Setting Things Right, Part 7: Sergeant Pierce - Hoffman - the Kawi - the beach - a bird! - an angry crowd (240 hits)
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Submitted by X54 (View user info) at 2008-11-04 17:22:19 EST
Part 1: http://www.ubersite.com/m/118878 I meet Colonel Barnes - a standoff - their mission and mine
Part 2: http://www.ubersite.com/m/119080 I depart with the convoy - a burned down house - waiting for Mr. Robbins - reflections on surviving the pandemic
Part 3: http://www.ubersite.com/m/119174 meet the Robbins family - kids in the attic - a hero - an impromptu cesarean - thin ice
Part 4: http://www.ubersite.com/m/119299 Grumpy collects - escape attempt - disinfecting the house - the colonel's pet
Part 5: http://www.ubersite.com/m/119378 a bit about me - the colonel's strategy - our next big contract - the refinery
Part 6: http://www.ubersite.com/m/119483 assigned - confrontation with a guard - the motor pool - Watson - a two day pass - requisitioning a motorcycle
Part 7:
I drew my pistol and pointed it at the nearest of the two guards, holding it in close, out of his reach. He stepped back, held his hands up. "What the fuck, over?"
As my finger tightened on the trigger, the garage door began rolling up with a sudden metallic rattle. The line of light shining underneath it advanced across the ground and illuminated the three of us. Sergeant Pierce stepped out, a fat and wheezing silhouette against the backlight. "The hell's going on out here?"
I turned to keep the gun hidden from his view. "I have a vehicle requisition, Sarge. These guys are giving me a hard time." Keeping the guards covered, I moved slowly around them.
"He's got a gun," said the guard.
Sergeant Pierce looked at me. "Hope you ain't planning on requisitioning nothing with that."
With my free hand I showed him the outline of the bottle in my cargo pocket.
"Well, come on in." Ignoring the grumbling guards, he motioned to a chain dangling alongside the roll-up. "Shut the door."
I slid the Glock back into my field jacket pocket and rolled down the door. Sergeant Pierce sat in a squeaky chair behind his desk. I grounded my ruck and set the bottle of Captain Morgan's down amid the greasy boxes and valves and carburetor parts scattered across his desktop.
"I'm guessing you want one a them Kawis."
"Roger that."
"Where you fixing to go?"
"I thought you said you didn't care about that. As long as it comes back in one piece."
He picked up the bottle, grunted at the unbroken seal. "That what they pissed off about? You didn't give 'em none?"
"I didn't know that was part of the drill."
Chuckling, he unscrewed the cap. "More for me. Them sons a bitches..." He drowned the rest of his sentence in a mouthful of rum.
The pistol grew heavy in my pocket as I waited impatiently for fat Sergeant Pierce to finish his drink. I imagined my front sight nestled under the scar or blemish just above his beady little eyes, pictured an X-ray of the bullet plowing in slow motion through his gray matter and out the back of his skull, the wall behind him with the keys to his vehicles hanging on their hooks all splattered and dripping. He seemed like an okay guy, sort of fatherly in a peculiar way, like the kind of dad who dresses up as Santa for Christmas and sometimes gives you beer and looks the other way when you smoke pot in the tree house. Had he been married before the pandemic? Kids? I got the impression he liked me. As my hand crept for the pistol, my neck hairs bristled. I thought it was just anticipation, but suddenly I realized there was someone behind me. My hand froze.
Sergeant Pierce finally screwed the cap back on. "Need it back by seventeen hundred tomorrow." He plucked the ignition key from the wall, the chair squeaking like a mortally wounded rodent as he swiveled. "You ain't back by then, I send Hoffman after you." Nodding over my shoulder, he handed me the key.
"Hello Hoffman," I said without looking back.
"Hello Swanson."
The voice, dripping with smarmy sarcasm, registered immediately. Hoffman was another survivor. He'd been with me at Leavenworth and during a quarantine operation in Texas. He stood in the shadows behind a tool chest cradling some kind of submachine gun. "Maybe you better hand that pistol over before you go. Just in case I have to come looking for you." The nasty little click of a selector switch broke the sixty hertz fluorescent hum. A large silencer canister poked into the light. I saw right down the hole in the end of it.
I tossed the key on the desk. "Give me back my bottle."
To the extent they could, Sergeant Pierce's eyes widened. He held the bottle close to his chest.
"I'm not going out unarmed."
He blinked and rubbed the spot on his forehead. "Better let him keep the pistol."
