by Lilly Black
"If a gun shop hasn't already been looted by now, it probably means there's someone in there shooting the looters," Alek rationalized.
"I don't know, man," Damon said, running thick, strong fingers through his brown hair. He wasn't from French-speaking Canada like Aiden, and he barely had an accent unless he said words with the ou sound. "The place was surrounded by dead. If there was someone protecting it, wouldn't they be shooting them in the head? Maybe the parking lot is full because many have tried, but nobody's been able to clear it enough to get in there."
"I don't know if we should risk it," Dani said, reaching for Jax's hand under the table. Jax went on some of these missions, and the idea of him battling a parking lot full of corpses was more than she could bear.
"Are you talking about Sylas Gun and Pawn down on Route 20?" Olivia asked, and Alek nodded. "What were you doing all the way down there?"
"I remembered passing a brickyard on the way in from interstate. It's where we got the last load of stone for the new wall," he said.
"We should probably start keeping a log of scavenging locations so we know where to look if you don't come back," she said.
"If we don't come back, you probably don't want us back," Alek pointed out.
"Is it that bad out there?" she asked, realizing that she was sitting safely on her mountain while others risked their lives for that safety. That wasn't going to happen anymore.
"Yes," Aiden said sadly. Yesterday, they had lost one of his teammates on a mission to clear a small, local pharmacy, and he knew that wouldn't be the last. "I had hoped that here in the middle of nowhere it would take longer for it all to collapse, but everything is overrun now. Everything."
"Then we need those guns," Liana insisted.
"Agreed," Olivia said, and she gave the group a little background on the guy who owned the shop. Randy Sylas, was a paraplegic Vietnam vet in his sixties who was confined to a wheel chair, but he was still a crack shot. If he was holed up in his shop, he could definitely take out looters, but he should be able to take out the dead as well. He should have also figured out that he had to shoot them in the head by now, so if his place was surrounded, they surmised that Randy was either dead or not there.
They decided they were going in. Liana was going to lead the mission, and they were taking Olivia, Alek, Damon, Aiden, and Ravi to drive the Right Way truck. They'd stolen so many rigs to bring stone up the mountain at this point that several of them had figured out how to drive tractor trailers, but somebody was going to have to maneuver it to back up to the gun store just right. Ravi was the only one with that kind of experience.
With everyone suited up in Kevlar and armed to the teeth, Alek, Olivia, and Liana climbed into the cab of the rig with Ravi while Damon and Aiden followed on motorcycles. One of the first things they did was modify the mufflers to cut down on the sound, but even as quiet as they were now, in the unnatural stillness of the new world, they may as well have been honking their horns as they rolled through the first gate. At the bottom of the mountain, Olivia had Ravi stop the truck so she could talk to John Vincent, whose family was the only one living in the lower ring now. He knew Randy better than she did, and she was hoping he could give her some insight in case he was in the shop.
He did one better. He offered to accompany them.
Leaving his unhappy wife and children, John climbed into the cab, and they made their way down the roads toward Pipestem on Route 20. Olivia watched in horror as they passed so much death and destruction, and though part of her wished she had never left the mountaintop, she knew she was not capable of sitting idly again while others did the dirty work. She needed to get out there and see what it was like because she was the one ultimately making the decisions that affected them all. She never asked to be their leader, but they all looked to her for answers.
Liana, on the other hand, was excited as they headed toward danger. Once her military training had kicked in, the urge she once had to be a general had resurfaced, and she was ready to reclaim the entire world from the dead one mission at a time. Her orders were for Ravi to pull the rig off the road before they reached the shabby, outdated mini plaza with the gun shop so Aiden and Damon could use the motorcycles to lure as many of the dead away from the parking lot as possible, and when they were sitting on the shoulder watching the Greyhawks lead the horde of corpses down Route 20 like Pied Pipers, it seemed brilliant.
