ASCENSION: THE SYSTEMIC SERIES

by Callahan, K. W.

  Craig eyed us warily, “I might be able to do a little business,” he nodded. “This what they got to trade?” he motioned to our belongings splayed across Myron’s table.

  “That’s it,” Myron nodded.

  “Not much,” Craig mumbled, spitting more crumbs in the process.

  “Some pretty good stuff there,” I interjected.

  “You know how valuable insulin is these days?” Craig said, turning to eyeball me. “I’ve got people dying for it…literally,” he chuckled.

  I found his sense of humor in extremely poor taste and I wanted to kick the crap out of him right then and there considering Claire’s situation, but I kept my cool. I recognized that I needed his product far more than he needed what I had to offer. Therefore, I didn’t respond, not wanting to offend him.

  “Tell you what,” he said. “I’ll take everything you got, including the rifles and ammo you’re carrying, for half a vial.”

  “Half a vial!” I cried. “That’s like two weeks worth!”

  “You know how hard it is to find this shit? They ain’t making it anymore,” he finally swallowed his food.

  “I know that,” I said as calmly as I could.

  “We have some nice stuff here,” dad interjected.

  “Yeah, you and everybody else, buddy,” Craig sneered, gesturing around at the market full of people. “This shit here…” he waved his hand across the table at our array of goods, “…it comes along every day. Nothing special. I’m actually doin’ you a favor really just by offering you any insulin at all for it. If Myron here hadn’t vouched for you, I wouldn’t even be talking to you.”

  I stood next to dad, silent. Half a vial was better than nothing, but it only delayed the inevitable, and not by long.

  “Listen, I got other customers to deal with,” said Craig, starting to turn around to leave. “That’s the deal…take it or leave it.”

  “Would you at least leave us one of our rifles to get home with?” I asked.

  He looked put out by the question, frowning while looking at his watch and huffing, “Since you’re a buddy of Myron’s, I’ll let you keep one.”

  We quickly made the exchange, dumping off our two hefty bags of stuff, and one of our assault rifles in exchange for the tiny, half-full glass bottle that I gingerly wrapped in a cloth handkerchief and placed in my front shirt pocket.

  “Guess there’s nothing left for me to do,” said Myron. “Should have called him over after I made my sale with you.”

  “We’ll be back,” I told Myron. “We’ve got more things we can trade for food.”

  He perked up noticeable at this, calling after us as we departed, “Bullets if you’ve got ‘em!”

  Dad and I hardly spoke on the long walk home. There wasn’t much to say. Dad knew the situation. I knew the situation. And things looked bleak. If insulin was this hard to come by these days, we’d spend the rest of our lives working day and night just to accumulate enough stuff to keep Claire living day to day. We needed to find a bigger supply; but even if we did, it wasn’t likely that we could afford it. And without such a supply, we’d be stuck here in limbo, unable to move forward with the final segment of our plan.

  Our outlook was bleak to say the least.

  On the way back home, we passed a burning car on the side of the road. The bodies of two young men lay in the street beside it.

  “Guess it isn’t quite Shangri-La just yet,” said dad.

  “Doesn’t look that way,” I agreed. “Wonder if things will ever get back to the way they were?”

  “One day…maybe,” dad said softly, but it didn’t sound as though he held much conviction in what he said.

  As we neared the apartment building, I said to dad, “Let’s not mention how much we had to trade to get this,” I patted the vial in my pocket.

  “Okay,” he agreed.

  “Let’s just load up the rest of the stuff we have to trade, get the food and water we need from Myron tomorrow, and then we can re-evaluate. At least this buys us a little time to try to figure things out if nothing else.”

  Dad remained silent. I knew he was thinking the same thing I was. Sure, getting this insulin buys us a little time…but then what?

  * * *

  I couldn’t sleep that night after getting back from the market, so I volunteered to take the first segment of the night watch, which Will was only to glad to give me. I was all wound up with worry about my wife. My mind was running rampant with questions regarding how to go about getting more insulin.

  I therefore took to wandering from apartment to apartment exploring them again in hopes of finding anything of value that we might have missed during our first searches of these areas. I figured re-search the apartments we’d already gone through on our floor, and I could investigate the ones we’d yet to explore in the morning when I had daylight to assist me.

