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GWOT I - Self Storage Stupidity
GWOT I - Self Storage Stupidity
I'll be honest here in a way that I don't want to be honest anywhere else.
I don't remember a lot of what I did during that first month.
I have some fragmentary notes. Sometimes, my most trusted subordinates tell me a story. It is generally deeply fucking scary.
Sometimes other people tell me a story. I assume they are lying.
I do remember that somewhere in the middle there, in between welding the peacetime security force into something that could hold a perimeter and fight back, getting a hard core posse together to go rescue Employees and steal food, keeping the corporate assholes in the rear with the gear from backstabbing me (literally!), and actually doing that fighting and rescuing and looting and political intrigues ...
I did two convoys to go get stuff that was neither rescuing Employees nor procuring food. The one to the Company offices to go get the Company's stuff was anticlimactic. We needed laborers to carry stuff down the stairwell, and we left some furniture behind, but we got what we needed with little ammo expended and no friendly casualties.
The second convoy was bad.
###
Imagine, if you will, a maze of metal corridors and roll-up doors.
Now add trash, litter, debris, dung and on occasion, stuff spilled into the corridor.
Now sprinkle liberally (pun intended) with hurt, ill, dying, pre-Firecracker homeless, post-Firecracker homeless, drugged out or even OD'd junkies, the drunk and those who can't get a drink, and junkies lacking drugs who are desperate for a fix. Give them all weapons. Some of those, firearms.
This was just not working. I told the Employee so.
"I. Want. My. Stuff." the Employee asserted. And he had pull. The Site Location Executive, or SLE, had said, "He's critical. Give him half a day of your effort and see what can be done."
What could be done is jack shit. We'd already let the bodies hit the floor to get to this point. I had wounded of our own now, and we were going from Yellow to Red on ammo.
I thought about it. My duty and my desires conflicted.
Then I saw clearly now how they could be combined.
"Hate Truck to me," I ordered on the tac net. Then I tripped the Employee, fell on top of him, racked his arms and handcuffed him behind his back. I ignored his protests as I took away his holstered pistol and passed it and his ammo to a guard.
The Hate Truck pulled up, blipping its siren. There was fresh splashed red and black on the front bumper which I ignored.
"Protect this man!" I ordered. They bundled him into the back, with slightly wounded who could still fight on either side of him.
We would make one more try at it.
###
"Bolt cutters," I ordered, and Sharon cut the lock.
The roll-up door did that roll up thing.
Behind it.
Cardboard boxes.
Jesus fucking Christ. Lord have mercy. Christ have mercy.
I recognized the boxes at first glance, too. Heavy cardboard boxes, taller than they are wide, and long.
Comic book collector's boxes.
I didn't want to explain what we had fought for. What we might have had our people killed for. And ... there is no statute of limitations on murder, so yeah. That.
I checked a few at random.
John fired several rapid single shots down the corridor. It might have been two bursts. I have no idea.
Yup, comic books.
Then I had an idea.
"Sharon, wand the boxes."
"What boss?"
"Your metal detector wand. Wand the boxes."
"Oh!" she said, enlightened. She still carried the Site-issued small metal detector wand - useless I would have sworn - in a holster on her waist.
The seventh box was pay dirt.
It was heavier than it should have been.
There were a few Punisher comics within.
There was other stuff too. Stuff well worth our time, and the casualties, to go and get.
"Boss, we gotta go! I mean, we. Gotta. Go!"
And he didn't mean to the bathroom. We'd all pissed ourselves dry already and didn't care.
I traded with John. I also laid down suppressive fire.
This freed him and Sharon to triage the boxes down to the 'interesting' ones. Just four of those, and one heavy long Pelican case that screamed its contents to anyone who saw it.
Those ended up on the ordinary grocery store cart we'd dragged with us. No use trying for the storage carts, and those are blocked by bodies anyway.
We started taking fire.
Zing. Zip. Ping.
Well, more fire.
I threw a flash-bang down the corridor. I'd been saving it for a special occasion. This was the time.
And no, we could not use the elevator.
We took the stairs. Flung the cart down the stairs and followed it. Picked the shit up, put it in the cart, shoved it down the stairs again.
By the fourth iteration, the tattered cardboard no longer hid the metal parts within.
Someone stood in the door of the first floor landing.
We ran her over with the cart.
I didn't look to see how badly she was hurt. We didn't care.
The Hate Truck bleeped its siren again. The volume of fire, ours and theirs, intensified.
John clapped a hand to the side of his head.
"Fuck fuck fuck!" he swore as his hand came away red.
Sharon grabbed him by the shirt collar and dragged him forward, screaming in his face, "You're still alive, fuck you, move those boxes!"
