180 Days and Counting... Series Box Set books 1 - 3

by B. R. Paulson

  Ending Jackson’s own life quickly might be the best way to go. Especially since the virus would be more pain than he wanted to face. Or, maybe giving himself the vaccine and watching the population disintegrate around him would be worth all of the horror of complete loneliness.

  If only there were a woman… he’d reconsider taking the vaccine and they could repopulate the earth together, like Adam and Eve. He wouldn’t even offer the second vial to his only friend.

  Jackson wasn't sure what he was going to do yet. There are so many options.

  And every single choice was all his.

  Following the curve, past the sign that said “No outlet - private property”, Jackson continued walking. He ignored the warnings and just glanced toward the white fuzzy smoke off in the distance. Wyoming was cold and wet in January. If anything, it was more bitter and unforgiving than other four season locales.

  Jackson ducked under the fence post at the very end of the property. He liked to tall it the end of the line. He narrowed his gaze, watching for any signs that the property owner had found him. In all the years Jackson had lived there, no one had found him yet. There were no tracks other than his. He retrieved a pine bough he’d stuck beside a tree and reached over the fence to brush away the last vestiges he’d been there.

  The snow was harder to hide his presence in, but soon, he wouldn’t have to hide from anyone or anything. If he decided to keep on living. The options he’d left himself were invigorating. If he could, he’d high five himself.

  Hiking through the collection of snow, he approached a copse of trees at the base of a plateau-style bluff, which overlooked the majority of the property. Trees and boulders decorated the landscape with various greens and dark, wet browns and blacks. Snow covered the tops brush and half-rotted stumps with icy round sculptures. The picturesque scenery sat at the back of the land plot which was close to a thousand acres, fenced in and overall well-maintained.

  The chunk of land wasn't Jackson's.

  Someone had left a bunch of train boxes at the back of the property where plants grew up and over, camouflaging the majority of them. At the bottom of the stack, Jackson had turned one into a bunker. Using solar panels placed on the tops of trees, he’d been able to harness enough energy to charge a few core batteries for the small things he needed done.

  He squatted on the land and left behind no evidence that he was there – no bills, no wires, nothing that could lead anyone to where he rested his head.

  Jackson was a no one.

  No one knew his real name – even his family clung to a name that didn’t represent who he was or who he’d become. One guy he’d been friends with for years on the internet knew his name but didn’t know the face to go with it. Jackson had no known address and even used a dead man’s Social Security number. He'd been working on building up that man's credit for a long time and now he could get any loan he wanted when he wanted with forged evidence of income.

  Slipping through the back entrance of his bunker, Jackson turned and locked it up tight before doing anything else. As long as he was quiet, if the property owner or owners came by, they would never know someone lived inside the train cars, even the cables to the panels were carefully secured to the trees above.

  White air puffed out in front of Jackson as he breathed into the chilly air of his home. He placed his backpack on the table at the far end of the box and sat in the chair at the desk. Everything he owned was second-hand or had been repurposed in some manner. He didn't believe in brand new where brand-new wasn't needed. Except underwear. Some things couldn’t be used – there was no other option on that. With all of the documented waste in the world, Jackson refused to add to it. He had to be the exception to the problem, or he wouldn’t deserve the vaccine.

  Just thinking about the changes coming flooded his cortex with exuberance.

  Jackson sighed. He couldn't wait for the revolution.

  Was he more excited or more nervous about the final stages of his plan? He had emailed C. Moss because he had to tell someone, and his long-time friend would understand. He had to share with someone what he was dealing with.

  Even his place of employment didn't know who he really was. They used the same credentials from when he’d been hired on as the tech guy. G-Pax, the pharmaceutical company, had hired him as a contractor which gave him the money to push his plans forward. That… And the fact that he was extremely talented in creating offshore accounts and convincing people to invest in his business ventures.

  Working at the pharmaceutical company made it easy for him to have access to equipment he needed to continue to develop his viruses and his other parts of the plan. He stole them or ordered from their suppliers with work accounts.

