The Systemic Series - Box Set

by K. W. Callahan

  Meanwhile, Sharron discovered a bread-baking machine in the kitchen pantry that we powered with the generator and that she was able to use to make several batches of bread with the supplies that the home had on hand. And to most of the group’s amazement, even in the snow she was able to track down a variety of nuts still available from around the property’s vast forest. Many were spoiled, but she’d spend hours sorting through, cracking, and cleaning out the portions that were still edible or that could be pressed for their oils. She also found several trees from which she could collect persimmons for bread and preserves.

  During the first few weeks in our castle, it quickly became apparent that Will and Ray were great at hunting the area’s abundant wildlife. They kept our fridge well-stocked with a variety of meat that included deer, goose, rabbit, and squirrel.

  And everyone was staying reasonably warm with new winter wardrobes. Shortly after our arrival, we had robbed the huge walk-in closets of but a small portion of their ranks upon ranks of clothing. It took hours to sort through all the drawers, cabinets and organizers to find articles that matched with the group’s array of shapes, sizes, needs, and styles. With the vast selection of attire at our disposal, we were able to outfit all of the men and woman. Paul, Shane, and Jason were harder fits since there weren’t many options for smaller boys, but we were able to modify some of the girls clothing we found for Shane and Jason and use some of the women’s clothing like smaller shirts for Paul, although we didn’t tell him they were for women.

  Emily and Pam were able to create several clothing options for the boys and make alterations and adjustments to some of the adult’s clothing as necessary on the sewing machine they found in the crafts room upstairs. They worked their magic to create well-fitted and warm winter clothing for the boys, and even made small snowsuits for Jason and Shane so they could play outside occasionally while the adults toiled away on their chores. And while many of the clothing brands and fashions were a little outside our plebian realm of apparel knowledge and experience, we managed to make them work. This wasn’t to say though that Ray, Will, and I didn’t give each other some good-natured ribbing about a few of the undergarments and tighter or ill-fitting blue jeans we were forced by necessity to select for our wardrobes. When we hit the bikini-brief underwear drawer, I laughingly put Ray in charge, holding up a pair for him to see while telling him we’d finally found the hot-pink skivvies he’d been searching for all these years.

  And thus, we continued settling in to our new home; weeks in which we fell into a sort of contented complacency, finally being able to forget some of the troubles of the outside world.

  CHAPTER 11

  Having enjoyed such a lengthy period of quiet contentedness in the mountains of eastern Tennessee, it came as a severe shock to walk outside one sunny October morning and find vehicle tracks in the melting snow in front of the garage.

  In hindsight, I guess we shouldn’t have been that surprised, but it was an unwelcome discovery nonetheless. We had remained unbothered by the outside world for so long in our new home that it was an unpleasant surprise to realize that someone had made the effort to come all the way up to our castle. What made it even more worrisome was that they had been able to do so without our recognizing their presence.

  The tracks appeared to be from just one vehicle, but this did little to placate the fears that their unwelcome appearance instilled within us. The house was abuzz with questions. Who had come? When? What did they want? Did they take anything? Were they friendly or dangerous? Would they be back, and if so, would they bring others? What should we do? Could it have been the old owners?”

  While many of the others had questions, I knew exactly what we should do, and what we should have done long ago. The isolation of our mountain retreat and the amount of time we’d gone without visitors had only acted to further the sense of security I felt in our situation, a sense of security I now realized was misplaced. I owned up to the fact that I had faltered in my role as leader and securer of our new home.

  Thankfully, it didn’t appear that anything had been taken from the garage, and Ray thought he might have scared off whoever the intruders were when he’d come outside for a late-night cigar after everyone had gone to bed. He’d heard noises, but he figured it was just some of the deer that still made regular visits to the grounds surrounding the home, and had therefore ignored them. He told us that a little cigar smoke going down the wrong way had led him into a coughing fit, and the noises had stopped. Ray just figured he’d scared off the deer. Several minutes later, as he was going to bed, he said he could have sworn he heard a vehicle engine, but then figured it was just the generator kicking on and had dismissed the sounds.

  After a quick breakfast of bread and jam, we formed up a scouting party consisting of me, Will, Ray, and Dad. We armed ourselves and then went out to the garage. There, I located a child’s plastic sled I’d noticed in our previous search of the space, and onto it we loaded a chainsaw, some axes, several heavy steel chains, and a big combination padlock. We then headed out – me pulling the sled loaded with our supplies – down the drive for the long trek to the property’s front gate.

  We followed the vehicle tracks all the way back down the winding road. Before we even arrived at the front gate, it was easy to see from a distance that it was standing wide open, the vehicle tracks leading out to the main road and back in the direction of the small town of Tipton.

  I put Will and Dad on sentry duty while Ray and I reclosed the gate, chained it, and padlocked it. I knew it wasn’t a perfect fix, as anyone with some bolt cutters and a little time on their hands could get through the barrier, but it was just my first line of defense of several I had in mind. I figured that whoever had made the trip up to the property last night had probably expected to find the place empty and had likely been surprised to discover people inhabiting it. I hoped that this revelation would be enough to deter them from returning, but I wasn’t willing to chance it. Therefore, on our way back up, we used the chainsaw to fell several large trees – at hundred yard intervals – across the entry road. Again, it wasn’t a perfect defense, but since we weren’t planning on leaving anytime soon, we didn’t need the road clear, and this would halt any attempt at a swift entry by outsiders…in vehicles at least.

