Never noticing before, she sees emissions from the Deconstructor's back near the top. A section where air blows out, distorting the sky with waves of heat. She learned from Mr. Nix that the Greys don't use combustible fuels, causing her to wonder what is being burned. There is no smoke, reminding her of the filtered stacks used at an incinerator plant near her former police station that released the heat and harmless gasses during incineration.
A flicker of movement in the corner of her eye causes Agent Strong to spin, aiming her shotgun at a paper wrapper blowing across the street. She then stares at a white cargo van parked roadside between two cars that she thought had rocked and swayed, but after watching it for a moment, the van is as still as everything else.
Mr. Nix pushes aside the broken doors to the bar restaurant and enters. She can't help but admire the authority and confidence Mr. Nix has moving around this city. He behaves and moves with the swagger of pacing home turf. She wishes she had his sense of comfort at this moment, finding herself snap-spinning to spot nothing moving. Crossing the threshold into the dining room, Agent Strong allows Mr. Nix's casualness to rub off, relaxing enough to lower her shotgun and breathe easy as they weave between toppled tables and broken chairs.
Mr. Nix walks straight over to the bar and goes behind it. Although the liquor shelves are bare, the floor abounds with empty liquor bottles. While Agent Strong takes a seat at a bar stool, resting her shotgun upon the bar, she continues to look out the walls of windows, keeping watch. Mr. Nix squats, picking and sorting through the empty bottles on the floor and in the pour rack, looking for one with contents left.
Unsuccessful, Mr. Nix looks through cabinets under the sinks and registers. Finally, he finds a bottle with a label reading 'Glass House Brand Gin' and clear liquid still inside tossed in the back of a cabinet's bottom shelf. He pulls it out, takes off the cap and sniffs.
"Cheap gin. Even in Armageddon, someone drew the line at cheap gin. But that someone is not us!" declares Mr. Nix.
Nix finds two clean glasses and pours a generous quantity of gin in each. He then pushes one glass to Strong.
"You seem on edge, Agent Strong."
"I am. The road was more comforting. You could always see ahead of you, what was behind you. It's why I enjoyed being a cop in the country. There was plenty of space between crimes and accidents that during a drive I could shake one off and get ready for the next. Here, too many nooks and crannies. I feel like someone is hiding in those windows over there, behind that barrier across the street, or ducking behind a car waiting to ambush us. We should not be stopping for a drink. Let's keep moving and get to where we are going as soon as possible," says Agent Strong, glancing up at the mirror over the bar to see behind her.
"You are paranoid and an agent should be, Strong. Stopping here for a drink is part habit, part nostalgia, part caution. See, the Secret Service hidden entrance to the headquarters building is in this restaurant because there are people who couldn't be observed entering that building, and people who needed to get out of the building in a hidden inconspicuous way for their safety. Secret agents, keeping undercover, could never walk in or out of the headquarters front door. This restaurant always had people in it, customers of all races and nationalities coming and going, and suited agents crossing the street for a bite to eat. It was easy for secret agents, informants and dignitaries to come and go from here unnoticed among the eclectic mix of people.
"One of the most important things was to stop and pause for a drink or a meal after you entered the restaurant, but before crossing to headquarters. The reason was the time sitting here allowed an agent to determine if they were being watched or followed. That is what we are doing. After having a meal or a drink, if the agent deemed it safe, they could then go to the passage and cross over. It is an important step toward not compromising security. You and I still need to maintain that security. So, we waste a little time here, share a drink, make sure no one is following or watching us, and then take the passage across. Drink up. Oh, first, a toast. To our mission together, may it end better than I imagine this gin will taste," tributes Mr. Nix.
"My first shot of gin, and hopefully my last," adds Agent Strong.
They clink glasses then take a gulp. Agent Strong winces as she swallows. Nix tries to keep a straight face, but can't help but grit his teeth.
"Oh, that is bad." Strong takes a second gulp, finishing the glass. "Other than containing alcohol, this gin has no redeeming qualities."
