Remnant: Asymmetry

Vernon Densa was able to get Jim calmed down.

The key was to take him seriously, or at least appear to.

Vernon made a big show of calling HR to get Jim’s paperwork for retirement started.

“Hey Jim, its gunna take a week to process. Whaddya say we drive out to that "can" and look it over?” Vernon asked.

Jim squinted at Vernon. It took a lot to get Vernon out of the office and here he was, volunteering. “Guess you need them “cans” fixed pretty bad” Jim said.

“Yeah, and if you are retiring I gotta be able to train your replacement” Vernon said.

Even if it was a transparent ploy to get Jim back on the job, Jim appreciated the effort. At 325 pounds, Vernon moving was a major effort.

The second trip to the “can” was a mirror image of the first trip. Nothing happened for about five minutes and then incoming.

The reports were muffled which made it difficult to sort out exactly where the shots were coming from.

Jim moved more quickly than Vernon and Vernon picked up a leg wound from a round that hit the ground and was tumbling. The outside of his left thigh was hamburger.

“Jesus Mother-fucking Christ! They are shooting at us” Vernon said.

“No shit” Jim drawled. Judging by the number of rounds hitting the ground, Jim guessed the shooter was a significant distance away. The shooter might not have been trying to hit the men but he certainly wasn’t making any effort to miss them.

If the men had any training in anatomy, the would have realized that had the tumbling bullet hit the INSIDE of Vernon’s thigh it would have likely severed the Femoral Artery and Vernon would likely have bled-out within two minutes.
 

Jim got on the radio and called in the police. Damned if he was going to let Vernon bleed all over his truck.

The shooting stopped as soon as the squad cars showed up.

Then the ambulance carted Vernon off.

Then the shooter(s) and the cops started playing whack-a-mole.

Jim left and took the truck back to the depot.

*

Jim had the repair effort organized for first light, next morning.

He called for police support before the work crew pulled out of the yard.

Three squad cars and a helicopter tried to chase down the shooters while Jim’s crew pumped out the hole. EPA be damned. The five-hundred-gallon-per-minute pump pounded the raw-sewage down a storm drain. Fans ventilated as the waste-water level dropped. Half-inch tread-plate was propped up at a 45 degree angle to provide some cover against incoming bullets.

Jim put on a lift harness and hooked up to a winch. He slid down the ladder and used an impact tool to unbolt the first pump unit. He was going to do a straight swap-out and fix the jammed up pumps in the safety of the Municipal Building work area.

Union rules required that a journeyman pipe-fitter “inspect and sign-off” on the pipe-hookups. Union rules required that a journeyman electrician “inspect and sign-off” on the electrical connections. Both men knew Jim, and like Jim were within a few years of having thirty years in. Both men had Jim snap a photo on his smartphone and send them the pictures. Of course there was no signal inside the can, but the men “inspected and signed off” before they received the pictures.

They had no interest in visiting a job-site where bullets were flying.

There were eleven hours of daylight and Jim got both pumps swapped out in that time. Barely.

It had taken three City trucks, six crew working thirteen hours each (eight straight time and five OT), three squad cars with the same straight time/OT, eight hours of helicopter time plus a master aviation mechanic inspection to ensure the bullet holes in the chopper didn’t impair anything critical to airworthiness.

The replacements were jammed up the next night with more scrap wood and seven cents worth of wire.

 

---A question to my readers: A traditional writer has to guess about which characters and which story-lines will be most interesting to his future readers. For on-line, serial fiction that is a constraint only if I let it be.

 

If I handed the manuscript to a typical editor he/she would tell me "Too many characters, too many story lines. Prune them"

 

So I ask you, hat-in-hand, which characters do you find most engaging? Not "most likeable" but "most engaging"? Are there any loose-ends that you would be tickled to see explored? Do you find the microcosm of Eaton Rapids and how they adapt more interesting than the monkey-hammering of major cities? Are the 7^7th freaks interesting; even with a 90% die-off they must still kill off 39-of-40 to achieve their goal? How about the warlord devolution of cities? The control freaks in government?

Or, I can just keep swinging from character to character like Tarzan swinging from vine-to-vine and we end up wherever the story takes us.

Thanks for reading.

-Joe---