The Path of Ashes [Omnibus Edition]

by Parker, Brian

  “Thanks. It’s close to campus and affordable, so…yeah. You said that you were going to leave town tomorrow?”

  “Yeah, we’re going to go to Missouri where my parents live.”

  “Why didn’t you just drive through the night?” she asked.

  “Yeah, fearless leader,” Tyler deadpanned. “Why didn’t we drive through the night?”

  He gave his roommate the finger and said, “We don’t have a car. My keys were burned in the fire, so we’re going to find a bus that will take us.”

  Veronica gestured towards the television with her chin. “Before the power went out, the television said that Austin was pretty isolated. The few main roads that are still open are being used by the military.”

  She could tell by the way he seemed to deflate that he didn’t know about the roads only being open for the military. “Maybe we can find a car then,” he replied. “We’ll have to take the back roads and avoid the highways all together. It’ll take a little longer, but we’ll get there.”

  “You haven’t really thought this through, have you?” Veronica asked.

  “I was in the hospital until this morning!” he answered in a high voice. “We need to leave town. There are murderers out there and dead people all over the street. Hell, we almost got jumped by some weird creepy dude calling himself a vulture when we tried to go into the university athletic department.”

  “Wait, you know about the Vultures?” she asked.

  Aeric looked over to Tyler and shrugged. “Other than some voice coming from the darkness down the hallway, no. He did make it clear that he doesn’t like jocks and threatened us. We couldn’t see anything and decided against trying to fight someone in the dark, then he shot at us with a shotgun and we took off.”

  “The Vultures are a group of hackers,” she stated, ignoring the obvious question about whether they’d been hit. If they’d been shot, they probably would have already been asking about bandages or something, especially when she’d told them that she was Pre-Med. “They’re behind the navigational control glitch that crashed all of those planes and the news said that they’ve been actively seeking ways to hack into the Air Force nuclear missile program. So far, the government has stopped their targeted attacks, but all the guests on the news said that it’s probably only a matter of time before they infiltrate the system and gain control of the nukes.”

  “What the hell do they want the nukes for?” Tyler asked.

  “Who knows? Besides their digital calling card that they leave behind every time they hack, no one knows much about them. The authorities don’t even know if the Vultures are a domestic group or an international one. You guys really haven’t heard about them?”

  Again, Aeric glanced at his friend for confirmation. There was a strange dynamic between the two. Aeric seemed to be marginally in charge, or at least the one doing most of the talking, although Ty was the person whom he looked to for information. The bigger man shook his head indicating that he didn’t know about them either.

  “I guess we missed that episode of CNN,” Aeric replied.

  “It’s been all over the news. It’s easy to get one story lost between all the riots and the terrorist acts that were really happening versus what the media says was planned to happen.”

  “Well, with the power off, they’re probably shut down, right?” Aeric remarked.

  Veronica stared hard at him for a moment. She hadn’t thought about them being shut down along with the power. “I don’t know. Maybe? Do you think that’s why the power went out?”

  “It seems like an easy way to stop a cyber-attack if you’re at a loss for what to do, and fighting for your life on multiple fronts, like the government is right now. If they purposefully turned off the power, it seems like they’re throwing the baby out with the bathwater to me.”

  “Huh?”

  “Yeah, Aeric. What the hell do you mean by that backwoods bullshit?” Tyler asked.

  “Sorry, it’s a Missouri thing. It means to throw away something valuable—the electricity—to get rid of something you don’t want. In this case, the hackers.”

  “Hmm, now I understand the saying,” she replied. “There are a lot of important systems on the network and shutting it down would be more harmful than good if they did it on purpose.”

  “Wait a minute,” Tyler interjected. “What if they thought that the lack of heat and air conditioning, loss of refrigeration, lack of communication—basically everything associated with electricity—was the lesser of two evils? I mean, it’s only October, so the weather is pretty mild right now. If they chose to shut everything down to keep these hackers out of the nukes until they could find them or until they developed better defenses, then maybe it’s a good thing.”

  Veronica and Aeric looked at Tyler and then back at each other. “You might be right, buddy,” Aeric conceded. “I mean, it makes sense. There are tons of backups and fail-safes to keep the power from going out without some major work, right?”

  “All it would take is a few downed power lines, like in the northeast during winter storms,” Veronica said.

  “I don’t think so,” Aeric countered. He gestured towards her darkened window and continued, “Think about it. The entire city is out of power, not only a few blocks or sections of the city. I think this was definitely caused by a deliberate act and if you think about it, like Ty said, it makes sense that the government shut the power down to stop those hackers from getting into their network.”

  “So, we should just sit tight and let the government work out the kinks, then,” she concluded.

  Aeric held up his hands. “Well, I don’t know about sitting it out. At least not here in Austin. Have you been outside since all of this started?”

  “No. Once they cancelled classes and the phone service went out, I came home and started studying for mid-terms and watching the news. Then the power turned off about an hour ago and I was sitting here listening to music on my phone while I studied, it’s not good for much else right now. When I heard the stairwell door open up, I peeked out to see who was out there.”

