The drop, p.35
The Drop, page 35
****
We were on the roof of Merv's complex, rifles in our hands. Merv had given me a head-spinning narrative of the AR-15, complete with historical notes and highlights of the weapon. Even though I hadn't wanted to use the gun before, the way he sold it to me made me feel good about my choice.
He walked me through the motions, showing me how to turn the safety on and off. He showed me how to load a magazine, how to insert and eject the magazine. He showed me how the sights work. I'd like to say it was a quick crash course, but honestly, we spent hours up on that roof. By the time we came down, my face was red from the sun exposure. I hadn't thought to bring any sunblock. It was Seattle after all, notoriously rainy and always overcast. Once again, my short-sightedness would pay off in pain.
"Alright," Merv said. I guess that's it.
"What? We're not even going to fire them?" I asked.
Merv scoffed at me once again. I was getting tired of that particular habit of his. "Are you kidding me? We're just up here in case you had an accident. I didn't want you firing off a round in my house. Come on. I'll take you to the range. Make sure that safety is on."
We followed Merv back down a rope ladder, our guns slung over our shoulders. Freddie and I dropped from the ladder and into the elevator; it bounced up and down on the cables. I thought I was going to be sick, and if I had eaten anything since the airplane ride, I might have been. Up top, Merv rolled up the rope ladder and closed the roof hatch before dropping into the elevator, setting off another round of stomach-churning, up and down motion. He pressed the button for the first floor, flipped the emergency switch of the elevator to ON, and we were off again.
After having seen Merv's armory on the third floor and his own personal nirvana on the fourth floor, I couldn't wait to see what he had on the first floor. The elevator bell dinged, and the doors slid open.
Somewhat less impressive than the other floors, the first floor was still a testament to what a man with too much time on his hands could accomplish in a city that had basically been abandoned overnight. There were no windows on this floor, just a series of counters spread over the entirety of the floor. Support beams jutted upward, and the space was vast and cavernous, but mostly empty. All of the windows had been bricked over with cinderblocks but for the occasional rectangle at eye level.
I watched as Merv went over to look out one.
"I've got motion sensors set up all around the perimeter. When you guys were walking around the block, my cell phone was going off nonstop. Nothing bigger than a cat can touch my block without an alert on my phone going off. But still, it's nice to be able to see what's setting off the alarms. I've got 360-degree views all around. It's somewhat limited, but that's alright. This wall of cinder blocks runs two-deep around the entire wall. Each cinder block is filled with sand. Most bullets wouldn't even be able to get through the first cinder block, let alone the second."
"Are you expecting some sort of attack?" Freddie asked.
"I've been expecting an attack ever since I was ten-years-old, and I realized what it meant to be a black man in America. Could be today, could be tomorrow, but whenever it comes, I'm gonna be ready for it."
"Who's going to attack you?" I asked.
Merv cocked a crooked smile my way. "When one boy builds his sandcastle to the sky, it's just natural that someone else will come along and want to kick it over. Don't matter how beautiful or well-defended it is... man just can't help himself."
"So... aliens?"
Merv's smile dropped from his face. And for a second, I thought I had ruined everything. Then he threw back his head and laughed. He doubled over, holding his hand to his chest, and I thought he was going to have a heart attack. His eyes bulged out of his head, as Freddie and I shared an uneasy look. Then he straightened up. "Aliens... that's good." Then he walked away, waving absently for us to follow him.
He led us to the closest counter, which faced the western wall of the building. Sandbags were piled from floor to ceiling. In front of them were racks where paper targets of bad guys could be hung. Off to the side were more cardboard boxes piled high with paper targets.
"Quite the set-up you have here," I said.
"Yeah, well, I always dreamed of running my own shooting range. I figure this is the next best thing." He grabbed a couple of earmuffs off of the counter and tossed them in our direction. "Put these on, or you'll never hear Rush the same."
"Maybe I shouldn't put them on," I mumbled to myself.
