From the Ashes

by Chris Kennedy

  A heavy-set woman with thick, red curls barreled toward them.

  “Hi, Mom.” Sally grimaced.

  The elder Tanner threw her daughter into an embrace, then snatched hold of the girl’s ear and pulled her forward. Once the verbal lashing had concluded, she squared herself before Ethan. “Thank you for bringin’ my daughter home, Mister. She’s the only kin I got left. I’m in your debt.”

  “I appreciate that, ma’am, but you’re really not,” Ethan said. “Fact is, I was in the right place at the right time to help two kids out of a pickle. A lot of folks would’ve done the same.”

  Ms. Tanner feigned a smile. “I wish that were true, sir. I really do.” The woman traded parting glances with the others then ambled off with her daughter.

  “I’d echo Ms. Tanner’s sentiment if I could,” a new voice said.

  New York? A tad surprised by the accent, Ethan turned and saw a squatty man in his early-fifties walking toward them. He was short—not as short as Ethan, but short enough—and visibly balding, and he wore cargo pants with a Corona Beer sweatshirt.

  Man, I could sure as hell go for one of those right about now.

  For once, Ethan was in total agreement.

  “My name’s Kendall Russo.” He extended a calloused hand, then glanced at the blonde. “This peach of a southern belle is my wife, Ella May.”

  “Ma’am.” Ethan nodded.

  “Ella May,” Kendall said. “How about you head on back to the house and scrounge up some breakfast for our guest? You do like breakfast, don’t you, Mr. Garrett?”

  “It’s Ethan. And I really couldn’t—”

  “Nope,” Kendall said. “You did my family a service. Where I come from, that, at the very least, entitles a man to a decent meal.” He frowned at Ethan’s rag-like attire. “And maybe some clothes.”

  Ethan was just about to mount another protest when the savory scents of seasoned fish and vegetables, cooking over an open flame, filled his nostrils.

  “Come on.” Kendall slapped his back. “I’ll give you the dime tour while Ella May preps breakfast. After that, you can stay a while or go. Your choice.”

  Ethan followed his host past a rusted-out pickup, into the beachside community. The place was nice, in a beachy, post-apocalyptic sort of way. Defined by its long rows of abandoned hotels, condo buildings, and store fronts, the area comprised much of the old Thomas Drive Strip from back in the area’s heyday. Ethan remembered it well.

  Now that was a good time. A deluge of spring break memories, flush with bikini-clad girls, underage booze, and hot, neon nights in sugar-white sand played through Ethan’s mind like an old Beach Boys record. It took the trashed Club La Villa sign ahead to bring him tumbling back to reality. Damn.

  Ethan rounded a corner off the main drag behind his host, then strolled past a patch of old townhouses, where a dozen or so others stood huddled around a fire, munching on biscuits and drinking from the kind of mugs that’d littered Ethan’s kitchen in another life. Is that coffee?

  The group turned upon seeing Kendall Russo approaching, then showered the man with a bounty of “Good morning, sir” greetings.

  Friendly place, the passenger noted.

  Ethan had noticed that, too.

  “This way,” Kendall said.

  Ethan trailed his host another block, past the townhouses, then onto the driveway of a two-story beach cottage on stilts. The place was in surprisingly decent shape, all things considered, with faded blue siding, clean-cut shrubs, and white shutters which were almost devoid of chipping. There was a large deck out front, and it was there that Ethan spotted Ella May Russo, working behind a sizzling grill.

  “It’s about time,” she called down. “I was startin’ to wonder if you’d stopped off by the Blue Pelican to nab our new friend a lap dance.”

  “The Blue Pelican died out years ago, Love,” Kendall said with a sly smile. “Nowadays, if anybody round here wants a lap dance, they go to your sister’s.”

  Ella May shot her husband the bird.

  “Man, I love that woman.” Kendall laughed.

  With his sense of smell now thoroughly immersed in the scents of fresh-cooked food, Ethan ascended the deck steps behind his host in time to see Ella May pull a mess of fish and a cast-iron pan of cornbread from her grill.

  Wow.

  Kendall pointed at Ethan’s duffel. “Can I take your bag?”

  “No, thanks,” Ethan said. “I’ll hang onto it.”

  Kendall shrugged and reached past his wife for a piece of fish.

