by EE Isherwood
Trevor started walking again, but before he’d gone five steps, he yelled out to the guys up the street.
“Zen, my main man! This dude broke into my house and shot Pike in the leg. Please help!”
Zen’s people had gotten out of the cars and, to my surprise, had returned to the far side of the wall to wait for us.
“Come on,” I groaned. “Don’t you ever give up?”
“Help!” he called out again.
I waited for a few seconds, on the off-chance they believed his cries were legit, but I soon saw a lot of head shaking. They must have known Trevor pretty well.
When we got to within ten feet of my ‘Vette, I signaled the men. “Hey, don’t believe anything this fool tells you.”
“That’s easy,” Zen replied. He stepped between my car and the Subaru behind it while he waved over the two prisoners. “He’s already stolen from me.”
Zen’s eyes lit up when he saw what was under Pike’s arm. I’d made him carry the drugs, figuring the person who handed it over to Zen would be in slightly better graces with him. I didn’t want that person to be Trevor.
“And you even brought our stuff!” Zen gushed before he turned toward me. “Still, do you mind if we take these two to ask a few questions?”
“No way!” Trevor stopped in place.
Pike made him keep walking, perhaps sensing the futility of resistance.
“Please do,” I replied. “In fact, don’t send him back. He’s not welcome here ever again.”
“This is total bullshit.” Trevor fought a little against Pike, but continued at a slower pace so he could speak to me. “You can’t keep me out forever. When the power comes back on, I’ll be back for what belongs to me and my family with the police behind me.”
I found it laughable the biggest criminal on the street was suddenly threatening to use the police on me.
“I’ve got to say, you’re one tough mother,” Zen said to me. “We saw you run into his house while getting shot at, and we figured you were a dead man. Yet here you are with both thieves and the stuff we were looking for. What are you, some kind of a special forces guy?”
“Just a retired guy who likes to read books,” I said.
“Retired guy?” Zen didn’t look like he believed me.
“You probably wouldn’t believe me, but today was supposed to be my second day of retirement. I’d planned to sit on my patio, read some books, and down a lot of cold beers. When the EMP came along, it took a healthy dump on my plans.”
“No doubt,” Zen agreed.
I gestured toward Trevor as he walked the final few feet toward the blockade. “But this guy has made life about ten times harder than necessary. I was willing to do whatever it took to get him out of that house.”
Zen pushed Trevor and Pike into the arms of the guys waiting on the far side of the roadblock.
“In addition to all my other problems,” I continued, “dillhole here decided to go out of our neighborhood looking for trouble, then he brought it back to our turf.”
Pike had placed the bag of coke on the rear spoiler of my Vette as he squeezed through. Zen grabbed it as if it were the winnings from the poker table.
“No, no, we’re cool, bro.” Zen gave the bag to one of his men. “We’re not interested in causing your people any problems. We didn’t expect to get Trevor or our product back today, so we’re far ahead of where I thought this bike trek would take us.”
“There is a bit missing from your bag, but Trevor wanted to make things right with you guys, so he asked me to give you an extra pistol.” I carefully set the golden AK-47 on my spoiler, then Zen’s stolen Springfield pistol, and finally the weapon that had previously belonged to Trevor’s dad.
Trevor moaned as if losing a good friend. However, he had enough sense left to not complain about giving it up.
“Well, that’s damned generous, Trev,” Zen said as he checked out the pistol. It was a 1911-style semi-automatic, so it was quite large.
“I thought it was a great idea, too,” I continued, “because I can see you guys are really into your firearms.”
Zen held it up and aimed at the clouds with one hand. “You can never have too many guns.”
I laughed along with his men, but I didn’t forget for a second they were drug pushers who’d come to exact revenge on one of their own. I was happy to give them what they wanted in order to keep them from getting a better sense of the people on our street, and I didn’t mind losing a random pistol to them, but I didn’t want them to spend a second longer at the blockade.
“We’ll take this gift into consideration, but you don’t have to give us this rifle.” Zen carefully pushed the AK back toward me, as if not wanting to scratch my paint.
“He said he stole it from you,” I remarked.
“Nope, this isn’t one of ours. It is sweet, though.”
I glanced over toward Trevor and Pike. “You said this was stolen.”
“I never said who I got it from, dude,” Trevor sneered.
I looked toward Pike.
“He showed it to me for the first time last night.” The young man shrugged. “I honestly have no idea where he got it from or how long he had it hidden.”
“Dont’ worry about it, man,” Zen added. “You get some cool loot out of the deal.”
“Thanks for giving it back,” I said to the leader. “You didn’t have to do that.”
“It’s all good,” he replied. “I’ll try to find out where he got it from.”
“Appreciate it,” I said.
I picked up the outrageous weapon and immediately slung it over my shoulder. It was pretty cool, but I didn’t want to act like a criminal myself by gawking at it. To me, it represented one more person who’d been wronged by Trevor. One more person who might come looking to take it back.
