Read Online FORSAKEN: THE SYSTEMIC SERIES by K.W. CALLAHAN - Free Book Online Page B

however, had discovered that drug addicts or alcoholics, while incredibly unreliable in a fight, were often quite eager to come along on just about any sort of mission and put themselves in extreme levels of danger to acquire their fix.  And in the post-flu world, there were plenty of people looking to dull the heavy doss of pain the world had dealt them with any remedy they could lay their hands on. 
    These people tended to congregate with other like-minded individuals.  Ava wasn’t sure if the reason for this was the feeling of security their numbers provided, the ability to share product, or just because misery loved company.  Whatever the case, like hoards of maggots to a piece of rotting flesh, they always seemed to find a spot near a steady supply, whatever their particular poison.  And Ava was turning out to be one of the most reliable sources around. 
    She’d started in the Atlanta drug trade purely by accident.  In one of the many warehouses they’d raided, she’d stumbled across a truckload of drugs.  Heroin, cocaine, marijuana, pills – they were all there.  Jake didn’t do drugs – other than partaking heavily in alcohol and tobacco – and therefore was largely uninterested in the supply.  Therefore, he was willing to let Ava do with it as she pleased.  Ava wasn’t big into drugs either.  She was more of a recreational user, but she understood the power of drugs and substance abuse and how it could be used to their advantage.  Therefore, she had their men haul the supply back with them and stash it at the pump station where it could safely be stored and doled out when the situation called for it – and right now, the situation called for it.
    There was a big apartment building just down street about six blocks from the pump station.  Ava knew that this was where some of the more degenerative addicts tended to congregate.  It was a real pile of shit building and the “tenants” lived in squalor to put it nicely.  The place smelled of human waste and decomposition of every sort, and Ava hated going there, but sometimes it was a necessary evil.  It was a great way to pull short-term manpower into their organization without having to keep it around after the fact.  This worked out extremely well for their purposes.  It acted as a sort of temp agency, for which Ava could pay for labor with a product she cared little about.  Better yet, when the men perished in battle, Ava actually felt kind of good about it since their deaths were quick by the gun rather than long and drawn out by way of the needle – plus, it saved her having to pay them.
    Today she took Rambo and Kill King – their sharp shooter and self-proclaimed “sniper extraordinaire” – along with her for security.  It wasn’t that Ava couldn’t handle herself, but addicts were crazy.  They were quick to lose their cool and willing to do just about anything to get drugs when they were desperate.  This often played into Ava’s hand when it came to bending them to do her bidding, but she liked to have some muscle on hand to kick some crack-addict ass when necessary.  Sometimes these guys needed a little slapping around to get the point across, and Ava wasn’t going to get her hands dirty with that sort of work.  There was a difference between taking risks and just being stupid, and Ava wasn’t going to get herself killed or stabbed or jabbed with a needle just trying to temporarily bulk up their ranks with a few junkies.
    While the drug house was only a ten-minute walk from their base at the pump station, Ava had learned to drive rather than walk.  They took a crew cab pickup truck that Jake had acquired a few weeks earlier, a beastly large thing with big bumper guard, flood lights affixed to the top of the cab, and an engine that roared eight cylinders to life each time the gas was touched.
    The pickup was Ava’s vehicle of choice for this sort of operation.  She chose it for several reasons.  First off, she’d