The Systemic Series - Box Set

by K. W. Callahan

  “Will do,” I gave him a salute, pulling the front door of the SUV closed behind me and starting the engine.

  CHAPTER 7

  Ava poured herself a glass of wine and slid open the patio door, stepping out into Miami’s late-afternoon heat. A gentle breeze blew across her face, tugging softly at thin strands of her silky black hair. She closed the patio door, locking in the air-conditioned chill behind her.

  After Jake and Ava were sure they controlled the majority of the city, they hosted several days of wild partying in celebration of their achievement. The Miami beachfront was the scene of excess and debauchery the likes of which Ava – and even Jake – had never before seen. Truckloads of women were hauled in. Huge coolers full of every sort of booze imaginable were made available. Drugs were distributed like candy being tossed from parade floats. And the sound of celebratory – and sometimes not so celebratory – gunfire was heard round the clock, interspersed by an occasional explosion as the rowdy conquerors blew up a car with a grenade or shot a tank full of propane.

  Jake and Ava themselves participated in the madness for the first day, but then they turned their attention to the duties involved in organizing and running an entire city, albeit a vastly different one from its pre-flu glory days.

  The first item on their to-do list was to find a base from which they could operate.

  Ava would have preferred a plush, gated, estate-like mansion nestled in a quiet neighborhood, but Jake wanted to be in the heart of the city so that he could feel its “pulse” and then act to regulate it as needed. Ava understood that Jake was a true urban dweller, and therefore didn’t argue. He wanted to be in amongst the slime that he plied with vice to govern his city. Given time though, Ava was confident that she’d eventually get her quiet mansion.

  So they decided upon a high-rise condo near downtown. Jake liked it because he could easily control who came and went from the building through a single generator-powered elevator. Ava liked it for the views. From their penthouse suit on the 30th floor, Miami still appeared to be the city she once knew. With the exception of the occasional out-of-control building fire or vehicle left to burn and smolder on the streets far below, she could almost imagine it as the once-vibrant city in which she had grown up, a city that she had left while still a teenager because of a man – a man named Gonzalo.

  At the time, she hadn’t realized it – as a naïve 16-year-old, she hadn’t realized much of anything – but she now understood that Gonzalo was the only man she’d ever truly loved. Being four years her senior, she admitted now that he wasn’t the best looking guy she’d ever known, nor the smartest, nor even the guy with the best personality, but there had been something between them, something that had bonded them immediately, almost instantaneously. Even now, she still couldn’t put her finger on exactly what it was. But after not seeing him for nearly a decade, she couldn’t deny that it was there, and it was undeniable and irrepressible. She felt it in the pit of her stomach every time she imagined she was with him again.

  She guessed that this was the way she made Jake feel – as though he could do anything, be or beat anyone, overcome anything. That’s how Gonzalo made her feel. With him she had experienced sensations she’d never felt with anyone else. She felt powerful, sexual, yet feminine all at the same time.

  Jake made her feel some of those things, some of the time. But she admitted it just wasn’t the same. Something wasn’t there. Something was missing. She had tried her best to forget Gonzalo, but he was always there, always lurking in the back of her mind. Something Jake would say or do would remind her of him. A touch or a way Jake looked at her would have her seeing Gonzalo’s face instead of his. Even just a song or something someone said would bring visions of her love rushing back, and as hard as she tried to force them away, they always remained. It bothered her. Even in her dreams, when they were about a man, it was Gonzalo she was with again, not Jake. She just couldn’t rid herself of those mental images and emotions the thought of him instantly invoked.

  At first, after Ava had left Miami, she’d thought that her love for Gonzalo had just been hard to get over. She figured that the impression a first love left was tough to shake. But as the years passed, and men came and went, she began to long for what Gonzalo had given her. She’d thought it was replaceable, that she just had to find the right guy, but eventually, she realized that she was wrong. It wasn’t the sex so much, although the sex was incredible; it was the feeling she had when she was around him. She guessed that it was the feeling of love, although it’d been so long, she wasn’t sure about that anymore either.

