Authors: Bryant Delafosse
The woman sidestepped out of his path and he realized in passing that the woman hadn’t once screamed.
This is one cold-hearted bitch, he thought as he folded forward, his knees buckling beneath him.
The last thing Albert saw, before he took a dive face-first into the marble-tile floor, was the satisfied grin of the punk kid standing by the side of the woman.
Standing alone in her neighbor’s kitchen, Charlene Myers-Cartwright shuddered, as the noonday sun outside slid behind a cloud and cast her and the body at her feet into shadow.
As the carving knife slipped from her wet hand onto the floor, her eyes shifted from the body of the security guard at her feet to the shoebox that he had thrust into her hands just before he collapsed.
A ring of keys lay spayed out at his belt.
Out.
Into the Mall.
To my grandchildren.
Out.
“
For the 1976 presidential election,
the
Republican party chose well-known actor and former California Governor, Ronald Reagan, narrowly over House Minority Leader Gerald Ford.
As his running mate, Reagan chose Secretary of the Treasury and former Governor of Texas John Connally, who had recently chosen to switch his party affiliation from Democrat to Republican.
Connally had been chosen as Secretary of the Treasury by his long time friend and mentor Lyndon Johnson before his death and served under Humphrey during his administration.
…Though it had been rumored that Reagan’s original choice of running mate had been George H.W. Bush, advisors had made a clear and convincing argument for Connally’s political value to Reagan… Reagan won a substantial victory over McGovern to become the 39
th
President of the United States and took office on January 20, 1977…As the Soviets continued to reject offers of joint space ventures with the U.S., Japan and Germany cooperated on several successful missions, including four more historic moon landings in which Washington Base, a permanent outpost (originally proposed during the Johnson/Humphrey administration) was finally constructed.
This lunar outpost contributed greatly to research into the miniaturization of circuits, which produced smaller and faster computer technology, directly leading to the MECH1, the first bi-pedal mechanized prototype (popularized by science fiction author Isaac Asimov as a “Robot”).”
Charlene Myers-Cartwright did not spook easily.
Living on the Gulf Coast her whole life, she’d seen her share of more hurricanes than she could remember.
Power outages were a way of life here.
If she’d still had her husband’s ranch, it would have been a simple matter to start the gasoline-powered generators and wait in air-conditioned comfort while those Gulf States Utilities repairmen pulled their thumbs out of their respective asses and started doing what their bosses paid them for.
But apartment life was different than living on a working farm.
After living a good portion of her life in the city of Houston before marrying Mr. Cartwright, her third husband—which she affectionately called the Rancher in deference to her previous two husbands, the Cheater and the Loser—whose name itself was the first thing that tickled her fancy about the man when they’d first met.
Who would believe after all that there really was a rancher named Cartwright?
At least he had the dignity to refrain from calling his impressive acreage the Ponderosa.
She’d gotten used to the prospect of being a stone’s throw away from whatever necessities and comforts a woman might desire.
At some point in her life, she’d discovered that “things” just weren’t enough and had hoped--by relocating back here to the city after the death of her husband--that she could get to know her grandchildren better.
But her plans had been thwarted by that woman that her son had had the lapse in judgment to go against her advice and marry--though he had certainly paid the price for that mistake.
This last outrage had been the final straw.
Should her grandchildren be without a home due to the stupidity, the selfishness of that bitch?
Not under her watch, she decided, and promptly called Child Protective Services the moment she had walked out the door with them, giving the social worker she had spoken to explicit orders that when—not “if” but “when”—the children had been removed from the care of their negligent mother, that she was to be considered as a priority placement, being that she was their only remaining living relative.
The next thing she had done was send a message to Mall security that they should be on the lookout for them.
The rep to which she had spoken told her that they would relay the message across the network but the odds of the three of them being picked out of the thousands of people that moved through the Mall everyday was extremely low.
Even after she had tried to explain to the snide sounding kid on the phone that this was a priority as her grandchildren might very well be in physical danger, she had the audacity to tell her that there were fifteen other alerts out in addition to hers—one for a potential kidnapper and another for a convicted rapist.
So she had waited.
Even after her central air had cut off in the middle of the night, she had waited.
The next morning, she had opened all the windows and the patio doors of her apartment and waited even longer.
But enough was enough and she had lost her patience.
She had tried the doors leading to the Mall and found those to be locked and without electricity her keycard was also useless.
