Wipeout | Book 3 | Empty Vault

by Richards, E. S.

  “But you say they’re still trying to keep things going? How can that be so?” He was confused by the statement, aware that having a supermarket chain up and running again was in high demand, but also aware of the restrictions stopping it.

  Harriet shrugged. “Beats me. All I know is that they got rid of the rest of us, but when I looked back the fellas at the top were locking the doors and staying behind.”

  “Interesting,” Walter replied, no more enlightened by what Harriet had said. He felt sorry for the woman though, clearly hard done by when it sounded like she had tried to be one of the better people. “I’m sorry about all that. I wish there was something I could do.”

  Harriet looked at Walter and raised her eyebrows, indifference showing in her face from their exchange. While Walter may have discovered some useful information for himself, he realized he’d done very little to help the woman and her daughter. His instincts as a police officer to always chase after the bigger picture could be debilitating at times and he knew this was one of them – investigating what might have happened at Pedro’s was one thing, but more pressingly he had a woman and child in front of him who needed his help. If only he had a way of doing that.

  “Have you eaten today?” Walter asked, changing the topic and focusing on the two of them rather than his own needs and questions. “Did you manage to get something before it all ran out?”

  “Not today,” Harriet shook her head. “Got here too late.”

  Walter frowned. “I’m sorry,” was all he could think to say. “Will you come back tomorrow? I’ll personally try to ensure there’s enough to go around and that you both get a good meal.”

  Harriet looked at Walter again, her eyes showing how little faith she had in the man and what he was promising. “Nowhere else for us to go,” she sighed.

  Frowning at how little faith Harriet had, Walter pushed himself from the curb and stood in front of them. “You have my word,” he said. “Come back tomorrow and I’ll have a meal for you – for both of you.” Harriet forced a smile onto her face and nodded, expressing gratitude as best she could before her gaze fell to the ground once again. “Thank you for talking to me,” Walter continued as he turned to walk away. “I’m sorry I haven’t been able to do more.”

  As he stepped away from the pair of them, all the pride and enthusiasm Walter had felt after his success earlier that day faded away. Saving a couple of lives was such a small blip in the bigger picture of the city. There were people starving in every corner of New York, their homes and jobs gone, their families torn apart and with nowhere to turn to and no hope for the future. He had known when he left the precinct that morning that cleaning up the city and returning things to normal was going to be a mammoth job, but he had no idea what he was getting himself into. New York was in the worst shape he had ever seen it. It was going to be an uphill struggle to get things back to normal again, if that day ever came.

  He did know one thing though. He had given Harriet his word and he would stand by that until the day he died. Walter wanted to make things right again and he was going to spend every waking minute working to do so from now on. Taking a deep breath, he looked around. There were plenty more people at the rescue center for him to talk to and plenty more troubles he could learn about. Even if Walter had to stay there all night, he decided he was going to speak to as many people as possible and try to come up with a way to help them all.

  As his gaze settled on an elderly couple sitting quietly at a table just inside the rescue center, Walter found himself desperately hoping that they too had a place to spend the night not far from there. The senior citizens always tugged on his heartstrings and he couldn’t bear the thought of a lost old woman out on the streets at night. Squaring his shoulders, he walked toward them, ready to hear their story about how Trident’s collapse had changed their lives and hopefully, ready to help them get through it.

  Chapter 15

  By the time Walter returned to the precinct much later that day, his voice was hoarse and his throat was dry and scratchy. He had been true to his word and spoken to as many people as were willing at the rescue center, learning about everyone’s troubles and problems and doing his best to come up with a solution that would help as many of them as possible.

  The one overwhelming feeling throughout the group however was a feeling of worthlessness and failure. People felt like their lives no longer had any purpose, their jobs had disintegrated along with the city and a large number of them had lost loved ones, too. The sensation that there just wasn’t any point in continuing was overpowering and that worried Walter. Hope was a very powerful emotion, but it was perhaps never quite as powerful as when it was not present.

  One particular conversation with a troubled father had made that painfully apparent. Walter had struggled to listen to the man’s whole story without breaking down himself. The father, a local man named Alex Cousins, had lost his job, home, wife and two children in the space of three days. After being in Alex’s presence for no more than sixty seconds, it was clear to Walter that the man was in serious trouble and posed a real danger to himself. He spoke like he didn’t see the point in living any longer, like there was nothing left in his life worth fighting for.

  Walter knew firsthand what it was like to lose a child and how it could rip your life apart. Alex Cousins had felt that twice over and then some. It was no surprise to Walter that the man was struggling to carry on himself. In the weeks after Walter’s own daughter had died, he had felt very much the same.

  He plunked down at his desk as the memories came flooding back to him, his eyes straying to the corner where once a picture frame had stood. Glancing down at his left hand the mark where his wedding ring had once sat was all but a distant memory now, the skin had returned to its normal pinkish color and all that remained of Olive and their daughter, Victoria was a distant memory.

