The Systemic Series - Box Set

by K. W. Callahan

  “Shouldn’t waste food,” she mumbled, wiping bean juice from the corner of her mouth with the back of her hand. “When you going to deal with them?” she nodded to the bodies of two men that lay nearby.

  The two men had been able to survive the flu and its tragic aftermath, but they hadn’t survived Jake and Ava. One was a middle-aged man, the other his college-aged son. Ava had been Jake’s lure. Jake knew how to use Ava and all her assets to his advantage. This time she’d play the damsel in distress; the extremely attractive damsel. She’d become quite skillful at the act. Her skin-tight jeans were the carrot on a string to be dangled before any jackass with a libido. A pushup bra in a low-cut shirt and open jacket shoved her supple Latina breasts into mounded drugs for the eyes. They worked a mystical sort of spell that could be cast upon the opposite sex whenever Jake liked. It was like he was Merlin the magician and Ava’s body was his magic wand to be waved before his bedazzled prey before he pounced. And that was exactly how they’d gotten the drop on these two dupes in the warehouse.

  It’d been so easy. Jake knew how guys were. And he also knew that these two dimwits probably hadn’t gotten laid since the flu hit…maybe longer. So when he sent Ava to work her magic, it hadn’t taken much. A sob story about how her husband had been killed by some “bad, bad men” spoken in broken English. A few shed tears. A few innocent touches of her hand against a chest or arm. A hug of consolation that became something more. This is how she’d so innocently distracted the sympathetic and horny young man who’d answered the door of the warehouse just long enough for Jake to step silently from around the corner and slit his throat. By the time the young man’s father had arrived to help, it was too late. Jake had shot him twice in the chest before he’d even had time to react. It was all so easy.

  “The least you could do is drag them out back,” Ava complained.

  “I’ll get to them when I fucking get to them,” Jake spat. “What the fuck difference does it make to you?”

  “I don’t really want to sleep next to dead bodies. They start to smell worse than you after a couple days.” she mumbled.

  Jake walked away, lighting a cigarette as he went, “Eat shit…fucking bitch,” he mumbled back under his breath.

  Ava jumped up from her folding chair, “What’d you say to me, fucker!?” she yelled, embers glowing in her piercing brown eyes as she took a menacing step forward.

  Jake whirled to face her, “What you gonna do, bitch?” he glared, walking toward her. “You got nothing without me!”

  “I ain’t got shit with you, either!” she said back.

  That was it. Jake lost it. He slapped her hard across the face. The blow snapped Ava’s head to the side, but she took it. She took it better than he’d expected. She’d become steeled against his icy hand, and now it seemed almost as though she almost enjoyed it. It was as though she was retaining each hit, memorizing it, storing it away, putting it in the bank where it would accumulate interest that she would one day cash out to use against him.

  He looked at her. This used to be the time when they’d be most turned on and the ensuing sex would be explosive. Instead, now it was something he’d almost started to dread…they’d both started to dread. It would happen, but it was habitual now; routine, a stress reliever at best.

  He pulled her close and kissed her hard. She kissed back.

  After they were done, they rolled over on the dingy little mattress they used as a bed, exhausted, yet still full of the pent up rage that such passion used to relieve. It was simply an animal act now with little meaning or use, and they both realized it. They needed something to reignite that lost intensity.

  They needed power.

  “I’ve got a plan, babe,” Jake said, the romp with Ava leaving his voice thick, his mouth dry.

  “Yeah,” Ava said back, not expecting much. She lit a cigarette, inhaled deeply and blew the smoke out in a long straight cloud. She’d heard it before and knew better than to get excited. The last few “plans” had failed miserably. She was expecting more of the same. Down here, Jake was a nobody. No one knew him, and the few Chicago connections he’d once had were of absolutely no use. Here, he was just a scrawny white guy with nothing going for him.

  “Yeah,” he went on. “Heard about this place nearby. Supposed to have a big stockpile of guns and ammo.”

