The Service Centre (Zombie Transference Book 1) Read online

  Hell, if Sal tried it on Susie? She’d break him in two. Tracy would talk to him about rights until he hung himself.

  At least the summer rush was officially over in three weeks and he would be free of those three.

  It was the end of August and pitch black outside. He could go and get himself a sandwich in an hour or so, then make sure everything was okay and set up for his two to three AM nap.

  He leaned back in his chair and felt his belt cut into his stomach. Damn it, he shouldn’t be letting himself go like this. He used to be a young, fit guy. He’d only been working there for the last six years and yes, the company had given him pay raises and he had it pretty easy. But this night shift was murder. He had been on night shift for six fricking years! His sleep patterns were messed up, he had gained all this weight, and he was miserable all the time.

  If only the head office would finally just bump him up and move him… Even if they moved him out of state, he could handle the move as long as it was a day shift. Maybe get himself back in shape and actually start caring about the work again.

  He stared at the monitor and blinked. He had to finish the time sheets and orders for the next week. When that was done, he could take a nap. He could see and hear Sal coming this way now, probably to try to weasel out of stock taking again. No way, he was going to stand firm.

  He tried to focus on the keyboard and sat upright. He could do this. He felt the dried mustard stain on the right side of the shirt near his belt and felt the chafing from the collar that was getting a bit too tight. He took a deep breath and smelled the familiar stench of the office and the centre.

  God, he hated this place.

  Sal stumbled into his office and started mumbling. When he was finally done and left, Richard heard the jingling sound of the main door being opened.

  He knew it! Every time inventory happened, dozens of people popped in. Maybe something exciting would happen tonight? He got up to see who it was.

  As he walked out, he could see the girls were both in from their smoke break with Tracy slowly working at inventory checks while Susie was at the counter ready to take orders.

  Well, what do you know? A load of soldiers here this late at night? But their uniforms didn’t look right. There were more vehicles pulling into the parking lot. A busier night than usual. Hopefully, it wouldn’t be too exciting.

  Richard headed back into his office to grab the rest of the inventory paperwork.

  The Soldiers

  The large green tow truck, which looked like it could haul a transport truck, turned its lights off and then shut the engine down. The deep growling noise faded quickly in the night. Nestled up to it like a cub was a much smaller green pickup with four doors. Its engine was already off.

  As soon as the big truck’s engine shut down, all the doors opened and everyone climbed out. There were six of them, and they stretched and grumbled.

  The largest man stood six-feet tall with a bristle of black hair and large arms with multiple tattoos. He looked around and settled on the smallest man in the group. “Sir, are we treating this like a ten-minute rest stop before pushing on, and do you want us to leave a picket on the trucks while we go in?”

  The small man, the warrant officer, was maybe five-foot-nine-inches and skinny, with dark brown hair under his beret. He smiled. “No, Sergeant Caisson, I think we’re okay. We have nothing aside from personal kit in the vehicles and it’s late enough that I don’t see anyone breaking into them.” He raised his voice so everyone could hear him. “We take our time on this rest stop. We maxed out for driving time so we may just camp out in the trucks tonight. We drive the rest of the way home tomorrow.”

  “Crap.” The word came from another soldier that stood almost as tall as the sergeant. He was heavier set and had long brown hair that stuck out from the back and sides of his beret. In the bright overhead lights in the parking lot, his face looked bright pink. “Sorry, sir, but I would have preferred not sleeping in the cab of a truck with snoring, smelly army guys. A nice soft bed in a motel room would be better…. if there were any in the area.”

  Sergeant Caisson laughed. “Well, Corporal Vajjer, we have our gear here. Set up a ground sheet and rack out over there in the trees away from the smelly people. It’s what I’ll probably do. Who knows, maybe some of the furry woodland wildlife will come over feeling ‘friendly’.”

  Corporal Vajjer shuddered. “With all the furry woodland wildlife in the area, I’d rather not have a racoon, fox or bear come checking me out for food or anything else.”

  The three other soldiers were younger and looked nervously at the nearby tree line as if they expected a family of bears to come out looking for a nighttime snack.

  The warrant officer chuckled. “Everyone can sleep where they want tonight. I would suggest that the back of your cute little pickup with the covered back that you can close and the small side windows for some air would work. Three in the back of that, two in the cab, and one person sleeps in the wrecker. As long as we know where you are, we can find you easily, and there are no problems, I don’t care. If you get bitten by something and get rabies while we are down here in the States, or at all… That makes a problem. I’ll be in the wrecker cab; I can make it work. Let’s get some food.”

  Before they went into the service centre, all six pulled out small green backpacks and slung them over their shoulders, then moved as a group for the service centre.

  Corporal Vajjer lit a cigarette while he trailed the other four, walking next to the sergeant.

  The sergeant grimaced. “Shit, man. Smoking while walking? Really? Good impression there to the public.”

  The corporal shrugged. “I couldn’t smoke in the vehicle with the new guy there as he hates smoke. I’m behind everybody and after two weeks in the field of that disaster I just don’t care. Cripes, they’ve programmed us so well, we’re carrying our small packs everywhere still. I got no ammo or gear. I just have a change of clothes, ablution gear, and tech stuff.”