  Nearly ten years had passed now – longer than his daughter Victoria had even been alive – but Walter could still picture her face perfectly, still hear her laugh in his head and feel her skin against his touch. Upon graduating from the police academy, Walter had married his high school sweetheart and firmly believed that was him set for life. He landed his dream job and bought his first house with his dream girl; life couldn’t possibly be better. But then a few months later he found out he was going to become a father and what he hadn’t thought possible happened. Walter couldn’t wait for his daughter to be born, Victoria bringing a whole new love into his life that he hadn’t known was possible.

  A wave of guilt washed over him as he realized it had been months since he’d visited her grave. The last bouquet of flowers he’d left would be dried out and withered, the teddy bear he’d positioned against the tombstone likely gone. He wondered whether Olive had been there recently, what with everything that was going on.

  Victoria was only three years old when she was diagnosed. Leukemia. It seemed to happen overnight; Walter could still remember being woken up by his daughter’s crying and sitting on the edge of her bed, trying to comfort her. Things spiraled so quickly after that. They were in hospital the very next day and just over a week later Victoria was given no more than three years to live. Three years. Walter had only known his daughter for that amount of time and all of a sudden, they were half way done.

  It wasn’t fair. He had felt it then but he had been forced to swallow his emotions and his pain and keep fighting. He did everything he could for Victoria, tried every experimental treatment, every new drug, every option, but nothing worked. The weeks turned to months and Walter was forced to watch as his only child became sicker and sicker, gradually worsening until she could no longer keep herself alive. What would the ward on the hospital be like now? How would the Children’s Leukemia Foundation be surviving? They’d looked after his baby for fourteen long months but how many kids would now be without that care.

  Victoria was only five years old when she died. Her life providing Walter the happiest and most heartbreaking of times.
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br />   Heaving a deep sigh, Walter put his head in his hands and closed his eyes. As he breathed in, he smelt the pristine scent of the hospital where they had spent Victoria’s final hours, mixed in with the damp and desperate stench of the local bar he all but moved into in the months after. He wished he had comforted his wife, Olive, during that time instead, but he had been selfish. Olive quickly became depressed, spending eight hours a day sitting on a bench at the local playground. She watched the other children playing on swings and building sandcastles, longing to see Victoria amongst them with a smile on her face. That was where Walter should’ve been, but instead he drank himself to delirium every night and staggered home in the darkness to pass out on the couch.

  Two years later they filed for divorce, their marriage – like their daughter – now just a thing of the past.

  The upcoming Christmas period would mark the ten-year anniversary of Victoria’s death. She would’ve been a feisty teenager by now, wearing too much make up and staying out too late for his liking. Walter sometimes imagined what Victoria would look like and how she might act, longing to have that feeling of being a parent once more. He didn’t even know where Olive lived now – the two of them had lost touch completely when she moved. Staying in contact with her was just too painful for Walter, it reminded him too much of all the suffering they had gone through and everything they had lost.

  Looking back on it all now, Walter knew it had all played a factor in helping him become the man he was today. But he also knew if he could go back and experience it all again, he would do so in a heartbeat. All the pain, all the torture; he would do it willingly just to be beside his daughter again.

  That was how he understood so clearly what Alex Cousins was going through when they sat outside the rescue center and talked about what had happened as the sun set across the city. When quiet tears started to roll down the man’s face, that was how Walter knew to place a hand gently on his shoulder, just reminding him that no matter how it felt, he was not alone. But it was also how he knew there was nothing he could say to make the man feel better. The grieving process differed for everyone, but it wasn’t something that could be alleviated by a stranger’s kind words, no matter how pure the intention was. Walter hoped and prayed that Alex didn’t do anything stupid and continued to keep fighting for the days and weeks to come. He also knew that if the man did make a certain choice, neither he nor anyone else would be able to stop it.

  What he could do however, was stop other people from reaching that point. He could make a difference before the point of no return and help spread more positivity across the city as best he could. New York had always been known as the city that never sleeps and in the current climate, that had never been more true. Walter had already sent word to as many previously high up people that he knew in order for them to pool together and try and get the city back on its feet. Captain Banes was on board and in a few minutes they would all be putting their heads together to work out the problem.

  There was just time for one last cup of coffee, which Walter poured steadily into his mug, his mind drifting to the people he had met that day and remembering how many of them were stripped of even the smallest luxuries like the coffee he was drinking. That – among many other things – was what this meeting would aim to resolve. The warm liquid against his lips carried the faint undertone of injustice, but Walter was ready to fight it until he could fight no more. He was inspired and above all, he had hope.

  “I appreciate you all coming out at such short notice,” Walter addressed the room. “I know it isn’t easy anymore, but hopefully that’s one of the things that we can change here, tonight.”

