“What’s your name?” The man asked, as they walked down the stairs.
“Alex.”
“I’m Jason, but everyone around here calls me Doc. Truth is I’m the closest thing they have to a doctor, so I don’t correct them.”
When they got to the kitchen, Jason opened one of the drawers and retrieved a candle and lighter. He lit the candle and opened the basement door. He began to descend without waiting for Alex, who considered following him down, but decided to wait for him as a sign of trust. He had doubtful thoughts and wondered if he was making a mistake. He half expected the man to appear at the bottom of the stairs with a bazooka, but he waited nonetheless. Alex looked around the kitchen again, fixating again on the wooden cross on the wall by the door. He prayed silently, hopeful that he wasn’t falling for a hoax or trap.
A minute later, Jason returned to the kitchen and closed the basement door behind him. He sat at the small table and motioned for Alex to join him, placing the candle between them in the middle of the table next to the two large pill containers that he had retrieved from the basement. He handed Alex a small shopping bag, when he sat down.
“You’ll want to keep a fresh dressing on that,” Jason said pointing at Alex’s bandage, which had visible blood stains on it. “What happened?”
“A big dog made me his chew toy and I whacked my head,” Alex said turning his head for Jason to see the wound on the back side. He looked inside the bag and saw a couple of gauze rolls. Alex then removed his backpack and laid it on the floor beside him and placed the empty revolver on the table next to the candle.
Jason looked up at him gave a silent nod in appreciation. He then laid out a small note pad on the table and began to scribe instructions on it. He quietly finished his notes and got up to get two seal lock sandwich bags from one of the cabinets. Jason took the two pill containers and counted out a number of pills from each, which he then put into the plastic bags along with his notes that indicated the prescription dosage and frequency for each medicine.
Alex reached into his bag and pulled out the pouch full of jewelry. “I can pay,” he said placing the pouch on the table.
Jason looked inside and laughed. “Save it, unless you have a box full of Twinkies in there. I don’t have a use for a bunch of wedding rings and necklaces.”
Alex was struggling to understand why this man, whose home he had snuck into in the middle of the night, was willing to help without looking for payment in return. “You Christian?” Alex asked with a head nod in the direction of the cross on the wall.
Jason thought long and hard about the question, before answering. “I think I used to be,” he said glancing at the cross briefly, before looking away again as if overcome by shame. “I was a helper before and I felt like it was something I was called to do in life. Now? I’m still a helper. Only now I help out of selfish motives. The people I help now offer me protection… food… survival. When everything went down, I realized pretty quickly that life as we knew it was gone forever. I also knew that I wasn’t strong enough to keep myself alive when I saw how crazy everything was.
“So I did what everyone else was doing. I looted the pharmacy that I worked at and took all the medical supplies I could carry. It got real bad after the water shut off. Some of the guys in the neighborhood formed a gang, including a cousin of mine. He’s probably the only reason I didn’t die in the first week. Anyway, when one of them got hurt, my cousin brought him to me and I patched him up. After that, they made me their Doc and I found my way to survive. They aren’t the worst gang around. There are others that are more vicious, but I know that they steal from people and I know that they’ve killed some people. I don’t go out and do that with them and I don’t ever ask any questions, but I know I’m still part of it. The food in the cabinets belonged to someone else. I try not to think about it, but I know that’s the reality of the situation.
“You asked if I was Christian,” Jason said with a long pause. “Not anymore. I lost my religion when the lights went out. Not sure if I even believe in God anymore… Or maybe I’m just trying to convince myself of that to justify my choices, so I don’t have to think about the consequences.”
“So why are you helping me?” Alex asked.
“I guess I was relieved to come across someone that still had a bit of decency inside them,” Jason said. “You could have shot me upstairs and you didn’t. You could have robbed me of the food and you didn’t. Besides, you offered to leave the gun behind. Who does that?” Jason said laughing again. “And the fact that you were risking your tail for a friend in need. That says something about your character. Not many people like that left in the world.”
The two men sat silently, each considering how much life had changed for them and the hard choices that they had to make along the way in order to survive. In that moment, Alex wanted to invite Jason to join his own “gang” back in his Oak Tree Lane neighborhood. However, he knew that there were risks to bringing anyone else in and he couldn’t make such a decision without the input of the others.
“Thank you for doing this,” Alex said, breaking the silence and extending his hand across the table. The men shook hands as if they were finalizing a deal that still felt lopsided to Alex.
“Glad I could help. Oh and I guess I should thank you for not killing me.”
The two men snickered as they stood up from the table. Alex packed the supplies away in his bag and shouldered the backpack.
“You mind if I use the door this time? I sort of knocked over your stinky trash and would rather not go back out that window.”
“You touched that awful trash barrel?” Jason said wrinkling up his face in disgust. “Good thing I gave you more than one dose of each antibiotic. Between the dog bite and that barrel you’ll be infected soon too.”
Alex walked to the back door and paused, looking at the cross on the wall beside him. “Hey can I see that notepad?” He asked turning back to Jason.
