Olivia joined them and put a reassuring hand on her daughter's shoulder. “Why don’t you keep Mami company tonight and have a sleepover in my room?” Isabella looked up and nodded quietly as she was still a bit shaken up by the violence in the neighborhood.
Alex turned his attention to Daniel, who did not appear fazed by the incident. He had Autism and struggled quite a bit with his verbal communication, so it wasn’t always clear if he understood the gravity of their situation. He had adjusted remarkably well to life without TV and the games on his tablet during the past month, but Alex never assumed that his son had it any easier than the rest of them. Any changes to his routine were usually hard on him. The amount of time that Alex now spent outside the home looking for food or on guard duty meant that he did not spend nearly enough time with Daniel as he used to, so he worried about how that would affect his connection to his son.
“Daniel, hug please,” Alex said, as his son came over and hugged his father. He did not make eye contact, until Alex lowered his head and he and Daniel touched foreheads, like they often did. “I love you, Daniel.”
After kissing his son on the forehead, Alex said a final goodnight to his family before slinging the shotgun over his shoulder and leaving his family for the night.
CHAPTER 3
On the way over to the Kim’s house to cover his duty, Alex radioed Martina to check in. “Anything moving out there?”
“Nothing,” The Army veteran replied. “But it’s getting too dark for me to see far with this scope, so I’m not doing much good right now.”
“Ok, why don’t you shut it down for the night and I’ll take it from here.”
“Sounds good. Have a good night over there,” Martina said, signing off.
Alex approached the two lifeless bodies and picked up the firearms that lay on the street beside each of them. Both guns were revolvers, a small snub nosed .38 special and an old beat up looking .32 caliber. The Oak Tree Lane group was amassing a small collection of firearms confiscated from people who had threatened the neighborhood. However, the challenge they faced with being able to put the firearms to use was that the neighbors, collectively, had a limited amount of ammunition on hand prior to the EMP event. With no way to go out and buy more, the only firearms that ended up being useful to the group were ones that were in a caliber that matched their meager ammo supply. Since no one in the neighborhood had any guns that fired .32, it would only be of limited use to them unless the two men had extra cartridges for it.
A cold shiver ran through Alex as he stood over the bodies. He had seen quite a few dead bodies in the recent weeks, but it never got any easier to experience. He recognized that life was fragile and that it could end in the twinkling of an eye. In the aftermath of an attack on his neighborhood, Alex never really felt much remorse for the “bad guys” who perished in the assault. He was able to recognize that it came down to the survival of either them or his family and friends. The choice was justifiable in his mind. However, he still hated the choice and being forced into a position to make it.
Because he had been a counselor for so many years, Alex did occasionally wonder about the stories of the people who had died at their hands. Where did they come from? What were their lives like before the EMP? Were they “bad” before or did the event change them? Were their families out there waiting for their return and wondering what happened to them?
Alex left the two bodies and approached their shopping cart that they left on the corner. He scanned the parkway in both directions, but didn’t see anyone, so he pushed the cart towards the Kim’s residence and parked it on the side of the house, out of view from the parkway. He removed a large duffel bag and a milk crate full of canned foods, which would be added to the neighborhood food supply. He left behind a discolored gallon jug of what Alex assumed to be water. The neighbors had enough water from their rain catch system and didn’t have a need for the awful looking jug. Alex had always been somewhat of a germaphobe and surviving the end of the world didn’t do anything to help his condition. So in reality, he wanted nothing to do with the polluted container.
After carrying the items from the cart inside the house, he left the milk crate by the door and carried the bag upstairs to examine the contents, while at his lookout post. He put on a pair of rubber gloves that he had in his sling bag and began to go through the contents of the bag in order to see if there was anything else that the group could make use of.
Alex considered the irony of his situation, in light of how significantly life had changed for him over the course of the past month. This was clearly evident by the fact that, prior to the EMP, he worked as a guidance counselor with school aged children and now he was rummaging through a bag that belonged to a couple of dead men who were still lying in the street just a few yards away from him.
Inside the bag, there were a couple of grungy looking clothing items, which Alex quickly tossed aside. The smell from the clothing began to make Alex second guess his decision to do the work in the room where he would be keeping watch for the next 12 hours. The stench assured him that he would not run the risk of falling asleep that night.
He continued looking through the bag and found a few tools that could be useful to the group. There was a prybar, a knife, and a few lighters. There was also a half empty box of .38 special rounds, but no ammo for the .32. Alex found a large pouch and opened it to find quite a treasure trove of miscellaneous jewelry items and a number of prescription pill bottles. The only remaining item in the bag was a clear freezer bag filled with small plastic cards. Alex quickly stuffed the clothes back into the duffel bag and brought it outside, where he tossed it back into the shopping carriage to try and get the awful stench away from him.
As Alex was turning to go back into the house, his brother in law walked up to update him on Jack’s condition.
“How is he?” Alex asked.
