While someone backed the big tree service truck up as close as they could to the solar arrays, Sam explained the volume of work overhead to Ronnie, who processed it with a few arched eyebrows and nods. Each cell had to be covered, then disconnected from the inverter, its leads covered, then the whole thing physically detached and lowered. They'd planned ahead for some of that at least - rolls of black garbage bags and piles of moving blankets in the cargo truck. But even with the cargo trailers a handful of soldiers were already hooking most of the Humvees up to, there was no way this was all going to fit in one load, not to mention whatever other goodies they found.

Rhonda nodded one last time when Sam finished all of the details and raised a hand palm up, sighed, and dropped it again. "Alright, Red. The part we need you most for is getting them disarmed for safe handling. Taking them down once that's done should be straightforward mechanical talent and physical labor." She paused to yell over her shoulder. "LANDRY!"

One of the soldiers checking the hitch connection between a trailer and Humvee looked up and jogged over. "Take two of your technically inclined people and assist Miss Conroy. Her priority today is showing you how to fully dismount one solar panel, then focus on de-energizing all of them for future recovery and removing herself as a dependency. Any questions?"

The slightly shorter than usual but extremely burly glanced from Ronnie to Sam to the panels overhead and nodded. "No questions, Gunny. We'll follow her lead."

"Good." She dismissed him back to find his two picks with a nod, then turned back to the girls. "Landry's done some construction work in the past. He'll at least know which way to turn a wrench. Rebecca, time for you to go find a nest and post up. Take Elroy since Chrissie's putting her head together with Epstein, set up on the maintenance bay's roof and watch the road and your girl. Ladder's on the southeast corner."

"Got it." Rebecca nodded to Ronnie then turned to Sam, pulling her gently towards her with a hand on her forearm and kissing her on the cheek. "Be safe, Rosie."

Sam tilted her head to clonk helmets with Rebecca again. "I will, sugar. Enjoy getting to lay down for bit while everyone else does the work."

Rebecca stepped back, lingering her hand in Sam's as she did. "Hey, at least you mostly get to be in the shade." With that and a grin at Sam's smirk, she turned and walked quickly through the garage, twisting and sidestepping around Epstein's crew, and gesturing to Patrick where he was looking for somewhere to contribute manual labor. "C'mon buddy, you get to help me stare into the distance up top."

He laughed and hustled across warehouse space to catch up with her as she went to the Humvee to retrieve her long gun. There, she tossed him a bundle — a mottled tarp and one of her sleeping pads rolled up, with a set of straps cinched around them providing a carry handle — before she pulled her backpack on and slung Felicia's case across it, the strap diagonal across her torso. Patrick managed to do the same with his carbine as he followed her to the ladder, then hung the bundle over his shoulder for the climb.

Rebecca could hear the reverse beeper of the tree service truck as she climbed the ladder ahead of Patrick, no doubt getting positioned closer to the steel structure supporting the solar panels over the parking lot. At the top, she turned and literally offered Patrick a hand clearing the last few rungs to the roof's edge. While they caught their breath, she surveyed the rooftop, then led him across the roof (and up onto a higher section that involved another shorter ladder climb) towards the edge overlooking the EV spots.

Glancing down, she saw Landry form a step with his hands for Sam, boosting her up onto the truck's hood with an amicable "Up you go, sister." She smiled a little to herself when Sam hooked her toe under the rear lip of the hood, by the windshield, and reached out to help Landry pull himself up behind her. They reversed the gesture on top of the cab, with Landry reaching out to steady Sam as she set one foot on top of the folded boom arm and pivoted so she could reach the crew bucket with her other leg and slip into it. Once her boots plunked to its floor, Sam looked up at the panels, and then her with a reassuring wink. Rebecca replied with a lopsided grin before turning back to the rooftop and waving Patrick towards what looked to be a nearby pair of ventilation or cooling machines.

With his help, she arranged the tarp spanning the gap between the two, then crawled beneath to spread her bedroll out. He settled to sit with his back against one of the cooling units — at first to her right, but she waved him over to the left side, reminding him that he'd get pelted with brass if she had to start shooting. He laughed as he shuffled around her while she laid out her backpack in front of the bedroll, removing a pair of binoculars that she passed to him and a small rangefinder and notepad.

