9.0 - Sanctum Read Free Page A

stores in the area and find some batteries for the night vision goggles.  There aren’t that many Whites in the neighborhoods nearby so we shouldn’t run into any trouble.”
    “You mean no more than usual?” I asked.
    “Yeah, of course.  Then with the goggles, we’ve got the nighttime advantage again.  We head over to the base, get what we need, and get out of Dodge.”
    “Get what we need?” I asked.
    "You've got a knife, a machete, and some janitor guy’s coveralls with shoes that don't fit.  I'm low on ammo, and I'd like to load up with grenades and maybe some other good stuff.  If you're still thinking we need to head to College Station—hell, even if you're not—one of those Humvees down there would come in handy loaded up with food, if we can find any, and things that go boom."
    I turned away from the wall and started walking across the Expo Center's big flat roof.  Why stay and sulk? I needed to be moving.  "Sounds like a plan to me."

Chapter 2
    "Westcliff Road.”  Murphy pointed at a street sign.  "That's how you know we're on the right track."
    I glanced at the sign, but mostly I watched the darkness for Whites.  I heard them around us but couldn't tell if they were blocks away or behind the next house.  "Westcliff?"
    “My mother’s maiden name.”
    “I hope you’re not reading portents from the road signs.” 
    “I’m just saying it’s good luck.”
    “Sometimes it’s like we don’t even speak the same language.”
    Murphy punched me in the arm.  “That’s what I’ve been saying since August.”
    No point in responding.  I sighed instead.
    We’d left the Expo Center after dark and found a convenience store with empty shelves.  We spent at least an hour searching through garbage and shit—literal shit—on the floor to find several unopened packages of batteries.  Looters often knocked or dropped inventory on the floor in their hurry to be on their way.  Murphy and me spent the next few hours working our way carefully across Killeen, heading roughly west toward Fort Hood.
    We found ourselves finally on a corner of an L-bent street, crouching behind a burned out car on rusty rims in somebody’s yard.  The car was one of many along the roads and in the grass in both directions.  Across the street to our right stood a concrete water tank, old and discolored, part of a pumping station for the local utility.  Nothing but scant moonlight, dark empty fields, and scattered trees lay behind the pumping station.
    Across the other street around the corner lay a downed chain link fence that had marked one of the boundaries between Killeen and Fort Hood property.  The barbed wire that topped the fence had been ripped away and spread across a wide field beyond, curling among the bodies of naked Whites, bloody and broken, burnt and shredded.  Scattered among the rotting corpses lay bones of those who had died earlier, gnawed clean and bleaching whiter with each passing day.  The US Army and later the Survivor Army had made the Whites pay a severe price for their attacks.
    Past the carnage, spread over the hundreds of yards of killing ground stood dozens of fifty-year-old, utilitarian buildings that were part of Fort Hood.  Behind the widely spaced buildings and parking lots stood what looked like airplane hangars.  I pointed and asked, "What do you make of those?"
    “Buildings.”  Murphy answered.  “Is it that dark that you can’t see the buildings? Is it the virus? Are your eyes going bad?”
    “Says the guy with the night vision goggles.”
    "I didn't leave mine in a badass electric car.  And I didn't give the keys to some chicks we just met.  And I didn't watch them drive away with all your shit.  So I've got my night vision goggles, fresh batteries, and I can see stuff."
    “If you want to get all technical about it,” I countered.  “I gave the keys to you.  You gave them to the chicks we just met.”
    “It was your dumb ass that decided to run around naked