Charlie's Requiem: Democide

by Walt Browning

  The next six days were a mixture of fear and hope. Those first few days after the electricity went off were a jumble of knife fights, rioting and death. Old scores between the Whites, Blacks and Latinos ruptured what little stability the prison maintained. Then, on the third day, the feds took over the 33rd Street County Jail. Taurus and the other gang leaders met with some DHS representatives. A working relationship had quickly developed and a truce between the gangs took hold.

  Beker wasn’t privy to the deal, but conversations between Taurus and his soldiers indicated that DHS was going to commute their sentences in exchange for helping DHS out. Two days later, the full gravity of the relationship between the gangs and DHS became evident. The gangs were going to be DHS enforcers. They were going to be a catalyst to encourage the uncooperative residents to align themselves within the new order of things.

  But Taurus, although a gangbanger, was smart enough to distrust their “alliance” with their new DHS partners. His white supremacist philosophy and time in prison allowed him to educate himself on history, especially the history of a man named Adolph Hitler. Taurus spoke with his commanders and described the history of the rise of the Nazi party. He spoke of the Sturmabteilung, which meant “Storm Detachment” in German. They were the Nazi party’s first henchmen. During the early days of Hitler’s rise, they disrupted opposing political party rallies, and intimidated the general population, especially immigrants and Jews. They were called the “Brownshirts” because of their brown paramilitary uniforms. “That is who they want us to be!” Taurus had told his men.

  The subordinates slapped each other’s backs and congratulated themselves for their good fortune. That is, until Taurus told them what had happened to the “Brownshirts.” After almost a decade of loyalty to Hitler, he ordered their arrest and the murder of nearly a hundred of their leaders and members. Called the Night of the Long Knives, the purge of his loyal followers was due to Hitler’s paranoia about the Brownshirts’ growing power. He replaced them with the even more fearsome Schutzstaffel (SS) and the Gestapo (the Nazi secret police). Taurus confided in his men that he was worried that when the DHS had finished using them, the gangs would be eliminated. DHS was not to be trusted.

  So Beker and “Weed,” another young recruit, were sent out with a busload of gang members that were tasked with helping the DHS contain a problem at one of the roadblocks. Once they arrived at the scene, they were immediately unleashed on a crowd of people wanting to pass through the government blockade and refusing to follow Homeland’s directives to report to a holding facility set up at the county fairgrounds. They wanted to go home, not to the fairgrounds. So the gang was released on the uncooperative crowd in punishment for their insubordination. Taurus’ instructions to Beker and Weed were clear; stay free of the fight and observe.

  Once unleashed, the gang began to brutalize the uncooperative mob that had pushed their way through the DHS blockade. During the fight, two of the DHS agents turned against Beker’s people and killed or disabled most of his new brothers. Over a dozen of the white supremacists lay on the expressway concrete, either unconscious or dead. Beker had even watched in horror as two of his brothers had been flung from the highway overpass, falling to their death almost 30 feet below.

  This was the treachery Taurus feared! Beker began to follow the giant black DHS soldier and his female agent companion when Weed pulled him back.

  “Stop!” Weed pled. “We need to stay with our kind.”

  “No, we follow. You heard Taurus. He expected us to be betrayed and it sure looks like he was right.”

  “Then let’s just tell him that. That’s all he wants to know.”

  “No,” Beker replied. “It’s more than that. They are walking away from the roadblock, not back to the other agents. Maybe they are part of a special force we don’t know about.”

  “You mean, like a death squad?” Weed replied.

  “Yeah, exactly!” Beker said back. “We need to see where they go and then report back to Taurus.”

  So the two young men lagged behind the giant DHS agent and his older female partner. They watched as they joined some of the civilians that had forced their way past the blockade. The two of them followed the group all the way to the downtown Police Headquarters building. Beker and Weed snuck into the city’s professional arena, which sat a block south of the DHS parking lot. The north side of the arena faced up the street towards the police building where the DHS agents had gone. The DHS agents and the residents separated; and interestingly enough, the residents stayed hidden in the parking lot across the street while the agents went into their headquarters. Weed and Beker watched through the broken glass windows as the agents returned to the parking lot.

  “I’m going to get closer,” Beker told Weed.

  “I ain’t movin’.” Weed replied. “I ain’t getting caught again.”

  “Stay here then,” Beker shot back. “If I get caught, wait till dark and get back to Taurus. Let him know what we saw!”

  Beker slipped out the shattered glass doors and scurried across the street. He dodged and darted through the parked military vehicles until he got within 30 yards of the group. After a few minutes, Beker saw the agents and residents split up again. This time, the young man, two women and the child made their way into the city and the agents returned to the DHS office.

  Beker moved to join back up with Weed, but several military vehicles pulled into the parking lot, one of them moving toward the young man’s hiding spot. Beker frantically searched for a place to conceal himself. He was squatting behind an oversized-looking Jeep that had a machinegun mounted on top. A similar-looking Jeep was driving up the lane directly towards his position. In seconds, the DHS agents would be on him. Many of the lot’s spaces were empty, so running was not an option. The agent manning the machine gun would cut him down in seconds if the saw him sprinting away. Beker could see nowhere to go. He was trapped! If he were caught, he was sure he would be killed.

