The Conch Commandos

Key West, New Town

The Conch Commandos formed as a collection agency.

Not paramilitary, not at the beginning, when Dr. Morenz took the hospital off the old system of payment and treatment. Just collections. But after the first few trips, it became obvious that this would be the most dangerous job at Memorial, and that was why they informally reassigned Reagan Castaneda from his old position as an orderly.

Morenz was a cardiologist, not an administrator, but the days when that made any difference had vanished. At Key West Memorial, Dr. Morenz was now in charge, not because he had trained for it at university or had a degree that said he was qualified. No, Aiden Morenz was in charge because his parents had been missionaries, and he’d grown up in Western Kenya, where his father supervised a 144-bed bush hospital. He was in charge because he was the only one on staff who had any real idea what to do when the supply trucks stopped. Rather than going on as if nothing had changed, or standing stock-still with the National Geographic’s Afghanistan-woman gaze, like many of his colleagues, Aiden Morenz stamped his way through the halls, and through the outdoor tents, and through the outbuilding with its ‘special infected,’ assigning jobs and explaining tasks.

Six weeks into the quarantine, the hospital remained operational.

They stopped taking money, but still took payment. Rosamond Betz, who had been an administrator, now went from bunk to pallet in the triage tent, talking to family, determining where they lived and what they had. They always accepted food, since Morenz knew better than to count on the current system of food drops. Weapons and prescription medications were at the top of the list too, since no one was dropping either of those. Blood donations were standard for everyone who had sheltered and not been potentially exposed. As a last resort, they accepted physical labor.

The first collection teams went out armed only with a clipboard full of addresses and listed properties. They came back with three wounded, one of which died later that week. They’d found hotels, neighborhoods, strip businesses—anything defensible—had been turned into miniature fortresses. The occupants were violent as often as not, some out of paranoia, some because this is how they always would have lived if they could have gotten away with it. The military was content to keep everyone inside of their invisible wall and watch from a distance. Every day, the radio reported more cases: twenty six states, nine countries. Key West had faded from the news as they focused on the broader scope of the outbreak. On the inside, the leftovers of the police had become just another group with guns. No one was safe, not even medical staff.

The newly reformed collection team went to a residence on Seminary Street and told the occupants who they were, and that they had permission from the owners to collect certain items as payment. Someone threw a Molotov from a second-story window, which set the hospital’s box truck temporarily on fire but did no real damage. At this, Reagan Castaneda knocked the front door off its hinges. Inside, he broke one man’s collarbone and pitched another head-first through the rear sliding glass door.

They were still working out the details. Almost twenty men and one woman had made the trips, in standard groups of six to ten. Everyone went armed. Some worked well together. A few never went on the same trips. One, Derrick Adisa, was so fractious that he only made night trips. His father, Louis, had become the leader of the offshoot night crew, and proved so competent that almost everyone had forgotten that, only a few weeks ago, he was a waiter in the hotel restaurant at the Marriott. Dr. Dave White led the day crew, a general practitioner who’d worked out of his own private office before the quarantine, but knew the Lower Keys Medical staff well.

White was short, trim, and looked just like many of the aging fathers who had visited the island as tourists, complete with dapper, salt-and-pepper hair sprayed into place, and striped, knee-high socks below his khaki shorts. Like Morenz, he had history. Almost fifty years ago, Dave White had dropped out of college to serve in the Vietnam War as a combat medic. He never told war stories, but whatever he’d seen and done, so far he took everything on the island in stride.

Both day and night crews used Reagan—they all used Reagan—and Reagan used Heinrich Mueller.

They’d gotten the idea when they ran into another group on Caroline Street. The two parties stood off from each other, about a hundred feet apart, guns at low ready. The other group had a boy with them, no older than ten. The boy had a pistol.

“So we’ve sunk to using child soldiers?” Dr. White called out.

“It doesn’t set them off,” came the answer. “Kids can walk right up to an infected and the guy will never even flinch.”

Reagan had been sitting on a bench in the second floor hallway, when he looked up and saw the widow Stratton standing in front of him with her hands laying protectively on the shoulders of a little boy.

“Reagan, this is Heinrich,” she said. It was the first time she’d spoken to him since the day of Krissy’s shooting, but her voice sounded just as he remembered it, without even a hint of bitterness. “He and his parents were visiting from Germany. His mother is in a bad way. When you go out again, can you help him look for his father?”

