Wilkes County (restarted 10/17)

[Trident]

Maybe he is editing and doing a rewrite?
I was enjoying the story, even though it was a bit long on the intro.
Hate to assume anything about the author at this point.
Hope the writing bug hits him again and we can see more of the story.

[AeroRat]

A couple of things is what happened. Christmas, visiting relatives...four days without internet being the latest among those. But I doubt you came here to hear about that, so I'll see if I can keeps things semi-relevant for the time being.

First off, it's a bitch when you bust your ass writing something in a vaccuum and find out when it goes out for public consumption that it's probably not the gem you thought. Worse when the first couple of responses take that same tack. It's really the pits when your critics are right. I re-read the new version after some time away from the keyboard. Turns out...it wasn't that good. Sad when you think your own work drags. On top of that it had reached the point that while I was making pretty good time, I had the dawning realization that I wasn't much enjoying the thing anymore. I believe some parts might be improved over the original - but at the same time I wound up cutting a fair bit of what made it tick.

Plus, it sort of struck me that it's a fairly stupid idea to have a zombie story largely sans zombies.

So I zapped whatever I had up, scrapped whatever I had left, and have spent most of the past week sorting through the remnants and picking out what works and what doesn't. Which is somewhat complicated when confined in a small space with too many relatives and too little privacy. Long story short - I'm going to see if I can hash out a third rewrite of this infernal little monster. Preferably something with more deads/undeads/infecteds/what-have-you. I have no idea how long that's going to take or when it might be available. My sincerest apologies if I've pissed in somebody's breakfast cereal or ruined Christmas.

And Urban...I'm not sure you could afford me.

[Mr. E. Monkey]

My sincerest apologies if I've pissed in somebody's breakfast cereal or ruined Christmas.

Apology accepted.

I liked the original storyline. I liked the character development in the revision. I like your story.

BRING IT BACK.

[d1chet]

The best thing I liked about the original as compared to the new version is how it quickly picked up, from the "meth head" sighting in the fuel farm all the way to the school/camp scene. Mind you, he's just a common Texas kid that is more concerned about his hatred for his job then preparing for the zombie apocalypse.

I think the story should be centered around the one guy and him only. IIRC, he had a brother that went to college in a seperate town, and that alone should've been your focus, not introducing a love story to the mix. Kind of like switching back and forth from our hero wondering if his brother is alive to the brother trying to get home and his struggles.

If I were you I'd leave everything from the original version up until he escapes from the camp and returns home, then start the split of hero/brother. Whereas the apocalypse is already in full swing at the hero's location, maybe it's just starting at the brother's, so you can get 2 different accounts of the same thing (the hero thinks it's a meth head running around or some sort of riot on city hall, the brother thinks it's just college kids rioting after a sporting event)...that type of stuff.

Just my $.02

[Bearcat]

I think the story should be centered around the one guy and him only. IIRC, he had a brother that went to college in a seperate town, and that alone should've been your focus, not introducing a love story to the mix. Kind of like switching back and forth from our hero wondering if his brother is alive to the brother trying to get home and his struggles.

If I were you I'd leave everything from the original version up until he escapes from the camp and returns home, then start the split of hero/brother. Whereas the apocalypse is already in full swing at the hero's location, maybe it's just starting at the brother's, so you can get 2 different accounts of the same thing (the hero thinks it's a meth head running around or some sort of riot on city hall, the brother thinks it's just college kids rioting after a sporting event)...that type of stuff.

Just my $.02

That's what I thought was gonna happen. I was wondering the whole time, 'okay, I guess he doesn't give a fuck about his brother'

[Dawgboy]

if you keep writing, i will keep reading... I like you stor(ies)

[AeroRat]

A couple of points -

- The meth head. Yes, the meth head sighting was awesome. Somehow it got cut (along with the camp) in the rewrite, which probably didn't help the overall story. Both will return for the third go-round. Because meth-zombies are a degree of awesome unto themselves.

- The brother. Minor part in the first version, still important but altogether physically absent in the second despite playing a more important role. Neat trick for a character that never actually appears. In the later portions, the reason why he doesn't appear is explained somewhat (no - he's not dead). Assuming I ever finish this ungainly bastard the follow-on story will possibly be from his POV.

- The love interest. Evelyn wasn't there as a love interest. She's more to allow for the non-prepper side of the story, whereas Mike was the somewhat-better-prepared-but-still-not-survivalist prepper. Alas, not much ZS presence in Wilkes County.

- Woody the crazy-ass chainsaw neighbor. Yeah...nobody brought this up, but he was more awesome as the crazy-ass neighbor, so that's how he'll appear in the third attempt.

So we'll see how that all goes.

[URBAN ASSAULT]

And Urban...I'm not sure you could afford me.

I don't schwing to that side of the aisle my brother(sorry!), but if I did I think a 40 oz. bottle of warm malt liquor and a half-pack of Kool's stolen from a corner Bodega would likely be grossly overpaying for any service you could possibly provide...
.
.
... unless it's washing my van.



BTW, I forgot... Oh SNAP!

Cheers to you for Christmas.

-urban

[ForgeCorvus]

I like Woody the nut-case next-door (doesn't everybody know someone a bit like that ?)
The 'Meth head' was a great idea, glad its making a return

The whole 'dump it and start again' was a bit of a shock and a few words as to why would of made this Moar Zombie happy...... Come to think of it, now I know the Wilkes will be back I'm happy

I'll just wait here shall I ?

[kremor]

While I didn't catch the rewrite, I thoroughly enjoyed the first version.

[AeroRat]

I don't schwing to that side of the aisle my brother(sorry!), but if I did I think a 40 oz. bottle of warm malt liquor and a half-pack of Kool's stolen from a corner Bodega would likely be grossly overpaying for any service you could possibly provide...
.
.
... unless it's washing my van.



BTW, I forgot... Oh SNAP!

Cheers to you for Christmas.

-urban

Sir, you offend me. I don't drink, I don't smoke, and I only accept payment in ammunitions and small arms. Hereby, I challenge you to a duel.

Squids at fifteen paces. At dawn.

[URBAN ASSAULT]

I don't schwing to that side of the aisle my brother(sorry!), but if I did I think a 40 oz. bottle of warm malt liquor and a half-pack of Kool's stolen from a corner Bodega would likely be grossly overpaying for any service you could possibly provide...
.
.
... unless it's washing my van.



BTW, I forgot... Oh SNAP!

Cheers to you for Christmas.

-urban

Sir, you offend me. I don't drink, I don't smoke, and I only accept payment in ammunition's and small arms. Hereby, I challenge you to a duel.