  The monstrous Jeep coming at him was painted a dusty tan color. The wheelbase was wider than anything he had ever seen. It seemed to take up the whole traffic lane as black diesel smoke belched from its vertical exhaust pipe. That’s when Beker noticed the clearance under the monster moving toward him.

  As the giant military vehicle rolled toward him, Beker made a last, desperate decision. He dropped to his belly and crawled under the truck he had been hiding behind. Within seconds of him worming his way under the giant Jeep, the other vehicle pulled into the space next to him, right where he had just been hiding.

  Had he been seen? There was nowhere to go. He was flat on his stomach, pressed under the massive steel car. If they saw him, he was done for! Beker held his breath, not even daring to exhale for fear of being discovered. He could hear the agents in the next space talking.

  “Finally made it!” The first man said. “That was a hell of a ride.”

  “This where we check in?” the second one said.

  “Yeah,” a third voice replied. “I got the map from the armory. We check in across the street.”

  “What about our gear,” the first man said as he opened the driver’s door.

  Beker watched the man’s boots hit the ground not three feet from him. A second set of boots came out of the other side, that agent exiting out the passenger door. Beker watched as a third set of boots followed out of the other side.

  “Let’s leave it in the HUMVEE,” the driver said as he began to walk back down the lane towards the DHS building. “We’ll grab all of it when we find out where we’re going to be living.”

  The three men’s voices began to fade into the distance, their laughter echoing off the freeway overpass above.

  Beker dared not move. Maybe the gunner is still in his turret? He thought. “There could be four of them!”

  After what seemed like forever, he slid out from under his veh
icle. So this is a HUMVEE! He said to himself. Beker gingerly rose and peered above the HUMVEE’s front hood. The agents were crossing the street, never bothering to look back.

  Beker crept to the other still-cooling HUMVEE and looked inside. On the back seat were backpacks and duffel bags. On the floor were plastic cases and a metal box. The young man stole another look down the street; and seeing no one watching, he opened the rear door and began checking his potential loot.

  The bags all contained clothing and other personal items. But the metal box was pure treasure. It was loaded with bullets. The box had printing stenciled on the outside. It read “1000 CRTG 9mm;” and under it was printed in the same yellow stencil, “BALL M882.” Beker unlatched the lid and found cardboard boxes stacked inside.

  Next to the large green metal box with the 9mm ammunition were black plastic boxes. When he opened the latches on one of them, he about jumped out of the vehicle. It was a pistol, black and menacing.

  Beker had never handled a gun before. He didn’t know what to do with it; but he was sure Taurus would know how it worked.

  The ammunition box weighed a ton and there was no way he would be able to run with the thing. So he grabbed what looked like a messenger bag that was lying across the back seat and shoved a pistol box into its main compartment. The bag was loaded with papers, including orders and instructions for the arriving agents. Beker opened the metal ammo box and pulled out five of the smaller cardboard boxes from within and added those to his loot. He folded the large bag’s flap back over and secured its straps. He also grabbed a bottle of unopened water and closed the door.

  The young man glanced back at the parking lot and DHS offices. Seeing no observers, he quickly ran down the lot’s backside, staying under the freeway until he made it to the last of the spaces. Keeping cars and HUMVEEs between him and the DHS building’s front door, he made it across the street and back into the abandoned arena.

  Weed immediately met him, his face as white as a ghost.

  “Dude!” Weed gasped. “I thought you was a goner.”

  “Yeah!” Beker replied with a smile. “What a rush!”

  “Well, don’t get used to it,” Weed retorted. “At least not around me. I ain’t gonna keep following you around on your adrenalin trips.”

  Beker smiled and placed his bag on an empty counter. He opened the flap and retrieved the gun case.

  “Oh man,” Weed exclaimed. “You got a pistol! A Beretta! I’ve shot one of these before.”

  Weed pulled the handgun out of its case and held it up for inspection. He grabbed the top of the gun and pulled it back, locking it in place.

  “You got any bullets?” Weed asked.

  Beker removed a cardboard box and Weed greedily grabbed it from him.

  “Hey, that’s for Taurus!” Beker chided his companion.

  “No problem, amigo! I just want to load it up.”

  Weed grabbed one of the handgun’s magazines and began to press bullets into it. Beker watched with fascination as each bullet was pressed and then pushed rearward, locking them into place.

  “Here,” Weed said. “Load this one.”

  “I don’t know how,” Beker replied.

  “You ain’t ever shot a gun?” Weed asked.

  Beker just shook his head.

  “Well, we can’t shoot it here, so you ain’t gonna be able to learn to aim, but at least you can see how to load it.”

  Weed demonstrated the way this handgun functioned. He showed Beker how to place the bullets in the magazine. He taught him how to put the magazine into the pistol and release the slide so that it was ready to fire. He showed him where the safety was located and let the young man handle the weapon.

  “This is heavier than I thought!” Beker said.

  “Yeah, it’s an all-metal gun. I used to rock a Glock. It’s lighter cause it’s made of plastic.”

