The Jakarta Pandemic

by Steven Konkoly

  “…seven…six…five…”

  “He’s running around front!” Kate yelled from somewhere near the top of the stairs.

  Alex kept his own focus just to the side of the scope. At this range, he wouldn’t miss, even without sighting in. The man stared at him impassively.

  “…four…three…”

  Before Alex reached “two,” Manson barked something toward the driveway, and the third man suddenly appeared. Manson yelled for him to join “Rick,” and Alex watched as the third man walked over to “Rick” near the top of the driveway. The man tried hard to conceal a weapon on the right side by his body. Alex couldn’t determine the weapon type, but guessed it to be a modified shotgun, with either a shortened barrel or no shoulder stock.

  The phone rang and he ignored it. He needed to focus on the man standing on his mudroom stoop.

  “Charlie Thornton’s calling!” he heard from upstairs.

  “See what he wants!” he yelled back, shifting his gaze from the man on his porch to the two men standing on his sidewalk.

  “He says the man that just ran out has a shotgun!”

  The man on the porch didn’t appear to have heard her and continued to stare at Alex.

  This guy’s fucking crazy.

  “You gonna quit pointing that thing at me?” Manson grunted.

  Alex lowered the barrel a few inches, but kept it aligned with the vertical center of the man’s body. “Not until you’re out of my sight. Come back again, and I’ll kill you. If I see you approach this house with that shotgun your friend is carrying, or any other weapon, I’ll kill you.”

  “Don’t worry, Alex…you won’t see us next time,” he warned, turning to leave.

  Alex considered shooting him in the head, and then gunning down the other two. He’d probably get one of the others right away, hopefully the guy with the shotgun, then pop out of the mudroom door and tag the other one. He knew it would all be over in a matter of seconds, but something stopped him. The pressure eased off the trigger, and he was once again surprised by how close he had come to killing the man.

  Manson walked straight across the landscaped bed, pushing through tightly spaced, waist-high evergreen bushes and trampling the remnants of a large, decayed perennial. The gunman no longer made any attempt to conceal the short-barreled shotgun and brazenly slung it over his shoulder.

  I know I should take them out now. All standing in a pile like that. I’ll never get a chance like this again

  “Charlie thinks you should start blasting away. He’ll back you up!” Kate said from what sounded like halfway down the stairs.

  What is she talking about? This isn’t a video game.

  Alex knew she was right. If he opened up on them while they stood in a tight group like this, he would most likely hit them all right away.

  “Get back up with the kids and keep them away from the windows. All shades shut. I’m not starting a gun battle in the middle of the street. I’ll end up sending bullets through Derek’s house,” Alex yelled.

  “I’ll call Derek and tell them to get in the basement if that’s what’s really stopping you. He was sneaking up on us with a shotgun, Alex. Charlie has the guy with the gun sighted in,” she yelled back.

  He ran through the kitchen to the foyer, yelling at her as he moved to the formal dining room for a full view of the street.

  “Tell Charlie to cool it! They got the message!”

  He knelt down a few feet back from the window ledge and aimed his rifle at the group standing on the street in front of his driveway. The tip of the rifle’s barrel scraped the glass and Alex slid back a couple of inches along the hardwood floor, taking in the view of the street. This new position would allow him to watch the group walk all the way around the bend near Charlie’s house, assuming that they headed back toward their newly acquired residence. Charlie could visually escort them the rest of the way.

  “Tell him yourself,” she said and walked down the stairs to hand him the phone.

  “Goddamn it, hon, I don’t…” he protested as the phone was forced into his trigger hand. “Can you get me the binoculars and then get upstairs? I don’t want the kids near any of the front windows,” he said, annoyed.

  “Sorry about that, Charlie…” he started, focusing his attention on the phone.

  “The kids are on the third floor. They’re fine,” she interrupted.

  “Just check, and get me the binoculars from the kitchen and a pad of paper. Pen, too,” he snapped and nervously glanced at the Mansons out front.

  The trio began walking northeast down the middle of the road in the direction of the Murrays’ house. Manson looked back at the house, pointed his finger, and grinned wickedly.

  “They’re on the move,” Charlie whispered excitedly into the phone. “This is our chance, Alex. We may not get another.”

  “We can’t just start ambushing people walking down our block.”

  “They just tried to sneak up on your house at sundown with a shotgun. That’s it in my book. What else do you need?” he asked, emphasizing the last part of his statement.

  “They’re heading back. Keep an eye on them, and call me if they don’t park it back at their new digs. The storm’s gonna cool them off. Looks like it’s gonna hit late tonight and continue through most of the day. They won’t be playing outside for a while.”

  Kate walked back into the dining room with the requested items and a full glass of water. She set the binoculars on the windowsill and the pad and pen on the dining room table. The water was apparently not meant for him.

  “I’m going to check on the kids,” she said coldly and mumbled something about them being on the third floor.

  “Thank you, honey,” he said with a thin smile.

  Don’t do me any favors.

  “Charlie, I need to take some notes here. Keep an eye on them,” Alex said and hung up.

