The Systemic Series - Box Set

by K. W. Callahan

  Will and I walked back to the lagoon, which at its widest point was probably 80 yards across. We stood there on its small beach and stared out across the water.

  “Come on,” I finally said to Will, climbing back into the boat. “I want to check something.”

  We shoved off from the beach, but I didn’t start the motor. Instead, we paddled out to the center of the lagoon. “Okay,” I said. “Stop paddling and let’s just sit a minute.”

  Will and I both stopped paddling and drifted for a minute before stopping completely. We sat listening. In the distance, we could hear the sound of the surf pounding against the reef. We could hear the soft breeze rustling through the palm tops around us. I stuck my head out over the edge of the boat and stared down into the crystal clear waters. Below me I could see a variety of fish swimming.

  I nodded at Will to look down. “Good fishing,” I said.

  “Wow,” he breathed in amazement. “Beautiful.”

  An octopus slid along beneath us. We watched as it passed from its hiding spot under one rock to disappear from view as it hid beneath another.

  “Make for good Sushi,” I said.

  “Yeah,” Will nodded.

  “This home?” I asked, still watching the array of sea life below us.

  “Think so,” he said, doing the same.

  “Good,” I nodded. “I think it’s perfect.”

  “Me too,” he agreed.

  Back aboard the yacht, we gave the others our report. They were all exited to get ashore and explore the island, but we had some things to take care of first.

  I wasn’t comfortable leaving the yacht exposed out in the main channel. I wanted to get it into the safety of the lagoon; but that was easier said than done. The first area of concern was our ability, as relatively inexperience sailors, to navigate the large vessel through the reef and into the shallow waters of the lagoon. The second area of concern was whether the channel leading into the lagoon was deep enough to allow us clearance.

  I gathered the group together on the ship’s bow to discuss the plan. We all looked over the railings down into the waters below. It was almost like looking through liquid air the water was so clear. This was a great advantage in some ways since we could see exactly what was below us as we navigated the ship, but it also made it extremely difficult to gauge the depth of the water. We could easily see the bottom, but what we couldn’t tell was whether that bottom was eight feet below us or eighteen.

  “What’s the draft on this boat?” Dad asked.

  “Uh,” I shrugged, “I don’t know. “Five…six feet…seven maybe? I really have know clue.”

  “Great,” Dad frowned.

  “I’m sure we’re not making it any shallower with nine people and literally tons of supplies aboard,” Sharron offered.

  “True,” I nodded.

  I stripped off my shirt. “I’m going to jump in and find out how deep it is here and what our clearance is,” I said.

  “Is that a shark?” Paul suddenly shouted, pointing excitedly off our starboard bow about 30 yards out.

  “Oh my god,” Claire said looking. “I think it is!”

  We watched as a black dorsal fin cut slowly through the water. A few seconds later a tail thrashed wildly and the head of a shark raking its razor-sharp teeth back and forth over the midsection of a large fish jutted from the water. A second later, we saw several more such fins make their appearance, going after the same wounded fish.

  “Oooookay,” I drawled, slipping my shirt back on. “Maybe I won’t be jumping in the water.”

  While the others watched the feeding frenzy taking place before them, I quietly slipped away, making my way downstairs to the office that was now crammed full of extra supplies. There, I rummaged in one of the cabinets above the tiny workstation until I found what I wanted.

  I stopped at the back of the yacht on my way to grab a coil of rope.

  Along the way back to the ship’s bow, I tied the rope onto the paperweight I’d stolen from the ship’s office.

  “Here’s a better idea,” I said, holding our new depth finder up in front of me to show the group. “Will, let’s get the skiff and we’ll map a course out using this as our depth finder. We’ll just take it slow. While we’re gone, the rest of you get as many supplies out and ready as you can. We’ll start ferrying in people and supplies so that we reduce the weight of the load we’re carrying and hedge our bets; that way, if something goes wrong, all our supplies won’t go down with the ship. We’re going to have to move the stuff to land anyway, so we might as well get started.

  But for the first time in a long time, nothing went wrong. We spent the rest of the day ferrying materials to shore. Getting the skiff loaded and making the brief trip to the island and back took about half an hour per trip with everyone pitching in. Emily watched Jason. Sharron, Will and Sarah stayed on shore to help offload the skiff and move supplies to a safe location on the island. Claire, Dad, and Paul helped load the supplies from the yacht to the skiff. And I cautiously captained the heavily loaded little boat back and forth between the yacht and the island.

  By the end of the day, we had a large amount of our supplies ashore.

  We decided to call it a day at around seven that night. We were all tired, so we decided to take a leisurely dip in the lagoon to clean off, and then we ate a quick dinner onboard the yacht and hit the sack, exhausted.

  The next day, we ferried the remainder of our necessary supplies – including our animals – onto Resurrection Cay. With a good 80 percent or so of our supplies safely on shore, we tenuously navigated the yacht slowly but safely into our lagoon harbor. The big vessel looked funny sitting there in the center of the scenic spot, but it was a relief seeing it safely secured. We not only dropped its anchor into the soft sands of the lagoon bottom, but we tethered the ship to several palms with heavy ropes we found onboard just to be on the safe side. The last thing I wanted was for our main transportation back to the mainland to go drifting off one night while we were asleep only to be dashed to pieces upon the reef and sink.

