The Last Storm

by Jack Hunt

  Chapter 8

  The entire bag was stuffed with bricks of heroin or cocaine, it was hard to tell by all the wrapping but it was definitely drugs. Alex fished out brick after brick and placed it on the bed until he saw what had caused the leak. In the bottom corner was a half-filled plastic bottle of juice. The top wasn’t sealed tight and so most of it had leaked out, soaked through the bag and stained the ceiling tile.

  “What the hell…?” Hayley said.

  “Hayley, go into the living room,” Jess said.

  She didn’t protest and left immediately. All three of them stood there staring at it.

  “Kip, the room across the way. The tape over the door was snapped. Did you do that or one of the officers?” Alex asked.

  “I noticed that on the way in, I was going to check after.”

  “So it happened recently?”

  “Well it wasn’t like that a couple of days ago because I was up here fixing someone’s plumbing.”

  He nodded. “Okay, listen, I’ll get this over to the department,” Alex said tossing it all back into the bag haphazardly. “Maybe Solomon will know more about it.”

  The light in the room started to flicker then it went out.

  Kip crossed the room and flipped the switch a couple of times. He tried a few more rooms before returning. “Great. I’ll have to check the fuse box. Must be the storm.”

  Outside the wind had picked up and was howling. Although it was still daytime, it was hard to tell as it was so blustery and overcast it felt like early evening. Dark storm clouds had moved in squeezing out whatever light remained. Alex hauled the strap over his shoulder, and cast a glance at his phone. There were no bars. “Damn it.”

  “It’s out?” Kip asked.

  “Appears so.” He went and collected his firearm that was locked inside a gun case, and palmed a magazine into it. He put two more in his duty belt, holstered his service weapon and headed for the door.

  “You got a landline?” Kip asked.

  “The phone is in one of the boxes,” Alex said.

  “Forget it, I’ll check the one downstairs.”

  “Alex,” Jess called out. “What if the power doesn’t come back on?”

  “We have two backup gasoline generators downstairs,” Kip said. “They need to be fired up but it should provide enough power while we try to figure out what the issue is.”

  “It has enough power for the entire building?”

  “Of course. After some of the ice storms we’ve had over the years we had to get it. Quite a few of our residents are senior citizens. They can’t be climbing the stairwells in an emergency. The backup generators can provide enough power to cook, have lights, stay warm and potentially keep us in contact with the outside world. That is if the internet hasn’t gone down.” He looked around. “You guys got any flashlights?”

  “My service one,” Alex said raising his.

  Jessica looked flustered. “And I think we have another one somewhere around here. Finding it is another thing. The rest of our belongings weren’t meant to arrive until tomorrow.”

  “Like furniture?” Kip asked.

  “We couldn’t bring all of it but we have a truck that’s bringing some down from Anchorage,” Alex said. He opened the door to the hallway. Outside it was really dark because there were no windows. He pulled out the Maglite he’d been issued for work and switched it on, shining it on the door across the way. He reached for the door handle and noticed that it wasn’t locked. The door was slightly ajar. Alex entered apartment 1002 and shone his light. It washed over the silhouette of furniture. Kip came up behind him, using his own flashlight.

  “Dear lord. Doug is going to have a fit when he sees this mess. Who the hell did this?”

  They entered to find that all the furniture had been torn apart. Chunks of sofa filling was scattered. Tables were flipped and cupboards yanked off their hinges. Alex went into the bedroom and found the mattress ripped down the middle as if someone had gone wild with a knife.

  “You said Greg Mitchell lived here, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And he was dealing?” Alex asked.

  “Well I can speculate on that but rumor has it he was running a grow op.”

  “You think he was dealing in heroin?” Alex asked turning to Kip who was looking around the room in total bewilderment.

  Kip shrugged. “If he was he kept it under wraps. Though that’s hard to do in a building like this, where everyone knows each other’s business. Sometimes they know too much.” He turned and walked out and Alex followed him into the hallway. Some of the residents of the building on the tenth floor had come out of their apartments and were chatting about the blackout. The moment they laid eyes on Kip they started firing questions.

  “What’s going on?”

  “I was in the middle of cooking.”

  “When is the power coming back on?”

  Kip raised both hands to try and calm them. “Please, people. Go back inside your homes. We’ll have the power on as soon as we can. The storm has knocked it out.”

  “Typical. They really need to update the wiring in this place.”

  “It’s not the building, Janice, and they already have. The storm has forced the tunnel to be shut down and you’re not the only ones affected. And please don’t line up outside the store if the lights aren’t on in half an hour. It will probably get worse before it gets better. Now go on back inside. Grab a flashlight, use some candles but just make sure you don’t leave them unattended. The last thing I need on my plate is to have to deal with a fire.”

  Both of them squeezed through unhappy residents as they made their way to the stairwell. “Before you head over to the department, Alex. Do you think you can give me a hand filling up the generators?”

  Alex grimaced. “Kip, I really should get moving.”

  “It’ll only take a few minutes. If we can get the power back up that will at least get these folks off my back. By now there is probably a line a mile long outside my store.”