“He seems ok, just in a lot of pain,” David said. “Naomi is still with him, but she sent Lilliana back home for the night, since there was not much else to do after they patched him up. It sounds like it didn’t break any bones and it missed the artery, so he didn’t lose too much blood. It could have been a whole lot worse.”
“Wow, that’s good news. It looked bad,” Alex said.
“You ever seen a gunshot wound that looked good?” David asked sarcastically.
“Good point,” Alex replied. “Let's go inside, so I can keep an eye out, while we talk.” David followed him inside and they returned to the second floor post to watch the parkway. “What happened anyway? I was out cold until the shooting started.”
“I was sitting here watching the parkway,” David explained. “It was pretty quiet all day, but then I saw those two guys approaching from the north end of the road. They stopped on the corner, but didn’t see me, so I radioed it in to let the neighbors know, because they looked shady to me. I didn’t call out to them at first, because I was still waiting to see if they would just move on.”
Alex looked out the window at the bodies. “Should have just moved on,” he said under his breath.
“They just stood there talking to each for a few minutes and they must have decided they wanted to check us out, because they started walking into the neighborhood. I shouted for them to stop, which seemed to surprise them. I didn’t see their guns yet, so I just kept the Mini-14 pointed in their direction to make sure that they stopped and they did. Martina radioed that she was covering from her attic window with the .308 and then Jack started walking down the middle of the road to confront them without any cover.”
“Stupid. Jack knows better than that,” Alex said, shaking his head in disbelief.
“When Jack got close to them, one of the guys panicked and pulled out his revolver and took a wild shot at him. Jack fell back out of the way, so I took a couple of shots and nailed the jerk that shot Jack. I think I hit him in the side. Martina hit the other guy with the .308 and dropped him right away and then she put another shot into the guy that I hit to make su
re he stayed down. It all happened so fast. Anyway, you know the rest.”
“Man, we can’t ever let our guard down,” Alex said, frustrated about what happened to his friend.
“Do you think I should have just shot as soon as they set foot onto our street?” David asked.
“I don’t know,” Alex replied. “It’s such a tough call. I hope there's still good people out there and I would hate to hurt someone who isn’t a threat, but when seconds count, like today, it’s hard to know what the right thing to do is.”
David looked down at the items laid out on the floor. “What’s all this? The stuff they had in the cart?”
“Yeah, the .38 will come in handy,” Alex said. “They had a few rounds of ammo for it, but nothing for the .32. There was a decent supply of canned foods in the cart and Naomi and Lilliana might be able to make use of the meds, but otherwise, not much else we could use, unless you want to put on all this jewelry and do your Mr. T impersonation.”
“Idiot. Anyway, what’s the deal with this?” David asked, picking up the plastic bag.
“I didn’t go through it yet, I was trying to get the raunchy clothes out of here first.”
“I didn’t want to say anything,” David quipped. “I thought you crapped your pants or something.” David opened the slide locked bag and pulled out a handful of the cards. “ID’s. Mostly driver’s licenses.”
Alex took a handful as well and noticed a pattern. “Take a look at the addresses. They’re all local.”
The men emptied the bag and began to lay all of the photo ID’s on the floor, twenty three in total. Many of the ID’s were from homes located in nearby Roslindale and West Roxbury, which were two other Boston neighborhoods that bordered Hyde Park to the north.
“They must have been just going door to door robbing people along the way. That would explain the jewelry and meds, but why keep the ID’s?” David asked.
“Trophies?” Alex replied. “Maybe they keep them as a way of remembering their conquests.”
“You think they killed all those people?”
“It’s possible,” Alex said. “If they did, then you just helped rid the world of some evil bastards.”
The thought made David feel better about the fact that he had a role in killing the man who shot Jack. He knew that he made the right decision, but the thought of them being cold blooded murderers helped him feel somewhat more comfortable with the difficult decision.
As the men were quietly wondering about the fate of the poor souls that the ID’s belonged to, Tony arrived from Jack’s house. He still looked worried, even though the prognosis had been better than expected.
“That cranky old bastard is going to be a pain in the ass as a patient,” Tony said.
“At least it wasn’t worse,” Alex said reassuringly. “The shot could have hit him in the balls.”
The three men erupted in laughter. Dark humor was one of the few things that could alleviate the stress and tension of the difficult times that they were living in.
“I guess we should do something with those two assholes, huh?” Tony said grinning at Alex.
“Yeah, unless you’ve got one of your crazy medieval ideas again.”
A month earlier, when Mr. and Mrs. Kim were killed in the home invasion, Tony had initially wanted to leave the bodies of the two men responsible for the attack out on the parkway to rot and send a message of deterrence to any future attackers. Cooler heads prevailed and the bodies were disposed of by cremating them in a trash dumpster located behind a recreational building in the nearby Stony Brook Reservation.
“Well let's get it over with,” Tony said. “I want to get home and get some sleep. It’s going to be tough doing our guard duty rotation without Gunny. The back side of the neighborhood is going to have to be left unguarded tonight, until we can figure something out in the morning.”
“Well, we’ve never had any trouble from that end before, so hopefully our streak continues tonight,” Alex said.
