the armory and like her, he saw the empty gun racks hanging on the walls. There were, however, a few boxes of ammunition on the shelves to the right side of the door. Stewart was holding open a military ammo box, one of three that was still on the floor beneath the lowest shelf. The box had a piece of duct tape over the side of the olive drab color, the tape had “.223 - 840” written on it in black marker.
“It’s our caliber! Grab an end would you?” Stewart asked.
Bill bent down and brushed her hands away from the other side, he picked the box up and stood easily. “I can get it. You and Ruben just light the place up so I don’t trip over anything. Are we going to take it all?”
“We burned through a lot back at the hotel. I think we should take two boxes of it and leave the third tucked under here, so we can get to it if we need to later.” Stewart said.
“Fine by me. Are you sure we can fire this stuff?”
“There will be some loss of accuracy, you won’t notice, but I might miss a few shots once in a while.” Stewart said with a faint smile on her face.
“Thanks. I’ll just fire twice to make sure I hit the target.”
“You don’t already?”
“There is no winning with you, is there?” asked Bill.
“Talking is a competitive sport.”
“It shouldn’t always be.”
“Oh, I am not that bad.” said Stewart, “Can you help me with this other one, or do you want me to double you up so I can keep a better lookout?”
“Double me up, they aren’t that heavy.”
“I know, I just like having my hands free. Even if the building is empty.”
“You ladies ready to go yet?” called Ruben from the workroom.
“Yeah, let’s roll.” Stewart said, leading the way.
The three made their way back outside. Max was sitting cross legged in the back of the truck with his eyes closed. Without looking he said, “Did you find what we need?”
“What are you doing? Taking up meditation?” Bill asked.
Max blushed, “No, but Aubrey said I might try expanding my ‘talent’ by exercising it a little more, trying to build it up, instead of just using it as it is.”
Stewart stared at him for a moment. Max was facing them, but his eyes were still closed. “Is it working?”
Slowly Max turned his face towards her, his eyes remained closed, “Yeah, I think she might have something there.”
“Open your damned eyes! It is too freaky talking to you like that.” Stewart said.
Max cracked open one eye, “Sure thing. Zombies coming, but slowly, through the woods, they’re about a mile away.”
“Shit. I thought your girl said the way would be clear.” said Stewart.
“I think by ‘way’, she meant the highway. We’re off of that path by more than a little.”
Stewart handed Ruben and Bill each a set of keys, and kept two for herself, “Let’s get these checked.” After a moment she turned back to Max, “How is our boy there?”
Max reached out and put his hand on Javier. He pressed down on him again, harder, “What the fuck?”
“What?”
“He’s, he’s hard!”
“Gross Max, check at his neck instead, feel for a pulse.” Stewart quipped.
Max blushed again for the second time in as many minutes, getting a laugh out of the others. “Not there! I felt his stomach, it’s like a rock.” Max moved his hand up to the young man’s neck, “His neck is
stiff too. No, not stiff; hard as a fucking rock.”
“What?” Bill said, climbing into the back of the truck on the other side of Javier. Both men put their hands on Javier and pressed his body, which was as hard as a rock.
“What the hell? Could it be internal bleeding, Stewart?” asked Bill.
“How should I know? Bleeding inside his neck? No, I don’t think so. Plus he isn’t swollen at all, just…I dunno, dense? Max can you zombie-vision him and see if he is still alive?”
Concentrating for a moment, Max nodded, “He is fine, he looks…good Lord! His body is changing as I look at it. His leg, it’s, like white, like everything he has, all his energy, it’s there working.”
“Good. Leave him. Bill, let’s check these cars, whatever happened to us, happened to Javier too, he’ll be fine. Probably.” Stewart said.
Bill gave Ruben a sideways glance, “What about you, Ruben, can you tell us anything about Javier.”
Ruben returned his gaze and said levelly, “I think he’ll be fine, if we can get him back to Iowa. Are we going to wait here until those zombies get here or what?”
The three of them soon found all four state trooper vehicles, they all looked good and started without any difficulty at all. Each of them drove one of the cars over to the broken down pickup truck and parked it.
