9.0 - Sanctum (5 page)

Martin opened the door and stepped inside.  He didn’t want to, but with the machete in hand, I insisted.  Yeah, I'd just saved his ass by the helicopter, but that didn't mean that I trusted him.

Nobody was inside to ambush me when I followed Martin in.

We entered a shop with worktables along the walls and a few long tables in the center of the room, all on metal legs with thick wooden tops capable of supporting a lot of weight.  Engine parts large and small, electronic parts, and pieces I had no hope of identifying lay everywhere, some organized on shelves, others in disarray or disassembled on the tables.  The shop smelled of machine oil, a welcome change since so many new rooms I entered held the smell of those who'd died there.

"Is this where you've been hiding?” I softly asked.

Martin pointed to the right where the L-shaped shop continued out of sight around a corner.  “Over there.  I had me a place after the Army collapsed and before the Survivor Army moved in.”  He patted his gut.  “They were a bunch of mean idiots but they took care of their pilots.  After I earned their trust, I used to sneak in here and stash extra food in case I had to use this place again.  Turns out I did, after all those naked ones attacked.  Happened a few days back.  Did you know about that?”

I cocked my head in the direction Martin had indicated.

Martin took the silent instruction and led.

I carefully stepped over metal pieces—of helicopters, I guessed—strewn on the floor, not wanting to kick anything and make noise. 

When I was able to see down the leg of the L-shaped room, Martin pointed to the far end at a rolling metal staircase twenty feet tall.  “I use that to get into a storeroom up there on top.”

I followed the line of his pointing finger and saw a balcony that looked to have been rudely constructed over an interior room.  The balcony was stacked with pieces of sheet metal, and behind the sheets I made out the shape of a door, dingy and hidden so much I'd have missed seeing it altogether had Martin not pointed it out.

“You wheel the ladder away when you come down so no Whites will accidentally wander up there when you’re gone?”

Martin nodded.

“But they could come up when you’re in there, right?”

“No,” answered Martin.  “Once I get up, I sit on the edge and give the ladder a good push with my feet.  It usually rolls ten or fifteen feet away and sits in the middle of the floor over there just like it is now.”

That made me suspicious.  I looked Martin up and down again.  He was far from athletic.  The balcony was at least fifteen feet up.  “How do you get back down with the ladder pushed out in the middle of the floor?”

Martin pointed at a support beam running down the wall near the edge of the balcony.  “I have a pair of leather welding gloves.  I put them on and slide down the beam.”

“You slide down?” I didn’t believe it.

Martin nodded and started forward.  "I leave them there on the steps after I come down.  That way I won't forget to bring them back up with me."

I followed Martin toward the ladder.  Sure enough, a pair of elbow-length gloves, blackened with grease and soot, lay on a step.  "Dangerous way to come down."

He raised his hands and showed me the grip.  "I have to hold on tight when I slide down the beam, so I don't hit the bottom too hard.”

We reached the ladder, and I gave Martin a look that said, "Go ahead."

He wheeled it quietly over to the wall below the balcony.  He looked at me.  “I lube the wheels whenever one starts to squeak.”

“You first.”

“Of course.”  He hauled his weight up the steps.  “You still don’t trust me.”

“You did just attack me.  I get why, but that kinda eroded the little trust I was building, so you first.”

Martin turned to look at me.  “Why’d you stay out there and save me from the infected? You could have ran away and left me there.”

“Doesn’t matter, does it?” I looked around the room and scanned across all the windows for any movement outside.  “Why don’t you just thank me and we’ll leave it at that.”

“Thank you.”  Martin extended a hand to shake. 

I looked at it for a moment but was unwilling to put my machete down.  I grasped his hand awkwardly with my left.  "You're welcome.”  I pulled my hand back.

“You want me to fly you somewhere, don’t you? You believe me now that I’m a pilot, right?”

“No,” I looked up at the balcony, urging Martin to get moving.  “I’m just tired of feeling shitty about things I’ve done.  Leaving you out there to die without knowing you’re a lying bastard who’s trying to get me killed would have been one more of those things to keep me awake at night.  So you don’t need to thank me.  I didn’t save your ass for you.  I did it for me.  That’s it.”