"What was that?" Merv asked.
"Nothing." Merv pulled a couple of plastic doohickeys from his pocket and began putting them in his ears. "What are those?" I asked.
"Electronic shooter's protection." He held them out so that I could look at them. They were green, and looked like they were built to fit into his ears.
"What do they do?"
"These things are like the holy grail for people that love guns. They're molded to my ears. I put them in, they automatically dampen the sounds of gunshots, but I can still hear when people are talking. Technology... ain't it amazing?"
"You got some of those for us?" I asked. "They could be super useful out in the field."
"I wish I did, but I had to have mine specially molded, and I got the feeling that you guys are kind of in a hurry."
"Yeah, I suppose we are."
He tossed us a couple of old school earmuffs. "These ought to do. Let's see how you handle my rifle." He walked over to the counter, and I stepped up to it, cognizant of the fact that he had described the rifle as his. I held the rifle up, looked down the sight, and then squeezed the trigger. It smashed into the meat of my arm, and I knew that a bruise would be developing there in the near future. I tried not to swear or show any pain. I didn't want these boys thinking I was weak, but man, did it fucking hurt.
"Keep going," Merv yelled, his voice barely audible through the earmuffs I wore. I did as he said, and I placed the rifle more firmly against my shoulder this time. I squeezed the trigger. Thirty rounds, thirty punches to the shoulder. By the time the gun was empty. I didn't want to shoot anymore.
I pulled my earmuffs off, and Merv clapped me on the shoulder. "I seen worse shooting from people. Not too bad for a first time." He walked past the counter and down to the target. He brought it back to me, and we looked at the holes. Most of them were outside the target, but a handful had hit what I was aiming for... not where I was aiming specifically, at the little red circle on the middle of the cartoon bad guy's chest, but I could have done some damage to someone that was sitting still and letting me fire off thirty rounds.
"Well, how hopeless am I?"
"Not totally hopeless. I've seen a lot of men with fancier rifles than that, complete with all the bells and whistles, do a whole lot worse." Merv then turned to Freddie. "You're up, big man."
Freddie stepped to the counter and aimed. Merv tapped me on the shoulder and pointed at the earmuffs. I got them over my ears just as Freddie began firing. Once he started, he didn't stop. Fire and smoke erupted from the barrel of the rifle. Spent shells flew into the air, flying through the cloud of smoke that clung to us. When he finished firing, I reached up to take my earmuffs off, but then I saw Freddie drop a magazine and insert another one. He fluttered his trigger finger, and his body barely moved against the recoil of the rifle. He was a pro. When Merv brought back the target, the bad guy was peppered with bullet holes, tight bunches of them in the heart and the head.
"Damn..." I said.
"Not bad," Merv said admiringly. "That gun fits you like a glove."
From there, Merv adjusted my posture, my aim, my stance, the way I held the gun. It was another hour-and-a-half of shooting, and gradually, I began to improve. I was still clunky with the loading and unloading, but I was fairly sure that if I needed more than thirty rounds in a firefight, I would already be dead. Once, he had taught me everything he could, he walked to his stacks of cartoony targets and brought out something special.
"Here you go, Katherine. This ought to help you aim better." He hung the cartoon on the wall, and I laughed. There in front of me was the image of a pudgy man. The floppy, ridiculous hair, the orange face, the balloon knot lips. I gleefully raised my rifle and fired round after round into the cartoon shape of that gelatinous orange ape.
I wasn't perfect, but I was a damned sight better than I had been when I had first shown up at Merv's. Merv took a few moments to point out the shots of mine that had been kill shots, and which ones would mostly just put a man down. All the shots had hit the target except for one. I was feeling proud of myself, and then Merv walked us back twenty feet to the next counter, and it was like I was starting all over again.