  Alex frowned and nodded, and they headed into the stairwell and made their way down to the basement. “Kip, you mentioned you had been warning people about a superstorm for the past four years. Why are you so obsessed with it?”

  He laughed. “I’m not obsessed. I guess it comes from my time in the military. I just think you need to be prepared. Too many folks are putting their faith in the government and let’s face it, they are in the same boat as us. Anyway, there’s not a lot to do when I’m working. When I’m not serving the odd customer in the store and believe me we don’t get many, I listen to the radio.”

  “Why?”

  “Because old habits die hard.”

  “No, I meant regarding customers.”

  “Oh,” he said smiling. “That’s because of the high prices.”

  “So lower them.”

  Kip snorted. “Supply and demand, my friend. Supply and demand! Most of the residents here travel to Anchorage once a month and spend upwards of fifteen hundred bucks at Costco to stock up their cupboards so they don’t have to pay me. It’s only the lazy or those who forgot an item that usually come into the store. Anyway when I’m not manning the desk I help Doug with the maintenance. Between the two of us we manage to keep this place ticking over.”

  “Seems like it needs an overhaul.”

  “Already had one back in 2016. We finally managed to get a three million dollar grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to cover repairs, repaint the building and get a decent boiler.”

  “Boiler?”

  “When the military ran this place they had their own heating plant but when they pulled out they installed two boilers. One of them quit working and so the water in the pipes ended up freezing and we had pipes bursting all over the place. Finally they managed to get rid of those two and replaced the corroded pipes with PVC and installed three modern boilers so we are all good now. However, without power to run them and with the frigid temperatures we are having right now, there is
a chance we might find ourselves back at square one.” They eventually made it to the basement. “Oh and that’s not all, this building and the Buckner one originally had asbestos in the flooring so all of that had to be ripped out and replaced along with an air exchange system and floating walls to cover the cinder block walls in the hallways so it didn’t look like a damn institution, and it allows for them to paint it easier.”

  “You like living here, Kip?”

  “Could be worse.”

  “How?”

  He snorted. “Look, on the surface this place might seem like a junkyard and at times, believe me, I have thought about moving away, especially when you hear fishermen say, ‘There is nothing shittier than Whittier,’ but I’ll tell you this… there is something special to the people in this place. The ones who stay, I mean. You feel like part of a family. That’s lost in the big cities. It’s the closest thing that I have to the sense of brotherhood I found in the military. When I got out, I tried to keep in touch with pals but like everything eventually people go their separate ways and you have to get on and live. But how do you handle life outside of the times when you’re working? You know, when you’re not keeping your mind busy?”

  They pushed their way through a set of doors in the basement.

  “So you wouldn’t want to live in Anchorage?” Alex asked.

  “What would I do there? Who would I know? At least here I know where I stand. I see the same people, day in and day out, and while it might not seem very fulfilling, I feel useful, and this place feels like one big dorm room.”

  He chuckled and began pointing out a few rooms in the basement. “You got many belongings arriving tomorrow?”

  “A fair amount.”

  “Well whatever can’t be stored in your apartment can be contained in these storage cages. Costs $15 a month though. There is also a room full of chest freezers. People eat a lot of fish here so you might want to get yourself one of those. They are $15 a month. Oh, and the laundry costs $25 a month.”

  “Twenty-five bucks?”

  “That’s not bad if you’re doing a few loads of washing every other day.”

  They continued on. “That tunnel over there runs from the building to the school which is on the west side.”

  “Why did they build that?”

  He stifled a laugh. “Management will say it’s for convenience and because of the weather but that’s bull crap. It’s because of the bears.”

  “Bears?”

  “Oh yeah, we get them rooting through the dumpsters outside the trash room on the ground floor. We usually have to bang on the door before heading out as you never know when you’re going to come face to face with one of those hairy suckers. We had one wander into the school. Scared the shit out of the pupils.”

  “Anyone get hurt?”

  “Nope.”

  “How did you get it out?”

  “My rifle.”

  “The one in your store?”

  He cast a sideways glance and grinned. “You’re in God’s country now, Alex. Got to be prepared.”

  “Speaking of being prepared. How old is this place?” he asked looking around.

  “Over sixty years old. But don’t let it fool you. It’s as strong as an ox. It’s survived all manner of storms. On Good Friday back in 1964, it survived the Alaskan quake. This place was still standing. Of course some people died.”

  “How?”

  “The tsunami from the quake. It came in off the bay and hit this building like a wall. Over a hundred feet high. Damn thing killed thirteen people.”

  “So it’s true, the bay doesn’t freeze, does it?”

  “Nope. Too deep. Had it done, they might have survived.”

  “So this superstorm. You don’t think it would kick up another tsunami, do you?”

  He shrugged. “Hard to know. I’m not going to say it won’t because I’ve been monitoring what’s been going on over the last four years and it doesn’t look good.”

  “Yeah, that’s what that climatologist said. He thinks it would make Superstorm Sandy look like child’s play.”

  “It will. There’s a good chance it will throw us back to the ice age.”

