“That would be great,” answered Abe quickly. Always loved a deal. The man walked away to get the old gas cans and Abe finished filling his cans and grunted as he lifted the heavy cans into the truck.
The man brought back the cans and though they were a bit dirty seemed to do the job. Abe filled up those and put them in his increasingly full truck bed. He walked into the store with the guy who seemed to be waiting to make the fifteen foot walk with him.
The inside of the store was jam packed with everything from fishing lures to ammo to that bunny white bread Kyle liked so much. Dust coated the unpopular items that didn’t seem to warrant cleaning, and the wooden floor creaked as they walked on it. All in all, Able loved it. It reminded him of the small country store where he ate hot dogs at when he was younger. There was a large jar of Smithfield's Dill Pickles on the counter and Abe thought he might get one of those on the way out.
“Do you have any ammo for a .30-06?” Abe asked, as he moved up to the counter and waited for the guy to move behind it.
“Sure I do,” he answered. “Not sure how old it is but not older than a few months since hunting season used a lot of it up. We keep a lot of it around.”
“Good, I’ll take a few bricks of that and three cases of 9mm. And one case of 45s.” Kyle had told him to buy everything he could but ammo wasn’t cheap and he still wasn’t sure this wasn’t a joke. He would hedge his bets.
The guy plopped the heavy boxes of ammo on the counter and then began to punch the in numbers in his classic cash register. “And a pickle,” Abe added, taking one out of the jar.
“On the house,” the man replied happily, and then began to cackle at his joke as he pointed around the small store. “Get it? House?” he kept laughing and Abe smiled and was happy the old man was having such a good time. Who said all old people were grouchy.
“$212.50,” Jeremiah said, after punching the last item in the old cashier.
“I’m gonna kill him,” Abe mumbled to himself. “Totally unnecessary,” he was still grumbling when he thanked the guy for the pickle and climbed into his truck, a dill pickle hanging from his mouth.
As he pulled into the housing development that Kyle lived in, he saw smoke in the distance. He couldn’t immediately see where it was coming from but became a little concerned when he noticed that it was coming from the general direction of his brother’s house.
He breathed in a sigh of relief when he saw that the smoke was coming from the house with the car smashed in its garage. He wondered again how that had happened, and was asking himself where everyone had gone. He didn’t see a person in the area which was weird since he wasn’t gone that long. The smoke was thick and black, and was progressively getting heavier even as Abe watched it from his truck. He decided he would take a look after he parked.
He backed the big truck, bed first, into the driveway so he could pack a little easier if he needed to. He got out of the truck and started to close the door when his brother’s warning squawked in his head. He sighed and flipped up his seat to pull out the gun belt that his brother had gotten him. It was black and made of some fiber that was extremely durable, though that was all he knew about it. Kyle had told him that it was what they used at work.
He snapped the gun belt on his waist and pulled out a small, hard plastic case. He opened it and pulled out a Remington 9mm. His brother had given him this also and made him spend countless hours at the range with it. What a waste of money. He didn’t mind the shooting, but loading the magazines and picking up the spent brass was a pain.
Abe checked the action, popped the magazine out to make sure it was loaded, and inserted it back into the magazine well. He holstered the gun and snapped the safety on it. He felt like an idiot as he started to walk down the street like he was trying to be a cowboy, and he hoped no one called the police on him. He stopped at the front of the house and debated what to do.
The house was still producing black smoke but Abe couldn't see a fire from the front. The car was still crashed halfway into the garage but there wasn’t anyone around.
“Hello in the house?” he called out, trying to be loud enough without looking like a gunslinger throwing out a challenge. Nothing moved. He looked to the houses on either side, but nobody seemed to be moving. He decided to get a closer look and saw a nice gap where the car crashed into the garage. He started to hear what he thought had to be a dog trapped inside the smoking house. A soft muted growl was coming from right in front of him.
“Hey boy, you trapped in here?” he called out, as only a dog lover could.
