Dave pulled the door and it opened. They switched on the headlamps and cautiously stepped inside, but found there was enough ambient light to see without them, so each switched them back off.
“Whew!” said Gem. “Look at this.”
Before them, in racks and stands on the walls and floor, were guns of every size and type. Nobody had ransacked this place. Not even close.
“Well, I’ll be,” said Dave. “They are an RCBS Procenter Dealer!”
“Whatever the fuck that means,” said Charlie. “but they do have a shitload of ammo.”
Behind the sign was an entire wall stacked with red, green, yellow and blue boxes of every type of round they could ever need.
“Glad that car’s fortified,” said Dave. “We’re gonna need the weight capacity I think.”
“I like guns as much as the next girl,” said Gem, “but I don’t know anything except my Uzi. These look like rifles, mostly. And handguns.”
“Accurate anyway,” said Dave. “Let’s focus on ammo first.” He looked around. “Fuck. No shopping baskets.”
Charlie laughed. “So you just proved you’re not the big gun shopper, either.”
Dave shrugged, smiling. He went behind the counter and grabbed a handful of plastic bags. “Let’s start filling them up.
”
“Jeez,” said Gem. “Get started. I need to get the radio out of the car. I said I’d call Flexy right away when we got here.”
Dave and Charlie busied themselves filling the bags.
“Hurry, and be careful,” said Charlie.
Dave watched Gem walk out and thought twice about it. Flex sent him to be another pair of eyes, and this probably isn’t what he meant.
“She okay?” asked Dave. “Alone?”
Charlie looked up at him. “Seriously? You have to ask? Flex used to write on his chronicles while we went out shopping. Yeah. She’ll be fine, sweetie.”
They stacked the bags by the door, as the shelves grew emptier. When they’d moved probably three hundred pounds of ammo, Dave looked at his watch.
“Where the hell is she? It’s been like fifteen minutes.”
Charlie looked up, her expression pinched. “Really? That long?”
They looked at one another for a brief second and moved fast toward the door. Charlie pulled her 9mm from her drop holster, and Dave did the same, only he wore his western holsters, each cozying his Walther PPKs.
They pushed through the door side-by-side and flew down the steps, turning hard left toward the lot.
Gem was nowhere in sight.
Dave’s mind reeled. “Is she in the damned car?” he asked.
They ran to the Ford, but it was empty. Charlie peered inside and saw the keys dangling from the ignition.
She opened the door, reached in and snagged them.
“Where the hell is she?” she asked Dave.
“We need to find her. Now.”
“Is the radio in the car?”
Charlie opened the door again and looked on the seats and on the floorboards. She reached down and picked it up.
“Shit,” said Dave. Shit fuck shit!”
“We’ll find her. Where the hell could she have gone?”
They both looked around. There was another building just behind Riley’s.
Dave looked at Charlie. “It’s worth a shot.”
She nodded. “Let’s go.”
*****
“Charlie, look,” whispered Dave, pointing.
Charlie turned, and saw the body crumpled on the ground on the passenger side of the Crown Vic. For a split second, her breath had caught in her chest as she realized it wasn’t Gem.
“Human or zombie?” asked Charlie.
“Either way, he wasn’t here when we got here,” said Dave, approaching the body slowly, his gun trained on its head. He knelt down beside it. “Wow. A Ninja star.”
“Are you shittin’ me?” asked Charlie.
“No. Buried about halfway into the dude’s skull,” he said. “Wonder how far away the thrower was when they heaved it.”
“Suddenly I wish I was wearing head protection,” said Charlie. She scanned the buildings, and looked for movement. Dave followed her lead, doing the same.
A loud bang came from the distance. Not a gunshot, Charlie thought. It was the sound of something hitting corrugated metal – hard.
“That way,” she said as low as she could so that Dave could still hear her. Charlie pointed at the
small building in the back. It was a metal building, and it was her guess that Gem was inside, under someone else’s control.
A high pitched sound suddenly assaulted Charlie’s ears, followed by a clang as a circular piece of metal with points all around it hit the door of the Ford and ricocheted off, landing harmlessly a few feet away.
“Get down!” shouted Charlie, and she and Dave hit the dirt and gravel of the parking lot, their guns pointed in the direction they guessed the thrower was hiding.
“I’m not tryin’ to hurt you, goofballs,”
called
a voice. “I’d have taken you down. And yeah, I got your friend.”
Charlie looked at Dave, who gave her a shrug.
“Should we get up?” he asked. “He’s right I guess. He could’ve hit us.”
“Yeah, I could’ve. Watch this!”
The whizzing sound came again, followed by a wet thud as the head of the dead zombie twitched toward the Ford.
“Ha! Dead hit!”
“
The guy’s a real joker
,” said Dave, standing and brushing off his pants.
“What are you doing? Get down!” said Charlie.
Dave cocked his head at her. “Charlie. The guy could’ve hit eithe
r one of us and he put another
one in the zombie. I’d say he’s not interested in killing us.”
Charlie realized Gammon was right. She stood, dusting off her jeans
. She was not a fan of games, and intended on letting the dick with the Ninja stars know it.
“Why do you have Gem?”
“Gem’s her name?”
The voice sounded
like the stereotype of a southern California surfer. If Charlie didn’t know better, she might think it was Jeff Spicoli from the old movie,
Fast Times at Ridgemont High
.
“Dude, here’s the deal,” said Dave. “You don’t want to fuck with that woman you’ve got there. Her husband will kill you several times over, and there won’t be much conversation beforehand.”