“Alright, David, I guess you and me get to do the dirty work tonight.”
“Great,” David said sarcastically. “Let’s put that shopping cart to use and roll them over.”
“Good idea,” Tony said, grateful that they wouldn’t be carrying the men over and hoping that it would make their disposal go quicker. “Why don’t you roll the cart over to them and I’ll get the gas canister from the shed.”
“Make sure you guys burn that duffel bag and those rotten clothes too,” Alex said, still smelling the foul odor that was left behind in the room.
The men said goodbye to Alex and left to put their plan into action. Alex was glad that they were taking care of the bodies, because he didn’t want to be sitting there in the middle of the night with the men still laying there. He was sure that would have disturbed him quite a bit and he would be fully expecting them to get up and haunt him, like some scene from the Walking Dead TV show that he used to enjoy watching.
Alex found a small carry on suitcase in the closet and packed up most of the items from the floor into the suitcase and put it back in the closet. The only items that he left out were the guns and ammunition, which he placed inside a desk drawer in the corner of the room. He planned to offer the .38 to Naomi or Lilliana, since they were the only two people in the neighborhood who still hadn’t come to terms with carrying a gun for protection.
David and Tony quickly loaded the shopping cart with the two bodies and headed for the nearby recreational building across the parkway from their neighborhood. The building was barely visible to Alex in the darkness, with the thick cover from the trees blocking much of the view. The shopping cart rattled loudly, though, so even after David and Tony disappeared from sight, he could still hear the noise from the cart in the distance.
A short while later, David and Tony had a much quieter walk back to the neighborhood, since they decided to leave the noisy cart by the dumpster. As the men wearily passed by the Kim residence on their way home, they said goodnight to Alex. He could hear Leo’s bark across the street as David approached the home that their families shared. Having his brother in law around made Alex feel a lot better about his family’s safety, so he worried about them less when he was on guard duty at night.
Alex had grown to enjoy the overnight shifts, for the most part. With the sun hidden away, there was usually a slight respite from the summer heat. However, with all of the alone time, Alex’s mind was often left to race about the scary things that bred fear and anxiety in his mind. On that particular night, he knew that his concerns for Jack’s health would be on his mind, even though he knew that he was doing ok for the time being. He also would have ample time to also worry about the health and safety of his wife, children and the rest of the families on Oak Tree Lane. Death could come for them at any moment and in any form. He could only hope and pray that they could make the right decisions and continue to survive when faced with life or death choices.
In the distance, through the trees in the Stony Brook Reservation, Alex could see the glow of the flames that marked the final resting place of the two men who died on his street that evening.
“Should have just moved on,” he said again under his breath.
CHAPTER 4
At sunrise the next morning, Alex prepared his breakfast of black coffee and plain oatmeal. He was running low on both and was worried that his real survival situation would begin the minute he drank the last drop of his coffee supply. He had cut back to one cup a day in order to try and make it last longer, but he knew it would eventually run out and he’d have to deal with the effects of withdrawal. Alex had tried to quit drinking coffee a couple of times in his life, but failed miserably each time.
He waited until his breakfast was ready, before sitting down to try and contact Erik for their daily check in. He took a sip of his precious java and keyed the mic on the radio.
“Wakey wakey eggs and bakey!”
Erik lived a mile and a half away, as the crow flies, at the top of a hill in nearby Dedha
m. The friends had kept in regular contact with each other since the beginning of the disaster. The emergency preparedness plans that they each came up with prior to the EMP included a communications protocol in case either the Stone family or the Walkers needed support from each other. Although they talked with each other on a daily basis, the men had not seen each other in person since the night of the battle with Frantz and his crew three and a half weeks earlier, when Erik aided in the defeat of the gang.
“I’d kill for some bacon and eggs right about now,” Erik replied after a brief delay.
“No kidding,” Alex said. “I’ve been kicking myself for not investing in chickens before all this mess.”
“I’ve been kicking myself for not investing in a lot of things. You don’t think about all the crap you need until it’s all gone bye-bye. Anyway, how are things down there?”
“We ran into some trouble yesterday,” Alex said somberly. “We had a couple of road warriors show up looking for trouble and Jack got shot in the leg while confronting them.”
“Man, is he ok?” Erik asked.
“Not sure, I haven’t seen him since it happened, but Naomi and Lilliana patched him up and seemed to think it wasn’t as bad as it could have been.”
“What happened to the jerks that did it?”
“What do you think? We invited them to move into the neighborhood and gave them some food and supplies,” Alex said sarcastically. “Red carpet treatment.”
“It’s nice that the apocalypse hasn’t dampened your sense of humor,” Erik said.
“I’m Irish, dark humor is embedded in our DNA. It’s like we are genetically predisposed to enjoy the end of the world, because it involves tremendous suffering with a side order of guilt.”
Alex had always relied on humor during times of stress. It was his coping strategy to keep himself sane and it usually benefitted those around him, by offering a distraction from the crisis of the moment.
The Power Struggle Series (Book 2): The Downward Spiral Page 3
