The Rise of Macon: A Zombie Novel (Macon Saga Book 2) (10 page)

Chapter 10

James lifted his head, taking a look at the round office
clock on the wall. An hour. An hour since Kyle was knocked out. James had made
another trip around the office, making sure it was safe and looking for
anything that would be useful to them. He found plenty, but nothing they could
carry now that they were on foot. During his check of the place, he'd spotted a
small hallway, which led to a large metal door at the end of the hallway; a
safe. He hadn't gone in, why would he?  He didn't know how to get into a safe. He'd
just have to wait for Kyle, maybe he'd have an idea. James sat down and put a
finger on Kyle's neck, still there. He leaned back against the cubicle wall and
wondered how long he should wait for Kyle to regain consciousness. He decided
to give him a little slap. Maybe that would do the trick.

He leaned up and gave Kyle a small smack across the face. Kyle
looked up, eyes wide, hand instinctively going for his berretta. James
immediately grabbed Kyle's arm to keep him from reaching the weapon and said
softly, "It's me Kyle, we're safe."

James let go of his arm as he saw Kyle get hold of himself
and look around. James gave it a few seconds before he said anything, allowing
his friend to get his bearings and, no doubt, allow his heart to fall back into
his chest. James finally spoke. "You were knocked out when you put the
truck into drive. Didn't make it out of the door jam in time. I got us inside
and dealt with a few diseased in here, but I think we're surrounded. Most of
them followed your diversion, but you can hear some outside."

Kyle looked up at him, his eyes tracking the gloom of the
office. "You saved my life, but more than that, that's the most I've heard
you talk in quite some time."

Kyle's response made James give a small, deep throated
laugh. "It needed to be said, most things don't."

"True enough," said Kyle as he put his hand to
his head. Sore. He felt around his head. Tender, but he didn't find any blood.
His chest hurt and he placed a hand on his left side. Kyle sucked air and
quickly took his hand off. He'd either broken or bruised one or more of his
ribs. It hurt, but he'd survive. He'd been lucky in more ways than one. A head
injury could be just as deadly as the diseased. He looked back at James, his
emotionless face staring back at him. He shook his head slightly, feeling for
pain and grunted to himself. He was okay. "Anything else?"

"I found the safe, but it looks locked."

Kyle nodded. "Let's see, shall we?"

James got to his feet in one swift move, and reached a hand
down to Kyle, who wasn't up to moving that fast yet. Kyle took the hand and
allowed himself to be pulled up, his bruised rib immediately letting itself be
known. Kyle took longer than he would have liked sucking air in, but finally
got it under control. He checked his weapons and stretched a little, trying to
loosen up a bit. He took inventory of the rest of his body, hoping he didn't
have any more injuries, and then reached for his rifle.

James led the way through the cubicle filled office, with
Kyle following. Kyle couldn't help but notice the blood stains on the floor. As
they walked past an aisle, Kyle saw a pile of bodies, lying underneath a
blanket, which James had no doubt place on top. Kyle walked on, wondering at how
many diseased James killed.

"Some of these were already dead when I came in,"
said James, as he walked past the aisle. Kyle didn't say anything. He was in
awe of the fierce guy in front of him. He felt more than grateful for what
James had done, and by himself, all the while moving him inside.

"This hallway here," said James as he came to an
entrance that led down a white painted corridor. Kyle took a look down the
narrow space and easily saw the gray safe sporting a wagon wheel looking device
on the outside. Kyle walked into the corridor, James following a stop behind. Kyle
stopped a few feet from the safe and cursed himself for not thinking about a
safe. How he could have planned for a safe, he wasn't sure, but they needed the
guns and ammunition.

On a whim, Kyle grabbed the wagon wheel device on the front
of the antiquated safe and it whirled easily in his hands. He decided to give
it a little pull and see what happened. Bad idea. He almost bent over in pain,
as pulling the door seemed to pull the rib from his chest. He exhaled a loud
breath and felt James reach next to him and grab the wheel. Kyle let go, his
pride giving way, and moved to the side so James could pull more easily.

