The Age of Embers (Book 5): The Age of Defiance

by Schow, Ryan

  “I think you’re talking about solid-state electronics. Semiconductor diodes, transistors and integrated circuits. Is that what you’re trying to say?”

  “I s’pose, yeah,” he said, nodding.

  “This isn’t a project we can do in a weekend, boys. We can start with a string of lights, an old refrigerator, maybe some heat, but it will take time and patience. Regardless, I intend to bring some of the comforts of our former life back to this building if I can. If you’d like to help, I’ll provide protection and I’ll find ways to build a strong, competent community. But you’ll learn to be proficient fighters and you will be loyal, or you’ll be back out on your asses, needing some swamp donkey like Cletus here to fight your fights.”

  “We’ll go with you,” Myron said, his two front teeth practically hanging over his lower lip when he smiled.

  “No one gets in fights when we’re inside, no one gets raped and you don’t steal anyone’s stuff. Any of you. If you can live with that, then we can go back inside. Payment tonight is food and water. I need to eat. In return, you get a bed, a room of your own and my protection.”

  The three ruffians looked at each other and then collectively, they nodded. Myron opened up his backpack and offered her two cans of food and can opener. Lima beans and a southwestern style corn, black beans and red bell pepper mix.

  “Are these from your food stores, or are they Cletus’s?”

  “We all share,” Myron said.

  “Water?” she asked.

  Danny handed her his bottle. She opened the cans, gobbled them down, swallowed them with a few gulps of water, then burped lightly behind sealed lips. After a minute, she wiped her mouth and said, “Alright, let’s go. And pick your jaws up off the ground. It feels like forever since I’ve eaten.”

  She walked them inside, chaperoned them to two of the rooms on the bottom floor with beds and doors that would shut and lock, and then she returned to the street where she stood over five feet three inches of dead meat.

  “You’re a meal for someone,” she said to Cletus’s body. “Just not me.”

  Grabbing a handful of hair, she started to drag him through the streets. Accessing her internal database, she studied the distinct calls of coyotes, then began to bark as she walked, getting louder and louder as she got the timber and the pitch right.

  Coyotes, especially the betas and the mates, will come running to the sounds of agitation, especially to the solitary male on territorial patrol. She was no expert, but she sounded convincing enough, so she continued dragging the body down the street, barking, howling, giving a little warble at the end of each howl.

  Finally she saw them. The coyotes. There were four or five in the pack, and what she hoped was the alpha out front. He looked at her. She stopped.

  “Food,” she said.

  Grabbing Cletus by the ankles, she began to swing him around her in a tight circle, giving herself the right momentum. With each rotation, she saw the pack standing in curious silence. When she finally got the right cadence she launched the dead body through the air at them. He sailed a good forty feet, an impossible distance for anyone else, but possible for her.

  The body smacked down and skid a few feet across the dusty street before the coyotes, causing them to startle, but hold their ground.

  “Food!” she barked.

  The alpha approached the body, took ahold of the arm, jerked it then jumped back. When the body didn’t respond, he crept up to it and sniffed again. He turned to the pack and they joined him. When they started to tear at the flesh of his face, Maria decided it was time to return to the apartment tower.

  “How’d you throw him that far?” a small voice asked, stopping her. The accent sounded unusual, not from America. Haiti, perhaps?

  “I just did.”

  “He must weigh a hundred and eighty pounds,” the man said.

  “He was just a hair over one seventy,” Maria replied. “You could have done the same thing.”

  Letting her eyes adjust to the shadows before her, she pinpointed this man’s location, but she didn’t see him because the darkness seemed to have swallowed him.

  “I see you in there,” she lied. “You can come out.”

  A slight gentleman emerged from the shadows, almost like he’d passed through worlds before arriving there. His skin was as black as the night sky, hesitation and curiosity present in his voice. She strained her eyes, but she could not see his features. There was something sneaky about him. Diminutive, but potentially dangerous. Even when she thought she was seeing him, she wasn’t really seeing him, and this concerned her.

