My Dad gave me Charlie’s story to read after we came back from burying Charlie.
Everyone in our village was at the funeral.
We buried Charlie up on the hillside on a ledge that overlooks the lake and the cabins.
He is buried between my Grandmother Stacey and Wolfe.
I just thought you should know.
Signed,
Charlie Meadows IV.
Charlie’s Great Grandson.
I hope you enjoyed the story of Charlie and Wolfe.
If you haven’t signed up to be on my email list to be notified of future book releases, feel free to email me at
[email protected]
and say add me to your email list.
Until next time, I hope you will check out some of my other books.
The First Night
June 2018
By
Gary Chesla
It was a normal balmy night in Kingsland, Georgia, at least that was how it started.
But as the night progressed, it soon became apparent that something about the night was wrong.
It wasn’t long after the night began that things started to spiral out of control.
Michelle arrived at the Kingsland Public Safety Building to start her first night on her new job.
She had bought a new dress and hoped to make a good impression on her first night.
The job was something she had never done before, but she hoped she would be able get through the night without making too many mistakes.
After all, she had always been a fast learner.
But this night would not allow room for any mistakes.
Michelle soon realized that if she didn’t learn fast, she would not live through the night.
When a strange call to the 911 dispatch center was received, Dave, who was in charge of the night shift at the Kingsland Police Department, was sent out to investigate.
The call itself was strange, but what he found on the scene was even more puzzling and horrifying.
Investigating what had happened became even more difficult when he began to be overwhelmed by a flood of other strange emergency calls.
As Dave struggled to make sense out of what he found, he soon realized where it was all leading.
It led to Dave running for his life.
There is a first for everything.
Tonight, would be a first for many things in Kingsland, Georgia.
As the song goes,
For everything there is a season
A time to be born …………. and a time to die.
Chapter 1
Michelle walked into the Kingsland Public Safety building.
She was excited to be starting her first real job, but she wasn’t thrilled to be starting it at 1:00 AM.
She was used to working at night, she had spent the last year working the evening desk over at the Springfield Inn, but by this time of the night she was usually at home tucked comfortably in her warm bed.
The last time she had been out this late, her mother grounded her for a week and made insinuating comments about why she had been out so late.
Working over at the Springfield Inn, she made enough money to put gas in her car and eat out a few times each week.
It was enough to provide spending money for a girl living at home without any financial obligations, but not enough to give her any sense of independence.
It definitely wasn’t enough for her to think about moving out on her own.
Most of her best friends had gone off to school or had moved away already to get on with their lives, leaving Michelle behind stuck in her old home town trying to figure out what to do next.
The cliental that she had to deal with each evening at the Springfield Inn was often enough to make her wonder if going out on her own in the world was something she really wanted to do.
Michelle had been out of high school now for almost a year and felt it was time that she got a real job if she wanted to live the kind of life she had always dreamed about.
Despite her reservations about the kind of people she would have to deal with in the real world, she knew she didn’t want to live at home for much longer, but she would need to find a better job to be able to make the right move.
Her boyfriend had been after her to move in with him, but she was determined not to make the same mistake her mother had made.
Her mother had married her father right after they had graduated high school and Michelle had been born six months later.
Her parents had big plans, but a young couple with a baby, things just didn’t go as they had hoped.
It took all their money and time to care for Michelle resulting in their plans being postponed until the next year.
Unfortunately, they found themselves having to postpone their plans year after year.
One thing had led to another and before they knew it, their opportunities for making a better life for themselves had passed them by.
Now they found themselves working minimum wage jobs to just pay the bills as the better higher paying jobs were being taken by younger better educated applicants.
They lived in a small apartment with a TV that worked only half the time and drove an old car that was in the shop more than it was out of the shop.
They found themselves struggling unsuccessfully to just keep up with their bills with no time left to find a way to enjoy life.
Michelle was determined not to end up like her parents. Besides, they hadn’t come right out and said as much but she could tell that they were hoping that Michelle would be moving out on her own soon.
Michelle was all for moving out, but the problem was how to do it.
She took the job at the Springfield Inn so she wouldn’t be a burden on her parents and as a way to become independent.
She was anxious to be out on her own, but until she and her boyfriend found real jobs and a little security, getting married or moving in with him was not going to happen.
Besides, Michelle wasn’t sure that she wanted to spend the rest of her life with Kevin.
She felt that maybe it was time that she moved on.
