The group as it stood now consisted of my wife Claire, my son Jason, my father Frank who was recovering from a gunshot wound to the arm and suffering what appeared to be a severe respiratory illness, Claire’s mother Emily who had been badly burned in our escape from Tennessee, my brother Will who was recovering from a gunshot wound to the butt cheek, his vegetarian wife Sharron, their children Sarah and Paul, a knockout looking gal named Joanna who had joined our group in southern Illinois, Joanna’s young son Shane, and my good buddy Ray – a former FBI agent – and his now pregnant wife Pam.
I was a former freelance writer and stay-at-home father turned pandemic survivor and default leader of our ragtag bunch. I hadn’t asked for the position, but I held it nonetheless.
By the time I arrived on the scene to which my wife Claire had beckoned me with her calls, a group of concerned family members had already clustered around little Paul who lay motionless on the ground. Over the past week, Paul had been dealing with the same sort of respiratory illness my father had been combating. Claire, who had been an occupational therapist in her pre-flu life and who the family often turned to for medical advice, and Paul’s mother Sharron, knelt beside the boy. They were doing their best to revive or at least get some sort of response from the unconscious lad. His father Will, still on crutches due to the wound he had suffered to his rear end, was standing nearby, staring down helplessly, watching as the two women worked.
“Paul! Paul!” Claire said as she squeezed the boy’s hand in hers and then released it to lift his left eyelid. Only the whites of his eye were visible.
“I don’t think he’s breathing!” his mother cried. “He was throwing up. I just thought it was something he had eaten, but he kept on vomiting. Then he said he felt tired and collapsed!”
“Can you find a pulse?” Claire asked her.
Sharron felt Paul’s wrist. “I can’t tell!” she cried, tears rolling down her cheeks. “I…I don’t think there is any!” she said, dropping his wrist and grabbing Paul by the shoulders and shaking him. “Paul. Paul!” she continued to sob. “Paul! Honey, can you hear me? Answer your mother!”
But her admonitions were doing no good.
Claire allowed Paul’s eyelid to close and placed two fingertips on the side of his neck, just below his jaw. “Jesus,” she said in exasperation. “I can’t find anything either.”
It was then I remembered a technique from yesteryear, something I’d seen in an old movie or on television one time.
With spring approaching in Georgia, the days were getting warmer, but the mornings and evenings were often still cool and crisp. This morning had dawned bright and beautifully sunny, but there was frost on the ground. And now that it was evening, that same chill had begun to return to the air. I yanked the pocketknife I carried with me at all times out from where it sat in my coat pocket and pulled out its blade. I dropped down flat on my belly beside Paul, nudging Claire out of the way. Turning my head to the side so that I could see, I held the knife blade down directly in front of Paul’s nose about an inch away.
“What are you doing?” Sharron cried, frightened at seeing the knife held so close to her unresponsive son.
“Just wait!” I hissed at her.
Suddenly a very fine film of misty haze glossed across the knife blade as I watched. “He’s alive!” I said. “He’s breathing!” I pulled the knife away and turned it so that the others could see the light film of condensation that had accumulated on it from Paul’s faint breath.
I wasn’t sure what was wrong with him or what to do, so I just did what came naturally. I put my hand on his chest, applied pressure and just began to rub my hand slowly over him while talking to him in the calmest voice I could manage with the chaos going on around me. “Paul,” I said. “Paul, wake up. Wake up, Paul. Come on hon’, you need to wake up. Everything’s okay. You need to wake up now.”
I had no idea if what I was doing or saying would help at all, but it was all I could think of. A child’s illness and the resulting helplessness a parent can feel is one of the most terrifying situations I’d ever encountered. And it was even worse experiencing it in a world without the modern safety net of the local doctor or urgent care center to turn to for advice or immediate medical attention. There was no one to diagnose the situation, no one to prescribe the right medications in the right amounts, and no one there to say, “This is quite common in children this age, it’s just a mild case of…” To which parents and loved ones could respond by sharing a collective sigh of relief.
