She reflexively laid the shotgun across her lap to catch the box, then panicked when she realized what she’d done, yanking the gun back up. Ford hadn’t moved. Hadn’t made any effort to go for her.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” he said. “I’m serious. This is why I came here. To look for leftover supplies.”
“Then why should you share them? How do I know you’re not going to hurt me and my little girl and just take all of it?”
“Because that’s not who I am. That’s all I can tell you.” He looked long and honest at her, trying to convince her, but uncertain if he was getting through whatever damage had been done to her.
In the next locker he found a few of unopened bags of beef jerky. He tossed her two of them and kept one for himself.
“Why is this food here?” she asked.
“Long hours,” he said. “We don’t always know when we’re getting home or where the next meal is coming from. It’s good to be prepared for those times we can’t just run to a fast food place.”
Ford moved on to the next locker and found a plastic grocery bag beneath a change of clothes and some toiletries. There were some candy bars and a couple of cans of tuna. He took one of each and gave the rest to the woman.
“My name is Nicole,” she said as Ford moved on to the next locker. “My daughter is Paige.”
Ford regarded her for a moment and nodded. “Good to meet you, Nicole. You can call me Ford.”
She was looking away and did not acknowledge his comment. “There were men came to our house looking for food. My husband went outside to tell them to go away and they killed him. When I saw that, I grabbed Paige and we ran out the back door. We hid in the woods until they were gone, then I grabbed what I could from the house and we took off. I couldn’t stay there knowing they could come back anytime.”
“Where did you stay?”
“We slept in somebody’s old shed for a couple of nights but when it got really cold I knew I had to find something better. We were walking through here, taking a shortcut to town, when I noticed there were several buildings out here that looked empty.”
“Most people wouldn’t stay out here in the winter because there’s no way to heat them,” Ford said. “How have you been doing it?”
Nicole shook her head. “I haven’t. We stay in sleeping bags most of the time. We read and color and do stuff like that. Things you can do from a sleeping bag.”
“What have you been eating?”
“We had a little food that the men missed when they broke into the house. I’ve even been back there a time or two to get more stuff. I made Paige hide here while I went. It takes about an hour to walk there and a little longer to get back if I’m carrying a lot of stuff. We also found a few cans of food in the lunch room here and I broke the front out of the vending machine.”
“That’s a crime,” Ford said.
Nicole looked at him with a look of incredulity but found that he was smiling at her. “Oh, a joke.”
“Not much of one,” he acknowledged.
“I’m going to get my daughter out here and give her something to eat,” Nicole said. “She’s not had anything today. You promise you’re not going to try some shit?”
“If that was my plan, I would have done it already,” Ford assured her. “I told you exactly why I was here. You’ve got the proof in your hands.”
“There aren’t many lockers left. Was this the only place you knew to look?”
Ford shook his head. “I’ve got a few tricks left up my sleeve.”
Nicole yelled for her daughter, not quite ready to leave Ford alone in the building. After several attempts, the little girl skulked into the room, her head lowered while she glared at Ford.
“I’m sorry I scared you,” he said, assuming that was the reason for her expression. “You scared me just as bad as I scared you.”
That admission put a brief smile on her face. Nicole handed her daughter a bag of jerky. Ford expected another smile at that or some expression of joy but what he saw instead was a ravenous, desperate look overtake her. Her hands shook as she tore into the bag and shoved a large piece into her mouth, chewing the tough jerky as hard as she could.
“Easy there,” Ford said. “You’re going to get choked if you don’t slow down.”
“He’s right,” Nicole said. “Go slower. Stop to take a drink.” She handed her daughter a well-used water bottle.
“Where are you getting the water?” Ford asked.
“From the gutter downspouts,” Nicole said. “It looks clean but it’s got a little bit of an odd taste to it.”
“I’ve got a couple of more places to check,” Ford said. “You coming with me or do you trust me enough to let me go by myself?”
Nicole studied him and seemed to concede from weariness rather than any quality she saw in him. “I’ll let you go. I’m going to have a bite to eat with Paige. If you find more food, will you bring us some?”
Ford nodded. “It’s a promise.”
Nicole set the shotgun to the side. “Then go on.”
“I’ll leave you this light. I think there’s another in the room I’m going to.”
Ford left the locker room, returning to the conference room where he’d entered the building. He left the food he collected on the table and headed down the hall to the locked room where they kept the load out assault gear. The room was locked but he had a key. The lock to the unmarked door was undamaged so he assumed no one had been in there. It was not lost on him that many of the men who might have been tempted to break into this room were dead already, many of them killed at the superstore after they sided with Barnes.
The room had no windows and he propped the door open with a fire extinguisher so some ambient light from the hallway would reach the room. The first thing he looked for was a flashlight to replace the one he’d left with Nicole and Paige. There was a shelf with several heavy D-cell Mag-lites on it and he tried one. It worked.