As Aiden and Damon slowly drove, the dead came from other parking lots and joined them, and they were soon leading a march of about fifty in an area neither of them were terribly familiar with. By the time they disappeared from sight, the mini plaza was clear except for a few random corpses with wounded legs that prevented them from walking, and as Ravi navigated the parked cars, the others got out of the rig to put them down, noticing that they all had two things in common. Their leg wounds were caused by gunshots, and they had been bitten multiple times. This, along with the haphazard way the cars were parked, made it obvious that someone was inside the gun shop taking out potential looters.
It had been the middle of the night when the plague began. The parking lot should have been empty, but the looters set their sights on Sylas Gun and Pawn early on. It was probably the most valuable asset within twenty miles for those who didn't realize the worth of pharmacies at that point. The shop was full of expensive jewelry and weaponry. Only one of those things had any value today, but three days earlier, looters may not have seen it that way.
Olivia and Alek shot the rest of the dead using silencers one of Aiden's teammates had made from the barrels of flashlights. He had managed to look it up online before the internet went down, and they were able to fire without drawing the attention of the crowd following the cycles. Aiden and Damon had filled their gas tanks before leaving the compound, but they were at a complete loss of what to do with the herd they now led. No one had envisioned it working so well, assuming that they would be followed more casually and be able to just turn around and zip past the dead to get back to the gun shop once they'd led them a few miles off, but as more joined the group, they took up the entire road. Then before Aiden and Damon even had time to come up with a plan, the herd's attention was abruptly drawn back to the mini plaza as a hail of gunfire erupted.
"Oh, shit!" Aiden cried, worried for Liana. He didn't know which end of the bullets his friends were on, but he was certain that fifty walking corpses weren't going to help matters. He and Damon hurried back to the herd, revving their engines and trying to get the focus back on them, but it only attracted a dozen or so stragglers who hadn't rushed off to the new stimuli.
The majority of the dead were running a three mile marathon back toward the gun shop where an AR-15 was spraying bullets into the parking lot from the mail slot in the steel door. Most of them were hitting the rig as Ravi had done a perfect job backing it up, and while the shooter was focused on the front of the shop, Liana, Alek, and Olivia crept around to the backdoor, hoping to break in and sneak up on him. Meanwhile, John Vincent stood by the front waiting for a lull in the gunfire so he could be heard. If it was Randy, he thought he might have a chance.
"Randy!" John shouted when the shooter finally stopped to reload. "It's John Vincent! Hold your fire!"
"Get the fuck out of here, John! I don't want to have to kill you," Randy yelled back.
"I'm your friend, man. Let me in."
"I don't have any friends anymore. Now, go the fuck away!"
"I can help you, Randy. What's the matter? Are you having a flashback?" he asked, confused about why his friend wouldn't be willing to let him in.
"No, I'm not having a fucking flashback, you jackass! You show up here with a bunch of armed strangers in the middle of the goddamn zombie apocalypse, back a semi tractor trailer up to my front door, and you think my problem with you is a flashback from a war I fought fifty fucking years ago? Fuck. You," he spat, and John laughed, realizing how ignorant it was for him to make that assumption.
"I'm sorry, brother. I can see how
this must seem, but I swear it's not like that. We're here to help you," he insisted.
"Help yourself, John. Get the fuck away from my store!" Randy shouted, then John heard a click and jumped back from the door just before the AR started spraying the back of the rig with bullets. John threw his hands up in the air in exasperation, but behind the building, Alek had been waiting for gunfire to use as cover. He shot the knob off of the backdoor, and he, Olivia, and Liana were able to slip inside.
Quietly, they stole through the backroom of the shop. There was a short hallway that led to the main store where Randy was shooting out of the mail slot, and off to one side was an office. Liana and Olivia peeked in and saw two young girls hiding under a table in the corner, terrified, but as one of them took a breath in to scream, Liana and Olivia dove under the table and put their hands over the girls' mouths, holding firm.
