The Systemic Series - Box Set

by K. W. Callahan

  He walked over to the smoldering SUV and inspected the dead man inside. Then he moved around the vehicle to give the body laying on the pavement beside it a good kick just to make sure the man was good and dead.

  Ava joined him a minute later, an old Polaroid camera in her hand.

  “Wait,” she said. “I want to get a few shots.

  She took up an angle so that she could get Jake in front of the pickup full of diesel fuel. There she snapped a shot, pausing and then waiting until she cold pull the photo from the camera as it made its exit. She quickly shoved it into her t-shirt’s front pocket. Then she moved to get a shot of Jake in front of the destroyed SUV.

  “Here,” Jake said. “Now get one like this,” he put one foot up atop the chest of the dead man who lay sprawled beside the SUV. Jake sneered evilly at the camera for the grizzly shot.

  Ava snapped the photo and handed it to Jake to see as the photo’s image took shape. “For your scrapbook,” she said.

  “That’s my girl,” Jake took it from her hand, grinning as he looked at it. “It’ll look good taped up inside the Stryker. Give me motivation for next time,” he nodded. “Remind me just how badass I am.”

  “As if you need reminding,” Ava eyed him provocatively. She gave him a devilish smile with lips exhibiting curves that matched the rest of her body and that sent Jake’s engine revving into the red.

  He stepped close to her, reaching his arm around her waist to grab her by the ass and pull her up against him. “Just don’t you forget it,” he said as he looked into her eyes with an intense Svengali-like gaze. Then he kissed her hard and with plenty of tongue.

  As he led her away to the privacy of the nearest Stryker where he could have his sweaty, lust-filled way with her, he yelled at his men, nodding toward the pickup, “Get that goddamn fuel unloaded and split it up between the Strykers! I want to get out of this fucking shithole asap!”

  CHAPTER 4

  Gordon managed to haul Edwin what he’d hoped was a safe enough distance from the road so that they wouldn’t be pursued by their assailants. He let his young nephew sag as gently as he could to the ground before he dropped to his knees himself, exhausted and gasping for breath. He prayed they hadn’t been followed. They were pretty much screwed if they had been. Gordon had his loaded .45 on him and one spare clip in his pocket, but he had dropped his automatic rifle back on the highway when helping Edwin.

  His nephew now lay on his back in the thick undergrowth, barely having moved since Gordon had set him there. The young man took short, labored breaths that caused him to wince and to cringe with each attempt.

  Gordon moved to inspect the boy and find out exactly how bad the damage was. The first thing he did was gently open Edwin’s bulletproof vest, but he didn’t try to remove the vest completely since he dared not move the young man too much until he knew more about his injuries.

  Gordon immediately noted that Edwin had taken a bullet to the shoulder during their escape. Gordon could clearly see the exit wound through the bloody hole it had left in the front of Edwin’s t-shirt.

  Gordon slowly and cautiously rolled the boy over onto his side. Edwin cried out as he was moved.

  “I’m sorry, boy. But I’ve got to do this,” Gordon gritted his teeth and apologized.

  Gordon continued his inspection. It looked as though a bullet had struck the boy on the lower left side of his back where his bulletproof vest had done its job and stopped it. Even then, as Gordon lifted the vest gingerly to look beneath it, he could see the boy’s bare skin was red and swollen and he guessed there might be a cracked rib or two from the impact. He wondered if a lung might be punctured resulting in the boy’s labored breathing. But the most serious wound had occurred on his right side near his lower abdomen that had somehow been left exposed as he ran. Gordon guessed that as Edwin had turned to fire at the armored vehicles as they made their escape, the angle of his turned body and raised arms while he shot must have pulled his vest up just high enough to expose this tender area.

  The young man had paid dearly for the mistake.

