Charlie's Requiem: Democide (10 page)

“I understand,” he replied. “Just give me until tomorrow, or at the latest, the next day. I’ll get the information and be back as soon as I can. But I have to run patrols on the west side of town, so I can’t promise anything before late afternoon tomorrow.”

“The west side?” Janice asked. It was the first thing she had said since John arrived. “How far west?”

“Well, right now we are finishing Pine Hills and should be moving further west. Eventually, we’ll be going into my partner’s old stomping grounds, Ocoee and Winter Garden.”

“You remember the doctor we told you about yesterday?” Janice continued.

“Sure. Dr. Kramer, the cardiologist.” John quickly replied.

“He lives in Montverde. Could you look in on him?”

“Well, I suppose so,” John tentatively responded. “Do you have an address?”

“I do,” Janice said as she reached into her backpack and retrieved a small address book. John got his waterproof pencil from his own kit and wrote the address down on the back of one of the DHS memos he had stashed in the backpack.

“And here’s Maria’s name.” Jorge wrote her full name on the back of the same piece of paper. John looked at it.

“Maria De La Hoya. Did I pronounce that correctly?”

“Por supuesto!” Jorge smiled.

“Where is she from? I mean originally?”

“Right here,” Jorge answered. “Her parents are from Mexico.”

“Any relation to Oscar?” John slyly replied.

“If it helps to find her, yes!” he joked back.

John cracked a smile, then turned slightly and addressed the group.

“Do you guys need anything else? Food or water?”

“Maps,” Jorge replied. “We need detailed maps of the area.”

John looked at Jorge, re-evaluating the man. With that request, Jorge had shown John that he had a good head on his shoulders. Very few people would have thought to ask for maps.

“Very good,” John replied. He then stood up to leave, but stopped himself before he could turn away.

“Look,” John started. “Let me give you all some advice.”

He sat back down and took a slow, purging breath.

“You are in a survival situation. Every decision, every move you make could mean the difference between living and dying. So let me give you some basic directions to keep yourselves on the living side of the ledger.”

“First, you need to take care of four basic needs. Number one is shelter. You need to stay safe and under roof. The number one killer in a survival situation is hypothermia. That means you need to be sheltered at night, and stay dry. Keep a spare set of clothes in a zip lock bag or some other waterproof sack so you can get out of any wet clothing before the sun goes down. If your core temperature gets too low, you’ll be in trouble. It will only get worse as we hit December and January.”

“Another great reason to have a roof over your head is to hide from the criminals out there.” He continued. “Don’t get caught in the open. Move with a purpose and a plan to shelter if the need arises.”

“Second,” he continued without pausing. “You need clean water. You cannot rely on tap water anytime soon. Restoring service to the areas outside of downtown may take months or even years. Getting clean water will be a huge challenge. You need to find a source of chlorine or heat to make your water consumable. If you are lucky, you may run across a Berkey filter system or some other means of purifying water. Check a hiking or adventure store on your trip for a filtration system. Heating the water will work as well, but heat requires time and energy as well as marking your position to any undesirables. A fire is a beacon for trouble in the city right now. It brings evil down on you. Don’t make yourselves noticed and stay hidden as best as you can. Find other ways to generate heat. “Be creative” is the best advice I can give you.”

“Third, you need food. As the months go by, scavenging will become more and more difficult. If you are leaving the area, carry as much as you can, and hope you find a secure place that can feed you. If you don’t have a guaranteed safe haven, make one. Find a defensible position, one that is not readily or easily found and provides you with the shelter and water. Get food wherever you can find it and stash as much as you can. At some point, this will all be over. You just need to hold out until then.”

“Finally, you need security. You have some handguns. Great. But handguns are a secondary weapon. We were taught that a handgun should only be used to fight your way to your battle rifle. It’s the battle rifle that will provide you with security. Find some AR-15s or AK-47s and learn quickly how to shoot them. They make noise, but learning how to shoot them is best done now before the government becomes more organized. Random gunfire will not draw a crowd of survivors or refugees to you. It will, however, earn the attention of the government. So, before the DHS or any other military group gets to wherever you are going, practice so that you are prepared.”

“Now, I am going.” John stood up and turned to Charlie. “Could you join me in the hallway?”

Charlie got up and the two of them left the room.

“I’m going to take Brie’s body with me now,” John said. “I’ll leave her in the parking lot near my vehicle. If no one finds her before my partner and I leave in the morning, I’ll ‘discover’ her body myself and make sure she is treated properly.”

