ASCENSION: THE SYSTEMIC SERIES by CALLAHAN K.W

Author:CALLAHAN, K.W. [CALLAHAN, K.W.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2015-03-09T07:00:00+00:00

“Cubs or Sox?” the woman said after a moment.

“What?” I said, bewildered by the question.

“Cubs or Sox? It’s a simple question,” the woman said, turning her head to the side to speak while watching me from the corner of her eye.

“Uh…Sox,” I said, still somewhat confused.

“Well that’s a relief,” she breathed. “For a minute I thought we were in trouble.”

I couldn’t help but smile at the moment of levity she offered, and found myself surprised that she could be so calm as to find some bit of humor in such a situation. It made me realized that even after all that had happen to the world and what society had become, we were all still people linked by a common background. Her question struck a cord in me, and it reminded me that we weren’t so far removed from our former lives that we couldn’t be united by that past and even by small talk regarding sports teams that no longer existed.

“Your wife’s a diabetic?” the woman asked.

“Yes,” I nodded.

“Type one or type two?”

“One,” I said.

“My father was type one,” she said. “He had the pump…or did until the flu hit at least. What’s your wife use?”

“She had a pump, but it broke a while back. She’s been on shots ever since.”

“Tough,” the woman said. “Got to be hard for a diabetic these days.”

Her voice was hard, direct, but yet there was a hint of compassion in her words.

“More than you know,” I answered, sitting down on the bed.

“Those are my lucky guns,” the woman said, looking over to where I’d set the handguns on the bed. She was silent for a moment, and then she said, “Tell you what, you give me back my guns and let us go, and I’ll get you your insulin.”

“Huh,” I snorted. “How are you going to do that? You know how expensive insulin is these days?”

“Yes, I do,” she said. “But I have connections here. Getting insulin might be hard for you, but it’s not hard for me.”

It wasn’t necessarily the words she was saying, but how she said them that made me believe her. I reasoned that this woman was either extremely stupid – not realizing the danger of her predicament – or tremendously confident; and I was banking on the latter. And if she was that confident, I figured that there must be good reason for it. There was a certain assurance in the way she talked, and a sort of poise and intelligence in the way she spoke her words that her beauty belied. Sometimes you could just tell by people’s manner of speaking whether what they were saying was true or not. And there, in the relative darkness of the small bedroom, the tone of this woman’s voice and her cool, self-assuredness spoke volumes.

“Could you get us a boat and fuel too?” I asked, deciding to press my luck. I felt that if insulin was that easy for the woman to procure, then maybe I had a chance. I mean really, what did I have to lose?

“I can handle that too,” she said, not skipping a beat.

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