  “Eh!” She swatted his hand. “Manners.”

  Kendell shot his wife a wounded look.

  “Here you go, Ethan.” Ella May offered him a plate. “I hope it’s to your likin’.”

  Ethan sat down in a rocker, his mouth watering. “Ma’am, I’ve lived off nothin’ but canned beans and pork rinds for the last two weeks. I can assure you, my likin’ is ecstatic right now.”

  Ella May smiled and handed her husband a plate. Afterward, she took some food for herself and vanished into the house.

  “This is a real nice spread you got here, Kendall,” Ethan said through a mouthful of cornbread.

  “Thanks.” Kendall took a seat in the rocker, opposite his guest. “It isn’t much, but I figure it’s better than what a lot of folks got nowadays.”

  “How’d you come by it?” Ethan asked.

  Kendall bit into his fish. “Everything you see, from here back to the old Hathaway Bridge, is controlled by one man. Folks call him the Baron.”

  “The Baron.” Ethan frowned. “You mean a warlord.”

  “That’s one way to put it,” Kendall said. “Most prefer to think of him as a man who understands the benefits of a mutual arrangement. See, unlike many warlords in these parts, the Baron doesn’t abuse those who live in his domain. He doesn’t beat them, doesn’t take their women. He doesn’t even take their property without asking first. What he does do is show them honor and respect in exchange for two things.”

  Ethan ate his food while the New Yorker continued.

  “One.” Kendall raised a finger. “Everyone in this community finds some way to pay tribute. Whether it’s fishing, gardening, or even being a seamstress, you gotta bring something to the table to live here. Two, when and if some outlander tries to take what the Baron has, everyone here fights—and if need be, dies—to eliminate that threat.”

  Ethan tilted his head. “Back in the old world, they had a name for men like your Baron. They called him a Mob Boss.”

  “That may be,” Kendall said. “But this ain’t the old world, my friend, and a man’s gotta do what’s right by his family. Serving the Baron gives people that.”

  His issues with warlords notwithstanding, Ethan couldn’t argue with his host’s logic. “So, how does Kendall Russo earn for the Baron?”

  “You’re eating it.” Kendall pointed to the fish. “In case you haven’t noticed by my accent, I ain’t exactly from around here.”

  “You don’t say,” Ethan remarked.

  “I grew up a fourth-generation fisherman from Long Island,” Kendall said. “My entire childhood was spent workin’ the sea, and a good chunk of my adulthood, too. The thing is, I hate fishing. Don’t get me wrong, the act, itself, is fun. So is the eating part. It’s everything in between that I got sick of. So, when my old man passed and my mom moved back to Maryland, I decided to move south and open a restaurant.”

  “Let somebody else chop off the heads and scoop out the guts, while you make the recipes,” Ethan said.

  “Bingo.” Kendall paused as Ella May emerged from the house with a fresh pot of coffee. “That’s where I met this one. Yep, I’ll tell ya right now. It was love at first sight.”

  “Bah!” Ella May guffawed. “Don’t let this fat old Yankee fool ya. He courted me for the better part of a year before I finally caved in and said yes to a date.”

  “And we’ve been the spittin’ image of happiness ever since.” Kendall beamed.

  Ella May rol
led her eyes, then smiled and kissed her husband’s scalp. After that, she handed mugs to each man and filled them with coffee.

  Ethan could hardly contain himself.

  “Don’t get too excited,” Kendall said. “That, right there, is fifteen year old instant. We found it on a supply run, a while back, in Marianna. Still, we only break it out for special occasions.”

  “And what’s the occasion today?” Ethan asked.

  “My idiot son and his girl getting rescued by a stranger from a band of marauders in the dead of night.”

  Ethan glanced past his cornbread at his host.

  “I’m the father of a teenager, Ethan,” Kendall said. “I know when I’m being lied to. So, how many were there?”

  Ethan washed down a bite with some coffee. “Three. One old man and two younger ones. They said they represented someone named Evans.”

  Kendall muttered a curse. “That’s Bill Evans. He’s a rival warlord. Let me guess. The old man you saw was scruffy with a scraggly beard, while the other two wore flannel and overalls?”

  “That’d be them,” Ethan said.