  But there was always the chance that people might come on horseback or on foot. I recognized that such an intrusion would take a lot longer, but in this day and age where the remaining population could find themselves with very little food or other supplies but with plenty of time on their hands, such a trip could certainly prove worthwhile, especially if the trespassers thought that we were well situated up here…which I had to admit, we were.

  Therefore, it was time to batten down the hatches a bit and get a little better organized. After we’d barricaded the entry road, we continued our preparations around the castle by hauling pieces of plywood and 2 x 4s from the garage inside the main house to secure the French doors and front entrance leading into the home. We also locked and chained the entry gate to the walled garden between the house and the garage. We left the back entrance to the home open and agreed as a group that this would be the only entry through which we would come and go. Meanwhile, Will rigged up a system to bar the back door when it wasn’t in use. First, he attached two steel brackets that bolted into the stone walls on either side of the door. Then he found a big piece of four-inch by four-inch wood post that he cut so that we could slide it across the door into place between the brackets to bar the entrance. It was quick and simple to remove when we needed access to the outside, and it definitely added more support to the door should outsiders attempt to break through.

  Then we set up what we called the “third-shift” schedule. Each week, two people were designated to work the third-shift watch. One person would take the 6 p.m. to midnight shift, and the other would take over the midnight to 6 a.m shift. We hoped that the shorter six-hour watch limits wouldn’t over-tax anyone and would make being up late at night more
manageable.

  The third-shift watch person would be stationed in the master suite office. This area had full view out over the front yard and also had access to the second-floor balcony that overlooked the garden and had an unobstructed line of sight all the way to where the entry drive met with the forest.

  We also sat down as a group and developed a plan should we have any unexpected visitors. The plan included a rendezvous point as well as secure positions we were all to man should we be attacked. We also included a fallback plan with “hold out” positions, which depending upon the direction from which we were being attacked, included the home’s basement levels, the third floor, or the garage’s upstairs guest quarters.

  While none of our plans were foolproof, we felt better at least having everyone on the same page and some security features in place.

  Even with all our efforts though, we weren’t prepared when tragedy finally struck. And we quickly discovered that the true danger would arrive in a form that we hadn’t been expecting; and worse yet, that it would come from within the confines of what we wrongly assumed was the safety of our secure castle.

  * * *

  We chalked Shane’s first bout of achiness and upset stomach up to indigestion. We were incorporating things into our diet such as squirrel, rabbit, goose, and other meats with which most of us had been largely unfamiliar just a few months prior. And we had all had our share of stomach and other digestive track issues as our bodies worked to acclimate to this new menu. Plus, we weren’t getting a lot of fruits and veggies, which didn’t help things. Thankfully, we had some vitamin supplements that helped us get many of our missing nutrients and especially our vitamin C to help stave off scurvy during these long winter months.

  However, as Shane began to spill his tiny tummy’s contents with regularity, and suddenly little Paul found himself not feeling so well either, we began to worry. Just because we were isolated, it didn’t mean we were immune to sickness. The real concern among the group quickly became determining exactly what sort of sickness this was. Was it just a stomach virus going around or something worse…something like the Su flu?

  After Paul, it was his sister Sarah, and then Claire’s mother Emily who came down with the sickness. We began to quarantine the sick upstairs on the third floor in the big crafts room, hauling mattresses from the guest rooms downstairs to make up beds for those who had fallen ill. We found the face masks that I’d brought along in my emergency supplies and some more out with the tools in the garage and passed them around to those assisting to care for our ailing family members.

  Joanna was the first to volunteer as nurse, but she was soon exhausted from tending to the kids’ constant requests and was in need of some relief.

  Pam volunteered next. The poor children lay in states of agitated sleep in which they tossed, turned, and moaned piteously, only arising occasionally to make the hurried trip to the bathroom where they either vomited violently or battled bouts of severe diarrhea. Emily just seemed to sleep more, and after the first few rounds of vomiting, lay largely in a comatose state, often shivering violently. Her only request was for more blankets to help keep her warm.

  We ran the generator to power several small portable heating units in an effort to keep the upstairs warm, and I cut up several garbage bags and taped them together to act as a stairway barrier between the second and third floors to help keep more of the warm air in. I did the same thing at the base of the stairs, the stairway itself acting as a sort of decontamination area between the quarantine unit on the third floor and the rest of the house. The person on nurse duty would work for several hours and then enter the decontamination area. There they would shed their clothes, put them in a garbage bag, seal the bag, don one of several robes awaiting them in the stairway, and then take their bag of clothing outside where the clothing would quickly be dumped in a bucket full of soapy boiling water. The person would then be hustled quickly through the garden over to the garage suite where they would wash themselves down with more warm soapy water. The icy-cold run from house to garage was one of which Polar Bear Club members would have been proud.

