Day by Day Armageddon: Beyond Exile (28 page)

I took out the mag and jacked the slide back about ten times. I put the ejected round back into the mag and threw the weapon in the back of the wagon. The mag was full. I salvaged the mag from the wrecked AK and tossed it into the back with the other. I’ll take the extra weight, since I’m not humping it. Just as I closed the back door, Saien came around the wreckage and told me that we could make it around with no trouble. As I got back into the vehicle, in the back of my mind I was thinking of how the sun was getting low and that my Reaper UCAV was now empty and probably returning to base. As we weaved slowly down the road we continued to pass remnants of last stands. Some cars contained the caked leftovers of undead corpses still moving inside their clear caskets even though sun-baked and rotting.

As we drove along the side of the road we came to a new-car dealership. The cars still sat in neat rows along the road. Before the world fucked itself up, car lots seemed to have a uniform look with vehicles lined up in perfect rows. A car lot had held a very neat and clean appearance. Fast-forward to now and many of the cars have flat tires and the once-even rows now look like a staggered collection of cars in a junkyard. Hail damage and the rest of the elements have taken their toll. It was going to be dark in about half an hour. Saien and I made preparations to park the wagon in the showroom of the dealership so that we could sleep in relative safety and still be able to drive out of the building with assumed lower risk if we were swarmed as we had been before on the road. Using my hatchet and some of Saien’s tape, we were able to unlock the sliding door to the showroom floor. We set up the ramps and swept the showroom for danger. Saien had my abandoned MP5, and we began to systematically go room to room through the sales offices. There was no sign of anyone in the entire dealership. We secured the back doors by placing office debris (old boxes full of paper, and so forth) against the doors so that nothing could find its way inside while we slept.

The main back door had a place for a two-by-four as a barricade for after hours. Before setting the plank I opened the door to
see what was back behind the showroom. The maintenance area was housed behind but we didn’t have the daylight left to properly clear it. I shut the door and put the plank in the slot, securing the door against anything short of a battering ram. I backed the wagon onto the showroom floor and shut and locked the large sliding glass doors, cutting Saien and me off from the rest of the world for the night. Before retiring for the evening I will ensure the solar charger is connected to the phone in anticipation of the morning sun and tomorrow’s possible contact.

I rounded up some paracord from the drop and, using tape, I made some magazine pulls so that I can easily pull the M-4 magazines from stowage in the event that I’m running and gunning my way out of somewhere. Tomorrow Saien and I will need to visit the garage so that we can acquire the raw materials we’ll need to get the wagon prepared. I’ve noticed that there are road atlases in a stack in the corner. They were probably gifts for the new-car customers here. They are dated for last year but something tells me that there has not been a huge number of roads constructed since they were last printed.

In my spare time in the dealership I checked out some of the maps that were in the drop. They were overlaid with a military grid. The map was laser jet printed and some obscure machine language was present. There was a legend on the back and I found myself flipping the map over and over. Then something clicked and suddenly a light bulb went on in my head.

The area where the supply drop occurred was marked with an S, presumably for supply. The letter S had a diagonal line through it, probably signifying that the drop had already occurred. There were other places on the map with an S that seemed to follow a logical path south to Hotel 23 (within twenty miles either side of a straight line). They did not have the diagonal line through them, which could indicate drops we would find ahead of us. There were areas marked with a radiation symbol. Dallas was one area marked, as were random other areas along our path that probably gave off enough radiation to trip national sensors. It could in theory be anything large and dense, such as a crane or a fire truck that had absorbed enough radiation to hold and emit a residual amount. It could also be a large group of those things, like those
we had seen today, although I doubt the relatively outdated (in real-time terms) map would be useful in pinpointing the location of a mass like that.

Random items of concern: Charge the phone, rewire the wagon, garage, reorganize gear and distribute sixty 9mm rounds to Saien.

21 Oct

1200

As my eyes gained focus on the light reflecting off the dusty showroom floor, I saw Saien lying belly down on his drag bag with his rifle scanning the area in front of the dealership. It would be absurd to attempt a head shot through the thick glass, so I wrote this off as him just making sure that things were kosher in the area. The man remained alive, despite traveling hundreds of miles through an apocalyptic wasteland to where he is today. I’m not qualified to question his methods, and even if I were, I am too jaded to care.

I cleared my throat to get Saien’s attention. It took him a few seconds, and then he whispered over his shoulder, asking, “What do you want, Kilroy?”