"That's selfish.”  Martin took the next step up.  "I'm still alive, though.  I appreciate it no matter why you did it."

At the top of the stairs, Martin said, “Walk softly on the balcony.  It makes a lot of noise down below if you go stomping across, alright?”

I urged Martin toward the door.  “Open it quietly and slowly.  You go in first.  Stay where I can see you.”

Martin crossed the balcony carefully, avoiding pieces of sheet metal that were extending corners and edges from out of their piles.  He whispered, “Don’t want to hit any of those.  They make a hell of a noise.”

I took his advice and stayed behind him.

He turned the handle on the door and swung it open. 

“Inside,” I told him.

He gave me a last look and stepped into the dim light of the storeroom.

I followed, ready for the ambush I kept expecting.

Martin stopped in the center of a space the size of an average living room.  All the shelves in the storage room had been scooted to one side, leaving about three-quarters of the room usable.  Along one wall, beneath a small window, some chair cushions had been fashioned into a bed.  Stacks of cans and cartons of food were piled by one wall.  A dozen five-gallon plastic buckets, all previously opened, were stacked in a corner.

The place clearly had only a single occupant, and that had to be Martin.  There was no gang of compatriots, no ambush.  At every turn, Martin's story checked out.

I pointed at the buckets.  “What are those for?”

“You know.”  Martin looked embarrassed.

I shook my head, suspicious again.

“Guys told me the way the infected find hiding people is by the smell.”

“The smell?” I asked.

"You know.  Stuff people don't think about.  A family hiding in an attic might have a latrine dug in their backyard to sneak down to and take care of business.  Some afraid to go outside might drop their business in a bucket and dump it out a window, so it doesn't stink up the hiding place.  The infected smell it.  They only have to be downwind, and a smelly latrine pit will give away a hiding place.  They follow their noses.  Then they search around and find the hiding place or they just wait behind a bush until somebody comes out to take a dump, and bam! They got you."

“So the buckets.”  I sniffed the air, guessing what was inside them.

"They've got rubber seals, most of ‘em,” said Martin.  "I pop a lid, do my business,” Martin walked over to a few rows of bleach bottles I hadn't noticed before.  "I pour in a little bleach, and I seal it up.  It's a temporary solution, you know.  I'll run out of buckets at some point, and I'll have to dump them somewhere.  I was thinking of waiting for a big rain and dumping them in a ditch nearby."

I nodded.  “Good thinking.  But you know the Whites, they’ll take a dump anywhere, right? Seems like I step in a pile of shit damn near every day.”

“But they spread it out, you know, wherever they happen to be.”

“Or when they hole up in a house somewhere, they leave it on the floor and stink up the place.”

Martin shrugged.  "I guess the infected who are out hunting by smell find those guys, too.”  Martin patted the top of a bucket.  "At least, they don't find me."

He was right about that so far.  I crossed the room and peeked out the window to see another hangar and a section of the tarmac.  A long line of Whites was running that slalom path they run, crossing from right to left through a row of helicopters sitting unperturbed, seemingly ready for use.  "Those all work?"

Martin nodded.  “They all need fuel and some of the guns need ammunition.”

I stepped away from the window and relaxed, lowering my machete to hang at my side.  I decided that Martin wasn’t a danger.  I still needed to find Murphy, though.  “Any ideas on where Murphy might be?”

Martin shook his head.  "Instead of sneaking off to come from an unexpected direction, he should have just come straight over here."

“We didn’t know if we could trust you.  Murphy did what he had to do.”

Martin pointed right.  “A couple hangars that way for the Black Hawks.”  He looked left.  “Two more for the Chinooks down that road, spread over a mile or so.”  He thumbed over his shoulder.  “Way out across the runways a couple more hangars over there for the Apaches.  Then it’s the yards for the tanks and Humvees and fuel trucks.  By now, I suppose he could be anywhere.”

“He’s not
anywhere
.”  I rubbed my hand over my forehead as though the act might do something to soothe a headache that was growing with my worry over Murphy.  “He wouldn’t wander away.  He’s not like that.”

“You guys been friends a long time?”

“Since the day it started.  We helped each other out.  We’ve been through some shit.”

