The Forgiven The Fallen The Forsaken

by S. M. Armstrong

  The knife pulled away and Uncle Jim said, “Good stalking, except for the part where you died. You've gotta' watch your six, kid. Keep practicing.”

  “Thanks Uncle Jim.” And one of these days I’m going to put a paint ball on your forehead, you sick bastard.

  JANUARY 20th

  It didn’t take long for the RVs the girls were sharing to get far too small. Julie told Susan that she was getting worried that they’d end up killing each other. Susan answered, “Don’t worry; I’ll take care of it.

  Susan went to work on Jim to let them finish the work on his Airstream so they could use that, too. He was very reluctant but finally gave in after she winked and promised to make it up to him later.

  All seven of the girls dove into his Airstream project with enthusiasm. The cabinets were carefully removed and the plywood floor taken out in pieces. Jim welded in additional supports, allowing the floor to be replaced in 4 foot sections without losing the support for the sides of the trailer. He was ecstatic at finally getting to finish the trailer, but was working hard at hiding it. Susan thought it was priceless.

  They installed an 110v and a 12v system and a propane generator and solar panels. Jim didn’t trust the 65 year old stove and propane heater, so put in fire alarms with carbon monoxide detectors and gave them a kerosene heater, along with instructions to leave a window cracked when it was in use and three fire extinguishers. He also installed a trap door in the back of the trailer as a fire exit.

  By the time they finished, the bathroom had been expanded and moved to the back of the trailer, the floor was covered with vinyl tile that Jim had originally purchased for that purpose, and the trailer was furnished with items out of Jim and Susan’s storage, including a fold out sofa and a double bed. There was not a shower or a real stove, but it would be useable as more of a bedroom than an efficiency apartment. By now almost everyone was using the community showers anyway just because they were more convenient and the hot water lasted longer.

  Susan let the girls make curtains and decorate with stored items from the Vegas house. Jim cringed to think what would happen to his belongings, but had to admit that at this point, it probably didn’t matter.

  The girls were thrilled beyond belief, Julie and Helen at getting their RV to themselves, and the rest at having a households worth of furniture and other items to use to help make their RV’s their own. Rebecca and Pia chose to room together in an extra fifth wheel and Angie and Samantha were happy enough with the motor home.

  At 18, Jamie was the youngest and seemed destined for the Airstream. Fortunately she was also the one who enjoyed working on it with Jim the most. He really reminded her of her dad sometimes, except with a better sense of humor. And Aunt Susan was the best.

  Jamie's parents were in Alaska and had been very clear with her that they wanted her to stay put and not to try to come home during the crisis as it was far too dangerous. She missed them terribly, but had no way of knowing if they were okay or not. She was sure that if anyone would survive, it would be her parents.

  Jim and Susan let her know that she could stay with them if the Airstream was too cold. She thanked them and said that she wouldn’t trade the trailer for anything. Julie gave her a cold weather sleeping bag rated for zero degrees. She had a heater. It would be fine. The only thing missing was any kind of real stove. Jamie said she was fine with using the cabin or the pub for that.

  Jim told Susan, “I don’t care what you say, that’s a satisfying child. Can we adopt her?” Susan just laughed and kissed him.

  Aunt Susan asked to speak with all of them tonight, so Julie had gathered all the girls into her RV. I just hope they don’t make an ass of me, Julie thought. Helen was passing pouring Chianti for everyone as Pia set a tray of cheese and summer sausages on the kitchen table.

  Susan smiled at the girls and said, “So much for roughing it. I wanted a chance to talk to you now that you’re settled in more. I’m delighted that you’re all here. We girls need to stick together even more out here in the sticks, if for no other reason than to keep the guys from turning into cave men. You can all think of me as Aunt Susan, okay?”

  They all nodded. Here comes the catch, thought Julie.

  “First off, if you have any issues with anyone, I want to know about it. It’s too small of a group to let things fester, and if any of the guys are acting inappropriately, I want to nip it in the bud.

  “The small size of the community means that privacy is way too limited and emotions are going to be a bit raw. You’re going to have to give each other room and make allowances. It also means that I’m going to be keeping a thumb on any behavior that interferes with the community. Understand?

  “Here are the rules. Stay clear of anything that even looks like flirting with the married guys. You’re going to have to go way out of your way to be very clear you’re not going there.”

  Angie said, “None of us are even interested in them.”

  “Silly rabbit, it’s not you I’m worried about. It’s the wives who are going to be insecure and paranoid having a gaggle of hotties running around.” They all laughed at this. “So you’re going to need to go out of your way to be helpful to, and get along with, all of the women in camp.”

  Pia groaned. She had already had friction with Rita when helping to cook.

  Susan laughed, “Yeah, good luck with that. But it’s incredibly important. Trust me on this.

  “The next thing is that we’re pretty damn short on single men. Unless you're into Manny or Dave, you’re pretty well out of luck. The boys are going to have to be off limits for now.” Seeing the expressions on the girls faces, Susan continued, “You may not think that you’d go there now, but in a few months, Matt is going to start looking pretty damn good to some of you. Why, Rebecca, you’re blushing.”