This was the room where they kept the specialized gear that they might use on a drug raid or in the extremely infrequent hostage situation that might pop up. There were department-issue tactical vests, body armor, bump helmets, and belts with every kind of holster and pouch. There was also a wall with a dozen Go Bags. Ford knew that each Go Bag had a hydration bladder as well as a couple of bottles of water. There would be several MREs, a trauma kit to enhance the individual first aid kits that each man already carried, and a few other items.
There were some large black duffel bags stacked on a shelf. They kept those in case someone had to grab gear from this room and haul it to the location of an unfolding emergency. Ford decided it would be easiest to sort what he found if he started one bag for him and another for Nicole. He shoved two full Go Bags into each of the cavernous duffels and then split the contents of the remaining Go Bags. He grabbed a tactical vest for himself and shoved it in the bag he was keeping.
He placed a couple of flashlights and some batteries in the bag for Nicole and her daughter, then added the remainder to his bag, along with several headlamps and tactical lights. Finding a weapons-mounted light reminded him of the small armory in the building. It was not as large as the armory at the sheriff’s department but he assumed this one had been looted based on what the sheriff said. Still, he couldn’t leave without checking. Just the presence of the woman now living here told him that the building might be fully ransacked the next time he came back. And who knew how long that might be.
Ford strapped on a headlamp to free up his hands. He dragged the two heavy duffels down the hall to another unmarked door. He fished out his keys and found the one that opened the door. The only thing in the room was a gray cabinet that dominated the wall across from the door. It was eight feet wide and seven feet tall, made of heavy steel mesh that allowed air to flow freely. A padlock secured the cabinet and a flat steel shield prevented anyone from reaching the lock with bolt cutters.
The deputies were not allowed to have individual keys to the padlock but there w
as a key box on the wall, openable with their door key and containing the padlock key. Ford opened the key box and was pleased to find the locker inside. He approached the cabinet and pressed his head against the steel mesh, shining his light into the interior. He couldn’t hold back a smile when he found the locker was still full of weapons.
He opened the locker and stood admiring the contents. Since this was only a secondary armory, it just held a few weapons, but they were good stuff. There were several pump-action Mossberg shotguns. There were three Colt Law Enforcement Only M4s that looked similar to what Ford was carrying now but with one significant difference. They had a selector switch instead of a safety, allowing the weapon to be in Fire, Safe, or three-shot burst modes. One had a 40mm grenade launcher for tear gas.
There was a suppressed H&K MP5 that ran full-auto as well as two FN SCAR Subcompacts that were select fire. Additionally, ammo cans stacked in the bottom of the cage held thousands of rounds for each weapon. Ford knew there was no way he could leave any of it. He would set Nicole up with more rounds for the shotgun but he was taking the rest of this if he had to strap it on his horse and walk alongside it.
“Poor fucking horse,” Ford mumbled. “If you knew what was coming, you’d be heading for the hills.”
6
Randi and Jim were mounting their horses outside of Mrs. Fairlane’s house when they heard distant gunshots. They looked at each other nervously.
“You think that’s Ford?” Randi asked.
“Sounded like a shotgun,” Jim said. “Ford was carrying a rifle.”
Randi nodded, understanding they were both probably thinking the same thing about now, that Ford may have been on the receiving end of the gunfire rather than the giving end. “Should we check on him?”
“I want to go by my parents’ house and check on things anyway. The emergency operations center is right there close by. We could swing over and check on him.”
“If you want to check on him, I’m going to go check on Buddy,” Randi said.
Jim frowned at Randi. "Buddy said he wanted to go alone."
After some effort Randi finally managed to climb on her own horse and settle in the saddle, struggling in the bulky layers of winter clothing. "What people want and what people need aren’t always the same thing."
"Buddy is pretty plainspoken. If he tells me he wants to go it alone, I take him at his word."
Randi frowned. "Well, you're pretty plainspoken too. In fact, you’re about the grumpiest damn person I've ever met and if it was you up there, I’d still go.”
Jim realized that an argument with Randi was time wasted. She was clearly his equal in terms of hard-headedness. He’d have about as much luck telling the snow to melt as telling Randi not to go. He sighed and gave up. "You be careful."
"I always am."
“Make sure you have a round chambered,” Jim said. “And keep those guns handy.”
But Randi was already gone, her horse trotting down the driveway and steering clear of the dead bodies frozen to the ground.
“Yeah, I’ll be careful too,” Jim said to the empty yard. “Thanks for the concern.”
Jim nudged his horse onward, down the drive, and through the gate to the road. Instead of retracing his steps to where he and Ford had parted ways, Jim went in the other direction. As a child, he’d walked to Mr. Fairlane’s house on an old road that had since been abandoned. He thought it might still be passable if he took a shortcut through a nearby neighborhood. At the end of that neighborhood was an area that had once been the town dump, all traces of it now long buried. There were a few places where he might have to cut through a gate but he had bolt cutters with him for that purpose.
He plodded on for around a quarter mile before emerging onto the dead end street. There probably weren’t a half-dozen houses on the street, most dating from the 1950s and 1960s. The neighborhood had never been desirable because no one wanted to live on the road to the town dump, overrun as it was with rats, cats, and stray dogs.