  Kendall rubbed his chin. “Ah, it’s no bother. The Baron will make restitution, and that’ll be that. My kid, meanwhile, can expect to have part of said restitution taken out of his ass.”

  Ethan laughed and nibbled more of his fish.

  “So, you said you’re passing through,” Kendall said. “Where from?”

  “Just outside New Orleans,” Ethan said.

  “New Orleans, huh.” Kendall whistled. “Word has it that’s pretty rough territory these days.”

  “It has its moments,” Ethan said. “Some zones are safer than others, but I expect that’s the case with most major cities anymore.”

  “What brings you down here?” Kendall asked.

  “I’m headin’ to Tallahassee,” Ethan said.

  The New Yorker furrowed his eyebrows. “You can’t be serious.”

  “Yep,” Ethan said. “There’s somebody there I’ve gotta find.”

  Kendall huffed. “That must be one helluva somebody.”

  Kendall looked up.

  “The entire Tallahassee domain rests squarely under the control of the Five Kings,” Kendall said. “Nobody, and I mean nobody, crosses them without an invitation or something to offer.”

  Ethan shook his head. “I appreciate the concern, but I’ve dealt with my fair share of warlords. I’ll be fine.”

  “With all due respect,” Kendall said with a huff, “you don’t know the Kings like we do. For starters, they’re not warlords. They’re barbarians.”

  The passenger stirred in Ethan’s mind.

  “You gotta understand,” Kendall said. “Most of the major cities in the Deep South—Jacksonville, Birmingham, Atlanta—were fried by the nukes during the Corporate War. Granted, some folks have begun returning to those areas now that the RAD levels have dropped, but their infrastructure is forever shot. By contrast, Tallahassee was just small enough that it wasn’t targeted. It was also far enough from the blast zones that it wasn’t affected by the fallout. That made it and everything in it prime real estate for anybody with the balls to stake a claim.”

  “And the Five Kings were those people,” Ethan said.

  “Damn right they were,” Kendall said. “The Kings knew other warlords would come for what they had. At the same time, they were smart enough to recognize that they’d never be able to hold onto Tallahassee as long as they were busy warring with each other. So, they banded together under a simple defense pact and slit the throats of anybody who dared challenge their authority.” The New Yorker paused and faced his guest. “Do not cross the Five Kings, Ethan. You gotta find somebody in their territory? Fine. Get in, conduct your business, then get out. If for some reason you should cross paths with one of the Kings’ representatives, do exactly as they say and don’t ask questions. Otherwise, it’s likely they’ll make an example of you.”

  Ethan glanced up. “What kind of example?”

  “Put it this way…” Kendall frowned. “You’d have been better off in Pensacola.”

  The crackling of the grill and the crashing of the nearby surf were all that was heard for a long moment.

  “Ahem.” Ella May re-emerged from the house carrying a cardboard box. “I ain’t rightly sure any of this stuff will fit, but it’s the best we’ve got.”

  “Thanks, Love.” Kendall took the box from his wife and laid it on the table beside the rockers. From it, he pulled a rugged set of jeans, a black Harley Davidson t-shirt, and a woodland camouflage overshirt with the sleeves already rolled to the elbows. Lastly, he pulled out a pair of steel-toed work boots with the tags still on them. “The boots might fit a tad sloppy, but that’s nothing an extra pair of socks won’t fix.”

  Ethan discarded his shredded right sneaker and slipped on a boot. “Fits perfect.”

  “Great.” Kendall returned to the box for a bundle of ballcaps. “Now, as everyone knows, no uniform is complete without a cover. So, what’ll it be? I got Florida State, Mossy Oak, the Braves…”

  A flash of red and blue on a stylized T caught Ethan’s attention. “That one.”

  Kendall pulled the cap from the stack and handed it over. “Texas Rangers fan, eh? Seein’ as how you said you’re from Galveston, I’d have pegged you as an Astro all the way.”

  “My daddy was from McKinney, just outside of Dallas. We used to hit Arlington at least once a season to catch Rangers games when I was a kid. Neal Ryan was always my favorite player.” Ethan laughed. “I’ll tell you right now, man. That cat had a slider not even Ruth could touch were he still around. Seriously. The Rangers won the Series on that arm.”

