Charlie's Requiem: Resistance

by Walt Browning

  As the late afternoon began to give way to night, the three sat on a second-floor balcony outside the massive master bedroom. The home had been closed up fairly tightly, so no unwanted creatures were inside. They each took the opportunity to wash up using the home’s oversized water heater tank. The pool out back was green with algae, but was more than adequate for filling the toilets. MREs from the salvaged “go” bag provided meals for them all, and they ate greedily as the evening sky turned an azure blue.

  They spoke with muted voices, keeping their conversation to a minimum as they finished their dinners. Sound traveled on water, and normal speech could be heard over a mile away. Even a muted burp from Big Mike created enough noise to bring a disapproving look from Cyn.

  As darkness blotted out the setting sunlight, a few pinpoints of lights began to show up across the lake.

  Pointing to the lights dancing in the distance, Drosky whispered, “Gangs.”

  “We goin’ that way?” Mike asked quietly.

  “Yeah,” Drosky said. “They’re a block or two down from the main road.”

  “No other way out?”

  “Nope, not without totally exposing ourselves. There’s a bike trail that starts north of her and winds all the way up to Sanford. We have to go through Maitland to get to it. Otherwise, we’ll be walking up a six-lane road with no cover.”

  “Damn,” Mike murmured.

  “Don’t worry,” Cyn said. “Even scum sleep. John, zero dark thirty?”

  “Yeah, sounds about right.”

  “Okay,” Mike said, “you two stop with the military crap. What are you talking about?”

  “Just some slang. It means ‘late at night,’ but I’m thinking that we should move through that neighborhood an hour or two before dawn. That’s when everyone is tired, especially anyone pulling watch for the night.”

  “Hmmph,” Mike replied. “So we have a few hours before we leave?”

  “At least four or five hours,” Drosky said.

  “Then I’m hitting the sack.” The big guy moved with a grace that belied his size and rolled into the master bed. “Leave the sliders open; it’s hotter than hell in here.”

  “I’ll take first watch.” Cyn said to Drosky. “You need some rest.”

  “Yeah,” he sighed. “It’s been a crappy day.”

  LATER THAT NIGHT

  Mike felt someone shaking his shoulder and sat upright, his Berretta clutched in his right hand. The pistol never made it all the way around as his wrist was grasped and twisted back. The handgun was stripped away, and before he could move, a knee to his chest jolted him back onto the bed.

  “You never learn,” Cyn hissed as she placed Mike’s gun onto the side table next to the bed. “You don’t sleep with a gun in your bed. You’ll just as likely shoot someone you don’t mean to. Especially yourself.”

  Mike grunted and stood up. “Sorry.”

  “Yeah, I know, ya big dope. Next time, leave it in your holster.”

  The three met at the sliding glass doors that led out to the back yard.

  “Everyone all fresh and clean?” Drosky deadpanned.

  All three had taken the time to use the toilets and check their firearms. Cyn wasn’t sure if any of their rifles had been bent or disabled by the blast, and without any tools, they were limited to a visual inspection of their assembled M4s. Separating the upper from the lower receiver, they could dry fire the empty gun and at least see if the hammer struck forward when they pulled the trigger. But if the barrel had been warped, it could be catastrophic. Hopefully, they could move without being seen. The last thing they wanted was to get into a firefight with unreliable weapons against an unknown number of gang members.

  Drosky checked his watch and saw that it was just past two in the morning. A good time to be out and about without being seen. They moved in a staggered line, leapfrogging each other from one position of cover to another. The mile-long trip took the better part of an hour before they at last came to the first road that crossed north of the lake.

  Cutting behind a burned-out McDonalds, they crouched in an alley that fed onto the road they needed to take. Moving to the east would bring them near to the gang members that they had seen from the balcony, but there was no way to avoid that unless they wanted to continue north and through an even more industrial area. Concealment was their friend, and so they pushed east.

  About another mile in—and another hour later—the three of them stopped again. Cyn was in the lead, and she held up her hand and spun it in a circle, indicating that they needed to rally to her position. When they joined her, she pointed to the south side of the four-lane street. As they stared into the shadows of a subdivision entrance, Drosky saw slight movement near the base of an oak tree.

  “Got him,” he whispered.

  “Just wait,” Cyn replied.

  Sure enough, a second person moved a moment later.

  “How do we get by?” Drosky asked.

  “Don’t know. But we need to get closer before we decide.”

  About twenty minutes later, they lay prone behind a line of bushes. A parking lot for a recreation area sat on the other side of the street from the gang members. Crawling behind the hedge, the trio found themselves directly across from the two thugs. There was a three-foot median in the road as well as ground cover and an occasional crepe myrtle tree giving further concealment.

  “We can’t keep going,” Cyn said. “We’ll be exposed as we cross the street in front of them.”

  “Agreed,” Mike said. “But we can’t just stay here.”

  Drosky stared across the street. “We have to take them.”

