I got to the ground and rounded up Claire. “I think we found something. It’s up on a small hill to the left.”
“Great. Just in time, too. The rain is coming back.” She pointed to the sky.
I looked up at the gathering storm. Angry, gray clouds were starting to form over our heads. It looked like a lot of rain was headed our way. With weapons ready, Claire and I started up the road to possible sanctuary.
I only hoped it was as deserted as it looked through my binoculars.
Claire and I approached the twin steel roll-up doors carefully. It had been a difficult slog to the building. The road and front yard of our possible sanctuary was choked with cars and trucks. There was even a tank or two scattered among the wreckage. Thankfully, we only had to grease two zombies as we came near the building. They had both popped out of an overturned ambulance and were dressed like paramedics. I always felt sorry for firemen, cops, soldiers, and other emergency workers in all this mess. They were just bravely doing their jobs and were rewarded by being turned into walking corpses. To me, it always seemed a little unfair.
The broken vehicles were like some sort of macabre maze on the road. Claire and I sometimes had to climb over or duck under cars and trucks to find a clear path. In some cases, we even had to open a few doors and go through the vehicle. It had not been easy; many of the vehicles had decaying bodies still strapped in the seats. In fact, the entire area was covered in bodies and other assorted debris. It made getting to the firehouse very tough.
The steel roll-up doors were down and, I assume, locked. They were quite large and substantial, with small windows about halfway up. There was a regular door with a small window between the two roll-up doors. I approached it carefully with my rifle at the ready. As I stepped closer, I noticed it was slightly ajar. Someone had also painted a large zombie skull on the door. They were in such a hurry that they dropped the spray can before their masterpiece was complete. Claire and I looked at each other. It could be wall-to-wall undead inside. By now, the rain had begun to fall heavily. I could also hear a few rumbles of thunder in the distance. We had to chance it.
I motioned for Claire to follow and slowly pushed the door open. The hinges creaked in protest. We both froze for a moment to see if somebody or something had heard us. When nothing horrible came to the door, I got out my flashlight and took a look inside. We knew better than to barge right through the door. With all the monsters running around these days, you took a quick look first.
I peeked around the door at the space beyond. It was a vast space that was used to hold at least two vehicles. In place of the vehicles, there were a few cots, tables, and footlockers set up into sleeping areas. A few empty wooden pallets lay scattered on the floor among the cots. At the end of the garage, cardboard boxes were stacked against another set of roll-up doors. I also caught a glimpse of some bottled water containers spilled on the floor. I took a few steps into the garage. To my right was an office with a large glass window and another door that probably led to a hallway. A few folding tables and a large white dry-erase board, along with a hastily installed wood burning stove completed the furnishings. The place had a damp smell, with a little dead animal mixed in. Claire and I went instantly on guard.
This place had definitely been a command post at one time. Claire and I took a few more steps into the building. Behind us, the full fury of the storm was unleashed. The wind had picked up along with the lightning and thunder. Raindrops and small hailstones poured down in buckets. I could hear them bouncing off the metal roof of the building. We would have to stay here no matter what we found.
“Lets check out those boxes first,” I said.
“Okay,” Claire answered, gripping her bat till her knuckles were white. “I won’t lie, Tiger. I’m a little scared.”
“Yeah it’s creepy. We’ll have to see about some light.”
We walked to the boxes at the back of the garage. They’re were several of different sizes scattered in the corner. Claire took a look in some of the larger ones, while I picked through a few of the smaller boxes on the floor. I picked one up and shined my flashlight on it to look for markings. It said “Chocolate Bars-50 ct.” on one of the flaps. I opened the box and, sure enough, was rewarded with about fifty bars of generic chocolate bars in plastic bags.
I took a bar out and got Claire’s attention. “Hey kiddo. Catch.” I threw the candy in her direction.
She caught it and took a look. “Chocolate. Cool.” She opened it and cautiously took a bite. “It’s cheap, but it’s pretty good.”
I opened one and took a cautious bite myself. The chocolate may have been cheap, but it was damn good. We had run out of candy and chocolate, and had forgotten to grab any at Mollie’s Place. The small bites of chocolate were like pure heaven, and returned a little lost energy to our tired bodies. The rest of the small boxes were packed with another kind of candy: large bags of hard peppermints and bubble gum. I grabbed a few brightly wrapped gum balls, and inhaled their bubble gum scent. I couldn’t remember the last time I had gum of any kind.
