Neighborhood Watch: After the EMP

by EE Isherwood

  Neighborhood Watch

  After the EMP

  Book 1

  E.E. Isherwood

  Connect With E.E. Isherwood

  Website & Newsletter: http://www.eeisherwood.com

  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SinceTheSirens/

  Copyright © 2021 by E.E. Isherwood

  All rights reserved.

  Cover Illustration by Covers by Christian

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  CHAPTER 1

  The blazing Florida sunshine and walk-out-of-the-shower humidity no longer bothered me. I’d sweated through many hot Chicago summers, but my attitude about the weather flipped on its head the minute I retired to the Sunshine State. Behind the wheel of my spanking-new convertible corvette, driving back to my dream home in suburban Fort Myers, I didn’t even care how soaked my shirt had become. I was free of the daily grind for the first time in my life.

  I had to tell someone.

  My new car had been programmed to interface with my phone, so I tapped a button on my steering wheel to engage the system, then spoke my nephew’s name. “Call Joey.”

  The car’s custom Bose speakers blared the ringing phone as if it was a radio tune until a voice cut in. “Hello? Uncle Frank?”

  “Hey, Joey. Yeah, it’s me. My car auto-dialed you.”

  Joey laughed. “By accident?”

  “No, on purpose. I wanted to test out this fancy technology in my new ride…” I let the words hang out there, since Joey knew of my ‘big plans’ for retirement.

  “Oh, man. You bought it already?”

  Being a fifty-two year old guy with a typical lead foot, I answered in the only way appropriate for such a question. I revved the engine, causing the tires to chirp in response. The satisfying purr of the pistons resonated through my foot, up my leg and spine, and injected itself directly into the hot rod wing of my brain. I knew he’d feel it, too.

  “Shit!” Joey exclaimed. “What did you buy? A race car?”

  “Just about. This baby is a Chevy Corvette ZR1 in Sebring Orange with blacked-out wheels. It’s a 2019 model, not even for sale yet, but I know a guy.” It helped that I’d spent the last thirty years in the trucking industry. I kept in touch with lots of transportation guys all across America. Those connections are what made my recent move between cities so simple. “And it was worth every penny my overcharging friend squeezed out of me. It has 755-horsepower boiling under the hood. I could get back to Chicago in about five hours if the police looked the other way.”

  The kid whistled. “You said it was a thousand miles to Florida. It goes two hundred?”

  I had to decelerate to a stop sign, but it was no problem for the oversized brakes. In fact, I let the beast continue at fifty miles per hour until the last second, then I stomped on the pedal, reveling in the crisp stopping power. It made me laugh to myself as if I was back in highschool, showing off for friends. However, there was no one to impress, save for a woman in a minivan coming from the other direction. “Two hundred and change, in fact. This engine is a monster…”

  Instead of coming off the line and roasting the tires across the intersection as my foot begged of me, I kept it at a respectable speed. It was the middle of the day, the woman probably had a small child or two in her back seat, and there was no reason to scare them. Once she was safely behind me, however, I planned to impress my nephew with more of the rich sounds of the motor, but I didn’t get the chance. My good-natured showboating was interrupted by two swept-wing military jets ripping across the sky. They came in low from the east, above the rows of subdivision entrances on that side of the road; they shot away over the forest on the left side. The roaring engines resonated in the bottom of my lungs like a bass drum.

  Joey mistook the sound as coming from my car. “Holy shit! Is that a supercharger?”

  I spoke slowly, at first, not sure what I’d witnessed. “It does have a supercharger, yeah, but that wasn’t me. The screams came from a couple of low-flying military jets doing maneuvers, or something.”

  My nephew showed no interest in the aircraft. “Congratulations on buying your dream car, Uncle Frank. You always talked about moving out of this cold-assed town and settling down in Florida. I’m glad I could help make it happen.”

