The Systemic Series - Box Set

by K. W. Callahan

  I was sick and tired of the cold. I had hated the months between the holiday season and spring before the flu destroyed the world, and I hated them even more now that I had to sleep outside and be on the constant lookout for shelter, food, and fuel.

  Before taking my nap, I crawled quietly into the tent. Dad was reading a copy of Great Expectations he’d brought with him from the castle. Everyone else was sleeping. I quietly snuck several of the trash bags containing blankets from within and distributed them to those of us who would be bedding down in our self-constructed huts. I assisted Sharron get Will comfortable inside their hut while Ray and Pam headed to their tiny sleeping hole carrying their bedding with them.

  The wind blew, and I shivered. I felt a rain drop on my head, and then several more plunked down.

  Claire and I took a minute to set out containers to catch rain for boiling later. With so many to keep hydrated, water was a precious commodity. And without knowing whether there was a good fresh water source nearby, we needed to collect as much as we could when it rained. We currently had two, maybe three day’s supply left at best.

  “Come on,” I said, taking Claire by the hand. “Let’s get some sleep before the kids wake up.”

  As we crawled into our little hovel, it started to pour. “Just in time,” Claire said. “Guess we’ll get to test our work.”

  “Guess so,” I said. “Hope we don’t find ourselves underwater soon,” I said.

  We maneuvered ourselves inside our cramped quarters and wriggled under our blankets. There, we snuggled up tightly together, holding each other close. Cashmere chose the high ground, crawling up on top of us as we lay on our sides and settling into the hammock our blankets made as they gapped the small crevice between our bodies. We could hear the rain start to pound down around us and the wind whisper through the pine trees, trying but failing to wiggle its icy fingers into our little dwelling.

  We had cut several fresh boughs from young pines to help block our entrance – our door of sorts. Wedging four of them across our entry hole worked well to keep cold air out, warm air in, and block outside light too.

  As crappy as our situation was, in a weird way, it was also kind of cozy.

  For a few minutes, I lay there thinking. I thought about what needed to be done. I then began ranking my list in order of importance. We needed to find a fresh water source. We needed to search the surrounding area to insure that it was secure and that no other people who might pose a threat lived nearby. We needed to search for food, especially for Sharron since we were down to largely meat as rations. We needed to find more fuel to get to our next destination. It’d be good if we could hide the vehicles, but considering they were completely out of fuel, it might be more trouble than it was worth. Still, I didn’t want people stripping them for parts in the event that we found more gas.

  I was asleep before I made it any further in my mental list. The only time I remember waking over the next few hours was during an explosion of thunder that rumbled our tiny lodgings. I quickly fell back asleep to the soothing pitter-pat of heavy raindrops, Claire’s arm tight around my midsection as she pressed herself up against me.

  When I woke next, the rain had stopped and Claire was gone. My body felt like it just wanted to lay there and fall back asleep, but I knew there were things to do. I could hear the chatter of voices and the laughter of children outside. I wriggled feet first out of our hut to discover the clouds gone and the sun out. It was still chilly, but the sunlight breaking through the treetops was a welcome sight.

  People were hard at work and I felt momentarily guilty about sleeping through their efforts. Claire, Paul, and Sarah were making the rounds, collecting all the partially-filled water containers and dumping them into a metal bucket for boiling. Joanna and Shane were collecting dry firewood from beneath our plastic covering and working on getting a campfire going. Ray was cutting mid-sized limbs and hauling them over to where Pam, Sharron, and Dad were trimming them down and making a pile of smaller twigs and vines.

  I walked over to where they sat. Dad was supervising.

  “What are you working on?” I asked him.

  “We’re trying to develop a sort of hybrid stretcher slash cot for Emily,” he said. “We want something to be able to move her on more easily and at the same time be able to put up on a base so that she can be outside with us. Poor thing is bored out of her mind and lonely always being left behind while we go off to work.” Then he lowered his voice, “And I don’t know how much more I can stand reading Great Expectations to her,” he grimaced.