  “You’re too pretty to be out here alone,” he said. The man had a trucker’s cap pulled low on his face, the bill rounded nicely.

  “People say I’m too pretty to be anywhere alone, yet here I am. Alone and just fine. Now if you’ll excuse me.”

  “Yes ma’am,” he said, tipping his hat. His voice was low, his Haitian accent pronounced. He didn’t make any moves toward her, and he didn’t reach for a weapon. She began to walk away from him even as he stepped back in to the shadows.

  When she was a good block and a half away, her ears endeavoring to hear and decipher any and all noises, she glanced over her shoulder and failed to see even a hint of him. Was he gone, or just hiding? She didn’t know.

  In the apartment tower, upstairs and out of breath from ascending to the tenth floor one flight of stairs at a time, she quietly crawled into bed.

  “Where were you?” One asked.

  “Making friends.”

  “But it’s still dark outside,” she said.

  “You’d be surprised how many people you can meet in the dark these days,” she replied. “Go back to sleep.”

  But she was already asleep. Carver, however, was not. She could tell by the way he was breathing that he was awake.

  “What?” she said.

  “Nothing.”

  “You don’t want to sleep with me anymore?” she said.

  “I tried to do it your way, but that didn’t last long.”

  “Why are you awake?” she asked.

  “Nightmares.”

  “From earlier? Back in Loomis?” she asked.

  “Yeah.”

  She had nothing to say to that. Amber had confronted her, pushed her too far. Finally she said, “I was going to deal with Amber in a civil manner before Indigo went and shot me. Don’t forget who started this, Carver.”

  “Everyone saw your agitation, Maria. You threw a kid out of the school, you were always brooding, and you could never really just relax.”

  “This is not a world you relax into, Carver. This is a world full of opportunity and possibility. Only a fool would waste their days growing food, filtering water, teaching a bunch of little sickness factories physics. I threw my pearls before swine.”

  “No one asked you to do that.”

  “Everyone volunteers for something, Carver. That’s the rules.”

  “I know.”

  “Well I’ll tell you what, in this world, under my reign, you volunteer to row and I’ll steer the ship. I need people to do for me. I don’t do for others.”

  “Spoken like a true narcissist,” Carver said.

  “You can call me what you want,” she countered. “You can even sleep over there in the corner like a bug if you choose. Just make sure you know your place.”

  “I’m not unaware of it.”

  “We have three guests downstairs, guys who might be able to get us power. Myron, Aaron and Danny. If they give you any grief, you have my permission to kill them. Got it?”

  “Got it,” he said.

  Within a half an hour, she was asleep, daybreak not that far away.

  The Haitian, Kalfu, made his way back to the group, stood outside the door, gave three sharp raps with the rock left in the planter, then one scratch and another tap. After that, he set the rock back in the planter and waited. A moment later, the door opened and a shotgun barrel slipped out, pointed right at him.

&n
bsp; Ridiculous American cowboys, he thought.

  A pair of cautious eyes darted back and forth, looking to see if he’d been compromised. Kalfu, drew a deep breath, frowned, then blew it out and stared through the darkness at the man bathed in shadow.

  “What happens if you ever need to use that thing?” Kalfu asked.

  “Let’s hope we find some ammunition before it comes to that,” the slight but vigilant voice replied. “Where you been the last few days?”

  “Scavenging,” he said.

  When he was satisfied no one had compromised the Haitian, the door opened and Kalfu slipped inside pushing past the man who was not a real shadow.

  “Anything?” Stephen asked.

  Stephen was a normal man in every, trying way. Not personable, not quirky or unique, not old or young, neither good looking nor ugly. His plainness didn’t stop there. He was white, but not too white, and his tone of voice was fairly neutral with little variance, even in times of duress. And the way he dressed? It was like he was going to a barbecue with a bunch of his guy friends.

  Kalfu did not like him.

  He didn’t like any of these stragglers, these hangers-on. In fact, in light of recent events—specifically the slaughter these men seemed to have perpetuated—he was not liking any of these people very much anymore. Not that he ever really started.

