Breaking the Beast

by Steven Bird

  “What kind of father sends his daughter ahead of him to scout for danger?” I whispered.

  Merely grumbling in reply, Ronnie again demanded, “I’m not going to ask again.”

  “Daddy!” she shouted in a trembling voice. “Daddy, they want you to show yourself, or they’ll hurt me.”

  “Now, that wasn’t very nice,” Ronnie said. “I never said such a thing. Is that to prompt him to take some sort of action against us?”

  “Don’t hurt her!” a voice shouted from the front yard of the home.

  Turning toward the threat, Ronnie said, “You stay on her, I’ll check this out.”

  Slipping through the room and doing his best to avoid the moonlight, Ronnie peeked at an angle through the window to catch a view of a man in his late thirties standing on the front lawn, appearing to be unarmed.

  “Please, don’t hurt her,” he again asked in what sounded like a sincere voice. Whether that was rehearsed sincerity or not remained to be seen. “She’s all I have left in this world. Just please, please don’t hurt her.”

  “What kind of coward sends his daughter ahead of him?” Ronnie asked.

  The man’s head began to hang low. “Yeah, I’d be ashamed, too,” Ronnie added.

  Turning to me, Ronnie said quietly, “What do you think?”

  “I think I don’t want to shoot a young girl, that’s what I think.”

  “Don’t be blinded by preconceived notions of who the innocent are, Joe. That’ll get you killed.”

  Looking back out the window, seeing that the man was still there, Ronnie shouted, “How many more are with you?”

  The man quickly replied, “No one. It’s just us. We didn’t mean to intrude or to startle you. We’re just looking for a place to spend the night, and were hoping to find something to eat.”

  “You won’t find anything to eat around here,” Ronnie replied. “You should know by now that waves of people have beat you to it. What are you really up to?”

  “That’s it, I swear,” the man insisted. “Please, just let her go. I’ll trade myself for her. Just take me, and let her go.”

  “Daddy, no!” the girl shouted.

  “Quiet!” I demanded. “My friend and your father are having a polite conversation. Let them finish.”

  Thinking it over for a moment, Ronnie mumbled, “I don’t like it, Joe.”

  “Me, neither, but I’m not shooting a young girl,” I again insisted.

  In an exasperated tone, Ronnie said, “Against my better judgment, let her go. Just let them go.”

  “Why is it against your better judgment?” I asked.

  “It just doesn’t feel right. But I can’t argue with you. We can’t turn to shooting children this early in the game. That’s not who we are. You know it, and so do I. If we take any other action, that’s liable to happen.”

  “Don’t move!” Ronnie shouted to the father. “We’re sending her out the front door. Don’t move until she reaches you. When she does, both of you turn and walk away slowly. Don’t be a fool and try anything else. There’s nothing else for you here but heartache. That, I promise you.”

  “Yes. Yes, sir,” the man said. “Thank you. Thank you, sir.”

  Turning to the girl, Ronnie said in a soft voice, “My friend there is going to cover you while you stand and walk across the room to the front door. I know he said he didn’t want to shoot a young girl, but he’ll choose me over you, trust me on that. Once you’re up, walk across the room slowly and don’t make any sudden or unexpected movements. If you or your father do anything to make us think we’re making a mistake in letting you go, well, it won’t end well for either of you. Do you understand?”

  “Yes,” she replied. “Thank you.”

  “Okay, then. Go ahead, get up.”

  The girl got on her knees and then slowly stood. She was trembling noticeably. I couldn’t be sure if it was fear or hunger. Likely, it was a bit of both. She looked very worn and weathered for her age. The life she was living with her father had clearly taken its toll on her. It was a heartbreaking sight for me. I could picture her and her father, and what life must have been like for them before the Sembé virus tragically shook their world to pieces, stripping them of everything they had, and of their futures.