Squids at fifteen paces. At dawn.

Squid are for uneducated, ill-tempered amateurs.

A true gentleman with élan uses a swordfish.

-urban

[Lugnut]

[ I think a 40 oz. bottle of warm malt liquor and a half-pack of Kool's stolen from a corner Bodega would likely be grossly overpaying for any service you could possibly provide...

I had occassion for a comeback like this just a few weeks ago. If only I had thunk of it!! awesome. lol!

[URBAN ASSAULT]

[ I think a 40 oz. bottle of warm malt liquor and a half-pack of Kool's stolen from a corner Bodega would likely be grossly overpaying for any service you could possibly provide...

I had occasion for a comeback like this just a few weeks ago. If only I had thunk of it!! awesome. lol!

Thank you, but I only speak to the truth that I see.



-urban

[AeroRat]

And...I've resurfaced. Day late and dollar short still. Go figure.

Some news on this rolling disaster of a project.

- I have nine of the first ten installments written/re-written/re-re-written. I may have explained (or not) that I've opted to write this thing in blocks of ten, i.e. I write ten parts that more or less have an existing story arc of their own, then post those. The next block builds on that. Theoretically this should allow me to turn out a smoother, less-glitchy product. Theoretically. It's only been reviewed by one of my writing cohorts so far, which doesn't always square up with popular opinion here. But I'm going to cross my fingers and hope for the best.

- There will be two POV characters. You've met them both already. There will also be a dog, which you haven't met. You will learn more about them than you probably wanted to know. Sorry - I can't help that. I'm a wordy bastard and I flatter myself that I do character-driven stuff (which may or may not be entirely true).

- The meth-head near miss at the tank farm has returned.

- The school plot has returned, albeit tweaked.

- The zombies are present in this block. Some of them are even encountered. However, this particular block is set up as a lead-in for the eventual shambling hordes, so they won't be appearing every page. This is still the outbreak stage. Mostly what we're doing is introducing characters and setting up plot points for later. If you don't like it, that's perfectly alright. The zombies will begin appearing as regulars sometime in the next block and I'll be happy to have you tune back in when I get that hammered out.

- A word of warning here: Murphy's law is in full effect. You'll get that in the first ten pieces, but I just figured I'd throw it out there upfront. Shit will happen.

- I'll probably have bits and pieces ready to post in 1-2 weeks, barring disaster.

- With any luck this will end better than the last two.

So...that's all the news I got for now.

[d1chet]

Now this is what I pay for!

[Bearcat]

I am waiting.

[AeroRat]

Okay. We're running slightly ahead of schedule, which means this thing might get posted on time. Cross your fingers, toes, or other assorted appendages of your choice.

The rough drafts of Block I are in the books. Done. Finished. I have one chunk of rewriting to get handled (four or five pages, probably) and it'll be ready for the final polishing. And then you, loyal readers, will get to suffer the consequences...perhaps as early as this weekend, at which point I'll commence to working on Block II. At this point I have no idea when Block II will be ready, so you'll have to bear with me on that front.

I'm also thinking of posting these on some sort of schedule, albeit one I haven't finalized yet. I was thinking once a week, but that seems too long a break. Maybe once every three or four days. We'll see.

Stick around.

[ForgeCorvus]

*Happy Dance*

[AeroRat]

The Citation was gear-up and climbing shortly after seven, and as far as was known afterwards it was the last flight out of Wilkes County.

Several hundred yards east across a baking plain of sectioned concrete, Mike Duncan watched it taxi and turn, half hidden in the shimmering heat waves that rose from the asphalt strip of the runway. He listened over the hum of the truck as the jet engines spooled up from a dull whine to a roar and turned away. Business jets didn't interest him terribly. On a given week he handled them by the dozen; balanced himself on a step ladder to put fuel over the wings, scraped untold thousands of dead bugs from the windshields, dumped lav tanks, refilled oxygen bottles, parked, chocked, hangared, and jump started them. Three years in line service taught him that if there was any kind of magic to be found in flight it wasn't hiding in corporate aviation.

This one - Cessna Citation N559AB, registered to Andrews Brothers Contracting Services of Plano, Texas, two crew, nine passengers, 700 gallons of Jet A taken aboard - was unremarkable in all respects save one.

Mike finished scratching out the figures on his transfer paperwork. He double checked, tossed the metal clipboard into the vacant passenger seat, and slid out of the truck. Almost immediately the sweat began to bead up under his shirt collar. He ignored it, walking to the back of the truck, and swung up on the narrow ladder. Atop the tank he squatted and unlocked the midtruck hatch, then stood and pushed it open with the toe of his boot. Resettling his sunglasses, he peered through the opening. The curved silver walls of the tank reflected a whole lot of nothing. A couple of gallons of amber fluid pooled in the bottom between baffles.

That confirmed his suspicions.

Nudging the hatch shut, he replaced the padlock and stood. From his belt he took a bulky transceiver radio. He checked the frequency and keyed the transmit button.

"Clower, Truck Two."

"Clower," came the bored voice at the other end. The fixed-base operator's dispatcher, comfortably ensconced in an air conditioned lobby. "Go ahead."

"We're dry."

"Completely out?"

"Yeah. Citation got the last of it."

"I guess take it to the tank farm and park it. Not much else we can do."

Mike resettled his Clower Aviation Services ball cap and looked out over the ramp. Dozens of light aircraft parked in rows. Further on, clustered together, a flock of turboprops and light jets. So many transients that there weren't chains or wheel blocks for even a tenth. Most were held in place only by parking brakes or force of will. There was a whole great pile of liability sitting out here on the Rigland tarmac. Especially if the wind decided to kick up. He had the mental picture of millions of dollars in airframes and powerplants and avionics piled up like a scrapyard. The sooner this gaggle cleared his ramp the better.

Of course, a mass departure wasn't in the cards anytime soon. Their stock of aviation gasoline - a thousand gallons in their avgas tanker, ten thousand more at the farm - had been expended the day before, stranding anything with a piston engine and empty tanks. Supposedly a resupply truck was on order, but God only knew when that would arrive. And now they could add the jet setters to that growing list of irate customers. It was going to be an unhappy day in the lobby.

"You want me back at the office?"

"Yeah, I guess. Don't know what you're gonna do, but yeah."

"All right. I'll be around in a few."

