I touched Melody's shoulder and gave her two fingers. She knew what I meant and as I watched her aim, I aimed at the head of the other one, both of them so engaged in trying to break through that door they didn't pay any attention to us less than 20 feet away.

       I fired less than a second after I saw blood blossom from that other guy’s head and got my man, too, without the need for a second shot from either of us.

       We rushed to the door and knocked on it gently. I called out, "Mary Beth, are you all right? It's safe now… Are you all right?"

       A small voice answered from behind the window, whimpering, "I'm okay, I think. I was so scared…"

       We tried the door, but the door mechanism was so messed up the door wouldn't open, even from the inside when Mary Beth tried. Finally, we saw the wood slat window cover full of bullet holes rising to the ceiling out of sight and we saw her blood drained white, frightened face appear behind the counter.

       We helped her crawl over while trying not to step in the growing blood of the bodies below. I called Sheriff Singh.

       "Hello, this is Lieutenant…ah… Sheriff Morgan Singh. How can I help you?"

       "This is Drake Hutchins. Glad you were able to answer, Morgan. We've got a mess here at the pharmacy in the medical center. Two invaders killed the guard out front and tried to shoot their way into the pharmacy when Melody and I caught them at it and killed them both. Can you get somebody to come here to attend to the bodies. I'll get somebody to fix the front of the pharmacy--all shot up."

       "We'll be right there. We already saw the camera view from alarms we got. He was Orange County Deputy, Marlon Joyner. He ran for sheriff against me. I deputized him right after the meeting. I don't know why he was sitting outside on the steps of the medical center. Must've needed a breather from sitting behind the counter in the lobby for a long time. Would've saved his life." I saw him shake his head and signal to his secretary that he was leaving.

       Melody asked, "Mary Beth, are you okay?" She was standing aside, eyeing the dead bodies and shaking as though she were cold.

       "I think so… I was so scared when the bullets started hitting the door. All I could think of was to get my gun and get low. So, I got it and crawled on my belly to in front of the counter and lay there as the bullets kept breaking through the wooden folding door above me and showering me with splinters. I kept my gun aimed up at the door hoping I would catch them as they pushed through it. But then…" She started crying.

       Melody hugged her to help calm her down. Before long, several people were there and, after many pictures of the dead, the two bodies were hauled off to the dumpster where the bodies from the medical center had been placed and covered to keep rats out. Deputy Joyner would be given a full shipboard funeral and burial at sea. I was glad I didn't have to tend to the details. Sheriff Singh saw to that. He turned the body over to Captain Jensen's mates who are experienced in such matters.

       The next day, I had Hector Lopez and his daughter, Selma pulled from working on the city office at work demolishing and rebuilding a more secure entry to the pharmacy. The yard at the old company still had the aluminum partitions we needed to do the job quickly so that it would be better and stronger than before.

       The security in front of the medical center was beefed up by adding firepower to the cameras that could be triggered from the sheriff's office by the same technology used in our lethal drones.

       The raiders had the same tattoos as the three recuperating from starvation and dehydration on the Rambler. Research showed that they were members of an Iranian gang, the Shah's Avengers. We asked some of the village members of Iranian descent about them and they universally told us that those were very bad guys, not only bent on destroying anything Moslem, but were preying on their own country people by protection, kickbacks, extortion, death threats and kidnappings.

        Sheriff Singh would escort them far from the village in their truck with no weapons and a couple of weeks of food and water. They would be given will what little we found in the pockets of the two deceased as what would happen to them if they tried to come back again violently.

       Two days later, a few of us attended the funeral  of Deputy Marlon Joyner. It was a fine ceremony for a man

hardly any of us knew. We saved his meager personal belongings in case some family member showed up in the future. It was all we could do.                                  

       It took a couple of weeks to get the city offices completed. What had been a storage area was converted into a jail that would hold about 10 people. But there were plenty of police substations in the area that would be a police station in the future when the village boundaries would encompass one. But that project like others would have to be put off into the future.

       The education committee got to work on schooling and decided to create a school where classes were already being held in the meeting rooms on the first two floors of the hotel. Where former teachers and teacher aides were already giving impromptu classes to about 100 students of various ages and groupings. It had been recently cleaned up after the flood and was back in use. Preschoolers had a wonderful place in the Rambler to go while their parents worked.

       I decided to send our older kids to the hotel school if they wanted to go. But for now, Martha, Wondah and Stephanie were doing a great job tutoring the kids in our compound and we saw no reason for them to join the larger school until they reached high school age.

       Another project for the future would be picking a suitable elementary school in the neighborhood to reopen with a high school nearby. But staffing them, even partially would take a while with a greater population. Fortunately, stragglers were appearing nearly every day now. Tired of just surviving and coming because they heard the village offered an opportunity to rebuild.

       A counseling office was set up by the Mayor for any of the many who were suffering mental problems as a result of their experiences during and since the pandemic began. When it opened up, the three counselors that had volunteered with various degrees of experience, were overwhelmed with the number of people that signed up for treatment.

       Not wishing to leave anyone out, they set up self-help circles of people with similar mental health conditions to hash it out together and even went so far as to have online sessions using Quaroom that would have people signing in wherever they worked and following rules of order with a counselor/moderator to communicate their fears and concerns so that others could suggest a way to deal with them.

       Reopening a monetary system was very tricky business. We didn't want anyone hoarding wealth or being manipulated by it. So far, bartering was working quite well, as well as many free ways to get necessary things. But sometimes, what was available was unevenly distributed and that caused some concern among those who were left out.

       We needed a bank. So, the treasurer and finance committee had a meeting with Captain Jensen. He had already opened the casino to ship employees and others working on the ship for occasional recreation breaks at the gambling machines. The ship had a large bank of dollars already to support gambling that could be used. Everyone agreed to use US dollars and cents to define the value of goods and services. The big concern was being fair to everyone.

       The ship also had private safes for up to 2000 passengers. Initially it was thought that villagers could keep their valuables there but that might lead to heavy traffic in and out of the ship and the captain didn't like that. The only other possibility would be to open, perhaps a nearby bank and/or credit union to start with accounts and safe deposit boxes. Of course, that would require much more security personnel. The committee decided to wait before determining what we might do.

       When the fishing fleet came in, there was good news. While they had to go further up the coast past Santa Barbara, the flooding up there, largely through agricultural areas, had fertilized the sea and they were making catches of albacore, sardines and yellowtail like never before. With the storehouses filling up  and the market providing lots of fish for everybody, it was time to make a run to the Valley again to exchange the bounty of the sea with the meat, fruit and produce of the Valley.

       I arranged another convoy, twice as big as the last one, to leave the next day by 10 am to try to make it in one day again. At least, that was my plan. At 2 am, Melody received a phone call and I listened in… Marsha Rosenberg was on the line…

       "Melody, we've got a problem! Can you come over?"

       Melody looked at me intently. I motioned the best I could for her to go.

       "Okay, okay… I'll be right over… Bye."    

       She hung up and gave me an inquisitive look before she slipped on her jeans and pulled a sweater over her head as she fumbled for her slippers before she reached the door.

Copyright 2023 © Ronald W. Hull

10/3/23