  Their split had been quick and painful. It was a silly spat, a lover’s quarrel that now seemed so meaningless. In fact, Ava couldn’t even remember what it was about. It was a breakup they’d gone through more than once – a passionate exchange in the heat of the moment – and Ava assumed it would last a few days, maybe a week, just as it had in previous breakups. Before she knew it, they’d reconcile and be back together again and things would be fine. But Gonzalo – in a fit of angry revenge – had slept with another woman. And soon thereafter, he’d had found out that the woman was pregnant.

  Gonzalo swore up and down to Ava that the child wasn’t his, but it hadn’t mattered. What had mattered was the act itself; and so, in her own jealous act of reprisal, Ava had run away. She ran away from a town she loved, a family she loved, and a man she loved. And she didn’t stop running until she’d reached Chicago’s south side, a place where she could lose herself and try to forget; but it hadn’t worked. The more she tried to adopt her new home, the more she longed for Miami, for her family, for Gonzalo.

  Several years ago, she’d met an old friend from Miami while at a bar in Chicago. After they’d spent some time catching up, the conversation had turned to reminiscing about their old neighborhood. When the topic of Gonzalo inevitably came up, the friend had told her that he had married the woman he’d allegedly gotten pregnant, wanting to do the right thing although never fully believing that the child was his. The union had lasted less than a year before the two split. At the time, Ava had shrugged off the information as unimportant, but she couldn’t deny – at least to herself – that the revelation that her first love, her true love, had married someone else, stung terribly.

  She now found herself wondering if it’d feel the same if she met him again after all these years and whether they’d still have that emotional connection. Would they immediately fall into that old groove, conversing freely about anything and everything, talking and flirting playfully one minute, rolling naked on the bed together the next? Or would it be awkward, time having eroded or obliterated completely what they once had?

  She stood outside on the penthouse balcony thinking and sipping her wine. The Miami sun blazed down upon her, baking her already smoothly toasted skin. The sea breeze whispered through her hair. She closed her eyes and tried to envision Gonzalo, imagining what it might be like to meet him again.

  In her mind, she saw a car pull up and stop before her as she stood on the sidewalk. The car door opened and a man stepped out. He looked over at her and smiled.

  It was him.

  Even just imagining such an encounter had her experiencing that nervously excited pit in the bottom of her stomach. As she stood, eyes closed, she felt herself push her chest almost imperceptibly forward to make her ample breasts seem even larger, just as she had done when she was young. Her posture straightened. Every muscle in her body became taught with sexual energy. Her breathing slowed and became heavier. Her mind cleared and she found herself intensely focused, but only on Gonzalo. He walked around the car and stopped just a foot from her, close enough that she could feel that gravitational pull toward him again. Reaching out to her with a hand, he ran his fingertips softly across her check, then moved the back of his hand down and along her jawbone just as he used to.

  She shivered in electrified delight at the thought. But she wouldn’t show her enthusiastic exhilaration to Gonzalo – not yet. She had t
o act as though his touch had no effect, at least until she could no longer stand it. Then she’d use all those muscles, all that energy, all her focus to sexually tear him to shreds.

  “We need you inside,” a voice interrupted her thoughts.

  It was Jake.

  Ava opened her eyes and exhaled heavily. “I’m coming,” she said without emotion and as though she’d simply been making a mental grocery list. But those two words had far more meaning than Jake would ever know.

  She followed him through the sliding glass patio door and inside to the penthouse suite’s vast living room where Jake had collected his generals. It was cool there, almost cold. Ava shivered at the contrasted chill from the balmy warmth outside. The penthouse had central air, powered by generators and fuel that Jake’s men had confiscated during the takeover. The three floors below them housed Jake and Ava’s security forces in similar luxury. The palatial digs were just one of the many perks that came with being a top member in their organization. It was also a benefit that served to ensure continued loyalty among higher-ranking crew members as well as to motivate ambitious lower-level subordinates to climb the ranks.

