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

by Schow, Ryan

  “How did I even get here?” he quietly asked into the night.

  Kalfu was on his way to the airport to catch a plane back to his home on the Louisiana Bayou. He never made it. After saving himself and others, he pulled Jaw-Long from the wreckage of a nasty pile-up, not knowing what the man was about. All he knew was that, before anything, he was a human being and that he was hurt.

  Kalfu hid from the drones with this man, survived the downfall of society and managed to stay alive against the odds, but now Jaw-Long was changing. He was bitter, his past shattered, and he was so very angry, his life a monumental disappointment.

  In the last few weeks, Jaw-Long had taken a turn for the worse. With this last accumulation of food, water, supplies and girls, he’d gone too far.

  Now this woman...

  When Kalfu finally managed to get to sleep, he dreamt of snakes. Coils of black, squirming snakes. To many, this would be mere coincidence, a symptom of the times. To Kalfu, it was a response from the Loa.

  Chapter Ten

  Maria woke just after daybreak. She walked downstairs where Aaron, Myron and Danny were awake and blinking back the sleep.

  “We have a big day ahead, boys,” she announced.

  Aaron sat up and looked at her long and hard. She could tell he was conflicted. He did not understand how—with her petite size, and her refined look—she could do the things she did.

  “Spit it out, Aaron,” she said. “I haven’t got time to sit here and read your mind.”

  “How did you kill Cletus like that?” he asked. The other two stopped what they were doing and waited for a response.

  “Proper body mechanics and power,” she explained.

  “You caved his entire face in.”

  “I did.”

  “But that’s not possible,” Aaron said.

  “I’m redefining what is and isn’t possible, Aaron. I think you would be appreciative of something like that.”

  “What are we going to do with him?” Danny asked.

  She crossed her arms, tilted her chin and drew a deep breath. Then: “I fed him to a pack of coyotes last night. No use in letting that human stain rot in front of our home.”

  “You could have burned him,” Myron said, quietly, almost under his breath. He was even uglier in the daylight than he was in the night.

  “Then what would the coyotes eat?” When no one said anything, Maria said, “Aaron, you’re with me today. We’re heading out to get a generator. Myron and Danny, you two will be with Carver and One. We need food and water if we plan to keep this place as a shelter.”

  “That’s what I was trying to tell you last night,” Danny said. “This isn’t our territory. It isn’t yours either. Anything you do will be noticed by others.”

  “That’s what I want, Danny.”

  “Okay,” he said, dragging out the word.

  “Where I drop my roots is my territory,” she said, firm. “Whoever gets here and however long I stay is up to me and me alone.”

  “Are you willing to defend it?” Aaron asked. “I mean, if you throw a spotlight on this place, people are bound to see it.”

  “That’s what I’m counting on,” she said.

  “Well I’ve seen what you can do, so I’m with you. And I’ll help you defend this place, so long as it doesn’t get me killed.”

  “Any number of things can get you killed,” she replied. “Sack up, boys. We move out in thirty minutes.”

  Upstairs, where Carver and One were waking up, she said, “I have three guys downstairs. Strays I picked up last night. You and One will head out with Danny and Myron to find food, water and supplies while I take the truck and try to get us some power with Aaron. Aaron’s the good looking competent one. You two are with the morons.”

  “Sounds magical,” Carver said.

  “When everything seems to be going against you,” she said, emotionless, “remember that the airplane takes off against the wind, not with it.”

  “Is that supposed to brighten my day?” Carver asked, disinterested. “Be some kind of motivational speech?”

  “Henry Ford said it. Basically it means you take those two retards out and find us some food so we don’t starve to death. At first it will be hard, but then it won’t.”

  “You can’t say ‘retard,’” One said.

  “I’ll say whatever the hell I want to say whenever I want to say it,” Maria turned and said to the little girl.

  “It’s not nice, though,” One whispered, lowering her eyes.