Krissy had taken a gunshot to the cheekbone from a fast, light round—one of the seamen’s rifles—which had shattered on impact. Morenz had removed the shards, and he thought she would probably keep the eye. Now she was recovering, with bandages over the entire right side of her face, and Mary remained by her side hours each day.

Mary had once again proven to be the mythical phoenix of moms, an angel-faced woman with expressive hands and a warm hug, but once again no visible indication whatsoever that she understand that the world outside the hospital had descended into nightmare, or that the man she was speaking to had failed to get her out of that nightmare, and was, in fact, the reason her only daughter had been shot in the head.

The German boy’s mother had been gang-raped and was showing signs of infection. If the father was still alive, he’d made a place for himself inside one of the communes springing up everywhere. Probably, he was dead. Either way, he’d never come looking for his wife and child, and any attempt to find him would be pointless.

Moreover, the very last job description on Earth that Reagan Castaneda was equipped for was babysitter. Yet Mary Stratton had spoken to him again, so he let the little boy with the broken English and the blank stare follow him around like a rescue puppy.

A few days later, the day crew pulled up to an empty house. When no one answered and they found the front door unlocked, Reagan went back to the truck, took the boy by the hand, and said, “Hey, Rick, can you check a house for us?”

A few hand gestures and the boy went inside.

Reagan and Robert Calhoun were nearly to blows over sending the boy in when Heinrich walked back out of the front door and said very plainly, “Zare is a man on bed up ze stairs. He vatch TV. TV is not on.”

Reagan went up the stairs with Dan Wietzner, and found the overweight, balding, completely naked resident sitting on the edge of a bed, his bloodshot eyes locked onto the dark TV screen, his lips stained purple. Reagan made a sound, and the man’s head snapped suddenly towards the door.

Wietzner shot him just above his right eyebrow with a Colt 1911.

Today, the truck stopped on the grass north of the high school, its paint burned black, its front windshield completely gone. Eight of them got out, including Dr. Dave White, Reagan, and little Heinrich Mueller.

Dan Wietzner, 38, also got out. A paper-pusher for an insurance firm in the old world, he now lived under the same death sentence as every other diabetic on the island. In the hot late-spring sun, his skin stood out bright white. Nevertheless, he walked with an easy gait, the handle of the Colt .45 sticking out of the right pocket of his Levi’s. Somehow, the man had made peace with the fact that a mere mile away, agents of a government he’d spent his adult life paying taxes to were apparently going to allow him to die of an easily treatable disease.

Elton Lonneker, also at the end of his life, and like Wietzner, had no fear of the inevitable. If anything, Lonneker looked forward to it. A 78-year-old with a stoop, he was married to the infamous Beth Ann. Reagan had met her only twice but couldn’t imagine what it must have been like to be married to the harridan for half a century. Lonneker joked that his only request was that his wife be brought to examine his corpse and see how the rigor mortis had selectively affected both his middle fingers. He carried an over-under .20 gauge shotgun that he’d never used—so far—but he moved with just a little stiffness, and could carry collected property like a Sherpa, or put all the rest of their problems into stark relief with a quip about life with his Medusa of a spouse.

Rob Calhoun had owned a collection of wing franchises, and retired to Key West in his late forties. He was one of those who’d come to the island to live a sportsman’s life. Early fifties now, tall, with a widow’s peak, his muscles were still tight, and his skin had tanned to a mulatto brown. Of all of them, his thinking was still the most rooted in the old world, and every day he asked Morenz if they had word from the Governor, but the Marlin 30-30 he carried on a shoulder strap was his own. So was the .20 gauge.

Artis Buehl was a different breed entirely. In the earliest days of the infection, before the Army closed Highway 1, Samaritans of all sorts still drove down to help. Buehl arrived right at the end. He came to the hospital—having been sent by a policeman thinking the Red Cross might have arrived—and offered his services. When asked what exactly those ‘services’ entailed, Buehl had raised both fists and said, “I got these.” Before the quarantine, Reagan would never have believed that anyone could have been so simple as to think they could punch their way out of the apocalypse. Nevertheless, Artis Buehl existed, and now Reagan knew that, truly, anything was possible. At 6’3’’, 230 pounds, heavily tattooed, with reddish-brown hair and a beard that hadn’t seen a comb in weeks, Buehl carried a Mossberg pump action .12 gauge, but held it by the receiver, a sign that he was just as likely to use it as a cudgel as he was to pull its trigger. The jet-black Mossberg had a composite stock that the others hoped could handle the abuse.