I didn’t want to argue that Kilroy was not my name, nor did I wish to give Saien an American history lesson, which would be about as valuable as a lesson on the Mayan civilization.

I said, “Saien, we need to clear the garage area and scavenge some wire so that we can reliably wire the wagon for the journey.”

Saien looked at me as if I were an idiot and asked, “Why do we not charge the battery and treat the fuel on one of the new vehicles on the lot?”

Fighting off embarrassment, I had to admit that his suggestion made more sense than spending an entire day wiring an old wagon. Using a factory ignition method would be more reliable, and using a new vehicle could save us a potential breakdown in no-man’s-land.

Despite what he said, we would still need to charge the battery on the vehicle that we would liberate from the dealership. There
was a selection of hybrid vehicles on the lot but they were mostly smaller in size.

“Another question, Kilroy: Why do you write in that book? What is so important that I see your nose buried in it when we stop? You are going to die writing in that, you know.”

I wasn’t sure how to answer. I just told him, “It helps.” I think he understood what that meant.

Saien and I debated about vehicles and decided that although the hybrid vehicle would save us from scavenging gas by the order of half, we would need an SUV with a towing package and tow chain to get around all the cars and debris blocking our way from here to our destination. During our discussion I noticed that the sleeping rug that he had rolled and attached to his pack was very ornate. It appeared to be an oriental carpet. I didn’t know Saien, so my first assumption was that he was Muslim and this was his prayer carpet. He has seemed troubled since the action died down and I could see conflict in his eyes.

I suggested that we pick out a vehicle so that we could start the charging/fueling process, and he agreed. Before finding our ride we decided to check out the garage and maintenance office area of the dealership for any threats that might lurk there. Saien put a fresh mag in the MP5, and I was at the ready as we opened the door. Nothing was out there but the apocalyptic silence that still tortured my nerves. The back end of the dealership was fenced off with chain-link. Saien and I walked around the perimeter and saw nothing outside the maintenance area but the corpse of a canine that hadn’t been able to get out of the fenced area to keep himself alive. For some reason this caused me more grief than I had felt for some time. I imagined the poor animal thirsty and unable to eat or drink and just dying on the ground in misery.

With this on my mind I didn’t notice the creature approaching on the other side of the fence. The screeching sound of the creature’s reaction broke me from my thoughts, and I instinctively raised my weapon and put the red dot on the thing’s forehead. Of course, there was no reaction from the creature, and it just advanced into the fence, striking it and falling straight back to the ground. I lowered my weapon, let it hang down on my sling and
asked Saien to pop the creature with the MP5 to avoid the noise that my M-4 would create. Right before he carried out my request, I told him to wait. I wanted some more practice with my Glock. I attached the suppressor and gave the creature two to the chest and one to the head, Mozambique style. There was no particular reason I wasted the first two rounds; I just felt I needed the practice. One of the rounds that I aimed at the creature’s chest damaged the fence but still had enough energy to penetrate the creature’s ribs.

I kept my carbine slung and walked the perimeter with the pistol at the ready. There were no other creatures in the immediate area. I did look farther down the field adjacent to the dealership with my binocs. I saw two of the creatures, but they were walking away from my position. If we practice vigilant noise discipline we should be fine—unless we get swarmed like before.

The door leading to the administration portion of the garage building was locked. Saien and I both peeked through the window and stayed there making sure nothing was moving about. My head was planted to the window so long that the glass fogged over, making standing there useless. If there was anything in there it was not moving or was really dead. Saien pulled a small rectangular leather zipper case from his pack and out came a lockpick and tension wrench. Through his clenched teeth, holding another shaped lockpick rake, he asked me to cover him while he worked. Within a few seconds he had the door unlocked and his gear put away. We readied our arms and went inside. I called out quietly, asking if anyone was inside. Of course, I knew that no living thing would be here, but if there was a functioning dead thing inside it would no doubt react to my voice, giving away its own location.

Dust, mold, and a corkboard were the main showpieces of the office. On the corkboard were handwritten notes and messages dated the first week in January. One of the handwritten notes stated, “The End Is Here” and “The time to repent has come and gone.” There were internet printouts of the major headlines broadcast when the world started to crumble. They ranged from, “How Will the Dead Affect the Economy?” to “If Anyone Is Left, This Is It.”

The latter article, printed from the
Wall Street Journal
home-page, I saw fit to read, and I attach it here: