The Systemic Series - Box Set

by K. W. Callahan

  Poor Cashmere had to adapt as well, learning to exchange her fancy cat litter for wood chips and shredded paper. She wasn’t happy about it at first, but like the rest of us, eventually she learned to adjust to the change.

  I began the rounds of my inventory check inside. First, I hit the laundry room and gauged our soap levels. Thankfully, the Coughlins must have been neat-freaks or they just didn’t like going to the store very often because they had stockpiled a ton of laundry and hand soap. I’d say we had more of these types of supplies than just about anything else. I counted eight jugs of laundry soap, four jugs of fabric softener, several large containers of liquid hand-soap dispenser refill, and about 40 smaller liquid hand-soap dispensers that we’d collected from cabinets in guest bathrooms throughout the house.

  The laundry room was also where we stored our ammunition, the levels of which were down due to the hunting Will and Ray had been doing. Overall, it was still holding out though. I’d asked Will and Ray to try to use more of the .22 rounds in an effort to maintain proper ammunition levels with other weapons, especially the shotguns.

  While I was in the basement, I also gauged our remaining gasoline. We kept our fuel housed with the generator in the HVAC room where we could vent the machine’s exhaust up through the available duct work. It appeared that so far we hadn’t burned through too much gas by using the generator. We still had about three gallons left in the five-gallon fuel tank but the little two-gallon tank was completely empty. There was also what was left in our two vehicles – which wasn’t much – as a reserve, but I really didn’t want to touch that supply since we never knew when we might need it.

  Next, I headed upstairs to do a walk-through of the garden with Sharron. With her help, I noted what was – or soon would be – growing, what was ready to be harvested, what was waiting to be consumed, and what needed to be dried or canned.

  Even after our Thanksgiving brouhaha, it looked as though we were soon going to have a nice stock of veggies on hand. Sharron even showed me her starts for peas and corn.

  “Wow! Awesome job!” I told her. “You’re doing amazing work here. I don’t know what we’d do without you.”

  “Well, you’d certainly be a lot sicker of the meat you’re eating,” she smiled. “But it’s my pleasure. Nothing is more gratifying to a vegetarian than getting non-vegetarians to eat less meat.”

  “Hey, if you’re happy, I’m happy,” I grinned. “And keep up the good work.”

  “Will do,” she said, as she got back to work trimming some basil leaves from one of her plants.

  “Anything you need here?” I asked her as I began to leave.

  “Not really. I guess a little more wood for the stove would be helpful.”

  “Sure thing,” I said, happy to oblige.

  I made a quick trip out to our reserve woodpile in the walled garden to get Sharron stocked up before continuing my work.

  My next stop after my brief foray to the woodpile was the kitchen. There I took account of all the baking supplies, herbs and spices. Then I hit the fridge outside that was nearly packed full with various meat packages, all of which were labeled with what was in them and the date that they’d been prepared.

  We had a whole goose, half the wild pig from Thanksgiving, at least 30 pounds of venison meat, a small rabbit, and several squirrels. All the meat was still nicely frozen and seeing all our packaged supplies made me feel good and even more secure about our situation atop the mountain.

  Still, there was an almost ever-present pit in the bottom of my stomach. What had me worried most was Claire’s insulin supply. She was starting to deplete her reserves, and that was one area in which we couldn’t come up with a substitutes or replacements. She was consuming insulin at a faster rate than we’d expected. She now had a five, maybe six-week supply left at best, and I was beginning to lose sleep over what to do to find more. While I didn’t want to worry the group or put anyone else in danger, I was thinking that we might have to make a scouting mission in to town to see what we could do to find her some supplies.

  After I finished up my inventory, I headed to the office next to the library. Once there, I sat down in the extremely comfortable leather office chair behind the desk to put some order to my list and begin developing a meal plan for the upcoming week. This took me all of about 15 minutes, and when I was finished, I knew I had some wood chopping to do out in the garage, but I didn’t feel like doing it just yet.

  Instead, I sat back in the plush leather desk chair and propped my feet up on the desktop, looking around at my lavish surroundings and pretending that I was the king of this castle empire. I would have liked to have flipped on the enormous flat-screen television hanging from the far wall to watch a ballgame or a movie. I would even have settled for a mindless reality television show just to take my mind off things for a few minutes.

  I tilted my head back in the chair, looked up at the ceiling, stretched, and yawned. I was actually feeling somewhat at home in the castle. It was nice. While there were still worries, at least our living situation was stable, and that was freeing up time for me to focus on other things. As I sat, I noticed a framed Chicago Cubs poster from 2012 that had “It’s Gonna Happen!” printed on it.

  I snorted and said aloud to myself, “I don’t know if that was less likely then or now.”