Felicia's case went alongside the bedroll to her left, and she unzipped it and lay the rifle across the backpack, taking a few moments to make sure the adjustment knobs on the top and side of the scope were still locked in the correct positions. Of the four magazines left in the case's side pouches, she shoved one in her left thigh pocket in case she had to reposition hastily, then settled prone behind the rifle and picked up the rangefinder. Before starting that though... she looked back at Patrick over her left shoulder.

"Hey, do you have any half-full mags left after that fight?"

He started patting around on his load vest until he found the one he was looking for. "I don't know about half, but yeah, a partial."

Rebecca passed him the one she'd used during the same fight. "See what you can make out of the two of them while you're just sitting there looking pretty." He chuckled as she turned back to look out at the highway though the rangefinder. It was actually just one they'd found in a civilian sporting good's store — nothing military grade, just what a well-heeled golfer would use some Saturday... but it was handy for setting up in new locations like this.

She heard the hydraulics of the truck below groaning as she made a rough sketch of the view in front of her and started jotting down ranges of convenient landmarks. The crest of the hill where the highway disappeared out of view in the distance, a billboard and a large tree, the end of the armory fence line. Between the whirring sounds from below, she could make out the clicking sounds of Patrick pushing bullets out of one magazine and into another, and realized she didn't know which way he was moving them.

"Hey Pat, what ammo are you carrying? Just general stock?"

"Uh, yeah, I guess. I know we were loading from a couple of different box styles."

That confirmed her suspicions. "Okay. Mix my ammo into yours, but not the other way. I need to make sure my magazines are all the same load so the rounds land consistently."

"Got it, that makes sense. I might as well do something useful... Chris's putting her head together with Epstein and going all super logistics queen like she does, we're not here for food, so there's not much use for a glorified urban farm boy like me on this ride along."

Rebecca had a slightly evil idea and smirked into the eyepiece of the rangefinder. "Hey now. I knew a very nice farm boy freshman year. I'm pretty sure Chrissie will agree with me, there's nothing wrong with taking a one for a ride. There's something to be said for stamina..." Patrick sputtered and she heard the distinctive clink of a fumbled round hitting the roof they were on. She was a little remorseful, but it was still fun teasing him. "Sorry. He flustered easily too, I think it was part of the appeal."

She set down the rangefinder and snugged up to her rifle while Patrick chuckled and sighed — probably rolling his eyes. God, it was so much more comfortable than her old one, in more ways than one. Better ergonomics were one thing, but every time she picked it up, she was relieved to not be literally rubbing bad memories in her face. She unconsciously shifted her cheek against the buttstock (comparing it afterwards to how she might have against Sam's hand, or even Jaime's back in the day) and let a little sigh be the start of focusing on slowing her breathing. Panning the rifle back and forth across the trees and skyline, she tried to get familiar with the view so anything different would stand out.

After a few minutes of that and Patrick quietly clicking away with the magazines, she worried she might have hurt his feelings or something. "Hey... I hope that didn't come off as too mean." Her voice was muffled from being up against the rifle, but he wasn't very far away.

"What? Oh no, please don't tell me my girlfriend is happy with my performance in the bedroom. Anything but that. Oh no."

His feigned incredulity was enough to make her giggle. "Okay, okay. We wouldn't want you to get complacent after all." She paused as she saw a flutter of motion at the bottom of her field of view and lifted her head away from the scope briefly, just enough to see Sam and Landry loosely cinching a length of rope around a moving blanket they'd just flung over the first solar panel. They were a tight squeeze, both of them in the lift bucket at the same time, but she supposed that was necessary for him to see what she was doing up close... and those muscles would certainly come in handy wrestling the panel off of its scaffolding. She noticed the same rope they'd lashed around the blanket was fed through a carabiner attached to the bucket and down to the ground — probably an improvised pulley to lower it to the ground?

She settled her eye back behind the scope as she finished that thought and scanned the distance again. After another minute or two, she heard Patrick musing behind her. "I just never thought I'd end up spending half my life on guard duty."