  Like the horrific scene down the hall, they had likely lost other close family members and were all that remained for one another. Still, they were a threat to us. Desperate times called for desperate measures, and the current state of the world outside the zones was far beyond desperation. Everyone had to be viewed as a threat. It’s simply how things were.

  Once she reached the door, Ronnie said, “Stop. Stand right there and don’t move.”

  I was confused by his order, but then saw him walk over to his pack and remove two of his MRE’s. He then removed his medical kit and removed an anti-bacterial/anti-viral sterilization wipe, and cleaned the MRE’s thoroughly.

  He then walked over to the girl, being sure to keep his distance as best he could, and offered her the meals, along with several unopened packets of the sterilization wipes in her direction, holding onto them with the wipe he used still in his hand. “Take these. I cleaned them. They should be safe.”

  Reaching out and taking them, her voice trembled, and she said, “Thank you.”

  “Now, go. Go on out there to your father and get far away from here. Don’t come back. There won’t be more charity from us. Get away from us and then use the other wipes to clean your hands and any other part of your body that may have come in contact with anything in this house. Do you understand?”

  “Yes,” she said as she walked out the front door to her father.

  Once the two were reunited in the front yard, they quickly turned and walked away, disappearing into the darkness.

  “It’s your turn to sleep,” he said.

  “Yeah, right,” I replied. “Like I could go to sleep now.”

  Chapter Eight

  The morning sun soon shone through the trees, illuminating the dust that danced on the breeze that flowed through the broken front window of the house once again.

  “I don’t think we should take the van,” Ronnie said as he gazed out the window, using the edge of the wall as partial cover.

  “Why?” I asked.

  “Not after last night. We can’t assume they were alone. We also can’t assume others aren’t around either. They could be from a larger group, sent as a probe. If that’s the case, they’ll be watching the house and us driving away in the minivan will make us sitting ducks. No, I think we need to slip out the back on foot and lose ourselves in the woods. We can try to find other transportation elsewhere. If we got in that minivan now, and simply drove right out of the garage, I’d feel like a soldier on D-Day watching the landing craft door open in front of him, expecting a barrage of machine-gun fire at any minute. No, it just doesn’t feel right.”

  “Nothing feels right anymore,” I replied. “Are you sure it’s not just paranoia eating away at you?”

  “Sometimes paranoia is well placed,” he retorted.

  Replying with merely a nod, I said, “Whatever you think, Ronnie.”

  With that, Ronnie slipped his arms through his daypack, wearing it on his back, while strapping his refrigerated pack on the front of his body.

  “You carry the extra rifle, I’ll carry the Symbex,” he insisted. “You know your way around that old relic more than I do, anyway.”

  “Roger that,” I replied, slipping my pack on and slinging the Garand over my shoulder while carrying my CX91 at the low ready in front of me.

  Looking into the back yard of the house, I began to feel Ronnie’s sense of dread come over me. “Damn you and that D-Day remark,” I quipped. “You’ve got me paranoid now. How do you want to handle this?”

  Retrieving the thermal monocular from his pack, Ronnie powered it on and scanned the area, “I wish I would have thought to use this last night when the girl and her father were here. I’m just not used to having it yet, I guess,�
�� he said as he scanned the area around the rear of the home.

  “What do you see?” I asked. “Not much that looks alive,” he replied. “A few small critters, but nothing that raises a red flag.”

  He then walked to the front of the home and surveyed the area lying in front of the house with the thermal monocular as well. “Ah, ha!” he reported.

  “What?”

  “Some sneaky bastard is hunkered down beyond those overgrown hedges.”

  “Is it the girl and her father?” I asked.

  “I only see one heat signature big enough to be a person,” he responded. Thinking it over for a moment, he decided, “Well, with nothing out back and a possible threat up front, I say let’s both just go for it, running across the back yard simultaneously. You go left toward that big maple tree, and I’ll go right past the swing set. Once we get into the cover of the woods, we’ll meet back up. If we both bolt across the yard at once, if anyone is lying in wait, at least one of us will get through. If I go down, do whatever you have to do to get the Symbex.”