  “If we cut back a bit, the median has some thicker bushes. We come up on their side and try to take them quietly.”

  They backtracked to the spot Cyn had mentioned. After crossing the road without being discovered, they moved up the opposite side of the street. Soon, they could hear the two men talking in low voices. There wasn’t much cover for the next twenty yards; the houses were flanked by tall concrete walls and little vegetation stood between the two men and their three silent stalkers.

  “I need a smoke,” one of them said.

  “Taurus will kill ya! He told us not to light up. Said you could see it a mile away.”

  The first man pointed across the street. “Hell, let’s just smoke in there. No one can see us in the trees.”

  “Dude, we can’t leave our post.”

  “We’ll be right across the street,” the first one said. “No one’s gonna know. We’ve been out here for hours and ain’t seen shit.”

  The man pulled out a pack of cigarettes and held it out.

  “They smell right good,” the second thug said. “Let’s go.”

  The two men began to walk across the street, and Drosky turned back to his friends. “Follow me when they light their cigarettes. They’ll have night blindness for a few seconds.”

  “Where are we going after that?” Mike asked.

  “The next opening up there,” Drosky said and pointed.

  The three crouched down and moved to the last tree on their side of the road. After a moment of waiting, they were rewarded with the flare of a match.

  “Now!” Drosky hissed.

  The three of them walked heel to toe, their rifles pointed across the street at the dying flame. Within seconds, they had crossed the intersection the two men had just left. They were halfway to the next entrance when they heard laughter coming from further down the street.

  All three went prone on the sidewalk as a group of armed men approached, pulling a couple of wagons full of items down the street’s north side.

  As the new group approached the woods where the two guards had taken refuge, one of the men in the party called out, “Who the hell is smoking?”

  The two guards slowly walked out of the trees.

  “You dumb bastards. What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  All of them circled around the guards as their leader slapped and berated them
for their stupidity.

  Drosky nodded at Mike and Cyn, and they sprinted the last hundred yards to the next subdivision. An eight-foot-high concrete wall faced the road, and after turning right, they were hidden from view.

  “Hasty ambush,” Mike whispered, and the three set up behind cover, rifles pointed in the direction they’d come from.

  After two minutes with no pursuit, they moved further away from the road toward the lake down at the end of the street.

  “Let’s keep going down and then turn left,” Drosky said. “That should take us out of range of the guards. Then we can head back out and find that bike trail.”

  They hugged the left side of the two-lane street, keeping in the shadows of the trees and homes. It was a modest neighborhood with single-story homes built forty or fifty years ago. At the end of the road, mansions stood on the lake’s shore. Typical of any area where lakefront property could be found, multi-million-dollar estates sat on a piece of waterfront property with smaller homes right across the street.

  Drosky signaled to their left, and he and the others darted around the corner of a house and into its open garage. They removed their ballistic vests and sat down on the cool concrete floor for a few minutes, taking a much-needed rest.

  “Let’s keep moving. We can take this street a few blocks further, then cut back to the main road. I think we’re about a mile from the bike trail,” Drosky said.

  “Everyone hydrate,” Cyn said, and they each took a pull from the camelback bladder that Mike carried in the group’s “go” bag.

  “We’ll need some more water soon,” Mike said as he took a draw from the bladder’s straw.

  “Yeah,” Cyn said. “I’ve got some purification tablets. Love that chlorine taste.”

  “Better than dysentery,” Drosky said. “Lots of bad stuff out here now.”

  The three stood up and hoisted their ballistic vests back over their shoulders. As they slung their rifles over their necks, Cyn stopped and held up her hand.

  “Someone’s out there,” she hissed.

  The three of them moved back into the shadows of the garage. Drosky found the door into the house and opened it. A quick glance inside showed that it was empty. They moved into the home and took a position where they could look out front.

  “There!” Cyn said as she pointed across the street. Her sensitive ears were always the first to pick out sounds.

  Two people were slowly walking out of the gates of the mansion across from them. One was casually carrying a rifle, its barrel pointed forward and down. The other was walking with a five-gallon plastic bucket in one hand and a rifle casually slung over a shoulder. They were moving without caution, even giggling with the muted conversation. Drosky could pick up some of the words coming through his broken front window.

  “Holy shit,” he said as he stood up and moved to the garage.

  The other two followed, confused at his sudden move. Before they could ask him questions, he was out the door and positioned at the corner of the garage, staring out onto the now-empty street.

  As Cyn reached out to tap him on the shoulder, Drosky spun out of the garage and glanced back up the road. He ran across the street to the corner of the waterfront mansion’s wall. After ensuring that the gang had moved on, he signaled for Mike and Cyn to follow and then slipped around the corner.

  Cyn and Mike could barely keep up as he disappeared up the side road across the street. They ran to the intersection where Drosky had just been and looked up the road, just catching a glimpse of him disappearing between two-single story houses.

  “What the hell?” Cyn said as the two of them hauled butt to catch up with their friend.

