Barrel of Monkeys

by Tymber Dalton

  “What the hell am I supposed to do with you?” She opened her eyes. It was a rhetorical question, but he helplessly shrugged anyway.

  We are totally farked.

  The last thing she wanted to do was babysit a bunch of National Guard kids.

  Literally, kids.

  It was the middle of the night, and she also didn’t want to send these kids out into unfamiliar territory under these conditions. “Okay.” She turned to Mark or Mike or whatever his name was. “Go show him how to get his guys through the back gate, get their vehicles inside the garage, and seal us up tight again. Let ’em get a halfway decent night’s sleep and some food in them.”

  “Where you want them?” her deputy asked.

  And now the fact that he really was her deputy slammed home in her brain. “The closed garage evidence bay in back. Move some of the impound vehicles out to make room.” She had a thought. “Unless they’re like an SUV or a truck or something. And they have to be drivable vehicles. Keep those inside in case we need them. In fact, move all the other impound vehicles out, and move in as many official SUVs and units as you can fit.”

  Mike looked conflicted. “But…they’re evidence.”

  “Kid, we are in the middle of a massive TMFU of our own right here in LA county, if you haven’t noticed. I swear to you, if a judge gets pissed off about it, I will personally explain it to them and absolve you of all blame. But for tonight I want”—she turned to the corporal—“how many vehicles you got?”

  “Three, ma’am.”

  “Okay. Tonight, I want room for them, their vehicles, and other vehicles—official and running impound vehicles—inside that garage. Got it?”

  Mark-Mike nodded. “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Go. Take him out back first and show him the facilities. Then you two work up a plan, and execute it.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  The two men left. Gia leaned against the counter and rubbed at her forehead again. Sleep deprivation was cranking up a good start to a bad headache.

  Sharon Keele, the night receptionist, looked up at her. “You want weed or caffeine, Chief?” she snarked.

  Gia started, staring at her. Not over the weed comment. That was an old running joke in their office.

  The “chief” moniker was what had startled her.

  That was something she wasn’t used to. She wasn’t the most senior captain in their station, and they had two commanders and a chief above them.

  Unfortunately, it looked like she’d just received a battlefield promotion.

  Fark.

  Chapter Three

  Once assured that things were under control in getting the National Guard unit settled, Gia again tried for another nap. She had to, because she was dead on her feet and nearing collapse. If things couldn’t wait an extra couple of hours, then they were all more than farked anyway. She removed her gun belt and left it on the floor next to her makeshift bed.

  Unfortunately, thinking about MP being overrun, a facility that over the past fifty years had undergone enough upgrades and reinforcements to make it pretty much like a prison in and of itself, kept her from being able to fall asleep.

  MP was far more reinforced and secure than their Santa Clarita station. And if it had fallen…

  She eventually dozed, finally giving up around 4:00 a.m. At least the little bit of sleep she’d snagged had staved off her headache.

  There were currently sixty-eight deputies out on patrol, and another hundred and fifty or so due in at six that morning.

  If they showed up for duty.

  All leave and vacation had been suspended indefinitely, and, unfortunately, fourteen of their deputies, along with their commanders and chief, had gone down to help with riot control in the basin area.

  Like their commanders and chief, they had neither reported back nor returned as of yet.

  I need a shower. And about a gallon of coffee.

  And at that point, even though she never used the stuff, she was seriously considering raiding the evidence room to see if there was any weed in there. Then again, it’d been legal to use for over a hundred years, so there probably wasn’t.

  After grabbing a shower she opted to put on a knit short-sleeved shirt over her undershirt and bulletproof vest instead of a formal uniform shirt.

  Fuck it, she didn’t have another clean formal shirt with her anyway, and it wasn’t like she was going to return home to her studio apartment on the north side of Santa Clarita just to pick up clean clothes.

  Maybe I’ll be able to hit the laundry room here this afternoon.

  Ever since the riots broke out, and then the massive earthquake a couple of days earlier, Gia had been camped out at the station pretty much full time. She’d been needed there, and without a family to worry about, she had the luxury of being able to give her coworkers time here and there to sneak away to check on their own.

  It didn’t help that her apartment currently had no water or electricity anyway. At least the backup systems at the station were still functioning, between solar, wind, and diesel gennys.

  Gia followed the smell of freshly brewing coffee down to the break room that served the front administrative part of their station. Sharon was standing in front of the coffee machine and muttering darkly at it under her breath.

  “You reading it its rights?”

  Sharon jumped, laughing and turning. “Hey, Chief. You spooked me. You get any sleep?”

  A shiver rippled through Gia at the title Sharon had used for her. “Yeah, about that. I wasn’t thinking earlier. I guess we have some protocols to go over, huh?”

  Sharon was a widow in her late sixties, and had been a civvie employee of the sheriff’s department for over forty years. “Yeah. Coffee first.” She handed Gia a mug. “Then we’ll do it.”

  It was one of those “I’ll never need that” kind of scenarios. Sure, once Gia had hit the rank of lieutenant and realized she had no desire to derail her career path, she’d started advanced training in tactical and administration.

