The Systemic Series - Box Set

by K. W. Callahan

  Peering into his driver’s side mirror he started to slide the van back a few feet to give himself some maneuvering room.

  Bonnie was in the backseat, enthralled with a cartoon show playing on the van’s entertainment center. She started giggling uncontrollably at something she’d just seen on the television. It was one of those incredibly annoying giggles that drive parents nuts and that was definitely coming at the wrong time.

  “Bonnie!” Kim said, swiveling in her seat to berate her child.

  Suddenly Bonnie’s face switched from happy contentment to fear, her eyes going wide, her smile disappearing.

  I’m finally getting this parental discipline thing down, Kim thought as she saw her daughter’s reaction.

  It would be her last thought.

  Bonnie’s shriek brought Kevin’s foot down hard on the break, jolting the van as he stopped reversing to looking back in front of him. “What are…” he started, but the first blast and the splatter of blood across the side of his face stopped him short.

  The next few seconds seemed to take place in slow motion. In front of him, Kevin saw a group of young men. Somehow he had missed their arrival in the brief time he’d been distracted with trying to back up the van. They had surrounded the police officer conducting the traffic stop, taking his assault rifle and shoving him up against the car in front of Kevin’s, knocking his helmet off in the process.

  At first, Kevin thought the explosion he’d heard had been the van’s radiator blowing up or something, the blood, hot water from the blast. Then he realized the passenger side of the windshield was shattered and noticed that Kim was toppled over in her seat, motionless, her seatbelt keeping her body partially suspended, a gaping hole in her forehead.

  Bonnie was screaming. As Kevin glanced in the rearview mirror, it appeared she was physically unharmed.

  More explosions erupted around him and the passenger side of the front windshield thunked and cracked as bullets tore through the glass and impacted with his wife’s lifeless body.

  Kevin flashed his eyes back to the group of men in front of him, now seeing that several of them had guns aimed at his vehicle. He saw the cop try to reach for his sidearm, but he was quickly restrained. One of the armed men grabbed the officer’s handgun instead, pulled it from the holster, aimed it at the back of the officer’s head, and squeezed the trigger. In a blast of noise and red spray the officer went down in a heap. The man with the gun then turned and fired three shots into the driver’s side window of the traffic-stopped vehicle in front of Kevin’s. Then he yanked the door open and pulled the dead driver from within, letting the man’s body tumble out onto the pavement.

  Kevin didn’t wait any longer. He threw the mini-van into drive and hit the gas, but he hadn’t given himself enough room. The front of the mini-van hit the rear of the car in front of them, bringing the van to an abrupt stop even closer to the armed group of men who seemed momentarily stunned by his escape attempt.

  Kevin pressed the accelerator to the floor, pushing the car in front of them forward several feet before it slowed and the van’s tires began to spin.

  He took his foot off the accelerator and put it on the break. He heard more gunshots. Suddenly, hammer-like hits and searing pain in his right arm and shoulder knocked him back in the seat and tore his right hand away from the vehicle’s shifter as he struggled to get the van into reverse.

  Bonnie’s screams suddenly behind him stopped.

  He looked back up into the rearview mirror. Bonnie was slumped to one side, the white shirt she was wearing soaked in blood.

  Kevin’s right arm was now useless so he used his left hand to reach over and throw the mini-van into reverse. As he got the van in gear and looked back up to the group of men in front of him, the next wave of bullets struck, ripping into his head and chest, killing him instantly.

  HOUR AND A HALF EARLIER

  10:26 a.m.

  SOUTHERN ILLINOIS

  I was walking along one side of the access road just out of view from any approaching vehicles should our visitors not be friendly. I had an idea of what might be going on and who might be here, but I wasn’t taking any chances.

  As I neared the open field where we’d first made camp, I began to slow to a more cautious pace. I paused, slinging my rifle around in front of me from where it hung on my shoulder strap. I clicked the safety off and checked to make sure I had a round chambered before continuing.

