Read Online ASCENSION: THE SYSTEMIC SERIES by K.W. CALLAHAN - Free Book Online
Authors: K.W. CALLAHAN
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sure how it would heal, but Claire and Pam got the two men’s wounds cleaned and patched up as best they could before we loaded everyone back into our pickup truck and trailer.
While they worked on the wounded, I took the kids to sit up front in the pickup’s cab so that we could load the bodies of Gordon’s dead sons Billy and Jerry, as well as of his nephew Edwin, onto the trailer. We covered them with one of our extra blankets in an effort to provide some dignity to the deceased, respect to Gordon, and keep the gruesome sight of the dead men from the curious gazes of the children. I figured that Paul and Sarah could probably handle it after what they’d been through over the past year, but I really didn’t want my little three-year-old son Jason waking up at night screaming with nightmares of bullet-ridden, burned, and bloodied corpses.
Then we got the rest of the family and the remaining wounded loaded up and started east towards the coast at a pretty good clip. I hoped that Gordon was being truthful with us about having fuel, because we were literally running on empty. If it was a lie, we would find ourselves stranded and having to spend some additional time scavenging the area for more. But Gordon seemed like a decent individual. He’d been forthright with us so far. Of course right now he was desperate, and desperate men said and did desperate things.
Thankfully though, it wasn’t a lie. It turned out that Gordon was actually very well situated at his little spot on the coast and we ended up spending around three weeks with him and his family. We almost felt like prisoners – although extremely happy ones – as Gordon refused to let us leave until he felt he’d thoroughly repaid us for what we’d done to help him and his boys. He lavished us with food, drink, new clothing, and anything else we needed. And over the weeks we spent with him, our families grew to become quite close. We told them the story of how we’d ended up in Florida all the way from Chicago, and they explained how they themselves had survived the flu and built their post-flu business.
And so, over the ensuing weeks, we lived with them, we laughed with them, and we cried and mourned with them, attending the family funeral they held for the three men – their three boys – killed on the fuel salvage run. It was a tough time for their family, but I think it helped having us there. They seemed to appreciate the new faces, and Gordon’s wife Samantha, his daughter Danielle, as well as his brother’s wife Cindy, all made a big fuss over Jason and Pam. Pam was now working on month number four – although without a doctor’s expertise, we relied upon our best estimate of conception – of her pregnancy and had a nice round baby bump to show for it.
We found that Gordon had a pretty nice little situation going for himself and his family on north Florida’s Atlantic coast. He was involved in much of the trade along the stretch of coast that reached from south Jacksonville to north Daytona. He said he preferred to stay away from the more urbanized areas as they tended to present characters like those he’d encountered the day we’d met him on his fuel run. The results of that run-in were exactly why he liked his quieter, lesser-developed, and lesser-populated stretch of A1A. He was a businessman, not a mercenary. And while he recognized that guns –having replaced the cell phone as the “must have” device of those involved in regular commerce – often accompanied post-flu business transactions, it didn’t mean that he enjoyed using them.
The core of Gordon’s business was trade and transportation, but he dabbled occasionally in services since customers without tradable wares often had to pay with their time and physical labor.
Several of Gordon’s buddies who had survived the flu worked for him in his quite successful taxi service. Even after Armageddon had struck, people still needed
While they worked on the wounded, I took the kids to sit up front in the pickup’s cab so that we could load the bodies of Gordon’s dead sons Billy and Jerry, as well as of his nephew Edwin, onto the trailer. We covered them with one of our extra blankets in an effort to provide some dignity to the deceased, respect to Gordon, and keep the gruesome sight of the dead men from the curious gazes of the children. I figured that Paul and Sarah could probably handle it after what they’d been through over the past year, but I really didn’t want my little three-year-old son Jason waking up at night screaming with nightmares of bullet-ridden, burned, and bloodied corpses.
Then we got the rest of the family and the remaining wounded loaded up and started east towards the coast at a pretty good clip. I hoped that Gordon was being truthful with us about having fuel, because we were literally running on empty. If it was a lie, we would find ourselves stranded and having to spend some additional time scavenging the area for more. But Gordon seemed like a decent individual. He’d been forthright with us so far. Of course right now he was desperate, and desperate men said and did desperate things.
Thankfully though, it wasn’t a lie. It turned out that Gordon was actually very well situated at his little spot on the coast and we ended up spending around three weeks with him and his family. We almost felt like prisoners – although extremely happy ones – as Gordon refused to let us leave until he felt he’d thoroughly repaid us for what we’d done to help him and his boys. He lavished us with food, drink, new clothing, and anything else we needed. And over the weeks we spent with him, our families grew to become quite close. We told them the story of how we’d ended up in Florida all the way from Chicago, and they explained how they themselves had survived the flu and built their post-flu business.
And so, over the ensuing weeks, we lived with them, we laughed with them, and we cried and mourned with them, attending the family funeral they held for the three men – their three boys – killed on the fuel salvage run. It was a tough time for their family, but I think it helped having us there. They seemed to appreciate the new faces, and Gordon’s wife Samantha, his daughter Danielle, as well as his brother’s wife Cindy, all made a big fuss over Jason and Pam. Pam was now working on month number four – although without a doctor’s expertise, we relied upon our best estimate of conception – of her pregnancy and had a nice round baby bump to show for it.
We found that Gordon had a pretty nice little situation going for himself and his family on north Florida’s Atlantic coast. He was involved in much of the trade along the stretch of coast that reached from south Jacksonville to north Daytona. He said he preferred to stay away from the more urbanized areas as they tended to present characters like those he’d encountered the day we’d met him on his fuel run. The results of that run-in were exactly why he liked his quieter, lesser-developed, and lesser-populated stretch of A1A. He was a businessman, not a mercenary. And while he recognized that guns –having replaced the cell phone as the “must have” device of those involved in regular commerce – often accompanied post-flu business transactions, it didn’t mean that he enjoyed using them.
The core of Gordon’s business was trade and transportation, but he dabbled occasionally in services since customers without tradable wares often had to pay with their time and physical labor.
Several of Gordon’s buddies who had survived the flu worked for him in his quite successful taxi service. Even after Armageddon had struck, people still needed
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