Charlie's Requiem Novella (11 page)

“Both of my agents reported that you were co-operative and even helpful in diffusing a situation outside,” she stated.

She then continued. “I see you have no political party affiliation, is that true?”

“True Ma’am.”

“You don’t like the politicians, Officer Drosky?” She said with a bit of sarcasm.

“I just don’t pay attention to politics, Ma’am. I don’t find it interesting or relevant to my day to day life.” He replied, somewhat perplexed.
Why is that important?
He asked himself.

“I see that you don’t own any personal firearms, is that correct?” She continued.

“No, Ma’am. My duty weapon is more than sufficient for my job.” He once again replied. “And may I ask, why is that important?” John asked in his ‘innocent’ voice.

Her eyes flared with the questioning, but softened when she saw John’s easy-going demeanor.

“Just taking inventory, Officer. Trying to keep the public safe.”

John waited stoically for her to continue. She re-opened his voluminous folder and scanned several more pages. Multiple colored tabs were used to divide what looked to be an over two inch thick dossier. Finally, she closed the folder once again and addressed the OPD officer.

“I see that you were a Marine, Officer Drosky.”

“We like to consider ourselves Marines for life, Ma’am. But yes, I was a Marine.”

“And as a Marine, your job was?”

“To follow orders, Ma’am.”

That seemed to please her. The woman set the folder aside and produced two envelopes. She set aside the dark blue envelope and gave John a white one.

“Officer Drosky, Thank you for your patience. Please go to your right, through the glass door marked intake 1. Take that hallway and follow the instructions you will find in the envelope I gave you. Go, and welcome back.”

John nodded to the woman and gathered his backpack. His weapons were never returned to him, but he was sure that was going to be corrected once he was settled in.

As John walked away and around to the right, he found two doors against the far wall. The first one was marked Intake 2 and the one just passed it marked Intake 1. As he walked in front of the first door, Intake 2, he bumped into a Sheriff’s deputy he had interacted with during his time on the force. He couldn’t quite remember the deputy’s name, but the large and surly man was grumbling under his breath as he pushed by John and went through the Intake 2 portal. John noticed that he carried a blue envelop with him.
Curious,
John thought.
There’s a lot that doesn’t make sense here.

Then Officer Drosky exited through the Intake 1 door, pushing aside his doubts in the hopes of taking care of some of his more basic needs like a hot shower and a good meal. His stomach rumbled when he smelled bacon cooking somewhere down the hall. It had been a long five days and John was sure things could only get better with the level of organization he saw in front of him. Food and a hot shower! Those were his primary concerns right now… along with the over two million other souls in the Orlando metropolitan area.

Chapter 17

Day 6

Charlie

Kirkman Specialty Clinic

Dr. Kramer removed the two corpses, putting them with the third one on the side of the building. Janice mopped up the blood and everyone took turns in the hot shower. We were all preparing to leave and hot water might not be available for a while. The patients were given first dibs in the doctor’s private lavatory. All five were elderly and seemed to take forever in the bathroom.

Dr. K ramen had decided to drive the five patients and Peg to their homes, then make his way back to his family farm in Monteverde. Janice and Garrett and I were going to walk to DeLand.

“That’s a heck of a walk,” Garrett said, as they loaded up the additional supplies from the dumpster into the captured Chevy.

The stash of medications had been somewhat of a surprise. Of course, the narcotics were the first thing the crooks had taken. But most pharmacies only keep a day or two of any medication on hand for sale. The drugs the punks had been searching for just aren’t kept in high volume. It wasn’t just for security’s sake, but rather a financial decision. Just-in-time inventories had revolutionized profits in almost every industry in America. Daily deliveries kept overhead cost low and short term profits high. Unfortunately for the newly collapsed American people, that meant just a two or three day supply of food was on-hand when the lights went out. It was day six and people were already hungry.

But what pleased Dr. Kramer was the other medications he found. The criminals had actually taken all the drugs in the pharmacy, not just “the party drugs” and Dr. Kramer planned to use those to help his community. Heart and blood pressure meds were in the trunk, along with antibiotics and even prescriptions strength NSAIDs like Motrin and Aleve. The whole pharmacy was in there! Combined with Dr. Kramer’s stash of samples, he would be able to help a lot of people for a very long time.

