Escape From Metro City

by Mandel, Richard

  "Head for the alley!" Cy called back, as he began to slowly backpedal away from the wreck on his side of the looparound and towards the alley entrance. "Mercy, you next! I'll be last! Lisa, get ready to light it as soon as I'm through!"

  "Right!" Lisa called in reply. Quick as a flash the young racer again dove under the side of the box back end of the truck and crawled into the front part of the alley on the other side. It was a tight fit given the weapons and gear she was carrying, but she made it. She called out as soon as she was back on her feet again. "Mercy!"

  "Coming!" Mercy called back. She fired off one more round from her M-16 at the zombies crawling through the wreck on her end of the looparound, then turned and ran for the alley entrance. Cy had backed up far enough to cover both ends of the looparound and was swinging his M-16 back and forth, redirecting his covering fire as necessary. It was not enough. Wounded zombies were clearing the wrecks on both ends. Mercy made it to the truck, squeezed under it with her gear, and then came out from under the other side. At the same time Lisa had pulled her makeshift torch and had already lit it. It burned brightly as she anxiously called to Cy. "She's through! Come on, Cy!"

  Cy fired off two final full auto bursts, one at each end of the looparound, then turned and quickly slung his M-16 over one shoulder. He sprinted for the alley entrance and the truck blocking it, while at the same time almost a half-dozen wounded zombies came to their feet and started to half-shamble, half-stagger after him. He had too much of a lead, however, as he dived for the underside at the middle of the truck. A flurry of scrambling arms and legs later and he was through, with Mercy helping to pull him clear. As they did so, and while the zombies were closing on the truck blocking the alley entrance, Lisa threw her lit torch. The truck went up in flames instantly as soon as the torch hit it, and there was the sound of zombie wailing and screeching on the other side. On the alley side, the three humans were running down the alley and away from what they knew was about to happen. Approximately six seconds later, it did.

  KA-WHOOOOOMMMMM!!!!!

  The catering truck's gas tank exploded, taking the truck and some half-a-dozen zombies with it and sending flaming debris in all directions. An entire flock of crows which had been roosting on the nearby power and telephone lines immediately took to the air, flying as fast as they could and cawing madly. So too did a big black raven that had been roosting with them; however, its ascent was a silent one as it quickly rose and furiously flew away with them. As for Cy, Lisa, and Mercy, they as one dived behind the closest piece of cover, which happened to be a dumpster off to one side, and huddled behind it as metal shrapnel, burnt rubber, and pieces of ruined food went everywhere. It took about three seconds for the worst of the rain to end, but the trio waited a little longer before cautiously poking their collective heads around the edge of the dumpster to look back the way they came. Some distance away, the alley entrance was bathed in flames and they could still make out the ruin of the burning frame and body of the catering truck, along with what looked like the remains of a couple of bodies before and under it. Mercy shivered and turned away.

  "That ought to hold 'em for a while," Lisa observed, as the flames and smoke continued to rise into the night sky.

  "Until the fire dies down," Cy quipped, also looking at the flames, "but that won't be for a while yet. We still need to be long gone by then." He turned to say something to Mercy, stopped at what he saw beyond her farther down the alley, and then nudged Lisa gently. "Hey, look at that."

  Lisa turned so she could also see down the alley. Less than a dozen yards away was the beginning of a large opening to its right side. It was blocked off by a chain link fence with triple strands of barbed wire on top. It also had a large double gate in its middle covering a gap in the fence large enough for two vehicles to pass each other. Mounted on the fence itself off to one side of the gate was a large sign with the following legend: SOUTHWEST SPORTING GOODS / BACK ENTRANCE. She allowed herself a little laugh. "Our next stop, folks."

  Everyone stood up and turned to look down the alley at the gate before looking at each other. "Why are we going to stop there?" Mercy asked.

