The Path of Ashes [Omnibus Edition]

by Parker, Brian

  He flattened against the wall near the wailing woman and Tyler came huffing up. “Get out of here,” Aeric ordered. “It’s not safe.”

  “My babies are inside,” she cried.

  He stood rooted in indecision for a moment and then said, “Do you want to see your children again?”

  She didn’t answer so he asked again, louder. Terrorizing some poor woman wasn’t how he wanted to be remembered, so he held up his hands to calm her down. “Look, I’m sorry this happened to you. We need to get inside if we’re going to stop Huerta before he does anything else to sabotage the city. Can you get us past the door?”

  “Huh?” she asked dumbly.

  “Inside. We need to get inside. Edward Huerta is the cause of all of this. He’s the leader of all these gangs. They started the fires.”

  “Huerta?”

  “Geez… We’re gonna go in and get those gang members. I need you to be our decoy.” She stared blankly at him and finally, he said, “We’re going to save your children. I need you to take us inside.”

  The mention of her children spurred her mind from wherever it had taken flight and she nodded her head roughly. “We’ll follow behind you and stay off to the side until you clear the doorway. Do you understand?”

  “What about my children?”

  “Miss… I’m sorry, what’s your name?”

  “Megan. Megan West,” she replied.

  “Megan, as soon as the other Vultures dismiss you as a non-threat, go to them. I don’t care what you do after that.” He amended his harsh tone once again, “Sorry. I don’t mean that. Once we get inside, there’s going to be shooting. You need to get to your family and keep them safe. Then, when you can, you need to leave the city, Megan. Go to our back up location in Tennyson. San Angelo has fallen and it’s Huerta’s fault.”

  Megan accepted his apology and steeled herself to walk into the supermarket. Aeric rested the heavier 30.06 rifle on the side of the building and unslung the compact M-4 that was designed for fighting in an enclosed space. Tyler followed his lead and slid the baseball bat into the converted arrow quiver on his back in exchange for a pistol. He’d been out of the game so long because of his illness that he didn’t even have a rifle anymore; those had all gone to the defenders on the wall.

  Aeric was amazed to see the way Megan was able to calmly walk to the building, open the door and then quickly cover her private areas. Smoke flowed in through the doorway and they used it to help disguise their entrance behind her.

  Rough-sounding words came from the mouths of the young gang members inside. Smoky torches burned along the top of several of the aisle-dividing, shelving units causing the Vultures to be silhouetted against the light, further helping to disguise Aeric and Tyler’s movements. They quickly crouched behind one of the old cash register stations near the doorway and listened to the exchange between the woman and the boys who’d doomed his city.

  “Hey, bitch. Rat and Poncho done with you already?”

  “Yeah, they finished quickly,” Megan replied, her voice shaky. “They said they had to get ready for a fight or something.”

  “We can have a turn, den.”

  “I have to take a shit,” she countered.

  “Eww. You nasty,” a different young voice stated.

  “Sorry, gang rape does that to me.” Aeric grinned at her choice of words. She was a feisty one. Maybe he’d been wrong about her being a victim. Maybe she put on whatever mask helped to keep her and her family alive.

  “Go on. Get outta here, gross-ass bitch.”

  He saw her shadow march resolutely across the wall behind him and risked a quick peek around the conveyor belt. He counted four boys, all holding rifles, sitting in old folding chairs facing the door. They’d exchanged their homemade spears somewhere along the line for the rifles—either they’d had them all along and kept them hidden or they’d taken them off of dead defenders at the walls.

  There wasn’t a sign of the fifth Vulture, but Aeric decided to risk it. They’d be unlikely to get a juicier target than four of them all together, not paying attention. He whispered to Tyler the setup of the boys and told him that he had the responsibility of taking out the one on the far left and he’d deal with the other three since he had the semi-automatic rifle.

  Aeric held up three fingers and said, “On the count of three. One… Two… THREE!”

