Black Market Merchant

The rest of the fish fry was a rather enjoyable experience. With the ERM happy to have fresh meat to eat after a long day’s work and the townspeople with new job opportunities provided by Lisa, the fish was nearly all eaten up. Still, Lisa encouraged the townspeople to take what was left before they departed. Night was encroaching and all had returned to normal after everyone, save for Gillian, had left the dam’s grounds.

“So, how did everything with Hanna go?” Lisa asked. She was cleaning up a bunch of fish bones and tossing them into the dying flames of the fire.

“It went very well; she had exceeded my expectations again. There wasn’t one time she asked me for a deeper explanation of what to do. She just did it, not perfectly, but way better than the two pilots I’ve been training did on their first try.” Gillian replied.

“Oh, so nothing was odd about her performance then?” Lisa asked. “She just might be something special after all.”

“Well, there was one thing that she did mention that I found intriguing.” Gillian said picking at a piece of food in his teeth.

“Please, don’t leave me waiting.” Lisa remarked.

Gillian spit and continued, “On my Mech the headlights hadn’t been installed and to save power I had that system disabled. Hanna didn’t know this. She assumed that they were disabled but still in the Mech. When I told her this, she seemed genuinely surprised by this information, as if the Mech didn’t tell her this, like she claims it can do.”

“Interesting indeed.” Lisa answered. She raised her hand to her chin in thought, before speaking aloud moments later. “I have a theory of what might be going on, though its completely a guess and I’m probably completely wrong.”

“Oh, tell me.” Gillian replied rubbing his hands together excitedly. He leaned forward to rest his hands on his knees expectantly to hear her reply.

“I can’t give you one just yet.” Lisa said to his disappointment. “I will need to test a few things with Hanna and try to remember what exactly I am thinking the case is. Again, I’m only guessing at this point.”

“Fine, I guess I can wait.” Gillian sighed with mock disappointment as he stood up. “Well, I best get to sleep soon. Got a lot of work still to do.”

“I’ll come by tomorrow and see how things are proceeding. I’ve been meaning to do that sooner.” Lisa said while tossing the last of the bones into the fire. “Goodnight.”

…

The next morning, Sadie woke up to an unfamiliar sent in the air. Groggily she sat up and rubbed at her itchy eye to see that Eva was already awake and gone, while Lisa was sitting at a desk they had left in the room. On this desk was the source of the smell. Lisa had taken out of her coffin all her dismantled guns and they were laying all over the desk in seemingly disorganized plies. The smell was the anti-rust solutions and grime cleaner.

“What are you doing?” Sadie asked sleepily.

“I am just cleaning my guns.” Lisa replied. “Things have been getting a bit more, hmm, uncertain around here and I think being prepared for anything would be the smartest move.”

“You mean like with the Mad Dogs and the kids?” Sadie asked tossing aside her covers to reveal her fluffy pajamas.

“Yes, that and a few other developments.” Lisa replied absentmindedly picking up a barrel and a clean gray sock. Then taking a unscrew-able copper colored poll, no thicker than a cars antenna, she stuck the sock to the end of the poll and rammed it gently down the gun barrel to the other end.

“Where’s Eva?” Sadie asked changing into her clothes for the day. Though still early in the day Sadie could tell it was going to be hot today and was dressing accordingly.

“Eva and the others are getting ready to go back to working on clearing out the storage units. They should be eating breakfast now.” Lisa replied.

“Aren’t you going to eat too?” Sadie asked while putting on her socks.

“I have been up since sunrise and ate already.” Lisa replied. She had by now started to assemble the gun she had been cleaning.

“I can’t understand you morning people. If I could sleep all the time, I would.” Sadie sighed. Then before she headed out the door she called back. “Oh, I plan on training Zane on attack patterns and counters. You got any pointers for him?”

“Not at the moment.” Lisa replied without looking up from her gun. “I’ll see what you can do with him first and then I’ll put in my advice.”

“Alright, see you later then.” Sadie said disappearing around the doorway.

Lisa was alone in the room now and moments later her guns were reassembled. The largest of the two was a .50cal sniper rifle, the same caliber as her own arm gun. The scope wasn’t attached, and the magazine was laying empty on the desk along side the sniper. The other was a specially modified NGSW-R. It had a variable 2x-4x zoom red dot scope, Merc Foregrip, and an FFS 12.4” Predator barrel. The rest was Marine standard issue equipment that Lisa found suited her best in a gunfight. Her .45cal pistol was also laying on the desk too, cleaned and fully loaded.

These weapons had served her well in many, many dangerous battles. There probably wasn’t anything she trusted more than these three guns. Her life was quite literally put into her hands on more occasions that anyone would have wanted.

Picking up the ammo boxes from the bottom of her coffin, Lisa then started to load the empty magazines. As she did this, she started formulating her plans.