“Alright!” he said, sounding perturbed for the first time. “Come over here. Just lower your weapons.”
Charlie waved
her hand
and started walking toward the building behind Riley’s Guns.
“Over here, dudes” he said, and we saw him for the first time.
Charlie shook her head and laughed to herself as she approached him. He looked like a stoner. His
dirty blond
hair was
center-parted and
down to the middle
of his back,
still in dreadlocks from God knew when.
He had a thin face with a sharp nose, and darting eyes that probably didn’t miss much.
“Sorry,” he said.
“
Can you guys talk to zombies, too?”
“Talk to zombies?” asked Dave. “No way, bro. Haven’t done that yet.”
“Your friend did. That Gem.”
“Enough of the bullshit,” said Charlie. “Who are you and where the hell is Gem?”
“Name’s Nelson,” said the
dude with the dreadlocks. “Nelson
Moore
.”
Charlie and Dave now stood directly in front of the man, who looked no more than twenty-four. He was unarmed.
Charlie put her gun barrel to his forehead. “Gem. Now.”
Nelson smiled. Big. “You can, huh?” he said. “You can talk to them.”
Charlie lowered her gun in frustration. In a flash, Nelson’s hands moved so fast that Charlie never saw them. Before she knew it, her gun was flying through the air, she was on her knees, and she felt a
firm, yet soft
chop to the back of her neck
that dropped her the remainder of the way to the ground
.
When she rolled over
onto her back
, c
hoking the dust from her mouth
, she saw that Dave was in the same position.
Flat on his back.
Nelson was barely winded. “Sorry,
guys
. Just wanted to make sure you knew I had skills.”
Charlie waved her hand at him, breathing hard. “Skills,” she said. “Agreed.”
“
Mad skills,” said Dave. “But what the fuck! I didn’t even have my gun out.”
“You would’ve,” said Nelson. “Anyway, Gem’s inside. C’mon.”
“Gonna kick our asses anymore?” asked Charlie, realizing she actually liked the man-child named Nelson
Moore
.
“No. You can bring your guns in, too.”
“No shit?” asked Dave.
“None.”
Dave got up and dusted himself off, then looked at Charlie and shrugged.
Charlie retrieved her gun from the ground, blew the dust from it, and slid it back into her drop holster. It just didn’t seem necessary to have it out. Nelson was unarmed, and didn’t seem concerned, as he walked ahead of them. Charlie could’ve clocked him if she’d wanted to.
They entered the building, and Charlie saw it was a Tack store. It smelled strongly of leather, hay and dust, and everything from bridles to leads to horse blankets and bags of feed lined every inch.
“Hey, guys,” said Gem.
Charlie noticed her jeans were dusty, and
t
here was a scratch on her arm, probably from getting dropped like the punk had done to her and Dave.
“Sorry
,” Gem added.
“
Got a
little
hung up. I told Nelson here you guys would be looking for me.”
Gem was sitting at a faded wood table that looked as though it had been around since the mid-1800s. Her hands were cuffed to a post with a thick eye-bolt screwed into it.
“What the hell, Nelson?” asked Charlie. “Really? Prisoners?”
“Hey,” said the young man. “I came up here from New York,” he said. “Kinda lived in Central Park. Not really just one place, but all over it. I know better than to take any chances. This one was talkin’ to zombies, and that shit means you know some shit that I gotta know.”
“I wasn’t, I repeat,
wasn’t
talking to him,” said Gem. “I was fuckin’ with him.”
Gem turned to
Dave and Charlie
. “I was sitting in the car with the radio in my hand. I was just turning it on, when that skank zombie – the one beside the car – came
up and smacked the window. He
was gnashing his teeth and shit – you know how they do. I got my gun and got out of the car.”
“Okay, this is the part where she talked to him,” said Nelson, smiling.
“Jesus, Nelson. Are you fucking dense?” asked Gem. “I got out of the car, and being brain dead and all, the rotter didn’t realize it. While he
kept
clawing at the passenger side window, I walked up behind him and said in his ear, “Get away from my car, asshole.”
“See?” said Nelson.
Gem rolled her eyes. “So next thing I hear is this metallic ringing-whizzing sound, and the zombie’s head hits the glass, and he falls over. I look and there’s this fucking ninja star in his head.”
“That was from like twenty feet,” said Nelson, obviously proud. “Learned that shit when I was fifteen. Big Tarantino fan.”
“Surprise,” said Charlie.
Then:
“Nelson, unless you plan to keep her, would you un
-
cuff her please?
”
“Oh yeah, sure,” he said, as though he’d forgotten she was restrained.
He reached into his pocket and withdrew a small key ring. There were only two keys on it
; one that
looked like a golf cart key and
the other one
a handcuff key. Nelson leaned over
and chewed his lower lip as he fitted the key in
and unlocked the
left one
.
He repeated the action on the right cuff.
As the last one fell away, Gem brought her knee up hard into Nelson’s face, knocking him
backward and onto
his ass
.
He was
out cold.
“Fuckin’ A, Gem!” said Dave. “Righteous!”
Charlie laughed. “Righteous. That’s funny. What the hell, Gem?”
Gem stood and stretched her legs. “He caught me with that fucking karate shit.”
“Jesus, Gem,” said Dave. “Did he hurt you?”
He turned to stare at Charlie. “Charlie, shit! I’m so sorry, I forgot to even ask. Are you okay? The baby?”