Buehl was also the source of Reagan’s most grinding frustration—not the man himself, whom Reagan found wryly amusing, but the anchor that Buehl now carried everywhere with him. Her name was Sandra Wainscott, an opposites-that-attract to Buehl, and the Beth Ann Lonneker to Reagan, who seemed determined to ruin the end of days for him. Sandra and Buehl were repulsively affectionate, but Sandra didn’t follow her man to keep him safe. A self-styled latter day feminist, Sandra “Sandy” Wainscott was out to prove that the women of the collapse were every bit as capable as the men.

Unfortunately for the Commandos, Sandy was not the best representative of a Valkyric warrior princess. She’d kept herself in shape swimming around the island, and had no visible body fat. Seen from a distance, anyone might have thought her a physically capable woman. Closer up, she had boyishly short dark hair and a voice that spoke with confident self-assurance. Yet if those observers watched her move, the illusion ended. Sandy simply lacked any sort of smooth coordination. When she walked, her arms and legs swung at odd angles, like a puppet put together by some Gepetto with an acute stigmatism. She carried a scoped Ruger .22 rifle that she’d been told was perfect because it had a ten-round clip. No one told her that the real reason it was ‘perfect’ was because it was the firearm they were all least afraid of being shot with in the back.

That was a problem, in Reagan’s mind, because if anything, the fall of civilization meant no one should have to tow the old politically correct ballast anymore. Reagan himself had shed nearly all of his old pretenses like snake skin. He never said sweet anymore. He never used his ‘clueless’ voice. Now, he was every bit as likely to tell someone—in blunt language—how he really felt as to use even a grain of tact. And how he really felt concerning Sandy was that no civilization in its right mind had ever sent its women willingly into melee combat, and that this woman was more likely to get one of them killed than she was to ever prove her mettle.

Every trip with the two of them involved some amount of verbal exchange, but even though he could jab and joke, Reagan could not really cut loose. Not like he wanted to. The Krissy situation clouded everything. Those living inside the hospital had become a kind of small town, where gossip travelled from floor to floor in a matter of minutes. The gossip concerning Reagan Castaneda was that his girlfriend had lost her looks to a military bullet, and he had dumped her like a case of rotted bananas. Of course, even the newly frank Reagan could not exactly explain his former life and the true nature his relationship to Krissy Stratton.

The other problem was the last member of this day’s group.

Christopher Papp was only a few years older than Reagan, tall, slender, already losing his hair, and—now that he could no longer get contact lenses—wearing a pair of glasses that he often needed to push back up the bridge of his nose. He was the only one of them, other than little Ricky, who did not carry a gun, holding only a wooden bat with a single hand halfway up the shaft as he walked. Papp had worked as an independent web developer when he could find the work, and made ends meet by waiting tables at the Hard Rock. He was also a member of Key West’s large community of gays.

Several of the men now living in the hospital had what could politely be called admiration for young Reagan Castaneda. He no longer slept on a pallet of clothes, but on an air mattress with a pair of soft pillows. His fists, which had quickly become legend, were now encased in a fine pair of black Neoprene gloves to keep the blood off of them. Anything he needed, someone found a way to provide. If he needed to skirt the rules, this could happen as well. No one left the grounds by themselves, except for Reagan, who came and went as he pleased, often returning with a specific prescription that Morenz wanted. No one questioned him, and except for Sandy, no one bothered him.

Because Reagan was not simply good looking.... In an atmosphere of constant danger, he served as a source of deep comfort. Anything that went wrong, tell Morenz, but get Reagan. If a patient became too unruly for the orderlies, they got Reagan. If one of the infected in the outbuilding went berserk, and threatened to tear out of its restraints, they got Reagan. He was the first to recognize that they would need to store food, and he showed them how to make cages to catch pigeons on the roof. He knew which shoreline plants were edible and how to prepare them. Morenz consulted with him almost every morning in the cafeteria. The other Commandos held him in awe, and even Sandy was usually careful how much she needled him.

Papp, like many of them, had been deeply affected by the crisis on his home island. He grew more sullen by the day. Yet no matter how much humanity disappointed him, his longing for the untouchable hero kept him on the list of the collection crews.

