The Systemic Series - Box Set

by K. W. Callahan

Joanna and I snuck our way back down the alley running behind Tipton’s downtown and headed for the church. Then we skirted around a nearby house and its adjoining garage and made our way stealthily to the back of the church’s rectory where we took shelter behind a small storage shed.

  From our position, we could see both the rectory as well as the back of the church itself. There appeared to be a rear entrance that led into the church but was closed.

  “Think we should try the back door?” Joanna asked.

  I found it kind of weird talking to Joanna now, but what had passed between us moments ago seemed not to have fazed her at all. I however, found my mind thoroughly in the gutter as now I pondered whether her question was meant as some sort of dirty euphemism.

  I really didn’t want to risk trying the church’s door only to find out that it was unlocked and led directly into the main area of worship where twenty-some unfriendly faces might be awaiting us. “No,” I shook my head. “Too risky.”

  “What then?” she said.

  I shrugged. “Hell if I know. This isn’t exactly my forte. Planning and preparing and all that stuff, I’m good at. But recon and sneaky spy shit ain’t really my bag.”

  “Want me to try it,” she challenged, giving me a sly grin.

  “No,” I frowned, my shoulders sagging under my multiple layers of winter clothing as I realized the responsibility was going to fall upon me whether I wanted it to or not. “I’ll do it.”

  I hesitated, thinking.

  While I wondered whether I should go in with my rifle or just take my sidearm so as not to appear overly antagonistic, the back door to the church opened. Joanna and I both pulled back further behind the cover of the storage shed, but we continued to watch as a large hulking fellow wearing a red and black-checkered winter coat, Russian-style fur-trimmed hat, blue jeans, and work boots exited, paused just outside the door, and lit a cigarette. He inhaled deeply and exhaled in a cloudy mixture of smoke and vaporous warm breath.

  I was instantly glad for my hesitation. I’m not sure how I would have reacted had I met this man face to face at the door. Would I have shook his hand or shot him? Would he have punched me in the face or invited me inside to his place of worship? They were questions that I was glad I didn’t have to answer.

  Joanna and I waited patiently – crouched, silent – for the man to finish his cigarette. He was a scruffy looking younger man, yet his bulk made him look older. As a first impression, he didn’t look all that friendly. He hocked up a loogie and spit a huge wad of mucus onto the snow, then rearranged the crotch of his pants and farted loudly. It wasn’t necessarily something that made me want to just wander right over and casually introduce myself.

  After a few minutes, the man dropped his cigarette butt in the snow, turned, and went back inside. I watched as he re-entered the church. It was hard to see from a distance, but it appeared that by the way the man’s legs moved upward and out of sight as he entered the building that there was a staircase just inside the door.

  I couldn’t see anyone else inside.

  As I focused my attention back to the door itself, I noticed that while it had slowly swung shut behind the man, it didn’t appear to have latched completely.

  “Okay,” I said to Joanna, “I’m going to give it a shot. Cover me, and be ready for anything.”

  She looked less confident now and just nodded wordlessly.

  “Anything goes wrong, just get the hell out of here and try to link back up with Will and Ray.”

  She remained silent.

  “Hear me?” I said. “No hero bullshit, okay?”

  She gave me a little nod, but didn’t make eye contact. I was worried more now that I knew about her feelings toward me. I was afraid her emotions could get in the way and cause her to do something stupid or dangerous.

  “I’m serious,” I said.

  “Okay, just shut up about it. I got it,” she replied. “I know what do to.”

  I turned back to the door. “Here goes nothing,” I said.

  I felt Joanna’s hand rest upon my back and then it was gone as I darted across the clearing between the shed and the church.

  Reaching the church, I backed up against the wall beside the door and waited, holding my breath and listening. I reached out slowly and took hold of the door’s handle, pulling it lightly so that it opened just a crack. I peeked inside, but it was hard to see. I listened again. Hearing nothing, I pulled the door open another inch.

