by A. K. Meek
After running his hand over his deputy uniform to smooth out elbow creases, came around his desk and held his thick hand out to Johnny.
Sheepishly, Johnny examined the outstretched hand, then took it in his own. Bob shook it vigorously. “How are you doing, Johnny? I’m glad to see you here. Glad to see you made it.”
Johnny’s head spun between the alcohol, the experience of being at the dog pound, and meeting his former boss. “I’m not sure what this is all about,” he said. “What did I make?”
Bob laughed. “What you made is survival,” Bob said. “Survival in a new world.” Then Bob launched into a monologue like he’d been practicing it before a mirror for days, waiting for moments like this.
“See Johnny, even though we’re both men, there’s still a world of difference between us. Us Bowersocks, we naturally make money. In your case, you tend to scrape it together, just enough to survive. Now don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with that at all, but those are the differences.
“Ever since my great-great-grandfather, Isaiah Bowersock set foot in this country, money found him. He was inclined to make it. Destined to. Those same genetics that allowed him to make money were passed down to his children, to their children, finally to me.
“But I’m not saying I can sit back and relax. I still have to put effort into it, just like they did. But I have a knack for seeing undiscovered opportunity.
“What you see here, the Dog Pound, is just another extension of an opportunity to make money. But,” he held up a finger the same way a teacher laying out instruction would to one of their students, “there’s a problem. The money of old, before the world ended, isn’t the same money that we use nowadays. And this is where I need your help, Johnathon. People like you, with people like me, we can make money in this new world. We’re on the edge of something great, a great transformation that’s happening right now in our country. You may not see it, you may not even be aware of it, but it’s here.”
“But,” Johnny said, “how is this all working? How do you have power? In Bartel we haven’t had power for weeks.”
Bob answered, “Johnathon, the least of your worries should be how we have power. But I’ll allow this opportunity to show you what I’m talking about. Those with the money have the power. Those without sit in darkness and silence. That’s the important question I have to ask you: do you want to be the one with the power, or do you want to be the one that sits in the silence, in the darkness? Like where you slept last night.”
Bob talked in circles, and Johnny had a hard time following his train of thought. But even in his slow mind, Johnny caught the last part. He thought about the long night, the overwhelming doom that weighed on him like an anchor, ready to pull him to the depths of nothing. He had never been so alone, thinking at any minute he was going to die. He didn’t want that at all.
Roscoe and Bob seemed to see the same doubt in Johnny’s eyes because Bob added, “I see you’re still considering this, Johnathon. Let Roscoe take you for a little walk around the pound and show you a few things. Maybe that’ll help make up your mind.”
Johnny followed Roscoe and Linebacker down the steps of the mobile home turned animal clinic turned corporate office. Sounds: metal clanging, wood grating, engines running, barking, became louder.
“Where we going?” Johnny asked.
“We’re going to the kennels,” Roscoe answered. They rounded a corner and Johnny saw a low cinderblock structure of many kennels side-by-side at least a hundred feet long.
And the most disturbing thing was the majority of the cages didn’t hold dogs at all, but people.
The kennels were cells.
“Come on, Johnny-boy,” Roscoe said. He grabbed hold of Johnny’s upper arm and pulled him along. Somewhat reluctantly, Johnny followed him.
The first cell they passed had a pile of old tattered rags. It was a mix of clothing, coats, rotten sheets, and paper. Curled up in a ball atop the pile of trash was a thin man. He looked to be in his late twenties or early thirties. It was difficult to tell since he was as dirty as the trash.
The only color in the grey scene was an orange collar secured tightly around the man’s thin neck. Underneath and around the collar, his neck and lower jaws were red and swollen, chafed. He’d obviously been wearing that too-tight collar for a while.
On a fence post jammed into the ground, just out of arm’s reach of the cell a lanyard with a small electronic device about the size of a hockey puck hung. It was the same orange color as the collar.
