The Systemic Series - Box Set

by K. W. Callahan

  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 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 needed inside the warehouse where 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 successful. We came out of our contract work with her and her crew not only 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 on these items with the paltry few things we had to barter 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 of 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. 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 that 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 supplies. Claire was back to being able to manage her blood sugars more easily now with the array of foods we had on hand. 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.

  After I’d taken some time to further secure and store a few more of our supplies, as I had noticed several boxes tipping and rocking as we rode the gentle waves, and after I’d had a peek inside the engine room to ensure everything was working as it should – not that I’d know if it wasn’t – it was approaching ten o’clock. Emily had taken Jason downstairs for a morning nap. Dad was perched happily in one of the captain’s chairs up on the bridge where he was reading a copy of Kon Tiki and ensuring that everything remained shipshape on our voyage.

  With Dad keeping track of things, I decided to take a break from work and join the rest of the family on the bow of the ship. Will was there with Sharron, Claire, Paul, and Sarah. They were all decked out in bathing suites, sunbathing, and the parents were enjoying champagne cocktails while the kids were sipping sodas.

  “Time for a break, workaholic?” Will asked as I sat down on the deck beside him and shed my shirt.

  “You said it,” I agreed as I picked up a half-full champagne bottle from a nearby buck
et of ice and chugged from it freely. “I’ll just be glad when we find a spot and get all settled in,” I said after swallowing my coolly refreshing mouthful of bubbly.

  “Dude,” he gave me a sidelong glance, “you need to relax a little bit and learn to live in the moment. You’re going to have a heart attack by the time you’re forty if you keep this up.”

  “What?” I said, taking another long drink. “I just want to make sure we’re safe is all. There’s a lot of stuff to plan for, and we still have tons of work ahead of us.”

  He looked at me and snorted, “There ever been a time when there hasn’t been a lot of stuff to plan for and a ton of work ahead of you?” he asked. “Welcome to life. That’s just the way it is. But look around. You’re on a beautiful yacht that you’d never have been able to afford in a million years back when you were working as a writer. You’ve got your family with you. You’re headed for what we all hope to be a tropical paradise, where again, you’d never have had the chance to live had you still been working back in Chicago. I mean, shit, really? All things considered, I know we’ve taken some hard knocks over the last year, and we’ve traveled an exceptionally difficult path; but overall I think things are looking pretty damn good at the moment. Sure, could the boat engine blow up and sink us? Yeah. Could we be raided by pirates and forced to walk the plank? Maybe. Will we meet up with an island of the walking dead when we arrive? Shit, these days, it frankly wouldn’t surprise me. But what are you going to do about it right now?”

  I kept sipping on my champagne bottle, absorbing what he was saying.

  “I mean, look at this,” he gestured around him over the beautiful deep blue waters in which we sailed. Then he nodded over to the women, who I had to admit were looking rather good in their bikinis. “We have beautiful woman on a beautiful yacht, plenty of good food and booze, our kids are safe, and we’re headed for an island paradise. I don’t think it could get much better. So just chill, bro. Keep on drinking that champagne. There are enough of us here, and we’ve been through so much that we can handle pretty much whatever gets thrown our way. You’ve done enough. You deserve a break.”

  He held out his glass to toast.

  “To taking a break,” he smiled at me.

  “Here, here,” I nodded, clinking my bottle up against his glass.

  We drank and talked and relaxed for the next several hours, lazily lounging away the late-morning and early-afternoon hours.

  At around one o’clock, Jason finally awoke from his nap, and Emily brought him topside. We really didn’t want him playing on the ship’s bow as he hadn’t quite got his sea legs yet and we didn’t want him toppling overboard. Therefore, we retired indoors to prepare lunch, which was sorely needed to counteract the effects of the champagne.

  We then sat outside on the aft deck, eating, enjoying our cruise, and letting the wind blow soothingly through our hair while the sun baked our well-lotioned skin.

  Our lunch consisted of sour cream and onion potato chips, pretzels, and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, which may not sound like much, but it tasted absolutely incredible. The salty snacks with the sweet creamy sandwiches balanced one another perfectly. The adults had beer to wash down our meal and the kids had powdered milk, which they had now become accustomed to drinking due to the absence of the real stuff for so long.

  We sat talking for about half an hour after eating and then Dad killed the ship’s engines. We were all hot and sweaty, and we took turns jumping off the side of the yacht to rinse and cool ourselves. We dangled Jason by his arms and dipped him repeatedly as he laughed, and squealed, and kicked his feet in delight. None of us dared stay in the water more than a minute or so without hopping back out and nervously searching the waters below, frightened by the prospect of sharks.

  Thankfully, we saw none.

  After our baths, most of the adults headed below for naps. Dad restarted the engines, which was pleasure to my ears since the whole time we were swimming, I was worried that we wouldn’t get them re-fired and that we’d be stranded at sea.