  "To ammo up," Cy responded immediately. "You and I used up a fair amount of our ammo covering Lisa so all of us could get out of the hospital." With that he promptly reslung his M-16 and unslung his shotgun. A worried look from Lisa caught his eye. Cy made a point of giving her a grin. She gave him a look, then smiled back and said nothing. "Lisa also needs more ammo for her AK-47 assault rifle," Cy said, looking away from Lisa and at Mercy. "This is probably the only place we're going to be able to get it on our way out of town."

  "What's that?"

  "It's that big long gun she's been carrying but you have yet to see her use, because she's hardly got any ammo left for it."

  "Why can't she use ammo for this?" Mercy asked, lifting up her M-16 in her hands to emphasize her point.

  "Wrong size shell," Lisa responded gently. "AK shells are a lot bigger."

  "Oh," Mercy said, and then her face formed into a wry smile. "Shows you how much I know about guns."

  "But you're learning, Mercy," Lisa said, and gave her a friendly wink in reply. "You've come a long way in a short time."

  "Speaking of long ways," Cy said, and with that both women turned to look at him, "ten minutes, Lisa, fifteen tops. That's all the time I want to spend in there."

  "Or the zombies will gang up on us again," Lisa answered, "like they did back at the Armory and just now here. I understand."

  "Any idea of where to look so we can speed things up?"

  Lisa nodded. "The best two places are in the back storeroom and in the cabinets behind the sales counter in the gun section out on the sales floor. The back part will have a secured storage area for valuable merchandise, and all of the extra ammo will probably be locked in there." She gave an ironic chuckle. "Everything will probably be locked, of course."

  "Of course," Cy said. "That means we'll need to find the keys for both, and that'll be time consuming."

  "I could try picking the locks," Lisa said, "but no promises."

  "That's even more time consuming," Cy observed.

  "Why not do both?" Mercy suggested. "Let Lisa try while we search for the keys?"

  "That means splitting up," Lisa noted, "and that might be dangerous."

  "We might have to, given the fix we're in," Cy said. He thought for a moment, and then drew himself up. "Okay, here's the plan. We go in and check the back first. If we can't get what we need back there because of any lock, then you will stay and try to pick it," he continued, looking at Lisa, before his gaze turned to Mercy, "while you stay with her and watch her back. In the meantime, I'll go up front to the sales floor and see what I can find." He now looked again at Lisa. "Hopefully by the time I'm back you'll either have that lock picked and you guys will already be loading up on ammo, or I'll have the keys to either that or the cabinets up front and we can load up after unlocking them. Either way, we need to be done and heading out within ten minutes, fifteen tops, like I said earlier."

  "Understood," Lisa said, nodding in agreement.

  "Sounds like a plan," Mercy added, also nodding.

  Cy now waved towards the gate in the fence on the side of the alley. "Okay, let's do this. The sooner we get done, the faster we can get to the police station."

  The trio had no trouble getting into the back lot behind Southwest Sporting Goods. The double gates were closed but they were not secured. Instead of finding a chain and padlock as the humans had expected, they instead found nothing. There was only a drop pin on one gate and a simple chain link latch on the other holding both in place. With both women providing him cover, Cy lowered and let go of his weapon, so that it dangled in front of him from its shoulder sling, and then used both hands to open the gate. He then swung open the side with the drop pin. It was well oiled and moved silently inward, as Cy walked with it until he reached a old concrete slab set in the pavement that had a short piece of metal pipe sticking down in
it. Cy stopped, lined up the the gate's drop pin with the metal pipe, and then lowered the drop pin in place so the gate would stay open. He then looked around. Nothing had moved inside the lot, and the only movement outside were some of the crows returning to their former roosts on the nearby power and phone lines. Cy looked back to the alley, gave a grin, and then waved at the others as he swung the other gate back and out of the way.