  “We should have left under cover of darkness,” I replied.

  “Six of one, half dozen of the other,” he shrugged. “You could just as easily run into a knife in the dark as a bullet in the daylight. At least you can see and avoid this way. This monocular is great for surveying the area, but you can’t really run with it, holding it up to your eye.”

  “You always put a positive spin on things,” I said in jest.

  “Whatever I can do to help,” he replied with a grin. “The heat return out front definitely reassures my paranoia about just driving away from here,” he added.

  I wasn’t sure if he was trying to convince himself, or if he was trying to reassure me. Either way, I didn’t have a better plan. Up to this point, Ronnie had it all figured out. Now, though, it seemed as if we’d be making everything else up as we went.

  “Let’s go for it,” I said reassuringly.

  Positioning ourselves at the back door, I placed my left hand on the knob while holding onto the grip of my CX91 with my right. Ronnie placed his left hand on my shoulder while holding on tight to his carbine with his right hand as well.

  “Good luck,” he said.

  “You, too, Ronnie,” I replied. “On three. One… two… three!” I said as I turned the knob and made a break for it across the yard. Reaching the maple tree, I ducked behind it and turned to cover Ronnie as he disappeared behind the swing set and into the bushes.

  Quickly scanning the area and seeing no threats, I began working my way through the woods further from the home while Ronnie did the same, working his way toward my position.

  Meeting up approximately fifty yards behind the home, on the edge of the woods near the back yard of another house, Ronnie whispered, “See? That wasn’t so bad. I don’t know why you were so paranoid.”

  “Yeah, right,” I said, rolling my eyes.

  “What now, Captain Wilkes?”

  Swatting me on the back of the head, he said, “Don’t call me that anymore.” Looking around, he pointed, saying, “Let’s just work our way around this neighborhood through the trees. It almost seems as if they let a buffer of trees grow between the two subdivisions. The only drawback to that is we’re probably not the only ones who’d choose to do so.”

  “I’ll take point,” I said, leaving my position of cover behind a tree and moving forward in the direction he suggested.

  I had barely taken a few steps when a shot rang out behind me. I spun around quickly to see Ronnie falling forward. It seemed like it was all happening in slow motion. I could see the expression on Ronnie’s face as he fell. It was one of shock, disbelief, and fear, all rolled into one. Over Ronnie’s shoulder, I could see the man from the night before. He had evidently been hiding behind an overturned tree stump that, with the help of the thickly wooded area, had conveniently masked him and his daughter’s heat signatures from our vantage point in the home. Once Ronnie had stepped past them and into the open, the father had fired an older revolver, striking him in the side between the packs.

  I immediately raised my CX91 and fired several shots directly into his center of mass, knocking him backward and onto the ground. The girl’s father was dead before he hit the ground from the very lethal 6.2x40mm cartridge.

  Seeing the young girl go for her father’s handgun, I shouted, “No! No! Don’t…” but it was no use. The girl reacted like a crazed animal, going for the gun to either avenge her father or to finish the job in an attempt to get to whatever was in our packs. She was like a desperate animal, unlike any young teenage girl I had ever seen. My time in the zones had shielded me from such desperation, and it was more than my mind could comprehend or recognize.

  Before I had a chance to process it all, my training overrode my thoughts, and I fired two more shots at the threat. Unfortunately, that threat was the young girl, who now lay dead before me, slumped over her father.

  Quickly running to Ronnie’s aid, I rolled him over just in time to hear his final words escape from his mouth, along with the sound of air escaping from between the frothing and gurgling wound in his side where the projectile had clearly entered his lung. With his eyes seeming to stare off into the distance behind me, he muttered, “Finish it…”

  With no time to process it all, not knowing if there were others in the area, I quickly removed both of his packs and ran as hard as I could through the woods. I struggled to keep up the pace with both of his packs across my left arm, my CX91 in my right hand, and the Garand bouncing around, clanging into my carbine as I awkwardly tried to carry it all, as well as having my pack on my back.

