Class of 2013 - 28

Chapter Twenty Eight

The day had finally arrived. Our mission to Wal-Mart had the green light, and our team was assembled. The Core Four, plus Christine and Johnny, were all set to head out on the scav’ mission. Some last minute training, weapons checks, and planning was put into preparation – and a large amount of ammunition was loaded into the suburban. Just as so many times before, it was going to be our primary method of transportation. Why all the extra ammo? Well, Wal-Mart wasn’t exactly in the most populated section of town, it was actually in a mostly business district and surrounded by a shopping center… but there was a residential area not far away, and if anywhere had probably been a target for looting, it would have been there. We were expecting a lot of zombies, and to pull off this job we might need a lot of extra ammo.

The down side, of course, was that the extra ammunition that we would need couldn’t all be put in magazines. In fact, most of it couldn’t. It was an unfortunate fact, but we only had so many magazines for the weapons that we had – and some of those magazines were to stay behind at the base so the sentries would be able to defend it. We didn’t expect a horde to show up any time soon, but if one did, it would be best for them to be able to fight it off quickly. This left us with the distasteful option of having to lug around the ammo boxes and crates full of various ammunition types. The up side was that we had already figured out our rally point; the McDonalds inside the Wal-Mart wasn’t far from the front doors. We could park the SUV just outside, and have the ammunition stockpile right there. If things got too hot, we could bug out.

Eating a late lunch, we were going over some building clearing techniques in the cafeteria when we were approached by Novik. He was quiet for a moment, watching us go through our routines, but we all knew he was there. It was like a dark cloud had just come over us; a heavy presence that was, perhaps, more imposing due to his silence than due to the fact that we could feel him watching us. It was like being a microorganism in some sample of pond water while a scientist gazed through a microscope at you. Even still, despite the hairs that stood up on the backs of our necks, we continued our practice… until he spoke, anyway.

“Fury!” He suddenly snapped, after watching us for what felt like hours, “You’ll be sitting this one out. You’ll be playing the part of range master while Abernethy is on mission.”

Christine whirled to face the man, “What do you mean I’m ‘sitting this one out’?” She glared at him, “I was chosen for this assignment! You can’t just tell me I’m off it, Coach.” Her hands were balled into fists, and if looks could kill, Novik would certainly have been dust in the wind by now. “Does Sweet know?”

“I don’t need to ask him who of my group is going to be going on what mission.” Novik snapped back at her, “Until such time as I say he has command over you fully, I’m the one that has final say on what you do. Do you understand that?”

The air in the cafeteria was tense, and glancing toward James I could tell he wanted to bash the former coach and ex-Ranger in the face something fierce – and the fact that Lea’s hand was hovering over a rifle lain out on one of the tables didn’t exactly make things better. Thankfully I stood between the two, and with a hand on James’ shoulder and a tug on Lea’s shirt to take her attention from the rifle, I kept them from making things worse. Johnny was remaining oddly silent – and that left Chien… who I had assumed would be the last one to get involved, but we all got a surprise when he was the first one to speak on her behalf.

“Actually,” He began, taking a step forward and slipping his hands into his pockets, “correct me if I’m wrong, but none of us are in the goddamned military right now, are we? That means the only rank structure right now is the one that was established at this school. Following that little thought trail… would find us ending with the fact that neither her nor you have a rank here. You’re both civilians here, but she’s a volunteer with us. That puts her under the jurisdiction of our militia.” He smirked, “That in mind, I’m the highest ranked individual on this base other than Commandant Sweet himself – and as far as I’m concerned, she’s part of this team. If you want that to change, take it up with the Colonel. Otherwise… well…” There was a short pause before Chien scowled. “…you can fuck off.”

Needless to say, Lea, James, and I were stunned – both at the fact that he was so blatant in what he said, as well as the fact that he stood up for Christine at all. He had no intentions toward her, hardly even seemed interested in her, and yet here he was pulling this alpha male bullshit on the very guy that we all despised. Even Novik was speechless for a moment, but those sharp eyes of his lingered on Chien for a short time before cutting back to Christine. He said nothing, but a slow smirk came to his thin lips and he nodded a time or two to himself before stepping outside – a crooked grin crossing his features as he stepped out of sight.

When Chien finally turned back to face the rest of us, he saw the whole lot of us staring at him, and only one simple word left his lips: “Yes…?”