  They both stood and began firing. The pop of Tyler’s 9-millimeter pistol sounded loud in the confined space compared to the relatively quiet M-4. Two of the boys went down without ever knowing what happened. Aeric nailed the third as he lay on the ground where he’d dived, not quite making it behind a pile of wood that sat near an old grill.

  There wasn’t any sign of the fourth Vulture who’d been there a moment before. After a brief pause, a squeaky voice yelled out that he surrendered, trying to make himself heard over the terrified screams of the other supermarket residents.

  “Come on out—and keep your hands where I can see them,” Aeric ordered.

  A pair of grubby hands extended from behind the wood pile followed by the body of a thirteen year-old boy. Aeric squinted in the dim light and recognized him as the gang member that he’d punched when he came to see Maria for the first time.

  “Nice and easy, Flame,” Aeric said.

  The boy flinched and said, “Mr. Traxx? That you?”

  “Yeah. How many of you are there, Flame? How many of you became Vultures?”

  He thought about it for a minute and replied, “Ten. Plus, Mr. Edward. He always been Vulture.”

  “Shit,” Aeric muttered. He’d always been a Vulture. “Do you know where your other friend is? You, your friend and Huerta are all that’s left.”

  The boy’s shoulders slumped. He hadn’t expected to hear that everyone else was dead. “Claw with Mr. Edward in tunnels,” Flame replied.

  “Claw? I thought he died,” Aeric asked in confusion.

  “No. He okay. No dick, but he alive.”

  “The entrance to the tunnels are in the back of the store, right? Are there any secret traps or anything?”

  “Why should I tell you, Traxx?”

  “Because if you tell me the truth, I’ll forgive you for getting mixed up with the Vultures.”

  The boy’s shadow nodded and he said, “No traps. Tunnels start in big metal box floor.”

  “There’s a trap door or something?” Tyler asked.

  “Uh, sure. Door in floor.” He laughed nervously at his own choice of rhyming words.

  “Anything else we should know?”

  “No. I told you everything. You let me go now?”

  Aeric shifted his feet, brought his M-4 up rapidly like he’d been taught. He fired two quick rounds into Flame’s chest and followed the boy’s falling body with the muzzle until he was sure he was dead. The screams that had quieted down to a collective whimper erupted once again and several people ran towards the storeroom in the back. It was going to be a lot more difficult to find Huerta and Claw if they were intermingled with a bunch of supermarket residents.

  Tyler glanced over at him with his one good eye and said accusingly, “You told that boy you’d forgive him for what he’d done if he told you the truth.”

  “What?” Aeric shrugged. “I forgave him… I forgave him for condemning thousands of people to their death. I can’t let someone like that stay alive, though. Imagine if he made it to Tennyson and people knew that he’d been one of the people to blow up the wall and start the fires.”

  “You’ve lost your way, Aeric,” Tyler accused. He gestured vaguely towards the eastern border of the city where the Vultures had attacked. “Somewhere along this journey, you’ve become one of them.”

  “Ty, that’s not—”

  “No. I don’t want to hear it, Aeric. You’ve lost it, man. You’ve done things in the heat of the moment before that I was able to look past or make excuses for. Remember that Wal-Mart where you shot that man in the back and then we walked by his family like nothing was wrong? Or
what about Sterling City and that music hall?”

  “I did those things to survive. The guy at the Wal-Mart was to protect you, Tyler.”

  The big man nodded his head. “We’ve both done some fucked up shit, Aeric. And I acknowledge that fact, but you murdered that boy in cold blood.” Tyler paused, making Aeric think that he was organizing his thoughts. “When this is over, if we survive, I’m going to the council. You’re not fit to lead this city anymore. You’ve become just like the Vultures. We’re through after this.”

  His words hit Aeric harder than any punch he’d ever taken. They felt worse than when Justin had tortured him and paraded around with Kate on his arm. The sting of his words hurt more than when she’d died and even more than Judd’s information about his stepson’s hatred of him. The feeling of emptiness welled up inside him and threatened to overtake him.