He holstered the radio and clambered back down the ladder. He'd left the air conditioner in the cab running and for a minute he just sat behind the wheel and soaked in the cool. Unscrewing the cap from a plastic bottle, he finished off the last of the water and added it to the growing pile in the floorboard. Triple digit heat, eighty percent humidity, and a flat calm meant he was running through at least half a dozen per shift. If he'd had any sense he guessed he might have started selling to the stranded transients; the hundred dollar hamburger joint on the far side of the tower had closed up shop sometime during the preceding shift, and if the office rumblings could be believed anything potable commanded a premium.

Then he put the truck in gear and rattled down the length of the tarmac, taking certain care not to stray anywhere near the double yellow line that seperated the vehicle lanes and the aircraft movement areas. The last thing he needed now was to clip a bird or, God forbid, run over a pilot. And he'd come close two or three times already. Dumb bastards didn't pay attention to anything. They decided to shuffle aircraft and towed them out of assigned parking spots. They wandered across the vehicle lanes, head down and playing with cell phones. Their children ran rampant in joyous ignorant bliss of the hazards posed by a working airport.

Going on midafternoon and the place was starting to look like one of Steinbeck's migrant road camps. Save a few slow learners, most of the visitors had abandoned the wall to wall pandemonium of the lobby and returned to their aircraft. A few had rigged makeshift shelters by throwing tarps over the wings. Others had brought proper tents and set up shop in the shade of wings and fuselages. A number of them stopped to watch the truck as it rumbled past.

They were angry, too.

Not at Clower or his ramp monkeys. Not at the weather, though that didn't help. Not even at the meager offerings for food and board in the city of Everett. They were angry with the circumstances that had brought them here, held them separate from their families or their friends or some safe haven they imagined to be over the next horizon. They were angry at the government for not doing enough and then they were angry when it caught up and did too much. In the meantime they were hungry and uncertain and left in the middle of a million square feet of tar-streaked concrete to bake until the circumstances changed and freed them to move on to greener pastures.

But until such time as that happened or a more deserving party could be located they were content to blame Mike and his ilk. In their world...their sheltered way of thinking...an airport FBO didn't just run out of gas. It didn't happen. It wasn't done. Some might have some line service experience. Most wouldn't; to them their missing fuel magically appeared at the tank farm, not far removed from their children's belief that meat and milk and vegetables were generated from thin air in the back rooms of their nearest supermarket.

Some went through the motions of listening. They could grasp that Jet A and avgas arrived via truck, and that there was a truck on order. Most couldn't or wouldn't understand that trucks needed highways, and that most every interstate south of the Mason-Dixon line was presently roadblocked, cordoned, and monitored by some form of law enforcement. The quarantines were fixed around larger cities - Austin, Houston, San Antonio, El Paso, the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex - and since most truckers tended to follow the bold lines on their map the assorted aviation fuels needed in Wilkes County were likely tied up half a state away.

So long as Reelfoot was out there it was long odds that'd change anytime soon.

At the tank farm he made a three point turn and backed the truck into the designated slot behind the spill barrier. He set the parking brakes and door locks and collected his armful of trash, which he took to the rusted-out drum next to the empty storage tanks. From there he diverted to the gap between tanks No. 1 and 2 and took a leak on the skids. Hitching up his pants, he walked to the end and climbed up on the curved back of the first dead tank.

When he'd started with Clower the entire fuel farm had been in use. Twenty eight months on they were down to three tanks of the original seven, the other four knocked out by failed inspections or dead pump mechanisms. So now the empties lay in place like the carcases of strange mechanical aliens, rusting down the sides and speckled with bird shit - a testament to Lance Clower's propensity for pushing fire-sale equipment to its limitations. Sooner or later the boss meant to bring that lost capacity back into the fold, a goal hamstrung by lackluster sales and payments on his new Ferrari. Somehow Mike doubted there was going to be much of a Christmas bonus this year.

On the plus side Reelfoot was liable to kill them all well before the holiday season, a development that would save Clower a shitload of money on things like employees, insurance, and fines from the state for safety violations. He climbed down the tank and dusted paint chips from his hands, threading between dead Tank No. 1 and the chainlink fence along the top of the spill barrier. He kicked a nest of rusted wire out of the way. Supposedly first shift was responsible for keeping the tank farm clean. First shift was responsible for a lot of things, which was why they didn't get done.

He stepped off the barrier. His ride back was an aging Toyota with a busted windshield, formerly painted lizard shit brown but presently mottled with primer and bondo. The interior smelled like a cross between an ashtray and a sock forgotten in a gym locker for the better part of a month, but despite the general state of things he felt a certain affection for the beater. Put upon, ridden hard, and worn out -he fully expected to look up one day and see the transmission and drive train in the rearview mirror. It saddened him, like losing a comrade.

Which of course presumed management didn't inadvertently find a way to do him in first.

Out of the gate he slowed for a last inspection. As the Toyota came around he had a strange new feeling in his gut. Seven empty tanks and three empty trucks. No telling how long before that changed. Never before had he left the tank farm without some idea when the next shipment was due. Presumably somebody would come down here later tonight to check, but that would be more formality than anything. There was no reason to stick tanks, no fuel to top off the waiting trucks. He imagined it was something akin to a man looking into his wallet, seeing nothing, and realizing that he had unknowingly bypassed his last dollar and gone directly to broke.

Even so it was important to make sure the place was closed up and locked. It wasn't hard to imagine the kind of shitstorm that would kick up if somebody's precious little urchin wandered down to the farm and got himself a million-dollar case of tetanus, or fell off a tank, or crushed a couple of fingers or toes. There were a thousand ways an enterprising brat could get in a pinch, most of which entailed somebody getting canned and, shit work or not, dealing with Clower compared real favorable to starvation.

He parked in the lot beside the office. The automated doors hissed open and hit him with a push of artificially cool air. The lobby was crowded still. A dozen of those nearest the door glanced momentarily in his direction. The ones that concerned him then were those that didn't look away. Consciously ignoring him behind the anonymity of his sunglasses, he pushed through the restricted and down a short hall to the employee's locker room.

The new girl sat up, peering at him over the back of the couch. A television with oversaturated color flickered from the far wall. The set was turned low in hopes of avoiding detection by their unintended guests; the cable box in the lobby was on the fritz, leaving only a handful of local stations. The loss of one more connection to the outside world had not been appreciated by visitors expecting CNN but stuck with Ricki Lake re-runs. It would be appreciated even less if they found out of the line monkeys were bogarting all the good news channels.

Mike paused, half listening to the talking head on the screen and half reading the news crawl. The new girl flopped down out of his line of sight. Her name was Evelyn. Closing on her third month at Clower, he wasn't sure to make of her just yet. Some days she seemed halfway competent, like she might make a half-decent lineman, most days she struck him as lazy or forgetful of the most basic work shit and borderline dangerous.

