* * *
Much of the rest of the day was spent processing and packaging the deer meat. It was such a monstrous animal that it took us hours just to gut, clean and carve it up. Then we spent the early afternoon hours preserving the various cuts in plastic wrap and then wrapping them in wax paper with labeled dates.
It felt nice to have the refrigerator full again…and safe this time.
Will and Ray went out hunting later in the afternoon even though we had plenty of food. It had become a scheduled daily event with them. I think it was now done more to conduct an inspection of the surrounding areas than to hunt, although food collection certainly played a key element in the exercise. Even if they didn’t shoot anything, they were our advanced scouts, and I liked getting their reports on anything that might appear out of place.
We’d gone for a period of nearly a week without any snow, and the sunshine had diminished much of the ground’s existing cover. It almost felt strange to start seeing grass once again poking its way through the white. But it felt good too.
I was looking forward to spring. I was looking forward to better hunting and warm days spent outside without the need for constantly gathering firewood. I was looking forward to berry picking so that we could make our own delicious preserves. I was looking forward to taking the kids down to the mountain stream to play in and enjoy the cold rushing water. I was looking forward to hikes in the woods with Claire. I was looking forward to sleeping outside under the stars with Jason. I was looking forward to cool summer nights with warm campfires in our walled garden area. I was looking forward to moving Sharron and her crops outdoors, maybe adding a few additional items to her list of growing options. Heck, we might even be able to cultivate some grapes and make our own wines and jellies.
I was so excited about the prospects of our living situation on the mountaintop that I found myself wishing that winter was already past. But then I reminded myself to slow down and enjoy what we had. Each season had something unique of its own to offer. I had to take advantage of these gifts as they were given, since without jobs, careers, and all the rest, the appreciation of life and living were our rewards now and largely our purpose for existence.
The week following our trip to Tipton found us settling back into our regular routines. Almost all the snow melted. And though it remained chilly outside, with the snow gone, everyone’s spirits – even Joanna’s – seemed to rise a little bit in anticipation of an early spring. But our hopes were soon dashed as a new front brought with it a fresh layer of snow several inches deep.
Even then, our spirits remained high. We had everything we needed to survive in our cozy castle, and we knew that spring would be upon us before long.
On January 9th, we celebrated Paul’s 9th birthday, and on the 12th, we celebrated Shane’s 6th birthday. The kids were growing up fast and becoming more accustomed to living without all the amenities of the modern world by the day.
Even Janet – who as a teen was probably having the most difficulty with the transition – seemed to be getting acclimated to our new situation and surroundings. She came to me the day after Shane’s birthday as I was staring out the large picture window in the office off the library.
“I was wondering if I could talk to you for a minute?” she said quietly in her reserved, embarrassed sort of way.
“Sure,” I said. “What’s up?”
“It’s about Joanna,” she said.
“Yes…go on,” I said, feeling that nervous queasiness in my stomach but not showing any outward emotion to her response.
“It’s her birthday next week,” she said softly.
The nervous tension disappeared.
“Oh,” I said, unaware of this fact.
“I wanted to do something special for her,” Janet continued. “But I can’t think of anything. I mean, it’s not like I can go out to the store and buy her something or even just get her a cake. But you’re good at planning and thinking of things. I was hoping you could help me come up with some ideas. I don’t mind doing the work if you can think something up, but I’m drawing blanks on anything special we could do or make for her.”
I could think of a couple special things that I bet Joanna would like me to do for her, but I certainly wasn’t going to share them with Janet…or anyone else for that matter.
“Hmm…” I said, thinking. “Give me a little while to think about it. You said her birthday is next week, right?”
“Yes,” Janet nodded. “January eighteenth.”
“Well, that gives us some time to work on it then. I’ll talk to Sharron and see if she can come up with some sort of dessert or a cake using what we have on hand. She’s good at that kind of thing, especially using her squash. It might not be great, but better than nothing. Did you have any ideas at all on something you might want to do for her?”
“Well, there was one thing I came up with,” Janet hesitated. “You’ll probably think its stupid, and I’m not sure exactly how we’ll do it, but if we could…”
Suddenly something smashed into the window and I was hit in the face by debris as the window shattered. Instinctively, I closed my eyes and recoiled back and away from the window, putting my arm up in front of me to further protect my face. My initial thought was that a large bird must have struck the window and broken the glass, but then my logic dictated that it would have to be an awfully big bird and hit with extreme force to break through such a large window.
I felt warmness on my face and was sure I’d been cut by glass from the window when it broke. As I opened my eyes, the first thing I saw was Janet lying on the floor before me, her eyes open, lifeless, the side of her head opened up in a pulpy mess. Suddenly there was the sound of more impacts, shattering the remains of the window glass, and I heard gunfire echoing in the distance.
