3:42 p.m.
I had to break away for a few minutes. It seems that one of those groups I mentioned earlier found our building. About ten people came through the entry gate and into the courtyard. They didn’t do much, just smashed a window to one of the ground-level units, screamed some profanities and racial slurs, and then ran out yelling and laughing. Looks like they’re gone for the moment. I should probably do another check downstairs to make sure everything’s okay. But first I’m going to do a quick rundown of how to use the shotgun with Kate and Dylan. That way, if something happens while I’m gone, or something happens to me, they’ll know how to defend themselves.
4:29 p.m.
Okay, so I went down and double-checked everything. Both the vestibule and stairwell entry doors were still secure. I found a bike chain and lock and used it to secure our front entry gate. Then I took time to get a piece of plywood from the storage unit and screw it over the glass-paneled portion of our stairwell entry door. It’s not the best done job in the world, but I didn’t particularly want to hang out down there too long. Plus, there is a severe stench out in the stairwell. I’m almost sure someone has died. I’m not exactly sure what death smells like, but if I had to take a guess, I’d say what our stairway currently smells like is it.
So while I was down there working, old Ms. Murphy from 1B stuck her head out to see what all the racket was. She was wearing a white surgical mask, but other than the stink in the stairwell, she didn’t seemed all that perturbed by what was going on outside.
She waved a hand in front of her masked nose and told me that even her mask didn’t keep the stink out…whatever it was. The way she said it was so comical that I would have laughed aloud had it not been for the situation swirling around us. I didn’t want to mention that one of our decomposing neighbors could very well be the cause of the stench.
Anyway, Ms. Murphy watched me work for a few minutes and then told me she was glad to see someone was taking action. She said she had heard all the “raucous kids” out in the courtyard and was “…hoping one of us young folks would get up off our duff and take care of the building’s security.”
I asked her if she was doing okay. She told me she’d like to flush the toilet and wouldn’t mind getting rid of the dirty kitty-litter from her cat…Felix is his name.
Once I was done with my work on the door, I headed back upstairs and got a mask of my own, a gallon of our dirty water, and a plastic trash bag. Then I went down and helped Ms. Murphy clean her cat box, filled her toilet tank for her, and took her dirty kitty litter away in a trash bag.
While I was there, I asked her how she was doing on food and water. She said that she was okay on food, since she doesn’t eat much, but not so good on water. She only had a few bottles of fresh water left.
I don’t really want to be giving out our supplies, but I felt bad for the old gal. Therefore, I took her down a gallon of fresh drinking water. She was very appreciative and thanked me profusely. I told her that if she needed anything else, not to be afraid to ask.
With the way things were outside, there was no way I was going to take the dirty kitty-litter out to the trash. So when I got back to our condo, I double-bagged the mess, made sure that it was tied shut, slid the refrigerator aside, made sure no one was around, and dropped the entire bag out our kitchen window. It landed by the corpse in the alley and exploded like a cat-poop-laden dust bomb. When it did so, several large rats scampered from around the dead body.
I have to admit, I’m pretty fed up with this whole situation. Any interest in trying to treat it like an extended camping trip or science experiment is over. None of us are finding this an enjoyable experience, and I think we can all agree that we are ready to have our old lives back. For as difficult, monotonous or frustrating as things sometimes felt before all this began with school, work, parenting or whatever, nothing compares to this. And I’m afraid that THIS is the new normal. What’s most frightening about it all is that I’m not sure we’ll ever get our old lives back. Watching neighboring businesses and homes burn is very disheartening, and not being able to do anything about it leaves me feeling extremely helpless.
What’s next? God only knows.
5:16 p.m.
A late-afternoon/early-evening rain shower has helped douse the fires burning in our neighborhood. It also appears to have driven some of the looters…pillagers…arsonists, whatever you want to call them, indoors.
I’m using this reprieve to take a few containers up to the rooftop and attempt to collect some of the rainwater. Dylan and Violet are helping me. Currently, they’re gathering containers from around the house.
5:47 p.m.
So much for my rainwater collection efforts. By the time we got enough containers set up on the roof, the rain had mostly stopped. I’d say we got about eight ounces of water in total. It’s better than nothing, but not nearly as much as I’d hoped. I used a couple bricks I found on the rooftop and collected some paperweights and bookends from inside our condo to help hold our rainwater collection containers in place. I left them up there in hopes that the next rain shower will be more productive. We can use the rainwater for flushing toilets and even bathing.
For dinner, we’re going to have sandwiches to try to finish up the last of the lunch meat. I’m going to warm up some canned veggies to go with it. Actually, I don’t know if I’m even going to bother warming them. With the temperatures the way they are, they’ll already be warm, and I don’t want to waste the propane to heat them on the camp stove.
8:03 p.m.
Uh oh, now that the rain has passed and it’s starting to get dark, it looks like those people from earlier…the looters or whatever they are, are back. I’m not sure how things are going to go down, but I guess I’ll find out. They’re coming into the courtyard now. I told the kids to stay quiet and in the hallway with Kate where there are no windows. I’ve got the shotgun and Kate has the .38. Gotta go make sure this doesn’t get out of hand. I really don’t want to have to shoot anyone. I’ve never killed anything much more than insects…although I did run over a squirrel once. But I’ll shoot someone if I have to, especially if it comes to protecting my family.
