The Systemic Series - Box Set

by K. W. Callahan

  “Meet us back out here when you’re finished, and then we can move on to the houses.”

  Ray and Joanna went off to investigate the side of the street where the post office and Mary’s Diner and Thrift Shop sat.

  Claire and I began our search with a peek inside the dilapidated structure that appeared to serve no other purpose than space filler. In the center of the building was an entry door with big plate glass windows on either side of it. I had Claire wait a safe distance away as I kicked the front door in as carefully as I could, if such a thing is possible. I didn’t want the rest of the building coming down on top of us while we were trying to get inside.

  After I got the door open, I mentally berated myself, realizing that I should have just thrown a big rock through the glass portion of the door or through one of the big front windows. It would have been a heck of a lot safer. My hesitation to do so came as a result of pre-flu exercises in self-restraint that were no longer necessary in this new world of ours. I’d been taught for so long that such things were the acts of vandals or looters that it seemed taboo. I guess kicking open a door wasn’t much better; it just seemed a little less destructive.

  I left Claire on guard duty outside, largely to keep her out of harm’s way, while I took a very quick look around inside the building.

  As I suspected, it appeared the place hadn’t been used for years, if not decades. Just inside the door, a staircase led upstairs while a hallway ran beside it to the back of the building. To either side of the front door sat offices, each with their own big plate glass window that faced out across Main Street.

  The office on the left held an old and extremely dusty desk, desk chair, and file cabinet. The office on the right was completely empty, but like its counterpart, was also extremely dusty. I cautiously but quickly made my way upstairs. There were a total of four rooms. One was filled with old boxes of paperwork. One was completely empty. One had been packed full of wooden chairs, many that were in severe states of disrepair, and the last – near the back of the building – had a big hole in its ceiling where a significant portion of the roof had collapsed. I didn’t dare go inside for fear of falling through its water damaged and rotted-looking floor.

  I headed downstairs and back outside.

  “Nothing to see here,” I said. “Let’s take a look at the general store next door,” I nodded to the building beside us.

  “Sounds like a plan,” said Claire.

  The door to the general store was also locked. I tried the front windows, but they were locked as well. They were nice old multi-paned windows, and while I hated to do it, I broke out a small pane on one, nearest its lock, reached inside, and unlocked it. Then I shoved the window up and crawled through, coming around and opening the front door for Claire.

  The inside of the general store was amazing. As we searched the first floor shopping area with our flashlights, I quickly realized that it was the kind of place I wish I could have visited when it was still in operation.

  The store space had a towering ceiling lined with stamped copper-plate tiles. Warehouse-style lights with round shades and single bulbs hung down on long, thin fixtures. A huge wood counter with glass front and display shelving looked as though the building must have been built around it and had once served as the store’s checkout area. An ornate antique cash register sat at one end.

  The floors were wood plank and creaked and moaned when we walked on them. Of course almost all of the shelving units in the center of the store, as well as the refrigeration units that lined its perimeter, had been picked clean. Things like bug spray, certain cleaning supplies, a small section of auto accessories, certain medical and sanitary items, and some pet food remained, but that was about it.

  “Cashmere will be happy,” I said to Claire, picking up a can of cat food and shining my light on it for Claire to see. “Amazing,” I said, shaking my head. “Even when there’s nothing to eat, people still won’t eat pet food.”

  “Ugh,” Claire said. “Can you blame them?”

  I shrugged, “I’d be willing to try…if I were hungry enough,” I added.

  We kept wandering about the store. “Looks like it used to be a cozy little place back in the day,” I said, continuing to play my flashlight around the room, helping to do what the dust-covered front windows of the store couldn’t.

  “Cute,” Claire nodded her agreement.

  I paused, “You talking about me or the store?” I walked over and nudged her playfully.

  “Both,” she smiled, touching me lightly on the arm.

  “Good,” I said. “Come on, let’s check upstairs.”

