“Ready?” Jake said.
She nodded, tipping slightly in her seat to slide the file into her right rear pocket. Then she swiveled to dig an assault rifle from the backseat.
“Ready when you are,” she nodded, jamming a clip into the weapon and ensuring it was locked and loaded.
Jake followed suit.
“Alright, let’s go finish this thing.”
Outside, they found their crew spread out in a horseshoe-shaped perimeter around what appeared to be four, maybe five guys crammed into a small dip in the earth with a felled tree across the front of it.
Jake found his most trusted man, Roger, knelt behind a large stump, firing away like crazy.
“What you fucks doing?” Jake yelled, smacking Roger in the back of the head. “You telling me you can’t handle that burrow full of bunnies over there?”
“They got some firepower, boss,” Roger paused in his shooting spree to respond.
“All you’re fucking doing is wasting ammo. Why don’t you get around in back of them?”
“Tried, but more of ‘em showed up. Shot Mac dead and wounded Winston.”
Jake made a mental note. Mac was a long-termer who needed to go anyway. Winston had joined up just before they left Chicago and would be missed…but not much.
“Get organized goddamn it!” Jake yelled at Roger. “Grab a few guys and lay down some suppressing fire. Ava and I will work around back. And Roger…” he made sure he made eye-contact with the man, “…no more fuckups.”
Roger nodded, staring, understanding the unspoken consequences. Suddenly Ava gave him a hard kick in the ass. “Well, get the fuck moving,” she glared at him.
He just nodded sullenly and scurried off.
Jake smiled, watching Ava. “God, you’re amazing,” he said.
The rain had soaked through her shirt, making it cling tighter to her, if that was even possible. Her erect nipples poked hard against the drenched, nylon fabric. Jake grabbed her and pulled her close amidst the chaos swirling around them, kissing her hard while grabbing an ass cheek in hand. Then he released her to round up a couple guys to take with them to finish this ridiculousness.
After the house burning in Avers, he was getting bored with rural Illinois. He’d had high hopes, but he was ready to be out of this shitbubble. Memphis sounded like a good spot. Maybe they’d head in that direction next. Redneckland wasn’t panning out the way he’d planned. He figured it’d be easy pickings, but it wasn’t turning out that way. The woods weren’t his natural habitat; he felt more comfortable in the steel and concrete of the city.
***
The gunfire was growing even heavier now. It was so bad that the occupants of the tiny sinkhole could barely raise their weapons to return fire. Little Paul was crying, his hands over his head and ears. Ammo was running perilously low.
“Okay, here’s the plan!” Will almost screamed. “Dad and I will stay and give covering fire. Steve, you and Brian take Paul and get the hell out of here. Get back to camp and tell the others what’s going on. Arm everyone, but then get them away from camp to somewhere safe and wait for John. Got it?”
“What about you and grandpa?” Paul cried.
“Don’t worry about us; just do as I say. We’ll be right behind you as soon as you’re out of danger.”
Will peeked his head up quickly above the tree trunk, scanning the area in front of them and then ducking it back down as several rounds tore into the wood near where his head had just been. He raised his rifle and fired off several rounds in return.
“Ready?” he called.
“Ready!” Steve and Brian responded as Steve took one of Paul’s hands in his, cradling his shotgun in the other.
“You ready, Dad?” Will said, glancing over at Frank.
“Yeah,” his Dad nodded.
“GO!” Will shouted, turning and firing round after steady round over the tree trunk in front of them, pacing his fire. Frank did the same.
Brian jumped out of the sinkhole with agility, then paused and turned, aiming his rifle like some kind of Hollywood hero and letting loose with a volley of his own.
Steve started out of the hole behind him but slipped as he tried to pull Paul along with him. He went down on his knees and it took him several seconds to regain momentum and heft himself from the sinkhole in the mud and slippery leaves. Once out, he lifted Paul out with him as Brian continued laying down covering fire of his own.
“Go!” Brian pushed him ahead.
Suddenly a bullet tore into Brian’s left arm, causing him to drop his rifle. He cried out in pain but recovered his weapon with his right arm and continued to fire as Steve and Paul ran from the sinkhole. He turned to follow, but as he did, he noticed Steve – Paul sheltered behind him – lift his shotgun and squeeze off a round. As the smoke from the blast cleared, Brian could see two figures, one in a black leather jacket, and another who appeared to be a woman…and a good looking woman at that. Both had guns – guns aimed at Steve and Paul.
“LOOK OUT!” Brian yelled, aiming his rifle at the two unknown attackers, but it was too late.
The woman took aim at Steve and fired several rounds, one of which struck him in the shoulder as he pushed Paul behind the cover of a nearby tree. Brian tried to use his injured left arm to steady his gun but it wasn’t working; his hand wouldn’t grip the underside of the weapon. He had just got his finger on the trigger, ready to fire, when he felt a hard thump and then searing pain in his side. He glanced down to see the side of his shirt torn away revealing a gaping wound just above his waist. It was strange though. Even with the hammer-like impact, it didn’t really hurt, it just stunned him and made him angry.
In front of him, Steve stumbled and went down, managing to pull himself behind the tree with Paul.
