by Tony Baker
He was respected by the rank and file because they knew he could be counted on to have their backs. His outspoken bluntness however, generally pertaining to bullshit, didn’t endear him to certain elements of the command staff, but even those he pissed off at times grudgingly respected Officer Harold Lancaster. At some point he had even earned the handle “Dirty Harry” when a couple of his buddies had conveniently let it be known that his favorite movies were Clint Eastwood’s Dirty Harry series; all five of them.
Harry never really got that though. He didn’t think he was anything like Harry Callahan. Yeah, okay, so he did happen to own a Smith and Wesson Model 29, with an 8 & 3/8” barrel chambered in .44 mag, with accompanying speed loaders, but he hadn’t carried a wheel gun since the mid-1980’s. Which had been a Colt Python .357 in those days. Now, with bad guys having access to automatic assault weapons, cops carried autoloaders. However, he had made an impression on the target range with that .44 many times, usually putting six out of six in the center consistently.
Nor had he once, in his entire career, run through the streets of San Francisco, jumping over cars, shooting “punks” one-handed with that cannon. He didn’t consider having his wrist broken the most practical way in which to end a pursuit, with all the reports that had to be written, while delivering iconic catchphrases such as “this is a .44 Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world, and would blow your head clean off; you’ve got to ask yourself one question: "Do I feel lucky? Well do ya, punk?”
After some good-natured ribbing and friendly pressure from colleagues he had worked with over the years and who had been promoted up through the ranks, he finally relented and accepted an FTO position the last few years before retirement. Being able to work the day shift, after fifteen years fluctuating between graveyard and swing, was one of the carrots that led him to finally promote up at least one small rung. As a Field Training Officer he was able to pass along experiences and real world techniques to the young men and women just starting their own careers – experiences that the academy could never hope to teach.
The “Dirty Harry” handle, and highly overstated reputation, had followed him to day watch. He had overheard rookies several times saying things like, “I heard Lancaster is kind of scary but a great FTO, and they say he gets all the most exciting calls! I really hope I get assigned to ‘Dirty Harry’.” Usually a couple of his buddies were in the vicinity, turning shades of purple to keep from laughing theirs asses off, while looking everywhere but in his direction.
“Yeah, they had nothing to do with this shit,” Harry always said, chuckling. But that was great because if the rookies respected him, or even feared him a bit, they would listen to what he had to say, and hopefully the experience they gained from his critiques would help them throughout their careers.
He remembered his own FTOs that first year, and how vital that portion of the training had been in developing his own career. As a rookie, which seemed like a hundred years ago, he’d trained with some of the most dedicated and qualified police officers he’d ever met. That was why, in part, he had enjoyed such a long, successful career and had developed into a decent cop himself. I hope to God some of those young men and women I helped train survived this zombie thing, Harry had thought sadly several times over the past few hours.
All retirement plans went in the toilet with the 2008 financial downturn when Harold Lancaster lost his entire investment portfolio. Like millions across the nation, he found himself scrambling to make decisions pertaining to his future. With only his retirement pension to live on, and Social Security still too far down the road to even consider, his plans were completely and totally fucked. His two buddies who were to partner with him also lost everything they had.
The apartment building Harry had lived at for the past several years was quiet with a fairly good group of tenants, and was located in Nob Hill, one of the most desirable areas in the City. He had gotten to know the owners of the property fairly well, so when the previous building manager retired, Harry was approached to take the job.
“All you have to do is collect rents, call a plumber when needed, and rent vacant units when they come up,” the owners had said during an impromptu hallway meeting.
“I’ve handled domestic violence calls, rapes, robberies, and shootings for years, how hard could it be! This’ll be a piece a cake,” Harry had concluded after that conversation.
With the allure of a free apartment and utilities, he’d accepted the position. It would be an easy way to eliminate one major expense from his tight monthly budget. It rapidly became apparent that the role of resident manager was anything but a piece of cake. The plumber could not be reached most times, tenants paid their rent late for all manner of reasons, and renting overpriced apartments, in one of the most expensive cities on the west coast, was like selling used cars at times.
Just eight months after taking the manager position, the owners had sold the building to an investor group, who could have cared less what happened, as long as the apartments were rented for the highest price possible. “We’ll get back to you,” was the general reply for anything else. Pest control was a foreign concept completely, and “Yeah, just send us an email and we’ll look into that,” quickly became their response for maintenance issues. Referencing back to his outspoken bluntness generally pertaining to bullshit, it was clear Harry’s bullshit limit was close to being achieved with these folks.
5
Along with his quickly growing angst with property management, and his retirement plans no longer conceivable, Harry came to the realization that he missed his former stress-infused life more than he had expected, which led him back to the department as a Level 1 Reserve Officer. A Reserve Officer is an unpaid POST, Police Officer Standards and Training, certified peace officer, who must maintain the same stringent POST standards and training as regular full-time sworn cops.