Suddenly Paul’s eyes fluttered open.
“What…what happened?” he breathed softly.
“Oh, thank god!” his mother tilted her head up to the sky and began crying, taking his hand in hers.
Paul struggled to sit up but I used the hand I had on his chest to gently keep him on his back. “Hold tight little guy,” I said. “Just relax, there’s no hurry.”
With the boy revived, his mother now stepped in to take over. She cuddled and rubbed and cooed and petted.
My job done, I stood and walked a few yards away, taking a moment to recover from the extreme emotions and adrenaline coursing through me, all the while wishing I had a cigarette to help calm my nerves.
Dad and Ray joined me aside from the group a few seconds later.
Dad was coughing as usual. He cleared his throat after a minute of hacking and said, “We need to find a place to settle down.”
I gestured to the spot we’d picked for the night and said, “I think this is as good a spot as any we’ll find tonight.”
Dad shook his head, “No, I mean permanently. Like back in Tennessee.”
“What the hell, Dad?” I said in exasperation. “I’m doing the fucking best I can here. Sorry I can’t instantly find us the Che Chalet, but the pickings are kind of slim right now. I thought I had us a good spot in southern, Illinois. I thought I had us a good spot in Tennessee. I thought maybe we’d found something back at Jonah’s farm. Nothing is working out. I’m sorry I can’t be a better freakin’ leader. I’m not a post-apocalyptic lifestyle expert.”
Dad stood silent, not looking at me.
Ray was silent as well.
I took a deep breath. “Sorry,” I said. “I’m just frustrated. I’m frustrated, and I agree with you. I want to find somewhere just as bad you do, but it seems like everywhere we try just blows up in our face.”
“It’s okay,” Dad said, coughing again and spitting some phlegm out onto the ground. “I know it’s hard on you. It’s hard on all of us.”
I immediately felt guilty for losing my temper. Poor Dad was still recovering from being shot in the arm, plus being sick. I had my diabetic wife doing her best to survive on her rationed insulin and diabetic supplies. Paul was passing out from sickness, exhaustion, malnutrition or some combination thereof. Pretty much the whole group was suffering in some way or another. And here I was feeling sorry for myself and getting angry because I couldn’t find a good spot for us to settle down. I felt so selfish.
I looked at Dad. He was staring at me with a certain look on his face that I remembered from when I was a kid. I knew exactly what he was thinking.
“You don’t even have to say it,” I looked at him, shaking my head and giving him a knowing half smile.
“Say what?” he said, wanting to hear it straight from my mouth.
“What Mom would have said if she was here.”
He smiled at me.
“If you don’t like it, stop complaining and do something about it, is what she would have said,” I nodded.
“Your mother was a smart woman,” Dad said, turning to rejoin the others. “And you take after her. I know you’ll get us where we need to go,” he said confidently as he walked away.
After he was gone, I looked at Ray. “I’m glad he knows it,” I said with some uncertainty. “Just wish I did.”
Ray reached out and put his hand on my shoulder. “We’ll be okay,” he said reassuringly, giving me a grin. “I know it too.”
/> “Thanks,” I nodded at him.
“Now let’s get things set up so we can get Paul and everyone else some food and rest. Don’t forget, tomorrow’s a new day,” he said as he led us back to join the others.
CHAPTER 2
Jake opened his eyes and then immediately clamped them shut again. The sun was bright…too bright. He tried opening them again, and as soon as he did, he felt like he was going to vomit.
He rolled over on the floor and onto his side so that he could reach inside his right jacket pocket. Fumbling blindly, and still without opening his eyes, he found a pack of cigarettes, fished one out solely by feel, found his lighter – also in his jacket pocket – and lit his smoke. He inhaled deeply, eyes still shut, savoring the smoke, and then exhaled. He inhaled deeply again, finally starting to feel the nicotine’s effects, then he tried re-opening his eyes. This time he didn’t feel so nauseous, but he still felt like shit.
