ASCENSION: THE SYSTEMIC SERIES

by Callahan, K. W.

  Ava stopped her twirling and led the way through the foyer and into a huge glass-roofed octagonal-shaped atrium in the center of the home. Open limestone archways led from every side of the space, the center of which held a massive marble – and currently non-functioning – fountain of a naked cherub boy riding a large fish, the mouth of which appeared to have spouted water when it was working. The rest of the atrium surrounding the fountain was decorated with an array of dead and wilted potted plants.

  The sunlight here shown down through the glass-ceiling and onto Ava, giving her a radiant look. Jake watched her. She looked beautiful wearing black leather knee-high boots and skin-tight black yoga pants that hugged every curve and sank magically into every crevasse. An equally becoming form-fitted tank top, accessorized with her lucky guns that she was never without and that were strapped across her chest, completed her ensemble.

  For once – actually, maybe for the first time ever – Jake now saw Ava not just as a sex object but as a woman and as a partner.

  Jake followed Ava as she exited the atrium and walked over to the huge sliding pocket doors that led from a hallway off the atrium and into a library that was crammed floor to ceiling with rare and collectible books.

  “My gift,” said Ava, spreading her arms wide as she swept around the room, absorbing its elegance.

  “We’ll this is a waste of space,” Jake grumbled as he stopped just behind Ava and looked around him. “But overall, it’s a nice place,” he nodded. “It’s not really my style, but it’s the most beautiful gift anyone’s ever given me,” he agreed, looking around him at the majestic architecture, the stunning artistry, and the finely-crafted features of the room and the mansion as a whole.

  It actually seemed like he was being genuine, and it almost made Ava regret what was coming next; but it was too little too late.

  “But this gift isn’t for you…it’s for me,” she turned to look at him, and in the process, leveled her two 9 millimeter lucky handguns at Jake’s chest.

  Jake gave a confused half smile. “What?” he said, frowning, not understanding.

  Ava shook her head sadly, “Clueless to the end.”

  “What do you mean?” Jake frowned.

  “I’m setting up shop here…without you,” Ava said. “This is my town…my people.”

  “What do you mean your town?”

  “I’m from here, you idiot,” she shook her head, incredulous at Jake’s apparent inability to connect even the simplest of dots.

  “You’re from here?” Jake grasped mightily at the concept.

  Ava had mapped out this final split months ago, and to this point, had managed the process of getting here magnificently. And now it was hers for the taking. This was the final phase in moving their organization from joint venture to sole proprietorship.

  “I…I…” Jake fumbled, watching as Ava fingered the triggers of her lucky guns. “I didn’t know you were from here,” he said as though he was making small talk, giving her a sly, charming little smirk that used to work.

  This time, it didn’t.

  “You didn’t know, because you never asked,” Ava said coldly, her eyes cool and calculating as she kept her guns trained on Jake. “Just like you never asked about the time I spent in Chicago before I met you. I was going to college and studying operations and business management by the way…just in case you were curious. Or why I really left Little Havana alone, or why the Polaroid pictures were gone from your Stryker or why I took those pictures in the first place, or why I wanted to leave Atlanta and come here, or why I sucked up being with a small-time piece of trash like you for so long.”

  It felt good to let all this out in the open and watch her words hit Jake like a ton of bricks. Finally, after all she’d endured, after all the abuse she’d taken from him, she was able to enjoy dishing a little of it back.

  “Listen…” he said, shaking his head and swallowing hard, “…you don’t want to do this. You’re fucking nuts if you think you’re going to kill me and just walk out of here. I’ve got nine guys out there,” he looked at her wild-eyed as though she were crazy. Half of him still figured she was joking, this being a ridiculous part of her house-warming initiation or some warped woman thing she was trying to pull just to get her way about him letting her have the house.

  “I know you have nine guys out there,” Ava nodded confidently, secure in the knowledge that she had thought of everything.

