While the drug house was only a ten-minute walk from their base at the pump station, Ava had learned to drive rather than walk. They took a crew cab pickup truck that Jake had acquired a few weeks earlier, a beastly large thing with a big bumper guard, flood lights affixed to the top of the cab, and an engine that roared eight cylinders to life every time the gas was touched.
The pickup was Ava’s vehicle of choice for this sort of operation. She chose it for several reasons. First, she’d found that if she gave the druggies a time and location to show up for an operation, most of them never did. Taking them back with her was the safest and most efficient way to ensure they arrived on time to meet their work obligations. Second, taking them in any sort of enclosed vehicle immediately left the interior of that vehicle ripe with any number of stenches. Being able to load her prospects into the open air of the pickup’s bed kept them outside and the stink to a minimum.
Sometimes these trips were fruitless as the druggies were either all hopped up on their supply or were out scavenging for barter items to exchange for drugs. Today though, Ava hit the jackpot. They were able to acquire a total of six recruits. She didn’t even bother to ask their names. It didn’t matter. Most of them appeared not to have taken their first hits of the day, or if they had, they were disguising it reasonably well.
Ava gave them all a little taste – just enough of a downpayment to get their blood up and some life into them – with promises of more to come. She showed the addicts their prize if they came through for them in the day’s operation, a display tray of little baggies – a Tapas-style feast of remedies to satisfy their almost insatiable appetites for self-destruction. It was enough to get them motivated and cooperative, but Ava knew that this collaboration wouldn’t last long. The light doses of drugs she’d provided would only last an hour or so and then they’d start to get agitated or lazy or both.
This is why they were heading straight for their next target. Jake and the rest of the crew would meet them there.
CHAPTER 7
We spent our first full day in Olsten settling in and getting organized. I have to admit, it felt good to have a place to call our own again and be able to start thinking about things in terms that ranged into the weeks and months ahead rather than just days or even hours.
We took a vote that morning and decided to make the general store our official home. Not only did the location give us plenty of room to spread out, it also had a nice basement for storage that we hoped to fill with food from our eventual garden. There was plenty of space upstairs for living and sleeping, the building’s height gave us good vantage points to watch the surrounding area – and shoot from if necessary – and maybe most importantly, unlike most of the homes in Olsten, there were no dead bodies inside the structure. None of us had any real desire to have to move rotted or still-decaying corpses in order to live somewhere.
In the afternoon, we moved additional beds and mattresses – at least those that didn’t have bodies still in them – from several surrounding homes over to the store to ensure that everyone had their own comfortable bed to sleep in. We also took pillows, blankets, and other available furnishings to make our stay in the store’s living quarters as comfortable as possible.
In our scavenging, we found a working generator, some multi-gallon tanks of gasoline that we were able to fill by siphoning from several of the town’s abandoned vehicles, more canned and dehydrated food, and a gas grill with some propane tanks that were still partially full.
All in all, it wasn’t a bad day’s work, and we felt good about our prospects in the new location. Things stayed quiet all day, and it didn’t appear that anyone else lived in the area which was just fine with us. And even though we were reasonably certain of our isolation, we still decided to keep our night watch up, at least for a few more nights until we felt more confident in our situation.
* * *
Two weeks after our arrival to Olsten, we finally felt at home.
We’d created a space for Joanna and Shane by putting a bed, a table, some chairs, and several other items in the unfinished third floor apartment. This gave them some privacy and allowed them a double bed of their own in which to sleep.
By this point, almost everyone was up and around again. Paul and Dad were over their illnesses, and Dad’s arm was out of the sling, and while not fully functional, it was certainly in much better shape than it was prior to our arrival. Will was walking with the help of just one crutch. Even Emily was up and around, walking gingerly with the use of a cane that we’d found in one of Olsten’s empty homes.
In the store’s downstairs area, we’d dismantled all the shelving units to open up the available floor space. It was a sizeable area with everything removed, nearly 30 feet by 40 feet. We’d converted a good chunk of this space into an indoor play area for the kids. They spent much of their time playing out on the front porch or on the desolate Main Street. It definitely took some time for the parents’ pre-flu jitters of seeing their children playing in the middle of the street to wear off. The indoor space served more as a location for them to entertain themselves when darkness or weather didn’t permit outside play.
The rest of this store area was sectioned off for Emily and Dad to have as their bedroom so they didn’t have to go up and down stairs. We hung large sheets on ropes to partition the space and give them some privacy. It was kind of sweet and old fashioned. They each choose to have a single bed divided by a tiny nightstand to avoid the appearance of impropriety, especially with the grandchildren around. It reminded me of the parents’ bedroom on the set of some 1950’s television show.
We spent the majority of the two weeks after our arrival to Olsten getting things set up for the long term. We dug two pits out back, about 50 yards from the general store, and built outhouses for both sexes. I made Jason a special seat that was smaller in circumference in order to minimize the chance of his falling into the pit below. And once we explained to him that he was like a bombardier in an airplane, dropping his “poo-poo bombs and pee-pee missiles” on the enemy below, he started to enjoy using the outhouse. It was hilarious to stand outside and listen to him make shooting sounds and explosions as he went potty.
