The Systemic Series - Box Set

by K. W. Callahan

  Then I raced upstairs to the third floor apartment, shoving the door open. “Ray! Get guns and ammo and meet me downstairs, they’re setting fire to the town!”

  I hustled back downstairs, but by the time I got there, it was too late. Dad and Emily were hurriedly dressing themselves in their first-floor bedroom as I heard vehicle engines outside on the street. Seconds later, there was the sound of smashing glass and an eruption of flames on the front porch.

  “They’re burning the building!” I yelled. “Out the back! Grab everything you can!”

  There were two more crashes of glass as objects smashed into the front windows and the room lit up from outside with flames that quickly spread across the porch and up the dry wood framing of our old store.

  I stepped to the front door to survey whether it was possible to combat the flames, but a hail of gunfire drove me back inside and I dove for cover behind the store’s huge front counter.

  I crawled along behind the counter until I could safely stand, and then I made my way back upstairs. Along the way, I yelled, “Grab what you can! The store’s on fire!”

  I burst back into our apartment. It was hard to see, but the growing flames outside were providing some light through our windows.

  I found Claire throwing on clothes. Jason was sitting on the bed in his underwear crying. “Get Jason out of here!” I shouted. “Grab anything you can save on the way and get out back!” I grabbed several rifles and a can of ammo along with Claire’s diabetic supplies. “I’ve got your supplies,” I called to her. “Follow me down.”

  She grabbed Jason, his clothes, and a few other items and followed me back out to the hallway. Will, Sharron and the kids met us as we made our way out to the landing.

  “What’s going on?” Will said.

  “The building’s on fire,” I explained. “Get the kids outside and then help me save what we can. Guns, ammo, food, medicine, and water…those are the priorities.”

  Ray and Pam came rushing down the stairway behind us. I didn’t even wait for them to ask, giving them the same rundown.

  At the bottom of the stairs, we met Dad and Emily.

  “Wait here,” I told the group now formed behind me. “Will, Ray…come on.”

  I didn’t want to lead our families outside and into the path of danger if there were armed intruders still present. I led the two men out the back and around front, ready for anything. But it was quiet outside now, the night illuminated by the numerous blazes burning around town. All we found was an empty street. In the distance, I could see taillights disappearing down Main Street between the burning homes and back toward the direction of the pond.

  Across from us, Mary’s was on fire. Flames were also shooting out of the post office’s front windows. The decrepit old building next door to the store was engulfed.

  The entire town was burning.

  I turned to see the front of our own building being licked by flames as they crawled their way up the walls and inside through the front door.

  “Come on,” I said to Ray and Will. “We’ve got to get everything we can out of the store before the entire place burns to the ground!”

  They followed me around back to where the others were waiting. We got the kids sheltered by the pickup parked nearby, handed over our rifles to the women, and charged back inside. The first thing I did was to close the door dividing the store area from the rear of the building and the back staircase leading up to the apartments, hoping that it would help slow the spread of the fire and buy us a few extra minutes. Then we ran back upstairs. There, Ray and Will collected the rest of the guns and ammo while Dad and I grabbed pillows from the bedrooms and shed them of their cases which we then began filling with all the food we could grab. With three of them a piece crammed full, we hustled them back downstairs and dumped their contents out on the ground. “Claire, can you grab stuff from the basement?” I asked, tossing her the padlock key and not waiting for a response before hurrying back upstairs.

  Will and Ray’s next trip was for additional food, toiletries, and any medical supplies. While the fire had yet to break into the upper floors, the smoke pouring through cracks around the windows and doors was growing thick. Just as we made it back downstairs with our loads, the closed door separating the front of the store from the rear staircase began to give way to the fire, releasing a wave of scorching hot air as flames began to fight their way through and around it.

  Knowing that it was getting too dangerous to attempt another trip upstairs, we helped Claire move stuff from the basement. We managed to collect a lot of the preserves as well as about 50 one-gallon jugs of water. At one point, I was carrying three jugs in each hand. But soon, smoke engulfed this lower portion of the building as well, and fearing a collapse from above, we were forced to abandon our efforts.

  We fell exhausted on the ground a safe distance from the store and watched as it burned before our eyes. It didn’t take long. With no rain for months, the place was a tinder box, and about ten minutes after we’d made our last trip, the roof collapsed. Shortly after this, the third floor went, taking the second, and then the first floor along with it down into the basement. And about forty-five minutes after the whole thing started, our store – along with the rest of Olsten – was completely burned to the ground.

  Our group sat in stunned disbelief. We had expected another attempt on the garden, maybe a confrontation of some sort, or even a possible exchange of gunfire, but not this. We didn’t even know who our attackers were. There had been no warnings, no gradual escalation, just a well-coordinated attack that resulted in complete and total surprise and had laid waste to our entire town.

  We had been ready, but not for this, and the more I thought about it, the angrier it made me. I was mad at myself for not having us better prepared, but I just hadn’t envisioned such an all-encompassing attack. I thought something directed solely at us or our residence, but not at the entire town. I hadn’t even considered it. And why? Why had they gone this far? Why hadn’t they just tried to make contact with us to see if something couldn’t be worked out? And why were they so pissed off in the first place? Was it because of the water? Were they just asshole people who didn’t want us around? Were they afraid of us?