The twin Kawis sat in the orange glow of a sodium light, chained to the light pole. I felt Hoffman watching as I unlocked the bike and looked it over. Fuel tank full. Tires in decent shape. The KLR650 was designed for on/off road use, light and tall and torquey with plenty of suspension travel. I strapped my ruck onto the small cargo rack as the motor warmed up, the big single thumping out an exhaust cloud that lingered in the still air. I wondered what Hoffman's trip was. Did Sergeant Pierce know he was a survivor? Colonel Barnes evidently didn't. Did anyone? I felt his sights trained on my back as I rode off.
I stopped at the compound's main entrance, asked the guard for the following day's challenge and password. Then I rode west down an unlit road through dark fields and farm buildings, dodging the largest ruts and potholes, pondering my destination and plans. The Umeda house would have been my first choice, but they'd surely go looking there if I didn't come back.
The air was cool and damp, on the verge of fog, painful against my bare face. The fields gave way to tract homes and strip malls, all of them black and vacant looking. I proceeded cautiously through intersections; all the signal lights were out. Parked vehicles lined the streets, but I encountered little traffic. Every once in a while a glimmer of lamp or candle light shone dimly through a window. I rode on, keeping west as much as my sense of direction allowed. The cold seeped through my Army-issue gloves and field jacket. Just as I felt compelled to stop, I saw a white strand of sand and the whiter lines of breakers in the distance.
The houses near the shore were mostly lit up. Squatters, probably, their wildest American Dreams finally realized thanks to the pandemic. I pulled into a parking lot on the edge of the beach and shut the bike down. The sound of generators and music and people talking and laughing against the backdrop of crashing waves. Bonfires in the sand. The air smoky and salty and fish-smelling. Dark little silhouettes of boats dragged up beyond the tide's reach.
I approached a small crowd of people clustered around something in the sand. A woman greeted me excitedly. "There's a bird!"
I hadn't seen a live bird since before I came down with the virus. "Alive?"
"Yes," she said, her voice joyful. "They say it looks injured, but it's alive. Can you believe it?"
"Where did it come from?" said someone.
"Be careful, you're scaring it!"
"Are you sure it's not sick?"
"It looks like it has a broken wing."
I threaded my way to the fore. A man shone his flashlight on a gray and white seagull lying in the sand with one wing laid out. A girl crawled toward it, but it hissed and snapped weakly.
"Don't get too close!" said the man with the flashlight. "It might be sick."
It looked to me like the bird was on death's doorstep. There was something obviously wrong with its wing, but its health issues appeared to run deeper than that. The people were only making things worse. Though it was terrified of them, it couldn't move. It seemed silly of them to get so worked up. There was no question it was going to die. I saw what had to be done even if they didn't, or couldn't bring themselves to face it. A little shock would do them good. "Let me take a look," I said. "I'm a vet."
"Thank God!" said someone. "A veterinarian."
"Can you save it?"
I scooped it up. It feebly hissed and bit my hand a few times, then lay trembling as I stroked its back. "I'm afraid this bird isn't going to survive. It's too badly injured."
"We have to save it. It's a bird!" said Crawling Girl, still down on her hands and knees. "What if it's the last one?"
I took the gull's neck in my left hand and its head in my right and twisted. To my surprise, the head pulled off. Blood spurted out the neck. Crawling Girl screamed as it splattered her face and frizzy hair. The crowd fell back. "What if it has the virus?" someone shouted. The gull's body twitched and jerked in my hand, spotlighted by the man's flashlight. The girl frantically tried wiping the blood from her face but only succeeded in smearing it all over herself.
The people seemed torn between anger and fear of catching the virus. "You bastard," they cried from a safe distance. "You killed a bird."
I made like I was swinging the carcass in their direction. They scrambled away. Then a man with a shotgun stepped up. He had a bright flashlight mounted on it, blinding me.
"Drop the bird," he said.
I tossed it his direction, about half way to him. "There's no need to point that at me," I said, turning and shielding my eyes with my left hand. My right crept for my pistol.
"You're contaminated. You both are. Don't try to leave."
Crawling Girl burst out sobbing and went for him, staggering in the sand. He swung the shotgun over, shouted and fired with a deafening explosion and a blinding flash. When my vision returned, the girl lay crumpled beside the headless bird, her face shot away. The last remnants of the crowd dispersed, even the man with the flashlight, who I thought might of seen things my way, if only because he'd witnessed the bird up closer than the rest of them.
The shotgunner seemed transfixed by the girl. He kept the light trained on the remnants of her head. My fingers slipped unnoticed inside my pocket to the Glock's familiar textured grip.
User Reviews
Submitted by monkeyswithguns (user info) at 2008-11-05 08:37:58 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by sexualchocolate1984 (user info) at 2008-11-05 07:50:55 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Yep, keep em coming. Loving this series.
Submitted by Desz (user info) at 2008-11-04 20:50:47 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
and still liking it
Submitted by Shlongy (user info) at 2008-11-04 17:28:14 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
7 parts!