Reserve Officers have full police powers while on duty and in uniform, and must volunteer at least sixteen hours of their time per month, although they usually put in many more hours than the minimum. They patrol in vehicles, on bikes, on foot, and in some cases on marine craft. Most recently they were deployed to assist in all of the Occupy demonstrations in the Financial District.
Although a bit long in the tooth to become a Reserve at his age, Harry had ultimately been accepted after demonstrating he was still in great physical condition, passing the oral interviews along with the updated background investigations, and completing a recertification POST program.
It also did not hurt that Harry still knew many of the department command staff, including the chief, but those relationships only gained him a foot in the door. He still had to prove he could do the job, and would have had it no other way. This was not like becoming a security guard at the San Francisco Centre keeping homeless out of Bloomingdales or looking for a lost kid.
He remembered feeling his long-toothed age with all the young men and women enrolled in the POST program he had attended to obtain his recertification, but there had been an immense sense of relief that none of those young folks knew anything about Dirty Harry Lancaster. He had specifically approached the POST instructors, who would have known he was a retired cop, to request that they not refer to his former career.
Harry actually thought he saw some disappointment at the time, as he was certain they had some training scenarios planned around his experiences. He had no intention of reliving his FTO days, nor of imparting pearls of wisdom from the dinosaur age. He had found that had been a most liberating decision, and thus actually enjoyed the program immensely.
Although the physical conditioning required just about did him in. “Those fucking instructors are offering up some pay back for not letting them use me as a visual aid,” he had said after one particularly grueling day of hand-to-hand demonstrations in which they used Harry as the assailant, of course, and generally kicked his ass.
What was ironic was that after years of resistance, he had also accepted the rank of Reserve
Sergeant just eight months after being sworn into the Reserve Unit.
“It’s about time you finally took on some responsibility for a change, old man,” Captain Lester Tomey, who supervised the Reserve Officer Unit, had said with a huge grin while handing Harry a star with the word SERGEANT engraved on the upper rocker, with the word RESERVES directly below.
“Screw you very much, sir,” Harry had replied good naturedly as he had accepted the star from his friend of many years.
Lester Tomey and Harold Lancaster had gone through the academy together and even worked a car together several years later until Les had been promoted to sergeant.
“Who the hell names their kid Lester?” Harry remembered kidding with him when they’d first met and been teamed up for take-down drills.
“They were probably the same kind of folks who would name their kid Harold,” Les had immediately replied, laughing and then adding, “Let’s get pizza later.” Harry knew they would be friends.
Les promoted up through the ranks to captain, and the word had been he was in line for the next commander position. Those positions rarely opened up, but Les was patient, and he had made it clear on more than one occasion that he would retire only when they dragged him out “kicking and screaming and tossing my ass through the door.”
Harry unfortunately had not spent much time with him over the past several years, as life goes on and all, but he had always wished him well and much success. He hoped Les had survived the April 1st onslaught, or that he had at least died quickly and was not a zombie somewhere.
After the promotion, which really only meant Harry got a new star with a different word on it, he began to work a higher than average of twenty-five to thirty unpaid hours per month. Normally assigned security at special events or demonstrations for crowd control, he had also been utilized many times in regular street patrol. That had thrilled him, and although his reserve status did nothing to increase his pension, or pay him an additional salary, he nonetheless felt that old sense of fulfillment he had missed after retirement.
Harry’s thoughts at the time, finding himself back in police work, had run along the lines of the more things change, the more they stay the same, but as it turned out the decision to enter the Reserve Unit had ultimately saved his life. Being a Level I Reserve came along with a California PC 832 peace officer status, allowing him to carry, keep, and maintain firearms much more easily than as a retired cop, especially in the City and County of San Francisco with its progressive anti-gun laws. Harry clearly understood now what being truly screwed would have meant on April 1st when the madness began.
6
Pulling his thoughts back to the present, Harry stood up from the bed and walked the few short steps to the heavily curtained window. He had installed the curtains several years ago to block light from entering the bedroom when he had still worked the graveyard shift. It had been hard enough to get use to sleeping during the day without sunlight flooding the room, reminding him that a normal working person should be awake.
Now the curtains kept any light from the battery-powered lantern he had been using, not to mention the laptop and small television he had brought into the bedroom, from escaping the apartment and announcing his presence. Carefully pulling back a small section of the curtain, he looked upon a scene straight out of a horror movie. He said with a smirk, “Wonder what the new owners will do about a little zombie infestation.”
Nothing in his twenty-five years of dealing with the worst humanity had to offer could have prepared him for what he had been witness to since this all began. There were at least fifty of those things directly below in the street. They were going in and of buildings, which were obviously breached, pounding on doors of those they could not get into, all the while emitting that incessant moaning.