The man in the cell didn’t react to their presence. He stared off into space with blank eyes.
They moved on.
The next cell housed two mastiffs that ignited in a round of ferocious barking. They switched between barking and growling, all the while baring vicious teeth. The floor was concrete and bare, except for a small water dish. It was half-full of murky water.
“I’d suggest not trying to pet them,” Roscoe laughed. “They might take a finger off.”
They moved on.
The next cell was empty.
They moved on.
The next cell housed two teenage boys.
They looked to be twins possibly, maybe brothers separated by a couple years. Dirt covered both, their brown hair matted in filth, and they huddled at the back of the cell. Duct tape was wrapped around each of their necks. But through gaps in the tape Johnny could see the same orange collar, like on the first man.
“Why are these guys in here?” Johnny asked, sickened but curious nonetheless. A voyeur at a horrible scene.
The brothers made Johnny think of Kurt. The man who drove him out of town. Who accused him of killing his wife. He swallowed hard against the still-fresh anger at his brother welling in his throat. He cared a little less about the brothers in the cell.
“Johnny-boy, it’s like Bob said, this is a new world we’re living in. The old one has burned away. But if you think we should sit around and cry about it, you’re wrong. There’s an opportunity here. Like Bob said, we have to do what we do in order to survive.” He walked from one kennel to the next, inspecting each like a parent searching for the perfect pet to bring home to their kid for Christmas.
“Money always speaks, no matter what day and age we’re in. And now, humans are the new cash crop.” He pointed to a middle-aged man who grasped the chain links. He appeared to have been worked over good; blood caked his face and hair. But in his eyes, there was defiance. Johnny was sure if the man had a chance he’d throttle everyone he could get his hands on. Roscoe smiled at the man as Linebacker smacked the chain link with one massive arm. The man backed away as the chains shuddered.
Roscoe whipped his pistol from his holster and aimed it at the man’s head, about six inches away.
To Johnny’s amazement the man didn’t flinch. His eyes looked past the tip of the barrel and focused on Roscoe.
With a smile, Roscoe turned from him and held the gun in the air. “And these, Johnny-boy, are the ATMs of the future. Guns are precious, almost as precious as humans.”
Attempting to spin the pistol like a spaghetti-western cowboy, Roscoe almost dropped it as he fumbled to keep it from slipping from his hand. He slid it back in the holster. “Come on, the best is yet to come.”
They whizzed past more cells, some empty, some with dogs, some with men and boys, and walked around the building, to another long stretch of kennels. Except these were filled with women.
Roscoe involuntarily smoothed back his greasy hair on his prematurely balding head as he slowed to scrutinize each cell.
“You have girls—women, too,” Johnny’s voice held a thin note of excitement.
“We’re all about equal opportunity,” laughed Roscoe.
Johnny scanned the women with fascination. He found his heart beating faster with each step.
Most looked away from their captors, keeping their backs to the guys. Some cells held two, others held more. The women outnumbered the men by far. And they all looked as filthy as t
he men. Orange flex-collars were tightly wrapped around each of their necks.
“What…” Johnny began, still not sure what to make of this all.
“It’s simple,” Roscoe explained to Johnny’s clueless face. “They fetch a high price. Once our society fell, cash became virtually useless. You can get so much more beer with a twenty-year-old.”
In Johnny’s dull mind, things began to finally click. “Slavery? You’re selling people?” He struggled to make the connection.
Roscoe stopped, looked at Linebacker. “I wouldn’t call it slavery. Gump here doesn’t like that term, being black and all.” He cast a smile at Gump, formerly known as Linebacker. “Bob says we’re profiteers. Indentured servitude, I think I heard him call it. Slavery just sounds so 1800’s.”
They passed cell and cell, inspecting the contents of each. One young black woman turned enough so that Johnny caught a glimpse of her face. It was just for a fraction of a second, but enough for him to make a connection.
