TWENTY-SEVEN

According to Chelsea, the Walmart distribution center was on the other side of Melissa, an exurb northeast of McKinney. She couldn’t tell us which street the building was on, but she did know you had to drive past a landfill to get there. With that information Ed deduced the approximate location.

We left Mack’s place around 4PM so we could scout the DC in daylight. Ed, Mack, and Jimmy rode in the pickup’s cab and the rest of us climbed into the bed. My mind whistled like a kettle. The hard shell of my skull shrieked. A dull knife of pain poked into the space behind my eyes, and I wondered for the first time if something was physically wrong with me.

By now weapons had been assigned, and the semi-automatic rifle I’d been given was clearly meant as an insult, since most everyone else was carrying a full auto. The pistol was shoved into the back of my jeans.

From Mack’s place we drove east through a rural region where stalled cars were less numerous than other areas we’d been. At one point we passed a pickup traveling in the opposite direction, an old brown Chevy with four men piled in the back. The men carried handguns and one of them offered a knowing nod. Only two days had elapsed since the EMP, and already a new order was understood. One class of citizens was armed with guns and transportation that gave them a fighting chance to survive. The other would probably starve to death before summer was over.

At the Highway 75 intersection we headed north, and the road was a disaster. Ed honked his horn repeatedly to move people out of the way. They were single walkers, married couples, families, the elderly. At one point a small BMX-style motorcycle passed us, steered by a girl who could have been twelve or twenty. People carried backpacks and duffel bags and rolled suitcases behind them. Some carried nothing at all. Fear rose from this mob like waves of heat. People yelled at us for help. They threatened us. One guy claimed Army tanks were approaching from the south.

Fortunately the drive to Melissa was only five or six miles, and by the time we exited 75 at TX-121, we were making good time again.

When Chelsea figured out where we were, she began to babble directions. Eventually the truck slowed down, and Mack motioned us to lower our weapons. Then, at long last, I spotted it: A driveway labeled with a blue-and-white sign that looked like this:

WALA * MART

Distribution Center

*OUR PEOPLE MAKE THE DIFFERENCE

Because of the tree line, and because the DC was set well back from the road, I caught only a short glimpse before it vanished from view. The building was uniformly white and enormous. When we reached another break in the trees, I could see the facility was divided into two separate buildings, one of which was taller than the other, like maybe three stories high. A large propane tank stood on the front lawn, along with taller, cylindrical tanks that probably held fuel.

Standing atop of one of these taller tanks was a man wearing a brown shirt and jeans and holding a rifle. Beneath him a crowd of people had gathered on the other side of a chain-link fence. The entire scene was visible to us only a few seconds and then was hidden by trees again.

“Did you see that?” said Bart. “They got guards just like we thought.”

A couple of minutes later we turned into a neighborhood of condos and duplexes. One more turn brought us to the home of Chelsea’s mother, where we climbed out of the truck to stretch our legs. Though nightfall was still a couple of hours away, the overcast sky made it seem as though the sun was already going down.

Chelsea took us inside, where she found her mother napping on the couch. Here was a wispy, graying woman who clearly had not been expecting company.

“Oh, Chelsea!” she shrieked. “Oh, my God! I didn’t know if I would ever see you again!”

“Everyone,” Chelsea said, “this is my mom, Marie.”

The mother cast a wary eye upon our motley crew and especially the rifles.

“Mom,” Chelsea said, “these friends of mine are going to visit the Walmart warehouse tonight. We think there will be a lot of food.”

“I wondered about that,” said Marie. “Danny Armstrong walked over there this afternoon, but I don’t know what came of it. He lives next door.”

“I’m sorry for bringing weapons into your home,” said Jimmy. “But we think the Walmart building might be well-guarded. In a situation like this they ought to share their supplies.”

“I agree,” said Marie. “But won’t it be dangerous to force your way in?”

“It will, but we won’t take the girls with us.”

“And if they’re able to bring back food,” Chelsea said, “I was hoping you’d let us crash here for a while.”

Marie didn’t love the idea of taking in so many guests, but after Jimmy gently reminded her of the desperate reality she faced, that everyone faced, she relented.

Soon, the men were outside again, standing next to the pickup, while Mack explained our next steps.

