Legion of Despair: Book Three in The Borrowed World Series (16 page)

He was pleased that the lock worked just as it was supposed to. He turned the key slowly so the throw of the bolt did not echo in the open stairwell. Then he pushed gently and the door swung open. He slipped inside, closing the door behind him.

He shined his light around, making sure that no one was in the dark stairwell with him. He took the stairs one at time, stepping softly and trying to keep the noise down. It did not look like anyone had accessed the upper floors, but that could be intentional. Someone could have picked the lock or used a ladder to find an open window and was living up there. He didn’t want any surprises.

When he reached the top landing, he paused and listened. He couldn’t hear anything at all. He placed his ear against the door and listened. He slung his rifle over his shoulder and un-holstered the Glock. It would be easier to use than the rifle if someone was waiting on him on the other side of the door.

He turned the handle to open the door and it was a lot louder than he would have liked. In the silent building, it sounded as loud as knocking over a stack of cans. With the door unlatched, he faced a dilemma: make a rapid entry while he wielded his pistol, or gently ooze inside as stealthily as possible. He chose curtain number one, yanking the door open and holding his pistol at the ready.

The first thing he noticed was the message written on the wall in marker, advising that he, Jim, and Randi had made it this far and that there was food in one of the offices. The second thing he noticed was the frightened eyes of Alice staring at him over the shaking barrel of a pistol. He could see the look of panic in her eyes, knowing instantly that she recognized him and did not want to shoot him, but also knowing that in her terror she could not stop herself from pulling the trigger. Gary threw himself to the side, back into the stairwell, just as the gun went off.

Gary managed to get his body out of the way of the shot, but the steel door was still easing shut on its hydraulic closer. The angle of the door deflected the slug into the stairwell. As Gary fell, he heard the round sing over his head, then ricochet once, twice, three times, before he was done falling. He had no idea where the round ended up but a lack of searing pain told him that it had not lodged itself into his flesh.

“Oh my God, Gary!” Alice cried, her voice shrill with panic. “OH MY GOD!”

She burst into the stairwell after him, gun in hand.

“It’s okay, Alice. I’m not hit,” Gary gasped. He lay on his back, stunned from the hard fall. He held out his hand. “Just hand me the gun.”

His request snapped her back to reality and she calmly declined, tucking the revolver into the waistband of her pants. “I’ll hang onto it. I think I’m okay now.”

She dropped to her knees and threw her arms around Gary, hugging him tightly. “I’m sorry I shot at you,” she said. “I was just getting ready to leave for home and I saw the doorknob turning right in front of me. I panicked.”

Gary picked up his dislodged headlamp where it lay on the concrete floor. He struggled to his feet, his pack and rifle still strapped to him but hanging awkwardly to the side. “It’s okay,” he said. “Let’s get out of here and into some light.”

He shined his light around and found his Glock. It had tumbled down ten stairs to the first landing. He holstered the pistol, then followed Alice out of the stairwell. He gestured at the writing on the wall.

“I probably would have reacted quicker, but I was distracted by that message,” he said.

“That message really lifted my spirits when I came through that door,” Alice said. “I knew that you guys had made it this far and I knew where to find some food.”

“Jim and Randi said they were going to spend the night here,” Gary said. “I parted ways with them at Claypool Hill, heading toward my own house.”

“So they made it home?” Alice asked. Then she frowned. “I guess you don’t know with the phones out, do you?”

“I do know,” he said. “We’ve talked by radio. Everyone has their own set of problems to deal with, but everyone is home.”

“Except for me,” Alice said.

“Is Rebecca still at the camp?” Gary asked. “I thought you guys were heading for the camp together.”

“The camp was a joke,” Alice said. “They had no real plans for getting us home. They were just trying to win political points by getting us off the roads and out of the hair of local cops. Rebecca and I ended up trying to make a run for it. She was murdered on the way home.”

Gary was shocked, his mouth dropping open in disbelief. “Murdered?”

She nodded. “It’s too long a story for now, but the road home was brutal. I’ve kicked myself every day for not leaving with you guys.”

Gary leaned forward and hugged Alice again. “I’m sorry,” he said. “We would never have left you guys if we’d known.”

Alice patted him on the back. “That’s okay, Gary. You couldn’t have convinced us to have acted any differently back at that hotel. We really thought you guys were crazy. It didn’t take me but a couple of days in that FEMA camp to figure out that you guys made the right decision.”

Gary glanced at a nearby window, noticing that it was probably close to noon now and he needed to get a move on. “Why such a late start?” he asked. “With this being your last day, I would think you’d be hauling butt down the road at first light.”

“The mind is willing but the body is weak,” Alice said with a fragile smile. “I’ve been having stomach issues since I had to drink some questionable water out of a ditch.”

“You might have picked up Giardia,” Gary said. “I’ve got meds at home that will treat that. It takes an antibiotic.”

“Then the heel came off my shoe yesterday,” Alice said. “I’ve taped it back on but it keeps coming loose. Now I’ve got this enormous blister on the bottom of my foot and each step is excruciating. I know I’ll make it, but it’s going to hurt like hell.”

Gary didn’t know what to say. He could tell that Alice needed help, but so did his family. Perhaps if Alice was willing, he could help both of them.

“I need to get moving, Alice,” Gary said. “I’m going to get my family out of town. The place we’re living is not really set up for long-term survival. We’re too close to town and I just don’t think we can secure the location.”

“Were you going to move here?” Alice asked.

“No. We’re going to join forces with Jim. He says there’s a house we can use near where he lives. It’s far enough out in the country that I think it will cut down on people wandering by and we can also help each other out if there’s any trouble.”

