Maddie called out. “You in the house, we aren’t looking for trouble, we’re just passing through.” The reply came in the form of several more shots fired.
Parker kept clear of the door and went over to the car. He pulled the cover off to find a 1960 Porsche 356b convertible. The fact that he kept on finding classic cars was not lost on him, but right now, he wished it was a minivan instead of a hundred thousand dollar Porsche. He radioed the others.
“I’ll lay down some cover fire and you guys beat feet to the garage.” He didn’t wait for an answer. He stepped to the door and loosed a dozen rounds at the second story of the house.
Josh came first, sliding around the corner and diving into the doorway. Parker shot a few more rounds at the house and then Doreen popped out from behind a tree fifteen feet away and sprinted to him. Several more shots came from the house, and Doreen fell. Maddie began pumping more fire at the house, and Josh darted back out, grabbed Doreen, and dragged her into the garage. He searched her all over but couldn’t find where she’d been hit. She rolled over and gave him an embarrassed shrug.
“I tripped.”
Josh didn’t say anything; he went to the front garage door and peeked out the row of windows. He unlocked the door and rolled it up, then looked around the corner back at the house.
Maddie came over the radio.
“I think there is only one. I need you to distract him again and I’ll get up against the house where he can’t get an angle on me.”
“Then what are you going to do? Don’t be stupid,” Parker said. “Give me a minute.”
He walked over to the Porsche and looked it over. It had a tiny backseat, but with the roof down, they could make it work. There were no keys, but the 356b didn’t have any antitheft locks, so hotwiring it would be a breeze. Parker clicked the transmit button.
“Maddie, when we start shooting, make for the garage.”
“Okay” she replied.
“Josh, shoot at the house when I start shooting; Doreen, be ready to help Maddie if she needs it.” They both nodded their understanding.
Parker aimed at the second-story window and began firing. Josh joined in from the front of the garage. Maddie ran from tree to tree until she was fifteen feet from the garage, then sprinted for the door. When she ran through the door, Doreen caught her in a hug and stopped her progress after a few backward steps. Parker swung the door shut and turned toward Maddie.
“We’re going to steal his Porsche and ride out of here,” he said. Maddie looked at him, then at the Porsche, then back at him.
“In that little thing?”
“Yep!” he said as he went around the car and opened the door. He got under the dash and pulled the ignition wires free. He stripped and twisted them together, and then touched the power wire to them. The Porsche’s starter whirred and the engine fired right up.
“I got movement at the back of the house,” Josh said, as he began firing a few rounds off in that direction.
“Everybody on board as best you can!” Parker said as he slid in behind the wheel. Maddie jumped in the passenger seat and Doreen sat on the folded-up ragtop with her feet in the backseat.
“Come on, Josh!” she yelled at him as Parker got the car moving. Josh fired a couple more rounds, then jumped on the back of the car as it pulled out of the garage, with both Maddie and Doreen grabbing onto him.
Parker swung the car left onto Maplewild Street, and Josh slid precariously close to the right fender, his left foot just catching the bumper in time to stop him from flying off. Bullets zipped past them like angry bees as Parker tried to push the accelerator through the floor. A few hundred yards away, the road took a right turn. By the time they hit the corner, Josh had his head stuck down behind Maddie’s seat, his ass in the air and his legs dangling off the back, with Doreen hugging both as tight as she could. Parker downshifted and made the turn without losing either of them.
They drove for a couple of minutes and then pulled to a stop next to an empty field. It took both Maddie and Doreen to pull Josh back out of his spot, but everyone had come out unscathed. Parker had parked the car sideways across the road.
“Everybody out, and be ready in case they’re following us,” he said.
They all got behind the car and crouched down, pointing the weapons back down the road. They listened but heard no sound of anyone following.
Maddie stood up and slung her rifle onto her back.
“Okay, I hate to split us up, but Josh, we have to get the boat moved before they think to go look for it. Head straight to the waterfront from here and then work your way back to the dock. If they have found it, or are down by the water, don’t risk it. If they aren’t around, get the boat and bring it north a couple of miles and wait for us. Doreen, you go with him; Parker and I will go to the warehouse.”
“No, you may run into more trouble and you’ll need as much firepower with you as you can,” Josh said. “I’ll get the boat; you guys get Clay’s meds.” Then, without waiting, he started off at a trot across the field to the west.
They squeezed back into the Porsche. With Doreen sitting sideways, she could actually fit into the backseat with her feet up behind the driver’s seat. They sped off in search of the warehouse.
Twenty minutes later, they pulled up in front of what Maddie said was the warehouse.
“How did you know about this place?” Parker asked her.
“Liv, Josh’s girlfriend, told me about it. She’d been here with her brother a couple of times.”
“Will they have the drugs Clay needs?” Doreen asked as she climbed out of the backseat.
“They should; they supply all the hospitals in Seattle. The real question is, will we be able to find them?”
The radio sounded off. It was laced with static, but understandable.
“Hey guys… the boat and I’m… our rendezvous… no contact… anyone.” Well, that was good news.
“Roger that, we are at our destination and are starting the search. We’ll be in touch every half-hour,” Maddie answered. They heard a couple of clicks in response.
They headed toward the buildings, looking for the main office. Parker held up his hand and stopped.
“You hear that?” he said in response to the audible sound of a generator running in the distance.
“Yeah, they must have a pretty big fuel tank in order for that to still be running,” Maddie said. “Either that or there is still someone here.”
They cautiously made their way around the buildings, following the sound. After walking a couple of blocks, they came to the source of the sound. There were several industrial Caterpillar diesel generators chugging away behind a fence. To the right was a massive storage tank.
