Last Stand. Robert Ciancio

      1

      My morning started with a cold nose to the back of the head.

      “Shit, Fred. Go lay down. It’s too early for this shit!”

      Fred, actually Freddy, was my cat. She was a Heinz 57 mutt, and when she decided it was too late for me to be sleeping, she woke me up by sticking her cold nose into the base of my neck. I tried to go back to sleep, but it was futile. Once I was awake, that was it—I was up.

      I rolled over and petted the purring bundle of fur. Freddy was sixteen years old and had been through every good and bad thing that had happened to me since I got her. She was my only living contact in the house. I had been single for some time and had no kids. So when I got home from work, having that fur ball to greet me at the door was very important.

      I got out of bed and looked at the clock. Nothing, not even flashing mode. I picked up my cell phone and again saw nothing. I walked out into the living room of my one-bedroom apartment and found that all the power was out. There was no TV, no lights, nothing was working.

      I looked out the window. It was light out, but I couldn’t tell what time it was. There were several of my neighbors walking around my apartment complex. I lived in Laurel, Maryland, and had lived there for about ten years. The neighborhood was quiet, and the people were fairly friendly, but I was a loner and didn’t associate much with my neighbors.

      I was a police detective in a municipality just outside Washington, DC. I had been a police officer for twenty-five years, half of which had been with a sheriff’s department in Pennsylvania. When I started in police work, I looked at the job as though we were modern-day samurai, protecting the people of the village from the rogues and bandits of society. I had done everything from patrol to SWAT and was currently the Investigations Unit Supervisor for my current department. But today, I was on day one of a two-week vacation. I had taken some time off just to chill out a little and get away from the office. I was starting to get tired of my job. Society was expressing a deep hatred for the police and criticizing us for everything we did right or wrong. I was losing my faith in the human species and was beginning to take more time off because I was just not caring about the job or the people anymore. I had always heard that when you start to feel like that, it’s time to look for another job. For now, a couple of weeks off was all I could muster. A job search just wasn’t in the cards yet. Soon, but not right now.

      I recognized a few of the people walking around as being from the neighborhood. I decided to go out to see what was up. I got dressed and walked outside. It was the beginning of March, but was surprisingly warm for this time of year. It wasn’t unbearable, but comfortable. The sun was out, and the humidity was low. It was a nice break compared to the bitterly cold winter we had just had. People were wandering around, talking to each other, but everybody seemed to have confused looks on their faces.

      I walked up to one guy who lived in the building next to mine. I think his name was Andre. Andre was an African American, in his late twenties. We spoke when we saw each other, but it was just in passing conversation. He always struck me as being a good guy.

      “Hey man, what’s up?”

      “I don’t know,” he said. He looked puzzled. “It’s sunny out, doesn’t look like it rained at all last night, and I didn’t hear any rain. But nobody has power.”

      “Yeah, nothing in my place is working either,” I said. I walked over to my patrol car and hit the unlock button on the key fob, nothing. I was starting to get a little nervous. My mind was starting to run with ideas about what could be causing the power outage. I didn’t want to jump to conclusions, but I had read stuff about EMPs, and I was hoping beyond all hope that this wasn’t that. I walked back over to Andre.

      “All right, brother, I’m heading back in. If you happen to hear anything from anybody, let me know, okay.”

      “No problem,” he said as he waved at me.

      I went back to my apartment and closed and locked the door. My apartment was still cool inside, but without power, the outside temperature would soon heat up the inside of my place. I sat down on my leather fat guy chair and started to ponder the possibilities. Could the electricity just be out? If it was, why did my cell phone not work? Why would the car not unlock? I was starting to think that maybe the EMP scenario was the most plausible explanation for what was going on. An EMP event could have been caused by a high-altitude nuclear strike, or a huge solar flare. Either way, it was bad. If this was a true loss of the power grid, who knew how long it would take to get things back up and running? It could take years. My concern started to grow. Freddy jumped up on to the arm of my chair. Her purring was a welcome comfort and small distraction from my thoughts.

      I decided that I needed more information before I jumped to any conclusions. I went into my bedroom and went to my closet. I kept a safe inside the closet where I kept my off-duty pistol. Once inside, I took out my 1911 with its holster. I had always wanted a custom-built 1911 and had this one built for me the previous year by a small, one man show gunsmith in Kansas. The gun was not only beautiful, but I had also designed it to be what I thought a true combat 1911 should be. It was chambered for .45 caliber, had a light rail, front cocking serrations, with the words “Hunt Custom 1911 A-1” engraved on the side and a matte finish to limit glare. The grips were polymer from VZ grips, and at twenty-five yards, it would pound nails. With today’s mentality, I catch a lot of grief about carrying a “dinosaur gun.” But my thoughts are that if it’s okay for the Marine’s MEU and Delta Force, it’s good enough for me. I strapped it on with two extra magazines, and once I covered it with a button-down shirt, I went for a walk in the neighborhood.

      It was starting to get hotter out. The sun was up, and the cloud cover was minimal. There were a lot of people wandering around. They were talking to each other, moving around, doing the same thing I was, which was trying to find answers to their questions. I could see smoke rising from someplace in the distance but was unable to tell exactly what it was. Nobody seemed to be getting the answers that they wanted. As I moved around, I saw several cars along the roadway that had just coasted to a stop, unable to start or turn over. There was nobody in the immediate vicinity of the cars, so I assumed the drivers had walked home or went somewhere to try to get out of the heat.

      As I continued to look at the plumes of smoke in the distance, it dawned on me what they could be. I got a sinking feeling in my gut because I believed I knew what they were. I saw a guy I didn’t know looking in the same direction. He was maybe sixty years old and had a small schnauzer running around, between his legs.

      “What is that?” I asked, pointing in the direction of the smoke.

      “Both of them are planes. They just fell out of the sky. I was out walking my dog…I’ve never seen anything like it. They just crashed.”