Holding Their Own: A Story of Survival (16 page)

Bishop sat straight up on the couch, covered with sweat and not sure of where he was. His mind cleared after a few seconds, and he recognized his surroundings. He had been dreaming about gunshots. He checked on Terri, and she was in the bedroom, safe and sleeping soundly in the cooler air. He scouted the house, peering out the windows at the completely dark neighborhood. Everything seemed fine.

He
started for the fridge to get a drink when he heard a distant popping noise.
That was what woke me up
, he thought,
I wasn’t dreaming after all
. He quickly went to the back porch, shut off the generator, and listened. It was difficult to be sure with a couple of neighbors’ generators still running close by, but he thought he heard a car engine and voices.

He waited several minutes
. . . just listening, but didn’t hear anything more. As he was eyeing the generator, he realized something was wrong. “Oh shit!” he said out loud. He had fallen asleep and not changed the plugs to power the freezer. He ran back through the house into the garage and pulled open the freezer lid. Bishop was relieved at the sight of frost lining the side of the unit and the still-frozen food stash. He went back outside, changed the plugs, and re-started the generator.
That was close
, he thought,
I have got to pay more attention.
He stayed up listening and walking around the house for another hour before returning to bed.
I almost lost four days of food
was his final thought before sleep took over.

The smell was what
had initiated the search. No one had seen the general or the teacher at the MISIRA headquarters for several days. This was not unusual. After everything electric had stopped working, chaos had occurred, and the staff had been distracted. The organization could not easily contact its many operatives, and over 90% of the equipment had been completely fried. A few computers, housed in the basement, still functioned, but were worthless since the outside connections had been destroyed.  

The underground cells were off limits to all but a very select few
, and the elevator used to access those lower levels required a special key card to operate. After five days, everyone started to notice the smell of decaying flesh coming through the air conditioner vents, even though no air was circulating.

A search for the source
of the odor ensued, and both the general and the teacher were eventually found suspended mid-shaft in the elevator car. Both men had died of dehydration.

Bishop went through his normal morning routine of making coffee on the grill
. He hit the start button and put the teapot in its normal position. He returned a bit later only to find that the water was still cold.
Damn
, he thought,
there goes the gas
.

He started to switch the grill
from the natural gas to propane, glad he had two full tanks, when he heard what sounded like a gunshot, and it was close. Before he could react, there was a second and then a third shot. He ran into the house and woke up Terri to tell her what was going on. He grabbed a rifle and headed out the front door. By the time he had walked a short distance, there were several neighbors standing on their own front lawns. “Where did it come from?” he asked. Everyone pointed toward Roger’s house.

Bishop could see Ro
ger sitting on the ground staring at a body lying next to him. Roger’s wife was standing nearby with her face in her hands. Naturally concerned, Bishop rushed over. “Roger, are you okay, man?”

“Oh
God,” he said, looking up at Bishop with a face full of pure horror.

Bishop bent down to check on the body
. It had blood pooling underneath and two holes in the center of the chest. It was a young man that Bishop had never seen before.

“What happened
?” Bishop asked.

“Oh
God, I don’t know what happened. I just, I just…I just don’t know.”

Several neighbors
began walking up to get a better view of the situation. A couple of the women took Roger’s wife inside.

“Ro
ger, tell us what happened. Come on, buddy. It’s okay. Cindy is fine. Everything is all right. What happened?”

“I heard a noise outside and saw someone in
my driveway. I grabbed the gun and went out there, and this guy was under my car. I could see his legs. I asked him what hell he thought he was doing, and he rolled out from under the car, pointing a gun at my face. He took a shot at me and missed. I don’t know… I shot back, and he went down.”

Two of
Roger’s friends consoled him as he began sobbing uncontrollably. Bishop asked someone to get a blanket and motioned for the guys to get Roger away from the body. With Roger away from the car, Bishop was able to size up the situation. He found a pistol under the dead guy’s arm, as well as a screwdriver and an empty milk jug under Roger’s car. A neighbor covered the body with the blanket.