“Dude…” James started, “Where the fuck did that come from?”

“Yeah…” Lea added, “…never thought you’d be the one standing up for some chick you weren’t planning on trying to bed.” She squinted a little, “At least that better not be in your head… or I’m gonna have to rewire your brain.”

Chien blinked and took a step back then, raising his hands a bit. “Whoa… hey… chill…” He waved his hands a little, “I just didn’t want him getting the impression he could order us around; any of us.”

Christine smiled a little, but sighed shortly after. “I don’t think he’s going to just let this slide, Chien.” She shook her head slightly, “He’s probably on his way to the Commandant right now… and from how Sweet has been appeasing him so far, I think this is going to just be one more time that he gets his way.”

James scowled, “Whatever reason the Boss has for doing things like he is, I’m sure it’s a good one. He isn’t the type to let people walk all over him.”

“That’s true, James…” I said quietly, “…which makes it odd that he’s been doing the appeasement thing all this time.” Of course, ‘all this time’ amounted to just a little over a week, but even then, Sweet usually faced people head on… this roundabout method of his was new and different, and none of us had a read on it just yet. “I’m sure he has a good reason, but it’s anyone’s guess as to what that reason actually is.”

“Who knows…” Johnny finally spoke up, “…maybe he’s hoping Novik will screw up and cause some real trouble, and then he can get rid of him with a clean conscience.”

I quirked a brow at hearing that hypothesis, and thought about it for a moment. It was a decent theory and it would explain the general lack of backbone that Sweet had been showing toward Novik… but it was also, thus far, unable to be proven.

Minutes quickly passed by and soon enough we were back to our little bit of training, but it wasn’t long into it that we heard the door open again – and in walked Sophie. Most of us smiled happily when we saw her, though Johnny seemed to be down a bit. I chalked it up to the after-effects of withdrawal. It would probably take him a couple days to be back to his regular, happy, self. Those smiles of ours quickly faded when we saw the troubled look on Sophie’s normally happy face. When she looked at us and then glanced down, I’m pretty sure just about everyone knew she had come with some sort of bad news. Considering who had been there just moments before, we also knew just exactly what it pertained to.

Without waiting for a cue, Christine spoke. “I’m not going on the mission, am I?”

A quick look to Christine, and then a sad glance away, and Sophie spoke. “No. You’re not, Christine. I’m sorry.” She sighed before looking at all of us. “Nate tried to convince Novik that Christine should go to fill out the team a bit more, but the man wouldn’t hear it. As far as he’s concerned, Johnny going is more than enough. Apparently, he doesn’t want to ‘risk more of his people than he has to for a mission he doesn’t believe is necessary’.” She scowled a little, “He also said that he apparently wants you to be working with him training the guards, instead of the range duty that he mentioned to you earlier.”

Christine hung her head as she heard the news, and offered a simple “Yes ma’am…” in response. Chien’s fists clenched and James’ arms crossed in disapproval, but both knew that there was little that could be done to alter how things had gone.

“I can’t believe he’s letting this guy dictate who does what on our team. This is bullshit, and everyone in here knows it!” Chien snapped, and I swear he looked like he was close to hitting something. I could only imagine that he was being touchy about this because of what had happened last week. He still felt responsible for it.

“We know, Chien.” I said as I looked to him, “But in the end it isn’t our call. It’s Sweet’s. We just have to trust that he knows what he’s doing.”

“Yeah?” He scowled back at me, “Then he could have at least come and told us this himself, rather than have someone else do it.”

Now it was Sophie’s turn to speak up. “I’m here because I volunteered to tell you all, Chien. I knew you all would be upset with him, so I came without him having to ask me.”

With his last jab parried so effortlessly, Chien just looked away. He was obviously still angry about what was going on, but now had no specific target to direct his anger toward. Finally he sighed, and Sophie’s more melancholy attitude returned in place of the abrupt shift to irritation. Sucking in a breath, Christine looked to the rest of us and spoke.

“Well, I guess it’s up to you five then. You better all be careful.” She grinned slightly then. “If any of you die, I’m going to make sure I haunt you – and yes, me, being alive, will find a way to haunt your ghosts… because I’m determined.”

