The Red X Chronicles (Book 1): Emergent

by Sullivan, Robert Patrick

  “Ok Daddy.” I couldn’t really read Jill’s expression. She seemed sad of course, but I think she was more confused than anything.

  Dennis was quick to give direction. “Will and I already got inside the pawn shop, but I still need to lock the front door when I’m in there. Give me a few minutes to get set up. Will once I get in through the front I want you to drive the van around the back, so I can use it to get away. Once that’s done you pick him up in the truck. I’ll radio you when I’m ready, then we can get this over with.”

  Will got into the driver’s seat of The Glory with Dennis taking the passenger’s side. They drove off while we waited. After a few minutes we got a radio call from Will. “Come pick me up.”

  We drove to the alleyway that connected to the back of the shop, but we didn’t manage to turn in before we saw Will running right toward us. “Hurry up get in!” I shouted from my seat. When he got in I asked. “Why didn’t you just wait by the van?”

  “Um…” Will was still catching his breath from running, so it took him a couple of seconds to answer. “It’s real tight back there, I didn’t think you would be able to drive the truck back out.”

  “I could have just backed up.” Elizabeth said.

  “Oh… Didn’t think of that.” Will finished, and we were ready to go.

  Chapter 20

  “Hey uh…” John took his finger off the transmitter. “What was that guy’s name again? Anthony!” He pushed the button on the walkie-talkie again. “Hey Anthony, we’re ready to go on our end.”

  There was a moment of silence before an answer came through. “It’s going to take a little bit to get the generator connected and running. You should be able to clear the inside of the building while I’m doing that.”

  “Sounds good, be ready to get to work as soon as you hear the first shot.” John waited for a reply but didn’t get one, he took this as a sign Anthony was already prepared. “Dennis are you ready?”

  “Affirmative.” He said back to us through the radio.

  “Ok let’s do this.” John clipped the walkie-talkie to his belt. When the shooting started Elizabeth put the truck in gear. “Hold on there.” He stopped her. “Let’s give it a few seconds, let those things walk down the street a bit so they aren’t focused on the truck.” We waited about a minute or so before John tapped her on the shoulder. “Ok, let’s move.”

  Elizabeth drove the truck right down the street leading to the entrance but turned left at the intersection right in front of the building so she could back it up. I had to hand it to her, she was actually quite good at maneuvering that trailer. She backed the rear end right up to the door. “Here’s your stop.” She said almost playfully.

  Before John got out he made sure that Elizabeth knew what she was doing. “Stay in the truck with Jill.”

  “I can hel-“

  He didn’t even let her finish. “We’re already up shit creek without a paddle, but if something happened to you we’d lose the boat too. Besides Jill needs company.”

  Elizabeth was hesitant but knew he was right. “Alright, just don’t take too long.”

  I opened the door without paying too much attention only to have a zombie right on top of me. I reeled back my arm to give it a hit with my machete, but I didn’t get the chance to hit it before Dennis sprayed its brains out of the side of its head. “Phew.”

  Dennis’ voice came through the radio. “If you get in trouble come outside where I can cover you.”

  John grabbed the walkie-talkie from his belt. “Ten-four.”

  I shook off the shock and got my head back where it needed to be. When we got out of the cab and looked down the street we could see the pawn shop. It had high windows, which were now busted out, but the bars kept the swarm of zombies at bay. Luckily, or perhaps Dennis chose that building because of that, the height of the windows meant he could get a clean shot over the mass that was surrounding the building. “You think those bars will hold?” I asked.

  John looked at the building. “The bars are made of iron and bolted straight into the bricks, they should hold no problem. I’m not so sure about the front door cage though. We should hurry.”

  “Right.” I replied and turned to follow John toward the station which he was already heading to.

  It wasn’t long before we had a bit of a problem, once we opened the front door we could see there were quite a few zombies inside. It wasn’t just the police staff either. John bashed one of their heads in. “Shit, these guys must have been trapped in here the whole time. I was hoping they would have cleared out by now.” The faces in the room all turned toward us, and we could see the wave of them heading our way.

  “What do we do?” Will asked nervously.

  “We’ll lead them outside, maybe we can get them to join the rest of them down the street.” I said thinking it was our only option.

  “Good plan, let’s go!” John yelled and propped the door open with a planter so they could follow us.

  We ran back outside into the street and turned around to look at the horde of them coming through the door. “Why are there so many of them?” I asked.

  John glanced over at me. “Remember when I brought you in, the station was full of people who had been exposed that night. We were flooded, I guess they didn’t make it out of there. Kind of makes you glad we didn’t make it huh?”

  “No shit!” I was astounded at the number of bodies that were flooding into the street. They just seemed to keep coming and coming. “Hey!” I yelled out to them.

  “What are you doing?” Will asked.

  “We need to keep their attention so they don’t go after the truck. We also have to walk them down the street, so make some noise!” I answered.

  We all started shouting and jumping up and down, to get keep their attention. It must have looked odd, but we knew it was the only thing we could really do. Elizabeth and Jill had hunkered down in the truck when they noticed what was going on, which honestly made me feel a lot more comfortable about them walking right past it. Still, it wasn’t the best situation, especially since we were nearing the end of the street.