I didn't want to cross her either. So the three of us and the boxes and the Pelican case ended up in the back bed of the Hate Truck and we rolled.
Behind us, wisps of flame were starting to show from the upper windows and vents. Maybe my flash-bang. Maybe sparks from ricochets. Maybe angry ex-tenants who had thrown Molotov cocktails at us.
I wasn't going back with a fire extinguisher. Or a fire engine. Or a fire department, with lethal cover from a platoon of fully armed and armored military police. That building was burning to the ground and fuck all we could do about it. The building itself was steel and concrete, but the contents were comic books and cardboard and furniture and what smelled a lot like burnt pork.
Sharon laid down a burst to our rear. I slapped John's hand away from his head, got out a pressure dressing, and applied direct pressure to both sides of what had been his left earlobe. Lucky son of a bitch. Only luckier head injury is not being hit at all. You can still bleed out, so you still need direct pressure.
The column of smoke rose behind us, nice and black and thick. Even if the fire department responded, they couldn't establish a water supply with the mains impaired. They would be lucky to keep it from spreading to other buildings.
FIDO.
Not a dog. An acronym.
Fuck It Drive On.
###
Back at Site, the Employee was still furious, until he saw the Pelican case and the boxes. Then he was even more furious.
"Fuck that shit. I wanted the comics!"
I blinked at him.
Sharon grabbed him by the head, still handcuffed, and dragged him over to look at John's bandaged ear.
"You dumb shit!" she screamed. "You asshole! I don't care if that's a first edition of Action Comix Number One with the misprint! Are you going to buy John a new ear? Look around you, you fucking fool, this is not the fucking Golden Age! We bled to get this shit, and if all that had been in there was paper, I'd have fucking capped your ass and left you there! These guns saved your life, and they're going to save all our lives again and again and again!"
Some separation was achieved. Sharon was passed off as temporarily overwrought. The Employee - unharmed except for some bruises on his wrists - was decuffed and dismissed. John was walked to the Infirmary. I documented the firearms, except the Pelican case.
That I walked, directly and personally, up to H5.
My observer heard the hatch open.
"Boss?"
I thunked the case down in front of him.
"If this leaves H5 rooftop I will shoot and kill everyone who even touched it."
He opened the case.
We both took a moment, despite the fragrant odor of blood and piss coming from me, to admire the contents.
The observer nodded. Checked chamber. Loaded it. Checked the sights. And started scanning our perimeter with it.
That one item was worth a lot of lives.
I'll be honest here in a way that I don't want to be honest anywhere else.
I don't remember a lot of what I did during that first month.
I have some fragmentary notes. Sometimes, my most trusted subordinates tell me a story. It is generally deeply fucking scary.
Sometimes other people tell me a story. I assume they are lying.
I do remember that somewhere in the middle there, in between welding the peacetime security force into something that could hold a perimeter and fight back, getting a hard core posse together to go rescue Employees and steal food, keeping the corporate assholes in the rear with the gear from backstabbing me (literally!), and actually doing that fighting and rescuing and looting and political intrigues ...
I did two convoys to go get stuff that was neither rescuing Employees nor procuring food. The one to the Company offices to go get the Company's stuff was anticlimactic. We needed laborers to carry stuff down the stairwell, and we left some furniture behind, but we got what we needed with little ammo expended and no friendly casualties.
The second convoy was bad.
###
Imagine, if you will, a maze of metal corridors and roll-up doors.
Now add trash, litter, debris, dung and on occasion, stuff spilled into the corridor.
Now sprinkle liberally (pun intended) with hurt, ill, dying, pre-Firecracker homeless, post-Firecracker homeless, drugged out or even OD'd junkies, the drunk and those who can't get a drink, and junkies lacking drugs who are desperate for a fix. Give them all weapons. Some of those, firearms.
This was just not working. I told the Employee so.
"I. Want. My. Stuff." the Employee asserted. And he had pull. The Site Location Executive, or SLE, had said, "He's critical. Give him half a day of your effort and see what can be done."
What could be done is jack shit. We'd already let the bodies hit the floor to get to this point. I had wounded of our own now, and we were going from Yellow to Red on ammo.
I thought about it. My duty and my desires conflicted.
Then I saw clearly now how they could be combined.
"Hate Truck to me," I ordered on the tac net. Then I tripped the Employee, fell on top of him, racked his arms and handcuffed him behind his back. I ignored his protests as I took away his holstered pistol and passed it and his ammo to a guard.
The Hate Truck pulled up, blipping its siren. There was fresh splashed red and black on the front bumper which I ignored.
"Protect this man!" I ordered. They bundled him into the back, with slightly wounded who could still fight on either side of him.
We would make one more try at it.
###
"Bolt cutters," I ordered, and Sharon cut the lock.
