The Path of Ashes [Omnibus Edition]

by Parker, Brian

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Notice: The views expressed herein are NOT endorsed by the United States Government, Department of Defense or Department of the Army.

  The Path of Ashes

  Omnibus Edition

  Copyright © 2016 by Brian Parker

  All rights reserved. Published by Muddy Boots Press.

  www.MuddyBootsPress.com

  Edited by Aurora Dewater

  This book is protected under the copyright laws of the United States of America. Any reproduction or other unauthorized use of the material or artwork herein is prohibited without the express written permission of the author.

  Contents

  A Path of Ashes, Book 1

  Fireside, Book 2

  Dark Embers, Book 3

  Works available by Brian Parker

  The Path of Ashes

  A Path of Ashes ~ www.amazon.com/dp/B00XATPU9E

  Fireside ~ www.amazon.com/dp/B015ONZOU8

  Dark Embers ~ www.amazon.com/dp/B01CPSAI1A

  Washington, Dead City

  GNASH ~ www.amazon.com/dp/B01ACTBBZQ

  REND ~ www.amazon.com/dp/B01AYEQRUI

  SEVER ~ www.amazon.com/dp/B01C7VEMG2

  Unrelated Works

  Enduring Armageddon ~ www.amazon.com/dp/B00XZA2UQY

  Origins of the Outbreak ~ www.amazon.com/dp/B00MN7UFBW

  The Collective Protocol ~ www.amazon.com/dp/B00KUZDY4O

  Battle Damage Assessment ~ www.amazon.com/dp/B00PCND2RI

  Zombie in the Basement ~ www.amazon.com/dp/B00H6DUXY2

  Self-Publishing the Hard Way ~ www.amazon.com/dp/B00HNQCZ9I

  Coming Soon

  The Immorality Clause, an Easytown novel

  Look for Brian’s short story I Guess This is Growing Up in the Bite-Sized Offerings anthology alongside 33 more zombie authors ~ www.amazon.com/dp/B014I7MMZQ

  A Path of Ashes

  Book 1 of The Path of Ashes

  a post-apocalyptic novel by

  Brian Parker

  Copyright © 2015 by Brian Parker

  All rights reserved. Published by Muddy Boots Press.

  Edited by Aurora Dewater

  Omnibus Contents Page

  PROLOGUE

  Ash drifted across the family’s compound. The old man didn’t know if it was from his own fire or if it simply fell from the clouds above. The filth was a constant reminder of what had been lost to human pride and arrogance. The old world died in fire and somehow humanity continued to scrape by in the darkness.

  Aiden Traxx leaned back in the wooden chair that his youngest son had made for him years ago when the heavy metal chair from his grandfather’s time had finally rusted through. He watched his grandchildren play while they used sticks as swords, imitating their father and older brothers, not even realizing that they were already laying the foundation for training with the weapons that they would soon need. The armaments that his predecessors used to destroy the old world were mostly useless relics now, scavenged for the metal that they contained. Occasionally a working gun would make an appearance or be unearthed, but it was a person’s ability to use a sword to defend one’s family that mattered now, not questionable old world technology.

  Unconsciously, the old man’s gnarled hand drifted down to his grandfather’s sword beside him. He still carried it with him everywhere, even though it had been many years since he’d needed to use his own weapon to protect the family perimeter. His sons and grandsons had taken over the role of defending the family and their meager crops against the Vultures who lived in the ruins of the cities with the creatures of the night. The Vultures were men who’d succumbed to the deprivation of the world around them, more deadly than any other living thing. They lived deep in the wastelands with the other creatures like the demonbrocs that had been born after the world had burned.

  “Come, children, come. Grandad has a story to tell you,” he called to the young ones on the far side of the fire.

  The two boys and their cousin, a girl, looked at the old man for a moment. Recognition flickered in his eyes. The children’s desire to disobey the feeble old man was almost palpable. Why should they stop their game and sit to listen to him? The respect that their parents had instilled in them overcame their resentment and they came near to hear his tale.

  “Caleb, you sit over here,” Aiden said, indicating the space to his left. “Varan, sit on this side with Tanya.” It was better to keep the boys separated so they would pay attention to the story of their family history.

  He waited for them to seat themselves before looking to his left and then the right. “Are you all settled?”

  “Yes, Grandad,” Caleb, the oldest of the three, answered for the group.

  “Good. When I saw the two of you fighting through the flames of the fire I was reminded of a story that you haven’t heard yet. It’s the story of my grandfather, Aeric Traxx. Have you heard of him before?”

  “We’re Traxx,” the little girl answered proudly with a thumb to her chest.

  “Yes, little one, we are. Aeric was the first of us.” He leaned down conspiratorially and whispered, “In fact, Aeric’s family name wasn’t even Traxx. He took the name when the old world burned. He was the last of his family and he no longer had any use for the name that he’d been given as a child.”

  “Was that when the ruins were made?” Caleb asked.