  The warrant officer had dropped back to join them. “And your porn, right?”

  Corporal Vajjer laughed. “No, Of course not. That’s wrong. I have my Eastern European heavy metal videos on my phone.”

  The sergeant looked surprised. “What languages do you speak?”

  The corporal shrugged. “Only English, but I don’t have the sound on when I’m watching…”

  The three young soldiers had stopped at the front door and were waiting for the other three to catch up. The sergeant nodded at them. “I’ll keep an eye on them. Effing newbies don’t know how to act yet.”

  The warrant officer nodded. The three of them stopped while Corporal Vajjer took a last deep drag on his cigarette before butting it out, stripping it, and throwing the remains into a metal garbage can by the door. “We are all going to keep an eye on them. I can’t wait to get home and be done with this ex,” the warrant officer said.

  The other men nodded and the corporal said, “Amen.”

  The sergeant started walking for the front door. “Well, let’s get some growlies and then sleep.” The three young soldiers followed him in.

  The warrant officer and corporal looked around for a minute, enjoying the dark and the quiet.

  Corporal Vajjer looked at the officer. “Everything all right? You were having some sort of nasty dream there for a while on the drive.”

  The warrant officer looked away with a troubled expression. “It was bad. I was somewhere else nasty and in charge of idiots. There was something always just out of sight and it was bad. It wanted us. I started losing people to it and no one saw anything. I love nightmares like that. Unarmed and waiting for the boogeyman to come get me.” He shrugged. “Well, let’s get some food, and you’re just about out of smokes, right?”

  Corporal Vajjer laughed. “Yup. Here is hoping that I get a chance to smoke them, though. Allergic to smoke. Who woulda thunk?”
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  Both men headed for the door and entered the service centre’s brightly lit main room.

  Tracy

  Tracy had butted her smoke out and gone inside. Susie was right about one thing. The sooner they finished the inventory check the sooner they could go. She wanted to get on the phone and call the guys back at school. They were planning a lot for the coming year and were hoping to change the establishment. That Rory was so hypnotic when he started on one of his rants…

  The ringing of the door startled Tracy out of her thoughts. She turned and saw a bunch of soldiers come swaggering in like they owned the place. The man in the lead was big. He looked like he was over six-foot with a green beret that was low over his forehead, just over his eyebrows. He looked like he had a full day’s growth of stubble on his face, and tattoos all over. He had three little wannabe knock-offs following him. All three looked like skinny kids next to the hulk. There was a blonde boy, a brunette that looked sunburned, and the last one stood out. He had darker skin and a big hooked nose. He looked nervous and kept looking around. That last one was probably from the Middle East.

  The strange thing was they weren’t American. The uniform was wrong, and they had red and white patches on their shoulders.

  Tracy noticed two more soldiers that she had somehow missed standing off to the side. One was grabbing two sandwiches and a large container of Gatorade. He was a bit taller and heavier with longer hair. He looked interesting. But the man next to him… Eesh.

  He was shorter than the other guys, and skinny looking. He was probably the oldest of all of them. She could see that just like the rest, he had stubble, not hair. But it was his eyes that got her. Everyone else was checking her out and then ogling Susie, who was eating it up. Not that guy. He dissected them and then moved on like they just weren’t important. She had taken a medical course for fun, and all her friends told her to drop it, so she did. The professor had eyes like that and he was used to dissecting bodies of every type. Everyone thought the professor was a serial killer. This guy had eyes like that.

  Tracy turned and walked to where Susie was flirting with the big guy. As he turned away, Tracy whispered to Susie, “Did you see that short, older soldier? Scary guy with a killer’s eyes?”

  Susie kept smiling and whispered back to Tracy, “Silly! They’re soldiers and have to act a certain way in public! They’re all good guys as long as they’re in the open and not drinking and haven’t been overseas for like a year.”

  Tracy stepped back as the ‘killer’ and his smiling henchmen stepped up to pay for their stuff. She missed whatever they were talking about as a trucker stepped through the door. She could see another guy coming in and there was already an older couple there, all dressed up.

  Jimmy And Sam

  Jimmy stretched beside his tractor trailer while Sam looked over the load. Sam was a good kid who worked hard. It wasn’t his fault that the local economy had taken a bit of a hit and he couldn’t find a job as an.

  Heck, Sam was a good looking kid too. Anyone looking at him would realize that he could land way better girls than that flibbertigibbet he had now. Big boobs and no brains. Damn, she was clingy too. She seemed to call every ten minutes. What did she think they did on the drive? Stop at a strip joint every fifteen minutes?

  Well, maybe now that they were doing some long hauls together, Sam would wake up and find a good girl, or maybe a bad girl with some smarts.

  Jimmy stretched again. Okay, they would stop here overnight as they were maxed out on their hours, then roll out again in the morning.

  Sam came around the corner checking the last few tie-downs before calling it a night. Jimmy could see why what’s-her-name, Terri with an I or Tuna or whatever her name was, would be into Sam. The kid was fit and stood six-foot tall. He’d started work in the trades in high school and kept going at it. Dirty blonde hair and kinda blue eyes. Heck, most of the women at stops checked him out quickly when he walked by. He had a brain too. He was just young and didn’t always think things through.