  “I need to speak to Jaw-Long,” Kalfu said.

  “He’s asleep.”

  “I know he’s asleep, but this is worth waking him for,” Kalfu said, his unblinking stare pinning the man down.

  Frowning, scrutinizing the Haitian, Stephen said, “It’s your life, friend.”

  “We’re not friends,” Kalfu said.

  “I don’t know what else to call you,” Stephen retorted, lighting a candlestick with a lighter. The native Californian made the mistake of looking in Kalfu’s eyes. Quickly averting his gaze, he handed Kalfu the candle.

  “You may call me Kalfu,” the Haitian said, taking the candle.

  Nodding, Stephen stepped aside and let the small black man through, avoiding looking anywhere near his eyes for fear of being captured by them again.

  Kalfu walked down the large hallway, to Jaw-Long’s bedroom door. He knocked lightly, heard mumbling coming from within, then opened the door and stepped inside. He did not shut the door all the way, rather he left it cracked with the burning candlestick on the floor outside. The soft amber glow with the limited space by which to illuminate Jaw-Long’s room made for many shadows.

  “Who’s there?” Jaw-Long asked. His voice was cracked with sleep, slow from being woken from a deep slumber.

  Kalfu took a breath and said, “It’s me, Kalfu.”

  “You’re in a shadow,” Jaw-Long said. Kalfu didn’t respond. “Why are you disturbing me at this hour?”

  He came and sat down in the chair beside Jaw-Long’s bed, barely making a sound. “We have company, neighbors. They could be a problem.”

  The former Chinese pot farmer stirred, set the gun he was holding on the nightstand beside him and said, “I almost wasted my last bullet on you.”

  “If that was my destiny, I would have accepted it,” Kalfu said, unable to still his restless soul.

  Sitting up, Jaw-Long said, “You really believe that, don’t you?”

  “Indeed,” the Haitian replied.

  “Tell me about these neighbors,” he said, yawning deep.

  “A woman and some men,” Kalfu said, trying to summon the appropriate words. “It wasn’t the men that concerned me. It was the woman.”

  “What about her?” he asked, lighting a candle and rubbing a touch of sleep from the corner of his eye.

  He stared right at Kalfu, as if trying to see him. Jaw-Long would not see him though. Kalfu sat back in the chair, further shrouding himself.

  “And why is it that no matter the light, you are always in shadow?”

  “It is my way,” Kalfu replied.

  “This woman you spoke of…” he prompted.

  “She’s the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen, but there’s something…awful about her. A wrongness that swirls in the air around her. I know darkness and evil. She is both.”

  “What makes this evil woman so…awful?” he asked.

  “She is a purveyor of the impossible,” Kalfu said, his body in the room with Jaw-Long, but his mind back in the street watching her punch the man to death with a single blow. After the woman ushered the remaining men inside, Kalfu had examined the man’s face, breathless from what he found.

  He’d looked toward the front entrance to the apartment tower where the woman and the trio of men had entered, then he peered up the face of the building, as if he might see them. Seeing nothing, he studied the air around the dead man, but was rewarded with no further information.

  He’d stepped back in the shadows to wait. He wasn’t sure how long he’d have to wait, but he was intent on remaining until sunrise if he had to.

  When later she came back out, he watched her from the shadows. The way she grabbed the dead man and so effortlessly began dragging him down the street confounded him. Scientifically, what she was doing was impossible for a woman her size. Then she started making noises, yipping and barking noises that drew a pack of coyotes, and this is where his skin broke in to gooseflesh—a first for him.

  “You know how much I appreciate my sleep, don’t you?” Jaw-Long said, stirring him from his reverie. “Because if you’re here to just sit and contemplate whatever it is you’re contemplating, this will be rather upsetting for me.”

  Kalfu’s gaze fell on the sword beside the bed. The Chinese national had reportedly cut through a dozen people like they were nothing. Jaw-Long claimed to be a protector, but if he turned that sword on any of his people, he said he would be an enemy, too. Jaw-Long was bad, which he hadn’t foreseen, but this woman…she was something worse.

