The Systemic Series - Box Set

by K. W. Callahan

  Suddenly there was movement behind me as Ray exited his room carrying an assault rifle of his own aimed at the two men. The men in front of me spun around to face him, their hands instinctively going for their side arms, surprised by his arrival. The young man in the pickup quickly took aim at Ray. Ray instantly readjusted to aim at the kid.

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa!” I yelled as I held up my hands. “Everyone just stay calm! Ray, it’s alright. We’re just talking here.”

  The man in the red hat looked over at the kid in the truck and raised a hand to stop any further action. “Steady, Jack,” he said. “Keep calm, boy. Everything’s fine.”

  Ray slowly lowered his weapon, and the kid did the same.

  “Like I said,” the man in the red baseball cap turned back to face me, “we don’t want any trouble. It’s been a while since we’ve had any visitors, and those we have had haven’t been the friendliest. But we can’t just let you come into our place and stay for free. Do you understand?”

  “I understand,” I nodded. “And I agree. But I have to tell you, we were just run out of our last place and we don’t have much to trade.”

  “It’s alright,” the man said. “We don’t ask for much. Name’s Bill,” he took off his winter glove and reached out a hand.

  “John,” I said, shaking it. Ray walked up, “This is Ray,” I introduced him. They shook hands.

  “This here is Rubin,” Bill nodded to the man standing beside him. “He don’t talk much, but he’s a good man.”

  Rubin nodded sullenly at us.

  We nodded back.

  “Back there in the truck is my pa and boy.”

  Ray and I nodded at them. They just watched us warily.

  “Like I said, we’ve had some rough characters roll in here,” Bill went on. “Had a couple bad experiences with some of them.”

  “I hear you on that,” I agreed. “We’ve had a few encounters of our own.” I paused, deciding not to go into the subject further. “So what type of stuff are you looking for as payment?” I asked.

  “Well, I’ll tell you what we could use,” Bill said as his buddy Rubin turned his head to spit a large wad of brown tobacco juice onto the parking lot blacktop. “We’re starting to run low on ammunition, and I got a sick girl back home.”

  I nodded, “We might be able to help you out there,” I said. “We used up most of our ammo getting out of our last spot, but depending upon the weapon, we might have some to spare.”

  He nodded.

  “What’s wrong with the girl?” I asked.

  Big Bill suddenly looked vulnerable, and his shoulders seemed to sag. “Got an infection of some sort,” he said. “Been going on near a week now. Her temperature has been up near 103 last few days. Hit 104 this morning. We’ve got it down under a 100 a couple times with some cold medicine we had on hand, but it keeps going right back up, and now we’re out of medicine.”

  A tear formed in his right eye. It didn’t seem like he was putting on an act, but I couldn’t be sure. Trust was getting harder to come by these days.

  “Tough situation,” I sympathized.

  “You’re damn right it is,” he nodded sadly.

  “You got any news about other places that might have supplies?” I asked him.

  He snorted, “Was hoping to ask you the same thing. You’re the first people been in here in weeks. Last people tried to pay us with dollar bills…dollar bills,” he said incredulously. “What the hell am I supposed to do with dollar bills, wipe my ass? Then they gave us some silver coins. Said they were using old silver coins and bullion in some of the bigger towns and cities as a form of exchange. Mostly it seems like guns, bullets, booze, medicine, and fuel are ‘bout the only things people are trying to get their hands on these days though. We took the silver just in case anybody came along with an eye for the stuff. If things get better, I’m figuring gold and silver might come back as currency.”

  “Tell you what,” I said. “If get you some antibiotics for your little girl and a few rounds of ammo, will you let us stay?”

  “Long as you want,” he said, perking up at the mention of the medicine.

  “Thanks,” I said. “I don’t think we’ll be here more than a few days.” I paused, thinking, and then decided to give it a shot, “You don’t happen to have any extra gas or know of where we can get some, do you?” I asked hopefully.