“Thanks, John.” Charlie replied. She gave him a quick hug and walked John to the apartment that held the young girl’s body.

“She’s in there, behind the bed in the guest bedroom.”

“I’ll take it from here.” He replied.

“Again, I can’t thank you enough!” Charlie whispered. She kissed him on the cheek, then spun on her heals, returning to the rest of her group.

John found little Brie, her body wrapped tightly in the white, cotton sheets. Her corpse was light and he had no trouble sliding her out from behind the bed and scooping her into his arms. Her body was still remarkably flaccid, reminding John of some of his previous encounters with the dead.

Rigor Mortis, as he recalled, was muscular stiffening due to a lack of normal sugar processing.

Dr. Garavaglia, the Dr. G from the television show and chief medical examiner for the Orlando area, had given him an off-the-cuff lecture at the M.E.’s office one weekend on rigor mortis. In twenty seconds, she had given him the “dumbed down” version on what happens to the body when the heart stops beating and the lungs stop breathing.

“Essentially,” she started. “Muscles use sugar to produce energy. The blood sends sugar to the muscle and the muscle uses that sugar to not only contract, but to keep the muscle fibers separated when they aren’t contracting. Once the blood stops sending sugar to the muscle, they can’t stay separated and the muscles fibers bind together, making them stiffen. That’s why they call a dead body a stiff.”

During the impromptu lecture, she had mentioned that infants and small children, along with patients with muscle-wasting diseases like cancer, would not develop much rigor mortis because they don’t have a lot of muscle mass.

Brie was a little girl and with no significant muscle mass, she stayed supple and easy to carry.

John cradled her in his arms and carried her to the stairwell. She barely weighed 40 pounds; but by the time he got to the first floor door, his muscles were starting to complain.

He hefted her onto his chest, her cotton wrapped head lolling about and settling on his neck as he pushed through the stairwell door and into the lobby. By the time he was outside, the darkness had enveloped the street in front of the building. Brie’s cold and limp form was beginning to feel a lot heavier, and the thought of a corpse’s head bouncing off his neck was a bit unnerving. The final straw was when the child’s right arm and hand dropped out of the bindings and lay against his chest.

John cast a warry look around; and seeing no one in the area, he turned to face the building one more time. No one could see him in the dark.

“God, forgive me for this. But I just can’t keep this up.” He mumbled.

John dropped the corpse to the ground and re-wrapped her tightly. He threw the girl over his shoulder in an unceremonious fireman’s carry and with her weight being supported by his back and legs, he quickly retraced his steps back to the concrete lot where he had parked their vehicle just a few hours before.

John gently placed the body in an empty parking slot a few spots down from their M-ATV. At least in the morning, if no one else finds her, John could “discover” her body and have her properly laid to rest.

With that distasteful episode finished, Agent Drosky finally headed back to his apartment. He needed to figure out how to find Maria and who could help him do that. He didn’t know his partner Bru well enough yet to fully trust him; but so far, the kid seemed solid. Further, the building inspections that Charlie and the others had avoided may not be limited to just one day, and only serious trouble could come from discovering those three in the apartment. The crap would eventually be dumped in his lap and that couldn’t turn out well for any of them.

With all this on his mind, John mechanically stepped into “The Tower” as the residents had started to call the 40-story apartment building, and hit his floor button. He started blankly at the numbers above the elevator door until it stopped on floor 35 where the door slid silently open. All the while John stood motionless in a hypnotic-like trance as his mind juggling all the possible scenarios that they would be facing. Every line of action, each twist and turn, had a high probability of ending up badly.

I just don’t have enough information
, he finally thought to himself, as the elevator door finally closed.

“Well,” came a woman’s voice, “I guess I didn’t make that much of an impression on you after all!”

John came out of his stupor and looked to his right. There stood Natasha, her hair loosened from the constricted bun she wore the day before. Her shoulder-length auburn locks flowed in waves around her head, framing it in a way that accentuated her face. The makeup monster that had applied all the heavy eye shadow and blush when he first saw her was obviously not around now, having applied just enough highlights and not too much lipstick.

“Oh,” John stammered. “I was lost in thought. Had an interesting day in the field.”

“Love to hear about it,” she quickly replied. “I’m heading up to the 37th floor lounge. Want to join me?”

“Sure! But I need to clean up and grab a bite to eat. I’m just getting in.”

“There’s food in the lounge if you don’t mind hot appetizers,” she said. “Just get out of those smelly clothes and I’ll see you in a bit.”

