Charlie's Requiem Novella (10 page)

A few minutes later, the doctor had gathered the patients and we all sat in the reception area. Dr. Kramer found the first man’s pistol in the hallway by the room Janice and I had hidden in. There was a third gun in the car. Dr. Kramer turned the old vehicle off and returned to the office. We let Garrett calm down a bit then heard about the horrors down at Publix.

It seems that the dump truck had blasted its way through the front entrance, taking out the other two employees. Carla and Ed were crushed where they were preparing to open the doors and feed the crowd outside. Mr. Wayneright and Garrett were in the back gathering more food when the wall exploded in and the truck crushed his poor co-workers. They quickly took refuge in the manager’s office and locked the metal door, unable to prevent the looting. There was nothing they could do. The mob was too large and too desperate. Their need too great.

After hours of watching the carnage through the upstairs glass window, the crowd began to settle down. Most had loaded up what they could and retreated back to where they came from. Mr. Wayneright decided it was time to abandon ship and he and Garrett proceeded down to the main level. They needed to get out of there, go to their stash in the dumpster behind the building, and make their way out of the area. For Garrett, that meant finding Janice. For his manager, it meant a long walk to his home in Kissimmee.

When they reached the main floor, the gunfire began. Looters were caught in the middle. Some ran out into the melee, while others fled to the back of the store, seeking cover from the fusillade of bullets. The two retreated once again and watched as almost a dozen thugs entered the store and looted what was left. A number of people were trapped as the back entrance had been locked shut. Mr. Wayneright still held the key.

Trapped between the back of the store and the open front door, they begged and pleaded to be let go. The thugs began to shoot them one at a time. Mr. Wayneright couldn’t take it anymore. He left Garrett in the upstairs manager’s office, leaving his keychain with the young man but removing the pharmacy cage key, and hurried down to try and bargain with the druggies. They were rattling the metal cage that had been locked down to the floor, trying to get to the narcotics in the back.

Garrett watched as Mr. Wayneright flagged down the criminals. The gunfire abated while they talked. They made their way to the pharmacy and the cage was unlocked, giving the hooligans everything they wanted. Mr. Wayneright turned to face the remaining trapped people and pointed them to the front opening. It seemed that he had negotiated their safe passage by opening the pharmacy gates. That is, until one of them pointed his pistol at the back of the kind manager’s head and pulled the trigger. Before his body hit the floor, the remaining six people were shot as well as almost a dozen guns opened fire on the unarmed group. It was over in seconds.

“I couldn’t believe it!” Garrett said. “He did everything he could to protect those people, but it didn’t matter. He gave them everything they wanted but they shot him like a dog.”

“Lesson learned.” Dr. Kramer finally said. “There is no room for trust outside of this group. Trust needs to be hard won and certain before it is given. I want all of you to remember this!”

“Well,” Garrett concluded. “After they looted everything and left the building, I went out toward the front of the store and heard them talking outside about your office. They wanted more drugs. So I got a couple of crowbars from the docking area and got here as fast as I could. There were only three of them and by the time I got up here, two were in the building and one stood by the car smoking a cigarette. He never heard me come up behind him. After seeing Mr. Wayneright killed by those sickos, it was terribly easy to smash the punk’s head. I just wanted to make them pay for what they did. And I couldn’t let anything happen to you guys.”

We sat in silence, considering what had just happened. Dr. Kramer, as usual, was the first to act. He stood up and faced us.

“Well,” he started. “Out of tragedy comes opportunity. We now have a functional car and supplies in the dumpster.”

“It will be light in an hour or two.” He continued. “Charlie, you and I will go down to the dumpster after I inventory the stolen items in the car and retrieve the supplies. Then, we can get the hell out of here.”

Nothing ever had sounded so good to my ears.

Chapter 16

Day 6

John Drosky

South Orlando

Officer Drosky sat on the front porch of the one story house. After finding the two bodies in the back bedroom, he spent the next few days helping those in the neighborhood cope with the new realities they faced. It was frustrating to watch civilization rapidly disappear. The two local gas and go shops were a total loss, having been broken into and vandalized the third night he slept.

