“Well I don't know.” he whispered, “I don't think we could shoot our way in? When was this place built? The fifties? We'd need a battering ram to get through the door. And if they had grenades to leave around as booby traps they probably have more firepower than we do.”
“But we have the element of surprise.” Stewart said.
Abruptly the deadbolt unlatched and the door handled turned, surprising them both. Stewart stepped back in time to avoid the door which swung out quickly and almost caught her. Tom stumbled and fell to his butt behind her, as he fell he tried to catch himself on one of the shelves and his hand contracted and the shotgun when off firing into the junk of the basement.
Stewart brought her gun up and yelled at the surprised man standing in the doorway, “Freeze! Police!” in a voice that carried authority beyond those of the words along. The man was older, probably in his fifties, he was in good shape, but had a paunchy beer belly which was visible because he was completely naked. His gray hair was cut short in a military style and he stood about five and a half feet tall. In the hand that he had not been opening the door with he held some sort of assault rifle. His body was splattered with blood and loud, pounding music blared out of the room behind him, it sounded like some sort of punk band from the late seventies.
“Don't do it!” yelled Stewart as the man stepped back trying to pull the door with him as he brought his gun up and fired.
The assault rifle sent bullets ricocheting off of the metal door back into the room, Stewart watched as one of the rounds tore through the man's leg just above his knee. The bullet spun him around and he fell onto the floor, where he lay moaning and grasping at the blood pouring from his leg.
“Fuck!” Stewart yelled, unable to hear her own voice. She stepped into the room scanning it for other adversaries, looking right and left she saw no other moving people. The room was longer than she expected, and after about four feet there were two steps down into the main area of the fallout shelter. There were two sets of bunk beds up against the walls of the shelter and another set had been broken down into two beds in the main area of the room. Along the far wall hung a set of green metal cabinets, to one side of them was a portable toilet on the other was a shower curtain. On the upper level of the room was another counter with stools set up to form a bar like area, shelves above this counter held dozens of bottles of alcohol and there were three coolers on the counters too. Near the far end of the counter was a gun rack, there was another assault rifle there and what looked like a few cases of ammunition. The shelves also held a large stereo which was plugged into an array of car batteries with a converter box. There were two overhead lights hanging down off of the ceiling that also appeared to be plugged into the car batteries, they kept the place well lighted and Stewart wanted to retch at what she was seeing.
Tom stumbled into the room after her and was mouthing something at her, that she could not hear. Finally he turned and went over to the stereo and pulled the plug on it. The man on the ground was moaning as the pool of blood grew around him. Stewart went up to him and kicked him, “You son of a bitch! You fucking son of a bitch!”
Tom didn't stop her, instead he went down to the beds in the main room and checked the two bodies tied to them, both were also nude and sported various cuts and bruises. One looked like it had been there for a few days, the other had a fresh wound in the ribs, where a trickle of blood flowed. The very dead one was a young man, perhaps fifteen or sixteen years old, the other was a young woman. Their faces were similar enough that they could have been siblings. Tom stood over the woman while Stewart kicked the man down the steps into the main room.
“Stewart!” She didn't respond, “Stewart! She is still alive! Stop and help me!”
Stewart looked up, the man on the floor was not moving, the blood from his leg wound was only seeping out slowly now. “What?”
“She is still alive!”
Stewart came over and checked the woman's wounds. She had plenty of them, her face was bruised and swollen and she was breathing raggedly. Tom used his knife to cut her free of the bed and Stewart checked the girl's pulse. The girl pulled in a deep breath and the blood from her chest wound bubbled as air hissed through the opening.
“Fuck, the bullet went into her lungs. Her lung is going to collapse. We need some plastic and duct tape, Tom, now!”
Tom started searching the room and found a plastic bag from the hardware store and some duct tape on one of the counters. He hand them both to her, but while Stewart was taping the plastic over the hole in the woman's chest she stopped breathing. Stewart looked across the body at Tom, both knowing they could start cardio-pulmonary-resuscitation, both realizing it wouldn't do any good.
“Fuck.” Stewart said slowly, “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”
Tom, still holding her gaze, repeated her words and they both started to shake at the same time. Stewart got up first and held her hand out to Tom, he took it and she hauled him up to his feet where she, gave him a brief hug.
When they parted he said, “I didn't think you were the kind of woman who liked to hug.”
“I'm not, that was for you.”
“What do we do about this?” he said, gesturing around the room with one hand.
“This? Fuck me if I know. I am taking the guns and the ammo and if there are grenades I am taking them too. As much as we can carry, but no more than that. When we leave this basement I am not coming back down.” Stewart checked the body near the door to make sure he was dead, 'He must have hit an artery in his leg.' she said looking at large pool of blood surrounding the man on the floor.
Five minutes later Tom and Stewart left the hardware store lugging a heavy army green box between them, on top of the box were assorted dog treats, dog food and one flip flop. Stewart was wearing the other one over her socks. Amelia, who was standing by the cars keeping a look out noted the blood on their clothing and started to ask a question. Stewart stopped her, “Don't worry about it. Just the run of the mill shit we find everywhere we go. We did get some good stuff this time, weapons and hand grenades, the guy must have been a gun nut. You guys didn't hear us firing from out here?”
“No.” Amelia admitted, “Where was he?”
“In the basement, with all this stuff. Funny how none of it did him any good in the end. How about me and Tom get cleaned up and we get the hell out of po-dunk-ville?”
Chapter 10
The three zombies loped into town an hour after Max and his companions left it. They went into the hardware store and then into basement where the lights were still on. He looked at the man's body and frowned, the flesh was dull and unappetizing, the woman's was no better.
“I gotta stop thinking about them in terms of food.” said their leader, a man named Erik, but he went by the nickname 'Red'.
Nita, nominally the second in command of this trio smiled and said, “They wouldn't taste good now anyway Red, you know that.”
“Besides” put in the third a man named Hugh, “we gave up humans, remember? We are going to save the world and all that.”
“We are doing what we can, don't make it into a joke.” said Red. He was a white man whose skin looked a bit chaffed and almost red, hence the nickname. His hair was a raven black and his eyes were a piercing gray, almost clear of the betraying cataracts most zombies had. He moved with a cat like grace and had a huge pistol on his hip. His pistol was an old fashioned fifty caliber weapon he picked up from one of his victims, the guy had already been dying and showed Red how to load the gun using black powder and small, childlike caps. Red liked the gun because it was so very anti modern, it was not efficient, it had short range and made a huge noise when fired. In short, it suited him. Hugh had been Red's second recruit from the suburbs around Denver, the man had probably been fifty when he died and was from Colorado. He was in top physical condition when he became a
