FORSAKEN: THE SYSTEMIC SERIES (14 page)

Much of Bushy’s day, he explained, was spent scavenging gas, something he intensely disliked due to his constant run-ins with others working the same locations for a few measly ounces of fuel.  Free gas was becoming harder and harder to come by as all the easily accessible vehicle and equipment tanks had largely been siphoned dry.  With the low-hanging fruit now picked clean, people were often being threatened, beaten, shot, or worse over a quart or two of gas from a lawn mower or motorcycle, and Bushy said it just wasn’t worth the risk anymore.

The offer from Ava to ditch all that and join up with her crew where things were more comfortable and the raids typically only took place once or twice a week and resulted in far greater rewards, piqued his interest.  Ava told him that he was free to live with Brownie and Blondie at the house, but he needed to be at her and Jake’s disposal whenever necessary. 

She also mentioned that as an unspoken rule, the men all reported to her first and foremost, although this was never to be mentioned to Jake.

They all agreed to her terms.

And thus, Ava was pleased with the day’s work.  She’d accomplished all she’d set out to do and then some.  The addition of Bushy and the knowledge he brought with him about the trader for which he’d worked had been an unexpected bonus.  And best of all, none of these men knew or had been influenced by Jake.

* * *

Ava told Jake about her new recruits – Brownie and Blondie at least, not Bushy.  She didn’t want him to think she was hiding things from him.  She also told him that the men weren’t coming to live at the pump station. 

Jake didn’t like it at first.  He said that it was bullshit that she was hiring people and then not bringing them around to pull their weight.  But Ava understood her position with Jake, and she knew that she still controlled the power of sex over him and could occasionally put her foot down and make a fuss as long as it wasn’t over something really important to Jake or done in front of the other men. 

Therefore, she bitched to him that it already stunk like shit in the pump station with all his men around.  And with summer in “Hot-lanta” fast approaching, she didn’t want to add further to the “pig sty” the place had already become.  She said this all in her bitchiest tone, and Jake knew well just how Ava could get. When she was in one of her “moods,” he did his best just to placate her and shut her the hell up.  She usually got pissed off about stupid shit like cleaning the place up or where the guys were taking their pisses, so he didn’t mind making these occasional concessions.  They were typically minor in nature, and as long as it kept Ava putting out, he was willing to go along with her little requests every once in a while.  What did he care where these two fucks lived?  As long as he could depend on them to carry a gun and shoot halfway straight when the time came, he was fine with it. 

Jake had bigger shit to focus on – that shit being finding a place to use his Strykers where he could do some serious damage.  He wanted to play with his new toys.  Therefore, after giving Ava her way regarding her new recruits, he told her to develop a plan for executing this mission, which was exactly what Ava hoped he would do.

With several such targets already in mind, it didn’t take long for Ava to provide Jake with their first strike location.  It was a tiny gas station several miles away that was not yet in control of the X Family.  It was really just a fun run, and Ava knew it. 

Jake plowed the two Strykers in and lit the place up with the .50 caliber machinegun, taking out five guards in the process.  Then he refueled several support vehicles they’d brought along for the raid.  They couldn’t refuel the Strykers since the gas station wasn’t carrying diesel fuel, an increasingly scarce and valuable commodity. 

Once they were done, Jake used the Mk-19 automatic grenade launcher to blow the place to kingdom come.

Ava was disgusted by the waste of the remaining fuel at the gas station as well as the ammo they used to destroy it, but it was a huge morale booster among the men.  It made Jake look like a big shot.  And who could deny that boys didn’t love blowing shit up?  An explosive firework display was not however, the way in which Ava had envisioned the Strykers being utilized, and she planned the next raid accordingly.

Ava had more grandiose visions in mind and therefore convinced Jake to go along with her next plan.  It actually hadn’t taken much convincing.  Jake was having a blast playing Captain Destructo, but at the same time, he was still tired of the small-time raids and bored with what he now termed, “the same old shit.”

What was quickly becoming difficult for Ava though, was finding targets that hadn’t already been laid claim to by the Three Families.  Their reach was becoming increasingly all-encompassing around the Atlanta metro area, and both Jake and Ava felt the pressure of their presence in the dwindling assets that remained unclaimed. 

But this aspect was only part of the problem for their burgeoning organization.  The bigger issue was finding a place to keep all the supplies that they were acquiring.  It had become a real pain in the ass to hoard and to store all the stuff they were accumulating on their raids and they were running out of room in and around the pump station.  At the same time though, they didn’t yet have the manpower to store and secure supplies in off-sight locations.  Not only this, but they were quickly realizing that they couldn’t feed their crew with guns and bullets.  They had more than enough destructive firepower, but not enough food, booze and cigarettes, which were the lifeblood of their organization.  Even though they were being successful in their raids and accumulating plenty of “stuff,” they were still living largely hand to mouth.  They’d load up on food, cigarettes and booze, and within a week, it’d all be gone.  Their organization had absolutely no willpower to restrain themselves and ration their supplies.  The men drank and smoked incessantly and ate like ravenous dogs.

The solution to the dilemma of how to keep their operation supplied with a steady stream of such items of course fell to Ava.  But it didn’t take her long to come up with a solution to their problem.  While she pretended to ponder the issue for several days before bringing it to Jake, she knew exactly what she wanted to do the minute Jake made the request of her; she had just been waiting for
him
to bring it up.  Things went so much smoother when Jake thought that
he
was the one calling the shots, not her.

Ava used the two interim days that Jake thought she was working to develop the plan to gather intelligence instead.  She sent several teams of two men each out to learn which remaining area traders were still untouched by the Three Families.  She had already compiled a short list, but she needed more to fulfill what Jake expected to be the next portion of their planned expansion.            