  I couldn’t make sense of it, and this left me even angrier. Back in Illinois and in Tennessee, at least I could see some method to our aggressors’ madness; but here, I didn’t even know who our assailants were or why they they’d picked us as targets. I did have to admit that their tactics were extremely effective. I could see no other way but to leave. If their goal was to be rid of us, it had certainly worked. And this probably made me angriest of all.

  I stood up and walked over to the truck. I punched the door’s side panel hard with a fist, actually denting the metal. “Fuck!” I hissed. “Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! I can’t fucking believe this! Here we are again! Why?” I cried, looking up at the sky. “Why? Why can’t we just live in peace? Fifty fucking people left in the whole fucking world and we can’t just leave each other the fuck alone?”

  Everyone was looking at me, but I didn’t care. I was tired. Tired of relocating. Tired of starting over. Tired of planning. Tired of preparing. Tired of constantly trying to see the future and failing. For the first time since the flu, I actually found myself truly longing to be back in our old society. Sure, I had missed things about our old way of life, but until now, I felt that we had a chance of succeeding in this new world. But now, I was starting to feel like we might not make it. I was physically and mentally exhausted, and the thought of having to start all over again – to have to load up the truck and find a new place, to lay down roots, and try to get everything set up again – left me feeling even more exhausted and apathetic.

  For the first time since the flu, I felt hopeless.

  “I’m sorry,” I said to the group, shaking my head. “I’m sorry. I’ve let you down. I should have seen this coming, and I didn’t. I’m just…so…sorry.”

  It was all I could muster. I couldn’t
think of anything else to say, and anything else I could have said would largely have been pointless anyway. I’d blown it, and I knew it, and all the responsibility I could take for it now wouldn’t matter.

  Ray walked over and put his arm around me. “We’re all alive…and unhurt…that’s all that matters,” he said. “None of us want to start over, but we can, and we will, and we’ll succeed. You’ll see that we succeed.”

  Then he hugged me.

  I don’t think that Ray had ever hugged me. Heck, I don’t know if I’d ever even seen him hug Pam. It wasn’t much, but it was enough. It was what it took to pull me back to reality.

  I nodded and took a deep breath. “Okay,” I said. “Okay.”

  I looked around at the ground, now blanketed with an assortment of supplies. There were piles of food, jugs of water, boxes of medicine and personal care items, guns, ammo boxes, stacks of clothing.

  And then, as I stood their absorbing the entirety of the situation, it started to sprinkle, the raindrops landing like tiny cold bugs upon my face.

  I looked up at the sky. It was thick with clouds that masked the stars.

  I started to laugh, “Really?!” I cried. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me!” I held my hands up to the sky. “Now? After all this time?” I just stood there looking up at the sky, shaking my head and laughing. It was all I could do to keep my sanity.

  “Alright,” I said after several seconds, pulling myself back together and taking over, “let’s get this stuff loaded onto the trailer and covered up. Get the guns and ammo stashed in a dry place first. Ray, Will, Dad…help me unbolt these water tanks from the back of the truck. Claire, put Jason in the truck’s cab so he’s out of the way! Sarah, you keep an eye on him. Claire, put Cashmere and your diabetic supplies in there too so they’re safe.”

  And so we spend the next hour, loading up the few remaining possessions we had, slipping in the mud and soaked to the bone in the pouring rain.

  “There’s got to be a place,” I said as Will and Ray helped me lay a tarp we had salvaged atop the supplies in the trailer and secure it.

  “What do you mean?” asked Will.

  “A place where we can finally be safe…where we can avoid all this,” I gestured around me at the charred and smoking rubble that was now Olsten.

  “We need a castle with a moat where we can pull up the drawbridge and just be left alone,” said Ray jokingly.

  “Yeah…no kidding,” I agreed, considering his words. “Easier said than found.”

  Ray’s words stuck a chord with me though as we finished up loading the supplies and securing them to the truck and trailer. I decided to make them my next area of consideration as I climbed into the pickup’s cab and fired up the engine.

  Claire sat with Jason on her lap in the middle of the front seat, and Pam – since she was pregnant – got the other front seat spot to keep her out of the rain. Cashmere settled upon her lap for the ride. The rest of the group sheltered in a makeshift tent we’d erected in the pickup’s bed.

  I slowly pulled the pickup and trailer from around the pile of rain-soaked and smoking debris that had just hours earlier been our home for the foreseeable future, and out onto what had once been Olsten’s Main Street.

  Now it was just a road – a road to nowhere.

  CHAPTER 20

  While Ava had been handling the pump stations’ second floor, Jake had been down at the front door. He didn’t have time to worry about where she was or what she was doing. He had swarms of Three Family soldiers heading for the building’s entrance where he had but a paltry few men – most of whom were wacked-out drug addicts – there to defend his fortress. At first, the addicts had been cutting down men left and right. They were all psyched up on their drug of choice up and laying down an insane amount of fire, burning through ammo like crazy; but that was fine with Jake, they had the ammo to be burned through. It was like shooting fish in a barrel. But Jake remembered that Ava had expected this. She had told him that the families would likely use their dregs as decoys and cannon fodder as a way to get a read on where they had positioned their defensive emplacements. Then they’d move in with their main assault teams.