I instantly took cover, hitting the floor beside Janet’s body. I covered my head from more glass and debris that was flying from the hail of bullets tearing into the office around me. As I looked over at Janet, a wave of anger, sadness, and despair swept over me seeing the smooth, innocent face now destroyed and mangled. She had been such a quiet girl, but so thoughtful and sweet. Her last moments had been spent trying to make someone else’s life better, and the thought made me instantly furious.
There was a pause in the gunfire from outside and I jumped up, pulling the .44 from my waistband. I aimed it out the window at the first vehicle I saw on the drive and pulled the trigger again and again until I’d emptied my gun.
I surveyed the scene. A multitude of vehicles were moving up the castle’s front drive or already parked. People were climbing out and sheltering behind several of them.
I knew that this was it. What I feared would happen, what I prayed would not happen, had now come to fruition. We were being attacked…again. And the life of one wonderful human being had already been claimed.
I gritted my teeth as I reloaded my gun and wondered how many more would die before it was all over.
***************
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 Gert. I know…you would have written it THIS way. Editing was never my strong suit though.
Thank you for all your love, help and support.
* * *
DESCENT
CHAPTER 1
OUTSIDE TIPTON, TENNESSEE
We’d been living in our mountaintop retreat – the “castle” we’d begun calling it – for over three months. The spot had been selected by Ray; one of our group. It had formerly belonged to an acquaint
ance of his – a wealthy doctor – whom he had met years ago and who had once invited him to stay at the castle over a long weekend.
I personally found the spot enchanting. Its location on a secluded mountaintop that could only be reached by a two-mile-long entry drive made it a perfect location for our family to hold out. And up to now, it’d kept us safely separated from much of the ensuing aftermath of the Su flu, a pandemic that had ravaged the nation and decimated modern civilization as we’d known it.
The castle itself was huge – a sprawling mansion more than a castle. We’d only dubbed it the “castle” because of its massive stone walls and formidable position atop the mountain. Inside, it was nothing like the dank interior of an actual medieval castle. Instead it was lavishly furnished. There were lovely tapestries and wall hangings, commissioned family portraits enough to fill a museum, and so many oriental and Persian rugs that they could carpet a football field. There was darkly-stained wood paneling and trim, brass fixtures on every sink and shower, literally tons of granite and marble, a wine cellar, a game room, and a labyrinth of guest rooms. All of this was spread throughout three floors and a fully-finished basement.
We’d never gotten an official square footage of the place. I estimated it somewhere between 9,000 and 10,000 square feet, but it could have been more.
My favorite spot had grown to become the library which spanned two floors in the west wing of the home. It was a gargantuan space that housed not only an extensive collection of books running the gambit from the classics to more modern reads of the 20th century, but had enough finely-upholstered leather sofas and chairs to outfit a coffee shop several times over. There was also an enormous fireplace that could have served as a garage for a newer model eco-friendly car and that I loved to read in front of on cold winter nights. From before a roaring fire, I would cozily spend much of my leisure time reading or contemplating the management of the castle and our group that resided within it.
Cashmere – the cat we’d found in the basement of the castle upon our arrival – had fast become my loyal pet and would often curl up in my lap to contentedly fall asleep during these sessions.
Our group had gradually been adjusting to our new lifestyle and living environment over the past few months. After our escape from the Chicagoland area and the rapidly spreading grasp of the pandemic, we’d been able to find protective seclusion in the thickly-wooded forests of southern Illinois on a plot of land belonging to an old family friend. There, we’d set up camp and begun our post-flu lives. I’d managed to collect not just my own family – consisting of my wife Claire and our two-year-old son Jason – but a multitude of other family members and friends in an effort to keep them safe from the swiftly spreading disease. Claire’s mother Emily, Claire’s father Steve, and her younger brother Brian had joined us, along with my own mother Susan, my father Frank, and my brother Will, his wife Sharron, and their two young children Paul and Sarah.
Our peaceful and relatively happy existence at the camp was to be short-lived as we were suddenly and viciously attacked by a roving gang of mercenaries.
During the attack, we’d lost Claire’s father Steve and her brother Brian. We did however gain two more members as my college buddy Ray – a former FBI agent – and his wife Pam arrived in the nick of time, helping us break from the intruders’ encirclement.
Fearing our location had been compromised and was no longer safe, we moved on, picking up three more members in the process – a young woman named Joanna, her now six-year-old son Shane, and teenage family friend Janet. They had accompanied us south to eastern Tennessee where my mother had passed after falling ill. And now, young Janet lay before me on the castle’s office floor, eyes open, dead, her head smashed by a bullet from citizens of the nearby town of Tipton who had decided to attack our stone fortress after a recent encounter we had with several of their people while on a scouting mission.
Things had been going so well at the castle; it was hard to believe that we were once again under attack. We’d settled into our home, secured it well, and assigned our group members duties such as hunting, gathering wood, and growing vegetables in the castle’s attached greenhouse. My wife Claire – a diabetic – had found a multi-month supply of life-sustaining insulin stashed by the home’s former owner who had been a doctor. We’d harnessed the power of a generator we’d found in the garage to make life a bit more comfortable – even having regular family movie nights – and we’d made the situation overall about as normal as possible considering the conditions of the outside world.