  “I know your stupid norms, everyone and their hurt feelings, all the ways the little sissies of the world couldn’t stand up for themselves and got bullied, and you know what?” she challenged, her voice climbing into outrage. One just stood there, hunched forward, eyes down. “All those cowards are DEAD!” she roared. “Carver. One will not be going with you and the retards today. She will find a broom and sweep out this entire building. She will not stop until each and every floor is swept perfectly clean. Do you hear me, One?”

  “There must be twelve stories,” Carver said softly.

  “I’m disappointed there aren’t more,” she growled. Grabbing One by the ear, she hauled the child over to the edge of their room, both of their feet only inches from the drop off that would have them plunging nearly one hundred feet to their deaths.

  Looking over the street below, all the trash and blown up cars, the buildings decimated, the glass shattered and lying in the street under the dust of neglect, she smiled. One, however, fought the urge to squeal, her eyes wide with fright, her little hands gripping Maria tight.

  “See that car down there?” she said to One.

  “Yes,” the girl stammered.

  “A missile, or maybe even a grenade, blew out the engine block. Shot most of the hood clean off. That eight inch run of metal down there, turned up like a knife on its side, that’s razor sharp to skin like yours in a fall from this height. Do you see it?”

  “Knock it off,” Carver said, advancing on her.

  Whirling her head around, she said, “One more word from you and you’re going to get a very intimate view of what I’m talking about!”

  Back to One, she pointed down and said, “If I throw you off the roof for telling me what I can and cannot say, and you land just right, that strip of metal will cut you in half. From the belly button down, your body will be laying on the pavement, half your guts spilled out. But from the belly button up, you will be laying in the engine bay, with the other half of your guts just vomiting out of your chest onto all those burnt engine parts. Is that what you want?”

  “No!” One screamed, tears streaming down her eyes.

  “Do you know what the moral of the story is?” she said, moving the child even closer to the edge.

  “If I talk back to you, I die,” she said, sobbing, her voice shaky and wet.

  “Yes.”

  Pulling her back from the edge, she shoved the girl across the room. One toppled forward, landing on her knees and pitching forward to where she hit the side of the bed with her leading shoulder.

  “Good girl,” Maria said. “I’m not well practiced at discipline, child, so let’s not make a habit of this.”

  She looked up at Carver, who just glared at her. “You got something to say, pussy?”

  “You are failing to grasp the nuances of being human,” he said. “Being a bully does not make you powerful. It makes you an unlikeable wretch.”

  “Tell that to Hitler, Stalin and Mao.”

  “They’re all dead.”

  “And one day I may be dead, too. But not today.”

  “Inspiring fear as a means of totalitarian control is far less powerful than lifting someone up by the soul because they are drawn to you and want to serve others with you.”

  “I’ll lead by fear, thank you very much.”

  “So you’ll scream and yell and toss around little kids, and then what? Kill your way through the masses, all to prove you’re our new God? Okay, fine. I believe you. But I will n
ever love or revere you the same way all those who served the tyrants over the years never loved or revered them.”

  “What did you ever lead?” she said. “Three dead security guards? A failed charge against me?”

  “Those were my friends, and they will forever be more human than you’ll ever be. I’m not the one failing at this life, Maria. You are.”

  “Humanity is a stain. You’d best decide to shut that mouth while you have the chance,” she warned.

  “I’ve already decided,” he said, closing his lips and making the zipper gesture to indicate he had no more to say.

  She smiled, but the dead look in his eyes concerned her. He had punched her once when she wasn’t looking. Knocked her out completely.

  “Get dressed, find One a broom and dustpan, then meet up with a bald headed clown and the ugliest man on earth downstairs and let’s get our life here started.”

  “Why did you bring them in with us if you clearly don’t like them?” he asked, stopping her. “The quote/unquote retards?”

  “Slave labor,” she said.

  He nodded, then pulled on his pants and shirt and said, “C’mon One, let’s go get you situated.”