  It was dark, but I could see a small boot-room just inside with a half flight of stairs that led upstairs as well as down. I eased my way silently inside the entry area, letting the door close – but not latch – behind me. While it’d been a while since I’d been inside a church, I immediately noticed that clean “church” smell.

  The downstairs of the church was dark, but the upstairs had a landing at the top and was well lit, so I crept noiselessly up to the top of the steps and waited again, listening. There was an open door to my right that led into a darkened room. A long, linoleum-tiled hallway stretched ahead of me, down which I could make out the faint sound of voices.

  I crept along the hallway, my eyes flickering between what lay before me and the tile floor. I didn’t want a misstep leading to a creak, a crack, or a slip that could give away my presence, but I also didn’t want to be caught off guard by someone else heading outside for a cigarette.

  As I moved forward, the sound of talking grew louder.

  About a quarter of the way down the hallway, there was a door on my right that was open maybe three inches. I paused beside it to sneak a peek.

  The door opened directly onto a stage. In front of this, I could see two rows of pews extending back about ten deep. People sat scattered among them, many of them still wearing their winter gear since it was about as cold inside the church as it was outside. I angled my way around the door so that I could get a better look of the person who was talking. I could see a man standing at a pulpit near the center of the stage addressing the onlookers. He looked to be in his mid-30s, and unlike his audience, appeared relatively clean cut. He wore nicely-fitted blue jeans, a white dress shirt, and a blue suit jacket. He was going on about how they all needed to remind themselves that the illness that had swept through was God’s will – a way of cleansing the earth and riding us of the sins of the modern world. And that while some of our loved one’s had been claimed in the process, they were now in a better place. This was all part of God’s grand plan, he continued, in order to better those left behind and make them stronger.

  I stopped listening at this point and began surveying the rest of the church. Directly across the stage from where I was standing, and beside where the “Preacher” as I had deemed him, was speaking, there was another door. Down from this a little ways, toward the front entrance of the church, was a balcony section that overlooked the seating area and faced the stage.

  I retreated from my position near the door and continued further down the hallway toward the front of the church. At the hallway’s end, it turned and split, one way going right and to the front entrance and the other way going left to a stairway. I quietly made my way up the stairs which led to the balcony. At the top of the stairs, I laid my rifle down on the floor, and got down so that I could belly-crawl along the floor until I reached the balcony’s banister-style edge. From this vantage point, I could peer between the open spindles that created the dividing ledge, only exposing a small portion of my face in the process.

  I felt relatively secure in my position overlooking the church floor. The audience was facing the Preacher and had their backs to me, and the Preacher’s attention was focused solely on his flock before him, not the balcony.

  “Now is the time in our weekly gathering at which I open the floor to your questions and comments,” said the Preacher.

  Several hands in the audience went up.

  “Hank Lowry,” he pointed at one of his flock. “What would you like to say?”

  The man, who had gray hair, was wearing a
dull green army coat and appeared as though he was somewhere in his 60s or maybe even 70s – although I couldn’t see the entirety of his face – stood and said, “Have you, or has anyone here,” he looked at the rest of the people sitting around him, “heard anything from towns outside of Tipton? Has there been any news from Nashville, Knoxville, Asheville…anywhere?”

  Then he sat back down.

  “Well, I personally haven’t heard anything,” the Preacher replied. “And I’m sure that if anyone else here had, they’d certainly have let us know.” He paused and waited, surveying those gathered. “Apparently not then,” he continued after a moment. “Who else?”

  More hands went up.

  “Sarah Truesdale,” he pointed at one of the raised hands.

  A woman who looked like she was wearing about three coats and had a red shawl wrapped around her back and head stood. “We’re almost out of food,” she said. My little one,” she pointed to a little bundle of cloth that must have been a small child or baby, “he cries all the time because he’s hungry. We need more food,” she said, exasperated and sounding as though she might cry. “The Wardlaws brought us some deer meat ‘bout a week ago, but since then, we haven’t got anything, and you promised last Sunday that there’d be provisions coming. I don’t have a husband. I don’t have other family. I got no one to fend for me and my little one,” she pleaded.