Martin sat down on his makeshift bed.  “What do you want to do?”

“That’s not what you’re asking,” I spat, my fatigue and my worry turning a hard edge on my tone.  “You mean what do I want
you
to do?”

“You’ve got the machete.”

I glared at Martin and saw his right hand on the edge of one of his bed cushions, not resting, not taking the weight he was pretending to lean on it.  “You’ve got a gun stashed under that cushion, don’t you?”

Martin’s face froze in a fake smile.

I measured the distance between us and figured if he went for the pistol, I could pounce across the room and remove his hand with my blade before he could bring the weapon up high enough to shoot.

From the look in Martin’s eyes, he was doing the same calculation.

“If you had a loaded gun here, why’d you go out with an empty one?”

Martin pursed his lips as he thought about his answer.  “I used all the bullets.”

I laughed.  "You're a shitty liar?” And that was a lie too.  The only thing I was sure about was that Martin had not emptied his magazine shooting at Whites, or he'd be dead.

Martin looked at his feet.  “I brought the empty gun with me in case I came across some ammunition.  Then I wouldn’t be unarmed.”

“Tough luck on that.”  I looked at Martin’s hand again, still poised.  “Or
that’s
the lie.” 

“Yeah,” Martin agreed.  “Or that’s the lie.

Shit.  Being honest with myself, I couldn’t tell.  “Pull your gun out if you want.”

Martin looked at the nicked blade of my machete.  He knew it earned every one of its metallic scars from killing people just like him—infected.

“I’m not going to kill you.  I think you’ve been truthful with me.  You’re not going to shoot me, are you?”

Martin grinned and rubbed a hand over his wrist.  “After keeping me tied up all night, I might.  But like you said, the gun must be empty.”

I rolled my eyes and went back to look out the window, hoping I hadn’t just made a fatal mistake.

After checking the chamber for a round, Martin laid the pistol in his lap and looked at me.  He ejected the magazine and tossed it over.  It was full.  I looked at Martin and didn’t know what to say.

“Like I said, I used all my bullets in the other gun.  I got trapped in the building, killed a bunch of infected, and then hid out where you guys found me.  I’ve been there most of the day waiting until the middle of the night to come back here.”

I looked at the full magazine in my hand and tossed it back to Martin.  “I guess that kind of establishes where we stand.”

“What do you mean?” Martin asked.

"I'm not going to kill you for no reason, and apparently you're not going to kill me.  We're the good guys."

“Do I get a white hat?”

"You were talking about flying somewhere,” I said.  "Do you have anywhere in mind?"

"Like I said, oil platforms, an island somewhere.  Thing is, I don't have the range to get to any island in the Caribbean.  I could make it to an oil platform, though.  As safe as a place like that might be, I'm not in any kind of shape to handle a problem, you know.  Suppose I land on a big platform and some infecteds are already there.”  Martin looked himself up and down.  "Gun or not.  With this old body, I think I'd be taking a chance."

“So you were fishing for friends to tag along with you when you brought it up.”

“Couldn’t be any worse than wherever you’ve been.”

I shrugged.  “Some places were better.”

“But they didn’t last, did they?”

"Wouldn't be here if they did.”  I looked back out the window.  The long helix of Whites out on the tarmac had finally passed by.  I didn't have a count, but I guessed five hundred, maybe a thousand.  "I've got to go find Murphy.  You going to be here awhile?”

“I’ve got nowhere to go.”

“Is it cool if I come back?”

“You gonna tie me up again?”

I smiled and shook my head.  I walked over and extended a hand—my right hand.

Martin shook and said, “Come back.  Think about those oil platforms.  They could be the ticket.”

“I think I know a place that’ll be better for us both if you’re game.”  I crossed over to the door. 

“Where?”

“I’ll tell you when I get back.”

“Don’t trust me yet?” Martin said with a chuckle.  “I didn’t shoot you.”

“I know.  But it’s one thing to gamble my life on trust.  I’m not gambling other people’s lives on it.”  I stepped through the door.  “Mind if I use your gloves to slide down the support beam?”

“As long as you toss them back up so I can use them if you don’t make it back.”

“Will do.”

“Good luck.”