  “Hey, let’s not get ourselves trapped here!” John yelled as after he turned around he noticed we were drawing some of the attention of the ones from the pawn shop. He grabbed the radio. “Dennis! We need you to start making some serious noise. Smash shit around, scream at ‘em, anything you can do.”

  “Copy that.” I could just barely hear him respond.

  The number of shots increased and we could hear him shouting between shots. It was enough for us to be able to slip down an alleyway and beat a hasty escape. “Ok we should work our way around back to the truck.” John said quietly trying not to get their attention again.

  We managed to climb over a small wall in the back which led to a side street. We ran down that road until it connected with the one the station was on, and luckily for us, there weren’t that many zombies in our way. We got back into the station just in time to hear the generator out back come to life and see the power flicker back on.

  “You should be good to go.” We heard over the radio.

  “Good, we should be able to get to the evidence locker here pretty quickly.” John clipped the radio back onto his belt. “This way.” Even with the majority of the zombies out on the street, the back rooms were still full of them. It wasn’t nearly as many, but the ones back there were in uniform. I could see a look of dread fall over John’s face, but he snapped back to reality quickly. “We’ve got to take them out.”

  Even though we were in a bit of a hurry, we took our time to face them one on one. The last thing we needed was for another one of us to get chomped, especially since we were so close. We worked our way further back until John finally pointed it out. “In here.” He punched in his code to the locker and swung the door wide open. “Oh shit!” A zombie from inside the locker lunged on him, knocking him to the ground.

  He managed to get his hands around its throat, which gave me the chance to finish
it off. Will and I pulled the body off of him, only to see more coming out. It was a mess in there, but we were able to close the door. “Why is the evidence locker full of zombies?” Will asked nearly panicked.

  “I don’t fucking know, they must have hidden in there when shit went south!” John was wiping blood off of his face. “It doesn’t matter, we’ve still got to get in there. Here’s what we’ll do, you two man the door, and I’ll take them out one at a time. If we can keep it that way this should be easy.”

  We did as we were told, letting one, or sometimes two who were a bit more ferocious out into the hallway at a time. We were all surprised at the number of officers who tried to hide in there when things went bad, but if you didn’t have anywhere to go, I guess it made sense.

  When the last one fell John asked “Is that all of them?” We opened the door slowly, peeking inside, and finally we managed to see that the room had been cleared. “For fuck’s sake! Alright help me move these bodies so we’re not tripping over them. We pulled the corpses out of the way. It didn’t help that each time we had to deal with zombies they had gotten more ripe, but I guess I should never have expected something like that to smell decent.

  “See that big pile over there?” John pointed to the massive pile of drugs in the corner of the room. “We’re taking that, and all this shit on this table too.”

  “Woah…” Will was flabbergasted. “How much is there?”

  “I don’t know about five hundred pounds or so total, plus a bunch of odds and ends.” John was busy grabbing an arm full of packages.

  “What is all of it?” Will jumped in to help him.

  “Meth, heroine, I think there’s some pot in there too. Look I’m not really sure we’re just putting it in the truck alright?”

  “Yeah.” Will said back, and I rolled my eyes before grabbing my load. It took quite a few trips to move all of it, from the back of the station over to the truck, and we kept having a couple of zombies pop up from the woodworks when we were making the trips. It took more time that we were hoping it would, but we managed to do it. Will closed up the back of the truck and we ran back around to the front. We hopped in the cab and shut the door behind us.

  “Is that it?” Elizabeth asked.

  “Yeah, we got it.” I replied.

  John pulled the walkie-talkie to his mouth and pushed down the button. “We’re all good here Anthony, Dennis, you can bug out.”

  “I’ll see you back at the rail-yard.” Anthony said.

  “It’s no good.” We heard Dennis say after that. “There’s too many of them, I’m not gonna make it out of here. Just go without me… and tell my daughter… I love her.”

  “Are you really gonna leave your own guy behind?” Anthony asked.

  John rolled his eyes and tried his best to sound serious. “We got what we came for… Fuck him.” Dennis went off in a tirade of curse words to sell the story. John smiled turned the radio off and clipped it to his belt once more. “I think he bought it.”

  Chapter 21

  We pulled up to the rail-yard with Jill crying. John had instructed us not to tell her what was going on because he wanted her reaction to seem genuine. It was cold, but we knew it was the right move. One of the men told us where to pull the truck to. We backed it into a loading ramp on the other side of the building. When we opened the door Harry was there to greet us.

  “Hey! So you pulled it off, great for you. Hey, where’s the other guy?” He waited with the cheesy fake grin on his face.

  “He didn’t make it.” I said, trying my best to sound genuine.

  “Aw shit, that sucks, sorry to hear it.” His words almost sounded like he cared until he opened his mouth again. “Oh well! Not my problem, now let’s get this shit unloaded.”

  “Where are we putting it?” John asked.

  “There’s a fancy service elevator that should handle the bulk of it no problem, well that is unless you want to climb down one of the ladders with all that crap. It’s over here.”