Garrett was stuck with a pillow case for a knap sack, lacking a backpack to carry his walking supplies. Janice lightheartedly needled him about looking like a little boy running away from home, with his pillow case tied to an unused I.V. pole. The poor kid (actually, we found out during our conversations that he was almost 22) was crestfallen. But Janice felt guilty after that and did her best to prop up his self-esteem with some reminders of how he had saved us all the prior evening. Young men, even the brave ones, can have an awfully fragile ego!

Dr. Kramer heard the kerfuffle about the knap sack and appeared with a pair of jeans.

“Whose jeans are those?” I asked.

“Donated,” he replied and nodded toward the side staff entrance. That’s where he took the bodies of the three thugs.

He got some string that he called paracord, and tied off the bottom of the pant legs, sealing them shut. He left two long loose ends on each tied off leg and then brought each of them up to the waist band and tied each end of the leg onto one of the belt loops. When he held it up, he had created a homemade backpack. The two pant legs were now shoulder straps, and the waist opening was the mouth of the pack.

“Don’t worry,” the doctor said. “He isn’t going to need this anymore.”

Garrett gave him a disgusted look.

“And yes I smelled them first. I think they’re newly stolen. There’s no smell to them!”

We all chuckled a little too morbidly. It was disturbing.

We loaded up what we now called the “denim backpack” with Garrett’s supplies and Dr. Kramer used more para-cord to fasten together some of the belt loops from front loop to back loop, effectively sealing off most of the top. He made an “X” between four of the loops in the middle of the pack, two in the front of the pants and two in the back. He then tied the two loose ends together with a shoe tie so Garrett could easily open and close his makeshift rucksack, making it quite effective.

“Take this,” Dr. Kramer said. “This is a spare belt. You can use it as a chest strap to cinch the leg straps together in the front. It’ll keep the sack riding high on your back and a lot more comfortable.”

Janice smirked.

“What’s so funny?” Dr. Kramer asked.

Janice began to giggle, then snort as she fought to hold in her laughter. Finally, she blurted it out.

“I never thought I’d hear you worried about another man’s sack riding high and comfortable!”

We all just looked at her, stunned. And as one, including Dr. Kramer, we had the best laugh I could remember in a very long time. It seemed to last forever, and was the greatest medicine I could have ever been given. All of a sudden, our situation didn’t seem so bad. It was, pardon the pun, just what the doctor ordered.

Dr. Kramer brought me, Janice and Garrett into his private office while the patients gathered their belongings and took them to the car outside.

“Well,” he said. “I guess this is it! I wish I could say it’s been a pleasure, but I can say I am proud of the way you three handled yourselves. You were the perfect end of the world companions!”

We all giggled and got down to a more serious discussion. The doctor opened his desk drawer and withdrew the three handguns we inherited when our invaders were killed the prior evening.

“Do any of you have firearm training?” He asked.

“I do,” I replied. “My dad took me to the range a number of times. But I haven’t shot a gun in a few years.”

He grabbed a black pistol and unloaded it by racking the slide back, ejecting the bullet in the chamber, locking it in place and ejecting the magazine. He handed me the handgun.

“It’s a Hi-Point 9 mm.” He stated. “It’s heavy and has a stiff trigger. But it’s reliable and won’t let you down. It holds 8 bullets in the magazine and one in the chamber.”

I hefted the firearm and disengaged the slide lock, which was the same button as the safety. Interesting. The slide snapped forward and I held the heavy handgun up in front of me, lining up this sights on the “staff only” sign attached to his bathroom door.

I grabbed the magazine and put it back in the pistol, racked the slide which put a bullet in the chamber and ejected the magazine once again. I put the previously ejected bullet back in the magazine and replaced it in the pistol.

“This will do!” I said. “It’s heavy, but I like the feel of it. Like my dad used to say, more mass, less recoil.”

“Well,” Dr. Kramer said. “That’s a great idea when you’re at the range. But you have a lot of miles to cover and that gun is nearly two pounds. Can you do it?”

“I’m a Gator, Dr. Kramer!” I said, reminding him of my collegiate days. “I can do anything!”

“Oh please!” Janice shot back. “If you ever do one of those God awful Gator chomps with your arms, I promise I will snap you in half!”

“Roll Tide!” I replied with a grin.

