Tales of Junction

by Davis IV, John L.

  As Trina placed a tattered grade school textbook into the box she heard the door open and turned expecting to see a parent of one of the children.

  “Oh, hiya there Earl, what’s up?”

  “Trina, Filler asked me to come see when you’d have that stuff ready to take down into the basement.”

  “Just finishing up now Earl, I’ve got two boxes of stuff. Would you mind taking them over for me? I can’t leave the kids alone.”

  Earl glared at her for a moment, about to ask if she thought he was some sort of bitch-boy. He reconsidered, knowing that to be on the bad side of both Filler and Janet at the same time was just asking for a whole new level of shit-on-a-stick.

  “I’ll take one and send somebody over for the other, girl.”

  She could feel the contempt he felt for her and all the other working girls as if he were an old-fashioned radiator and the boiler was kicked up on high.

  “Thank you, Earl,” she said, flashing him a big, toothy grin. “You really are just a sweetheart, aren’t you?” She could see it rankled the old prude to hear her speak so sweetly right to his face, and she reveled in it.

  Earl grunted, twisting his mouth up in disgust. Without another word, Earl picked up one of the boxes Trina indicated and headed for the door. He pressed his back to the door and shoved it open, tossing one last glaring look at Trina as he went.

  “Whatever, you old grump,” she grumbled at the closed door.

  The cry of a child snapped her back to the moment. Thomas and Andy had taken little Tina’s hand stitched rag doll and were tossing it back and forth, giggling as the girl hopped back and forth between the boys trying to catch the flying cuddle.

  “Boys, you give that back right now!”

  Both dropped their arms, the doll slapping softly against Andy’s chest and falling to the floor. She saw the look the boys shared, a faint grin passing between them. Trina rolled her eyes, knowing that she would be scolding them again within ten minutes for some new mischief they cooked up in those devious little brains.

  “Zombies might be easier to corral and keep calm,” she whispered to herself.

  13

  Bill knelt at the opening, sweat dripping from his forehead to splash on the upturned faces of the dead men hungrily staring back at him. “No going back, Billy-boy. This is the reason you came here.”

  He didn’t know what to expect once inside the gun shop, but he hoped and prayed that it had somehow survived any looting that had happened in the area. A stock of weapons and ammo would certainly set him up in comfort.

  “Nothin’s easy anymore, that’s for damn sure. Hell, an easy life now just means you don’t worry about getting eaten every minute of the day, doesn’t it? If I get a good load going, maybe employ some of the other scavs from Junction to make big hauls out of here I might even try to buy out Phil. Set up some better defenses. Maybe even expand Junction. Now that’s a damn good idea, Billy-boy.”

  Bill realized he was delaying the inevitable. Hovering over the hole, he drew the holstered pistol and pressed the button to drop the magazine, intending to check his ammo, though he was certain he had one in the chamber and two left in the mag.

  Drop the magazine he did. It slipped through sore, blood-slicked fingers and down into the open mouth of the funker with a sucking noise. Even in the dim light he could see the bottom of the magazine peeking up at him from that rotting flesh-hole.

  The funker didn’t seem to notice.

  “Are you fucking KIDDING ME!”

  His shoulders slumped, hanging his head and sighing, Bill wanted to cry or beat something or fall asleep and wake up in happy land. He had only been awake for a few hours, but the excitement and adrenaline had burned off the energizing effects of the coffee. Now, exhaustion and emotion threatened to put him under.

  Bill looked at the pistol stupidly for a moment before checking to be sure that there actually was a round in the chamber. “Fuck it.” He slammed in his empty back-up magazine, sighted down on the face of the shuffler and squeezed.

  Zombie brains splattered the funker as its partner’s head was cored through with the heavy .40 caliber ball. It did not seem to notice that the shuffler had fallen. The sound of the shot spurred it into increased activity, attempting to scale the ladder. The obscene swish and swing of the facial skin sagging almost to its chest made Bill’s stomach roll.