Seeing the commotion,
Terri ran up to find out what was going on. Bishop, trying to recreate the scene in his own mind replied, “Roger heard this guy under his car and challenged him. The dude took a shot at Roger and missed. Roger fired back and killed him.”

Terri asked, “What was
he doing under the car?”

“He was stealing gas
. He died trying to get a gallon of gas. What a fucking waste.”

“How do you steal gas from under a car? I thought you needed to suck on a hose or something?”

“That is the slow way. See the screwdriver?  You punch a hole in the bottom of the gas tank with that and then let the gas drain into the jug.”

“Bishop, shouldn’t we call the police?”

“How are we going to call the police? There are no phones.”

Bishop turned the body over and checked it
. He found a wallet that was empty except for a motorcycle driver’s license listing an address of an apartment complex about a mile away.

“What a dipshit
. This poor guy was just plain dumb,” Bishop said, shaking his head in disbelief. “This whole thing
really
bothers me.”

Terri replied, “He was probably just desperate
, Bishop. Don’t you think you are being a little harsh?”

“
It bothers me because he died for a gallon of gas. How long before he would have killed someone for their sandwich?”

Bishop realized how cold his statement sounded and wondered for a second what he was
saying. He mumbled to Terri, “Sorry babe. I’m having trouble wrapping my head around all of this. This street is full of good people living decent lives and to see this sort of thing here is, like, some sort of nightmare.”

Bishop joined a few of the neighborhood men
. They talked about what to do for a few minutes, and the men agreed that they would load the body into a pickup and take it to the closest police station.

Bishop
didn’t agree, “I don’t think that is a good idea. First of all, it is a waste of gas. Second, I don’t think you will find any police at the station. Even if you do, you might be in trouble for messing with evidence at a crime scene. Besides, what are
they
going to do with the body?”

The debate
continued for a few more minutes, and they determined that some of the men should walk to the police station to see what the police wanted them to do. Bishop didn’t like that idea either, but thought it was better than the original.

T
wo other guys and Bishop were going to make the trip, so he went home to get ready. He grabbed his rifle, load gear and a side arm. When he went back out to meet the other men, they looked up at him with an expression that seemed to ask,
What the hell is that?

Bishop had put on hi
s body armor, which was a thick-looking vest. On top of that, he had put on a chest rig, a harness that contained many small pouches, each full of different types of equipment, including a medical kit and other items. Three of the pouches contained extra rifle magazines.

One of the men joked,
“Are we going to war?”

“I
’m uncomfortable with this trip. I think if one guy is desperate enough to walk a mile for a gallon of gas, there is a good chance there will be other very desperate people. I have heard bangs and pops for the last two nights, and I don’t think it was firecrackers. Besides that, carrying all this shit around gives me a good workout.”

His two traveling companions digested his
reasoning for a bit and felt they should at least bring along their rifles. They had to make a second trip home when Bishop asked them if they had brought any water.

“Water
?” they asked.

“It is over a mile to the police station
. It will be over a hundred degrees on the way back. When was the last time you walked two miles in that kind of heat carrying a rifle? What if we have to detour and it’s more than two miles?”

When t
he team was finally ready, including rifles and water, the three men began trekking down the street. Bishop’s housing development had been started in 2008, right before the housing bubble had burst in the market. Originally, the large tract of land was to have included several streets and entrances off of the main road in the area, Cypress Boulevard. The developer had managed to construct a single street and build less than 50 homes on it before the housing market had evaporated. The remainder of the land was vacant and covered with a tangle of wild vegetation.

When Bishop and Terri were
shopping for a home, he liked the fact that there was only one way in and one way out. Traffic would never be an issue since the single street dead-ended. No cross streets existed, and a nature preserve bordered one entire side of the neighborhood. They couldn’t afford a larger piece of property within commuting distance and really liked the home, so they had taken the plunge.

As the men
left their street, they walked single file down Cypress. Something kept nagging at Bishop. They had made it four blocks when it finally dawned on him that there was no sound. The fact that there were no automobiles was not a surprise, but what did bother him was the lack of sound from home generators, children playing, or other normal human noise pollution. He had grown used to the sound of generators on his street, and now that they were out of earshot, he couldn’t hear any motors running at all.