  Looking around the room, Walter spoke to the men and women who had gathered there. Although they had all previously carried positions of power within the city, everyone had been made equal over the past couple of weeks – something which was made abundantly clear by Walter taking the reins and his commanding officer, Captain Banes, sitting back to listen.

  They were the only two from the NYPD, but the Fire Chief was a familiar face in the room, as was Stephanie Matthews, a former news anchor and journalist who he had been interviewed by a couple of times. The five others he didn’t recognize but Walter was positive he would come to learn more than just their names in the next hours they spent together. He was determined to come up with a plan to clear the streets of New York and get the citizens back on their feet. Together they just had to figure out how to do that.

  “It’s no secret that someone needs to do something to stop everything from descending into an even worse state,” Walter continued. “And after this long, it’s clear no one has stepped up to that plate yet, but I intend to. There are people out there who have lost everything: their homes, their families, their jobs. There are people who have almost entirely given up on life, who don’t see any hope for the future or any way for things to return to normal.

  “There are also others who are taking advantage of this situation,” Walter changed tact, referring not to the people he’d spent the day helping, but those who he’d been forced to try and protect them from in recent times. “Gang activity is getting out of control and certain areas of the city are almost entirely lost to their control. There are hospitals being pillaged for medicine, arms shops being ransacked, food supplies bled dry. If we don’t act quickly, then there is going to be a divide in this city far greater than one we have witnessed before. It’s already happening – I saw it with my own eyes today. The fact that we are even sitting here having this conversation with a roof over our heads and hot coffee in our mugs puts us amongst the more privileged left in the city which is neither fair, nor good enough because if that’s privilege,” Walter paused, “then we seriously need to do better.”

  “What are you suggesting we do? None of us want to live like this, but there simply aren’t the resources for us to change things. There’s no money to get the electrical grid up and running again, there’s no way to import the food, no gas to get the trucks moving again or get the necessary security measures in place. We’re stripped bare and sadly there’s no one riding in on a white horse to save us.”

  Walter looked at the man who had spoken and nodded. He didn’t recognize him and the man had made no effort to introduce himself at the beginning of his short speech, his identity simply remaining a mystery for the time being. Perhaps they should’ve had name tags – an almost unmissable requirement had the discussion have taken place in the day’s before Trident’s collapse. Walter smiled to himself, amused by how such a trivial change was on his mind considering everything else they had to discuss.

  “All valid points,” he replied, “but they’re points that we need to tackle, otherwise they’re never going to change. The bottom line is that someone has to take the first step, no matter how difficult it might be. If not, then we’re never going to get out of this rut, are we?”

  “Exactly,” a woman nodded, agreeing with Walter’s statement. “Very well put Lieutenant. It’s about time we tried to do something instead of just sitting comfortably in this mess. It’s nice to meet you,” she held out her hand across the table, “I’m Samantha Rice, Director of City Planning. I think our first job needs to be clearing up the streets and getting rid of the gang activity you mentioned. There are parts of the city which are completely overrun and unsafe for people to walk through even in the middle of the day now. That’s got to be where we start.”

  “How?” The man from earlier spoke up again, now finally introducing himself to the room. “Philip McManaman,” he nodded, “former US Army. Forgive me for being so blunt ma’am,” he addressed Samantha, “but we don’t have the resources to clear the streets. The civilians are better armed than we are right now and we don’t have the manpower to change that just yet.”

  “But we can’t give them free reign to operate as they like,” Samantha argued back. “They’re already taking advantage of us; stealing our supplies whether it be food, medicine or whatever else.”

  “We
need to find a way to lessen their advantage over us,” Walter commented, keeping his voice steady and in the stream of conversation so to limit voices being raised and the debate turning into an argument. “Set up a system so that they need us, rather than them being able to carry on acting as they like.”

  “That’s the ticket,” Captain Banes nodded. “We shouldn’t be focusing on them at all – we should be focusing on those who need help and figuring out how to get them all back on their feet. Then, once we have a functioning society again, the people stuck on the outside of it will want a way to get back in. They’ll come to us for help, rather than luring us out to them in the first place.”

  Walter looked at his captain and smiled, thankful for the man’s input. Together they had nearly sixty years of experience and had overcome many sticky situations by each other’s side. Captain Banes was always a rational man and scarcely let his emotions get the better of him; for a passionate debate he was the perfect man to have standing by, always ready to help maintain the peace.

  “We need to make a list of the actions that should take place,” Captain Banes continued to talk, the room now listening to him and calming down slightly. “Once we have our priorities in order, we’ll know what to tackle first and the required steps to take.” He stood up and walked to the whiteboard affixed to one of the walls, picking up a marker on his way. “So, what are they? Gang activity is certainly one,” he scribbled it down on the board, “but is it the most important? I would argue food and electricity come first.”

  “Food definitely,” someone agreed, heads nodding around the room as Captain Banes wrote the items down on the whiteboard. “Shelter too – and security. So many people have lost their houses and they need somewhere to live. Plus, we need measures in place to police everything.”