She was on the thin side, blonde with blue eyes and halfway appealing in the generic way of a skinny girl without much to brag on. Not conventionally pretty and not his type, but she was flirty and she had a cute smile. Seeing as Clower's layabout son did the hiring it was no great mystery how she'd gotten here. The trick now was to get her trained or get her out before she killed somebody.

"How's it looking?" he asked.

"Not good. I forget the infection rate. It's in the millions, I think. It's unreal. They say Tennessee is probably a write-off, and the East Coast is working on it."

An exaggeration probably, but maybe not by much.

Contrary to popular reporting, Tennessee - and more specifically, Reelfoot Lake - hadn't been the origin, but merely the first confirmed case. Never one to shy from slack research, the national purveyors of news and opinion christened it the Reelfoot Virus. The name stuck despite similar outbreaks elsewhere. Plus, to an enterprising journalist the namesake lake offered any number of suitably creepy photo opportunities, and the whole alphabet soup of network got ahold of the soundbyte and ran with it. As productions went the whole affair was on the level of Legend of Boggy Creek, albeit thankfully without the hicktacular musical interludes.

Wherever it had its origins, the virus didn't waste time. The symptoms came on fast - exhaustion, a certain sluggishness, the mangling of speech, and finally the killing fever. As near as Mike could gather the virus overheated the brain and turned people into blithering, drooling idiots...but diagnosing an infection was easier said than done. He dealt with blithering idiots on a daily basis. The specifics and the details were above his pay grade, besides, and he doubted he'd be able to do much if Reelfoot came to Everett.

He unbuckled the duty belt and hung it in his locker along with the yellow safety vest. The air conditioned cave of the employee room was like stepping into a refrigerator after the open blast furnace out on the ramp. His sweat-damp shirt stuck to his back where the plastic vest had covered and he picked at the cheap material. Detouring to the mini-fridge, he searched the contents. Somebody - first shift, probably - had left a can of root beer in the back. Unopened.

"You got anything in the fridge?" he asked.

"No. Why?"

"Just checking."

Prize in hand, he went around the end of the couch, picking Evelyn's socked feet off the arm rest, and dumped them unceremoniously over the side. She shot him a go-to-hell look. Whether for throwing her off half the couch or finding the soda he didn't know. Didn't especially care, either. Pretty and cute and flirty didn't count for much in the tiny universe that was Rigland Field.

She shook her head and drew her legs up on her end of the sofa. Mike kicked off his boots and stretched his feet out. His right sock had a hole in the toe.

"Put those back on," she said, screwing up her face. "Your feet stink."

"You sure that ain't you?"

"My feet smell just fine, thank you."

"How do you know? My not complaining don't mean otherwise."

"Seriously," she waved a hand in front of her face. "It's like mustard gas."

"Well -" he opened the can, half expecting a carbonated overflow. None was forthcoming. "I don't smell anything. Except this couch. Least I assume it's the couch."

"Mike," she said, sitting upright. "Put your shoes back on. It's fucking gross."

"Am I married to you?" he asked.

"No. Thank God."

He grinned and sipped at the root beer. "Damn straight."

She let off something that was part sigh and part growl and retreated to her end. A second talking head on television droned on, unaware that he had been muted. A map appeared on screen. A county-by-county representation of the United States. Those with reported outbreaks were colored in red. Those unaffected were left the color of the underlying territory. Except for the areas with extreme low population density there wasn't too much unclaimed real estate still on the board. Reelfoot didn't stay put for long.

Two weeks ago, maybe sixteen or seventeen days, when the virus had begun to kill in earnest, there had been a kind of exodus in the works. The great migration - thousands upon thousands of people simultaneously opting to leave their homes with the hope of crashing in somebody else's - was based on the belief that there was someplace untouched. Someplace safe. Trouble was, outrunning Reelfoot was like dancing on a Whack-A-Mole game. The virus didn't move in linear patterns. It didn't follow wind currents or major highways. It surfaced and spread in Kansas with the same gusto it exhibited in New York.

Mike really didn't see the point in fleeing. By his estimate he was probably fucked, anyway, and if he was going to get wiped out by a hillbilly virus he meant to go out hacking up miscolored chunks of his lungs from the comfort and dignity of home. He could be just as good a statistic here as out on the highway, halfway to nowhere.

"Hey," Evelyn shoved him with a foot. "Is it true we're out of Jet A?"

"We are now. Nothing left but the dregs."

"You think we'll be open tomorrow?"

"I dunno," he said. "Doesn't matter to me. I'm off for the weekend."

"You bastard," she said. "You lucky, insufferable bastard."

"Mmm-hmm."

He didn't envy her the weekend. Though Saturday and Sunday tended to be slower, shifts began at seven in the morning and ran until six in the evening. Getting weekends was a good way to rack up hours - especially this one, since there was nothing to sell and almost no chance of actual work - but the longer workday was a pain in the ass if the on-call line rat was also on the preceding Friday. Getting off at eleven one night and showing up at six-thirty to do opening checks the next was a bitch. Worse if the rat in question got stuck for Friday, the entire weekend, and the following Monday. That was a torment generally reserved for new guys. This weekend would be Evelyn's third, though she'd had at least some supervision in prior instances.

In his time here he had wondered if that was legal. He was decently sure it wasn't safe, but that was how Clower did business and until somebody crashed a tanker through the office or burned down the tank farm or went Branch Davidian on his cheap ass that was how it was going to be.

Evelyn got off the couch and he heard a locker opening.

"This is bullshit, you know."

"No argument from me."

She rooted around for a minute and slammed the door. The television screen divided like an amoeba. Talking head on one side, some form of doctor on the other. The news crawl droned by, bearing word of a small plane that had attempted to depart an airport in Oklahoma City and crashed shortly beyond the fence, catching fire soon afterwards. The pilot and two passengers were reported killed. There were no names and no reported cause, though a bird strike was suspected. The feds were investigating.

Birds he thought. Full metal jacketed ones.

"Hey, Mike?" she called from the uniform locker. Her voice carried that faint whiny edge. The sound of a little girl who wanted something but who wasn't willing to out and out say what.

"Yeah?"

"What are you doing tomorrow?"

"Staying far away from this dive. I dunno. Sleeping late. Barbecuing. Just being a worthless piece of shit, I suppose."

And playing doctor with a well-built brunette, but that was no concern of Evelyn's. Speaking of...he needed to call said brunette. One-player games of doctor tended to be pretty dull.

"Why?" he asked, regretting the words before they were out.