8:58 p.m.
What I just watched from our living room window, was one of the worst experiences of my life. It was so surreal, almost like watching a movie…a horrible, gut-wrenching movie. It reminded me of the time back in college when I watched “Faces of Death”, the movie (actually I think they made a series of them) of compiled real-life footage of people being killed – hit by trains, falling off buildings, committing suicide, and otherwise meeting grizzly endings – on film. I still remember the sick-to-my-stomach feeling I had after the movie ended. It’s the same feeling I have now.
As I said in my last entry, those roving groups had come back and one was in our condo building’s courtyard. It looked like it was the same people from earlier, but with the light fading outside, it was hard to tell for sure. They certainly acted the same. They looked heavily armed and were again shouting profanities. After cutting the bike chain off the front gate, they just kind of congregated in the courtyard, like they were unsure of what to do next. They smashed a couple more windows to the ground-floor units. I’m not sure if anyone is still living down there. I saw a couple of the looters duck inside the units through the broken windows, but from my vantage point, it didn’t look like they came out with much. It was kind of hard to tell since, besides it being dark, I had the blinds down and was trying to peek through the cracks without really opening them. I didn’t want to draw any attention to our unit or even our part of the building should any of the intruders be looking for signs of life.
So after a couple minutes of them screwing around in the courtyard, it started to quiet down. I thought the group was getting ready to leave. They slowly began moving back toward the entry gate, but I guess they were only taking a few minutes to come up with a plan. A few seconds later, a couple of them broke off and started trying doors. There are a total
of five main entry doors to the front entrances of our building. Each door leads to a different stack of six condos. The north side of the building also has two ground floor units. They tried the first door to the north side, which was locked, and I’m guessing they tried the first door on the south side (our side) of the building (although I couldn’t see for sure). From the brief amount of time it took for them to do so, I’m thinking that it was locked as well. I know for sure that OUR door is locked, since I’m the one who locked it, and I’m damn glad I did. Then they tried the door to the western stack of units in the center of our U-shaped building. It was also locked. But when they tried the second door on the north portion of the building, they got inside…and once one of them was in, they were ALL in. It looked like a swarm of hungry locust. They poured in through the vestibule door and then I heard the smashing of glass, which I took to be them breaking through the stairwell entry door.
By this point in the action, Kate and Dylan had come out of the hallway, curiosity getting the better of them. Thankfully, Violet was already sleeping. They were squeezing in around me by the window trying to get a view of their own. In hindsight, I should have shooed them away immediately in the event a stray bullet found its way up here, but I was so enthralled with what was going on across from us that I couldn’t tear myself away. It was like a reality TV show gone terribly, terribly wrong.
Shortly after I heard the glass breaking, I could hear shouting and then what sounded like heavy pounding on wood, which I’m guessing was the group of hooligans breaking through condo unit entry doors. The front doors to our building’s condos are all solid wood (almost two inches thick), but they can only handle so much. Most of them have had a single lock, and it’s often not the wood of the door that fails when someone’s trying to break it down, but the frame or the lock itself. Our entry door actually has three deadbolt locks for some reason. They must have been added years ago by an extremely timid former owner. I always thought them a tad overkill and somewhat ridiculous. Now I’m glad we have them.
Shortly after we heard the banging sounds, there was an eruption of what sounded like automatic gunfire. I’m not sure where the shooting started, but it continued for several seconds and then stopped. Then we heard more shouting and one of the windows was broken out on the second floor. About a minute later, we heard more banging, and then more shooting. This time, I could tell that it was on the third floor, directly across the courtyard from our unit. With the sun down, but with plenty of ambient light still available, I could see shapes moving inside the unit, people in front of the living room windows, and then suddenly flashes of light. There was the sound of gunfire, a spray of liquid (that I’m guessing was blood) against the living-room windows, and almost simultaneously, bullets that cracked through the window glass. Luckily, the shots must have been fired at an angle; otherwise they would probably have come into our unit. They impacted to the left of our unit’s living room windows, and that was all she wrote. I immediately pulled Kate and Dylan away from the windows with me and we all took shelter in our central hallway.
Now the shooting has stopped. Violet is crying, and Kate and Dylan look terrified. I can’t say I’m feeling much better, but I’m doing my best to appear calm just to help hold everybody together. I’ve pushed some larger furniture in front of our condo entry doors, and tomorrow I’m going to do more work to blockade entries to our condo and see if any of our other neighbors are still alive. It’s time to get organized if they are.
10:13 p.m.
About ten minutes after the shooting stopped across from us, we heard more commotion down in the courtyard. It was the roving gang exiting the building and leaving through the front gate. They were carrying multiple boxes of what appeared to be canned goods and bottled water. I wish they hadn’t found anything. Then they might leave us alone. Like feeding stray dogs, though, now I’m afraid they’ll come back later looking for more.