  I’m not sure how far I ran or for how long. After a few moments, the instinct to flee was replaced by rage. My run was now fueled by a total and complete state of fury. Not only had we let the girl and her father go the previous night, but Ronnie had given them food and took great care to prevent them from catching the Sembé virus from our contact with it.

  I felt betrayed by my own feelings from the previous night. I had refused to accept the fact that a teenage girl could be a legitimate threat. I had refused to acknowledge or reconcile the fact that such a world could have driven people to such behavior. Perhaps I’d projected the plight of the father and daughter in the bedroom at the end of the hallway onto them. I’d wanted them to live. I’d wanted them to survive this hell, and someday help to rid the world of the OWA’s monopoly on our life and death so they could rebuild their lives.

  My emotions had betrayed me. My emotionally-guided view of reality had gotten Ronnie killed, and now I was on this ridiculous mission alone. With no plan at all—only some absurd idea that somewhere out there was a group of people I could reach who could put the anti-viral drug I now carried to good use and somehow save the world. Was that also some ridiculous, emotionally-guided fairy tale of a dream?

  ~~~~

  The rest of that day was a blur to me. My body and my mind must have put themselves into protection mode. I know I must have been in some sort of shock. The face of the little girl that I had been forced to shoot haunted me. Her fragile little voice from the night before, calling out for her daddy, haunted me and echoed through my mind.

  I had shot a young girl. She was just a child. I could rationalize the fact that she was presenting herself as a threat until I was blue in the face, but that wouldn’t do anything to soothe my aching heart. All my life, I had been a pretty decent guy. But, how does a pretty decent guy shoot a child?

  Throughout my tenure as both a police officer and an ODF security officer for the OWA, I had drawn my gun in the line of duty maybe five times and had only discharged it once. That’s not to say I hadn’t been involved in any in-the-line-of-duty shootings, but with multiple officers on the scene, not everyone has to fire.

  The one and only time I’d had to use deadly force and discharge my weapon was during a hostage standoff situation at a local convenient store. It was a robbery gone wrong. A young man, who was more than likely following through with
some sort of gang-related initiation ritual, attempted to rob a store and then proceeded to make a scene out of it. He couldn’t keep himself from showboating around and trying to be seen as the one with the ultimate power over others, the power to choose life or death.

  He taunted people, pointing the gun at the back of their heads, one by one, asking, “Should I choose you? Or you?” all with a few disrespectful expletives thrown around just to help him mentally beat his chest. Male, female, young, or old didn’t seem to matter to him. His callousness and complete lack of regard for others was something straight out of a Hollywood movie.

  His showboating had prevented him from getting away before we arrived on the scene, and once the pressure was on him, he began to break. His showboating and machismo quickly turned to fear-fueled, erratic behavior. He was on the edge, and we knew if we didn’t do something quickly, some innocent person or persons would end up suffering the consequences of his actions.

  We chose to make entry into the building and put an end to the situation before any of that happened. I was assigned to enter from the rear with Officer Miguel Rodriguez. Miguel and I were pretty close. I mean, well, we wouldn’t have been the best man at each other’s weddings or anything, but we were friends, and we had each other’s backs.

  Upon receiving the command to enter, Miguel went in first with me following closely behind. We quickly worked our way through the stockroom toward the storefront where the hostage situation was taking place. Unfortunately, the officers assigned to make entry through the front of the building rushed in before we were in position, forcing the suspect to turn and run toward the storeroom in our direction.

  Just as Miguel began to pass through the door, the young man appeared with his Hi-Point .4o caliber pistol held sideways, and immediately began discharging the contents of his magazine in a very uncontrolled manner, sending bullets flying into two-liter soda bottles and bags of chips everywhere. It was a total spray-and-pray situation.

  At some point during the spastic discharge of ammunition, Miguel was hit once in the vest, and once just above the vest, striking him in his throat just above his breast bone.