ASCENSION: THE SYSTEMIC SERIES

by Callahan, K. W.

  The plan had gone perfectly until dipshit Doug starting going nuts with the M151’s 7.62 mm machinegun and threatened to destroy the entire reason for the plan in the first place.

  By the time Jake got settled behind the controls of the weapon system, the flies he’d drawn into his web were already in the process of trying to escape.

  * * *

  There was still gunfire coming from the three SUVs that had blocked Gordon’s convoy in from behind, but the armored vehicles sat quiet for the moment, and that gave Gordon some hope, but it also concerned him. He wondered if they were setting him up, giving him just enough rope to hang himself by making a break for it. Then they could open up on him and his boys as soon as they were outside their vehicles and completely vulnerable.

  But he instantly reasoned with himself. What choice did he have?

  “Get to Barry, Ian and Andrew in the rear,” Gordon told Jeff. “I’ll see what I can do about Billy, Jerry, and Edwin up front.”

  Jeff grabbed two automatic rifles from the back seat, handing one to his dad. “Good luck,” he said, looking at his father.

  “You too,” said Gordon, nodding.

  They had both known that one day it might come to this, but neither had expected it to be today.

  Both he and Jeff shoved the Mustang’s doors open and rolled out low, taking cover behind them as best they could. Then they each broke for their intended targets, Jeff moving faster and with more agility than his old man, but he had to. Machinegun fire was still ripping into the two rear vehicles of their convoy. He saw the doors to their SUV open, the steel-plated panels they’d welded to them doing their job in repelling the machinegun fire they were taking. Ian and Andrew jumped out of the vehicle and moved around to shelter behind it. Barry was already out of the pickup parked nearby and crouching behind it for cover.

  The men quickly used their own weapons to flatten the last few vehicle tires that hadn’t already been shredded by their attackers’ gunfire. This lowered the clearance on their vehicles and in the process provided better cover and less chance of bullets ricocheting off the pavement and beneath the vehicles. All the men wore bulletproof vests, but of course these vests did not extend below the waist, leaving feet, ankles, legs, and other vital areas vulnerable to low-flying projectiles, and ricochets were often no less damaging than unobstructed bullets. Sometimes they were even more dangerous due to the deflected spin put on a round as it changed directions or was altered in shape. This could give a projectile a wider surface area, a more angled trajectory or even break it into multiple fragments as it entered the body.

  Jeff made it to his youngest brother Barry, who was pinned down behind the cab of the pickup and not returning fire. He grabbed the boy by the back of his t-shirt and literally dragged him along with him, raising his own assault rifle without really aiming and letting loose with a full magazine of rounds aimed in the general direction of the three attacking SUVs.

  In seconds, the two men had made it to the better cover of the armor-plated SUV where cousins Ian and Andrew were holding out.

  Gordon wasn’t having any such luck. His first stop was Billy and Jerry’s burning SUV. Just as he reached it, a renewed assault from the first armored vehicle sent a projectile hissing over his head. It stuck the Mustang a second later and blew it to hell.

  Gordon didn’t let this stop him though as he reached the wreck of the SUV in which his sons had been traveling just minutes earlier. Beside it lay Jerry, eyes open, dead on the ground. He quickly moved around to the driver’s-side door. Flames were pouring from beneath the hood of the vehicle, and the resulting heat was intense. Gordon tried to grab the door handle but immediately recoiled as pain seared through his hand at its red-hot touch. He used the lower portion of his shirt to grip the handle and yank the door open. Inside, he could see Billy slumped headfirst against the steering wheel, the side of his face burnt and bloody, the front windshield of the SUV smashed in. Gordon leaned Billy back in the seat as he prepared to unclip his seatbelt and slide him from the vehicle. But as he looked into his boy’s face, he could see there was no point. The young man’s eyes were open, staring lifelessly ahead, a jagged piece of steel protruded from one of them.

  Gordon wrenched himself away from the horrific scene. Part of him desperately wanted to stay with the boy, but he had to get back to the part of his family he still had a chance to help.