We also took time to shore up defenses on our general store home, boarding up any open and unnecessary windows on the first floor and adding security bars across the front and back doors that could be slid into place at night.
We decided to turn the plot of land directly behind the store into a garden. Ray, Joanna, Claire, and I spent two days with hoes, rakes, and shovels, tilling up the earth to prepare it for seeding. Sharron meanwhile, spent her time with Paul and Sarah scouring the area for seeds to plant. She worked through the various homes and garages, compiling a variety of seed options from old planters, seed packets left in drawers or cabinets, and later on, the plants themselves as they began to sprout around town in gardens left untended, out in the wild, or in odd spots like old garbage and compost piles.
Thankfully, while we were waiting for our green thumb of the group to get things rolling, and the weather to start cooperating enough to plant, we were able to consume the little remaining food we’d brought with us, the items we’d collected in the homes around town, as well as food we’d taken from Mary’s diner.
We’d been pleasantly surprised when making our second search of the diner to discover that Ray and Joanna’s initial report of substantial supplies at Mary’s had not been exaggerated. In fact, we found that there was still a multitude of food stuffs that had amazingly remained untouched during and after the flu. We found large salvageable bags of dried pasta, rice, dehydrated mashed potatoes, powdered drink mix and powdered milk, as well as sizeable amounts of sugar, salt, pepper, flour – which had been invaded by meal bugs, but that were easily sifted out – crackers, dried cereal, grits, oatmeal, potato chips, pickles, olives – both black and green – relish, various condiments and syrups, and cases of sodas.
We guessed that much like the corpses that remained in many of
the homes, there just hadn’t been time to deal with evacuating these goods, and Mary – or the owner of the establishment if it wasn’t Mary herself – had either died or skipped town, leaving this plethora of supplies behind. Then, due to the swiftness of the spreading disease and the distance of the town from the highway or any other towns, here the food had remained, graciously untouched by man or animal until our arrival.
Whatever the reasons behind its being there, we were ecstatic to find the food, and we hauled the supplies back to the store where we could hide them safely in the cool darkness of our basement. We collected sealable plastic containers and bags from around town into which we transferred much of the food to help keep it fresh longer and reduce the chances of bugs getting into it. Most of the time though, since I assisted with or prepared much of the food, I never said anything about the tiny insects I discovered that had made their way into some of the rice and pasta. They really didn’t hurt anything, you couldn’t taste them, and people only seemed to get fussy about them when I mentioned their presence or they saw their tiny carcasses. If anything, I figured the little buggers added some extra protein to our meals whenever they occasionally surfaced.
We also collected certain medical, sanitary and cleaning supplies from the homes around the town. With water at a premium, things like hand sanitizer, disinfecting spray, sanitizing wipes, and paper towels all came in handy. Ray and I scavenged the bathrooms and closets of the community coming up with things like hand soap, toothpaste, extra toothbrushes, mouthwash, floss, antibiotic ointment, feminine hygiene products, and tons of toilet paper. We undertook this job ourselves to spare others from the ghastly sights and smells that issued from some of the homes’ previous occupants.
We found several cases of hospitality-style toilet paper and paper towel rolls in a back storage room at Mary’s diner, which added nearly 200 rolls of toilet paper to our stocks and probably enough paper towels to stretch from Olsten to Atlanta. While these paper products were not as cushy and comfortable on the tush as some of the name brands, who were we to be connoisseurs? We were just thankful to avoid having to use wet cloths as we had back in Tennessee. We knew that eventually we’d likely have to revert to that sort of sanitary wipe after we’d exhausted our supplies, which with 13 in our group, wouldn’t take as long as some might think.
But above all else, the biggest find from inside the diner’s storage area was beer…cases and cases of beer. I was as surprised by the find as everyone else, but I supposed I shouldn’t have been. Thinking about it afterwards, if the food was there, why not the beer? It’s not like the first request of people dying from the flu is for a cold beer.
In all, we found 16 cases of assorted beers. By the looks of it, there hadn’t been much else to do in Olsten before the flu but drink. In addition to the regular beer, there were two cases of pumpkin spice ale that appeared to have been ordered for the upcoming fall season.
We shuttled all this across the street to the store and hauled it down into the cool depths of the basement along with the food. We celebrated our find by powering up the generator, turning on the upstairs apartment’s refrigerator, and sticking half a case of beer and half a case of soda in the freezer to get it cold quick, and the other half of each case inside the refrigerator.
By the end of the evening, all the beer had been drunk by the adults, much of the soda had been consumed by the kids, and the refrigerator was again turned off. The adults were left pleasantly buzzed and relaxed while the kids frolicked and played out in the street, burning off their sugar highs. We even allowed little Jason to partake in the soda guzzling.
“Fuzzy in the nose,” he wriggled up his face, twitching and rubbing at his nose as the soda’s carbonation tickled him.