For his part, Reagan did nothing to encourage, but he was also careful not to treat any of his admirers with contempt. This fell under one of his critical categories: useful relationships. So far, none had proven as useful as Chris Papp. Papp was no fighter, but he knew every minute detail of the island and could think in terms of collapse. On this day, he had guided them to the school using a route that kept houses, buildings, and trees between their truck and the airport tower, where at least one sniper had started shooting at helicopters days before, and now shot at anything that moved.

Once the eight of them stepped outside the truck, Reagan shielded his eyes against the sun. A little twin-rotored drone had followed them from the hospital.

“Yeah,” said Buehl while he opened the hood and pulled the spark plugs. “You just keep watching the show.”

“Reagan?” Dr. Dave White said.

Reagan tilted his head toward the high school. “It looks the same to me, Doc. The grass looks undisturbed. Those windows—” He pointed to the west side of the main building. “—were all busted two weeks ago.”

“Not that someone hasn’t taken up residence,” said Papp, “but it has to be almost ninety today. I’ll bet the upstairs is an oven.”

Dr. White considered all this as he lifted the binoculars strapped around his neck and slowly panned over the school. “Nobody smart lives in that thing. Too many ways in and out. Makes it a viable candidate for the other kind. Reagan, is this one for little Ricky?”

“Room by room would take forever. I think we’re better off hitting quick and getting out. Unless something tips us off for infection, my vote is no.”

“Okay.” Dr. White set the binoculars back against his chest and took the antique M1 carbine off of his shoulder. “Secure the truck and spread out.”

“I just want it on record,” said Buehl, “that if I die looking for salt, fuck each and every last one of you.”

Sandy gave a smirking laugh.

Dr. White said, “Thank you, Artis. We’ll take your objection into consideration if you ever need a saline drip.”

They walked through overgrown grass browned from the last week and a half without rain. All the adults, except Wietzner, turned around at intervals, their heads swiveling left and right for threats. Ricky looked up at Reagan and turned when he turned. When they reached the nearest building, Wietzner peered through the windows while the others ducked.

“It’s a classroom. It’s clear.”

Reagan now carried a .357 magnum that he kept in a belt holster directly in front of his khaki shorts. On most trips, he still preferred his signature look of the shorts, lightweight canvas shoes, and a loose-fitting, white, button-down shirt for the same reason as always—it drew little attention and provided maximum flexibility. The only addition now was the gloves that Papp told him did not go with the outfit, but under which he now curled and uncurled his calloused knuckles. If it came to a firefight, Calhoun and Wietzner were both excellent shots. Anything else, and Reagan and his Neoprene gloves would let the others conserve their ammunition.

They entered a gymnasium. Dead leaves and footprints of dried mud marked a trail where the door had been left open. The bleachers were pushed flat against a wall painted a dozen shapes and colors of graffiti.

“Reagan?” Dr. White said.

“This is just how it looked last time. It’s been cleared out pretty good.”

“Chris?”

“Through that door and left,” said Papp, pointing to the entrance at the far wall.

They walked the hall in two lines of four, each line close to a wall. At one point they stopped, hearing running in the distance.

Calhoun scanned the hallway with his rifle scope. “Kids. They ran out.”

Ricky looked up at the lockers and over at each door, his eyes wide. The boy carried a SpongeBob backpack on all of their trips. Each time, right before they left, Reagan gave him a once-over, untucking his shirt out of his shorts, combing his hair if needed, doing anything to make Ricky look like a harmless little child. Right then, he truly looked childlike, his eyes wide.

“It’s just a school, kiddo.”

The boy looked up at Reagan, but said nothing.

“It probably reminds him of home,” said Sandy from the opposite wall.

Reagan peered in both directions. Several of the lockers stood open. Papers, books, chairs, and odd debris littered the hallway. Wires hung down from missing panels in the ceiling. Someone had stacked boxes outside of one of the rooms, but never come back for them.

“Tough schools they got back in the Fatherland,” he said.

Sandy made a face that showed what she thought of his maturity.

Papp tapped Reagan’s shoulder. “Up those stairs.”

“Up those stairs,” Reagan repeated to Sandy with exaggerated courtesy.

“Can we go through one trip without the two of you starting up?”

Reagan lifted his hands to Dr. White in appeal.

They climbed the stairs and turned where Papp directed. It was not quite an oven, but it was ten degrees hotter than comfortable. Papp dabbed at his neck with a handkerchief and took them to a room marked, Mr. Montrose. “This is the chemistry room.”