  There were mumbles of agreement among the crowd.

  The Preacher nodded, “I know, I know. I’m working on it. The wildlife has been scarce around town lately and we didn’t kill or trap as much as we thought we would…but we’re working on it.”

  “That’s what you said last week,” someone interjected. “We’re starving, and you’re giving us nothing. That wasn’t the deal you made with us when you took over.”

  The Preacher raised a hand, “First off, no one took over,” he said calmly. “Remember, you all voted that I was to make decisions for the group when this thing started, and up until now, things have been running pretty smooth, haven’t they?”

  There were a few murmurs of agreement among the crowd and some more muttering. It sounded far from a consensus.

  “I just need a little more time,” the Preacher went on.

  There was a loud snort from one of the back pews and a big monster of a fellow who was wearing a black and red checkered hunting coat and sat among four other sizeable individuals stood up. I recognized him as the smoke break guy that Joanna and I had seen outside earlier.

  “We always give you more time, but you don’t seem to do nothin’ with it,” he bellowed. “Only reason poor widow Truesdale here got that meat last week is ‘cause we brought it to her.”

  “And how did you happen to come across that meat?” the Preacher asked, sounding less than pleased and as though he already knew the answer.

  “Don’t matter,” the big man said.

  I was listening intently now, my interest piqued by this dissention among the group.

  “It does matter,” the Preacher shot back. “You stole it, Jim Wardlaw.”

  Now I was really interested.

  “You stole it from our neighbors up on the mountaintop and that’s not the Christian way to go about things.”

  “The same neighbors don’t nobody know and who’s stealin’ all the game up there from us!” someone from the Wardlaw section shouted out.

  “You forget,” Jim Wardlaw went on, “that man Coughlin, he owed our family. We did a lot of work for him up there cuttin’ trees, clearin’ brush…all sorts of stuff that we never got paid for. He owes us…his estate owes us. We got a right to reclaim somethin’ from up there in payment.”

  “That Mr. Coughlin owed you might be true, but that doesn’t give you the right to steal food that those people rightfully killed themselves,” the Preacher countered. “They have nothing to do with Coughlin or his estate.”

  I was starting to like this Preacher guy, whoever he was.

  “Bullshit,” a big man wearing a blue mechanic’s jacket and who was sitting beside Jim Wardlaw bellowed, standing up. “They’s livin’ up there, ain’t they? They’s takin’ what ain’t theirs, ain’t they? My brother and me got the right to take whatever we need to feed our family and feed the rest of these good people. We ought to just go up there and take what they got in that place. It’s owed us anyway. They got nice shit up there. Ya see, we’re willin’ to do what it takes to survive, but you don’t seem willin’ to do that, Richard. Maybe it’s time to have a new vote on who should be runnin’ this town.”

  “That’s more than fine by me, Joe Wardlaw,” said Richard the preacher. “Just remember who got you all through the flu in the first place and has kept you alive this long. Remember, Jim and Joe Wardlaw, who treated your mother when she got ill and was laid up in bed for nearly two weeks. He turned to another section of pews and motioned to a group, “And who brought you food and firewood when your fire went out and your bellies were empty, Ann and Gary Rice. And who got rid of those trespassers from the highway who came in here and tried to steal our food and who killed John Andrews right in his own home,” he addressed the crowd. He looked around the room, “You want a new leader, that’s fine. Just remember, there aren’t many people here who will stick their necks out for you like I have.” Then he paused, “Well then, all in favor of having an election for a new group leader, raise their hands.”

  Every hand in the Wardlaw section went up along with a few others sprinkled around the pews.

  “I count eight,” said Richard, the preacher. “As we all know, we make decisions here based upon a majority vote, so the motion to elect a new group leader fails.”

  There was a commotion in the back as Jim and Joe Wardlaw pushed their way from their pew and exited the room out through the side door into the hallway through which I’d entered the church.

