Free FORSAKEN: THE SYSTEMIC SERIES by K.W. CALLAHAN

found that if she gave the druggies a time and location to show up for an operation, most of them never did.  Therefore, taking them back with her was the safest and most efficient way to ensure they arrived on time to meet their work obligations.  Secondly, 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 to decide upon making the general store our official home.  Not only did the location give us plenty of room to spread out in, but we discovered that it had a nice basement for storage, which 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 from which 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 in which to sleep and that we weren’t all crammed together.  We also took pillows, blankets, and other available furnishings to make our situation 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 as well.
    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