The Romero Strain

by Alan, TS

  “I didn’t say I disagreed,” she disputed. “I just said you’re cynical.”

  “Fine. Okay, that leaves you, Doc. Nice of you to finally grace us with your presence.”

  “I am only here out of necessity. I protest that I am being forced from the GCC and must finish my research in this primitive and inadequate environment—”

  I interrupted him.

  “Duly noted. Is there anything else, like the medical supply inventory list I gave you for review?”

  “Band-Aids and aspirin,” he proclaimed, clearly dissatisfied. “That is all you have given me.”

  “You’re being melodramatic, Doc. There are antibiotics, morphine, and numerous other items on the list.”

  “Like I said, ‘Band-Aids and aspirin.’ Totally inadequate. Yes, I have morphine, bandages, sutures, broad spectrum antibiotics, gloves, masks and bouffant caps. However, I also have IV fluids without enough kits, syringes without enough needles, and an X-ray machine without film. I need another autoclave and at least two more infusion pumps. And what about treatment for radiation sickness? Have you even considered this? We know the living dead as well as those half-mutes have been contaminated. There are bound to be survivors that have been exposed. I will need potassium iodine, diethylenetriamine pentaacetic acid… prussian blue. We are ill prepared and under stocked for what we may encounter.”

  “And that’s why I asked you to review the list and make recommendations. Did you do that?”

  “Of course I did,” the doctor replied, as if I had offended his organizational skills. “I compiled a spreadsheet for you of twelve pages in length, ranking the items by need. I have also listed the bioequivalent counterpart in the column next to the brand name of the pharmaceutical.”

  “Doc, I appreciate the effort, but for time purposes, I’m just going to go over to Saint Vincent’s and clear out the entire stock room of pharmaceuticals and medical supplies. If there is any medical equipment or instruments you may need, within reason, let me know and I’ll bring back what I can.”

  “I have already compiled that as part of the report.”

  “Why am I not surprised? You are certainly efficient, to the point of obsessive compulsive. As for my report,” I began. The doctor stood up to leave, not wanting to waste anymore of his valuable time listening to things that he considered trivial and of no concern to him. I didn’t acknowledge his rudeness. “I have compiled a list of weapons and ammunition and we’re pretty stocked in that department, with exception to grenades. As for relocation of all those boxes, as you can see Kermit and I have been very busy. We’ve managed to get about a quarter of the pallets down to the basement, which gives us enough room for an exercise area to practice our martial arts.”

  Most everyone grunted and groaned.

  “Yeah, yeah. I’m not making this mandatory, yet, since I know we’ve all been working our asses off and are overtired. However, once our move is complete, I’m going to make a mandatory two-hour session five days a week, and the other two days Kermit will be running drills and doing firearms instruction. So enjoy this vacation… and that’s about it, unless anyone has anything to add.”

  Julie raised her hand.

  “Yes.”

  “What about the sleeping situation? We’re going from the semi-comfort of hard mattresses to cots. I don’t really want to have to sleep on an army cot. Is there any plan on taking our beds when we move?”

  “Oh, yes. I’ve already heard several complaints in regard to the living quarters and the lack of amenities. I know this place is a little lacking, but once we get ready to officially move in, we’ll go mattress shopping as it were. Anything else? No? Okay, next staff meeting in two days, same time, same place, same Bat channel. Meeting is adjourned.”

  VII. Hometown

  September 14th. Five weeks after we gained access to the armory it was fully functional defensively and offensively. We reconstructed the gating and barricades, rebuilt the machine gun nests on the roof, opting not to reestablish the ones on street level. We mended all the razor wire, took inventory of our supplies, set up living quarters, removed the dead, and repaired the rooftop perimeter fencing. Sam also salvaged as much video and radio communications equipment from the GCC as he could carry out, while Marisol, with Sam’s help, disassembled and removed the external storage of the Networx Altix supercomputer. It was impossible to transport the nearly seven-foot tall, fourteen hundred pound rack server to our new home, even though Doctor France insisted it was necessary for his ongoing research efforts. The only remaining item on our to-do list was to move the doctor himself and his needed research equipment into the armory hospital.