"Now I understand why it was untouched. It is hardly worth drinking, and definitely not worth stealing." says Nix as he finished his glass.
Agent Strong scrutinizes Mr. Nix's Face: his white scraggly beard, thinning disheveled silver hair, and his sun brazed reddish pale skin. Something about this wise old man she connects with and believes in. She understands his decisiveness and harsh reality outlook. And yet, never in a million years, did she as a black woman imagine her Armageddon companion and confidant would be the same race and gender her grandmama warned her never to trust. Mr. Nix is one of the few people who neither sees her sex nor skin color, only her capabilities.
"So how long do you want to wait here?" asks Agent Strong as she stands and wanders around the restaurant. "Smells bad in here."
"Let's wait long enough for me to crave another shot of this rot gut. Then I'll know it's time to leave."
Mr. Nix turns and continues searching through the storage behind the bar. Agent Strong wanders toward the bathrooms in the back corner of the restaurant. In the small nook hall, she notices a faint dark swirl smeared on the floor of dried wiped blood. Realizing she left her shotgun on the bar, Strong draws her handgun. As she carefully pushes the woman's room door open, her head tilts back from the rancid aroma released. The small sliver of light reflecting into the dark bathroom shines atop dead bodies on the floor. Their pallid skin bloated, bearing bloodstains dried into a crust. The bullet holes in the chests of the bodies and the way they are stacked atop each other make it obvious they were murdered, then stored in here.
She lets the door close, covers her nose with her arm, and steps to the adjacent men's room door. Still covering her mouth and nose, she pushes the men's room door open with the handgun barrel. The sliver of light cast in illuminates another stack of shot decaying bodies. She backs up and lets the door close, then looks to her left at the emergency exit. Pressing the emergency exit handle, she finds the door unlocked.
Before she opens the emergency exit door to look outside, gunshots ring out from the main dining room, followed by silence. Agent Strong reflex spins, moving attack-ready back to the bar. At the end of the nook hall, she peeks around the corner into the dining room.
Armed with an assault rifle moving toward to the bar is a man dressed as an apocalypse warrior. He wears a police riot gear helmet with shatterproof visor, a military camouflage jacket with the chest open revealing a ballistic vest underneath. Strapped across his back is a sniper rifle. On his hands are leather biker gloves. His denim pants are held up with a police sidearm belt, and strapped to his pants leg is a huge hunting knife. The whole eclectic wardrobe is spotted with dirt and speckled with blood.
Mr. Nix is nowhere to be seen. Agent Strong assess Nix is dead or injured, otherwise he would shoot back. Her only thought is to keep this hunter killer from looking behind the bar and finishing off Mr. Nix, if he is not already dead. With his head and chest wearing bulletproof gear, she won't be able to kill him from her shot angle. If she injures him, he might take refuge behind the bar. Strong needs to lure him away from the bar.
The warrior stands at bar's edge. Letting go of his rifle with one hand, he reaches for Agent Strong's shotgun resting on the bar, grabs it and drops it to the ground by his feet, making sure if anyone is hiding behind the bar they can't jump up and grab it. The warrior then leans forward, trying to get a peek behind the bar.
"Hey," yells Strong as she fires a shot, hitting the hunter killer in the helmet. The bullet nicks and ricochets off it, not penetrating
but causing the man to shake his head and regain his wits.
Agent Strong ducks back into the hallway nook as the warrior turns to shoot at her, his bullets splintering the wall corner. As he charges the corner to pursue her, the bang of a door kicked open sounds from the nook hallway. Coming around the corner ready to fire, the warrior sees the emergency exit door swinging open to the outside. His body tense, he creeps toward the open exit, gun-ready.
As he reaches the emergency exit and glances outside, the bathroom door behind him cracks open. The barrel of Strong's sidearm points out, and fires, shooting the warrior in the back of his kneecap. As he spins around to shoot back, Strong fires again and again into his legs. His injured limbs unable to support his turning body, the warrior collapses backwards into the wall, his gun firing wildly without direction. The bathroom door shuts.
