Chapter 12

Betsy stood in front of the little stand that was selling meat. The stand had once been a little souvenir hut that had sold glitzy trinkets to tourists. It had a fake grass roof, giving it a kind of hokey appearance that tourists expected of a tropical island. She wondered where it had come from, but wasn’t interested enough to ask.

A bird flew overhead and landed upon a branch of a nearby bush. She turned to look at it. It was a red crested cardinal. Like many of the more common birds on the island, it was a bird species that had been brought there when men traveled by ships with cloth sails. It flew away and she turned back to watch people moving around.

There were a lot of little spots around the park where people were set up to trade goods. Most were little more than a blanket with goods arranged on it. The proprietors were sitting tailor fashioned waiting for customers. It was the kind of scene that one might expect in a medieval village.

She wondered for a minute how the state would collect taxes in the future. Barter and the exchange of cell phone minutes were now commonplace. Things weren’t marked with a fixed price. Like everywhere in the world where there was barter, there was haggling. She was sure that the Governor was pulling her hair out trying to figure out that one.

She watched someone buy a pound of meat from the vendor. The vendor opened a fusion cell powered cooler in which the meat was stored. There was an attempt at negotiating the price down, but the vendor was firm. The customer finally picked out a piece, it was weighed, and a price fixed. It was a primitive affair.

When the customer handed over the cell phone minutes, the vendor whipped out his cell phone and entered the number on the slip of paper to verify that the card was good. It was amazing how many people tried to trade a card for goods that had already been redeemed. Common practice was to check the card first before accepting it.

Her attention turned to six men marching down the sidewalk headed in her direction. Two of them were openly carrying guns. They didn’t look at her, but focused their attention on the stand where meat was being sold. They marched to it and came to a stop. She hoped that they were there to trade the guns for meat, but their behavior didn’t give that impression.

“We want your meat,” one of the men said in a loud voice that carried far.

“One hour of cell time per pound,” the proprietor said nervously.

“We don’t want to buy your meat. We want your meat,” the man said in a much more threatening tone of voice.

The frightened proprietor stepped back. He had heard stories about a number of gangs on the island that were taking what they wanted, even in broad daylight. They had even killed people who had resisted, confident that there wasn’t going to be any reprisal. The police force had vanished.

The vendor looked at the coolers filled with beef knowing that he was going to lose everything. There was a lot of valuable meat in the coolers. The coolers themselves were expensive and would be nearly impossible to replace. The theft of his goods would be a real loss since there wasn’t insurance around to cover things like this. He would probably be put out of business.

From where she had been standing, Betsy said, “You can want all you want, but you aren’t getting it.”

Lifting his gun, the man said, “Run along and play with your dolls, little girl.”

“No. I’d rather play here,” Betsy replied with a smile.

Her eyes flicked from man to man taking the measure of each. She was not impressed. They were confident, but only because of their superior numbers and their weapons. Alone, each of them would have been too cowardly to attempt a robbery like this.

“I told you to leave.”

Betsy sauntered casually over to the group. The men, rather surprised by her actions, all took a step back.

She said, “I suggest that you drop the weapons and go.”

The man went to swing his shotgun in her direction, but a blow to his crotch quickly changed his mind. He dropped the gun and held his hand over his crotch while slowly crumpling to the ground. It had been a solid hit intended to damage. He vomited.

One of the other men carrying a pistol started to move towards her and found that he was staring into the business end of the shotgun. He hadn’t seen her pick it up. He gulped. Her foot lashed out and his pistol flew through the air.

“I guess you guys want to play a little game of cops and robbers. I tell you what, I’ll be the cop,” Betsy said with a feral grin that should have scared them away.

Too stupid to know that he was outclassed, one of the other men moved in on her as if to grab her. He ended up grabbing his nose after she had kicked it. There was blood streaming from it. The knife he had brought into play had fallen to the ground. A second blow to his head put him on the ground with the first man. He was unconscious.