  I stopped again in the forest about 30 yards from the parking area. I stood perfectly still, listening. I could hear voices, but I couldn’t distinguish what they were saying, so I crept slowly closer trying to sneak a peak at the vehicle or vehicles that had arrived before I saw people. The brush was too thick here where the forest met the clearing to see much of anything.

  I hunched down, holding my rifle out in front of me, finger on the trigger, ready to fire, and continued in a half crouch. I wiped away the sweat that was dripping down my forehead and getting into my eyes, stinging them like crazy. I blinked hard then found a patch in the scrubby growth near the tree line where I could conceal myself and try to refocus. It took me a moment before I could see what I’d hoped would be there.

  I stood, eavesdropping for a minute.

  “I thought they said they’d be here,” I heard a female voice say in a distressed tone.

  “That’s what the letter said,” a male voice came back.

  I heard a child’s laugh and another young voice whine, “Paul, stop it!”

  “Kids, knock it off,” I heard the male voice say sternly.

  I stood and softly started whistling the theme song from The Andy Griffith Show as I began picking my way through the brush to make my way into the clearing. I knew they’d recognize the tune because it was something I tended to whistle at family functions when cooking or helping to clean up after dinner.

  The voices stopped and I could see the glint of metallic gray as sunlight reflected from my younger brother Will and his wife Sharron’s mini-van moments before I saw them standing beside it. Their two kids, Sarah who was six, and Paul who was eight, were chasing each other around the vehicle as their parents stood talking.

  As I emerged from the forest, Will’s head dropped back in relief. “Thank god you’re here,” he called to me as I approached. I thought we’d driven all this way to be stuck out here on our own.”

  “Would I do that to my little brother and his wonderful family?” I said, opening my arms wide to embrace Will as I approached.

  We exchanged greetings and pleasantries. As the kids got back to their playing, I asked Will, “So how was the trip down?”

  “Not too bad,” he said. There were some rough patches on the outskirts of Naperville around some of the shopping hubs. People are going a little bit crazy trying to take what they can since many of the stores have been closed for a few days.”

  “A little bit crazy?” Sharron chimed in. “How about a lotta bit crazy?”

  Will nodded, “Yeah, things are starting to break down pretty bad. Whatever this Su flu is, it’s more than just the damn flu.”

  “That’s what it sounded like from the radio reports we’ve been getting down here,” I agreed. “I’m just glad you made it safely,” I smiled.

  “Thanks for setting this up, John,” said Will. “It’s getting bad up there. We brought what we could, but it’s not a lot. We were getting ready to go to the store when all the reports started coming in about people raiding the few places that were still open. They said that even if you could find an open store, most everything of use would likely be gone anyway.”

  “That’s alright,” I said. “We’re pretty well set up down here if you don’t mind canned food, pasta, and roughing it a bit.”

  “Hey, at this point we’ll be happy with anything,” Will smiled.

  “And appreciative,” Sharron smiled at me. “Thank you for the letter. I’m sure that took some guts to put out there. Most people would have been too embarrassed or timid or just damn uncaring in t
his day and age to do something like that, but it was very thoughtful.”

  “Sure,” I said, coyly. “No problem. Just wanted to give you guys an option if you needed it.”

  “Well, we did,” Will said. “And we’re very grateful.”

  “Okay,” I said, getting back to business. “If you’ll throw a leash on these wild animals you’ve brought along,” I grinned, nodding at the kids, “I’ll show you where we’re set up and we can start getting you settled in. I’m sure Claire will be ecstatic to have some company. She doesn’t know about the letters I sent out.”

  “You didn’t tell her?” Will said, sounding surprised.

  “Ha!” I laughed. “She would have flipped out. She was mad enough about us having to come down here, let alone if she’d known I’d pushed this idea off on other family members too. She’d have been as embarrassed as all get out.”

  “So where is your camp?” Sharron questioned, looking around at the empty field.

  “Back down the entry road, about hundred yards or so from where you crossed the bridge.”