  Bill thumbed the slide release, sending the bolt home on an empty chamber. He jammed the pistol back into place and fixed the strap over it before reaching for his knife.

  “Son-of-a-bitch!” he swore when it dawned on him that he had lost it in his mad leap and climb to the roof. The only weapon he had left was the heavy gauntlet. “It’ll have to do,” he said with a shrug.

  “Here I come, asshole.” Bill went through the hole, and stepped down the canted ladder backward, his shoulders resting against the steps. When he was one rung above the grasping hands of the nasty dead thing he paused. He knew that if he stopped to think he would balk, and possibly screw up, get himself killed, so he jumped.

  He went out, over the left shoulder of the funker, turning in midair, as the zombie twisted around, arms reaching up. As he came down he swung his arm in a wide arc, using both muscle and gravity to bring the gauntlet down dead center on the funker’s head with force.

  The skull split and shattered with a wet crack. Rotting brain tissue splattered out to both sides. Bill saw it as if watching a movie, in slow motion, the gore splashing out in a wave on either side of the head, both eyeballs popping free, one tearing away completely and smacking him in the chest with a liquid splat, the other bobbing at the end of its nerve tether.

  Bill failed to stick the landing.

  His feet slid the moment he hit the ground. With his gauntlet buried deeply in the skull he pulled the fully-dead funker down on top of him as he fell. Bill cried out in pain as his tailbone met concrete and the funker landed square on his chest, knocking the air from him.

  He was able to guide the funker’s head with the gauntleted arm, preventing a mouth to mouth encounter.

  Trying to suck air through lungs already compressed by the weight of the dead zombie was nearly impossible, and a moment of true terror swelled in Bill as he felt the darkness at the edges of his vision spreading out. Don’t pass out, don’t pass out… became an instant litany in his mind.

  Levering with the gauntlet arm, pushing with his right hand, and rolling his body, he was able to shift the funker off and to the floor, though the gauntlet was still firmly lodged in the thing’s head.

  Lying next to the foul smelling dead thing and trying to draw air into lungs that felt paralyzed would shatter the mind of most.

  With his first full breath Bill laughed, at the zombies, at his lodged gauntlet, at his own terror, at the cloying reek of the funker. Then he vomited.

  If not for the reeking dead and his own vomit right next to his head, he would have lain there on the floor for several more minutes collecting himself, reassembling the pieces of his mind that decided to head for the hills for the duration of the scary shit, but the smells of puke and funker were powerful motivators.

  Bill rolled onto his side and pushed up, lifting the zombie head several inches from the ground. Getting fully to his feet, he placed a boot against the funker’s head and pulled.

  The gauntlet came free with a squishing pop and Bill stumbled backward but kept his feet beneath him. Walking back to the dead funker, Bill slipped two fingers into the zombie’s mouth, shuddering when his knuckles brushed cold, slimy, dead lips. He pulled the magazine from its throat, flicking it, flinging large drops of fleshy gore onto the floor before dropping it into an empty pocket. He would clean it later. Ammo was far too precious to leave behind.

  He could see that he was in a small back room, storage for basic supplies like toilet paper and cleaning materials.

  He walked through the open door leading toward the shop area, passing through another storage room, this one made up of mostly a heavy w
ire cage. The lock that had held it closed had been battered to pieces.

  “Yeah, figures,” he said, hoarsely. The gun shop had been looted.

  After everything he had done to get in here, Bill wasn’t about to leave Bunker Bill’s Guns and Ammo without giving it a full once over. “Eh, hell, maybe something was left behind.”

  Bill scanned the shop-front, eyes following the long L-shaped counter, and the empty gun racks and smashed glass display cases. Out on the floor, t-shirt and hat displays had been knocked to the ground. Piles of unwanted items, like the clothes, reloading set-ups, branded merchandise, and other outdoors odds and ends like camping equipment were scattered over the sales floor.

  It appeared that the looters had been more destructive than efficient, taking guns and ammunition and smashing through everything else.

