Outpost 9: An Apocalyptic Memior

by Crane, J. J.

  “You’ve got a real smart mouth professor, don’t you?” Lasker scowled.

  “With all due respect officer, I think you’re jumping the gun,” I retorted.

  Lasker cracked a menacing grin. “Jumping the gun, you say.” He looked off while scrunching his lips together. I felt he was doing everything within his power not to pummel me where I stood. “I like that…let’s just put it this way. I need five men to join up with me for a patrol of the western part of the county, tomorrow, 8AM sharp, here at the Stop sign. They will assist my drivers with the sweep.”

  “And, if we refuse?” I asked, my voice cracking. I felt my palms get clammy, a trickle of sweat escaped and rolled down my cheek nearer toward my ear. I was hoping Lasker didn’t notice.

  “What will I do if you refuse?” Lasker repeated back to me. “If you refuse. We will forcibly take everything from you.” He then snapped his fingers a couple times. Seconds later, the car doors opened and out poured eight men, all holding rifles, mostly shotguns from what I could quickly surmise.

  “I see,” I said, trying to fight back the nerves that began to

  overtake me. “And, what if we fight back, resist.”

  Lasker couldn’t help himself but laugh. It was a hearty, you

  have got to be kidding me, laugh. “Listen, professor… you have a couple of I.T. people, some bankers, another white-collar desk jockey, a government flunky, a disgraced doctor, a sewage manager, a retired couple. What in the hell do you think they are going to do against, three other cops, two military guys, and four gentlemen who I wouldn’t say were the kind of men you would want your lovely daughter to date.”

  I stood there soaking in his words.

  “Listen, Prof, I also know you own two guns, and Max, the hunter, owns a few. The Burrells have a couple flintlocks, nice for reenactments but not the kind of muscle that comes off very threatening,” Lasker said.

  “I understand,” I said. “You seem to know your stuff.”

  He smiled a shit eating grin. “I do, thank you. I did my homework. I background checked all you guys before the power went.”

  “Okay,” I mumbled thinking how thankful I was that government bureaucracy stalled my last gun purchases from making it to whatever database Lasker used to run a background check on me.

  He smiled again, this time with a more satisfied look as if he felt I understood who held power. “So, this is how it’s going to work. I was going to give you a couple of hours to discuss my terms and return with an answer, but that generosity sailed with your smart professor mouth. Now, I’m going to,” he paused to look at his boys behind him. “We are all going to wait right here while you have a very quick discussion with your group.” He paused again. “In fact, there isn’t going to be any other answer but ‘yes.’ You will do as I say. I’m giving you the courtesy of ten minutes to let everyone know. There are no negotiating points. I am the new boss. I don’t care if you like it or not. In fact, I’m beginning to think we are going to also have you guys hand over all those precious supplies you must have in stock because there is no way that you can thrive as well as you have without some kind of food and water supply.”

  “We don’t have as much as you think,” I said. My heart was pounding hard in my chest. Though I wasn’t sweating nearly as much as I thought I might, I felt woozy in my head with anxiety, happy not to fall down with fright.

  “Enough of your bullshit Knowles. I have always tired of listening to smart mouths talk or lord over towns, counties, states. Lots of bluster while feeding people shit,” Lasker grunted out, his frustration hitting a boiling point. “You think you know what’s good for people but it’s nothing more than some elitist high-mindedness. There’s a new sheriff in town, and I’m finally going to run things the way they should be run.”

  I slowly nodded as I listened. “Understood.”

  Lasker snarled. “It’s understood, sir.”

  “Understood… sir.”

  This pleased Lasker. He seemed to relax, as a more sinister smile crossed his face.

  “Now, you have five minutes to let your people know what the new deal is.”

  “Yes sir,” I said and began to turn around.

