The gate had been left open, which was too much for Weed to pass up.
“Come on,” Weed said with a grin. “Let’s go huntin’ for some treasure. I heard that them boxes and transformers have gold and platinum in ‘em”
Before Beker could even reply, the gangly man started jogging through the gate.
The area was a salvager’s dream come true. The utility park was a collection of all the equipment and supplies needed to keep the electric grid up and running. A metal warehouse stood at the back of the yard, large enough for a truck or two to be stored inside, while to its side was a mound of 40 to 80-foot-long poles. The treated southern pine logs were stacked on top of each other like a gigantic pile of toothpicks. The yard had a patchwork of dirt lanes wide enough for the trucks needed to pick up and transport the massive electronics to get by. Large metal cans with electrodes were stacked on pallets in a haphazard pattern at the front of the yard. Some of the supplies were newly placed, while others had grass and milkweed intertwined within their workings. Dust and bird droppings coated some of the piles of metal and wire, while other stacks of equipment brightly reflected the rays of the setting sun.
Weed ran amongst the workings like a child attacking their presents under the Christmas tree. The two of them made their way to the garage in the back of the yard, passing gleaming stacks of machinery. The door to the garage was held in check with a clasped Master Lock. Weed found a metal bar amongst the garbage scattered nearby, and pried the hinge and lock off the building. The doors slid sideways into recessed pockets, letting the evening light filter into the cavernous space.
Weed let out a disappointed sigh when he discovered nothing inside other than some truck and automobile maintenance equipment and supplies. Cans of brake and transmission fluid were stacked on rusting metal shelving along with motor oil and some boxes of decomposing hardware.
Weed, undeterred by his efforts, moved back to the dusty road where Beker stood.
“Dude,” Beker said. “Let’s get going. It’s going to be dark in less than an hour and I want to get back to Taurus.”
“Just keep your britches on,” Weed replied. “Won’t take but another minute to check them piles.”
Weed began to pull parts and wires from a pallet nearby. He used his Beretta like a garden trowel, pushing aside some of the material to search underneath the surface of the stack.
He turned his attention to one of the rows of cylinders heaped in a square section of the yard. A collection of large metal twenty-foot-wide brackets containing three flat, rectangular boxes bolted to the bracket’s frame were laid on their sides. From the top of each of the three boxes jutted three more large electrodes. They looked like something from an old Frankenstein movie. Beker half expected to see electric arcs dancing in the air between their tips.
“Be careful, Weed!” Beker admonished his companion.
“Easy boy,” the gangbanger replied with a smirk. “AIn’t been no power for over a week.”
The thin man pushed at the stack, ducking his head under and around the alien looking contraption.
“Ain’t nothin’ here!” He finally said. “You see anything like a place for gold or platinum wires?”
Beker moved closer, studying the three boxes. Examining the electrodes, he was looking for a service panel or something that might hold his white brother’s treasure.
Beker looked at the electrodes jutting up from the casings and noticed a plastic cap covering their tips.
“Look there,” Beker stated, pointing to the cap that covered the tip of the contraption. The boy stood up and moved back a few feet to let Weed move into position.
“Well, look at that!” Weed exclaimed. “Now why would they cover that! Bet there’s somethin’ under there worth protectin’”
Weed leaned down and grabbed the metal frame with his right hand, and with his left hand, he stretched out and used the Beretta to lift the cap off the top of the rod.
A momentary flash of light, brighter than the sun, blinded the young man. That was the last thing Beker remembered until he awoke a minute later, flat on his back and thirty feet away from where he had last stood.
He rolled to his side, his mouth filled with the acidic tang of gunpowder. The hair on his body stood stiff and his skin tingled with electricity.
“Weed!” Beker called out as he struggled to his feet.
The boy caught his breath, rubbing his face and smacking his lips as he tried to get the metal tang from his mouth. It tasted like he had just chewed on a piece aluminum foil. He bent over and spit.
That’s when he noticed the smell of scorched flesh, and in a panic he began to examine himself, searching for burns. The hair on his hands and arms had been singed. He felt his body and mentally searched for pain or numbness. Thankfully, he felt neither.
He looked at the dirt and grass around the cylinders they had been examining and saw that a small grass fire had started.
“WEED!” Beker called out in alarm.
Beker turned and searched the yard nearby. Within a few seconds, he found the gangly man.
Almost sixty feet away from the explosion, Weed’s body lay against an adjoining stack of equipment, his body aflame. Beker ran to his fallen comrade and began to throw handfuls of dirt on the burning denim pants and cotton shirt. However, after a second glance at the body, Beker quickly gave up.
Weed’s right hand had been blown open, like a bomb had gone off in his wrist. The hand was split nearly in two. His eyes had bulged out of their sockets and his feet were smoldering and shredded.
Weed’s left hand still held the metal gun. Beker squatted down next to the dead man and examined the weapon. The end of the pistol had melted, its barrel and frame deformed. Beker tugged at the handgun and it came loose, along with most of the seared flesh from Weed’s hand still attached.