"I'm the only one scheduled."

"Yeah. And?"

"Will you have your phone on?"

"I doubt it."

"What if something comes up?"

Mike rolled his eyes back into his head. Jesus. Jesus Christ on a bicycle. She pulled this shit every time there was a chance she might have to do something unattended. Dead certain that something big and terrible was going to happen on her watch. Admittedly it would be her first weekend running solo, but still.

"You been here what - ten weeks now?" he said, craning over the back of the couch. "You've covered all the shit there is to do. What's your question? What do you not know?"

She stood by the bank of lockers assigned to each employee and the larger boxy cabinet that held uniforms and foul weather gear. She was biting her lower lip in a gesture of uncertainty that other men had likely found endearing. Something to stir the inner knight errant and ride the rescue of the poor lost maiden. Or better yet, to handle whichever unpleasant task lay in the fair damsel's way. He wasn't falling for it. He wasn't altogether unsympathetic, having been in her shoes before, but she needed confidence and that was something that only came with experience. That sort of experience didn't come from working with a safety net.

"Look. This ain't hard. You show up in the morning. You do your opening checks - that ought to go pretty quick since you ain't got shit to do at the tank farm. Then you sit around not selling gas and making sure the place don't burn down. At six you kick everybody out, clean the bathrooms, and close out your paperwork. Then you go home. What's the problem here?"

"What if something comes up? Like they won't leave?"

"Grab the son of a bitch by the collar and throw him out."

She made a show of looking down at a five-foot something frame that carried all of a hundred pounds, spread her arms, and cocked her head to the side.

"Mike. Really."

"Bring a shotgun. First customer to give you lip gets one in the gut. They won't be able to get out fast enough. Ain't nothing scarier than a woman with a shotgun."

She gave an exasperated sigh and left the room. Probably to go find Dani, the girl who worked the front desk on weekdays and answered phones, in hopes of scaring up a sympathetic feminine ear. Mike shrugged and shifted his attention to the television and the silent news broadcast, then found the remote and clicked over to catch the tail end of Tank Week.

He hoped she found the sympathy she wanted. He also hoped Clower didn't call from his vacation house on Lake Tahoe to have poor dumb Senior Rat Mikey play nursemaid for the weekend.

[ForgeCorvus]

Is this the third re-write of the start ? (I think its the third I've read)
Best yet, keep this one

[AeroRat]

It is.

I finally got my head out of my ass and figured I needed to at least point out that the zombie flu was afoot, even if the shuffling hordes aren't on-scene. Also, the job still sucks but our Fearless Protagonist No. 1 complains less than the second attempt, which probably doesn't hurt. Plus, it sort of hints at a larger world outside, something lacking in the others (I think...been a while since I read those).

Third time's a charm, I guess.

[223shooteresc]

need more of the good stuff

[AeroRat]

The hangar was a big, boxy thing, rounded across the top with high windows and and marked at the ramp access by a pair of heavy telescoping doors. CLOWER AVIATION SERVICES was painted across the doors, EVERETT, TEXAS in smaller letters underneath. Around the upper part of the wall, fogged and spiderwebbed glass squares let in enough light to get around inside during the day. At some point - back in the dark ages when Rigland had been a small air national guard strip - an addition had been made to the street-side, providing two or three offices, a restroom, and an area with large, flat tables and chairs and telephone connections for flight planning and briefings.

Evelyn parked the service truck in front of the bay doors. She was less than enthused to be down here, but after careful and thorough consideration she had concluded it was either this or kill somebody. Her day was progressing more or less as planned; no fuel on tap meant no paperwork or sales, but having been spared during the week by Dani the hassle of tending the front counter she had been unprepared for the constant barrage of complaints, comments, or demands posed by the flying circus camped out on the ramp.

There was no coffee for the machine - the customer phones were giving busy signals - where was the courtesy car - the paper towel dispenser was empty - the toilet paper dispenser was empty - how long until there was more gas - gas better not cost more when it arrived - the coffee machine was broken - why didn't Clower sell charts - the internet was down - how about this heat wave - my kid doesn't feel well and needs a doctor - the toilets need to be cleaned.

Not much into the afternoon and Mike's offhand suggestion of bringing a shotgun to work didn't sound too far off the mark. At a quarter past eleven she locked all the exits, passed on a hasty excuse about needing to check on something at the hangar, and beat a retreat.

She rested her forehead on the steering while and stared at the fine coating of dust on the instrument panel. Fuck. Leaving the office wasn't smart. Come Monday - assuming he bothered to show up - the boss' worthless kid and ersatz second shift manager would give her an earful about the importance of customer service. Customer service was a sacred thing to them. Companies lived and died on good customer service. Presumably the principle was unaffected by the Fortunate Son clocking in, shutting himself in his father's office, and surfing porn or sleeping through his forty-plus hours. Otherwise Clower would have crashed and burned inside a week.

It occurred to her that she might not have a job soon. She sort of wished she didn't now. That Junior would show up and fire her on the spot. Give her the rest of the weekend off. But she needed the paycheck, pitiful as it was, and in the big picture stomaching management here was easier than going unpaid for a while and settling for the same anywhere else.

She reached for the door handle. If she was going to be here she might as well give off the illusion of productivity. What she should have done was gone to her car and picked up her music. But she'd been too frazzled at that point to think about anything past escape. She'd just have to find something down here to amuse herself for half an hour or so. Not too long. Just enough to let her mind clear. She slid out of the truck and walked to the side entrance of the hangar, toying with the ring of keys clipped to her belt loop.

The inside of the hangar was hot and stuffy and she left the door hanging open behind her. Not enough to draw any kind of draught, but the effect of a sheetmetal building left baking in the sun was like that of a sauna. She threaded her way through the tangle of wings and stabilizers to the offices. Planes were packed in wall to wall, nose to tail, and wing over wing. A tribute to a another line rat and a childhood spent playing Tetris. Even the FBO's ramp tractor was present, tucked neatly into the front corner under the high T-tail of a King Air.

There really wasn't anything she could do here. She drifted to the addition and through the rooms in the back. Most were piled with junk or old furniture. The cast-off things that had been included when Clower bought the hangar but which had never quite made it to the dump. By and large the briefing room was untouched.

She sank into one of the old chairs lined along the wall and leaned her head back. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. The place smelled of age and dust. A poorly assembled model airplane dangled from the ceiling in one corner, frozen in flight over a battered wooden podium. Aviation charts, well out of date, plastered the walls. Through gaps in the high-traffic carpet she could make out some kind of crest laid into the floor tiles. Some air guard unit, probably long defunct. The ceiling was sound-absorbing white panels. Loaded with asbestos, knowing her luck.