Wietzner casually pushed through the door. “Clear.”

Buehl stayed to cover the hall while the others paced through the lines of desks with mounted sinks and started to rifle through the cabinets.

Ricky stared at the sinks and their nozzles like an archaeologist just discovering an ancient ruin.

“All right,” Dr. White said, “it could say salt. It could say sodium chloride. It might say Halite. We need bricks, not granules. Any questions, just call out.”

Artis raised a hand.

“We’ve already discussed why it can’t be table salt.”

“I have a question,” said Lonneker. “Do we think any of this stuff in here is dangerous?”

“We want it if we do,” said Wietzner.

“Papp?”

He pushed up his glasses. “Chemistry was never really my forte. Lots of it will burn. I can tell you that. Montrose was kind of a character. Anything he could do to keep our attention, he’d do it. Set all sorts of things on fire. He blew up a yard gnome inside of a metal box once. I want to say it was a sodium tablet about the size of a Tic Tac. He had this little apparatus to push it into a cup of water.”

“He sounds fun,” said Sandy softly while opening a window. “Do you know if he is still on the island?”

Papp blinked away the memory and smiled without any joy. “If he is, I’m going to have Reagan kick the shit out of him. He gave me a C.”

“Well, watch yourself in here,” said Sandy, now looking at Reagan. “You burn that face of yours, and he’ll never do anything for you again.”

Buehl made a snort. “C’mon, Babe.”

Reagan stiffened, his back to them all while he inspected a set of glass cabinets. He didn’t turn. “Watch out for facial burns. Thanks for the pro tip there, Sandy.”

“Some women are more than just a pretty face, Reagan.”

“Some women need to mind their own business.”

At this she raised her voice. “God, you’re a tool. You don’t get to decide what’s beautiful and what’s not. You hear me? You and that little pea brain of yours... you don’t get to tell someone they’re all used up. What do you think she’s feeling?” She shook her head with a combination of fury and contempt. “That poor girl.”

“All right, you two,” Dr. White cut in, just below a shout. “Knock it off.”

Reagan tilted his chin up as if sniffing the air. “You guys think this is what it sounded like back stage at a Beatles concert the last couple of years? Bunch of dudes wanting to get the job done and get back to the hotel room, maybe smoke some hooch, but Yoko just keeps running her head and the guys are looking around at each other like, when is somebody gonna take that bongo out of her mitts and hit her upside the head with it?”

“Asshole.”

Reagan turned around. He held out a relaxed palm to the frustrated doctor. “No, no, she’s right. I’m an asshole and I need make amends.”

“Reagan—”

“First thing I’m doing when this is over is hooking up with someone that’s gonna set me straight, someone who can teach me everything I can and can’t decide.”

“Hey Reag—”

Reagan stepped around where Papp was trying to stop him, and held a gloved fist in front of his mouth like a microphone. He made his voice to sound like a news announcer. “Professor Ellen Prickly has a PHD in Women’s Studies. Her new book, Castration, a How To, is flying off the stands. Miz Prickly is a relationship expert whose first three husbands all faked their own deaths for some reason. We’re here with husband number four, Reagan Castaneda, to ask him what it’s like to support such a strong, independent woman.” He passed the imaginary microphone to himself and ignored Sandy’s cursing. “She’s amazing,” he said, his voice skittish. “It’s like in the Alien movies.” Then back to his announcer voice, “You mean like Ripley, a natural leader?”

“I meant like the alien,” he said, cringing over his shoulder. “With its... row after row of razor sharp teeth and its acid for blood.”

“Then just what attracted the two of you?”

“Well, I used to go for—”

“Hey!” Calhoun shouted.

“Thank you.”

“No,” he said to Dr. White while pointing to Reagan. “That was almost funny, but we still have one more stop and....” He lifted his other hand and shook it. Inside of a box roughly the size of a Rubik’s Cube, something clunked like a golf ball clattering against the sides. “I found your Halite.”

“I hope there’s more than just that.”

Calhoun nodded. “There’s more.”

They parked far down Roosevelt Street from the Home Depot. Dr. White, Sandy, Reagan, and Chris Papp all put on blue hospital scrubs before exiting. Reagan turned Ricky’s head in the direction of Wietzner and told him to stay with the pale man wherever he went.

