The Path of Ashes [Omnibus Edition]

by Parker, Brian

“This sucks,” Kate moaned from behind Aeric. “I wish we could leave and never come back.”

  “We will soon,” Aeric assured her. “It makes the most sense to stay here for a few days while we let this thing blow over. Hopefully, there will be infighting soon to determine who will lead the Vultures and they’ll forget all about us.”

  Tyler’s stomach growled audibly, which caused all three of them to laugh. Once he’d stopped, he smiled to himself. It would be alright. They’d find food, stay safe and then make it to San Angelo. If San Angelo wasn’t a viable option, then they’d keep going until they found somewhere safe. As long as they were together, everything would be alright.

  THIRTEEN

  It took a month for Aeric, Tyler and Katie to make it to San Angelo. They’d spent a full week in Veronica’s apartment, combing the building for food supplies. In a strange twist of fate—or mass murder—the building was empty of residents. It didn’t matter though, since most of the food had been stolen anyways. But there were enough crumbs and an occasional can of vegetables to keep them alive until the Vultures stopped looking for them.

  They made their run for the north part of the city on the evening of their sixth day at Veronica’s. Before they left the city forever, they went to the building where Tyler and the girls had been ambushed. Beth Gaines’ body was gone and none of their gear remained. Austin’s scavengers had swept in and cleaned everything out. Aeric and Kate paid their respects at the place where his mother had died and then they continued on into the night.

  On their trip westward, they stayed in the Balcones Canyonlands Wildlife Refuge for three days because they were able to kill an emaciated deer and didn’t have any means to transport the meat. They gorged themselves at each meal until there was almost nothing left of the beast and when they left the wildlife refuge they felt satisfied for the first time in months.

  They were on foot until halfway between the ghost town of Llano and the small city of Brady when they stumbled upon a mass of dead bodies near the highway. It looked like there’d been some type of gang warfare between two groups, one that wore all black and another that had Texas flag bandanas tied around their arms. The battle looked as if they’d each killed each other and whoever had been left alive fled the scene, leaving a lot of gear behind. So they were able to get bicycles, rifles and some heavier clothing, but they still had to scrape by for food and potable water.

  The trip became much easier with the addition of the bikes, and after weeks on the road, their pace increased once they saw the few high rises on San Angelo’s skyline. They unwittingly headed down the same highway that Julie and Kayla had taken seven weeks prior and topped the same rise where she’d encountered Shellie.

  Aeric’s small group topped the hill’s rise and saw two military Humvees resting on the reverse slope. They hadn’t been able to see them on the opposite side of the rise. One of the vehicles was tan, like Lorelei’s had been and one was green. Both had machine guns mounted on the top that were aimed at them. The guards were much more prepared for strangers now than they had been when Julie came through and fired two warning shots off to the side of the road. Experience had taught them to scare off the wanderers early or else they could quickly overwhelm the guard force.

  “That’s far enough,” a man yelled. “We don’t have any food and you’re not welcome here. Go back where you came from.”

  “Please, we’ve been on the road since the beginning of all this,” Aeric shouted back.

  “Well, then go around the city and keep on travelin’. You wanderers are worthless and all you do is take, take, take until you use something up and then you move on to the next place. We ain’t got the resources for your kind.”

  Aeric opened his mouth and then closed it quickly. He hadn’t anticipated meeting the motley mix of military and civilian guards, especially not so many of them. He wondered about the city’s resources, if they could afford to have so many people on one guard shift at only one of the many roads leading to the city. Were they all as heavily guarded or was it simply because this was the road that led to Austin?

  “We’re not wanderers,” he finally managed to say. “Yeah, we’ve been on the road, but we’d planned on coming to San Angelo all along.”

  “Look, boy, are you deaf? I said we ain’t acceptin’ no new residents,” the man yelled back at them.

  “We were invited here by one of the city’s residents before the war started.” He didn’t have anything to lose, so he took a shot and said, “Miss Veronica Delgado told us that she had a place for us to stay. Have you heard of her? She lives on Briarglove Lane on the south side of the city.”