By the end of the day, I felt comfortable with the AR-15 that Merv had lent me. My shoulders felt like noodles and my eyes stung, as Merv's shooting range didn't have a good air filtration system, so the air was clogged with acrid gunsmoke. I didn't know if he kept moving me further and further back at the shooting range because I needed the practice or because it was virtually impossible to stand in a spot after firing off a hundred rounds. After it was all over, we gathered up casings and put them into a bucket. Merv apparently made his own ammunition. When I asked him about it, he said, "You never know when the well's going to run dry, you know what I mean?"
I received some faint praise from Merv, but I couldn't tell if he was serious or just being nice. I mean, I wasn't going to win any shooting competitions at the Olympics if those were still a thing. Of course, once I had to hit a moving target, I got the feeling that everything I had just learned would go right out the window.
After we were all cleaned up, Merv said that he was fine letting me babysit his child. The man has some heavy love for his guns. Unhealthy obsession or not, I felt like maybe his love of guns and his fish were the only things keeping him alive. "Let's go eat some dinner," Merv said, and I realized that I was starving. The weird elation of firing guns had overridden my need for food. I held guns in a new light, I supposed. I was still in awe of them, and terrified of the damage they could do, but I felt a little more comfortable around them. I could see why people were so dead set against getting rid of them. Of course, after this was all over, after I had gotten the story, I doubted that I would ever touch another gun for the rest of my life. Fingers crossed, that would be many years.
****
Dinner was delicious. Despite the fact that the food we had eaten had been packaged some five years ago, the freeze-dried stuff that Merv had prepared for us was fantastic. My tongue felt like it was going to burst from all of the delicious salt and preservatives in the MRE's that he fed us. I don't know what the hell sodium benzoate is, but I fucking love it.
Freddie pounded down three packages of the stuff.
When I pointed out to Merv that he was going to run out of food if he had to keep feeding Freddie, he said, "I got so many of the damned things stored on the second floor that Freddie could eat nonstop for five years and never even get through half my supply. Plus, they're all going on Sebastian's tab, so sooner or later I'll be able to replace them. Friend or not, I gotta make a living you know. Damn property taxes. Can you believe that shit? All the shit that is happening, and the government is still insisting on property taxes. And for what? What the hell has the government done for us?"
I sensed a gateway rhetorical question in the works. I was tired, my stomach was full, and I didn't want to get into any anti-government tirade with Merv. I got the feeling it would be a one-sided conversation filled with woefully inaccurate misinformation, so I let the question slide. After dinner, Freddie and I watched as Merv sprinkled fish food into the small stream on the fourth floor.
It was peaceful, really fucking peaceful. I faded in and out, my mind wandering as I listened to the water trickle and watched those beautiful fish bob up to the surface, kiss the air and scoop food into their mouths. Their bodies, sleek and delicate, but powerful at the same time... I could watch them for hours.
"Ain't got no real guest beds or nothing," Merv said. "But I do have some sleeping bags. I hope that's good enough for you."
"I've slept in worse places," I said.
"Ain't we all," Merv said. "Ain't we all." With that, he plunked two sleeping bags down on the ground and then strayed off to his own corner where he had his own bed set up. He dimmed the lights, and it was gloomy enough that I thought I could comfortably find sleep. I stood, wishing to watch the fish some more, but I also knew I wasn't far from passing out next to the little stream.
I walked over to the sleeping bags and began to make my bed. "Good night," I said to Freddie.
"Good night."
I lay down in my sleeping bag, my hands and hair smelling like gunsmoke. I fell asleep to the sound of a trickling stream and the muffled sobbing of a traumatized man on the other side of the building.
****
I dreamed of sleeping in my house. My mom was there. My heart swelled with emotion. She was sitting at the kitchen table, just drinking coffee and looking at a newspaper. Bright sunlight streamed in through the window, glinting off of her auburn hair. This was the old house, back when we could afford your typical suburban palace.
