Lock And Loaded
The Ironhowl X4 rolled down the quiet backroads of upstate New York, salt dust clinging to its tires like residue from a conquered battlefield. Raven sat behind the wheel, one hand resting lazily against the door, the other tapping the steering wheel in time with the low rumble of the engine. The sun was starting to dip, casting long shadows across the highway.
She checked her mental checklist:
"Meat. Water. Salt. Crops. Livestock. Power. Transport. Seeds. All mine."
A small, dangerous smile crept onto her face.
"Now it's time to lock and load."
She flicked on the turn signal, even though there were no cars for miles. It was muscle memory, more than anything. A part of her old self that hadn't quite been sandblasted away by the coming apocalypse.
She muttered under her breath, "Zero-money procurement."
To the uninformed, it would've sounded like corporate jargon. But Raven knew better. It was apocalypse lingo—an old raider term that meant taking everything not nailed down once the world fell apart. Looting without guilt. Robbery with righteous cause. Because if the world was ending, and you were fast enough to take what others hadn't protected, it was yours by law of survival.
She intended to be first.
Her destination wasn't marked on any modern map. The old subway terminal hadn't seen a passenger since the 1970s, and it had never been made public again. But her father—William Salvatore—had found use for it.
A private weapons vault.
Raven had stumbled across it in her last life, long after society had already collapsed. She remembered the rusted tracks, the walls slick with moisture and mold—and the endless crates of firepower nestled inside like the bones of a slumbering dragon.
Fully automatic rifles. Compact rocket systems. Armed drones. EMP grenades. A full-sized tank she'd only seen once. Missile launchers and things that didn't have names, just serial codes. Her father's war cache wasn't just impressive. It was madness with steel teeth.
No cameras. No surveillance.
"Too paranoid for his own good," Raven muttered to herself as she pulled into a fenced-off utility lot in the Bronx. It looked like nothing. Overgrown weeds. A rust-eaten metal shack leaning sideways like it had given up trying to stay upright.
She stepped out of the SUV and locked it behind her. The air here smelled like rust and piss. But she wasn't here for aesthetics.
She made her way behind the leaning shack to where the cracked pavement dipped slightly. Hidden under a filthy plastic tarp and a few planks of broken wood was a rust-covered manhole cover. She crouched and grabbed the edges.
Her fingers dug into the grime, straining until the cover groaned and gave way, flipping aside with a dull metallic thud. A wave of stale, wet air rolled up from below.
Raven pulled a flashlight from her belt, clipped it to her jacket, and descended into the tunnel.
The ladder groaned under her weight, but held. She counted twenty-five rungs before her boots hit solid concrete.
The tunnel widened before her, carved decades ago with old stonework and heavy bolts anchoring support beams that had outlived the purpose they were built for. The silence was thick. A mouse scurried past her boot and vanished into the shadows.
She pulled her coat tighter and started walking.
"Back entrance," she whispered to herself. "He didn't even guard it. Idiot."
The route twisted once, then opened into a slightly wider tunnel that once fed electrical access to the main subway line. Here, the remnants of graffiti stretched across the walls like faded warpaint.
It smelled of damp mold and rusted wire.
As she walked, she recalled the first time she'd broken into this place in her past life. It hadn't been easy. She'd almost lost a hand disabling one of the trap doors near the main loading dock. But now? Now she had all the time she needed—and none of the surveillance to worry about.
Her father, so obsessed with secrecy and avoiding government snooping, had ensured that the entire site was offline. No network. No motion sensors. Just heavy steel and a belief in deterrence.
It was his weakness. And her opportunity.
She ran her hand along the cool stone of the wall. The silence down here wasn't comforting. It was isolating. A place forgotten even by the rats.
Eventually, she reached the heavy steel bulkhead that marked the first lock-in gate. The door was built like a bank vault, lined with magnetic seals and outdated keypad entry.
She ran her hand across it and whispered, "Still cold."
A smile ghosted across her face.
She took out a small toolkit from her coat pocket. From memory, she unscrewed the rusted control panel casing beside the door and exposed the wires. Most people would have tried to hotwire it. Raven simply reached into her coat and pulled out a faded access card.
She slotted it into the emergency override.
There was a pause.
Then a faint click.
The vault door gave a shudder, then rolled open with the slow screech of ancient hinges.
The air beyond was still. Silent.
Raven stepped through and sealed it behind her.
She was in the first antechamber now. A place where forgotten crates lay stacked in uneven towers—some labeled with company names, others unmarked entirely. A mounted minigun sat deactivated in the corner, as if still waiting for a war that never came.
She didn't linger.
This was just the first layer. The main cache was deeper.
She paused before a second doorway, bracing her hand against the steel.
"You locked it all down, Daddy."
Her voice was soft. Cold.
"But you forgot one thing."
She leaned in, her lips brushing the metal.
"I am your daughter. And I pay attention."
With that, she turned and faced the path ahead.
Beyond this point was the treasure trove. Enough weapons to supply a small country.
And she intended to take it all.
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