by Jay Morris
I was getting confused “What river?”
He was barely able to keep from breaking up “The Monongahela!”
He seemed to think this was hilarious.
“So you mean to tell me that the river banks are falling into a river called the river banks are falling in?”
He just about had a heart attack, he was laughing so hard all he could do was say
“Who’s on first?”
“What?” I asked.
This caused him to laugh even harder; I decided to change the question.
“Okay, what tribe was so clever to name the river like that?” I asked.
More laughter but he was able to choke out “The Monongahela”.
I was beginning to like him better when I hated him, still I could always shoot him later. I thought it about it some more and said
“So you mean to tell me that a tribe of Native Americans called “the river banks fall in lived along a river where the river banks fall in and called it the river banks fall in?”
He was laughing so hard I swear he had tears on his cheeks and I gave up muttering
“Stupid name for a river anyway.”
Once we were across the bridge we went a couple more miles then made a sharp hairpin turn onto a road that didn’t have a name as far as I could see. Thank God I thought, my luck it would have been the ‘road on the bank of the river with the bank that falls in avenue’. OMT cut the wheels and entered a large parking lot that was paved with gravel. At the far end was a huge warehouse. There was a sign saying “Dray’s Firearms Sales”, its web address and some store front hours below that.
There were no cars that I could see but there was one diesel big rig with a trailer was on the side of the building and was backed up to a loading dock. A second trailer off to one side but that one looked rusty and as if it had not been used in decades or centuries, maybe even since the Bush Administration. He looked at me.
“We made it John.”
I looked at him, he was still wearing that annoying smile but I didn’t fall for it, instead I picked up the .41 colt from the dash board and we both got out of the SUV. I looked over at him, he had the double barrel shotgun in his hands and a Beretta M9 stuffed into his the waist band of his jeans. I shoved the colt into my holster and picked up my M16. It dawned on me that I was getting pretty comfortable with weapons for a 12 year old. We walked slowly, carefully across the lot but 50 feet from the front door we could see that a huge metal garage door looking thing had been lowered and locked in place behind a glass front.
“Great” I muttered and looked over at OMT.
He was looking around then said “Wait here John”
He walked around the side of the building to the Freightliner. He looked inside then hopped down and opened the door. He poked around in the rear sleeper area for a moment then he climbed in. A moment later the big 14 liter 6 cylinder started to turn over and in a moment it caught and the diesel roared to life. I could hear him yell in victory then shut off the engine and got out. He walked over to me and he handed me the shotgun.
He jogged back to the SUV and got in. A few minutes later he started it up and revved the engine.
“Oh crap” I thought, “is this the only plan this guy ever comes up with?”
He backed up a bit then peeled out and there was a tremendous crash as the SUV bashed through the glass wall and made contact with the garage door thingy. The garage door was pretty solid but not enough for a SUV going 40 miles an hour. The SUV was sitting there, the engine having died and the rear tires lifted into the air by the strange angle at which it landed. The rear wheels were spinning slower and slower and bits of glass kept falling but there was no other sound. I began to get nervous, what was I going to do if that crazy old man had just killed himself. Suddenly the rear hatch of the SUV popped and it was slowly raised. Old Man Tucker’s face appeared; he had some blood running down his forehead and looked as if he had just been hit between the eyes with a baseball bat.
“Come on John, we don’t have all day!”
I shook my head as I climbed into the rear of the SUV, which was outside. I exited the drivers’ door of the SUV which was inside. I was beginning to miss Mr. Samuel’s history class.
It was dark inside but not pitch black. There was a skylight and that helped a lot, dust was still filtering down from OMT’s rather dramatic entrance. Looking around he grabbed two large gun bags from a display and exchanged them for the shotgun, then he took two for himself. He went over to a glass display and started smashing it with the shotgun. He started shoving revolvers and pistols into the first bag, he yelled over to me.
“44 MAG, and 357”
I realized he was calling out the calibers to me so I ran over to a long set of shelves that were laden with boxes of ammo. I began sweeping boxes of the listed calibers into the first bag.
“Fiffffty Smith and Wesssssson”
He yelled dramatically and I found a half dozen boxes of that. I heard him say “SHIT...” and he banged around a bit.
“Whats wrong?” I asked.
“No casull’s” he barked. He started towards the racks of long guns. “Grab all the 12 and 10 gauge slugs you can, start with the 3.5” and work your way down to the smaller 12s if you have room.”
“Right!”
I said and read through the various boxes looking for 3.5” 12 gauge slugs, why on Earth did they make so many different kinds of shotguns? I found them and started loading the bag. TEhe damn thing was getting heavy fast, so heavy I really couldn’t carry it, more or less just dragged it. I nearly jumped out of my skin when I heard OMT fire several rounds and I spun around to see him dragging a chain from a locking bar. I went back to loading the ammo and I heard the locking bar slam to the ground. There were so many shotguns that it took him a minute or two until I heard him loading the guns into the second bag.
I heard him grunt as he pulled both bags to the floor near me and he grabbed a third big duffle. He looked at me and I saw something I hadn’t really seen before. It was, well, hard to describe, but the best I can say is ‘an urgent sense of hope’.