  “Oh yeah?” Ava said, still uninterested. “Why are you so special? Why’d you get this information? Why hasn’t anyone else gotten to them yet?”

  “Cause I got a guy. I worked a deal with him. His buddy used to own the place where the guns are stashed. It was a coin shop. Turns out, during the flu, the owner died. Everybody took all the shit upstairs…the gold, the silver, the cash. Once the place was empty, that was it. What people didn’t know was that downstairs this guy had an arsenal. He was a big-time gun nut…kept all his shit in a big walk-in safe. But the safe’s still locked. Nobody’s been able to get into it.”

  “Let me guess, nobody until you came along,” Ava frowned, knowing better than to believe the hype.

  “Right,” Jake nodded, sitting up from his position beside her on the mattress, unperturbed by her lack of confidence or interest.

  “So what makes you think you’re going to be the one to bust this big safe?”

  “Cause I got, it,” Jake sneered, trying hard to sound like he actually did have “it.”

  Ava almost laughed aloud when he said it, but stifled the desire. She’d play along. “It, huh?” she mumbled, blinking hard and taking another long suck of her cigarette. “Then what?” she asked.

  “What?” Jake said frowning.

  “What happens once you get the guns?”

  It was as if Jake hadn’t even contemplated the next step, which of course he hadn’t. “Well, I, uh…then I guess I can get a crew going again.”

  “And?” Ava led him.

  “And what?” Jake shook his head.

  “What are you going to do with the crew?”

  Jake shrugged, “I don’t know, run things. Pull some jobs.”

  Ava took another drag of her cigarette, exhaled slowly, and then crushed it out on the cold concrete floor beside the mattress, shaking her head.

  “That’s your plan?” she said.

  “Yeah,” Jake said defensively. “Why, you got a better one?”

  Ava nodded, staring at the floor, “Yeah…yeah, I do.”

  CHAPTER 11

  The day did not dawn with any great revelations as to what to do regarding our situation. Instead, it brought a lot of soggy shivering and griping about the weather among our group members.

  The rain seemed to have gotten into everything – clothing, bedding, food, firewood; it had even put out the campfire and waterlogged a corner of the tent. The kids were sullen and the parents unhappy about the cold and all the extra work the rain had brought with it. Joanna and Ray cursed the wet wood and soggy kindling as they attempted to restart the campfire.

  The only good thing about the heavy rain was that it had filled most of our catch containers with enough water to keep us supplied for another couple days. Other than that, it sucked. Anyone who has ever camped in the rain knows just how bad precipitation can make life outdoors. And we weren’t just on a weekend camping trip at the end of which we could go back to our cozy homes, take hot showers, have a warm meal, and throw all our clothes in the washing machine.

  This was it…this was our life now.

  People stood around shivering. Teeth chattered. Lips were blue. Jason was crying. Mothers held kids close in an effort to warm them, huffing hot breath on their little frozen hands.

  Once Ray and Joanna got the fire going, people rushed to it as everyone crowded shoulder to shoulder, hunching over the growing blaze. Hands were warmed; some of us holding them so close to the fire that our skin nearly touched the flames. Then we turned so that butts and backs were toasted as clothing finally began to warm and to dry. We moved poor Emily out on her stretcher and set her up on its supports near the fire pit
in hopes of getting her warm. Claire and Sharron stretched a long rope between two trees, running it close to the fire, upon which they could hang all the clothing and blankets that had become saturated by the night’s rain.

  I was stood by the warmth of the fire, chewing my bits of dried-venison breakfast, my stomach rumbling as I thought about all the different kinds of foods I missed. Milk, coffee, bacon, cheeseburgers, pizza, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, pasta, ice cream, fresh fruit, cookies, Chinese food, beer, hot dogs, brats with sweet peppers, fries smothered in ketchup, beef sandwiches, mozzarella sticks, chicken fingers, onion rings.

  “I think our decision has been made for us,” Will interrupted my mental torture as he hobbled closer to the fire on his crutches and looked up at the still gray sky.