  I remember there being more men when we originally met with them, but I wasn’t about to say anything, if it came to a fight, the fewer the better.

  It took a while to unload everything onto the elevator, not as long as it took to load it, but we were dragging our feet to buy Dennis more time. Still, we got it all in place, and the elevator took us down into the tunnel. It was dark in there, with the exception of the few places that they had set up lights, you couldn’t see a thing.

  “Alrighty righty right!” Harry broke the silence, we’re going to be moving all of this crap over onto that small train car over there, so let’s get this done!” We did as he said.

  When the work was finally over John asked “So is that it? Are we ready to go?”

  “I know it sounds a bit cliché, but not so fast there Jonny Boy. Don’t get me wrong but…” Harry hung on his words.

  “You’re fucked.” Will cut in, then walked over to stand beside the men.

  “What are you talking about Will?” I asked.

  “It’s nothing personal, well maybe a little. But let’s face it, these guys weren’t going to let us walk out of here.” Will was cocking his head to the side and acting just like the piece of shit he was.

  “What did you do?” John growled at him.

  “Come on, you can’t honestly have thought that one guy with a rifle was going to make that big of a difference. I just made sure he’s not coming.”

  “You fucking bastard!” Elizabeth’s shouts echoed off the walls.

  “Oh don’t worry baby I made sure you’re taken care of too. You know the funny thing is, it wasn’t even that hard. When you all thought I was scoring drugs, I set up this little deal. Then all I had to do was park the van against the door so Dennis couldn’t get out. It was fucking easy! You all put way too much trust into this stupid little plan. Sorry you guys, but me and Liz have got to go.” Will was as smug as I had ever seen him when he walked over to grab her arm. She shrugged away from him.

  Harry cleared his throat. “About that kid… It behooves me to ensure that this whole thing isn’t going to bite me in the ass later, and witnesses tend to have sharp teeth from my experience, so…” The men at his side pulled their weapons to the ready.

  “You can’t fucking do this! We had a deal!” Will yelled at him.

  “And you trusted me?” Harry raised his hands to emphasize his words. “See that was your first mistake right there. No, no that actually wasn’t your first one. Your first one was trusting this piece of shit.” He walked over to John. “Yeah, that’s right. This little bastard was your real problem. Do you know what he did? He wasn’t just dirty, he was the worst. Why don’t you tell ‘em there Johnny?”

  “What does it matter, you’re just going to kill us anyway.” John spit the words out.

  “Well it’ll buy you a couple more minutes of time, which I don’t think I need remind you it’s in short supply.” Harry grinned like a maniac.

  “Fine! I…” John was breathing heavily with anger. “I was out on patrol one night with my partner Dale. Things were going fine, then we get this call. Some unusual activity in a business park late at night. I knew the place, it was where Harry was moving his drugs from. I knew if we went in there, things would go bad… So I convinced Dale to wait in the car, he was kind of a slacker so it was easier than I thought it would be… I came in, and sure enough, Harry and his boys were there. I spent a minute or two waiting, just trying to act like everything was normal. But then shit I didn’t expect happened. Some jackass was trying to steal a car out front, so Dale called in for backup. There was nothing I could do.

  The guy went running, right toward us, and when Dale came around the corner he got his eyes on this mountain of shit!” John waved his hand at the load of drugs and other contraband. “One of Harry’s men got the drop on him, bashed him right over the head, he was out of it. Harry and his boys were about to split, but Harry stops, turns to me and said ‘You know he saw us together… Finish it.’ He put a
gun in my hand… There was nothing I could do… It was either me or him…”

  “And?” Harry forced it out of him.

  “And I pulled the fucking trigger! Is that what you wanted you sick son of a bitch!” John could barely keep himself under control.

  Harry raised his arms up to gloat. “That’s what I’m talking about! See? He stabbed him right in the back! What a sick mother fucker he is…” He popped his neck. “Now wasn’t that fun? Doesn’t it feel good to have that off your chest before you die John?” He raised his hand to motion his men to fire. “No wait! I’ve got a better idea.” Harry smirked to himself.

  “What more could you possibly want?” John was exhausted at this point.

  “There’s no sense getting rid of a perfectly good pawn. The way I see it, I still have all the evidence I need to keep you on your leash John. So why would I shoot myself in the foot? You-” Harry paused for dramatic effect. “Are going to kill them. Just like you killed your partner.”

  “I won’t do it!” John yelled at the top of his lungs.

  Harry smiled and waited patiently for a second. “Yes you will. You’ve done it before, and hell practice makes perfect right?” He grabbed him by the shoulder and turned him around. “So who should it be? You!” Harry pointed right at me. “What’s your name kid?”

  “I thought you didn’t care.” I choked out the words.

  “I didn’t at the time, but now I want to know for dramatic effect! So what’s your fucking name?”

  I couldn’t do anything but give him what he wanted. “It’s Mark, Mark Williams.”

  “Good!” Harry reached down and grabbed the gun out of John’s holster. “So here’s what you’re going to do John you’re going to take your gun, like a good boy.” He forced the gun into John’s hand. “And you’re going to shoot Mark right in the fucking head!”