  Kicking his way through the trash, Bill showed no concern over the knot of zombies now pressing against the bars of the doors and windows, hands out and grasping at the air.

  “Oh yeah, there’s plenty of good shit left in this mess.” Feeling dejected at the lack of guns and ammo in the guns and ammo store, he took a moment to lean over an unbroken section of the counter, hanging his head and squeezing the back of his neck to relieve the tension that had built up since he left the apartment this morning.

  Frustrated, he knocked an empty display off the counter. It flew back against the vacant gun racks, and slammed to the floor. An almost musical tinkling, skittering noise came from the floor behind the sales counter.

  Pulling himself over to look, Bill smiled in surprise. The floor was littered with loose rounds, from shotgun shells to various calibers of brass ammo.

  “Well holy crap.”

  The only thing he could think was that in their haste, the looters had dropped and trampled boxes of bullets. Instead of taking the time to scoop up the fallen ammo they left it, absconding with whatever they had in hand.

  He walked around the counter, careful not to step on anything. It was obvious from the discoloration of some of the brass that it had been laying here for a long time, but it he was confident that some of it was still viable.

  Kicking through the mess on the store floor, Bill found a tipped shelf hiding a pile of plastic ammo boxes. He took several to the unbroken counter and began scooping the loose ammunition up with a dustpan.

  It took him just over thirty minutes to sweep it all up. He had filled five and about a third of a sixth box by the time he dumped the last scoop. Picking through the boxes, Bill looked at the base of round after round until he had set twenty-five identical bullets out on the counter-top. Bill chambered a round, loading one more into the magazine, for a total of thirteen in the gun.

  He grabbed a shirt and a small bottle of gun oil from the floor. He dismantled the magazine that had been lodged in the funker’s mouth, wiped it clean, and oiled the entire thing before loading it to capacity as well.

  “A thousand rounds of ammo is more than anyone has seen at one time in years. Even Filler, who has a tidy little stockpile of ammo,” he told the empty store. “Damn shame there wasn’t more, and some guns to go with it.”

  Scouring the whirlwind mess of the sales floor, Bill found several small bubble-packed flashlights, batteries included. He cracked one open, inserted the batteries, and thumbed the button.

  “Hot damn!” he said when the light came on, brilliant in the dim room. “Now that’s cake!” He was unable to stifle the wide grin spreading across his face.

  He shined the light across the zombie horde still pressing against the security bars. Several of the dead were caught between the iron bars, their heads having been squeezed through by the crush of the others. Bill shook his head. “Have to do something about you bastards before I can get out of here, won’t I?”

  Shooting them was out of the question. He didn’t want to draw in more and conserving his new-found ammo for times when it would be truly necessary was a top priority.

  Next to a mound of fishing equipment, Bill found what he considered ideal for his need. He took a moment to open the packaging and assemble the telescoping rod. He then mounted the four-prong trident of the frog gig and planted it on the floor next to his foot like a warrior on the battlefield. With the rod fully extended and locked into place he had a twelve-foot long spear.

  With a gleeful cackle, Bill moved toward the front of the shop and the horde waiting there.

  Working in a rhythm of jab, twist, yank, he was able to spike every dead thing outside the windows within thirty minutes. His arms shook from the effort. The day’s activities had taken their toll and it was just now going on noon. “I need a fuckin’ nap,” Bill Robb muttered.

  Bill walked toward the back room, propping the frog gig on the shattered counter as he passed by. Taking out his new flashlight, he explored the back rooms, finding nothing of any real importance, other than a case of toilet paper. It wasn’t heavy, but it’s bulky size would make it hard to carry out. “Few rolls at a time. Fuck, maybe I won’t tell the others about this. A lot of good shit I can trade, set myself up a nice place in the walls of Junction.”

  Scaving was always a lot of risk, with little chance of reward. A few cans of goods well past their expiration, or clothing that wasn’t rotted and falling apart. Things like guns and ammunition, toilet paper, batteries, those things that held the most value were rare, and often in such deplorable condition that they were beyond useless.

