Charlie's Requiem: Resistance

by Walt Browning

  Finally, the gang of thieves entered Cory’s designated kill zone, an open area with no trees impeding his view. HIs training had been limited to targets, not real people. As he learned from his failure to drop the first pair of thieves, shooting at firing range targets was a lot easier than hitting a moving person. But the skinheads were walking at a steady pace, moving toward him head-on instead of at an angle. A .308 round would put down a three-hundred-pound black bear, so it would be more than enough to stop a more fragile human being even if his aim was a little off.

  Cory lined up on the nearest man, a scrawny piece of crap if Cory had ever seen one. Shirtless and with a cigarette dangling from his lips, he was skeletal. He had the look of an addict that spent his money on drugs instead of food or was so high all the time that he simply forgot to eat. As the scrawny man turned to speak with one of his larger companions, Cory pulled the trigger and felt the satisfying jolt as his rifle’s stock slammed into his shoulder.

  Keeping his scope on his intended target, Cory watched as the blood exploded out of the man’s back. A rookie mistake, watching his first victim fall rather than immediately moving to his next target. That tactical error gave the others a chance to sprint for safety.

  Cursing himself, Cory continued to scan the road, finally finding a leg projecting from behind one of the neighborhood’s many oak trees. he lined up his sights and fired, once again keeping his scope glued to his target. The shot went high, clipping the asphalt, and Cory quickly lowered his aim and put two more rounds downrange. The third bullet found its target, and the leg was shattered into two pieces. The man’s knee and lower leg bounced almost a yard away from the rest of the stump.

  A scream from behind the tree confirmed his success, and Cory grunted to himself in satisfaction. He saw another limb poking out from behind a second tree, and Cory blew that one off as well, which brought a smile to his face.

  But his grin was short lived as several of his targets began to shoot back. The targets at the gun range never shot back. How a person reacted to return fire was the difference between a marksman and a shooter, between a soldier and civilian with a gun. Suddenly, with deadly .556 rounds peppering his garage door, Cory realized that his plan wasn’t so good anymore. He pressed himself down and tried to become one with the concrete floor while over a hundred bullets shattered his walls and shredded his phone book and newspaper barrier. The minute or so of sustained gunfire seemed like an eternity. So when the shooting stopped, Cory didn’t react immediately, but lay still on the cool concrete.

  After thirty seconds of silence, Cory decided that his bunker wasn’t the place to be. He jumped up from behind his newspaper wall and ran to the kitchen door. If he could get out of his bedroom window, he could jump over the next-door neighbor’s fence and make a quick getaway. He hadn’t planned to leave, so he had no bug-out bag ready. He had no rally points scouted and prepped, so he had no idea where to go. He just had to get out of there and put as much distance between himself and those guns.

  Just as he flung the kitchen door open, he heard the crash of several pots from within. Someone had tripped his alarm. Cory brought up his rifle and let off six or seven rounds at the skinheads that had snuck inside. All found their marks and the two men hit the ground, blood squirting from several arterial hits. But before Cory could move, several more rifles opened up from the living room, punching through the walls of the kitchen and sending Cory scurrying back to his paper-lined fortress.

  The bullets from the street began to fly again, the air filled with instant death. Cory laid back down behind his newspaper wall as more and more of his house was ventilated. Finally, one of his phonebooks took one too many rounds, and a fifty-five-grain slug shattered his right knee.

  Cory lost his breath. It felt like being kicked by a mule at first, but the pain transformed into an intense burn that was nothing like he had ever felt before. He howled and brought his AR-10 over the barrier and indiscriminately fired at the street.

  Cory looked at his mangled limb, his foot tilted at an impossible angle away from his body. He began to sob out of pain and fear. In the distance, he heard the deep-throated growl of a large diesel engine. From down the street, a dump truck came rumbling toward his house. Cory brought his AR-10 up and aimed at the driver’s side of the windshield. The pain in his leg pounded, throwing off his aim, and he fired futilely three times before his bolt locked back. He was out of bullets! He had forgotten that the AR-10 magazine, because of the larger size of the rounds, held only twenty shots instead of the thirty that his AR-15 carried.