  He believed in the One Thing theory to “focus on one thing until you find success”. The man whose book he idolized was Gary Keller, a book which led him to find out what his true goal was and focus on actualizing on his real meaning in life.

  Jackson's entire reason for living became constructing a way to kill everyone else.

  Cleaning the world of its parasitic problem, not just his town, not just the state, or the country – but the entire world. He wanted to eradicate the world of any more abuse. Seven billion people on the planet and more and more every day.

  The sheer growth was unacceptable. Didn’t people realize there was birth control?

  He reached forward, flipping the switch to turn on the Internet using the booster he'd connected up another tree with a painted satellite. It would take a moment for everything to boot up and get online, but it was worth the energy it would use to check his email for a reply from Moss. They'd been friends since the late 90s. They had met on a basic chat and both had promised from the beginning to always keep it anonymous.

  Jackson had honored that promise. So far, he hadn’t even tried to find out where C. Moss lived. He could. He knew how to get information from the computer. He was good. But his promise to his friend was more important.

  Plus, there was a level of honesty and trust when things were kept anonymous. Things were said when they were anonymous. Jackson needed that. He needed that safety and he wanted to provide that for his friend. The guy was brilliant, too. He had ideas and theories and when they would come off their rants they would come up with plans that Jackson ended up using more than one of. He even printed off their emails and chats to reference later. He had three-hole punched them and put the pages into 3-inch ring binders. Marking them up like the best reference books was fun, but making his own notes in the margins has been like revisiting a new edition of a well-loved book.

  Rereading those conversations reassured him that his thinking was not out of the norm. His thinking was proactive, more along the lines of freethinking and world protection than anything else.

  They had multiple pages that agreed with climate change and proved it on a mathematical level. Population control was the most basic of topics for them that they came back to again and again. A favorite twist to the topic was how to control population and the problems associated with free thinking and choice.

  Always their conversations came back to population eradication. When you just took the human out of the equation, there was no problem with choice, no problem with consequences of population control. Population decimation was the answer to all of the problems they listed.

  Climate change? Get rid of the population.

  Not enough food? Get rid of the population.

  Too much greed? Get rid of the population.

  Too much sickness? Get rid of the population.

  Getting rid of the population was the answer to everything.

  Jackson reached into his back pocket and pulled out a small case he carried everywhere with him.

  He opened the black box and pulled out two very small vials. The glass was cool to the touch but didn’t need to stay cold. He’d designed it that way. It would be viable up until one-hundred-and-thirty-degrees. He had to make sure not to leave it in a hot window in the summer.r />
  Not that they would make it that long. The efficacy of the vaccines wouldn’t last after he released the virus.

  Jackson only had two vials.

  There would only be two.

  He had destroyed the formula that had taken him months and months to create. All of the materials he’d used to create the vials had burned in an incinerator at work. He’d made sure that the vaccine wasn’t accessibly by anyone, but who he wanted to have it. Jackson would offer the second vial to C. Moss. He owed his friend that much. Even as Jackson waffled on using the vaccine himself, he had to give his friend the option to take it. To live or not to live – wasn’t that what they wanted to give the planet?

  True, he’d be forcing Moss to be alone until he died, but at least he could grant his friend the choice. Yet, Jackson had the feeling that if he knew his friend, then he could recognize the fact that there was no way the man would take the vaccine.

  Chapter 4

  Scott

  “Cady? You in here?” Scott knocked on the door and turned the knob. Zach’s truck wasn’t in the drive – it was only Wednesday – so Scott didn’t have to worry about being formal. Not many people would think Cady and Scott had an appropriate relationship, but as far as she was concerned, Scott was just a neighbor.

  He didn’t like to think about what he thought – that was where the line was crossed. That was where, if he ever dove deeper into his thought processes, he would give people a reason to talk and Zach a reason to punch him in the face, if not shoot him.

