by Wade Ebeling
“I’m here, Maggie…I won’t leave you,” he promised, ever-so-slightly squeezing her frail hand. “You will be alright…”
Maggie stubbornly shook her head again and wheezed, “You can’t let Danny see me. You have to get him out of here…”
“What? I can’t just leave you…” Allen cried, shocked that she would even suggest such a thing.
“I’m dying…You…must,” Maggie begged. She was fighting hard to find the strength of will to continue talking. “Please…please, Allen. You have to get Danny out of here. I let him…go out…Not his fault…Mine,” she slurred, slipping out of consciousness again.
Allen stood up. He looked at his wife, and then at his bleeding, throbbing arm. Knowing that if she woke back up it would just bring about more pain, he went to the other side of the bed, stooping to pick up the rifle from where it lay on the carpet. He could not just leave her here suffering like this.
Everything else washed away, leaving behind only anger.
Allen tried in vain to keep the feeling from settling on his son. It was ludicrous to put all of the blame on his lazy boy. Still, his mind found that option preferable to blaming his wife, given the price she had paid, or his own culpability for having left them alone. He had gone out with the best of intentions: to help keep his family safe and fed. Allen felt the tears falling down his face, but not the emotion that had born them.
Maggie was right; she was dying. He might be able to prolong her life by several days, but, in the end, it would still be inevitable. Something either clicked-off or turned-on inside his brain, he would never know for certain. Whatever it was had filled him with the strength to do what needed doing. Not just for the next few minutes, but long-term plans also became clear.
“I love you, Maggie,” Allen whispered. It sounded hollow, distant, and futile to his new ears.
Pulling the comforter up over his wife’s head, Allen took aim at the bulge. He firmly set his jaw and yelled out, “Ahhhh!” without opening his mouth.
Allen shot his wife in the back of the head.
This ended her misery, and started his own.
Chapter 16
Monday
Allen watched the rising sun sharpen the window outline, tracking its incremental movement down the wall. There was no more use in trying to fight for sleep, it was not going to come. He sat upright on the uncomfortable floor. It had been a fitful, sleepless night in the small, drab office that he had taken for himself the night before.
Every resident of Sunnybrook, who was still alive, had moved to the former elementary school turned Korean-only Christian church, which took the remainder of the afternoon and most of the evening the day before to make all of the needed trips. Everyone’s stashed supplies, eventually, made it inside the squat, sprawling building.
The main hallway worked its way around like an elongated rectangle. A large growth off one short arm was where the gymnasium used to sit, and the two long runs had classrooms and offices strung along them. Warm variants of orange and red brick wrapped the outside elevations, while white painted block lined the hallways and classrooms. The polished terrazzo flooring, which the former janitorial staff had spent years laboring over, had become scuffed and scratched, former standards no longer being upheld. Large area rugs in the rooms and long, rubber runners in the hallways kept noises from resonating down the corridors unchecked.
Danny was not among those inside the church. Allen had taken him to the home that they lost to foreclosure, leaving Danny there alone. The only thing that had changed in the neighborhood, since their untimely departure, was the still-smoldering wreckage of a Colonial, which used to sit directly behind. The house remained as empty as they had left it, even the multiple sheets of paperwork, which branded the house reclaimed by the banks, were still taped to the front window. It was common knowledge that houses with this particular stigma were empty. This fact would probably keep his son safe from looters while he was gone.
After removing his son from the picture, Allen returned to the apartments, where Jason cleaned and bandaged his arm. Counting Maggie, four people had died inside the complex; this number did not include the nine dead gangsters. This time, everyone helped dig the graves. Once the loved ones were buried, and before the tears had dried, the tenants were told to bring their belongings to the church. Allen gave only two stipulations: Everyone must work, and everything they owned now belonged to the group. Not having anywhere else to go, not having much food, and not wanting to be left alone, were all factors in people’s decisions. The group all worked very hard to accomplish the move, as quickly and quietly as Allen had demanded.
The church was three miles north and a half mile west of Sunnybrook. It was also only two hundred yards from the house that Danny had been sequestered to. The building was in a large, open field, in what was the dead center of the subdivision. The long sightlines made it very defensible, and the new large kitchen had made the choice to move here a nearly perfect one for the burgeoning group.
A dozen BBQ grills, and the two working generators taken from Northside RV storage, sat outside the west side of the building, next to the door leading into the kitchen. Dozens of bottles filled with propane sat just inside of the same door. All of the combined food was moved into an emptied out classroom across the long hallway from the kitchen, which was just past the first-aid station that had been set up. Temporary guard posts were positioned at opposite ends of the building, and any extra guns had already been passed out; those all mainly coming from Jason. All of this was accomplished before Allen had even attempted to get some sleep.
Troy Campbell, who used to live in building B, was being of great help to Allen. Troy was twenty five years old, very large, and in excellent shape. He was the kind of person that no one picked a fight with at the bar. Troy had almost finished with his training at the police academy when the country started to implode, and was both eager and willing to enforce the orders that Allen kept issuing.