“I took the better of the two, but they both looked good. You guys didn’t do too bad either. How are they on fuel?” asked Stewart.
“About a quarter tank.” Ruben said.
“Same here. I thought they would fuel them up at the end of the shift?” Bill asked.
Stewart shrugged her shoulders and said, “Don’t look at me I was a city cop, not a state trooper. My tank is hovering at about half.”
“Okay then, let’s go see about fueling them up. Are we taking all three?” Bill asked.
“I think so. I can ride alone, we’ll put Max and Ruben in one and you and Javier in the other.”
“You get a car to yourself?” Bill shrugged his shoulder, “Okay, I guess.”
“I’ll drive point, so if the shit hits the fan we won’t risk the entire group.”
They manhandled Javier into Bill’s car, putting him at an awkward angle in the back seat. The man’s body didn’t bend at all, he was as stiff as a sailor in a whorehouse after six months at sea and that made positioning him difficult.
“This is messed up. It is like he has rigor mortis or something.” Max muttered after they finally got Javier in the seat diagonally.
“But he is doing okay, as far as you can tell?” Stewart asked.
“Yeah, I guess. I can see his colors pretty well and….and Aubrey was right, I should have been trying to use this power I have, test it and strengthen it. I can’t see his bones, not directly, but when I look close I can see where his body is flowing around his bones, which leaves some hollow spaces. It’s weird, but I swear I can see that his leg is almost whole again, no blood flowing around the damaged hollow space. When I look at both legs they look almost symmetrical.”
“Portal x-ray machine. I’ll add that to your list of talents.” Stewart clapped Max on the back and walked him over to ‘his’ cruiser. “You shouldn’t have any problems with this baby. It’s automatic, but has paddle shifting, you know what that is?”
“No.”
“Think of it like an override for the automatic transmission, you can force the car into a lower or higher gear if you need to accelerate faster, I doubt you’ll use it to shift up much.”
Max examined the steering wheel controls and nodded, “Okay, I can’t see how that is useful, but I guess I get it. I’ll mess with it when we get on the road. The zombies are closer. We better get that fuel and get out of here.”
Ruben had the trunk to their car open and let out a long whistle. He held the bomb in one hand as if he were intending to put it into the trunk.
“What?”
“A box of crap.” Ruben replied.
“Good crap or bad crap?” asked Max.
“That’s another thing I like about you, Max. You have different categories of ‘crap’.” Stewart said walking around to the back of the car. She took one look and said, “Mixed crap, we got nuggets of gold here, but other bits are only corn.” She reached into a large cardboard box and brought out a short, heavy, machete. The blade was sharp and ugly looking. Someone had ground it down into a sharper point, leaving the blade about eighteen inches long.
“Why would the police need that?” asked Bill, walking over to them.
The box contained all sorts of crude clubs, knives, swords, chains and other makeshift style weapons. Among the ‘bad crap’ were a few reasonable pieces of equipment, like the machete Stewart had. Max brought out a bowie style knife and pulled it out of its leather sheath.
He tested the blade with his finger tips and pulled it away quickly from his hand, a small drop of blood appeared on his ring finger.
“Ouch! Fucking-a! That’s sharp!”
Stewart laughed, “This is probably confiscated stuff, things they took off people they were arresting or found when they searched their cars.”
“Wouldn’t it go into an evidence locker?” Max asked.
“Oh, Max! You don’t know the half of how law enforcement works, do you? If we busted people for every little thing they did wrong we’d need three times as many jails. No, these, I can guarantee, were just taken off of the criminally stupid who hadn’t done anything wrong. Think of it as a safety precaution. No sane person is going to come crawling back to the officer who took their bowie knife and ask for it back. In return the weapon is out of the hands of someone who probably didn’t need it.”
“But that’s…stealing!”
“Right. So you’d rather serve a few months in jail for carrying a concealed weapon than give up your, what? Hundred dollar knife? Most people figure out that not spending time in jail and money on lawyers is a better deal. Plus this stuff isn’t in evidence, so it would likely just disappear if anyone complained anyway.”
