Charlie's Requiem: Resistance

by Walt Browning

  “Oh yeah, it’s a Jewish thing. What else can’t you eat?”

  “Camels.” Claire deadpanned as she put another big bite of food into her mouth. “I’ll bet they’re delicious.”

  Rachael snorted and began working on her salad. “So what are you planning on doing tonight and tomorrow?”

  “I’m heading over to talk with the HAM guy.”

  “With all the shit that’s going on out there! Are you kidding?”

  “There is a convoy leaving at nine o’clock, and they can drop me off a couple of blocks from this guy’s house. I know he’ll be there on his radio. He said that Saturday nights were particularly busy. I just need to speak with my family. I miss them.”

  “What about getting back here?”

  “The convoy will pick me up when they return tomorrow. The radio guy offered me a room for the night.”

  “I’m sure he would,” Rachael said.

  “I don’t think I have a lot to worry about,” Claire said as she put her fork down and brought out a plastic zip-lock bag. She stuffed the remaining chicken into the bag along with a second full bowl of carrots. She zipped the bag closed and put it in a brown paper bag along with a half-dozen cookies wrapped in a napkin.

  “You think that food in the belly will prevent lust in the heart?” Rachael asked. “Here in the South, we know that a way to a man’s heart is through his stomach.”

  Claire stood up from the table and grabbed her tray of dirty dishes.

  “Well? You didn’t answer my question. How’s that food gonna keep his hands off you?”

  “He’s old,” Claire said.

  “A dirty old man!” Rachael shot back.

  “He’s in a wheelchair. He was exposed to Agent Orange in Vietnam. I’m not an idiot, Rach, and I can take care of myself.”

  Rachael’s face fell as her teasing manner drained away. “I’m sorry. I just…”

  “I know.” Claire said. “But sometimes you treat me like I was so stupid that if I had an idea, it would die of loneliness.”

  “I’ve never thought of you as stupid. Naïve, but not stupid. I’m glad to know he’s not a threat.”

  “Oh, so you’re glad he’s crippled with a neurologic disease?” Claire replied, refusing to let her friend out of the box she’d put herself into.

  “I said I was sorry,” Rachael protested.

  Claire smiled. “What do you say we go get some ice cream. I hear they’ve got strawberry tonight.”

  “Sound great,” Rachael replied, grateful that her friend had let up on her. But the nurse still wasn’t all that pleased to see Claire go out at night, even with an army escort.

  “Why won’t you let the guys drop you off at Slack’s house instead of a few blocks away?”

  “He doesn’t trust them. Doesn’t want them to know where he lives.”

  “Well, if the stories Billy’s telling are true, it’s probably a good idea to stay off the radar. I just hope the neighborhood is safe.”

  “It is. They have a militia set up. They’re on a dead-end road with a small river backing up to them. They’ve got things under control.”

  “Well, I still don’t like it, but I guess that’s something I can’t help.”

  “I love you too,” Claire replied with a smile. “Let’s get some ice cream. I’ve got an hour to kill before I leave.”

  “Please,” Rachael said, “don’t use the work kill.”

  CHAPTER 9

  LEBANON PIKE (SR 70)

  NASHVILLE, TN

  “One life is all we have and we live it as we believe in living it.

  But to sacrifice what you are and to live without belief, that is a fate more terrible than dying.”

  —Joan of Arc

  THE UP-ARMORED HUMVEE SWERVED TO avoid a burned-out Suburban that had come to rest across the right lane of the road. The driver, E-4 Specialist Janice Castro had been quietly cursing under her breath, while her fellow soldier Darius Jackson sat on the passenger side of the four-door vehicle.

  “Hold on!” SPC Castro yelled from the front seat.

  “I don’t get it,” Jackson said. “This was clear last night. Now it looks like a war zone.”

  “What do you mean?” Claire Kramer asked from the rear seat. “I thought you told me this was going to be a milk run.”