After the second night in the house, the smell from the back bedroom forced him to duct tape the door’s seams. His food supplies, at least the ones that he wasn’t using in his emergency kit, were rapidly drawing to an end and John felt he had done all he could with the limited resources he had at his disposal. He was throwing buckets of water on a forest fire. It was futile to do much more. It was time to make his way back to headquarters and check in with his superiors.

The morning air was crisp and cold when John went back inside and gathered his backpack and supplies. He wore his civilian clothes, his police uniform stuffed in the backpack with the other items he was to carry. His “Batman” duty belt was on his waist with his Sig 226 holstered and a couple of spare magazines. He manufactured a sling for his shotgun and it hung from his right shoulder. His patrol car still sat in front of the house as he closed the front door to the dead couple’s home he had occupied the past five days. He had completed a final, quick check for anything of value in both the house and his vehicle earlier so he began the walk downtown.
It shouldn’t take too long,
he thought to himself.
It’s less than three miles.

He strode north to Colonial drive and gazed right down the six lane road. Smoke still rose from the Executive airport where a jumbo jet had tried to land. The pilot attempted to use the short runway to glide his beast to the ground, but in the end, there was too little real estate and too much mass to stop. It slammed into one of the numerous hangers that lined the runway and burst into flames. With no firetrucks or power, the wreckage created a series of smaller fuel fires that spread from hanger to hanger, and plane to plane. By the third day, most of the buildings had been reduced to ashes. The only thing John could see as he started down the road was the Southwest emblem on the tail of the doomed jetliner. It was the only part of the jet to survive the inferno.

The walk to the station was remarkably serene. John always liked early starts, and with the sunrise at his back as he made his way west towards downtown, it gave the city a lightness that belied the reality of the situation. As he approached the downtown area and its blocks of high rise office buildings and condominiums, vandalism was starting to show itself. Every store that could have held something of value had been broken into and ransacked. Another gas station at the corner of Orange and Colonial was gutted and burned. A pharmacy and local sandwich shop also suffered similar fates.

Checking down one small side street, John saw a body on the grass of a renovated home. The early 1900’s brick mansion had been converted into an attorney’s office. The lawn was littered with trash and as John hustled down the street to check the victim, he quickly realized she was beyond help. Her clothing ripped from her body, a knife buried in her chest, the poor woman had been sexually brutalized and killed where she laid. John made his way up to her body. He moved her lifeless form to the flower bed next to the broken out front door of the mansion. John retrieved his sidearm and entered the house. Once he was inside and confirmed a lack of occupants, he brought the body into the old house and laid her on a couch in a reception room to the right of the front entrance. He covered her form with a blanket from a closet in the hallway. After finding no identification, he said a quick prayer and went back on his way.

A few minutes later, John crossed under Interstate 4 and turned left onto Hughey Street and gazed down the road to the OPD headquarters.

“My God!” He said to himself. He stared at dozens of vehicles a quarter mile away, many moving about. Mostly large yellow school busses and HUMVEEs. Even a few modern MRAPS. They were clustered in front of the old headquarter building, parked end to end under the I-4 overpass parking spaces that sat across from headquarters. Several busses idled on the street, their accordion doors open and engines spewing diesel smoke into the air. All at once, civilization seemed not so far away. It was with a lighter step that John rapidly walked to the front of the building to present his credentials to a guard that stood watch.

Before he could reach the stairs to the front door, two DHS agents in full military gear appeared from behind one of the idling busses and brought their M4 rifles to bare on the policeman.

“HALT!” One man cried. “DROP YOUR WEAPONS NOW!”

John forgot he was in civilian clothing and quickly dropped to his knees. He unslung the shotgun from his shoulder and laid it on the ground. He raised both hands high in the air and replied.

“John Drosky, OPD, reporting for duty!” he shouted.

