by Wade Ebeling
The two boys would stop periodically, checking snares and dead-falls. When, suddenly, they gave out a loud hoot of joy and dashed away into the wreckage-strewn storage lot. Daniel smiled briefly at their victory and their elation, knowing all too well how they felt. Then he realized that the boys were running back to share what they had caught with the group. This made Daniel wonder if he would ever again feel the warm embrace of appreciation that helping others could emulate. A rudimentary form of jealousy replaced his smile with an involuntary sneer.
More and more of the world became engulfed in darkness as the sun sank away. The shadows grew in numbers and joined forces against the amber colors of sunset. Black fingers spread themselves across the ground, and across Daniel’s heart. Haughty laughter emitted from the shadowy forms, which were squatted in bunches around two distinct bonfires. He smelled their game cooking and cringed enviously upon hearing their simultaneous joy. Daniel pined for a comradery like they showed.
It was not just the sense of loss that gripped Daniel, it was the inability to share how he felt, to have someone comfort him. Jason had been of no help in this matter, and had made it sound like Daniel had lived the good life, and that Jason had endured the worst of it, just by being alone for several years.
Sitting on the unyielding, sharp edges of the concrete pile, Daniel clutched at his perceived shortest straw. All that was left inside of him was the stanch belief that he, and he alone, had been led down the grimmest of all paths. The only thing left for Daniel to look forward to was finding a way to kill Bob Donner. And those people down there, with more than just distance separating them, were Daniel’s ticket to the only show left to see in town.
……..
Sunday
The first night alone in the building proved to be quite arduous. When Jason was still here, the unfamiliar creaks and moans of the building were mainly drowned out, and Daniel figured that if anything sounded out of place, his uncle would have called attention to it. Staring at the opaque skylights, which seemed to stare right back like a pair of monstrous blind eyes, Daniel could not sleep with the amount of odd sounds being given off.
The unblinking skylights eventually grew brighter as dawn broke. Daniel continued to stay curled up in the chair for several more hours. He did not have the will to move today. He had eaten little food during his cleaning the previous day, and when this was compounded by zero sleep during the night, just thinking about moving was tiresome.
A grueling tug of war started inside his worn-out brain. Frozen pictures of his wife and daughter, and of his father, and short, fuzzy remembrances of his mother, even snap-shots of the dirty man in the library and the dead bodies in the burn pile would call up and march across his mind’s eye. Then, equally as fast, he would forcibly wipe them away. This went on far longer than could be considered healthy.
Daniel only quelled the images by fixating on another memory, one worthy of his obsession. He replayed those few seconds repeatedly, ingraining them upon his conscious. He was being hurried along, meeting and shaking the hands of everyone introduced to him on that first day inside the Warehouse. The part that stuttered like a scratched record was that of meeting Bob Donner; dressed in a ridiculously large uniform, following the Chief of Police around by the heels, glib look etched onto his face. Daniel had taken an immediate dislike to him.
Hearing the complete story of how Bob’s mother and sisters had been traded for food had little effect on Daniel. He was not his father, and Daniel felt that he should not be judged by Allen’s mistakes. In fact, Daniel believed the only mistake that his father had made was to leave Bob alive at all. He would still have his home if Bob had been killed off during those early days like the rest of his family, and he would not be here, plotting the man’s demise. Any chance there was for Daniel to have empathy for Bob’s plight got burned away with the rest of his belongings. Daniel did not care what some third party would think of this backwards situation, there would be no bygones coming from Daniel. Bob would die by his hand, whether or not it cost him everything that he had left; including his life.
Sad as it was, Daniel’s world had distorted and shrunken down to a singular cause, revenge. To him, it did not matter how others perceived this bloodlust, or if they looked upon it as being warranted. The thought of seeing Bob dead, lying in a pool of his own blood, however, was what got Daniel out of the chair to make lunch.
