The Protagonist System

119 Potential Rescue

The police station was empty of walkers. Either all of them had been out on call during the outbreak or they all succumbed to the virus and died. Honestly, it didn't matter what happened, because it was empty and that was all that mattered.

I entered through the back door and raided the picked over armory. Several long range rifles and the few shotguns left there, went right into my inventory and all of the ammo that was there. The normal guns were all gone, as were most of the ammo for them, so I didn't have much left to give to Morgan for his pistol.

The showers were working with hot water and I spent a stupid amount of time having a hot shower and enjoying it. I thought about taking both the propane tank and the hot water tank when I was done and realized that no one else would ever use it, so I disconnected them and stored them. I wasn't sure how I was going to produce power to run them and assumed I would find something in a hardware store with various connections for camping stoves and portable heaters, which should work in the short term.

I changed my uniform out for a fresh one, including the stylish hat, and went to the sheriff's office and found both a service pistol and a badge. I strapped both onto my uniform and made myself official by signing a paper on the desk, in case anyone ever came here and found it. I doubted it, since everyone would go either to the wilderness and spread out or would congregate in the cities, making it easier for the walkers to overwhelm them.

The storeroom had sets of handcuffs, bottles of pepper spray, zip ties, and several sets of walkie-talkies. I stored everything as well as the packs of batteries after checking if they were expired, then I went outside. The parking lot had several patrol cars parked there and I found the keys hanging behind the security desk.

I spent a few minutes hunting down a piece of hose and then siphoned off the gas from every other car in the lot. I filled my tank and several gas cans with the remains and wouldn't run out of gas anytime soon.

I locked the station up and drove the car back to where Morgan had set himself and his son up. I gave him one of the long range rifles and one of the shotguns, then a third of the ammo I had gathered. I also warned him about conserving ammo and limiting target practice, because killing walkers should take precedence over becoming a better shot. He thanked me for the advice and the guns before I left for good.

Using a map, I headed off towards Atlanta and towards where I was meant to go. Was I looking forward to what I was going to have to do? Not really. Was I going to do it anyway? Yes, I was. There were people to save and things to change, so I had to get there long before I was meant to. I had enough gas to not need to steal a horse on the way or waste so many days travelling.

I did stop on the way at any spot that had walkers and dealt with them, however. It would save me time later, I was sure. Removing the walking dead was a lofty goal that most people would have ignored or hoped they didn't have to do. I wasn't that naive. I knew I was there to deal with the threat it represented, because I was to entertain whomever had set me up as the protagonist.

With my Karma as far into the negatives as it was, I would have to do something worthy to counter it. Cleansing the dead as much as I could in an apocalypse world, should give me some leeway from my punishment. At least, I hoped so.

As I drove along the highway towards the large metropolitan city that was Atlanta, I didn't fail to notice that all of the traffic was going out of it and all of the vehicles were either abandoned or burned out, meaning there had been a huge altercation along the road and either everyone died or they became undead.

With a sigh, I drove into the city and fully expected to run into a mass of walking dead. It didn't take me long to prove myself right and I easily gained the closest one's attention with the noise of the car and my screeching tires. Before they started to move, I hit the police sirens to let them all know there was fresh meat to chase.

The mass of walkers rushed towards the car, just as I planned, and I quickly backed away in reverse and drove backwards until I reached a cross street and changed back to drive. I led the mass of undead all the way back to a smaller street clogged with abandoned cars and parked out of the way. I had a short amount of time to set things up and made a similar corridor as I had in the hospital, thanks to the large amount of debris that was nearby.

I used the shotgun this time as soon as the dead started to walk into the killing area and I unloaded into them without hesitation. The first few died easily, since they took the full blast of the shotgun. The ones on the outskirts barely flinched and crowded in instead of fleeing like they should have.

I kept shooting and they kept coming, just like in the hospital. The noise made more and more of them appear and I kept shooting and shooting at the almost never-ending horde of walkers that streamed towards me. I changed to the handgun a few times for a change of pace and even switched hands. I also never stopped shooting.