  He was my sister’s son, and the only living relative who’d showed any interest in my trucking company. I’d been happy to sell it to him to keep it in the family, though I made it clear about four hundred times I wanted nothing to do with Headache, Incorporated once I was in my new Florida pad.

  “So, other than to brag about your new car, why ya calling? Afraid I’ve already stuck the company’s foot into the toilet?” Joey laughed.

  “Nah,” I laughed with him. “You paid me fair and square for it. It’s yours, nephew.”

  The other end remained silent for a short time before Joey spoke in a sober voice. “I really appreciate you selling it to me, Uncle Frank.”

  My nephew was a good young man, beyond being family. He had a business degree from a local college, which was way more than I had when I started. He’d also worked for me while he got his degree, giving him the necessary experience to keep it all going. Yeah, I cut him a break on the sale price, but I didn’t mind.

  “I know you’ll do me proud.” I said.

  “I will,” he replied. “Are you going to do anything awesome with your bitchin’ new hot rod? Maybe go down to the beach and impress the ladies by revving it up?”

  “I’m looking at my hot date right now, actually.” I glanced over to the passenger seat.

  “No shit?” he bubbled with excitement. “Is she hot? I bet she’s hot as hell. You wouldn’t go out with an ugly lot lizard from down at the truck stop.”

  “Yeah, she’s smoking hot from sitting in the sun. She’s pretty, too, though it’s dangerous to judge a book by her cover. You can’t know what she’s like on the inside. This one, I think, has about six hundred pages I’ll need to go through.”

  That shut him up.

  I laughed it all off. “It’s a book, jackass. I’ve got a front seat full of books. I’m going to take them home, pile them on my patio table, pull up a six-pack of beer, turn on my music, and spend the rest of today doing absolutely nothing but turning pages.”

  “Sounds boring as shit,” he said dryly.

  “Don’t knock it till you try it,” I chuckled.

  Joey tried to rally. “Come on, man, you’ve got the whole state of Florida at your fingertips. You can get anywhere you want in minutes if you go the full two hundred. If you’re going to knock anything, you should be knocking boots.”

  “Soon enough,” I allowed. Finding a nice lady was one piece of my many retirement goals, but like any puzzle I needed to get a sense of the larger picture, first. For starters, I had no creature comforts in my house, besides a mattress on the floor and a card table for eating meals. No woman worth her salt was going to date a guy eating canned chili on folding chairs. The rest of my furniture was in a moving truck somewhere between Chattanooga and Atlanta. Once I had my things, and that puzzle piece was squared away, I could entertain a lady. “I’m going to work on my Tom Selleck mustache and buy a closet full of Hawaiian shirts. Once I have them both, I’ll be ready to go out and mingle.”

  “I don’t think you understand how retirement works. It’s supposed to be fun, not filled with books and ugly shirts.” Joey was poking fun again.

  The sign for my housing development approached on the left. It was nice to ta
lk, but it was a Monday, and he did have work to do. I didn’t want to keep him too long. “Well, bud, I’m back at my subdivision. I’ll let you go. Good luck with the company, and tell your mother I said hello.”

  “I will. And thanks again for everything you’ve done for me.”

  I smiled. “I love you, kid. Don’t ever forget it. Take good care of my baby. Talk soon.”

  Turning left, I happened to notice black dots in the sky above the roadway to the south. Three huge military choppers moved in a triangle formation toward the west like the earlier two planes. There had to be a serious military exercise going on today, which was something I hadn’t considered when looking for houses in Florida. Was that a common thing?

  My subdivision, known as the Yucca Reef Community, was typical of our area of Fort Myers. A huge billboard sat at the entrance, adorned with a tropical orange fish and text inviting people to buy their next home there. The two-lane streets beyond the sign were long and straight, flat as pancakes, and almost always paired with a freshwater canal so Joe-retiree could take his little pleasure boat out to the ocean. The development was also bracketed on three sides by a forest, making it seem more rural than it was.