  I continued to chew my dry venison in silence. I had to admit that even for as hungry as I was, deer meat was getting old. Heck, I’d even take some teriyaki sauce or something other than salt and pepper with which to flavor the meat just to change things up.

  I washed my mouthful down with a large gulp of water and then passed around vitamin C tablets to the group. This was our way of helping to ward off scurvy and maintain our immune systems during the winter months. We had taken several bottles of the tablets from the Coughlins’ supplies in the castle, but we were down about 50 tablets remaining. I doled them out to the group twice weekly since our vitamin C intake was low during this time of year. Sharron did what she could to supplement our supply by brewing teas occasionally when she came across the right herbs or roots.

  I gazed at everyone huddled around the fire. We were a grizzly looking bunch. The men were unshaven – some of us now bearded. The women’s hair was what I would call, “frizzled” – dry, unkempt, un-brushed, and untreated. Over the months, Claire’s blonde locks had mysteriously faded to an almost light brown in color.

  Dad coughed a heavy, thick, phlegm-filled cough. It had grown worse over the past few days and the rain especially seemed to have aggravated it. The sound of it worried me. And worse yet, little Paul had recently started up with a similar cough.

  “What exactly do you mean by ‘our decision has been made for us’?” Sharron asked her husband. “Should we hunker down here in hopes of avoiding being caught in the rain or try to hike out and find better shelter?”

  It was a good question and one that I was going to ask if she hadn’t.

  “I think we should go,” Will responded. “If we sit around here waiting, we could all be soaked and sick by the end of the week. We need to pack up and get moving before it rains again. It we move our asses, we could find shelter by the end of the day.”

  “But if it starts raining again in an hour or two, we’ll all be soaked and risking hypothermia if we’re caught out in the open without shelter,” Ray added.

  Eyes turned to me. “What do you think, John?” Dad asked.

  I frowned, staring at the fire. “Well…” I said in no hurry to answer, “…personally, I don’t particularly like sleeping on the cold, wet ground. That being said, if we’re caught out in the open like Ray said, it could turn out much worse for all of us. As much as I’d like to find better shelter, I think we should try to wait this rainy weather out. If we’re lucky, it could pass by tonight or even this afternoon. If it does, we can pack up and get moving by tomorrow morning. In fact, as soon as the weather breaks, we could probably be on the move again in under an hour. It won’t take us very long to break down camp and pack things up.”

  I paused and looked around the group for indications of how people were feeling about what I’d said. It was impossible to tell. Everyone was staring zombie-like at the fire. Morale was the worst I’d seen it since we’d left southern Illinois, and I couldn’t blame these poor people for being somewhat disillusioned at this point. We didn’t have much going for us and our prospects were somewhat bleak.

  “Shall we take a vote on it?” I offered, tired of constantly making decisions for the group, decisions that never seemed to pan out as I’d hoped or planned.

  There was a group mumble that I took as affirmation for a go-ahead of the vote.

  “All those in favor of leaving,” I said.

  Will, Paul, Joanna, and Shane raised their hands.

  “Four votes,” I said. “All those in favor of waiting out the weather,” I continued.

  The rest of us raised our hands. I nodded, “The waiters have it,” I said. As I finished the words, it started to rain again. “Okay, everyone back to shelter. Claire and Sharron, help me get these blankets and clothes off the line. I know it’ll be tough, but do your best to stay dry and warm,” I called to the rest of the group as they scampered to haul Emily and the kids back to the tent.

  My request would be harder to fulfill than I’d ever imagined. The rain kept up, off and on, for the next three days and nights.

  Lying in our hovel, shivering and listening to the rain for the next 72 hours was torturous. People quickly took advantage of any breaks in the deluge to use the bathroom or to have a quick bite to eat or drink. The tent served as our cramped and smelly cantina where we could stretch out for a couple minutes before retreating back to our cramped shelters. I tried to reason with myself that at least we were conserving energy, reducing our calorie intakes, and resting for the upcoming trek, but it was of little consolation when trying to combat the boredom, cold, wet, and stiffness that came from lying on the ground for hours on end. Even Cashmere was growing restless.