  Though we had explored the blocks surrounding the armory, scavenging as much needed supplemental supplies as necessary—not only food but personal hygiene as well—we had not actually had a day away from our new home with the intention of exploring for the sake of exploring. We needed a few days of enjoyment, moderate relaxation, and no work. I wanted to take my friends on a “field trip” to a secret destination before going home to retrieve personal items.

  Marisol was hesitant about returning to her home; she was afraid of what she knew she would find. David, had no one at his home, which was not in New Jersey, but a townhouse on the west side of Gramercy Park. He was anxious to return and retrieve his seven guitars, which he told me was ever-present on his mind since we made the relocation to the armory. The armory was less than five blocks north of his townhouse and he had considered walking home on several occasions.

  I wanted a day away from the armory, a day to take my friends to my old neighborhood, to a special destination. Of course the doctor declined, which was fine by me. We showed him how to use the radio in the communication room, in case there was an emergency, and locked the exterior gates behind us as we departed.

  * * *

  I lived on 13th Street between 3rd and 2nd Avenue. My neighborhood was famous; so was my building. Famous, if you were a movie buff and a fan of the 1976 Martin Scorsese film, Taxi Driver. I lived at 204 East 13th Street, the building where Robert De Niro meet and eventually shot Harvey Keitel, not to be confused with the building that was used as the brothel, where De Niro’s character, Travis Smiley, went on a bloody rampage in the film’s climatic finale. That was 226 East 13th. Besides, my building was renovated while the other looked like it was from 1976.

  I loved where I lived; it was a good neighborhood and I knew quite a few of my neighbors. I also liked where I used to live on East 10th Street across from Tompkins Square Park. During the 1980s, the park had become a high-crime area that contained encampments of homeless people, and it was a center for illegal drug dealing and heroin use.

  The property values of the neighborhood had plummeted by then, and no one wanted to live in the neighborhood for fear of their lives, including my mother. However, my father turned the plight of the neighborhood into an opportunity. He, along with a few of his colleagues, scraped up enough money to buy a building for slightly over $100,000. That was one year before Daniel Rakowitz made brain soup out of his roommate of sixteen days.

  Rakowitz had come to New York City in 1985 from Texas and even as a child had shown signs and been treated for mental illness. He had established himself as a well-known character in the neighborhood that was part of a rootless young crowd that squatted in the Park, and who had earned a reputation as an oddball among even this seriously iconoclastic collection of the disenfranchised, alienated, and lost. He was often seen wandering about with a chicken on his shoulder, mumbling about the devil and police control. To those who would listen he announced that he was Jesus and would soon take over the country by becoming the youngest president, and would legalize marijuana. Then in mid-August of 1989, he bragged to the regulars of the park that he had murdered his girlfriend and made soup out of her brains. However, Rakowitz was known to be so demented that nobody took him seriously. My father, nonetheless, took him seriously and as soon as he heard the rumor he reported it to Detective Rich
ard Abbinanti of the Homicide Division of the 9th Precinct, the same precinct where my father worked. On August 19th, 1989, bemusement turned to horror when it was discovered he had murdered his roommate of sixteen days, Monica Beerle, a Swiss dancer and student, and, over the next several weeks, dissected and boiled her remains in the kitchen of their apartment at 700 East 9th Street. When my mother read this in the paper, she told my father if he didn’t move out of the neighborhood she was going to divorce him and move back with her parents. She did leave my father for a week until he pleaded with her to return. She did, and my father spent the rest of his life making it up to her. My father’s recompense came to fruition when he retired and sold his portion of the building to his partners. He retired a millionaire. His small investment had skyrocketed as the property values soared in the aftermath of the cleanup and gentrification of Tompkins Square Park and the surrounding neighborhood.

  * * *

  As I drove down Second Avenue with Max in the passenger seat and David at gunner’s position—Marisol, under protest, rode in the Stryker since she had proven a capable targeting systems operator—and crossed 18th Street. I didn’t realize that I had been singing aloud until David brought it to my attention.