All things considered, I felt very positive about our choice to settle in Olsten. It seemed that the rest of our group was getting used to and enjoying the new surroundings as well.
Our greatest challenge came with the water situation. Upon our arrival, we’d set out a variety of containers beneath downspouts around town to act as rain catchers, and for the first few weeks in Olsten, we’d been greeted by several heavy downpours that had helped us keep these containers full. However, I didn’t like relying on intermittent weather that was anything but consistent. We tried using the generator to power up the general store and several of the surrounding homes in hopes that they were on well systems, but we didn’t have any luck. We just got a murky mess of orange-colored muck from the faucets. I quickly realized though that even if we had tapped water from these sources, once we ran out of fuel to operate the generator or if the generator died, we’d again find ourselves in the same predicament.
Therefore, we began making regular searches for additional water supplies. This also gave us the opportunity to see what the wildlife situation was in the surrounding area since the carnivores of our group were becoming a bit ravenous.
Unfortunately, the land surrounding Olsten was a combination of thin pine forest and scrubby grassland. It was not the best environment for finding larger game. Most of the wildlife we saw came in the form of scrawny squirrels. The little buggers actually looked more like malnourished rats. They certainly weren’t the pudgy critters that we found in abundance back in the Midwest and Appalachians. The scrubby things would stare at us as we passed, almost as though they were inviting us to put them out of their misery. But it wasn’t worth the bullet it’d take to kill them, so most of us just ignored them. Paul however, took it upon himself to accept the role of “squirrel catcher,” making little slip-knot nooses to ensnare the tiny tree rats. He’d spend hours watching them, seeing where they lived and where they buried their goodies. Then he’d carefully lay out several kernels of corn or similar seed that he’d stolen from his mother’s surplus stock, using it to set his traps around the area.
Amazingly, he was more successful than any of us imagined. His father showed him how to skin and clean his catches, picking off the paltry few ounces of meat they afforded us. Paul would often come home from an afternoon of hunting with two or even three pitiful little carcasses that he would proudly hold up for all to see. Then he’d go around back to his “cleaning area” as he called it – and old stump behind the store – and work until he’d gotten all the meat and usable bits he could off the squirrels.
We’d often incorporate Paul’s offerings into our dinners in some way. Of course his vegetarian mother wasn’t particularly pleased with his newfound role, but she seemed proud that her little man was doing his part to help provide for the group. And if nothing else, it gave him a purpose, kept him from fighting with his sister Sarah, and got him out of Sharron’s hair for a few hours each day while she and Sarah toiled in the garden.
It took us a while, but eventually in one of our searches, we came across a small pond a few miles away. While it wasn’t much, I figured it would work as a water reserve should we encounter a dry spell when we couldn’t collect enough rain water for our needs. The downside was that we’d have to drive there with the pickup to make the trip worthwhile. That meant burning precious fuel; but it was a tradeoff we were certainly willing to make should the situation arise.
With a stable water source discovered, the adults of our group began occupying their days with a variety of duties. With everything from washing and mending clothes, doing dishes, and searching for and preparing food, to cleaning our guns, conducting repairs on the store, helping in the garden, and watching the youngsters, it almost seemed as though our days were busier in Olsten than when we’d held occupations before the flu. Meanwhile, the kids – when not assisting with certain aspects of such duties – found wonderful and creative ways to play together and entertain themselves.
The pieces of the puzzle felt as though they were falling into place in Olsten just as they had back in Tennessee. And while it was a nice feeling, it also tended to worry me since I knew our situation could change in an instant. Still, I was happy to have things settled, even if there was no guarantee they would re
main that way.
CHAPTER 8
Ava had gotten her lead from an area trader, but she never took such information at face value. She always had the details verified first, and often did some of her fact checking herself, just to be on the safe side. Ava was willing to take risks, but they needed to be calculated risks. She didn’t throw darts at a board like Jake. Jake just didn’t care. He was willing to toss men into the meat grinder at will to achieve his goals. Ava didn’t mind doing this in certain situations, but lately she’d become more selective about who was placed in harms way, in what sorts of situations, and to achieve what goals.
While Jake didn’t realize it, Ava was slowly weeding out the bad apples and keeping the most valuable, most trusted, and most loyal members of their organization. She was developing a more specialized core in which each member had his distinct purpose, skills, and abilities.
Rambo was the former marine who was a badass in just about ever sense of the word. He knew guns – not just how to use them, but how to clean them, repair them, and care for them. He was good with a knife and knew his way around explosives.
Mad Dog was a little wild, but only in battle. He was big, but not beefy, and with more muscles than brains; but he was one hell of a wheel man and had gotten Jake and Ava out of some sticky situations when the going got tough.
The Kill King was a military man as well, and he was one hell of a shot. After the flu, he’d lost an eye while trying to steal a car. He now wore a patch over the eye but it didn’t seem to hurt his aim. In fact, the loss of the eye only seemed to make the other eye stronger, sharpening his aim and increasing his accuracy.
The Systemic Series - Box Set Page 65