The DHS agents were in black military gear. A “POLICE” Morale patch was stuck to his Velcro Identifier on the front of their plate carriers. They were in full kit, with Kevlar helmet, a battle belt with full load out of 556 ammunition. A side arm with two spare magazines rounded out the firepower. On their shoulders were the DHS patch he had learned to recognize over the years of federal and local interaction. John didn’t move a muscle.

Both agents approached Drosky and covered him. They eventually took his shotgun and pistol from his holster. They finally frisked him and zip tied his hands behind his back.

“We’ll have to check this out,” one of them said. “Stay seated while we verify your identification.”

One of them, the older of the two, went into the building with John’s identification while the other stood guard. The younger one, younger than John by his looks, bounced back and forth on his heels as he stood guard over his prisoner.

“Don’t worry,” the young agent said. “We just need to make sure you are who you say you are.”

“No big deal,” John replied. “I get it. I could have capped John Drosky and taken his weapons and I.D. No problem.”

The agent seemed to relax a bit, his rocking motion steadied. But John noted that he wasn’t well trained. For starters, the young man failed to keep an eye on his surroundings while his partner was in the building. In an amateurish sort of way, it felt like the kid was playing soldier and not well versed at his job. He glanced at a few woman that passed by, trying to strike up a conversation with one attractive girl. As the minutes passed, he even stopped watching John and fumbled in his pocket for some dip. Retrieving a can of Skoal, he actually put his rifle butt down on the ground, leaning it against his legs so he could use both hands to place the cut tobacco between his cheek and gums. He actually had the barrel of his firearm pointing up at his body, effectively putting his head in the line of fire. Instructors called that “lasing” as if you were pointing a laser at someone or something not meant to be pointed at with your rifle. It was inexcusable, but given the state of things, John chalked it up to desperation and situation. You take what is available and use it to the best of your abilities. DHS was using the assets they could.

John took pity on the kid and got his attention.

“Hey… kid!” he said in a low voice.

The young man turned to look at John who still sat on the sidewalk.

“No one gave you permission to talk!” He stammered back, the military rifle still butt down on the ground, its barrel pointing up at his chin as it leaned on his leg.

“No offense, but you need to be more careful where you point your rifle.”

“What the hell are you talking about? I can point it wherever I want.”

“I mean,” John softly replied in his most gentle and non-threatening tone. “Don’t let your C.O. see you with your rifle like that. You’re lasing yourself.”

“What do you mean?” The kid asked. John’s ‘concerned parent’ voice, the one he used to diffuse situations on the street, seemed to disarm the young man.

“You know,” John replied. “Lasing. Pointing the barrel at something you don’t want to kill or break.”

The kid gave him a perplexed look, so John continued.
My God,
John thought
, how deep in the hole did DHS have to go to get this kid?

“You know,” John replied. “In your firearm training. Never point the barrel of the gun at friends. It’s one of the four rules of firearm safety.”

The kid still looked lost, so John finally laid it out for him.

“Kid,” he stated in his ‘stern father’ voice. “Look down at your rifle. Where the hell is the barrel pointing?”

The young DHS agent looked down at his firearm and stared directly into the loaded chamber of his own battle rifle.

“HOLY SHIT!” he cried and brought the firearm back to his ‘low ready’ position. Barrel pointing slightly down and slightly away from John.

“That’s what I’m talking about,” John said in his ‘concerned’ voice. “I just didn’t want anything to happen to you.”

The young man was momentarily embarrassed, a red flush rising in his cheeks.
Cripes,
John thought,
is this kid cherry or what?

“Don’t worry about it, kid. This world is upside down. It’s easy to lose track of your training when all hell breaks loose. In a bit, it’ll come back. Always does as long as your sergeants keep track of you.”

The young man shuffled his feet, failing to make eye contact with John. It was an awkward moment that seemed to last for minutes. In reality, some few seconds later, another bus pulled in front of the building, disgorging a number workers and DHS agents.