  Will nodded. “Close to water…makes sense,” he agreed.

  I waited while they loaded the kids back into their van, then I rode along with them, directing them to a spot next to the bridge where they could park temporarily while we unpacked.

  “Where’s your car?” Sharron asked as we pulled up.

  “It’s close. I found a good spot to camouflage it, just in case we get any…unwelcome visitors.”

  “Good thinking,” she said.

  “Will and I will do the same thing with yours after we’re done unloading it,” I told her.

  They were right when they said they hadn’t brought much. There was a cooler of frozen food, but not much ice. It looked like they’d only dumped in what was left in their ice maker. There were several packages of frozen ground beef, a package or two of frozen chicken breasts, some ribs, some frozen veggies, and a couple cuts of beef. There was an assortment of lunch meats, a pack of hot dogs, some cheese slices, and fresh vegetables thrown in on top of the frozen stuff.

  There were also some shopping bags in their mini-van’s cargo area. One bag contained several bags of potato chips, a jar of already opened salted peanuts, and a bag of pretzels. There was a bag that contained several cans of assorted veggies, soups, and other canned items like pumpkin pie filling and tomato paste. Then there was a bag with a box of snack cakes, half a loaf of white bread, a quarter loaf of rye bread, a couple deli rolls, two boxes of crackers, and some olive oil. And the final bag had a container of syrup, two boxes of opened cereal, some peanut butter, two jars of jelly, and salt, pepper, and an assortment of spices, many of which appeared to have opened and spilled inside the bag. Beside all this, there was a 24-pack of 16-ounce bottled waters, five of which had already been consumed, an open case of soda, an unopened case of beer, and a gallon of spring water.

  I’d estimated that they’d brought about enough to feed a family of four for about a week if the supplies were rationed properly.

  “Can’t believe you’re my brother,” I said, looking at the pitiful array.

  “That’s why I have you,” he grinned, walking around the back of the car to stand beside me and put an arm around my shoulder.

  “Did you at least bring your guns?” I asked.

  He slid the cooler over to reveal a large crate it was sitting on. He lifted a latch to open it. Inside sat a pump-action shotgun, two handguns, a hunting rifle, and an assault rifle. He turned to flip up the back of his t-shirt, revealing another handgun tucked into his belt.

  “Well,” I said, “what you don’t bring to the table in provisions, you certainly make up for in firepower. How’s the ammo situation?”

  He guided me around to the front of the vehicle. At the foot of the passenger-side seat where Sharron had been sitting, there were several large steel boxes.

  “Sharron bitched about the lack of leg room the whole way down, but I knew it was worth it. 100 shotgun shells, 400 rounds for the handguns, 300 rounds for the rifle, and 1200 rounds for the assault rifle.”

  “Guess you’re my brother after all,” I grinned.

  We sent Sharron and Sarah along ahead of us, each with a couple bags of food, while Paul, Will, and I loaded ourselves down like pack mules and trudged along behind.

  “Claire will be glad to see you guys,” I said, loud enough for Sharron to hear. “I think the effects of my amazing charm and wit have been fading on her,” I joked.

  “Yeah, it’s been a while since we’ve seen you guys last. What was it? Fourth of July? It’ll be good to catch up,” Sharron called back to us.

  The sound of her voice must have carried because Claire met us at the edge of camp, smiling and open armed. Jason came toddling up to us, jabbering excitedly.

  We went through the greeting process all over again, both families exchanging pleasantries as we unloaded our supplies on the picnic table it’d taken me and Claire nearly half an hour to lug to camp with Jason riding merrily atop it.

  Will was tall and thin like me but had a fuller face from plenty of good downtown Chicago eating where he worked in financial consulting. Sharron was a school teacher and was just a tad on the plump side which always kind of intrigued me since she was a vegetarian. I never quite understood how she managed to retain the weight living off twigs and berries. Paul was looking like he was going to take after his father while Sarah appeared to be following in her mother’s footsteps when it came to physical appearance.

