This Shattered Land - 02 (19 page)

“Took
you long enough.” I called out.

“Yeah,
yeah, whatever.” He replied. “Nice work clearing the place out, amigo. You
ready for a little shopping?”

I
stood up and reached out a hand to take my pack from him. “Sounds like fun.
Where do you want to start?”

He
pointed across the street. “Let’s hit that hardware store and see if they have
a wheelbarrow or something.”

The
door that once stood in the entrance to the hardware store now lay broken on
the ground just beyond the threshold. Gabe and I stepped over it and did a
quick sweep with our guns drawn, just to be safe. The inside of the store was
in shambles, but most of the goods were still there except for building
materials. I assumed that the folks living in the nearby community probably
bought or pilfered anything during the Outbreak that would reinforce windows
and doors against the infected. Gabe went toward the back storeroom to look for
a wheelbarrow while I perused the shelves. I came to a display on the wall near
the cash registers, and broke into a smile.

“Hey
Gabe, check this out.”

“What
is it?” He asked as he walked over.

I
pointed at the wall in front of me. The big man grinned. “Nice. Think one of those
would work for Brian?”  

“Probably
so.” I said.

Hanging
from the wall on a low set of racks was a display of large hand tools. Next to
a row of shovels and rakes hung several varieties of axes ranging from large
splitting mauls to smaller camp hatchets. Gabe looked them over and picked up a
medium sized woodcutting axe with a metal handle and blue rubber grip.

“I
think this will do nicely.” He said.

I
took a couple of long handled hatchets for Tom and Sarah, and a larger chopping
axe with a durable fiberglass handle for myself. Axes are tremendously useful
tools, and they are great for dispatching the infected. More importantly, they
never run out of bullets. I wanted to make sure everybody had a good quality
one before starting west for Colorado.

Gabe
located a large yellow wheelbarrow, and I helped him carry it over the piles of
junk on the floor out to the empty street. There was more stuff in the hardware
store that I would have liked to take along, but it was too heavy, and I didn’t
have the means to carry it. We rolled the wheelbarrow down the sidewalk to the
drug store and used a crowbar to pry open the door. While Gabe searched the
pharmacy for antibiotics and painkillers, I found a shelf loaded with toilet
paper.

Using
the pliers on my multi-tool, I pulled the cardboard tubes out of the rolls.
Without the reinforcing tubes, I could pack the rolls flat and store more of
them in my pack. Next, I moved on to the first aid supplies. I snagged a box of
freezer bags from a shelf and filled several of them with bandages, compression
wrap, gauze, iodine, hydrogen peroxide, and cloth athletic tape. The freezer
bags went into my pack along with the medical supplies. Gabe came around the
counter from the pharmacy with a trash bag full of pill bottles.

He
took a marker from a display at the front of the store and started pouring the
pills into resealable sandwich bags and labeling them. As we were about to
leave, I hopped over the counter behind the cash registers and stuffed a couple
of boxes of my favorite brand of condoms into a side pouch on my pack. Gabe raised
an eyebrow and gave me a quizzical stare.

“I
don’t know what you have planned for tonight, Eric, but count me out.”

I
laughed as I climb back over the counter. “You never know, man, we might run
into some ladies on the way out west. I just want to be prepared.”

Gabe
snorted and walked back outside. The next place we raided was the teashop.
Unlike the other businesses, this one still looked neat and orderly, albeit
covered in a thick layer of dust. I guess no one was thinking about a daily
caffeine fix during the panic. I ignored the shelves near the windows, and went
to the back of the shop where the sealed tins were stored. Gabe and I opened a
few dozen of them and poured their contents into zip-lock bags, writing their
titles onto labels made of masking tape. Earl Grey, Irish breakfast tea, and
lemon green tea are my personal favorites.