And though she could get into the garage from the residential level—someone had been kind enough to prop the keycard-operated doors open so that anyone entering would be able to get back in—she quickly found that her car, along with all the others, if the testimony of the residents could be believed, was inoperable.
Not only that, but the remote-operated gates were also locked shut, effectively sealing the tenants into their homes like prisoners.
With a certain amount of alarm, she had begun to realize that something was seriously awry here, and though, she had attempted to get a few of the more dependable of her neighbors motivated enough to do something, she was surprised to find that like the others, even they simply wanted to “wait and see.”
Fear, she thought.
These spineless cave-dwellers were so used to being catered to day-in and day-out they’ve forgotten how to fend for themselves.
Had
she
become that complacent in her retirement?
Not Charlene “the Warhorse” Myers—as her employees used to call her back in the bad old days when she was head loan-officer down at the Harris County Savings and Loan, single-handedly supporting the Loser (husband numero dos)
after the housing market bubble had burst back in the early-sixties, rendering her principle wage earner of the couple.
We can all thank the bleeding heart liberals for re-electing that skirt-chasing Kennedy for another four years.
Between him and Old Triple-H, Hubert Horatio Humphrey, she had barely survived the last two decades, what with the energy crisis and the Soviets’ little missile-waving exercises.
Not that Johnson could have done much better had the lush not died two days into his administration. Bizarre thing that.
She wouldn’t have been the least bit surprised if the Russkies hadn’t slipped a shot of plutonium into his single-malt scotch.
Things had only recently started to turn around since the second term of Reagan.
As far as Connally
went, she didn’t know enough about the guy aside from his Texan roots, though switching from Democrat to Republican seemed a bit wishy-washy.
(As far as she was concerned, politicians were pretty much all a bunch of brown-nosing tunnel dwellers anyway.)
But despite all the economic setbacks of the sixties and seventies, Charley had managed to survive with no help from anyone but herself.
She always came through in a crisis and this was no exception.
She had been determined to find a way outside and now it appeared she had, she thought as she turned the key and pushed the fire escape door open to the stairwell.
For a moment, she hesitated there in the open doorway and looked back into the empty quarter of the complex.
She considered wedging the door open so her neighbors could follow her down into the Mall, but then she had the good sense to realize that there might be questions asked about the body of the security guard and about the body of the poor Mr. Kaibigan, who the guard had thrown off his own balcony.
Why he had done that, was beyond her.
She didn’t know and didn’t need to know.
She knew nothing about the Filipino gentleman besides the passing pleasantries they’d exchanged over the years.
She had witnessed the entire encounter by a coincidence she didn’t once question.
She had been reading in her apartment when she thought she had heard her name being called from the outside courtyard and discovered the security guard standing just outside Mr. Kaibigan’s door, tying a blood-stained uniform around his waist.
That had been enough to pique her interest.
On the heels of that, she had realized that the guard was a tenant and if he hadn’t been upstairs when the lights had initially went out,
then
he had been in the Mall.
How had he gotten back inside the residential level?
It was this question that had led her innocently enough to the doorway of her neighbor.
She had actually lifted her fist to knock on the door when she recalled the blood on the uniform that the man had seemed so desperate to hide, and tried the doorknob instead.
They were standing on the patio when she had peeked inside.
It looked fairly innocuous and she had even stepped foot inside the foyer with the intention of calling out to her neighbor—“Hello, I heard voices and was just wondering if I could borrow a cup of hope,” or some similar inanity--when she witnessed the guard murder the elderly retiree before her eyes.
Instinctively, she spun toward the door and realized that it was securely closed.
But she had left it open.
She was positive of that fact!
After all, how would it have looked if she had entered her neighbor’s home uninvited and shut the door behind her?
Before she could question the fact that the door had closed on its own, she rushed defensively into the darkness of the kitchen, slipping into the shadows until her back struck the counter.
There, resting on the counter beside her left
hand,
was a carving knife.
It lay on the counter, neatly separated from its siblings, while the others sat conspicuously organized on the rack.
It was almost as if it had been placed there for her to find.
“Why did you do that?”
She froze.
The voice had come from the balcony. Was he talking to himself?
There she stood, breath held fast, as she listened to the guard re-enter and slide the screen shut behind him.
Her blood turned cold.
She realized that there was a distinct possibility that she was in the presence of true lunacy.
Her hand enclosed around the handle of the knife.
The heavy-set man rushed within several feet of her and stomped down the hallway.
Moments later she could hear the distinctive sound of urine streaming down into a toilet.