  Though there were no guns, and he was certain that much of the loose ammunition he found would be too corroded to fire, the gun shop still held many items of value. The flashlights and batteries alone would be enough to put him in good stead with every trader in Junction for months. The camping and fishing gear, hiking equipment, knives and sharpening stones, even the several cases of emergency food bars, which were only a couple of years past their use-date, were of great value to a world that had nearly forgotten what having these things truly meant.

  In the back room, inside the looted storage cage, Bill stretched out on the heavy rubber mats that covered the floor and rested.

  14

  Bill raised his head, feeling groggy and disoriented. He wasn’t sure how long he had slept on the rubber mat, but he could tell that the light coming through the door from the front of the shop was dusky. “Well this could be a long night if you don’t get up and get out of here.”

  Bill rubbed the sleep from his eyes and scrubbed his face with dry hands to wake himself fully. “Well, let’s make this happen, Billy-boy.” Slapping the hard rubber mat, and leaning forward, still trying to convince himself to move, Bill heard a noise through the uncomfortable stillness. Cocking his head sideways, he listened intently.

  The sound was muffled, almost buried beneath the sound of the blood rushing through his ears. A soft wet noise, like the gently moving waves at the edge of a wind-swept pond.

  “What the hell?”

  The sound stopped, leaving Bill to wonder if he had even heard it. He stared down at the black shoe-scuffed rubber and thought. Raising his hand he slapped the mat again and listened.

  The sound came again, wet and sloshing, possibly from beneath him. “Well, ok then.”

  On hands and knees, Bill Robb crawled the mat until he found a seam. He picked at it for a moment with sore fingers before flipping open a pocket knife he had rescued from the mess out front and liberated from its bubble packaging.

  Digging the clip-point into the seam he pried, lifting the edge of the mat. Slipping the blade in even further he was able to get the mat up far enough to slip his hand under the cool rubber and lift. The mat pulled back to reveal a solid concrete floor.

  “Hmmph, ok then.” He inched over to try another section.

  Minutes later Bill had pulled up and peeled back a large flap of the floor-covering to reveal another section of concrete similar to the last, except for the metal hatch hidden toward the back corner of the cage.

  “Well holy shit! Bunker Bill had a bunker!”

  Bill Robb’s he
art began to pound with excitement and anticipation of what might be below the hatch. “Damn sure some water down there, and something moving around in it. You down there waiting for some company, Bunker Bill?” He asked the hatch.

  Bill knelt down and lifted a wide pull handle that folded down flush into the top of the hatch. It refused to budge, no matter how hard he pulled.

  Bill paced in front of the hole in the floor that refused him entry. “Think, Bill, think.” He knew he had seen similar hatches and doors and racked his brain to draw the memories up from the dark well where they were hidden.

  “Ok, so the hatch looks pretty simple, but uh, if it’s one of those that locks closed with a wheel there’s no way you’re getting’ it open, short of having a pound or two of explosives. If it’s a single point lock, then prying it might work. Back breaking, but it might. Fuck it, I’m getting’ in there.”

  Bill was determined, his heart set on whatever was inside that bunker. He wandered through the piles and scattered mess of the front of the store, kicking debris and loot aside, looking for something to use as a pry bar.

  Under one pile his boot struck something that clanked against the tile floor. Under a mound of clothes and rotted boxes he found a crowbar. “Hot damn, now that’s cake!” He hefted the bar, noticing how light it was compared to the usual crowbar. Looking closely he saw the word TITANIUM stamped in the haft. “Ok, now we’re in business,” he said with a grin.

  Returning to the storage cage and the waiting hatch, Bill swigged the last drops from his bottle of water and tossed the empty aside.

  With determined gusto, he set the tip of the bar in the thin crack between the hatch and the edge of the steel inset and began his work.

  ****

  Three hours and several scraped knuckles later, just as he was on the verge of giving up, the hatch gave a low grating noise and lifted an inch, before stopping. “Oh hell yeah, I’ve got you now, you stubborn bitch!”