Protecting Our Home

by Colton Lively

  “Roger,” said Charlie, leading the younger pair to the back. “Probably gonna set off the alarm,” he warned.

  “Then let’s move it like molasses,” his grandfather urged. “Cody, fill one of those baskets with bandages, gauzes, rubbing alcohol, things like that.”

  “Got it.”

  “Del?” Cabot asked, ready to issue his next order. But the man didn’t answer. “Hey, Del, you still out front?”

  He found Del, but something was wrong. He was staring ahead, immobile. It took Cabot a moment to realize, peering around the pharmacy doorway, that some kid with a gun had gotten the drop on him.

  “Don’t move,” said a young, scared voice. “I done this before, so I’m like a... a professional. Nobody needs to get hurt.”

  Cabot peeked very quickly and understood the situation at once. A terrified teenager was pointing an overly large handgun at Del, actually trembling as he tried to maintain his aim. “Son?” Cabot called around the doorway. “Young fella, we don’t mean any trouble. We’re here for medical supplies, that’s all.”

  “Me too,” said the boy. “And you’re gonna help me.”

  “Sure,” said Cabot affably. “It’s a good time to be helping other people, right? What is it that you need, son?” He muttered the two syllables, but Cabot’s old ears missed them. “Say again, buddy?”

  “Oxy,” the boy said, turning yet paler.

  “Oh, man, okay. I guess… I guess we can take a look,” Cabot said, motioning to the pharmacy at the back of the store, “see what they’ve got…”

  “No!” the boy yelled, shifting aim to Cabot. “Don’t fuck with me. You’re gonna bring out the oxy, and I’m gonna walk outta here. Do it my way, and everyone lives. We clear?”

  “Sure, sure,” said Cabot. “We got you, don’t sweat it.”

  “Gotta be quick,” said the boy. “Or your friend here is gonna lose his head.”

  “As you wisely said, young man,” Cabot offered, “ain’t no need for anyone to get hurt.”

  “Just hurry,” the kid said, desperation coloring his tone. He was incredibly pale and drastically underweight, the difficult days since the EMP had been less kind to addicts even than to others.

  “Boys?” Cabot called back to the pharmacy. Bryce dashed over to report that they’d cracked open the pharmacy’s shutters, but then Cabot had to give him a confusing instruction.

  “Woah. Why?”

  The altercation by the doorway wasn’t visible from back here, and Cabot was happy to keep the youngsters out of it. “Just search for that label and grab as much of the stuff as they’ve got,” Cabot said. “We’re out of here in three minutes.”

  He hovered within sight of the doorway, where the scared kid’s gun trembled like a leaf in his weak hands. Del remained still, equally concerned about the size of the gun and the state of the kid’s mind; if he were desperate enough to bully people into burgling a pharmacy for him, what else was he capable of?

  Before he could engage the pale boy in conversation, two men appeared at the edge of the parking lot and began quickly to approach. Del called out, “Two coming across the lot. Camo and weapons. Heads up!” He slunk back against the wall, taking cover behind a vending machine.

  The kid noted these new arrivals, becoming yet more scared and confused. “Hey, who the…”

  “Drop your weapon!” one of the men yelled.

  “I’m just…” the kid began to explain.

  “Drop it!”

  “But…”

  Three shots rang out in a single burst, and the kid disappeared behind a cloud of red.

  “Fuck!” spat Cabot. “Hold your fire! Civilians in the mix, hold your fire!”

  “Get his gun,” said the shooter to his comrade. “Make sure he’s down.”

  Del reappeared from behind the vending machine. “Down?” he exclaimed. “You just about blew his head off!”

  “You can thank me later,” said the shooter.

  “I ain’t thanking you for shit,” Del replied, furious. “That situation was not nearly as fucked as you thought. But you came steaming in, and the only thing in your mind was to put three rounds through someone, huh?”

  “Prevented a robbery,” the shooter said, slightly defensively.

  “Bullshit. A gust of wind could have disarmed that kid. He was just an addict, desperate for oxy.”

  “Still sounds to me like we performed a public service,” the man told them. His colleague nodded in approval, though he couldn’t stop staring, aghast, at the bloodied mess on the ground.