“Bad move,” Betsy said lightly.

The other men all moved in on her at once. They thought that they could overwhelm her with sheer numbers. It was a bad mistake on their part. One man received the butt of the shotgun to his face, breaking his nose and cheek bones. Another man received a bone breaking blow to his chest that snapped ribs and cut into his lungs. As a result of a leg sweep, the third man found that his knees no longer functioned and his legs wouldn’t support him. The fourth man, after a blow to his solar plexus, was gasping for breath on the ground.

Betsy casually stood over the fallen men. She kicked the last man rendering him unconscious.

She said, “We’re going to have to get a police force going again.”

The proprietor of the meat stand came over to her. He asked, “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine. They never touched me.”

“That was amazing,” the proprietor said.

“Not really.”

“What are we supposed to do with them now?” the proprietor said looking down at the men sprawled on the ground.

“That’s a good question,” Betsy said.

A man with half of his face covered with bandages and his arm in a cast limped over. He surveyed the downed men with a critical eye. He recognized a couple of the men and wasn’t surprised that they had attempted the robbery. He was surprised that one woman could take all six of them out like that.

He said, “Call 911 and let the National Guard take them off.”

“I wasn’t aware that 911 was functioning again,” Betsy said.

She glanced over at the vendor who was busy making a call on his cell phone. She assumed that he was calling 911. She turned back to the man with the bandages and examined him.

“Officially, it isn’t. I was over there this morning and they were trying to get it organized,” the man answered.

“You look like you were in bar fight and lost,” Betsy said.

The man answered, “I was clobbered during the riots on the second day of the fall. That was a very bad day to be a cop.”

He had been one of the policemen who had tried to stop the riots. Like everyone else, he had underestimated the anger of the crowd. He didn’t understand that the anger would turn against anyone who looked like an authority figure. He had gotten a broken bottle to the side of a head and a baseball bat to his arm. He felt lucky to have made it out of there alive.

“You were a cop?”

“Yes, I was,” the man answered. “You’re Betsy Carter.”

“Yes, I am.”

“I recognize you from the murder case.”

“I guess a lot of policemen recognize me because of that.”

“I wasn’t involved in that,” the man said uneasily.

Betsy said, “That’s good to know.”

“That was a horrible mess. To be quite honest, it angered me that some of my colleagues were involved in it. I was ashamed by it despite the fact that I wasn’t even involved in it. We should be protecting the victims of crimes and not the criminals.”

“Well, I must admit that I agree with that sentiment with protecting the victims.”

“There’s no one protecting anyone now,” the man said with a flat emptiness in his voice.

“You’re right. We need policemen, particularly now.”

“I don’t think you’ll find many trained officers who are willing to return to the force. I’ll never forget that riot. The people hated us and all we were trying to do was protect them,” the man said.

“They didn’t hate you, they were angry at the system you represented,” Betsy said.

“You didn’t see their faces,” the man said.

He still woke up with nightmares about that day. The twisted faces with lips drawn up in snarls barely looked human. It angered him that these were the people he was sworn to protect and they had turned on him like that. If he were ever in that situation again, he’d draw his service revolver and fire into the crowd.

Betsy said, “Yes, I did.”

Stepping back, the man asked, “You were one of the rioters?”

“No, I wasn’t,” Betsy answered. “I was at the downtown police station riot watching from a distance. There wasn’t much I could do to help you out until it was over. I organized the folks who got the wounded policemen to the hospital.”

Betsy had, in fact, ended the riot a lot earlier than it would have naturally come to a conclusion. From a safe place on a rooftop, she had shouted that there were good pickings over at a nearby strip mall. The mob had surged off to loot it.

She had spent a lot of time those first few days directing mobs away from where they were harming others to locations where the worst they could do was to damage property. While stopping the mob had been basically impossible as the police had discovered, controlling it was actually pretty easy to accomplish. The mindless mob followed any suggestion shouted loud enough to percolate through their fogged brains. She had tried to tire them out so that they would just give up and go home. Most did, a few just got angrier.