  He looked at his buddy and then back at me, “How much you looking for?” he said.

  I shrugged, “I’d like to fill our tanks. We’re almost out.”

  “Ha!” Bill laughed. “You and me both! These days gas is about as precious as oxygen underwater,” he bellowed. His spirits had picked up immeasurably since I’d mentioned the antibiotics. “You save my little girl though, and I’ll get you some gas. Won’t be enough to fill both your gas guzzlers over there,” he gestured behind him to our two vehicles. “But it’ll be a start.”

  “It’s a deal,” I smiled at him. I stepped back and opened our room door. “Claire,” I called softly inside, not wanting to wake the others. A few seconds later, Claire was outside with us and I was again making introductions. I explained what Bill’s situation was and what he needed. And he told me what types of ammo he was looking for, most of which we didn’t have or didn’t have enough of to spare. We decided on the antibiotics and a .22 rifle with some spare rounds of ammunition. I started at 25 rounds, he started at 50, and we met at 35.

  It seemed that this was going to be the new form of exchange where things were purchased by bartering in a sort of supply/demand or as-need basis rather than through any sort of formal currency. We decided that Bill would get half the necessary dosage of antibiotics now, and the rest when he brought the gas. After this, we took a few minutes to gather up the supplies. I left Claire in charge of getting the medicine, and I got the gun and ammo. Then Claire explained to Bill about proper dosages and how long he would need to continue administering the antibiotics.

  Afterwards, he took a minute to examine the .22 rifle. “You all enjoy your stay,” he said after he was done looking over the gun. “I’ll be back in a few days to let you know how things are going. If my little baby looks like she’s on the mend; well, then I’ll bring along some gas with me too.”

  “Sounds good,” I agreed. And with that, we parted ways. I found myself kind of wishing that Bill would have hung around for a little while. He seemed like a decent enough character and it was nice talking to someone different for a change and who wasn’t trying to kill us. However, after our last encounter with outsiders, I was wary of pressing my luck, and I didn’t know who else might be connected with Bill and his group and who could pose a danger even though Bill himself seemed like a good person.

  Richard had seemed like a good person too.

  “Well that was interesting,” said Claire after they were gone.

  “Yeah,” I agreed. “I’ll take words and trade over shooting at each other any day.”

  “Me too,” Claire agreed.

  “Same here,” Ray nodded. “That being said, I think we need to be on the lookout just in case. They seemed okay, but we don’t know for sure, and we don’t know who else is around here.”

  “I’m guessing they’ve probably picked the waffle joint and gas station clean already,” I said.

  “I’d think so,” agreed Ray. “Probably won’t do much good to check them out, but what else we have to do? We might stumble across something they missed.”

  “True,” I shrugged. “Let’s have breakfast and then we can walk over and take a look. Hopefully we won’t get charged by the management,” I grinned.

  “Yeah, hopefully,” Ray laughed.

  * * *

  After the rest of group woke up, we ate breakfast. It was a sad meal of venison prepared on our camp cook stove, using the final few ounces of our propane. We paired this with a few slices of salt and peppered or sugared (depending upon preference) squash and tomato for each of us. We portioned out more of the vegetables for Sharron since she
still refused to eat the meat.

  After breakfast, Ray and I cased the outlying buildings without much success. At the gas station, we turned up a couple cans of bug repellant and a small bag of potato chips that had apparently been knocked off its shelf and then been kicked beneath it. After the discovery, we crawled around on our hands and knees searching for remnants under other shelving units and display cases. Mostly we just came up with old candy wrappers, a few – now worthless – coins, and lots of dust bunnies. We did however find a package of hard candies, a candy bar, a pack of gum, a pack of pipe tobacco, and a 4-pack of AA batteries. It wasn’t much, but at this point, everything counted. The waffle joint was even less productive. It only provided three small packets of grape jelly, one of honey, and an assortment of salt, sugar, and powdered creamer packets.

  In the back of the store, there was a large walk-in freezer.