“As you could see, people already want inside the DC. That means our assault will come from the rear of the property. I’m willing to bet there’s nothing but pasture back there, but we won’t know until we arrive.

“And we can’t just drive all the way to the property, because they’ll hear us coming. So we’ll need to leave the pickup far enough away to maintain stealth, but close enough that we can retrieve it in a timely manner. This interval will be important, because the civilians outside may approach the building when they realize something has changed inside.

“The next problem is exactly where to approach. Those guards are probably employees familiar with the campus. Our advantage will be surprise and hopefully superior weapons, but we won’t know the exact nature of our assault until we’re familiar with the layout.

“We’ll split into two teams and coordinate a staggered approach from different angles. When the guards realize an attack is in progress, their attention will be drawn to Team One. This could make it easier for Team Two to approach the building and breach the security perimeter.

“Men, our biggest ally, the darkness, will also prove to be a major obstacle. That’s why it’s important to locate all guard positions while it’s still daylight and hope they maintain those at night.

“Visibility could be even worse inside the building. Any lanterns or fires may be extinguished as a last-ditch defense. And if we get inside and can’t see, all hell could break loose. These people will know their way around their building. We will not.

“As far as teams go, let’s put Ed, Bart, and Aiden on Team One. Nick, Aaron, Jimmy, and me will be Team Two. We’ll see how these teams work during our scouting run and make any changes before tonight. Questions?”

* * *

On the drive over, the difficulty of what we were trying to do finally became tangible enough to scare the shit out of everyone. We were traveling west and hadn’t gone far when we found an unpaved road that ran north and south. From there we were close enough to catch glimpses of the DC, its rectangular bulk reflecting orange hues from the sky. We were maybe a half-mile away, but I wondered if the guards could hear our engine running and our tires crunching over gravel. Or for that matter if they could hear the ever-present screeching of the world, if that awful sound had wormed its way into their heads the way it had lay waste to mine.

On our left stood unimproved pasture, brown grassland dotted here and there with mesquite trees and the occasional oak. When we discovered an unlocked gate guarding the entrance to a forgotten-looking dirt road, we turned and found a place among some trees to hide the pickup.

From there we approached the DC on foot: Mack and Nick; Jimmy and Aaron; Bart by himself; Ed and me at the rear. What a smug bastard the slick cat was in his hip jeans and his lean frame squeezed into a shirt too small for him. He probably thought he was better than me. He was probably a godless, libtard Democrat who voted for Killary and Obummer and took money from George Soros. He was everything wrong with America. He deserved to be shot.

The trees grew denser the farther we walked and my mind began to wander. What would it be like inside the warehouse? Would there be lemonade? What sort of food would I eat first? Something canned? From a bag? A box? I wondered if I would ever eat another pizza. I tried to understand the appeal of pizza. Nothing more than bread and sauce and cheese but put one in front of me and I would eat the entire thing. I pictured the whole world as a pizza, where you could take a bite of anything, anywhere, and it would taste like your favorite slice. In fact, when I looked down, the texture of the ground had changed. It was softer, springier, and coming up on my right was a large, brown boulder that might have been made of pork sausage. But it couldn’t have been. Right? Except beyond the boulder lay a series of red, oily discs, flat on the ground, that anyone could have mistaken for slices of pepperoni. And large cacti shaped like chopped bell peppers, and concrete slabs that looked like onion slices. Brown, crusty cliffs loomed in the distance, as if we had stumbled without knowing into a large, structural basin. Eventually the ground began to change again, the cheese giving way to a red, gooey swamp, and I realized the entire surface of our planet floated on a great lake of blood, which in a perfect world would have contained the blood of every person who had ever wronged me, like for instance my absent parents and my disloyal sister and every slutbag who never returned my calls. And all the liberal elites who made me feel stupid and provincial. I was so hungry I could imagine falling to my knees and slurping this blood right off the ground, laughing the way a hyena laughs while he devours his prey alive.

Eventually our progress slowed and then stopped altogether. Mack turned around and raised a finger to his lips. I thought he might invite us to fill our bellies with pizza before the attack, but when I looked around, the food had disappeared. All I saw were the other men standing in a narrow grove of trees. Through branches and leaves, the rectangular bulk of the DC loomed enormously. We were closest, at that point, to its northeastern corner. Mack and Nick and Aaron crept closer to the edge of the trees, using binoculars to look for any posted sentries. They observed for a few moments and then returned, encouraging us to gather into a rough circle, like the shape of a pizza. Where the hell was the pizza?

