The Dystopian Diaries

by K. W. Callahan

  But this time was different…very different.

  Time for another shot – the first two are finally kicking in.

  6:19 p.m.

  I asked Liz and AJ if they wanted dinner yet, but no one really feels like eating. I can’t say I blame them. I don’t really either, but I thought that dinner might help us take our minds off what happened earlier.

  I know it’s taking me a lot of writing in here to get to the point, but I think I’m still trying to process what happened.

  So Dan was really laying into this guy for messing with the stupid pineapple plant when one of the other men got up from the picnic table, hopped the wall, and walked up to Dan. I don’t think the guy even spoke a word to Dan before he pulled a gun, leveled it right at Dan’s head, and pulled the trigger.

  Dan dropped like a sack of potatoes right there on the lawn. Liz grabbed AJ, pulling his head up to her bosom as we watched, but it was too late, he’d already seen. Thankfully, however, he didn’t have to see the rest as Liz quickly guided him off the balcony and inside the condo.

  I Did.

  Dan landed on the ground face up. The guy had shot him right in the face, caving it in so that he looked like a melted plastic doll. It was a truly horrible sight. I’ve never seen anyone killed right in front of me, let alone in such a gruesome way that left the person so terribly disfigured.

  And things were about to go from bad to worse as the man turned his gun toward Angie Highmore, who stood standing over her dead husband screaming. He aimed at her upper torso and pulled the trigger, not once, but twice, dropping her alongside Dan. Then the man calmly shoved the handgun into his waistband, turned as though nothing had happened, and climbed back over the wall, telling his buddy in the process to “hurry up with that plant,” referencing the pineapple.

  The other guy did just that, claiming his ill-gotten prize after a few more seconds of cutting.

  Needless to say, Dan and Angie’s pineapple plant is no longer a running joke here at the condo. If anything, its leafy stump now serves as a memorial to its former caretakers. Speaking of the two, I’m not sure exactly what to do about them. Their bodies are still down there in the lawn.

  The people that killed them left the beach access parking lot about 10 minutes after the shootings. I can’t believe they were so brazen. They just kind of loitered around for a while, finished their drinks, cut up the pineapple and passed it around to eat, and then headed on their way.

  They must feel like they can do anything they want in our current environment. I’d go down and dig holes to put Dan and Angie in, but I don’t want to go out there while it’s still light outside in case those people come back. I don’t want to act like a scared weenie, but I don’t have a gun, and they do. And they are obviously willing to use it over the littlest thing. Once it gets dark, I’ll get a shovel and see if I can get John or Gerald or somebody to help me dig holes. I’m thinking that the soft sand in the dunes will be the best place for the bodies. Even if they’re shallow graves, it will be better than nothing. I’m hoping that my account here will help me better recall these events so that when things get back to normal, we’ll be able to make a report to the authorities in hopes of catching those murderers.

  Their pickup truck was a red Chevy. The SUV was a black Explorer. The guy that cut the pineapple was probably 32 or 33 years of age, around 5 foot 10 inches tall (although it’s hard to judge heights from four floors up), maybe 160 pounds, and had a full beard about an inch thick. The guy that did the shooting was around the same age but bigger. I’d estimate that he was at least six feet tall, maybe a little taller. And he was probably closer to 180 or 190 pounds, possibly even heavier. Again, it was hard to tell from my perspective.

  Now I’m left with a whole new pile of worries in my lap. Not only do I have to deal with burying my friends tonight, but I have to try to manage the situation with AJ. It was hard enough to see Dan shot in front of me. I can only imagine what it was like for a 12-year-old. I know that Liz has already talked to him about what he saw. I’m not sure what else I can say or do right now to help him deal with this, but I’m left feeling as though I should say something.

  I’m also left with the new reality of this situation. I knew that things were getting bad, but I didn’t grasp the severity. It just hadn’t hit home HOW bad or what people were willing to do to one another. It’s one thing when you see that sort of stuff happen on the news. It’s another thing altogether when you see it happen right on your front lawn.

  September 9th

  8:53 a.m.

  I wanted to sleep in this morning but couldn’t. My mind just wouldn’t let me. I was up late last night digging holes in the dunes for Dan and Angie. God, I hope I never have to do something like that again. It was the worst! John and Gerald helped me dig, but I did most of the heavy lifting considering I’m the youngest of the group. They were there mostly as moral support. Once we got the bodies in the ground, we each said a few words – fond remembrances of our friends – before covering them over.

  John and Gerald had both seen what had happened to Dan and Angie, but like me, were largely powerless to do anything about it. John has an old .32 caliber revolver, but he said he hasn’t fired it in decades. By the time he remembered where it was, dug it out of the closet, removed the gun lock, and had it loaded, the people who had killed Dan and Angie were already gone. Just as well in my opinion. I can only imagine John waddling down there with his pistol to do battle with that crew of drunks. I don’t think it would have ended well for him after seeing the quick work they made of Dan and Angie.

