The Omega Protocol Chronicles (Book 1): Exodus (20 page)

“Pizza place was empty,” Travis said when he joined him. “They said there’s some staples like flour and salt in the back. They’re packing them up now.”

“Good,” Malcolm replied, continuing to scan the perimeter of the strip mall.

“You worried about the fact that this place was unlocked but hasn’t been touched?” Travis asked.

“No more worried than I’d be if the place had been looted already,” Malcolm said. “Just being out here in the open makes me worry.”

“How many more runs you think we’re gonna have to do before we’re ready to head north?”

“Depends on how lucky we get. Gas is next on the list of priorities and it’s going to be the most difficult. We lucked out with that truck stop still having manual pumps but most stations are going to have electric pumps. It’s way too dangerous to try and open the underground storage tanks. We’ll probably have to siphon a lot of it from abandoned vehicles.”

“It’s going to be a hard road, isn’t it?” Malcolm nodded grimly. There was no point in hiding what was to come. Everyone needed to face the fact that from here on out, they were in for one hell of a struggle to survive.

“I was afraid of that. I worry about Jenny and how she’s going to take it in her condition.”

Malcolm had to admit that the pregnant woman had been in the back of his mind as well. She had a couple months to go before she was due but with the stress of everything, it was entirely possible that she would deliver early.

“If anything happened to her or the baby…” Travis trailed off, turning away from Malcolm. Even without looking into his eyes Malcolm could sense the strong emotions coming off the man and, not for the first time, Malcolm considered the man’s relationship with his brother’s wife.

He was protective of her, always watching over her and offering to help her, but that wasn’t too odd. Malcolm behaved the same with Janet after all. But it was Travis’ actions when Alan would blow up that had first interested Malcolm. Instead of going to his brother to placate or support him, Travis would go to Jenny to see that she hadn’t been upset by her husband. It was obvious that Travis’ loyalty belonged to his sister-in-law and the child she carried. And that made Malcolm wonder about that baby.

“She and the baby will be fine, we’ll make sure of it. And then your brother will be a proud father.” Malcolm prepared himself for what could come after his next words. “He is the father, isn’t he?”

Travis moved fast, whipping around to face him and closing the few steps between them to get in Malcolm’s face.

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” he snarled. “I should knock your damn teeth out for even thinking that Jenny is the kind of person who would do that.”

Malcolm held up his hands in surrender. “Hey man, disrespecting her wasn’t my intent, okay? You’ve got to have enough self awareness to know it’s a legit question for an outsider.”

Travis took a step back, the anger in his eyes disappearing as his defences kicked in and he closed himself off. Malcolm had the sense that few people had broached this subject with Travis.

“Look Travis, I’m not bringing this up because I want to shame you or hurt you. Everyone has done the unrequited love thing.” Travis looked away, clearly embarrassed but Malcolm had to get this out. It was too important for their future. “I’m bringing it up because I have to think about the group and keeping it whole. I need to know if we’ve got a conflict brewing on our hands.”

Travis took a deep breath, exhaling in a sharp hiss as he shook his head in frustration. “The baby is Alan’s. Jenny would never cheat on him. You don’t have to worry about any conflict. This isn’t something new. I’ve been in love with her for years so I’ve learned how to cope. It’s not a threat to the group.”

Malcolm felt for the man. It wasn’t fair that they couldn’t control who they fell in love with. He’d been in Travis’ place before, loving someone who didn’t love him back, but he hadn’t been forced to have that someone as a constant in his life. He didn’t have to watch her be with his brother, share his home and his bed, grow heavy with his child. Travis had found himself in one hell of a shitty spot. Malcolm wanted to offer him some words of wisdom but he had no idea what would help.

He was saved from having to say anything as Alan and Jose came out of the pizza place, their bags stuffed full and carrying boxes in their arms. He moved to help them load the boxes in the wagon, looking over their haul.