Jason handed the small pad of paper to him along with the pen. Alex scribbled something on the pad and handed it back to him.
“If I can’t pay for the meds, the least I can do is offer a prescription of my own in return,” Alex said. “It helps get me through the hard times.”
Jason looked at the paper and held it near the candle to read what it said. Romans 5:1-11
“Even though everything has gone to hell out here, we can’t lose hope,” Alex said. “It’s just about the only thing left that matters. My family and I will keep you in our prayers, Doc.” With that, he opened the door and stepped out into the night, encouraged by his experience and eager to return home to his family and friends.
After watching Alex depart, Jason took the candle and his note upstairs to the room that he used as his home office. He sat at the old hardwood desk, a gift from his grandfather when he graduated from college. He picked up the leather bound bible from the corner, where it had sat unused for quite some time. Opening to the fifth chapter of the book of Romans, Jason read the prescribed verses, which focused on perseverance in the face of hardship, hope and ultimately reconciliation through faith.
He sat quietly for a few minutes, considering what he had read and thinking about the odd sequence of events in his home that evening. Unsure of what to do next, Jason blew out the candle, knelt beside the desk and prayed earnestly for the first time since the lights went out. When he finished, he sat there for a few moments in the quiet darkness of his physical world. Deep inside his being, a spiritual light was rekindled which began to overcome the darkness.
CHAPTER 18
Alex headed in the opposite direction away from where he had originally come from, in order to try and avoid the local gang. He tried to move as quickly as he could without making too much noise. In his mind, he envisioned the map of the area and planned his route back to the bike, where he left it stashed in the Stony Brook Reservation. He knew that if he continued to head east, he would eventually reach another main road that he could follow south to a public
golf course, which abutted the reservation property. He could cross the golf course and he was hopeful that once he got back into the Stony Brook woods, he would be able to find the trail he left the bike on. However, that seemed to be the easy part of the trip, since he still had to get there first by crossing a few more blocks of residential neighborhoods.
Alex was moving at a steady pace away from Jason’s neighborhood. Every so often, he would hear the sound of a dog barking in a house, alerting its owner to his presence. However, he did not hang around long enough to wait for anyone to investigate and catch a glimpse of him. It was late and he assumed that most people remaining in the area would be sound asleep. Once he was a couple of blocks away, he slowed his pace and began to take intermittent breaks so he could listen and look out for any potential dangers. Alex’s confidence grew with each passing block that he didn’t run into anyone.
As he neared the long and winding Poplar Street, which he would follow south, he felt like he had reached the home stretch, so to speak. He had a steep incline to hike up the street, before it would level off and then begin to decline as it passed the George Wright golf course, one of only two public courses within the city of Boston. A number of houses lined the street, so Alex knew he still had to be on guard.
He began to approach the summit of the street, when he noticed what looked to be a barricade of cars at the intersection near the top. He ducked behind a nearby car and squinted while staring towards the intersection, looking out for any signs of movement. Nothing stood out to him, but he also knew that from his vantage point, he could not see over the summit and could not be sure of what might await him. The challenge that he was presented with was that there were no easy escape routes, if he approached the summit directly from his position. He knew from years of driving in the area that the hilly terrain minimized the number of intersecting streets and the ones that were close enough to run to were long and straight, which was not ideal for evading others, if he needed to. The other challenge was that those routes would funnel him back towards the neighborhoods that he had already been through and experienced dangers in, which would further delay his trip.
Alex was beginning to get antsy and was hesitant to do any backtracking, considering the known dangers he would likely face. After considering his options, he decided to push on and carefully approached the summit. As he crept towards the barricade, using the abandoned cars as cover, his heart began to race again. In his mind, he just wanted his adventure to be over. He felt like he had done the impossible by finding the meds that he needed, but that wasn’t any good to anyone if he couldn’t get them home in time to help Jack.
When he got to the top, the sound of voices talking nearby paralyzed him. Alex slowly squatted lower and sat motionless for a moment as he tried to listen for the sounds again. He heard what sounded like at least two men talking in a low tone, but they were loud enough that he could determine their general location beyond the barrier. After a few minutes had passed, he felt confident that the men were not moving around and they sounded like they were on the opposite side of the street, so if he was discovered, he would still have some cover from them.
Feeling fearful, but determined, Alex continued his approach on the barricade, which he could now see had created a large square, blocking off the intersecting streets on each of the four sides with a number of stalled out cars. On the corner that Alex was on, the cars went right up on the sidewalk as well, practically touching a fence in front of the house on the corner of the street. Alex could see the two men inside the barricade sitting back on a couple of beach chairs. For a moment, he thought he might be able to sneak past them, since the cars blocked him from view. However, as he tried to squeeze between the car and the fence, his tattered backpack brushed the fence and the noise seemed to be magnified in the quiet of the night, causing the two men to stop and take notice.