“Arrahhh,” Brian screamed, charging at the man and woman, and squeezing the trigger of his rifle as he ran toward them.
The man in the black leather jacket shoved the woman aside and she stumbled, falling to the ground.
Brian was sure he had hit the man at least once. But then the man in the jacket slowly took aim at Brian and squeezed off a single round. It hit Brian square in the chest, knocking him backward and to the ground, dead.
While Brian’s efforts had accomplished little, they were enough of a distraction to allow Steve and Paul time to limp back to the sinkhole where they fell in a wet, bloody heap alongside Will and Frank.
Will looked at them in shocked surprise upon their return. “What happened?” he said, seeing Steve’s injury.
“They’ve got us surrounded,” Steve gasped.
“Where’s Brian?”
Steve just shook his head, crying, “They got him.”
Behind them, Jake checked his bulletproof vest where several rounds had hit him in the midsection. The impacts had knocked the wind out of him, but it appeared the vest had done its job. As he pulled Ava to her feet, he saw that her arm had been speckled with buckshot, but she otherwise appeared uninjured.
As they made this quick inspection, they saw someone shoot past them in the rain. They couldn’t tell if it was one of their own or not.
“Come on,” Jake said. “We’ve got them now.”
***
Without Brian, I headed straight back to camp from the entry road, but halfway there, I fell awkwardly as I was jumping a tangle of vines. It was one of those unexpected falls that happens so fast you have little time to brace for impact. Landing hard on the ground knocked the wind out of me and it took a minute to recover. It was a horrible feeling, one that thinking back on it, I’d last experienced as a child. Gasping for those oxygen molecules I needed so badly after running nearly half a mile through the woods was something I certainly hadn’t missed over the past few decades.
Therefore, I was a couple minutes behind Brian, and just as I made it back to camp, I began hearing the sounds of gunfire in the distance. Seeing as how only the women and kids were left behind, I figured that whatever was happening involved the remainder
of our camp.
Since I already had my rifle and .44 with me, I quickly grabbed an extra box of ammo for my .22 from the tent and a few additional magazines for Will’s assault rifle.
Claire was there. She gave me a worried look.
I gave her a rushed kiss and a “Love ya,” and I was off.
It took me a few minutes to get close to the action. I stayed off the camp road and skirted the edge of the forest. Whatever was going on, there was a pretty good firefight involved.
I slowed my pace, moving from tree to tree as cover. The rain and gunfire blanketed the sound of my footsteps so I felt secure in moving a little quicker than I might have otherwise. As the sound of the gunfire intensified ahead of me, I could see muzzle flashes and a haze of smoke and steam starting to envelop what I took to be the battlefield. The darkened day from the rain-filled sky helped me decipher the perimeter of fire that was ringing a single point where I guessed my family members were likely pinned down.
It was as I made up my mind regarding this positioning that I noticed movement around me. As I took up cover behind a large maple tree, I noticed several people moving to my right. It appeared there were at least four of them, and they were carrying assault rifles. There were too many to try to handle at once, so I made a tactical retreat deeper into the forest and away from them. I thought that if I acted fast, I might be able to extract my family members before they were entirely encircled.
As I moved away though, I noticed several forms emerge from their position in the center of fire in which it appeared our camp members were holding out. As a firefight erupted between our guys and several of the flanking attackers, I raised my rifle to fire but it jammed. I pulled my .44 and fired until it was empty. As I did, it appeared as though I hit one, but because of the rain and fog of war around me, I couldn’t be sure. All I could see was several forms that I took to be from our side, retreating back to their holdout inside the ring of fire.
It was then that I made my move, hoping that the attacking forces would be so fixated on the others attempting to make their escape that they wouldn’t expect someone to try to enter the fight from behind. I sprinted toward our position, praying that I wouldn’t be shot by my own family members in the process.
As I neared, I could see Will in the haze that surrounded the tiny hole in which they were making their stand.
“WILL!” I screamed, waving my free arm in the air as bullets hissed and cracked around me. “WILL…DON’T SHOOT! IT’S ME…JOHN! DON’T SHOOT!”
I must have looked like a track star as I covered the last few yards unscathed by bullets from either side, hurdled a few felled trees and small bushes, and threw myself feet first down into the pit in which Will, Steve, Frank, and Paul crouched.
“Man, am I glad to see you,” Will said.
The side of his head was bleeding, apparently from some shrapnel he’d taken.
“Bad news,” I said. “You’re being surrounded.”
“I know,” Will said.
“Where’s Brian? Is he okay?” I asked.
Will shook his head, “No.”
“You bring any extra ammo?” he asked.
“Here,” I said, handing him two extra magazines. “Make them last.”
As Will reloaded, I looked over at Steve. He was bleeding profusely from a wound just below his right shoulder. His eyes looked into mine knowingly.
I shrugged quickly out of my jacket and used my hunting knife to cut off the sleeve. “Paul, I need your help,” I said to the poor shivering child. “You’ve got to be a big boy now. I need you to hold this on Steve’s chest. Can you do that for me?”
He looked at me wide-eyed and wordless but moved to do as I asked.
