The Quartermaster

A drill sergeant barged in, half-yelling,

"Attention!"

And everyone shot up from their seats. I struggled to follow suit and tried to stand like everyone else. I mentally cursed myself and felt a cough coming.

"Alright! You terd eating maggots! Stay where you are! Before you go frolicking through the city looking for trouble or causin' it, I need to make sure you ignoramuses can put your pants on right!"

He found some poor souls among the crowd and told them to do at the least one-hundred push-ups. A larger man, with his combats rebelliously low, and shirt untucked was given a thousand for a repeated offense. The cough was burning in my throat as the drill sergeant was grilling someone farther down the line.

Unable to contain it I added more blood onto my arm. After I finished my fit of coughs the room was deathly quiet. The drill sergeant tilted his head towards me with exaggerated slowness, dished out whatever punishment and crossed his hands behind his back as he came over to me.

"Did I give you permission to cough? You sick boy?"

"No sir." I croaked.

He looked me up and down.

"This your first day, boy?"

"Yessir." I wheezed.

"Well that explains why you thought you could hide," he pointed, "that there stain from me in your dark fabric, why you're shoes ain't shiny enough for me to do my hair off of, and explains why your hair ain't parted boy!"

I contained a cough and swallowed the blood and his eyes roiled. The guy reminded me of Karver but with no restraint. How does this guy get away with treating the children of social elites this way?

"Excuse me, what was that? You try to spit a loogey in my face?"

"No, sir." I said weakly.

"What is that there stain? Hmm?" He shoved me, trying to rattle me and got his hand wet. He looked down at it, and then me. No-one else saw the blood, despite hundreds of people being in the room. They didn't want to earn this guy's wrath, I guess he was that scary.

"Give me twenty-five push-ups!" Then he whispered from the side of his mouth, "Then see the nurse or social worker." Then he continued, grilling someone who was looking at a girl instead of keeping his eyes straight ahead. I did my twenty-five and there wasn't much action after that. We had to wait for everyone to finish their push-ups so that beefy rebellious guy with the death sentence of a thousand push-ups kept us waiting. Scary thing was, that after he finished he flexed his I-beam muscles pridefully like he enjoyed a good workout.

The drill sergeant scowled at the giant of a kid but gave up on chastising him for not standing at attention. The pale skinned drill sergeant looked over us at the door with a thoughtful scowl.

"Dismissed!" Then the door slammed behind him.

Then a cacophony of everyone talking at once filled the once silent room.

Spider gave me one of his high-fives.

"Man, twenty-five!"

"Lucky," Andy said, "you were exceedingly lucky."

"He usually has a hundred push-up minimum if you didn't notice." Crow informed.

"I did notice that." I croaked before a cough. "What now?"

"I'm going to take you to the quartermaster, while Andy, Spider, and Nova-" she air-quoted, "go 'frolicking around the city looking for trouble.'"

The armory was built adjacent to the main building and looked like an old barracks. The sun mirrored brightly off puddles, dew, and the small building's roof. When I got closer I noted stationed guards, cameras and automatic doors with card-lock panels.

"The quartermaster should be here." Crow said, "The cameras will scan my irises and voice as I approach so don't look at anything or say anything."

As if on cue, a light on the heavy duty lock barring the door turned green and Crow gave me a look like "see?". Crow lead and I followed as the door shut behind me and I gazed about an empty room with lockers. Crow's yawn brought my attention back.

"Ugh, can't see crap and I got a headache."

"Headache named Maverick?" I teased and she gave me an icy look, "I didn't sleep well either."

"Yeah, if you find a tranquilizer down there it'd be nice to shoot me but... Spider could always use it."

I huffed a laugh and followed her down some steps to a guarded elevator. Good god, I thought, how much security is in this area? A voice kicked on,

"Ah! Scarecrow! Long time no see!"

"Open up, you goof."

I coughed a few times and there was a hiss behind me.

"Hold still, don't move." Both Crow and the voice warned at once. A few seconds passed and then there was a hiss and folding away of metal.

"Phew!" The voice exclaimed, "He sick?"

Crow smirked, "Ebola."

"Ha-ha," I said, "not even funny."

"TB? Maybe?" Crow teased.

I contained another cough, and threatened, "I'll cough on you."

"Please," she dismissed smoothly, "I'm sick of you already, Arthur Morgan."

"Who the hell is that?" But she ignored me.

I arched a brow, she seemed to be trying to laugh her bitterness off. Maybe things will get better after all. I tried to turn the joke back on her.

"Pfft, lovesick more like."

Crow gave me a weird look like she didn't know whether or not I was joking. I added quickly,

"I'm joking-" then I coughed a few more times.

"Anyways," Crow said, the play in her voice replaced by her casual all business tone, "he needs his car and gear for patrolling."

"Wait-" I croaked, "what?!"

The door opened and my eyes widened at the sight of enough weaponry to destroy a city. There was even a radioactive sign at the back of the room. Despite all this, the massively overweight man in the center smiled like it was his home.

"All right!" The man said from his rolling chair, he popped his fingers dramatically and rolled to another screen, "What kind of car?"

My mind simply blanked.

"Uh, Maserati Birdcage?"

The man laughed, "No, we can't do Corvettes or higher."

"What kind of car is that?" Scarecrow asked.

The man answered her, pulling pictures up on a hologram, "This car is a concept car ten-times the price of a Lamborghini and was designed-"

"Whoa," Crow interjected, "let's concentrate on the task at hand."

"Aw, but I'm surprised that he knew that this car even existed!" Then he added, "Name's Nedry Nelson, by the way."

"Maverick," I introduced with a cough.

"Well Maverick, classic cars are pretty popular but as long as it's not a classic Ferrari or Shelby Cobra or something expensive and too eye catching."

"Um," I thought a moment, "a red Chrysler Imperial?"

The man had a knowing smirk on his face, "64 or 66?"

"64 I guess?"

"So," Spider asked as we rode in Andy's Escalade, "you got the car the Green Lantern used but red?"

Andy was driving, Nova was shotgun as Spider, Scarecrow and I were in the back. Nova was texting updates on her phone as Spider spoke to me on the other side of Crow in the middle. I observed the scenery while talking to the others.

Nova blinked blankly and shook her head, "Spider I can't believe you."

"What?"

"That was the Green Hornet."

"I thought the only Hornet was that Yellow Hornet guy who fought Ant-Man?"

Crow sighed.

"Would you two just shut up?"

"Here's something I want to know," I asked, "how did you get this Escalade?"

"He somehow convinced Nedry it would be better than a Chevy Tahoe or GMC equivalent since people mistake them for cop cars at times." Alien droned.

Andy smirked, "There were a lot of scientific and technical terms included in that conversation."

I watched as we passed hundreds of Infected as they sat on the sides of buildings or warming themselves around little trash fires. I noticed graffiti symbols painted onto different surfaces in white, symbols I recognized. At another street I coiled my fists tightly and grit my teeth. A mob was outside a government building with signs that read, 'Death to the Infected', 'The Only Good Infected are Dead Infected', or other hate filled messages. No, not hate... fear.

I looked at some messages from Burke on my phone. Nothing important, they were mostly texts saying he won't be getting texts because he's in some hole somewhere. Idiot, I'm coughing blood and nearly screwed everything up and it's not even my second week.

There was a bump when the Escalade hit the six lane freeway and worked its way into a net of overpasses. I looked at the lights of downtown Oklahoma City as they grew closer and the sun faded away. At the center was Saint Francis, HQ, with helicopters hovering here and there. I sighed and popped the medicine Nedry gave me and sipped a bottle of water to wash it down. Hopefully things won't get to shaken up... yet.