  I took her by the hand and led her back down the hallway that ran from the storefront to the back of the building and met up with a staircase leading upstairs.

  The stairway took us to a small landing on the second floor before it continued up to the third. Here, a single door opened off one side of the landing. I quietly tested the door handle. It was unlocked, so after a quick courtesy knock just in case, I opened it. Inside, we were surprised to find a large and fairly modern apartment that we soon realized comprised the entirety of the second floor. It had two bedrooms, two bathrooms, a spacious living room, and a nice-sized kitchen. I assumed that it had likely belonged to the building’s owners who may or may not have also operated the store downstairs. Whoever the occupants were, by the looks of things, they were long gone. We did a quick sweep of the place, turning up little of use, and then headed back out to the landing and up the staircase to the third floor.

  Here we found another landing. This time two adjoining doors led from it. The first door opened into a skinny, one bedroom, one bathroom apartment that ran the length of the building but comprised maybe a third of the floor. It looked as though it had either been unrented at the time the flu hit or the occupant had quickly packed up their belongings and moved along at the first signs of trouble. We expected to find a similar unit behind door number two, but upon searching the space, we realized that it was unfinished. The area consisted of open floor space that ran from the entry door to the front of the building; its walls nothing more than bare studs with exposed piping and wiring. A toilet was framed in with 2 x 4s where a bathroom had obviously been planned, and there was exposed white plastic piping where we guessed the kitchen was to be located. The rest of the space housed a variety of tools and building supplies. Sheets of drywall, stacks of 2 x 4s, rolls of insulation, some circular saws, boxes of nails and screws, and various other building supplies lay haphazardly about the space. It looked as though the owners had been in the process of preparing to convert this area into another apartment, but their plans had been cut short either by the appearance of the flu or lack of funding.

  “This building could make for a good place to settle down if we decide to stay,” I said to Claire as we walked back out the other landing. “Lots of space for all of us.”

  “Definitely better than sleeping on the side of the road,” she nodded.

  I stepped up behind Claire on the landing and slid my arm around her, resting a hand on her abdomen.

  “Maybe we could take one of these apartments up here,” I said as I slipped my hand beneath her shirt to rub her belly and then moved my hand up to cup one breast and give it a squeeze. “Finally get some privacy.”

  “Maybe after a while, once we get settled, we could even move into one of the houses,” she said, thinking aloud.

  “Maybe,” I agreed, pulling her back up against me and having the real desire to settle down with Claire right then and there in one of the apartment bedrooms. Instead, I exhaled deeply, released her breast, and said dolefully, “Guess we’d better go check the rest of the town. Find out if there’s anyone else here before we go making plans to occupy the place.”

  I could see Claire’s shoulders sag almost imperceptibly. “Yeah, I guess we should,” she said, slowly leading us back downstairs.

  I hadn’t had any real expectations of finding anyone in the town’s business district, but I wa
sn’t so sure about the residential area. Therefore, we combined forces, joining back up with Ray and Joanna for the search of the town’s homes. My main hope was that we’d find them devoid of people but with some decent supplies still remaining. If the flu had swept through quickly enough, it might have taken out the town so fast that they wouldn’t have had time to consume all their food stuffs.

  “Find anything good?” I asked Ray and Joanna as we met them out on Main Street.

  “Mary’s diner has a shit ton of supplies left,” said Ray. “Didn’t have time to inventory them all, but there’s a lot.”

  “Good,” I nodded, starting to feel more optimistic about our prospects in Olsten. Leftover food might mean everyone was gone.

  “Plenty of clothing in the resale shop too,” Joanna said. “New wardrobes for everybody.”

  “Cool,” I nodded, my positivity growing.

  It quickly became apparent though, that while the business section of town offered some hope, the houses were largely busts when it came to useable goods. In our quick search through the town’s minuscule residential district, we managed to collect a few cans of food, some cooking herbs and spices, a few packs of batteries, some cigarette lighters, a box of candles, some opened packs of very stale cigarettes, and a variety of hard candies and gum. We decided we’d come back later and conduct a more thorough search, but we had few illusions that we’d find much more than we already had.