There was movement behind us and the injured Steve pushed Paul hard out of the way, lifting his shotgun and letting loose right next to me. A man collapsed into our pit and Paul started screaming as he gazed into the half blown off face of one of our attackers.
My ears still ringing, I worked to push the body up and out of our hole. Bullets thudded into the corpse as Will helped me shove it topside to provide us with some additional cover. “It’s getting bad here, Will.”
“It’s been bad here!” he yelled back.
“I’m out!” Dad called over to us.
I handed him my .44 and the extra rounds I had with me. “Only got about eight extra rounds with me, so make them count,” I told him
“What you got left, Steve?” Will called.
“Two in my pocket, one in the chamber,” the wounded man called back. His face was pale. Blood had saturated his shirt as well as the coat sleeve that Paul was holding in place to help stem the bleeding.
“All they have to do is wait us out a little bit longer,” I said.
“We stay, we’re goners…we go, we’re goners,” Will said. “What’s the play, big brother?”
I glanced down at Steve. His lifeless eyes now stared unblinkingly up into the pouring rain.
I pulled Paul away from the big man and hugged the boy up next to me, thinking of Claire and Jason back at camp. I wondered if they would meet a similar fate. They surely wouldn’t be able to hold out as long. But maybe we’d be able to inflict enough casualties on these assholes before they killed us that it would take the fight out of them. It was our only hope for protecting the rest of the camp. I just wished Paul wasn’t here; but there was nothing I could do about that now.
“We stay…” I said to Will, reloading, “…and we fight.”
***************
BOOKS BY K.W. CALLAHAN
THE SYSTEMIC SERIES: DOWNFALL
THE SYSTEMIC SERIES: QUEST
THE SYSTEMIC SERIES: DESCENT
THE SYSTEMIC SERIES: FORESAKEN
THE SYSTEMIC SERIES: ASCENSION
THE M.O.D. FILES: THE CASE OF THE GUEST WHO STAYED OVER
THE M.O.D. FILES: THE CASE OF THE LINEN PRESSED GUEST
PALOS HEIGHTS
Text and image copyright © 2015 KW Callahan
All Rights Reserved
* * *
For my loving wife who has had to suffer through all the, “I just can’t wait until it’s finished” conversations. Thank you for all your help, love and support.
* * *
QUEST
CHAPTER 1
TIPTON, TENNESSEE
The mountains of scenic eastern Tennessee were beautiful in the fall. The trees and their bursts of foliage glistened in the morning sunlight. A thin vale of fog swirled around their dew-laden leaves. But it wasn’t this view from his vast mountain-top estate that had Aaron Coughlin emotional. Rather, it was the overwhelming grief from the thoughts and memories of having to first lay his daughter and then his wife to rest here, and the knowledge that he would never again share this awe-inspiring sight with them.
It was these same mountains that had brought him – the fresh-faced medical intern – and his new bride – the hungry and hustling attorney – to the area nearly two decades ago. Over the ensuing years, he’d successfully risen through the ranks of the medical profession, building not only a lucrative career for himself, but enjoying watching his wife, Jolene, become the first female partner at one of the largest firms in Knoxville.
The birth of their daughter, Sarah, four years ago, had coincided with their move from the city to the mountains. Reaching the point at which they were both successful enough to determine their own career paths, Aaron began consulting part-time while simultaneously freeing up enough time to author several books on cardiology. Meanwhile, Jolene enjoyed tackling the stay-at-home mom role while still working from home for the firm.
They had decided to buy 100 acres on Frost Mountain and build their own 10,000 square foot stone castle set far from the hustle and bustle of city life. At the time, it had been their crowning achievement, besides Sarah of course. They wanted something more than luxury automobiles and expensive watches and clothing to commemorate their career achievements. Aaron especially wanted something tangible and lasting that he coul
d eventually pass along to his heirs; and the massive structure formed from rock pulled from a mountain stream running through the property was what he and Jolene had envisioned.
They had just been contemplating their second child when disaster struck.
Being a physician, Aaron had on occasion contemplated the chances of a pandemic. However, living in rural Tennessee, it was something he felt comfortable leaving to the Washington bureaucrats and the CDC to handle. It wasn’t something that could touch them out in the nether regions of where the Great Smokey Mountains met the Appalachians.
But somehow it had.
In Aaron’s occasional pondering of a potential pandemic, he had largely pondered the effects of the sickness on people and how it might be combated, but he had never taken it that additional step or two further. A worldwide pandemic was something in his mind that would come on gradually and for which there would be time to prepare. There would be time to work on developing a cure. People would be moved to hospital isolation units where they could be treated, safely removed from the population. Some would of course unfortunately succumb to the illness, but in time, things would work themselves out and mankind would persevere. It would be like all the other diseases that had come and eventually gone or been treated – bird flu, ebola, tuberculosis, measles, diphtheria, malaria, swine flu. Even if it was like the Plague or the Spanish Influenza, people would most likely prevail…eventually. It would just take some time. It certainly wouldn’t be something so severe as to cause the collapse of society.
The Systemic Series - Box Set Page 20