  The back lot was empty, and they had no trouble gaining entrance to the back of the building. The back door beside the main loading door was wide open, and there was blood on the handle. They went in single file. Cy was first, then Mercy, and then Lisa bringing up the rear. They stopped as soon as they were inside the back storeroom, however, due to the sight that greeted their eyes. There was a wide aisle that ran down from their end of the back storeroom to the other end between numerous two-tier heavy-duty storage shelves full of boxes of various sizes. Despite the semi-darkness within, they could clearly see about half-a-dozen zombies clustered around something less than a dozen feet away from their end of that long aisle. It was a ruined body in the process of being eaten, and there was blood all over that part of the floor. Only a few feet away from one of its half-eaten hands was a crowbar, with blood and something covering its bent end. There were also the remains of two other bodies farther down the aisle, as well as the bodies of three more zombies with their heads bashed in. The way the bodies were arranged down the aisle suggested that the three had been tackled and taken down while running down the aisle from the other end, with the one with the crowbar putting up one hell of a fight before his end came. The zombies gathered around that final body, the one closest to the three humans, turned around or looked up as one to gaze at them, the intruders who dared to interrupt the gruesome feast they were enjoying. They snarled or moaned and began to come to their feet in preparation for a mass attack. Three shotgun blasts and a liberal peppering of machine pistol and assault rifle fire later, and whatever threat they might have posed was now permanently ended.

  Cy walked up to the first body and the lifeless zombies now scattered around it. Mercy followed him, while Lisa hung back and began looking over that part of the back storeroom. "Looters," he said, pointing with his weapon to the crowbar. "Must have gotten surprised in the act by our undead friends here."

  "Nothing down here," Lisa said, rejoining the group. She looked down the aisle. "I'm guessing that what we want is down there, given the way these bodies are arranged."

  "That's what I'm thinking," Cy said, as he sidestepped both the bloody remains and the zombie bodies. He then began to walk down the center aisle towards the other end, shotgun raised and at the ready, with both women following him in likewise weapon-ready modes.

  "What about that crowbar?" Mercy asked as they walked past it.

  "Leave it," Cy advised. "We're loaded down enough already. We can always come back for it if we need it."

  The three saw what the looters had been after as they approached the far end of the back storeroom. It was a section of smaller standard store-sized modular shelving separated from the larger warehouse type shelving by a heavy steel security cage, the size of a small room, which enclosed it completely. Within the cage and on the shelves inside were all kinds of valuable sporting goods merchandise, including boxed and cased weapons and multiple boxes of different kinds of ammo, and everything appeared to be undisturbed. The reason for this was clear. The door to the security cage was as stoutly built as the rest of it, with a reinforced metal frame and heavy gauge wire mesh securely welded to it, and with two diagonal reinforcing bars to prevent warping at the corners. It also had an embedded keyed lock and interior deadbolt combination. The door hinges were located inside the security cage and were thus unreachable from the outside. Numerous scratch and pry marks around all edges of the stoutly built door testified to the numerous and ultimately frustrated efforts of the looters to break inside before the zombies arrived and killed the lot of them.

  The three stopped in front of the security cage door. Lisa chuckled as she looked at the markings on the door edges. "Wasted effort," she stated. "Those guys were never going to pry this door open with a crowbar, the way this cage is built."

  "Can you pick the lock?" Cy asked.

  Lisa knelt down and took a look at it. "That's a Master® lock," she said, noting the manufacturer's markings. "They're tough. It's a key lock, though, same as the Yale® I picked earlier. I can try, Cy, but it's probably going to take a while."

  "Go ahead and get started then," Cy said. He looked at Mercy. "Per the plan, Mercy. You keep an eye on her."

  "Where are you going?" Mercy asked.

  "Up front, like we planned, to see if I can find a key or if there's any ammo still on the sales floor," Cy said. He pointed with his weapon at a nearby door beyond one of the large shelving units. "I'll bet that's the way up front. Be back as soon as I can."

  Lisa had already released her MAC and let it hang on its sling, while she produced the bent heavy duty paperclip she had used to pick the padlock back at the hospital. She was now using it to work the lock. "Speaking of soon, time check," she said.