  “More like murder, if you ask me,” said Del, furious at their overreaction. “Tell me something, now that you’ve finally done it,” he railed at the pair, “now you’ve finally busted your cherry and killed someone, do you feel like a real man, huh? Has that filled the hole in your soul, taking a kid’s life, huh? Has it?”

  “Either say thank you,” the shooter said dismissively, “or shut your mouth.” He walked over to kick the dead addict’s boot and wasn’t surprised that the kid remained still. “I’m Wickham. That’s Finn. We keep order around here. And who the fuck might you be?”

  Cabot was shepherding the boys and Cody to the front, loaded down with stacks of boxes, pill bottles, and baskets of medical paraphernalia. “Just doing a little shopping for surgical supplies,” Cabot said, brandishing a stack of twenties which he began to count on the wreckage of the cash register. “We’re all done, and we’ll be going.”

  Wickham raised his hand like a traffic cop. “Wait a second…”

  “Ready to get outta here, boys?” Cabot asked the others.

  “Just hold it, old-timer. Where have you come from?” asked Wickham.

  “Flannigan,” Cabot said, the lie coming easily. “Heck of a walk, and we got blisters you wouldn’t believe.”

  “And you need insulin for your blisters?” the shooter asked, leafing through Cody’s basket. “And folic acid? Really? Which one of you guys is pregnant?”

  “I’m shopping for others, but I can’t discuss my patients’ ailments with anyone,” said Cabot. “Confidentiality, you understand.”

  The shooter stopped him with a brazen fist to Cabot’s chest. “No, I don’t understand. What’s going on here? Who are you?”

  “Well, who are you, buddy?” Cody shot back.

  The shooter turned to address this new voice. “Local law enforcement. The regulars all left town days ago,” he said, bending the truth ambitiously. “We’re here in their place to keep the peace.”

  “State Militia?” Cody asked. “Or something else?”

  “Definitely something else,” the other guy replied, then gave a sloppy but theatrical Hitler salute.

  “Oh, okay,” said Cabot, his voice remaining uninflected despite the welter of worry he was feeling. “Well, I’m Dr. Tobias Spielman. Back there are my three grandsons, and these two fine men are partners in my medical practice. Mind if we finish what we’re doing and move on?”

  “If you’re a doctor, that means you carry a stethoscope, right?” the shooter asked.

  “Sometimes,” Cabot said. “Today’s a bit unusual.”

  “But you know how to use one.”

  “They wouldn't have let me out of medical school if I couldn’t,” Cabot smiled.

  “All right. Finn? Grab a stethoscope from aisle sixteen and meet the good doctor in the back office,” the shooter instructed. “Where’s your other buddy? Still out front?”

  Del was still slumped against the vending machine, nauseated and upset. “He ain’t a problem,” said Finn, glancing back.

  “Now, doctor,” Wickham continued, “there’s no point helping the dead druggy outside, but you’re for damned sure gonna help us crack the back-office safe.” To enforce the point, he raised his rifle slightly in Cabot’s direction.

  “No problem, compadre, just take it easy,” said Cabot, raising his hands awkwardly in surrender.

  “We’ll walk back there with you,” Cody offered, “and get the safe open w
hile the boys get ready to travel. Sound okay?”

  “Stay in sight,” Wickham told the three teenagers and then escorted Cabot and Cody down the empty liquor aisle and to the back office. It had been turned over, and the computer was gone—a truly useless piece of theft, Cody thought. The safe remained intact, though scratched and dented as though someone had valiantly failed to open it. “Doctor, let’s go. clickety-click. Open sesame.”

  Cabot looked at his own hands. “I mean, I’ll try, but I’ve never done anything like…”

  “You want to live to see the lights get turned back on? You and your ‘colleagues’?” he added skeptically. “Then do as we fucking say and get this open, right now.”

  “You got it,” said Cabot, applying himself to the task. “No problem.”