  The warm aroma of cinnamon apples cooking greeted him and he half-closed his eyes as he inhaled deeply, closing the door behind him. Cady was baking again. The woman’s skills and talents astounded him and he wasn’t sure what was acceptable to comment on. He usually kept his compliments to himself, but her husband didn’t give her enough appreciation and if she was Scott’s… Well, that was better left alone.

  “Scott! Did you walk here? I didn’t hear you drive up.” Cady rounded the corner from her kitchen, a green and red kitchen cloth in her hands. She beamed at him, her soft brown hair braided and pulled over her shoulder. Her blue eyes widened and she arched an eyebrow as she reached him and stretched up to press her cheek to his. Pulling back, she glanced out the window.

  Flustered by being close to her for a moment, Scott cleared his throat and pulled his warm Carhart jacket off, hanging it on the closest chair at the dining table. “Yeah, I brought the four-wheeler, but parked it back in the trees. I wasn’t sure if Zach was here, and last time I saw him…” He didn’t keep going. Bringing up the last time Zach had yelled and waved a gun at him had left Scott feeling like he’d done something wrong and poor Cady in tears.

  It’d been a few weeks since he’d visited again.

  Cady shook her head. “Well, the house is in my name, so don’t worry about it. You’re welcome here. I’m… well, Zach and I have a lot to discuss. You’re always welcome here. All my friends and family are.” She turned back to the kitchen and tossed over her shoulder, “You need to bring Ranger over sometime. I know Bailey loves that dog.”

  Following her, Scott averted his eyes from the shape of Cady’s rear end and stopped at the sight of all the cakes and pies on the counters. “Wow, you’ve been busy. Why all the cooking?” He slid onto a stool across from her counter and leaned forward on his elbows.

  She took a deep breath. “I’m not sure. Honestly? I just have a lot of pent up frustrations and I can’t ride the bike any more than I have. I’m getting cabin fever and it’s driving me nuts.” She laughed, moving around the counter island toward the sink. Almost like a second-thought, she watered a mason jar of herbs set in the window above the faucet – basil, cilantro, and oregano. Her aloe plant hung over the edge of the pot as if reaching toward Cady’s nurturing fingers.

  “Well, I have the perfect way to burn off that frustration and give you something else to work on for your prepping.” He tilted his head to the side and reached for a small apple turnover sitting on a silicon baking sheet. He glanced up at her in a silent request and grinned at the roll of her eyes and short nod. “I’m telling you,” He picked up the still warm turnover and took a small bite of the flaky corner. He groaned a bit at the warm, feel-good taste. “Yep, that’s delicious. Okay, so as I was saying, I keep telling you to get down to Center Partners and get that carry conceal license. They can teach you how to use those guns you have, Cady. You need that. That kind of knowledge will round out your education nicely.”

  “I don’t need a carry conceal in Idaho, Scott. Plus…” She shook her head, turning to stir something in a pan with her back to him. After a minute, she looked back at him. “It’s not that I don’t want to learn how to use a gun. Zach told me he didn’t want me to do anything that extreme. I don’t want to blatantly go against all of his wishes. I figure I’m doing that enough as it is.” Sadness turned down the corners of her eyes and she looked back at the stove. After a second, she glanced back at him and arched an eyebrow. “It’s not like he wouldn’t freak, if he knew you were here.”

  She had a point. Scott didn’t say anything as he bit into the treat further. As far as Scott was concerned, Zach was a hypocrite. He had guns in the house but wouldn’t allow the rest of his family to get educated on them. He turned a blind eye to the food stockpiling under his house because it would benefit him at some point, even though he didn’t want to admit it. And Scott watched as Cady tried not upsetting her husband while she also tried to get the entire family prepared for an inevitable something that was coming.

  It was coming. It was just a matter of when and how severe.

  Cady’s home was inviting and warm while also having multiple practical applications. Her wood stove warmed the house but would also provide a means to cook when the power went out. Sure, she’d set up a generator and a transfer switch in the garage, but she hadn’t hooked up the entire house because of the size limit Zach had forced on her. He hadn’t wanted to have to store anything bigger than a 2200. Every time Cady tried bettering their situation, Zach stonewalled her attempts.