  “It normally is, ma’am,” Castro said as she accelerated away from the cluster of burned out vehicles she had just swerved through. “Been doing this run for a month, and we haven’t had a problem yet.”

  The road seemed to open up as they shot toward the Nashville Airport. After a minute or two driving on a quiet and open road, Castro’s shoulders relaxed.

  “We’re through,” she said. “But I still don’t like it.”

  “We haven’t seen any problems on this route,” Jackson said as he turned in his seat to face their lone passenger.

  Around Claire were boxes of supplies destined for the Nashville airport. Claire was smashed against her door, having created a space in the back seat by moving and piling crates of medical supplies that were bound for the airport, where they would then be distributed to aid stations throughout the area.

  Jackson, a young African-American man from northwest Nashville, had an easy smile on his face as he turned to Claire. “Don’t worry, ma’am. We’ve seen a lot worse.”

  “You sure about this, Doc?” Castro asked as they took a final bend in the road and began to slow down in front of the subdivision where “Slack” lived.

  “Yes, thank you,” Claire said.

  The giant military vehicle came to a stop in front of a street that had been blocked off by several SUVs and an old pickup truck.

  “Don’t see anyone,” Jackson said.

  “Go check it out,” Castro said.

  Jackson swung the door open and produced a Surefire G2X flashlight from his pocket. The beam swept across the cluster of vehicles guarding the entrance to the housing development.

  “Stay here,” Castro said to Claire as she dismounted from the HUMVEE. She produced her own flashlight and lit up the left side of the road while her partner scanned the area to their right. Satisfied the area was clear, she propped her battle rifle on top of the vehicle’s hood to cover Jackson’s advance.

  “Looks good,” Jackson called as he walked carefully toward the barricade. Claire and Castro watched his beam darting behind and under the trucks.

  “All clear!” he yelled as he returned to the HUMVEE. “No brass or signs of a fight.”

  Both soldiers returned to the HUMVEE and shut their doors.

  “This isn’t right, Doc,” Castro said. “The barricade’s been manned every time we’ve gone by.”

  Jackson stared out at the empty vehicles. “They’ve waved at us every night for a month. No way they just abandoned their front line of defense.”

  Castro turned to Claire. “I can’t make you stay with us, but this stinks. I’m strongly recommending that you cancel your little trip. Nothing about this makes sense.”

  “You said there wasn’t any sign of a fight,” Claire said. “Wouldn’t there be bullet holes, spent casings, or blood if something happened?”

  “Yes…,” Castro hesitantly replied. “But that’s no guarantee that things didn’t go south here.”

  “Even if there wasn’t a fight,” Jackson said, “they’ve abandoned their barricade. You don’t do that unless you’ve left the area. The best you can hope for is that the houses are all empty. The worse you can expect is that bad guys have taken control.”

  Claire sat for a moment, processing the information. In the end, there was only one choice she could make.

  “I’m going in,” she said. “I have to try and contact my family. That HAM radio operator is my only link to home.”

  “He’s probably gone,” Jackson said as he stared into the quiet subdivision. “Moved on with everyone else.”

  “I don’t think so,” Claire said. “He’s wheelchair-bound and in no shape to leave his house.”

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p; “Is that why you’re here?” Castro asked. “You’ve never explained why you’re making this trip. If you’re worried about your friend, we can arrange to have him brought to the hospital.”

  “You don’t know him,” Claire replied. “Besides being stubborn, he’s a retired Marine.”

  From the conversations she had overheard, the soldiers had a real love/hate relationship with the few Marines they had run across. Stubborn, loyal, and dangerous were the three most common adjectives she had heard.

  “Copy that,” Castro said. “No reasoning with a jarhead once they’re set on their mission.”

  Jackson laughed, his infectious smile bringing a grin to the two women.

  “Very well,” Castro said. “This is your stop.”

  “Thanks,” Claire said. “What time is my pickup tomorrow?”

  “We’ll be rolling back through from the airport about 1300.”