“Help me with the rifles John, then we will look for the ammo together.”
I agreed and we headed towards the other wall of guns. He was appraising them carefully, finally he reached up and took down first one then a second lever gun and set them both on the counter.
“Take those two John.” he said “both are 44 mag.”
A moment later he added one in 45-70. He seemed to be searching then finally reached up and took down two semi-automatic rifles that resembled my M16.
“7.62 NATO” he said.
He even picked up what I thought looked like one of those old machine guns, like the ones in the ‘Untouchables’, OMT said I was right and that it was a Thompson, he said that they still made them and that this one was brand new and while it wasn’t fully automatic it would certainly put a lot of lead down range in a hurry. Finally he nearly ran to the far end of the last counter,
“I KNEW IT!” he barked. “I knew these bastards would have one.”
He pulled down something that looked a lot like a long black iron pipe with a box attached to the bottom. He took it down and opened and closed a bipod that was attached near the muzzle.
“Right, 50 BMG, that’s the lot” he said. Together we went over to the section of shelves that held the rifle ammo. We called them out as we found them: 45 ACP, 44 magnum, 45-70 government, 308, 50 BMG. When we took all we could we fished out one last bag and filled it with all the 9mm and 5.56 we could fit. The duffels were piled up like a big black and green mountain, The Barrett rifle balanced like some bizarre candle on top. The only things we took after that were a number of scopes, (I really had no clue what they were, some were short and squat in their boxes, others were long but OMT seemed to know what he wanted), a half dozen black plastic bottles of what I found out later was gun powder, and several heavy cloth bags of lead shot labeled 00 and one of 000.
�
�Now what?” I asked.
“Go grab a couple of carts from the front John.”
I did as he asked and we loaded them with the bags.
“Follow me.” he said.
I started to wheel the cart towards the back of the store.
“Where are you going? Where are WE going?” I yelled.
I couldn’t hear whatever he said in the squeal of the shopping cart wheels. Suddenly he burst through a steel door that had a sign on it that said
“WARNING: ALARM WILL SOUND. FIRE USE ONLY” I started laughing and I followed him out into the back lot. The huge Freightliner sitting right where we had left it only an hour before, “pretty as you please” my dad would have said and remembering that made me smile. OMT pulled the passenger door open and lifted me up and in. He started pushing the bags up onto the floorboards. I pulled them as best as I could into the back, I even got the one with the pistols and revolvers up onto the neat bed in the back. When we had finished, the other bags made a mound so high, that I had to climb over it into the passenger seat. A moment later OMT opened the driver’s door and slid in next to me.
I leaned over and watched his hands.
“What?” he asked. “I wanted to see how to hot wire this thing.” I said.
He laughed and said “like this” and he produced the keys and slipped them into the ignition and once again the big semi came to life. I started laughing as we moved forward with a lurch and the gear box whined as we pulled out of the parking lot and at last started our journey home.
We made it easily crossed the bridge over the river which shall not be named because it’s banks keep falling in and started to retrace our route. We talked a bit, OMT and I, but we actually didn’t have to say too much. I was pretty happy I realized. I was going home, to be with Elaine and Lucy and Mrs. Driscol and Janey. I was even looking forward to seeing Kyle and Karen and Mrs. Franks. The jury was still out on Mr. Franks although I guess like OMT I felt that maybe he had suffered enough. OMT did ask me to dig out the Thompson and to load the two clips that came with it with .45 rounds. I had to rummage around a bit but there was a lot of room in the semi so I was able to get it all done easily enough. The long thin ‘stick’ magazines held 30 rounds each, but I was still surprised how heavy they were once loaded even though OMT asked me to only put 25 in each.
It didn’t take long until he started to lament all the things he was sure we had missed. He said he was sure they had class IIIs somewhere but he “sure couldn’t find them”. I nodded sympathetically and said
“Well, maybe we could get lucky and find some 3s or even 4s or 5s some other day”.
OMT laughed and asked if Lucy was back there some place. I was beginning to wonder if Old Man Tucker had finally gone crazy.
We hadn’t gone much further and were only a few miles from Fairmont when OMT pulled the truck to a stop. The air breaks ‘swooshed’ loudly and it rocked a bit.
“That’s new.” he said.
Stretched across the highway was a school bus, it was acting as a gate and several other pickups and four wheel drives were arranged on either side.
“What do you think?” he asked me.
I felt grown up and respected, it was something I like very much so I took his question very seriously. I lifted the binoculars and saw that there were at least a dozen armed men and older boys scattered in and around the vehicles.
“I think this sucks.” I said.
He nodded and the sighed deeply as he added “oh dear.” I looked back at the road block and saw three men heading our way. The one in the middle held a pump shotgun, the one on the right a hunting rifle and the left I recognized an SKS but his didn’t have the long banana clips that OMT’s did.
“Whatever we are going to do, we better do it soon.” he said.
The river was on our left, but the right was wooded, I glanced over in that direction and I saw movement.
“They are coming in on the side as well.”
“Shit. Well, if they want our truck they are going to have to earn it.”