Beker quickly dropped the mangled pistol and stumbled out of the yard. How had this happened? There’s no power, but Weed had just been electrocuted! Beker thought. At that point, all of the day’s events finally came crashing down on the exhausted young man. Having witnessed the death of the gang at the roadblock, narrowly avoiding capture in the parking lot by DHS and now witnessing Weed’s death and barely avoiding his own, Beker’s only thought was to return to the jail. Back to the safety of Taurus and his Aryan brethren. With the fading light of the setting sun in his face, and a burning friend lying in the dirt behind him, Beker staggered westward. The only good thing to come out of the day was that it had finally come to an end.
Chapter 6
“A government is an association of men, who do violence to the rest of us”
— Leo Tolstoy
The next morning, newly appointed DHS agent John Drosky slowly woke from the best sleep he had experienced in over a week. With a functional air conditioner and ceiling fan, he barely remembered closing his eyes before the brightening morning sunlight filtered into his north-facing bedroom. His alarm on the officially issued wind-up alarm clock had yet to go off, so he lay there thinking about yesterday’s events.
The evening before, after checking into the DHS tower apartment building and making his bed with some supplied sheets and blankets, he had returned to the lobby where there was a converted office down one of the hallways containing some officially sanctioned civilian clothing. Three sets of Khaki 5.11 tactical pants with black polo shirt sporting the DHS logo were issued. A six-pack of boxer underwear, work-out short and t-shirts along with a half dozen beige socks were added; and it all went into his newly allotted Maxpedition 3-day assault pack. A netted laundry sack was given to him since daily laundry service was provided.
An annex off of the right side of the clothing-filled room contained New Balance cross-trainers and Wolverine work boots along with a bin of white athletic socks. John quickly found the size 11 footwear, and grabbed a set of each alo
ng with several pair of the white shin-high socks. John returned to his apartment and deposited his newly issued treasures on the kitchen table. He took the “recycle bin” first issued when he was assigned his room back downstairs and entered another converted area off the lobby. This one was a commissary where he filled his plastic container with toiletries, over-the-counter pain relievers, antacids and cold medicines. He was amused to see that the standard male-issued supplies also included condoms. I guess that’s a practical item since no one wants to deal with a pregnancy during this crisis, he thought.
John grabbed a six-pack of vitamin water and four half-gallons of Gatorade. Some protein bars and packages of nuts rounded off his stash of goodies along with a box of Keebler’s Chocolate Chip Cookies. The only disappointment was a lack of dairy products. John kept himself in top physical condition, a byproduct of eight years in the Corps. With their main meals provided in a public mess hall, he would have to be smart about what he ate and how much. Cafeteria food was notoriously high in calories, being full of carbs and fats. These items were just meant to supplement his diet and not to replace meals.
All things considered, he thought, I can’t complain.
He took his bin and waited in line. There was no money to change hands, but an accounting of his choices was catalogued. John figured that they had to keep up with inventory as he observed someone ahead of him move to the register. He watched as a clerk used the bar code scanner which quickly stored the information in yet another laptop connected to the wall.
As he was standing in line, he looked about at the contents of the other agents’ bins. Some had picked similar items, but most had filled their containers with junk food and booze. John had been a bit surprised to find a shelf of hard liquor along one wall. Many of his fellow agents had multiple large two-quart bottles of bourbon, vodka and rum along with mixers packed into their 3’x 2’ crates. It was almost humorous to watch them struggle with the weight of their boxes while they waited in line. John mentally pictured these people standing in three feet of water, and It brought back memories of the pictures of looters after the New Orleans hurricane, slogging through the flood waters with their stolen goods.
While standing in line, John heard a muffled cheer coming from the lobby. Within a few seconds, an excited agent burst into the commissary and announced that the water supply to the building had been restored.
When he finally got back to his apartment, his first act was to turn on the shower. The water came out cold at first, and the stream was only a trickle. Everyone must be hitting the showers! John thought.
He turned off the shower and spent the rest of the evening putting things away and exploring the floors above and below. On the floor above, John found a common area with a bunch of agents lounging about, most drinking from plastic cups and grabbing fistfuls of pretzels from several large bowls.
“Johnny boy!” one of the men yelled.
John watched as Travis Nixon stood up from the couch and rapidly approached. The agent, a former SWAT sniper, grabbed John in a bear hug and lifted him into the air.
“My man! I thought you had bought the farm. No one had seen or heard from you for days! What the hell happened?”
Travis began carrying John back to the couch where three other semi-drunk men sat laughing.
Typical Travis, John thought. Always trying to one-up everyone. Always the Alpha male. Best not to get off on the wrong foot by popping him in the nose for being his usual douche-bag self.
The big man deposited John on the couch, dropping him rather unceremoniously onto the cushions.
“I’m fine, Travis! Just took me some time to make it back.” John replied as he straightened himself up.
“Always a survivor, eh John?”
Travis dropped back on the sofa as well and swallowed a half cup of whatever concoction he was drinking. From the man’s slightly slurred speech to his marginally uncoordinated movements, the cup was undoubtedly filled with a rather stiff drink.