  “You serious?” Alex asked.

  They entered a large room that had three boilers inside of it, industrial generators with gasoline canisters. Kip shone his light around the room. The light hit a shelf full of about twenty mason jars, some of them were filled, others empty.

  “What are those?”

  Kip’s eyebrows rose. “Ah, my private stash of moonshine.” He walked over and took one down and unscrewed the top, then stuck it under Alex’s nose. It smelled like ass. “You want to try some?”

  “Thanks, I think I’ll give it a pass.”

  He laughed. “Over there, grab that canister and I’ll grab the other. Fill up that generator.” They went about doing that and Kip continued talking. “It’s all to do with global warming and the melting of the ice caps. Without getting too technical, much of our weather over land is determined by the ocean’s rotating currents, which are occurring north and south of the equator. Essentially we have the cold heading south and the warmer waters heading north. Studies show that when that Gulf Stream flow is reduced, it can trigger an ice age kind of like what was seen in northwestern Europe back in the thirteenth to the nineteenth centuries. It caused long winters, shorter growing seasons and increased glaciers. Yep, it’s not pretty and the fact is people really don’t know how Mother Nature is going to respond. They try to come up with these timelines but she’s unpredictable and after all the damage we’ve done I wouldn’t be surprised if she hits back just to remind us of how small we are.”

  “You know a lot about this.”

  “Nah, I just listen. The fact is global warming has been causing the ice caps to melt for a long time. That’s been sending out large amounts of fresh cold water into the oceans which can disturb the current enough to change the weather on land. Basically, if we keep going the way we are using fossil fuels instead of renewable energy, we are going to take a nosedive into a cold snap that could last for decades or even longer.” He stopped filling the generator and placed the canister on the ground. “And you know the irony, other parts of the world will stay warm.”

  “I’m not sure I understand.”

  “Okay think of like a conveyer belt. Warm water is lighter than cold water. So you have this current heading up from the Gulf floating on top of the cold water and so it keeps moving. You then have the northern Atlantic cooling it down, making it denser and then it flows back to the south crossing underneath the northern warm Gulf Stream until it hits the tropics and the cycle repeats. But if you get too much dilution in the ocean through the ice caps melting, it will make the water get lighter and essentially choke out and stall the entire system. The sea levels rise, temperatures change and all manner of extreme weather occurs in the atmosphere.”

  “So what’s the solution at that point?”

  “There is no solution. We head south.” He laughed. “Join the snowbirds and wait for Mother Nature to sort her shit out.”

  Alex poured in the gasoline from a large canister.

  “How much fuel we got?”

  “Enough down here for maybe 24 hours.”

  Once it was filled up Kip fired up the generators and stood back as they rumbled to life. He looked up at the lights as they flickered to life and illuminated the whole room. “There we go. That should keep them off my doorstep.”

  “You just made two hundred people happy, Kip.”

  “Two hundred?”

  “The residents in the building.”

  He scoffed. “There haven’t been two hundred people here since 2015. This place has around a hundred residents, plus or minus twenty depending on the time of the year. Yeah, the turnover is pretty high. Tourists don’t stay for longer than an afternoon usually, and new residents come and go. It’s the isolation. It can get to you.”

  “Solomon said. Which reminds me, I should get over there
before he comes looking for me. I figure he’ll be interested in this.” Alex heaved the large duffel bag back onto his shoulder. They turned to leave when the echo of rapid gunfire erupted. Both of them froze as the sound of screams filled the air.

  Chapter 9

  Cayden figured the quickest way to round up the residents was to start on the lower floors. Those higher up had nowhere to go. Two men per floor, ten of them, they were going to clear five floors at a time. What had started out as a pretty straightforward request had already led to the death of one resident causing others to scream in fear. He had no qualms about ending lives. Sixty million dollars in heroin was worth it. First order of business was to lock all the lower exit doors. No one was getting in or out without his permission. Once everyone was out of their apartments and brought to the homeowners lounge on the fifteenth floor, he would take the subtle approach; question them and hope someone would provide answers on where Greg had stashed it.

  Cayden was on the fifth floor.

  He banged on a door with the back of his rifle. “Let’s go. Open up!”

  Those who chose not to open were quickly dealt with. He gave them a minute or two to reach the door but if they took any longer than that he opened fire, kicked the door open and threatened to take their lives.

  “How we doing, Leon?”

  “You know this is a dumb move, Cayden.”

  If anyone else had said that, they would have been swallowing teeth but he and Leon went far back. Sure, the dynamics between them had changed over the years as he moved into a leading role and Leon assisted, but he still respected him. Sometimes he was right but not this time.

  “I gave you plenty of time to find it.”

  Leon pushed a resident towards the stairwell at the end of the hall. “Head on up to the homeowners lounge, now!” The frightened mother with two children cowered and hurried down the hallway following the long line of people. Most were compliant. Everyone was afraid.

  Keeping his M4 low, he grabbed a hold of Cayden and shoved him against the wall. “You know what, Cayden, your need to be in control is wearing my patience thin.”