==X==X==X==

After the practice session was done, we all went out to have a little bit of relaxation time before we left. Lea and Christine went off together to do who knew what, Chien went to make sure that the SUV was loaded up with everything we thought that we might need, and James and I had decided to take a walk and talk for a bit. Nothing too serious at first, though we finally landed on the subject of Johnny as we got near the back area.

“I really wish Johnny wasn’t going with us, man.” James said as we walked.

“What?” I asked, looking to him, and then pausing for a second as I heard what sounded like a snap. A glance around revealed nothing though, so I paid no mind to it.

“I don’t want him going with us. He’ll slow us down, and we’ll have to be watching out for him the whole fucking time. It’ll be a pain in the ass having him along.”

“Well, then we might just have to take care of him while we’re out, huh?”

Another snapping noise, and this time James and I both looked around, but there was still nothing. Refocusing on our conversation, James spoke.

“We wouldn’t have to if he wasn’t coming with us.”

“You make it sound like he’ll get us all killed. From what Chien and Lea said, he’s good with a shotgun. What makes you think he’ll be detrimental?”

James was quiet for a moment, and then sighed. “Okay, so I don’t really think that… but I’d still rather him not go. He needs rest… hell, he just went through withdrawal, for fuck’s sake! Sending him into a combat situation can’t be the best idea, now can it?”

==X==X==X==

It was nearly five in the afternoon by the time that we left the base, and about the only one of us that actually seemed genuinely happy as we left was Lea – who was kicked back in the cargo area of the SUV, with the AR-15 leaning against her good shoulder and a big grin on her face. The rather extended kiss that she and Christine had shared before we left, I supposed, would have made just about anyone grin… as long as they were part of it. It just made the rest of us a bit jealous of the two of them. Well… it made James and I jealous of the two of them anyway, and only because the girls we wanted were with each other. Go figure the sort of luck required for that, will ya?

Back there with her were a couple thousand rounds of ammunition for the Ruger rifles and pistols, a few hundred rounds for the AR-15, a couple ammo boxes for the pistols, and a couple more ammo boxes for the shotguns. We were heading for a shopping center, and it could easily be expected that there would be more than a few zombies in the area. I was also starting to run the numbers in my head about how much ammunition we had versus the population of the surrounding area. We started with an ammunition supply of about thirty-two thousands rounds of ammunition – Perris had a population of roughly sixty-eight thousand at the last census, and that population had been increasing at the time. Top that off with Moreno Valley and its population of just over one-hundred-ninety-three thousand being basically next door to Perris, and that gave us a whopping two-hundred-sixty-one thousand zombies to deal with…

Not. Good.

If there really was one survivor for every thousand zombies, then there should be roughly two-hundred sixty-one survivors. If we cleared the area surrounding the base and constructed walls around the whole place, we could house that whole population and more. The problem would still be the sheer number of zombies though. One bullet for every eight zombies still left us with way more zombies than we could handle. If a horde really did surround the base, food would eventually run out, water would dry up, electricity would fail… and we’d all die from starvation, dehydration, or internal strife between the survivors. We needed to go out and get a lot more ammunition than we had. After Wal-Mart and our rescue operation, I intended to suggest to Sweet that we raid the police station – and after that, March Air Reserve Base. It probably wouldn’t have the same impressive cache of weapons that an active duty base would… but it had to have something.

“Hey Roy, something the matter?”

Blinking, I shook my head a bit. I’d been lost in my thoughts to the point that I hadn’t been paying attention to my outward appearance, and Johnny had taken notice.

“Yeah, I’m fine… just thinking about what our next moves should be.” I said quietly, “We need a lot more ammunition to do what we need to do. That, or come up with a few ways to wipe out a lot of zombies all at once without using bullets.”

“Couldn’t you just group them together and light them on fire?” Johnny asked.

For a moment, the only sound that could be heard was the Suburban’s mechanic machinations. The same idea could have been used at Sweet’s home when Sophie and the rest were rescued, save it would have had a likelihood of burning down the house they were all in. However, the strategy, if implemented properly, could actually work very well. Tilting my head slightly, I glanced in the rear view mirror at Johnny.

“Where would you suggest doing this?” I asked.

