Swimming pools in the area, including the one where the animals were being housed, lost their chlorination and become stagnant. Creating an ideal environment for hatching mosquitoes.

Melody was on the other side of the pool standing in water up to her shoulders with her back to the wall watching me when I dove in and swam over to her underwater. By the pool LCD underwater light that automatically came on at night, I could easily see her bare legs, midriff, breasts and her vagina approaching and surfaced right in front of her, hoping to surprise her.

Instead, she grinned mischievously, put her arms around my shoulders and gushed, "What took you so long? Kiss me…”

I closed in, feeling her nipples on my chest and my hard on growing up between her legs as I put my arms around her back and pulled her to me making sure that my kiss would be memorable.

It must have been, because at first, after her lips matched mine perfectly, she went limp against me and then, reached down and started rubbing the end of my penis against her clitoris with a heavenly look on her face in the full lamplight. I responded by slipping my right hand from behind her back, still holding her close with my left arm and kissing her lips, neck and under her ears, began cupping her breasts and massaging them while playing with my fingers on her nipples. They were rigid, not from the bathtub warm pool, but her arousal.

Suddenly, we both stopped when we got sharp bites on our foreheads, necks and shoulders--mosquitoes! We were being swarmed by them. We both ducked under water to escape.

I heard Melody yell bubbly underwater, "Let's get out of here!"

Without surfacing, we both pushed off the wall behind us with our feet and swam underwater to the other end of the pool. We emerged from the pool in a single leap and raced each other to my open bedroom sliding door, with me slamming it shut behind us. We were laughing hysterically over what happened, but glad we were inside. There was no time to scratch our mosquito bites, we had other things in mind. Jumped in bed together, grabbed each other and rolled with me on the bottom and her on top.

Melody taught me things I never thought I would ever do. She was clearly in charge and I let her. I came inside her twice, while she had multiple orgasms. After about an hour, we both tired, settled down and she wanted to talk while we held each other without any sheets on we were so warm from exertion.

"I want to tell you Drake, that was amazing. But I don't want you falling in love with me. I've seen Derek look at me, too, and I don't want to leave him out. Do you understand?"

"I think I do, but we never shared girlfriends."

"You'll have to with me. And here's the long story why…"

I shut my mouth and listened.

"I was pregnant at 17 with Flower about two months in May of my senior year in high school, just before graduation. When my parents found out, we had a big fight and they told me to leave the house. They had warned me not to go out with that jock troublemaker, so I did to spite them. It was the last straw for them. They had enough and threw me out. I got a garage apartment, but was desperate with only a waitress job to pay the rent.

"My boyfriend at the time, Flower's father, told me that he was going to college to play football and he didn't want any baby or me dragging him down. He wanted me to have an abortion and came over one night in early June to take me to an abortion clinic. When I refused, he beat me like I'd seen him beat other guys, and left me bleeding to go outside and smoke. I knew he would come back to rape me.

"I called 911. The patrolman that showed up, scared him off, but got the license plate of his car. And then, he knocked on my door. When I opened it up, there was this handsome young man coming to my rescue with a name tag that read "Cpl. Spiro Bloom, LAPD." He took down my complaint, all the while sizing me up as though I were something he liked.

"I don't know what came over me, but I invited him into the bedroom and we had sex. Flower's father was arrested and served two months for assaulting me. I never heard from him again. But Spike Bloom came around often after his shift to have sex with me. When I laid down the law, he agreed to marry me.

“But marrying Spike didn't solve my problems. Spike turned out to be infertile and a womanizer. Often came home drunk and beat me, even in front of Flower. I had a couple of affairs that he nipped in the bud by getting his buddies to intimidate anyone who even looked my way. I was trapped until this pandemic came along and solved my problem for me. That's why I like you, Derek and any other healthy man I find. I want to have babies, lots of them. Repopulate the world!"

All I could say was, "Wow, what a noble gesture!"

She smiled broadly in the dim light. "Not noble, perhaps selfish, but it's time I looked out for myself and maybe did something good in the process."

"And Derek?”

"As soon as there is an opportunity, I will sneak into his bed before morning."

"Be my guest. I'd love to keep holding you like this. But I think I understand what you mean and I'll try not to be jealous."

Melody kissed me deeply to seal the deal. We were interrupted from the kiss by gunfire at the lower end of the street and we heard something crash into our makeshift barricade. I jumped out of bed and looked for my Levi's in the dark. As I was pulling them on, I yelled out…

"Derek, we have company! Meet me in the gun closet." The shotgun and police rifle were still in Derek's truck so all we had were the pistols and what hunting guns we had in the closet.

Derek met me in the closet and I picked up my father's old reliable Winchester .30-30 rifle that had shot many a black tailed buck. Derek picked out dad's Browning Auto-5 and some slugs as well as birdshot.