“So why did they keep it?” Max asked.
“I dunno. I knew guys back in Denver who did this too, as long as it wasn’t a gun. They showed each other what they found on the guys and laughed about it. Kind of a macho thing. But kind of not, any one of the guys this stuff came off of, could have turned it on the officer or someone else. Maybe they used it as a way of keeping score. You want to know the real shit of it? I mean if these weapons had been put into the evidence locker?”
“What?”
“They probably would have been sold at auction to make more money for law enforcement. We destroyed guns in Denver and I don’t recall selling junk like this at auction, but I know other places did. Kind of a repeating cycle, huh? We confiscate, it gets sold to help buy us a new radar gun and then we might end up confiscating it again.” Stewart looked the machete over and experimentally tucked it into the back of her belt. “Does it make my ass look fat?”
Max stared at the woman’s posterior, not knowing how to answer. Combat fatigues made everyone’s ass look fat, in Max’s opinion. Finally he said, “It makes you look like a central American revolutionary. Real Che Guevara.”
Stewart tilted her head sideways and looked over her shoulder at him, “Max, you say the nicest things sometimes!”
“You won’t be able to sit in the car with it like that.” Max pointed out.
“Oh, I’ll just let it ride up a little and tuck it back down when I get out.”
“I hate to interrupt your bonding, but where are the zombies at, Max?” Bill asked.
“Close. We’re probably going to have to clear them. I think some supers are coming up from further out.”
“Well, let’s get the cars pulled around and see about filling them.”
Bill’s vehicle, by chance was the first to the garage area, the yard was surrounded by a chain link fence that was locked with a chain and padlock. He got out of his car and looked the gate over as the first zombie stumbled out of the brush twenty yards away.
Stewart, who was in the last car in line, got out of her vehicle, she was holding the machete in one hand and approached the zombie head on.
Max stepped out of his car and steadied his rifle on the top of the vehicle. The zombie stumbled towards Stewart and she swiped it in the side of the head, slicing off the top third and sending the bloody-black hairy bit flying away into the grass. Oddly it resembled a mole hill.
The zombie toppled and Stewart cleaned off her machete on the man’s overalls.
“Disgusting. How’s that gate coming Bill?” Max asked.
“I’ve got it open. Let’s move on in.”
Ducking his head into the car Max said, “Ruben, would you drive? I’ll stay here and shoot zombies as they show up.”
“Sure. I can drive.” Ruben said sliding over to the wheel.
Max took up a position at the gate and waved the old man and Stewart through. She paused and her passenger window, next to Max, rolled down.
“Where ya headed good looking?” she asked with a grin.
“Very funny. There are a few more coming, I’ll stay here and make sure they don’t get in. You just fill up and get back here.”
Stewart looked at Max and then at the pump, which was about forty feet away. Bill and Ruben were already stopped close to it. Finally she nodded, “Jeez, we just lost you, don’t go vanishing again on us.”
“There’s no fog. I’ll stay in sight at all times. Go on.”
Stewart drove off and left Max staring into the woods. Some of the zombies approaching were moving faster than the others. He turned his gaze away from where they were coming from and towards the slower ones, keeping his mind’s eye open at all times. He didn’t know what he was looking for, he was going by instinct, knowing something was going to happen. Max reverted to using his normal vision and checked out the gate, the chain was still hanging loosely wrapped through the chain links. One end was weighed down with a broken padlock; Bill hadn’t used a tool to break it, not that Max had seen.
“So you’re still strong, I see.” Max muttered quietly about Bill. Checking on the approaching zombies he noticed the ones that had been approaching quickly had slowed down to a more cautious pace. Concentrating Max tried to get into their heads, to see what they were thinking. Despite his efforts he got nothing. Well almost nothing, while he was watching he noticed the slightest of pulses, a merest trace of their dead, bluish energy that raced from one of them to the slower shamblers off to Max’s right side. The dead on that side stopped, just inside the tree line and out of sight from normal vision.