He walked up the paved driveway further to see into the garage. He squatted down to get a better look through the small opening that was between the car and the rest of the garage, the lights were on. A nasty smell was coming from the hole in the garage but Abe didn’t give it much thought, there was something burning after all. He didn’t see anyone moving in there but the smoke, coming out of the opening in waves, was pretty thick. He was about to call out for the dog again when something slammed into the garage door from the other side causing the garage door to shake and sending small pieces of wood flying out at him. The sudden action startled him so badly, that he let out a high-pitched scream that sounded embarrassing even to himself, and he fell backward on his butt. He grimaced in pain from the fall on the hard cement.
Abe, slowly getting up, looked back at the jagged hole. A man seemed to be leaning over and sticking his face in the hole. Due to the small space, Abe could only see part of his face and his legs behind him. The head disappeared but Abe saw the legs move back and again the door jolted. The man was running into it for some reason. Again the man tried to break through, this time screaming at the results of his poor effort. The scream was from the gut, a growl mixed in with a moan. Abe began to slowly move away from the curious scene. A little distance was a good thing.
“What….,” he wasn’t able to finish saying anything as he was completely at a loss to what was going on. “Virus!” he almost yelled, thinking about what had been going around, what his brother had warned him about. He put his hand on his gun but didn’t pull it as he looked around him to make sure that he was still alone. He was. Abe wasn’t sure what to do about this guy, but he wasn’t going to stick around. He could always call the police from the house. “I guess Kyle wasn’t joking,” he thought, as he jogged back down to his brother’s house.
He ran into the house, slammed the door, and bolted the deadbolt. He started to head to the garage when he turned back around and looked at the door thoughtfully. He quickly scanned the room and turned his eyes on the big dark-blue lazy chair. He quickly picked up one end of the chair and shoved it against the door. Satisfied, he ran off again.
They entered the security building to find it almost deserted. That wasn’t too abnormal during a shift, with only the officers rotating through to get their dinner. Today however, it seed a little ominous. They walked through the locker room into the main hallway. A radio was broadcasting down the hall in the administration offices, but Kyle turned the other way. He wanted to see if anyone was in the lieutenant’s office. Patrick and Yolanda followed him as if he were walking through the jungles of Vietnam. He almost wanted to take a knee and raise his hand in a fist to see if they would copy him. His amusement was short lived, his recent actions flooding his mind. He didn’t want to question himself anymore, but that was as much a part of him as his big toe. He couldn’t stop it, but he knew he could focus on other things, and this was a good time for that.
He stopped at the edge of the lieutenant’s office, hesitating about what to do next. He figured that if they were any crazy people in the office they would come running out, and he wanted to avoid shooting any more friends.
His decision was cut short when from behind him he heard in a loud whispered voice, “Yo, is anyone in there?” Kyle gritted his teeth and looked back at his friend in exasperation. Patrick returned his look with a serious nod, his expression telling Kyle that he had taken care of it. Kyle couldn’t help it, a smile came out again and he turned around and waited a minute. If anyone was in there, they certainly heard Patrick’s attempt at…whatever that was.
Kyle decided it was probably safe, so he entered the office carefully with his sidearm drawn. His tension faded quickly as he saw the small office was empty. Another door leading to the briefing room was left open giving him a view of that room also.
The room was no longer than 15 feet deep and 8 feet wide, with two doors on diagonal sides of it. Its walls were a collection of charts, schedules, memos, and forgotten policy updates. Obsolete grey file cabinets were lined up against the walls, only to be separated by metal desks that held the room’s computers. Kyle walk over to the phone and called the Command Center to check in with the sergeant. Busy. He dialed the Secondary Command and it picked up immediately.
“Lieutenant, we’ve got problems,” said the frantic voice on the line. Kyle recognized it as Billy, a older guy who was usually on the relaxed side of the street.
“Billy, it’s Kyle. We’re in the office but there’s no one here.”
“That’s not good, man,” Billy started. “He went to check on a situation about 30 minutes ago and I can’t find him at all. I literally have a fight going on in the Command Center right now! I’m watching it on one of the monitors, and they won’t respond to the radio or the phone. Also, Skinny Finn went crazy and attacked a paramedic down near the cafeteria. I don’t know what happened and I don’t have any extra people to send. Also, you and Patrick weren’t picking up the radio.”