  “Are you singing?” he asked, talking through his radio.

  “Sorry, I didn’t know my comm was on.”

  “I didn’t know you sang? That was pretty good,” David complimented. “Sounded like Elton John?”

  “Thanks. It was. Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters. My favorite song about New York.”

  I slowed the vehicle down as we crossed 13th Street.

  “You a musician?” he asked when Kermit’s voice came over the radio.

  “Why are you slowing down? Is there a problem?” Kermit asked, brusquely.

  He had been a little grumpy since he had only instant coffee to drink. But my side trip was not motivated to please the grouch; it was more for my needs.

  “Negative,” I responded. “No problem, just a quick stop. Tell Sam I’ll need his bolt cutters. J.D., out.”

  I stopped in front of the Open Pantry. It was my favorite place to purchase coffee. After retrieving Sam’s bolt cutters, I walked in front of the East Village Thrift Shop, which was the adjacent building front. I swore I saw Victor Walker inside behind the checkout counter, but it was only my wishful imagination. Victor, like all the other shop managers I knew, were gone.

  After cutting the lock off and rolling up the gate, I punched the glass out of the store entry door with the tool’s cutting jaws and unlocked the door from the inside. Behind the checkout counter, to the right and up, were the different brand chocolate bars. I took all of the Black & Green’s milk chocolate bars, and even ones that were a different brand. I also grabbed a few cans of ground coffee. No one asked what I was doing, for it was obvious I was looting the shop.

  There had been no time to mourn those we had lost. No time to be concerned with what tomorrow would bring. We had been in a fight for our survival, a struggle in which bonds of friendship and trust were born. Once we had found sanctuary in our underground hideaway, we had gone into denial mode. We had not and could not see the true extent of the world’s demise from our bunker, nor did we want to think about all we had known, all we had taken for granted, and those we loved and even hated were gone. But as the months passed at the GCC little snippets of realization emerged. Then as we were forced to find a new home we were confronted with reality. As I drove through the East Village, the harsh truth began to awaken those feelings and memories I had tried to suppress. The sadness that washed over me began to suffocate me. This was not the time or place for me to grieve. There would be plenty of time for that in private, in a sanctuary I found in the darkness and the relative silence of the armory’s roof.

  I answered David as we proceeded on our way. “Once, to answer your question.”

  “You never told us that,” David replied. “What instrument?”

  “That’s cuz it never came up in a conversation,” I simply replied, not fully answering his question.

  He questioned me again. “What instrument?”

  “Piano. But that was long ago.”

  “What’s up with that?”

  “I started when I was six and stopped when I was somewhere around twenty-two.”

  I hadn’t driven very far when I came to the Stage Restaurant near the corner of 8th, not to be confused with the Stage Deli. I stopped our vehicle once again.

  “You classically trained?”

  “I was taught to play classically, but I taught myself jazz, rock and Broadway show tunes. I didn’t just want to be a classical pianist. I wanted to be a composer like Jim Steinman, James Pankow, and Paul Williams. I wanted to sing like Harry Connick, Jr. and Joe Jackson, and be able to play like Oscar Peterson and Elton John.”

  “Why’d ya quit?” he further questioned me.

  “After an open mike at a piano bar in the West Village, some jackass came up to me and said, ‘Dude, that was awesome. It reminded me of Jack Black and Leo Sayer with hemorrhoids.’ Then he slapped me on the shoulder to compliment his snide remark.”

  “What did you say to him?”

  “I answered with an elbow to his forehead and knocked him out. That was the last time I ever played.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. I had a bit of a temper back then.”

  “You don’t say.”

  I was sure by his tone he was grinning.

  “That’s a very endearing story,” Kermit announced over the radio with a slightly snarky attitude. “Now how about we keep the channel clear?”

  I responded with, “That freeze dried java not cutting it, Kermit. Well, I picked you up a gift, so play nice.”