  Suddenly a huge explosion rocked the outside the house, causing Jake to lunge forward and giving him the opportunity he needed to grab Ava by the arms and in the process, shove aside the guns she had trained on him.

  With both his hands holding her guns’ aim away from him, Jake brought his elbow up, smashing it hard into the side of Ava’s jaw, stunning her momentarily. He used this opportunity to pull her up close, tucking both her arms, guns still in hand, under his left arm, where he wedged them between his underarm and body. This freed up his right hand which he used to punch Ava hard in the side of the head, and then again in the face.

  Gone was his love for this bitch. It was kill or be killed, and he wasn’t going to be the one going down. Not here. Not today. And definitely not because of Ava.

  * * *

  After Jake’s arrival, his bodyguards had relocked the entry gate to the compound and then took up positions around the grounds where they could lounge casually. Some of them chose to relax in their air-conditioned vehicles. Others wandered about, inspecting the grounds and smoking cigarettes. Two more sat on the home’s front steps, simply enjoying the day. The house was secure, the bosses were inside together, probably getting it on in their new digs, and their guards could take a breather from Jake’s ridiculous and constant demands upon their time and energy.

  The sun was out and there was a cool breeze blowing in off the ocean. It was a beautiful south Florida day.

  Suddenly there was a strange hissing noise from one edge of the thick growth that lined the property followed almost instantly by a massive explosion just to the right of where the two bodyguards sat on the home’s front steps. It showered them with debris. A flying brick stuck on in the head, knocking him unconscious, and bits of stone peppered the other in the side of the face, temporarily blinding him in one eye.

  The impact was the result of a rocket fired by one of Rambo’s men and that was intended for Jake’s personal SUV and the driver inside. But these men weren’t well-versed with such weaponry and instead the shot had gone wide and hit the house. Rambo was afraid the rocket might have impacted where Ava had planned to be with Jake inside the library, but there was no time to worry about it now. Whether she was dead or alive, he had to ensure that he followed through with the rest of the plan; otherwise, he was good as dead himself.

  Another rocket hissed from the foliage ringing the other side of the estate’s grounds, and then another. They both hit their intended targets, taking out the two armored SUV’s along with the three bodyguards lounging inside their air-conditioned coolness. Seconds later, Jake’s personal driver fled his SUV, subsequently being gunned down by one of Rambo’s men.

  Meanwhile, from the cover of several scrubby palms lining the boundary of the grounds, Ray, and Gordon’s brother Don opened up with automatic rifle fire, taking down two more of Jake’s bodyguards while Rambo and his men charged the front entrance finishing off the two wounded guards on the front steps and another who was attempting to kick his way inside the front door that Ava had locked behind her on the way inside.

  It was all over in less than a minute. Rambo and his men held the day outside, but Ava’s situation inside the home remained unknown.

  * * *

  Ava could hear continued explosions and gunfire erupting outside as she struggled with Jake. With her hands incapacitated, and still dazed from Jake’s initial blows to her head and face, a well-placed knee to the crotch temporarily slowed the barrage of fists and elbows coming from her former lover. His body recoiled, and he groaned mightily, but he didn’t release her ha
nds that were still pinned between his arm and body.

  They continued to grapple with one another, each looking for an advantage; each in their own dazed state from the blows they had been dealt.

  Jake recovered first.

  He used his free hand to grab Ava by her long black locks and rip her head back. As she struggled against him, he suddenly released his hold, causing her head to jolt forward just as he brought his forehead banging in hard against her own. The blow dazed both of them again, but Ava bore the brunt of the impact more so than Jake and she fell backwards, the guns she still gripped being wrenched from her hands as she collapsed. They clattered to the floor and Jake scrambled for them.

  Ava touched her forehead, stunned, her vision blurred. This was not how it was supposed to happen. Jake was supposed to be dead by now. She’d organized things so well from the very start. Her plan had been months in the making. She’d worked so hard to plan it all. And everything had been falling into place. She’d even been able to work around the Little Havana setback. She thought that her eventual rule over Miami had been preordained. But now it was all falling apart.

