by Crane, J. J.
“Nick Lasker is dead,” Max said to Carl. “They are all dead. You’re the only one lucky enough to have survived.”
“Maybe,” Jason added while swinging his Bowie knife around making sure Carl saw the size of the large blade. “Maybe we’ll just torture the shit out of you, cut your fingers off one by one.”
I stepped in front of Jason making sure he looked at me. “Calm down, take a breath.” I could see his face was flush, his eyebrows bent, his breathing rapid. “You have to take it easy. Go get something to drink. Go talk to your wife.”
Jason let out a long exhale. He said he was okay.
I patted his back then moved toward Carl. “Did Lasker set this whole thing up, and how many other people were involved in this?”
“There were the nine of us,” Carl stuttered.
“There was more than nine,” I said. “He told me Councilwoman Mortimer was involved.”
Carl gave a halfhearted laugh. “She died. She was the last of the township government to die.”
“What happened to the others?” Max asked.
“The Mayor died after visiting the hospital. I think Councilman Porter died of a heart attack. I don’t know about the others,” Carl said.
Ted made sure Carl’s hands were bound behind a chair in Pam’s basement. He winced in pain at every move, his leg still bleeding but not terribly.
“Any chance someone can please bandage up this wound?” Carl asked. “It’s killing me.”
“Doc will be here shortly,” I said. “More. I want to know more about what Lasker had going on. Who’s at that house in Circle Estates we saw a couple of weeks back? Where are the women? You can’t tell me there are no women survivors. Lasker’s wife?”
“Nick’s wife went to somewhere in Massachusetts when
this all happened. We had two other women. One died, breaking her neck when she fell off a ladder. The other one just left. One night, she took a car and left. We were all asleep when it happened.”
“Fine enough,” I said. “What about this whole warlord shit of taking over the region? Why?”
“Because he wanted to set himself up as some sort of King. He said all his followers would get a sizable parcel of land to take charge of if we remained loyal to him,” Carl said. “Since the government, from everything we could find out, didn’t exist, I thought, why not. He had weapons, supplies, people, connections.”
“And this plan made sense to you?” Ted asked.
Carl shrugged. “Everyone I knew died because they got sick. My wife, my kids, my parents, and all my close friends. I was away on an ice fishing trip when this all happened. My wife called and said to stay away,” he said. “I knew Nick. I didn’t know him well, but I’ve known him for years. He saved me, offered me a place to stay, and welcomed me. What else was I going to do?”
“What about this crew he had, the cops, the army people he claimed?” Max asked.
“That was a lot of bullshit. One of them was an ex- Marine, Chris Hand, a cousin to Lasker. This other guy, Larry, he was a National Guardsman. There was only one other cop, Bill Halsey. He was with us, so I take it he’s dead too.” Carl looked around the room seeing all the eyes on him. “Lasker didn’t think much of you guys. We spied on you. We knew you had a watch of some kind happening, but we saw you guys sleep through more of it than were awake. We also knew you guys had some weapons but nothing we couldn’t handle. Or so we thought.”
“He guessed wrong on that, didn’t he?” Max said.
“Yes,” Carl answered. “The one thing he was impressed by was that you guys had food and water. You see, the virus didn’t kill as many people as the lack of goods, the lack of medicine and hypothermia. We went into a lot of homes. Most of the people we found dead appeared to have died from exposure, starved, or from a medical concern. You’d be surprised by how many people also killed themselves.” Carl paused. “Rummaging through cabinets didn’t produce as much as we’d hoped. But considering the area… we barely scratched the surface of what is available.”
“So, you guys had supplies, what kind? If the homes didn’t produce much, how did you get them?” asked Ted.
“Nick said we needed lots of stuff…things to have on hand to barter with in case we came across other groups, bigger ones. He had us unload the food store downtown and bring it back up to Circle Estates, especially after the power went out. We took all we could get from the nearby stores, generators from Pete’s Hardware, all the weapons from the police station. Nick had a key for the gas pumps, and we began to stock up on fuel. We even managed to break into Jake’s Sporting Goods and helped ourselves to all the weapons and ammunition he had, which by the way, wasn’t as much as we thought he’d have.”
“So, all this stuff is up there now?” I asked.
Carl said, yes.
“When did you guys start all that?” I asked again, not wanting to miss any details.
“Well… we started to organize the food supplies once the electric went out. It was easier to run refrigerators off generators than trying to power the one in store, which we really couldn’t figure out. We collected as many supplies from various stores in the region and put them in the surrounding homes where we had other stuff. Then we heard the announcement that the virus had run its course…” We cut him off.
“Wait a minute…you heard the virus stopped infecting people?” I asked.
“The government announced it over their radio channel,” Carl said, looking at us with surprise that we hadn’t heard.
“When was this?” Max asked.
“A week, ten days maybe… that’s why Nick wanted to do this takeover; it was safe now. He figured we could accumulate large swaths of territory and if the state or federal government ever reestablished itself, he would claim he was simply trying to protect the citizenry through some kind of organized law and order,” Carl said. He looked at our puzzled faces and could see we were shocked by the news of the virus. “It was broadcast over a government channel on the radio.”