  He set the rifle against the white trim of the windowsill and grabbed the binoculars, sighting in on the three men walking away and wishing they were facing him, so he could take in more of their details. He’d made an easy, but nearly fatal error earlier that he didn’t intend to make again.

  To a casual observer, the man standing on the sidewalk looked like the sidekick Alex had seen earlier in the day: same type of clothing, same rough look. Pretty much everything was the same except for the hair.

  I should have noticed that immediately.

  He could no longer afford to be a casual observer with this crew. He took a long look and then grabbed the paper and pen from the table. He started to write under the TerraFlu logo as he talked out loud.

  “All right, we have three guys. Let’s name them Manson, Daryll and Rick. Manson wears a brown-patterned hunting baseball cap and has brown shoulder-length hair, brown leather jacket. No facial hair, blue eyes, brown work shoes. Daryll also has long hair, but it’s distinctly lighter, almost blond. Red and blue Patriot’s winter hat, jeans, leather boots, green camouflage patterned field jacket. Goatee. Didn’t notice that when he was sneaking around the houses. That leaves Rick. Faded OD green Vietnam-era field jacket, black watch cap pulled tight, no hair showing under hat, faded black jeans, black high top sneakers. Huskier than the other two and taller.”

  He picked up the binoculars again and focused in on the shotgun.

  “Let’s see, pump action, barrel shortened all the way to the feed cylinder. Looks like a full stock—”

  “The kids are fine up on the third floor. I told them to stay clear of the windows,” Kate suddenly announced from the staircase. She sat on the stairs, just below the first floor ceiling level.

  “Thank you for checking on them,” he said, putting the binoculars back on the sill, “and I’m sorry for barking at you. I was just a little frazzled…a lot frazzled.”

  “I’m not mad either really. I just…” she paused.

  “Wanted me to kill them in the middle of the street? Three bodies riddled with bullets in front of the house? The next visit from the police wo
uldn't be a cordial chat. I can't risk losing these guns, Kate.”

  “But at least they'd be dead,” she stated.

  “Then what? The police confiscate our guns and possibly haul me away?”

  “You know what they tried, right?” she asked softly.

  “Yeah. Exactly what I predicted. He kept me pretty distracted in the mudroom. If you hadn’t seen the other guy, we might not be having this conversation,” he said, keeping an eye on the group meandering down the street.

  “Lucky I chose to close Ryan’s shades first. I just barely saw him darting through the trees,” she said.

  “But you saw him, and that’s all that counts. Help me shut all of these shades. We’ll get the lights on and hunker down for the night. Storm’s gonna hit a few hours past midnight. I highly doubt we’ll hear from them again tonight, but we’ll be ready just in case.”

  He picked up the assault rifle and engaged the safety, removed the thirty-round magazine, and slid back the bolt handle, which ejected the .223 caliber bullet onto the hardwood floor. He picked up the bullet and pushed it back into the rifle magazine, reinserted the magazine, and slung the rifle over his shoulder. He checked on the Mansons one more time and saw them disappear around the block. The branches on an evergreen tree in Charlie Thornton’s yard swayed in response to a powerful gust of wind.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Sunday, December 1, 2013

  Alex shifted on the great room couch and drifted out of a shallow sleep. He opened his eyes to the pitch dark room, quickly reorienting himself within the house. He remained motionless and listened intently, feeling certain that something woke him, but he couldn’t be sure. He’d been drifting in and out of sleep on the couch since the rain had started pounding just after midnight. He checked his watch and put his hand on the pistol grip of the assault rifle lying across his chest.

  Something’s different.

  He stayed in place under the wool blanket for a few more moments, scanning the house for sounds.

  Nothing.

  Before lying down on the couch, he had checked on Kate and the kids in the master bedroom. Kate and Emily were snuggled together in bed, and Ryan was in his sleeping bag on the floor next to Kate.

  After checking the family, he proceeded to check the sound traps he had set earlier in the evening. The traps were basic. He placed stools from the kitchen in front of the doors to the mudroom porch, garage, front stoop and basement. On top of each stool, he placed a short two by four plank from his remnant pile in the garage, pushing one end of the plank up against the door. On the planks, he arranged several empty vegetable cans, which would hopefully tumble to the hardwood floor if the plank was moved. Given his shallow sleep tonight, Alex was confident that none of the traps had been triggered.

  He sat up and squinted. His eyes had still not adjusted to the darkness.

  It’s really dark in here.

  He heard another wave of rain pummel the great room windows. Frequent, unpredictable gusts of wind and rain had kept any semblance of restful sleep far from his grasp.

  Something else woke me up this time.

  He rose from the couch and stood, letting the blanket slide to the floor between the couch and the round coffee table. He glanced at the table and glared at the mug of coffee.

  A lot of good that did me.

  As his eyes continued to adjust to the darkness, his brain labored to figure out what had put him on alert. He fought the urge to whisper his thoughts aloud.

  The lights are out.

  Alex turned his head toward the front and back of the house.

  Jesus! How did I miss that? Brilliant.

  The last time he remembered being awake, the outdoor floodlights cast thin beams of light through the minute openings along the sides of the shades, creating a lattice work of beams high up on the walls and the ceiling. Now there was nothing. Alex’s mind ran through several possibilities in a matter of seconds, starting with the worst and most unlikely scenario.