  Including those worst-case scenarios like she now faced. Although those worst-case training scenarios hadn’t been a fraction as bad as this. And she’d thought they’d been pretty damn bad, at the time.

  Once Gia got her mug of coffee prepared, she took a deep breath and made her way to the front with the mug in hand.

  Their lobby was empty, the security cameras positioned toward the street showing nothing out of the ordinary around the secure perimeter. They’d locked the outer gates again once the National Guard unit had been secured inside their garage. Any civvies needing to enter the admin side, they had to buzz in at the gate and be buzzed through two other secure mantrap cages before they even reached the mantrap of the bunker-like front lobby entrance. There were two other administrative officers on duty tonight, and a dispatcher, as well as one other deputy, who was seven months pregnant and had been assigned to desk duty.

  Unlike their usual playful banter and easy discussion, the lobby area was filled with an ominous silence broken only by the sounds of news reports from various satellite feeds quietly playing on TVs and computers at different desks, interspersed periodically by calls from the official radios.

  The department was no longer responding to any nonemergency calls. At all. Your neighbor throwing a noisy party? Someone stealing your car from the street? There’s a drunk singing in your front yard? Tough luck, buttercup.

  Someone trying to kill you? We’ll get someone over there as soon as we can.

  Hopefully.

  Sharon had a copy of the order up on her computer by the time Gia made it to the woman’s desk. While Gia read it, Sharon jotted the special code onto a sticky note for Gia and handed it to her, along with an office key from her desk.

  “Here you go,” Sharon softly said.

  In addition to the highest-ranking officer being in charge at each station, the order basically said that every station was on its own if it couldn’t reach someone in command. To operate the best they could un
der the circumstances, with the personnel and resources they had. And that if it looked like a station could no longer be maintained, to evacuate to a safer location.

  Where such a place might exist, a safer location, they didn’t bother to clarify.

  In other words, good luck, godspeed, you’re on your own.

  Gia stared at the key in her hand. “Don’t suppose you want a promotion, do you?” she only half joked.

  Sharon snorted. “Not on your life. Although if you need moral support, I’ll go in with you.”

  Gia’s hand closed around the key. “Yeah. I think I need it.”

  Together, the women walked down a hallway, Gia punching in her code to go through another door, until they stood before what had been Chief Baynes’ office. She used the key to unlock the door and then opened it, almost hoping someone would jump out from the shadows and say, “Haha, got ya!” and declare it all a joke.

  Nope. Just dead, dark silence.

  She reached inside and felt along the wall to find the light switch. On his desk sat a family picture they’d taken last Christmas. Baynes, his wife, their three kids, their spouses, and four young grandkids.

  Forcing herself not to look at the family photo, Gia slid into the chair behind the desk and grabbed the computer mouse, waking the terminal up.

  The login box blinked at her on the screen.

  Security Code Login

  Another deep breath, and she used one finger to punch in the twelve-digit alphanumeric code Sharon had given her.

  The cursor turned into a pinwheel for only a moment before another screen flashed before her.

  Current Officer Login

  Gia punched in her badge number and security code she usually used for logging in to their system.

  It immediately returned another dialog box.

  Good Morning, Chief Quick. Special Procedures Emergency Checklist is as follows…

  She worked along with the prompts, which confirmed a loss of contact with MP, the validity of the special access code that had been issued, and that she was in fact the most senior officer registered at the station at that time.

  While the entire county was technically under a declared federal state of emergency, as well as martial law, there were still things to do, routines to go through, until the situation reached a no-return tipping point and she had to consider preserving life over law and order.

  As Sharon sat in a chair next to her and watched, Gia quickly worked through things such as assignment rosters, resources, phone numbers, and access codes for the safe in the chief’s office that contained master key sets and other items she’d need as…

  Well, the new station chief.

  It also allowed her to access the sat-linked database of other stations.

  That was when she nearly shit herself.

  Sharon said it first. “Holy fuck,” she whispered.

  All stations west of the 110 were dark. Not even running on backup power. There were only spotty reports from other stations that had checked in from the southern part of the county, most running at less than twenty-percent of normal staff and nearly all reporting moderate to severe quake-related damage or outages. Even stations from the LAPD and Orange County SD, who also used the same integrated computer system, were either out or running at far below normal operations.

  What chilled Gia even more were reports, hours-old, from stations in Compton, Lynwood, South Gate, and Downey, reporting they were evacuating all personnel from the area due to mobs, many of them reportedly infected with Kite.

  Unconfirmed reports were flooding in from officers on the street that the National Guard had been authorized to shoot on sight anyone suspected of having Kite. In other parts of the county, the National Guard was still in the process of evacuating people out to Barstow. Not from their area, but from the southern, western, and eastern sections of the valley basin.

  Gia didn’t understand why they were doing that, but she supposed it wasn’t her job to know that. Yes, local infrastructure had been devastated, riots and fires were making it impossible to remain in many neighborhoods, and the city had pretty much devolved into chaos.

  But why Barstow, of all farking places? There was nothing out there. And there’d been nothing in any of their previous drills that would indicate a massive civilian evac operation to that particular town. There had been a couple of cursory notices since the earthquake that the National Guard would use rail to ship people from Barstow to safety to parts east and north in the country…but that still didn’t make sense to her.