  He scrambled for a spare magazine, but the deafening sound of the rapidly accelerating truck forced his eyes up to the garage door. Cory knew he would never be able to reload in time as the truck rushed up his driveway. The last thing he would remember was the impossibly loud crash of metal on brick, and the momentary feeling that an elephant had landed on his back as the garage’s walls collapsed on top of him.

  The battle had been concluded. And although Cory had taken out almost half a dozen thugs, the lack of training and poor planning that marked his tactics had doomed him. In war, lessons were often brutal and unforgiving, and dead men could not learn from their mistakes.

  ***

  We kept our positions behind cover, the four of us at strategic intervals to provide supporting crossfire. Harley and I were taking cover on one side of the street, while Jorge and Garrett were on the other. Backyard walls and well-placed hides minimized our exposure to a flanking attack, but we kept our heads on a swivel, checking side to side for any enemy movement.

  Many minutes went by, and with the sounds of battle long nothing but a memory, I began to relax. I sat back, lowering my weapon, and grabbed a bottle of water. Adrenalin has a way of dehydrating your body, and I guzzled my water greedily.

  As I put the nearly empty water bottle back in its pouch, a man began shouting.

  “You’re dead if you don’t come out now,” he bellowed. “Surrender, and I’ll let you live. Fire on us and you’re dead!”

  I glanced at Jorge, who gave me a confused look. We held our positions as the man turned the corner of our street. He was tall and muscular, and tattoos covered his body. He held his battle rifle like a toy, waving it at the houses with one hand. He carried a fireman’s axe in the other. On either side of him, at least a dozen men prowled. They displayed an amazing level of discipline as each house was penetrated and cleared while the rest of them kept watch outside. They were coming our way, and there was nothing we could do about that. I looked to Jorge, hoping he had a way to win the battle without committing suicide in the process.

  “Retreat?” he asked, speaking low enough to not be heard by the oncoming gang.

  I nodded and turned to run. I would go back to my dad’s house and then down to the lake, where we had planned an escape route to the housing development to our west. Then I heard a voice calling out in answer to the gang of skinheads marching down the road.

  “TAURUS!”

  The gang dropped to the ground, scanning the homes in front of us. To my shock, Beker walked out onto the street, holding up both arms. He walked out onto the street in front of us, between our positions and the advancing gang.

  “Taurus, it’s me. Beker!”

  “Beker?” asked the large man, whose name was apparently Taurus. “What the hell are you doing here?”

  Beker slowly advanced toward the men. He was clutching several purple velvet Crown Royal bags filled with his looted booty. The gang advanced to meet him, standing close enough that I could hear them speak.

  “I’m so happy to see you guys,” Beker began. “I’ve been hiding here since we were ambushed at the racket club.”

  Taurus took the bags from him and opened one. A large smile broke across his face as he went through the pouch of gold and jewelry.

  “I was trapped here,” Beker continued. “Two of them almost got me, but I escaped. They’ve been all over the place, so I had to hide.”

  Taurus grinn
ed and put his arm around Beker’s shoulder. “This is my man! Pinned down by the Spics, he still manages to find us the goods.” He dropped let go of Beker and yelled to his gang, “Let’s keep moving!”

  As one, they began to march toward us.

  “No good,” Beker said. “I’ve cleaned all these houses out already.”

  Taurus stopped and looked down at our former companion. “Nothing?”

  “I’ve cleaned out all the houses in this subdivision and down the road toward the racket club. Didn’t go into King’s Row yet, though.”

  “Just left there. Lost five men,” Taurus said. “Bastard in his garage got ‘em.”

  “There’s another subdivision next street over,” Beker said, jerking his thumb toward the older houses to the west, where we had planned to escape. “A couple of lakefront mansions and a ton of older homes. I haven’t hit it yet.”