  We continually blasted the suite with heavy clouds of anti-bacterial spray to help kill any germs that may have managed to survive the trip over. But it was all for naught. One by one, we began to succumb. Thankfully, it didn’t appear to be the Su flu, but whatever it was, it was still a severe illness with flu-like symptoms.

  Soon, Joanna, Pam, Ray, Janet, and Claire joined the ranks of the ill upstairs. There were hardly enough of us left to care for all the sick, and those of us who did remain healthy or had recovered enough to help with the nursing duties, were exhausted from our efforts. This exhaustion in turn led to Mom and Dad joining the ranks of the bed ridden.

  Within two and a half days, the only ones who had not yet caught the virus were me and Cashmere, and I had a feeling it was only a matter of time before I got it. Will was sick, but he didn’t seem as bad off as the others, so he helped out where he could, largely taking over when I needed to take an occasional rest. By that point, I wasn’t even bothering to change my clothes anymore since the only person left to get sick was me.

  I was extremely worried about Claire. She wasn’t eating, and without nutrients, her blood-sugar levels were going bonkers. She was delirious and refusing water. I finally got her to drink a warm brew of water, salt, sugar, a little powdered drink mix we had left, along with a few lemon-drop candies I’d dissolved in the concoction in hopes of getting her blood-sugars back in line and her electrolytes up. It was my home-brewed version of warm Gatorade. And while it might not have been the tastiest beverage, it seemed to help.

  Claire’s mother wasn’t doing much better. She would drink water but then she’d vomit it right back up. And while the kids seemed to be recovering well, Emily seemed to be getting worse, sleeping most of the time.

  This is why it caught me all the more by surprise when I heard Will calling to me while I was on one of my five-minute breaks from nursing duty.

  I had set up my rest area down in the master suite, which was within earshot of the third floor stairway. Cashmere – who was growing ever more the trusted companion, like a faithful dog who rarely left my side – and I were sharing a piece of cooked goose and a couple crackers as our dinner. We were watching the sun set over the mountains on what had been a beautifully sunny day in which temperatures had nearly reached the 50 degree mark and had melted much of the snow.

  Hearing Will’s shouts, I rushed upstairs. Cashmere – who, by the way, we’d discovered was indeed a “her” – bounded along at my heels. A small bell that I had attached to her collar as a kind of tracker to help me find her in the vast mansion, jingled merrily as she followed along behind me.

  “What is it?” I huffed, out of breath after sprinting up the stairs.

  Will met me at the plastic sheeting covering the stairs, sweaty and pale. “It’s Mom,” he said. “She’s not breathing.”

  “What!” I said, darting inside the bedroom where mother was resting. “She’s not breathing or she’s having trouble breathing.”

  “She’s not breathing…at all!” Will relayed the vital information.

  I rushed to Mom and grabbed her arm, feeling for a pulse. I could see almost immediately that she’d indeed stopped breathing. My immediate thought was Claire. Claire knew CPR, but Claire was barely conscious and in no condition to help. Without Claire, I felt helpless. And there wasn’t much in the way of other help around.

  All I could think to do was ask loudly, “Does anybody know CPR?” There was silence. I looked around me. Other than Will, no one even seemed to be awake. Therefore, I bolted across to the hall to a bedroom where we’d put Janet, Joanna, and Shane after we ran out of room in the crafts room. “Does anyone know CPR,” I cried louder than I meant to but at a volume befitting the severity of the situation.

  Again, there was silence, but after a few seconds, there was stirring from one of the beds. A weak voice said, “I do.”

 
; It was Joanna.

  A wave of relief ran through me, but only for an instant as I realize that Joanna was hardly able to stand, let alone administer CPR. “If I carry you over to the other room, do you think you can tell me what to do?” I urged more than asked.

  “I…I guess so,” she said sounding tired and confused.

  I rushed over, literally ripping the covers off the poor woman, and gathered her up in my arms. I placed her on the bed beside Mom and she instructed me as best she could while I worked frantically to revive the woman who’d given me life.

  After a minute, and just as I began to think things were over, we got a pulse. I shushed Will and Joanna and put my head to Mom’s chest where I could hear a soft heartbeat.

  I fell back onto the bed beside Joanna, exhausted and relieved, but my respite would be short lived.

  “What’s that?” Will said, walking over to one of the windows that overlooked the front of the house and cocking his head to listen. “Sounds like an engine,” he said.

  “Shit!” I said, jumping up. “Look after Mom!” I cried to him and Joanna.

  I raced back downstairs, pulling the .44 I now kept on me at all times from my waistband.

  By the time I made my way all the way down to the first floor and outside, it was too late. I watched as two men in camouflage hunting suits rode away on our ATVs through one of the garage doors that they had apparently forced open.

  I fired several warning shots into the air as they disappeared down the entry drive, not wanting to hit either of the men. First off, I didn’t think stealing an ATV was worth killing someone over, although it certainly got my blood boiling that they were brazen enough to do so in broad daylight. I also didn’t want to bring any reprisals down upon us. I had no idea where these men had come from and how many others there were, but I sure as hell wanted to let them know that we were well aware of their presence, weren’t appreciative of their act of thievery, and were armed and willing to use our weapons if provoked.