The roll-up door did that roll up thing.
Behind it.
Cardboard boxes.
Jesus fucking Christ. Lord have mercy. Christ have mercy.
I recognized the boxes at first glance, too. Heavy cardboard boxes, taller than they are wide, and long.
Comic book collector's boxes.
I didn't want to explain what we had fought for. What we might have had our people killed for. And ... there is no statute of limitations on murder, so yeah. That.
I checked a few at random.
John fired several rapid single shots down the corridor. It might have been two bursts. I have no idea.
Yup, comic books.
Then I had an idea.
"Sharon, wand the boxes."
"What boss?"
"Your metal detector wand. Wand the boxes."
"Oh!" she said, enlightened. She still carried the Site-issued small metal detector wand - useless I would have sworn - in a holster on her waist.
The seventh box was pay dirt.
It was heavier than it should have been.
There were a few Punisher comics within.
There was other stuff too. Stuff well worth our time, and the casualties, to go and get.
"Boss, we gotta go! I mean, we. Gotta. Go!"
And he didn't mean to the bathroom. We'd all pissed ourselves dry already and didn't care.
I traded with John. I also laid down suppressive fire.
This freed him and Sharon to triage the boxes down to the 'interesting' ones. Just four of those, and one heavy long Pelican case that screamed its contents to anyone who saw it.
Those ended up on the ordinary grocery store cart we'd dragged with us. No use trying for the storage carts, and those are blocked by bodies anyway.
We started taking fire.
Zing. Zip. Ping.
Well, more fire.
I threw a flash-bang down the corridor. I'd been saving it for a special occasion. This was the time.
And no, we could not use the elevator.
We took the stairs. Flung the cart down the stairs and followed it. Picked the shit up, put it in the cart, shoved it down the stairs again.
By the fourth iteration, the tattered cardboard no longer hid the metal parts within.
Someone stood in the door of the first floor landing.
We ran her over with the cart.
I didn't look to see how badly she was hurt. We didn't care.
The Hate Truck bleeped its siren again. The volume of fire, ours and theirs, intensified.
John clapped a hand to the side of his head.
"Fuck fuck fuck!" he swore as his hand came away red.
Sharon grabbed him by the shirt collar and dragged him forward, screaming in his face, "You're still alive, fuck you, move those boxes!"
I didn't want to cross her either. So the three of us and the boxes and the Pelican case ended up in the back bed of the Hate Truck and we rolled.
Behind us, wisps of flame were starting to show from the upper windows and vents. Maybe my flash-bang. Maybe sparks from ricochets. Maybe angry ex-tenants who had thrown Molotov cocktails at us.
I wasn't going back with a fire extinguisher. Or a fire engine. Or a fire department, with lethal cover from a platoon of fully armed and armored military police. That building was burning to the ground and fuck all we could do about it. The building itself was steel and concrete, but the contents were comic books and cardboard and furniture and what smelled a lot like burnt pork.
Sharon laid down a burst to our rear. I slapped John's hand away from his head, got out a pressure dressing, and applied direct pressure to both sides of what had been his left earlobe. Lucky son of a bitch. Only luckier head injury is not being hit at all. You can still bleed out, so you still need direct pressure.
The column of smoke rose behind us, nice and black and thick. Even if the fire department responded, they couldn't establish a water supply with the mains impaired. They would be lucky to keep it from spreading to other buildings.
FIDO.
Not a dog. An acronym.
Fuck It Drive On.
###
Back at Site, the Employee was still furious, until he saw the Pelican case and the boxes. Then he was even more furious.
"Fuck that shit. I wanted the comics!"
I blinked at him.
Sharon grabbed him by the head, still handcuffed, and dragged him over to look at John's bandaged ear.
"You dumb shit!" she screamed. "You asshole! I don't care if that's a first edition of Action Comix Number One with the misprint! Are you going to buy John a new ear? Look around you, you fucking fool, this is not the fucking Golden Age! We bled to get this shit, and if all that had been in there was paper, I'd have fucking capped your ass and left you there! These guns saved your life, and they're going to save all our lives again and again and again!"
Some separation was achieved. Sharon was passed off as temporarily overwrought. The Employee - unharmed except for some bruises on his wrists - was decuffed and dismissed. John was walked to the Infirmary. I documented the firearms, except the Pelican case.
That I walked, directly and personally, up to H5.
My observer heard the hatch open.
"Boss?"
I thunked the case down in front of him.
"If this leaves H5 rooftop I will shoot and kill everyone who even touched it."
He opened the case.
We both took a moment, despite the fragrant odor of blood and piss coming from me, to admire the contents.
The observer nodded. Checked chamber. Loaded it. Checked the sights. And started scanning our perimeter with it.
That one item was worth a lot of lives.