The Gunslingers #2: Jace and The Briefcase.
The shotgun sits idly in front of my face, but I can’t stop looking at the metal briefcase handcuffed to this guy’s wrist. Who is this suited lumber-jack?
“Focus, kid. Back-pack. Now.” He pokes me with the gun and nods his head backwards. I slide off one of the shoulder straps slowly. “Yah, that’s good. Nice and slow.” Before he can say anything else I knock the shotgun away and shove him to the ground. He tries to protest, but only finds my combat knife resting against his windpipe.
“Fuck. Off.” The words drift out of my mouth slowly, like breath in winter. “I could slit your throat right now.”
“Hey, hey, hey! Don’t be hasty!” His brow is covered in a thick layer of sweat. “You can use my help, friend.” He jangles his wrist and the briefcase shakes.
“What is it?” I remove the knife and take my knee out of his gut. He reaches for the shotgun before noticing that it’s already been knocked behind me. He sighs and punches a fourteen digit code into a terminal on the briefcase and it slides open. He sits up and starts going through an array of vials inside the case. Out of roughly twenty vials, ten are empty and ten contain a green liquid that looks like some kind of alien blood. Beside a smaller lock box is an empty hypodermic needle and a small bottle of blue liquid.
“I’m a doctor.” He says, looking proud of himself. “I’ve created a solution that can tell if a person’s blood is infected.”
“That’s amazing!”
“It’s something alright. When the outbreak started, I gave up on my old research and came up with this formula.” He holds out the hypo and an empty vial. “Care for a test?”
“How do I know you’re not gonna’ stick me with something?” I lean back hesitantly.
“Because I’m taking blood, not injecting you with anything.”
I pause for a second, and then nod. He finds a good vein in my arm and sticks the needle in. It hurts more than I expect, but I try not to show it. He takes a full needle of blood and then deposits it into the empty vial.
“And now to add the solution.” He drops a single drop of the blue solution into my blood and shakes the vial. There’s silence. We wait. “If it turns green, you’re infected, if it turns blue, you’re fine.” There’s more silence, and we wait some more. A bluish tint starts to form in the bottom of the vial and I let out a sigh of relief, not that I had any doubts.
“That’s odd…” He says, and I look back at the vial and see the blue tint spreading through the blood is turning black. And then, in no more than a second, the entire sample turns black.
“Does that not always happen?” I ask nervously.
“I’ve never seen this before.” He adjusts his glasses and looks closer at the vial.
“How many times have you done these tests?”
“I did them at least a hundred times between now and when I first started developing the solution. I’ve never seen this result before though.” He quickly puts the vial back into the slot that he took it from and closes the briefcase. There is the sound of a mechanism closing, and then it’s locked.
“That’s it? No closure?”
“Sorry, that’s all I can do. Now why don’t you give me my gun back and we can be off on our merry ways?” He flashes a pearly-white smile that I don’t trust at all.
“Where are you headed? A group of two is better than trekking it alone.”
“Well I was headed into that butcher shop to look for scraps, after that, I’m heading for one of my old labs, it’s a long walk but I guess I could use the help.” He shrugs and I nod. I pick up the discarded shotgun and pass it to him. He takes it but doesn’t notice how tightly I have the combat knife clutched in my hand. He slides the weapon into a holster sewn into his pants.
“That’s a clever place to keep it. Is that all you have? The gun and the briefcase?” I look around and don’t see a back-pack, money belt, or even a fanny pack.
“Yessir,” He says, slurring the two words together. “Just me and Annabelle. I usually just eat what I find. Haven’t found myself to be that hungry lately. Water on the other hand, seems to have completely escaped me.” I slide my bag around to my side and dig out the water canteen. He catches it and twists off the top as soon as I toss it to him. He hands it back almost empty and wipes the water from his beard. “Thanks, man.”
“That reminds me,” I say, putting the canteen back into my bag. “We haven’t even exchanged names.” I offer my hand and he takes it.
“Saul Ghoulachov, Bio-Engineer.” We shake.
“Jace Abernathy, Ex-military.”
“Oh, military. Explains that rifle on your back.” Saul says with a chuckle.
“This thing?” I say, grabbing my rifle. “Any farmer with a daughter or two could use this piece of crap. I found it in an abandoned apartment a few days ago, haven’t used it much though. I’m more of a Desert Eagle or M4 kinda guy.” I small smile creeps across my face as I see the shock on Saul’s.
He puts his hand on the butt of his shotgun and chuckles. “I guess we’re just a couple of gunslingers, eh?” We both share a laugh.
“Out here, man, you can’t be anything else.”
“Should we check out this Butchery?” Saul nods back towards the building behind me and I nod. “I’m prayin’ for some steaks.”
We walk up the stairs and Saul waits while I kick down the locked front door. On the outside, it looks like a regular butcher shop, on the inside, it looks like a crime scene. All of the floors and walls are almost completely covered in blood, and hanging from the ceiling on massive meat hooks are several infected. Still moving.
“What the fuck?” Saul says, pulling out his shotgun and aiming it at the infected.
“If the infected ones are hanging from the ceiling, then where are the Ragers?”
“You mean the Hyper-Tension/ Hyper-Aggravated Re-Animated Humanoids?”
“…Yah I just call them Ragers.”
“Works for me.” Saul shrugs. Something clatters in the room in front of us and we both turn quickly to see the door opening.
“What is dis?” A thick Russian accent shouts as a large burly man in a mostly red apron slams the door open. He’s around six foot three and could be no less than two hundred and fifty pounds.
“Hey, we’re just here looking for food. We mean to harm, padre.” Saul says, failing to calm the giant. I assume the worst when out of nowhere the monster of a man lets out a massive, throaty chuckle.
“Dis is good, yeah? De spoiled meat does not cook as vell as de fresh meat.” Something in the way he says ‘fresh’ sends chills down my spine.
“Who are you calling fresh meat?!” Saul raises his shotgun but The Butcher is way ahead of him, he brings down the massive cleaver in his hand and smacks the shotgun to the ground. Saul staggers back, but I see the opening. As if he’s moving in slow motion, I charge forward, knife in hand, and tackle the massive man. I don’t know how, but I knew that his footing was wrong, and that if I hit him exactly where I did, he would fall. Before he has the chance to react, I punch his wrist and the cleaver clatters to the cold cement. I put all my weight on his chest and start pounding my fists into his meaty face. He blacks out but I throw a few more for good measure.
“I think he’s done, Jace.” Saul says, picking up Annabelle. “That was insane.”
“What was?” I say, wiping my hands off on the butchers bloody apron.
“You moved so fast, like, weirdly fast. That didn’t look like military training to me.”
“I just saw an opening.” I look away from him and stand up, wishing I could explain what just happened a little better. “let’s look around.”
After what feels like an hour, we decide there’s nothing here for us to eat. Saul takes a long machete that the butcher had locked up in a case and a few shotgun shells from a shotgun that looks older than me. We’re about to leave when I see a door that I hadn’t noticed before.
“Should we check in there?” I ask, and Saul nods. I pull open the door and feel my limbs going stiff.
“We need to go. Like, now.” Saul says, pulling me away from the cage filled with what looked like twenty Ragers. Each one flings itself one at a time into the cage door, trying desperately to murder us.
The stiffness goes away and is replaced with adrenaline. We book it out of the Butcher’s shop. I feel my heart pounding in my chest. Pounding, pounding, pounding. It hurts so bad, my vision is blurring. All I can see is Saul standing over my collapsed form and the group of infected gathering around us. I reach for my inhaler and remember it’s not there.
“Saul…” I manage to say, “Behind you!”
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