They also left three macabre presents. They dragged what I’m guessing are the bodies of the occupants of the units they raided out into the courtyard. It’s a horrible thing to do. I guess that’s the point…some kind of mental warfare meant to intimidate and scare anyone else in the building. I won’t let Violet and Dylan look outside. They want to see, but they don’t need the mental imagery invading their dreams tonight. They’ve had more than enough for their innocently untainted minds to absorb today. Seeing dead bodies splayed unceremoniously in the courtyard won’t do them any good. It certainly hasn’t done ME any good. That’s one of the reasons I’ve made some stiff cocktails for me and Kate. Now that the kids are asleep, it’s time to down a couple of these drinks to sooth what have become some extremely frayed nerves.
Kate’s kind of pissed. She says I’ve been writing too much in my journal. But this journal is my only outlet. I can’t really talk to Kate about what’s going on because the kids are always around; plus, I don’t want to worry her any more than she already is. And I’ve got no one else to express my thoughts and concerns to. I can’t even get away from everything that’s going on by playing on the internet or watching some mindless television.
I need another drink.
10:46 p.m.
None of us ate much for dinner tonight. The events of the afternoon and evening left us all pretty wound up and not much in the mood for eating. It’s weird; we can watch Hollywood films with all sorts of violence, shooting, death, and destruction while eating dinner or munching on popcorn, but seeing the real thing leaves you feeling like throwing up every time you think about food. You’d think that all the violence we’ve witnessed on the news and on television would have hardened us to seeing it in real life, but I can say from first-hand experience, that is definitely NOT the case.
I still hear shooting outside. Thankfully, it seems to have moved away from our immediate area for the moment.
I’m tired. Even though I really didn’t have to do much to defend our condo, simply having our home threatened by armed intruders really sapped my energy. I need to get some sleep so that tomorrow I can attempt to meet with any remaining residents in our unit stack and continue to work on our defenses.
Thursday, September 12 th
8:03 a.m.
The family ate dry cereal with the last of the bananas for breakfast this morning. It has cooled off a little bit and doesn’t feel as humid as it has been for the past few days. It’s still pretty warm out though. Blue skies don’t help. The sun really warms things up throughout the day, and that means it probably won’t rain.
We’re still doing okay on our drinkable water supply, but water for washing up and flushing the toilet is dwindling. I siphoned some water out of our hot water heater tank this morning to give our two toilets another flush. There is generally a rush to the bathroom after a fresh flush. Everyone has realized pretty quickly just how unpleasant it is to be second or even third in line for the restroom after others have already used it. We’ve all started trying to hold it longer, especially once someone else has already gone in for a “code brown” as we’ve started calling them. I used the rest of the water I siphoned for washing dishes. They were really starting to pile up. We’ve used most of our paper plates and are now trying to eat sandwiches and the likes off paper towels whenever possible. It’s amazing to realize just how many dishes you go through when you can’t just throw them in the dishwasher.
Things seem to have calmed down outside for the moment, but it’s still early. The intruders from yesterday haven’t reappeared. Now that I’m done with breakfast, I’m going to don my surgical mask, take my .38, and make the rounds, working my way downstairs to see who is left in our stack of units. I don’t really want to, but I feel somewhat obligated; plus, after yesterday, I unfortunately think we need to be ready for what happened to the stack across the courtyard to possibly happen to us. It’s not an appealing thought, but this whole mess has been pretty damn unappealing.
I’m guessing that anyone who had the flu in our building has probably died from it by now, so t
hose of us remaining in our stack should hopefully be safe. I just hope no one thinks that I’m one of those people from yesterday and shoots me.
11:03 a.m.
Well that was certainly more work than I expected. So here is a quick breakdown of what I found regarding the occupancy of the other units in our stack:
3A – Us
3B – Unoccupied. Someone has been working to remodel it over the past few months but apparently they have yet to move in.
2A – No response from Ms. Laurel, but there is a horrific smell issuing from inside…not good, definitely NOT good.
2B – No answer from Ms. Callahan. Not sure if she’s gone or…well, gone.
1A – Ms. Williams and her teenage son Bradley are home and doing as well as can be expected.
1B – Ms. Murphy (and her cat Felix) is still managing just fine.
Ms. Williams is in her mid-50s, slightly overweight, but an extremely pleasant individual with an overwhelmingly positive demeanor (all things considered). Her son Bradley is a well-mannered, somewhat reserved boy, who wears glasses and has a bad bout of teenage acne going on.
I ended up convincing Ms. Williams and Bradley to move up to the empty unit across from us for safety’s sake. That’s why it took me a while to conduct my “meet and greet” and why I’m so tired. Dylan and I helped the Williams’ carry their essentials up the two flights of stairs. I was surprised at how few supplies they had (especially when it came to drinkable water). I don’t know how much longer they’ll be able to make it without our supplementing their stock. We don’t have much extra to give, but compared to them, we’re a regular grocery store.
The Pandemic Diaries [Books 1-3] Page 7