  Taurus thought for a minute and agreed. On command, the gang turned and retraced their steps to the main road. Turning left, they disappeared from sight.

  Beker had just saved our lives. The little creep did have a heart in him after all.

  Jorge and Garrett ran to our position, sliding to their knees next to me and Harley. Jorge pointed up the road.

  “I want to follow them. We need more intel. How many and what they’re armed with.”

  “You looking for volunteers?” Harley asked.

  “Just one,” Jorge said. “More than two will increase the chances of getting caught.”

  “I’ll go,” I said.

  “You just want to check up on your boyfriend, but I think Beker has a thing for that big guy.” Harley joked.

  “This is serious,” Jorge said. “No fooling around.”

  “You should know us by now,” I replied. “Humor is how me cope.”

  “Then let’s go,” he said as he stood up and peeked around the corner of the house we were hiding behind. In a flash, Jorge disappeared, forcing me to run to catch up.

  We got to the end of the street and peered around the corner. The gang was up ahead, moving quickly toward the main road. Based on the conversation we’d overheard, I was expecting them to leave our development. Instead, they turned back onto King’s Row.

  We followed them from a distance as they met up with an even larger group of thugs outside a home that had been destroyed by heavy gunfire. Jorge and I looked knowingly at each other, recognizing the house where someone had taken shots at us. A large dump truck had taken out the side of the garage. It was wedged against the concrete block wall, engine off and doors open.

  “You get that damn thing working?” Taurus yelled as he approached.

  A thin, shirtless guy wormed his way out from under the belly of the truck, his upper body covered with brown fluid.

  “Sorry, Taurus,” he said. “Hydraulic line’s shot. It’s done.”

  “Damn it!” Taurus yelled as he strode up the driveway. He called into the house, “You get it all?”

  Five more men came out, each carrying multiple rifles and metal boxes full of ammunition.

  “Nice haul,” one of the thugs said, smiling at the group’s leader.

  A sudden, violent slap from Taurus sent the man sprawling onto the lawn. The tattooed crook shook his head and scrambled to his feet.

  “What the hell was that for?”

  Taurus grabbed him by the hair and turned his head to the dead bodies that had been lined up on the grass.

  “Nice haul? You think that those guns were worth THIS?”

  Taurus pushed him, sending the man stumbling onto the corpses. He drew his handgun and pointed it at the prone man.

  “I…I’m sorry,” the skinny mechanic said.

  “Show some damned respect for your brothers,” Taurus replied, his handgun unmoving and pointed at the man’s head.

  Everyone froze, including Jorge and me. Seconds ticked by, no one seeming to breathe, until the big guy slowly lowered his weapon and replaced it in his holster. Taurus picked up a shovel leaning against a nearby tree. He threw it down next to the man.

  “Start digging, maggot.”

  “Just me?”

  “I’ll help,” one of the others said.

  Taurus grunted his approval. “About time you acted like a team. Now find some more shovels and get our men in the ground.”

  Thirty minutes later, the graves had been dug. Taurus took a minute to say a prayer over the dead before leaving with their haul. We let them go. The group now numbered nearly forty, all armed and all united behind their leader. They moved with tactical awareness, including a point man and rear guard, without direct orders from Taurus to keep them in formation. Those that weren’t overburdened with stolen goods were flanking their comrades, rifles at ready and scanning their surroundings as they moved.

  “Someone in their group has some military experience,” Jorge whispered.

  “Yeah, these guys are dangerous.”

  Jorge broke cover and began to walk up to the destroyed house. We cautiously walked over to the dump truck, sidestepping the oily liquid that was running down the driveway. Jorge jumped up onto the driver’s runner board. A moment later he hopped back down, a key dangling in his hand.

  “This is a universal key for just about any piece of Caterpillar equipment. I hoped they had left it. You never know when this will come in handy.”

  “I’m impressed.”

  “Thank my brother. They have some Cats on their ranch. He carries the key around his neck.” He pocketed the prize, and we walked back home.