Dr. White looked all around, and then at Reagan, who nodded. “All right, kids, worst spot on the island, hands down. These strip shops have been host to the looting Olympics, and there is almost no tree cover.” He pointed to the four-story building with many of its windows shattered. “I don’t like that. If somebody wants to take a shot at us while we’re dealing with these guys, this could get ugly.”

At that moment, a brown 4-door passed slowly on North Roosevelt. They could see it was full of passengers. It did not slow down.

“I don’t want anybody but the bikers thinking we’re medical. Artis, wait till we make contact. Move the truck where Rob and Dan can cover us from the rooftop. You’re going to be exposed.”

“Not if they move up next to that semi,” said Reagan, pointing to the opposite side of the lot.

“Their spotters will see it.”

“We’ll have to make sure we have their focused attention. I think it’s doable.”

Rob Calhoun peered through his scope at the Home Depot. “If we ever get out of this alive, I am suing the shit out of congress.”

“I’m not sure that’s how it works,” Papp mused.

“I’m not sure the post-apocalypse is gonna leave us a lot of courtrooms,” said Reagan.

“We all ready?” asked Dr. White.

Calhoun shouldered the rifle. “There’s a wooden owl by the front doors if we need to make a statement.”

Dr. White nodded.

Artis and Sandy kissed, long and slow.

“Ready, Doc,” said Buehl as he wiped his lips and slid into the driver’s seat. “Hey, Reagan, keep your dick-beaters off my girl, okay?”

“I’ll try to control myself.”

“He knows better,” Sandy called out as the two groups separated.

“What would I do? What does he do?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know?”

“I mean, he can’t be on top because that’s oppression, and he can’t be on bottom because then he’s making you do all of the work.”

Papp shook his head while trying to suppress a pained laugh. “Oh, Reagan.”

“I mean they have to be side to side, don’t they? But I’m thinking he’s still doing all the pushing and she calls that equality.”

“You’re having the time of your life, aren’t you?” Sandy sneered.

“Well, that’s not saying much, but yeah, kinda.”

The four in scrubs, cowls, and surgical masks on their heads, approached from the street directly in front of the Home Depot’s loading bay. A third of the way through a parking lot cluttered with cars, someone shouted at them from the roof. Dr. White stepped forward and held up his hands. Then they kept walking.

Bikers filed out of both front doors carrying tools for weapons. Six of them approached Dr. White and the others.

“I’m Dr. Dave White,” he called out, and sidestepped a Silverado so that he was clearly visible to the advancing group. “We’re from the hospital.”

The bikers didn’t look happy. Many of them wore their vests. A few, in spite of the heat, were wearing their jackets. Several of them covered their mouths with painter’s masks or tied rags.

One of them lifted a full breathing apparatus onto his forehead, turned, and chuckled to the others. “Did one of you guys call 911?” He was of average size, in his later forties, his black hair draped over the shoulders of his white button-up shirt with sweat stains under each arm. Clearly in charge, he wore black boots, blue jeans, an oversized belt buckle with the words ‘Don’t Tread on Me’ etched in gold, a ring on every finger, earrings in both ears, and a necklace of black and white beads with a large black cross that danced below his beard. His eyes sparkled as they gazed upward at the drone. “They with you?” he asked like a gypsy king whose voice radiated a playful menace.

“Since we left the hospital.”

The biker laughed. “Yeah, I bet they’re real curious what’s happening inside there right now.” He fixed the doctor with a hard stare. “Kind of curious myself. People outside say they can hear screams from inside at all hours.”

“We have 13 showing signs of the infection right now. We keep them in restraints.”

“Any getting better?”

“Not so far.”

“Well ain’t that a bitch. And I was supposed to get a mani-pedi up in Big Pine on Thursday. I’d hoped this’d all be cinched up by then.” He looked each of them in turn, gently batting at a fly that had taken an interest in his beard. “So to what do I owe the honor of this little visit?”

“We heard you make trades.”

The biker spoke through his teeth. “You heard wrong. We got everything we need right now.” Then, while he looked Sandy up and down, he added, “Unless you mean to trade in... uh... female companionship, and I’m guessing that you don’t. Or unless you fellas have a gun you don’t mind parting with.”

Dr. White held his hands up, palms out. “We don’t have any guns.”

“Then I’m just not sure what we have to discuss, Doc. You see, me and the boys have a nice little setup here. Got just about everything we need except for enough ladies and... uh... entertainment.”