  “Yes, when the ruins were made,” he replied and then stared into the flickering flames. A piece of ash separated from the wood and drifted upwards, riding the heat current towards the heavens where it would combine with the rest of the ash to eventually fall back to earth.

  Fitting, he thought. The man’s gravelly voice filled the space between the Traxx family homes where they sat as he began to tell the story of his grandfather Aeric. It had been told to Aeric’s son, who then passed it on to the elderly man when he was young. Now, he passed the family’s history on to his grandchildren.

  “On the day that the old world ended, ash drifted across the sky, blotting out the heavens and making it impossible to see the sun in the day or the stars at night—much like it does now when we have high winds, children—except this wasn’t the way that it used to be. Would you believe that when Aeric was a boy, they could see the sun all day long and people were never cold because of the warmth that it provided? It’s true.”

  ONE

  Aeric stared at the ceiling above his bed and imagined life outside of his tired hometown of Springfield, Missouri. He was done with this town and ready to move on to the next phase in his life. In two weeks he’d graduate from Central High, and then he was headed to Austin, Texas to attend the University of Texas on a baseball scholarship.

  He was ready to be an adult, to experience life to its fullest, away from his parents and away from everyone he’d ever known. He was moving three entire states away from his parents, over ten hours one-way. The opportunity to put that much distance between himself, his doting father and overprotective mother sounded like heaven to Aeric.

  It wasn’t that he didn’t love them—he did—it was just…too much. His dad always praised everything that he did, or found a way to put negatives in a positive light while somehow still managing to be headstrong, and not budge on much of anything once he’d made up his mind about a subject. His mother worried that something would happen to her only child, so much so that he hadn’t been allowed to go out for football when all of his other friends had. She told him that with all the information about traumatic brain injuries that foo
tball players sustained, it would have been criminally negligent for her to allow him to play. So he’d tried out for baseball and earned a spot on the varsity baseball team as a freshman. Four years later, Central High had won three Missouri High School Baseball State Championships and Aeric had a full ride to UT—away from his parents.

  He was even looking forward to the summer job that the coaches had helped him land. He was going to spend Monday through Friday coaching at a baseball camp for underprivileged kids. He’d be able to keep working on his own fundamentals while teaching the kids how to perform theirs. It was a win-win for him.

  Aeric had to get through the last two weeks of school and then he could leave. Everything had become complicated once he and Kate, his former girlfriend, had broken up. She was a cheerleader and the Prom Queen, easily the most popular girl in their school and they’d dated since the seventh grade. They broke up over a huge misunderstanding. Katie thought that he was cheating on her with his biology partner. As a result, the past three months had been hell as she’d made it her life’s goal to ruin him, turning almost everyone at the school against him. He was ready to get it over with and move on.

  The alarm on his phone chimed once again and he pressed the button to turn it off. “One day at a time,” he muttered as he sat up on his bed.

  He went to the bathroom and then selected a pair of jeans and his baseball team’s t-shirt from his closet. It was supposed to be rainy all week, so he’d have to wear a jacket—another thing that he was looking forward to when he moved to Texas. He hated the rain and knew that it hardly rained in Austin. When it did rain, they had actual storms, not the drizzle that seemed to go on for days in Missouri, keeping his mood sour.

  “Honey, time to get up!” his mother called up the stairs.

  “I’m up, Mom. Just getting dressed.”

  “Okay, honey. I made you some breakfast. Oh! It’s raining, so don’t forget to take a change of socks and shoes in your backpack in case yours get wet.”

  “Be down in a second.” There it was again. The constant coddling and over-protectiveness was exhausting. Why couldn’t she give him a bowl of cereal like every other kid in America got before they went to school? He reluctantly grabbed a second pair of socks and another pair of sneakers.

  As he jogged down the steps, the smell of fried eggs hit him full in the face and his stomach rumbled accordingly. Okay, maybe I’ll let her cooking for me slide, he thought. Aeric dropped the extra pair of shoes beside his bag and went into the kitchen. She’d made him an egg sandwich with mayonnaise and tomato. On the side was a bowl of freshly chopped melon and a glass of milk. He liked to complain that his parents were always doting on him, but he was going to miss having a home-cooked meal waiting for him whenever he was hungry.

  He scooped up the sandwich in one hand and crammed a large bite into his mouth while he used his other hand to unravel a paper towel. Another bite went in as he dumped the melon onto the napkin. The milk disappeared as quickly as the sandwich had and he yelled, “Thanks, mom!” while he carried the melon down the hallway towards his backpack and shoes.

  “Have a good day, honey!” she called after him. “I love you!”

  “Yeah, love you too.”

  He slipped on the rain jacket that his mother had laid out for him and darted out the front door into the drizzle. Aeric was tempted to run so he could get out of the weather faster, but he knew from experience that doing so would only result in him getting soaked from the waist down as the water splashed up from his feet slapping the pavement. Besides, he still had more food to eat.

  He was still three blocks from school when he finished the melon and used the paper towel to wipe his mouth. It came away smudged with a greasy, gray film.