  “Might be some good stuff in there,” I motioned to Ray as we walked over to the freezer.

  But upon opening the door, we almost gagged on the stench. Shining our lights inside, we were shocked to find five human bodies piled upon the freezer floor.

  The smell was overwhelming, and it appeared as though the top two bodies, which we were only able to discern as male by their clothing, had bullet wounds in their temples. We weren’t sure what the story was on these people or why the bodies had been placed inside the refrigeration unit, and we weren’t sure we wanted to know.

  Were these people who had come down with the flu and killed themselves voluntarily? Had they been sick and someone else killed them to avoid the spread of the disease? Were these the “rough characters” that Bill had said they encountered a while back? Or had they been killed for some other reason? And why had they been placed in the waffle joint’s freezer?

  We quickly resealed the refrigeration unit and rejoined the group at the motel with our paltry findings. We decided not to mention our discovery at the restaurant.

  We spent the next two days in relatively close proximity to the motel, not wanting to venture too far outside our comfort zone after our last experience in Tipton. We were outsiders here, and we didn’t need anymore problems. Nor did I want to end up like the people across the street in the waffle joint’s freezer. I just wanted Bill to get back soon and hopefully with some gas.

  As we waited, the weather warmed into the low-50s, which was a nice change. Ray was able to catch a small rabbit for us. Sharron found a few acorns and made a disgusting looking acorn pulp, which she boiled into the consistency of baby-food and then flavored with sugar and honey. She and Jason shared it happily. Meanwhile, Joanna located a nearby stream where she was able to spear several small fish with a sharpened tree branch.

  I had to admit, we were becoming a pretty self-sufficient lot; however, our shortage of propane for cooking, our dwindling ammunition supply, and our lack of gasoline, all weighed heavily upon me.

  Meanwhile, Will was still unable to walk from the wound to his rear end, Emily was in severe pain from her burns – even with the painkillers we were giving her – and Dad’s arm was unusable and still very painful.

  Joanna’s birthday came and went with little fanfare while we were at the hotel. It made me sad thinking back to Janet’s final wish to do something special for the occasion.

  Jason’s third birthday also arrived during our stay. We didn’t even bother to tell him though. The decision seemed somewhat cruel, but we felt it would have been even crueler to tell him and then have nothing with which to celebrate. We did, however, cut half the candy bar we’d found at the gas station into little bits and gave him that and a few of the hard candies as a special treat, enjoying watching his delight in consuming the tasty tidbits, then feeling terrible when he cried for more. We ended up giving him a few more candies, but we let him know as we did so that they would be the end of the treats. It was more important to conserve as many such items as possible in an effort to help Claire regulate her blood sugar levels.

  Speaking of which, Claire had become very adept at stretching her insulin supply, and I’d become quite observant regarding the signs that something wasn’t quite right with her if her blood sugar began to get out of whack. The most obvious indicator was when she began doing or saying silly things. It was almost like she’d had too much to drink. She’d get a funny look in her eyes, or slur or mix her words, or fumble around when trying to put things away. Sometimes I could tell simply by her breath as it would get a sickly sweet kind of smell to it when her blood sugar level was too high.

  But she was good about correcting these slight miscalculations in managing her diabetes, and it would only take a slight hint from me for her to change her insulin pump settings or eat a candy or two to get things back in line.

  I worried about her insulin pump giving out. We had enough batteries for it, but we were running very low on the necessary accessories to connect the pump to her body, especially the tubing through which the insulin ran. It wasn’t like we could re-use the stuff over and over again. Therefore, Claire began utilizing some of the syringes we’d found at the castle to take some of the pressure off using her pump all the time. It wasn’t a perfect solution, but she was often able to get four or five uses out of a single syringe. It wasn’t that the syringe was useless after that number of injections, but its tiny needle began to get dull so that it became rather torturous for Claire to attempt to use it after that point, and torturous for me to watch her try as well. I hated seeing the bruises and puncture marks on her beautifully pure skin. And it was horrible watching her cringe or hearing her little gasps of pain from failed attempts as she poked herself with a dull needle. But we had little choice. If we wanted to make her supplies last and keep her alive, it was just part of it.