It took well over an hour before the last few stragglers stumbled over the piles of bodies and I easily put them out of their misery. Of course, this also meant the entire road was blocked by the mass of dead bodies and rancid blood flowed like a river from the piles and piles of remains.

Fortunately, I wasn't an idiot and I didn't try storing them to get them out of the way, because I was sure my system wasn't going to keep them separated from the food supplies I also stored. It would be a dick move I fully expected after everything I had gone through the last little while and I wasn't going to take that chance.

I spent half an hour driving around and looking for some kind of construction business. I found a small one near the edge of the city and they had a smaller backhoe that was easy to figure out and drive. I left the patrol car there, since I couldn't store it with my limited space available, and I drove the tractor over to the area where I had killed all of the walkers.

It only took a few minutes to scoop them out of the way and pile them off to the side of the road. It was a much shorter time than it took to drive the thing over to that spot and I drove it back to the small lot with the other construction vehicles. I really considered keeping the thing for later use and tried again to store the police car, only to get the same warning message that I needed more room.

The car was smaller than the tractor, so I knew I couldn't store the tractor either. Instead of wasting more time, I spent half an hour gathering up the diesel fuel from the various vehicles into the available barrels and stored them instead. I knew the fuel was more versatile than gas was and any larger generators used diesel as a main fuel, so having barrels of it would only help me later.

I hopped into the police car, without the siren of course, and drove back to where I first encountered the walking dead horde. I saw a large tank in the middle of the street and there were several Hummers scattered around, so I thought about changing vehicles and parked near one of the Hummers and checked it out.

Unfortunately, it was out of fuel and the keys were not in it. I also didn't see any soldier bodies around or had any clue where the keys could be. I checked the other vehicles and they were in the same state, unusable, and the tank was worse than useless without the command codes to activate the computers and the keys to start the engine.

Hell, even the ammo for the main guns was pretty much useless, since there was no similar calibre anywhere near any of the other military vehicles. It explained why someone else hadn't raided them, because they couldn't be used by a normal person. Even an army grunt wouldn't be able to use them without an officer's rating to unlock things for them.

It made me wonder if a warrant officer would count and then I dismissed the idea, because I would need to raid an army base to find both the codes and the instructions for unlocking things to be used. That wasn't going to happen in the current environment and I pushed the idea aside.

I had work to do and people to save, which meant I needed to check the radio frequency inside the tank. It was easy to get inside with both hatches open and I changed my walkie-talkie to the right frequency and climbed back out of the tank.

*

Glenn was back on watch on a nearby roof a couple of hours after that police car had mysteriously shown up out of nowhere and skidded to a stop, blared its sirens and alerted every walker within several blocks, then the car tore out of there with all of them following it. It was the stupidest and bravest thing he had ever seen and he wasn't sure if he should praise the idiot for clearing the place out or yell at him for being so stupid as to get a majority of the city's walkers chasing him.

Then again, Glenn wasn't going to look a gift horse in the mouth, because his search for a safer way to leave with the horde surrounding the building they were holed up in had ended. They could now leave the way they came in and head back to the camp without worries. He just had to decide if he wanted to tell the others about the idiot that had saved them so much trouble.

At the time, Glenn had waited for half an hour before he decided that was long enough to see if any walkers returned or if the guy lived after such a ballsy move. He had made his way back to the building to let the others know that the way was clear and he still didn't decide if he should tell them how the way was cleared. Would knowing someone sacrificed themselves for them to leave, make them feel better or worse about things?

In the end it didn't matter if they knew, because as soon as he told them the way was clear, the group hunting for supplies had unanimously decided that they would stay much longer than they originally planned and would raid more locations for food and essential items. With the local walker threat pretty much neutralized, there wasn't anything else that they needed to be worried about.

Glen had done his best to not roll his eyes or called them idiots then, because he knew that with the main force gone, that didn't mean the danger from stragglers wasn't real. Some of the walkers might not have heard that very loud siren as it went through the city or bothered following the horde, even though that was usually their normal behavior.