Michelle had been putting in applications hoping to find a better job for the last six months.
One week ago, she got a call from the County to go in for an interview at the Public Safety Building.
She was disappointed when she didn’t get the job as an administrative assistant that she had applied for.
It appeared that she didn’t have the education or the experience to qualify for that job.
It wasn’t the first time she had heard that excuse.
She felt really down when they called to let her know that she didn’t get the job.
Michelle thought that after all the rejection she had experienced over the last six months that it wouldn’t have bothered her as much, but for some reason it did.
However, as she began to cry, the lady on the other end of the phone began to tell her that they felt she would be perfect for another opening they had in another department.
The job paid twenty dollars an hour, came with health insurance, a county pension plan and two weeks of paid vacation the first year.
Being paid to go on vacation was something she had never even thought about, but it sounded amazing.
Michelle couldn’t believe her good fortune.
It was more than she could have hoped for.
She had to restrain herself from running out and buying the new Honda that she had her eye on.
Michelle instead decided that she could get another year out of her old Toyota and maybe even help her parents out a little until she made sure the job would work out.
Having a car payment without a real paycheck would only make life worse than what it was now.
In fact, having a car payment without a real job could be the thing that would start her on the road to the kind of life she was trying to get away from.
So here she was, on her way to work and what she hoped would be the first
day of the kind of life she had been wanting.
The job was being a phone operator at the Kingsland 911 Dispatch Center.
She got the job because they told her she had a nice voice and seemed to have the type of calm and personality to help people in trouble.
When she found out what the job entailed, she was sure her conversation with the interviewer about the difficult people she had to deal with at the Springfield probably had helped her get this new job.
It made her feel like the time she had worked at the Springfield for peanuts wasn’t wasted after all.
Michelle was excited about the job but wished the opening would have been for a position during the day instead of one in the middle of the night.
But if all went well, Michelle was told that after she would be on the job for a while, she could transfer to another shift when an opening became available.
To get a job like this, she was willing to do what she had to do, it was an opportunity just too good to pass up over something as trivial as her not wanting to work nights.
Life hadn’t been easy and she never expected to have her dream job just handed to her, she was prepared to work hard for what she wanted.
“When do I start?” was all she could say.
Michelle parked her car in the County parking lot behind the building.
She got out of the car and locked the door even though she doubted that anyone would want to break in to and try to steal her old Toyota.
She had often joked that if anyone ever stole her old heap that they would bring it back the next day.
But she did it out of habit anyhow, besides the car as bad as it was, was all she had.
As she started walking towards the building she pulled the top of her blouse up around her neck to fight off the chill she felt.
The cold damp air blowing in off the Atlantic Ocean felt like it was blowing straight through her, making her shiver.
It had been a while since she was out this late at night but she quickly remembered how cold and damp the night air was at this time of night.
The one dim street light in the parking lot that was casting long eerie shadows across the pavement also made chills run down her spine.
Even though this was the County Safety Building, she didn’t feel all that safe at the moment.
The area had a problem with vagrants and gangs running drugs, something that she had never thought much about until seeing the eerie shadows that seemed to move across the dimly lit parking lot, blocking her way to the door of the building.
Her mind started playing tricks on her, making her imagine that the shadows were the outlines of people lurking in the darkness waiting for their next victim.
It was almost enough to make her think about asking her boyfriend to drive her to work tomorrow night, but she knew that would only lead to another long uncomfortable discussion about moving in with him when he would come back to drive her home.
The fights with Kevin had been more frequent lately and much more unpleasant.
She didn’t want to deal with that any more.
She took a deep breath to clear the thoughts out of her head and told herself that she was a big girl that could drive herself to work, beside it would be daylight out when she went home.
Once inside, she would be safe.
She was sure the area around the County Safety Building had to be safe and she was just letting her imagination run away with her.
It had to be because she was nervous to be starting her first real job.
She was sure that after tonight, everything would feel much different after she felt more confident and familiar with the area around the County Public Safety building.
Michelle quickened her pace as she walked across the parking lot, watching the door to the building get closer with each step.
As she reached for the door handle she thought, “The night air sure smells extra fishy tonight. I hope another whale didn’t beach itself over near the Kings Bay Submarine Base again.”
For some reason whales were always swimming up on the beach over by the submarine base.
The locals thought it was probably all the sonar signals coming from the submarines as they entered and departed the base that confused the whales, causing the huge mammals to lose their sense of direction and end up on the beach.