Johnny shrugged. “Probably that section of the 215 freeway that runs through Perris. After all, a long stretch of it seems like it’s pretty much sunk down into the ground with the city higher up along the sides – not to mention there’s a wall that runs along most of it to lessen the noise pollution for all the residential areas. You could fill the whole thing from just P.M.A. all the way down to the overpass next to Denny’s, and then light it up. They have an aversion to sources of flame, so if you light up the zombies at both ends first, they’ll just group closer and closer together as the fire spreads… and if they do the fire will spread even faster. A firestorm could sweep through the whole place and torch every zombie on the freeway.”

“Johnny… dude…” James began slowly, looking at the Tennessean that sat next to him, “…you’re a freakin’ genius!”

Johnny just laughed, “Nah, James, I’m not really. I just figure it would be the safest place. I mean, the only thing on the freeway that you risk losing is all those cars and whatever stuff is in them, not to mention the fuel that’s probably in their tanks, but if nothing else you can always have the cars searched and drained of fuel by scavving teams before you do it. Could also make a fire break by moving some of the cars, that way the fire won’t continue all the way down the freeway. Then you can torch the cars on purpose from the start, so the zombies won’t try and get through the wall of cars. They’d all be trapped on the freeway like trees during a California forest fire.”

Glancing over at Chien, I spoke. “We would need to figure out somewhere to store all that fuel. Think the bus barn would be able to?”

Chien thought for a moment. “Maybe. Not sure how much fuel is there right now though. Could nearly be full for all I know.” He shrugged a bit, “But if nothing else, we could just have the scavving teams take pickup trucks out and take the fuel tanks off the cars. Just have to cap them off somehow, and then we wouldn’t need to worry about putting the fuel in a new container. Just have to put the fuel tanks somewhere.”

I nodded. “Sounds like a good idea to me. We oughta put the idea to Sweet and see what he thinks about it. There’s an awful lot of parts in all those cars too.”

“Yeah, but some of those parts might be good even after that fireball, and it’s not like there aren’t plenty of dealerships and auto shops in California. If we need car parts, we can always go get them off brand new vehicles… or just get the new cars.”

I shrugged a little as we headed down Perris Boulevard. “Yeah, that’s true.”

It took only a few more moments for the shopping center that surrounded Wal-Mart to be easily visible to us, but there was something strange about it. Something seemed… off, somehow. I wasn’t exactly sure what it was until we drew closer. Rather than being filled to the brim with zombies like we had all been expecting, it seemed like the place was completely deserted. Driving into the parking lot for Wal-Mart, passing the Taco Bell, that suspicion one gained more precedence. The parking lot was empty. Plenty of cars were around, sure, but the zombies were nonexistent. The SUV slowing to a near crawl as I let off the gas and it idled forward, I looked to the others inside the vehicle.

“I’m not the only one seeing this right now, am I?” I asked, and silent headshakes were returned as the rest continued looking around the area. Not a soul, living or dead, was anywhere in sight. There should have been at least a couple hundred of them here, but there wasn’t even one single zombie. Of course, it was obvious that there had been zombies here at one point, there were corpses and pieces of corpses strewn out in various sections of the parking lot… but nothing that indicated that there were still any present.

Driving up to the front of the parking lot, near the front doors, I stopped and Chien hopped out of the front passenger seat, pistol in hand, and went up to the door that went directly into the little arcade at the front of the store. Looking through the glass for a moment, and even tapping on it a few times to see if he could attract anything, he soon turned back to us and shrugged before moving back to the SUV.

“There’s a few corpses on the ground…” He began as he shut the door, “…but I don’t see even a single zombie inside there. At the very least, there aren’t any near the front doors.”

The vehicle ran only a few more seconds before I turned the key back and pulled it from the ignition. “Well then, right here is as good a place as any to park. I can’t get any closer to the doors because of those pillars.” I nodded toward the little pole looking defenses. I had never understood why Wal-Mart would need those, but I supposed anything could happen. Our current situation was evidence enough for that.

Looking over his shoulder at the rest of the group, Chien spoke.

“Alright everyone, grab your weapons and ammunition. I want you all on your toes when we go in here. I didn’t see any zombies near the front, but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t any. For now we’ll leave the ammunition in the truck. If something goes wrong, we’ll come back out here and grab it – or if need be, we’ll get the hell out of here.” He paused then and reached down, grabbing up five radios and handing them out to everyone. “If the inside of this place is as abandoned as the outside seems to be, we’ll split up and fan out across the store to find whatever we can that might be useful, but remember to stay on your toes. Got it?”