I cautioned Derek. "I'm going to climb up on the roof. Don't leave the house, they can shoot you from the gate and I heard an automatic rifle or machine gun. While you and Melody are behind the drapes pulled just enough to see if anyone comes to the gate to shoot, give Martha a call and tell her to lock all of the doors and hide everyone in the small garden tool shed out back, including Regis."

I slipped out my sliding glass door and Melody locked it behind me. It was relatively easy to climb up on the awning and then up on the roof, even with my dad's rifle with a scope that should allow me to see better in the dark.

The shooting was moving up the street slowly as I climbed on the roof. They appeared to be just doing random destruction until they got across from Rodney Owens' place. Then, all hell broke loose!

Both sides were firing at one another with automatic weapons. It sounded like war and louder than anything I had ever heard in the movies. As I reached the crest of our tile roof and peeked over, I could see that it was a double-cab pickup truck with a guy firing what could've been a 45 caliber machine gun mounted in the back like all those Middle Eastern war movies. He was pumping deadly fire across the road with his back to me.

There was no time to hesitate. I braced the rifle on the crest of the roof, aimed for high on his back and squeezed the trigger. I had killed my first man as he slid down off the gun to the floor of the pickup bed. Immediately, another guy climbed over the side and got up on the machine gun to fire in the same direction.

I, just as quickly, dispatched him. I fired five more shots into the roof of the double-cab where I thought guys’ heads might be. Holding the last shot for anyone that might try to retaliate my way while getting ready to duck down out of sight and reload.

I didn't have to. The pickup took off up to the cul-de-sac at the end of the street, spun around, squealing tires, and then, raced back down the street and away, firing no more shots as it did. I pumped off my last shot at the roof behind the driver but missed and they got away.

Adrenaline was still pumping into my blood stream and my heart was beating nearly out of my chest. I soon felt great relief and calmed down having killed at least two of them and driven them off. But without Rodney firing from the other side, things might've been much different. I knew right then, we had to spend much of our time on barricades, arms and surveillance, to prevent any more firefights in the neighborhood.

When I got down off the roof, I realized there were no mosquitoes. And thankful that there hadn't been that late at night with a cool breeze off the Pacific feeling refreshing and cooling me down. I met Derek and Melody in my bedroom and we all hugged each other and cried.

But we couldn't stop there. We had to see how Rodney and Stephanie were. Derek called Martha and told her that it was over and that she could go back to her house with the kids. We all left my house with headlights and our pistols loaded with one in the chamber, just in case.

There were two bodies in the street. One was an attractive black woman as tattooed as the other one. I don't think I killed either of them. We couldn't tell in the dark, but would be able to determine what killed them in the morning. Obviously members of some gang. I remembered them yelling obscenities in English. So they weren't Spanish from Central America even though their tattoos appeared to be from there with those symbols I had seen before on the Internet. Strange?

We approached Rodney's Place with caution. We tried the doorbell at the gate but it was it destroyed. Parts of the wall were battered so heavily concrete blocks were knocked out of place or broken leaving holes in the wall. I went to one and yelled out…

"It's Derek and Drake from across the street! Are you all right, Rodney? Are you all right!"

At first, I got no answer. But I didn't stick my head in the hole for fear of being shot at. Finally, I heard Stephanie call out, "I'm shot, but my dad is dead! Please help me… Please…!"

The gate wouldn't open because the touchpad had been destroyed. There was a guy hanging dead on it. Another was dead in the yard. All of the dead had AR-15 rifles with high-capacity magazines and more on their bodies. Shell casings were everywhere. I climbed over the wall and rushed to the house that had been battered heavily by that gun on the pickup and rounds from the assault rifles.

Rodney was dead below the living room window with multiple wounds and a big hole in his back, lying in a big pool of his own blood. Stephanie was behind the kitchen island with the granite top purposely taken off and tilted in front of it--broken. She was shot through by her right shoulder and her left calf where it was broken and bleeding. We got some towels from the bathroom and some bandages from the war room and patched her up to stop the bleeding. I spotted some morphine in the war room and Melody gave her that, too.

I carried her over my shoulder in a fireman's carry because of her broken leg all the way to where Martha had the gate open letting us in with her. She then guided me to her bedroom and had me lay Stephanie down gently on Jake's bed.

Martha said, "I was a nurse in Baghdad during the Iraqi war. That's where I met Jake. He was a wounded colonel that I cared for. Cared so dearly for him, he married me." She sighed.

And then, she examined the wounds and while we applied pressure to them, got a suture kit from her bathroom and began stitching Stephanie up. Once the wounds were closed and no longer bleeding, she expertly set Stephanie's leg and with some lath that we found in the garage, made a splint that kept the leg stable enough to heal, and maybe, walk on later.

When she was finished, Martha declared, "I've got some crutches, somewhere. You'll be up and around in no time." And patted Stephanie's hand as she did. "I'll get you some soup to replace that blood you lost."

Still keyed up from the morphine and the wounds, Stephanie engaged us in conversation until Martha came back with the soup.