  We had found out who our enemy was, and he was deadly, organized and ruthless. And unfortunately, he was now our neighbor. After the gang left, they settled into the homes to our west, just on the other side of our subdivision’s eight-foot concrete wall, while leaving some of their men to guard several intersections in the area. We were surrounded and any sound that carried outside our area could bring the gang back. In one short afternoon, our lives had gotten very complicated—and dangerous. We were supposed to be walking to Dr. Kramer’s house, but now we were trapped in a three block subdivision. We quietly returned to our houses and began to plan our next move.

  CHAPTER 6

  EARLY SPRING

  MONTEVERDE, FLORIDA

  “Opportunities will come and go, but if you do nothing about them, so will you.”

  — Richie Norton

  “GERRY, WAKE UP,” BARB KRAMER whispered as she gently shook her husband’s sweat-soaked shoulder. “You’re dreaming again.”

  Kramer slowly lifted his head from the pillow. The light from the crescent moon cast shadows of ghostly apparitions from the passing clouds onto the bedroom’s wall. He squinted at the darkened silhouette of the ceiling fan, which had stood immobile since that November day when the EMP detonated somewhere over the North American continent. The cool evenings hadn’t required its use, but he would miss it in the coming summer.

  “You know,” Kramer whispered back to his wife of over thirty years, “I never knew how precious light was until all of this happened.”

  The two of them stared at the phantoms, the vaulted ceiling creating a movie screen of dancing shadows.

  “That one looks like your uncle Saul!” Kramer chuckled as he pointed to a silhouette.

  “Oh, stop,” she said.

  “No really!” Kramer raised his arm and traced the outline of the shape in the air above them. “That’s definitely your uncle’s nose and chin.”

  Barb stared at the black outline as it disappeared, finally seeing what her husband’s imagination had found. “Well, I’ll be,” she snickered.

  They lay together, caressed by the spring breeze that brought the heavy fragrance of the nearby orange groves. Several weeks a year, the overpowering fragrance of tens of thousands of orange blossoms covered the area. Although the perfume of was most intense at dusk, the scent lingered most of the night, carried by the cool night breeze.

  “I’m so sorry you haven’t had a good night’s sleep since you came back.” Barb
said, gripping her husband’s hand.

  Sorry couldn’t begin to express her emotions. Fear, anger and disbelief all swirled in her mind as the specter of her husband’s discovery always seemed to float just below her conscious thoughts. When he had returned from his horseback trip with Mr. Jacobson, what he told her was a story too unbelievable to be real. In fact, their best friend and neighbor, Ed Grafton, had to drive to Mr. Jacobson’s home and verify the details of her husband’s horrific report.

  After her normally steady and indefatigable husband had stuttered and stumbled his way through the tale, she got Ed Grafton to drive his old stove bolt pickup to the Jacobson home. Ed brought the old guy and his dog back with him, explaining that he found the elderly man sitting in a rocker on his front porch, holding an old revolver and clutching his deceased wife’s favorite shawl.

  “He looked like he’d been crying,” Ed said when he helped Jacobson out of the vehicle and into one of the Kramer’s spare bedrooms.

  When her husband found out they brought his travelling partner back to their house, Kramer joined Jacobson in the bedroom and closed the door. An hour later, both men came out, seemingly back to their old selves. With Will and Rob guarding the road to the house, the rest of the group had gathered in their living room to listen to his report of their travels to the Coventry power plant, where they had watched agents of the DHS incinerate the elderly, the infirm, and other people they deemed undesirable.

  “Are you sure?” she had asked in disbelief, challenging her husband’s story. “Maybe it was just garbage they were burning?”

  “No,” Gerry had quietly replied. “I know what I saw.”

  “We watched buses loaded with people driving to the plant,” Jacobson said. “And they were empty when they left.”

  “But maybe they were being housed in the plant somewhere?”

  “Barb,” Gerry had replied. “These buses were transporting chronically ill people, folks that were infirmed and fragile. They needed medical supervision, and there were no medical facilities there.”