“That was you?”

“Yes,” Betsy answered tiredly. “It was a long day.”

“Thank you for your help.”

When the rioters had finally left, he had been laying on the ground curled in a fetal position trying to protect his face and broken arm from further abuse. He had flinched when an elderly man spoke to him about it being safe. It took some time for him to relax enough to uncurl his body and sit up. His arm was throbbing. His face was burning. There was a dull pain in his leg where he had been kicked.

One of his friends on the force had not been so lucky as him. His friend had been hit in the head with a bat and it was obvious that he wasn’t ever going to get up again. He felt something trickling down his cheeks and went to wipe it away thinking they were tears. His hand came away bloody.

The elderly man returned after a few minutes. The man had helped him stand and walked with him to the hospital. He had looked around wondering what had happened. Through vision blurred with blood, he saw that people, young, old, and in between, were helping other officers make their way to the hospital. He had limped his way there and then waited for treatment from the overworked and overstressed medical personnel who had remained on duty.

“That particular group ended up burning down an entire neighborhood before they were killed at the university,” Betsy said.

She had sent the mob in that direction after they had burned down the neighborhood. She knew that the people had stopped being a mob and had turned to something uglier by that time. Like rampaging barbarians, they had become marauders hell bent on raping and pillaging. Nothing and no one was safe from them as they burned a path through the city.

“I’m not going to say that I’m sorry to hear that they’re dead.”

Betsy said, “A lot of folks had dropped out of the mob by that time. Those that were left were bent on mindless destruction.”

A National Guard truck pulled up and three soldiers climbed out of it. Betsy recognized one of the men.

She smiled and said, “Hello, Sergeant Williams.”

“Hello, Betsy,” he replied. He looked down at the men on the ground. In a gruff voice, he asked, “I take it they tried to spar with you.”

“They tried something,” Betsy said.

“What did they do that required you to take them apart like this?”

“They tried to rob the little meat stand over there,” Betsy answered. “When I suggested that they drop their weapons and leave, they decided to convince me that I had done something stupid in making that suggestion.”

“They had weapons?”

“Guns and knives,” Betsy answered pointing to the items on the ground.

“Who else witnessed this altercation?” Sergeant Williams asked.

“I did,” the former police officer answered.

“What’s your name?”

“Mike Masters.”

“So what happened?”

“It was just like she said.”

“Did anyone else see it?”

The proprietor spoke up, “I was the one they were trying to rob.”

Another person spoke up. “I saw it all. They demanded that guy to hand over all of his meat. When the lady told them to leave they attacked her. She kicked their asses.”

“Would everyone who witnessed it, please raise your hand?”

A dozen bystanders in the crowd raised their hands.

Sergeant Williams shouted, “Did anyone see anything different?”

All the witness shook their heads in the negative. Sergeant Williams turned to the two soldiers with him and said, “Interview everyone. You know the procedure we’re to follow.”

“Yes, Sergeant.”

Betsy and Sergeant Williams chatted while the two soldiers interviewed all of the witnesses. It didn’t take too long for the interviews to take place. The witnesses all told essentially the same story.

Sergeant Williams said, “So that’s one count of armed robbery, one count of assault with a deadly weapon, and one count of stupidity each.”

“Is stupidity a crime?” Betsy asked with a raised eyebrow.

“No, but it should be,” Sergeant Williams answered with a weak smile.

Betsy said, “I was afraid that I missed something.”

Sergeant Williams knelt down and roused the man who had been knocked unconscious. He asked, “What happened?”

The man answered, “I want a lawyer.”

“You don’t have that right. Miranda rights have been suspended under martial law. You can tell us what happened or you can say nothing. You can question all statements said by others,” Sergeant Williams said.

“You can’t do that!”

“Yes I can. Now tell me what happened!”

There was that tone in his voice that only a Sergeant can achieve. It was a commanding voice that compelled unquestioning obedience.