One of the causes for Allen’s sleepless night was the mental checklist he was working on to give Troy. The list was made up of all the things Allen wanted the big man to oversee while he was away. Allen needed someone trustworthy who could stay with the group, making sure work got done while he was gone, and Jason and the constantly bitching Brown brothers were just not up to the task. Allen had also lost some sleep while making up a list of all the places that he, personally, wanted to raid.
By now, the lootings had plucked all of the low-hanging fruit, thus changing the equation of what was available over what was going to be needed soonest. Travelling more than a couple miles seemed a good way to get bushwhacked by marauding former-citizens or former-military, and the fear of roaming too far was hampering his ideas more than anything else. Then, of course, there was the biggest plan of them all, his strategy to get food from the BULKCO distribution center.
A scowl spread across Allen’s face as he laced his boots up. He felt a small pang of guilt for having left Danny alone, but it did not yet out-weigh the anger. The rational side of Allen said that he needed to take his son some food and water. The irrational side was saying that Danny would remain alone for some time. His fists clenched, just the mere thought of seeing Danny made him want to yell. The look that he had given Allen, as the front door closed last night, was straight from Maggie’s face. Allen simply could not bear to see it again.
After dry-swallowing three pain pills, Allen stepped out of the office. The room he had taken the night before was in the middle of the one of the long hallways that ran the length of the church. At the south end was the main entrance and doorway to the tall gymnasium. To the north was an emergency exit where the hall turned to the right at the kitchen, just after the new pantry.
The only signs of life that Allen heard were coming from the kitchen area. Two elderly women, who lived together on the ground floor of building D, were in the kitchen preparing a communal breakfast. Allen asked them where he could find Troy, Jason, Derek, or John. The women directe
d him outside to the front of the building to find Troy. The whereabouts of the other three men was unknown to them, and they quickly ended the conversation by returning to their preparations.
Allen thanked them for working so hard. This seemed to melt the wall that they had put up a bit, one even saying that she would have coffee ready soon, if he wanted to come back for some. Before turning around, he gave them a kind smile, and then he opened the door to the pantry. Trying to adjust his eyes to the lack of lighting inside the room, it slowly came into focus, painfully obvious exactly how empty it really was.
He had to get moving on his disturbing plan to stock the larder. He needed to find John, and make his useless ass help him carry it out, even if he had to be forced to do it at gunpoint.
Instead of searching for where the Brown brothers had slept, he gloomily walked the length of corridor to find Troy. Giving him the plans for the trenches and sandbag fortifications on the roof would at least feel like progress. People also needed to start searching houses for food and any other supplies they could find. This included tapping the fuel tanks of any vehicles left behind. Allen’s stiff back added that they should also collect anything that could be used for bedding.
As important as all of these things were, Allen felt that power was going to be of the utmost importance. Fuels would eventually run out or would just go bad given enough time. Part of the solution was knowing that Warren had started a futile campaign of sustainability. These sideways steps that the State of Michigan and Federal Government had already taken would be of great help to a small band like this.
Tornado sirens, programmable freeway signs, even those annoying ‘Your Speed:’ signs near schools were some of the first things to be updated. Individual solar panels, transponders, and inverters were mounted on or near these new replacements. The inverters held three large 12v batteries connected in series, and the larger signs even required an additional three batteries connected in parallel to the first.
This meant that almost everything needed to supply indefinite power was strung up on all around them, if he could get enough of them. The thick ash chocking the sun meant that Allen needed to get three or four times the solar panels that would have normally been needed. One of the main components of this plan would be the backup batteries used by Voice over Internet Providers, which hung about 15 feet from the ground, and were spaced out about every quarter mile on power poles, these boxes stored energy to provide emergency phone power during electrical outages. Access to just one or two boom trucks, found in equipment rental and energy provider’s parking lots, would ensure that the lights would not go out on Allen’s new team.
Walking out of the double set of glass front doors, Allen adding them to his growing list of things needing modification. He saw Troy standing at the parking lot’s entrance, talking to several people that Allen did not recognize. No one in the small crowd looked armed, with the exception of Troy, who wore a holstered pistol on his police issue belt. Allen spun his rifle to the front as he casually walked around the circle drive, which provided drop-off access to the front doors before curving off into the parking lot. All Troy needed was a velvet rope to complete the ‘giant bouncer holding people at bay’ look.
When Troy noticed that the people were looking past him, he turned and said, “Ah, here he is now.”
“What’s up, Troy?” Allen asked smoothly, searching the faces that stared back at him, and his rifle.
“Oh, these people all live around here. They saw us setting up inside, and, I guess, they were kind of hoping to…maybe…join us,” Troy said very diplomatically. He then quickly added, “I told ‘em that I would have to talk to you first.”
“I see,” Allen replied, giving an approving nod to the tall man. He took a step in front of Troy because he was feeling a little scrawny standing right next to him. “Well, two questions for you all then. Do you have any guns? And are you willing to give all your food, as well as anything else you have in your homes, over to our little…community?” He smiled just wide enough to convey that this would ensure their safety.
Allen could make out three separate couples and one lone female. The couples all started nodding at once, one of the men even adding that he owned several deer rifles and shotguns, all of which he would be willing to let people use. The lone female just stood with her arms crossed in a frigid-looking pose, staring at her shuffling, slippered feet.