“Sherry?” he asked, recognizing the girl who worked the cash register at the local Subway. On more than one occasion she personally paid Johnny’s bill when she found out his daughters were splitting a sandwich because he couldn’t afford more than that.
From muscle memory Sherry reacted at the mention of her name. She turned to face Johnny. Her eyes were full of fear, anger, hatred, and hopelessness.
“Yes,” Roscoe said. “We’ve got a few of Bartel’s finest here. We’re opportunists.”
Johnny put two and two together, realizing the kidnapping he’d witnessed were these people. They must’ve also grabbed Kevin and Janelle.
“The choice is simple, Johnny.” Roscoe lost his playful tone and stared through Johnny with a serious intensity that he’d never seen from him before. “You have a choice. You can be on the losing team,” he pointed to a girl, probably in her late teens, sobbing, partially hidden underneath a yellowed mattress, hiding from the world. “Or, you can be on the winning side,” he pointed to Gump whose jaw was flexing. “You can have the whole world, or you can forsake your life. Decide.”
That wasn’t much of a decision. Even if he didn’t feel like he was being held at gunpoint (which he thought he was) he knew what it felt like being on the losing side of things. He’d spent his whole life in that position. Now, he had an opportunity to do something different. To make something of himself. So what if it didn’t fit with what the old world said was wrong.
Who said what was right and wrong anymore?
Like Bob said, you have to adapt to a new way of life. And he was adapting. He was tired of losing. Now was the moment for him to win.
“Count me in,” Johnny said and he smiled at the girl hiding under the yellowed mattress. “I’m definitely in. Can we celebrate with a six pack?”
03.04
UNCAGED RATS
For the past four days, Johnny found himself caught up in a whirlwind of alcoholic pleasure. He came out of a hangover only long enough to get drunk again. In the short time between binges, he wondered what was going on in the pound.
Strange trucks would pull into the pound at all hours of the night. Sometimes they’d drop cargo off, other times pick cargo up. Johnny was sure it was people. When he’d swing by the kennels he’d see new faces mixed with the old. There was one face he’d discovered two days ago, and now it was a face he always searched for whenever he strolled by. Fortunately, Janelle hadn’t gone anywhere.
Now he reclined in a break room, which was a rundown dining room in one of the double wide trailers. The gentle hum of the window air conditioner lulled his pickled brain to the point of falling asleep. The door opening behind him interrupted his soon-to-come slumber. When he saw it was Bob he popped upright like a soldier whose commanding officer just walked in on him dozing off.
Bob gave him a smile. “How’re things going? You being treated right?”
“Can’t complain,” Johnny said. “Anything I could want is here.”
“Excellent.” Bob smiled more. “I came to ask for your help.”
“Sure, boss.”
“As you know, a machine doesn’t run without oil. Well, I see the Dog Pound as a machine. It runs great, but without maintenance it’ll fall apart fast. You know what I’m saying?”
“Sure.” Johnny didn’t, really, but knew Bob would explain because he liked talking.
“Well, our machine—the Dog Pound, needs more oil. Guns. Guns are the oil we need. Sure, we have plenty at the moment, but if we don’t take steps to keep new equipment coming in, soon we’ll be without. Can you imagine what would happen if we didn’t have firepower?”
Johnny mulled the thought. To be honest, thinking too much made his head throb. So he just shook his head.
“That’s right. Nothing good. Now here’s how you can contribute to the Dog Pound. I thought about who I could ask, and your name came to mind. I can’t trust this important task with anyone but you.”
His pride swelled that Bob would see Johnny’s value, even if he didn’t know what value he brought to the table. This new Bob wasn’t like the old Bob that constantly berated him on the job site.
“I want you to go to Bartel and get some guns. You know where your brother stashes them. That’s all. I don’t want you kidnapping anyone or killing anyone. Heck, I don’t even want you doing anything to harm your brother.”
Johnny thought about it for a minute. Bartel had plenty of weapons. Bob didn’t say all, he just said some. This would be easy. He could sneak it, take a few rifles, and sneak out. No harm.