  “Looks like you’re pretty well set up here,” Will said gazing around our camp.

  “We’ve had some time to work on it,” I agreed.

  “When did you guys get down here?” Will asked.

  “This past Saturday.”

  “Wow, you really got a jump on this thing,” he said, wide-eyed.

  “You know me,” I shrugged.

  “Claire’s given up on work?” Will said.

  I shrugged, “Didn’t have much choice.”

  “Good thing,” Will shook his head sadly. “The hospitals are houses of horror now. You couldn’t pay me enough to even get close to one these days. My office is closed for the rest of the week and I put in for a week’s vacation for next week. Sharron’s school is off for the foreseeable future. Same for the kids’ schools too. I have a feeling it’s going to be some time before things get back to normal.”

  His words made me feel a little bit better about our decision to extend our stay in southern Illinois.

  I turned to Claire, Sharron, and the kids, “Will and I are going to make another run down to the car,” I said. “You can come too, Paul.”

  The young man looked defeated by the request. I’m sure he would rather have stayed, played, and explored the camp with Jason and his sister, but I needed him to learn quickly how to help out and pull his weight.

  “Sounds good,” said Claire. “We’ll start unpacking some of this food.”

  I was relying on Claire to help me in getting our new arrivals acclimated to a completely new way of life and living. It needed to happen quickly, as our supplies and situation – especially now that we were going to be sustaining a group of seven rather than three – left little room for missteps.

  On the way back to the car, I said, “So the situation back home doesn’t look too good, huh?”

  “The situation everywhere doesn’t look good,” Will shook his head. “Chicago, Springfield, New York, Miami, LA…Canada, Mexico, Europe, Asia…you name it, they’ve got this thing…whatever it is.”

  “Jesus,” I said. “And they don’t have any idea of how to fight it? Cures, treatments, anything?”

  Will just shook his head, no. “Even if they did,” he said, “I’m not sure they’d have a way to get vaccines out to people at this point. Things are really starting to fall apart. Hospitals are closed or way understaffed. The police…the officers who are still working at least, are getting mobbed with calls. People are afraid to leave their homes, but they’re running out of
food. And the ones who aren’t afraid to leave have taken all the supplies or are waiting for other people to leave their homes so that they can break in and steal whatever’s left. We snuck out in the middle of the night. It’s a freakin’ mess. We’re lucky that we live outside the denser populated suburbs because we’ve been hearing horror stories on the news about people trying to escape. The closer in to downtown you get, the worse the situation becomes when trying to leave.” He took a deep breath and stopped walking.

  Paul and I stopped walking too.

  He looked at me, “Thanks again,” he said. “You know you’ve pretty much saved our asses here.”

  “Yeah,” I shrugged, playing it off. “No biggy.”

  He put a hand on my shoulder, “Yeah, it is a biggy. I know you don’t like to play the hero, and I know that a lot of people have given you grief about your doom-and-gloom scenarios, me included; but it looks like this time you were right.”

  I smiled, “Thanks,” I said. “But I was never looking to be right, just prepared to stay alive, that’s all.”

  “Well, whatever the reason, thanks,” Will said, starting to walk again.

  “Thanks for bringing the guns,” I said. “Those could come in handy down the road.”

  “Hey, I’ve got to pull my weight somewhere,” he said.

  We grabbed the rest of the food, a tent, and some camping equipment that I’d given Will for his birthday a few years back and that still looked unused, and then we made the return trip to camp.

  While we were gone, Claire and Sharron chatted and unpacked food while Sarah played with and kept an eye on our little Jason.

  “I’m glad you’re here, Sharron,” Claire said as she sorted through one of the grocery bags, pulling out assorted items and spreading them on the picnic table.

  “You’re telling me,” Sharron said, sounding relieved. “I have to say, when we first got John’s letter, we thought he’d finally gone off the deep end, but I’m so thankful he sent it now. Things are falling apart back home.”