  “Wait a minute,” Lasker barked. “I’ve changed my mind about something. I want the five guys now. They’ll come with me. Max is one of the guys, so is that young blonde guy, I believe his name is Jason. You can fill out the other three. Remember, five minutes.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said. I wanted to smile or smirk but didn’t. I just turned around and walked back down the center of the street the same way I walked up. I was about ten steps past Katie and Dave’s house when I raised my hand and waved like I was casually saying, ‘hi.’ Ten seconds later, a barrage of gunfire opened.

  I ran. I ran hard. I didn’t look back. I cut into my yard and grabbed my shotgun and pistol before heading into the Kenderdine’s yard and ducking behind one of their cars.

  Earlier that day, we hashed together a precautionary plan very similar to ones we had practiced in case something like what Lasker pulled happened. Condition Red was a defensive plan based on an attacker blocking off access to the main road by the Stop sign. If such a moment occurred, shooters would go to the second floor side windows and take positions that allowed for good sight lines to the top of the street. In this case, Max, Beth, Bruce, and his girlfriend Stephanie, all with hunting experience took positions in Max’s house. Ted and Betty from our home with Casey and his other son, Bobby manning positions from their house.

  Two flanking positions would then set in motion. Going out into the backyards, Jason, Peter Kenderdine, his son Kenny and my son Curtis protected the right side as they would make their way along the edge of the backyard up into Pam’s yard and close that end.

  On the other side of the street, Katie, Dave, Emma, and Steve would close off their end. Pops, Jean, and June would have the center line from Pops’ house. Linda, Steve, and their son Paul would take positions from their home and fire.

  With my back to the side of Casey’s car and the gunfire still roaring, I slowly began to look over the car’s trunk. On the ground, I saw Lasker, and four others, pools of blood streamed from all of them.

  As I continued to try and assess how many of their men were firing, the lead car began to pull away towards the downtown area disappearing from my view.

  It turned out that Katie, Dave, Emma, and Steve unloaded shells of 30-06 rounds as well as #00 shot from two shotguns.

  Dave reported, “We were set just inside the tree line about twenty yards down from Doc’s backyard. We missed the opening salvo, but when we got into position we saw several men already on the ground, some still alive and trying to escape. I know I saw one guy clamoring to crawl his way behind the front car when his head exploded and sprayed blood all over the car like a massive spirograph painting.”

  “I saw that too,” Emma said. “I puked a little at that.”

  “Me too,” Steve added.

  “But we pulled it together real fast,” Emma said with pride.

  “We saw a door open on the lead police car,” continued Dave. “People were getting into it from the protected side facing the woods. Our angle didn’t allow for a good view. I wasn’t sure if someone was getting a gun or what… after all, it was a police car. A minute later the car starts moving.”

  “Yeah, it’s coming right at us,” Katie blurted.

  “I shouted, get ready to fire,” Dave said. “And before we could count to three, we started to unload.”

  “The windshield shattered quick,” Emma said.

  “I had a rifle, and I shot at the driver’s side of the glass, and pretty quickly a big hole opened,” Steve said.

  “It was seconds later that the car then veered towards us,” Dave said. “But you could quickly see, whoever was driving had no control. The car crashed square into a tree at the end of Doc’s yard at the border of the woods.”

  “That was scary because I wasn’t sure what was happening, seeing t
his car head towards us. We cleared out of there for safety, pretty quick,” Katie said.

  “I have to say, I didn’t hesitate to shoot,” Dave said, his voice turning more somber. “I’ve never had to do anything like that… none of us had, but we did. We just reacted. I think once that car started to escape, something inside, something primitive, that protective element, kicked in.”

  “I felt that way as well,” Emma said as Katie and Steve followed suit in agreement.

  “The real nerves came when we had to check out the car,” Steve said.

  They all said yes to that.

  “That was eerie,” Katie said.

  “We had our guns up as we approached,” Dave said.

  Steve added. “And what was weird was that gunfire from the houses was still going on, but it seemed so distant because we had to concentrate so hard about what was in front of us.”

  “Yup,” Dave agreed. “When we approached the car, we

  managed to spread out a bit from each other, naturally. It was

  like the movies.”