Actually, the place wasn't that bad. Quiet, conveniently close yet far enough off the beaten path to disappear for a few minutes. She searched under the vest in her shirt pocket and came up with a pack of cigarettes. She'd have to keep this in mind. God knew she couldn't do it anywhere near the office. It was improper. A good young lady did not smoke. She'd made that mistake early on, getting caught on her second or third week by Mrs. Patricia Clower, who had lit into her with a lecture on how smoking was an affront to God and polite society. Her husband, whom she imagined had already been well broken to her nagging, said nothing and their son, she had figured out later, was the sort who was dead-set on saving her pitiful soul unless he got into her panties first. He had better odds of getting to the moon.

She took a drag on the cigarette and thought of something else.

God, she hated it here.

Evelyn slipped down in the chair until she was almost looking up at the ceiling. She didn't fit here any better than she had at her other jobs. She didn't want to make the admission, but it was the truth. She could feel the certainty down in the pit of her stomach. Four months. Five, tops. That's how long she could see herself going before she fucked up in catastrophic fashion. When she did it was going to be all her, too. The only part her asshole boss and his creepy fundevangelist family and her indifferent coworkers would play would be standing on the sidelines and watching the fire.

She paused, certain she'd heard something out the in the main hangar. Footsteps? Settling metal? Wind? On second thought she -

"Hello?"

Shit.

Shit!

She jumped up. The chair skidded. Not much - just enough to bark and give her away. She looked frantically for a place to toss the half-smoked cigarette. There weren't a whole lot of options. Everything in the room was either covered in paper or dust. Then she spotted the trash can, one of those featureless metal types. The footfalls were closing, slapping against the bare concrete floors. She arced the butt, watched it twist through the air and drop cleanly into the can.

Thank God. She just hoped there was nothing flammable inside.

"In here!" she said.

A man stepped through the door. Brown pants. Khaki shirt. A black leather duty belt around the waist. A worn pistol on the right hip, a bright yellow taser on the other. A lightly colored cowboy hat. And pinned on the left breast, a badge. The nameplate opposite was etched REED.

"Afternoon. You work here at the airport?"

"Yeah," she said. "At the FBO."

"Okay." The deputy furrowed his brow. Picking up the scent of tobacco smoke. She could imagine how this looked. Her out here alone. The smell. NO SMOKING signs posted at neat intervals along every wall. "Anybody else working today?"

"Oh, no," she said, smiling. Doing her best to be disarming. "Somebody told me it looked like people were down here earlier. I came down here to look."

"Find anything?"

"I think they got away."

"They'll do that." The eyes held hers. If they betrayed anything, it was that he wasn't buying any of this.

"What brings you here?" she asked suddenly.

"You mind stepping outside?"

"Of course." She kept the forced smile up. It masked the hurricane twisting through her belly. Bad enough that she was going to get caught. Worse that it had to be an actual cop instead of Clower. Clower, for his slave-driving tendencies would have just cut her loose and no more would have been said. Mike - who did the actual managing that netted Clower Junior his fatter paycheck - would likely have pointed out the signs and left it at that. She wondered now what the penalty was for smoking in the hangar. One of those little things she might should have considered beforehand. Too late now.

Outside the deputy adjusted his hat and waited for her to lock the door. She fumbled for the proper key, squinting in a light that seemed brighter than it was. She dreaded turning around. When she did he was facing up the ramp. Towards the office.

"How can I help you?" she asked.

"Official business," he said. "As of three o'clock today, this airport is closed."

Her stomach rolled. She wasn't on the hook for her little break, but the bigger implication was more troubling still. Quiet as Rigland had been the past few days, that was more an issue of crowding and lack of available fuel. For those who cared to try the airport and overlying airspace had been unaffected. That the field was being shut down spoke to a larger concern.

"There's been an outbreak here." Her own voice surprised her. So calm, so measured. So matter of fact. An almost imperceptible turn of Reed's head.

"The county's sending buses to pick these people up," he went on. "They don't have to be gone by three, but nothing moves on this ramp without permission."

"Okay," she said. It seemed a vastly underwhelming response to a huge event.

"Can I get you to follow me to the FBO?"

"Sure." She reached for her truck keys. For a moment she encountered only her personal keyring and realized she'd left them inside the office. Like an idiot. And just as quick the lightning bolt - the service truck keys were in the service truck. In the ignition. Where the line rats always left them. She suppressed a giddy grin at her discovery.

Stupid rookie mistake she told herself as he got in behind the wheel. She got the truck turned and trailed the deputy at a reasonable distance, keeping pace at a crawl. No sooner had they stopped than her phone buzzed. She fished it out and read the display. Months ago when she had started flying she'd signed up for an service that delivered Notices to Airman for her local airports, and the phone was letting her know that she had one unread message; sure enough, the latest relayed the news of Rigland's closing.

Shit. She hadn't thought to forward the office calls to her phone. She was stepping in it left and right today.

She pocketed the phone and slammed the truck door. Across the double-yellow line a group of transients was forming, drawn to the arrival of a second sheriff's car. Or maybe some of them had gotten word already. News had a way of getting around.

While Reed and the other deputy were busy surveying the crowd she ran inside. Her first concern was the answering machine. A missed call would be bad. Worse if it came from the boss. A thousand times worse if he'd called more than once. She whipped around the counter and hunched over the machine.

A tiny yellow light blinked above the keypad. Two missed calls. Numbers she didn't recognize. She sat down and redialed. Today had been busy. Was still busy. She was doing work things. Thin excuse, but it might stretch.

"Hello?" a man's voice.

"Hi," she said. "This is Evelyn with Clower Aviation. I'm sorry, I was out and missed your call. What can I do for you?"

"Hey, Evelyn. This is Frank Jackson with Flint."

"Flint?" She searched her brain, searching for a mention of that name. Didn't ring any bells though she was certain she'd heard it before. But where?
"Flint Hills," he explained. "You buy fuel from us."

"Oh!" she said. "Oh, okay. Brain freeze. I didn't draw the connection."

A laugh.

"Some days, eh? Anyway, I'm just calling to tell you we're at the north gate with your order, so...your trucks are here."



She knew when she got back from the transfer that there was no way she was getting home on time. Shifting fuel from supply tankers took roughly an hour per truck, hindered some while she'd gotten ahold of Del - another coworker, who'd offered to drive in and help - and walked through the specifics over the phone, and it'd already been midafternoon when they began the process. Happily, the buses had come in the interim and relieved her of her customer service burden, leaving the makeshift camp on the tarmac depopulated and the lobby free and quiet for her paperwork. Only Reed and the other deputy remained. One cruiser moved up and down the length of the ramp within the confines of the vehicle lane. The other was parked at the foot of the tower, the driver gone inside with the air traffic controllers to monitor the field from a higher vantage.