  Their generals sat upon several plush white sofas that comprised but a small portion of the crisply-clean décor of the 5,000 square-foot unit. Mad Dog, Rambo, Kill King, Johnny Switchblade, and the Fallback Man, slouched comfortably, taking a breather from the raging party taking place below them. Several of the men smoked cigarettes or joints. A few held partially-filled bottles of booze. Some partook in combinations of the aforementioned vices.

  Ava found it slightly odd to see these hardened men lounging in such luxury. It just didn’t fit with their demeanors and personal styles. She stared at the men, taking them in. If Ava was going to create a cologne based upon what she saw and smelled sitting before her, she’d start with a base of dirt, sprinkle in some heavy stubble, toss in some ground chains and denim, add an essence of leather and tobacco, and lace it with hints of booze, bad breath, and body odor.

  She found the sight of the men mixed with the pure whites and pale pastels of the penthouse’s décor an odd juxtaposition to absorb. But the men weren’t gathered for a home-design photo shoot, they were here for business.

  “I called you here today,” Jake began, taking complete credit for the meeting as usual, “first to congratulate you on your hard work and success in overrunning the Miami metro area. But more importantly, I’ve called you here to explain how you will be rewarded for your efforts.”

  If the men sitting before them weren’t listening up to this point, they certainly were now. They shifted positions, sitting up straighter, setting liquor bottles on the floor, or extinguishing cigarettes in an attempt to better focus on what they would be receiving as their spoils of victory.

  Ava watched the meeting from afar, having perched herself on the edge of a large mahogany table behind and slightly to the right of Jake. From her position, she could watch everyone, her sleekly smooth legs crossed enticingly, exposed from beneath a black one-piece mini-dress that she had picked not just for style but for comfort in the extreme Miami heat.

  “I know there’s still work ahead of us. We have a lot of mopping up to do in certain areas across town, but once things are finalized and start to settle down, which will be part of your first order of business, each of you will receive your own areas of Miami to control,” Jake went on. “Don’t get me wrong, I’ll still be overseeing the control of Miami as a whole, but as long as you keep your shit together and make sure that business is dealt with, I won’t fuck with how you handle things.”

  He looked smugly around at the men, reveling in his newfound power and enjoying the ability to dole out areas of the city for these men to control.

  “Ava, if you would,” he said, turning his head slightly to talk behind him.

  Jake liked that he was still going to be in charge while other people would be doing all the work, and he hoped that his men saw this as an opportunity rather than a burden placed upon them.

  Ava stood and walked among the men, handing each of them an envelope with their name printed upon it.

  “Inside these envelopes are the areas that you’ll personally be in charge of,” Jake went on. “We’ll work it just like we do with the vendors in these areas. You’ll be taking your cut from them each week and then give me my cut of your take to ensure your continued security. You see, while you’ll be getting paid by the vendors to handle the security of your own areas of control, Ava and I will be ensuring that there are no issues for the city as a whole…like the type of situation we’re dealing with in Little Havana right now.” He glared at Ava as he said the words since that was the one remaining neighborhood she’d failed to overrun during their takeover. “We will ensure that the Miami area remains safe not just from threats inside the city but outside as well from places like Fort Lauderdale, Orlando, and Tampa.”

  “You think we have any realistic challenges from those areas?” Kill King eyed him questioningly.

  Jake didn’t like having his statements questioned. It required thinking on his feet, and with the exception of fighting, it was difficult for Jake to handle little more than walking and chewing gum at the same time let alone trying to come up with answers to questions that Ava hadn’t prepped him for.

  Therefore, he let her field the question while he went and retrieved a bottle of tequila from the kitchen.

  “You have to remember that we came here all the way from Atlanta, and we managed to take over in less than a month,” she reminded them. “Other big cities around Florida are much closer than that, so we have to be prepared for anything.”