  Our entire subdivision was shaped like the letter E lying on its side. The long connector was about half a mile long. Each branch was about a quarter of a mile from south to north. The first street I passed on the left, Albacore Anchorage, was a couple of years old, and thus had the most houses. The second street, Barracuda Bay, was only about half-filled with homes. A few of the closest ones were still under construction. I slowed and turned left on the last street, the playfully named Clownfish Cove, which had the fewest sold properties.

  Other than a few partially finished luxury homes in the middle of the block, all the completed houses were at the far end, on the cul-de-sac. My Florida-styled McMansion was the one at the exact center and facing the length of the street. Flowers and shrubs surrounded a streetlight standing in a small island of grass in the middle of the circle. Like everything else in the place, the developers had spared no expense.

  There were a dozen high-dollar exotic cars parked in front of one of the first two homes on the right side. It looked like the kids in what I called the ‘frat house’ had hosted another pool party last night. The two-story brick mansion was one of the larger houses on Clownfish, with the tallest palm trees around it, and those kids certainly liked to live it up on the property. At the moment, I couldn’t see anyone stirring, so I suspected noon was still too early for them.

  Driving on, I briefly waved to a healthy-looking young woman watering her flowers in front of the next house on the right. She was a dark-haired beauty who reminded me of Jennifer Lopez. I admired her string bikini top for a second, then returned my eyes to the final approach.

  I pulled into my driveway, wanting to get in my three-car garage as fast as possible. It wasn’t that I was anti-social, far from it, but once I set my mind to something, I wanted to carry through. I’d been in the place for almost three weeks and had been working the entire time. My goal for today was to taste from the chalice of retirement for one solid afternoon. Tomorrow, I’d likely be unloading the moving truck…

  The garage door fell behind me with a clunk. My trusty black pickup truck sat in bay two; it’s what got me to Florida in the first place. Bay three was stacked five feet high with cardboard boxes. It was the stuff I didn’t trust to any moving company.

  I hustled inside the house with my books, shucked off my boots and socks, and slipped on my flip-flops. I grabbed a beer bottle, but as I closed the fridge door the floor, windows, and light fixtures rattled.

  “What the hell?”

  It was the unmistakable sound of fighter jets again. Based on the volume, they must have flown about ten feet above my roof. I flip-flopped out the back door to get a look, but their droning afterburners were already well in the distance, beyond the trees.

  Even an annoying military exercise wasn’t going to stop me from enjoying my day. I turned on my portable CD player and let it spin Jimmy Buffett right off the bat. I cracked open the beer, noted that I didn’t have to care if it was 5 o’clock somewhere, and then I finally sank into my patio chair.

  “Hell yeah,” I said aloud, taking a deep, satisfying breath of the ocean air. It was one of the big differences between Florida and Chicago heat; it felt right to be hot when the Gulf of Mexico was only two miles away.

  I’d set the books next to my chair, so I reached over and grabbed the top one, not caring which title I’d picked. I was retired, I would eventually read them all.

  This was the life, and I’d earned it.

  I sucked down half the beer to celebrate my day’s achievement, and it was the best-tasting beverage I’d ever experienced.

  “To retirement!” I saluted.

  I enjoyed the hell out of the first few pages of the novel before my CD player quit playing Jimmy.

  “That didn’t take long.” I put the book on my lap as I chuckled.

  I hit the machine a few times, figuring the old boom box needed a little love to get it going again. However, when my efforts failed, I followed the cord to the wall outlet to confirm the most basic element of troubleshooting. It was plugged in, leading me to think bigger.

  “Did I blow a fuse?”

  I went through the hurricane door into my dark kitchen. I was certain I’d left the lights on when I grabbed my beer, but now they were off. I flicked the switch a few times, then I went into the utility room and did the same for the breakers. My house was less than a month old, so kinks were to be expected, but this time I concluded the trouble might be coming from outside.