  He ran as fast as his aging body would carry him around behind the SUV and across the short distance to where the bullet-riddled pickup truck containing the diesel fuel sat.

  There he found his nephew Edwin pinned behind the pickup. The boy was firing rounds that pinged harmlessly off the thick steel of the armored vehicles.

  “We’ve got to go, boy!” Gordon yelled at Edwin. “Before that thing opens up on us again,” he nodded towards the nearest armored unit.

  The other armored vehicle lofted a grenade over them. It arched high and came down right in the bed of the other pickup truck away from which Jeff had just pulled Billy. A second later, it detonated, tearing the rear of the pickup to shreds and leaving the vehicle nothing more than smoldering scrap metal.

  The blast sent everyone on that side of Gordon’s convoy rushing for the relatively safety of the thick foliage lining the road’s edges. Jeff, Barry, Ian, and Andrew all bolted to the north side of the road, spraying rounds at the still firing SUVs as they ran. Just as they reached the road’s edge, Ian took a bullet to the right thigh, crying out in pain as he fell awkwardly onto the pavement. Barry and Andrew, not having noticed their fallen family member, continued down into the relative safety of the drainage ditch nearby. But Jeff saw his cousin fall and stopped to help. As he did so, from the corner of his eye, he could see his father and Edwin break in a crouched run from behind the fuel-filled pickup and head towards the opposite side of the road.

  Just as they made the move, the second armored vehicle’s heavy machinegun opened up again.

  In the split second that Jeff watched them, he saw his cousin get hit and drop to the pavement. His father stopped to help. That was all he saw. He couldn’t wait to see if they made it to safety. Instead, he grabbed Ian, who was struggling to stand in front of him, around the waist, hefted him, and pushed him violently so that he fell forward down into the drainage ditch before them.

  As bullets zinged off the pavement around him, Jeff dove headlong into the ditch behind Ian. Once there, Barry and Andrew helped him drag his cousin to relative cover behind a thick grove of palms.

  * * *

  A few minutes after the shooting stopped, and Jake’s men had secured the perimeter, the emperor himself emerged from his steel chariot. Across from him, his queen emerged from hers.

  Ava had hooked up with Jake in Chicago back when he’d been a sleazy hood pulling small-change jobs. She was a good-looking girl searching for a man to take her places – instead, she got Jake.

  The arrival of the Su flu had been the opportunity for which both of them had been waiting. For most people, the flu had been something from which to run and hide, but Jake had embraced it as the chance to finally take what he’d wanted from those less willing and less capable of doing so for themselves. And Ava had recognized this one strength in Jake, seeing a man that was willing to do whatever it took to get what he wanted in a world where fear reigned supreme. Jake may not have looked like much, but Ava had seen something in him, at least enough to take a chance.

  The lovely Latina was different from Jake in almost every way except maybe for their lust for power and proclivity towards violence. But even the latter tendency was somewhat different from Jake’s. Ava usually only resorted to violence as a necessary means to an end rather than as an indulgence to be savored and enjoyed as Jake viewed it.

  Jake was short and boney. Ava was leggy and curvy and almost as tall as Jake. Jake was pale and ugly. Ava was brown and beautiful. Jake was ignorant and instinctual. Ava was smart and savvy. Jake lived in the moment. Ava was forward thinking and liked to plan. But
both had guts of steel, and both were good with a gun and enjoyed what each gave the other.

  Jake provided Ava the power she so lusted after and the ability to wield that power through the plans that she developed for Jake and his men to execute. And Ava gave Jake sex unlike any he’d had before, leaving him feeling like a real man – like the man he’d always known he was but had never been able to unleash until after the flu when his true colors would not only shine through but scorch the earth. And that’s precisely what he’d done since departing Chicago’s south side nearly a year earlier, leaving a swath of death and destruction in a march to the sea the likes of which Sherman would have been proud.

  Jake watched as his queen gracefully exited the Stryker armored vehicle in her tight leather pants and black t-shirt. Even after sitting inside the Stryker’s stifling steel interior for over an hour, she somehow appeared cool and collected. Not a drop of sweat was visible on her Amaretto-tinted skin.