  “See you tomorrow.” Claire replied as she slid out of the back. Grabbing a backpack filled with the food and a couple of Cokes, she slammed the door closed and picked her way through the vehicles. She turned to wave and was met with a flash of the headlights followed by the growl of the HUMVEE’s diesel engine.

  A nearly full moon bathed the road in the bluish glow of its light. The entrance road split, and Claire followed the street to the right. She had been driven here just once before, and that was a while ago. As she walked into the neighborhood, she reminisced about the time before “the darkness,” when she could have driven here in under fifteen minutes. Now her beloved sedan was nothing more than a useless lump of plastic and metal, sitting in the medical center parking lot across the street from the University’s emergency room entrance.

  Mist clung to the open field to her right. A few cries from an owl somewhere in the fog-covered meadow gave life to the neighborhood, and the constant chirping of crickets comforted her as she walked.

  They stop chirping when there’s a problem, Claire reminded herself.

  Even with the background noises, the dark windows of the abandoned one-story brick homes gave the sub-division a tomblike air that eroded Claire’s resolve. The street was a large circle. Slack’s place sat at the bottom of the loop, his backyard on the river that marked the southern boundary of the neighborhood.

  Muted sounds were coming from the center cluster of homes. Claire ignored them, but she began to pick up the pace as she felt, rather than saw, that someone was nearby.

  CRACK…WHIIIIING!

  A bullet flew by her.

  Claire sprinted toward the field to her right as several more shots pinged off the road and slapped the dirt at her feet.

  “There’s one!” called a voice from behind her as she disappeared into the mist.

  Several people were chasing her. Adrenaline dumped into Claire’s bloodstream, and she barely felt the ground as her feet seemed to have a mind of their own. Deep into the fog, she stopped to get her bearings. The sounds of leather rubbing against metal, along with the crushing sound of many feet in the dry grass, was rapidly approaching. She turned to her right and began running back up the field.

  Running parallel to the main road, she prayed that the fog would stay thick enough to cover her escape. But as she began to run uphill, the mist rapidly thinned. Seeing her cover disappear, she hid herself among the tall weeds and listened for her pursuers.

  Like a trapped animal, her breathing was heavy and rapid. She tried to force herself to calm down, drawing on her crisis management experience in the emergency room where seconds meant the difference between life and death. She brought her breathing under control just as four men crashed into the spot where the fog thinned out.

  “Where’d she go?” one of the men huffed.

  “I think she turned back there,” another replied.

  “No, she went this way,” the first. “We need to spread out.”

  Each carried a battle rifle and had a military belt or bandolier with extra magazines of ammunition strapped to their bodies. They wore jeans and sneakers, so they definitely weren’t military or government.

  The first man pointed over Claire’s head and sent two of his comrades in her direction, while he and the other man moved south. They brought their rifles up and surveyed the fog covered and moon-lit field. By Claire’s estimate, they were about thirty yards away when they split up. Her hiding spot was far from perfect, and if they got much closer, she would be captured.

  Reaching into her backpack, she pulled out the plastic bag of chicken. As the two men slowly advanced toward her, they were scanning with their eyes side to side. About twenty yards away, both men stopped and looked to their left, peering into the fog at a noise or movement that had caught their attention. Taking advantage of the distraction, she heaved the bag of food deep into the field.

  The bag landed with a thud, crushing the dried grass.

  “Over here!” one of her pursuers yelled as they ran towards the sound.

  Dropping her backpack, Claire sprinted back toward the highway, quickly losing the cover of the low-lying fog. Her legs moved with a speed and purpose that she didn’t know she had possessed.

  “There she is!” Claire heard from the field behind her about thirty seconds later.

  She continued running up the slight rise of the hill, using the maturing oaks as cover. Loaded down with guns and ammunition, her pursuers were having difficulty catching up to her. In fact, as she came to the end of the field, she glanced back to find the four men now about fifty yards behind.

  As she broke out onto the open street, she heard the crack of a rifle, felt the air pop next to her ear, and heard the zing of a bullet as it passed within inches of her head.

