Quinn studied the corpse for a second and then reached out, fumbling along the wall until his fingers met a switch. The room glowed beneath the light of two fluorescents set in the ceiling.
“Holy shit,” Alice said, stepping into the room behind him.
It was an armory.
The walls were glazed with weapons. Handguns, rifles, shotguns, swords, knives of all lengths, and ammo. Stacks of ammo in dark, steel cases. Shelves laden with boxes all marked with the loads they carried. In the corner was a low bin containing rectangular, plastic wrapped objects the size and shape of hardcovers. Black writing graced the front of each one.
“I can’t believe it,” Alice said. She glanced down at Thor’s corpse. “God of thunder took the easy way out, huh?”
“Appears so.”
“Looks like he was wounded by someone before crawling in here.”
Quinn nodded. “Must’ve given up and left him to take care of himself.”
Alice moved to the nearest wall and brought down a wicked looking rifle with an extended magazine protruding from its bottom. She brought the weapon to her shoulder, aiming down its length before dropping it to her side. Her smile seemed to brighten the room further.
“You did good, Quinn.”
~
They spent the next forty minutes making trips to the Tahoe. After walking through the entire store twice, Quinn found a small loading platform at the rear of the building and pulled the vehicle around making for a shorter route from the office. Alice picked out four AR-15s as well as three Sig Sauer handguns, explaining the benefits of each one as she handed them to Quinn to haul out. If she noticed the questioning looks he gave her, she ignored them, choosing instead to stack more ammunition in his arms.
The bin in the corner turned out to be full of MREs or, meals ready to eat, their contents displayed across the packages in small black print. They took the entire bin, and Quinn had to detach the third row seats from the rear of the Tahoe, leaving them beside a rolling dumpster. When Alice was satisfied with their haul, she picked up Ty, who had begun to squirm on his chair, and started for the door. Halfway there his small voice stopped them.
“I still need to go to the bathroom.”
“Oh honey, I’m so sorry; I forgot,” Alice said, turning in a circle to see where the nearest bathroom was located.
“Over there,” Quinn said, motioning with his light to the far corner of the store where two alcoves were cut in the darkness. “I’ll load a few more things that look useful.” Alice nodded and continued through the building, pausing in the right bathroom entry to turn on the lights inside.
After they disappeared, Quinn returned to the camping area and found a black, all-purpose duffel bag. He moved along the rows, the strangeness of being where he was compounded by the fact that they seemed to be utterly alone in the city. As he took items from the shelves and stowed them away in the bag, his hands shook. Not from fear but from excitement. The bizarre exhilaration hung about him like a fog, and he chided himself, thinking of the dead they had encountered already that day, the horrifying sights he’d seen only on TV before this—though those interpretations of death were weak when compared with the thing itself: the fetid smell, the slick of blood beneath your feet, the ravaged flesh. But he couldn’t deny there was something about being here, away from his home, in the company of others whom he didn’t know that moved him inside. The possibility of dying was only part of what he was experiencing.
The rest was life.