"We're not here to hurt you. We're here to help you," Liana repeated the words she'd said a hundred times to Afghani children in similar situations, and she meant it just as much now as she did then. "Are you here against your will?"
The older girl shook her head no.
"I have a daughter your age," Olivia said. "Savannah Anders. Do you know her from school?" The girl nodded. "She's at my house right now with Sally Chambers and Bella Fugate. We came to get you out of here and take you to my house where you'll be safe."
"I'm going to remove my hand now, but if you scream, you'll be putting yourselves and Randy in danger, do you understand me?" Liana asked, and they both nodded. She looked at Olivia, and they nervously released the girls. They stood up and backed toward the door as Liana put a finger to her lips to remind them to be quiet, but as soon as the women turned away from them, the girls started screaming, "Grandpa! Help!"
"Goddamn it!" Olivia cursed, expecting the worst, not even realizing yet that the gunfire had stopped.
"It's okay," Alek called out. "I've disarmed him."
Randy hadn't heard his granddaughter's cries over the sound of his own gunfire, nor did he hear Alek sneaking up behind him until he had a gun pointed at his head. With Randy's gun now on the ground out of reach, Alek ordered him to turn around and face him.
"Well, fuck me running!" the old man with the grey ponytail grumbled as he glared at Alek. "Every armed wannabe badass in Summers County died trying to steal from me, and I get taken out by a fucking Hollywood pretty boy!" Olivia smiled as she approached them. Yes, he was pretty...and delightfully resourceful.
Olivia wheeled Randy out of the way so John could get in and they could start loading the trailer, but when Liana opened the door and shouted to John, who was standing at the side of the truck, he looked back and shook his head.
"We've got a bigger problem now," he said, and she took a peek through his binoculars to see the horde of the dead in the distance. She estimated that they had about three or four minutes before they hit the parking lot.
"Okay, Alek, get Ravi, and the two of you need to start moving vehicles to block off the front of the store while we load the truck. Olivia, tie Randy up if you have to because we need to get started now. John, get the girls out here and put them to work."
"Yes, sir, General Navarro," Olivia teased, and while Alek continued to hold his gun on Randy, she looked around for something to tie him up with. She found a rack of rope bracelets, and when she pulled one down, trying to figure out how to untangle it, Alek looked down at Randy impatiently.
"Is this going to be necessary?" he asked. "We came here to rescue you and take you somewhere safe. I'm not going to lie. We need your guns, but we weren't going to just steal them and leave you here."
"And I'm supposed to just take the word of some Hollywood actor?" Randy balked.
"If that's not good enough, take my word, Randy," John said, irritated as he walked by carrying an armload of weapons headed for the back of the truck. "I left my family alone to come down here because I didn't want this to end with a bullet in your stubborn head."
"Come on, Randy," Olivia said. "How many times has Reid bought guns from you? Have we ever lied to you or tried to rip you off?"
"Fine. I surrender," he relented with a scowl, but Olivia hesitated.
"What do you think, John?" she asked, not sure if they could trust Randy.
"I think he's a good man, and we can take him at his word," he said, glaring at Randy as he spoke to emphasize that he had better not prove him wrong.
"What am I gonna fucking do?" Randy asked. "Run over you with my wheelchair?"
They laughed awkwardly, deciding to take the chance on trusting the older man, and now that Alek was no longer stuck holding a gun on him, he went outside to start blocking the coming herd. It wasn't hard. Most of the cars had keys in them because they had come with the intent of robbing the gun shop. Alek and Ravi moved as many as possible to create a perimeter around the entrance so they could keep loading the truck while leaving the rig a clear, yet narrow, path to drive out of there. With seconds to spare, Alek climbed over the cars and went inside to help as Ravi got back in the driver's seat and prepared to make their getaway, and when the dead finally made it back to the lot en masse, they surrounded the front of the truck.