  Cy looked at his watch. "Just under eight minutes."

  Lisa stopped what she was doing and made a point of looking at Cy. "You be careful, you hear?" she said.

  Words unspoken passed between them as they looked at each other. "I will, Lisa," Cy promised. He made a point of giving her a grin. Lisa did the same, and after a beat went back to work on the door lock. He again looked at Mercy. "I'll call out if I get in trouble, and I'll also call out once I'm done and back at the door. That way you won't shoot me."

  "Good point," Mercy said, allowing herself a smile.

  Cy looked again at Lisa, who was concentrating on working the lock, and then back at Mercy. "Don't let anything happen to her, okay?" he asked.

  "I'll do my best," Mercy said, and then added with a smile, "After all, you two have that date once we're out of here, right? I wouldn't want either of you to miss it."

  Lisa looked up at those words. She and Cy looked at each other, then back at Mercy with grins. Cy laughed softly, and then headed for the side door while Lisa went back to work on the lock.

  Cy shouldered his shotgun and pulled out his .45 ACP as he moved into the back part of the sales floor. He held it in a classic double-handed walking carry as he moved down one of the main aisles. As he started his search, he inwardly allowed himself to be amazed at a woman's power of deduction. Lisa had guessed correctly that Cy was running low on M-16 ammo and had swapped weapons earlier for that reason. He also allowed himself a small smile. She was worried about him. That was a good sign, insofar as their newfound friendship was concerned.

  All of the signs were there that the store had been thoroughly looted. Shelves and j-hooks were mostly bare, with only items of no significant use in the Outbreak left behind. One of the few things left that was on the modular section that held medical supplies for camping was a shrink wrapped three pack of Bactine® in its typical small aerosol cans. Cy looked at it for a moment. There was no reason it should have been left behind when the shelves around it had been emptied, unless the looters were too loaded down to take it with them. Strange. He looked around, then released his left hand from his walking carry. He used it to first open his rucksack and then pick up and somehow squeeze the three-pack in there, despite it already being fairly full. It was medical, and it was something Mercy might be able to use. He quickly checked his watch, then resumed his two-handed walking carry and moved on.

  The area for gun and ammo sales was in the back corner opposite of where he had entered, on the same end of the building as the side entrance to the back storeroom. Cy saw right away that he wasn't going to find anything there. The area had been completely emptied of everything, with the glass to all of the front display counters for pistols smashed and emptied of all contents. All of the display cabinets in the back for long guns, as well as the low-profile secured storage cabinets beneath them, had either been pried
open or their glass smashed and part of their inside wire mesh pried up and away for outside access. Cy gave everything a quick once-over, knowing he wasn't going to find anything they needed but looking all the same, just in case he was wrong. Nothing. The only thing he found of any significance were the barrel lock keys for the counters and cabinets, still on their ring and still hanging under one of the counters on a hook behind a display frame, where they would be out of sight from the customers. Cy shook his head, checked his watch again, and moved on.

  Lisa continued to work the lock on the secured storage area while Mercy stood guard, occasionally looking up and down the long aisle of the back storeroom to make sure they didn't get surprised from either direction. She could hear the younger woman cursing under her breath. "What's wrong?" she asked, still searching the back storeroom with her eyes.

  "It's this damn lock," Lisa said, almost spitting the words out. "It's not like the padlocks I'm used to picking. I can't get the tumblers to fall right." She leaned back on her heels for a moment and blew some loose strands of hair away from her face. "If this were a padlock, I'd probably have it open by now." She then brushed away the loose hairs that had fallen back down in her face, leaned forward once more, and resumed working the lock.

  Mercy was looking rather thoughtful as she continued her visual sweeps. "A question, if I may."

  "Go ahead."

  "I've noticed you two have grenades."

  "Yeah. What of it?"

  "Why didn't you use them to help us get out to your car so we could get in it and escape?"