Hard Favored Rage

by Don Shift

  “At least a couple of them were Rangers.” Sam, being a Marine, and Sibley former Navy, naturally made fun of the Army. “One of them was from Westlake, actually.”

  “Interesting. Did they give you a SITREP?”

  “Sort of.” Sam recounted his experience at Fort Irwin, the journey home, and the gossip from the Navy at headquarters. Sibley was quiet for at least a minute while he worked everything out in his head. “So where are Sean and Tyler?”

  Sibley snorted. “Work. Can you believe that? My sons playing goody two-shoes risking their asses out there. Sean kept saying he wasn’t going to go in but did anyway. Stupid. Same goes for you Samuel Church. Give that up. Doesn’t matter anymore.”

  Sam thought about his response for a moment. “One of my DI’s told us to ask ourselves before we did anything risky ‘Is it worth your life?’ Is the Corps now or some battle overseas worth my life? Hell no.”

  “If that’s the case, is being a cop now worth your life?”

  “Now so more than ever.”

  Sibley shrugged. “To each his own. I could give a care about the outside world, but you’re part of the plan and know the drill. Did your folks make it out here?”

  “Not yet. Hoping they’ll make it in tonight sometime. You know my dad, like a frog in boiling water. He’s likely to think it’s a jacuzzi until it’s too late.”

  Sibley saw Sam’s face become downcast. He squeezed Sam’s arm. “Don’t worry. How many days are your parents really going to spend sweating in the heat? Besides, I picked up on ham radio that cars are working in Arizona. Hang tight.”

  “Wilco sir.”

  “You’re not carrying a rifle, I see.”

  “It’s in the Jeep. I’m not hauling an AR-15 around your ranch like some Texan open carry freak.”

  “No Galil?” The SWAT team once carried the Israeli rifle, itself a modernized and highly modified AK-47 design, instead of AR-15s. The one Sam had the chance to shoot was a semi-automatic only imported by Action Arms.

  “Nah, I went into combat with an M16A4. If I’m paying for it, I’m more comfortable with what I’ve actually killed people with.” Sam had spent his last two years on the department with the team, which had moved away from the exotic gun in recent years.

  “Not a bad gun, but boutique.” The Galil was purchased because its Israeli design and ancestry from the Russian rifle supposedly made it more rugged and reliable in the rural county where operations could be in thick mud or dust. Having used the competing AR-15 designs for years and in combat, both Sibley and Sam knew that the American rifle was perfectly reliable in horrible conditions. “When they bought it, people still remembered Vietnam and the rumors of the M16 being unreliable and easy to jam. Fudds.”

  “Yeah, but we were one of the few agencies to use an AK derivative. Still pretty cool.”

  “True. I got a couple myself. Hey, go grab your rifle. I want to do something for you.” Sam returned from the Jeep with an unloaded rifle. Sibley knocked out the takedown pins and separated the halves of the gun. “Just a little functional upgrade.” Sibley started stripping the lower receiver down of all its parts to ease machining. Sam did not protest. He knew where this was going. “How’s the situation in Simi?”

  “Crappy, literally. Sewage is draining downhill to our street. We had to plug the toilets with rags. Water pressure is gone. People are getting nervous, snapping at each other. No one goes out in the evening but stays in their backyards like they’re afraid of something. How do you have power?”

  “Solar. Got the whole array out back.”

  “It still works?”

  “Of course it does! Photovoltaic panels are very resistant to EMP. Only thing that burned out was the charge controller and a few other pieces of crap outside the arrested portion of the interior grid. You know your dad thought I was nuts when I installed multiple lightning and surge arrestors in series to our power line? Ha! Who’s crazy now? Batteries are good, circuits are good, even the wireless security cameras are good. Trick was wiring those to their own little solar panels. Nothing for the pulse to couple on to. Hey, you want some ice cream while you wait?”

  “Sure.” How did he get to from ice cream from solar power in one breath? Sam thought. Sibley was a very unique and quirky individual.