  “What the hell?” he muttered and looked skyward. He squinted against the falling rain and noticed a dark cloud above that trailed towards the southeast side of town where the industrial park was located. Something big was on fire over on that side of town.

  The dirty rain dribbled through his dark hair down his forehead and stung his eyes. “Ow! Come on! Can this day get any worse?” he grumbled as he walked quickly towards his school rubbing his eyelids.

  Once he got there, everyone in the hallway talked about the big industrial fire to the south of town. First, one plant had caught fire and then, an adjacent factory had lit as well. The school’s resident conspiracy theorists said it was a terrorist attack since the two buildings were separated by massive parking lots and there was no way that the fire had jumped that distance.

  Their theory married up with the rest of the attacks happening across the country. Over the last several years, they’d gotten worse. Riots happened almost weekly as the disillusioned youth protested the lack of jobs and rising cost of education while minorities protested the lack of upwardly-mobile positions available to them. Adding fuel to the fire were the religious extremists who’d stayed away from America’s shores for decades after getting their asses handed to them in the Middle East. They’d recently begun to return in force to spread their message of hatred and intolerance.

  The police had become increasingly hostile as well. They no longer knew who the enemy was since they were confronted on all sides. As a result, they often dealt rapidly and with an iron fist before small demonstrations became full-fledged riots. Their heavy-handed tactics did little more than add to the tension and further divided the nation’s residents as seemingly innocent people were injured during melees with the people who they trusted to protect them.

  Aeric didn’t know whether the conspiracy theorists were right in proclaiming that the industrial fires outside of town had been a terrorist act, but he did know that it was another nail in the coffin of his life in Missouri. If anything, the idea that the troubles might be coming to Springfield solidified his desire to leave the state and never return. Graduation couldn’t get there soon enough, so he could start making a life for himself elsewhere.

  *****

  Aeric pulled up in front of his new apartment on San Jacinto Boulevard. He was tired after driving all day from Springfield to Austin and wanted nothing more than to curl up and go to sleep. The baseball coach had overnighted him the apartment keys and updated camp schedules, so he knew that he had tonight to move in and get settled, and then he’d be working every weekday after that. Even though he had a couple of hours of unpacking to do, the idea that he could potentially be asleep if he let himself skip out on it made him that much more tired.

  The university had provided him and another player with a furnished two bedroom apartment for the summer. Then he’d move into the Blanton Dormitory for the fall semester. The apartment was only minutes from campus and the baseball camp where he would work, so he planned to walk or buy a cheap bike instead of driving the car that his parents had surprised him with on graduation night.

  Leaving home that morning had been exciting, terrifying and a relief all rolled together. His mother had been an emotional basket-case, while his father went over the route with him for the hundredth time and gave him some cash for the drive. Aeric thought his mother was going to chase after him because she’d followed the car to the end of the driveway. Thankfully, she’d saved both of them the embarrassment and just stood near the street to watch him drive away.

  The trip through southwest Missouri and across a small corner of Oklahoma had been uneventful until he’d turned south on US Route 69. That’s when he’d noticed the huge black smear across the morning skyline. As he’d driven closer, it had become evident that something big was on fire and he was reminded of the industrial fires back home a few weeks ago. Those fires hadn’t been the result of a terrorist attack. It turned out to be a disgruntled employee who’d started the fire and then set one of the hotels near the condiment factory on fire—not a second plant as originally reported.

  Several thick columns of roiling black smoke drifted skyward to form a massive cloud that hung over southern Oklahoma like a dense blanket. When he got near the town of McAlester, the
smoke had been incredibly thick, causing traffic to slow down to ten miles an hour due to limited visibility. In town, he was diverted down back roads far to the east and then back south around the big army ammunition plant that was in McAlester.

  The radio had said that several of the massive underground ammunition storage facilities had exploded; Aeric would have bet everything he owned that it was more than just a few of the bunkers, though. There was too much smoke for it to have been a small number of bunkers. The discussion of terrorists had come up on the radio, but Army officials denied it, insisting that it was an explosion of improperly stored ammunition.

  His mom had called his cell phone when he was traveling wide around the site of the accident. She’d heard about what happened and wanted to make sure that he was okay. He’d assured her that he was fine and told her that he’d been diverted around the fire, not to worry about him. Of course, that sent her into a tailspin of worry since he’d been close enough to see the fires. After all, what if another bunker exploded?

  When he crossed into Texas about fifty miles later, it seemed like a weight had been lifted off of his shoulders. While he still had several hours to drive, including traveling through Dallas, the fact that he’d arrived in the state that he’d call home for at least the next four years had made him feel relieved. He felt like he was actually on his way to becoming a full-fledged adult.

  Aeric looked up at his apartment building with a lopsided grin and turned off his car before sliding an arm through his backpack. Might as well take a load when I go up, he thought as he unfolded himself from the Pontiac. He wasn’t overly large at six foot four, two hundred and thirty pounds, but he was pushing the manufacturer’s recommended size limit for the small coupe. He twisted around to pop his lower back and then walked up the sidewalk to the stairwell.