Collapsing to the floor, the warrior steadies his gun and fires into the closed bathroom door until he empties his magazine. Unable to use his legs to stand, he tosses his gun aside and crawls out the hall nook, dragging himself with his arms.
The bathroom door opens. The warrior crawls faster. Agent Strong steps out of the bathroom, aiming at the fleeing man. As he reaches for a sidearm at his waist and rolls onto his back to face her, she fires again and again, until one shot strikes him in the throat beneath his helmet's protection, causing him to go limp. While his body shakes and gasps for its last breaths, Agent Strong approaches, kicking his gun away from his hand.
Not ready to relax, Agent Strong waits to see if anyone else is coming to investigate the shots fired. Certain the coast is clear, she looks at the man, and with the tip of her boot, kicks the riot helmet off his head. While blood pools in an ever-expanding puddle on the floor, the man's breathing stops. His eyes lay open, glazed over. She kicks him hard in the head a couple times to make sure he is dead. Grabbing each of his weapons, she tosses them into the dining area away from the body. She then closes and secures the emergency exit door and heads back into the main dining room.
Scanning and still seeing neither enemy nor ally, she calls out. "Mr. Nix! Nix! Are you ok?"
"I'm still alive, just playing dead," comes a voice from behind the bar.
She moves to the bar and glances over, seeing Mr. Nix sitting on the floor, his back against the wall, his shoulder covered with blood. She jumps behind the bar and moves to him.
"What happened?"
"He got me once in the shoulder outside the vest. He hit me in the back, too, but the vest stopped it."
"Your shoulder is bleeding bad."
"It'll be ok. I felt the bullet go all the way through, so if I can stop the bleeding, I'll survive."
"Let me help you."
"Is he down?"
"Down and out."
"Good work, Agent. Before you help me, we need to make sure he was alone. Go check outside and make sure the area is secured. We don't want to put our guard down until we know it's safe. Be careful. Don't stand out in the open and get sniped."
She draws her pistol, grabs her shotgun from the floor on the other side, and moves to the broken front door. While glancing around the street, she notices the back doors open on the white cargo van she thought was moving before they entered the bar. Agent Strong moves between the cars, crosses the street and approaches the white cargo van with the open rear doors.
As she aims into the van back, the stink of body odor, feces and burnt food strikes her nose. The inside is a scavenger's home: collected weapons and clothes from police and military, a thick layering of blankets making up a bed along one side, a bucket in the corner stained with excrement and a toilet seat leaning against it. On the floor are empty food cans and what appear to be pigeon bones and squirrel bones with scraps of cooked flesh still on them. A coffee can with oil in it and charring on the top edges resembles a makeshift cooking device. The setup is for one person. After taking a last look around, seeing nothing but the distant Deconstructor demolishing the Smithsonian building, Agent Strong heads back into the restaurant.
Back behind the bar, she sees Nix using bar towels to wrap his shoulder. She sets aside her weapons and helps him make a tight wrapping. He winces when she tightens it, then relaxes with relief.
"Hand me that gin bottle, will you?" asks Mr. Nix.
She grabs the half full gin bottle and gives it to him, from which he takes a swig.
"Alcohol isn't good for you at this moment. It can thin your blood, and it can make the pain worse, not better," informs Agent Strong.
"You heal your way, I'll heal mine. However, we need the rest of this gin for something else. Tear off a strip of that bar towels and twist it up tight like a rope. Then tuck it into this bottle until the bottom of the cloth is in the gin, and the top of the cloth is sticking out the top, only an inch."
She does as instructed, then asks, "Are you making a Molotov cocktail?"
"No, we are making a torch. The gin will keep the cloth wet. As long as we don't smash it, it should burn the alcohol off like a lantern."
"What for?"
"We need to get across to the headquarters now, before anyone else comes. An underground passage runs from this building, beneath the street, into the Secret Service building. But the passage will be dark, and we have no flashlight or flares. The gin will light our way."