  Sibley explained about the solar system. Every south-facing roof was covered in panels and a small flat area was filled with a solar array field. “Provides enough power for the entire ranch. We’ve got batteries that store the surplus.” The wiring was also robust and incorporated an unusually redundant surge arrestor system. Solar panels were resilient against EMP damage. It was usually the circuit breakers and charge controllers that were the weak link.

  “So I guess you weren’t as green as everyone thought you were.”

  “Nope, but just as neurotic as they said.” He didn’t need to add that he had been right. “Our offer to move into the campesino house still stands. No worries about backing up the septic tank.”

  Sibley and Mr. Church became friends when the boys had all met in Boy Scouts. During the Y2K scare, Mr. Church helped out with some electrical issues and construction work as

  Sibley prepped the ranch for the apocalypse. Mr. Church never bought in, but as a way of saying thanks, Sibley offered the empty foreman’s apartment in the empty field workers’ house to the Church family, just in case they ever needed it.

  “I will, just not yet. Don’t want my parents to show up to my place and get shot by my roomies because I’m not there.” Sam explained about coming home to see Auggie’s gun in his face.

  “Okay, but once it really hits the fan around here, I’m crashing the ranch. Bring those guys too. We’re a little light on bodies. The more the merrier.” Crashing the ranch meant top-level security procedures would be implemented. Sam wouldn’t just be driving up to the gate.

  “Sam, can you go outside and hit the power button on the generator?”

  Sam did as he was asked. Sibley started up his milling machine and ran a large drill bit around inside the cavity that held the trigger parts in the lower receiver of Sam’s rifle. There wasn’t much material to relieve. Next, he switched the bit for a smaller one and drilled a third pin hole above where the safety went.

  The receiver was black treated metal, inside and out. Now that Sibley had machined it, there were areas inside of shiny, exposed aluminum. “No time to anodize or Cerakote it, but it won’t corrode. Now go kill the generator, diesel isn’t free.” When Sam came back, Sibley was installing the fire control parts back into the gun. It was easy to drill the gun out to fit the machine gun parts, but not easy to obtain the small parts needed to finish the conversion, at least if you didn’t have the right connections.

  “Viola! Now you can rock and roll with the rest of us, my friend.” Neither of them said anything about the legion of state and federal crimes that were just committed. Not that they had cared prior to the pulse; the end of the world merely enabled them to do what they did with a clean conscience.

  Mrs. Sibley came over from the kitchen where her two daughters-in-law, Carlie and Amy, were cooking. “Hi Sam,” she said as she looked for something in the chest freezer. Sam greeted her and gave her a hug. He hadn’t seen any of them since their recent group vacation to Lake Mohave in June.

  “Babe get Sam some ice cream. Stupid fool is playing deputy like our friggin’ kids.”

  “Oh relax. I’m the one that should be worried about them,” she said, half serious.

  The three of them went to the kitchen. There were three-gallon tubs of ice cream on the counter. It reminded Sam of the scene in Jurassic Park where the kids walked into the buffet only to be interrupted by the raptors.

  “Where’s Holly?” Amy asked, referring to Sam’s on-again, off-again girlfriend Halima. Her parents were Coptic Christians who fled Iraq after her father had a large price put on his head for working for the Americans as a translator.

  “No idea; haven’t seen her since June and wasn’t expecting to
see her until the start of her fall semester,” Sam answered.

  “Oh,” Amy said quietly. “Sorry.”

  “No worries. It wasn’t serious.” Sam started eating his ice cream and was shocked at how normal and extraordinary it seemed. “So Carlie, I heard your brother got hit in the face.”

  “Serves him right for not ducking.”

  “Ouch.”

  “Have you seen him, Sam?”

  “No. Worked Saturday in East County, then nights. Have to swing by the house one day. How are your parents? They coming out here?”

  “My dad isn’t ready to move out yet. Same with David and Brooke. Are you joining us out here?”

  “When my folks show up. You know my dad; nothing is ever urgent.”

  Code 5

  Sergeant Stackhouse eagerly took Sam Church back onto his team. As young as he was, Sam was shocked that he got offered a SED spot on his first try. It was only a year long career enhancement position, but it could lead him to more. He had always been a highly competent deputy and a hard charger. Being a golden boy with experience tracking down jihadi cells in Iraq was a major factor in his initial acceptance to the unit. Everyone loved a hero. Sadly, his tenure had been cut short just months after it began by a drunk driver.