“Someone probably got the sickness in the command center man, it’s the virus,” Kyle said, completely ignoring the dig at him. “It does something to people and they start to…”
“Hold on, cops are calling now.” The line went to playing soft music. Kyle gritted his teeth.
Kyle looked over at Yolanda and Patrick, not needing to say anything. They had already seen what was going on.
Kyle’s thought were already drifting past this place as he waited on the phone. “Patrick get into the lieutenant’s desk over there and get the keys to the F350 and the armory.”
“We’re gonna rob it?” he asked. He didn’t seem displeased.
“We’re gonna make sure that we survive,” answered Yolanda. “Now go do it.” With that, Patrick turned his back on them and went about finding keys.
“Yolanda, call as many of our friends as you can, tell them we’re going to plug them into a conference call in fifteen minutes. Until then, tell them what happened to us and to not get bitten.” She went to the next room and started calling.
“Kyle, the cops say it’s the virus also, things are going crazy all over the place. The plant manager also called,” Bill started, “we’re closing her down. I also got eight officers missing, and reports of people attacking other people all over the place.”
“Billy, listen to me. Brian, Scarrow, Johnson, and the doc are all dead or gone crazy. The two nurses also. The cops are right, that virus that we heard about is here and it makes them go crazy, and then try to eat you,” Kyle heard the words coming out of his mouth but they sounded incredible even to him, and he had been there.
Silence filled the line for a moment, then Billy said, “Well shit Kyle, what am I supposed to do with that?”
Kyle felt his answer was better than he could hope for but he didn’t know what to tell the man, “We’re getting out of here Billy, gonna make sure our families are okay, but I want to check on the lieutenant. We’re gonna have a conference call in twelve minutes.”
“I’ll listen in then,” he said. “Gotta run and coordinate the shutdown with the plant.” He hung up.
Kyle put the phone down and thought about the conversation. He didn’t want to leave the building to check on anyone, especially with the way it was going outside. Even now, he was hearing the sound of rifles from different directions, but he ne needed to check on the lieutenant and see if he was okay. He felt he owed him that. He looked at his watch. There was no way he was going to be able to meet the thirty minute deadline like he told his brother. He only had fifteen minutes left. He pulled his phone out and sent a text telling him that it would be an hour instead. He told him to text a confirmation and asked if he was still okay. The response came quick: “Yes, Mom, see you then.” He smiled and walked over to Yolanda who was just hanging up the phone.
“I got almost everybody, but I can’t find Jones or Hibbert. I tried to call them on the radio but nobody is answering. They were supposed to be on tours inside the vital zone,” she said. “She looks tired,” he thought. Her hair was starting to pop up out of her neatly-fashioned rows. Her uniform was disheveled and dirty in some places. He wasn’t sure when she got dirty.
“That’s good, we’ll try to find them,” he reassured her. “We have twelve minutes until then. I’m going to run to the cafeteria really quick. Billy said the lieutenant went in that direction.”
“I’ll go with you,” she answered quickly and moved to pick up her rifle from the desk.
“No, stay here and help Patrick gather everything you can. Use those big moving buckets we have. Try to get into the vault, they have the combination hidden somewhere. Guns and ammo first, then radios and that stuff.” He stopped and thought for a moment. “I’ll be in and out and tell him what we’re doing, I don’t think he’ll try to stop us.” He turned to go. “Did you find James?”
She smiled a little. “Yeah, he’s in XR-2, he hasn’t seen anything much being that far out, so that’s good.”
James was a one of the nicest, if quietest, guys Kyle knew out here. He was a sharp looking black guy who carried himself well and was built like a truck. He had some good conversations with him about race problems while sitting endlessly at their posts.
“Glad to hear it, I’m off.” He quickly called the lieutenant on the radio to get his position. He didn’t hear back. He then called the Command Center but didn’t hear back from them either. It seemed everything was going down. He thought he might try the tower.