Alice nodded, taking it all in. “So why are you here?”

Gary smiled awkwardly. “Basically, I’m here to steal a truck.”

“I’m still Human Resources,” Alice said. “I might have to terminate you for admitting something like that.”

Gary got a panicked look in his eyes for a moment before realizing that Alice was teasing him. “If you’re willing to hang out with me and my family for a night, I’ll drive you to Russell County tomorrow and see what we can do about getting you home. I can also hook you up with some meds to get those stomach issues under control.”

It didn’t take Alice long to think it over. “As much as I miss my family, I’m just not sure I can do another twenty miles on foot today. That would be great. Thank you.”

“Follow me,” Gary said. “We’ve got work to do.”

*

Gary started in Jim’s office, using his master key to open the office door. Since one of Jim’s duties was overseeing the agency’s properties, he had hundreds, if not thousands, of keys to deal with. He managed this by storing them in a carefully organized key cabinet in his office. One section of the cabinet held keys to the various maintenance vehicles and equipment that the agency owned. After flipping through numerous white key tags, Gary found one labeled
Box Truck
.

After more scouring of the box he came up with a spare key to the maintenance shop. He dropped those in his pocket, along with a key to the padlock on the steel Conex box that they used for storing items that didn’t fit into their shop building. The Conex boxes were very hard to break into, with welded shields over the padlock points that kept the locks from being opened with bolt cutters.

When Gary finally had all of the keys in his pocket that he thought he’d need, he headed toward the stairwell. Then he realized he was forgetting something. “Uh oh,” he said, stopping in his tracks.

“What is it?” Alice asked.

“I forgot I wanted to check my office for a package,” he said. “Wait here.”

Gary trotted down the hall, his rifle and pack noisily jostling on his back. When he turned down the alcove where his office was located, he saw a compact box about a foot tall. He approached it and tapped it with his foot. It didn’t budge.

“Yes!” He leaned over and picked up the heavy box, heading down the hallway with it.

He and Alice carefully made it to the Nissan, making sure that no one was around. Gary’s first stop was to go behind the maintenance shop and make sure that the truck had not been damaged. He found it exactly where it was supposed to be. The vehicle was used so little that the white cargo box was starting to turn green from algae. An initial inspection revealed no flat tires and no broken windows. That was encouraging.

Gary crouched and sniffed. No fuel smell. He looked beneath the tank and saw no disappointing fuel stains. It appeared that the truck was unmolested. Although it was sitting out here in the open, the parking lot behind the maintenance shop was so out of the way it wasn’t likely anyone would see the vehicle unless they knew where to look.

Gary unlocked the door and climbed in. The truck was old with torn vinyl seats, a cracked dashboard, and that smell that only a thirty year old truck has. He turned the key and the fuel gauge ran up to a little less than half of a tank. He wasn’t sure if that was enough or not, but it was enough that he would certainly try to make it. He hoped he could find more fuel in the maintenance shop. On a whim, he turned the key, just wanting to feel out the engine and see if it was going to cooperate or not. It turned over a little sluggishly. It didn’t start and he chose not to push his luck in case the battery was weak. He would just have to see if he could find some booster cables in the maintenance shop.

The maintenance shop was set off toward the back of the agency’s property. Shop buildings tended to accumulate lots of clutter around them and become eyesores, so it was best to put them in places where they didn’t attract a lot of attention. It was surrounded by tall pines that screened it from the rest of the property. This also may have helped in keeping the nondescript building from being broken into. Gary stood in front of the building and surveyed the area, seeing no indication that the building had been ransacked.

“This was probably the most useful building on the entire property,” Alice said. “But people chose to break into the buildings with drugs first. That tells you a lot about people.”

“What it tells me is that the kind of people who would know how to make use of tools aren’t out breaking into buildings,” Gary replied. “Only the lowlifes.”

Gary knew that the maintenance staff changed the lock on this building on a regular basis because a lot of people had access to it. He hoped the key he’d taken was the most current key. He was very pleased when the key he’d taken from Jim’s office opened the lock. He pulled a flashlight from his pack and swung the door open and peered into the windowless cavern of the metal building. “Do you have a flashlight?” he asked.

Alice nodded and pulled one from her back pocket.

“We’re looking for a couple of things. We need any fuel cans, full or empty. I also need either booster cables or one of those rechargeable boosting boxes. As far as I know, that’s all I’m looking for.

“Got it,” Alice said.

Gary clicked his light on and they went inside. The building was about sixty feet wide and twice that long. It was lined with shelves full of maintenance supplies and had a workshop area at one end. As soon as they were through the door, Gary flashed his light around the room and saw a yellow steel cabinet that said FLAMMABLE on the front in bold red letters.

“There,” he said. “That should have the fuel cans in it.”

Fortunately, the cabinet was unlocked. When they opened the door, they found the cabinet to be about half-full of red steel gas cans with a few yellow cans for diesel. Gary pulled all of the cans from the cabinet and set them on the floor. Some were full, some were less than full, but all had some level of fuel in them.

“This is great,” Gary said. “This will definitely get us to Jim’s and give you enough to get home.”

Alice couldn’t even think about that now. She had to focus on one step at a time. It was the only way she could keep her emotions in check. “What else did you need?” she asked.

“One of those rechargeable battery booster boxes. I know they have a couple of them. They have a handle on top and booster cables built onto the side of them. They use them for jump-starting cars when the batteries are dead.”

Alice started off on her own, shining her light around the walls and floor of the crowded building. In a few minutes she called out to Gary. “Is this it?”

Gary left the gas cans and went around the end of a shelving unit. In the beam of Alice’s light, Gary could see an industrial battery charger, but it was not what he was looking for.