“Well we have a lot of times where we have to sit at a crime or accident scene with our lights on for a long time, running the battery down was common enough that a few years ago the department bought those batteries with a special reserve in them to kinda of jump start the cars, flip a switch and you are effectively using a whole separate battery. Ours are heavy duty, and the alternator is wired to charge up both batteries when the car is running, we are good to go and have two cars now instead of one, not to mention a shotgun and ammo for my other guns. Is Tom coming down?”
“He is probably on his way. Good job both of you, Steve you were awesome, a world class run if I ever saw one.” said Max, “So now what? We have the cars, do we tell everyone else? Make a break for it? How is the ammo situation now?”
Stewart answered, “Well good, compared to what it was, I have reloads out of my bag for my handguns and the squad car shotgun has both man shot and some rounds that are supposed to be armor piercing. I really wish I was in one of the cars that carried the assault rifles, that would have been nice. Though I suppose with a head shot to kill, single shots are better.”
“Man shot?” Steve asked.
“Yeah, double ought buckshot. I have some riot rounds too, doubt they will do much against a zombie, but man they should knock them on their asses at least. Tear gas, what a joke, won’t need that. It does get smoky though, that might be worth something. I don’t think we need to go wake everyone up to tell them of our good fortune tonight, we will do it in the morning, everyone will more or less know by then anyway. I wonder how boss lady will take it? Bad probably.”
That said they waited until the next shift arrived to relieve them, shortly after that their relief came down, Walter “Walt” Coggins, an older guy whom Max had always liked. They left him at his post with the advice to get help if anything happened and went up to the cubicles they had staked out earlier to sleep.
Chapter 19
Cautiously they crept the remaining distance keeping to the shadows as best they could. Hiding behind an abandoned Ford Explorer Nancy and Veronica watched the survivors gain access to the patrol car and one other, more sporty vehicle, all without attracting undue notice from the surrounding ‘dumb’ zombies.
“Look.” Veronica directed Nancy’s attention towards officer Stewart. “She’s going to be trouble.”
They watched as Stewart calmly lifted the hood of her car and did something, then hopped in and backed it up to the front doors of MAC co. Stewart’s professional manner under pressure was admirable, Nancy was thinking maybe a hole would have to be made to allow the more competent to survive what she had planed, and therefore allow her and her team to come out of it with less casualties as well. Steve was pretty calm too. Nancy recognized him from work, she always thought he was a bit of a flake, that impression was forced to change, it took balls to run out into the night of the parking lot, hop into your car and drive it back to the building. The other guys, Nancy saw one on the roof who she didn’t, or couldn’t recognize and another one hanging by the door, who might be a guy named Max. Nancy didn’t really get a good look at him, so for now he was ‘Max’. What the group did was just as informative as how they did it. They brought the cars back, why do that unless there were more people in the building? So there were more than four, but how many more? Nancy thought back to this morning, not many early birds came in, but she knew there was a night crew, but how many workers were on graveyard?
Nancy and Veronica watched from their hiding place taking survey of the remaining survivors until Stewart closed the metal framed glass door behind her officially ending their adventure. Some of the dead banged and pulled at the door but had no luck gaining access to the building. Eventually they lost interest and shuffled away in search of new prey.
“I counted four, involved in getting the cars. We have no way to know how many others remained behind. There could be five or fifty five people in there. What’s the plan?” Veronica asked.
Nancy thought for a moment and then surveyed the parking lot. “How many cars would you guess are out there?”
“Twenty, maybe thirty at most.” Veronica answered.
“Does it make sense then that there would be thirty, maybe forty at most, in that building? Only I know some of us are already zombies, me, Fred, who else? I bet we are dealing with less than thirty people, probably closer to twenty.”
“Yeah, that makes sense, where does that get us?”
Nancy leaned her back against the cool metal of the SUV and slid down until she was sitting on the asphalt. Veronica, anticipating that this was not going to be a short conversation did the same.
“Where that gets us is that we are probably out numbered. Add in the fact that they have guns and I’d say that we had better not take them lightly don’t you think? I think we need to let some of them go, the people who did this sure, they have the guns and the keys to the cars, if we can leave them an opening, they will exploit it and get out. Out of our way, leaving us with…meat.”
Veronica did not bother to answer, her face told Nancy that she was still waiting for some kind of revelation.
Somewhat irritated Nancy went on, “OK, lets think this through. They have two options, stay in the building or make a break for it. Apparently they decided to go with the second option, they are getting ready to leave, if we wait too long to strike they will get away. They need food, water, family, they will try to leave soon.”
“So, we wait until they try again, mix in with the rest of the dead and hope that we don’t take a bullet in the head?” Veronica concluded with a frown.
“Yeah. Doesn’t sound too good does it? Plus, how long will they wait before leaving exactly? A day? An hour? The longer we wait the hungrier we get. Let’s not forget our main goal here. The first priority is to get into the building, find Fred and make sushi out him. The stronger we are the better our chances of accomplishing that goal. Right?”
“I agree, but how do you recommend that we sneak into the building? The doors look secure and I’m sure they’d hear us if we broke one of the windows.”
“Ah. That is why I am in charge my dear V.” Nancy boasted as she revealed a card with her photo on the front and the letters MAC CO printed across the top.
The two women finalized their plans and then returned to where Jim and the other girls were waiting. They decided to wait until things settled down a bit and enter the building using Nancy’s card key at the back loading dock entrance. Nancy told Veronica that Jim and the other girls would be expendable should they encounter resistance from the living, but Veronica knew the truth, that she too was easily replaced in Nancy’s eyes.
Nancy forced herself to wait the agreed waiting period before leading the group to the back of the building. Once there they watched for signs of life, however, the cool blue solar reflective tinting on the glass hid any movement or lifelike energy from their view.
Veronica suggested that they move towards the back entrance “zombie-like” and not as a group so as to not raise any suspicion from anyone who might be watching from the inside. Jim was the first to make the short trip across the pavement to the rear entrance and when he arrived without incident the other girls followed one by one leaving Veronica and finally Nancy to bring up the rear. Nancy quickly swiped her card key across the reader mounted to the wall adjacent the door. With a familiar beep the small light on the card reader went from red to green and the magnetic lock released.