Things like fuel, ammunition, food, water, and medical supplies were of critical importance in the post-flu world. Grocery stores were closed and empty, their shelves picked clean of their usable goods almost immediately in the days following the flu’s outbreak. Power plants, water pump stations, sewage treatment plants, gas stations, fast food joints, hospitals, police and fire stations, and even centralized government offices and services had all quickly been abandoned as the flu claimed more victims or as people stayed at home, often in vein attempts to avoid becoming infected. These locations now sat as empty and decaying relics, shrines to a once peaceful and powerful nation.
While we had no idea just how many people the flu had claimed – or how many of us were left – it really didn’t matter. All that mattered now was the daily sustaining of life and the defense of whatever supplies were on hand. It had become a life of survival, and while we had been able to take that life and turn it into one that included a few amenities of the old world, that existence was now being threatened by the residents of Tipton, Tennessee who were in the process of surrounding our mountaintop holdout. Our curtain of safety and solitude had been rudely and crudely torn asunder.
I grabbed a nearby blanket from the office desk chair and threw it over Janet’s corpse lying on the floor beside me. Bullets were still zipping into the room, thudding into walls and books, smashing the glassware set atop the small wet bar, and cracking into the now useless flat-screen television. I crouched for cover and made my way out to the family room where the rest of our group had begun to gather. They looked frightened, and I couldn’t blame them. Like me, they had known that this sort of attack was a distinct possibility, but I don’t think they ever truly believed it would happen.
My brother Will, good friend Ray, his wife Pam, and my father were the last to arrive. The shooting outside had stopped as abruptly as it had started, but I knew that it could begin again at any moment.
Everything in the big family room – our base of operations – was organized chaos. But we’d practiced handling this type of scenario many times before and all of us knew their role and where they needed to be. Everyone but the youngest kids were grabbing weapons and loading magazines. Even Paul, who had just turned nine, had his gun out and ready. We’d prepared for this, taking time to train not just the adults, but the kids who were old enough to learn firearm safety and handling.
We had a plan in place, and it was time to execute.
With Janet gone, I now had to make some quick decisions, but I was ready for this type of scenario as well, where not everything was going exactly to plan.
“Okay guys, you know the drill!” I yelled, shoving my .44 into the back waistband of my pants and grabbing my rifle from a rack we’d attached to the family room wall. It was up high enough to be out of reach of tiny hands, but accessible enough that we could get to our weapons in a hurry if need be.
“Where’s Janet?” I heard Joanna yell.
“They got her.” I called back. I left it at that. There wasn’t time for more details, nor did I want to get into them right now.
“Sharron, you go with Joanna and cover the upstairs,” I said. “Emily,” I called to Claire’s mother, “you’ll need to cover the back door. “Paul, you’ve got the basement stairs,” I said to our little nine-year-old man. I took him by the shoulders and quickly bent down so that I was face to face with him. “You know what to do,” I said. He nodded. “Be ready and don’t be afra
id to pull that trigger…just make sure it’s not one of us first,” I reminded him.
He nodded again, his face serious and ready.
“Sarah and Shane, you take Jason down to the wine cellar,” I said to the youngsters.
They both nodded. “Come on,” Sarah said, as she took Jason’s tiny hand in hers and followed Paul and Shane to the basement stairs. I was glad to see Cashmere the cat bounding along behind them, the tiny bell I’d affixed to her collar so that I could find her in the massive castle, jingling as she went. There was no time for drawn out kisses goodbye, and the kids knew it; all but Jason maybe.
With the kids safely stashed in the windowless basement, the rest of us moved almost mechanically, and strangely, quite quietly, to our positions. I think we were all hyper-focused. Dad and Will took sector one – the east wing’s first floor – which consisted of the dining room, a breakfast room that we never used beside the dining room, the kitchen, and a mud room that led out to the walled garden, and the exit that we’d blocked off. Ray and Pam had sector two – the west wing’s first floor – which included the family room, office, and library. They were also to help Emily cover the rear of the home around the greenhouse and back door should she need it. Claire and I had sector three which consisted largely of the front door and entry foyer, which we deemed our “central command” and from which we could reach almost all areas of the home quickly and relatively easily as a mobile reserve if the situation called for it.
Over the months that we’d resided at the castle, we’d taken time to add additional defenses to the structure. It was already a formidable edifice with the lowest level of windows starting a good six feet or so above the yard outside. There were only three entrances to the home, two – the front door and side entrance through the walled garden – that we’d sealed off completely with extra wood and supplies we’d found inside the garage. The backdoor, we’d reinforced with a removable wood post – a “burglar bar” of sorts – that slid into and was held in place across the door by two steel brackets we’d attached to the stone walls on either side.
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