by ML Banner
“How many and where are they?” huffed the radio.
“Hundreds, and they’re still passing through the roadblock. The first part of the group will be in town in less than five minutes.”
“Get back here. I don’t care if you have to drive over them. Set up a new one right before the health clinic. Don’t argue. Don’t say anything. Just go!”
Bigelow tossed his walkie onto the passenger seat, creaked the door open, and barked orders to the grunt assigned to him, who drove one of Jonah’s big four-on-the-floor trucks. The grunt nodded and escaped into the truck’s cab.
Bigelow started up his Beetle. Its engine and even its vibrations were completely silent amongst the thunderous storms coming from above and around them.
~~~
Lexi
The little rumbles below them shook Lexi into semiconsciousness. The crashes above them jostled her awake. But it wasn’t until the aroma from her brother’s feet hit her that she finally moved.
Travis had the worst foot odor of anyone she’d ever encountered. And each time it assaulted her nose, aside from voicing her displeasure, she thanked her creator that she didn’t get that same smelly-foot gene.
This smell is definitely Travis’s feet.
She forced her eyes open, feeling at first disoriented.
It was dark, and the drumming on the roof was deafening. A crack of thunder confirmed to her that the drumming was rain.
She tried to home in on her last memory.
She had come into town with three men and a woman from the Army base and one of Jonah’s men. One of those from the base, an otherwise good-looking guy, had inflamed skin and was out of breath.
What was his name? she thought.
Robert O’Malley.
She remembered helping Dr. Scott at the town’s clinic, then helping more of Jonah’s men stack up medical supplies inside.
Then Frank was brought in, and for a moment she’d feared he was dead. But he was just suffering from the same thing O’Malley was, and he’d torn his stitches, again.
Dr. Scott’s office!
That was where they were. Frank was sleeping on Dr. Scott’s couch, and Travis and she were on the floor beside it.
“Travis,” she said much too loud. She lifted her head up off the floor to check on Frank. He’s still sleeping. Then she felt her brother beside her on the carpeted floor, under a shroud of blankets.
Propping herself up on her elbows to get a better view, she peeled back the covers, expecting to see Travis’s head. Instead she was greeted by his feet.
“Wow!”
She reflexively pushed them away, whispering loudly, “Travis, your feet stink!”
He didn’t move and neither did Frank.
When gunshots crashed outside, all three of them jumped up, attempting to move on wobbly feet.
“Where the hell are we?” Frank croaked, clearing his throat while he took in the dark room sporadically lit by lightning.
“We’re in Dr. Scott’s office in the Endurance Health Center. You were brought in unconscious. The doctor said you’re fine and just needed some oxygen and rest. We replaced your dressings too after she fixed your stitches: you’d torn them again.”
During her summation, he had lumbered over to the window, his limp very pronounced, and angled his body into the corner of the two adjoining walls. He slowly pulled back the blinds. His gaze shot from one direction to the other before he sprang back in their direction for the door. “Come on, we need to leave this place and get home, where we’ll be safe.”
They followed him out the door, down the hallway, to the entrance of the clinic, where a dozen or so people puddled around the windows and entrance. their worried faces pasted against the clinic’s glass. A few were just outside the entrance, speaking with cupped hands to each other. All were looking to their right.
Frank pushed past them through the doorway. Lexi and Travis trailed closely behind, glancing nervously around while trying to avoid the sting of the rain. They had broken free of the crowd, intending to go north, out of town and back to their home. But another shotgun blast halted them.
“Stop,” yelled Jonah in the distance.
The three of them obliged. But the yelling wasn’t directed their way.
Jonah, standing in the bed of a black pickup truck, arms raised and one hand clutching a shotgun, faced a threatening crowd of people. He looked like DeMille’s Moses, except this version held a shotgun rather than a staff and tried to stop the coming flood rather than parting it.
Even in the murk, it was obvious what was going on.
The undulating crowd of hundreds of people wanted into town. They were probably starving and looking for handouts from Endurance, a small show of kindness that was usually common in these parts before the lights went out. But with each town in America suffering like all the rest—except maybe Endurance—that kindness was no longer possible. Their town had the resources, apparently thanks to one man.
Perhaps this crowd knew it.
A woman’s scream pushed through the gloom.
“It’s Dr. Scott,” bellowed Lexi, pointing to some movement a few yards from them.
Frank squinted through the wet haze and saw that a man held a gun against the head of a woman who he suspected was Dr. Scott. The man pushed her forward while another woman clutching an infant and a little boy followed meekly behind.
As Dr. Scott moved toward the clinic, Frank could see the mugger was taking cover behind her, and he guessed the man’s family was behind him. The doctor was wearing scrubs, which like her, were soaked. As they came into the light of the clinic, he could see she was covered in blood.
Frank ambled into their path and they stopped.
The thug’s head popped up over Dr. Scott’s shoulder, perplexed why his human shield had become still.
“Hi,” Frank said, extending his hand. “I’m Frank. You must be Dr. Scott. Thanks for taking such good care of me and, of course, my godchildren.”