Nothing was moving in the sky.

For a moment she eyed the silent radio on the corner of the desk. Bobby in the tower had made it official at the stroke of three, a baritone voice on a dead channel announcing the closure. She double checked her figures for the transfer. Then, assured she had strained out as many errors she could find, she clipped the receipts together and dropped the sheaf in the plastic bin for the boss' eventual review.

Moving to the picture window that overlooked anchored rows of aircraft she put her hands to the small of her back and stretched. Already the wall clock was reading a quarter to six. She'd assumed an hour to clean the bathrooms and organize the lobby, a few minutes to review her daily paperwork - no sales today! - and thirty minutes or so to go stick tanks and close up the farm. If she was very, very lucky she might clock out by eight. Still, the hardest and most stressful part of the day was behind her.

From the fridge in the employee room she produced her lunch. The other half of the sub sandwich she'd brought for lunch yesterday and which she'd been too busy to attend earlier. Speaking of - she made a mental note to collect another one on the way home. She ate in silence and looked out on a silent airport. For once the television in the lobby was off. She meant to leave it that way, too. She'd had enough noise to last her a while.

To her surprise she felt a little pride. Maybe she hadn't been a stellar employee today but she'd kept it mostly together and handled the unexpected. The place was still standing, after all, and she'd even overseen the delivery of fifteen thousand gallons of fuel, albeit with some help. Funny in a way - she'd spent the first half of the day hoping someone would come by to keep an eye on her and the second hoping they stayed away and let her handle it. She guessed she was still likely to get fired sooner or later, but she allowed now that she might escape without causing a minor catastrophe.

So long as the flu didn't come around and melt her brain she had it made. The FBO might even be closed tomorrow. She could have her victory, the extra hours on her next check, and Sunday off.

Score.

But lying between her present and her weekend were the bathrooms. She frowned as she crumpled the wrapper from the sandwich. Yesterday the task had been split; she'd taken the ladies room and Mike handled the men's. It had worked in her favor since there were fewer women camped outside, but it still hadn't been pleasant. Facing the men's restroom...ugh. She was forever amazed that there existed a creature who could plant a bucking airplane on the runway centerline in the middle of a blind thunderstorm yet miss a stable target in a well-lit space. She'd wear two layers of gloves. And a painter's mask. Perhaps when finished she would burn her clothes.

Nevertheless she went into the storeroom and returned armed and armored, took one last longing look at the waning day, and went to face the music.

When she emerged at last the windows were pools of obsidian. Usually the airport would have been a veritable carnival - runway lights, red marker beacons on all the buildings, taxiway signage, aircraft position lights - but with the formal shutdown Rigland had gone into a blackout. If she stepped outside and strained her eyes she could make out the distant shapes of the tower and private hangars to the north, shadows against the night. Somewhere - either on the perimeter service road or the county highway beyond - a pair of headlights crossed below the horizon.

All that remained now was the easy stuff. Run a quick mop over the floors, hit the carpet with the vacuum cleaner, and shut down the tank farm. The place was halfway presentable. Not her best work, but if she came in tomorrow she'd have nothing else to do but tidy up. Actually, she was half tempted to leave it all. Nobody was going to be in here, and since Clower hadn't called she thought it was a safe bet she was still on for Sunday. She admitted to herself that she could use the extra cash. If that meant playing maid for the day she could live with it.

She pretended to weigh the options as she moved through the lobby, switching off the lights and small appliances throughout. It could wait. She'd been here long enough today. The wall clock said she was pushing on eight, and Clower was notoriously unforgiving when it came to paying overtime. She grabbed a pocket notebook and the keys for the service truck and went out the front door. She paused to lock up, and as she turned for the Ford the shadow of a patrol car slid into the parking lot.

The tinted window moved down and she could see Reed washed in the glow of the dashboard instrument lights.

"You got it about wrapped up?"

"Just about." She waved the scratch pad. "I just need to shut down the tank farm."

"Hang on ." He turned away and spoke into the radio microphone clipped to the epaulet of his shirt. Talking to the other deputy, she guessed. Or the tower. He spoke too low for her to make out his words over the hum of the motor. After a brief exchange he looked back to her.

"How long?"

"Fifteen, twenty minutes." She didn't think it could take too long. She only had to stick two tanks, check the drain and door locks on the trucks, and close the gate.

"All right," he said. "Be quick."

The window slid up and the ghost of the cruiser eased out of the lot. For a minute she stood looking after him. Running without lights. Weird. But then she gave a mental shrug and walked to the service truck, an aging Ford with a box cabinet in place of the bed. At one point the company name had been marked on the side, but years of exposure to weather, blowing grit, and jet exhaust had stripped the adhesive letters away. She turned over the engine and a cloud of blue-gray gas boiled out the tailpipe. Judging by the scent the thing was burning oil.

She made sure the windows were up and waited for the fog to clear. She'd learned early on to give it sufficient time to warm up. Even on warm days it was particular. Evelyn feathered the gas and coaxed the motor to life. There was a strange ticking under the hood and a squeal of belts in need of replacement, but none of the warning lights came on and she started up the ramp.

She parked outside the gate at the fuel farm, leaving the truck running in order to forgo a second showing of the startup ordeal. The yellow wedge of the headlights cast a sickly glow on the service entrance. On her way to the tanks she stopped, then walked to the secondary gate and swore under her breath. The gate was a motorized affair, and like everything else mechanical stayed on the raggedy edge of failure most of the time. Tonight the edge of the sliding section had come to a halt three feet shy of the target, thus leaving a man-sized gap in the perimeter fencing.

Flashlight in hand she shoved and kicked at the gate. She got the opening down to a foot or so before the wheels locked up solid. Well, shit. She kicked it again for good measure and scribbled a note. As Mike was so fond of saying, this was above her pay grade.

Inside the farm she picked up the measuring stick and a jar of pink goop. She'd do the jet tank first. Avgas was always last, she'd been taught - the chemical makeup of 100LL aviation gasoline would eat the jet fuel residue and evaporate, thus saving the effort of cleaning the dipstick. She eyeballed the curved side of the first tank, imagining how high the Jet A would be inside. Then she scooped out a glob of putty and put a six inch streak on the unmarked side. She propped the stick against the tank and climbed up. She almost dropped the flashlight and swore again; there was a light at the farm, but like everything else it had been shut off for the blackout.