“There’s no one left at Trevor’s place,” I said matter-of-factly to speed things along, “and none of my people are going to be as stupid as him by stealing from you again. Are we cool?
“Yeah, we’re totally cool, bro.” Zen pushed the 1911 into his waistband. “We live on Angelfish, which is just on the other side of Bayside Road. It could benefit us both to keep our eyes peeled for people like Trevor. We should stay in touch.”
“I’d appreciate that,” I said. “And, hey, let’s hope the power comes back on real quick. However, if the grid failure goes on for a long time, you’re going to want a ton of fresh water. Fill your tubs when you get home. When the municipal water drains out of the tower, that free resource is going to stop flowing and it may never come back on.”
“Pfft, this jerk thinks he knows everything,” Trevor spat out. “The power isn’t going to be out as long as he says. Everything will be back to normal in a day or two.”
“I’ll take his advice over yours any day,” Zen replied. “Did you collect water, Trevor? It sounds like a smart bet.”
His silence gave Zen the answer.
“What about pools, sir?” Zen asked me. “Can we drink from them?”
“In a pinch, maybe, but pools have a lot of variables you can’t control. Algae will invade since the filters aren’t working. They may have hard chemicals your body won’t like, including lots of chlorine. However, pools are great for flushing toilets, doing laundry, and bathing. Just be sure you take the water out of the pool before you use it, or you’ll have a filthy cesspool in just a few days.”
I’d read about pools in survival situations many times. If the power was out for weeks or months, we could work up a way to filter the pool water and make it drinkable. We could do the same for the freshwater canal, except people would likely foul those waters with trash, human waste, or even dead bodies. In that sense, pools at least represented a body of water one homeowner could control and keep clean. That made them valuable.
“Thanks for the heads-up.” Zen saluted me.
I saluted back.
“Alright, guys,” Zen said to Trevor and Pike, “you two are walking back to my place until we ca
n figure out a suitable punishment. We’ll ride behind you, so don’t try anything stupid, or I’ll have to use this nice new gun to air you out.”
Trevor looked at me from across my Corvette. “You said we were coming up here just to talk. Now they’re taking me away!”
I shrugged.
“You lied to us!”
“I said these gentlemen wanted a word with you. I also said you weren’t welcome to come back. Both are still true. They’re just taking you to a different place to talk.”
I half-expected the guy to parkour over the vehicle so he could punch me in the face, but he merely stood there with hatred in his eyes.
“Hey, not that I care, but what are you going to do with them?” I asked while Zen and his friends mounted their bikes. It wasn’t that I was worried about their fate, but I was curious how the young men planned to handle the theft. It might give me ideas if it ever happened again in my neighborhood.
“Don’t know,” Zen shrugged. “I guess it depends on what they can do for me. I can’t exactly call the police and complain about what they took, can I?”
That was true even before the EMP.
“Well, I don’t have any suggestions, either, but if you could convince him never to come back here, I would really appreciate it. We don’t want to spend all our time looking over our shoulders, you know?”
“I think you’ve got that covered. It looks like your people are already making damn sure he doesn’t come back.” Zen pointed behind me.
“What the?” I blurted.
“You guys are all badass,” Zen added. “I hope my neighbors are as cool as yours.”
I’d told Luke and Carmen to get ready to run, as a way of keeping themselves safe in the face of a possible encounter with Zen’s people. However, instead of heading for the woods, they’d fanned out to protect me from behind.
Luke saw me looking his way, so he waved. My friend had taken a position among the trees and shrubs behind the last house next to Trevor’s. He was partially hidden among the same cover I’d used when I’d watched Trevor come out of the woods.
Penny’s brown hair was barely visible behind Luke, as if ready to assist.
Ben stood across the street, on his front porch, holding a long gun.
Carmen crouched near the old man, her pistol drawn but held low.
I’d walked up to the roadblock thinking I was going at it alone, but they’d proven me wrong. I wasn’t by myself at all.
“Yeah, well, all we want is to live in peace,” I explained, “same as yesterday and every day before we lost power. Thanks to you boys, our day is now going to be a lot more peaceful.”
“Respect,” Zen replied, before his party rolled out.
Zen and his friends rode their bikes in a semi-circle behind Trevor and Pike, so the pair couldn’t escape. It took a few minutes for the slow parade to reach the end of the street, but once they turned the corner, I leaned against my ZR1 to take a load off.
When I picked her off the lot the previous morning, I never could have predicted she would be the setting for such a wild encounter. In less than twenty-four hours, a small group of young men had turned into warlords and hung out inside my brand-new ride. And somehow, contrary to what I’d read in the books, those drug dealers had become the good guys.
At least for today.
But what if the EMP disaster went on until the food and water ran out? Would they still roll up on their bikes and ask permission to talk, or would civility take a back seat to desperation? Would they always respect our borders because we’d shown a willingness to defend them, or does simply knowing we exist provide an invitation to come back and cause trouble?
They even had one of my neighbors, as much as I didn’t want him associated with us. Trevor was a dirtbag who’d been inside our cul-de-sac since the beginning. He was there when we’d started our guard shifts, began the roadblock, and started carrying weapons. Would he try to get even with me by telling Zen our defensive secrets?