A minute later he’d managed to sit up. He looked around the room. Several other men were sleeping in various states of disarray. A body draped across a dingy sofa across from him, someone slouched against the wall on the other side of the room, someone else passed out in a puddle of his own vomit near the door.
Jake saw Ava sitting in a metal folding chair beside a card table near the window. She was smoking a cigarette and looking outside. Even at this hour of the morning, she looked good…damn good. Her curvy Latina body had weathered the winter well, and she still had that soft brown glow about her skin that he found so attractive. It complimented his pasty white flesh so nicely.
It’d been a rough ride from the south side of Chicago where they had begun their journey to Atlanta where Jake had finally hit his stride and found the success that had so eluded him up to this point.
The flu had taken the Atlanta metro area’s population from right around 4.2 million to just under a million in a matter of weeks. The further spread of disease from the rotting corpses and lack of sanitary services, paired with starvation, the disappearance of law enforcement, and lack of clean water, reduced the population to about 400,000. And a combination of continued disease, starvation, and violence from theft and looting in the months that followed had left the population at right around 150,000. Many of those 150,000 people were some of the hardest core survivors anyone would care to meet. They were the ones who were savvy enough or tough enough – or some combination thereof – not only to have outlasted the most devastating pandemic the world had ever known, but also outlast all the things that came along with it.
Jake looked at the roomful of various supplies stacked around him. They were running out of space in their home base because of all the loot they had been acquiring lately. They’d hit several smaller supply dumps around Atlanta, and most recently a larger depot belonging to a downtown trader, a raid that had netted a laundry list of goods that included many of the new currencies in the post-flu age – cigarettes, alcohol, guns, ammunition, and of course, food.
Even with all this, Jake realized that they needed to find a different way – a better way – of sustaining themselves in this new world. Making these raids was time consuming and dangerous, and they often didn’t result in enough goods to make their efforts worthwhile. And while Jake and Ava had grown their small army of mercenaries to over a dozen men, it was still far below the number they needed to take on some of the big-time players in the city. And turnover in their organization was high. They’d already lost the guys they’d brought with him from Memphis, not that Jake considered them much of a loss.
It wasn’t that Jake was afraid of taking the risk with such raids. Just the opposite in fact; he liked the challenge, and he would never back down from a fight. But in a sense, Jake was lazy. He wanted to find a way for business to come to him rather than having to go out and find it. Jake wasn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer, but he was cognizant enough to recognize this shortcoming. And while he wasn’t willing to admit his ignorance in front of his men, he used Ava’s brains and planning abilities to help him prepare most of their operations. He knew that she was smarter than he was; but he was stronger, and that helped him keep her in her place. Still, while her intellect was beneficial to him and his operation, it also worried him. Her business acumen was something that he would never have, so Jake kept a delicate balance between keeping Ava close enough to use as a tool when he needed her, but not so close that she threatened his position.
Jake rose slowly from the floor, wobbling a little bit as he did so from the after effects of last night’s binge. He squinted to focus and then blinked hard several times to clear away the fuzz. Ava continued to watch out the window, smoking her cigarette, unperturbed by Jake.
Jake ambled over and pulled a nearby folding chair to the table, taking a seat beside Ava. The waft of body odor, alcohol, cigarettes, and morning breath overtook her. She took another deep drag of her own cigarette in an effort to cover the stench.
It didn’t work.
“Morning, babe,” Jake said, taking a glance out the window. He saw nothing so interesting that it would capture his attention like it did Ava’s. Two men were walking past – one blonde, one dark haired – that was all.
Jake and his crew had set up shop in one of the city’s old watershed management pump stations. The building was built solidly and it made for the perfect little fortress. It was a rectangular, two-story brick structure, with a much smaller pinnacle third floor directly in the center of the building that had an exit to an open rooftop. It reminded Jake of a tinier and much uglier US Capitol Building.