Dr. Scott glared at him, her eyes whiplashing—as if pointing—to her side and her head motioning there as well, to silently say “Can’t you see I’m being held hostage, you idiot?”
“What the hell’s going on?” a voice, muddled by the downpour and laced with a strong Ethiopian accent, called from behind her.
Frank stepped to Dr. Scott’s side and faced the man, “Hi, I’m Frank. Are you all right?”
“Get out of my damn way. Are you on some sort of death—”
Dr. Scott shrieked for just a moment, her eyes going wild, but the rest of her holding still. She watched this man who looked dead last night leap forward, outside of her view, do something that caused her attacker to grunt—it sounded to her like a fist pounding soft skin—and then the man called Frank stepped back, jerking her away by the arm.
Now Frank was holding the gun on the attacker. When it occurred to her she was free, she scurried a few more steps toward the clinic and spun around to see the mugger folded on the ground, grasping his throat, desperately trying to breathe.
“How did you …” she started to ask, examining Frank, no longer worried about the attacker.
Feeling safer, she walked over to the man’s wife, who’d been following them and now was bent over the hurt mugger. The wife was clutching an infant and both were crying. “Can I see your baby?” Dr. Scott asked.
Frank inspected the gun he’d taken from the mugger, pulling the slide back to make sure it was loaded. It was. All and all, a nice Glock. He handed it to Lexi. “Keep an eye on the man, would you? It’s loaded and doesn’t have a safety. Just squeeze.”
“Emme,” came a voice running in their direction, “you all right?” Jonah huffed, stopping beside Dr. Scott.
“Yes, I’m fine, thanks,” she responded to Jonah. Then to Frank she said, “By the way, Frank, I’m Dr. Emily Scott. But in light of what you did, you can call me Emily.” She flashed him a big smile and walked into the clinic. The mugger’s wife, cradling her baby, and her little boy follow
ed them.
“Don’t you have any police in this town?” Frank asked, motioning to the mugger on the ground.
“It’s actually the sheriff.” Jonah took a couple of breaths. “He and his deputies are ten miles away. I’m sure they have their hands full with their own problems,” Jonah replied. Two of his goonish-looking men pulled up beside him, also after a run, but didn’t say anything—just stood there, waiting for their boss’s orders. “We set up a room inside one of my buildings to be a holding cell until the sheriff gets here. This guy will be held there.” One of the goons jumped to attention and grabbed the man, aggressively hoisting him up from the ground.
“Looks like you’ve got a larger problem there, with the mass of immigrants. What do you plan to do with them?” Frank had more than a passing curiosity. What Jonah did next, since he was obviously in charge of this town, was going to determine their own well-being. There probably was no good answer to the question, though. If Jonah turned them away, these invading immigrants would probably show up on their own doorstep; normal family men would turn violent to feed and protect their families. If Jonah gave them some of his food, then word would get around and more would come, resulting in Endurance running out of its resources sooner. And that wasn’t counting the evil men out there who someday would certainly set their sights on their town. Admittedly, no scenario would be favorable for Frank and his godkids.
“I’m telling them to leave, naturally. We can’t very well give them food if we hope to survive as a town.”
There was another gunshot, this one from a large-caliber pistol that drew their attention in its direction. One of Jonah’s men had taken his place as the Moses-in-the-truck-bed and had fired it in the air as the horde pushed closer.
“You’re not turning them all away, are you?” Emily pleaded. She had quietly come back through the clinic’s entrance and was listening to their discussion. “These people are hungry, and I understand they’ve been kicked out of their homes from a town south of here. They have nowhere else to go.”
Jonah hesitated, thinking about what he was going to say in response. But Frank answered for him, “It’s an untenable position, but the more food this town gives away now, the less its chance of survival in the coming days or months even. Imagine this town with no food anywhere and Jonah’s warehouses empty. That day will come much sooner if the town gives away its food, even just a little bit right now.”
“Hey, Jonah,” a voice spurted from the radio attached to his belt.
Jonah sidestepped away from them and gave a little bow, as if to apologize for the interruption. He then turned his back to them and answered his walkie.
They watched him become animated, yell a couple of expletives at his feet, and then return the radio to his belt.
Turning back to them, he said, “We’re going to put everyone in one of my warehouses on Pine, a couple of blocks from here. They can stay there, out of the rain. We’ll give them some food and water too.” His voice was flat, emotionless, as if he were repeating someone else’s words.
“Why?” was all Frank could think to ask, surprised like the others at Jonah’s turnabout.
“I have my reasons, Emme,” he said, flashing a faint sign at Emily, and then he turned and marched to the horde.
“What was that about?” Lexi asked the question they were all thinking.
Chapter 15
Sunbay Cove Warehouse, Florida
Cain
“You said yo father is holding all des supplies for someone else?”
“Quiet!” Cain barked. His head snapped around, goatee whipping, eyes searching for other movement. But the blackness was thicker than the oil smell filling his nostrils. He turned in the other direction, slower this time, trying to focus on any other sounds from the darkness that might indicate they’d been caught.
It was empty. They were the only ones occupying this vast space.