“OK. OK. That’s quite enough,” the doctor said with a grin. “How about you, Janice? Do you know how to handle a firearm?”

“Sorry, Dr. Kramer. In my family, the boys did the hunting and the women did the cooking. I suppose I could use one if I had to, but I would prefer to let someone else do that.”

“Suite yourself,” he replied. “How about you, Garrett?”

“I can handle a pistol,” he replied.

Dr. Kramer had a revolver and another black handgun on the table. Garrett picked up the black pistol and properly removed and replaced the magazine. He kept the firearm pointed away from all in the room as he manipulated the slide to gently pull it back a bit and confirm that a bullet was in the chamber.

“It’s a Glock,” he said.

“It’s a 40 caliber,” Dr. Kramer said. “It’s got a 13 round magazine and I found a spare mag in the car along with two boxes of ammo, one for each pistol.”

Dr. Kramer took the revolver and put it in his pocket.

“Well I’ve got my hunter right here!” Janice said in her sweet southern accent. Garrett smiled, turned and left the room.

“I’ve got one or two more things to pack,” he said as he made his way to the reception room.

“I’m with him, too.” Janice said and quickly followed.

“Looks like Janice found her man,” Dr. Kramer said after the two had left the room.

“But he’s too young,” I replied. “She’s almost five years older than him.”

“He’s a man,” Dr. Kramer said in earnest. “In this new world, you’ll find out soon enough that age isn’t going to determine the men from the boys. Garrett killed two dangerous people for you guys, especially for Janice. Not many men out there in today’s society that could or would do that.”

He was right,
I thought.
Just how many guys in my generation could have done what Garrett did last night? Who could you rely on in this upside down world?

Garrett had proven himself. As I watched the two of them work together down the hall in the waiting room, I realized that they were quickly becoming a couple. I envied them. Going through the apocalypse with a partner would make things much easier. I thought I had a battle buddy in Janice, but now, I wasn’t so sure. She needed protection, I wanted a partner.

Thirty minutes later, we helped the patients into the vehicle. The car was loaded with food, medical supplies and other gear that the six would use to survive the coming weeks. Dr. Kramer had a long coil of I.V tubing wrapped around his waist in the event he needed to siphon gasoline. It was both cute and sad at the same time. We hugged and kissed each other, acting like the day after Thanksgiving when all the relatives were heading home. It was a bittersweet time. We all knew that we wouldn’t be seeing each other again.

Dr. Kramer handed me a paper bag just before he got into the driver’s seat.

“Here, Charlie. Take these. They are for you and Janice.”

I looked inside the bag and it was filled with birth control pills. I looked up and smiled.

“Gosh, Doc. I didn’t know you thought of me that way!”

He chuckled and put on a serious face. “Charlie, you don’t want to be pregnant out there right now. It’s not going to be a place to raise a baby. Just take these and start using them if you aren’t on them already. I hate to think of bearing a child in this mess.”

“It’s alright, doc. I don’t have a boyfriend.”

“Maybe not now,” he replied. And in a grave whisper, he said. “And maybe you run into a situation where you didn’t want to get pregnant. Or worse, a time when you didn’t want to have sex.”

I got his drift. My mood quickly turned serious. Getting pregnant because I wasn’t careful was stupid. Getting raped may not be a choice. I shivered and Dr. Kramer grabbed me in his arms and hugged me. It was a father’s hug. I needed it.

“Now!” he said to the group. “It’s time to get out of here!”

He looked at the three of us and pointed down the road past the I-4 overpass. “There is a bike shop down there, and a Wal-Mart further still. But I would stay away from any store that could have food, liquor, drugs or firearms. They’ll be a death trap someday, if not already. Each of you need to get a bike, however you can. By hook or crook. It will make your trip a lot quicker and maybe safer. And find a map if you can!”

With a quick wave, the good doctor jumped into the driver’s seat, cranked the engine and was gone. Janice started to tear up as the big blue Chevy rumbled down to Kirkman road, made a right and shot north to begin delivering his patient’s to their homes. I sighed, and as the quiet began to settle in, I realized that I felt a lot less sure of myself now that he was gone. I felt small and frail for the first time in a long while. With Dr. Kramer gone, I became very aware that I missed my family, and most of all, I missed my dad. I wanted to go home.