  “That’s a great idea,” I said.

  “I thought so,” said Dad. “So we’re trying to use two long poles with a soft bed of thatched weaving in between as the stretcher. Then we were thinking of making several X-shaped cross pieces with sharpened bottoms as supports that could be shoved into the ground to hold up the stretcher when she’s outside with us.”

  “Fantastic,” I nodded.

  “And…” Sharron said, putting her weaving down, “…we’re also working on improving Will’s crutches. It won’t be anything too fancy, but I’m going to tie some material here as padding to ease the pressure on his underarms,” she pointed to the top of the crutch.

  “Wow! You guys really got to it,” I said, smiling. “Maybe I should sleep late more often.”

  Ray was back with some trimmings to be used in the weaving of Emily’s stretcher. “You going to be up for a recon mission here in a little bit?” I asked him.

  “Sure thing,” he nodded. “Just got to cut a few more pieces for our weaving crew and they should have enough to keep them busy for a while.”

  Meanwhile, Joanna and Shane had gotten the fire going. She then brought Shane over and set him up to help strip leaves and small protrusions from the fresh branches and saplings that Ray had cut for weaving.

  “I think it’d be better if we used a couple teams for the recon,” she offered. “We could break up and scout several different directions at once. We seem pretty secluded out here and it could take us a while to cover the surrounding area in its entirety.”

  I thought about it. I didn’t really like the idea since it would mean putting more people at risk, but at the same time, she was right. Ray and I could only cover one direction at a time, and putting several “feelers” out so to speak, would decrease the amount of time necessary to explore our surroundings and increase the chances of finding the things we needed.

  “Okay,” I said. Claire was finished up with her water collection and had set the bucket beside the freshly-started fire to boil. “Claire, why don’t you come with me? We’ll head south, further down the road. Ray, you and Pam want to go east?”

  They nodded their agreement.

  “Joanna, you and Dad okay with heading west?”

  “Sure,” Dad said.

  “Yes,” nodded Joanna.

  “But don’t go splitting up when you’re out there. You come across anything that doesn’t look right or other people and you head straight back here to report. I don’t want anyone getting hurt. This is only a scouting mission remember. And Dad, you take care of that arm. No climbing over fences or hopping big ditches or anything like that…okay?”

  He frowned. He didn’t like being treated like a child or told what to do, but we didn’t need more injuries. “Alright,” he agreed sullenly.

  “Everybody take their time out there. There’s no hurry. Don’t go more than a mile or two, don’t get lost, and watch your backs.”

  I felt like a parent sending his kids off on their first overnight trip, but we’d been through enough. I didn’t want anyone stumbling across another camp that could be less than friendly, and I definitely didn’t want them leading anyone back to our own camp.

  It turned out that there was little reason for concern. There was absolutely nothing in the immediate vicinity surrounding our camp. We must have picked the most desolate part of Georgia in which to run out of gas. Claire and I walked down the road where we’d abandoned ou
r vehicles for what must have been a mile without seeing any signs of life. Finally, we came to an old house that appeared it’d been abandoned for decades. We didn’t even bother going inside as it looked as though it was on the verge of collapse. A large tree lay askew across half the roof and a large portion had deteriorated and fallen into the home. One of the exterior walls bulged awkwardly outward from the weight of the tree. The front door was wide open. Most of the windows had been broken, and the brick chimney lay in a pile of rubble beside the house.

  “I wouldn’t go in there if you paid me,” said Claire.

  “I know,” I said. “I’d rather take our chances in our huts than attempt to live in that place.”

  We walked on down the road a bit farther, but we soon began to lose hope. The sky had started to cloud up again, and I really didn’t want to get caught in another downpour. A chilly wind whipped at us from the west.

  “Come on,” I said. “Let’s head back. There will be better days for this type of thing. We should get back and start working on preparing dinner. We also need to build something over the fire to protect it from the rain. Maybe the others had better luck in their searches than we did.”