The screeching of a nail being yanked from its woody mooring ripped through the gloom. Cain spun toward it, when the sound of another nail wailed; its origin was just outside of his flashlight’s spray of light.
“You said yo father was gone,” Artie’s whiny voice continued.
“Yessss!” Cain breathed the s in a way to stress his frustration for all of his friends’ lack of quiet. “But one of his idiot guards might hear us. And I don’t want my father to know that we’ve been here.”
“Wow.” A high-pitched voice burst from the middle of the giant room, from the same place Cain had heard the nail sounds. The vastness of the space seemed to consume the loud voice almost immediately. “Look at dis shit!” There was no expected echo; his friend’s voice just tumbled into the void, never bouncing back to their ears.
Cain, Artie, and his only quiet friend hurried down a deep aisle bounded by trucks lined up side by side. Only their bumpers and headlamps were visible outside the beam of Cain’s flashlight; its light bounced forward with their stride. When they reached a T-intersection made by pallets of stacked boxes spanning the limits of his sight in both directions, they stopped.
Cain flashed his Maglite’s angry gaze at Jordi standing gleefully in front of an open crate with what looked like Russian writing on its side. “Damnit, what yah do?” Cain bellowed, forgetting his own demands for quiet.
Jordi, who held a crowbar in one hand and something else out of sight in the other, hovered over the giant open container. Its lid lay dead on the concrete floor, the sharp nail points sticking up and pointing directly at the culprit as if to say, “He did it!”
“Man, look at this.” He proudly displayed the object in his other hand: it looked like a brand-new AK-47. Cain’s father had a couple of these. A distant memory flooded his thoughts. His father had taken him shooting, each of them happily emptying mag after mag into useless targets. He remembered the smell of the cordite as thick as the laughter in the air. It was one of the few times he remembered having fun with his father. It was also one of the few times his father had treated him kindly, like a father should.
Cain pushed past Jordi, who had moved closer to show his find. Narrowly avoiding impaling his foot on one of the upended nails, he stepped to the crate and saw there were other rifles in it, packed side by side. All looked new, as if they had come directly from the factory that made them. He scrutinized the numbers of boxes to his left and then to the right and saw that the rows vanished from sight deep into the darkness of the warehouse out of his flashlight’s inquiring cone of light. He quickly counted the number of boxes on each pallet and the number of pallets he could see and tried to do some fast figuring. Shit, that’s a lot of guns.
Cain glanced back to Jordi, who was now pawing the rifle, salivating over it. “Put it back.”
“But can’t we each take just one? They’d never notice,” Jordi protested. The other two gawked at the contents of the box and then at Cain, expectantly.
“No! In fact, close dat crate up now. I want it exactly like it was when you found it. Do it now! Then meet us up front. And you help,” Cain told one of his other two yes-men.
“Come with me,” he said to Artie.
Cain and Artie swam deeper into the soupy blackness.
Cain had confirmed his suspicions that his father was storing weapons in this warehouse he’d only been allowed in once before Jonah had leased it two years ago. Before he pushed his luck harder, Cain wanted to check on something else. He knew one of the guards probably heard their voices and would burst through the door they had come at any moment. They had to be quick.
Somewhere just inside of his flashlight’s beam, when he was counting the gun pallets, he had seen another lone skid that looked interesting. Like a shadow that had sprung up unexpectedly, they found it.
On this skid were little crates, each crate no more than one foot square. Surrounding it were an uncountable number of pallets of shrink-wrapped dry foods. These seemed to span the other half of the warehouse. Each little crate on this skid had similar unintelligible symbols, which he believed was
Arabic, and a long word below the writing was written in English.
He pulled from the top one box, which was surprisingly light—he’d thought they were crates of ammo for the guns—and touched the English word, pronouncing each syllable: “Fen-eth-yl-line.”
Cain snatched the crowbar from Artie and carefully went to work on the top. “Hold this steady,” he commanded.
It cracked open, and then he peeled at the lid. Nervous excitement flooded him, as if he were a child opening a present the day before Christmas, knowing he could be caught at any moment. When the top came free with a final squeak, he thought he’d heard a noise near the front of the warehouse, right where they had entered. It was probably nothing.
He shined his light into the crate and they silently stared.
“Do you know what that is, man?” Artie asked.
Cain pulled up a big clear plastic bag containing thousands of little white pills.
“Yes, I do.”
The source of the sound he heard was now obvious. A large door slid open. The silhouette of a man stepped in, and the floodlights above bathed them all in light.
~~~
2 Years Earlier
He stepped into the warehouse’s void, feeling as if it would swallow him up in one bite.
Although if this deal didn’t go through, the Second National Bank of Florida would consider him more like a nibble.
Waiting for his appointment, he couldn’t shake feeling like he was dropping his last dollar into a one-armed bandit and giving it that final pull. Would this appointment be the jackpot that would turn the tide on his flagging real estate empire and at the same time give him a solution to SNBF’s foreclosure? Or would it be a bust? In his mind’s eye the reels spun so quickly the images were beyond blurry, with no sign of ever slowing down.