  Jimmy walked up to Sam and stopped. “Hey, Jimmy, the load still looks fine. In fact, it looks the same way it did at the last stop a few hours ago. Kinda extreme looking it over every stop, you know?”

  Jimmy shook his head. “I keep telling you, Sam. You get in the habit of checking the load every time you stop. This load ain’t gonna shift at all,. but other bigger or bulkier loads will. It’s a good habit to develop so that when you get here and you’re all tired and it’s raining, you don’t skip it to get to sleep. Cause as surely as I’m standing here, one of those loads you ignore will bite you on your ass. Worse case, you get crippled up and kill someone in the doing of it. So you check it. We don’t have accidents in this company, cause we’re careful.”

  Sam shrugged. “I guess you’re right, Jimmy. Can we just grab a quick coffee and hit the road again?”

  Jimmy glared at Sam. “We’ve had this talk, Sam. We are only allowed to drive so many hours a day. We are now maxed out for hours. We grab a bite and then rack out and can start over again in the morning. We get the rest we are supposed to and leave later. No need to cut corners, so we don’t.”

  Sam’s phone went off with a distinct pop tune. Sam pulled it out and looked at Jimmy. “Okay, Jimmy, no problem. I’ll just let Sherri know we’ll be in tomorrow. I’ll catch up.”

  Sam turned and walked toward the back of the truck with the phone to his ear. Jimmy just shrugged and started walking for the service centre. This was a good stop and had some good sandwiches later at night. He knew they could push it and be back early in the morning, but they weren’t supposed to and there was no need. Only cut corners when you had to. Then cut ‘em hard if you had to. That was Jimmy’s motto.

  He noticed the army trucks parked off to the side. At least, he thought they were army trucks. They looked different than what he was used to seeing around. But, yup,. there were some army guys inside. Always good to see soldiers out. It reminded him of all those who had stood up in defense of the country and their way of life. Poor guys were far from base this late at night.

  Sam

  He walked around the far side of the truck. Sherri hadn’t taken the news that they were getting back tomorrow well. He wished she would be more positive about everything. He had a good job which was consistent, and Sherri had wanted that. She had hated the construction job with working sixteen-hour days, but she was starting to hate the driving job even more.

  Sam shrugged as he walked along the trailer. It didn’t matter to him. He just liked to work. But Sherri was special and needed him close. He could appreciate that she was nervous about chicks hitting on him while he was out, but he wasn’t into anybody else. He also couldn’t take her calls all the time. Heck, he had to drive now on this job.

  Jimmy was pretty uptight about following the rules when it came to driving, but the thought of messing up and causing a kid to lose their life? It filled him with terror. Better to be uptight like Jimmy and know that you did it right.

  Now if he could only get that across to Sherri. She thought that since the last leg of the trip was only five hours, they could just do it now. Heck, there were two of them and it hadn’t been a hard run. Her nervous tone meant that she was thinking he had a piece on the side. Wrong again, Sherri.

  Sam yawned as he kept walking. It wasn’t that he was really tired,. it was that this run was so boring. It would be nice if something happened once in a while to spice it up.

  Sam came around the side of the truck and started walking toward the service centre. Maybe he could grab a sandwich and some chocolate milk before bed. He could think about what he could do about this. He did know that he wasn’t going to be taking any kind of office job, which Sherri wanted. He liked being outdoors.

  Maybe Jimmy was right. Sherri was really uptight. He just had to figure out what to say to her to get her to relax.

  The doors were just ahead and Sam walked in, looking
around. He had been through here a couple of weeks ago when he first started driving with Jimmy as an ‘apprentice’ and the place was like most of the other small service centres out there. A couple of tables set up by the door so you could drink your coffee and eat the food you picked up at the food counter. Off to the far side was the convenience store with smokes, food, and some electronics. The other side was the ‘truck driver side.’. Some nice accessories for your truck to make the inside and outside nicer, and all sorts of stuff that no one really needed but always seemed to sell.

  Most of these places had a small trucker lounge on that side, but if he remembered correctly, this place was the weird one. Whoever had designed it hadn’t put anything in for truckers. No showers or small rooms or even a lounge. Jimmy had said this place should get torn down and rebuilt bigger. Sam thought Jimmy was wrong for once. The economy was not doing well. If they wanted to keep this place going, they would just do an add-on for now.

  Sam turned toward the convenience store part, where customers paid for gas . Even though most places were on the card system now, cash was still used by a lot of smaller independents. There was a small garage/repair shop to the side that was probably closed because no one could get good mechanics at these smaller places anymore.

  He stopped. Checking out the blonde was all that he could think as he was eyeing her. She was a nice height with long blond hair and she was built and fit looking. He wouldn’t mind sharing a bunk with her…

  Sam stopped and shook his head. That was the kind of thinking that Sherri worried about. That he would go out and go for some fun with every girl out there. Then he noticed that the place was crawling with army guys. Well, not crawling, but there were at least five. He noticed that they had flags on their shoulders in red and white. They looked like leafs. Maybe they were Canadians?