At the end of the two days, Jake cornered her in the downstairs office of the pump station. 

Ava was ready. 

The office was a private space where only she and Jake were allowed.  It was a small room, maybe eight feet by ten, was sparsely furnished with an old wood desk with desk chair in the center, a four-foot tall file cabinet against one wall, and was lit by florescent tube lighting powered by the station’s generator.  Anything else in the room had been removed to make space for supplies, stacked boxes of which lined just about every inch of wall space. 

Jake and Ava kept the swag here – the best booze, the best smokes, the best guns – the best of anything and everything they had a taste for. 

“What ya got?” Jake said, riffling inside a box atop one stack.  There was the sound of ripping cardboard as he rummaged and finally came out with an unopened pack of cigarettes from a carton within.  

Ava stood before the desk like a good employee as Jake sat down in the creaky chair behind it.  He put his feet up on top, knocked a cigarette out of the pack, and lit it.  Ava pulled a piece of paper from her pocket and unfolded it.

“What’s that?” Jake nodded at the paper, frowning.

“It’s a list of our next targets,” Ava said quietly.

Jake reached out a hand. 

Ava dutifully handed him the paper. 

He looked at it, sucked on his cigarette, exhaled, and then said, “I thought I told you I was getting tired of these same old fucking sites.  I don’t see anything on here that looks any different than the targets we’ve already been hitting.”

“The types of targets
are
the same,” Ava agreed.

“So this is the pile of shit you’ve taken two days to come up with?” Jake said, tossing the paper angrily down on the desk.  He clenched and re-clenched his fist menacingly.   

“It’s
not
a pile of shit,” Ava said. 

“The targets are the same, so it’s a pile of shit,” Jake retorted, standing up.

“The targets are the same, but what we’re going to
do
with them is not.”

Jake looked at her and then slowly sat back down.  “Keep talking,” he said, suddenly interested again.

“These targets have yet to be claimed by the Three Families,” Ava said.  “That means that right now, they’re up for grabs.”

“Uh huh,” Jake nodded.  “So?”

“So we’re going to take them,” Ava said.  “But we’re not going to do it like usual.  We’re not going to go in just like we always do and blow them to shit.  We’ll take our whole crew, take the Strykers, and lay down some heavy fire…generally make a big show of force.  But we’re not going to destroy the place or kill the trader.”

“So what’s the point then?” asked Jake, not following.

“The point is, we want to shake these guys down…put them on the payroll so to speak.”

“Okay,” Jake said.  “So what does that mean?”

Ava took a deep breath, wanting to tell Jake what a fucking idiot he was, but instead, she kept her cool.  “Look around,” she gestured to the piles of crates stacked nearly floor to ceiling inside the cramped office.  “We don’t have room for storing more shit.”  She picked up a boxful of winter gloves and dumped them out on the desk in front of Jake.  “And we don’t
need
gloves, and we certainly can’t
eat
gloves,” she said, picking one up and then dropping it in distaste.  “We don’t need a bunch more
stuff
.  What we need is a steady stream of supplies or the ability to get the things we want when we want them.  It’s always feast or famine around here.  We need to build our own family.  And to do that, we need to recruit traders that will pay us for protection.  This way, we get paid weekly dividends, and they pay us these dividends by way of the supplies we need and in the amounts we need them.  Make sense?”

“Yeah…I guess so,” Jake frowned.  “Sooo…they’re pretty much paying us not to kill them each week, right?” he struggled with the concept.

Ava thought, then shrugged, “You could say that…or to keep them safe.”

“I guess that works too,” Jake nodded.

“
Jesus, you fucking idiot!
” Ava wanted to scream, but she remained imperturbable.  “If you’re good with it, and you’re ready, I thought that we could start tomorrow.”

“Ha!”
Jake, scoffed.  “I’m
always
fucking ready.  You ought to know that by now.”  He stood up and walked around the desk to where Ava stood.  He stopped close to her, reaching around her waist and grabbing a butt cheek in hand, pulling her up against him. 

As much as she sometimes hated him, he still had a power over her.

“Good job, babe,” he kissed her hard, shoving his tongue into her mouth.  It was like a lizard, poking, searching, twitching, flickering.  Ava hated the way Jake kissed when he was trying hard to play the macho role.  He sucked at her bottom lip hard as he pulled away. “We’ll prep the men tonight,” he told her, giving her rear a hard smack that echoed in the tiny office and out into the hallway. 

* * *

Each of the first three raids Ava had planned went off like clockwork.  They threw their forces into the attacks en masse, hitting the targets with a “shock and awe” style assault led by the Strykers.  The sight of the armored vehicles, paired with some heavy .50 caliber machinegun fire and a couple grenades lobbed into the fray served as enough to have the traders and their men quickly capitulating at each of the targets.

The sites that were chosen were picked not only because they weren’t yet linked with any of the Three Families, but also because the particular traders dealt largely in food as opposed to weapons, clothing, fuel, or other sundries.  And right now, food was what Jake and Ava needed most for their operation to continue to grow and thrive. 

The ensuing negotiations after each location surrendered were quick and one-sided.  The traders involved really didn’t have a leg to stand on.  Of course they pleaded their cases citing the needs of their own families and employees to eat, as well as their having to pay exorbitant fees to the Three Families do business at the Underground, but this was neither Jake nor Ava’s concern.  Jake actually felt they were getting off easy, and he told the traders that a truck would be by weekly to pick up a predetermined list of items.  Ava had taken some time to lay out their weekly supply needs and then divide them into equal portions to be split among the five area traders they planned to involve in this first phase of their expansion.  If a particular trader couldn’t come up with the exact items or amounts required on his particular list, he could substitute with similar items or with items on a secondary list of supplies that Ava provided and that she knew could be exchanged for the stuff they needed.