drewkitty

Arturo saluted as we came in through the gate. We didn't stop. We rolled directly into the loading dock of C building.

i keyed the radio and called out, "Echo 18, convoy arriving with casualties."

A woman came running out the doors wheeling a suitcase behind her with a stricken look on her face. A guard followed, carrying two tarps under his arm and wearing an oversize backpack. She dropped the suitcase and rushed forward, putting on a pair of nitrile gloves from her pants pocket.

The guard started spreading out the red and yellow tarps. He opened the suitcase next to the red tarp and the backpack next to the yellow tarp.

The shuttle bus was already unloading, in order of medical priority. That meant red tarp.

I longed to rush over and help. I had the skills. But that was not the assignment.

"Echo 18. drivers maintain your vehicles and be ready to report fuel status. After casualties are unloaded, guards reload, water up, take five."

A frazzled tall woman wearing the remnants of a chic business suit was wearing a vest labeled REGISTRATION and greeting each employee. She was duly followed by a heavily armed guard whose job it was to keep her safe, in the event that the convoy had picked up someone we shouldn't have.

A handful of trained employees were trickling over to help our vet triage, stabilize and start to treat the wounded. Other untrained employees were helping unload baggage and helping greet apparently uninjured employees, giving them places to sit and reassuring them.

I checked our vehicles. Hate Truck, half tank. Shuttle bus, one third tank. Pickup truck, half tank. I looked again at the hitch. The hitch. Fuck, I'm an idiot.

I checked my watch and inspected my people. We'd taken fire, no hits, and given it back, some hits. No injuries. At least not on the outside.

"Mount up!" I called. A rescued employee looked askance at the line of guards variously addressing or squatting in the ditch dug in what had been the neatly manicured grass two weeks ago.

Before the Firecracker. Before Hell.

Piss break over, we mounted up.

I boarded the shuttle bus. The driver was pale and shaking his body but his hands were steady.

"Echo 18 convoy departing," I called on radio as I made the 'roll out' motion with my hand.

No need to coordinate the destinations. We would go back and pick up where we left off, we'd only left because the vehicles were full.

But I'd seen something on the way in, that had stuck in my mind, and could act on as we returned.

The dead car was pushed out of our way at the gate and pushed back behind us. Arturo saluted again, rifle handy.

We were past the frantic evacuation phase. Everyone who could leave in a car, had already left. But the sides of the roads were jammed with abandoned vehicles. No towing enforcement. Not this week.

People crossed the street without looking and without caring. Power was down, traffic signals as well, and we matter of factly drove through controlled intersections, insisting on a right of way that legally we did not have. But we had superior firepower and that would serve.

We rarely saw police or CHP, and when we did, they ignored us. One police car was full of LCD TV sets in the back. We ignored them in return.

"Pull in," I radioed as the destination came into view. A franchise familiar to anyone who has ever had to move.

The front doors had been smashed and then unlocked from the outside. The parking lot was half empty of vehicles. The store was trashed, aisles askew and looted.

That was OK. I dismounted.

"Boss, what are we doing?" Brooke asked as she dismounted the Hate Truck, rifle in hand.

"Sweeping the building," I replied. We did. No one found.

I went behind the counter and checked the pegboard hangings for the parts that were necessary. Ball hitch, pin, adapter. I took each, laid them on the desk, took a digital camera photo. Scribbled a note, took a picture of it, tucked it in the register.

By then George was already looking at the trailers remaining in the lot. He pointed to one, a 5' by 8'. I grabbed an agency three part form from the pile spilled in the manager's office and wrote myself a receipt. No mileage, it's a trailer. Unit ID. Borrower. Under form of payment I wrote, [CLIENT] Purchase Order and the word SALE. One copy in the register, one copy in the tow vehicle, one copy on me to turn in to the Client's Finance Department with the stack of other paperwork no one had looked at.

Or perhaps would ever look at.

Five minutes later, I had the hitch connected to the truck. Five minutes after that, we hooked up the trailer to the truck. A brief brake check, and we rolled out.

As we pulled up, I heard someone shout "GO AWAY!" and rack a pump action shotgun. Brooke turned in her half ring hatch cut out of the roof of the Hate Truck.

I keyed the PA. "[CLIENT] Security! Mr. Pappas? David Pappas?"

"What?" the same voice shouted.

I dismounted, clipboard in hand. My rifle was still in the bus and my pistol holstered - but if gunfire was necessary, Brooke and George had my ass covered.

"Mr. Pappas, [CLIENT] Security, we're here to offer you a ride to work."

The man behind the shotgun had a patchy beard, a bad case of sunburn, and a thousand yard stare on his face. He turned back over his shoulder.

"Helen?" he called. According to the personnel data sheet I had on my clipboard, his wife.

"Yes, dear?"

"Time to go, we're packing out."

As they loaded their personal effects, I grabbed a blue numbered Ikea bag and caught his attention.

"Salvage will be credited to you by the Client."

He nodded abstractly and I went in for the kill. First priority, bathrooms. Medicine cabinets, drawers, supplies generally. Towels and sheets which were getting cut up for bandages and dressings almost as fast as we could obtain them.

Another team was working the kitchen. All food. We had plenty of utensils and dishes and crap. The one appliance we bothered to steal was the microwave. Failure to plan is a plan to fail.

Once I finished the bathrooms, I went back to the bedrooms. Quick, quick, ignore the sex toys and hair care products, but make sure to get any weapons or ammunition. Then one double-check sweep of the living room and family room. Ignored most of what a burglar would grab. At one house last run, I'd delayed us an extra five minutes to load out an actual honest to god encyclopedia set. Later, it would become a pivotal feature of the site's elementary school.

The garage gave up its hand and power tools, its motor oil, and any gas cans and jacks. We worked fast - by the time the Pappas couple had finished their baggage, the interior of their house looked like a debris field.

