The Systemic Series - Box Set

by K. W. Callahan

  I could see that the tracks led around the storage shed off in the opposite direction from where I’d approached the church’s back door. I cautiously followed them until I came to a small one-car garage that was attached to the side of the rectory. The main garage door was closed and faced out toward the street, so I avoided that area, but I noticed that there was a side door as well.

  The tracks I was following led to this door, which was closed. The door had a small diamond-shaped window at eye-level, so I moved to one side of it and waited. I held my breath and did a quick peak in through the window, but I quickly realized my effort was useless. Someone had painted the glass black from the inside so that it was impossible to see the interior of the garage.

  I swung my rifle around off my shoulder, holding it in one hand with my finger on the trigger while I slowly tested the door handle. It moved quietly side to side as I turned it, indicating that it wasn’t locked. I took this as a good sign because it would allow me to enter quickly and quietly, hopefully catching the two men off guard. I didn’t want any trouble. I was just hoping to get in, surprise the two bearlike monstrosities, get Joanna, and get out. I realized though that I was likely going to have to first somehow disable the men and tie or lock them up in order to give us some time to make it safely back to Will and Ray and give us a head start back home. Otherwise the Wardlaws would be back to their clan and their – or should I say, our – ATVs, and hunting us down before we made it more than a quarter mile. It was a thought I didn’t relish and knew it would make our encounter more difficult and extremely dangerous, especially if they didn’t comply with my demands, but I decided it was just something I’d have to deal with when I got to it. Maybe they’d just tied Joanna up and left her, I hoped.

  As I stood pondering, I realized that I was wasting valuable time and I had no idea what these two morons were doing to Joanna. The thought forced me to action. I checked that the safety was in the “off” position on my rifle, removed my glove so I could keep my finger tight on the trigger, took a deep breath, and turned the handle of the door, shoving it open and stepping inside, ready for anything.

  The interior of the garage was dark, but the dingy gray light from outside helped me make a quick scan of the area, listening as well as looking for any signs of movement.

  There were none.

  In the dim light, I could see boxes lining the walls, a snow blower in one corner, shelves that contained tools, gloves, jars, and cans, lining the far wall, and a closed door opposite me with two concrete steps leading up to it. I guessed that this door likely led into the rectory. There were bits of un-melted snow in a trail leading across the garage floor to the door’s steps.

  I moved silently through the garage and up to the door, my finger still tight on the trigger of my rifle. I paused in front of the door, my heart pounding wildly. I could hear faint sounds behind door, but I couldn’t make out what, if anything was being said.

  I gripped the door handle, turning it silently and pushing it open several inches. Peering through the gap between the door and frame, I could see a dark hallway before me. I pushed the door open wider and peeked around its edge. In front of me, I could see doors leading off to either side of the hallway. The door closest to me and on my right was ajar and seemed to be from which the sounds were coming. I couldn’t tell what the people inside were talking about or how many there were. I pushed the door open wide enough so that I could enter the hallway, but as I did so, there was a slight squeak from one of its hinges. The noises inside the room seemed to subside, and I held my breath, standing motionless, my rifle aimed at the open door ahead of me and to my right.

  I waited; then the sounds seemed to start up again.

  I slid between the door frame and the door itself. I was thankful that the hallway flooring was tile, which took away the concern of creaking wood floorboards.

  I crept forward to the open door and stopped, listening. I could sense movement inside and heard the sounds of breathing and a soft moan. Then I heard a voice say, “Yeah…get up on that shit.”

  I had a gut-wrenching feeling I knew exactly what was happening, and while I wanted to maintain the peace, there were some things that I just wasn’t willing to stand for.

  I quietly pushed the door open wider.

  Inside the room, I could see a twin-sized bed. Jim Wardlaw in his black and red checkered hunting coat was standing before the bed, pants dropped, bare-assed. His brother Joe was standing behind and just to the side of him, staring down at the bed. Around them, I could barely make out Joanna, splayed on the bed, unconscious, her bare legs exposed and spread around Jim Wardlaw’s thighs. Her winter pants were on the floor beside the bed.