  The two men were practicing with the handgun when Weed noticed the three agents returning to their HUMVEE.

  “Beker!” He said suddenly. “They’s ‘goin back to the HUMVEE. We better move, cause when they find out we stole one of their guns, all hell’s gonna break loose!”

  They scurried down the hall, moving away from the glass doors they had been using to watch the parking lot. They found the southern doors broken just like the ones they had entered on the north side of the arena. They sprinted through the shattered glass and crossed the street, advancing quickly down an alleyway, moving as rapidly from the scene of the crime as their legs could take them.

  As they ran, both men giggled and pushed each other, high on the rush of their caper. Within minutes, they were well on their way back to their brothers, but now they brought back goodies that were sure to put them in Taurus’ good graces.

  I guess the kid knew what he was doing! Weed thought. Taurus is gonna be happy when we show him what we got!

  Both men grinned as they darted through the abandoned cars that lined the side streets of the West Orlando neighborhood, high on the success of completing their assignment. Taurus was going to be pissed that their white comrades had been killed, but happy with the treasures and information they brought back. Not a bad day’s work for the brotherhood!

  Chapter 5

  “If human beings are fundamentally good, no government is necessary; if they are fundamentally bad, any government, being composed of human beings, would be bad also”

  — Fred Woodworth

  Weed and Beker moved through a poor black neighborhood just a mile or so from the arena, returning to the jail where the brotherhood had been assigned rooms formerly used by the prison’s guards. Called the Parramore Historic District, it was specifically developed in the 1880’s by then mayor James Parramore “to house the blacks employed in the households of white Orlandoans.”[

  While some of the homes had been gentrified, most of the homes they were passing had already been in disrepair. Now, having been abandoned in the early days of the blackout, their appearance could only be described as one step above a shanty. Front doors were left open and more windows were shattered than not. Cars, bicycles and all forms of trash were scattered throughout the yards they were passing, giving the impression that the residents had been quickly whisked away. Peeling paint, a problem due to the intense Florida sun, and missing shutters on once-dignified homes, presented a dystopian vision of a more gracious bygone era. This part of town could easily have been mistaken for a slum in any war-torn city. He had studied about Bosnia and Sarajevo in his history class, but there was a difference; those Eastern European towns had the pockmarks of battle. In Sarajevo, chunks of buildings had been ripped from their frames by small arms fire and explosions, and there was none of that here.

  As they carefully picked their way through the detritus left by the fleeing residents, it finally came to Beker where he had seen such a similar situation: Chernobyl after the nuclear meltdown. The entire city had quickly been abandoned; and pictures of the town, to this day, show an empty city that died quickly and with no mercy. That was Orlando, at least where they presently stood.

  The two men stopped their advance as they saw a large collection of cars pushed together on the road ahead. Several vans had been placed across the street, and the sidewalks nearby were piled with furniture and appliances. The result of the placement of all the cars and other large items was to create a funnel with the vans serving as a blockade.

  “Hey Beker,” Weed whispered as they crouched behind a large Formosa Azalea. “Don’t like that pile of cars up there.”

  “Yeah,” Beker replied. “Looks like it’s a trap.”

  “I don’t hear anyone up there,” Weed shot back. “Ain’t no one movin’ that I can see.”

  “I don’t want to take any chances,” Beker replied. “Let’s go back and around. I’d rather be safe.”

  “Me neither!
Don’t want any niggers getting us now that we’re so close to getting back.” Weed hissed as he displayed the Beretta.

  Using it as a pointing stick, the skinny little man looked like he could barely hold the large pistol in front of him. Of indeterminate age, he was sinewy and almost too thin in a diseased sort of way. His teeth and breath spoke of a lack of basic hygiene that was reflected in his body odor. When he smiled, he only showed his brown-stained lower front teeth. Beker was pretty sure his upper teeth had been lost years before, given that he never saw one in the man’s foul mouth.

  Weed’s name was appropriate. Since DHS had shown up, he had been high on pot more than he had been sober. His days consisted of smoking ganja and cigarettes while pulling shots from the bottles of cheap whiskey provided by their new government “friends.”

  “Man, put that thing away,” Beker whispered. “And don’t aim it at me!”

  Weed was playing with the handgun all the time. If he wasn’t pointing with it, he was using as a stick to prod and poke piles of junk they ran across. With the neighborhood being so impoverished to begin with, nothing had caught the thin man’s attention, although it wasn’t for lack of trying. He was constantly scratching himself with the gun’s front sight and using it to lift anything that needed to be pushed away in his fruitless, but never-ending search for something worth stealing.

  “Don’t worry, youngin’” Weed said as he stopped to go through yet another pile of clothing. “I got the safety on. Ol’ Weed ain’t no fool!”

  Yeah, right! Beker thought.

  They backtracked and moved south, crossing several streets before resuming their westerly journey. The last thing they wanted was to run into whoever was manning the makeshift barrier. A few blocks down, they found a large, chain-link, fenced field. A sign posted at the gate read: OUC Property. No Trespassing. It was an urban field covered by the Orlando Utilities Commission’s equipment. Called a lay-down yard, it was a holding area for the power company’s electric line components.