  “Oh, I remember. The pricks beat my Yankees to take it in six.” Kendall arched an eyebrow. “You’re what? Twenty-seven? Twenty-eight years old?”

  “Thereabouts,” Ethan said.

  Kendall tilted his head. “Texas won the World Series in 2032. That’s a little before your time, isn’t it?”

  Ethan cleared his throat and returned to his coffee. “What can I say? Baseball was king in our house. As history goes, I had a first-class education.”

  “Uh, huh.” Kendall opened his mouth as if wanting to push the discussion. He didn’t. “Alright then. Whenever you’re done, Ella May will show you inside to wash up.”

  Ethan’s eyes widened. “You got hot water?”

  “Don’t I wish.” Kendall smirked. “Every day, a bunch of the guys bring water back from a spring about a mile inland so folks can boil new drinking water and bathe in something other than the Gulf. I’ll warn you now, it smells a little sulfury sometimes, but it’s clean.”

  Ethan wouldn’t have argued, even if he’d wanted to. He scooped up his duffel and started for the house. “I’m grateful, Kendall. Really.”

  “It’s no bother.” Kendall slapped his guest’s back. “Now go. Get yourself cleaned up. I’ll see you back out here when you’re done.”

  Ethan hadn’t realized just how badly he needed a bath until he’d stripped off his clothes and climbed into the Russo’s bathtub. The water was incredible, to say nothing of the soap and shampoo he’d been given before entering. Once he’d finished, Ethan toweled off and pulled on his new clothes, then headed outside to rejoin his hosts on the deck.

  “Kendall’s around back,” Ella May said from her rocker. “He’ll meet you there.”

  Ethan nodded, then sculpted the bill of his new Rangers cap on his way down the steps. When he rounded the corner of the house, he found Kendall and Bradley waiting alongside a good-looking pinto horse with white and tan markings.

  “What’s this?” Ethan asked.

  “This is Tonka,” Kendall said. “He’s the best damn trail horse on the Emerald Coast. He’ll get you safely to Tallahassee.”

  Ethan donned his cap. “I appreciate the offer, Kendall, but I don’t anticipate comin’ back this way when I’m done. I won’t be able to bring him back.”

  “I didn’t expect you would,’ Kendall said.
“I’m giving him to you.”

  Ethan did a double-take.

  “Bradley told me the truth about what happened in the woods,” Kendall said. “Most folks would’ve stayed out of it, but you didn’t. You stepped in and put your life on the line to save two kids.”

  “I’d say the meal and clothes were thanks enough,” Ethan said.

  “Yeah, well, I wouldn’t.” Kendall handed over Tonka’s reins. “The world needs more people like you, Ethan Garrett. Believe me, I know this better than most.”

  Ethan looked the horse over before turning his attention back to his host. “I don’t know what to say.”

  “You can say you’ll rethink that notion of coming back when you’re done in Tallahassee,” Kendall said plainly.

  Ethan stared at the ground. “Thank you, Kendall. For everything.”

  “The pleasure was all mine.” Kendall extended a hand. “Safe travels, Ethan.”

  A dark-skinned man with dreadlocks and python-like arms emerged from the brush carrying a six-point buck on his shoulders.

  “Good day, sir,” the man said to Kendall. “As promised, I’ve come with my balance for the month. Where shall I put it?”

  “Take it to Ella May,” Kendall said. “She’ll handle things from there.”

  The man bowed his head, then took his leave for the deck.

  “A fourth-generation fisherman from Long Island, huh?” Ethan raised an eyebrow.

  “Yeah.” Kendall grinned. “Among other things.”

  All things considered, the ride from Panama City to Tallahassee wasn’t bad. As the crow flies, the distance between the two was only a hundred miles or so. Still, the trip took most of the day as several bridges were out, and he came across the occasional band of roving marauders.

  Marauders. Ethan hated them. He’d heard tell of some who simply took what they needed, then left their victims in peace. He’d never seen those. In Ethan’s experience, most marauders were thugs like the Evans gang, or worse, cutthroat killers like those who’d jumped him coming into this godforsaken world six months ago.

  Three on one. Such odds were becoming a theme, not that being outnumbered and alone was anything new to Ethan. He’d learned long before New Orleans how to survive in a world without law and order. He’d learned to deal with the monsters who lived there, too.