“We lucked out. This place made their dough from scratch,” Jose told him as he saw the bags of flour, salt, sugar, yeast and other staples in the boxes. “It isn’t much but it’ll help.”

“Found a gun under the register,” Alan said, nodding down to the piece stuffed in his waistband. “Not a total waste.”

“That’s a nice bonus,” Malcolm said. “Hopefully we’ll luck out at the sheriff’s station next.”

“You know, the station isn’t too far up the road,” Travis said to Malcolm. “If they’re done in there, they can watch over Lorraine and Craig while we walk up to the station.”

“You sure you want to split up?” Alan asked and Travis looked towards his brother but Malcolm noticed that he wouldn’t meet his eyes.

“It’ll cut down on the time we’re all out here in the open,” Travis reasoned. “We can get back to camp quicker this way.”

A logical reason that would get him away from his brother after Malcolm had opened up old wounds. Considering his part in it, Malcolm knew he owed the guy his support.

“He’s right. Things will go faster if we split up. We got the walkies so anything goes down on either end, we’ll know.”

“All right,” Alan said, clapping his brother on the back. “Take care of yourself, brother.”

They shouldered their packs and fell into step beside each other as they crossed the parking lot and headed in the direction of the sheriff’s station.

“Thanks,” Travis said after they had rounded the corner and the strip mall disappeared behind a row of townhouses. “Sometimes it’s hard to be around him. I love him, he’s my brother, but it’s still hard.”

“Love is one hell of an emotion. It screws with you like nothing else.” He put a hand on Travis’s shoulder and grinned. “Let me tell you about the time I was on assignment with a heroin cartel in Nigeria. I was assigned to seduce the daughter of a corrupt politician and get information out of her. She was beautiful, smart, sexy as hell so, of course, I fell in love with her.”

“What happened?”

“She was given an assignment too. Turns out her daddy was suspicious of me and had her seducing me for information. Let me tell you, that was one hell of a messy break up.”

“Tell me more, hearing about your humiliation eases the pain of my own,” Travis said, smirking at him.

“Oh, I’ve got stories, son. Buckle up.”

Subject File #750

Administrator - How did you meet the group?

Subject - We got ourselves into a little stand off over a bunch of guns.

Administrator - You’ve come a long way since holding each other at gunpoint.

Subject - Well, a hell of a lot has happened between then and now.

Veronica and Quinton flanked Claudia when they entered the sheriff’s station, their weapons drawn, ready for anything else that could be inside. The stench of death hung in the air and Veronica gagged, fighting the bile that rose up in her throat. Claudia had a hand over her nose and mouth, her eyes watering and Quinton coughed, the beam of his flashlight shaking and bouncing off the walls.

Quinton led the way through the lobby and into the station’s bullpen where it looked like someone had fought for their life. Papers and file folders were scattered across the floor, half of the desks and chairs overturned and blood stains covered everything. Quinton went to a door that was marked
Interrogation Room 1
 and pointed the flashlight inside.

“Found the dead guy or what’s left of him,” he said with a frown before closing the door to the room. Veronica breathed a sigh of relief when the nauseating stench was cut in half and she didn’t feel like she was going to lose what little food was left in her stomach.

She noticed a large metal box mounted on one of the walls and walked over to pull it open. “Jackpot.”

The box was filled with hooks that held several rings of keys, each one helpfully labelled. She pulled off the one labelled
Armory
 and tossed them to Quinton. “Let’s see what’s left in the weapons lock up.”

Quinton led the way to a metal cage in the back corner of the station that housed several large metal cabinets and shelves. Veronica couldn’t help but let out an excited whoop at seeing all the boxes of ammo stacked on the shelves.

“Jackpot indeed,” Quinton said with a smile, unlocking the cage door and going to the cabinets. It took several tries with different keys before he got the cabinet open and they laughed at the sight of four Remington 870 shotguns, another AR-15, half a dozen Glock 17s and a bunch of flashbangs.