  The rage I felt inside me was something I’d never experienced before. Even when we were attacked back at our camp in southern Illinois, I hadn’t felt the hatred for our attackers as I did for these two scumbags.

  I stepped inside the room. Neither of the two men noticed my presence.

  Jim Wardlaw bent down and smacked Joanna hard on the side of the face. “Wake up, bitch!” he said. “I want you to feel this.”

  Joanna moaned, her head moving back and forth and her eyes flickering open, but she looked dazed.

  Jim Wardlaw reached down to her naked waist and pulled her body down closer to where he stood at the end of the bed, dipping down and squeezing himself up between her thighs.

  I could tell that Joanna was still out of it, but it seemed as though she was starting to come around. Instinctively, she put her hands defensively out in front of her; but he leaned down over her, using his weight and his own meaty paws to hold her arms down against the mattress.

  His brother was standing entranced, chortling at his brother. “Hurry up,” he said. “I want my turn.”

  “Shut up!” his brother spat. “I wanna take my time. This one here is a pretty one.” Releasing his grip on one of her arms, he touched her face, squeezing her cheeks between the fingers of one of his huge hands. “Prettier than I’ve ever had,” he drooled. “I wanna remember this.”

  Joanna started mumbling and then opened her eyes wide as she began to realize what was happening. She let out a piercing scream and began to wiggle and writhe on the bed in an effort to escape.

  “Shut up!” Jim Wardlaw yelled, backhanding her hard across the face and instantly silencing her.

  That was it. I couldn’t take any more. I rushed forward and rammed the butt of my rifle as hard as I could into the back of Jim Wardlaw’s head. He dropped like a bag of bricks to his knees, then keeled over to one side and smashed face-first down onto the floor.

  Joanna struggled to sit up on the bed, and just as I prepared to turn to the other brother, I heard him say, “What the fuck?” as something hit hard across the side of my face, momentarily stunning me.

  I saw stars and I wasn’t sure if I’d been hit by a fist or something else, but I didn’t have time to figure it out. I suddenly felt big arms around me and the weight of the hefty Joe Wardlaw taking me down to the floor. His massive body landed on top of me, nearly knocking the wind out of me. My rifle dropped from my hands and clattered onto the floor beside me as I struggled to get out from under the weight of the enormous man.

  As my vision cleared, I could see the grizzly face of brother Joe leering down at me. “Who the fuck are you?” he breathed nastily into my face as he elbowed me in the gut and brought his other arm down on top of my throat, starting to cut off what little oxygen I was getting. I couldn’t have answered his question even if I wanted to, so I did the next best thing, bringing my knee up hard into his balls.

  He let out a massive groan, pulling his head back and squinting his eyes in pain as he shifted his weight. It was enough that I could use his momentum to push him to one side and roll him off of me.

  Being lighter and much more agile, and not having just been rocked in the nuts, I was up faster than he was. As he struggled to stand, I kicked him in the stomach and then hit him in the head with a right hand. I immedia
tely regretted the decision as I wasn’t sure what was hurt more, his head or my hand.

  “Ahh,” I cringed, felling as though I’d broken my hand in the process. I stepped back and kicked my foot into his still hunched form again, hitting him square in his broad chest.

  It didn’t seem to do much, and instead of him reeling backward onto the floor as I’d hoped, he caught my foot and shoved me back. I went stumbling backwards, tripping over the bulky body of his lifeless brother on the floor and landing against the edge of the bed. Joe then made a linebacker’s lunge forward, hitting me in the midsection and pinning me against the bed with his weight while simultaneously punching me in the stomach as his huge head collided with mine, clunking our noggins together like two coconuts, a collision from which I came out the loser.