  While the shoulder wound was bad, it was nothing compared to the gapping hole near Edwin’s midsection. Gordon saw that he was losing blood at an alarming rate, and this was therefore where he decided to focus his efforts. But he was no medic. He didn’t have a clue where to begin. The wound was big, messy, and ugly looking, and Gordon was afraid of doing more damage than good. But he had little choice. He took off the baseball cap he was wearing, pulled out his pocketknife and cut the bill from the mesh-netting and foam that comprised the rest of the hat. He then shed himself of his t-shirt – something he knew he’d miss later when the mosquitoes got a hold of him – and cut off the sleeves. He cut the rest of the shirt into strips and quickly knotted them together. The entire process probably only took him three minutes, but with Edwin laying there, staring up at his uncle, moaning and wincing and dying right before his eyes, it seemed like it took much longer.

  Gordon next cut the rest of Edwin’s t-shirt and bulletproof vest away so he could work on him more freely and use the leftover material as wadding for the wounds. He wiped as much blood and debris away from the abdominal wound as possible with a portion of the cloth he’d cut from Edwin’s t-shirt. Then he balled up the rest of the shirt material and did his best to cover the seeping exit wound. Finally, he took the bill of his baseball cap, used it to cover the wadding, and tied it all in place with a long portion of his own knotted t-shirt. He ensured that he also covered the bullet’s smaller and less dangerous looking entry wound with the cloth.

  Getting the strands of material under and around the boy was terrible as he had to lift the boy up slightly which resulted in poor Edwin nearly losing consciousness. Gordon had no idea if what he was doing would help, but it was all he could think of under the circumstances. It was what they did in the movies, and that was pretty much the extent of Gordon’s medical training. Give him a bruised and battered vehicle and he could work wonders, but give him an equally beaten up human body and he was at a loss.

  With this work done, he took what material was left from the t-shirts, made two more wads of cloth, and put one wad on each side of Edwin’s shoulder wound. He then used the sleeves of his own t-shirt to slide up and over the boy’s arm and shoulder to hold the patches in place.

  He spent the next 10 minutes – which seemed like about an hour to Gordon – trying to keep his wounded nephew conscious. Gordon kept talking to him, trying to bribe him to stay awake with promises of booze, cigarettes, pretty girls, and whatever else he could think of to keep the boy’s brain active.

  Finally, Gordon heard the sounds of vehicle engines in the distance and figured that the assholes responsible for all this were likely on their way. There was the sound of an explosion and then silence as the engine noise faded back toward the direction of the interstate.

  “All this for some fucking gas,” Gordon shook his head, looking down at Edwin. It was enough to make him want to cry. He had at least two dead sons, a nephew near death, and who knew how many – or whether any – of his other boys were alive. More than anything, it made him angry that the world had come to this. He was a businessman. A deal could have been worked out if they’d just been able to talk things through. But he recognized that this was no longer the way the world worked; not anymore, not in post-flu America – or whatever the country was now.

  People still paid for things, but now they often paid with their lives.

  Gordon sat holding Edwin’s hand, unsure of what to do or if there was anything else that could be done to help the boy. Several minutes later, he heard voices approaching and soon the familiar call of, “Dad!” coming from Jeff.

  “Over here!” Gordon called back. “We’re over here!”

  “Just hang in there,” he said to Edwin, squeezing his hand. “Help is on the way.” As he looked down at the boy, he realized that his words of encouragement were pointless. Edwin’s open eyes stared up at the sky, unblinking.

  G
ordon exhaled heavily thinking not just of his own lost boys, but now of having to take this news back to his brother and the rest of the family. It was all suddenly hitting home.

  Gordon broke down and wept freely.

  He had cried a few times in the last ten years – once when his mother had passed, and once, he was embarrassed to admit, when his best dog died a few years back. But this time he wept. There was a big difference. Even when Jeff arrived, he continued to weep like a child. He just couldn’t hold it in any longer. It was all too much, even for Gordon who thought himself immune to such overwhelming outpourings of emotions. And Jeff let him, understanding – at least for a minute.

  “Dad,” he said, walking over and touching his shirtless father softly on the shoulder. “We need your help. Barry and Ian are hurt. I need you to help us with them.”