Of course, with many more things to take back to the camp, they had to figure out how to get it all back there, which was Glenn's second task. Looking for something they could use to carry everything, like a small trailer that they could easily pull or something similar. As he searched with a pair of binoculars, the walkie-talkie clipped to his belt clicked twice.

Glenn pulled it from where it hung and clicked once back before speaking. “No, Andrea. I still haven't found anything to carry the stuff back yet. Stop bugging me every five minutes with the same question. Over.”

A couple of seconds later, the walkie-talkie came to life and a man's voice he didn't know was heard laughing. “If you told them you would only call if there was a problem or you found something, she wouldn't bug you so much for information.”

Glenn was very nervous about talking to someone that he didn't know that also had their radio frequency, so he didn't respond.

“Damn, I forgot to say over. Over.” The man said and Glenn still didn't respond. A minute later, the man spoke again. “I'm pretty sure you can see me from wherever you are, so I'll let you know where I am. Look down into the street where the huge tank is. Over.”

Glenn couldn't resist the temptation and hoped the guy didn't have a sniper rifle or something to pick him off. He crept over to the other side of the building and peeked over the edge at where the tank was, only to catch his breath at the nicely dressed sheriff standing on top of it and waving his hat around.

“Sheriff Rick Grimes.” The man said from the radio. “Before you ask, under the rules of martial law, I won't be prosecuting certain crimes or keeping note of what people appropriate for necessary survival. Over.”

Glenn let out the breath he was holding and double-clicked the speak button to send the man the signal that he had his attention.

“If you're looking for vehicles to haul things and to offer your group of people a more secure way to travel, there's an enclosed parking area about four blocks away with several moving vans inside.” Rick told him.

Glenn again felt relief and wondered if the guy was going to solve all their problems so easily.

“I also found a mostly untouched cafeteria and raided their pantry of dry goods, all untainted, and I'm willing to share. Over.” Rick added.

Fuck, he really did. Glenn thought with a chuckle. “Okay, cop-man. You bought my approval. I'll let the others know and I'll see if they accept, too. Over.”

“I'll just sit here and wait.” Rick said and put his hat on and sat down on the tank's main gun. “It's too bad this thing doesn't work. It would be fun taking it for a spin and crushing some walkers. Over.”

Glenn laughed and made his way back over to the main building where the group had made a temporary base. “I checked the Hummers and they're disabled, too. I don't know how they did that in the middle of getting attacked. Over.”

“I'm pretty sure it's SOP, or standard operating procedure, to never give up a working vehicle to the enemy. I went through a temporary army depot back in my home town and everything was out of order, not that they left much of anything when they bugged out. Over.” Rick told him.

That was disappointing for Glenn to hear, because it meant they wouldn't be raiding any military bases in the future. “Going radio silent until I hear a decision from the group. Over.”

“Copy that, over.” Rick responded.

Glenn reached the building and went inside, greeting the two guards dressed in protective gear that had been waiting for him, in case he was followed and they had to disable any walkers. The three of them went into the break room and the rest of the group gathered there, except for Merle.

“We heard.” Andrea said and held up the other walkie-talkie. “We've been discussing it.”

Glenn nodded and sat down without commenting that Andrea hadn't told him off for what he said.

“What do you guys think?” The large black man named T-Dog asked.

“It's too good to be true.” The black woman said. “He shows up out of nowhere, lures off all the walkers in the area, and offers food and a vehicle that we desperately need? It's suspicious.”

One of the guards removed his face mask to talk. “He also knew what frequency we use for the radios.”

“I was worried about that, too.” Glenn said and everyone in the room shifted slightly and looked uncomfortable.

“So, what do we do about him?” One of the men asked. “He's got the only working vehicle in the area and turning down free food would be stupid.”

“It would depend on where he stashed it, since I doubt he could pack much into a police car's trunk.” Andrea said and a few of them nodded.

“I'll take care of it.” Merle suddenly said and everyone jumped in surprise, because they hadn't heard him approach or knew he was nearby. He chuckled at them being so skittish and rested his rifle on his shoulder. “Give me five minutes alone with him and I'll have all the information the guy knows.”

The others exchanged nervous looks and looked at Andrea, whom nodded approval.