With
the tea stashed in the wheelbarrow, I followed Gabe down the street to the
outfitter’s shop. We spent the better part of an hour rifling through clothing
and shoes trying to find items for both us and the Glover family. Sarah gave us
their sizes before we left, along with a list of the things they needed the
most. Socks and underwear were at the top, along with boots, winter coats, and
warm sleeping bags. We managed to find at least one of everything she asked for.
I rolled up the clothes and wrapped them in trash bags before stashing them in
Gabriel’s pack. The only room we had left at that point was in the wheelbarrow.

With
our ‘gotta have’ items all accounted for it was time to look around for some
‘nice to have’ stuff. I found a pair of waterproof hiking boots and some extra wool
socks, as well as a few boxes of a special adhesive called Mole-Skin. The stuff
is great for patching up blistered feet. Gabe nabbed us a couple of balaclavas
and new bladders for our water packs, then stood next to me for a few moments
while trying to decide if we should grab anything else. Finally we decided quit
with what we had. There was nothing else in the store we didn’t already have
back at the cabin.

The
only place that held anything else we needed was down on the end of the street.
Gabe pushed the wheelbarrow down the sidewalk and stopped beneath a sign that
read “Marion Gun and Pawn”. Every town in Appalachia had at least one of these
places.

Someone
had broken down the door a long time ago, and as we stepped inside, it was
obvious that the locals had stripped the place bare during the Outbreak. Display
cases on the counter were smashed in, the gun racks were empty, and the shelves
were stripped bare of anything even resembling ammunition.

“Bunch
of amateurs.” Gabe said, smirking. “Everybody knows the good stuff is locked up
in the back.”  

The
entrance to the storeroom was heavier and of much better construction than the
flimsy front door. Gabe looked it over for a few seconds before walking back
outside and grabbing a handful of wires and a few small blocks out of his pack.

“Uh,
what the hell is that?” I asked, pointing.

“What,
this?” He smiled back.

I
had seen this particular maniacal look on Gabriel’s face before, but only when
he was around high explosives. It’s kind of his thing. A bad feeling wormed its
way into the pit of my stomach when he started sticking the little bricks to
the wall and running wires between them.

“You
mind telling me where you got this stuff?” I asked.

“Hey,
have your secret stash, and I have mine.”

“No,
I mean like before the Outbreak. All your guns, ammo, explosives, all the
things in the bunker that were illegal. Where did you get it?”

He
turned a bemused glance at me. “Since when do you care?”

I
shrugged. “Honestly, I don’t. It just occurred to me that I never asked
before.”

Gabe
stared at me for a moment longer, and then went back to readying the explosives
around the door.

“After
I got out of the Marines, before I took the job at Aegis, I spent a few months
overseas doing contract work for the CIA. I met a few arms dealers who would
sell their own mothers if the price was right, and saved their asses from
torture and execution at the hands of their enemies. Out of gratitude, they
offered me a discount on anything I wanted. I stayed in touch with them, and
sent a lot of business their way. They got me whatever I needed, and since they
were on the CIA’s buddy list, no one ever bothered us.”

“I
can’t believe you worked for the CIA.” I said, shaking my head. “I get the
feeling there is a hell of a lot I don’t know about you.”

Gabe
belted out his coarse, rumbling laugh and stood up to clap me on the shoulder.
“Eric, old buddy, you have no idea. Come on, let’s get to a good safe distance.”

We
walked outside and around the corner of the building. Gabe held up a little
radio transmitter and turned to me.

“You
ready?” He asked.

“Um,
won’t the noise attract all the walkers we just got rid of?”

“Probably,
but we’ll be long gone by the time they get back.”

I
shrugged. “Alright then, cool with me. Let’s fuck it up.”

Gabe
grinned, and pushed the button. A low, powerful thump sounded from inside the
gun shop, followed by the crash of steel landing on concrete as a thick cloud
of dust and smoke bellowed out of the front door. It was not nearly as loud as
I thought it was going to be. Frankly, I was a little disappointed. We waited a
minute or two for the smoke to clear, and then went back inside to check the
damage. The shaped charges blew the door off its hinges, and a section of the
cinder block wall that held it in place lay in a dusty heap on the floor.