“We haven’t heard anything,” Ted barked.
Carl shrugged his shoulders. “We heard it… a couple of times.”
“He’s lying,” Max said as he grabbed his rifle.
“No, I’m not. I heard it myself!” he screamed. “There were some doctors on, as well as a congressman who said they believed the strain had either diminished or run its course,” Carl said, wincing in pain from his wounds after jerking back in defense from Max’s threat.
“What channel on the radio?” Ted asked. “We’ve been monitoring the radio.”
Carl shook his head, not able to remember. “I don’t know. It was AM, end of the dial.”
Ted stood up and left the house to get his hand-cranked emergency radio. A few minutes later June and Betty brought over some food and a hot drink for everyone including our prisoner. Carl relaxed as he ate – we untied one hand. Doc soon arrived and examined Carl’s wounds. He cleaned and bandaged the calf of its scrapes and grazes from buckshot. What concerned him was the bullet wound in Carl’s left calf. The skin swelled with discoloration, and he worried about infection. He also wanted to locate the bullet or fragments but did not have the medical tools to make a thorough examination. Also, our pharmacy trip didn’t produce the antibiotics needed to treat this kind of injury.
Ted returned with the radio on. Turning the dial, it produced nothing but static.
“It was at the high number end. Please, believe me. I have no problems with you people. I was just doing what I was told,” Carl said his voice quivering the whole time.
“Just following orders, I suppose,” I said.
Carl nodded.
“I’ve heard that line before,” I returned. “Nazis used it as their excuse at Nuremberg.”
“He’s a liar,” Max barked.
“I don’t think so,” I countered. “But, we’ll see.”
After
Chapter 21
It was an hour before sunrise, and I was still awake, amped up from the whole
conflict. We all felt a sense of boldness with the way we handled executing our defense of the neighborhood. As I sat on my porch and stared at the morning sky, the planet Venus gleaming to the southeast, I wondered for a brief moment if our current predicament was just a microcosm of what the future held for us.
“Hey brother what’s going on?” Ted said, coming outside seeing me sitting alone. “You know we’re going to have to secure those supplies of theirs.”
I continued to look straight out. “Yeah, I know.”
The fading darkness began to reveal detail on the vehicles. I could see the color of the truck, green, and read the markings of the police car. I began to notice the figures of dead men lying on the pavement. “First, we have to clean that up,” I said motioning towards the scene of battle.
Ted exhaled as if dreading it. “So much for the fruits of victory.”
“Let’s get it over with before the sun rises above the tree line. We don’t need any more reminders of that incident than we already have,” I said. “We’ll collect anything of value then bury the bodies.”
“Where?” Ted asked.
“There’s an old cemetery, lots of 19th-century gravestones off a trail in Circle Estates. We’ll put the bodies in a pickup and bring them up there,” I said.
“I thought maybe we can have a drink of scotch before we get to it,” Ted said revealing the bottle of twelve-year old
single malt and two small glasses.
“Sounds like a fine idea to me.”
It took a couple of days to log in the inventory of food, weapons, medical supplies we found in the three houses the Lasker gang occupied. It was a little like Christmas to have what amounted to an extra three to four months of supplies arrive on our doorstep. We had entered the ‘one month of food’ milestone as we closed out March. Now we easily had enough to carry us into the summer.
The weapons supply was another fantastic turn of events to witness. We collected twenty-two handguns of various types (mostly Glocks) and twenty rifles, one AR-15, and several shotguns, along with five body armor outfits. We also collected three large closets worth of ammunition for all the weapons.
Two guards kept a continuous watch over Carl who we threatened with physical punishment if he tried anything suspicious. One guard stood post at the top of the stairs by the locked basement door, and the other was a Watch Patrol person who made sure to walk the outside perimeter of Pam’s house. Most didn’t feel he was a threat, but until we figured out what to do with him, he stayed locked in her basement. There was no chance of escape from the block windowed cellar, though performing a visual check of those windows became the primary responsibility of the outside guard.
Three days passed, and Carl’s superficial wounds began to heal well, but his calf concerned Doc; the coloring didn’t look right, having turned dark with specks of pink. He feared infection even though he thoroughly cleaned the wound twice a day and always put on new dressings and a liberal helping of anti-bacterial cream. He also administered the best antibiotics he could muster from the supplies we gathered.
Doc felt frustrated by his meager attempts to treat Carl. He’d been out of the loop in terms of medicine for well over a decade and wasn’t exactly sure which drugs or cocktails of them would be best for Carl. “So much has changed,” he lamented. “Without access to the internet, it’s impossible to gather useful information.”
I tried to reassure him that he was our best hope, but my words were no consolation to him.
Carl, though hobbled by his wounds, appeared fine and helped in corroborating all the supplies we gathered. The Body even discussed taking him off being ‘watched,' given a room, duties to perform and essentially welcomed into the community.
Two more days passed. Ted’s daughter, Samantha, stood guard outside Pam’s house when I arrived to make my daily visit. Doc had arrived a short time before to check on Carl’s dressings. Max, who accompanied Doc, looked concerned as he came up the stairs to greet me.
