Free One Blink From Oblivion by Mark Curtis Bullock Page B

should presumably be bustling with teenagers looking for love or a sugar fix at this time of night in a small town such as this- is ominously free of patronage. 
    “There’s the sheriff station on the left. We have to stop,” says Max from the rear seat.
    Vinny pulls the Audi into the parking lot, dimly lit by one amber streetlamp, and exits the vehicle, “Looks pretty quiet. I’ll see if I can find anyone inside. Be right back”
    “Wait, I’m coming with you,” yells Brooke.
    Max exits the car to aid Brooke with the broken door handle. As he rounds his open door, he notices the gold Mercedes rental two cars over in the parking lot with the driver’s side door ajar.
    “Hey look, there’s Lisa’s car.”
    Vinny turns to see the vehicle and answers, “She must be inside. I’ll go find her.”
    Feeling something more than a bit off kilter Max calls out to Vinny, “See if you can get my grandmother on the phone.”
    Vinny gives the thumbs up sign and continues inside.
    Max turns to Brooke, “Why don’t you stay here with me, something feels wrong?”
    Brooke complies and the two stay by the car watching the Sheriff station’s double doors swing shut behind Vinny.
    ***
    Vinny approaches the high counter in the sheriff station’s lobby.
    “Hello, anybody here?”
    His voice echoes through the conspicuously vacant front office. He persists toward the counter and peers over.
    Again he cries out, “Anybody? We need help.”
    He looks down and sees a phone partially visible beneath a confetti of papers that have been scattered on the desk behind the counter. He reaches down and lifts the receiver only to find the cord jaggedly torn between the receiver and base. That gets him looking around with a little more urgency and he realizes that the entire office is in disarray. He intermittently searches and calls out for anything or anyone that might be useful. He is having little luck finding either. He travels from office to office checking phones and looking for signs of life. Every phone either has been destroyed or produces no dial tone. He pauses in a brown well-used desk chair in one of the offices to decide a course of action.
    Suddenly, tap-tap-tap, the sound of rapid footsteps raises his attention. He moves to the office door and pokes his head out into the hall where he hears the footsteps again –tap-tap-tap, this time moving down the dark corridor and away from him. Feeling naked in the face of the unknown, he surveys the office looking for a suitable weapon with which to defend his self, but can find none.
    Vinny calls out again, “Anybody here?”
    He waits silently for an answer but again receives none. He moves slowly down the hall and into the next office, again searching for any kind of weapon; a gun, pepper spray, hell even a nightstick would do. Whatever is running around isn’t keen on talking and Vinny’s had enough surprises for one day. It is probably just a scared kid but he is determined not to enter into a possible altercation empty handed.
    Tap-tap-tap, the sound of footsteps breaks the silence once more, this time sounding closer than before. Vinny instinctively retreats back further from the door and deeper into the office. In his haste, he bumps into a file cabinet and sends it falling to the tile floor with a metallic clank. The sharp sound in the quiet space startles him even further and he finds himself tripping over the cabinet and into the adjacent wall. When he finally comes to rest in the gap created by the wall and the fallen file cabinet he notices keys taped to the back of it. He reaches over and peels them free. He tilts them into the little light that remains in the office and written on a small red label on one of the keys are the words, ‘gun locker’.
    A quiet, “That’s what I’m talking about,” is the only jubilation he allows himself upon this fortuitous find. Now all he needs is to find the gun locker. Against his own will and better judgment, Vinny leaves