“Nice.”
I said. “Not too subtle, but nice.”

Gabe
stepped over the rubble and began searching the storeroom. It was only a little
smaller than the front part of the shop, and as expected, it had boxes and
crates stacked on neat shelves that ran all the way to the ceiling. At the back
wall on our left, I noticed a desk with a large blood spatter on the wall
beside it. I stepped around a rack of shelves and stopped in my tracks, staring.

From
what I could tell, someone had sat down in the chair in front of me, probably
after locking the door that we just blew up, and painted the wall with his
brain. A nickel-plated pistol lay on the ground near the chair, intermingled
with the remains of the person who ended his life here. I was guessing it was
male due to the large gold watch around one of the corpse’s desiccated wrists.
Two years of gravity pulling on the rotting carcass in the chair had reduced it
to a stinking, soupy mess of bones, stretched sinew, and tattered clothes. I
could make out the spinal column, and the remains of the shattered skull in the
jumble of bones on the floor.

I
made the sign of the cross, and offered up a quick prayer for the soul of this
poor suicide. It had been a long time since I went to Mass, but I was once a
good Catholic boy like all the Riordan’s before me, ever since my family
emigrated during the Potato Famine. I didn’t really think anyone upstairs was
listening at that point, but it never hurts to try.

Gabe
and I searched the storeroom from top to bottom. I scored a case of .22 magnum
ammunition for my Kel-Tec, and Gabe found a crate of .223 Remington. We grabbed
some .45 rounds for Gabe’s pistol, some nine-millimeter, and a few hundred .308
cartridges. We put the ammo in the wheelbarrow, and even with everything else
we had gathered there was still a little room leftover. We went back inside and
searched around some more, just in case we missed anything interesting. I found
several long cardboard boxes on a section of shelving labeled ‘Special Orders’.
I recognize the label on the front of the boxes, LWRCI. I opened one of them,
and sure enough, I found a rifle that would put a smile on everyone’s face when
we got back to the cabin. I took it out of the box and start loading a magazine
for it. Gabe came over to see what I was doing.

“What
you got there?” He asked.

I
pointed to the shelf. “M-6A3’s. Eight of them.”

“You’re
kidding me. Civilian models?”

I
looked the rifle over. “No, they’re not. These have the four position gas
piston system, suppressor ready flash hider, full-auto capability, the fucking
works.”

Gabe
bent down to look at them and let out a low whistle. “Nice. That’s some serious
hardware.”

“Who
the hell do you think that poor bastard over there was selling these to?” I
said, jerking a thumb at the human remains across the storeroom.

Gabe
shrugged. “Hell if I know. A lot of people cooked meth and grew weed out here
before the Outbreak, maybe he was selling to some of them.”

“Or
to the local cops.” I said. “Drug runners had money, which meant they had
quality weapons. The local police could have been outfitting themselves with high-tech
carbines to stay ahead of the bad guys.”  

Gabe
thought for a moment, then nodded. “That could have been it too. Either way, you
thinking what I’m thinking?”

I
worked the charging handle and held up the rifle to sight through it. The rail
system around the barrel was identical to the one on my HK. All of my optics
would work just fine on it.

“It
would be nice if we could all carry the same primary weapon. That would give us
parts commonality, and we could all use the same mags and ammo. Having a few
spares around wouldn’t be a bad idea either.”

Gabe
grunted in approval, and carried a few more boxes of ammo outside.

Once
we had everything that we could take with us, we put on our packs and set off
down the road that would lead us back to Lake James. I volunteered for the
first shift pushing the heavy wheelbarrow. Gabe took the M-6 I loaded and kept
a lookout for infected as we slowly made our way out of town. It took us the
better part of two hours to get back to the lake, even taking turns pushing the
wheelbarrow every quarter mile or so. My lower back was burning and my
shoulders felt like they had hot irons in them by the time we stopped on the
shoreline. The sun was low in the sky, and it would be dark long before we
could get back to the cabin.