"Wouldn't a candle be better? There has got to be one in here."
"I looked. Someone took everything of use."
"How are we going to light it?"
"There may be a lighter for candles or matches somewhere in here that someone missed. I suggest trying the waitress station."
"What is a waitress station?" asks Agent Strong.
"Where waitresses store menus, silverware, order pads. All the stuff they need."
"Where did you learn what a waitress station is?"
"When you do operations where a waitress is an agent, the waitress station is an invaluable place to hide weapons or devices."
"You guys definitely think differently than cops."
"You should, too. I heard you shoot that guy without telling him to surrender or identifying yourself as a cop."
"I almost did out of habit. Except I remembered there is nothing left to protect or serve." Agent Strong tries not to think about what she just said, "Let me try to find fire so we can get out of here."
Out from behind the bar, Agent Strong sees a small stand with drawers and a cabinet next to the kitchen doors. She opens the drawer and finds the items Nix described: check billfolds, pens, and long-stemmed lighters for igniting candles. She grabs one lighter and clicks the trigger, but nothing. Strong grabs another, but the flint sparks flicker in the empty lighter. After going through three or four more, she flicks one which ignites the tiniest flame. She puts it out and goes back to Nix.
"Found one, though it doesn't have much juice left."
"We only need enough to light this. Help me up and lets' get out of here."
Agent Strong helps Nix to his feet while he uses his good arm to pull himself steady. She slings both their shotguns across her back.
"Should I grab the assailant's weapons, too?" asks Strong.
"That won't be necessary. I don't think we'll need those shotguns either. We head into friendly territory and there will be other weapons available to us there."
"Better safe than sorry," she replies.
She grabs the lighter and the gin bottle torch, following him into the kitchen. On the floor puddle dried blood stains, and a couple shot-up dead bodies bloated from decomposition gasses. Nix leads her into a dry, gloomy and dank storage locker.
"Light it up."
Strong clicks the lighter a dozen times before a tiny flame flickers. Lighting the cloth tip sticking out of the bottle, it inflames and illuminates the room. After closing the storage locker door, Mr. Nix uses his good arm to yank up rubber matting that covers the floor. On the floor beneath the matting is a round steel groove an inch long. Nix grabs a long rod leaning in the corner behind one of the storage racks and sti
cks the rod into the groove. When he yanks upward, a floor panel pops open and lifts. After hiding the rod back in the corner, he opens the panel, exposing a hole with a ladder heading downward.
"Agent Strong, you go first since you can climb holding the light. I'll follow behind."
"You sure you can make it alone?"
"Yeah, and I have to close the hatch to make sure no one else comes down."
Agent Strong sets the gin lantern on the floor while she works her way down the ladder a couple rungs. She then grabs the lantern and descends the ladder one-handed while the bottle torch lights her way. Reaching the bottom, she steps off the ladder and holds up the lantern.
"You sure you will be ok?" she yells.
"Yes, but don't stand under the ladder just in case."
After adjusting himself into a seated position on the floor, he places his feet on the ladder and uses his good arm to go lower himself a few steps. Then grabbing the ladder with his injured arm, he winces and holds on while his good arm grabs a handle on the bottom of the hidden floor panel. He pulls the panel shut, sealing the floor and the secret passage.
Party Planning
Chapter 48
Meeting Room, The Barge.
A half dozen serious faces sit around a conference table: Captain Nemolopolus, Walter, Dr. Black, Sandy, Engineer Officer Evascott, and a hardened military mercenary woman called Master Sergeant Smyte, whose size and physique would make anyone pause before tussling with her. MSgt. Smyte is missing hair above her right ear, replaced by scar burned skin and a long-forked scar that goes from above that ear, across her cheek, with one fork veering up over her right eye, and the other fork running downward across the right side of her mouth. Ying stands behind them leaning against the wall, his massive size too big for the small chairs around the table.
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