  In the groceries aisle, Finn was trying to find something he regarded as edible, but there were only dreary canned vegetables and pasta sauce. After their own supply raid on the second day of the crisis and the rolling free-for-all since then, there wasn’t much left. The pharmacy, though, held real promise provided they could grab the worthwhile stuff—heavy pain meds, ADHD drugs, Sudafed—without triggering the security alarms. Cops still existed, even if they were reduced to riding around on bicycles and were sure to have granted themselves strong powers under emergency anti-looting ordinances. Taking out a useless addict was one thing, but Finn didn’t relish a gun battle with an experienced cop.

  No, it made more sense to just wait for their plan to succeed and to take advantage of this newly arrived group’s “medical supply run.” Wickham had been pretty jumpy around them, threatening to shoot an old man to jumpstart his latest why-the-hell-not armed robbery, but if he could keep his cool, the “doctor” could be their lucky charm; most pharmacies had to keep thousands of dollars of pills in stock.

  “We good, back there?” Finn called to Wickham, impatient to close out this robbery before anyone else became aware of their presence.

  “Almost,” he called back.

  “Good.” Finn saw that the nervy guy was still out front, sheltering by the vending machine, trying to avoid looking at the red ruin Wickham’s AR-15 had made of the addict’s face. The shots had tracked high, shifting upward from the aiming point at the kid’s center of mass, with the final round of the three entering his cheek and emerging as a giant, ragged exit wound in his skull, just behind his ear. “Jesus,” Finn muttered. “Wick, you went and killed this fool. Straight up executed.”

  A few yards away, Del was cradling himself and clinging to a sense of reality based on very old information. By his reckoning, it should still have been possible to visit a retail establishment, part with currency, and emerge with your choice of products. Doctors should still have been prescribing medications and pharmacies working to provide them. Police should definitely react to incidents like this one, and to whatever half-assed form of kidnap and armed robbery was going on in the back office. There should have been a national address by the president, but he’d either forgotten to make one, failed to find the words, or simply lacked working means of communication. All of these things should have been happening, but the compounded, surreal strangeness of that week was a thief of both peace and normalcy; the moment laughed at Del with his naïve expectations of “should” this and “should” that.

  All of which piled upon him, unfairness on top of stupidity on top of back luck. He despised his own powerlessness in the face of these… extremists? Terrorists? He almost laughed; they were a poor excuse for stormtroopers—unkempt and untrained—trigger-happy to the point of sadism. But they were threatening his friends, and that made them the enemies of all Del had left.

  Like a complete idiot, Finn actually had his back turned to Del. He was wandering down one of the aisles, his eyes fixed on the back office in the hope of good news. More sounds emanated from the office—a dull clank, some hollering, and then some other metallic impacts—and Finn took several more steps down the aisle, intrigued by the sounds.

  Which was when Del decided he’d had enough.

  “Turn it the other way, you dumb fuck,” Del could hear Wickham yelling; Finn guffawed as he visualized the comedy of errors involving an armed Nazi and some old codger with a stethoscope. He still had his hand to his mouth when Del fired a three-round burst from his AR-15 in the direction of Finn’s back. The triple-punch flung him forward toward the top of the aisle where he came to a halt, sprawled on his face, his gun skittering away. Del followed him, moving quickly, aiming now for the door to the back office. The shouting had stopped, and the door opened just a crack…

  Bottles of sunscreen exploded around Del’s head as Wickham’s rounds flashed past him and hit the remaining products on the shelves. The cloying scent instantly brought memories of beaches and picnics, but Del was moving again, sharpening the angle by approaching the pharmacy and ducking down by the partly-closed shutters. “Let ‘em go, and you can walk outta here,” he called to Wickham. “Your buddy is gonna need help. Toss out your gun, then let the doctor come out and see him.”

  More shouting and cursing boomed from the office, offering little intelligence for Del to draw on. Wickham was holed up, probably planning on using his two captives as leverage. But what if his very limited mind wouldn’t stretch that far, and he decided instead to eliminate potential threats? There was no time, and only really one course of action.

  Del dashed forward quietly, then only ten yards from the office door, he crouched down behind the sunglasses display and took aim. He still couldn’t see, but he remembered that the safe was on the left side of the office, with the desk and computer on the right; using this simple model, he made a mighty assumption and fired a trio of three-round bursts through the door.