"Dad got excited when he heard the shooting. He told me to wait in the kitchen until they got in the house and put that countertop in front of the Island for me to hide behind."

"Did you stay there?"

"No. From the kitchen, open to the front room, I saw dad put on his bulletproof vest and grab his AR-15 with a 40 cartridge magazine, and run out the front door leaving it open. I ran to the door as he reached our front gate and opened up on something I couldn't see. I heard other guys shouting in English evil words and shooting at him. I saw sparks coming off the steel gate where bullets hit.

"A machine gun was blasting at our wall and I saw a guy climb over and onto our front yard, so I shot him and he dropped. Dad came running back, bleeding on his legs and arms and yelled at me to, 'Get back behind your barricade in the kitchen!'"

"I saw him go to the window and shoot a guy that was trying to climb the gate. And then, I saw a big hole open on his back and blood flew out as the spent bullet slammed into the countertop in front of me, breaking it.

"I prepared for the worst, but then, I heard you shooting and the shooting stopped. And then, I felt pain in my leg and realized that I couldn't stand on my left leg and just slid down behind the counter bleeding until you guys saved me."

We all went back to bed, but I don't believe any of us slept. All I could think about was that I may have opened a hornets’ nest where gang members from all over LA may come after us. That was until I realized that those gangs probably suffered great losses from the pandemic, too. And that group had gotten together to try to get food, water and other resources as far as where we lived. Just trying to survive. But at what cost? Our lives? We had to do something. As I lay awake, a plan formed in my mind.

Derek was smiling at breakfast because Melody was with him, also smiling. I didn't ask them how it was because I knew. I had other things to discuss as we made breakfast and ate.

"Der, any ideas on what we need to do to keep those gangsters from coming back?"

"We need to put up a surveillance system on the streets approaching ours and then, maybe have a booby-trap using dynamite that we have in the yard, to set off if anyone tries to come onto our street violently again. The surveillance could help us tell the difference."

I agreed with what Derek suggested. And told him so. He called Wondah and she agreed and told him, "I can do all of that with what I gathered yesterday. First, I'll set up a Wi-Fi modem and network for the whole community so that everything can work without any wires. I'll get started right away."

"I've got something more aggressive in mind, Derek. But first, we have to remove all of those bodies, including Rodney, so it will look, except for that wall, like no one was ever here. Who knows, they might be so decimated they will never come back. Or just gather more gang members and come back for revenge."

Derek got us back on the immediate subject at hand.

"Let's take the bodies out through the gate past where we are keeping the dogs. There are already too many flies as it is, and the meat might help make the dogs wilder, sooner."

"Well, let's get to it, the sooner we clean up the mess, the sooner we will be able to protect this street from whatever may come our way. Melody, can you help us?"

"Sure. I told you I can carry my weight. You guys can both count on me." She winked wickedly. We both understood too well.

The three of us took the four wheeler, charged up from its last duty, with the trailer, out our gate to the street and began picking up bodies. We photographed their tattoos to see if we could identify who they were and where they were from. We stopped by the Rosenberg place and asked Stephanie what we should do with her father. She thought a minute…

"That's a tough one." She yawned having been awakened from a deep sleep. "I've experienced the smell and the flies. Didn't count on that. He wasn't my friend in recent years. I resented all of this that he and mom created, with their thought that the world would come to an end.

"But, not this way. Not what happened last night or even the pandemic. He was wrong. He should be buried so he won't stink or cremated. But you guys are such angels, I'll let you do whatever you are doing to the others. It will have to be right. I'm in no position right now to tell you." She shut her eyes and drifted off into sleep again.

We left the house and proceeded to the Wilkes-Hodges estate where there was a driveway going around the back of the house all the way to the large ground care and storage building on the back wall. The grass was already growing knee-high without any attention from groundskeepers.

We drove out through the open gate some distance down the trail until it got too steep and stopped. Several of the dogs followed us anticipating food. We unloaded the bodies there, hoping that the flies from our neighborhood would find better places to lay their eggs with these bodies.

We also hoped that the dogs would find them as a way to get something to eat other than the dog food we were providing that, eventually, would run out. We wanted them to go wild. Like the birds and the cats. As we drove off I looked back and saw them licking the blood. It wouldn't be long before they would be tearing away at raw flesh and liking it like the dried blood.

In case the gang that was massacred decided to come back, we quickly placed plywood over the front and back of our three ornamental gates using only the cameras on our doorbell intercom as a way of seeing who was at the gate. By placing plywood both on the front and the back of the wrought iron gates with bolts from the front plywood to the back plywood holding them in place and making the gates much stronger and nearly impossible to see through in the process, we felt more secure if anyone else came looking for plunder.

At the lower beginning of the street, we put up the construction barricades and a big sign that read, "Under Construction: Access Prohibited." Mounted a steel gate with a padlock that would certainly slow down any intruders. But as I thought about it more that morning, I had a solution in mind that would be more offensive than defensive.

Copyright 2023 © Ronald W. Hull

4/19/23