User blog:Gracchus Mccarthe/Benson and Roister: Setting up Shop

     Cecil walked to the hole he’d made in the wall earlier. “Here’s a good place to start. We need to get this hole covered up.”

     “Just out of curiosity, are we gonna do anything with Carl’s… body?” Ray asked.

     “Later.” Clayton answered. “Right now, we just need to get to work.”

     A.J. and Dig entered the building to get the materials needed for the repairs. They found several large metal beams in a storage room. Hoisting one up one their shoulders, the two men carried it outside. “Here.” Dig said. “We got a little present for you guys.”

     After the beam was laid on the ground, A.J. and Dig went back to get more. After about half an hour, the two Heavies had gotten a dozen or so beams.

     “So how exactly are we gonna patch up this whole?” Troh inquired.

     “Weld it into place.” Cecil replied. “I can take care of that, if you guys can find a big enough blowtorch.”

     Clayton scratched the back of his head. “Probably not the best fix, but it’ll have to do for the time being.”

     “Hey, I just thought of something.” Rex said. “This is the tallest building within what, at least five miles?”

     “Yeah.” Clayton answered. “Your point?”

     “If we demolish some of these other buildings, we’ll have a clear shot over a huge distance. It’d be a lot easier to defend this building, and we seem to have chosen it for our, uh, HQ, I guess you’d call it.”

     “Somebody just get me a stinkin’ torch*!” Cecil shouted.

     “I’ll see if I can find one.” A.J. offered. He went back into the building.

     “So how do you suggest we blow up the buildings?” Dehner asked Rex. “We’re gonna need heavier artillery than what I’ve got.”

     “I honestly don’t know.” Rex stated flatly.

     “Well, Art said he was gonna try to find a gunship, or whatever.” Hicks recalled. “If he can find one, we can use it.”

<p class="MsoNormal">     Clayton pointed at him. “Good call. Now, we need to get a perimeter set up around this tower. Any ideas about that?”

<p class="MsoNormal">     Ray put his hand up. “We could park weapon-mounted APCs** out here. We could use the guns ‘til the zombs get too close.” The others agreed this was a good idea.

<p class="MsoNormal">     A.J. returned holding an over-sized blowtorch. “How’s this?” he asked Cecil.

<p class="MsoNormal">     “Sweet. That’ll totally work.” Cecil had the Heavies place a beam on the ground next to the hole. Then he welded it and bonded it with the tower’s metal exterior. “Well, that’s one down, and about ten to go.”

<p class="MsoNormal">     “Uh, there was a door here.” Ray said. “There’s another door into the tower, right?”

<p class="MsoNormal">     Cecil nodded as another beam was placed. “Yup.” he replied as sparks began flying.

<p class="MsoNormal">     “Maybe we should’ve used it instead of blowing this one up.”

<p class="MsoNormal">     “They were probably locked too.” Cecil replied.

<p class="MsoNormal">     A.J. hadn’t yet gone back for another beam, and he said, “Yeah, it was locked. I unlocked it just a minute ago.”

<p class="MsoNormal">     Clayton and Sarck went to start positioning the APCs. Rex, Troh, Ray, and Dehner decided to go to the armory to see if the equipment inside was still usable.

<p class="MsoNormal">     “Hey A.J., where exactly did you find that torch?” Hicks asked. “I can help Cecil if I can get a torch.”

<p class="MsoNormal">     “I saw another one or two in there.” A.J. replied. “I’ll go get ‘em.” He returned shortly holding a blowtorch in each arm.” He handed one to Hicks. “Have at it.”

<p class="MsoNormal">     With two people welding the beams into place, the job began going much faster.

<p class="MsoNormal">     Clayton and Sarck drove up and parked four APCs: the two that they were driving, and two more that they had towed. Rex came back and told the six soldiers, “The armory’s still usable. There’s weapons and armor if you guys are interested.”

<p class="MsoNormal">     Clayton, Cecil, Hicks, Sarck, and Dig thought that sounded like a good idea, but A.J. said, “No thanks. I’m good with stuff I already have.”

<p class="MsoNormal">     “You don’t have to use any of the equipment in the armory.” Cecil pointed out to him. “You could just look around.”

<p class="MsoNormal">     A.J. grinned. “All right, I’ll do that later just to make you guys happy.”

<p class="MsoNormal">     “Anybody else hear that?” Rex asked suddenly.

<p class="MsoNormal">     The other soldiers strained their ears. “Yeah.” Hicks answered. “It kinda sounds like jet engines.”

<p class="MsoNormal">     Seconds later, they all saw Hicks was right. A large craft flew up and hovered over them. Heather’s voice came in over a loudspeaker mounted on the ship. “How’s this?”

<p class="MsoNormal">     The others gave thumbs-up, and then the ship was landed nearby.

<p class="MsoNormal">     Heather and Art walked up shortly. “As you can see, we got one.” Art stated.

<p class="MsoNormal">     “Yeah. Pretty sweet one too.” Sarck replied. “Does it have guns?”

<p class="MsoNormal">     The co-pilot smiled broadly. “Ooooh yes. Big guns.”

<p class="MsoNormal">     “Big enough to take out a building?” Clayton inquired.

<p class="MsoNormal">     Heather nodded. “More than enough. Why?”

