The Peacekeepers

Part One; Chapter Fourteen

The Story of Sheamas McCallihan

"Well, I'm not sure where to begin. My father was a boxer in Ireland where I was born. 'Madman McCallihan' he was called. My mum died when I was two years old and I was left with just my dad. He signed me up for boxing when I was five years old. I was good at it. I mean I was really damn good."

"I was able to outbox kids that had been there much longer than me. Fourteen or fifteen year olds when I was nine years old. I was just that damned good. When I was eleven we moved to the United States after dad retired. He had to from this heart condition he had that was getting bad. He was worried at the EUA's growing power, like everyone and got out even before the great exodus, which I must say, was luckier than hell. I was in New York for about a year where I also boxed. I never lost a single match. At thirteen I had official MMA camps looking at me."

"We moved to Compton to get closer to the camp that wanted me most. Got into a fight my first week there. It was pretty short but I was scared shitless because I had never been in a fight outside the ring before. Anyway the camp chiefly taught me American kickboxing and some BJJ. I had pro teams looking at me, I had a very bright future in MMA."

"Life was fairly good for a long time. I got myself a girlfriend, plenty of friends and a future job. Then I remember losing most of my friends in the war. Most were eighteen so they got drafted to fight the bastards who destroyed New York. When The Chaos started my best friend, my girlfriend and my dad holed up in my basement. We had plenty of food and down there to last us all quite a while where my dad was a bit of a prepper.

"It was like that for about a week until the gangs started fighting. Our house got broken into five or six times but we were never found. We all knew that we needed to leave before they found us."

"When we left we saw that the local Wal-mart was completely abondoned. We decided we could hole up in there for a while. On the outside it seemed abandoned. That's when I met Gideon. He tried killing me at first but I managed to hold our against him long enough to talk him down a bit. He was the only one there. His parents were killed in the first week of The Chaos. After he realised that we weren't going to kill him in his sleep he showed us that the store wasn't completely empty. There was a ton of food in the backroom stored up that looters didn't touch or didn't get the chance to and an old military surplus cot he had set up. We each set up our own cots and chairs and different furnishings. We were able to stay there for quite a while... or so we thought."

"Two weeks later we got attacked by a bunch of looters. They each had a black and red bandana tied across their faces. The bastards weren't even going for the food! They wanted my girlfriend and the painkillers we had. This was the first time I ever saw Gideon fight. He was like an inhuman beast the way he tore at them with such effeciency. There were ten in all. My friend took a swing at one of them. He was tripped and fell into a knife. We beat them back and killed four of them. My father's heart problems finally caught up to him but he fought them like the badass he was anyway. He died shortly after my friend did. I buried them both that night."

I saw the sadness in Sheamas' face. He is a man haunted by the demons of the past like I am.

"I'm so sorry Sheamas. I know how it feels to bury a parent."

He just nodded his head.

"Drake, can we continue this some other time? I forgot how much I fucking hate talking about this."

I told him that it was fine and apologised for bringing up a bad subject like that. He told me to just take it easy for the rest of the day and tomorrow I would start working...