  On the dawn of the fifth day, we finally saw the sun again. We were almost out of food and we couldn’t even boil fresh water since everything – even the covered woodpile – was saturated with moisture. We were packed up and ready to go by daybreak. I’d estimated the temperature was right around 45 degrees, but the rising sun soon made it feel warmer. Getting moving again felt good as our muscles finally had a chance to stretch and be used and our bodies began producing some heat from activity.

  As we loaded up packs, I wouldn’t necessarily say there was an air of excitement among the group, more an air of anticipation as we looked forward to getting the hell out of Dodge. Everyone was sick of staying put in our makeshift camp and they were ready to go. The camp had slowly been bleeding us dry of food, water, energy, and patience – all of which we’d arrive with little of anyway. It was starving us, and we needed a better place to finish out the winter and make it through what could – by the looks of things – be an agonizingly soggy spring.

  “Come on,” I said to Claire motioning to several articles of clothing – now sopping wet – that still hung from the line near the fire pit. “Let’s get this line down.”

  We each went to the individual trees where the ends of the line were attached. Getting my end untied and down wasn’t much of a struggle. Claire however, being about eight inches shorter than me, had to get up on her tip-toes to reach the rope. I turned around with my end of the rope in hand just in time to see Claire slip in the mud, falling awkwardly on her side.

  “Ah…shit!” she said as she landed.

  I rushed over to her, but she was up almost as quickly as she’d fallen. One side of her was covered in mud and pine needles and I almost would have laughed had we been on a regular camping trip, but now was not the time. Worse yet, when she lifted her winter coat, she revealed a muddied insulin pump.

  “Oh fuck,” I said, seeing it covered in glop and its digital screen cracked.

  Claire pulled it off the waistband of her pants where it had been clipped and looked at it dismally, doing her best to scrape off the muck.

  “Think it’s okay?” I asked.

  She pressed a few buttons, which elicited no response from the device, then shook her head, “Doesn’t look like it.”

  Suddenly the sound of retching came from somewhere behind us. We both turned to see Pam doubled over by a tree, a hand on the side of its trunk for support, vomiting onto its base.

  “We’re off to a great start,” Claire mumbled, carefully detaching the insulin pump from the site wher
e it attached to her skin near the left side of her belly.

  “Hang tight,” I told Claire, rushing over to where Pam stood. Ray came running up too.

  “You okay?” I asked her.

  “Honey, are you alright?” Ray asked simultaneously, putting his hand on her back and leaning down close to her.

  She nodded, spitting out some bile and saliva and wiping her eyes and nose with the sleeve of her coat. “Meat must not have agreed with me this morning,” she said.

  “It is getting pretty old,” I agreed. “Been about a week now. Good thing is; it’s almost finished. Bad thing is; it’s almost finished.”

  I left Ray to tend to his wife and walked back over to where Claire was still working on her pump. I felt a little queasy myself, but I wasn’t sure if it was the meat or nerves.

  “Get it working?” I asked hopefully.

  Claire shook her head, “No. I think it’s shot.”

  I exhaled heavily, “How are you on syringes?”

  Claire shrugged, putting the pump away in her coat pocket, “I have quite a few.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked, somewhat exasperated by the nonchalant attitude she was taking to the whole situation. I likened her finding herself without insulin or the means to transmit it into her body to me finding myself trapped underwater with just a few tanks of oxygen. I just couldn’t understand her indifference to it all.

  “Well…I think I have four or five boxes.”

  “How many are in a box?” I coaxed.

  Claire thought for a minute, “Twenty-five…I think.”

  I ran some quick calculations in my head. I knew she could re-use the syringes several times but I wasn’t sure exactly how far she could push the use of an individual syringe.

  “If you had to, how many times could you re-use a syringe?” I asked.

  She considered it. “I don’t know. Maybe six or seven. You know they get dull after a point.”

  “So you could potentially make it a full month on 10 or 15 syringes, right?”