  The thought of trying to make it back to the mainland in our little skiff was not something I liked to contemplate, but we had it fueled and enough supplies aboard to make the attempt should we ever need to. We tethered it in the lagoon to a separate palm.

  With the yacht safely anchored, we began further exploration of our new island surroundings later that afternoon. We strolled to the south end of the island, the kids slowing our progress as they stopped to pick up and inspect coconuts, chase crabs, poke sticks into crab holes, dig in the sand, and otherwise enjoy all the trappings and interesting activities a kid might find fun or intriguing on an island paradise.

  The southeast side of the island was almost entirely beaches. They were beautiful white sandy shores with an array of scattered shells of all shapes and sizes. The waves – their progress slowed by the reef that lay about a hundred yards off shore – lapped soothingly against the sand, sometimes rustling the shells and clinking them together softly. Between the reef and the shore, the waters were relatively calm, the ocean’s energy being absorbed by a combination of the islands across from us acting as a sort of barrier and from the reef itself.

  The island’s southernmost shore wasn’t much to see, just a little sandy edge that skirted the end of the island. There was a nice coconut grove in this area and some indigenous plants and shrubbery. The elevation at this point was maybe only a couple feet above sea level, and we noticed driftwood and other trash and debris that had been pushed up close to where the coconut trees grew, indicating that when storms blew through, much of this part of the island was likely under water.

  We continued our exploration, moving around to the center of the horseshoe that connected the two sides of the island and that stopped the lagoon from pouring through to the other side of the sea. This section was comprised mostly of sand and was sprinkled with a few rocks, shells, and a couple scrubby bushes. At its lowest point, almost directly in its center, i
t appeared that a low channel had been cut, but was currently dry. Again, we assumed that during storms, this area was likely submerged, and water from the lagoon flowed through this stream bed and out the west end of the island. The west end was mostly rocks that jutted their way out into the ocean, exposing themselves above the waves for several feet before the ocean eventually swallowed them up.

  The north side of the island sat at a higher elevation. We could tell by the increased amount of vegetation – as well as the lack of storm debris – that this would prove a better spot for us to set up camp.

  Like the south end of the island, the northern portion of the horseshoe facing east was almost completely sandy shores. The rest of this side was sprinkled with a nice population of palms and coconut trees that we hoped would provide us with the wood and shelter we’d need to establish a fixed campsite.

  Cashmere seemed the most curious about our new digs. We watched as she chased tiny albino crabs that scuttled across the sand and pounced as they darted for their holes, sometimes successfully catching her prize, sometimes winding up with nothing more than a nose full of sand at which point she’d twitch and sneeze. Casually ignoring the faux pas, she’d fall over and roll in the sand, then pause and spring to her feet, shaking herself clean to make another attack or sniff a fallen coconut, batting at it with a paw.

  That night, we again slept aboard ship. We left the portholes open and while the air was balmy even at night, we found the sounds of the ocean and the accompanying breeze deeply soothing. Even I found myself sleeping soundly without the constant worry and concern with which my brain had been so burdened in the year leading to our arrival.

  The following day, we began work in earnest on our new island home.

  CHAPTER 20

  It took a little bit longer than Ava had initially planned to get the mansion up to her standards. Repairing the library wall from the rocket blast and replacing all the bloodstained wood flooring in the library added almost another month to the rehab timeline she had in place to renovate her lovely 1920s Mediterranean-style architectural masterpiece.

  It didn’t matter much to her now though. She was the queen of Miami. She had the time and the resources to put a little more effort into a project like this. This new world needed people who showed some appreciation for effort and craftsmanship it’d taken to construct such works of art, and Ava was one of those people.

  She quickly found that things were progressing nicely in the rule of her kingdom and that the generals she’d put in place to manage her city state – including Bushy, who had finally recovered from the injury he suffered at the warehouse takedown – were performing their roles successfully.

  The economy in the Miami metro area was starting to come together, crime rates had leveled off and were even beginning to drop, and Ava had begun to think about things like a more formalized governing structure, setting up schools for the remaining children of the city, and contemplating the possibility of eventually getting certain utilities and public services up and running again. But those were all things that would take time and considerable planning. And while Ava was up for the task, she had other issues on her plate. Recently, she’d heard there was a group of individuals moving to organize the Fort Lauderdale area, and that could mean trouble for her in the future.

  And so she lounged, pondering these things, her elbows propping her up so that she could look out across the water as she bathed her beautifully bronzed body on the beach of her estate. The waves danced playfully on the ocean before her, shimmering in the sun.

  She took a long drink of her margarita, swallowed, and set her glass back down in the sand. Then she took a deep breath and tilted her head back, closing her eyes and letting the problems of the future temporarily slip away. For right now, she was content to take a little time for herself. She opened her eyes, glancing at the toned and fit bodies of the two men, one on either side of her, and gave an almost imperceptible smile. Jake had been right. She couldn’t just be content to enjoy what they had. She wanted more.