  Like many specialized units, they were turned into a sort of emergency “flying squad” to take care of major issues rather than just leaving them to the over-burdened patrol units. SED’s assignment for Monday night was to partner with the Gang Unit and hunt down the pharmacy burglars. The order was also based on political pressure from local doctors. Pharmacies in Ventura and Oxnard had been hit the last two nights and cleaned out of any narcotics or easily abused drugs. This left a critically reduced supply for patients in the affected neighborhoods and constrained the supplies for the rest of the area.

  Drugstores operated on the same principle as most other stores and depended upon daily drug deliveries to keep filling orders. The medical repercussions were actually more serious than the criminal issues of the drug trade, but only slightly more so. Finding out who the drugs went to or who had them would be helpful to re-establish a map of criminal networks wiped off of hard drives by the EMP. It was not just about taking the thieves off the street.

  Stackhouse briefed the detectives. “We start with the 187 at the Ventura CVS Saturday night. From what the Ventura detectives think, our guys got surprised by the two dead guys and killed them. A witness heard the gunfire and gave us a vehicle description, which matches the suspicious vehicle from the Rose area burglaries Sunday night. CSI came out and pulled some latent prints for us. Got a lucky partial print off a spent piece of brass from the murder scene that matched several surfaces in each of the pharmacies. I guess the guys figured with everything being down they didn’t need to worry about prints since we can’t run them. However, the geniuses didn’t figure we could compare prints from scene to scene and can just roll their prints once we hook them up.”

  Fingerprint comparison was a very old technology as far as forensics goes. A trained expert with a magnifying glass can identify matches, no computer needed. All the computer did was serve as a catalog of prints and a criminal registration system. Not wearing gloves made about as much sense as leaving your license plate at the scene of an accident with the assumption that since the DMV computers were down, no one could run the registration. It would work as long as no one found a car with the matching plate.

  “Saturday night, they worked east Ventura. Sunday night they worked over north and central Oxnard. Three confirmed burglaries in Ventura and three in Oxnard. Possibly two more, one in each city, that could be related, based on the vehicle description. Those last two are unknown because the stores were also looted and the front half burglarized as well, so they may have gotten nothing or just been doing a drive-by. We don’t know.

  “My guess is they’ll hit Camarillo next. Why? It’s been relatively peaceful with little looting. South Oxnard is filled with cops and a lot of the bigger stores got worked over good already. If these dudes were smart, they were out with the looters or in crowds. I suspect they have done their homework and know what’s open and what’s not.”

  A deputy raised his hand. “Sarge, how do they know about the pharmacies in the office buildings?”

  “Word of mouth, most likely. Pill-shopping addicts and dealers know these things. Or they could have an old Yellow Pages. So here’s the plan: we can field five cars tonight, so we all stakeout a pharmacy each. Patrol has been advised to keep things low-key in the area, so we don’t spook whoever. If you see a vehicle matching the description, keep an eye on it. If they try to go in, by forcing the back door, then try to grab them. If they are inside, we hold the perimeter and call a dog. I don’t want you guys going inside.”

  Deputy DeSousa raised his hand. “Uh Sarge, shouldn’t we be in El Rio or something keeping a lid on things?”

  In the county’s most notorious barrio, the breakdown had provided an opportunity to settle scores. Saturday and Sunday night had been busy ones, dealing with three shootings each night.

  “This is a cushy gig. I volunteered us so you guys could get a break. Let’s face it, the homies are going to be killing each other no matter what. It’s either we do this, or you suit up in riot gear and try to keep the dirtbags from killing each other.”

  Later that evening, Sam stood on a roof, alone, looking for a suspicious vehicle. There was something perverse about spending the night on the roof of a closed pizza joint. Sam would have sworn he smelled a fresh pizza at least half a dozen times before midnight. The night was incredibly quiet. Camarillo rolled up the sidewalks at dark as everyone went to bed with the sunset. Traffic was light and every pair of headlights made Sam’s heart jump and hope it was their suspects. There had been a false alarm at the Rite Aid on Las Posas Road, but as of one o’clock, everything was quiet.