Weapons would be currency in the new world and they were getting richer by the minute.

Quinton grabbed a duffel bag and began to toss the ammo inside it as well as the guns. Veronica added their own cache of weapons to the duffel, stripping off the longer M1A for one of the more compact Remingtons and grabbed holsters for their Glocks and clips.

“So, you think we’d be pushing our luck to hope for finding some drugs in here?” Quinton asked as he zipped the duffel closed and hefted it up onto his shoulder. Drugs, legal or illegal, were also going to be highly coveted.

“Probably,” she replied with a grin as she followed him back to the bullpen, a hand on Claudia’s elbow to make sure she stayed with them. “But it can’t hurt to hope.”

As they entered the bullpen, they froze at the sound of glass cracking out in the lobby followed by muffled voices. Quinton squeezed her arm to get her attention and then nodded towards two overturned desks. They moved silently to crouch behind the desks, backs pressed up against them, Claudia between them as they strained to listen to what was going on out in the lobby.

“Keep your eyes open, this thing hasn’t been dead long,” a deep voice that Veronica guessed had to be a man drifted in from the lobby. She heard footsteps and beams of light danced across the wall behind the desks as the man and his buddy entered the bullpen.

She looked over to Quinton as the footsteps of the strangers got closer to their hiding spot. If these strangers spotted them, they would be at a disadvantage on the lower ground. She tilted her head towards the weapon in her hand before lifting an eyebrow at Quinton and he gave a curt nod. She put a hand on Claudia’s shoulder, pushing down firmly to indicate she not move and then nodded to Quinton. They both shifted around silently before rocketing to their feet, weapons aimed at the strangers.

She took aim at the one nearest her, a large African American man with broad shoulders, thick arms and a Colt pointed right at her head. She could see his partner in her peripheral, a white guy, taller than the other man but slimmer and more wiry, with a rifle aimed at Quinton. The four of them faced off, the only sound their heavy breathing as they kept each other in their sights.

“Why don’t we all just take a moment? We’ve all got guns, we can all kill each other but let’s hold off on that and talk a bit first,” the large man said, his tone calm and controlled.

“Like you said, we’re evenly matched,” Quinton said, “So instead of talking, what do you say we all just walk away and forget we ever saw each other?”

“I like the sound of that plan but we’ve got some logistics to figure out, namely the fact that those shotguns are standard police issue which means you cleaned out the weapons cage in this place. We were hoping to do the same so what do you say we talk about a negotiation of sorts?”

“What, we give up the weapons or you blow our heads off?” Quinton sneered and the man smiled.

“Naw, nothing like that. I was thinking we split whatever there is equally and no one gets their heads blown off on either side.”

“Something like that requires a lot of trust,” Quinton said, his voice steady and calm as he kept his eye on the slimmer man.

“True enough.” The large man kept his gaze on Veronica as he took one hand off his gun, holding it up and out as he lowered the other hand holding the gun and carefully holstered it. Veronica waited a moment, watching him carefully for any suspicious movement but he just looked at her with that same small smile. Finally, she let the barrel of the shotgun drop, pointing harmlessly at the floor but not quite ready to put it back on her shoulder.

“It’s okay Travis,” the man said to his partner, who slowly lowered his rifle. Veronica heard Quinton let out the breath he had been holding in a rush as he lowered his weapon. “Alright, seems like we’ve established we trust each other. So what did you find here?”

Before anyone could respond, the sound of a car engine drifted to them followed by the squeal of tires skidding across pavement. Weapons were instantly back in all their hands but at least this time they all had them pointing in the direction of the lobby. The sound of car doors slamming echoed from the parking lot and Veronica tensed, ready for anything.

“Malcolm! Travis!”  

“Shit, it’s Jose,” the large man said before looking back at her and Quinton. “We’ve got more in our group. They were out scavenging. Let me go out there and explain what’s going on.”