  Still, I guess it’s good to know that someone is armed here at the condo building. I wish I had a gun. I wouldn’t want to use it, but it would sure add some peace of mind to our situation. If someone manages to get to the upper levels of the building, what are we going to do? There are no police to call. I have no weapons other than knives up here. There is just our front door with two locks standing between us and anyone who wants to get inside. And I’ve seen how easily front doors can be kicked open.

  Wait…that gives me an idea. I’m going to check something out.

  10:01 a.m.

  While I was writing about our door earlier, I realized something. After taking measurements with a tape measure, I’ve found that the sofa-style chair we have in the living room, turned sideways, will fit almost perfectly in the hallway that runs from our front door, past the kitchen, and opens into our dining/living space. This means that if I slide it into position directly in front of our entry door, it would be almost impossible for anyone to break through from the outside. Someone might be able to get the door open, but it would push in against the side of the sofa chair after opening just an inch or two. Then the chair would be shoved against the opposing wall, keeping the door from opening any farther.

  It’s a perfect addition to our personal security. It will be kind of a pain to move and/or climb over should we need to leave the condo, but in my mind, the inconvenience is well worth it.

  I think I’m going to call AJ and have him help me get it into place. I don’t really NEED the help, but it’s a way to make him feel useful as well as safer after the whole Dan and Angie incident.

  2:02 p.m.

  I just got back from Catherine’s condo. I wanted to pay her and the girls a visit before we barricaded ourselves inside our condo. She had heard the shots but didn’t know about Dan and Angie. I told her in the absence of the girls since I didn’t want to scare them.

  I asked her how they were doing. She said they were going a bit stir-crazy. I said that AJ was feeling the same. Therefore, I invited them over this evening after dinner for a combined family game night. I told her that since we’ve all been fairly secluded, I thought the chances of any of us being infected with the flu were slim to none, an assessment she agreed with.

  While I was out, I also did wellness checks on the remaining condo residents that I hadn’t seen during the burial process and that included Ed and Ira Levine and Ruth Be
nson. I have no idea where Rich and Barb Janowski are. I haven’t seen them in over a week. I wonder if they are on another one of their cruises or something.

  Ed, Ira, and Ruth seem okay but very bored and starved for news of any sort. Otherwise, they seem to have enough food, and all seemed to be in good health. I told them to sit tight and let me know if they need anything or see anything out of the ordinary.

  Huh, “out of the ordinary”. What a joke! This whole damn thing is out of the ordinary! But I think they knew what I meant. People with guns, people trying to break in, or people otherwise just looking to conduct random acts of violence is what we’re all on the lookout for after yesterday.

  8:22 p.m.

  Tonight was nice. Catherine and the girls came over to play board games. They brought with them some games we didn’t have, which was a good thing since most of our games are for littler kids. We had a game of Monopoly, and then we played several rounds of Jenga.

  It was a ton of fun and really helped take our minds off things for a few hours. I think we all needed this break from reality even if it was only for a couple hours.

  But now it’s back to reality, and I’m left wondering what to do next. It’s not just about the next day or two, but what if this thing doesn’t EVER get resolved. I mean, I suppose the flu will eventually die out, but what if that’s it? What if the flu goes away but normalcy never returns? We’re just so lost here, like a lifeboat adrift at sea. We have no guidance as to what to do next. We have no roadmaps to get us to the next stop. The questions just build upon themselves one after another. They start at the here and now, and they stretch out over weeks, months, years, decades.

  How is AJ’s life going to be affected by this when he’s our age? What will seeing the death of Dan Highmore do to him? I can only pray that in some warped way, maybe this will all be of benefit to him. I’m not sure how, but I can hope. It’s like that saying, “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” Maybe seeing this, experiencing this, struggling through this will make him stronger down the road somehow. As a parent, I just have to make sure that he GETS through this. And I think I’ve been going about it in a piss-poor way. I haven’t been taking this thing as seriously as I should. But seeing Dan and Angie die yesterday jolted something inside me. It’s time to start getting organized. Our lives are at stake. It’s one thing if I don’t make it through this, but I have an obligation to ensure that Liz and AJ do.

  September 10th

  7:15 a.m.

  The power went out sometime last night. I knew something was wrong when I woke up sweating this morning. I don’t know how long it’s been out, but it has to have been several hours. We keep the air conditioning set around 71 degrees at night, and currently it’s 76 in here.

  I checked the breaker box just to make sure we hadn’t blown a fuse or something, but everything looked okay.

  This is NOT good. If it stays off much longer, we’re going to have to take action and start loading up the coolers with our cold food. The water is still running for the moment, so we’re going to fill up a bunch of extra pots and other containers – just in case. I wish we had a bathtub here. I’d fill that up too. But both bathrooms only have walk-in showers.

  7:53 a.m.