  The laughter was contagious as they ribbed Rebecca and soon she joined in the laugh as well.

  “It’s okay, you have good taste. He is my nephew after all,” Susan said, “but a teenager in love is like a manic depressive off his meds taking random street drugs. I don’t want to have to clean up that mess. I don’t even want to think what the boy’s trailer bathroom smells like as it is now.”

  Julie started laughing and spit wine all over her t-shirt.

  “Julie, dear, please quit wasting the alcohol.” The laughing only became louder.

  “And the rest of you, please, please, please, stop the collective effort to give Luke a terminal case of blue balls.”

  Julie was crying now, she was laughing so hard.

  “So my point is, this adventure is going to be a year or two of your lives, at most. As long as you follow the basic rules and don’t disrupt the community, I don’t care who or what you do. I’m sorry we don’t have more single guys for you, but what can you do?

  “I’m going to go see if I can pull that man of mine away from whatever crazy project he’s started now and make him pay attention to me for a while. Thank you for the wine, Helen. Remember, no buns in the oven out here. You don’t want Jim delivering in an RV, or anywhere else.

  “Oh, and one last thing, Julie told me a couple of weeks before we locked down that she wanted to offer all of you a place out here and I insisted that she do so, and not tell Rob. It was devious, but it did let me do a little shopping ahead of time. Julie, could you get the present?”

  Julie went into the bedroom and brought out a large gift wrapped box that Susan had brought over earlier. “I’ll see all of you tomorrow,” Susan said as she left.

  Angie told Julie, “Your aunt is nuts. Aren’t you going to open it?”

  Julie answered, “I’m kind of afraid to.”

  Rebecca and Helen made it a moot point by tearing off the wrapping, pulling open the box, and dumping it upside down on the table. They were soon all screaming and laughing. There had to be a two year supply of condoms, a number of adult toys still in packages, and a note that said, “These are some of my favorites. Everybody gets one, or two, or whatever. Please be disc
reet throwing out the packaging.”

  Helen opened another bottle of wine as they tried to determine who would get stuck taking home which devices. In the end, they used a deck of cards, with the low card of each hand choosing an item for someone else. It was wrong, but hysterical.

  Julie thought, I didn’t think I would ever laugh like that again. Thank you Aunt Susan.

  JANUARY 26th

  Julie and Helen were enjoying not having to share their fifth wheel any longer. It's nice to come home to some privacy, thought Julie. During the early evening they would sometimes run a small Honda generator off of a propane tank and watch DVD’s, or they would use the 12v lights to read, or hang out and converse.

  Shortly after they had gotten rid of Jamie, Julie asked, "I guess we can go back to one of us using the sleeper sofa."

  "I don't want to go back to sleeping on it," said Helen. "Do you want to go back to sleeping on that lumpy thing?"

  "Not when you put it that way."

  "Then don't worry about it. Unless you have gas, then you should definitely sleep on the sofa."

  Julie asked, "What if you're the one with gas?"

  "Then you should definitely sleep on the sofa."

  Helen had finished her BA in sociology with a minor in economics and had been planning on attending law school starting the next fall. She had pushed Julie to spend some of their prep time buying text books at college bookstores wherever they went. She had also spent a fortune on filling their e-books with hundreds of books on many different subjects.

  Where Julie had been fixated on preparations for the months after the virus, Helen’s focus was on the question of, “then what?” Helen had said right from the beginning, “What good is it to survive only to be enslaved afterwards?”

  Tonight’s discussion was along the same lines. “What you’re missing is that there are people out there putting every second of thought into taking control of what comes next,” Helen said.

  “I don’t think that any one person, or even a small group, will be able to control anything on the macro level,” Julie answered. “There’s too much complexity.”

  “You deal with the complexity by placing enough flexibility in the system to allow people to believe they have a say. You even allow obvious avenues for resistance to the system because no system involving humans exists that doesn’t have someone trying to tear it down, or at least defying it to prove to themselves that they aren’t slaves of the system.

  “From time to time systems become too weak and corrupt to support their own weight. It happens in lots of different ways, but the primary characteristic is that the system becomes increasingly dysfunctional until something resets it, such as an external crisis, or it is replaced entirely. Which one do you think we’re dealing with here?”

  “Helen, that sounds nuts.”

  “You need to look at who benefits. Treat it like a crime investigation. Who ends up smelling like a rose, always coming out on top no matter the situation? You can usually spot the manipulations when a person or group manages to duck most of the shit that hits the fan.”

  Julie thought for a minute. “That sounds a lot like us.”

  “And here we are being trained by a special ops or maybe an agency team.”

  “Uncle Jim’s a civilian. He’s never been government.”

  “He’s up to his ears in government contacts. He’s much better known than you’ve ever realized.”

  “Where do you come up with this stuff?”

  “Have you noticed how your dad’s people treat him? They’re pros, and they treat him like he’s a lion. Friendly, but still a lion.”

  “Come on!”

  “How many ways do you know how to break a neck?” When Julie shrugged, Helen said, “I’ve counted 37 so far.

