Alright, I’m off to have a drink or two, not just to dull the pain, but to calm my nerves after having shot someone (that’s a first). I also want to grab something to eat and to say a prayer of thanks for getting through all that mess relatively safely. Then I need to clean and reload the guns. I’m down to 18 rounds for the .38. I hope I don’t need them, but the way things are going, I’m damn glad I have them.
1:48 p.m.
We ate packages of Ramen noodles for lunch, largely because they’re quick, easy, and fill us up. I had two warm beers and a couple aspirin with my meal to help calm me down and ease the pain of my leg injury. I find myself kind of wishing I had a pack of cigarettes. I’m not a smoker (except occasionally when I’m having a cocktail), but I could sure go for a cigarette right about now.
Everyone is pretty quiet. There’s not much to talk about, and what we CAN talk about, we don’t WANT to talk about. I’m really proud of the family though. They’re handling this like real troopers. Kate’s staying strong, the kids aren’t complaining (too much), and I feel as though we’re tighter now than ever before. I know everyone is scared, but they’re all doing their best to put on brave faces.
I hate that the kids have to go through this. I hate that ALL of us have to go through it, but especially the kids. No kid should have their childhood innocence torn asunder by something this tragic and traumatic. I wonder if things will ever get back to normal for them…for any of us.
After we finished eating, Brenda and Bradley went back to their condo across the hall to have a little privacy. They took a two-gallon bucket with them to fill from their unit’s water heater so that they can clean up and use the bathroom.
I think these roving gangs (although I’m not exactly sure if they are multiple gangs or just one large one) have set up camp in our once cozy and secure village. I have a feeling that they just go suburb to suburb bleeding each area dry of its resources, destroying them as they do so. It’s kind of weird…ironic, I guess. It reminds me of the Su flu itself. I remember seeing in the news reports – back when we were still getting news reports – about how the flu is systemic. It circulates through the body shutting down organ after organ until the body can no longer function or defend itself. While I can’t say for sure, I’m willing to bet that this is what’s happening all across the Chicagoland area. These types of gangs are probably going suburb by suburb shutting them down, slowly dismantling what’s left of the city piece by piece. The Su flu starts the collapse of civilization and then leaves it up to the societal remnants to finish the job.
I wonder if anyone will survive all this? If they do, what will they turn the world into in a year, two years, ten years from now? The prospects are terrifying to say the least. I can’t live this way. Well, I guess I shouldn’t say that. I CAN live this way, but I don’t WANT to live this way. And I DEFINITELY don’t want my children to have to live this way.
Uh oh, I hear something next door in the Williams’ condo. Sounds like loud banging. I’d better go see what’s up. I really don’t want to. God I’m exhausted. I just want to be left alone. Is that really too much to ask?
3:11 p.m.
I guess being “left alone” IS too much to ask, but again, the irony of the situation strikes me hard as I write it. We’re just as alone now as when we began this whole mess. First, it was Ms. Laurel downstairs, then it was Ms. Murphy, and now it’s Brenda and Bradley Williams who are dead. It’s all just too much. I hope that one day I can look back on these pages and remember what we suffered through and appreciate how much better we have it, but I’m beginning to wonder if that day will ever come.
And while I really don’t want to rehash what just happened to our neighbors – our FRIENDS – I’m going to. I owe it to them to tell their story and not have them be forgotten in the hellish hole our world now seems to have become.
I probably should have seen something like this happening, but hindsight is always 20/20. The exposed stairwells appears to be our building’s Achilles’ Heel. It’s how people got into the unit with the smoldering sofa, and it must be how people got into the Williams’ unit.
The steel cages that enclose these stairwells that exit into the alleys running alongside our U-shaped building don’t extend all the way up. In fact, they only extend up about 15 feet. So even with the steel cage doors having self-locking mechanisms, someone could scale the metal grating and enter the stairwell around the second floor.
Unfortunately, there’s not much I can do about this weak point in our structure. There are four such exposed stairwells, two on each side of the building. There’s no way to block them once the top of the cage ends. Of course, I guess I could dismantle portions of the wood steps and landings, but it would take forever, and doing so would likely only draw more unwanted attention to our building.
The banging sounds I heard at the end of my last entry must have been the intruders breaking down the Williams’ back door. Unfortunately, we hadn’t taken the precautions with their unit that we had with our own (although now we have moved the unit’s refrigerator in front of the smashed back door and wedged it in place with a large cushion chair).
Once the intruders were inside the unit, it didn’t take them long to find Brenda and Bradley. The particular unit in question is a small one bedroom. Brenda was in the bathroom when the intruders entered – they apparently killed her first since they would have found her before they found Bradley as they came in through the kitchen. Since the home invaders had entered through the back, it made it harder for me to get inside when I heard the commotion. Brenda had locked the front door to the condo (the door facing our unit) after they left our place. This meant that they were safer from intruders entering from this direction, but it also meant that they were left exposed and defenseless when I tried to come to their rescue since I couldn’t get into the condo quickly.