His agenda would still be left hidden from the group when he approached them; it would just be easier that way. Daniel would use the lessons shown to Jason by his father, and taught cyclically back to him, in accomplishing his narrowed goals. The group was a means to an end. He would smile, tell them what they wanted to hear, and even share some of the building’s wealth with them in an effort to gain their trust. The rest would take care of itself, if he accomplished the rouse correctly.
……..
Tuesday
Taking a page from his father’s audibly transcribed playbook, Daniel watched the group in the R.V. lot for two days. The group was not acting nearly as cohesive as he first thought they were. The division seemed to be over whether or not to stay put. The smaller group, those mainly with children, tried to cobble together R.V.’s into livable huts. The larger group was trying to create carts out of the wreckage and consolidate what provisions they had inside them. Comical arguments would erupt when an irate member of the smaller group would march over and try to steal provisions from the circle of carts, sparking off yelling and shoving matches amongst the already loaded crowd. Daniel had gathered all the pertinent information that he felt was necessary to approach the group with the upper hand intact.
The group had no firearms to speak of, carrying only fashioned spears and clubs for protection, and they had no actual plans as to what they should do next. Most of the members of the group were recognized as former tenants of the Warehouse, but a few unfamiliar faces still popped up. The group had only been able to gather a short term supply of food, and they sat around in exposed areas of ground, telling him that they were either ignorant of the dangers around them or in denial about their situation. As much as all of this information was useful to Daniel, there was one bit of welcomed intelligence that proved to him that the plan would work. His former boss, Tony Jenison, was in charge of the larger group.
Daniel could easily make these people feel as if they needed him more than he needed them, which was not true of course. He had familiarity with them, even if was just on a passing level, and he knew that what the group truly needed was a safe place to live. All Daniel had to do was convince them that retaking the Warehouse was going to be everyone’s best option. Daniel could help arm them, feed them, and show them how to retake their former home.
It all seemed so easy in his head, but part of Daniel knew that it was impossible to calculate everything. He had to be especially certain that none of these desperate people found his stash inside the building; that would most certainly ruin everything. Daniel would have to carry everything that he intended to give the group away from the building, and they would receive it only after he had gained their trust. Creating a cache close by, and using the story of his father’s map, seemed the easiest way to explain his appearance. Given the derision showing inside the group, Daniel knew he would have to hurry.
Cutting his surveillance short, Daniel pulled off the dusty, stiff, canvas tarp, which he was using to camouflage himself atop the concrete piles, and left his uncomfortable perch, jumped down the irregular slope and hurried back to the building. Most of the rifles could go, freeing up room on the rack that was taken from a gun store display case; Daniel really had no need for all of them. Most of them were of odd calibers anyway, taken from a collector’s house, and the ammo cans below the rack only held ten to twenty loose rounds for some of the weirder ones. I took him quite a while to match up the right ammo with the right gun. These included a .243 Winchester, .257 Roberts, 7mm Weatherby Magnum, 8mm Mauser and .376 Steyr. Even the shotguns were 10 and 16 gauge. The one
consolation being that even the strangest of the guns had plenty of knock-down power.
The one thing that Daniel did not want to do was take the group too much food. If they suddenly had a windfall of free sustenance, they just might decide to take it away with them in their carts. Daniel was not doing this to give them the means to leave the area fully outfitted. Giving them just enough food to keep them worried about their fate was a far better plan. It had to be just enough to give them all the few days that would be needed to formulate a decent plan for retaking the Warehouse. Finding the right amount would be tricky calculation, but it stood to reason that too little food was better than too much; just to err on the side of caution.