  I kicked my legs off the desk, stood, and wandered over to the office’s big picture window. The sky was cloudy and gray. There was still some snow on the ground and it looked like more was on the way. It was strange no longer having weather reports to guide us in our preparations and activities. It was a complete mystery what the day would bring. It could dawn a beautifully pure blue sky that would continue melting the existing ground cover, or we could find Mother Nature adding several more inches of snow. In a way, I actually kind of liked not knowing. It made things more interesting and added a relatively harmless element of surprise to our days.

  I fished a cigarette – one of my last – from my front shirt pocket and lit it. Then I slowly wandered around the office just looking at and appreciating different things like the walls’ dark wood paneling, the elegantly carved trim, and the crown molding. I liked taking a few minutes now and then to stop and do nothing more than appreciate the fine workmanship of this wonderful home. Today, I did so for so long that I neglected my cigarette and it went out.

  Purely by chance, as I prepared to relight my cigarette, I walked over and into the office’s small bathroom. It was dark inside, but as I flicked my lighter, the flame illuminated a tiny, almost imperceptible handle protruding from the wall beside the toilet. I’d completely missed this detail in our earlier search of the home.

  I went back to the desk and dug around until I found a small flashlight. Back inside the bathroom, I wasn’t surprised that during our first inspection we’d missed what turned out to be an extremely small closet. It was so dark in this interior space that the tiny gray-painted door handle to the closet was almost indiscernible from the wall from which it protruded. And this handle was the only thing that distinguished the door, as the door itself was painted the same dark shade of gray as the rest of the bathroom.

  I pulled the door open and illuminated its interior with my flashlight. The space was about two feet wide by four feet high by maybe 18 inches deep. The top third of the space was devoted to a shelf that held multiple bottles of hand soap (of course), some unopened boxes of toothpaste, several rolls of toilet paper, and a couple extra hand towels. At the bottom of the closet sat three medium-sized cardboard boxes stacked atop one another.

  I set my flashlight down, collected all the toiletry items, took them out, and laid them on the desk. Then I went back, pulled out the three cardboard boxes and brought them out into the light of the office where I could go through them.

  As I set them down on the desk, I could see written on the top of the first box the words “clinic extras” which got me thinking. Even though Ray had told me when we’d arrived, I’d kind of forgotten that Aaron C
oughlin had been a doctor.

  I opened the first box to find a jackpot of white-capped, orange prescription bottles.

  I pulled one bottle from the box and read the label: Amoxicillin. I dropped it back in the box and pulled another bottle. It read the same. I moved on to another one; it was labeled: Hydrocodone. I went through three more of those before I hit the antihistamines and Acetaminophen.

  I ran upstairs and got Claire to help me since she was more familiar with such items due to her previous work in healthcare. We spread the boxes out on the desk so we could more easily sort through our finds. I explained to Claire what was in the first box, so we moved on to the second. This box was a mixture of antibiotics – both in topical gel and ingestible pill form – stool softeners, cholesterol medicine, eye-drops, and some supped-up ibuprofen.

  It was with the third box that we really hit the jackpot.

  “Holy shit!” I exclaimed as we opened it. “Is that what I think it is?”

  “Sure is!” Claire said, delving into the box and pulling out full bottles of insulin, boxes of test strips and syringes, and even brand new blood testers.

  “Told you I’d keep you stocked up,” I said, full of pride at my find. But my excitement was tempered by my next thought. “Is it still good though?”

  Claire checked the expiration dates on the glass bottles of insulin. Good for at least another 18 months she said. And the cold temperatures in here have probably helped keep it fresh,” she added. “This is awesome,” she breathed, continuing to sort through the box. “This is probably another seven or eight months worth of supplies…maybe even longer. And all these other supplies will certainly come in handy too. Colds, infections…constipation,” she grinned, holding up a bottle of laxative pills. “We’ve got it all covered.”

  “And we could trade any surplus items for supplies we need should the situation ever present itself,” I said.

  Claire threw her arms around me. “You’re so awesome!” she literally cried. “You don’t know how much I’ve been worrying about this.”

  “You don’t know how much I’ve been worrying about this,” I said, hugging her tightly and feeling like I was about ready to cry myself from the combination of pride, joy, and relief I was experiencing from the find.

  Claire was so happy about our discovery that she rewarded herself with a little wine and a shot of the good scotch after dinner to celebrate. It had her feeling a tad tipsy since she hadn’t been partaking in much of the drinking up until now in an effort to better control her blood-sugar levels. However, her intoxication made it even more enjoyable when she continued the celebration later that night once we were alone, providing me with my own reward for finding her the supplies.

  The discovery was certainly a win/win for both of us.

  CHAPTER 13

  We were now well into December, and as crazy as it might sound, I don’t think I’d ever been happier than I was in our secluded Tennessee castle.

  I sat lounging in the library one evening, being warmly toasted by a blazing fire in the library’s gigantic fireplace where the logs we used generally reached between four and five feet in length. I was enjoying a steaming hot cup of tea, and reading a copy of Thoreau’s Walden.