  My vision blurred, and I was sure I was going to vomit. The time it took me to recover was enough for him to get one of his hands onto my throat. I coughed as he squeezed, my eyes watering. He made sure that he kept positioned so that I couldn’t make another free kick to his groin, and he kept my right hand controlled with his left. I flattened my left hand and brought it up palm first into his nose, which stunned him, leaving him to cough and sputter violently, but it wasn’t enough to get him to release his strangle-hold. I was rapidly choking to death, so I hit him again, and then again, but it still wasn’t enough.

  I’d just decided to go after his eyes with my fingers when I saw a flash of movement next to me. I figured it was his brother and calculated that with him re-entering the fight, I had just moments to live. Then I felt someone tugging at my waist as I saw another flash of movement beside me. Suddenly there was a strange gurgling sound as the brother’s grip on my neck at first tightened, then relaxed, and then released altogether before he fell back onto the floor convulsing.

  As my vision began to clear, I did a quick wipe of my eyes to see Joe Wardlaw lying on his back on the floor, choking on his own blood that spewed from his neck and mouth. My hunting knife jutted from his neck. Joanna knelt trembling, half naked on the floor beside him.

  I moved fast. I wasn’t sure how much noise we’d made in our struggle and I didn’t want others arriving on the scene. I grabbed Joanna’s pants and her shotgun leaning against the far wall. Then I helped her to her feet, threw her pants on her as best I could in her still dazed state, and gathered up my rifle, slinging it over my shoulder along with the Joanna’s shotgun. Hurriedly, I grabbed her boots as the still dying Wardlaw writhed on the floor beside us, and helped her on with them. I didn’t take the time to lace them up. Then I pulled one of her arms up and over my neck for support.

  As we stepped over the still-dying man who now lay in a pool of his own blood, I steadied Joanna against the room’s doorframe. “You okay here on your own for a second?” I asked her.

  She swayed unsteadily but nodded that she was as she leaned heavily against the side of the doorframe. I left her there as I turned back to Jim Wardlaw, where I bent over, reached down, and ripped my hunting knife from his neck. I paused just a moment to watch the blood spew from the wound and his body go limp. I had to say, I didn’t feel one ounce of remorse. His brother still lay motionless beside him on the floor.

  Quickly, but as quietly as we could, we made our way out to the connected garage where we laced up Joanna’s boots. She was coming around now and could better assist me with the process.

  As we worked, I asked without looking at her, “You okay?”

  She didn’t answer.

  I took a quick glance up at her face, but she wasn’t looking at me, she was just focused on tying one of her boots.

  I decided not to press the issue.

  “Come on,” I said, standing and taking her by the arm. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

  * * *

  It took us about 25 minutes to get back up the hill to where Will and Ray were waiting for us. I kept looking behind us for signs that we were being followed, but there were none.

  Finally reaching the hilltop, panting and out of breath, I said, “We’ve got to move.”

  “What’s up?” asked Will.

  “I’ll tell you as we go, but we’ve got to get out of here…quick.”

  Will and Ray exchanged worried glances and then looked at Joanna who stood silently staring down at the snow. I realized now that we were both covered in blood. It must have sprayed onto us when Joanna had stabbed Joe Wardlaw with my hunting knife.

  But Will and Ray didn’t wait around for explanations, instead moving quickly to gather up their weapons and follow us down the hill and back around to the other side of town where we’d tied up our supplies in the tree.

  Along the way, I told them what I’d learned about the group by my listening inside the church and how we’d encountered the two Wardlaw men. I didn’t get into exactly what had happened with Joanna. I just told them that the Wardlaw’s had captured her and that in the process of trying to rescue her, things had gone bad and we’d ended up killing at least one of the men…maybe both, we weren’t sure.

  We then discussed how the rest of the community and the Wardlaws’ other family members might react to the discovery of the two men, but it was all conjecture. All we knew for sure was that we needed to get back to the castle as quickly as possible since these people had vehicles that could traverse the snow a heck of a lot faster than we could on foot. And while we were concerned about our own safety, we could hold our own. We were more concerned about the citizens of Tipton reaching our homestead before we did and exacting their revenge upon our loved ones.