“Well, that answers that question—or does it?” Parker said.
The building closest to the generators looked like office space, accompanied by a parking lot full of vehicles. Some looked like company cars, but many, if not most, looked like private vehicles that belonged to the warehouse workers.
“That is not a good sign,” Maddie said. “That means there were a bunch of people here when the shit hit the fan.”
Parker nodded. “Yeah, we need to be really careful. Let’s check out the offices to see if we can figure out where they have the stuff we need. We’ll never find it just looking around; this place is huge.”
The front doors were intact, which they took to be a good sign. The places that had freaks in them usually had busted-up entryways. The building was too big to scout out, though, so there could be other, less obvious ways inside. Maddie and Doreen positioned themselves behind two different cars as Parker approached the doors.
He stood to one side and banged on the doors with his fist a few times, then waited. No people, nor freaks, moved inside, from what he could see. He tried the door… locked. He pulled the Sig Mosquito from its holster and aimed it at the lock. The first shot did no damage—the bullet just ricocheted off—so he holstered the .22 and blasted the damn thing with the M4. They could all hear the shrieking loud and clear as soon as the sound of the gunshots ebbed. Parker peeked around the edge of the door. The lights were on, but he could see no one at home. He waved the girls forward and stepped into the office.
He immediately noted the temperature and the smell. It was pleasantly cool, but still smelled like a dead man’s ass. The A/C was apparently still working, but that had not saved the office workers, several of whom were now deceased and littering the floor in front of him. Doreen came up behind him.
“Good golly, the smell is enough to gag a maggot.” There were no maggots present, which was a relief, but Doreen caught sight of the carnage and immediately backed away and started throwing up. It was her first exposure to the results of an attack. Maddie understood and consoled her as Doreen regained her composure.
Parker cleared the front room to make sure there weren’t any freaks lurking in a dark closet or hallway. Although it was obvious they had been here, it appeared that they came in through the back of the office, which connected to one of the warehouses. There was no immediate threat that he could see.
The power from the generators supplied the office as well as the warehouses, and several computer workstations sat idle, their desktops mutely staring back at Parker.
“Maddie, come here,” he called from the front of the building. She stuck her head in the door.
“What’d you find?” He pointed at one of the monitors.
“Looks like Bill Gates wins a few points; his damn operating system is still running on a couple of the PCs in here.”
Maddie came in, yelling back at Doreen to stay put. Parker pulled the dead office worker away from the desk and pulled a chair up to the keyboard. Maddie sat down and moved the mouse.
“Damn, screen saver password.” She began opening the desk drawers, checking to see if the worker had written down the password. She remembered Ryan telling her that by requiring stronger passwords that contained multiple letters, symbols, and minimum lengths, companies were inadvertently weakening their security. Most people ended up just writing the password down on a sticky note and storing it close to their computer. After going through the desk and not finding it, Maddie was about to try another workstation when she flipped the keyboard over, and there it was. She moved the cursor to the password field, typed it in, and hit enter. It came back with “wrong username or password.” Ryan had also told her that instead of constantly changing the entire password, a lot of people just added a number to the end of the previous password to make it easier to remember. She tried the password again and added a 1 at the end. Still no luck.
Look for clues within your immediate area,
Ryan’s voice in her head reminded her. She scanned the cubical and saw a calendar with the 14
th
of the month circled. She tried the password again with a 14 tacked to the end of it, and the computer’s desktop popped up.
“I’m in!” she announced.
She began to look at the most recently loaded spreadsheets and after twenty minutes, she found what she was looking for. She sent the page she needed to the printer in the hope that it was still working as well.
Parker heard the printer next to him whir to life. He pretended that it hadn’t startled him, and retrieved the paper from it. “Inventory Building Sixteen,” he read at the top of the page.
“Okay, let’s go see if we can find this,” he said as he handed it to her. “Good work, Maddie.”
*****
It was two o’clock in the afternoon and we hadn’t heard a peep over the radio. Harry was pacing like a father waiting for his daughter to return from the prom.
“Why the hell haven’t they called us?” He’d been out to the coach every fifteen minutes trying to raise them on the radio.
“Look, Harry, the warehouse is fifty miles from the island. They’re probably out of range.” It was a weak argument, but it was the best I had. He left us in the building that Thomas had set up as his bomb factory at the farm and went back to the coach.
“I wish he would just stay the hell out there,” Thomas said. “He’s making me nervous, and that isn’t a good thing for me to be.” I could tell he was serious.
“I’ll go sit with him and wait for some info,” I said, and got up to leave.
“Ryan,” Thomas said.
I turned around. “Yeah?”
“Have Harry move the coach down to the other side of the barn, and gather everyone that’s working. I am getting to a critical place here, and if I fuck up I don’t want to take anyone out with me.”
“Yes sir,” I said and went to do as he asked.
I gathered the crews working the farm and had Harry move the coach. We were all sitting on pins and needles waiting for a loud boom and a mushroom cloud to appear on the other side of the farm. After what seemed like forever, Thomas came around the end of the barn.
“Well, it didn’t go off when I connected the wires, so that’s a good thing. Now I’m just wondering if the damn thing will go off when we want it to.” A nervous laughter rippled across the group.
“Okay, I need three of you to help me load this thing onto the pickup, and then we’ll move it down to the pier.” Merle, Henry, and Derek got up and followed him, and the rest of us sat there wondering what to do.
“Why don’t we all head back down to the farmhouse and fix some dinner? I’m sure everyone will be hungry soon,” I said, and Molly started giving out orders to folks to keep them busy.