After gathering together a few pails of food by the door, next to the bundle of firearms and cans of ammo, Daniel set out to find a believable cache location. Sticking the hunting rifles and their corresponding ammunition into the dirty man’s sea bag, he grabbing four pails of food and headed out. There was really only one direction that he could go to discretely escape the towering ring. East would take him closer to the road, not something he wanted to do, west was getting too close for comfort to the group, and north would mean having to scale the concrete piles with armfuls of heavy material. A narrow pathway led to the south, just outside the ring. This offered him ease of passage, at least up to the thick underbrush beyond, and it kept him behind the cover that the piles offered. All that he needed to find was a fairly waterproof, hidden location that would pass the scrutiny of whoever came to help him carry what he had stored for the wanting, waiting group.
“Oh, I’m sure there are tons of perfect locations around,” Daniel growled, as he walked sideways between spindly trees. He might not have been confident about finding a nearby spot, but he was positive that he would have to rely heavily on the group’s desperation. Hopefully, their joy at receiving the gifts would make them forget to ask why his father had left him food, guns, and ammunition under a pile of rubbish in the middle of an overgrown field.
With a great feeling of inadequacy, Daniel felt his way through the weeds, trying to avoid banging his shins on the rusted equipment hidden from view. He kept thinking that his father would not be implementing a plan with this many ‘what ifs?’ still in play. But Daniel was short on time, and this was the best that he could come up with. Forcing his body between the small gaps of a hedge row that was once a low fence, Daniel found himself standing fifty yards from another industrial out-building. It stood, partially collapsed, and in the middle of a small, square field. All of the edges of the field had thick woodlands obscuring it, apart from that of the way he had just come from. As Daniel glanced back to the north, that way looked an even more formidable barricade than that of what the trees offered. The towering concrete piles screamed ‘Go around!’ in a way that a forest never could.
Not wanting to leave a tell-tale trail, Daniel followed the old fence line around, until he found what was once the old railroad tracks that led across the field to the flat-roofed, block building. The railroad ties deteriorated just inside the fence line, leaving the tracks to meander back and forth due to years of heaving frosts. The rails made a drunken lane up to the leaning building’s southern side loading dock. Daniel continued past this, it looked far too cracked and powdery to attempt climbing upon, and up a small grade to the far corner of the building, which still looked mostly intact. Peering in through the clouded, spider web of shattered glass that still clung to the inside of the metal frame, Daniel laughed. Large metal workbenches lined the wall going away from him, and, there, across the stretch of old machinery and benches, on the east side of the building, stood an open doorway.
“This will work,” Daniel called across the space, relieved that at least one part of this plan had gone easier than he thought it would have.
Chapter 24
Wednesday
“Tony!” Daniel called out, raising his right hand and a smile.
The angry noise of the group fell away at once. Tony wound his way to the front of the pack surrounding the carts, slouching as he squinted at the approaching Daniel. He raised his hand in a half-hearted wave, before smiling widely and standing fully erect upon recognition.
Seeing that Daniel had stopped his approach, just this side of the railroad tracks, Tony waved him in. Daniel picked up two white, squared-off buckets and started coming closer. The group had all but forgotten how heated their latest argument had gotten with the sudden appearance of this outsider. Today, starting in the morning, most of the group was planning to leave the area. They also planned to take away the majority of what had been scavenged from the storage lot. This, of course, was met with vitriolic disdain from those who wanted to stay; as they still believed that Bob Donner might let them back in the Warehouse. They believed this, despite the fact that the last couple who went to ‘talk’ to Bob never returned, leaving two more orphans in the world.
Fearing that the group was about to irrevocably split, Daniel had stepped up his plans. This meant approaching the group now, or chance losing his window of opportunity. Not having the time to run back to the cache that he had set up, Daniel grabbed two unplanned pails of food from the building and made his way down to the railroad tracks. The group’s latest, and to date, most brutal shouting and shoving match covered Daniel’s movements. He made it a safe distance away from the path that led into the concrete plant before calling out to them.
……..