  Tea was an item that the Coughlins had left an excess of. They must have owned stock in tea companies for the vast amount and array they had on hand. From berry blends and citrus flavors, to Earl Gray, mint, vanilla, green, and more, their supply seemed endless, and it was our main indulgence after the alcohol and the little bit of coffee we’d found had been consumed. I had however managed to secretly stash one bottle of fine whiskey away for a special occasion.

  Cashmere sat purring contentedly on my lap. Claire was playing solitaire at a small table on the far side of the library. Jason sat on the floor beside her, stacking books and then knocking them over and laughing loudly. I could imagine few other environments in which I’d rather be.

  It seemed that everyone else was relatively content too. While I think that some of our group definitely missed certain trappings of modern society more than I did, they seemed to be adjusting and coping pretty well. Thankfully, the Coughlins had an extensive movie collection, so we managed to keep our movie nights varied, and this helped to incorporate some sense of normalcy from our previous existence. As we would sit watching our movies at night, I often wondered about the actors in them and what had become of them. I figured most of them had probably succumbed to the flu, but I liked to think that some of my favorite thespians had somehow survived.

  I seriously doubted it though.

  Most weren’t cut out for this type of post-apocalyptic living. Brad Pitt seemed to have pretty good luck…he might have made it. I could see someone like Johnny Depp living out with a tribe of American Indians somewhere. Harrison Ford might still be on his ranch out in Montana or wherever. One night we watched Zombieland, and I could definitely see Woody Harrelson and Bill Murray making it, probably hanging out smoking weed together somewhere. But I figured that most of those manscaping-metrosexual types back in LA had probably bit the dust in the first few weeks of the flu.

  Over the past few weeks, we’d tried the radio and television occasionally just to see if we could pick up a signal from the outside world, but we never did. And while it was strange being so isolated, it was kind of nice at the same time.

  I did wonder what was happening on the outside though. Were there efforts underway to rebuild and organize some sort of central government again? I figured that if there were, we would have picked up something on the radio by now. Was the flu still claiming people? If so, how many people were left? Had the flu devastated other countries as it had ours? Maybe lesser-developed nations hadn’t seen the rapid spread of the disease as our highly inter-connected society had. In some ways, I really didn’t care about the answers to these questions. I had my family, we were safe, we had food, we had a wonderful home in which to take shelter, and we had a great location that provided us not only with beautiful surroundings but bountiful wildlife to keep us fed. All things considered, we were set up pretty well and had everything we needed.

  The kids were even getting into a nice – although maybe not what they considered “fun” – routine. Emily, Claire and Pam had taken the initiative to form a school of sorts for them. For the first half of each day, they would tutor and guide Jason, Shane, Paul, Sarah, and even Janet in a variety of coursework. From mathematics, history, and science, to grammar, spelling, creative writing, and more, they would work with the kids to help develop their young minds. After lunch, the kids would devote the afternoon to chores, many of them helping Sharron out in the greenhouse garden for at least an hour or two. Occasionally, Will and Ray would take the older kids hunting with them. These activities not only helped Sharron, Will and Ray produce more food for the family, but they taught the kids about farming, hunting, and how to be self-sufficient. I was proud of the kids’ efforts as well as those of the family members teaching them. I figured that it was a lot like homeschooling them, but I liked the fact that they were getting some hands-on experience and expanding both their mental and physical abilities.

  Overall, I was pretty pleased with the ways things were progressing for our group.

  Ray and Will interrupted my reading and pondering of life as they entered the library. They took seats in leather chairs across from me. Their countenances looked serious.

  “We need to talk,” Will said in a hushed tone so that Claire wouldn’t overhear.

  My contented mood immediately shifted to one of concern. Will was usually pretty jovial, and so was Ray, so to see them serious meant something was up, which put my stomach into knots.

  “We found some tracks in the woods when we were hunting,” he got straight to the point. “They were down by the creek, about a mile from here.”

  “Today?” I asked.

  “First saw them about a week ago.”

  “A week! And you’re just telling me now?”

  “Didn’t see a
ny reason to worry you. They were a ways from here and we figured it was just some other hunters.”

  He took a breath and sat back in his chair, looking over at Ray who continued where Will left off.

  “But then they got closer.”

  “How much closer?” I said.

  “Well, several days ago, we found some that led up the drive to within about a hundred yards of the house,” Ray said. “We hoped it was just someone who’d gotten curious about the place; but then today, we found more. There was a combination of horse and human tracks. The snow made it really easy to see. Looked like a group of four people. They ditched the horses about quarter mile down the drive. We could see where they hitched them to trees. Then we followed their tracks up to where the forest meets with the castle grounds. The tracks stop by a cluster of bushes. Looks like they were there for a while because the snow was really packed down around that area.”

  I took a deep breath. “What do you think they were doing?”

  “Recon,” said Ray. “Just watching at this point.”

  “What do you think they want?” I rephrased my question.