He nodded his acceptance of Bob’s assignment.
Bob smiled.
Kurt couldn’t help feeling like a rat trapped in a cage.
For the most part, Bartel had been cut off from the world. Citizens had continued reinforcing the wall, and with each car bisecting the road, each stack of timber placed to form a new barrier, it felt like it was harder to breathe. The cage was slowly being built—by the rats.
To top it off, everyone was shoved into only a few city blocks. With no power, no running water.
To add to the misery, Farah had cut the town in half, claiming it for himself and his congregation, as he called them. Racial tensions ran high.
Kurt found himself and his men spending more time along the DMZ, as everyone called the artificial line separating black Bartel from white Bartel.
Most of the skirmishes were fistfights or Molotov cocktails hurled by teenagers or young adults. Being cooped up in a few city blocks isn’t an ideal way to keep kids busy.
Things weren’t working like the mayor had planned.
With even the gravity water tanks being out of commission, any drinking water came from the wells on nearby farms. So this meant an almost continual stream of people working round the clock hauling water from the farms outside the wall into the city.
No water meant sewage and waste had become an issue. The few porta-potties they’d managed to round up weren’t near enough to manage the roughly three thousand inhabitants.
Kurt didn’t even want to think about the illnesses that had begun to spread.
Bartel was never big enough to warrant a full-blown trauma center. They had a clinic with a couple of old-time doctors that still felt some kind of civic duty, thankfully, willing to treat patients for not much more than pennies.
After the world ended, one of the doctors, Lars Smith, was never heard from again, his house abandoned. The other, Edna Garwell, a widow well into her sixties, had worked day and night for two weeks before fainting from exhaustion. Fortunately, three good RNs had been able to keep things under control. Relatively.
As another night in a string of endless nights of sameness arrived, Kurt got his first notice of trouble along the DMZ. Clive informed him some budding artist decided to tag Moo Moo’s Yogurt Emporium a couple blocks over with a colorful choice of expletives. Then the hooligans chunked rocks through several surrounding plate glass windows. Clive and a couple other deputies chased them into an abandoned car lot. He d
escribed the lot as a modern-day Stonehenge of antiquated vehicles, which was just about right for a post-apocalyptic setting.
Kurt didn’t really want to go, but figured it would be better than staring at the walls of his office while letting his town burn down.
LaTonya was on shift, even though shifts had become more of an idea than a hard, set fact. When deputies were awake, they were in the office, just because there wasn’t much else to do beyond keeping the flooding torrent of chaos at bay.
LaTonya and a couple others milled around the office, catching up on never ending paperwork. Kurt wasn’t even sure if the paperwork meant anything anymore. He thought they did it just to keep their minds working so they wouldn’t shut down.
After staring at the trio shuffling stacks from one pile into another by candlelight, he decided it was time to leave the office.
Maybe he could catch his breath outside while investigating the disturbance.
A rat in a cage.
The nighttime air tasted as hot and wet as the day. The sun still hadn’t broken through the ever-present clouds overhead. Even with the sun remaining hidden, the daytime heat was a giant pressure cooker, and it was about to blow.
Or maybe it was the tension Kurt felt on his skin as real as the sweat pouring down his neck and into his eyes.
He’d hoped there was a breeze blowing, to at least purge some of the stench that had settled on the town. Sweat and Urine, that should be Bartel’s new name.
A burn barrel had been set up in front of the courthouse, just at the bottom of the marble stairs. Barrels had been strategically placed around the major traffic areas of the town: poor man’s street lights. Personally, he’d have done without the barrels because they generated more heat. More heat meant more discomfort.
A dozen or so people were standing idly around the barrel, talking. The courthouse had become the place for gossip and meetings. Being the geographic center, it was a magnet to draw folks in when they wanted to hear about current events. Given the days of waking up to nothing, there wasn’t much else to do.