noise. Call me at seven, I’ll know more then. Listen, you’re going to be okay. If you have to defend yourself, shoot them in the head, don’t mess around, there’s no law in the Zone.”
We didn’t exchange endearments. What we had was long gone, wasted. It had been real once, though. That was something, anyway. Not everyone gets even that.
Seven pee em was sundown. Ninety-five minutes from now. I scarfed down the sandwich and headed back downstairs.
New choices: drop the Maglite and batteries, the night vision goggles, cell phone charger, the CB radio. Loaded magazines to replace empties, and add three more magazines for the M-4, this time all full metal jacket which ought to be better for drilling through skulls. Add two magazines on the vest for the Glock, sticking with hollow points because at close range the extra knock-down could help.
My plan revolved around the idea that you needed either distance or a barrier to deal with infected. Safety glass was not an effective barrier, so if I wanted to travel I needed a vehicle that a bare-handed person could not claw their way into no matter how hard they tried. There were numerous military vehicles up to the job, and the department had a few specialized riot vehicles which would do, but they would certainly be in use and far from my current position.
In the civilian world the Motor Vehicle Code had visibility requirements and safety glass issues which made almost every private and commercial vehicle useless for my purposes. Except for at least one type: the ‘armored cars’ used to move money around. They were neither cars nor really armored, just trucks with a bit more superstructure framework, crash guards to let them survive attempts to disable them, and ballistic glass. An infected could beat his fists to pulp on them and never get through.
The movement of bulk money is always of interest to the police. I knew that about eight blocks from my home Lomas Money Services stored two trucks for over-flow work in this area; the building was unmarked because it is best not to give such information away, but I was hoping at least one was still there. The banks would have evacuated their vaults prior to the Zone being put in place, but it was quite possible they did it using ordinary trucks with police or military escorts to hide the nature of the cargo. During the Ike evacuation tens of millions of dollars were moved using hearses. No one thinks twice about police making a funeral escort.
Outside my front door I looked around carefully, but no movement, no signs of trouble. Maybe most were still laying up, like vampires. I wondered what they did in the dark. I wondered where I could get dynamite-this hole up in daylight thing could turn into a major weakness for them.
Eighty-five minutes left, I gimped west, sticking close to the buildings except where there were broken windows or open doors. Snipers weren’t the issue, nor deflected rounds following a hard surface, but being spotted. The infected didn’t seem terribly clever, but I did not have a broad range of experience; they might be holed up for the day, but that did not mean they wouldn’t be watching. I can’t out-run anyone.
Halfway there I heard a car, and stepped into the doorway of a secondhand clothes store; seconds later a metallic silver minivan came up the road doing forty. I didn’t see where the infected came from, he was just there in the road, he must have been hiding between a couple parked cars, maybe under one, a tall skinny black kid, teenager probably. The driver swerved, instinct most likely, swiped a sun-faded yellow S-10 pickup parked on the opposite side of the road, and lost it. It didn’t roll, but it swapped ends twice and banged against a telephone pole and a couple more parked cars. It stalled on the sidewalk, two tires flat and air bags deployed all around.
The infected poured out of a deli between the minivan and my position, at least thirty, and swarmed the van. I had my
We didn’t exchange endearments. What we had was long gone, wasted. It had been real once, though. That was something, anyway. Not everyone gets even that.
Seven pee em was sundown. Ninety-five minutes from now. I scarfed down the sandwich and headed back downstairs.
New choices: drop the Maglite and batteries, the night vision goggles, cell phone charger, the CB radio. Loaded magazines to replace empties, and add three more magazines for the M-4, this time all full metal jacket which ought to be better for drilling through skulls. Add two magazines on the vest for the Glock, sticking with hollow points because at close range the extra knock-down could help.
My plan revolved around the idea that you needed either distance or a barrier to deal with infected. Safety glass was not an effective barrier, so if I wanted to travel I needed a vehicle that a bare-handed person could not claw their way into no matter how hard they tried. There were numerous military vehicles up to the job, and the department had a few specialized riot vehicles which would do, but they would certainly be in use and far from my current position.
In the civilian world the Motor Vehicle Code had visibility requirements and safety glass issues which made almost every private and commercial vehicle useless for my purposes. Except for at least one type: the ‘armored cars’ used to move money around. They were neither cars nor really armored, just trucks with a bit more superstructure framework, crash guards to let them survive attempts to disable them, and ballistic glass. An infected could beat his fists to pulp on them and never get through.
The movement of bulk money is always of interest to the police. I knew that about eight blocks from my home Lomas Money Services stored two trucks for over-flow work in this area; the building was unmarked because it is best not to give such information away, but I was hoping at least one was still there. The banks would have evacuated their vaults prior to the Zone being put in place, but it was quite possible they did it using ordinary trucks with police or military escorts to hide the nature of the cargo. During the Ike evacuation tens of millions of dollars were moved using hearses. No one thinks twice about police making a funeral escort.
Outside my front door I looked around carefully, but no movement, no signs of trouble. Maybe most were still laying up, like vampires. I wondered what they did in the dark. I wondered where I could get dynamite-this hole up in daylight thing could turn into a major weakness for them.
Eighty-five minutes left, I gimped west, sticking close to the buildings except where there were broken windows or open doors. Snipers weren’t the issue, nor deflected rounds following a hard surface, but being spotted. The infected didn’t seem terribly clever, but I did not have a broad range of experience; they might be holed up for the day, but that did not mean they wouldn’t be watching. I can’t out-run anyone.
Halfway there I heard a car, and stepped into the doorway of a secondhand clothes store; seconds later a metallic silver minivan came up the road doing forty. I didn’t see where the infected came from, he was just there in the road, he must have been hiding between a couple parked cars, maybe under one, a tall skinny black kid, teenager probably. The driver swerved, instinct most likely, swiped a sun-faded yellow S-10 pickup parked on the opposite side of the road, and lost it. It didn’t roll, but it swapped ends twice and banged against a telephone pole and a couple more parked cars. It stalled on the sidewalk, two tires flat and air bags deployed all around.
The infected poured out of a deli between the minivan and my position, at least thirty, and swarmed the van. I had my
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