  Claire’s only thought at this point was getting out of the neighborhood, but as she zigzagged up the road, she realized that she had no plan beyond that. She didn’t know where to go once she escaped; she just knew she needed to get away from these four men.

  Another bullet pinged off the asphalt at her feet, pushing away any thoughts. Her brain wasn’t capable of higher level functions as she tried to get away. The sound of two more gunshots pushed her forward at an even more frantic pace.

  She could see the silhouettes of the trucks and SUVs at the front entrance about a quarter mile ahead as she rounded the bend in the road. Her pursuers were now blocked from a direct line of fire by the house on the corner. As Claire turned to look back, she stepped off the asphalt, causing her to stumble and fall. Quickly getting back up, she ignored the pain from her skinned knee and bruised right hand, and took off in a final attempt to get to the temporary safety of the vehicle barricade.

  “Got her!” one the men cried in triumph, the voice closer than she thought was possible. She glanced back and saw that the pursuers had cut across the corner house’s front yard.

  Claire cried out in fear and tripped again. Turning to face her executioners, she began crawling backwards through the grass on the side of the road as the four men slowed down to a walk, confident that they had cornered their prey. The men at last became more than dark specters in the night as the nearly full moon cast a pallid glow over their bearded faces.

  “Got us a pretty one,” one of them said.

  “Glad you’re such a shitty shot. Would have been a waste to kill her.”

  “Screw you,” the first one said.

  They lowered their rifles, and one of the men stepped forward with a sinister smirk on his face.

  “Say there, honey, what’s your name?” he said as he approached with his hand out.

  As the thug reached to grab Claire, the world exploded.

  CRACK! BWRATT! CRACK! BWRATT! BWRATT!

  The man who was looming above Claire jolted back and landed with a thud on the dark street. Two of his companions were trying to bring their rifles up when their heads erupted like a firecracker exploding a ripe cantaloupe into pulpy fragments. Their deaths were instantaneous as their bodies simply dropped in place. The fourth man screamed as three shots punched through his abdomen and ches
t. Within seconds, the four men were down, three of them dead and the last writhing and moaning from the gunshot wounds to his torso.

  “Advance!” someone called out behind Claire.

  She turned to see Castro and Jackson jogging toward her. Each held their black rifle up, staring through their ACOG scopes as they scanned the area.

  “Clear!” Castro yelled. She dropped her slung M-16 to her side. “You okay, ma’am?”

  Claire struggled to speak as she let SPC Castro pull her to her feet.

  “What…how?” Claire stammered.

  “You can thank Jackson for the save,” Castro said. “He made us come back for you.”

  “It was no problem, ma’am.” Jackson said before Claire could respond. “Our C.O. would have thrown us in the stockade if we’d lost one of our only docs.”

  Claire threw her arms around the young man, hugging him hard for a few seconds before letting go and embracing Castro.

  “I don’t care why you came back. Thank you!”

  “Just doing our job,” Castro replied. “Now we need to get out of here.”

  As they turned to go back to the HUMVEE that was parked on the other side of the makeshift barrier, Claire stopped.

  “I can’t,” she said. “I have find my friend.”

  “You’re joking, right?” Castro asked.

  “No, I’m not.”

  “I’m sorry, Doc. But you’re coming with me.”

  “I have to find out what happened to him.”

  “That’s what happened to him,” Castro said, pointing at the downed thugs. She began to pull Claire toward the waiting military vehicle. “We have to move. There may be more.”

  Claire resisted, but the two soldiers hauled her to the other side of the barrier. The HUMVEE sat idling with its lights off. Around them, the fog began to settle on the moonlit road. Claire looked over her shoulder. What if Slack was hurt and needed her help?

  “Stop!” Claire said. “I need to tell you why I’m here.”

  “Ma’am, you’ve already told us,” Jackson said as he began to push Claire into the open rear door.

  “No, I haven’t.”

  Claire shook their hands off her arms and took one step back. Facing the two Guardsmen, she made a decision to trust them with the real reason she had risked her life tonight.