Allen looked directly at her, waiting for her to meet his gaze before saying, “Is there a problem? We are offering the safety of a large group. If…you want to join, that is. That’s it. Nothing more. If we all work together…Well, we should all live through this temporarily, first. Once things cool down a bit on the roads, and around here, we should be able to walk right out of here…” Seeing that this did not have the desired effect, he continued, “Troy here is a good guy. I will be putting him in charge of most things around here. The main one being security. With all of us helping, we can lock this place down tight. We have some limited power, and foo…”
“What about our kids?” the woman interrupted. “I have a daughter. What about her?” she asked, with a steely-eyed stare that bore into Allen.
Having obviously misread the woman, he laughed briefly. Smiling broadly at her, Allen said, “I understand. Most of us have children, and that is probably the best motivator for people...” Allen stopped himself. He thought about what he had planned for today. This woman had legitimate concerns; especially about him. His thoughts gathered once again, Allen now felt his smile slip a bit. He hoped the others hadn’t noticed the internal conflict that he was having of right vs. wrong, weighing in against self-preservation. “I’m sorry, what is your name?” Allen asked, a firm tone replacing his smile.
“Susan. Susan Locke. And my daughter’s name is Corinne,” she answered in a measured tone, to offset Allen’s.
“Okay…Tell you all what, Susan” Allen said calmly, looking at each of the strangers. “You all go back home, and get your things together. Tonight, say around six or seven, you can come back if you still want to. No pressure, or hard feelings,” Allen issued. He wanted to postpone adding any other people until he had completed his errand. The fewer people around to see it, the easier it was going to be, he reasoned.
“We have kids, too…” one of the men added.
“That’s fine. Everyone is going to be expected to work. I want you to know that right off. The more people we get…the more…normal we can make things feel. The same goes for the kids. We cannot have them running around like this is a day care center or something. But a group of kids can play and work together the same as their parents can,” Allen said, a small smile returning to his face.
“What about food?” Susan asked expectantly.
“We have plenty for now,” Allen answered, waving his hand as if to say food was of little concern. “I am going to work on trying to get a bunch more today”. He emphasized ‘a bunch’ intentionally. “I need to steal Troy away now. We hope to see you all again tonight,” Allen called out, waving with one hand and pulling Troy, who was also waving, away with the other.
Stopping well short of the entrance, Allen started to tell Troy his expansive list that he expected the large man to get started. He pointed out where the holes should be dug around the building for the entrenchments. The spoils from digging would then be put into anything that could hold the dirt. Once the soil was contained, it could be pulled onto the roof for the two fortifications that Allen wanted up there. For today though, Allen mainly wanted people out looking for materials to barricade the doors and windows with.
He explained that anyone going out should stay in one group, working together and watching out for one another. They should work as a team to clear each house, keeping a map as they went of what had been searched. That way, if different people went out at a later date, they would not waste time looking inside the same houses. Allen offered up his and the Brown brother’s truck for the scavenging teams to use, because most of the other ve
hicles available were sedans and compacts, and of little use as cargo haulers; Allen had found this out yesterday during the move.
After the plans for the day had been made, Troy could no longer bite his tongue, asking, “Alright, Boss, where are you planning to get all of this food?”
Allen looked him right in the eye, weighing and measuring how much he should say. He started off by saying, “Listen, you are not going to like this…I don’t like this.” He figured that honesty was going to be the best course of action. He wanted to know if Troy would stand behind him, and he wanted to know right now. “Some sacrifices are going to be needed to keep this place going. I need to find Jason, so he can send some food over to Danny. Then I need to take Derek and John with me to go try and get the food.”
“Allen, I don’t understand…What are you going to sacrifice to get this food? And why is Danny over at your old house? Why not bring him over here?” Troy asked, a confused look on his face.
“Two things, Troy,” Allen said slowly, holding two fingers up. “First, we need to get Lynn and her kids out here, where no one can see them…” He looked around to make sure no one else was within earshot, and to give Troy a chance to catch up with what he was saying.
“Um…wow. I don’t understand at all…Where are you going to get the food, for…them?” Troy stammered.
“From where John used to work,” Allen said bluntly. “Anything else?”
“Well,” Troy said, slowly shaking his head in disapproval, “what’s the second thing?”
“Don’t ever ask me about my son again,” Allen said coldly. “You want to help keep these people safe? You don’t want the rest of them to starve this coming week, do you? This, right here, is what it’s gonna take. I gotta have you understand…We will keep the rest safe by doing this. But, listen, we have to act now, or it could be too late. I, for one, am not taking that chance.” Troy had kept quiet so far, so Allen kept up the pressure. ”What would you have me do? Do you have any better ideas? How would you feed them all? Thirty six people…Listen, you want those people out there to join? Do you even know why they are coming to us? We’re the biggest son-of-a-bitches around right now, that’s why. We need more food. Plain and simple. I just need you to keep ‘em safe, I’ll keep ‘em alive.” With that, he went to look for Jason, Derek, and John.