  Gordon was in a state of shock, but he moved mechanically, knowing he had to try his best to be strong for his boys. Sons or nephews, it didn’t matter, they were all his boys. He let go of Edwin’s hand and Jeff helped his old man to his feet.

  Jeff guided his father back to the road where the remains of their convoy sat smoldering. The pickup truck that had been hauling the diesel fuel was now burning; their last hope of getting home anytime soon destroyed in one last violent and unnecessary act by their aggressors.

  With three dead, two wounded, no vehicles, no medical supplies, no radio communication, no food, no water, and hardly any ammo left, Gordon found himself wondering whether it might have been better just to have stayed put and let the armored vehicles finish them off. But he quickly shook himself of these negative thoughts. That sort of thinking wasn’t him. It was the avoidance of exactly that type of thinking that had helped him and his family survive the flu while so many around them had perished.

  Just as he and Jeff made it to the drainage ditch beside the road’s edge, they again heard the sound of approaching vehicles.

  “Oh no,” said Jeff, pulling his father along faster. “Come on Dad, we’ve got to move our asses.” But his father resisted.

  “Dad!” Jeff urged. “Come on!”

  But his dad shook his head. “No,” he said. “Just wait.”

  “But it could be them coming back. They might have been waiting for us to come out so that they could finish us off.”

  But his father remained unswayed. “It’s not them.” He said the words so confidently and matter-of-factly that it worried his son.

  “Dad!” Jeff yelled. “You’re going to get us killed!”

  But his father just shook his head, unflappable in his determination. Instead, he pulled away from his son and walked slowly, steadily up the drainage ditch and onto the road, moving passed the smoking vehicles so that he stood, shirtless, in center of the road before them.

  “It’s going to be okay, boy,” he called back to his son. “Just wait and see.”

  Jeff had no idea whether his dad knew what he was talking about, and he had come to the conclusion that his father might be somewhat shell-shocked after the battle and the loss of his boys. Jeff swung his rifle around in front of him and moved up to the edge of the road. Here he lay down near where the drainage ditch met with the road’s shoulder so that he could cover his dad.

  He watched his father standing in the middle of the road, vehicles still burning or smoldering around him, waiting, staring down the road ahead of him. He just stood there, not even pulling his handgun that was shoved securely in his rear waistband.

  But Jeff pulled his own handgun and laid it on the ground beside him as he wriggled to better position his assault rifle in the crook of his shoulder. His dad might not be thinking straight, so he wasn’t taking any chances.

  * * *

  I slowed our trailer-hauling pickup and pulled it gradually over onto the shoulder of the road as we watched the smoke rise ahead of us. Its engine coughed and sputtered as I stopped, and it made me wonder just how much farther the late-80’s model would take us.

  We stopped about three-quarters of a mile from whatever was taking place up ahead. I left Claire, Jason and pregnant Pam in the front of the truck and got out. I walked around to the rear of the vehicle where the rest of the group was riding with our supplies in the pickup’s bed and attached farm trailer.

  “Looks like something’s going on up ahead,” I told the others as they piled out, stretching stiff legs and sore backs.

  “It’s already gone down by the looks of it,” said Ray, nodding at the rising smoke.

  “My question is, after our last few experiences, do we want any part of it?” I asked, looking around at the rest of the group.

  “Might be a trap,” said my brother Will.

  “Or they might need our help,” said Ray. “Could have been an accident. People might be hurt.”

  “You’re awfully trusting for a former FBI agent,” I said, frowning at my best friend.

  “Just a lowly public servant at your service,” he grinned at me, bowing slightly.

  “Bullshit,” I smiled tiredly back at him. “Don’t give me that crap. It was your job to be wary of these kinds of situations.”

  “I also served in Iraq, and I know that not all people are bad people. Sometimes it’s about how people react to situations. Situations can make good people do bad things. I always felt it was my duty as a soldier, as an American, to ensure that I didn’t let that happen to me. I tried to let situations make me better and enable me to help other people to do the same before circumstances dictated their actions.”