Jet reading in hand, she wrote down her figures and moved over to the avgas tank. Avgas was more of a hassle. The same chemical makeup that ate through jet fuel was also slower to leave marks in the paste. On a hot night that meant standing for a minute or so and giving it time to work. A lot of times it meant measuring more than once. Leaving the stick standing she paced the length of the tank, playing the light over the piles of trash inside the spill barrier.

On her second circuit the edge of the light caught something amiss. She hesitated and swung the beam back, unsure of what she'd half-seen but aware that it seemed wrong. The circle of weak light swept over the concrete. Dirt. Tire marks. Weeds growing up in the joints. A puddle of something - God only knew what.

There.

Beside the puddle.

A footprint. She squinted. Maybe. The batteries were going and it was hard to say for sure. Maybe it was imprinted in the cement. She couldn't really be certain. She turned slowly, spot following the general direction. Nothing.

The fence chainlink fence rattled and she started. The beam moved that direction. Nothing there, either.

"You made it this far," she said, her voice seeming oddly distant. "Don't blow it now."

She forced herself to grin. Nineteen years old and still jumping and noises in the dark. It was like the game she'd played as a little girl. Hide and go seek at night. The rush that came from being scared, then pursued, fed by a lifetime of bad horror movies. She managed a laugh. Even to her it sounded forced and unnatural.

The difference was that as a little girl she'd known the people chasing her. The game had been in a familiar place. Her backyard, or one of theirs. It had been established that no matter the outcome nobody was getting hurt beyond bruises or skinned knees. A kind of fear, yes - but contained in a framework that effectively removed its teeth. A drug without the aftereffects.

Big girls in the real world didn't have that luxury. That was why they were sometimes found gutted in dumpsters with a sock taped in their mouth, or the harmless guy who'd lived next door their whole life dragged them into the shrubs on the way home from a movie, or they accepted a friendly drink and woke up in a bathtub full of crushed ice in Mexico. Of course she knew that some of those things were just bullshit. Urban legends. The others were real enough, but...bad things happened to other people.

She was getting out of here on time tomorrow. Definitely.

She flicked the beam back and forth. Nothing out there. Cats, maybe. Or foxes. Rigland was far enough into the boondocks that wild animals were hardly uncommon. She'd even seen one a few days before. A little gray fox with black points trotting across the end of the runway in the dusk. Supposedly there was a matched pair but she hadn't seen them together yet.

She hard the scrape of shoes against concrete. A good two or three seconds of distinct sound that was gone as quickly as it had come. Any other night she'd have chalked it up to one of her coworkers. They seemed to take particular delight in pranks and practical jokes. She didn't think anything about it because the practice was basically a free-for-all against any and all targets of opportunity. Everybody pulled shit on everybody else, she'd found, so it wasn't some kind of hazing against the new hires.

Or girls. Her fellow line rats were equal opportunity assholes like that. Steve was the most frequent prankster, most of his being small-time stuff, more eye-rolling and annoying. Mike, on the other hand, had played exactly two pranks since she'd been here, both minor masterpieces of fuckery that had the intended recipients - of which she had been one - well on their way to cardiac arrest by the the time the victims caught on.

She waited for the avgas to finish eating a line in the putty and for the sounds of someone else in the yard. She knew there was something there, like stepping into a dark room and feeling a human presence that couldn't be seen. She tried to guess the source, but had no luck. Too many things jumbled together echoed and muted sound and made her little game of mental Marco-Polo a dead end. At best she'd have to finish up and hope her uninvited guest wasn't waiting when she got down.

Wiping her sweaty palms against her jeans she forced herself back to the task at hand. She scrawled a barely legible figure that hopefully matched the stick reading and shoved the notebook deep in her back pocket.

This was when she needed a Del or a Mike or a Jim. Somebody to stand on the concrete lip of the spill barrier and tell her that she was seeing things, or that she needed to quit sniffing avgas, or to hurry her skinny ass up because they were tired and wanted to go home sometime this week and no, there was nobody else here. Too look at her like she'd uttered some dazzling stupidity. Because it was stupid.

Wasn't it?

She clenched her teeth and made record time getting down the ladder. At the bottom she jumped the spill barrier and got away from the tangle of pipes and hulking tanks, sweeping the light behind her. She stopped and listened for some small noise to reignite the fear. It didn't come. She took a deep breath, fighting to calm her nerves, and put the dipstick in its holder alongside the first tank.

She was alone.

Shaking her head, she closed the gates and wound the chain through. An open padlock hung from the fence, and she clipped it securely through the links and seated it firmly. She gave off a small laugh - nervous, still, but not forced - and got in the truck. She fished the notebook out of her pocket and turned on the truck's dome light. Her handwriting was borderline illegible for the avgas reading. That was okay. She'd get a better one tomorrow and correct it then. The important thing was that she was done here tonight. She'd survived her first solo day. The realization was almost a surprise. She'd made it. And now she needed sleep.

Lots of sleep. Her mind felt like her television looked the static whiteout when there was no signal, and it was going to take hours to work the burgeoning kinks out of her back.

She drove back to the office. There was an area floodlight affixed to the side of the building, one of the few that hadn't been doused, and she parked in its glow, glad to be back from the strange nighttime world that was the tank farm. Place had always given her the creeps. Especially after dark. But like those monsters from childhood it was a stupid fear. The others would agree, she imagined. Maybe she'd do okay here.

The rounded shape of Reed's cruiser appeared as she was unloading her stuff from the cab. She paid the deputy no mind until he was even with the rear bumper of the Ford. Until then she assumed he was being courteous - coming to get the truck door, as she had a number of things to carry - but then she saw the hand resting on the butt of his service pistol.

"You run into some trouble?" he asked.

She hesitated, the ghost of the mastered fear springing up like a tiny match in the midst of a vast and depthless pit. The seed of doubt. Did she tell him? Could she tell him without sounding like a head case? Surely he dealt with maladjusted people often enough, but she meant to go home tonight. Not to the mental hospital.

Reed stepped back and gestured with his chin at the back of the truck. "Maybe you could explain this to me."

Cautious, she stepped around the bumper. The flashlight, notepad, and truck keys hit the ground and her hands flew to her mouth.

"Oh Jesus," she said.

The back of the truck was smeared with something dark and greasy. In two or three places she could make out the definite shape of a handprint. Slowly she reached to the cabinet and touched on the marks. The stuff was warm. Sticky. And under the brilliant illumination of Reed's duty light, a deep dark red.