  “I’m glad that you did, but promise me that once we leave, you won’t open the door for anyone else,” Aeric said as Tyler nodded his head in approval.

  “Why are you guys being so weird about things? I don’t open my door to just anyone. You were students in need of help.”

  Tyler stood and walked to the window. “That could be a cover for some very bad people, Veronica. Good thing for you that we really are students who needed a place to stay. It’s not a nice world out there right now, you need to keep yourself safe.”

  “You mean all the fighting down in Southeast? Isn’t that crazy?”

  Aeric carried on Tyler’s line of thought, “It’s not just that. On the way here, we witnessed the murder of a convenience store clerk. It looked like the only thing that they took was the cash from the register and then they took off.”

  “Oh geez!”

  “On the walk from the hospital to campus, we passed probably twenty bodies that were left like garbage on the curb, waiting for the sanitation crews to come take them away. I don’t know what’s happening. People are going crazy.”

  Veronica found herself staring into Aeric’s deep brown eyes and only the sound of the curtains being drawn pulled her away from them. “What are you doing?” she asked.

  Tyler continued messing with the curtains for a moment and then replied, “I think it’s best if people don’t see that there’s someone living up here. You can see candles and some camping lanterns shining in a few of the windows across the way and it’s a dead giveaway that someone’s there. I don’t think it’s a good idea to advertise that there are people here.”

  “Wait, what do you mean?” she asked with a quiver in her voice. “This is all gonna blow over, right? If the government is behind the power outages, they’ll beef up their security and have the power back on soon.”

  Aeric nodded and said, “I hope so, but I’m not sure. It makes sense
that the government shut down the power grid to keep the hackers out, it really does. There was a lot of crazy stuff going on even before the electricity went out, though. Murders, riots, plane crashes… What if all that was only the beginning of a total collapse?”

  “You mean like the end of the world or something?”

  “Something like that,” Aeric agreed. “Not like fire and brimstone Armageddon or anything, just the total collapse of the world as we know it. Everyone always talks about how technology has made the world a smaller place; in reality it’s created more problems. People settled at various places on earth because they wanted to be separated. Now all that pent up anger and forced interaction has come back to bite us in the ass.”

  “Is he always like this?” she asked Tyler.

  “You mean all doom and gloom?”

  “Yeah, it seems so negative. Things are bad out there right now, but it can’t be the end of everything.” A nearby scream pierced the night in contrast to her statement.

  Tyler slid aside the curtain and then looked back at his partner. “Shit, Aeric. It looks like a gang is beating someone right down there in the parking lot.” He watched for a moment and then said, “Are we gonna stand by and let that happen or do we go out there and stop them?”

  More screams emphasized his point. Aeric and Veronica went to the window to see for themselves. In the parking lot below, a group of men had surrounded someone who knelt on the ground. They took turns stabbing him when he tried to escape while two of the men who held rifles stood back from the group, watching to make sure that no one snuck up on them. Harsh laughter drifted up the seven stories to their window and grated on Aeric’s nerves like nails on a chalkboard.

  Oh, God. She knew the guy that they were torturing. He was her neighbor from across the hall. They’d messed around a little bit before she decided that they were too different to be in a relationship. She put her small hand through the crook in Aeric’s elbow and squeezed his forearm. “I think I know that guy. It’s hard to tell… I think he lives across the hall from me,” Veronica muttered. “Are we going to go down there and stop them?”

  Aeric looked back and forth between her and Tyler. Both of them had asked that he do something about what was happening downstairs. Veronica wondered what type of man he was. Would he stand by and allow the murder of an innocent man or would he get involved and try to stop it?

  *****

  Aeric couldn’t believe his ears. Had Veronica suggested that they go down to the parking lot and get involved in the violence? He’d never even been in a real fight before. His size had always been intimidating enough to keep him safe. He’d been slapped by his ex-girlfriend Kate and even that had brought tears to his eyes. He had no idea how he’d handle a real punch. The men in the parking lot had knives. They would probably skip the fistfight and slash at him with their weapons.

  He didn’t know what the future held or how long Austin would be lawless. This was the first time that he had a real life-and-death decision to make. If they stood by and did nothing, then the man would surely be killed. On the other hand, if they went down to stop the thugs, they’d likely be killed themselves. All Aeric and Tyler had were a baseball bat and a pair of cleats. They wouldn’t be able to stand up to anyone with just those things.

  Was it even their place to protect people that they didn’t know? In his mind, Aeric thought that it was the right thing to do. From the sidelines, it was easy to say what the correct choice was. But when he was faced with the possibility of death because of a choice between right and wrong, that distinction became a whole lot murkier.

  The decision was taken away from him before he could make it. One of the thugs stepped forward and grasped the man’s head from behind. Blood fountained into the night as he slid his knife across the victim’s throat. Veronica gasped and turned away from the window and Aeric stepped back in shock. He couldn’t believe that they’d witnessed a murder. In truth, he was relieved because they didn’t have to go down to the street and face their own death. Did that make him a coward?