  On our way back, as we re-passed the dilapidated farmhouse, I had an idea. “Wait here,” I told Claire.

  I left the road and walked through the weeds up to the front of the house. After a minute or two of struggling, I managed to detach the front door from its hinges. I lugged it back to the road where Claire was standing.

  “I hate to negate all their efforts, but this might work better to carry Emily on,” I said.

  Claire shrugged, “Worth a shot, I guess.”

  Upon our return to camp, I offered my suggestion to Sharron who had nearly completed the woven stretcher for Emily.

  “I think this will be better for her,” Sharron nodded at her work. “Its bottom will give and flex more than that hard old door,” she eyed it with distaste. “The vines and thatching we used will give with her weight making it more comfortable. I think laying her on a door would prove very uncomfortable after a few minutes, and if we had to carry her for any distance, it would really stink. This,” she pointed at her creation proudly, “will be more like a hammock.”

  I thought about it for a few seconds. “That’s fine,” I said. “It was just a thought. You’re probably right. I have a good use for this anyway,” I patted the sturdy old door and took my find away with me over to where Claire stood warming herself by the fire.

  There was a big pane of glass near the top of the door. I called Paul over since I still remembered what it was like to be a boy his age. Then I held the door up over the fire and asked him to knock out the glass by throwing a sizeable rock through it.

  He thought the job was, as he termed it, “Awesome!”

  The glass tinkled as it fell down into the fire pit. I chose to do it over the fire because I didn’t want to leave broken glass in the camp or surrounding area for anyone to cut themselves on later. Then I took several of the unused branches that Ray had cut and that hadn’t been used for the stretcher, and two more that we had collected for firewood, and pounded them into the rain-soaked ground. I left them so that their tops protruded about four feet into the air. Then I set the door atop the four posts that I’d driven into the ground – a corner of the door on each post – so that it fit perfectly over the fire pit as a rain blocker. I watched as the smoke from the fire began to curl up to and around the door and then out through the open portion near the top of the door where Paul had broken out the glass. I hoped that the door was up high enough that it wouldn’t catch fire and that the vent Paul had created would help cool its underside. After testing it, I decided we’d only use my contraption when it rained – which by the looks of it, would be soon – to help keep the fire going and the pit covered and relatively dry.

  The others arrived back from their scouting missions soon after we were done with our work. They’d had about as little luck as we had. Pam and Ray had found a small, dilapidated trailer. They’d picked up some garbage bags, a tarp, some silverware, and a small plastic bucket from inside. They’d also found a small pond about a mile or so away, but it had several old cars rusting away in it, and according to them, was pretty nasty looking. They didn’t think the water would be fit for drinking.

  Dad and Joanna had made it about a half mile before Dad stepped in a small hole. Unable to properly brace himself as he fell due to his injured arm, he had twisted his ankle. Joanna had helped him back home and he now sat glumly on a large piece of wood we’d dragged from our pile of firewood. His ankle was swollen but Claire didn’t think it was broken.

  It seemed that we’d picked an absolutely terrible spot to run out of gas, and things weren’t looking too good. The temperature was dropping, the wind was picking up, and intermittent raindrops let us know that a fresh storm was approaching. Therefore, we decided on an early dinner during which we discussed our situation and plans for the future.

  “I don’t think we’re long for this spot,” Dad offered.

  “I think you’re right,” Will agreed.

  “But without gas, we’re pretty much up crap creek,” I frowned, chewing on a piece of salty venison.

  Sharron took a swig of some sort of brewed vegetarian concoction she’d come up with. It looked like a leaf soup if you asked me, but she said it was edible and provided calories, so if she was happy, I was happy. “We could always walk,” she offered.

