Part 2 - May 22 - Return to South Bend

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Carl, Sam, and Gerald entered the small police station of Elmwood and looked around. After the hospital staff had revived him, Gerald had stopped by the office only long enough to lock everything up, but nothing more.

The personnel who should have been on duty were absent, the desk and chairs vacant. Gerald retrieved all the keys from everyone’s desk to access the weapons lockers and closets. Then the three of them began searching and inventorying every piece of equipment in the building. Sam searched the building, noting anything she thought might be useful. She unlocked a desk, found two handguns, and passed them off to Carl.

The front door opened, and Gus walked in with four more people. “Carl, Sam.” Gus nodded at the two. “This is Jean, Dorothy, Max, and Jeremy. They’ve all had service experience, and Jean is another one of our local police officers.”

“Great. We’ve been poking around this office for any keys and equipment to make sure everything is accounted for. Why don’t you check out the inventory list we’ve organized?” Carl suggested to the two deputies. “Make sure we haven’t missed anything, and we need to figure out where to lock up the rest of the firearms.”

“Not a problem,” Max said. “As far as an inventory list, we only have a dozen firearms. We don’t get a lot of calls for taking out snipers or riots around here. The most we get is occasional civil misconduct. I’ve never had to pull my sidearm on anyone.”

Carl looked around at the others and asked, “Have any of you ever had to use a firearm against another person?” The group shook their heads.

“Jeremy and I have been trained and we have seen duty, but we’ve never actually had to shoot anyone,” Dorothy stated.

“All right then, that means we go in and get out and avoid confrontation,” Carl said. “We’ll need to see what we’re up against. I want to at least try to talk to them, see if they’ll respond to reason.”

“And if they don’t?” Dorothy asked.

“Then we get the hell out of there, without anyone getting hurt, and come up with another plan,” Carl stated as he scanned the group for any further comments or questions. “All right then, we’ll meet here tomorrow morning at 7:00 a.m. sharp.