White Saturday

White Saturday - Wednesday, July 4th 2012

Kyle Tricks

The group sat in the office that was at one point a Warden’s, and then Carlos’ living quarters. I was standing; taking a quick look around the room as Vivienne and her sister entered the room and closed the door.

Between all of us, with my bandaged, dirty hands on top of it, was a desk. A crappy piece of furniture made to look expensive. Probably something from IKEA. In the corner, an equally crappy double bed, because why the hell not? With a drug problem like his, and a just lovely office to go with such ugly features, how could any piece off ass say no?

Stacked in another corner were about a dozen picture frames, glass broken for weapons and whatever medical degrees that were in them used for kindling.

On the table when we first came in there were a few things –moved aside for now- a large stack of books, a wide variety, Macbeth, Hamlet, the latest teen fan girl novel, Psychiatric Medical Theory and The Brain Surgery of Tomorrow, a Green Lantern comic in Spanish, even an old copy of Sun Tzu’s The Art of War in Chinese. A battered pair of Ray-Ban reading glasses lay on top of the books. Our new enemy was dangerous, quick, agile, merciless, and now multi-lingual, intelligent, and well-read in both the weaknesses of the infected and of humans.

There had also been a dangerous looking black, non-serrated, six inch Italian NATOS stiletto knife, which had been grabbed by Vivienne, the group knife-enthusiast.

I looked at the group that sat before me, and realized almost a minute had elapsed. The pills I had taken hadn’t packed much of a punch. They were already wearing off.

I remembered what Meline had told me, that we were safe here. Give it a little while. We had to be prepared for the fight, and that meant more supplies. Namely, medical supplies.

“Right. So as I guess you all know, we’re doing the raid on the mall soon. But that won’t be an easy fight. We have to be prepared, more so than we are now. So, Ryder, Jason and I are going on a scavenging and recon mission.”

Meline rolled her eyes, “Of course all of our strong, burly, macho-men are going on the dangerous adventure. For God’s sake Kyle, when are you going to figure out that girls can fight too?”

“I know you can and that’s why you stay here. There is a mall packed with enemies right across the street, just in case you forgot. We need everyone else here, in case of some pre-emptive strike. Okay?”

“Fine.”

“Alright, now if you’ll excuse us, Ryder, Jason and I need to sort out who’s going where.”

The girls walked out of the room, leaving just the three remaining guys in the group. The mood was dark, why not change it?

“Wow. Not many of us left. We’re gonna have one hell of a time repopulating the earth.”

There was one second of awkward stares all around, before the laughter came, maybe the first I’d heard since June.

“Alright…” I said as the laughter died down, pulling my trusty map-book out of my backpack.

I found the hospital we were at on the map, seeing the top-view, simplified image of the mall.

“Okay, here’s what I’m thinking. Jason, you’re a military bad-ass. The mall is North of here the hospital, meaning Jason, you go West down the road that is parallel to the mall. Go about five kilometers or until you can’t carry anything more safely. Ryder and I will go East.”

Jason nodded. “Yeah that sounds good.”

“Alright, yeah.” Ryder went to pick up his M4.

“I would recommend you leave the rifle, Ryder, smaller weapons mean more stuff you can carry.”