  This woman was the devil.

  “She scared me,” Kalfu finally admitted. “I am not easily spooked.”

  This singular statement had Jaw-Long’s attention.

  Nothing scared the Haitian.

  Nothing.

  Sitting silently in the corner were two girls, both in their late teens, early twenties. Kalfu could not see them, but they were awake, that much he could feel. He sniffed the air, let their scents gather in his nostrils. The faintest hints of sweat and blood let him know this man was exploiting his dominion.

  Kalfu slowly, sadly shook his head, his soul drooping at the thought of what had happened. He’d been out when Jaw-Long massacred those people. He returned to see if it was true, and now he knew it was. He’d leave in the morning. Kalfu decided this the instant he smelled the girls. He’d leave because he could not be with people like Jaw-Long, and he could not kill them. Kalfu was not a fighter. He was a priest in training.

  A voodoo priest.

  After he’d heard of the massacre, Kalfu went to the location of the slaughter and he sat in silence as he attempted to hear—or at least feel—the spirits of the fallen. Would they pass through to the other side, or remain here, haunting Jaw-Long and those who cut them down so mercilessly?

  Even as he sat there in Jaw-Long’s presence, he didn’t know the answer. All he knew was that he did not want to anger the spirits.

  “Why don’t you go do some of that voodoo of yours,” Jaw-Long said flippantly, “connect up with your Loas, or whatever you call your gods.”

  “The Loa are not Gods, they are intermediaries,” Kalfu explained. “Besides, this is not an oúfo, and I dare not contact them without a hougan or a mambo present for fear of reprisal.”

  “Remind me again?”

  “An oúfo is a temple, a hougan is a priest, and a mambo is a priestess. We are in dangerous times, as you no doubt know, so I dare not risk the ire of our ancestors, or the gods over a violation of the appeasement ceremony.”

  Sliding back under the blankets, Jaw-Long fell silent, clearly at a loss for words.

  The Chinese nationalist came to California with h
is wife to have their baby under America’s anchor baby program. He never expected them to die in childbirth. After that, he stayed with a cousin, illegally, and ended up working in a grow house because he could not go back home and face his wife’s family. They’d wanted him to have the baby there. He wanted to have it for free in America, as all his other friends had done before him.

  When the drones later hit his grow house and the staff, killing most everyone, the members of the up-and-coming street gang dispersed, leaving him estranged and in a foreign land. Fear turned to rage and that’s when he turned to the sword.

  “Can I give you some advice, Kalfu?” he asked, tired and nearly falling back asleep.

  “If it appeases you,” he said.

  “This is not New Orleans. Your family is gone, your friends dead. Same as mine.”

  “What is your point?”

  He leaned over and looked in the shadows Kalfu hid inside. “A religion dies with the last of its followers, and we are your family now, like it or not.”

  “I am not the last follower and you know that,” Kalfu said.

  “Your gods will not fault you for consulting them out of the regular channels,” he argued, “but they will not look upon you with kindness if you hold fear in your heart. I assume they prefer a priest to a coward, don’t you think?”

  “There was something different about her,” Kalfu said again. “I don’t need to consult anyone about that. I am here to warn you. I know darkness.”

  “Nothing the sword can’t cure. We’ll find her tomorrow, and then you can watch me cut her down like the rest of them.” With that, he turned over and went back to sleep. “Leave here, Kalfu, or I will cut you down, too.”

  “Your arrogance will be your downfall,” Kalfu replied. “It might be all of our downfall.”

  “Get out, boy,” he said.

  Kalfu stood in perfect silence, left the room and blew out the candle waiting for him in the hallway. He walked through the darkness to his room where he opened up a channel to the Loa, as permitted, and asked for both direction and guidance.

  Later, as he lie in bed contemplating the night, the devil woman and Jaw-Long, he wondered if this was a world he wanted to travel in.