  * * *

  I have had both my music and singing insulted many times and it had never bothered me. People have the right to express their opinions, good or bad. I wasn’t trying to be a rock star or even a professional musician, so negativity never bothered me because that I never thought of myself as talented. In contrast, though, I have also had my playing and singing complimented, which was odd to me since I felt I was just mediocre. I played because I had to; it was in me like a painter’s need to paint or a poet’s need to write verse. It was just something I had to do. But on that day, for some unexplained reason, I lost it. And in truth, I had not chosen not to perform at the club again; I was banned, even from patronizing it.

  However, what I had imparted to David wasn’t entirely the whole story. The truth was I had not publicly performed since that incident, but I hadn’t given up playing or singing. I just did it at home. Strange how at first I found it so painful to be forced to take piano lessons. Classical music was grating to me and I had repeatedly begged my parents to stop torturing me by forcing me to take them, until I discovered the band Chicago. Well, discovered was not quite the word. I had heard of Chicago and I had occasionally heard a song or two of theirs on the radio. It wasn’t until after I read an article on James Pankow, which was sometime into my fourth year of piano-abuse, about what inspired him to write the song, “Colour My World,” which brought about a profound appreciation for the classical genre.

  “Colour My World” was the 5th movement of “Ballet For A Girl In Buchannon”, a thirteen-minute song cycle/suite from Chicago’s 1970 album Chicago II. The group’s trombone player James Pankow composed it. He got the inspiration to write the ballet from his love of long classical music song cycles. That’s when I changed my mind about learning classical music; it was also the first rock song I learned, being an extremely easy piece to play since it was written for piano.

  One positive note that came from that night in the West Village, it was later the same evening that I went to another club to see a band called The Tiger Lillies, a London-based three-piece gypsy cabaret group. The band was known for singing songs of bestiality, prostitution and blasphemy. It wasn’t the offensive lyrics that got my attention. It was Martyn Jacques, the main vocalist, who played the accordion in ways I
had never heard it. Two days later I bought the same model he played, an investment well worth the money spent.

  * * *

  I got out of the vehicle and Max followed. As soon as I did, Kermit’s voice came over the radio again. “More reminiscing or you lookin’ to make yourself an omelet?” he jokingly questioned.

  “No, Salisbury steak with buttered noodles and cut green beans,” I retorted. Yeah, I was being a smart-ass, as usual—but he set himself up for it. “Just give me a moment, please.”

  The Stage Restaurant serves Eastern European food, mainly polish. Well, it did. Many mornings and evenings I sat by myself in the back of the restaurant, usually at the end seat, which had more counter space to the left since there was not another seat next to it and was in direct view of the large stainless steel wet chemical fire extinguisher. That was because it was also the flip up counter entrance/exit to get to and from the kitchen from the back of the restaurant. Most people didn’t care for this seat, not because of the counter top, but rather due the lack of a footrest for your left foot. The stool was slightly to the right of the hinged moveable counter top and the footrest below stopped where the seam above began. To compensate for the lack of foot support, Roman had placed an institutional size can of Chef’s Quality cut green beans to use as a footrest.

  The restaurant was small; it only had sixteen counter seats. The eating area was narrow, much like the food preparation/dispensing area. Two people could not pass simultaneously without squeezing by one another, especially when Chester was involved.

  Chester was an enigma. He was also the morning cook. He was a large man, and when I say large I mean round. Chester always wore blue jeans, a white apron over a white collared shirt and rubber surgical gloves—for health code reasons—and a paper hat with a blue stripe adorning the top, which covered his thinning and graying sandy-blonde hair. Chester barely spoke, except when I would wish him a good day as I departed, and when he did it was soft-spoken, humble. In the entire time I had patronized Stage I never had any conversation with him, except once when I ordered a double cheeseburger, which was not on the menu. He questioned me on how I wanted it, with three pieces of bread, dividing the meat, or the two burgers stacked atop one another. I choose double-stacked with raw onion, cooked medium. From that day forward when I ordered a double, Chester knew exactly how I wanted it. I truly miss his cooking.