Disenchantment 36

*****

 

 

 

 

South Dakota. It was all over and Hornblende decided that he would go to South Dakota.

 

There had been an actual attack on the police station, like something you might see in a movie. Hornblende had completely missed it. It did happen quickly, very quickly. The assailants had been armed. They had come in, killed three officers, released all the prisoners, then left. The whole thing had occurred in less than five minutes. Hornblende had arrived fourteen minutes after it started, already too late.

 

He had been awake for over a day and a half. There were cots set up in the actual complex, but Hornblende had tried to sleep there before, and failed to get any decent REM sleep. Morgan had told him to go home for eight hours. As he was pulling into his driveway, he got the call on the radio that the station was under attack. Fourteen minutes later he was back at the eerily silent police station. The damage had already been done.

 

Reynolds lay at the entrance for the public. He had a bullet wound in his neck which looked like it had hit his carotid artery, and bled profusely. Apparently to make sure he wasn’t getting up again, or maybe in an act of mercy, someone had put another bullet right between his eyes. Hornblende knew that was the second injury because the first would not have bled so liberally if his heart had already stopped.

 

The entire station was dark, the power having been cut, which should have made the perpetrators' job harder, as the officers in the station really should have been more used to the layout. Hornblende walked to the emergency station and grabbed a flashlight, then proceeded further into the darkness, his weapon drawn and following the flashlight’s beam as he guided it about the seemingly empty station.

 

Jacob’s body was between the two primary holding cells, both of which were vacant of living humans. Jacob had stopped wearing his vest after being promoted to detective, even when entering an active crime scene, and it seemed as though he paid for his comfort with his life. His chest looked shredded, as though he had received a shotgun blast at point-blank range. His Kevlar vest might not have even prevented his death had he been wearing it.

 

With the increasing usage of computers, “paperwork” was mostly not done with paper anymore but done digitally. Still, there existed paper, just not as much as there used to be. What paper they did have seemed to have all been strewn about the office area. The place used to be so neat and orderly, now in the minimal light of the flashlight, it was almost unrecognizable. Chairs overturned, one of the file cabinets laying on the ground, even many of the outer windows shattered inward.

 

His radio crackled, breaking the stillness inside the gloomy station. Detective Chu’s voice cut through the darkness on the other side, a dull mono sound disturbing the dimly lit place: “Hey guys, this is Chu. Look, I’m not coming back in. The city’s gone. I hope you guys do okay, but I’m done...this whole city is done. I’m taking my family and getting out. Maybe try Arizona, my wife’s got family there. Good luck. Out on my end.”

 

Coward, Hornblende thought. He continued making his way into the large room where most of the precinct’s desks were, and beyond them, the hallway that led to the offices of the higher-ups. He shined the light into the big cells.

 

In the two larger holding cells, were two more bodies, one in each. They were not cops. Hornblende wondered if they were perpetrators in the invasion or other criminals that had been picked up recently. Those fools, thought Hornblende. Murderous fools. If they came in to rescue prisoners, they should have known that most prisoners were released the next morning, as there was no room for all the people being arrested. With the huge surge in crime, most of them were released without any pending charges. It was handled on a case-by-case basis, but assault charges were dropped, even charges of murder, if not premeditated and if the suspect seemed rational, aware, and empathetic, were released on their own recognizance. In the majority of other crimes that were committed, the suspect was not arrested if he was even located.

 

Hornblende entered Morgan’s office. The captain’s body was slumped over his desk, his arms outstretched, and in one hand his service pistol. Blood was evident on his desk, but not much. He wasn’t killed with an arterial wound. Upon examination, Hornblende noticed that the head wound was in his temple. That was an odd place to get hit if facing someone head-on. “Did you turn to the side, captain? Or was that one self-inflicted?” He couldn’t imagine the latter, so he hoped for the former, but it seemed highly unlikely.

 

Hornblende had read online a few years past that Santa Clarita was not just one of the safest cities, but the safest city in the United States. It was a perfect place to live and raise a family, if you had the money to do so. All stats were above average. School test scores, unemployment, crime rate, the scores were all great. In a few short weeks that had all come crashing down and turned it into a complete wasteland. Yeah, sure, a lot of the damage was done by outsiders, but plenty of residents had shown their true colors as well.

 

South Dakota. Morgan was dead, Santa Clarita was effectually gone. Hornblende’s job was no more. He felt that it was time to leave. A couple of decades prior, he had gone there with his girlfriend, who was from the Black Hills area, Rapid City to be exact. She had begged him for a long time to visit her parents. The problem Hornblende had, at the time, was that she was white and he was black.

 

Being a city-dweller, only having ever lived in larger metropolitan areas, he was always worried about racism in smaller areas, maybe not if he was by himself, but being romantically involved with a white woman, it had been on his mind. Hornblende had not ever experienced any racism, despite being told by the media that he had. Sure, maybe a subtle look or an uncomfortable glance, but nothing outrageous, nothing ever even verbal. After he became a cop, he wasn’t even sure the looks he got were for his race at all, telling himself that it was for his profession, cops being liked by very few. Still, going to a white-dominated, less-populated area as the lover of a white woman did put him on edge.

 

It turned out nothing could have been further from the reality of the situation. He was treated with nothing but respect. He even watched others closely as he would hold hands, hug, or kiss his girlfriend. No one cared. He thought the Black Hills area was extraordinarily beautiful. More importantly, South Dakota was one of the least densely populated areas in the country, and over a thousand miles from any damn ocean. Time to move to South Dakota.

