Logan Quarters

He awoke, sweating profusely and panting like an overheated Doberman, aware that the dream was too real, too intense. He rose frantically racing to his bedroom door, swinging it open as if trying to lift it off of its hinges and ran down the hall to the far room. Logan thrust the door open only to be relieved that his sons were still sleeping soundly and contently. Logan Quarters was never a man to show his emotions, but he slumped down in the doorway, staring at his two boys and began to softly cry. Despair quickly overwhelmed him and the tears became more prevalent as he hung his head down with thick dreadlocks cascading into his face. Damn that dream he thought.

“Daddy, what’s wrong,” said his eldest son, Malcolm, groggily waking from sleep not knowing why his father was slumped over. Logan quickly wiped his eyes and steadied his voice to answer his son. The dream so disturbed him that he did not want to give the impression that it unnerved his very soul and that a sense of dread permeated his being.

“Nothing son. I thought I heard a noise in here, but it was my imagination. You know I get jumpy sometimes,” whispered Logan with a hint of uneasiness. He made his way to Malcolm’s bed and kissed him lightly on the forehead and pulled the sheets to the nape of his neck. He then turned to his youngest son, Tariq, and repeated the same routine. As he moved to the front of the doorway, he looked back at his two princes and wondered how much they looked like their mother. She would be so proud of how they are turning out. Wide-awake and not ready to return to his king size modern age bed, Logan walked delicately across the hard wood floor, careful not to disturb the boys, into the kitchen to pop open a Heineken. It was 1 o’clock in the morning and nothing was on t.v.except for vulturing infomercials hovering over insomniacs’ lack of nocturnal rest. This was his fourth night of lack luster sleep, along with the re-occurring nightmare, so t.v. was a welcome diversion.

Logan was a solidly built black man in great shape from his years as an Army Ranger. Not Denzel Washington handsome but he held his own when it came to the opposite sex and besides, his neck length dreadlocks and goatee made him mysterious in some women eyes. Lazily swinging his leg over his favorite armchair that he bought when he was a bachelor, Logan took another swig of his Heiney and proceeded to settle in his seat for a long night of mindless television. Thoughts were chasing every avenue and corner of his mind struggling to release the meaning of this constant dream that was so overwhelming that he began to dread sleep. The same nightmarish image of his boys being led into a dark tunnel with soldiers surrounding them, guns drawn and cocked, ready to extinguish their very life force of existence, while other soldiers heed his attempts to liberate them from their captors.

Breath became shallow and quick along with perspiration soaking his dark, muscularly etched body giving indication that he was starting to hyperventilate. Rushing to the window and hoisting it open, Logan was able to breathe deeply fresh winter air into his lungs to fight off his near panic attack. The color began to reappear on his face and his breathing slowed to a normal rhythm, however, his mind still flooded with the images.

No one will take my boys he thought defiantly as he regained his composure, closed the window and rose to head toward his bedroom. When he reached the room, Logan made his way toward the closet and abruptly slid the clothes down the rack to the opposite end. A small, hidden door on the inside right of the closet popped open after Logan gingerly moved his hand across the top crease of the wall revealing the gap. Distant memories emerged from the farthest recesses of his subconscious while he stood there staring at old friends that were long forgotten.

Anchored to the wall by metal hooks were two gunmetal colored, 9mm Beretta 92 model pistols along with 10 magazines spread across the partition and various laser sights positioned parallel to the magazines. A shoulder strap with double gun sleeves draped a Styrofoam mannequin that stood in the back corner of the secreted compartment and a Kevlar anti-arsenal vest lay neatly in a government issued storage trunk awaiting orders from its meticulous caretaker.

Logan Quarters stood there in the opening with his forehead resting on his hands that were perched on the low overhead of the hideaway closet. Contemplation weighed heavily in his heart about the next move that he might have to take. Seeing the weapons and accessories were just a reassurance of his commitment to his sons. Promises he made to his beautiful wife and to himself were coming to a head and he knew that something or someone was coming. Would he be ready? Could he go back to that life? For the boys, it was about protecting them and if he had to revisit the killing, then it would be a necessary evil. A familiar decision that he was accustomed to making.

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The wind wailed pass the unmarked gray Crown Victoria with its non-descript hubcaps like the infamous banshees of Scotland calling out for the lost souls of the night. Detective Noel Forrest, sipping strong black coffee with a hint of mud, grudgingly shifted from side to side in the tattered black leather seats cursing the day he requisitioned this piece of crap car. Of all the nights to do a stakeout, it would be the coldest in Philadelphia and the tri-sate area’s history and the heater in one of Ford’s finest cars dies without even a goodbye.

Noel hated the cold. His 6’2’’ lanky frame and baldhead always made him susceptible to the high winds of a winter blast, which usually resulted in an ensuing head cold most of the time. He found it to be irritating and bothersome when interviewing a witness or interrogating a suspect. It’s hard playing good cop, bad cop when you’re sneezing your head off and snot is flying out of your nose in all directions.

It was one more month until he could squeeze his toes in the hot sand of Miami Beach away from all the muck and crap that he has floated above each passing day since joining the Force twenty years ago. Vacationing in sunny South Florida was his rejuvenating tonic. His fountain of youth removing the excess gray from his mustache that was increasingly turning white each day that he bothered to get out of bed.

Disillusionment grew at a steady pace after witnessing horror after horror of homicidal indulgence. Watching human carrion suck the life out of viable neighborhoods, only to be led down the bottom of a wooden crate filled with rotten garbage and stink was taking its toll on the seasoned veteran.

But as much as he grew tired of the destruction of the human race, his sense of commitment to the job would never let him retire. He had too much at stake to just give up. Twenty years of blood, sweat, and bullets has been poured into this community to rid it of malicious, exploitive vermin like the man he is watching in the shadows.