It was also apparent that the screaming he heard this morning had been from more survivors being found. Zs were pouring into the building across the street. Harry clearly saw, even in the dim morning light, fresh blood on the steps and sidewalk of the building that had not been there the day before. The bodies of the permanently dead kind lay everywhere, in every conceivable position, most mutilated beyond recognition.
Between the dead bodies and the zombies, the smell was horrendous, even through the closed window. Harry had come to know that odor intimately while responding to welfare checks on the elderly or the home bound left forgotten. The odor was of death personified; it permeated clothing, and assailed the senses almost to the point where you could taste it. Clothes could be cleaned, but that indescribable stench would linger in the nose for days. This was what once again assaulted Harry but a hundred fold; that, and an underlying trace of smoke.
Looking up slightly at the skyline above the buildings with concern and a real sense of dread, he saw the glow of the city burning. “This must’ve been how the folks felt who witnessed the ‘06 fire,” he said, closing and sealing the curtain.
Although the fire might possibly destroy the City, he was fairly confident that it would do so at a much slower rate due to the automated fire suppression built into buildings along with fire retardant construction materials required by the vastly improved building and planning codes since the 1906 earthquake, and the resulting fire that had destroyed the majority of San Francisco east of Van Ness Avenue to the Bay.
“The City will surely die, but at least it will take out a large percentage of those fucks as she does,” Harry thought. The spread appeared to be moving from the south side north, and although still south of Market Street, he knew his time frame to remain in the building was quickly closing.
“And I hate packing!” he said sarcastically.
It had only taken two days before the local TV stations went off the air and Internet service began to fail. But during those two days, there had been all manner of speculation as to what had happened. A virus, “Maybe.” Terrorist act, “Probably.” Some super-secret government experiment gone wrong? “Who knows?” Every religious zealot known seemed to be crawling out of the woodwork spouting, “End of Days has arrived; repent as God’s wrathful judgment is at hand.”
Then ‘respected government experts’ began describing medical reasons to explain why they were seeing “people suddenly becoming extremely aggressive, attacking and appearing to bite and consume their victims, with many of the victims then getting up and joining the hordes of infected”— and something about a mutated form of “Super Rabies”?
The local TV stations had field reporters in every part of the City, all with endless rhetoric about the events unfolding, although much of their descriptive had just been superfluous information. The old adage “a picture is worth a thousand words” was never a more true observation based on what was transmitted through the camera lens those first couple of days. Crowds of people, either pursuing or being pursued, running through the streets or pouring from buildings, with the infected indiscriminately attacking anyone they could get their hands on.
During all this, on a banner scrolling at the bottom of the screen from the San Francisco Office of Emergency Management, instructions were being relayed that all citizens should evacuate to one of the listed “established safe zones”. Other officials from the police department were encouraging citizens to remain wherever they happened to be, to lock all doors and windows, and that “help would be dispatched to your location as soon as possible”. Too many mixed messages to effectively save anyone.
Hastily assembled police skirmish lines, replete with officers uniformed in complete riot gear, were unable to hold back the hordes of people they had sworn to protect. Verbal commands were useless, as was the use of non-lethal weapons such as batons, pepper spray, or tear gas. Even less than lethal weapons – shotguns with rubber composite rounds – proved ineffective. At the point somebody decided to finally use lethal force it was obviously too late. The infected overwhelmed the lines in mere moments.
The officers surviving an onslaught at one particular line were seen regrouping to establish a new line, until
there was simply nobody left as they finally succumbed to the massive size of the zombie horde. Most of the mauled cops, like many other victims of the zombies, were seen standing up, with all manner of horrendous injuries, to join the exponentially growing ranks of the infected.
Harry knew that even if he had been able to respond to the call out he had received on April 1st he would have also been killed, or worse yet, become one of the infected. That fact did little to ease the sense of deep loss for friends and the horrific way in which he’d watched them die live on television.
Every part of the City, from the Financial District, Russian Hill, Telegraph Hill, the Avenues, South of Market and all other districts, were in complete chaos. Harry watched as those “established safe zones” that had been set up in Golden Gate Park, AT&T Park, and a couple of other centralized locations were overrun by the infected.
The local TV channels showed the same horror until the field reporters either abandoned their cameras as the hordes were closing in on their locations, or who were ripped apart waiting too long to join their fleeing colleagues. More than one reporter was heard screaming just off camera, while surely realizing their dream of a Pulitzer for their “career changing exposés” had been flushed. “Let’s get the fuck out of here!” A few made it, but most did not. Finally the stations just stopped broadcasting.
7
Thanks to the large water storage tank still used on the roof to service the apartment building, there was enough backpressure to shower. Although the water was cold and the pressure low, Harry did not care. Standing under the weak and frigid water, the events of the past several days inundated his thoughts.