  Unfortunately, more than anything, we instead came across the unpleasant discovery of decomposed bodies. It was something that with the exception of Aaron Coughlin and our brief stint at the motel in North Carolina – where we’d found a pile of bodies stacked in a nearby restaurant’s walk-in refrigerator – we’d been able to avoid. I figured that a small town like Olsten probably wasn’t at the top of the priority list for emergency services when things started going bad. The residents were likely left largely on their own when it came to dealing with the effects of the flu. Apparently, they’d been unsuccessful in their efforts. In almost every home we searched, we found a corpse or corpses in at least one of the bedrooms. Most were withered and decayed, still dressed in their pajamas, bed clothes, or robes. Some were in the beds themselves. Some were on the floor and looked as though they had tried to walk or to crawl to the bathroom or make it to the phone to call for help in their final moments. We even found a body near the backdoor of one home bound in sheets and tied with ropes. Another rotted corpse in the same house lay in the upstairs bedroom. We guessed that the person in the bed had plans to take the son, daughter, husband, wife, neighbor, friend or whomever it was wrapped in the sheets to be buried outside. Overwhelmed by the effects of the flu, they’d apparently never had the capacity to undertake the burial after they’d become sick.

  All in all, it was a grim process. Traveling from one grizzly scene of death to the next was something I found myself glad not to have to share with the rest of the group. Some of the macabre images I saw in those houses would haunt me for the rest of my life.

  CHAPTER 4

  Jake always tried to dry out a little bit the day of a raid. He didn’t like it, but he felt it important to at least try to be sober when he was leading his army of mercenaries. Jake knew that some within his organization fought better when high or drunk. Therefore, he tended to leave it to the discretion of his men to make similar decisions regarding their sobriety on the date of an attack. They knew well the consequences should they not carry out their duties as required. Jake wasn’t one to fuck around. A screw up could result in a bullet to the brain if the offender was lucky and a slower, more excruciating death if Jake was in a bad mood or the mistake warranted such disciplinary measures.

  Today’s raid was to be another simple one according to the advanced information they had. Ava wasn’t even going with them. Jake was going, but only because he was bored. These types of raids were becoming child’s play to him now and weren’t really doing it for him anymore.

  Jake was ready for something more, something new.

  “You sure you’re not going today?” he asked Ava.

  She turned her head away slightly to avoid the waft of Jake’s breath as they sat at the card table in the pump station’s lounge area. “Yes,” she said.

  “Good,” Jake nodded, as if it was exactly what he wanted. “Then I want you to come up with something better than these bullshit raids we’ve been going on lately.” He gestured around the room, “Look at all this shit! I’ve got nowhere to put the stuff anymore and we have to pay the fucking Y Family’s ridiculously high fees to try and move the shit we don’t want down at the Underground. They’re the ones making out like bandits while we have to grovel like dogs fighting for scraps.”

  “So what do you want me to do about it?” Ava looked at him.

  “Come up with a plan…a plan to get us out of the trenches. I want to stop going out and hunting. I want the goods to start coming to us. I want to be where the Three Families are.”

  “We’ve got a long way to go to get to that point,” Ava said, crushing out her cigarette. “And how exactly do you expect me to come up with a plan to get us there? You think I have these things just rolling around in my mind ripe for the picking whenever you like? I’ve got to find the locations, scout them, find out what’s there, determine how they’re secured, and make sure they’re not protected by the Three Families. It’s hard enough developing these small raids, then you’ve got to paint a fucking picture for the halfwits you have working for us,” she said with a hint of exasperation as she looked around at the heaps of flesh that Jake considered his army and that lay sprawled around the lounge.

  “You mean working for me,” Jake corrected her.

  “Whatever,” Ava said with attitude as she shook her head in disgust.