  Will snorted, “Oh yeah, speak for yourself. Some of us aren’t in the best of shape here. I know you made me crutches and all, but now we got Dad with a bad ankle, and it will take a least two people to carry Emily. Plus, we have all this stuff to haul along too,” he gestured around at the camp supplies. “We have to carry enough supplies to keep thirteen people fed, hydrated, and warm along the way.”

  “It might be our only option,” Joanna said.

  “We haven’t thoroughly explored the area,” Claire said. “There might be stuff around; we just haven’t found it yet.”

  “Problem is, if we continue to spend time here and we don’t find anything worthwhile, then we’re just burning valuable supplies and time that we could have spent getting to our next location,” I said.

  “If we go, then we have to continue on with three wounded travelers,” said Ray. “Whereas if we wait, we might end up finding the fuel we need to take the cars or at least buy ourselves enough time that the injured are healed enough to continue under their own power.”

  It started to sprinkle and I looked up at the darkening sky. “Let’s sleep on it,” I said, finishing my food. “Looks like it’s about to pour any second.”

  Parents gave the kids good-night kisses, and about a minute later the sky opened up in a torrential downpour. Everyone hustled off to their shelters where they endured fitful nights of sleep broken by explosions of thunder that shook the ground and a cold rain that managed to find its way into every shelter, gripping our skin uncomfortably with its icy claws.

  CHAPTER 10

  Jake Steins and his girl Ava Acadro sat on metal folding chairs eating cold beans from cans inside a frigid warehouse on the outskirts of Memphis. They had made the city their new stomping grounds after the long trek down from the south side of Chicago. They had plans to resupply in southern Illinois, having found a local camp where they’d expected to procure their goods. The camp however had been much better armed than they’d expected. For all Jake’s bravado, he and his band of mercenaries had been ill-prepared for the fight and were swiftly driven from the area.

  The defeat had hurt Jake’s ego, but worse yet, it had damaged his reputation among his men. His confidence had been shaken and his men could see it even if Jake couldn’t. That’s why they had all deserted him once they arrived in Memphis.

  Now, back were those fears that had haunted Jake in Chicago before the flu. What if he couldn’t do this? What if he wasn’t as tough as he thought? What if he lost Ava?

  He’d been able to push such fe
ars aside when the flu had struck. He’d used the surprise with which the disease had caught most people to his advantage, sweeping through his old neighborhood, taking what he wanted, when he wanted, how he wanted, and collecting a nice band of like-minded and equally vicious devotees in the process.

  In Jake’s mind, he had envisioned a Sherman-like march through Illinois, him and his men cutting a swath of terror as they pillaged the heartland, leaving only death and destruction in their wake. Instead, those yuppie suburbanite assholes outside that dinkwater town of Avers had screwed everything up.

  The thought made him seethe with anger and he gritted his teeth and clenched his fists, nearly crushing the can of beans from which he was eating. He threw the near-empty can aside angrily and stood.

  It wouldn’t have made him so angry if Ava wasn’t still with him. While he’d lost the remainder of his followers after the debacle in southern Illinois, for some reason Ava had remained by his side. And for as much as he liked the sex with her, her presence was a constant reminder of the defeat he’d suffered and what he’d lost in the process. He’d finally been a leader. He’d finally had the position and power he’d always dreamed of. But he’d lost it all. He could still see it in her eyes. She saw that defeat every time she looked at him; but he was her meal ticket, and so she stayed.

  A meal was a valuable thing these days. For the moment though, those meals were getting fewer and farther between, as well as far less palatable. Now, Jake was just waiting, figuring that Ava would leave when the next best thing came along, and that bred distrust in him. He used to pass her among his men freely, assured in his manhood and unwavering in his confidence that Ava would return to him as hungry as ever for his touch. Now however, he was far more protective of his sole remaining asset, yet he still made valuable use of her and her knockout looks.

  Ava watched the can of beans Jake had thrown as it hit the floor, bounced, and came to rest against the lifeless body of one of the men they’d killed for the honor of sleeping in the decrepit warehouse.