  Sam was busy taking a leak when a car drove by. He couldn’t have seen it anyway over the parapet and through the trees, but Deputy Price, hidden in one of the stalls of the coin car wash across the street, did see it.

  “Units, Price, white sedan just drove down Daily past our location. It’s continuing towards Carmen.”

  “Price, 8-Xray-Sam, 10-4,” Stackhouse said. The unit at the next location near the Post Office a few blocks away radioed that they were ready. Nothing ended up happening at any of the locations and everyone went back into their boredom stupor.

  Price had hoped to listen to AM radio during his shift, but KFI had mysteriously gone off the air last night. None of the other stations within range were broadcasting either. His mind kept going back to feeding his family. They were totally dependent on whatever he and his wife might be able to scrounge or get from the department. The issued “rations” wouldn’t last all that long. He figured that when it came down to it, he would begin raiding orchards and farm fields for produce at night.

  Sam heard the droning of a car fan approaching.

  “Price, do you have your air on?”

  “Negative. I’m sweating like a pig. Why?”

  “I can hear a radiator fan, like when the air is on. Sounds like it’s getting closer.”

  A white sedan with the lights off was slowly working its way down the alley towards Church’s position. It stopped at the back door to the CVS, hidden from the street by a truck trailer that someone had dropped off next to the tire store.

  “8-Xray-Sam, Church. I have the possible suspect vehicle at my location. White Olds sedan, two Hispanic males.” The men had retrieved tools from the trunk and were busy forcing the back door.

  “Church, Price. En route to your location. Need another unit to block off the north end of the alley by the LDS church.”

  The nearest unit said they’d cover the north end. Price turned the key of his car, but it revved weakly a few times and quit altogether. The two burglars heard the engine trying to start and froze. When the noise didn’t repeat itself after a moment, they continued.

  “Price, Church.”
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  “I know, the car won’t start. I’m en route on foot.” There was no time to troubleshoot it now, so Price grabbed his shotgun and legged it across the street.

  Sam waited patiently on the roof. The ladder faced the alley, so if he climbed down, he would be presenting a lovely target for the suspects. All he could do is wait and cover Price whenever he decided to show up. Meanwhile, the suspects had popped out the pins of the exposed hinges holding the double doors to the doorframe. Sam cursed whoever was dumb enough to put the hinges on the outside, making it trivial for the two men to simply lift away the door and enter the loading area.

  Sam cussed and radioed that the two suspects were now inside. In the distance, he could hear the squealing of tires and a racing engine as backup arrived in the area. Price arrived at the corner of the building, audibly huffing and puffing from his sprint across both the road and the parking lot. The patrol units arrived and set up a perimeter while a K-9 unit broke away from a search for some carjacking suspects in El Rio. Church held the overwatch position while Price and three other deputies held the corners of the alley. Sergeant Stackhouse and another deputy cleared the suspects’ vehicle and used it as cover while they waited for the dog to arrive.

  Inside the store, Andres and Jaime were busy stealing drugs, oblivious to what was happening in the alley. Much less than they expected was left due to those desperate for medication to live coming in for their prescriptions to be filled in advance before supplies ran out. Doctors were overwhelmed with office visits from elderly and sick patients begging for a paper script since the computerized system was down. Jaime carried the first load out to the car. In the darkness, all he saw was the head and hands of a man holding a gun crouching behind the fender. He darted back inside the store, dropping the pillowcase full of drugs and drew his pistol.

  Sam was the only one who was wearing night vision goggles. He saw Jaime, standing just inside the back door, draw the pistol from the front of his waistband and fire three rounds blindly in the direction of whom he assumed to be rival thieves. It all happened so fast that Stackhouse didn’t have time to yell out “Sheriff’s Office.” The first syllable had only just left his mouth when Jaime stepped out from behind the doorframe, concealed from the ground deputies by the shadows inside, and raised his gun again. Sam, who had illuminated Jaime with his infrared designator, put two rounds into the man’s chest before he fired again.