“Got out of the sandbox in one piece and never once had to fire your weapon in the line of duty with the OPD!” Travis said with a bit of contempt.
The big man had always been an asshole as far as John was concerned. He had been involved in some questionable shooting incidents including the accidental death of a female hostage who was in the hands of her ex-husband. Although cleared of any wrong doing by Internal Affairs, it was well known that he was a hot-head who never admitted when he was wrong. A transfer from Atlanta, he had only been with OPD for a couple of years, yet had already found himself investigated twice for excessive or inappropriate use of force. Seeing Travis’ attitude since he had first arrived convinced John that his transfer from Atlanta was likely encouraged by his former brothers in blue.
Travis was SWAT because of his prior military experience, but being ex-military didn’t mean you were the salt of the earth! During John’s time in the Corps, he knew that not all his fellow Marines were cut from the same cloth. Most were honorable people who made good and loyal brothers-in-arms. But some of the new recruits were dregs or undesirables who snuck past selection. They were usually rooted out after their first three-year hitch. Travis was one of those three-year enlistees. Having joined the Army after high school, he left after his thirty-six-month commitment. During that time, he had never seen combat, but strutted about OPD as if he had won the Medal of Honor. In many ways, John’s years in the Marines were a reminder to Travis that his Army stint wasn’t all that heroic. John was a threat to his false bravado. All things being equal, Travis was not someone John cared to associate himself with.
Yet, here I am, John thought, sitting in a 40-story high rise, surrounded by chaos and a struggling country, getting chummy with a man I would have preferred to never see again.
“So what does DHS have you doing?” John asked.
“Hey, whatever they want, my man!” The drunk agent replied. “With all the booze I want and all the bullets I need, they can send me to hell and back. My only question will be when do I leave and who do I kill!”
The four men laughed and chortled, gulping their drinks with gusto.
“Hey guys,” John said. “Good to see you but I have to get a shower. I just got in and I have a ton of stuff to put together tonight.”
“I thought you smelled ripe, Johnny boy!” Travis sneered. “I’d say you smelled like shit, but that’s how you always smelled, you dumb Pollock!”
The four drunks roared with laughter at the big oaf’s comment.
“Yeah,” John said as he stood to exit the room. “I’ve smelled worse than this. Like when I was in Fallujah going door to door for six weeks. Hard to shower when Al Qaeda was punching back at you with RPGs and AKs. A real pisser that was.”
Travis’ face began to contort with rage.
“But I’m sure you know all about that,” John said over his shoulder as he left the room.
What a dick! John thought as he strode back to his room.
He went into the apartment’s bathroom and checked the water pressure. Within less than a minute, the shower head blasted out a heavy stream of hot water. John quickly stripped off his clothing and jumped in. Not knowing how long the pressure and temperature would last, he did a quick lather and rinse. Once the grime was scrubbed away, he allowed the steamy jet to drench his body, soaking away the memories of the past week. Finally, he dried himself off and put on some sleeping shorts and a t-shirt. The last thing John remembered that night was his head hitting the down-filled pillow thinking that everything was going to be alright.
Now, morning had broken and John had a job to do. After breakfast, Agent Drosky walked to DHS headquarters to start his first day with his new partner, former Ocoee police officer, agent Dixon Bruner. “Hello Agent Bruner,” John said as the men shook hands. “Ready to save the world?”
“Always, Agent Drosky.” He rep
lied. “Just check out this fancy Batman belt they gave me!” As he jutted out his stomach to show off his new black battle belt. Both men were issued a battle belt with three pouches on their left side each holding an M4 magazine, while the service pistol with a spare 17-round magazine was strapped to the right hip. Each man was issued ceramic bulletproof plates and a black plate carrier, as well as a matching Kevlar helmet with a radio mic attached. They picked up their assigned radios and stuffed them into a pouch on their shoulders, attaching the cord to the mics. A brief radio check confirmed they were on the same channel. Their clipboard gave them the day’s communication frequency as well as their assigned A.O.
“Drosky! Bruner!” Their lieutenant yelled from down the hall. “Hold on for a second. We have a call from the Utility Restoration Group about a dead man in one of their lay-down yards. Stay put, I’ll be back with the address.”
“You mean real police work, L.T.?” Drosky sarcastically asked.
“Yeah, would you believe it? It wouldn’t even be on the radar except for the fact that the man was electrocuted.”
“So?” Bruner shot back.
“So… Rook. Where did he get the electricity? Seen the city lately, smartass?” The lieutenant hissed.
Drosky looked down and chuckled as his young partner took the dress-down. When will they learn? He thought. Never be seen or heard. It only creates trouble.
After a moment, the lieutenant returned with an address and instructions.
“Brass wants to know how someone was electrocuted in a yard with no electricity. Bring back a report before you head out on your assigned beat.”
“Yes, Lieutenant!” John replied. “Whom do we bring it to?”
“Bring it directly to me and I will pass it along. Got that, agents?”
Charlie's Requiem: Democide Page 5