  I went to the front door, still in flip-flops, and strode onto my porch. The young woman remained in her front yard, but no one else was around. Our street was fairly quiet in the daytime; most people had jobs and weren’t there until dinner time. After seeing nothing unusual, I pulled out my phone, curious how many minutes of retirement I’d managed to get before something had gone wrong. However, it was out of battery and wouldn’t turn on. I couldn’t recall if I’d charged it the previous night.

  When I looked up, the guy two houses to my right peeked his head out the front door.

  “Is your power out?” I called to him.

  He turned to my voice, waited a few seconds, then gave me the thumbs-up gesture. To my surprise, he came out of his house and jogged across the street to the woman. She was pruning some of the bushes near her house, but when the man got to her, she stopped what she was doing to talk. After only a few words, she hurried into her garage and went inside.

  That guy walked across the circle, cutting through the small park-like middle and then came up my lawn. “Hey, I’m glad I saw you. Does the power go out a lot around here? I work from home, and I really can’t have any interruptions like this.”

  I held out my hand. “I’m Frank Douglas.”

  The guy was younger than me, perhaps in his thirties, with a friendly, tanned, nothing-to-hide demeanor. His dark hair was combed and styled with gel, like he was going somewhere. However, he also wore tan cargo shorts and a black T-shirt with Kermit the Frog on the front. They were clothes suggesting he never intended to leave his home again. Despite his dress code, his handshake was firm, and he looked me in the eyes like a man. “Nice to meet you. I’m Luke Farmington. I know I’ve seen you a few times, but it’s hard meeting neighbors, you know?”

  Having just driven into my garage and shutting it behind me, I knew.

  “Well, Luke, it looks like it’s more than just one house. I—”

  As I spoke, the pretty J-LO impersonator from two houses to my left came walking down her driveway. She seemed to search for Luke, but once she found him, she headed our way.

  “Do you know her?” I whispered.

  “Carmen? I only know her from a couple of times we’ve talked from next to our mailboxes. The neighborhood gossips think she might be a drug dealer based on how many strange cars pull up and visit her house, but I do
n’t know for sure. In fact, all I know for certain is we have a common interest in the assholes who live next to her.”

  “The frat guys?” I asked.

  “Are they? I just thought they were rich beach bums who thrived on keeping me and my family up all night with their partying. And her up all night.” Luke spoke the last words much louder, intending to be heard by the new arrival. He pointed to Carmen, who was now at the edge of my model-home quality lawn.

  “Are you talking about me?” the woman replied, smiling.

  “Yeah, I was telling Frank here how you and I have trouble with your neighbors.” He pointed to the two-story frat house, which was the third house down the street, on my left side.

  “Frank, huh? I’m Carmen Perez.” She held out her hand as Luke had done. I took it, noting her more reserved squeeze, her long fingers, and the vibrant glitter on her painted fingernails. Her green eyes caught mine mid-flight, and held me there for five seconds, until we both let go.

  “Nice to meet you,” I replied. It was impossible not to notice her change of clothes. When I drove by earlier, she’d been wearing yellow shorts with nothing but a black bikini top above. Now she’d put on a breezy floral blouse, pulled her long, curly hair into a loose bun, and I was fairly certain she’d added a gold necklace and some large hoop earrings. “Is your power out, too?”

  She nodded readily. “I checked everything. My hurricane jenny didn’t kick on, either. It has gas and everything.”

  I turned to Luke. “Do you have a generator?”

  “I do. I should have mentioned mine didn’t come on, either. It’s wired into the house, and I’ve tested it a bunch of times. I do remote programming on internet hardware, and breaks in power can interrupt my coding, setting me back a whole day sometimes.”

  I had a nagging suspicion develop as we stood on my front lawn. A possible explanation for multiple houses going out at the same time. An explanation for why my phone wouldn’t turn on. There was only one way to satisfy the itch. “Will you wait a second while I check on something?”