Inside the shop, it took about fifteen minutes to load the rig with every weapon and bullet in the showroom. Since Randy was in a wheelchair, he had various ramps and carts, making it easier, and a lot of items in the back were already stacked up on dollies. They took bows and arrows, knives, bullet proof armor, and even the jewelry, anything they thought they might find a use for, leaving only the guitars and other pawned instruments that Jax might have been inclined to take if he had come on the mission. It went quicker than expected, but by the time they were all packed up and ready to head back to the compound, there was no way Ravi was going to be able to drive through the teeming sea of the dead blocking the rig.
"That looks like half the population of Summers County," Olivia exaggerated.
"How the fuck are there so many of them already?" Liana complained. Her training did not extend to clearing areas of dead people who didn't respond to being threatened with a gun.
"I'll tell you how," Randy said. "Looting assholes! Bunch of crazy pricks from up these hollers hear there's civil unrest, and they see opportunity. They're as bad as the goddamn gangs in the city, but they're not as fucking smart. I've sold weapons to damn near every motherfucker in this county, and they'll protect what's theirs just like I did."
Olivia realized he was right. There were far more good people than bad, but in this situation, good people - like her and her group for instance - had resorted to looting just like the bad people, and like Randy said, a lot of motherfuckers in this county were armed.
"So what do we do?" she asked.
"I have an idea if one of you can shoot a bow," Randy said.
"Can you?" Olivia asked Alek, thinking about the bow his demon character on TV used.
"I can," he said because although he had trained with expert archers so he would look like he was doing it right on the show, he didn't feel like an expert himself. "But if there's anyone more experienced..."
"Not unless you want to carry my ass onto the roof," Randy said with a chuckle as he wheeled himself back toward the rig, and as Alek pushed him up the ramp, he explained that he watched a group get away from the dead at the gas station across the street a few nights ago by setting a fire. He grabbed a bow and a box of arrows, then he rolled himself back down the ramp and into the office where he gathered sterno, cheesecloth, sparklers, and duct tape. He shaved the sparklers into several packets of sterno dipped cheesecloth, and prepared five arrows, which he handed to John.
While Olivia collected the rest of the supplies he had used, John and Alek followed Randy's directions to get to the roof. Once up there, they could see their target - an old shack that was falling down in the middle of a field to the right of the mini plaza. It was about two hundred yards away.
"You've got to be joking," Alek said when he realized the distance.
&
nbsp; "Can you hit it?" John asked.
"Guess we'll find out," he said, gritting his teeth. John struck the lighter beneath the arrow as Alek held it in place until the sterno caught fire. It took him three shots to finally land one on his target, and the dry grass around the first two arrows seemed to be burning better than the shack. He shot the remaining two arrows, one hitting the roof, the other landing in front, and after a minute, they could see that the shack had caught fire. In the dry, fall air, it took only minutes for it to spread, and when the flames began to put off a cloud of black smoke, it finally drew the attention of the dead.
"They're clearing out," John said as he and Alek came back downstairs. "Let's go ahead and get in the back of the truck so Ravi can take off as soon as they're gone."
They couldn't use the walkie talkies to communicate with Ravi yet because the sound might draw attention, but they had rigged a communication system in the truck using technology not much more sophisticated than two cans on a string.
"Remind me to loot Radio Shack next," Olivia whispered as the others quietly climbed in, and while Alek pushed Randy up the ramp, he realized that Liana and his granddaughters were missing only seconds before one of the girls let out a blood-curdling scream. It came from the office. Liana had been helping them pack up, and since the backdoor no longer latched after Alek shot off the knob, some of the dead had wandered inside when the wind blew it partially open. Now Liana and the girls were trapped in the office by three corpses, and Liana did not have a weapon.
With the silencers in the cab of the rig, they were afraid that gunfire would draw the entire herd, most of whom were in the field next door now, so Randy handed Alek and John two large, sharp hunting knives. They hurried toward the office, but when they reached the hallway, they were met with problems of their own as the scream had drawn even more corpses through the open door.