“Entertainment?”

The biker nodded over a shoulder to the circle of eight-foot-high hurricane fencing, set with poles propped up in masonry blocks, which occupied most of the space under the roof of the loading bay. “We made ourselves a little ring of champions. Some folks trade a shot at the title for whatever tools they think will save their asses.” The biker lifted up straight when the four in scrubs began looking at one another. “No. C’mon, Doc, be serious.” He gestured to Reagan and Papp. “Which one of these two tomato-cans are you gonna turn into a cripple? What could you possibly need that badly? Hell, we respect the job you guys are doing. What is it? Nails? Heck, we’ll give you some nails for free.”

“Or some screws,” another of the other bikers gently chided.

“Chris?”

Papp took off his glasses. “I’ll do it.”

“No!” Reagan stopped him with a hand on his shoulder. He shook his head, and with a whisper filled with emotion, said, “No.”

“Oh my God,” the biker said. “This is adorable. Now, I’m really curious. Listen, fairy,” he said to Reagan, “if you guys need something this bad, then why don’t you just go the companionship route. Your ass will hurt after, but you’ll still have your looks.” Again, he laughed. “I bet some of the guys would go for you.” Then, over his shoulder, he said, “What do you think, Blitz.”

“Hell yeah, I’ll fuck him, Marcus.” The other bikers laughed at Blitz’s enthusiasm.

“Three minutes,” managed a trembling Reagan.

Papp’s eyes started to tear up.

“What?”

Reagan took a deep breath, and said with a martyr’s softness, “If I can... stay standing with your man for three minutes... then you give us what we need.”

“And what might that be?”

“Activated charcoal,” said Dr. White slowly. “We can’t find it anywhere. We heard you men took a bunch of stuff from the pharmacy section of the Publix before you wound up here. Do you have it?”

The one called Marcus considered. “Not us, but maybe the rest of our crew, putting up a fence around the old farts back in the neighborhood. Go talk to them.”

“We did. The one called Chief told us to come and talk to you. He told us to tell you that he would consider it a personal favor if you helped.”

A bitter bouncing of the chin ensued. “Well, Chief isn’t really in a position to ask favors of us right now. Besides, that shopping run was costly.”

“We need it.”

“Badly enough to take a beating for three God-damned minutes?”

Reagan nodded solemnly.

Marcus looked back at the other bikers, then shook his head at Dr. White. “Okay.”

Two of them roughly patted him down for weapons before leading Reagan into an opening in the wire fence. They had set up a few chairs, but the bulk of the area between the fence and the building’s entry doors were now taken up by makeshift bleachers, consisting of tiers of plywood on top of flats of roofing shingles.

There were almost thirty of them, nearly all men. Reagan counted only four women. Most of them wore t-shirts and filthy jeans, and had long, dingy hair and beards. Most were white, with a few Hispanics—like a group of roadies at a Lynyrd Skynyrd concert. The smell of their accumulated body odors was intense. Most of them brought tools with them—hammers, hatchets, a bat with nails hammered through it. Two that Reagan could see held nail guns. None had firearms.

The one inside the cage with Reagan was a little shorter than him, maybe six feet. He took off his shirt, and was muscled, but not like a weightlifter. Barefoot, his body was covered with a pair of black jeans, and tattoos that took up almost every inch of skin, from his neck down to his waist, and down both arms to his wrists. Printed on his knuckles were the letters F-E-A-R on one hand, and P-A-I-N on the other. He had old bruising under his left eye, yellow and deep purple.

“We’re not bad people,” said Marcus as he and another came out of the front entry carrying a collection of pouches. “Listen, I found eight of your little packets. Like I said...” He motioned to the others. “...We all respect what you guys are doing. Trying to get stuff like this to lance boils or do brain surgeries or whatever the hell you’re going to use it for.”

He set the pouches down on the ground outside the cage, and entered through the overlapping section that another biker pulled back for him. “We came here for justice.”

Several of the seated bikers nodded their approval.

“Them!” he shouted, pointing to the compound where the last of the police and officials had taken refuge. “They’re the criminals. You want to know how many of us they’ve killed since the bridge blew? They were killing us before this even started!” he railed to Dr. White, as he paced the inside of the cage to the place where Reagan stood, one arm holding another. “You want to know how much blood is on their hands? Huh?”

Dr. Dave White did not reply.