  There was movement among the guards and finally a woman called out, “Come closer.”

  They walked their bikes slowly down the slope until they were about fifty feet from the guards and their military Humvees. “What’s your name?” the woman asked.

  “I’m Aeric Traxx,” he replied automatically taking the name that he’d been given from all of his scars. He indicated his friends, “This is my friend Tyler Nordgren and my girlfriend, Kate Hampton.”

  “Holy shit, you survived! We thought you were dead.”

  “Huh?”

  The squeal of metal scraping against the asphalt pavement filled the morning silence as the makeshift gate that had been placed across the road was moved out of the way. A single figure wearing a gas mask came out from behind the gate, walking rapidly towards them.

  “Aeric! It’s me, Lorelei,” the woman said as she came closer.

  “Lorelei? Oh my God! I… I don’t know what to say.”

  She wrapped him in a hug that took him by surprise. “You were right about San Angelo. The Air Force base here was spared and they only had a small Security Forces element, so they welcomed our expertise in military tactics.” She lowered her voice and said confidentially, “The Air Force guys had no clue how to run security. Even my group of Army mechanics is better trained than those clowns.”

  “Wow. I can’t believe that you’re actually here,” Tyler said as he also hugged the lieutenant.

  “That goes triple for me. I can’t believe that you guys made it all the way to—where was it again?”

  “Missouri,” Aeric answered.

  “Damn. Yeah, Missouri and back. That’s crazy. You’ve been out there this whole time?”

  Aeric held up his hands and said, “We were taken prisoner in Austin by the Vultures. They tortured us.”

  “We’ve heard stories about them. How did you escape?”

  “It wasn’t easy,” he indicated Tyler and continued, “and both of us are horribly scarred from it. Katie rescued us. She killed their leader, Justin, and then helped us escape.”

  Lorelei’s blue eyes flicked over to observe Kate. Aeric could tell that she was measuring the woman up and that bit of information had made Kate a dangerous addition to their group in the lieutenant’s mind. “Good job, Katie. That’s some good news that we haven’t heard about yet.”

  “Thanks,” Kate replied and busied herself with a piece of loose leather on her bike’s handlebars.

  She looked back to Aeric and asked, “The Vultures tortured you?”

  “Yeah. They put out Tyler’s eye and cut off his ear and some fingers.” Tyler pulled off his sunglasses to reveal the new, bright pink skin that was growing together where his right eye had been.

  “Oh, man. I’m so sorry,” she said. “Okay, you guys are clear to come through our checkpoint. I think Miss Delgado will be surprised to see you. I’ve met her a few times and told her that you were the ones who recommended that my platoon come here if Fort Hood was destroyed.”

  “Is it?” Tyler asked as he put his sunglasses back into place.

  “Yeah, it’s gone. Looks like a small ground burst nuke took it out. The damage was mostly contained by the terrain around the base, so not much outside of the bowl that it sat in was damaged. Helped keep the radiation in too.”

  “I’m sorry, Lorelei,” Aeric said. “I know you wer
e hopeful that it would be there.”

  She nodded her head and the rubber of her protective mask made a swishing noise as it rubbed against her clothing. “Yeah… It can’t be helped. We’ve all lost someone. The only things that we can do are to honor their memory and try to be the person that they wanted us to be.”

  She didn’t elaborate and Aeric wasn’t going to push her for who she’d lost. Maybe one day, they’d be able to get together and talk about what had happened. Instead, he focused on what they’d been talking about before he became sidetracked with Fort Hood’s demise. “So Veronica is here? We weren’t sure.”

  “Yes, sir. Just like you said she’d be. And like I said, she’s going to be surprised to see you guys. That little girl that lives with her told her that you were dead.”

  “Huh? I guess I missed that part of the story,” he admitted.

  “There’s a teenager who showed up a month or two ago with a baby. She said that she’d been traveling with you and that you were all dead.”

  “Julie?” Kate blurted out.

  Lorelei looked over to Kate once again. “I don’t remember her name. Cute little baby though. They split time living with Veronica and her dad and one of my guards when she’s not on duty.”