  One of the men noticed her look and rolled over to tend to her. She let him play his fingers over and across her well-oiled body as he massaged her gently. She thought of Gonzalo and then forced his image aside. Without Jake, and even without Gonzalo, Ava was determined to do her best to be content and enjoy what she had. It was time to consolidate her position in Miami and enjoy life as a single girl again…at least for a little while.

  CHAPTER 21

  A month after arriving to our island paradise, we’d accomplished most of the goals we’d set forth upon arrival. Of course, like settling into any new home, there were still little things on the to-do list that weren’t necessarily immediate concerns but that we still wanted to cross off eventually.

  Items like food and water collection remained a constant presence at the top of our list. The supplies we’d brought with us were holding out reasonably well, and we kept some of our reserves aboard the yacht as a backup against a storm sweeping in and damaging our stocks stored upon the island. We’d been able to supplement our caloric intake with a seafood heavy diet; and since Sharron wasn’t opposed to eating the items we pulled from the sea, everyone was pretty satisfied with their overall caloric intake and the variety of our menu.

  The fishing in the area was great. We’d even caught a few small sharks. Added to our diet of fish were an assortment of crab, the occasional octopus, and even some conch. In the month we’d lived as island dwellers, we’d becoming quite adept at finding, catching, and preparing this variety of culinary options, as well as discovering ways to incorporate them into a number of dishes, soups and stews. Conch chowder was a real crowd pleaser as were crab legs and scrambled eggs with crab.

  Speaking of scrambled eggs, the livestock we’d brought with us was doing surprisingly well. We’d quickly realized that the goats would eat just about anything and everything if we allowed them to roam free, and they were particularly hard to catch when we wanted to try to milk the females. Therefore, we’d built a pen to house them on the south end of the island in an attempt to keep them out of our hair.

  The rabbits were as prolific as expected and made for a nice source of protein when the menu called for it. And the chickens, while not as productive as we’d hoped in supplying us with eggs, were easy to maintain since we allowed them to roam the island freely. They didn’t take much work to keep, and the most difficult aspect in maintaining them was finding the eggs they laid. We’d managed to collect about a dozen in the month since we’d landed. The kids – who were charged with the regular feeding and care of the animals – found this an intriguing and exiting part of their role as caretakers. The search for eggs became a sort of ever-present Easter egg hunt in which they were constantly trying to outdo one another. So far, the score sat at eight eggs for Paul, six eggs for Sarah, and one for Jason, a find that came largely by accident as our sweet little guy thought it was an especially interesting looking seashell he’d found in the weeds as opposed to an actual chicken egg.

  Water was another constant concern. While we still had a good supply of several hundred gallons aboard the yacht from which to draw if we had to, we did our best to hold that in reserve. We’d collected some water from rainstorms and we’d found that we could make some seawater drinkable through a sort of evaporation contraption we’d built using some of the roll of plastic sheeting we’d brought with us, but it wasn’t always enough for everyone.

  We’d also learned that if we dug down deep enough in the sandy channel that ran between the lagoon and the other side of the island, we began to get sand-filtered water that was drinkable. We turned this into a sort of well, ringing it with a thatched fence to keep the chickens and any other little wildlife from falling in and potentially contaminating it in the process. Then we placed a cover Sharron had woven from palm fronds atop it to keep out debris or bird droppings as they flew overhead. We found that this worked quite well as a regular water source, at least until the first big storm obliterated our co
ntraption, sweeping away the fencing and filling in our hole. But it was easy enough to re-dig, and Sharron had the thatched fencing replaced within a day.

  And while we could have slept aboard the yacht, and did so occasionally in storms or bad weather, we chose to spend most of our time – both day and night – on the island. We’d constructed a nice little tiki hut with a raised floor that could comfortably sleep four. Plus, we had two tents that provided ample shelter for the rest of us. Sometimes the couples would take turns having “private evenings” aboard the yacht. Even Dad and Emily would take a turn occasionally. These breaks served as little mini-vacations where we could appreciate the comfort of sleeping in a real bed again. In the morning, we would rise, eat breakfast, lounge and read onboard for an hour or two and then dive off the yacht into the crystal-clear waters of the lagoon for our morning baths before swimming to shore.

  At night, we’d sit around the campfire after dinner and tell stories or talk about the day’s events. The kids would discuss their play plans for the upcoming day, and the adults might mention a project they needed help with or one they were thinking about for the future.

  I’d often take this time to massage Claire’s feet to keep the circulation to these areas moving in hopes of staving off any ill-affects of her diabetes. She’d been doing wonderfully at keeping things in check with her blood sugars. But eventually, no matter how well she did, we’d need more supplies for her. I knew we’d have to go back to Miami. I was just hoping that we could stick it out on our island home long enough for things to cool down and become more organized back on the mainland. I prayed that given time, the rest of the world would find some semblance of order and eventually even get back to a point where at least a basic level of health and medical services were again available. But I think both Claire and I were realistic regarding the future and understood that there were no guarantees.