  Emily took Jason, Paul, and Sarah up to man the ships controls, which really just entailed making sure that our yacht remained running, stayed on our set course, that no alarms went off, and that we didn’t encounter any other vessels. Sarah sat behind the wheel. We gave Paul a set of binoculars so he could play lookout, which he loved. He would dart outside regularly to investigate things he saw – or thought he saw – on the horizon and that consisted entirely of birds, cresting waves or some occasional floating garbage. Jason was content to play with several plastic toy boats we’d brought along for him, puttering them about on the floor.

  As evening approached, Dad was so excited to take over as captain again, he volunteered for the first night watch. Will was only too happy to let him have it. I relieved Dad at just past midnight and stayed on until sunrise when Dad was back up, bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, and ready to go. It was nice to see him so excited about something. I hadn’t seen him like this since he first opened his antique business back when I was still in high school. It felt good to sit together, sipping coffee and talking while we watched the sun rise over the horizon.

  Just to our south, we could see the large black mass of North Andros Island, which was a welcome sign and further indication that we were on course. As it slipped away behind us, we altered our course to the southwest and headed into the Blackpoint waters.

  * * *

  By early afternoon we were seeing land to our left. We spent the next several days carefully creeping our way through the often quite shallow waters that flowed between and along the string of deserted cays as we looked for a good place to settle.

  Several times we thought we’d found the perfect spot only to discover after taking our little skiff in explore, for one reason or another, it was ill-suited to our needs. At one promising looking location, there turned out to be no good place to safely anchor the yacht. Another cluster of little cays had our hopes up, but we determined there were just too few resources to make our existence sustainable over any lengthy timeframe. A larger island we stopped at appeared better suited to our needs, but we found it inaccessible even in our small skiff due to a maze of shallow rocks and reefs that surrounded it and created dangerous waves and currents.

  Even though it took us a bit longer than we’d planned, as afternoon settled on the fourth day of our slow but steady search, we finally found the perfect spot.

  We named our new home “Resurrection Cay” with hopes that this tiny plot of sand in what was once known as the central Bahamas would provide us with the opportunity to begin rebuilding our once happy lives.

  The colony we came to know and love as the Resurrection Isles was actually a tiny cluster of four small islands that formed a sort of triangle through the center of which ran a navigable channel. The three smaller islands sat on the eastern side of the channel, and the chosen island for our settlement formed the point on the western side. The gap between them was maybe a half a mile or so across at its widest point.

  Upon our arrival, we navigated our way slowly into the center of the channel and dropped anchor. Will and I took the skiff out and investigated for about an hour, making our way between and around the three smaller islands before attempting to land at the fourth larger one.

  The first of the three islands was maybe 200 yards long by only about 100 yards wide. It looked largely to be filled with a mix-mash of scrubby bushes that from the ocean appeared nearly impenetrable. Its west end was almost completely formed from stone, and large rocks jutted their way out into the water where the ocean crashed upon them. The eastern side of the island was comprised largely of a rocky beach.

  About 50 yards across the water from this, was another small island – if you could call it that – that might have reached 15 yards across at its widest point and was composed almost entirely of sand and shells. One lonely palm tree sat growing askew at its center, leaning so perilously to one side that it looked as though it might topple to the ground at sli
ghtest breeze.

  Maybe another 50 yards beyond this tiny sand spit was another island, comparable in size to the first, but longer and skinnier. It was a nice looking island, but there wasn’t much there. The western facing side had two sandy beaches that jutted outward in a crab claw sort of shape, leaving a small, rather calm pool of water between them. In the center of the island was a large grove of coconut palms surrounded by sand and more beaches facing the north and south. The eastern side of the island was almost entirely rock with native vegetation forming a sort of hedge wall that ringed its perimeter.

  Across from these three islands was the larger island that was formed into a sort of horseshoe shape, the center of which was filled with a fairly large, pure-white sand-ringed lagoon. Beaches on either side of the island stuck out creating the ends of the horseshoe. Just past the tips of these points began a coral reef, the center of which was low enough for us to easily pass over in the skiff and move on into the lagoon. I wasn’t so sure about attempting the maneuver with the yacht. However, I realized as we continued into the lagoon, that if we could get the yacht past the reef, we could anchor it in the safety of the lagoon’s calm waters, not just out of sight of any potential outsiders, but where it would be better sheltered from storms and the elements.

  Will and I killed the skiff’s engine so that the boat coasted slowly up onto the lagoon’s smooth, soft, white-sand beach that ringed its edges but that was just several feet across at its widest point before it met with a sparse smattering of vegetation. I estimated the island’s size at about a half mile wide where the ends of the horseshoe extended. But it narrowed where the lagoon penetrated its center to maybe 80 sandy yards or so across. The far side of this portion was largely rocks where the island’s butt met with the ocean.

  As we walked the island’s length, I estimated it at about three-quarters of a mile. There was a small coconut grove on the south end of the island, and a similar, but larger grove to the north end that I thought would be an ideal spot for us to settle. There appeared to be plenty of driftwood collected on the beaches, and there were tons of coconuts scattered in among the trees.