I chuckled to myself. That, at least, was something I didn’t have to seriously worry about. Trevor had been so self-absorbed in his robbing, womanizing, and multi-day drug binge, he had no idea what me and the others had privately discussed about fortifying our neighborhood. He could only report on things Zen’s people could see for themselves.
In the end, Trevor or no Trevor, I could never fully trust Zen. They were allies for today, and we’d do what we could to keep the peace and maintain a positive relationship, but that’s where my faith in our arrangement ended. A healthy distrust was an important skill used by leaders in many of my books but it also came from simply being alive for fifty years. The hard knocks of life had taught me to be choosy about who I trusted with anything important.
As much as I didn’t want it to happen, I had to consider Zen and his drug-peddling buddies as a potential long-term problem.
“You did it, Frank!” Carmen squealed as she approached me. “That was incredible.”
My friends had come out of hiding while I watched the men walk away.
“I was just doing what I could to help the street. It wasn’t a big deal, really.”
“But you just faced down a bunch of drug dealers,” Luke exclaimed. “And you did it with your rifle over your shoulder instead of pointed at them.”
“Meh, whatever they are, at least they follow some rules. I was respectful to them, and they were respectful to me. Luckily, it worked out better than I ever expected. Not only did we jettison some dead weight, but those boys are just on the other side of Bayside Road. We now have allies out there.”
I used air quotes around the word allies, as I wanted to make it clear I didn’t place my full trust in Zen, and neither should they.
“We understand.” Luke had almost made it to me, but he spun and turned around. “I forgot about something. I’ll be right back.”
Carmen closed the distance until she stood about a foot from me. Her sugary perfume doused me again, reminding me of our brief encounter inside her home.
“Thank you, Frank, for saving my life back there. When you pushed me down, I had no idea anyone was shooting at me. It took a few seconds for my brain to catch up.”
“Don’t worry about it,” I replied. “You did a great job getting those last four kids to come out of Trevor’s house. I think that saved a lot of bloodshed, so thank you back.”
“They ran into the woods,” she reported. “I have a feeling they didn’t plan on stopping.”
“Well, I hope one of them has a good sense of direction,” I replied. “Since they don’t have a phone with a GPS anymore.”
“Should we look for them?” she asked with concern.
There were pros and cons to every decision. If I went out and found them, our street would be responsible for their well-being. While it would be nice to have the extra head count for the inevitable chores, we’d also have to expend additional resources on them. Until I had a better handle on our existing team, I didn’t want to add people at random. And, to put it bluntly, there were probably better allies out there than friends of Trevor.
“No, we don’t have the manpower. If we see them again, I’d for sure help ‘em out, but people their age should know enough to take care of themselves. I’m going to give them the benefit of the doubt that they can make it to their homes without our help. Until life gets back to normal, we all have to step it up a notch and learn how to do new things, you know?”
“Definitely. And speaking of stepping up, the next time you head into trouble, I want to go with you.” She flashed her J-Lo smile. “I just need a little practice with my weapon.” Her voice was suggestive, as if ‘weapon’ might be more than the pistol on her hip.
“As soon as we take care of some immediate needs around this neighborhood, I’ll teach you how to fire the revolver. A little target practice and training is all you need so you can help contribute to our defense.”
“And our offense?” she said with anticipation.
“Yes,” I allowed.
“If we go on the offense again, I’ll make sure to let you know.”
“Then it’s a date,” she replied in a seductive tone.
Luke came jogging back to the roadblock, but he’d picked up some followers.
A tall black man trotted behind him.
“Levar?” I asked with shock.
He still wore his holster, but he also carried a rifle.
“Hiya, Frank,” he answered.
“Did you find Kaira?” I asked with anticipation.
“She’s right here,” he replied, pointing to a small woman who trailed him. I’d seen her and Levar once or twice, but I’d never had the opportunity to wave or say hello.
We gave space to the newcomers.
“Nice to meet you, Kaira,” I said as I extended a hand.
“And you, too,” she replied while gently squeezing my grip. Her wavy black hair fell to her shoulders and appeared sloppy, as I would have expected from someone who’d just walked all the way from downtown. However, sweaty or not, she was an attractive young woman whose only oddity was being so much shorter than her husband. “Levar had plenty of time to explain how you and Luke helped him get out on a bike to search for me. Thank you so much for doing that.”
We separated, and she stepped back.
“Good to see you again,” Ben added. “Evelyn says hello as well.”
“Where is she?” Kaira asked.
“She’s cleaning out her car,” Ben answered as he pointed toward his garage.
Evelyn waved when she saw us all looking at her.
I prayed Kaira would be a little more involved with our group than the older woman, though I couldn’t complain at what we’d achieved with Evelyn in just one day. Sure, it would be nice if she’d come over to celebrate Levar and his wife coming back, but at least she was contributing by getting her car ready to go to the roadblock. I’d take small victories like that all day long.