  Downstairs Maria told Danny and Myron that Carver would be down to join them shortly. The two of them looked at each other with a question in their eyes. She said, “Don’t worry, out there Carver will protect you two.”

  “I can protect myself,” Myron said, puffing up and lifting his chin. “I can protect Danny, too.”

  “We need it all,” she said, ignoring the false bravado. “Water, food, over-the-counter medication, antibiotics, medical supplies, any bedding you want, firewood, lighters…everything.”

  “This whole area feels picked dry,” Danny said, hesitant, like he was breaking the bad news to her for the first time.

  Moving in on him fast, she said, “Then find someone who has what we need and take it from them.”

  “That’s messed up,” Aaron said, unmoved by her outburst.

  “Someone must bear the brunt of our suffering.”

  “We’re not suffering,” Danny said.

  “Not yet you aren’t,” she replied. “But when that belly of yours begins to shrink against the agony of hunger and the lack of sustenance, your head will want food long before your heart decides the moral and upstanding way of getting it.”

  “Meaning?”

  “When times get bad enough, you will kill for your food. Or you’ll be killed for yours. This is eventual. And that’s why I’m suggesting we avoid the suffering now, before it gets untenable. In time, after enough useless eaters die, there will be enough for everyone. But now…now we prepare. And that can’t happen if you’re going to act like a little tart right out of the starting gate.”

  When they tromped down through the dark, burnt smelling stairway on their way to the garage, Maria and Aaron did so mostly in silence.

  Aaron was a quick learner.

  Most of the cars, trucks and SUVs in the garage were dusty and inoperable, ruined by the EMPs, completely abandoned. Not their pickup truck, though. The matte black paint was dusty, but still burly looking and mean.

  “This you?” he asked.

  She nodded, got inside, fired it up. Reaching over the bucket seat, she unlocked the passenger side door for him.

  Aaron climbed in.

  The mufflers rumbled in the garage, making a tremendous amount of noise. They were sure to attract some attention, but nothing she thought she couldn’t handle.

  Pulling out of the garage and in to the street was like entering the mouth of hell. Dirty streets, flamed out trees and landscape, shattered glass all over the sidewalks, not to mention a graveyard for cars, trucks and motorcycles.

  She slowly drove by the eviscerated car sitting directly below the apartment they’d chosen. Up close, it had definitely been hit with some sort of explosive. And that ridge of metal she threatened to drop One onto—the one she promised would cut her little body in half—it was more jagged and more menacing than she first assumed. A smile slowly crept onto her face.

  Memorizing the address, she buried the pedal, creating a nasty growl in the engine bay.

  “You’re in charge of navigation,” she told Aaron over the noise.

  He looked at her and nodded.

  On the way out of the neighborhood, she saw a good looking girl with faded ruby-colored hair slinking through an alleyway, her skin gilded with tattoos. She turned when she heard the motor, slipped behind an industrial sized dumpster.

  “I see you,” Maria said to herself, her words drowned out by the old F150’s racket.

  A few miles from the destination, working their way along a road congested with even more dead, immovable traffic, she said, “How much farther?”

  “Few miles,” he said.

  That’s when she saw the men walking in the street ahead of her. Maria eased on the brakes, her senses heightened. On one of the nearby buildings, she spotted a lookout with binoculars.

  “Guy with the binos must’ve seen us coming.”

  “It would seem so,” she replied, coming to a stop maybe a hundred yards out.

  Decisions, decisions.

  The pack’s alpha led his men in to the street, a shotgun in hand to greet them. The leader was tall and lanky, his body craned sideways, the look under his cowboy hat not pleasant from what she could tell at this distance. His weary looking pack of minions carried bats, chains and knives, along with several makeshift shields.

  “Look at this living, breathing cliché,” she said. “It’s like the Bad News Bears of the apocalypse.”