Rebecca shifted her chin away from Felicia slightly, but continued her vigil through the scope. "I'm not sure if I should laugh or cry at that. I suppose there's a lot of laughing about things so we don't cry going around. How'd you end up on that agriculture and hydro team anyway?"

"If you're looking for a story to pass the time, you're in for disappointment because it's really not that exciting. I worked in a hardware store for a couple of years, so that's where they stuck me when I stumbled into Broadway after getting a flat tire on my bike. It worked out though, there was this foxy blonde with firm opinions about seed inventory and tracking fertilizer usage."

That got Rebecca to chuckle. "Things good between the two of you?"

"Oh yeah. It's nice being able to start setting up a place of our own with y'all. Home again, you know?"

"Amen to that." Their conversation lapsed for a while as Rebecca periodically lifted her head to peek down at Sam for a second or two. They'd removed one solar panel, and it seemed she'd dropped Landry off and come back up again on her own to cover and disconnect individual panels, moving down the row with gradually smoother movements as she grew familiar with the crane controls.

Rebecca was quite grateful for the fancy padding inside her purloined armor — the squishy gel conformed much better than conventional armor. She really felt it at bottom edge of her ribcage as she lay mostly flat, but with her shoulders and head propped up behind the rifle. Doing that in her old gear used to make breathing uncomfortable over time, but now she could almost take a nap in it if she had to. For now, breathing freely sufficed.

"Hey, Patrick?"

"What's up?"

"Have you and Chrissie, like... talked about looking for your families?"

"Yeah, who hasn't... but her folks are out in Nebraska and, frankly, I kinda had a falling out with mine. So realistically, we're in a holding pattern until the internet comes back or something."

"You're past reconciliation with yours?" Rebecca tried to make sure her tone was neutral, not stirring anything up... asking why might be prying too far.

"I mean... I guess I'd like to know that they're okay and vice versa, but we're not about to make an excursion just for that any time soon."

"Gotcha... fair enough." A flicker of movement drew her attention she quickly aimed for a better look, but it turned out to just be a small group of deer coming out of the woods and nibbling on the grass that had overgrown the fringes of the highway. That was actually helpful, they'd spook if there was someone out there.

Patrick saw her shift quickly and then relax. "Everything okay?"

"Yeah. Deer on the road. God, I'm sick of venison. Anyway... Sam and I... her parents' place is just a little outside of town, we were hoping to go check it out." It was a little weird, carrying on a conversation without eye contact, just this voice behind her as she stared down her rifle scope. Some part of her kept expecting it to be Ronnie's voice answering back.

"That's cool, I'll keep my fingers crossed. What about your family?"

"Farther, but maybe... my dad died when I was nine, but the last text message from my mom was that she was heading out to my uncle's cabin out west. There's a whole lake and wilderness preserve up there. She told me not to try to make it though, because the roads were so bad between us. You know, with the panic in DC, then Richmond when everyone heard what was coming their way..."

It was Patrick's turn not to dig too deep into information that wasn't volunteered. "And Norfolk, yeah. And here we are stuck in the middle. There weren't many good options to get out once everyone else started flooding the roads and rivers. I heard there were some crazy extortion rackets ferrying people down the Potomac out of DC."

"Assuming they were actually taking them anywhere." She sighed, resting more of her head's weight on the rifle stock. "Fuck humanity, man. We did this shit to ourselves, and we still are if this morning is any sign of how things are going outside our walls."

"Hey, I don't know where you're getting this 'we' nonsense. Seems like there's some pretty clear delineation between the assholes and non-assholes."

"Really? What about upstairs, with those two numpties in my apartment?"

Patrick conceded her point somewhat. "Being scared makes non-asshole people a little more asshole-y, though I maintain that's usually people who were more towards the middle of the spectrum. But hey, at least the wildlife is doing well in our absence."

"Ever the optimist. I guess that's why Chrissie keeps you around."

"That and my stamina."

Rebecca scoffed and lifted away from the rifle briefly to shake her head and take a long drag on her hydration hose where it protruded from her pack. "Farm boys."