It moved.

"Well, problem solved," said Kyle, happy that
something was going their way for once.

James pulled harder on the door and it began to move slowly.
As the door opened farther, a hand holding a gun popped out and a warning
followed. "Get back, I got a gun and I'll shoot."

Kyle could see, through the crack, half of a woman pointing
a gun exactly where he was standing. Kyle took a moment and looked at James, who
raised an eyebrow as if to ask if he could take care of this. James responded
without any hint he received the request, but, in a flash, grabbed the barrel
of the protruding gun and flipped it backwards. The woman inside yelled in pain
and quickly let go of the weapon, withdrawing her arm back inside.

"Stay back, I've got another one in here and I'll
shoot if you come in."

Kyle had taken the moment to move away from the crack in
the door, no need to tempt her. "Don't shoot, we're not here to hurt you. We
just need some guns to survive out there."

"I know what you want mister, and you're not going to
get it from me. You probably are one of those things anyways.

"Mister?" Kyle whispered to James, who gave a
small smile. He spoke louder. "Ma'am, we're not here to jump you, but
things have gotten out of hand outside this building and we need those guns. If
it helps, I'm former army and I'll gladly leave an IOU."

"Very funny, army man. I know what's going on outside.
Why do you think I'm in here?  My shipmates all got sick and started attacking
each other and so I slipped in here."

Kyle nodded."Good thinking. We both worked at a
Nuclear power plant down the road and when things went south, we holed up at
Fort Macon to keep us safe."

"Fort Macon? The museum?"

"A museum with high walls and a good old fashioned
moat."

"Good thinking yourself."

"Thanks."

"Doesn't mean I trust you," the woman said.

"You can keep us covered the whole time, we just need
some ammunition and maybe a few rifles if you got them. Have you considered
what you're going to do? How you're going to get out of here? You can come with
us. There are plenty of woman inside the fort."

The woman didn't answer. Kyle and James looked at each
other, waiting for a decision from the woman. From Kyle's point of view, the
woman didn't have a lot of choices. She could stay here, but for how long?

"Okay, you can come in, but I'll be keeping you
covered the whole time. And no funny business!"

Kyle smiled and James pulled the heavy door the rest of the
way open. Kyle put his hands up in the air, thinking it might help disarm the
woman. He didn't want to get shot on accident.

Kyle looked in the safe, no bigger than a walk in closet. His
breath was drawn from his lungs and it didn't have anything to do with his
busted rib. A slim woman of about twenty five, with the brightest green eyes
he'd ever seen, stood looking back at him from a face that made porcelain seem dim.
She had dark red hair, which was pulled tightly into a pony tail, and she wore
a dark blue Coast Guard uniform, with a small name patch that read, Jones. Kyle
stopped himself from staring and noticed how confident she seemed now, both in
her situation and with the handgun in her hands.

"Hello Petty Officer Jones, I'm Kyle and this is
James," said Kyle as his friend walked around the safe door. Kyle noticed
her eyes widen when she saw James, and knew exactly what she was experiencing. James
seemed a little intimidating at the best of times. Now with the emergency
lighting throwing red shadows all over the place, he looked like a minion from the
dark side.

"Nice to meet you, Apollo Creed," she said
without a smile. Kyle gave a laugh, which caused her to turn her head a little
in question. Kyle approved of any girl who liked Rocky. He liked her, now he
just needed her to stop pointing a gun at him. "You can take two hand guns
and some rounds for them."

Kyle hadn't expected that. "Petty Officer Jones, what
will it take for you to trust us? We're not here to hurt you."

The woman looked from Kyle to James, who had taken a step
inside the armory, seemingly filling it with his presence. Kyle took the
opportunity and, quicker that she could react, disarmed her in a smooth move. He'd
never done the move outside of practice but it worked better than he thought it
would. He took the gun and stepped back from the woman, whose piercing eyes
widened in fear at the turnabout of her fortunes.