  He walked over to the smoldering SUV and inspected the dead man inside. Then he moved around the vehicle to give the body laying on the pavement beside it a good kick just to make sure the man was good and dead.

  Ava joined him a moment later, a Polaroid camera in her hand.

  “Wait,” she said. “I want to get a few shots.

  She took up an angle so that she could get Jake in front of the pickup full of diesel fuel. There she snapped a shot, pausing and then waiting until she cold pull the photo from the camera as it made its exit. She quickly shoved it into her t-shirt’s front pocket. Then she moved to get a shot of Jake in front of the destroyed SUV.

  “Here,” Jake said. “Now get one like this,” he put one foot up atop the chest of the dead man who lay sprawled beside the SUV. Jake sneered evilly at the camera for the grizzly shot.

  Ava snapped the photo and handed it to Jake to see as the photo’s image took shape. “For your scrapbook,” she said.

  “That’s my girl,” Jake took it from her hand, grinning as he looked at it. “It’ll look good taped up inside the Stryker. Give me motivation for next time,” he nodded. “Remind me just how badass I am.”

  “As if you need reminding,” Ava eyed him provocatively. She gave him a devilish smile with lips exhibiting curves that matched the rest of her body and that sent Jake’s engine revving into the red.

  He stepped close to her, reaching his arm around her waist to grab her by the ass and pull her up against him. “Just don’t you forget it,” he said as he looked into her eyes with an intense Svengali-like gaze. Then he kissed her hard and with plenty of tongue.

  As he led her away to the privacy of the nearest Stryker where he could have his sweaty, lust-filled way with her, he yelled at his men, nodding towards the pickup, “Get that goddamn fuel unloaded and split it up between the Strykers! I want to get out of this fucking shithole asap!”

  CHAPTER 4

  Gordon managed to haul Edwin what he’d hoped was a safe enough distance from the road that they wouldn’t be pursued by their assailants. He let his young nephew sag as gently as he could to the ground before he dropped to his knees himself, exhausted and gasping for breath. He prayed they hadn’t been followed. They were pretty much screwed if they had been. Gordon had his loaded .45 on him and one spare clip in his pocket, but he had dropped his automatic rifle back on the highway when helping Edwin.

  His nephew now lay on his back in the thick undergrowth, barely having moved since Gordon had set him there. The young man took short, labored breaths that caused him to wince and to cringe with each attempted.

  Gordon moved to inspect the boy and find out exactly how bad the damage was. The first thing he did was gently open Edwin’s bulletproof vest, but he didn’t try to remove the vest completely since he dared not move the young man too much until he knew more about his injuries.

  Gordon immediately noted that Edwin had taken a bullet to the shoulder during their escape. Gordon could clearly see the exit wound through the bloody hole it had left in the front of Edwin’s t-shirt.

  Gordon slowly and cautiously rolled the boy over onto his side. Edwin cried out as he was moved.

  “I’m sorry, boy. But I’ve got to do this,” Gordon gritted his teeth and apologized.

  Gordon continued his inspection. It looked as though a bullet had stuck the boy on the lower left side of his back where his bulletproof vest had done its job and stopped it. Even then, as Gordon lifted the vest gingerly to look beneath it, he could see the boy’s bare skin was red and swollen and he guessed there might be a cracked rib or two from the impact. He wondered if a lung might be punctured resulting in the boy’s labored breathing. But the most serious wound had occurred on his right side near his lower abdomen that had somehow been left exposed as he ran. Gordon guessed that as Edwin had turned to fire at the armored vehicles as they made their escape, the angle of his turned body and raised arms while he shot must have pulled his vest up just high enough to expose this tender area.

  The young man had paid dearly for the mistake.

  While the shoulder wound was bad, it was nothing compared to the gapping hole near Edwin’s midsection. Gordon saw that he was losing blood at an alarming rate, and this was therefore where he decided to focus his efforts. But he was no medic. He didn’t have a clue as to where to begin. The wound was big, messy, and ugly looking, and Gordon was afraid of doing more damage than good, but he had little choice. Therefore, he took off the baseball cap he was wearing, pulled out his pocketknife and cut the bill from the mesh-netting and foam that comprised the rest of the hat. He then shed himself of his t-shirt – something he knew he’d miss later when the mosquitoes got a hold of him – and cut off the sleeves. Then he cut the rest of the shirt into strips and quickly knotted them together as best he could. The entire process probably only took him three minutes, but with Edwin laying there, staring up at his uncle, moaning and wincing and dying right before his eyes, it seemed like it took much longer.