Whatever the reason, the smell of dead whales was a familiar odor that often lasted for days at a time.
Removing something the size of dead whale from the beach wasn’t an easy task and often took some time to get them off the beach.
However, the smell of the decaying animals usually started after the first day and often hung around for a few days after the whales had been taken away.
It had been a few weeks since a whale had ended up on the beach, so Michelle guessed they were due.
Michelle felt relieved as the door opened and she stepped into the warm comfortable air inside the building, turning her thoughts away from dead whales and the scary dark damp parking lot to the more pleasant thoughts of starting her new job.
She straightened her dress and brushed out the wrinkles that had started to form on her dress from sitting in the car on the drive over to work.
It was one of two new dresses she bought to start her new job. The dresses were the only things she had allowed herself to splurge on after finding out that she had gotten the job with the County.
Tonight she wore the new three piece blue dress suit that she thought made her look professional.
She hoped that it would help her make a good first impression because she knew it was important to get off to a good start.
The first thirty days was a probation period before she would be considered a permanent employee and she was hoping her appearance in the blue dress would make her new employer overlook whatever mistakes she might make on her first day on the job.
She glanced at her reflection in the window on one of the closed doors as she walked down the hall.
She smiled at what she saw then began to look for the door to the 911 dispatch center.
She hadn’t seen the 911 Dispatch Center when she had been here for her interview, but she assumed it would be a large office with six or more girls busily manning the constantly ringing phones.
She based her idea of what the 911 Dispatch Center would be like from shows like Law and Order, Chicago PD and other similar shows her parents had always watched when the family TV was working.
However as she walked down the long hallway, lined with the closed doors to the dark offices that were on both sides of the hall, she started to wonder if she had come in the wrong door.
The only light in the building was a soft glow that was flowing into the hallway through the window of a small door at the end of the long hallway in front of her.
The building was also very quiet without the constantly ringing sound of telephones that she had expected to hear.
When she finally reached the only office with any light coming from inside the room, she cautiously looked in through the window.
A stocky middle-aged woman sat at the only desk inside the room with her feet propped up on the desk.
On the desk was a single computer monitor and two telephones, one red colored phone and a normal looking black one.
The woman sat with her back to the door and appeared to be reading a book.
Every few seconds a puff of smoke rose above the woman’s head.
Michelle glanced at the no smoking sign on the desk to the left of the woman and wondered why the woman would jeopardize her job just to smoke.
“Surely someone would smell the smoke and might report it to the supervisor,” she thought.
Michelle tapped on the door, not wanting to walk in on the woman while she was smoking.
She didn’t know who the woman was, but she decided that on her first night it would not be a good idea to just walk in and embarrass the woman by catching her doing something she obviously shouldn’t be doing.
“The door is o
pen,” the woman shouted with out bothering to turn around.
Michelle opened the door and stuck her head inside the room, “Hello? I’m looking for the 911 Dispatch Center. Can you help me?”
“You found it,” the woman replied as she put her book down and turned around in her seat to face Michelle. “Can I help you?”
The woman smiled and let out a big puff of smoke that formed a circle and floated into the air around her head.
“Yes Ma’am. My name is Michelle Torge and I’m supposed to report to the center at 1:00 AM to start my new job, but I’m afraid I’m not sure where that is. I was told to come in the main door and I would spot it right away, but….”
“So you’re the new operator,” the woman smiled, taking another puff on the cigarette.
“Yes Ma’am,” Michelle replied.
“Well have a seat and make yourself comfortable,” the woman continued. “I’m Betty Davis, not ‘the’ Betty Davis of course, she’s dead, but that’s my name. I’m the supervisor of the dispatch center. I’m here tonight to show you the ropes and teach you the job. After tonight you will only see me about once a month, but you can call me anytime if you run into any problems.”
“I was expecting the dispatch center to be bigger,” Michelle said as she looked around the room, “and that there would be more people here.”
Betty laughed, “I see you have been watching too much TV. As you know Kingsland is not a big place like New York City, so we don’t have as much activity around here to justify a large center. There will be nights where you will wish there were a dozen people here to help you, but on an average night you will only have to deal with three or so calls. We’ve found that most of the time one person is all we need.”
“So I’ll be here by myself most of the time?” Michell asked. “Is that safe?”
Apocalypse- the Plan Page 36