 

California could go ahead and catch fire, and then fall into the Pacific. As he was about to leave, he thought he would check the back cells, reserved for more dangerous people who needed to be in solitary so as not to cause harm in the larger holding cells, or sometimes for women, if the two larger cells were full of men.

 

There were three of them, and the one farthest back had an occupant. The man sat on the metal bench that was firmly connected to the concrete floor. As he shined his flashlight into the cell, he noticed that the man had his hands over his face, his elbows resting on his knees.

 

Hornblende felt uncomfortable and made sure that he had a firm grip on his sidearm. “Hello sir, would you like to get out of here?”

 

“I haven’t eaten in maybe four days,” said the man. “But you know, what? I still want to shower before I eat.” That was when Hornblende noticed the stench of the man. It reminded him of a few months back, when Oren Phileus had been interviewed after his wife went missing. That guy had smelled overly ripe as well.

 

“Why are you in this back cell? Did you cause a problem?”

 

“I smelled too bad.” The man removed his hands from his face and stood up.

 

Just as Hornblende recognized his voice, he also realized that he knew his face. Mark Nicastro. “Well, I’ll be damned, Mr. Nicastro.”

 

“Ah, shit, it’s you.” Mark laughed. “I should have known. “You just don’t let anything alone.”

 

“Could you tell me what happened here?” asked Hornblende.

 

“What’s to tell? I can’t see anything from here. You guys have me all the way back here by myself. The lights went out, guns went off. I think some of your guys were involved. It was quick.”

 

“Some of my guys were involved?”

 

“Yeah, how many people did you have here? Twenty or thirty? That was too fast.”

 

“We had twelve, I think. Did you hear anything?”

 

“Just the gunshots. Man, it was only two minutes or so. I heard someone ask for the keys to the cell. They seemed to spend more time getting people out of the cells than they had taking the place over. There was another gunshot before they left, and I think I heard someone say something about a snitch. Then, after it had gotten completely quiet again, there was one more gunshot. Then, I heard you poking around for a time until you came to see me.”

 

One of the prisoners must have been executed for some petty beef, figured Hornblende. The other must have died by accident. Only three cops out of at least twelve. Yeah, at a minimum, they surrendered quickly, or they were involved somehow. That final shot was Morgan taking his own life. Why did he do it? Was it remorse for helping the prisoners escape? Was it out of cowardice for keeping himself hidden during the firefight? Was it out of despair for the way the world was turning out?

 

“Well, I was about to ask you what you did to get in there, but frankly, I don’t care anymore. There is no more law in this part of the world. You can turn yourself in if the world ever goes back to normal, but I won’t be around.” Hornblende went out to the main hall, and couldn’t find the keys where they were supposed to be. He eventually found them on the floor near the second holding cell. If the power was working, he would need to have a button pushed as well, but there was a safety feature that shut that down when there was a lack of power, in case the prisoners needed to be released in an emergency. So, he only needed the key to allow Nicastro his freedom.

 

When he returned and began unlocking the steel cage, Nicastro asked him a question: “So where you going?”

 

“Somewhere far away, by myself.”

 

“Do you know what the date is?”

 

“Hornblende had completely forgotten, but looked at his phone. “It’s the nineteenth.”

 

“What if I told you that there might be a way to stop this, would you believe me?” Mark had exited the cell and approached Hornblende, and he stank to high hell.

 

“No.”

 

“Look, maybe it’s all bullshit, but mind if I tell you something? Maybe Oren should have told you from the beginning, but it’s a little crazy.”

 

“Crazier than this ever so thin veneer of civilization disappearing on the area that I was sworn to protect? Crazier than criminals easily taking over a police station? Crazier than law-abiding citizens turning into murderers?”

 

“Yeah, it’s probably crazier than all that.”

 

“I’m listening. You’ve got five minutes.”

 

“I’m really going to need a shower. Maybe something to eat. Also, I’m not sure how much time we have.”

 

“We don’t have bathing areas for prisoners as we mostly just hold them, then transfer them elsewhere, but I suppose you can use the locker room showers. I can’t help you out with any food.”

 

“Well, shit, can you help me out with a drink?”

 

“Can’t help you out with that either.”

 

Since the lights were out and the shower stalls were dark, Hornblende uncomfortably shone his light on Mark as he showered. Mark began talking and told Hornblende of all the things that had happened to Phileus on the night that his wife disappeared, all the information that the other man had left out of his interview. The more he thought about it, the more he didn’t blame the guy for leaving it out.

 

“What the hell is that on your back?” asked Hornblende.

 

“Where one of your guys tased me,” said Mark.

 

There was a purple, yellowish spot on the left side of Nicastro’s back, roughly three inches in diameter. “That looks very infected.”

 

“Your guys wouldn’t take me to the hospital, as it was too overcrowded. You also wouldn’t feed me. Did you know I had to drink water out of the toilet?”

 

“My apologies, Mr. Nicastro. Things haven’t been normal around here. We can get those taser barbs out of there.”

 

“Let’s do it, then.” Mark toweled off and began reaching for his clothes, his five minutes already up, but neither of the men mentioning it.

 

“Here, put these on. You’re a bit taller than Jacob, but a shirt is a shirt, and the waist of the sweatpants is elastic. Jacob won’t be needing them anymore, and I’m pretty sure that you really don’t want to be putting on your old clothes.”

 

“I like my shirt. It’s my favorite. I’m keeping what I can in my life, most of it just seems to slip away from me.”

 

“I suggest you burn it.”

 

They left the shower area walked into the break room, which had a window that allowed a little of the outside light into the room. “You’re going to have to hold the flashlight,” said Hornblende. “I know it’s awkward. You don’t have to look, but you have to keep the light on the wound.”