<p class="MsoNormal">     The commander responded, “We need to knock down a bunch of these buildings around here.”

<p class="MsoNormal">     “Our ships are programmed unable to fire on our own bases.” Art reminded him.

<p class="MsoNormal">     Clayton nodded. “Yup. That’s the reason Cecil’s gonna have to hack the base’s security system.”

<p class="MsoNormal">     “You’re capable of doing that!?” Rex asked the engineer.

<p class="MsoNormal">     Cecil cracked his knuckles and muttered “Ouch.” under his breath. “That looks so much cooler in movies, but anyway, yes. I can hack it.”

<p class="MsoNormal">     “Have you ever hacked a government system before?”

<p class="MsoNormal">     Cecil shook his head. “Nope. That’s unethical. Besides, I’d get caught. They monitor their systems extremely well, y’know. It’d take me about an hour to get in. By that time, they’d be bound to notice me.”

<p class="MsoNormal">     “We need to move more APCs into place.” Sarck said.

<p class="MsoNormal">     Clayton began walking back to the garage. “Yeah, let’s finish that.”

<p class="MsoNormal">     “Uh, before you do that, where can I start the hacking?” Cecil asked hurriedly.

<p class="MsoNormal">     “Oh, sorry about that.” Clayton told him. “The tower’s central control room isn’t at the top. It’s in a secret basement. Here I’ll show you where it is.”

<p class="MsoNormal">     “I’ll come along.” Hicks offered. “I know a thing or two about hacking.”

<p class="MsoNormal">     “I don’t get it. What’s the difference between a control room and a central control room?” Rex asked.

<p class="MsoNormal">     Clayton turned around. “A control room controls lights, temperature, etc., but a central control room does security, lock downs, and the like.”

<p class="MsoNormal">      With that, Clayton led Cecil and Hicks to the central control room.

<p class="MsoNormal">     “I don’t know about you guys, but I gotta see this.” Rex stated.

<p class="MsoNormal">     “Does sound interesting.” A.J. told Dig.

<p class="MsoNormal">     “Yeah, let’s go.” Dig said. They followed Rex.

<p class="MsoNormal">     Heather looked at Art. “We might as well.”

<p class="MsoNormal">     “Guess so. Everyone else is headed there.”

<p class="MsoNormal">     The two of them also went into the building. When they found the others inside, they saw a part of the floor had been taken out. It was a square about four feet wide and had a tangled mass of wires inside it.

<p class="MsoNormal">     Art scratched his head. “Why are there wires in there that don’t connect to anything?”

<p class="MsoNormal">     “Those wires make it look inconspicuous just in case part of the floor comes off somehow.” Clayton explained. “This is actually an emergency exit. The main entrance comes here from another building.”

<p class="MsoNormal">     Clayton was about to open a hatch leading down into the secret room, but Cecil stopped him. “Wait! Don’t open it just yet.”

<p class="MsoNormal">     “Why not?” the commander asked.

<p class="MsoNormal">     “When I did a bio scan, I only checked above ground level. I didn’t know there was underground stuff here. I’ll run a bio scan underground.” After a short time, Cecil told them, “There are two large infected down there.”

<p class="MsoNormal">     “Hold on.” A.J. said. “None of us has a weapon. I’ll be back in a couple minutes.” He left and got his gun from outside. He returned soon after, wielding his machine gun. “Open the hatch.”

<p class="MsoNormal">     When it had been opened, none of the SAS saw any infected inside.

<p class="MsoNormal">     “I’ll go down there. Hand this to me when I’m down.” A.J. said. He climbed down a ladder and turned around. Two zombies that were glowing orange charged at him. “Gimme the gun!” A.J. yelled. The other soldiers passed it down to him and he opened fire on the approaching zombies. “Phew. Got ‘em.”

<p class="MsoNormal">     The other SAS went down to join A.J. after Cecil did another bio scan that came up negative on infected life.

<p class="MsoNormal">     All of them said some variant of “whoa” when the light was switched on. Charred corpses were scattered around the room.

<p class="MsoNormal">     “The heat must’ve killed them before the virus could fully infect them.” Cecil said. “That’s my guess ‘cause those other two and the huge one were on fire and not getting burned up.”

<p class="MsoNormal">     Ray pointed at a hole in the wall. “That door got knocked in. The infected must have gotten in through there from whatever building has the tunnel that leads here.”

<p class="MsoNormal">     “Luckily for us, the tech is still intact.” Cecil said. “Too bad we couldn’t have gotten back from the mission a bit earlier. From the looks of things, the virus mutated people before they could get ready to fight.”

<p class="MsoNormal">     Hicks nudged Cecil. “After we clear this room, we can start working on cracking the base’s security.”

<p class="MsoNormal">     The dead bodies were moved out of the room and taken outside the building.

<p class="MsoNormal">      As Cecil and Hicks began their work, Clayton, A.J., Dig, Sarck, Rex, Heather, and Art took the bodies outside the tower. Rex voiced the question in everyone’s mind: “So, what do we do with these, well, bodies?”

<p class="MsoNormal">     “I wish we could have an official funeral for each one of them, but sadly, we don’t have the time for that.” Clayton said grimly. “We’ll just leave them here for now.”…

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