  “I was so nervous walking towards that car. I was petrified, actually,” Emma said. “You couldn’t see in the car well; the front windshield looked like a spastic spider web with a hole in the right side.”

  “It was also getting dark,” Dave added. “I yelled that anyone who could hear my voice should make their hands available for us to see. Nothing happened.”

  “When we got real close, you could see it was a bloody mess,” Steve said.

  “Two bodies. One at the wheel and the other in the back seat,” Dave said.

  “The guy in the back was alive,” Emma added.

  “Until,” Katie said, with reservation.

  Emma nodded. “Yeah.”

  While that episode unfolded, Jason noticed some of Lasker’s men begin to flee into the woods behind their cars. He ordered for Peter, Kenny, and Curtis to start firing into the woods. Again, two had shotguns, and two had rifles.

  At first, they hesitated. Jason ripped into them that this was war, these people meant nothing but harm to us. Once Peter began to fire, the others followed suit.

  Jason pulled out his radio and asked for a cease-fire at the cars. “There are men running into the woods. We need to pursue and capture.”

  Jason moved out to the shoulder of the road and began firing at the men without reservation. He noticed they fell to the forest floor to protect themselves. Within a minute, gunfire trickled to a halt. Jason waved for his crew to follow him.

  “Into the woods boys. These pussies aren’t going to fight,” Jason cried out like some Civil War captain waving his men forward.

  Jason crossed the street without looking around and bolted

  into the woods. Peter, Kenny, and Curtis were behind him by

  a comfortable fifty feet, always scanning and making sure there were no other shooters lingering about.

  “Stop you pieces of shit,” Jason yelled as he spotted two men begin again to run away up the slope of the hill. “I said stop.”

  Neither of the men did as they tried to serpentine through the trees. Both men were hobbling, and Jason noticed they had blood stained clothes. “Last warning,” he shouted. When neither man stopped, Jason lifted his shotgun and fired. He pumped another three rounds before both men fell to the ground, one slamming body first with a thud. The other slowed to a crawl.

  “You’re next scumbag if you don’t stop now and put your hands in the air,” Jason yelled.

  The man stopped, got up on his knees and put his arms in the air to surrender.

  “Smart move,” Jason said as he stuck the warm end of the barrel into the man’s neck. “Can you walk?”

  The man said, yes.

  “Good, get up.”

  When the firing finally stopped, I stood up. I kept my shotgun pointing towards the cars on the main road. Others came out of their homes, weapons in hand also pointing towards the bullet riddled vehicles.

  “Looks all clear,” Ted shouted over to me.

  Slowly, I came from behind my cover when a voice shouted that the police car that tried to get away was secure and that there was one survivor in bad shape.”

  “Got it,” I answered then proceeded to walk towards the scene of battle. With each step, more of the carnage revealed itself. The pickup truck and the one police car both had flat tires, and radiator fluid dripped from the pickup. Shards of glass lie about from all the shattered windows. A quick count of bullet holes in the vehicles came to forty-seven.

  It was the dead men though that made my stomach wince. Pools of blood formed like little ponds with tiny, slow moving streamlets winding their way through the tar crevices in the road. As Max and I approached the bodies, followed by Ted and Bruce, we saw the holes from the bullets that ripped into Lasker and his men. One of the men’s clothes exhibited signs of slashing like a small knife tore at the fabric while another’s had blood stained holes.

  When I came to Lasker, his body had small holes scattered over his torso and legs. I kneeled next to his body. When I went to take a pulse on his neck, his hand shot up and grabbed my wrist. The shock of the moment made me stumble over. My arm easily broke his weak grip. I regained my balance and swung my gun around and aimed it at his head.

  “Go ahead,” he mumbled through grit teeth. “Get it over with.”

  I settled myself and got nearer to him. “Why the fuck did you have to threaten us? I mean, there was no better way than to muscle us into submission?”

  It looked like Lasker wanted to smile, his blood-stained teeth covered nearly his entire mouth. “Fuck you.”

  I squinted at his stupidity. “No. You’re the one who’s fucked.” I grabbed him by the top of his shirt and jerked him into a seated position.