After trying the front door and finding it locked, I quickly went back to our own unit and got the shotgun. Not knowing the situation awaiting me within the other condo, I wanted as much firepower with me as possible. Unfortunately, those critical seconds may have meant the difference between life and death for poor Bradley. When I was back in our own unit, I heard several more shots, which I’m guessing was Bradley being killed.
Just as I got back to the Williams’ unit, the front door opened. I was confronted by a guy wearing a blue bandana over his face and a black ball cap. I think we were both surprised to find ourselves face to face with one another. He was carrying a handgun and began to raise it as soon as he saw me. Then he hesitated slightly. This gave me the chance I needed. I had no choice – I shot him. Thank God Dad’s old shotgun didn’t malfunction. Pellets ripped into the guy and spackled the door and walls around him. I think he was dead before he hit the floor.
God that’s weird to see in print. It was bad enough having to wound somebody when I shot the guy in the arm earlier in the day. But killing someone is an altogether different feeling. Between the overwhelming sense of guilt and feeling like I’m some sort of criminal, I can already tell it’s something that’s going to weigh on me for the rest of my life. I know I did what I had to do to protect myself and my family, but I still feel like it was wrong. It frightens me writing down that I killed a man. Will I be prosecuted after all this is done? Will I have to claim self defense? Jeez, the shooting didn’t even occur in my own home. That will look bad to a jury. Maybe they’ll say that the guy had a right to be in our building. Maybe they’ll say that he could have thought that I was the intruder and that HE could have been firing in self defense.
What am I saying? There won’t be any courtrooms, trials or juries after all this is done with. There probably won’t be enough people to even FILL a jury. But God is always watching. How will I be judged in that respect? A life is a life, and I just took one. Justified or not, it has to be viewed as wrong in the eyes of God. There may have been a better way to deal with the situation. Maybe I could have talked to the guy. Yeah, and then maybe I’D be the one laying
on the landing outside, along with the rest of my family. I guess there’s no definitive answer. It is what it is…and it SUCKS!
So back to what happened inside the Williams’ unit. The blast from the shotgun must have scared anyone else who may have been inside, because by the time I made my way around the guy I’d shot and through the front door, the unit was empty. As I got to the rear door, I saw two more dudes fleeing down the back stairs and out into the alley. I fired at them with the shotgun. I think I hit one partially in the shoulder, but at that distance, it didn’t do much damage. It was more of a warning to them not to come back. They both escaped down the side alley, and disappeared around the front of the building.
After checking on Brenda and Bradley, and finding them both dead, I made a quick trip back to our condo to let Kate and the kids know that I was okay but for the kids to stay put. Then Kate came back with me and helped moved the fridge and chair to block the back door of the Williams’ condo.
By the time we finished with our work and got back to our own unit, three buildings (one beside us and two across the back alley from us) were on fire. They’re stores with easily accessible ground levels, but that does little to ease my mind about our own situation. If these people can get in through the less secure alley stairways, it’s only a matter of time before they find their way to our condo. They could get in through one of the lower level units and then come up our front stairs. I can’t watch everywhere at once. And there are plenty of windows as well as the skylights that are options for getting into the building if people really want to, and apparently people REALLY want to. I think the best thing to do right now is to just stay put and just hope that people get into enough other units and take enough stuff from them that they think they’ve got it all. And hopefully they’ll find our unit secure enough and dangerous enough (with me being armed) that they’ll just leave us alone and move on to easier pickings.
Maybe it’s heartless to say – at least I FEEL heartless saying it – but I almost feel safer now that it’s just me, Kate, and the kids. Having other people around only seemed to make our situation more difficult and more dangerous. Now, all I have to focus on is protecting us, which brings me to our plan. Kate doesn’t particularly like it, but tough shit. With the way things are now, we’ve got to do what we’ve got to do to protect the kids…and that’s it, no questions asked.
So here it is.
If someone tries coming in the front door, Kate is to take the kids down the back stairs to the basement storage area while I attempt to hold off the intruders. We considered going to the rooftop, but with the access ladder just outside our back door, it seemed too obvious. Once downstairs, Kate will hide herself and the kids in a gap that we created (after the whole Williams’ debacle) behind a bunch of boxes in our storage unit. This cave is small, but once inside, the entry crawlspace can be covered with a box so that it’s not visible to anyone from outside. It is surrounded by other storage units full of stuff and it would take some time for anyone searching the space to uncover. The exterior walls of these storage units are formed from chicken wire, so people will easily be able to see and hear inside them. I consider this both a good and bad thing. Since anyone making a search of the area will be able to see inside the cages, they may not spend much time actually trying to get into them. However, it also means Kate and the kids will have to be very careful. The smallest noise could give away their position. We had a talk with the kids – especially Violet – about being as still and as quiet as possible should they need to take shelter there. We did our best to explain to them that it is literally a matter of life and death. I think that at this point, they get it.
