FORSAKEN: THE SYSTEMIC SERIES (13 page)

Joanna had rigged a hammock in one corner of the front porch that the group often rotated taking turns napping in.  She had posted a sign-up sheet beside the hammock to reduce arguments about whose day it was for some luxurious lounging in the gently soothing sway of its roped confines.

Emily and dad had chez lounge chairs at the far end of the porch, away from the yapping of the younger generations and where they could read or do puzzle games and crosswords in books they’d acquired from the resale shop across the street.

Ray found a love seat that I helped him remove from one of the homes and upon which he and his pregnant wife could sit comfortably together.

During most of our afternoons on the porch, the kids would first get a “lesson session” as we called them, with one or more of the parents.  With each of us having a particular expertise or strong background in at least one particular academic area, we felt that we provided a general and all-encompassing education upon which our youngsters could draw.  We of course worked on the standard subjects like math, reading, writing, history, and science, but much of our time spent educating the kids was now also devoted to topics like general hygiene, health, diet, weapons handling and training, and survival skills.  In our new world, we felt that these subjects were even more important focus areas than the book learning.  In addition to these topics, we also agreed that some of the most important educating came by way of sharing Sharron’s garden work where adults and kids alike were provided with the skills and knowledge necessary to nurture, grow, and harvest their own food.

After this early-afternoon school time, Jason would get a story and then a nap while the three older kids went off to play.  Jason would typically sleep for an hour or two and then join them.

Hats and sunscreen were requirements when the kids were outside, but often, the scathing Georgia sun would keep them in the shade of the front porch or inside the store’s first-floor play area, at least until evening when the sun’s fierce rays began to subside. 

The range in ages between the kids made them surprisingly self-sufficient for the most part.  The older kids could handle Jason, and the age differential between them all meant that they were more willing to play with and care for one another rather than compete and fight with each other, which took some pressure off the parents.

We’d collected a slew of toys from the houses around town as well as the resale shop to help keep our youngsters entertained.  It was wonderful to watch them play together and use their imaginations. It was also interesting to see how their play had changed over the months since the flu.  Television shows, movies and video games were rarely discussed except for maybe an occasional passing reference to a show, term, or character that was once common knowledge among children.  It was kind of weird realizing that Jason would likely grow up never understanding such references.

I think that while all of us seemed to be enjoying our situation in Olsten, the kids were adjusting the best.  They would often play around the building or on the side of the street in the shade of the storefront, filling up toy trucks to haul rocks and dirt, or they’d build streets and race tracks in the gravel where which they could push toy vehicles.  Jason loved filling little dump trucks full of stones and gravel at the bottom of the store’s front steps and pushing them a short distance to dump their loads and then reload them to repeat the process over and over again.  He could literally spend hours there playing quietly by himself.  Sometimes the boys would set up platoons of tiny army men up on the side of the porch or along the steps, often accompanied by toy tanks, trucks, and jeeps, and have battles in which pebbles were used as rockets, bombs and artillery.  They’d sit a few feet away and bombard one another’s forces until one was declared the winner, and then they set up their troops and start all over.  Sarah usually sat out these little wars, content to dress a doll and play with it nearby or pick flowers and dandelions. 

But it seemed like the activity the kids most enjoyed playing was “store” inside our own general store’s first floor.  They would set up a variety of items that were “for sale” on the store’s long oak countertop and inside the glass display cases.  There they would pretend to sell all sorts of stuff.  Dandelions, sticks, rocks (or “gems” as they called them), wood blocks, faux pieces of plastic food, books, other toys, and sometimes even pieces of real candy if we doled them out as special treats were all fair game when they were playing store.  But what they liked best about the activity was that they got to use
real
money since we adults no longer had a use for it.  The kids found using real cash “cool,” so we made a conscious effort to accumulate as much cash and coins as we could find from our searches of the homes and stores around town.  The kids loved it when we would come home from searching an area and plunk down a bag of change or give them a wad of now worthless bills.  Sometimes they’d divide their little group up so that one of them operated the store, one (usually Paul) ran the bank, and the other two acted as customers.  I found it interesting to watch them interact and run their little businesses or negotiate a bartered deal of some sort for their purchases.  The adults all agreed that transacting their commerce in negotiated trades would likely be the best training for a future in which there was no guarantee that a standard currency as we once knew and utilized the US dollar would ever be necessary again.  But the kids loved using the cash so much that we allowed this sort of payment as well.

As things wound down most afternoons, we’d start getting dinner ready.  Sometimes we’d cook a little Bessie on the grill out back.  Since we were trying to conserve our supplies, we’d typically make tiny sliders, mostly just to get the taste of the meat, and then combine them with sides of things like dehydrated mashed potatoes, pasta, rice, and other filler food to extend the dish.  Most evenings – much to Sharron’s delight – we’d end up going vegetarian or using tiny bits of Paul’s collected squirrel meat, marinated in a sauce of some sort, to work into a dish for flavor, substance, and some protein.  Sharron usually ended up eating a similar meal to ours but with various nuts or beans mixed in rather than squirrel meat for her sources of protein.  Sometimes, just one or two of us would cook; other times it would be more of a family affair depending upon the intricacy and size of the meal.  The kids often preferred cereal as their dinner of choice, and most of them had become accustomed to having it in a powdered milk mixture.  Paul still complained about the “funny taste” occasionally, but there wasn’t much choice about the matter.

After our dinners, as the sun would begin to set and the evening air started to cool, the parents regularly allowed themselves a beer, which was now more like half a beer as we tried to ration our supply in this area as well.  We’d sit on the porch in our respective chairs and watch the kids as they entertained themselves out in the street playing ball, hide-and-seek, tag, or catching fireflies.