  Jake stood and grabbed her violently by the arm, pulling her up from her chair and close to him so that the wafting stench of his breath hit her full on. She cringed more from the smell than the pain of his grip. She actually kind of liked the pain.

  “You get one thing straight,” Jake glared at her, teeth clenched. “I call the fucking shots here. You might be a little better at coming up with the ideas, but I’m the one out there risking my ass to execute them. Without me, you’re nothing. You just remember that,” he sneered at her, releasing her arm.

  Ava sat back in her chair and lit another cigarette, nodding slowly. “I’ll remember,” she said.

  “Good…you do that,” Jake nodded. “Now I want a new plan, a bigger plan when I get back later. You got it?”

  Ava sucked at her teeth and then took a deep drag of her cigarette and exhaled. “Yeah…I got it,” she said. “But these things don’t just materialize out of thin air. There’s a lot of work involved. It’s not as easy as you think, and it takes time.”

  “Then I suggest you get started,” Jake said as he turned and walked away.

  Ava already had a plan; far more of a plan than Jake would ever know, but like a huge dam holding back a lake of information, she wasn’t about to open the floodgates. Rather, she would release a more steady flow a little bit at a time, using it to generate the power necessary to secure her position within their expanding organization. If she told Jake everything now, he wouldn’t need her. And with Jake, if you weren’t necessary, you were expendable. Without information, Ava’s position was tenuous at best, and while she knew that Jake still loved her sex, sex was easily replaceable, especially here in Atlanta.

  While Ava sat there, quietly finishing her cigarette, Jake made a circuit around the room, rousing each of his lounging men often with a smack to the head or a boot to the gut. Then he stormed out of the room.

  Meanwhile, his men moaned, groaned, burped, and farted their way into various states of semi-awareness. Some lit cigarettes, some fished cans of beans from crates scattered around the room to eat for breakfast, while others rummaged through cereal boxes, fishing out handfuls of cereal for their morning meals. A couple washed down their food with swigs of whiskey or tequila.<
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  Disgusted by the sights, smells, and sounds, Ava departed the room. “I’m going for a walk,” she said quietly.

  No one seemed to care or even take notice as she left.

  She walked downstairs to the massive steel door that acted as the only way into or out of the pump station. One of Jake’s men sat slumped, sleeping in a folding chair. His assault rifle lay across his lap. He was supposed to be watching the monitor and guarding the entrance. Ava knew the job was boring as shit, but it was necessary nonetheless. She awakened him with a swift kick to the shin.

  “Ah…fuck!” he cried, jolting awake. “Why’d you do that?” he asked, rubbing his shin sorely.

  “Why do you think, dumbshit?” Ava frowned at him. “Just be thankful it was me and not Jake who found you asleep on the job.”

  The henchman frowned, shrinking back from Ava, knowing that he was in the wrong. A little cowering might just help keep Ava quiet to Jake about what she’d seen. The man sat, staring at her.

  “Well?” Ava said, waiting as the henchman stared at her, oblivious. “Open the goddamn door!” she said, frustrated at his incompetence. She shook her head as she stood waiting for him to unlatch and then swing the heavy steel door open for her. These guys might be tough and good at fighting, but they sure as hell weren’t worth much otherwise.

  She stepped outside, blinking and squinting from the sun’s rays as she gave her eyes time to adjust from the pump station’s dark, dank interior to the blazing Georgia sunlight. She walked the short distance to the chain-link fence that surrounded the perimeter of their compound, unlocked the chained gate, stepped through, and relocked it behind her. She looked up at the pump station’s third floor tower. She could see the head of one of their machine gunners watching her over the rooftop. She walked on past their fleet of vehicles that was comprised largely of pickup trucks and large SUVs. She could easily have had her choice of one of them, but she preferred to walk whenever possible. She spent enough time pent up inside that stinky, claustrophobic pit of a pump station, and it was nice to get out and enjoy some fresh air occasionally. And while walking these days wasn’t as safe as driving, Ava could take care of herself.