“I already told the new hires last night that I would call on them to work as soon as I got the materials together to start repairing and building things around here. So, I can put the idea of having them working here off for now. Hopefully not too long though, I need to do a lot of repairs. What should be my priority is to get the storage units cleared out and stakeout that one with the Serums.”

“I am sure Miss Olivia won’t be around here for much longer and it would be nice to earn something right away. Especially since I can’t bet on me winning any matches soon. The fact that Xander hasn’t come to pin the blame on me yet is a good sign, but I need to make money fast. Mr. Sellers is probably still going to be gone for a while too. So, the dam repairs are on hold until then.”

“Then there is the dam’s road and the ERM. Once the road is done, I can start setting up power lines to their side of the river. Maybe even investigate that concrete plant too and see if it is worth the trouble. Getting that working would save me a lot of money in shipping once its fixed. That is also assuming I can find a source for materials.”

“How could I forget, Hanna, that girl has just been full of surprises for me lately and I am curious about how her connections with the Mech is possible. It almost seems like the project Green Mosquito that I was apart of, though not quite the same. Though I shouldn’t dwell on the past without any proof, so, I might as well get to work on the units with the others.”

Just as she finished these thoughts the last rifle bullet slipped into the clip with a satisfactory click. There were only two, nine round magazines for her sniper rifle, and eight mags for her riffle. The two ZKZM-7000 rifles only had one battery to spare for when one ran out. Luckily, both these futuristic looking rifles were still at near full power and judging with her limited experience with them prior to the cyborg rebellion, they looked to be able to shoot several hundred bursts.

Before Lisa left the room, she was sure to place the assembled weapons covered under a cloth and hidden behind her heavy coffin that was placed in the far corner of the room. Everything was ready, clean, and loaded. Hopefully, the time to use them wasn’t ever going to come, but Lisa’s gut was telling her otherwise. Whether it was because of her military training or shellshock paranoia, something was going to happen.

Leaving the room behind, Lisa saw that the others were getting ready to leave for the units and hurried to join them. As the group walked Lisa explained that the last row of units, where the serum was being kept, they were going to leave alone. Not only to avoid confrontation with whoever the sketchy people were, but also to not cause them worry and move elsewhere. Lisa also pointed out that if they found anything worth value that they should try selling it to the Goldsberry’s and Nelson’s shops. It was probably going to be easier than sell the items on their own in the market.

The ERM volunteers had already completely cleared out the first column of units, both front and back. So, they started looking through the next column. They had brought along the boat trailer turned cart as well, and this time Henry had added fixed walls of old pallet wood to it so they could hold more goods.

The work went by slowly and rather uneventful. That had about the same luck as with the first column of units. They found nothing but cloths, empty boxes, and the odd spare tire. That is until they reached the second unit on the opposite end than from where they started.

Lisa smashed the lock with a hammer and as soon as she opened the door everyone inhaled sharply. It was as if they had stumbled upon someone lost doomsday stash. The left side of the room was socked from floor to ceiling, and on several one meter wide of shelves, was canned and non-perishable goods. On the right was all kinds of camping gear like tents, Firestarter kits, dozens of first aid kits, a stack of numerous sleeping bags and ammo. This only paled in comparison to what they found in the middle and back of the room.

On the back wall and surrounding a blue tarp covered object in the center of the room were guns. Shotguns, pistols, assault rifles of all types, half a dozen of sniper rifles and countless knives and machetes. Wordlessly Lisa excitedly grabbed and tugged off the tarp, revealing a truck with a mounted machine gun in the bed!

“Now this is what I am talking about!” Lisa shouted. “This is worth more than cash alone. We could hold off the gangs easily with all of this. This is exactly why I wanted to check this place out!”

“Who would put all this here?” Tayvon asked picking up a can of food labeled ‘Peas’.

“Probably someone that was preparing for a nuclear disaster and surviving on their own.” Lisa replied as she investigated the truck’s cab. “No way! Guys, the truck has got the key in the ignition! Oh, I hope this thing is electric, because we don’t have any gas.”

Wayne was on the other side of the truck and called out to Lisa. “I think it is. There’s a plug above the front tire.”

“Awesome! Alright, we are going to put exploring the rest of the units off for now and get all of this into the Powerhouse building asap.” Lisa said excitedly. “First, lets get the guns and ammo. They are the most dangerous to leave laying around for anyone to see.”

“Well, I guess now we don’t need to worry about finding weapons for us to use, right Lisa?” Henry asked picking up a sleek looking 1911 pistol from off the far wall.

“You got that right.” Lisa answered opening the trucks door with unhidden excitement displayed on her face. “We hit the jackpot!”

It seemed like all her preparations from this morning was almost unneeded, almost.