  The wood splintered in crazy patterns so that Del could see at least two figures through the fractures. “John? Cody?” There was no answer except some gruff exertions, more swearing, and then the door flipped open, and a bloodied Wickham was shoved out, landing heavily on the floor by the doorway. He still had his weapon, but Cody was on top of him, wrestling for the gun while Cabot tried to restrain Wickham’s legs with the cord from the office window blind.

  “Get the fuck off me!” the neo-Nazi screamed at them, kicking out at Cabot; Cody was partly pushed aside, and Cabot had to withdraw into the office, his nose bloodied. Del approached, planning to shoot the prostrate armed robber or immobilize him with his own weight, but as he figured it out, Wickham’s fingers found the trigger guard, and he loosed off four rounds, wild and un-aimed. The shock was enough to shove Cody off him, and as Wickham rallied, he found he could stand, though his left leg wouldn’t bear much weight.

  “Fuckers!” he spat, dealing Cody a stern blow to his back with the rifle butt, and then limping away from the office and toward the stricken Finn, whose blood had pooled along the length of the aisle. “Murdering fuckers!” There was no helping him, and so Wickham knelt by Finn’s body and aimed back toward the office. “You come out, now, you hear?” he bellowed. “You come out, and we’ll deal with this like men. You hear me, you fuckin’…”

  Bang.

  The single, riotously loud shot brought silence to the pharmacy, followed only by the distinctive rustle-slump-clatter of a heavily armed man hitting the floor. Only yards away, secreted behind a display of expensive skincare products, Max’s 9mm pistol was still raised. “Target down,” he called to Cabot. “Come out here,” he requested of the older two men. “Del’s hit.”

  “Jesus…” breathed Cody as he reached Del at the foot of the sunglasses tower. “John, he’s hit right in the gut…”

  Cabot was there in moments, holding a hastily-found ice pack to his bleeding nose. “Is he breathing?”

  “Yes, just,” Cody quickly established. “But, I mean, this is a pharmacy, not an ER. We won’t have what we need to treat him here.” The hospital was three miles away, and likely to be either closed or drowned with patients; either way, they’d need a stretcher and a vehicle, neither of which was available.
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br />   “Damn it,” Cabot cursed to himself. “All right, we gotta stop the bleeding. Let’s get pressure on, and then bandages. Any painkillers left on the shelves?”

  “We got the oxy that kid wanted,” said Bryce, his pistol in one hand and a white box of six pill containers in the other. “Any use?”

  “Might have to be,” Cabot said. “Let’s get some down his throat.”

  They worked quickly but feared everything they tried would be ineffective. The bleeding was terrible, and on turning Del over, no one could find an exit wound. “Oh, shit,” Cabot muttered. “Means the bullet’s still in there, and we’ve gotta find it.”

  “How?” Cody wondered.

  “Okay,” said Cabot, straightening to assess the situation. “The back office just became an operating theater. Bryce, get rubbing alcohol, and wash down the desk, real thorough. Max, bring bandages, painkillers, gauze, and anything that looks like a surgical implement. Cody, we’re gonna lift him onto the table, so figure out how. And Charlie?”

  “Sir?”

  “Son, can you go out front and pull that poor dead bastard indoors? Corpses attract attention.”

  “You got it.”

  “Then close the doors, lock things down, and we’ll do what we can for Del.”

  There was never going to be much, and within minutes, they were running out of options. “He needs a blood transfusion, some kind of scan to find the bullet in his gut, and then surgery to remove it,” Cabot told Cody after their initial efforts. “General anesthesia, surgical conditions, the whole nine yards.”

  “Or what?” Cody asked, but he knew the answer. “We lose him?”

  “Likely, we will,” Cabot said sadly. “A wound in the thigh, or the arm, we could maybe deal with, but…”

  “Yeah.”

  “It’s a damned shame, no two ways about it.”

  “Random, too,” Cody said. “The asshole just kept pulling the trigger, didn’t even know where the rounds were going.”

  “Probably desperate to avenge Big Dog, like the others. No going down without a fight, not for these fellas.”