He reached over and picked up the Thompson, he laid it across his lap. I chambered a round in the M-9 and held it down between the door and my right thigh. I also checked to make sure that the door was locked. I hated this, killing crazies was one thing, fighting other survivors was another.
OMT looked at me as he rolled down the window, “put on a happy face” he said, shut off the engine and then he turned back to the men, one was over by me, a second was directly in front, the one from the middle, the leader I suspect had come over to stand by the driver’s door. OMT called out happily
“Boy we are sure glad to see you guys.”
The man looked suspicious but not scared but that might change if he could see what I could, OMT had slipped the safety off on the Thompson and the barrel was just out level with the man’s throat.
“Is that right?” he said.
“Damn straight!” OMT said, “We just barely got out of Morgantown alive.”
He looked over at the other man in front of the truck.
“Oh yeah?” he said then he paused, “this here your rig?”
We all knew it wasn’t, it had DRAY’S FIREARM’S written on the side in letters a foot high. OMT didn’t miss a beat, in fact he almost laughed,
“No, no… not mine, I wish it were, me and my boy, we found it outside of Dray’s, barely escaped some of those monsters as a matter a fact.”
The man suddenly looked upset,
“Did they follow you?” he asked.
“Not that I know of, we stopped a while back and checked out the trailer and didn’t see anything. Of course we were hauling ass out of there.”
He seemed to relax. I watched as the two men in the tree came out onto the side of the road and I waved at them like I didn’t want to kill them. One of them looked about 18 and he waved back, relaxing a little and he laid his shotgun up onto his shoulder.
The man pressed one hand against the truck,
“So, what’s in the trailer?” he asked.
“Boots mostly, and boxes of hunting camo’s. “
The man looked back towards the end of the truck and OMT caught his attention,
“Oh, there were some smaller boxes, not sure what is in them though, could be ammo.”
He turned back and he actually had a smile, “Oh yeah?” OMT waved him over,
“Yall think that maybe we could trade this lot for something smaller? A pickup maybe?”
The man looked at his friend in front and smiled we can
“Oh I imagine we can find something?”
“Great!” OMT said, shall we leave it here?” and he started to open the door.
The man bristled “NO, no. Let’s pull it through the gate and we can complete our business.”
I saw something wicked in his eyes. OMT started the engine and the man waved at someone behind the blockade and the school bus started to slowly move out of the way.
“Get ready John.” he said. He slowly started to pull forward,
“Keep a grin on your face.” he said.
When we got past the bus a man with a hunting rifle slung on his shoulder waved for us to pull into one side.
“Here goes nothing.”
OMT slammed the accelerator to the floor and the engine whined. Men were screaming and rifle fire rent the air. We had a head start and we were past their barricade but there was no way we were going to get away without a fight. Faster and faster we went but it felt like we were trying to ride a turtle. Pretty soon I could see at least three vehicles behind us. The one in front was a pickup and there were armed men in the back. OMT stayed to the right and the pickup started to pass us, like they wanted to cut us off, how stupid, I thought. When they were nearly side by side with us OMT yelled at me to steady the wheel so I grabbed it, he shoved the Thompson out the window and started squeezing off rounds as fast as his trigger finger would allow.
The sound inside the cab was deafening. The front windshield was shattere
d, the driver must have been one of those hit because the truck suddenly made a sickening slide to one side, the rear end of the truck catching up with the front and soon it was rolling. Over and over it, it looked like a toy in the rear view mirror. Men, or at best, parts of men from the back of the truck were scattered over the highway. Their bodies shredded between the truck and the asphalt. The car behind them must have been tail gating because suddenly the truck exploded as it ran into the truck. I saw the other vehicles pull to a stop behind the wreck; even as we sped away I could see the horror on their faces as they tried to pull the bodies of their friends and family from the carnage.
I looked over at OMT, his smile was gone, and we were the same now, the tired old man with a thousand secret agonies and a 12 year old child-soldier who should have been playing ‘Magic the Gathering’ and trying to get out of unloading the dishwasher instead of figuring out how to kill people and monsters. I could see the pain in his eyes, the same pain that I felt behind mine.
Day 11
The sun lonely was setting by the time we pulled off the highway; we drove several miles down a lonely country road. Once we parked OMT and I rearranged the green and black duffle bags so we could use the built in bed. OMT didn’t even bother to shut it down; he just left it running with the lights off. I asked him how we were on fuel and he responded that the thing had TWO 100 gallon fuels tanks one on each side of the cab. He said they must have filled them just before the outbreak because it was nearly full.
We had neglected to bring our MRE’s from the SUV so dinner was pretty sparse, half a kit-kat bar apiece. We took turns keeping watch but in my off time I had no trouble sleeping. The next morning we took a few minutes getting ready but all we really did was go to the bathroom and stretch. We made our way back to the highway and started the final leg of our weapons journey.
Finally I brought up the subject I had carefully avoided.
“What about the Livingston’s” I asked.
He didn’t look at me “I promised we would stop by, give them the opportunity to join us, which is what I am going to do.”
We drove on a bit further and he didn’t add anything so I asked