  Richard did his best to pacify his flock. “I know times are tough, but we’ve been through worse than this. We know that God will provide. Sometimes we just have to work a little harder and wait a little longer than we’d like. But this abstinence makes us appreciate the bounty he offers to us all the more when it arrives. This winter has been especially harsh, but we have new traps laid out and Larry and Tim Balcus and I will be going out hunting this afternoon. So please, keep your hopes up. We must stay strong and come together to weather this storm. The spring will be upon us soon and with it, we’ll be able to plant crops, fish in the local streams and ponds, and hunt a variety of wildlife in our bountiful mountains. And now I ask you to bow your heads once more in prayer.”

  After a brief prayer to the lord asking him to watch over them and bring them provisions, Richard discussed some housekeeping matters related to food inventories, medical supplies, and a schedule for hunting, wood harvesting, and water collection. It sounded amazingly like the meetings we held back at the castle, and I was tempted to go down and introduce myself after hearing how we were viewed as “the outsiders up on the mountaintop,” but I was concerned about the Wardlaws. They seemed like a powerful and somewhat unpredictable segment of the group here, and I didn’t want to fracture this already divided community any more than it already appeared to be. However, Richard seemed reasonable and level headed. And I hoped that if I could get him alone after the meeting adjourned, I might have a chance of at least introducing myself and explaining our situation. In so doing, we might even be able to come to an agreement regarding what to do about the people – who I now assumed to be the Wardlaws – stealing from us. I also assumed that it was them who had taken the ATVs, but I was willing to look the other way on both the stolen vehicles and the missing meat if it meant that the two groups could peacefully co-exist and maybe even help one another.

  After another minute or so, when I was fairly sure nothing more of importance was going to be discussed, I decided it was probably a good time to make my retreat back outside to rejoin Joanna. I figured that we could hide out in the storage shed until the majority of the group left in hopes that Richard would ha
ng around and that maybe he lived in the rectory, at which point we could safely and privately introduce ourselves.

  I made my way cautiously back down the balcony stairs and out to the hallway that led to the church’s rear entrance. I was careful since I didn’t want to meet up with Jim and Joe Wardlaw. Thankfully, they were nowhere in sight. I figured they’d beat it out the back door and hopefully back home, but I remained cautious nonetheless.

  The church’s rear exit was cracked open as I came to it, and I peered outside, listening and making sure the Wardlaws weren’t outside smoking. Hearing and seeing nothing allowed me to breathe a slight sigh of relief. I really didn’t want to be trapped between the exiting church members and the Wardlaws, but there was no sign of the two men.

  I slipped through the door and outside, careful to leave it slightly ajar, just as I had found it. I was back around behind the storage shed in seconds, ready to explain my plan to Joanna – but Joanna nowhere to be seen.

  I pulled the storage shed door open, figuring that she had gotten tired or cold and ducked inside for cover, but she wasn’t inside either.

  I went back outside, closing the storage shed door behind me. It was then that I noticed the tracks in the snow around the spot Joanna and I had been taking cover – tracks that hadn’t been there before I’d entered the church and that didn’t match those of either me or Joanna.

  I immediately felt my stomach start to churn as my plans for an easy and amicable meeting with Richard, before plodding back home to the safety of our castle retreat, began to fade. I hoped that Joanna had maybe just been scared off by the two Wardlaw brothers when they came outside and had made a run for it back to Will and Ray. But as I inspected the tracks more carefully, they appeared to indicate a struggle had taken place.

  I had to face reality. The Wardlaws had taken Joanna.

  CHAPTER 16

  As I stood staring at the ground, trying to envision what had taken place and looking for indications that Joanna might have been injured in the process, I pondered just where Jim and Joe Wardlaw might have taken her. I studied the tracks surrounding the patch of snow that had been packed down by Joanna as she had crouched waiting for me. I felt guilty now for leaving her alone outside, but I had thought the danger lay inside, not out.