  Through their front entrance that had now been blasted open, Jake could see more men filtering between the houses across the street. But he had bigger problems. The men just outside their compound were laying down a ferocious amount of fire, and now that the door was down, Jake had a feeling that it was only a matter of time before the attackers gathering outside made a direct assault upon the station. They were just waiting until they had their men in place and numbers on their side.

  Jake didn’t like it, but again, he had to trust Ava’s plan; it was their only hope.

  The barrier they’d created of sandbags and steel plates just inside the pump station’s entrance was being riddled with bullets from outside, but his men were continuing to return fire from around the building. Suddenly he saw a puff of smoke from the street, and a second later, an intense explosion erupted somewhere above them. The firing from the rooftop ceased. He wondered if Ava was okay, but there wasn’t time for checking on her now. Jake knew that she could take care of herself.

  One of his men at the front door rocked back hard onto the floor, a bullet hole in his forehead. Jake reached down and grabbed the man’s assault rifle, aiming out the front door and squeezing the trigger until the weapon’s magazine was empty and then throwing it back to the floor. He saw a man outside dash across the front lawn, angling toward the cover of the building’s front exterior wall. Jake swung his own rifle around on a shoulder strap and fired, cutting the man down in mid-stride.

  An intense fire was now being directed at the entrance of the building from the street, causing Jake and his men to have to crouch for cover behind their barriers. They held their weapons just over their sheltered positions to fire. After a moment, Jake peeked his head overtop the sandbags and saw a group of six more men moving toward them across the lawn. He was able take down one of them, but the others made it to the cover of the building’s exterior wall. Seconds later, a grenade rolled in the front door.

  “Grenade!” Jake yelled, hitting the deck.

  The explosion ripped through the building’s entry hall, tearing into the sandbags and blasting some of them over onto the men. They hurriedly worked to replace them as best they could.

  Just as they got their barrier halfway back together, two more grenades rolled in.

  The ensuing blast was devastating. Two of Jake’s men who were still working to finalize the repairs to their bulwarks were torn apart, and Jake and two more of his men were hurled backwards down the entry hallway.

  Jake opened his eyes to a scene of chaos. He was stunned, dazed; he looked around him. The man next to him was bleeding from the mouth and ears. A lone arm lay beside him. He moved the fingers on each of his hands to make sure it wasn’t his own and then did a visual double-check. Another man next to him was struggling to stand, but kept falling in the blood that now covered the floor, making it a slippery mess.

  As Jake struggled to stand, he turned to look at the front entry. As the smoke began to clear, he could see men pouring through it and more out on the lawn moving toward the doorway.

  “JOHNNY!” he screamed.

  From the side room where most of the drug addicts were still firing away like madmen, Johnny Switchblade appeared. He whipped a throwing knife at the first attacker to enter the building, hitting the man in the neck. The man went down, spraying a hail of bullets in the process.

  As Jake moved to avoid the gunfire, he slipped, going down hard on the floor, landing in the ooze of blood and body parts it had become.

  Meanwhile, Switchblade pulled a handgun and fired continuously, hitting the next man through the door and killing him instantly while wounding the man just behind him. But there were just too many of them. The fourth man in line hit Switchblade in his mid-section like a linebacker, just as he ran out of ammo. They both went down to the floor.

&
nbsp; One of the addicts stepped into the doorway to assist but was immediately gunned down before he could get off a shot.

  Jake scrambled to stand, again slipping in the blood and gore, but eventually making it to his feet. He let loose with a full magazine, temporarily clearing the doorway of attackers. He pulled the empty magazine from his weapon and searched for another but found none.

  He frantically felt around his body for another magazine; then, realizing that he was out, pulled his backup piece. Another attacker appeared at the doorway and Jake fired, hitting the man, but he kept coming. Jake kept firing until the man finally dropped and he was again out of ammo.

  He threw his gun to the floor and prepared for the end. From the corner of his eye, he saw Johnny Switchblade, still grappling with the man who had tackled him. The man seemed to have the upper hand and had his hands around Switchblade’s neck, squeezing the life out of him. But Jake knew better. He watched as Switchblade’s free hand moved down to a holster attached to the side of his leg. In an instant it was all over, the handle of a four-inch blade protruding from the side of the attacker’s neck.

  Switchblade rolled the man off him and onto the floor, pulling the knife from his neck in the process. As he did so, five more men entered the doorway.

  Suddenly there was an intense explosion outside. Jake and Switchblade hit the deck. A second later, a deafening hail of gunfire from the hallway behind them ripped into the men who had just entered through the doorway. Several of the men were hit, several more ducked for cover behind the sandbag emplacement near them.

  It was Ava and the Kill King.

  “Hit the deck!” screamed Ava as she threw a grenade into the doorway.

  The attackers saw the grenade and bolted back outside. The ensuing blast killed two of them and picked the last few up like ragdolls, tossing them back out onto the pump station’s grass and gravel lawn.