Should intruders make it up through the rear stairwell, our plan is for me to hold them off long enough for Kate and the kids to make their way out the front door and across to the Williams’ unit. There, they will split up, Kate and Violet hiding under the bed that we moved from downstairs while Dylan hides in the furnace closet in a small gap behind the hot water heater. Not to be crude, but we’re going to leave Brenda and Bradley’s bodies where they fell for the time being. I’m also leaving the dead guy in the hallway. That way, any outsiders entering the condo will not only find it devoid of food and supplies, but they’ll find dead bodies. It will hopefully move them along quicker and make them think that the place has already been raided and picked clean.
In either situation, I’ll stay behind with the shotgun to defend our condo. In the process, this will make it look like it was just me holing up inside. Kate doesn’t like this last part of our plan, as it doesn’t give me great chances of surviving, but we have to make it look good. It doesn’t make sense for a buttoned up condo full of supplies like ours to be devoid of occupants should someone break in. That means that intruders might search for us, finding us ALL rather than just finding me. Kate wants to know what I’ll do after I make a show of force. It’s a good question. I’m not really sure. I told her that we probably won’t have to execute the plan, that these outsiders are bound to move on soon. They’ve spent enough time here. There can’t be much left to take. I’m hoping they’re like locust, coming in a swarm, ravaging a spot, and then quickly moving on. I just wish they’d go…God how I wish they’d go. It’d make an already incredibly difficult situation just a little bit easier.
3:39 p.m.
Someone’s down in the street with a megaphone. They’re shouting something up at the building, but I can’t make out exactly what they’re saying. Dylan’s got the binoculars out. He says the guy with the megaphone has a woman with him and a kid that looks like his friend, Liam. I’m going to see if I can hear what the guy is yelling about.
3:49 p.m.
Dear God, what have I done? The man I killed was Scott, the father of Dylan’s friend, Liam. I had no idea. It all happened so fast, and he was wearing that hat and bandana. He’s never been to our condo before, so he probably had no idea that this was our place. The people trying to get into our building must have sent him in to clear the place in one of those forced home-invasion teams he was telling me about. I guess he knew what he was talking about.
The dude on the street was yelling for Scott to come back out, obviously not knowing that he was already dead by my hand. The guy, and the group that was with him, were threatening Scott’s wife. They said that unless he came out in one minute, they were going to kill her. They counted down and then shot her right there on the street. It was the longest minute of my life. I wanted to do something, shout to them that he was dead, but I knew it wouldn’t matter. They were going to kill her anyway. At least that’s what I keep telling myself now. And by answering them, I’d only be giving away our own position, potentially risking the lives of my own family.
After the guy shot Scott’s wife, he did the same thing with Dylan’s friend, Liam. By that point, I couldn’t even watch. I closed the window and made sure the blinds were down so that the kids wouldn’t see. Dylan kept asking me what was going on. I lied and told him that the people had left. There is no way I can tell him the truth. It’s all too horrible. I keep telling myself that it’s not my fault, that their having been captured meant that this would have happened to them sooner or later. But having pulled the trigger that killed Scott leaves me personally shouldering this terrible burden of responsibility.
4:43 p.m.
There is a big firefight going on out front. A bunch of dudes in SUVs and pickup trucks just arrived and they’re letting the guys who killed Scott’s family have it. Could it be that the cavalry has finally arrived? Maybe this is some sort of new National Guard, a kind of local militia formed by area citizens to combat the roving gangs and renegades. I pray to God that it is. This could be our salvation.
5:39 p.m.
These people are definitely NOT our salvation. They drove vehicles in through our front gate, threw a grenade into one of our lower floor windows, and are generally blowing our building to shit!
We’re all hunkered in our condo’s central hallway…the best spot we coul
d find to protect us from what’s going on. There are a lot of armed personnel and they’re all over the place outside. I told Kate and the kids to be ready to move at a moment’s notice. We’ve gathered a backpack for each of us – a “bug-out bag” so to speak – to take along in the event we have to leave quickly and can’t make it back to the condo. Each pack has four bottled waters, three packs of Ramen noodles (since they’re light and durable), a small freezer bag of cereal, and a bag of cookies. In addition, Dylan’s pack has a can of corned beef, a container of crackers, two cans of beans, and two cans of fruit cocktail. Kate’s pack has a flashlight, the .38 (along with the rest of the ammo), a jar of peanut butter, two cans of beans, two cans of oranges, a can opener, and some silverware. It’s not much, but it will give us a couple day’s rations should we need it.
I pray we don’t. We all do.
My pack has a few medical supplies, a couple additional bottles of water, some extra cans of fruit, more cereal, some packs of fruit chews, and a water bottle full of vodka (for trade or wound cleansing).
I hear banging downstairs and glass shattering. Sounds like they’ve broken into the entry foyer and are now working on the plywood covering over the front stairwell door. It’s time to go. I’ll kiss the family goodbye and send them to un-barricade the back door. Then I’ll wait at the front door with the shogun. Violet and Dylan are crying. Now Kate is too. Hell, I’m even crying. Saying goodbye to them is the toughest thing I’ve ever had to do, but it’s worth it if there’s a chance it’ll keep them alive.
The Pandemic Diaries [Books 1-3] Page 11