  It was a miracle and they all hugged each other, even Tyler and Kate, who’d developed a tenuous friendship after she’d proven that she wasn’t simply using Aeric to stay alive. Julie and Kayla were alright and they were here in San Angelo with Veronica. Aeric marveled at the way everything worked out. The only person who hadn’t survived the trip was his mother, which was odd since the entire point of their trip to Missouri had been for her and his father.

  “Julie is my little sister,” Kate told Lorelei when their embrace ended. “We thought that they died in Austin on the day that we were all taken hostage.”

  “Oh, wow, that’s awesome!” the lieutenant said. “Okay, I know you guys have been on the road for a long time. You’re probably tired and hungry, so we’ve got some food—”

  “Lorelei, if you don’t mind, we’d like to see Julie and Kayla first,” Aeric answered for the group.

  “Oh. Of course,” she made a gesture like she was slapping herself in the forehead, reminding Aeric that they were only a few months removed from television, electricity, cell phones, pop culture and the like. It all seemed like a lifetime ago that those things were a daily part of their lives and now it was all so different.

  “Let’s go. I can lead you down to the mayor’s house.”

  “Mayor? No, we want to see our friends,” Aeric insisted.

  Lorelei looked at him funny and then asked, “You don’t know? Well, maybe not. Veronica is the mayor’s daughter. She lives with him now.”

  “Oh. No, we didn’t know that.”

  The guard shrugged her shoulders and gestured for them to follow her. “They’re alright,” she announced to the other members of the guard force. “They’re friends of mine—and the mayor’s daughter—so they’re gonna be staying in the city.”

  “Why do we admit your friends and turn away other people?” one of the guards grumbled.

  “Shut up, Cantrell,” Lieutenant Griffith ordered. “If you had friends or family that showed up, then we’d admit them too. That goes for all of you. You know that we’re fair, but we can’t take every asshole that walks over that rise.”

  “I still don’t like it.”

  “Then get the fuck out, Cantrell. You don’t like anything about San Angelo, our mission here or any of us. You’ve been nothing but a complainer for the past four months and I’m sick of it.” She pointed back down the road that they’d came from and continued, “Austin is that way. I hear they need a new leader for the Vultures since this young lady killed him. In fact, take my bike. I’m sick of you.”

  “What?” Cantrell asked.

  “You heard the LT asshole,” a large Hispanic man said as he grabbed Cantrell’s rifle. “You’ve been fucking up my platoon for a long time and now that Lieutenant Griffith has given the okay, you’re out, man.”

  “Sergeant Jimenez, please,” Cantrell pleaded. “If you guys kick me out of here, I’ll die. You’ve seen some of those freaks that live out there.”

  “You’ve had plenty of chances, Cantrell,” Lorelei said. “I’m sick of you. You’re a cancer and I don’t want your attitude spreading to the rest of my platoon. Fill your backpack with food and you can have my bike. Good luck.”

  Aeric and his friends watched the action in shock. Cantrell was the same guy who the lieutenant kicked off of her truck when they were on the Army checkpoint back at Richland. He’d seemed like an asshole then and apparently it hadn’t gotten any better with time. He was right. Sending a single person out into the wasteland without a weapon was the same thing as killing him.

  Cantrell lunged towards Lorelei and the sergeant—Jimenez?—punched him in the back of the head. He collapsed like a rag doll and the man took his gas mask off. “I’m keeping his mask, Lieutenant. He can wear a bandana like everyone else around here and one of ours may become compromised.”

  “Good idea, Sergeant Jimenez. I’m going to take these three to the mayor’s house. When Cantrell comes to, send him packing. We don’t need that kind of filth around here.”

  The sergeant stood upright and saluted, “With pleasure, ma’am.”

  She returned the salute quickly. “Alright, folks. Let’s go.”

  As they pushed their bikes through the checkpoint, the lieutenant picked up a bicycle of her own and said, “Sorry you had to witness that. It’s been a long time coming.”