Claire walked up to see what I had found. “What’s with all the candy and gum?”
“I don’t know,” I answered, scratching my head. “Maybe the soldiers requested a supply of it. Actually, they probably gave it to any young survivors they found.”
Claire held up a small brown object wrapped in plastic. “What are these?” she asked. “Some of the boxes over there have a few inside.”
I took a closer look under my flashlight. It looked like a small, brown paper bag similar to something you would use to microwave popcorn. There was some writing on both sides. On one side, it looked a little like instructions. The other side said, “Meat Loaf in Brown Gravy-1 meal”. A light bulb went off in my head.
“Hey, you know what this is? It’s an MRE …uh …a meal ready to eat. It looks like the food the military eats.”
“Oh cool. Don’t we need some hot water to eat them, though?” she asked as we walked to the large boxes in the corner.
I looked closer at our next possible meal. “No. I think these are a different kind. There’s some chemicals on the bottom that generate heat. First, you add a little water, the chemicals react, make heat, and voila, dinner is served.”
Claire broke out into a smile. It was her first smile in a couple of weeks. “Let me get this straight. You mean we might actually may get a hot meal tonight?”
“You got it. That’s if we can actually get them to work,” I said, reaching into the box to grab a few more meals. Several of the large boxes were empty, but two were at least one-quarter full. It looked like they had been hastily packed and shipped to this location. Claire and I counted about twenty or thirty meals in each box. There were several different kinds, like “Pork Rib” and “Chicken w/Noodles” and “Spaghetti w/Meat Sauce”. We even found a few marked “Brownie-Chocolate.” It was an MRE feast. I couldn’t believe our luck. First Mollie’s Place, than this firehouse; someone up there was really was looking out for us. Maybe Claire was my lucky charm.
Before we sat down for a possible hot meal, I wanted to check out the rest of the firehouse. I strolled over to the folding tables while Claire checked out the cots in the sleeping areas. The tables were covered in maps and charts of all kinds. Folders stuffed full of paper reports were stacked haphazardly on the tables and on the floors. Two metal file cabinets, also stuffed to the gills, stood like silent guardians behind the tables near the large glass window of the office. I started shuffling through the papers. Many of them were reports on supplies and troop movements. There were also projections on enemy (reanimates) numbers and location. There were other small bits of paper strewn here and there around the tables with various bits of information. Apparently, the military had resorted to messengers when all communications fell.
I turned my attention to some of the larger maps. I found our present location on the map marked with a green square. On the map were written locations of military units, survivor camp locations, and possible locations of zombie outbreaks. Large areas were marked with red and labeled “DZ.” Green and red arrows suggested movements of troops and the zombie horde.
I guessed “DZ” meant “dead zone.” Also, a few of the red arrows were pointing at the firehouse location on the map. I guess everybody bugged out before they were overrun. That, or they sacrificed themselves trying to defend the place.
Thinking the map might be useful, I rolled it up and put it in my backpack. I then turned my attention to the whiteboard behind the tables. It was one of those big dry-erase types usually used in corporate boardrooms. On one side, written in different colors, were reminders about convoy procedures and survivor processing. A lot of it was written in cryptic military speak with a lot of acronyms and abbreviations, so it was a little hard to understand. I got the gist of it, though. The whiteboard was a history lesson on the war of man vs. zombie, and man had lost …Badly. The numbers on the board that represented humans saved got smaller, while the numbers of observed enemy in the field got larger. According to the board, it had been a slaughter with the zombies victorious at the end of the day.
The whiteboard also told about the differences between yellow and red eyes. It also had information about the danger of dogs. The board contained rules about quarantine precautions and termination procedures for dogs and humans. It was all spelled out in graphic terms with block, multi colored letters.
I was concentrating so hard on the board that I didn’t notice Claire had stepped up behind me. She touched my elbow and I jumped. “Sorry,” she whispered. “Didn’t mean to startle you. What did you find out?”
“Nothing much. I guess they tried to mount a defense but failed. What’d you find over by the cots?”