“This
is kind of spooky,” he said. “I don’t think we are in Kansas anymore.”

They noticed the smell as they were approaching the first residential area between them and the police station
. Bishop thought he knew what the smell was, but didn’t want to freak the other guys. As they went around a small bend in in street, they saw a SUV at the side of the road. The hood and back hatch were both sticking up in the air and as they got closer, several buzzards flew off.

“Guys, I think we should go back
,” Bishop recommended.

“They may need our help.”

“I think they are beyond our help, but if you want to check, I suggest we spread out a little and get on both sides of the road,” Bishop replied with warning in his voice.

The two men with Bishop just shook their heads and went running up to the SUV
. They didn’t get very close before one of them turned around and went down on his knees and started to vomit. The other man stopped 40 feet away and just stared at the scene.

Bishop didn’t walk directly to the SUV. He made a very slow circle around it looking
both at the nearby homes and at the ground. After he had finished his circle, he slowly walked up and took it all in.

There were
open suitcases and paper bags surrounding the vehicle. Clothes, shoes, and other personal items were strewn all over the street and sidewalk. Bishop used his rifle barrel to lift the lid of one of the suitcases, and underneath was a spent cartridge.
So
, he thought,
they had pulled all of this out of the back after shooting.

He walked around the back and noticed that there were a few bullet holes in the brake light and a few more through the
back hatch door. He looked in the backseat and then quickly spun away. Lying there, in pools of dried and blackened blood, were two small children, one still strapped in a car seat.

Bishop pulled himself together and walked around to the driver’s side
. What he saw there almost took him to his knees. A man’s body was lying on its side with his hands bound behind him using his own belt. There was a single bullet hole through his head. He had been executed.

Bishop walked away quickly
, fighting a mixture of boiling anger, disgust, and fear. He went over to the other men and all three of them stood silent, looking in every direction but at the SUV.

“We should head back
,” stated one of the guys, “there are no police. If there were, this would not be left sitting here like this.”

“Shouldn’t we do something with their bodies?”
one of the other men asked.

“What do you suggest?”

“Fuck, I don’t know. I’m a gawd damned real estate agent. How the fuck would I know? Jesus Christ, I just want to go home.”

Bishop thought that was a good idea, but something was still bothering him about the SUV
. He tilted his head to one side and said, “Hang on a minute, I want to take one last look around, and then we will head back.”

Bishop walked up the street in the direction that the SUV had come from
. He had gone about a block when he saw a woman’s purse next to the road. It appeared to have been thrown out the window of a moving car. It was scuffed up, and the contents had been flung around. He continued another 50 yards or so and found two more spent cartridges on the ground.

He played it out in his mind
. The family had packed up and left in the middle of the night. A car had come up behind them and perhaps tried to get them to pull over. The man probably refused, and a chase ensued. The followers had started shooting at the SUV, and the woman in the passenger seat thought they were after her purse. She threw it out the window in desperation.

Woman
? Passenger seat?

He spun around quickly and began running back to the SUV
. When he got close enough, he yelled out, “Guys, let’s spread out – the woman is missing. She might still be around here.”

Bishop’s companions gave him a puzzled look and mouthed
, “Woman, what woman?”

He ran up to the scattered luggage and looked around for just a second
. He held up a woman’s dress with his rifle barrel and asked, “Who does this belong to?” Then he pointed to the open passenger door and said, “Who opened that door?”

Both men gave Bishop a look of “Oh shit!” and began to look around.

Bishop scanned the area for a minute and focused on a privacy fence about 50 yards away. It was the closest structure to the SUV, and he started walking toward it. As he rounded the corner of the fence, he saw her.

She was curled up in a
fetal position next to the barrier, naked except for a pair of white socks. Her back was turned to Bishop. He approached her slowly and said in a gentle voice, “Hey there. I won’t hurt you. It’s okay. I promise I won’t hurt you.”

She
didn’t move.

Bishop could see she was breathing
. He kept a good distance while he moved until he could see her face. Her eyes were open but did not focus. Her nose had been bleeding, and her face was bruised and swollen. Tears streaked the dirt on her face. She just lay there, not moving.