  CHAPTER 17

  It was mid-afternoon and Claire was helping Sharron in the greenhouse garden. She was getting quite the green thumb herself by spending extra time assisting her sister-in-law. Today, it was mostly more monotonous work, building some new planters, repairing old ones, and later in the afternoon, heading outside to try to chisel some fresh soil from the frozen ground to thaw for filling their newly created planting beds.

  It was as she was pounding a final nail into the corner of a repaired planter that from the corner of her eye she noticed shadows moving past the steam-covered windows of the greenhouse and around toward the castle’s back door. Claire immediately felt a mixture of emotions flow through her – there was hope and excitement that it was her husband who’d come back to her, paired with a combination of nerves and fear that it could be trespassers come to invade their home. She pulled a spare handgun she now carried with her at all times from her waistband and moved to where the greenhouse door met with the castle’s interior.

  On the way, Claire caught Sharron’s attention, silently motioning her to pick up the rifle she’d leaned carefully against one glass wall of the greenhouse and follow her.

  Claire paused at the greenhouse door, waiting for Sharron. “I saw movement outside,” she whispered. “Cover me,” she told Sharron, who clicked off the rifle’s safety and chambered a round.

  Claire moved stealthily out of the greenhouse and into the short hallway that divided the family room from the kitchen. The kids were all in the family room doing their morning schooling with Emily and Pam. She wanted to put herself between them and the back door.

  She and Sharron crept along the wall nearest the door, listening. She could hear someone trying the doorknob, and as she stuck her head around the corner to take a look, her heart leapt into her throat. She realized that when Frank, her father-in-law, had come inside from collecting wood, he’d not only failed to put the wooden “burglar bar” security device back up against the door, but he hadn’t even locked the door itself.

  As the door began to open, she moved to center herself before it, standing about ten feet away. There, she took aim, tightening her finger on her weapon’s trigger. Sharron was standing, partially concealed behind the wall beside Claire, rifle ready and held out around the corner, aimed dead-center at the door.

  The door slowly opened.

  “Jesus! Don’t shoot!” Will yelled, seeing Claire and ducking down and to the left, o
ut of the line of fire of Claire’s gun.

  Ray was just behind him and swiftly jumped backwards and outside, nearly knocking Joanna down in the process.

  Claire heaved a huge sigh of relief and quickly lowered her weapon, rushing forward to greet the freshly arrived patrol. She ran right past Will and outside, flinging herself into my arms.

  “Don’t worry…I’m fine,” Will called to her as she ran past, picking himself up off the ground where he immediately found himself throttled by Sharron who had traded her rifle for armfuls of husband.

  There was the sound of yelling inside the castle, and soon the rest of the house rushed us, bombarding us with hugs and millions of questions about what we’d seen and done.

  Walking inside, it felt so good to be back, and strangely, I don’t think I’d ever felt more comfortable or more at ease walking into any other home in my life.

  As I hugged Claire tightly, I noticed Joanna move quietly past me, hugging Shane up close to her and taking him inside by herself. I was concerned about her. She’d hardly said a word the whole way back, but now wasn’t the right time to try to help. I got the feeling that she needed some time to work things out on her own. And after our little encounter back in Tipton, I didn’t want to appear so overly concerned that she began thinking I was starting to have feelings of my own for her.

  All duties and chores were temporarily dropped. The kids schooling was finished for the day and regular chores were postponed to hear of our adventure.

  I’d already explained what I’d overheard inside the church to Will, Ray and Joanna, and how my hopes for a peaceful meeting with Richard the preacher had been crushed by the Wardlaw boys. But after we’d unloaded our packs and had a bite to eat, I went ahead and gathered the rest of the group in the family room to rehash the whole – well, maybe not the whole – scenario. I of course left out the part about Joanna on the bed. Instead, I just said that she’d been captured, and in rescuing her, at least one of the Wardlaw boys had been killed.