  I’d just reached the end of our hallway where it met with one of the stairwells when I heard voices coming from inside what I had previously assumed to be an empty apartment. It was an apartment I’d searched earlier so I was pretty positive it was abandoned – or at least it had been.

  I quietly turned off my flashlight and crept cautiously to the door, trying to make out how many voices there were and what they were saying. The entry door to the apartment was slightly ajar, and I stood outside listening.

  I pulled my .44 from my waistband and aimed it out in front of me. I softly pushed the apartment door open with my foot and moved inside, creeping through the darkness of the living room and towards the bedroom from which there came the dim glow of a light and the continued talking of what sounded like two people.

  I didn’t like it, and I didn’t really want to, but I decided to take a chance. It was time to become the type of person I despised, but at this critical juncture, I felt I had little choice.

  CHAPTER 11

  It’d been quite some time since Ava had met with Bushy. She’d sent him down from Atlanta nearly two months earlier to gather intelligence and get a few things set up prior to her planned arrival. This was how she’d been so well informed regarding the situation in Miami and able to develop the plan for how she and Jake could gain control over the city relatively quickly. It was also how she’d made contact with the people in control of Little Havana and had gained their complicity in the takeover of the city, thus the reason for their being bypassed during Jake and Ava’s rampage through town.

  Bushy had been a prepper-type living outside of Atlanta before the flu hit. Afterward, he’d come to the city to look for supplies and for work, and that’s where he’d met Ava. He had a thick, scruffy beard, thus the nickname, “Bushy.”

  Ava had recently sent him a letter to meet her at an abandoned art-deco apartment building in Miami Beach. The structure had been beautiful not long ago, but it was now rapidly succumbing to the ocean elements. Its aging pink-pastel stucco exterior was cracking and had crumbled away in a spots. Many of the windows on the first and second floors had been broken out. Exterior metal elements were starting to decay, and the resulting rusty icicles of brown stain were slowly sliding their way down the building’s walls.

  The building itself faced out towards the beach, and it was the type of place Ava had once envisioned herself living as a girl growing up in Miami. It was just another of many dreams she’d never had the chance to realize. Now however, the spot seemed the perfect location for a late-night rendezvous with Bushy out from under Jake’s watchful eye.

  Bushy had scouted the building a few days prior and had found it uninhabited. He was now waiting for her in the bedroom of one of the third floor apartments. A small battery-powered lantern cast their only light, but Bushy had to admit, Ava – as always – looked incredible in cloths so constricting they would have suffocated an anaconda.

  “So how have things been in Little Havana lately?” Ava asked, getting right down to business after a quick handshake in greeting. “They treating you okay?”

  Bushy shrugged, “Yeah, things are
good. Been staying busy. They’ve got me running supplies between their warehouses and some of the traders in the area markets. Not a bad gig; and they seem like decent enough individuals. Don’t fit in too well though being about the only white boy. But they don’t give a shit, and they don’t give me any trouble.”

  “Good,” Ava nodded. “I’m going to have to steal you away for a few days though.”

  “Yeah?” Bushy said in the dimly-lit bedroom. “Why’s that?”

  “I need you to make a run back up north.”

  “How far up north?” Bushy eyed her warily. He’d settled into a groove down here and was finding that he actually kind of liked Miami. The thought of having to leave didn’t really appeal to him, but if that’s what Ava wanted, that’s what he’d do. He hadn’t been with Ava long, but he knew her well enough to understand that she wasn’t one to be fucked with.

  “South of Jacksonville,” she handed him an envelope and then several photographs. “Directions are taped to the back of the envelope. I need you to show these pictures around, see if you get any reaction from anybody when they see them.”

  Bushy picked up the lantern and held it up to illuminate the photos, taking a moment to inspect them more closely.

  “Jesus,” was all he said.

  “Just be careful,” Ava said. “You find the people that these pictures mean something to and they might not be too happy to see you.”

  “I can imagine,” Bushy huffed, nodding as he stared at the photos.

  “If you find them, you give them that envelope.”

  “Okay,” he nodded, sliding the envelope and pictures inside his back pocket. “Anything else?”

  “Not right now,” Ava said. “I need this done quick.”

  “How quick?” Bushy asked.

  “You’ve got three days.”

  Bushy nodded that he understood. “Got it,” he said. “So you…”

  He was stopped by a noise behind them near the bedroom door.

  “Get down on your knees and put your hands behind your head,” a voice said in the darkness.