“He’s not feeling well,” he said.
I double-timed it down the stairs to see Doc kneeling next to Carl. As I approached, I could see Carl shivering, his face pale.
“What’s going on, Doc?” I asked.
Carl gave me an initial glance but quickly closed his eyes. I could see sweat had soaked his clothes all the way through, his hair slimy, matting against his head.
“Infection,” Doc replied. “The antibiotics we have aren’t suitable, and we don’t have an I.V. to provide the proper fluids. I have no tests to specifically know what’s happening. Remember what I said about being in the 19th century? This is what happens when you have no resources or technology.”
I put my hand on the back of his shoulder and motioned for him to step off to the side with me. “Is it that bad?” I asked.
“It isn’t good,” he answered with a stone expression. “It came on quick. I saw him last night. He looked fine, but I’m telling you if the antibiotics I gave him don’t lessen the infection, it’s not going to end well for him.” Doc took a deep breath. “I’m failing him. I’m failing us.”
I got in Doc’s face and made him look me in the eyes. “No way,” I stated. “You’re doing the best you can, given the circumstances. This whole situation is nothing any of us can fathom. You need to stay steady, just like you have been. We need you.”
Doc bobbed his head. “Thank you.”
“Okay,” I said. “You’re doing great.” I paused. “Let me know if there is anything I can do.” I started to walk away.
“Wait,” Carl pleaded, his voice struggling.
I turned around and came back to him. “Yeah, what’s up?” I said looking at his barely opened eyes.
He grabbed my hand and squeezed it as hard as he could. It wasn’t much of a squeeze, and I could feel his clammy effort wane as he pulled me closer to him. “Thank you for your kindness.”
“You are welcome,” I said as I stood up. He tugged at me to come back down. “Yes?”
“I,” he stammered, his shivering worsening. “I didn’t tell you something,” his words coming out weak but deliberate, “you missed three people that night.”
“What?” I spit out with anger. Carl acknowledged that I heard right.
He squeezed my hand a little harder. “Three others… two women and a man, back at the house. If we didn’t return within an hour for some reason or receive word over the radio that all was clear, they were to flee to a ranch near Shenipsit Lake.” Carl then began to cough; blood began to stain his teeth.
“Who are those people,” I asked, desperation coating my tone.
“A cousin of Lasker’s. They wanted to rule as much of the state they could get their hands on,” Carl spit out.
“Will they come to find out what happened?” I was livid. “Carl! Will they come to find out what happened to Lasker?”
Carl coughed up more blood. Doc wiped it away and signaled for me to back off. Carl started to choke. I watched him gag followed quickly by convulsions. His face went white. He meekly attempted to bring his hands to his face. Doc tried to settle him, but Carl shook even more violently, kicking, tossing the blanket off his body. Then just as quick as the convulsions started, Carl’s body went limp and slumped into the mattress. Doc tried to locate a pulse. A second later he began to apply chest compressions. For two minutes, he frantically worked on Carl before finally giving up.
“Fuck!” I barked. I looked at Carl’s dead body. I wanted to kick it with every ounce of energy I had. The only thoughts that rushed through my brain were, Now what? Now what? Now what?
With news of people from the Lasker gang escaping to another location, I called a community meeting for 6 pm at Pam’s house. I also stated that every adult would receive a handgun with two loaded magazines. This declaration put people on notice.
I stood outside Pam Richards’s home. The Body gathered on the porch, and the community stood on the front lawn. I explained what Carl revealed: there was another encampment roughly thirty minute
s away by car. I also said our prisoner confessed that three people from their group slipped away to this other compound. This meant we needed even more vigilant watches, no sleeping or alternating naps. We had to prepare to fight at a moment’s notice. We couldn’t take any chances.
Before the meeting, June, Betty, and Ted organized the handguns and loaded the appropriate magazines to distribute to all the adults who didn’t have one. They did their best to match up a suitable weapon for each person. Then, in a civil and organized fashion, Betty and June passed them out, recorded what weapon went to who and provided an extra box of ammunition for each gun. They informed people if they wanted more, all they had to do was ask.
Max suggested that Watch now always have five people on patrol twenty-four-seven, no exceptions, two in the rear, a middle floater and two forward. This led to the suggestion of placing cars as barriers up and down the main street that ran along our neighborhood.
Pops said it best, “We already let one group roll right into our neighborhood, no need to let history repeat itself.”
We decided to use the police cars and truck as a barrier. Pam said we could use her spare car since it had sat mostly unused in her garage for two years.
After siphoning gasoline out of the cars to a quarter tank apiece, Max and Ted took two police cars each from Circle Estates and placed them on each end of the main road approximately five hundred feet from the entrance to our neighborhood. They added Pam’s car and the pickup truck to help seal off the road at both ends. The sight of a police car as part of a roadblock would give anyone passing through a moment of pause. The barricade added more territory for the Watch to walk, but no one argued about its importance.
With the community on high alert and lots of energy to expend, the fortification of the woods surrounding our homes became a top priority. The sound of chainsaws soon filled the air. This became a whole community endeavor. Using ropes, teams dragged trees into various sections that needed reinforcing.