  I also got good at giving Claire insulin injections in her sweet little tush. It was the one spot where the shots didn’t hurt her as much, and I never refused a chance to see that tight little rear end of hers exposed in all its glory, especially with her winter clothing cruelly obscuring its supple form so much of the time.

  After our third day at the motel, I was itching to get on the road again. Most of the time, we were just hanging around and being unproductive; and we needed to find a spot where we at least had a better chance of providing for ourselves. I also wanted to see whether there were places that had consumer markets of some sort. My conversation with Bill had given me some hope that there were. And if we could find one, I felt that maybe we could barter for some of the stuff we needed and maybe even for more of Claire’s diabetic supplies.

  What I really wanted to find though was a small town where outsiders who were willing to pull their own weight were welcome and where things were more organized. I was kind of envisioning a Little House on the Prairie type of town – a place where there might not be much, but everyone had their own role. There’d be a doctor’s office, a school house, a general store, a town hall, a dentist, a post office, a church, and a few other businesses, and everyone else who wasn’t a business owner would hunt, trap and farm to provide for their families.

  I didn’t know if such places existed, but it was something I hoped for.

  The lack of news from other areas of the country really left us feeling blind without a cane. We had no idea how many people were left, how and where they were living, or really much of anything about anything. Sometimes I expected the police to roll up in squad cars and haul us all off to jail, charging us with the murders of the people back in southern Illinois or at the castle. It was ridiculous of course. It had all been in self-defense, but those prior societal rules and laws had been pounded into me for so long that they had become ingrained in my being.

  Finally, on the fifth morning of our motel stay, Bill came back. It was chilly but sunny out and I was sitting outside our room in one of the lawn chairs we’d pulled around from the pool area. I was using some of the pipe tobacco we’d found at the gas station to test out a pipe I’d attempted to whittle from a corn cob I’d picked up over by the waffle restaurant
.

  I wasn’t having much success.

  Rubin and Bill’s father were with him in the pickup truck, but the teen, I was relieved to see, had been left behind. Bill appeared to be in good spirits. He was smiling as he and Rubin got out of the truck. His father again remained inside the truck’s cab.

  Bill was wearing his same red ball cap and waved as he walked around the back of the truck and over toward me. I set my pipe down, stood from my lawn chair and waved back. Out of force of habit, I reached back to feel the lump of my .44 in my back waistband. I watched as he and Rubin maneuvered a large white plastic container from the pickup’s bed, carried it over, and set it down between our vehicles. I walked over to where they stood.

  “Guess the medicine’s working out alright?” I asked, looking down at the white container and reaching out to offer a hand to Bill.

  He took it in both his hands and shook it heartily. “Her temperature’s almost back down to normal and this morning was the first time she’s been out of bed in over a week,” he grinned back at me. He shook his head, “I have to thank you. Without your help,” he said, choking up a little, “I think we would have lost her for sure.”

  “Our pleasure,” I said. “And thank you for the lodgings. They came at a time when we really needed a break.”

  He nodded back at me. “We brought you a little something to pay for the remainder of the medicine.” He reached down and unscrewed the top of the white container. The smell of gasoline wafted from the tank, so I knew he wasn’t trying to pull one over on us. “It’s ten gallons. I know it’s not enough to fill both your vehicles, but I hope it’s enough to get you to wherever you’re going.”

  “Thanks,” I nodded. “It’s definitely better than what we have right now.”

  “You got any idea where you’re headed next?” Bill asked. Rubin spit an arc of tobacco juice that splattered onto the pavement.

  “Not yet. Further south is the plan, but we don’t have anywhere definite in mind. We find a place that looks good and that’s where I guess we’ll stop.”