The lower floor of the pump station was devoted largely to housing the equipment and machinery that had been used to pump a portion of the city’s water supply. There was also a small office that Jake and Ava had quickly commandeered as their private headquarters. In addition to these areas there were several empty storage rooms and a nasty old bathroom. The spaces were extremely dark and had to be lit by generators since the first floor was devoid of windows.
The second floor was comprised of a large room in the center of the building that – judging from the number of desks they’d found in it – had likely been used for administration purposes. This was the room where they now sat and that they had converted to their lounge area. There were also several more individual offices at each end of the structure and a separate room with various control panels affixed to its walls.
The third floor appeared to have been built for show and only housed one completely empty room and a stairway that led to its rooftop. The only purpose for the stairway seemed to have been to access the flagpole that was now devoid of flag.
The building sat on a one-acre plot that was an entire city block. The plot was surrounded on three sides by empty lots. Jake liked this because it gave him a good view of any approaching intruders and long-distance lines of sight for his armed guards. A city street ran in front of the building, across from where there was a row of abandoned homes, most of which had been built during the 1960s and 70s.
There was only one entrance – a single large steel door – to the pump station located in the front center of the first floor. Jake liked the lack of windows on the first floor because it reduced possible points of entry. The plethora of windows on the second floor however provided him and his men with a variety of firing points should they be attacked.
The pump station was surrounded by a 25-foot perimeter of dead grass and gravel that was ringed by an eight-foot tall chain-link fence topped with razor wire.
As an added precaution, Jake had positioned machinegun emplacements atop the small third-floor flagpole rooftop, which were manned at all times. He had also mounted security cameras at each corner, as well as at the main entrance of the building that linked to television monitors inside and that were powered by generators on the first floor. One such monitor was mounted in their lounge, above the card table at which he and Ava now sat; one was positioned just inside the first-floor entry door; and another was located in their private office downstairs.
/> Overall, Jake was pretty pleased with his little fortress, but he knew there was always room for improvement. He’d seen some of the compounds of the bigger players in town and he was envious. Their Scarfacesque mansions came complete with huge swimming pools, gated front entrances, attack dogs, and enough armed guards to fill a school bus. Still, he had to start somewhere, and Jake knew that it was only a matter of time before his own operation rivaled those of these current masters of the universe.
The way he’d heard it, there were three main operations in town. They were known as “The Three Families” around the Atlanta metro area. These families – also known as “XYZ” or “the Big Three” – controlled the core of Atlanta’s post-flu economy. The X Family controlled the majority of the area’s fuel supply. After the flu, the nation’s refineries of course shut down. Without refineries, this in turn meant no new supply of gasoline. The X Family had taken over most of the local gas stations that had any remaining fuel in them after the flu had run its course. Once they got these stations back up and running, powered by generators, they sent their minions crawling across the city in search of additional fuel. They siphoned gas from old cars, poured out paltry ounces from lawn mowers, trickled the remnants from weed eaters and leaf blowers, and generally stole whatever amount of fuel they could lay their hands on. Some of the family’s minions were even learning the art of bootlegging, creating their own super-hard alcohol so strong that it could be used for drinking, driving, or a combination thereof.
The Y Family controlled the Underground where much of the city’s commerce took place. They weren’t in the business of owning the actual supplies that were traded there so much as controlling the traders themselves. The Y Family took a cut of all the transactions not just at the Underground, but at any other markets in the metro area. In return, they provided safe environments – relatively speaking in the post-apocalyptic world – where merchants and consumers could conduct their trade. The Y Family also offered personal and business security for traders willing to pay them for these additional privatized services. For those who didn’t, well, they were on their own. And these were the ones Jake and Ava had so far been concentrating their efforts on.
The Systemic Series - Box Set Page 60