  “Think of it this way,” said Jake, returning while opening his tequila bottle and taking a gulp. “You get your places set up the way you want; then you sit back and reap the rewards while we take care of the big picture stuff.”

  “It could prove harder than you think to keep these places under our thumb,” said Fallback. “Just look at Little Havana. That place was like a war zone when we tried to hit it. What happens if people take a page from their book?”

  Ava again stepped in. “We’re working with Little Havana. They’ve agreed to most of our terms and shouldn’t be a problem from here on out. As for controlling your own domains, we’ve thought about that already. And coming up with the following ideas is where Jake earns the cut that you’ll be paying him each month.”

  She didn’t say what everyone in the room was already thinking – that she was the one who had really come up with the ideas, not Jake.

  “Can anyone tell me the best way to control a population?” she asked the men sitting before her.

  There was silence.

  “Proving my point,” she said. “This is why you need us.”

  Finally Johnny Switchblade said, “With an iron fist?”

  “No,” Ava said. “Definitely not. Violence is necessary at times, but it shouldn’t be used as the overarching influence in controlling a population. Some violence will keep the populace in its place, but too much violence will turn them against you and have them searching for new leadership.”

  “So how do you do it then?” he asked.

  “Currency,” Jake said, not being able to resist the urge to respond as though he were indeed responsible for coming up with the answer.

  “Right…currency,” Ava nodded.

  “But what do we use?” asked Rambo. “Dollar bills? Gold coins? Make our own? What?”

  “Dollar bills are worthless now,” Ava said. “Everyone knows that…same with gold and silver. Some people still use these types of coins as a form of exchange just because they used to be worth something, but there are too many of them out there, and more importantly, we can’t control them. And even though a large part of the commerce we still have is conducted through barter, not every transaction can be handled that way. It’s too hard for vendors when they’re inundated with stuff they don’t need by buyers who have too much worthless junk but are literally starving for the stuff they do
need. Therefore, we have to ensure that we can create our own currency and then control that currency. Say we decided to go with silver and gold as our currency and someone finds a couple coin shops or a bank vault full of gold and silver. Suddenly there will be an influx of money into the economy. It will be just as worthless as sand on the beach, and we’ll be adrift in a sea of inflation.”

  The men sat on the sofas, open mouthed, breathing heavily and only grasping about 30 percent of what Ava was telling them.

  Finally Mad Dog said, “So we use something like…gasoline or alcohol? We control most of that kind of stuff around here.” He shook his head and frowned as he said it, not comprehending exactly where Ava was going with this.

  “You’re right,” Ava agreed. “We do. But think about that for a minute. Are people going to lug gallons of gas or booze around with them everywhere they go to pay for stuff? We can’t very well dole out large amounts of it for the general public to use. We want something that almost everyone needs or uses, is valuable, yet is easy to carry but not easy to replace or counterfeit. Plus,” she added after a second, nodding and smiling down at the bottle of whiskey that sat beside Mad Dog’s leg, “if we use alcohol, I think people would be too tempted to drink their currency rather than spend it.”

  “True,” Mad Dog shrugged, giving her a sly grin and then picking up the whiskey bottle and taking a long drink.

  “Batteries?” asked Rambo.

  “Using batteries actually isn’t a bad idea,” said Ava. “Problem is, they have a shelf-life. In a year or two when they start to expire, they’d be worthless.”

  “Why can’t we just make our own currency?” Kill King said. “Then we could make as much or little as we want and have complete control over it.”

  “For the same reason our old government used to spend billions of dollars regularly creating new versions of five, ten, twenty, fifty, and hundred dollar bills…because it’s too easy to counterfeit. And we certainly don’t have the same resources available to us as the old government did in order to make bills that are extremely difficult to counterfeit. And even if we did, our currency would probably still be counterfeited to some degree. Plus, paper money on its own has no real value, and in today’s world, anything you carry needs to have some actual use to it.”