  The truck in neutral, she revved the engine, contemplated multiple outcomes. Aaron remained silent throughout all of this. She sensed his unease.

  “Speak,” she said.

  “We need to turn around and head the other way,” Aaron replied. “There are too many of them and obviously they want the truck.”

  “I’m not half bad myself,” she said, turning to look at him. “Maybe they want me, too. Did you ever think of that?”

  This didn’t put him at ease.

  “I stopped thinking of you as a sex symbol the minute you punched a giant hole in Cletus’s snotbox,” he grumbled, his attention squarely on the hooligans ahead. One guy was swinging the chains, another twirling the bat nervously at his side.

  The guy with the binos, he was watching them, then signaling down to the pack alpha in some sort of maggot-speak.

  “They’re playing on your fear,” Maria told Aaron. “And that’s something you’ll have to get past because everyone that still survived, they’re meaner than ever. Plus, they know the score when it comes to the realities of violence. So there’s no way anyone sane is going at this alone.”

  “I know, but there’s like…a dozen of them and two of us.”

  “Don’t say ‘like’ in a sentence unless you’re comparing one thing to another,” she said. “It’s a pet peeve of mine I developed from spending too much time with Carver.”

  He just looked at her and said, “Do you really want to be a word Nazi now?”

  She fired him a look, then slid the truck in gear, stepped on the gas and dumped the clutch. The beefy rear tires barked on the tough asphalt surface, the back end getting a little loose as Maria steered right for them.

  “What are you doing?!” he asked, gripping the door handle with one hand and pressing the other to the roof for support.

  The pack of cretins paused, but the guy with the shotgun—it looked like a double barrel stagecoach shotgun—fired off one barrel, which spit birdshot all over the glass in front of her, prompting her to duck sideways. The second shot hit closer to center, but by then Aaron was already down and sweating bullets.

  “Good GOD!” he shouted, glancing over at her. She was half grinning, her foot firmly on the gas.

  The twin barrels empty, the shooter shoved a hand in his pockets digging for more rounds. He quickly realized he didn’t have time. The rest of the crowd started to move, but no
t as fast as the shooter. He pushed sideways into them and screamed, “Make a hole!” But the crowd was either fixated on the crazy woman in the truck, too bold to move, or flat out stupid.

  Maria read the shooter’s lips, and at the last minute, instead of racing through the hole they created for her, she changed course.

  Cranking the wheel hard and to the left, she stomped on the brakes, sliding sideways into the crowd. Three bodies smacked the side of the truck and went flying. They were turned ninety degrees from where they started when they came to a dusty, permanent stop. Maria kicked open the door, got out and approached three horrified looking men.

  “You want to shoot at strangers?” she shouted in a voice that could have scraped against metal. Snapping out of the violence-induced trance he was in, Mr. Lanky in the cowboy hat dropped his empty shotgun and started toward her, hands now fists, ill intentions clear.

  When he was close enough, Maria faked a kick to his groin. He buckled slightly forward in anticipation of the kick that never came. Making contact was never the plan. She was only setting him up for the start of the real attack—a swift punch to the sternum, a shot to even their heights. She fired it in fast and hard. The bone beneath her fist broke, causing his knees to buckle and his body to fold forward. She slapped his hat off his head, looked at the swirl of a comb over and lots of shiny peach skin.

  She could have stopped there, but she didn’t.

  He was still too tall.

  Driving in a kick deep into the hinge of his knee, she completely decimated his left leg. He cried out and sunk down even farther. Now she was taller. With a vicious sweeping blow, she spiked the top of his forehead with the point of her elbow, causing the skin to split open like a giant red eye. His head became a literal faucet of red, the blood fountaining out, creating a red pond in the dirt. She shoved him aside and looked at the stunned men around them.

  “Hasta lasagna, Stretch,” she said.

  It all moved very quickly from that point on. One attacker swung at her with a length of chains while another was winding up the aluminum bat.

  The man with the chains swung first.