We’d spray the kids down with bug repellent to help keep the mosquitoes away.  However, we soon realized during our evening sittings that the nighttime birds we had noticed swooping around us above the store weren’t birds at all – they were bats.  And the bats of the town soon became our allies in the defense against mosquitoes as they consumed many of the pesky nuisances. 

Some evenings, after a bit of sitting and watching the kids, we’d break off into groups, going for walks around town.  Our “evening constitutionals” is what we called them.  Sometimes just a few of us would go.  Other times almost the whole group would head out.  Sometimes we’d break off into several small groups.  Other times we’d all walk together.  There was never any pressure to go on these walks or expectations to be there at a particular time, but for many in our group, it became a kind of nice way to wind down after a long day.  We’d talk about the day’s events and discuss what we were going to do tomorrow, what projects we had planned, or what we’d put on the back burner and wanted to get to at some point in the near future.

One such project involved working to clean up several of the houses so that each individual segment of our group could have their own, adding a bit more privacy to our lives and making Olsten back into a town –
our
little town. 

Things were finally beginning to shape up as I had envisioned them.  Our enclave appeared safely forgotten by the outside world. 

My main concern was our water supply for the rest of the long, hot, Georgia summer.

Chapter 12

Work came first in the hours following the National Guard armory raid.  It was nearly two in the morning before the repairs were done on the Stryker armored vehicles.  Then they were then driven back to base and safely stashed out of sight in a large shed that Jake had his men quickly erect behind the pump station. 

The machinegun that had been used against Jake and Ava’s SUV during the raid was mounted atop the pump station roof along with the Protector M151 Remote Weapon Station’s 7.62 mm M240 machinegun that had been stripped from the one Stryker that couldn’t be fixed. 

Jake’s men had scavenged an array of supplies from the armory.  Canister upon canister of ammo, assault rifles, tools, food, alcohol, cigarettes, silver coins, and more.  Jake was like a kid in a candy store – or maybe more like a sexually depraved scumbag in a strip club – as he stood watching the parade of supplies offloaded from the trucks. 

After all their loot was safely stashed with the rest of their hoard inside the pump station, and the Strykers were concealed under cover of the shed, Jake posted two of his newer recruits to man the machineguns atop the roof, and another at the main door, and then allowed the rest of his men to partake in a raging party that went on for the next 24 hours. 

Ava didn’t partake.

She knew that the days immediately following the strike against the armory would be the period during which it was most likely one – or even all – of the Three Families might come after them in reprisal for the taken weaponry. 

But as the hours ticked by, nothing happened.  And as Jake and his men finally slipped into an exhausted slumber on the dawn of their second day of debauchery, Ava took a moment to breathe a light sigh of relief and enjoy a little peace and quiet.

Still, she knew that she couldn’t relax for long. Now that they had their new instruments of destruction, she understood that Jake would be itching to use them.  Plus, she needed to replace their losses from the armory raid.  They had lost several of their newer recruits and she wanted to ensure that they had the manpower available should the Three Families just be biding their time in waiting to lay claim to the Strykers.  It was actually an opportunity for which she’d been waiting, but she knew she had to tread carefully when it came to how she made her next move. 

Therefore, before Jake’s partying began in earnest, she quickly pulled him aside and pleaded her case.  She talked about the Three Families, how they might retaliate, and how their own organization should be ready for anything.  And that since they’d lost a few guys, she explained, they should at least replace them, if not add a few more just to be on the safe side. 

Jake didn’t really give a shit if she brought in more guys.  He wanted to get drinking and didn’t want to be bothered with the recruiting process, which was exactly what Ava had hoped.  He personally felt adding more fresh faces unimportant now that they had the Strykers to “take care of business” as he put it.  But he told her that if she wanted to waste her time that she should go ahead. 

And Ava did just that.

This was Ava’s chance to expand their organization in a different way – her way.  First, she took a walk over to where “Brownie” and “Blondie” – as she now referred to the brown and blonde-haired men – lived.  While she didn’t want the two young men who she’d been using to conduct her own personal assignments to reside at the pump station with the rest of the crew and where Jake could exert his direct influence over them, she at least wanted them on the payroll. 

In the basement of their dilapidated home, she negotiated their contract with drugs.  She would provide them with just enough to keep their steady habit going, but not so much that they would become the sort of degenerates that she found expendable in battle.  She would also provide them with food and supplies.  In return, they would be at her disposal for whatever she – or Jake – needed.  They didn’t like the mention of the Jake part too much, but they were willing to agree to the terms if they could count on Ava to provide them with a steady stream of product.

A buddy of theirs was visiting when Ava arrived.  He was older; Ava estimated probably somewhere in his late-30s, maybe early-40s.  The guy had a bushy beard and had worked construction in his previous life.  He was a prepper sort from northern Georgia which was what had enabled him to outlast the flu.  He and his brother had traveled down to Atlanta after their supplies ran out.  His brother had died about a month back and now “Bushy” as Ava nicknamed him, was on his own and doing some work for an area trader.  He was looking to move in with Brownie and Blondie.  Bushy liked to party too, but he wasn’t into the hard stuff.  He was strictly a booze and weed man. 

Ava saw this as a dual opportunity.  In her brief visit, she decided not only to add Bushy to the company payroll, but to pick his brain regarding the trader for whom he’d been working.  From what he told her, it sounded like this particular trader could provide a perfect future target for their crew.  He was operating several gas stations, but he’d yet to fall under the umbrella of protection the Three Families – and the X Family in particular – offered.