I drained some motor oil out of one of the ambulances parked outside the fire station into a garbage can lid. It stank like turned cooking oil. Who knows how many times it had been filtered and recycled?
Nevertheless I stripped and spread it thickly all across my body. In a close fight like the one I hoped to start, I didn’t want someone getting a hold of my forearm hair. The motor oil had the added benefit of darkening my fur, not that the moon was giving much away tonight. Then I cleaned my palms on some convenient bark.
I inspected the building’s security. No cameras, but then again this was a small-town fire station, not the Atlanta Gunworks. I inspected the utility conduits and decided that they would serve as access to the roof.
I swarmed up the electric lines. The rain had slackened into something only a little heavier than a mist, easily blown by the wind so that the millions of delicate reflections in the security lights of the firehouse looked like dust.
The tower seemed unoccupied, but just in case I checked. There was a locked cabinet up there. I ripped the padlock clasp out of the wood, muffling the sound with my hands, and found a small radio and a lever-action carbine familiar to viewers of old Westerns. I checked the caliber. It was just a .22, useful for rabbits or intimidation.
Unfortunately, using the same technique wouldn’t work on the roof access door, which was well locked on the inside with only a bare handle in the wind and weather. There was a greasy outlet for the kitchen ventilator—far too small—and an old and long-defunct air-conditioning unit covered with roof-patching material.
The last, and noisiest option, was the skylight over the garage area. Inspecting it, I was ple
ased to see that the glass was in disrepair—two panels were missing and had been replaced by boards and tarp. The points of the nails that secured them had been driven through the window frame. It would be a pleasure to destroy such shoddy work.
I looked into the garage. An ambulance, fire truck, and armored bus rested inside, ready to go at a moment’s notice. There was room for another large truck, but judging from the stains on the floor and placement of equipment, there was one ambulance out or on loan to another station. A light burned in the reception office at the main door, which had a window looking out on the minimally lit garage.
It would be a fair drop to the top of the bus parked under the skylight, perhaps two body lengths if I hung from my fingers before dropping. Some think that because of our arms, we have an apelike ability to swing from tree to tree and perform acrobatics. To tell the truth, I don’t like heights.
I tore out the wood covering the missing panes. It was easily done as there were nails in only one edge.
As I nerved myself for the drop, I shifted the knife and shovel to my teeth. Theatrical, I know, but had they remained shoved into my belt, I might have stabbed myself. I swung over the ledge, hung from the fullest extent of my arms, and dropped.
I landed on the bus like the proverbial ton of bricks. The metallic thump was like a mortar going off beneath me. Sure that everyone for blocks around had heard it, I rolled off the bus opposite the office.
A fireman sitting by a dispatcher’s phone slumbered in a comfortable chair that tilted back. I quietly wrung his neck as if it were a chicken’s and hid the body in a janitorial closet.
I explored a set of stairs leading to the dormitory and private rooms. All seemed quiet, though a toilet flush caused me to press myself into an alcove in the main hall that had an industrial-sized washer and dryer. I saw a mild presoak for delicates that I could probably use to get the oil off my skin and fur.
Judging by the sizes of the rooms, there were perhaps as few as eight or as many as twenty firemen in the Beckley station on this overnight.
I found the arms locker, but it was wired in such a way that I decided it would set off an alarm if I opened it without punching in a key code (unfortunately, no one had written the code inside the plastic cover, as so often can be found thanks to the lazy owners of such systems). I left it for now.
Following the exposed conduit sheath, I came to the main electrical junction box for the building and the garage. There was a large red lever on it. I turned the main breaker off, then used the shovel to break off the handle. Emergency lighting flashed on, fitfully. More than half the spotlights failed to function.
Typical KZ attention to detail.
Power outages were frequent in most KZs, especially at night when it would least be missed for the performance of maintenance.
Now, for the killing.
I took the stairs three at a time, shovel in my right hand and the knife in my left. At the top of the stairs I met my first Beckley fireman, moving toward the staircase, supporting himself and feeling his way along with a hand on one wall, blinking in the darkness as he headed to the garage and occupied office to discover what had happened.
I buried the knife in him, then used the shovel to push him out of the way.
Next I burst into a dormitory. About half the beds were occupied. There were shouts and I heard the clicking of someone hitting a light switch.
From my side, the fight was an easy one. I simply lashed out at anything that moved with the knife or the sharpened shovel. When a body dropped, I stomped on it. I don’t believe I made any sounds other than breathing, though there were numerous cries and confused shouts from the Beckley firemen.
I threw one body through a connecting wall—one would think a fire station would have more robust construction—and followed it through into the next room. There were two in there, but only one tried to fight; the other had to be pulled from under his bed.
In the entire fight, I only received one serious wound. A woman stabbed me in the ribs with a sharp pair of scissors. She was dead before I realized I was fighting with a female, but on later consideration I decided that if she passed all the examinations and tests in order to be one of those who dragged the elderly, sick, and halt off to their deaths, who was I to deny her a place with her comrades.
Finally, the fire station was quiet, save for the sound of my breathing and the steady drip of blood here and there into pools. There was one hiding in the showers—I saw a pair of ankles, probably female, as I quickly rinsed my hands and feet and put a cotton dressing on the scissors stab—but left that one alive. It never hurt to have someone spread the tale.
I decided it was safe to crack open the arms locker. I had my choice of fire axes to use, and I broke it open with two swings of the biggest axe. I found a short machine gun with a hand-finds-hand grip-magazine of the type favored by Georgia Control officers and helped myself to all the ammunition I could find for that. I also took a full-length battle rifle and a shotgun. Between that and the big .50, I had enough to get started.
On a whim, I took a permanent marker from the office and etched an icon that looked like a reversed, inverted “L” on the inside of the arms locker. The symbol is used by a tribe of Nebraska Gray Ones that were long enemies of my people—it denotes a revenge killing.