  As her vision began to clear, she could see Jake standing just a few feet away holding her lucky guns which were now trained upon her where she lay on the floor.

  “Why couldn’t you have just gone along with things?” Jake said, staring down at her incredulously. “We had the world. We’d finally taken out our last remaining competition. All you had to do was enjoy it? But you had to have more. You stupid little bitch,” he sneered at her, shaking his head. “You lied to me from the start, didn’t you?”

  Ava just stared up at him, waiting for the shots to come. She wondered where he would decide to place the bullets. Would there be one…two…more? The rage he must have felt coursing through his veins might mean a quick end for her, but maybe he’d enjoy drawing it out, making her suffer, prolonging the agony of death for his own personal enjoyment.

  She knew Jake. He was just that sick.

  It didn’t take long for Ava to get her answer. A single, well-placed bullet stuck home – dead center of the forehead.

  * * *

  As Rambo and his men made it inside, they heard the sound of a single gunshot.

  They ran to the library where Ava had told them to meet her after they’d taken out the guards.

  She was lying on the floor, blood on her face, motionless.

  Rambo stopped short in the doorway, surveying the scene, his heart rate jumping at the sight of Ava.

  Jake also lay on his back on the floor, Ava’s lucky guns on the ground beside him. There was a single bullet hole in his forehead.

  Rambo looked over to the slightly angled bookcase that concealed the entrance of one of the mansion’s multiple hidden rooms. Standing there, peering out from behind, his body still half-concealed by the bookcase, his gun still trained upon Jake’s lifeless form, stood Gordon.

  He had remained patiently hidden inside the secret room, waiting to extract his revenge upon the man who had killed his son and then posed so cruelly for the snapshots of the death and destruction he’d wrought.

  Rambo walked over and helped the beaten and bloodied Ava to her feet, handing her a handkerchief.

  “Sorry it took me so long,” Gordon moved from behind the bookcase. “With you two grappling like that, I couldn’t get a clean shot.”

  “It’s okay,” Ava said, wiping some of the blood away and touching her face lightly with a hand. “All that matters is that he’s dead…he’s finally dead.”

  CHAPTER 19

  It was just light enough to see as we idled our way cautiously from the marina. The sun hadn’t even shed its first glimmering rays onto the glassy waters. The morning was balmy and calm, and the future was bright. A new world awaited us somewhere just over the horizon.

  It’d taken us nearly two full days, but we’d finally gotten the boat loaded and felt secure enough with our understandings and workings of the ship to set sail. While the women and kids worked to load our supplies aboard ship, Will, dad, and I spent hours pouring over whatever manuals we could lay our hands on in the control and engine rooms regarding the ship’s operating systems. It was tedious reading to say the least, but it was necessary, and it instilled within us a much greater confidence in our abilities to captain such a large vessel. While we certainly weren’t getting cocky by any means, we at least felt that we could navigate the ship safely and were reasonably ready to handle a variety of potential issues should they arise.

  As we slid our way slowly from the marina, I took a long look back at Miami, wondering how long it would be before we saw it, or the mainland, again.

  It took us about an hour until I felt comfortable enough in the open water to set our course and relax a little bit. I put us on a slow but steady cruising speed of just three knots in order to avoid overexerting the engines, the history and abilities of which I was still largely unfamiliar. This slow starting speed would also help us to conserve fuel and allow us time to familiarize ourselves with the controls of the yacht and get comfortable maneuvering her.

  At this steady rate, I hoped to be at or at least near our chosen destination within a day or two tops.

  Our charted course was west from Miami, around the northern tip of North Andros Island in the Bahamas, at which point we could then turn south/southwest to the chain of little uninhabited islands and cays that lay between Freeport to the north and Clarence Town to the south. It was the area known as Blackpoint, right smack dab in the middle of the Bahamas, and I hoped very soon to call one of these tiny cays our home.