  As they turned between the two homes, they saw Drosky open a wooden door that led to the back of the house. They sprinted forward, rifles up and ready, and ran into the backyard. Drosky had finally caught up with his quarry. The people, a man and a woman, were facing away from them. The man was pulling a stringer of fish out of the bucket.

  Drosky snuck up behind them and stopped just a few feet back.

  “Freeze,” he said in a low voice.

  The woman squealed in fear. Drosky approached her and, putting his hand on her shoulder, slowly turned her toward him. She gasped when she saw his face and flung her arms around his neck.

  “JOHN?” she cried.

  “Hello, Charlie. What the hell are you still doing here?”

  CHAPTER 32

  MAITLAND, FL

  “The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him.”

  — G.K. Chesterton

  WHEN JOHN SNUCK UP ON me and Mike, I about had a heart attack. But afterward, I was beyond happy. His story about their flight from town and their escape from the gangs left us all breathless. It was so good to see him. He had brought us hope once again.

  “So, Charlie,” Cynthia said. “Why are you guys still here?”

  We were in Harley and Ashley’s house having a breakfast of diluted condensed milk and stale cereal. As long as we let the milk stand in the old Frosted Flakes for a while, they became mushy enough to eat.

  “We’ve been trapped here by a gang of skinheads,” I said. “They set up headquarters next door.”

  Cynthia looked at John and shook her head. “I suppose I can’t fault you too much,” she said. “But you’ve become frozen, and that’ll get you killed.”

  “We can’t get by them,” I said. “There are too many.”

  Cynthia shrugged. “We made it. But don’t take it too badly. Most people lose their energy after a while. You get a little comfort or a bit of security, and you settle for that rather than pushing forward.”

  “I don’t think that’s fair,” I began to say.

  “Just look at what you have here,” she continued over my protests. “Food, shelter, and friends. The problem is that you don’t want to look too far ahead.”

  Cynthia got up and began pacing in front of everyone, taking on the role a professor explaining truths to her pupils.

  “I saw this all the time when I would train my Marines on CQB,” she said.

  “What’s that?” Maria asked.

  “Close quarter battle. It’s part of learning how to fight through an enemy inside a house or on a city street. We had “kill houses” set up like a small town and taught the recruits how to fight in close quarters. One of the drills involved clearing a house that had no lights. You had to go in and using a flashlight to find the bad guys.”

  She stared off into the back yard, lost momentarily in thought.

  “We videotaped the Marines with night vision cameras, and the men and women could be categorized into one of two groups: Victims and Predators. The hunted and the hunters. Most of the hunted would freeze. A rare few relished the drill. They were predators who sought the fight.”

  Cynthia stopped moving and stopped to stare at us all.

  “You guys have let yourself become the prey. You need to change your attitudes because in this world, only the hunters survive.”

  Later that day, we agreed that it was time to leave. Jorge and Maria were going to move east and then try and hook up with his family. We would join Cynthia, Mike, and John on their journey north to Sanford. From there, we’d decide on our best path to Monteverde and the hopeful safety of Dr. Kramer’s home. Harley and Ashley were staying put. Tomorrow, most of us would finally leave Maitland for good.

  EAST OF CHARLIE’S HOUSE

  MAITLAND, FL

  That night, three dark figures prowled the abandoned streets of Maitland. Moving silently among the empty homes and overgrown yards, they pushed east into unexplored territory.

  “Looks good so far,” Jorge whispered as the three crouched down in a wooded area across from an abandoned convenience store. Behind them was a pond, it’s stagnant water emanating a sewage smell that all but guaranteed the area was safe. No one would willingly stay here for long if they had to breath the acrid sulfur stench.

  Acros
s the street, the front of the 7/11 was gone. Its glass façade long ago smashed, the shards of the broken windows were now a fine powder on the building’s concrete slab. Abandoned gasoline pumps were entwined with creeping vines. The metal plate access to the store’s underground fuel tanks had been removed and a make-shift tent had been erected over the open hole. A hand pump lay on the ground near-by, with a hose snaked into the in-ground fuel tank.

  “Looks like they’re still pulling gas out of the ground,” Garrett observed. “That’s probably where they’re refueling before heading out for the day.”

  The moonlight was bright enough to see into the inside the store. It appeared empty, which was no surprise.

  “Let’s keep moving,” Garrett said. “I don’t think we should waste our time here.”

  “Agreed,” Jorge replied. The convenience store would have been torn apart within the first week of the crisis, and nothing of value would remain.

  They crept further east to the edge of the trees and came to an intersection. To their right, the crossroad pushed south back into Winter Park.

  “Hey, this building looks intact,” Janice observed.

  She pointed down the street to a glass and brick house that had been turned into a personal trainer’s business. Janice snuck up to the front of the converted house and looked into the window. Dirt and grime streaked the glass, but she didn’t risk wiping them clean so as not to leave evidence of their passing.