We rolled out. I triaged Mr. Pappas. Where was he when the nukes went off? Had he been blinded? For how long? Where had he slept that night? Had he thrown up? How long after?

He'd had a touch of nausea but had not thrown up. He had seen the flash and been blinded for two hours, but his sight had come back. He'd had the presence of mind to duck to the curb when he could see the bones of his hands through his hands. So he'd probably taken under a hundred sieverts. Enough to quintuple his cancer risk and reduce his lifespan, but not enough to doom him to the "threw up - now I'm better - now I'm worse - now I'm dead" cycle that some of our alleged survivors were in.

He clung to his shotgun. That was OK. He would be gently separated from it during the Registration process back at campus - or issued a permit and recruited for the corporate militia.

Then I turned to his wife and started to ask the same questions, unnecessarily. She'd been home and was fine.

By then we reached the next house.

It was a burned out shell. I noted the time and took three digital camera photos for the internal damage assessment Web site. Then I took two more photos of the untouched truck parked in front. If it matched our records, we would come back for it later.

Another house, another employee. He was ragged and wide-eyed and his first request was for water, which we provided. He had to be helped to start searching his house for personal effects. I started a timer. Twenty minutes he had, to sift the ruins of a life in the hopes of starting a new one. In the meantime we looted bathroom, kitchen, garage ... you get the drift.

Thanks to the trailer, we were not running out of room this time. Only three employees rescued, however, and the sun in the sky was getting low.

I decided we would do one more address.

As we rolled up, I realized to my horror that I should have read ahead. "1760 Susan Court, #16, #33, #52, #64 ..."

It was an apartment complex. And we had almost numbers thirty employee addresses in this complex, inexpensive and convenient to work.

This is what happens when you have no time to plan. This complex should have been a separate operation, carefully set up with a floor plan and overhead satellite photos ... but there was no time for that.

To my amazement, an utterly normal sight - a VTA bus with its doors open in front of the complex. But even from here I could see that the fare box had been pulled.

I tapped our shuttle bus driver on the shoulder. "Go check the VTA bus. See if it's driveable."

He shook but nodded, and went to go check it.

"Brooke, George, give me a perimeter. Use the employees as lookouts. Samir with me."

Samir was steadfast in his refusal to carry a firearm. But he carried a baton and was willing to use it. And two people are much more credible than one. I retrieved my rifle and slung it, however.

I went to Unit #1 intending to brace the manager, whose apartment was next to the office.

Samir vomited.

Without bothering with a glove, I reached down and clipped the keys off the dead man's belt, presumably the manager. The flies had been at his brain already.

I handed them to Samir.

"Unit #16 first, figure out which one is the master key."

I held my rifle at low ready. As Samir tried keys, I knocked.

"[Client] Security, Ms. Wainwright?"

Samir found a key and we entered.

Ms. Wainwright was dead. The intruders had entered through the balcony. They had taken their time.

No time or carrying capacity for looting.

Samir and I made it a drill. About half the units were empty. We left no notes, not this time.

The units that were full, were defended by occupants, at least some of whom were employees or dependents - but no time to sort them out.

"Boss, we got vultures," called Brooke.

That meant a body of armed men hovering some distance away, not in contact but watching us. They would swoop in on whatever we left behind.

"Copy, is the VTA bus driveable?" I'd heard the engine start in the unnatural silence of a shattered city.

"Wait one." The engine revved. The shuttle bus driver was rocking it backwards and forwards, testing the transmission.

"Affirm."

"Fuel status?"

"Half tank."

"We're taking everyone."

I returned to the Hate Truck and grabbed the PA mike.

"May I have your attention. [CLIENT] Security is here to evacuate our employees and dependents to safety. Please come out right now with what you can carry and board the buses."

Some of the vultures were moving closer. Brooke muzzled them. They stopped, shuffled their feet and spread their hands out.

"Peace, chica," one said mockingly, his hand concealed behind his back.

Careful, friend, that's how you get shot.

I realized I had said that over the PA when he broke and ran, and not before.

Samir and I made the unit loop again. They saw us in motion, saw the buses, saw the hope of an escape, and took it.

This would not be a healthy place to be after dark. The looters had been kept from totally wrecking the place by the fear of certain units still being occupied. Now that we were removing the occupants, we were making their thievery easier.

I tossed the clipboard into the shuttle bus. Fuck it. We would sort through this load after we got back to the site.

Without the VTA bus, we'd have had to have people hanging off every possible surface and sitting on roofs and hoods. With it, we were able to carry everyone and a selection of effects.

A police car cruised by with four police officers in it, all heavily armed. They kept rolling, eyes front. But the vultures moved back some more anyway.

Employees knew each other and helped each other. They'd been both neighbors and co-workers; this helped a lot. I let them self organize.

Someone wanted to take their car. I said OK. I wondered to myself why they hadn't left earlier, but that was on them.

We were well into dusk when the convoy was ready to roll.

"MOLOTOV!" Brooke shouted and opened fire. Her target fell in the middle of a throw; the glass bottle full of flammable liquid lobbed a weak ten feet instead of ten yards ... into the complex.

I brought my rifle up to point, saw another man holding a bottle, and triple tapped him.

The liquor bottle shattered as he fell, dead before he hit the ground.

Sorry, not taking any chances.

The vultures retreated further, muttering and cat calling, leaving two dead behind them.

We rolled. The VTA bus display was now lit and read "OUT OF SERVICE"

As soon as we were well clear, I reloaded with a fresh magazine and tucked the short mag back into a pouch.

The fares of the Client employees aboard the bus had been duly paid, in the only coin that mattered.

We would have to give it back - a County bus was a bridge too far - but I wanted to see how many lives we could save with it first.