32: Detour

Hunter parked outside the western bunker—my old place—and lit it up with his headlights.  The light splashed across the concrete, and in the goggles it made most of the building whiteout.

“Okay, lads, let’s make this quick.”

We hurried to the door.  Now that the engine was quiet, we could clearly hear the mutants in the forest.  I remembered that I’d left the door open, so it was no surprise to find three mutants living inside; they charged at us straight away, hoping for a meal, but the only thing they got to chew on was some high-speed steel.  Hunter guarded the door as Danny and I looked around the bunker.  We heard Hunter firing at things that called to each other, calling for backup.  Danny glanced at me, looking like some kind of insect with those goggles on.

“You lived in this dump for eight months?” he asked incredulously.  His voice came to me partly across the headset, which was an odd sensation.

“Yeah.  I would have killed myself, if not for running out of ammo by accident.”

“How do you ‘accidentally’ run out of ammo?” came Hunter’s voice.

“By having one bullet left for six months, then shooting a mutant in a moment of panic.  It happened the same night the salvage crew found me, funny enough.  Ah, here we go.”

I’d been searching for a few things.  The kerosene drums, a bag of copper pipes, even a portable desk that had run out of batteries.

“What’s all that for?” asked Danny.

“Salvage.  We can flog some of this stuff at Dessalines, or use it for ourselves.  These pipes will get us about five or ten each, and kerosene is trading at eight hundred a drum.”

“Yeah, but why would we—“

“You still owe Fraz thirty grand, and me another ten.  Every Platinum is the same, mate, no matter where it comes from.  You get enough of them together, and you can buy things.  The more you have, the more you can buy.  Eight hundred plat for a drum of kerosene is pretty decent.”

Danny nodded, then froze.  “Wait, what’s that ticking noise?”

I listened carefully, then recognised the agonizing tick of the clock on the wall.  I pointed.  “That.  I swear that thing was driving me insane when I lived here.”

“If you two scavengers are done in there, there are a whole lotta mutants heading our way, and they’re not here to play spin-the-bottle.”

Danny and I rolled the drum out to the buggy, while Hunter fired almost non-stop.  Just as we dumped the drum into the tray, several mutants charged at us.  Danny and I whipped our rifles up and shot them down in a storm of supersonic spikes.  He ran back inside to grab the rest of the gear, while I jumped up top to man the bolt gun.  I leaned back, hanging on the handles and striking down mutants as they came close.  It was tiring work having to turn the whole mounting ring to aim.  The bolt gun ran out of ammo, and I gladly switched back to the rifle.  Danny ran out of the bunker, rifle hanging from its strap and slapping around his knees.  A mutant on the roof leapt down at him.  I shot it neatly between the eyes, and the carcass crashed into him from behind.  He cried out in fear, before realising it was dead, and rolled it off him.  Any soldier who says they don’t get pee-your-pants-scared during a fight is lying.  Hunter jumped in behind the wheel and started the engine, while I kept firing the whole time.  By the time Danny jumped into my seat, holding the bag of pipes on his lap, I had gone through all of my six magazines.  As we whizzed through the trees, I sat down in the tray and grabbed a satchel that we’d loaded beforehand, replacing the six mags in the pouches on my vest and slapping a seventh into the bottom of my rifle.  I slung the satchel forward, into Danny’s lap.  “Hunter, you out of ammo yet?”

“Halfway through my last one now.”

“Danny?”

“Nah, I’m sweet, man, I only used one.”

“Can you load Hunter up again from that satchel?”

As he did that, I stood up in the mounting ring again to reload the massive bolt gun.  Danny had to work around Hunter’s elbows, sliding fresh mags into pouches and buttoning them up.

“Hey, Sam,” said Danny, “that was some nice work on the Eighty back there.”

“Thanks, Danny, you too.  Thanks for running inside and fetching the rest of that stuff.”

I looked down at him, and I could see his hands were shaking almost as much as mine.