  Doubtful in this storm, and they’d have to pull two plugs. One by the mudroom door and one on the side of the great room. Simultaneously.

  He stopped the mental process and stared toward the flat-screen TV and home theatre system. Nope, the power is out. He saw nothing that would indicate energy flowing to the electronics. No green clock on the cable box, no red “off” indicator buttons on any of the electronics. He stepped toward the kitchen and the whole picture fell into place. The blue LED on the microwave was gone. Same with the stove. All around the house, the small, unobtrusive signs of electronic life had vanished, and a pure silence punctuated by sheets of rain blankets had descended.

  Very unlikely that they cut the power to the house.

  He crept into the kitchen and glanced left at the basement door; the plywood and cans remain balanced on the stool. Continuing past the basement door to the hallway leading to the foyer he could feel his heart pump faster, creating the only perceptible sound that competed with his shallow breath.

  He stared down the hallway toward the front door. His eyes had adjusted enough for him to determine that the trap was intact.

  Two more to go.

  He didn’t expect to find anything out of order in the mudroom. He moved silently across the kitchen, passed the granite island, and approached the entrance to the mudroom. He could already see from the kitchen that the cans were still propped up on the plank set against the garage entrance. He slowly moved his head around the entrance corner and spied the contraption set against the mudroom door.

  Intact.

  Alex stepped into the mudroom, walked up to the mudroom entrance door, taking care not to bump into the plank, and stared out into the night.

  Nothing.

  He could barely distinguish the Sheppards’ house directly across the street through the wintery mix of sleet and rain and saw no ambient light from any source near his neighborhood.

  I wonder if this is localized?

  He stared out above the houses, but given the thick weather conditions, he doubted that he could see any of South Portland’s lights on the northeast horizon, even if they were still energized.

  He didn’t look forward to fumbling around the basement, not that it would be any darker than where he was currently standing. Just the thought of going down into the basement at night made him feel uneasy. His first order of business down there would be to make sure the bulkhead door was still locked and that none of the telltales he had left near the bulkhead entrance had been disturbed. Once he convinced himself that the bulkhead door had not been breached, his worries would be reduced to the occasional spider web, and the ever present, completely unreasonable feeling of panic and hysteria that accompanied him on every foray into any dark basement.

  “I hate going down there without the lights,” he whispered and pulled a powerful compact LED flashlight from his right front pocket.

  Bright sunlight poured through the sliding doors behind the kitchen table, and Alex set a steaming mug of coffee down on the kitchen island. He looked up at the microwave clock, which blinked the letters “PF.” He’d forgotten to reset that one before making coffee. He started to walk around the island to change the time, but was once again distracted by the backyard.

  Simply amazing.

  He moved over to the sliding doors and stared out into the yard. The scene before him was ethereal. The sun sat between the two closest houses behind the Fletchers’ yard, blazing rays of sunlight through the crisp early morning air. The ground shimmered with color and light as the sun’s rays scattered through millions of ice-encased blades of grass. The sensation mesmerized Alex again. Larger reflections sparkled from the ice that burdened the branches of the bare trees and empty bushes, pulling them closer to the ice-encrusted ground.

  The evergreen trees sagged, and he saw several snapped evergreen branches throughout the yard. Most of the maples and birch appeared intact, aside from the loss of some smaller branches. He imagined the heavy damage to the trees across Harrison Road
, which had stood for nearly half a century and towered over the homes there.

  Without thinking, Alex moved the wooden bar jammed into the sliding door’s track and opened the glass slider. He took in the cold air for a few seconds and stepped out onto the deck and held onto the door frame for balance. The entire deck was covered by a one-inch-thick slab of ice.

  Don’t be stupid here.

  He tested his footing and decided that the icy surface was rough enough for him to slowly walk across to the railing on the opposite side of the deck. He reached the other side and used the railing to navigate the steps down to the grass. He stepped down into the grass and knelt down to take a closer look at the grass, which resembled a crystallized shag rug. The grass crackled under his weight and every blade was individually encased in ice. Alex heard a distant cracking sound, followed by a crash, which made him instinctively duck down a little further.

  Maybe this isn’t the best idea.

  He stood up and scanned the horizons. The eastern sky held a thin, white layer of high altitude clouds barely visible over the distant tree line; the western sky told a different story. A solid mass of dark gray, extending north and south along the horizon, loomed nearly overhead, making it clear to him that the sun’s rays would probably never get a jump-start melting all of the ice. He started carefully back up the stairs.

  **

  Alex watched his son from the kitchen island. He’d finally come down from his room to get some breakfast and had been staring out of the great room window into the backyard for the past ten minutes. Alex turned his attention to the kitchen window. The snow had started falling steadily about an hour ago and had picked up intensity over the past twenty minutes, joined by sporadic bursts of wind.

  “You gonna grab something to eat?” Alex asked.

  Ryan slowly turned his head toward the kitchen, still in a daze. “Uh…yeah. Can I make toast? Or does that use up too much electricity?”