  Ava didn’t recognize the voice. She guessed that it was probably one of Jake’s new recruits who’d followed her here. She knew that this could be bad, very bad for her plans. It could ruin everything and quite possibly be her death sentence.

  * * *

  I crept through the apartment towards where I could see a light shining from within the bedroom. There, I edged my way up to the door which was open slightly, just enough to give me a view inside. I stood silently, watching, listening.

  It appeared that it was just one man and one woman inside. I wondered if they were looking for a place to bed down for the night, but it didn’t appear they had any supplies with them, and from the words I caught, it sounded more like they were conducting some sort of meeting or business transaction rather than discussing sleeping arrangements or where to find food.

  In the dim light, I could see that the man was a bearded fellow of average build. He was holding a small lantern and staring down at something he held in his hand – a picture maybe. The woman was tall – almost as tall as the man – and leggy, but I couldn’t tell much more that that. The only other feature I could detect, and what caught my attention most about her, were the two gun-holster straps that ran around her shoulders and across the back of her form-fitted white t-shirt.

  I pushed the bedroom door open with a foot, my gun still held out in front of me, my finger on the trigger. The door creaked on its hinges as it swung open into the room. I could see the bearded man glance over to the door and the woman start to turn around towards me.

  “Get down on your knees and put your hands behind your head,” I said.

  It was weird hearing the words come out of my mouth. The uttered phrase was something I never thought I’d say. I sounded like such a bad guy. I guess now I was a bad guy. I had to be, I tried to justify it in my mind. The events of the day had made me desperate, and the events of the past year had hardened me. I felt like Jean Valjean stealing bread to feed my family. But I was determined to do what I had to do to save my wife, whatever it took.

  I walked further into the room, clicking my flashlight on to get a better view. A small single bed lined one wall. A few scattered tables sat beside a long window that faced out towards the beach; otherwise, the space was largely devoid of furnishings.

  The bearded man and woman knelt in the center of the room as I had commanded.

  I walked over to the pair and pulled a handgun from the man’s waistband, sticking it into my own. Then I moved to the woman. I could see now that she was a young, very attractive Hispanic woman. I reached down and pulled the two handguns from the holsters strapped across her chest. I felt my hand brush against an ample bosom shoved snuggly into her tight t-shirt.

  I wondered what in the hell this lovely, yet heavily-armed woman was doing with this hillbilly-looking man.

  “You don’t want to do this,” she said as I moved away from them and set the guns down on the bed.

  “I know,” is what I wanted to say. And, “What should I do next?” was my desired follow-up question, but I resisted. “Yeah…why not?” Was what I said instead, in the deepest, most “I don’t-give-a-shit” tone I could muster as I tried to play the badass. I figured the best thing I had going for me was that neither of these people knew me, my background, or that I certainly was no badass. “I’ve got nothing to lose,” I said, trying to bluff them.

  “You’ve got everything to lose and you don’t even know it,” the woman responded coolly and matter-of-factly.

  “Lie down face-first on the floor and put your hands behind your back,” I commanded, trying to ignore her return threat.

  I began to look around for something with which to tie their hands. My plan, which was coming together as I stood there, was to incapacitate the two strangers by taking their weapons and tying their hands, and then take them out to the road and tell them to take a hike.

  I had to admit that it wasn’t much of a plan, but I wasn’t exactly expecting to find myself in such a situation.

  The two strangers did as they were told. “You’re going to get yourself killed for a couple guns?” the woman asked. “It’s not worth it. Just let us go and there won’t be any trouble.”

  There were several planters hanging from the ceiling by the window. I walked over and ripped them down, using the rope that had held them to ceiling hooks to quickly bind the pair’s hands.

  Once they were tied up, I felt I could speak more freely. “I’m not a bad person,” I said. “My group and I have just encountered some bad luck.”

  “Who hasn’t?” the bearded man scoffed.

  “Shut up,” the woman said to him.

  “Listen,” I said, for some reason feeling that I needed to justify my actions to these two people who I didn’t even know, “I didn’t make it all the way down here from Chicago just to let my wife die because I can’t afford some fucking insulin,” I said with a bit more venom than I intended. I was overcome with the emotion of the situation and what I’d gone through over the past several days. That, paired with the intense pressure of my wife facing a life or death situation, had me a little rattled. “I’m sorry I had to take your guns, but just know that they’re going to help keep someone alive.”

  “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?