  The power is still off. We’ve pulled all the blinds on the ocean-facing side of the condo in an effort to keep the morning sun from warming this place more than it already has.

  Our kitchen looks like some sort of hoarder lives there. There are pots, pans, plastic containers, and even large cups of water set all over the place. AJ and Liz are placing pieces of plastic wrap overtop all the open containers to help keep out dust, bugs, or whatever else might end up getting their way into our fresh water until the power comes back on – whenever THAT might be.

  9:01 a.m.

  There’s still no power. The thermostat, which is located between our kitchen and living room, reads 79 degrees. It’s only going to get worse if we don’t have AC. I’m not looking forward to the rest of the day if we don’t get power back soon.

  We’ve experienced Florida without air conditioning before. Our AC went out a couple years ago, and it took us several days to get a repair person out. Thankfully, Dan and Angie were out of town and said we could stay in their place until our air got fixed. Poor Dan and Angie. I still can’t believe they’re dead and that I had to bury them. It’s all so surreal – like a bad dream or hallucination or something.

  11:02 a.m.

  We were sitting out on the balcony, trying to get some of the mid-morning breeze, when the power came back on. I literally bolted back inside where I cranked up the AC and turned the fridge to its coldest setting.

  Now we’re just sitting inside, getting cool again and praying for the power to stay on. I know that John has a generator for a worst-case scenario, but that can be a pain in the butt to run. And how much stuff will we be able to run off it? We won’t be able to run our air conditioners. Maybe a couple fans just to stay cool, but we’d need a lot of long extension cords depending on where John decides to position it, and that’s IF he allows anyone else to siphon off some of his power. I guess we could at least power our refrigerators, I hadn’t thought of that. Hopefully the power will just stay on. Then we won’t have to worry about it.

  For now, we’re going to make lunch. We’re working on finishing the last of the lunch meat. We figured that we should eat that type of food first and save items like peanut butter and jelly for the future since that stuff doesn’t go bad as quick.

  3:13 p.m.

  I hear someone yelling out back. I’m going to move the sofa chair and take a peek outside to see what’s going on.

  3:08 p.m.

  There are multiple vehicles (several of which are large, moving-style trucks) pulled up in the condo building’s parking lot. John is talking to several of the vehicle occupants from the safety of the 4th floor balcony/hallway that skirts the building’s inner perimeter. I’m going to join him.

  3:44 p.m.

  This whole thing just keeps getting worse and worse. I really don’t know what to do anymore. Short term or long, I think we might be royally screwed. I’m not holding back any more on the thoughts I put down in this journal. My writing in here began as a way to memorialize our stays here. We’ll, to be frank, and with the way things are going, it might instead be more to memorialize US.

  So, more about the vehicles that pulled up in the parking lot. Gerald and Maggie Phillips had joined us outside, as had Ed and Ira Levine. I think we were all there not so much as a show of unity or force but more out of fear, curiosity, and maybe even a little bit of hope.

  And hope is exactly what we got…at least at first. The small convoy of vehicles, which included two moving-style trucks as well as several passenger vehicles, had pulled up in the condo parking lot. A small group of men and women had climbed from the vehicles and had assembled themselves near the clubhouse so that they could converse with us.

  It turned out that this was a sort of aid convoy organized by several good-hearted families living in a nearby neighborhood. They were going up and down A1A seeing if people needed help and handing out supplies. They had things like cans of food and bottled waters for those who were unprepared for the extent of the flu and its ensuing aftermath.

  At first, we were kind of wary of an “aid convoy”, when we’d been left so alone and without assistance over the past week. I think we all kind of figured that if help was to come, it would arrive in the form of FEMA, the Red Cross, the Army, the National Guard, or some similar government agency or relief organization. So to find that our first offer of assistance came in the form of neighbors seemed somewhat suspicious at first. I guess that’s kind of sad in a way. It certainly says something about modern society. In the old days, neighbors would have been the first to offer help. Now we wait for a government that never arrives.

  I’m sorry; I need to take a break. I’m feeling more and more exhausted by all this. The stress of this situation is starting to take a toll on
me, not so much physically as mentally. I’m having a tough time calming my brain after the past few days. I need a drink. Alcohol doesn’t fix what’s going on here, but it sure as hell helps.

  6:47 p.m.

  We made a frozen pizza for dinner. It was quick, easy, and tasty. I didn’t feel like cooking, not after what I saw this afternoon with the aid convoy.

  I drank three beers with my meal. I know I probably sound like some sort of drunkard, but after the day I’ve had (or DAYS I’ve had) I felt I owed it to myself. Liz had several glasses of wine, and we even allowed poor AJ to indulge in a couple sodas. I think we all needed some relief from this increasingly pressurized situation. But I’ll write more about that later. For now, I just want to try to enjoy a few moments with the family, free from worry…or at least as free as we can be these days. We found a Yahtzee game in one of the bedroom closets when we were cleaning the other day so we’ve decided to have a game of that before getting ready for bed.