  Scott would never do that, if he was with her.

  After a minute, Scott swallowed another bite and realized if he didn’t start talking, he was most likely going to gain five pounds from all the eating. “This is delicious, thanks. Well, if not the carry conceal course, what about the HAM radio club I sent you info on? You can use my receiver to practice. You don’t even need to buy anything. I just…” How did he tell her pursuing her passion was more important to him than making Zach happy?

  Zach and Cady were on a serrated edge of sanity with their marriage as it was. Part of him wanted to push them apart, but the part that cared about her as a friend didn’t want her to go through that kind of pain. Plus, if she didn’t care about him the same, having her available but not interested would be more torture than her being tied up with another man and Scott daydreaming about what-if.

  Cady turned and shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe? Maybe not. I’m just…” She cast her gaze downward. “It’s like, I’m doing all of this,” She waved her hand to encompass the house and the property. “To be prepared – I’ve taken so many first aid and first responder courses, I could write a thesis, I have more academic knowledge about what could or will most likely happen in the event of an EMP, a train wreck down in Athol, an earthquake within the surrounding two-thousand miles, and more. I just don’t know…”

  Scott had to convince her to try even more. She’d gotten him started, he was going to keep her going. “You’re such a prepper. I’ve never seen such passion for the trade, yet you won’t pick up the two fundamental skills of it. Fine on the shooting, I can teach you later and sometimes it really is as simple as point and pull the trigger. Whatever, but why not HAM?” He licked cinnamon-sugary goodness from his fingers and then pierced her with his gaze. “I need to understand, Cady. I’ll stop bugging you as soon as I understand.” They were close enough as friends he could be blunt with her with expectations that other people
wouldn’t have.

  She lifted her chin. “The guns… I already explained, Scott. I just… HAM radio is something I’m not sure I’d like. It’s a dedicated skill and I have to save up for that kind of commitment. If something does happen, it’s going to be trade-based. I know I don’t have a lot of skills, but there are things I’m good at and things I know I can do that I’m interested in. I’m just not convinced that I should be spending my time practicing HAM. Maybe next year, okay? I appreciate your help. I really do. I just…” She sighed and tucked her chin, bracing her hands on the counter.

  Scott slid from the stool and rounded the counter, taking Cady by her upper biceps. He leaned down to see her more fully in the face. “Cady, what is it?” That close and he could lean down and kiss her, if she wasn’t someone else’s wife.

  The moment came close into focus. Every minute detail slowed down. She blinked, the flutter of her lashes and the movement of her chest as she breathed entrancing. Scott didn’t want to look away.

  After a moment, she raised defiant eyes to his. “What are we doing?” She jerked from his hold. Was she upset he’d touched her or was she on about something else? She lifted her hand and then dropped it to her side. “What do we think is going to happen? Are we just wasting our time? I hear it all the time from my… family, how I’m wasting money and time. What if they’re right? With everything I’ve invested in preparing, I could pay for a year of college for Bailey at a four-year university. Maybe Zach could even quit his job.”

  Turning back to Scott, she twisted her lips to the side in a sardonic smile. “You know? Like, what’s the point?” She folded her arms, defensive against her own words and Scott’s chest ached for her. “I’m dealing with a lot of defiance here and the way things are going with Zach… I just don’t think I have the frame of mind to face either of those projects right now. Does that make sense?”

  Lowering his tone, Scott stepped forward. He ignored the thrill running through him at the mention that she and Zach weren’t doing well. He was her friend, not a vulture circling for stolen moments. “It’s okay. I understand. But trust me when I say, you’re not wasting anything by learning more. You’ll be glad you have the knowledge you have. I know something is going to happen. There’s so much going on right now that it’s only a matter of time. Don’t doubt yourself.” He let his hands drop to his sides. “When does Zach get back?” He knew Zach would be home soon, he just had to wedge her husband between them before he did something she would regret. He would never regret anything with her.