The men sat back in their beach chairs looking up at the clear starry sky from their perfect vantage point on top of the city. The hill itself presented a significant challenge for weak and weary travelers who often chose the path of least resistance over an exhausting climb, so the men had grown lax in their vigilance. It was a common phenomenon in security work, when long stretches of time passed between incidents, people often tended to let their guards down and become careless. These men were no exception.
When they had initially devised their barricade plan, along with the rest of their neighborhood group, they kept better watch at night. However, since most of the resources in the city had been plundered during the long month following the power outage, they had not had anyone challenge their position in the middle of the night in over a week. They figured that most of the people who were in the city when the mysterious disaster occurred, had either died miserably in the aftermath or already escaped to a safer place outside of the city.
In the beginning the barricade was a show of force, preventing unwanted travelers from passing through or posing a threat to their neighborhood. However, as resources became more scarce, it provided them with the ability to easily take the supplies of others that reached their hilltop. Only after paying the steep toll, most people were still turned away under the threat of physical harm if they tried to pass by or returned.
Now the routine overnight shifts at the barricade involved battling boredom more than anything else. To pass the time on this particular evening, the men reminisced about the different foods that they missed, as they lazily lounged about.
“Same Old Place over in Jamaica Plain. Best pizza in town.”
“You crazy bastard, you can’t pick a pizza place outside of the North End to be the best. It’s unethical.”
“Well I got one better. Golden Temple in Brookline. Best Chinese food around. And don’t fucking complain to me that it’s not in Chinatown. I’d kill someone right now for some Golden Temple chicken fingers.”
“You and me both.”
At that moment, they heard a noise nearby that caught their attention. They sat up and reached for their weapons, a bolt action .243 caliber rifle and an old SKS rifle. They listened intently for a moment, although neither man got to his feet. Lately the only visitors that they had were an occasional raccoon or skunk, the latter of which neither of them wanted to tangle with.
“What do you think it was?”
“Probably just an animal,” the man said cautiously, still trying to listen and scan the area from his seated position. He sat back after another minute, but kept his rifle handy, lest he get attacked by a rabid skunk or raccoon. The other man sat back as well and they resumed their conversation.
Alex froze again, something he was getting a lot of practice at that night. The men had stopped talking and he knew that they had heard him, but he didn’t hear any feet approaching or any other movement in his direction. He held the shotgun at the ready, but was hesitant to flip the safety off out of fear that the click sound would confirm his presence. Alex was confident in the shotgun’s ability to make life miserable for the men, but he was not looking for a gun fight and he had to assume that the men were armed as well.
Alex wanted to wait before moving again, but he suddenly felt an overwhelming urge to urinate, which was made worse by the fact that he was squatting down and trying to stay as low as possible. His legs also started to feel uncomfortable from holding their position for so long and Alex began to worry that he would not be able to move quickly if he needed to since his leg muscles were too cramped and fatigued.
In a moment of panic, Alex jumped up from his spot behind the car, squeezing between the fence and the car as he flipped off the safety and aimed the shotgun over the hood at the two surprised men.
“Don’t bother getting up,” Alex said firmly. “Put your weapons down. I’m just passing through, but I don’t feel like getting shot in the back, when I leave.”
“Shit,” one of the men muttered as they complied and laid the rifles on the ground beside their chairs.
“Now get up and lay face down over there,�
�� Alex directed pointing to one of the corners farthest away from the weapons. He hopped on the hood of the car he was using for cover and jumped down behind the barricade as the men reached their corner. He picked up each of the rifles and tossed them into the front seat of one of the cars. He thought about taking them with him, but knew he wouldn’t be able to carry three long guns, while moving quickly. “I’m going now. You both are on time out, so stay put. Got it?”
Neither man responded, but they both glared at Alex with hatred in their eyes. They were equally as angry at themselves for letting him get the drop on them and they knew they would face ridicule from the rest of their crew, if anyone else found out about it.
Alex climbed back over the barricade and held the shotgun on the two men for another moment, while planning his escape. He knew he wasn’t far from the golf course, but it was still far enough that the men could give chase and he wouldn’t have anywhere to turn off of the street ahead of him. He could see the slight bend in the road up ahead and there were plenty of trees and cars to use for cover if he made a run for it along the sidewalk on the right side of the street. Even if the men could get to their rifles and got some shots off, it wasn’t likely that they would be able to hit a moving target in the dark between the trees and cars.
Alex thought his plan over in his head and decided to make a break for it and took off running as fast as he could. He immediately realized that he was moving very fast, since he was now heading downhill, but his legs were still burning from the climb up the hill and trying to hold the squat for a few minutes. He was struggling to maintain his balance at that speed, since he was not used to running with a backpack on and shotgun in his hands.
Right when they heard Alex take take off, one of the men leaped to his feet and pulled a .40 caliber Smith and Wesson Sigma pistol from his waistband and began firing at Alex, who was already too far away. Alex ducked at the sound, but he had reached the safety of the sidewalk and was still running at full speed with the trees and cars providing him with cover.
The Power Struggle Series (Book 2): The Downward Spiral Page 12
