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ruins.
    Next door to the garage was a small fire
station, the near side seared and blackened. The rolling door had
been torn off the runners and the fire engine was gone. While St.
George checked the garage, Jarvis, Paul, and Lee searched the
building. It had been cleaned out by either civil servants or
looters. Paul found an ex in the back and took its head off with a
wide swipe of his machete.
    A little farther down the road a mom-and-pop
style gas station was crammed into a tiny strip mall. There were
eight cars in a line, a pathetic attempt to barricade the plaza’s
miniscule parking lot. Both of the pumps had been vandalized. Lady
Bee pointed to the three numbers on the price signs and winked at
Lee. There was a restaurant and what looked like a psychic’s shop.
All the windows had been used for target practice until they
collapsed under their own weight. The red tile roof was shot up,
too.
    Road Warrior pulled up alongside the
line of cars and half a dozen scavengers leaped out, their armor
jingling. Billie, Ilya, and a baby-faced man named Danny moved
around to check the back of the building. Jarvis, Paul, and Lady
Bee headed for the mini-mart behind the gas pumps. Through the
broken window they could see something tall swaying back and forth
in the shadows.
    St. George landed on the rooftop deck of the
big truck and waited. Under his watchful eye, a scruffy guy slipped
from the cab and moved to the loading ports for the station’s
underground tanks. He pried the metal covers off and fed a weighted
line into the opening.
    Lee and an older guy named Al slid out on the
opposite side and took Hector with them. They watched up and down
Cahuenga for movement. Hector started to line up on an ex down the
road, but Lee put his hand out and guided the rifle’s barrel down.
“Hold off shooting outside until you have to,” he said. “Noise
attracts them.”
    “I know that,” grumbled the tattooed man.
    “How long since you’ve been out?” asked Al.
He had leathery skin, dark eyes, and a few streaks of steel in his
iron hair.
    “Out?”
    “Out of the Mount. Out from behind the
walls.”
    “Nine months,” said Hector. “Not since the
war.”
    “You go out a lot before that?”
    “On and off. When I had to.”
    “It’ll come back to you,” said Al. “Just
don’t get anyone killed before then.”
    A muffled gunshot came from the mini-mart.
St. George looked over and Jarvis leaned out to give him an all
clear. Billie’s team returned from around the back of the building.
“Two exes,” she said.
    “No problems?” asked the hero.
    Ilya shook his head.
    “There’s some apartments further back there,”
Billie said. “How much do you want to search?”
    “Let’s stay on Cahuenga,” he said. “We’ll
have time to spread out later.”
    They nodded and headed for the restaurant.
From the battered signage, St. George guessed it was an Italian
place.
    “Sweet,” whistled the scruffy man. He’d moved
to the second fuel tank. “There’s about a foot down there. Could be
as much as sixty, maybe seventy gallons.” He grinned up at St.
George through nicotine teeth.
    The hero nodded. “We’ll wait until everyone’s
done and then I’ll make some space for Luke to pull in. Don’t want
to draw attention too soon.”
    Jarvis, Paul, and Lady Bee came back from the
store shaking their heads. “Cleaned out,” said Bee. “It’s a mess,
but there’s nothing useful.”
    St. George sighed. “Well, we all knew there
was a good chance of that. It’s a main drag.” He tipped his head to
the next storefront. “You guys want to take the psychic?”
    Lady Bee gave a too-sharp salute and clicked
her heels together with a smirk.
     
    * * *
     
    An ex stumbled across the road to them. It
had been an older man with a wiry frame and a thin mustache. It
reached out and Lee pushed it away with the tip of his rifle. “Hey,
check it out.”
    Al and Hector glanced over at him.
“What?”
    “It’s Vincent Price.”