  “Wow,” Will said, sounding surprised. “I wasn’t expecting that from you. But you forget…America’s gone now. This is the land the Su flu left behind.”

  “No,” Ray said, he tapped his head. “America is still here.” And then he tapped his heart, “And here. America isn’t a place or a government or a certain group of people…it’s a feeling, a way of life and living…an attitude I guess. We love our independence, but that independence gives us the freedom of choice to help others. Personally, that’s just the way I feel. But I also think that you can’t just go around being afraid all the time. Cautious, yes…afraid, no.”

  “Good point,” I nodded. “So why don’t you go check it out?” I tilted my head toward the rising smoke. “I’m going to take a nap.”

  “Yeah, right,” said Ray. “You’re too much like me. You can’t just ignore this and let it go. You’d never be able to sleep wondering if someone was cooking inside a vehicle or injured and dying on the side of the road when you might have done something to help them.”

  I exhaled heavily, knowing that he was right. I hated this kind of crap. I had my own family to worry about, and now an extended family too. But Ray knew me too well. I always put myself in the other person’s shoes. What if that was us up there? Would I want someone to help or would I want them to turn tail and run in the other direction? It wasn’t like we could just dial 911 on the cell phone and then casually head on our way, having done our good deed for the day.

  I looked around us, up and down the road, scanning for other vehicles. Of course I saw none. It was going to be up to us.

  “Alright,” I breathed, looking back at Claire who sat swiveled in the cab of the pickup, watching me, a concerned look upon her face. “Let’s get our guns and go check it out. Dad, Will…you two stay here and stand guard with the others just in case it’s a trap. Ray and I will go see what there is to see.”

  We kissed our respective wives goodbye as everyone urged caution. I realized that part of me was angry at myself for leaving my family, but another part of me agreed with Ray; and this particular part of me had a desire to help if help was indeed needed.

  I think that the more persecuted our own group felt, the more I hoped we’d find someone who still exhibited a few of those altruistic qualities that we had known in people before the flu.

  As Ray and I walked slowly together, we could see multiple smoking vehicles littering the road ahead of us.

  “What the hell happened here?” I said, looking
over at Ray.

  “I don’t know,” he shook his head. “Reminds me of Iraq.”

  “Huh,” I scoffed. “Reminds me of accidents I’ve seen on I-294 back home.”

  “No shit,” he nodded. “Look…somebody’s up there.”

  Ahead of us, I could see a lone figure standing in the center of the road before the trashed vehicles.

  “What the hell’s wrong with him?” I said. “He’s just standing there.”

  “Might be in shock…or hurt,” Ray said. “Doesn’t look like he has a shirt on.”

  “Might be a trap,” I said back.

  “Might be,” Ray agreed.

  The man – who looked to be middle-aged – just stood there, motionless, shirtless. We stopped about 30 yards from him, our rifles ready and visible but not aimed at him directly. We didn’t want to provoke the man unnecessarily.

  Ray whispered, “I got somebody at two o’clock…see him…over near the road’s shoulder, by the ditch?”

  I shifted my eyes quickly to the right without moving my head, catching the glint of a gun barrel in the sun and the top of someone’s head as they lay near the top of the drainage ditch that ran beside the road.

  “You got him if shit goes down?” I asked Ray quietly.

  “Yeah, I got him. You take the shirtless guy.”

  “Got it,” I whispered back.

  Then I turned my attention to the man in the road. “What happened here, friend?” I called to the shirtless man who continued to stand in the center of the road just watching us.

  “We were attacked,” the man called back.

  “We?” I said. “How many of you are there?”

  “There were eight. Now there are five…but a couple are wounded.”

  “Stay here,” I whispered to Ray as I began slowly walking toward the man.

  “When did this happen?” I gestured to the burned out vehicles around us as I continued moving closer, scanning the edges of the road.

  “’Bout twenty minutes ago,” the man said.