It had been Susan Davis who spilled all of the horrible information that doomed the group to exile. She had tried to stand up to Troy, while he was attempting to kick the scavengers and vendors out of the Warehouse. When Bob tried to intervene with his usual brand of brutality, shoving Susan out of the way, she finally let loose what Troy had done to his family. Susan screamed at Bob for several minutes, mocking him for being the head lackey of man who had helped Allen Moore kill his family. She laughed openly in Bob’s face for calling such a lying, traitorous man as Troy Campbell his father.
Bob mulled this over for a while with an emotionless, color-drained face. He looked around at all the people staring at him, some not even bothering to conceal smirks. Finally, Bob walked away from the crowd, calling several of his closest friends from the Police Force to follow him.
The five men walked into the communal area, already starting a heated, but hushed, conversation. Troy tried to follow the men, only to be turned away by one look from Bob. Troy then just sat apart from the milling crowd, sobbing quietly. Bob came back into the bazaar after a few minutes, calling for more of the police officers to follow him back into the communal area. Some in the crowd, not wanting to wait for any further orders, just packed up while they had a chance and slunk away. Others, including a very smug looking Susan, stood rooted in place.
Bob led his colleagues back into the bazaar, each with a scary look in their eye. He walked straight up to Troy, waiting impatiently for the mountainous man to look up through his tears, so he could see his fate. Bob calmly pulled his pistol out and shot Troy, who did not move or voice protest, right in the bridge of the nose; expelling his brains all over a neatly packaged stall of home-made soaps.
Most of the crowd took this as their cue to leave, some screaming and covering their heads as they went, making zigzag patterns once they made it outside the gate. Those who remained were the members of the council, this included Tony, and parents of the Police Force members; feeling that they would still be safe. Susan tried to look defiant as Bob approached her, pistol still in hand. Just after Susan’s eyes had switched to fear-filled, bulging orbs, Bob shot her in the forehead. Several people got speckled by a fine pink mist, and they made futile attempts at rubbing it away; smearing streaks across their faces and arms.
Bob scanned the remaining people, satisfied that no one would match his gaze, then announced, “We do not need you here. If you want to stay, fine. We will need people to cook our food and clean our clothes.” Most of his cronies chuckled ominously at this. Sneering evilly, Bob pointed and continued
, “If you want to go out there, also fine. Hell, I’ll even let you pack up some clothes and food for your trip.” Again, his flunkies laughed. “The rest of you know what to do. Go pull the APC’s into the yard, let’s get this place buttoned up. You three are with me, all the time. Got it? Let’s go find the Mayor…” The laughter was at its loudest ever upon hearing this last statement.
Tony Jenison led the group away from the Warehouse shortly after hearing Bob say that, knowing staying was no longer an option. Now he was looking at the son-in-law of the bitch that had started all of this. Tony never realized, until just now, how much he despised the handsome smile on Daniel’s face.
“What are you doing here? Brian here…says that you are supposed to be dead,” Tony stated.
“Well, it wasn’t for lack of trying,” Daniel replied, trying to keep the mood light. “Who’s Brian?” he asked while setting the two buckets down, labels out, so they faced the encroaching crowd.
“He’s right here. Said he heard Bob Donner tellin’ people that he was going to kill you, before we all left the Warehouse. Is that how you got that cut on your forehead? Never mind that right now…What you got there?” Tony posed, already having read the labels on the buckets of freeze-dried food. From the murmurs and pointing fingers, several others had also, and word of the food was spreading quickly.
Daniel smiled, took a step back and made a ‘help yourself’ gesture towards the buckets. Without looking at the people behind him, Tony waved them forward. Several men and women rushed forward to grab the buckets. Shielding the buckets with their bodies, as if Daniel might suddenly decide to take them back, they scurried into the security of the crowd. Acting as if the affront went unnoticed, Daniel stared at the gangly young man who Tony had nodded his head at earlier, indicating him to be Brian. Daniel recognized him as one of the unarmed guards who had been walking around the bazaar on his last trip there. “So, weren’t you in the Police? Did you come with them? To my house?” Daniel fumed, his knuckles whitening on the grip of the rifle.