  Lasker coughed, a little blood spit from his mouth but it landed back on his face. “You have no idea. None.”

  “What are you talking about?” I asked half shouting.

  He didn’t answer. Those were his last words.

  The other men in his gang that lie by Lasker didn’t survive to have a last word. We checked the cars, found a few extra rifles and a loaded handgun.

  When I finally stood, I saw Jason pushing a man with the tip of his barrel out of the woods. The man walked with a decided limp and winced every time Jason pushed him to move faster. Curtis, Kenny, and Peter trailed him.

  “We got a live one,” Jason said.

  The man stepped out into the road and in front of me.

  He was dirty, mostly from crawling in the woods trying to escape. He wore a red and black flannel shirt, a mechanics jacket with the garage’s name on it, the label was torn and faded.

  “What’s your name?” I asked the fellow who barely looked up to make eye contact with me. He couldn’t have stood taller than five and a half feet. I leaned in. “Your name.”

  “Carl,” he said, his voice scratchy. When he looked into my eyes, I saw that his were bloodshot, hollow looking, defeated.

  “You in pain, Carl?” I asked.

  “Yes,” he muttered. “I took one in the leg. A few, I think.”

  I looked down and saw his pants freshly bloodstained.

  “I’ll have someone patch that up,” I said. I turned to Max and Ted and told them to escort the prisoner to Pam’s for interrogation and treatment.

  “Jason,” I said. “Go check out the car that crashed into the tree. Someone is alive in there. Take control of that.”

  Jason didn’t hesitate, turned, and broke out into a jog towards the car.

  I began surveying the grounds around the two cars. Blood continued to ooze out of the bodies lying on the ground. I watched where I walked, trying not to step in any of it. I didn’t know what I was looking for, I just paced and stared at the wreckage. June joined me. At first, the scene revolted her but as she gazed at the dead men she too expressed what a waste.

  “We had no choice,” I said.

  “I know,” she answered, placing her hand on my back, lightly scratching it. �
��We all heard the conversation.”

  I pulled out a walkie-talkie from my top pocket. The small antenna was broken, and the yellow body all chipped up. “Amazing,” I said as I held it in my hand. “Imagine a broken radio with a sticky talk switch saved us, so most knew exactly what was being said and what would have happened if we submitted.”

  “Thank goodness you kept that thing. To be honest, I would have thrown it out,” June said.

  “And people thought I was crazy when I said it would work as a makeshift wire, just in case that one in a million chance presented itself,” I said.

  June chuckled. “Yup. Too bad you didn’t bet Max anything.”

  “Yeah, a wasted bet,” I said, but before I could continue, a single shot sounded, breaking the near silence that had come with the encroaching darkness.

  “What did you do!” screamed Katie.

  June and I looked toward where the car ran off the road. Jason stood outside the car, the barrel of his shotgun resting on the edge of the door where the window was.

  “I can’t believe you did that,” Katie shouted, her voice trembling.

  “What?” Jason shot back. “Were we supposed to nurse him back to health? The guy was good as dead. I just ended it early. Besides, you heard them; they were going to kill us if we didn’t cooperate.”

  “What the hell is wrong with this world,” Katie screamed. She then took her rifle and threw it on the ground. “This is insane. What are we becoming?”

  “Survivors,” Jason shouted back.

  The whole skirmish took less than ten minutes to unfold. It felt far longer. Later, I realized I only fired four shots. I was thankful I didn’t have to fire more.

  In all, roughly two hundred rounds fired. After collecting the intruder’s weapons, we counted they only fired about forty shots between nine of them.

  We used Pam Richard’s house as our makeshift prison. Pam moved into Linda, and Steve’s a couple of weeks earlier, having become uncomfortable living alone once the power went out. She had no objection to us using it as Ted and Max led the limping prisoner, guns fixed on him, into the basement. We didn’t have to coerce our prisoner to talk. He pleaded for his life, breaking into tears like a baby as soon as he touched foot on the front steps of the house.