O-Day + 11
Stocking Up
"Coming in hot!"
The prison van careened through the outer gate and screeched to a halt, inches from the inner gate. The outer gate was already closing behind them, but the zombies – far quicker and more aggressive than the shambling creatures of the classic movies – managed to slither in before it closed completely, three in all. The rest of the pack scrabbled at the outside, but found no weakness in the reinforced steel doors. Four careful shotgun blasts neutralized the situation inside the security chamber, confirmed by cameras before the inner gate was released.
Once inside the compound, every occupant of the van breathed a sigh of relief, and relaxed their frantic attempts to keep food items from rolling, falling, and sometimes flying around them. Like it or not (and most didn't), the most effective configuration had turned out to be Eliot riding shotgun, literally, with Parker driving. The zombie threat could sometimes seem the less terrifying option.
"Five more, Nate," Eliot called when Nate opened the back doors, and surveyed the faces himself. That made twenty-three refugees so far; every time they went out, they found more, and no one had even mentioned the idea of not taking them in.
Willing hands unpacked the supplies, while those from "the open" were ushered gently but firmly into individual quarantine cells, except Parker and Eliot. They were put in the same cell, on the principle that someone had to keep her from immediately breaking out again in protest. Eliot had already come to dub these periods as "the longest half-hours of my life."
This time, though, he came prepared. "Okay," he said, spreading a rough sketch of the prison van's layout on the floor of the cell, pulling out a pencil and nudging her boot with his. "Help me redesign Big B. I'm getting sick of recipes featuring crumbed crackers."
"We need netting," she said immediately, curling down next to him on the floor. "And reinforced portholes to fire out of. And some kind of grille over the cab windows."