  Like Veronica, Tyler had been with him from the beginning. He’d been his roommate and teammate in college before the war and had been with him every step of the way since then, with the exception of his assassination attempt in Austin a week ago. The man had been there for the birth of all of his and Veronica’s children, even several of his grandchildren; he never thought it would come to this. Sure, their relationship had deteriorated slightly over time as Tyler and Aeric became more involved with their own families, but they’d always been there for each other.

  “Okay, Ty. If that’s how you feel, then so be it,” Aeric conceded. He swallowed hard and continued, “I viewed Flame as a legitimate threat to the safety of this community and was in a position to put an end to that threat. I took that opportunity and I’d do it again if it meant keeping my wife and kids—and your family—safe for another day.”

  Tyler sighed heavily and ejected the magazine on his pistol. He dug around in his pocket and pulled out a few more bullets and crammed them on top of the others in the magazine until it reached capacity. He pushed it back into place and mumbled, “Let’s just get this over with and put an end to Huerta.”

  Aeric followed his lead and swapped out magazines as well before walking towards the back of the store where the entrance to the demonbroc breeding tunnels were supposedly located. He’d just started down one of the aisles when Megan appeared, clothed, and thanked them for helping her. She gave each of them a hug and promised that she’d see them in Tennyson as she herded two little kids towards the exit.

  They continued once she was gone and had to step over cowering residents, while also avoiding those who ran, screaming at the sight of their weapons. Aeric eased his way through the door when they arrived at the back of the store. It was dark and there were heaps and heaps of clothing and pilfered goods piled haphazardly. It didn’t help that they had no idea what Claw looked like, but either he or Huerta could have easily been hiding behind any one of the piles.

  “Now we know where all the stolen goods are going,” Aeric muttered, which Tyler ignored as he scanned the room.

  Screams of panic and fear echoed around the storeroom. They were muffled and didn’t sound like they were on the same level of the building. “Those must be coming from the tunnels,” Aeric surmised.

  “This way,” Tyler answered, walking rapidly towards an old cardboard crushing machine. The sounds seemed to be coming from inside.

  “Big metal box,” Aeric shrugged and indicated a door in the side of the machine with his chin. “Kid wasn’t lying.”

  They found the door’s release lever and it swung outward to reveal an enclosed, vacant space inside the crusher where the banded cardboard used to sit, ready to be sent to the recycling center in the old days. Centered in the floor of the storage area, a wooden door fit roughly over what appeared to be a hand-hewn hole in the cement floor.

  “I’ll move the door, you cover the hole,” Tyler stated.

  “Okay. I’m ready,” he replied as he bent his knees slightly and aimed his weapon at the hole.

  The moment Tyler pulled the cover away all hell broke loose. People, covered in gashes and bleeding profusely, tumbled up the stairs. Several held long, glistening ropes of intestines in their hands, uselessly trying to keep them from dragging on the ground or getting trampled by the crush of bodies behind them. Aeric was practically bowled over by the press of bodies and he slid up against the side of the cage as they rushed out.

  Below, a strange mixture of mewling and harsh, angry growls floated through the opening. As the flow of humanity ebbed, the screams coming from the tunnel had stopped, replaced by grunts of pain and the wet, sickening sound of tearing flesh.

  “Cover it up! Cover it up!” he shouted to Tyler, who stared dumbly at the bloody mass of fleeing residents making their way out of the storeroom.

  “Huh? Oh, the door.” He bent and picked up the heavy wooden slab, and slid it back into place. A dark gray paw thrust through the opening right before it closed. Three six-inch, razor-sharp claws unsheathed and the paw batted uselessly at empty space until the wood crushed its leg. What sounded like the screech of a banshee in some campy horror movie reverberated through the small space inside the crusher.

  The door started to move slightly as it was hit from underneath. Something was clearly trying to get out. “We need to move, now!” Aeric ordered before racing out of the machine. He slammed the locks into place the moment Tyler cleared the doorway.

  “That’ll hold them for a second. We are in some really deep shit.”

  “Was that what I think it was?”