Dad stood at the stove, cooking up something. The smell of bacon played in my nose, and I could hear it sizzling in the pan. It was so real I wanted to cry. But I knew I shouldn't. I was being given a gift. I placed my hand on my mother's shoulder and squeezed it. She looked up at me, blissfully ignorant that she had died of cancer four years ago. I wasn't going to tell her. Wherever I was, wherever this alternate universe existed, I was going to stay here forever.
Then a telephone rang. It was the landline, making a noise that I had never heard before.
"Would you get that, sweetie?" Mom asked.
I, willing to do anything to have this moment last forever, obediently went over to the phone, an olive-green, wall-mounted monstrosity that my parents still managed to hold onto despite the fact that everyone in the entire world had gone cellular. I supposed they liked the quaintness of it, the old-world feel of a phone with buttons that actually depressed when you dialed, the jangly analog ring that was never quite exactly the same. I picked it up... but the phone just kept making that odd ringing noise. It wasn't the type of ring that the phone should make. It was... more like an alarm.
I hung up the phone. Something about an alarm... something about danger. I turned and looked at my mother and my father, soaking in their presence one last time before my dream crumbled and fell away to be replaced by reality. Their faces... I wanted to keep their faces in my mind as long as I could.
"Wake up!" Freddie shouted. But Freddie shouldn't have been there. Then my world shook, and I opened my eyes. The lights were still dim, and Freddie was leaning over my face, his morning breath hanging over me. Panic filled me, and I sat up so fast that I almost bashed my face into Freddie's.
"What's going on?" I whispered.
"Merv says we have visitors."
I was still groggy. Visitors... visitors... Shit! Visitors. I got to my knees, and Freddie handed me a bottle of water. "Splash some of that on your face. It'll help wake you up. Time is important now."
I did I was told. The water was cold, and I took a deep breath as it washed over my face, shocking me awake. With my mind just a little clearer, I asked "Where's Merv?"
"He's checking things out."
Freddie squatted down next to me and handed me my rifle. "You ok using this thing?" he asked.
"No, God, no."
"Well, that's good. I'd rather have someone around that doesn't want to use their gun as opposed to someone that's dying to pull the trigger," he said in that husky voice of his.
The elevator dinged, and the doors rattled open. Merv was there, running towards us, keeping low, one of his rifles in his hands. He had done something to his face, and as he got closer, in the dim light, I saw that he had managed to smear camouflage paint across his cheeks and forehead. I questioned how effective it would be. I mean, it's not like the green and black smears would blend into the walls and windows of Merv's building. I got the absurd feeling that maybe this was like his own personal Halloween. Instead of Butterfingers and Baby Ruths, he was out for bullets and bodies.
He squatted next to us, and the crazy man was gone. In his place was a wide-eyed survivalist running on pure adrenaline. This was a man that collected guns the way a comic book nerd collected action figures; he had a thousand toys that had been sitting on shelves in wrappers for years, and he was about to get them out and play with them.
When Merv spoke, he spoke with an air of excitement that I did not feel. "We got ten people coming at us. They're probing the perimeter as we speak. I got a look at them with these bad boys." He flipped down some goggles on his head, and I assumed they were night-vision goggles. "They're armed, and they're loaded for bear."
"What are we going to do I asked?"
"A bear is a dangerous animal to hunt. Especially in its cave. We're going to pull back to the shooting range. I'm going to hook my phone up to the TV in there so we have a map of where they are, and then we're going to play us a little game of fish in a barrel."
The shooting range made sense. It was safer, fortified. We could shoot from it, and with the elevator access turned off, there was no way for them to get to us. I almost felt pity for whoever was coming after us.
"You think you can get one of these people alive?" I asked.
Merv looked at me like I was crazy. "This isn't a fucking Mission Impossible movie. This is the real shit. These people are either coming to kill us or capture us."
"I want to know who these people are," I said.
Merv shrugged his shoulders. "The best I can do is give you a few minutes to talk to one of them while they bleed out. I'm not pussy-footing around with guys with automatic rifles."
I was about to argue when Freddie said, "He's right."