  Then again, she suspected that was the least of her worries at that moment.

  “Like it or not,” Gia told Sharon, “you’ve just been deputized.” She quickly clicked through the administration screens back to personnel and made the adjustment.

  “Yay, me,” Sharon flatly said. “What if I tell you I don’t want it?”

  “Tough shit,” Gia said, still tapping at the keyboard. “You’re a deputy. And you get a raise. Congrats.”

  “Whoopee. I’ll try not to spend it in one place.”

  When Gia finished that chore, she clicked back through to the main page of the station status section, which graphically displayed the entire region on a map.

  The color-coded map was like a slap in the face. Huge black gaps indicated stations that hadn’t checked in lately, or were known to be down.

  Gia sat back, shocked.

  Sharon let out a whistle. “You might actually be the highest-ranking law enforcement officer left in this part of the county. If not in the entire county.”

  “Terrific,” Gia muttered.

  Gia had seen Sharon handle some of the worst situations and people with the utmost professionalism and equanimity. So what the older woman said next terrified her. Especially in the scared tone she spoke it.

  “Gia, between you and me, when do we finally call it a day and run?”

  Gia had sworn an oath to serve and protect the citizens of LA County, not to commit suicide or order other officers to their deaths in an impossible situation.

  Then she thought about the twenty-five kids from the National Guard now bunking in her station’s garage.

  About her own deputy—whose name was Mike, she’d looked it up. Most of the people remaining on their force were her age or younger. The few older than her didn’t outrank her. And she knew a lot of them had families they’d want to be moving out of the area.

  And she wouldn’t blame them. “Maybe sooner than we think.”

  Chapter Four

  Sharon took Gia’s coffee mug to the break room to refill it for her while the de facto chief attempted the next part of her duties, trying to make phone contact with someone in charge.

  Numbers she’d been provided—numbers that were kept current and verified on a weekly basis—either rang unanswered, or gave her a fast-busy signal indicating the call couldn’t go through for some reason.

  Including a sat-phone number for Assistant Sheriff Traverson.

  Trying to get through to other stations proved a chaotic blow to her morale. Four listed on the database as being active didn’t answer. Three of the stations immediately put her on hold and never came back. Dialing the numbers to two others got her a fast-busy tone. Finally, when she reached someone in West Covina, she found herself talking to a young-sounding man with a very nervous edge to his voice, who identified himself as Deputy Juan Ricosa.

  “Hey, this is Captain Gia Quick at the Santa Clarita station. Can I please speak to your commanding officer?”

  “You’re speaking to him as of a couple of hours ago.”

  Gia closed her eyes. “You’re a member of the sudden promotion brigade, too, huh?”

  “No offense, Captain, but I’ve got a situation here. Can we summarize things? Every available officer I’ve got here is herding people to the 10 to get them to the 15 on their way to Barstow and out of here before we lock the doors.”

  “Lock the doors?”

  “Ain’t you heard the latest? Damn Kiters i
n the west part of the county and heading this way. We’re buggin’ out of here.”

  “Has that been confirmed by the CDC?”

  “CDC don’t have anything to say about me closing this station down.”

  “I meant the Kite diagnosis.” She’d seen the training videos. The graphic footage from overseas. She’d seen what a human caught in the grips of the virus could do to other humans.

  It wasn’t pretty.

  “I confirmed it with my own damn eyes,” Ricosa said. “I’m actually from the Lynwood station. I saw a guy get his fucking arms and legs ripped off day before yesterday. Rioters might beat the crap out of you, but they don’t try to fucking eat you. City’s dead, lady. I don’t know what it’s like up there in your special neck of the woods, but it’s hell down here. Time to turn off the lights and lock the door behind us.”

  When she finally got off the phone with Deputy Ricosa less than five minutes later, Gia felt hopeless.

  Sharon handed her the fresh mug of coffee. “And?”

  Gia took the mug from her, sat back in her chair, and stared at the computer monitor. “I’m not sure you want to know.”

  “Then don’t tell me. By the way, I’m off at six. I’m going to go home, pack, and come back here, if you don’t mind. Not like my apartment has power right now anyway. Not sure I even have water. Pressure was way down yesterday when I left.”

  “Take a cruiser,” Gia said. “Or one of the impound vehicles.” Sharon didn’t have a car of her own anymore, unable to afford the insurance and fuel.

  Sharon cocked her head. “Wow. That bad?”

  “Yeah. And pack with the thought that you might not go home again.” Gia finally met her gaze. “I think I need to run by my apartment this afternoon, too. Might be the last time I get there.”

  “So where we going next?”

  “When I finally call it a day here?”

  Sharon nodded. “I don’t have any close family nearby. Wherever is fine with me.”

  “I’m thinking north.” Gia reached over and clicked on a map of the area. Damaged sections of freeway were highlighted in blinking red. The section of I-10 leading through to the 15 was undamaged, as was the 15 heading north. Maybe that explained why the National Guard was so insistent that they herd the refugees north out of the region and to the tent city exploding in the low desert just to the north and west of the main downtown areas in Barstow.