  “Banishment means death,” Aeric replied. “You should probably shoot him outright and avoid suffering.”

  “I’ve thought about it, but I can’t do it. I’ll shoot those freako bastards. I don’t know if I can shoot a man who wasn’t shooting back.”

  Aeric shrugged, “I’ll do it.”

  She glanced sidelong at him, “You guys are safe here. I know that you’ve been through a lot out on the road and when you were in captivity, but that kind of attitude will get you banished from here also. We can’t just go around killing people.”

  “Just sayin’,” he replied.

  They mounted their bicycles and pedaled slowly towards the city’s skyline. “You and Cantrell both said something about freaks. What do you mean?” Aeric asked.

  “We’ve been seeing some really strange things,” Lorelei answered. “People who are so screwed up that they’re basically animals. I don’t know if it’s radiation or if they’re just crazy, but they’re ridiculously dangerous. Plus, there are packs of wild dogs and rabid animals that attack everything that moves, I’m surprised that you guys didn’t run into any of them.”

  “Yeah, we’ve seen a lot of stuff out there, but it’s mostly been bad people who made the choice to become evil, not these other things that you’re talking about.”

  “Well, for now, you’re safe. The mayor will probably tell the colonel that you guys shouldn’t go into the guard rotation for a few days to let you recover from your journey.”

  Aeric was genuinely interested in the leadership structure of their new society and asked, “So the Air Force base commander and the mayor work together?”

  “Yeah. The appointed base commander, another colonel, was gone at a conference when everything happened, so the training wing commander became the base commander. It’s probably easier that one of them was gone, that way there wasn’t some type of fight for power. Anyways, the colonel and the mayor work well together. The military handles all the defensive missions while the mayor handles the administration of the city.”

  “Seems like it’s pretty efficient, then,” Aeric stated.

  “It works.”

  “So, what do you think our job in the community will be?”

  “If it were my decision, I’d recommend that you guys lead our resource recovery teams. We have food here—actually, we have a whole lot of military rations that were stored at the base—but it’s not sustainab
le. So, we send out teams to try and recover as much food as possible from the surrounding area to get us through until the ash settles out of the atmosphere and we can begin farming.”

  Tyler stuck his hand up like he was asking permission to speak. “I’ll do it. I’m pretty good at gathering supplies.”

  Aeric laughed, “He means that he’s good at killing whoever has what he wants so he can take it.”

  Lorelei skidded to a halt. “Are we going to have a problem with you guys? We don’t go around killing people here and that’s the second reference to it since you’ve been here.”

  Aeric held up his hands in a placating gesture. “No. No, Lorelei, we don’t go around killing people for no reason. We’ve become extremely efficient at doing it, but only to people who deserved it. I was making a joke about taking other people’s stuff. We haven’t ever done anything like that.”

  “Are you sure that you can go back to living in a normal society?” Lorelei asked. “We have laws, rules and social norms, just like before the nukes hit. The standards are simply adjusted for our new way of life.”

  “I can vouch for them,” Kate said. “If either of them get out of line, then I’ll kick their ass. You won’t have any problems from us.”

  The lieutenant stared at them for a moment and then nodded. “Okay. We’ve banished more people than Cantrell from the city. That’s not a threat, so don’t take it that way. It’s a statement of fact.”

  “We won’t be a problem. Don’t worry,” Aeric promised.

  “Okay. My platoon and I are only here because of you, so I trust you guys. Just, keep down on the references to killing. The city went through a few weeks of chaos right after everything went bad. About a third of the population died and people are sensitive to that sort of thing.”

  “You’re right. Being out there,” Aeric gestured behind them towards the countryside, “made us insensitive and callous. We’ll rein it in.”

  She nodded and put her foot back on the pedal. “Alright, let’s go reunite you with your family.”

  As they fell into line behind her, Aeric had to suppress the butterflies in his stomach. He’d been looking forward to getting the opportunity to talk with Veronica again for a long time. He had no clue what was going to happen and he was in love with Katie. It was finally time to find out how Veronica fit into the picture.