“Not much …a lot of personal stuff. No weapons or anything.” She handed me a heavy silver picture frame. It contained a picture of a young, Hispanic soldier in his Army dress uniform. On his right was a heavy-set older woman, and on his left was a young woman about Claire’s age who was very pregnant. I assumed the smiling older woman was his very proud mother. Engraved on the frame was “Congratulations Sgt. Luis Martinez”. This very young man had been promoted to sergeant, and then had been sent to fight zombies.
“That’s just an example. There’s a lot of family pictures over there. Kinda sad,” Claire said, looking at the picture.
“These guys probably gave their lives trying to save people,” I answered. I hope Martinez wasn’t one of the zombie Guardsmen I had smoked at the construction site. “How do the cots look?”
Claire brightened up a little. “Actually, they’re pretty comfy.”
Something hit the glass wall of the office with great force. It scared us so badly we both fell to the ground. I pulled myself to a sitting position with my gun drawn ready to do battle.
It was a badly decomposed Yellow-Eye caught in the office. He had struck the glass wall from the inside. Now he was clawing at the glass like some sort of captured zoo animal trying to get at us. He was some kind of fire chief or commander, according to his uniform. Although badly decomposed, he looked pretty intact and ready eat to anything he came across.
I helped Claire off the ground. She brushed herself off and said, “Dammit! That scared the hell out of me.”
“I’ll take care of it. You stay here and keep him occupied.” I hated to use her as a diversion, but I think she was relatively safe with Fire-Chief Zombie behind glass. I opened the door next to the glass wall and stepped into a long hallway. A door to my right was marked “Office.” I took a shooting stance, held my flashlight up to light up anything in front of me, and pushed the door open. I really hoped he was the only undead thing in the office.
I stepped into what looked like a small dispatcher’s area. Several desks and office chairs filled the small room. On a table, there was a radio with a few car batteries attached. Fire-Chief Zombie was still at the window trying to get to Claire. I could barely see her on the other side of the glass.
I whistled to get the zombie’s attention. He turned away from the window and fixed his yellow eyes on me. He then made a horrible screeching noise and leaped towards me. My shot caught him in the face, and he slumped to the ground dead. I walked to the window and motioned Claire to come inside. She just stood there with wide eyes. Something was wrong.
I heard the other zombie before it attacked me. It was a low growl coming from the darkness behind me. I turned around just in time to see a young woman zombie leap out from a dark corner of the little room. I didn’t have time to shoot.
She grabbed on and pushed me to one of the tables and pinned me down. My gun had been knocked out of my hand, so I was momentarily defenseless. She was on top of me, pushing me down, trying to take a bite. With one arm I was keeping her from killing me, and with my other hand, I was trying to get out my zombie-killing tomahawk. It was not going well. This zombie lady was strong. Worse, I had banged my head on something sharp on the table, and blood was trickling into my left eye.
I caught of glimpse of Claire entering the office. She ran in with her little revolver, ready for battle. The zombie turned around and hissed at the prospect of an easier meal. The Yellow-Eyes have a short attention span. The ugly undead beast stopped struggling with me and turned to take out Claire as she stood in the doorway. This gave me a chance to draw my tomahawk and do battle.
All those nights of sharpening the axe-end of the tomahawk paid off. I swung down and caught the screaming demon in the shoulder. I hit her with enough force to nearly sever her soft, rotting arm. The zombie emitted a scream of pain, fell to the ground, and tried to crawl away. I stepped on her back, flipped my tomahawk over to the pointy end, and drove it into her skull. The zombie fell silent in mid-scream.
The excitement over, I put my tomahawk away and slumped to the ground. I felt a little dizzy.
Claire rushed to my side. “Oh no …John …Oh God, are you alright? Did she bite you?” She had gone gray in the face.
“No bite …bashed my head in a little, though.” I reached up to try and stop the bleeding. Claire put her arm around me and put a small cloth to my wound.
“Well, Tiger, it doesn’t look too bad. I don’t think it needs any stitches,” she said, trying to keep her herself calm.
“Good. Stitches can be a problem.” I held on to Claire tightly. Even though she hadn’t taken a bath in a while, she still smelled a little like strawberries. Apparently she had been using her body spray. I took a deep breath that filled my nostrils and kept me from blacking out. The dizziness was passing, but I still felt like crap. I was still shaking from the close call. Claire put her arms around me and said, “It’s okay, John. Everything is okay.” She said it over and over. I don’t know if she was trying to reassure me, or herself.