“So the problem we have,” said Mack, “is a buncha semi-trailers parked at the docks. These will provide cover for the guards, while our approach will be made across a wide-open lawn and parking lot. The only cover we’ll enjoy is darkness, but as I said before, that will make it more difficult to identify our enemy targets.”

“If they’re well-armed,” said Ed, “this attack sounds like suicide.”

Mack nodded. “I know it seems like every weekend warrior nowadays owns a military rifle, but most of these weapons are toys compared to what we’re carrying. Even so, we don’t have a lot of ammo. This means we must shoot efficiently.”

Speaking of ammunition, each of our weapons was loaded with a 30-round magazine. Because I was carrying a semi-automatic rifle, and couldn’t fire as rapidly, I hadn’t been given a spare. Mack was carrying the RPG, while Bart wore a backpack that held three grenades.

“I’ll tell you one thing,” Mack added. “I underestimated the size of that building, even after seeing it from the road.”

We retreated into the trees a bit and moved westward until we were more centrally positioned. There were two main buildings, remember, this flatter-looking one and the taller one at the southwest corner of the campus. Eventually, Mack stopped again. It was a good thing, too, because I was ready to point my rifle at Slick Ed and fire away. If I cooked his arms and legs, they might taste pretty good.

“All right,” Mack said. “Let’s spread out and put fifteen yards between each of us. Then we’ll approach the tree line. I want every one of you to scan the perimeter of the building and look for movement. Watch for legs moving below those trailers, for movement on the roof. Look for any surface feature up there that doesn’t belong. We’ll do this for a minute or so and then regroup.”

From what I remember, our movements weren’t that loud, and we were at least three hundred yards from the building. In fact, as we spread into the new formation, I was fed up with all the careful preparation. I didn’t understand why we wouldn’t storm the building then, in the daylight, and force the guards to show themselves. I wondered why we even called them “guards.” We were talking about a handful of forklift drivers probably armed with hunting rifles and pistols and maybe a consumer-grade AR.

“All right,” Mack said. “I see a—”

You never imagine the sound of a bullet from the terminus of its journey, not unless you’re a soldier, which I certainly am not. So the brief and powerful whistle that coincided with the crack of a gunshot did not register at first as a recognizable event. Only when I heard fierce and frightened curses, only when I turned and saw a body convulsing on the ground, did I realize what had happened. That’s when I heard a second bullet and saw, not thirty feet from me, a spray of blood as Aaron’s head jerked sideways with the force of deadly impact. For a moment he just teetered there, a sickening grin on his face, while blood poured out of his nose and a chunk of cranial bone fell away from his ear. Something about that bone fragment finally registered as DANGER in my brain. I dropped to the ground and made myself flat.

“Fall back!” I heard a voice yell, which I now know belonged to Bart. “Fall back now!”

But I couldn’t bring myself to move. The only course of action that made any sense was to stay low, out of sight, to not make myself a target. But then I heard a third gunshot, and someone screamed “Nick!” and finally I got the message. We were being picked off like Coke cans in target practice. The shots were being fired from a considerable distance. Just because we couldn’t see the guy didn’t mean my magnified head wasn’t the next target.

I rolled sideways and onto my feet, where I scrambled deeper into the trees and caught up to Ed. The two of us ran blindly back the way we had come, at least until we spotted Bart and Jimmy huddled near the ground. Somehow Bart had grabbed a pair of orphaned binoculars.

“Stop and sit down,” he hissed. “Listen for any sound. We need to know if they’re following us or not.”

“Holy fucking shit,” said Ed. “They shot Aaron. Holy fucking—”

“I said shut the fuck up!”

Even when Ed stopped talking, our gusting breaths made it difficult to hear anything.

“We have no chance against that sniper,” I finally said. “He’s standing on the roof of that warehouse playing a goddamned video game.”

“Maybe so,” said Bart. “But I’m starving and thirsty and we don’t have shit for supplies.”

“We’re low on energy and not thinking straight,” Jimmy said. “Whereas those guards are well fed and enjoy better visibility. But they are missing one ingredient the rest of us will bring when we make our move.”