Just then, the one-floor ride to John’s 36th floor ended and the door slid open.

“See you in a few minutes!” John said.

“I’ll be waiting!” She practically purred back.

John drank in her outfit as the elevator door closed. She wore a thigh-length black one-piece dress that suggested a lot of curves in just the right places.
She is certainly showing herself to be a pleasant surprise,
he thought as he nearly sprinted down the hall to his apartment.
Besides,
he thought to himself,
she would have access to the refugee database
.

John jumped into the bathroom and did a thorough but quick military shower. After brushing his teeth and applying deodorant, he finished his primping and jumped into his khaki pants, polo DHS shirt and a pair of his new athletic shoes.

During his brief shower, he realized that while Natasha would have access to all the refugee information, thus helping him to locate Maria, how would he get her to look up another woman’s information without her blowing a gasket? It was blatantly obvious that she had a thing for him. It was going to take some luck and skill to pull off this miracle.

He rapidly walked down the hall and took the stairs up to the next floor two at a time. He swung open the 37th floor door and immediately heard the sounds of laughter and raised voices coming from the lounge. It was pleasant to hear people’s voices resonating down the hallway. John couldn’t help but crack a smile when he realized they were having an apocalypse cocktail party!

Turning into the room, John stopped and drank in the joyful scene before him. The room had once been a large conference room, but the resourceful residents had converted it into a party room. Young men and women were engaging in the ancient art of flirting and socializing. Groups of male agents clustered in small groups of three or four, heads together as if sharing a joke or secret story. All the while, the boys twisted and turned their heads to gaze at the women that were bunched in small groups of their own. John moved smoothly into the crowd, finding a makeshift bar that was dispensing mixed drinks and cold wine and beer. An iPad was leaning against the wall on a table behind the drink counter, dispensing old Jackson 5 music through some Bluetooth speakers.

“Hey,” John yelled at the bartender, “How did you get that thing working?”

“Had it in a safe when the lights went out,” the man replied. “Guess it acted as a Faraday cage. Just glad I had it loaded with music and a few movies.”

John gave the man a “thumbs up” and snatched an open bottle of brew. Taking a long draw from its brown, cold neck, he emptied about half of its contents and decided that this had to be the best tasting beer he had ever tried. The cool, amber liquid coated his throat as it settled into his gut, and a second draw was just as satisfying as the first. A few seconds later, a rush of air came rumbling back up from his stomach and a deep, satisfying belch roared forth.

“Well, boy will be boys!” he heard from over his right shoulder.

John spun on his heels, confronting the unknown spectator.

Natasha stood a few feet behind him. Sipping a plastic cup of some mysterious concoction, her smile was infectious and her outfit intoxicating. She glided forward and wrapped her left arm in John’s right and pulled him into her space.

“I must say, I am pleasantly surprised to see you.”

“Hey,” John replied. “I said I’d be here.”

“Yeah, guys promise a lot of things,” she shot back with a grin. “But I’m glad you’re not one of
those
guys.”

“What kind of guy is that?” John asked, continuing the verbal sparring.

“Oh, you know,” she said as she turned them toward a corner. “The kind that promises a lot and never delivers!”

“Well,” John coyly said, “How do you know I’m not one of those guys?”

“Well, Mr. Curiosity, a woman just knows.”

“Oh yeah? And is that a universal female talent or just gifted to a few lucky women?”

“Oh, we women will never tell. It’s a gender secret. Off limits to even the most endearing males. Let’s just say I have a talent for these things.”

Just then, the music volume ramped up and the Jackson 5 song, “I Want You Back,” started to jam the room.

“Come on, John! Let’s see those moves!” Natasha sang.

John drained the rest of the beer and Natasha led him to the center of the room where a few other couples had started to dance. John never sought out the dance floor, but didn’t shy away from it like many men did. The two of them began their moves, quickly falling into a rhythm as the song switched to the next song on the album. “ABC” began its upbeat melody, bringing even more couples to the floor.

“Alright!” Natasha said as the beat pulsed.

John grinned and did his best to keep up with her. Two songs later, a slow dance tune started its strain. As “I’ll Be There” wafted over the room, Natasha wrapped her arms around John’s neck and leaned into his body. Over six inches taller, John leaned down and put his cheek against her forehead. He could feel her sigh and fold herself into his chest and arms; and right then, he knew they were going to be spending a lot more time together. He closed his eyes and gave himself permission to enjoy the moment. These times were too rare to do anything else.