Papp gently pleaded with the bikers closest to him, while Sandy stood near with her arm around him.

Marcus came up to Reagan and stopped shouting. “All right, kid, you ever box before?” All the passion suddenly gone, his voice again sounded dark and playful.

Reagan shook his head.

“Keep your hands up.” Marcus brought his hands up comically tight against the sides of his head. “And move. We all want to see a little blood, but you keep moving and maybe lover boy gets you back in one piece. Okay?”

Reagan nodded.

“Whose gonna keep time?”

A fat one with enormous sideburns held up a wristwatch.

“All right! On my mark!”

The shirtless biker sniffed and got into a fighter’s stance.

Reagan brought his hands up in a clumsy imitation.

Marcus lifted a finger, readying to drop it like a racing flag. Then he glanced to where Dr. White had reached into his scrubs and pulled out a notepad and opened it with an exaggerated flip. “Now what the fuck is that?”

The doctor looked up casually. “It’s a list of all the other things you’re about to give us.”

For a moment, the other fighter had taken his eyes off Reagan. When he turned back, Reagan now stood directly in front of him, a surgical mask covering his mouth, his arms back at his sides, peering downward, a look of pleasure no doubt warming his visible features.

Reagan’s entire body turned with a sudden spasm that caused the scrubs to make a snapping noise. His left leg whipped out. The fighter had no time to grunt. No sooner had the leg retracted from where it had slammed into the side of his thigh, then it shot out again, the shinbone detonating against the side of the biker’s head.

“Mother fu—”

Then Reagan pivoted again. Before the fighter’s swaying body could fall, Reagan launched himself. His right knee exploded into the man’s face as it dropped, catching him flush on the nose. Blood sprayed, and the biker’s head pitched violently backwards, lifting the body with it and carrying it crashing back into the fence with such force, two of the masonry blocks scraped against pavement.

Bikers shouted.

Reagan looked down at his upraised palms. Specks of blood had splattered from his mask all the way down to his knees. He laughed. “Well, you said you wanted blood.” He smeared it away from his exposed cheek with a shoulder of blue cloth.

The bikers jumped to their feet.

Marcus pulled a black handle out of a pocket and flicked open a switchblade.

Reagan looked down at the little blade, and laughed again.

Dr. White was shouting for attention. “Look! Look at the owl!” He signaled Calhoun.

In front of the Home Depot, between the two entrances, the face of a sentry owl placed on top of a wooden shed burst into a spray of splinters.

Several bikers recoiled from the sound of the gunshot.

At the same time the wooden owl was destroyed, Reagan drove into Marcus with a wrestler’s double-leg takedown, which drove the older man’s back down onto the pavement. The breathing mask slid off his head and bounced away. Reagan levered the switchblade out of his hands with an arm bar and, before Marcus could even breathe, Reagan had the switchblade at the man’s skull.

“The last time someone pulled a knife on me, it wound up in his eye socket!” He spun his body into side control, looked up at the bikers on the other side of the fence, and shouted, “Now, everybody listen to the doctor.”

Buehl jogged up from the side. With the shotgun leveled in one hand, he handed the M1 off to Dr. White with the other.

For a minute, all was tension—hatchets held ready to throw, nail guns poised like pistols.

Then Reagan leaned onto Marcus’s chest. “Say something, genius.”

Marcus pursed his lips. He would not look Reagan in the eyes. “You better hope you got some spiffy defenses at that hospital of yours.”

Reagan grabbed his chin and forced him into eye contact, letting Marcus feel his true strength. “What do you think?”

Marcus arched his back slightly, as if he were about to try and resist, then stopped. His face slowly changed to neutral. “All right boys,” he called from the ground. “Let’s hear the good doctor out.”

Dr. White, rifle held in his right hand, lifted the notebook with his left. “This is how it works. We charge by the patient and by the trauma. Your champ down there—” He nodded to the ground, where the biker lay unmoving against the fence as if he’d been blown there by a hurricane. “—looks like he has a concussion and a nose that’s going to take the rest of the afternoon to straighten. At least.”

He swung the M1 up to his shoulder, and several of the bikers flinched. “That’s going to cost you. If my man inside the cage goes to work on the other guy, we charge for every body part he cuts. If the sniper on top of the truck gets busy....” He pointed to the edge of the visible parking lot. “Well, you don’t even want to know what we charge to dress a bullet wound.”