  Gordon then cut the rest of Edwin’s t-shirt and bulletproof vest away so he could work on him more freely and use the leftover material as wadding for the wounds. Next, he wiped as much blood and debris away from the abdominal wound as possible with a portion of the cloth he’d cut from Edwin’s t-shirt. Then he balled up the rest of the shirt material and did his best to cover the seeping exit wound. Finally, he took the bill of his baseball cap and used it to cover the wadding, and then he tied it all in place with a long portion of his own knotted t-shirt, ensuring that he also covered the bullet’s smaller and less dangerous looking entry wound with the cloth.

  Getting the strands of material under and around the boy was terrible as he had to lift the boy up slightly which resulted in poor Edwin nearly losing consciousness. Gordon had no idea if what he was doing would help, but it was all he could think of under the circumstances. It was what they did in the movies, and that was pretty much the extent of Gordon’s medical training. Give him a bruised and battered vehicle and he could work wonders, but give him an equally beaten up human body and he was at a loss.

  With this work done, he took what material was left from the t-shirts, made two more wads of cloth, and put one wad on each side of Edwin’s shoulder wound. He then used the sleeves of his own t-shirt to slide up and over the boy’s arm and shoulder to hold the patches in place.

  He spent the next 10 minutes – which seemed like about an hour to Gordon – caring for his wounded nephew who was now extremely pale and slipping in and out of consciousness. Gordon just kept talking to him, trying to bribe him to stay awake with promises of booze, cigarettes, pretty girls, and whatever else he could think of to keep the boy’s brain active.

  Finally, Gordon heard the sounds of vehicle engines in the distance and figured that the assholes responsible for all this were likely on their way. There was the sound of an explosion and then silence as the engine noise faded back towards the direction of the interstate.

  “All this for some fucking gas,” Gordon shook his head, looking down at Edwin. It was enough
to make him want to cry. He had at least two dead sons, a nephew near death, and who knew how many – or whether any – of his other boys were alive. More than anything, it made him angry that the world had come to this. He was a businessman. A deal could have been worked out if they’d just been able to talk things through. But he recognized that this was no longer the way the world worked; not anymore, not in post-flu America – or whatever the country was now.

  People still paid for things, but now they often paid with their lives.

  Gordon sat holding Edwin’s hand, unsure of what to do or if there was anything else that could be done to help the boy. Several minutes later, he heard voices approaching and soon the familiar call of, “Dad!” coming from Jeff.

  “Over here!” Gordon called back. “We’re over here!”

  “Just hang in there,” he said to Edwin, squeezing his hand. “Help is on the way.” As he looked down at the boy, he realized that his words of encouragement were pointless. Edwin’s open eyes stared up at the sky, unblinking.

  Gordon exhaled heavily thinking not just of his own lost boys, but now of having to take this news back to his brother and the rest of the family. It was all suddenly hitting home.

  Gordon broke down and wept freely.

  He had cried a few times in the last ten years – once when his mother had passed, and once, he was embarrassed to admit, when his best dog died a few years back. But this time he wept. There was a big difference. Even when Jeff arrived, he continued to weep like a child. He just couldn’t hold it in any longer. It was all too much, even for Gordon who thought himself immune to such overwhelming outpourings of emotions. And Jeff let him, understanding – at least for a minute.

  “Dad,” he said, walking over and touching his shirtless father softly on the shoulder. “We need your help. Barry and Ian are hurt. I need you to help us with them.”

  Gordon was in a state of shock, but he moved mechanically, knowing he had to try his best to be strong for his boys. Sons or nephews, it didn’t matter, they were all his boys. He let go of Edwin’s hand and Jeff helped his old man to his feet.