  “What I’m saying is that we are being trained to be soldiers and assassins. Your dad and whoever sent him out here are thinking a lot more about next year than about next month. We’re along for the ride and this is the team I’ll be staying with for the long haul, but understand that the game is a lot bigger than surviving the manmade pandemic. There will be a new system in place at the end of this process, and we’ll either be indispensible to it or we’ll be slaves of it in every way that matters.”

  “So what do we do?”

  Helen looked her in the eyes and said, “We study and train hard. We fit in. We prepare for the next steps while everyone else is still focused on breakfast. We keep our mouths shut. And we don’t make big mistakes. Same as it’s been for humans since the beginning of time.”

  Julie would be thinking about that for a long time to come.

  FEBRUARY 3rd

  Jim was pleased to see a comfortable routine fall into place. He was teaching hand to hand and weapons classes six days a week and Julio was teaching combat shooting, small squad tactics, and sniper training five days a week. Some of the students were doing better than others, but all of them would be competent in another couple of months.

  Rita avoided everything buy basic combat pistol training, insisting her place was in the kitchen anyway. After eating many of the amazing meals she prepared, Jim couldn't agree more. He was sitting on a stool in the pub kitchen watching her work and nibbling on some of the veggies she was prepping. She was skinny as a rail and never stopped moving. She was from Honduras and Jim always enjoyed listening to her stories.

  "So, what I'm thinking is we need a church," said Rita

  Jim swallowed the celery he was nibbling. "I'm not crazy about religion, but you can use whatever building you would like on Sundays."

  "No," she said, casually pointing the butcher knife at him. "I mean we need our own building for proper church services and it needs to be big enough to fit everyone."

  He had to stop himself from criticizing the idea. He thought, If a chef that good wants a church, she'll get one. "Then we'll build one. I'll have to see what supplies we have and bring the others in on it, but I don't see any reason we can't."

  "Good. And how about you getting me an apprentice in here. We need to have more than just me doing the work."

  "I'll ask, Rita, but try not to eat them alive, okay?"

  She laughed deeply. "That's how you make a chef. There's no time for nice in the kitchen until it runs just right. That's one of the secrets."

  "I won't argue with a master. I'll see what I can do. I need to get back to work. Thank you for taking such good care of us."

  "My pleasure, Mr. Mayor!"

  Jim waved as he walked out. This mayor thing is going a bit too far, he thought.

  He tracked down Rob in the headquarters building. "Rita wants a church."

  "You realize that if she gets a church, then she's going to want people to go to church," said Rob.

  "You want to cook your own meals?"

  "Where do you want to build it?"

  Jim thought for a moment. "Someplace I don't have to see it. How about next to the boys' fifth wheel?"

  "Perfect!"

  FEBRUARY 8th

  Stewart took charge of the church project and did a job on it that was far better than anyone had imagined. He chose a design out of one of the books Denise had bought for the village library. Instead of being just a project for the boys, most of the camp joined in to prepare and place the logs. It took two days to complete the basic structure and to complete the raw roof, but the building looked like something out of the old west. It was beautiful.

  They built a fireplace in one corner and put in a couple of windows and doors from the construction supply containers. The cement floor was plain, but somehow that added to the appeal.

  For the final touches, Susan dug out curtains from their former home and Frank taught the boys how to build wood furniture. Frank also made a large cross for the front of the room.

  Jim asked Rita, "How do you like it?"

  Rita said, "I love it!"

  "You can lead services on Sunday."

  Rita looked at him like he was nuts. "I'm no preacher! I just wanted a ch
urch to go to!"

  Jim looked at her in disbelief, finally saying, "I've got to go check on some things," and leaving.

  Rita waited till he left and had her best laugh in months.

  CATALINA ISLAND, SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA

  FEBRUARY 15th

  "I can't fucking believe this!" Sandy and her friends watched Brad take the boat out of the Avalon Bay marina without them. "He's leaving us here! He's ditching us."

  Her friends, Pam, Andrea, Maria, Lisa, and Sonya were equally outraged.

  "I told you he was a creep," said Pam.

  Lisa said, "What the hell are we supposed to do now?"

  Greg ran up behind him. "That's my fucking boat! I'm going to kill that asshole!"

  The group of them had been partying at Greg's parent's place when the virus broke out and the town's leaders quarantined the island. Greg wouldn't take them back to the mainland and the ferry trips stopped. They were stuck. The worst of it was that Greg and his friends were jerks. The molly and coke were good, but that ran out weeks ago. Now they were just stuck with a bunch of dickheads.

  Greg looked at the girls and screamed, "How are we supposed to get out of here now?!" He turned around and stormed off back to the small house up the street.

  They all watched him leave. Sonya said, "We're in deep shit."

  The local police had already told them they weren't welcome and had threatened to shoot them if there were any problems with the local population. Now they didn't even have the option of leaving.

  The young women were all in their mid twenties and attractive, but that didn't mean anything in a world without resupply of basic needs. They walked back to the house, dreading the situation that could only get worse.

  They entered the house to find Greg and his three friends drinking in the kitchen. Greg looked up and said, "Ladies, we need to have a talk."