“John?” Drosky heard from the sidewalk to his right. John looked over and saw one of the OPD dispatchers where she had stopped on the walkway. Tanya Culverson was known for her cool demeanor under pressure. All the officers recognized her when her voice came over the radio. She rarely sent the police into a situation without thoroughly wringing every last bit of information from the caller. It was a difficult and delicate job. She needed to balance the urgency of the call with the need for vital information. Information that could help the officers catch the bad guys, and most importantly, keep the OPD officers alive. John was glad she had made it.

“What the hell is going on here?” she stated to the DHS agent. “That man is OPD, and a hell of an officer. Just what’s going on here?”

The young agent didn’t know what to do. He was in a horrible spot with several OPD employees who were already cleared and back working in the building, standing behind Tanya lending their support.

Before things got any further out of hand, John shouted over them.

“HEY, ENOUGH! The kid’s doing his job. They’re following protocol.”

“Well let me tell you…” Tanya shot back. “Their protocol sucks. I’ve been here from the beginning and they are doing things that just don’t make sense. And they sure as hell aren’t letting OPD make any decisions.”

“I’m fine and he’s doing what he is supposed to do.” John replied in his ‘I appreciate it’ voice. “Now really. I’ve been out in the shit for six days. A few minutes sitting in the morning sun won’t hurt me. I’ll see you all inside and we can catch up.”

“I’ll be waiting!” Tanya shot back, giving the young man a glare that could have killed. “Look me up in transportation and relocation”

“What? Transportation and relocation of who?”

“That, Officer John Drosky, is the 64 dollar question. We’ll talk, honey! Oh yeah, we are going to do a lot of talking!” And with that, the group moved on to the entrance.

“Thanks guys!” John shouted at them, receiving a wave from two of the members as they disappeared into the glass front doors.

“Thanks, man.” The young agent said.

“Hey, you got a tough job here. Just stay frosty. You can’t let your guard down when you’re on the front line.”

A few minutes later, the older agent returned and the two led John to the lobby. Multiple desks had been set up, and signs lorded over different areas. “Relocation Services,” “Transportation,” “Intra-agency Coordination,” “Re-Education Services” and other monikers. John did a double take on the last one.
Re-education,
he said to himself.
What the hell is that?

They led him to the chief of police’s office, where a new group of employees were stationed. Gone were the old workers, replaced by DHS employees. The Chief’s name was still mounted over the door, but a paper banner had been taped over it. It read: DIRECTOR OF DHS SERVICES.

They entered the room and John, hands still zip-tied behind his back, was led to one of twenty or so modules where a severe and rough-looking woman of indeterminate age stared back at him. The two agents spoke in hushed whispers to her while John stood ramrod straight, ten feet back, staring at the divider wall above the seated woman’s head. She wore no uniform, but commanded the two agents to cut his tie and dismissed them from her presence like a drill sergeant crushing the spirit out of a new recruit.

She looked at the paperwork in front of her, taking her time while John maintained his stance. After a bit, she put the folder down and addressed the OPD officer.

“John Drosky,” she started. “I’m surprised it took you so long to report!” Her tone of voice left no doubt that she wasn’t happy with the delay in getting back after six days of absence.

“May I speak freely,” John asked. He had decided that it was best to placate the new bosses. Act like the loyal Marine he once was (and always would be), and give these people some respect for responding so quickly to the emergency. The organization he saw here after only six days was next to miraculous given the federal government and its past history of cluelessness and ineffective execution of even the most basic functions. What John saw was a well-oiled emergency response. It was surprising and welcome.

“Go on,” the woman simply replied.

John went on to describe his final call and the discovery of the bodies. The loss of power and his five days of trying to organize the people of the neighborhood. He concluded with his walk back and his surprise at the level of response. 

“If I may say so,” John concluded. “I am surprised with the federal response I’ve seen here. Very impressive. I hope I can help out.”

The woman seemed to soften a bit with his last statement. Her eyes, ice cold the entire time, warmed slightly and she began to tap her pencil on the closed Manilla folder which held the summary of John’s life. Everything from his grade school transcript (how in the heck did they get those) to his last field reports were in the paperwork. He was stunned to see such a massive amount of data on him already collected. More data that the OPD had in his personal file. It was remarkable.