Acceptable Losses by J. R. Jackson

Author:J. R. Jackson [Jackson, J. R.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781980562740
Google: gO75tgEACAAJ
Published: 2018-03-28T05:00:00+00:00

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Chapter 17

Outbreak +7 (168 hours after outbreak)

West of Clovis, New Mexico

The Road Warrior rumbled down the highway weaving around stalled and abandoned cars. The journey from Elko had taken longer than they had expected. With the desire to stay off major highways, the circuitous route had taken them along Forest Service access roads, starting at Jarbridge South Canyon Road running between East Peak and Elko Mountain to Highway 80 where they intercepted Highway 93 to Wells, Nevada.

The town of Wells appeared to be unaffected by the chaos that was tearing the world apart. They had stopped briefly to see if there were any survivors but had found none, the streets strangely deserted. Stopping outside of town, Stone had consulted his extensive database of maps and decided the best course of action was to head to Salt Lake City. Early afternoon of the next day, they had stopped at a scenic overlook after seeing smoke on the horizon, presumably from that major city.

Finding an alternate route, they had bypassed Salt Lake City and headed south to Saint George, where they would turn southeast toward northern Arizona.

It had been seven long days since leaving the salvage yard and during that time Durst had fixed Mecceloni with odd looks and equally strange questions.

Mecceloni had spent most of that time cleaning and assembling a weapon he had found in Stone's collection. Tension among everyone had increased within the confined space of the truck, and it didn't help that the only radio broadcasts had been recordings that contained no new information.

"What do you have there?" Durst asked for the twentieth time since Mecceloni had removed it from its carry case.

"It's a bassoon."

Durst frowned at that answer and kept staring as Mecceloni's hands fitted each piece together.

"Where'd you learn to do that?"

"Cliff notes," Mecceloni responded.

Durst was irritated by the evasive answers and fought to keep his temper under control.

"What exactly do you do, Mr. Smith?"

Sharon and Cassandra looked up and over from their card game.

"I sell frozen chicken legs all over the southland," Mecceloni said as he fitted the trigger assembly to the weapon. "No, actually I'm part of the election committee to reelect former president Richard Nixon and seeing as he's dead, we really have our work cut out for us."

Durst leapt to his feet, fists balled and stood at the edge of the table where Mecceloni sat.

"Goddamnit! What does it take to get a straight answer out of you?"

Mecceloni put the weapon down on the table and looked up at Durst.

"Okay, okay. I'm CIA and Cassandra is NSA. We're part of a multi-jurisdictional task force investigating the people who rip those little tags off mattresses."

"You Sonovabitch!" Durst snarled as he swung at the other man.

Mecceloni grabbed the incoming fist, twisted the wrist and brought Durst to his knees and hard against the table. Pinning the other man's arm to the surface, he took his thumb and pressed under Durst's jawbone and into a nerve cluster. Leaning closer to him, Mecceloni looked Durst straight in the eye.

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