“And what’s that?” asked Ed.

“Desperation,” Jimmy said. “Because if we don’t get inside that building, the rest of us will die like our boys just did.”

* * *

Seeing the spilled blood of fellow soldiers brought focus to my desires. Where minutes before I had been ready to shoot one of my own men, a real opportunity had finally arisen to fire at someone else. Also, I was pissed off. Why would God choose me to facilitate His plan and then intentionally cut our team in half? It made no sense. I began to wonder, for the first time, if God really played an active role in my life. Had my journey from unemployed graphic designer to member of this assault team been my doing? Was I the one in charge?

It was time to find out. Time to assume command.

“Why don’t I take your binoculars,” I said to Bart, “and sneak back to the tree line in a different spot? The sniper probably found us so easily because of the way we spread out. Maybe I can locate him this time before he finds me.”

“You’re willing to do that?”

“Sure. I’d rather go out guns blazing than starve to death.”

“It better be soon,” Jimmy said. “You’re losing your light.”

Until then I hadn’t noticed the rapidly approaching darkness. There was also a towering cloud structure behind the DC, dark and flat at the bottom, brilliantly pink in its upper reaches.

“Bart,” I said. “Hand me those binoculars.”

While I looked for a new spot to survey the roof, the screeching in my head began to sound more like a ringing, or a high-pitched tone you might hear during a weather alert. A sense of destiny wrapped me like a warm blanket, as if this assault had somehow been arranged for my benefit. As if I were the hero of this subplot.

Eventually I found a suitable position and crouched near the ground. I pushed the binoculars into an open space and hoped the rest of me was hidden by branches and leaves. I found the northeastern corner of the building and panned westward. The light was so low it was difficult to tell where the roof ended and the sky began, especially because, through the lenses, the approaching storm seemed close enough to touch. Its popcorn cloud formations had become a pinkish, dusky gray and the smell of rain floated on the wind.

I couldn’t see how anyone could hide on the roof, as featureless as it was, at least not until I reached the middle portion of it. That’s where I discovered a single row of what appeared to be exhaust ducts.

Adjacent to the closest one, if my eyes were not deceiving me, stood a rifle mounted on a tripod. As far as I could tell the gun was pointed right at me.

I blinked.

Rolled violently away.

The crack in the air might have been thunder, so close was the storm, but the explosion of nearby dirt verified the arrival of a bullet. Had I moved a second later, I would have been dead. Instead, I saved myself.

Which made the truth so obvious. I could be my own God!

“He’s at the middle of the roof!” I hissed. “By the exhaust duct. Cover me. I’m going in!”

The deliverance I felt in the next moment electrified me so thoroughly that as I sprinted out of the trees, down the slope of grass, it felt like my conscious mind had spread beyond the boundaries of my body. As gunshots rang out the world seemed to slow down and become drained of color. My footsteps on the ground were thunderous, the air in my ears a gale-force wind. Only when I reached the parking lot, when I saw a row of handholds mounted near a corner of the building, did I realize rain was pouring out of the sky. By this point, because of his angle, the sniper could no longer shoot at me from his original position. I kept waiting for other guards to appear, to be riddled with bullets, but these ground-based sentries were nowhere to be found. I darted between a semi-trailer and the exterior wall of the DC and found the handholds again. They turned out to be rungs of a ladder that stretched all the way to the roof. Without bothering to stop and rest, I slung the rifle over my shoulder and began my ascent. Through the torrential rain I saw Bart and Jimmy and Ed approaching, firing in bursts toward the roof. Hopefully their assault would occupy the sniper while I climbed.

On the way up my arms and legs seemed to take on weight, and my energy ran out just as I reached the last rung. Rain roared on the steel roof. Below me I heard loud voices and someone pounding on a door. What I didn’t detect was a response, like other voices or return fire or any sort of resistance.

Finally, when my muscles had recovered, I summoned the energy to push my right hand upward, where it slapped against the wet steel surface of the roof. Rivers of rain poured out of my hair and into my eyes.

Amid all this chaos, a voice emerged. At first the identity of the voice didn’t register because I was concerned only with the message itself.

“Come any closer,” said the sniper, “and I’ll blow your fucking brains out.”

Then reality poked through my confusion, and I marveled at this unexpected twist.

The sniper was a woman.