Kyle raised the gun and looked at it. Something felt wrong.
He smiled when he noticed the empty magazine well. He looked around the small
armory, ignoring the frightened woman, and found a large stack of loaded
magazines sitting on one of the shelves. He reached over, grabbed one and
inserted it into the handgun. He pulled the slide back and let it go forward,
placing a round in the barrel. He looked back at the woman, who had moved as
far away from the two men as she could. Kyle turned the weapon around in his
hand and handed it back to her.

Petty Officer Jones looked at the offered weapon and then
back to Kyle who said, "We're not here to hurt you, but we need more than
just two handguns to keep our people alive. We can be gone in ten minutes if
you want."

Petty Officer Jones took the handgun from Kyle, who
sincerely hoped he'd made the right decision. She turned the weapon around for
a minute and pointed it at Kyle. James gave indication he was about to move,
but Kyle held up a hand to him. The woman kept the poise for what seemed to
Kyle like a lifetime, then lowered the weapon and put it in the back of her
pants.

"My name is Grace. There are tactical bags in the
corner that you can use."

***

Kyle tried not to grunt as Grace worked the bandage around
his ribs, though he thought she might be enjoying his pain. Maybe he was wrong.

"You can cry if you need too," she said, looking
at him with innocent eyes.

He wasn't wrong.

"I'll be fine thanks," he said, trying to show
that the rib didn't bother him anymore. Juvenile, but he couldn't help it.

"So now, you and black Hercules are shopping for
bullets, even though there are thousands and thousands of diseased on this island.

"His name is James and yes, but I hope we won't have
to use them. I'd like to look at it like insurance, until we can figure out
what's going on in the bigger world or if there's a world left at all. We have
a radio but haven't had much luck getting responses."

"And what if there is no help out there? What if this
really is the end of the world?"

Kyle looked at her, her eyes focused on tying off the
bandage around his chest. She seemed mighty aloof about the situation, as if
this were a philosophical discussion and not based in reality. He wondered if
she had any family.Friends? Boyfriends? He wanted to ask all these questions
and was surprised at that. It had been a long time since he was interested in a
girl and he picked a bad time to start something new.

"We'll survive. And you?"

"I'll do more than survive, Kyle. Survival isn't
enough. Aim higher."

The comment annoyed Kyle. High talk from someone stuck in an
armory for three days. Was she being funny? He was weighting his response when
James appeared in the doorway. Kyle turned to him instead. "How's it
looking?"

"We have a bag full of Colt 45s, and two bags of ammo
for them," James said, face expressionless. "Also five tactical
12-gauge shot guns with a few hundred rounds for them. No rifles. The three
bags weight about 75 pounds each, that'll be all we can carry anyways".

"Of course we don't have rifles. We're the Coast
Guard, not some infantry brigade. The shotguns are for boarding ships,"
she said, putting the medical things away. She waved her hand to Kyle,
indicating that he could put his shirt back on and walked right up to James. She
took one of his hands in hers and looked up at him. "James, I want to
thank you for taking care of my friends. I know they were sick and I wasn't
sure I could have done it."

James looked down at the petite woman, gave her hand a
squeeze and watched her walk out. He looked back up and saw Kyle giving him an
irritated look. For the second time in as many days, James started laughing.

"I don't see what's so funny?" Kyle said tucking
his shirt in, then walked out of the room.

More infuriating than that, James didn't say a word about
it, just laughed a little more and fell in behind him. Kyle knew why James was
laughing, he was just irritated that James recognized it. He was glad Abe or
Patrick wasn't there to add on. He needed to get his head on straight, which
they did when he heard the sound of the diseased growling at the front doors. James
had piled some of the moveable walls against the doors, then covered the
remaining space over, so the diseased couldn't see inside.

"We can't go out the front," Kyle said thinking
out loud. "The windows are an option, but they'd slow us down pretty bad. The
back it is then. But how?  They’re surrounding the whole building." Kyle
looked back over the large room, full of cubicle walls, then turned to James.
"We have to spend the night here. We need to plan tonight and I don't want
to do this in the dark." He stopped talking as he looked again at the
movable cubicle walls. He turned to James and smiled."James, do you like
mazes?"