  About an hour and a half outside Miami, once we were well into open water and the city’s skyline had faded behind us, I left dad alone to play captain. He seemed to revel in the title, and I was happy to let him go with it as long as the seas remained calm.

  I walked outside the wheelhouse to inspect our craft. And as I looked around the boat, I felt like Noah on my ark.

  The ship was crammed full of as many supplies as we could afford to purchase and transport to our new destination. Some of these supplies – now tethered in the open-air portion of the yacht’s aft section – included two male and two female goats tethered to the side of the yacht, five chickens and two roosters in crates strapped to the deck, and a crate full of rabbits, several of which, from my best guess, already looked pregnant. And if they weren’t already, I figured that being boxed up together on this honeymoon cruise would certainly do the trick.

  Meanwhile, we’d filled the communal living space and much of the bedroom and dining room space of our vessel nearly floor to ceiling with supplies. Before we’d left, we traded much of our surplus ammunition – and any other unnecessary goods we had on hand – to Bushy whose leg wound suffered at the warehouse had turned out to be largely superficial. In return, he’d turned a blind eye as we largely helped ourselves to whatever we’d needed inside the warehouse in which I’d saved his life and Mad Dog’s. While they didn’t express their gratitude in words, they certainly did their best to do so in free supplies.

  Apparently, Ava’s bid for sole control over Miami had been a success, and we came out of our contract work with her and her crew not just with the boat upon which we now sailed, and the two years’ worth of diabetic supplies for Claire, but with a laundry list of other essentials. I was grateful for such supplies since, up to the day of the warehouse shootout, I wasn’t exactly sure how we were going to lay our hands upon these items with the paltry few things we had to barter with in trade.

  We were able to procure just about everything we had on our list – plus some items we didn’t – at the warehouse. Of course we started with food – things like cereal, pretzels, potato chips, crackers, canned fruit and veggies, canned and dried meat, and some hard candy. Then we stocked up on bottled water. We even loaded up on some dry and wet cat food for Cashmere even though she’d become quite adept at catching – and devouring – little lizards during our time in Florida. We took a case of bug spray and a case o
f sunscreen, we took a variety of clothing, and we took medical and personal hygiene supplies that included antibiotic ointment, soap, toilet paper, razors, shaving cream, adhesive bandages, toothbrushes, toothpaste, feminine hygiene products, deodorant, and more. We brought along the several fishing poles and supplies we had left from our stay in the apartments, as well as blankets, knives, trash bags, pots, pans, dishware, silverware, and an assortment of buckets. There was also a nice stash of batteries, flashlights, lighters, and matches left and that we kept in waterproof containers. We had several saws, two hatchets, a machete, two four-person tents, a roll of plastic sheeting, and some books and toys. We also had two small cook stoves and several large tanks of propane with which to fuel them. Even though we hoped to do most of our cooking over a camp fire once we arrived at our destination, we wanted the stoves as a failsafe just in case burnable fuel was scarce or became wet. Plus, we had the supplies aboard the boat, which included water, fuel, and generated electricity which gave us the ability to cook using the onboard appliances if necessary.

  As a final thank you for our job well done, Ava had also sent us a truckload of booze. There was a case of tequila, rum, vodka, gin, cognac, whiskey, champagne, and even a few cases of beer and soda.

  We’d taken the brief opportunity between Ava’s final takeover and our departure to go to market and trade a few of our nonessential items and more ammo for the livestock that now littered our deck.

  Cashmere was wary of the goats and curious about the chickens and rabbits. She’d slink her way slowly up to their cages and sniff, then jerk her head back as a chicken pecked at her or a rabbit hopped close. It was fun for us to watch her, and the kids got a real kick out of her reactions to the other animals and their reactions to her.

  All things considered, we felt pretty secure with our supply situation. Claire was back to being able to manage her blood sugars more easily now with the array of foods we had on hand and that provided a healthier and more regular diet. And after going through the several boxes of diabetic supplies we’d received from Bushy, she felt she could possibly stretch them for more than his estimated two years, which finally allowed me to breathe a sigh of relief.