  He stared in silence at the small opening in the curtains where they hadn’t fallen completely shut. He didn’t feel like a coward and had always considered himself a risk-taker, but then again, he’d never been faced with such a momentous challenge before. He tried to reason with himself that even if he and Tyler had charged headlong down the apartment’s stairs, they never would have made it in time to save Veronica’s neighbor. It was easy looking back on it now to determine that waiting had been the smart thing to do.

  Aeric’s sense of moral justice and self-preservation warred within him. He’d done the right thing to assess the situation before acting, but his lack of action had allowed that man’s death to occur. He argued that it wasn’t his place to go around rescuing people who’ve gotten themselves into trouble. Then, his thoughts reversed and he told himself that both he and Tyler should have responsibilities to the residents of the city. They were both physically stronger and more intimidating than most people, so they should use those gifts for good.

  What was good? What was evil? How did he know that Veronica’s neighbor hadn’t been evil himself and the men below had simply reacted and carried out vigilante justice because of the lack of police? They could have found him raping or murdering someone and stopped him. What if they were simply doing the same thing that he and Tyler discussed doing?

  Of course, he’d likely never know why they’d attacked the man, but he did know that justice didn’t entail torturing someone. His mind took those thoughts and carried them further. Those men had tortured him for fun. Their cruel laughter was evidence of that. They were the evil ones. They must be stopped. He was the one who had the strength and ability to stop them.

  Something in his mind snapped and his resolve hardened. The police were fighting a losing battle with the gangs in southeast Austin. It was his responsibility to ensure that bastards like the men below would never do anything like that to helpless people again. Aeric Gaines vowed to himself that from here on out, he’d do whatever he could to put an end to the evil of this world. He would never again question himself about whether he was considered a coward.

  “Veronica, can I have your knife? I’m going hunting.”

  FOUR

  “What do you mean?” Veronica asked.

  “We can’t allow those men to do the same thing to someone else. I’m going to make sure they never leave this place… and let others know that it won’t be tolerated.”

  Aeric felt her take a small step backwards in the darkness. “My friend is already dead. We needed to stop them from hurting him. It’s not your place to go out there and exact some type of revenge for what they’ve done. We have police, the FBI, heck, even the Army for that sort of thing. I wanted you to go scare them off, not get into a fight with them.”

  Everything seemed so clear to him now. “None of those things matter anymore. Those organizations are gone, a thing of the past. We need to stand up for ourselves and stop those types of people. If we don’t stop them and let others know that we won’t let it happen, then it will just get worse.”

  A wall of muscle stepped silently over to him. “I’m with you, bro. Those men are just like the bullies that I’ve dealt with my entire life. They won’t stop until you make them stop.”

  “Thanks, Tyler,” Aeric responded. “Veronica, please. The only other weapon that I have is a stupid shoe with metal cleats on it. Can I have your knife?”

  “Are you two crazy?” she questioned. “A few of them have guns. It doesn’t matter how big and tough you are, if those guys shoot you, you’ll die.”

  Aeric couldn’t figure out why she’d wanted them to charge into battle a few moments earlier, but was backpedaling now that it was time for action. Maybe he never would truly understand the way a woman’s mind worked. “We know that they have weapons. What if they come up here to your apartment after we’re gone? You saw what they did to your friend. They’d probably gang rape you until you bled to death.
People like that don’t deserve to live.”

  “You realize that you’re talking about murder right now, don’t you?” she asked, sidestepping his comment about them coming into her apartment.

  “It’s not murder, it’s justice,” he replied. God, I sound like a fucking Hollywood action hero cliché, he thought.

  The girl paced back and forth for a moment and then surprised Aeric by wrapping her arms around his waist and hugging him tightly. “Okay. Here, take it,” she said as she pressed the kitchen knife into his hand.

  “Thank you,” he said as he slid the knife down along his pant leg to avoid accidentally cutting her and squeezed her in another embrace. “Lock the door behind us and don’t open it for anyone else, okay?”

  “Aeric, I’m scared.”

  “I am too, Veronica. But we can’t allow people like that to keep doing those sorts of things.”

  The flickering candlelight played off her silky black hair as she nodded her head into his chest. “You ready, buddy?” Aeric asked his friend.

  Tyler grunted and replied, “As ready as I can be.”

  They moved the chair that they’d placed in front of the door enough to squeeze through and waited until they heard the locks engage before heading towards the stairwell.

  “What’s the plan?” Tyler asked.

  “Let’s go down the stairs and see if we can sneak out. There were two men with rifles, but we don’t know if there were pistols in the group. We have to assume that there were.”

  “Okay, so there are two rifles and…” Tyler trailed off as he thought. “There are five guys with knives, maybe pistols. Are we going to kill them or beat them up?”

  “I can’t believe that I’m saying this. We’re going to kill them,” Aeric replied. “If we beat them up they’ll just come back and search the apartment complex for us. We need to make sure that they never threaten anyone again.”

  “What the hell has happened to the world?”

  “It’s gone mad. Maybe even thinking about killing those men means that we’ve gone mad, too, but we can’t afford to think like the old days or else we’ll end up dead.”