  “Yeah. Fucking Huerta has been breeding them for meat. No telling how many of them are down there. Now they’re loose, we’ve got to get out of here now.”

  They burst into the sleeping area of the supermarket and Aeric began waving his arms above his head, shouting, “Everyone needs to leave now! The demonbrocs have escaped from the tunnels!”

  Several of the residents looked up from where they crouched, attempting to render aid to the injured who’d emerged from the tunnels below the supermarket. “Leave them! They’re going to die anyways,” he yelled as he shoved a woman away from a teenager covered with lacerations, including a cut on his thigh deep enough to see the quivering muscle beneath the skin. His femoral artery whipped back and forth, spraying blood everywhere. The kid was a goner and wouldn’t survive more than a few minutes at best, Aeric thought. That’s when he noticed the blood-soaked square of cloth on his shirt.

  The ear-shattering screech of bone claws raking against the cardboard crushing machine’s metal walls tore his eyes from the identification marking to the back room. The fucking beasts had made it out of the tunnels. It wouldn’t be long before they ripped their way through the thin steel side of the holding area.

  Aeric bent over, heedless of the blood spraying across his face and hands, and grasped the boy’s shirt, pulling his upper body up off of the ground. “Claw! Claw, look at me. Where is Huerta?”

  The boy’s eyes refused to focus on him as he answered, “Told me…let brocs out. Went to…”

  Aeric shook the kid violently, the rough fabric of his shirt causing the wound from the thorn in his hand to reopen. His blood mingled with the gore that cascaded out of the Vulture as he asked through clenched teeth, “Dammit, Claw! Where did Huerta go?”

  “North… northern gate,” Claw answered breathlessly, his head lolling backwards, stretching to the limit his skin allowed.

  “Goddammit, Claw! What about the Northern Gate?” he asked as he shook him again. Aeric set him down and then pulled his head up by the hair so the boy could see his ruined face. “What’s he doing up there? Claw! Is he going to Tennyson?”

  The Vulture’s eyes stared off towards the light of one of the torches. He was too far gone to form words. Aeric released his grip on the shock of hair and his head dropped heavily to the ground. He stood up and turned to Tyler, “Huerta escaped. He’s going to the Northern Gate. I don’t know if he’s trying to block off our escape route or if he’s trying to leave before the demonbrocs kill everything they see. We need to stop him.”

  Tyler l
ooked at Claw’s blood streaming down Aeric’s face in disgust. “We can warn the residents about the evacuation on the way there. Let’s go.”

  They ran as fast as their tired, broken bodies would carry them from the supermarket. Behind them, the piercing shrieks of the people who’d chosen to ignore their warnings about the demonbrocs echoed across the Barrio and they died by the hundreds.

  SIXTEEN

  “Where is he, dammit?” Kendrick screamed in frustration while his men turned over the mangled bodies near the wall so he could see their faces.

  He’d allowed the bulk of his army to move forward and continue the attack while he held back to find Traxx’s body. That arrogant bastard would have surely been at the gate, prepared to fight. Except for the fact that there was no proof, Kendrick was certain that he was dead. There was simply no way that he had survived the explosion. They’d searched for his body among the hundred or so bodies at the breach point and none of them belonged to his stepfather. It was maddening.

  “Perhaps we should consider that he wasn’t here at the gate, or that he somehow survived the explosion, my lord,” Quellan offered.

  Kendrick whirled on the man and then checked his temper; Quellan had done nothing to him and had been a loyal right-hand man. “Eh, maybe you’re right, old friend. You don’t know him like I do, though. He’s one of those ‘lead from the front’ kind of guys that you read about in stories. You know the type, the do-gooders who can do no wrong and their people would follow them to Hell and back.”

  “Didn’t that do-gooder assassinate eighteen of our men in cold blood? I would hardly call him a hero.”

  “He’s no hero,” Kendrick agreed. “The people love him because he’s a natural leader who does what has to be done, regardless of the damage. I’d have expected him here at the gate, getting himself shot at instead of running the defense of the city like he should have been doing.”