At the end of the street, Jim reached the artificial contours of the reclaimed dump with its perfectly angled hills and flat planes. It had been forty years since they closed it. Weeds, brush, and trees were making some progress and probably did a decent job of hiding the unnatural landscape when they were fully leafed-out, but the unnatural shapes were obvious now.
Jim played there as a kid, after the dump was closed but before the reclamation. He remembered it as a good spot to find cool old bottles and other odd bits of junk. There were even a few old vehicles scattered on the fringes of the property that had managed to avoid the crusher. He’d sat in those as a kid and imagined being able to drive them from where the trees formed cages around them.
At the end of the dump he cut the padlock on a gate the county put in. After taking his horse through, he returned the chain and padlock to where they appeared undisturbed and continued on his way. Ahead was a ridge lined with dark green cedar trees. His parents’ house lay on the other side of that.
He followed an overgrown farm road that had fallen into disuse. The cedars that lined both sides of the road were heavy with snow, the lower limbs so burdened they sagged to the ground. There were no tracks on the ground other than birds and squirrels, though Jim had taken to keeping an eye on those things. After the Great Depression, the deer were nearly depleted in this area and the population needed almost forty years to recover.
He approached the emergency operations center from the back side. Had he been using the roads, he’d have come to his parents’ house first, but this route saved him nearly three miles. He spotted Ford’s horse where he’d left it tied to a light pole. Jim approached the horse and saw the tracks leading to the building, not to a door but toward a bank of windows. Then he noticed Ford’s rifle leaned against the wall and the blown out glass peppering the snow.
The hair on Jim’s neck stood up and sirens went off in his head. All those windows and all that glass. Him sitting there in the open. He dropped off his horse, placing it between him and the windows, and walked it to a nearby truck. He tied the horse off to the bumper and crouched down while he studied the building. The reflective windows made it difficult to tell what was happening in there.
Jim was familiar with this building, and knew there was no approach that offered decent concealment. He assumed Ford had to be in there and he couldn’t imagine him leaving his rifle outside by choice. Something had happened and Jim had to know what it was.
Using the parked cars for cover he slogged his way toward the front corner of the building. It was far from safe but it was the least visible approach to the building. When he reached the last car in the parking lot, he slung his rifle to his back and un-holstered his pistol. He crawled toward the corner of the building, a distance of no more than thirty feet, but thirty open feet. The feeling of being exposed made him wish he’d fashioned a poncho out of an old white sheet to offer him some sort of camouflage against the snow. He expected a shot to come at any moment and he prayed their aim would be poor.
Within eight feet of the building, he rose to his hands and knees and scurried the remaining distance, flattening himself out against the base of the wall. He listened for a moment and heard nothing. The windows were about three feet up from ground level and Jim crawled along toward the shot out window, hoping he was close enough to the wall that a shot would be difficult. It was awkward going, his M4 jostling around and banging against the wall at times, nearly choking him at others.
When he finally reached the window he stood upright, flattening himself against the wall between the windows. He took a double-handed grip on his pistol and spun toward the open window, weapon raised. At that moment, a black duffel bag nearly the same size as the opening came sailing out. The sudden emergence of the black bag startled Jim and he backpedaled. In the deep snow, he lost his balance and fell backward.
With his finger planted on the trigger, Jim nearly sent a round flying through the open window. He hesitated, wanting to lay eyes on his targ
et. What he found was Ford staring at him curiously through the opening.
“Fuck!” Jim said. “I almost shot you.”
“What are you doing out there?”
Jim holstered his pistol, rolled to his side, and clumsily got to his feet. “I was going to check on my parents’ house. When I heard gunfire, I thought I should probably come down this way and make sure everything was okay.”
“I almost got scalped with buckshot earlier but it’s cool now.”
“Who are you talking to?” came a panicked voice from inside.
“A friend,” Ford called back. “He heard the shots and came to check on me.”
“Who are you talking to?” Jim asked.
“It’s not important,” Ford whispered. “I’ll explain later.” He came out the window, carefully avoiding any remaining shards of glass. He picked up his weapons from where he’d left them in the snow, holstered his pistol, and slung the rifle over his shoulder. He reached back through the opening and grabbed several smaller backpacks, dragging them back out through the open window.
“Those look heavy,” Jim commented.
Ford smiled. “You got no fucking idea, man. This is good shit.”
“I’m intrigued.”
“Help me with this.”
Jim grabbed one of the two backpacks and found it shockingly heavy. “What’s in this? Rocks?”
“Ammo,” Ford said.
Jim shared that same devilish grin now. Even though they were not in short supply, more ammo was always a good thing. They decided the best plan was to hang both packs on the rear of Jim’s horse, fastening the packs together like saddlebags. When they returned to the window, Jim had to help Ford with the duffel bag, each of them grabbing a strap and hauling it between them.
“More ammo?” Jim asked.
Ford shook his head. “I thought the gun locker had been hit but it hadn’t. There was a small armory in the building. Several Class 3 items.”
“Select fire?”
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