The Age of Embers (Book 4): The Age of Exodus

by Schow, Ryan

  We split the loot, but find nothing of use beyond that. We’re hoping for a car that works—a fifth vehicle for us, maybe something we can haul more stuff in—but all we find are a bunch of bicycles laying on their sides behind the wall of cars. It seems this (now deceased) group of pantywastes forced these cars into neutral and pushed this barrier together. When we’re able to push open a hole big enough to get through, we load up what little contraband we commandeered then drive through.

  “What weapons did you get?” Bianca asks.

  “A lawn mower blade with one end wrapped in duct tape for a handle, and a rifle with one round. We also got a crowbar, a rake handle and a full-sized shovel.”

  “How’s the blade?” Adeline asks.

  “Kind of sharp.”

  “Who has it?” she asks.

  “Draven.”

  The walkie-talkie then clicks over and we all hear the conversation going on in the Chevy Byzantine. It looks like maybe one of them sat on the transmit button, or perhaps it was mistakenly set to voice activation mode.

  “Why’d you keep the shovel?” Morgan was asking Draven.

  “You never know when you’re going to have to dig a campfire pit, a toilet or a grave. Best to be safe and take it with us.”

  “But we already have one,” she says.

  He scoffs quietly, but the mic picks it up. He sounds weary, exhausted. I can’t imagine. After the beating he took when he was out with Orlando, after the emotional onslaught of losing Eudora, he changed. He was no longer the friendly guy he’d been when they first met.

  “Is Eliana okay?” Brooklyn asks, staring out the back window, Bianca beside her doing the same.

  “She’ll be fine.”

  Eliana opted to ride on top of the bus as lookout. She’s got the rifle. The one with a single round. She says she’ll take whatever shot is necessary.

  “It’s not going to be this easy,” we hear Draven say over the two-way. I startle, but Adeline jumps. “The weak are going to die off. Only the strong will remain, and they’ll be haunted, ruined, weary and mean. We’re going to be cruel and violent and we’ll kill as easily as we eat, sleep, crap and walk.”

  “You’re scaring the boys,” Morgan says.

  “They should be scared,” Draven mutters. “What I’m saying is we have to pace ourselves, but we’ll have to be honest with ourselves, too.”

  Morgan starts to talk, but then the transmission goes dead. Like maybe they found that the two-way was active and they shut it off.

  Up ahead, there’s a mess of cars and a motorhome. Everything looks shot up, and one of the cars looks shelled, half of it roasted to a crisp.

  “I’m gonna check out the motorhome,” I say into the walkie-talkie.

  “Roger that,” Ice says. “Eliana’s got your back.”

  Pulling to a stop, I get out of the car and approach the pileup with caution. When I call out to see if anyone’s home, all I hear is a slight breeze rolling by and the faraway sounds of random gunfire.

  Overhead, a crow flies, and further off, a half dozen buzzards are circling something. I can only imagine how good the eating’s going to be for the next few months.

  “I’m coming in and I’m not armed,” I say out loud. It’s a lie, but whatever...the idea of morality through honesty has had its day.

  With my weapon ready but not in hand, I slowly open the door, standing just beside it in case someone decides it’s best to shoot first and ask questions later.

  I swing the door open, then let out a breath.

  “I’m unarmed and friendly,” I say, confident I’m alone, “just in case anyone’s here.”

  I listen for a second and there’s nothing, no noise at all. It feels dead inside, but it doesn’t smell like death. I lean out and make the thumb’s up sign to Ice. He hops out and joins me. As we’re rifling through everything, it’s quickly becoming clear there’s no food.

  We do, however, find a First Aid kit. Inside there are liquid Band-Aids, gauze, superglue and a small suture kit.

  “Bingo,” Ice says. “It’s a bit modified, even.”

  “I’ve got Ibuprofen, hydrogen peroxide and a half tube of antibiotic ointment,” I say, gathering a few things from a bin under the kitchen sink.

  The second we leave the RV, I see Draven scrambling over one of the cars, pistol in hand, a serious, focused look on his face. He starts talking and already I can tell this is a conversation that won’t be going well.

  “Stay back and show me your hands!” he roars. I get a look at a guy who’s standing a few feet from one of the cars. He’s got an empty jug in one hand and a shotgun in the other.

  “I just need some water, not some nut job pointing a gun at me,” the stranger says, cautious but pissed off by the predicament.

  Orlando rushes up behind Draven, slingshot in one hand, the pouch pulled back and pinched between his fingers in the other. He has the guy dead to rights. In a split second that slows down and feels an hour long, I sense everything going south fast.

  The guy lets go of the jug, drops down and swings the shotgun up toward Draven. Before he can fire off a round, however, Orlando releases the rock, which drills the guy in the forehead, splitting open the skin.

  Draven hustles down the car, grabs the shotgun out of the man’s hands and cracks him in the head with the butt of his former weapon.

  “Were you actually going to shoot us?!” Draven screams.

  “Ease up,” I say.

  He turns and fires me a look and this is not the Draven I know. Ahead of us, in the road, a dozen different dogs are headed our way.

  “There’s some bad energy pooling here,” Eliana says. “Like something awful is going to happen.”

  The dogs start barking. Up the road, someone’s pig comes trotting up to the dog. This hog must weigh five hundred pounds.

  “Well that’s not something you’ll ever see again in your life,” I say to no one in general. My eyes fall to the man on his knees before us. He’s got a red tear draining from a swollen hole in his forehead. “If you want to live, then grab your jug, turn around and start walking.”

  He does so, although it’s a labored effort with his head wound. When he leaves, he’s walking like a drunk down the middle of his road, his legs weak, his body gummy looking.

  We pile back into the cars and head for the barricade of animals. If I was smart, I would have shot the sow and fed us all for weeks, but who knows what’s going on with these creatures? They don’t look right. Not at all.

  I punch the gas and Adeline screams at me to not hit the animals.

  “They’re rabid,” I growl, not one hundred percent certain they are, but not taking any chances. Regardless, these creatures are not brave enough to face off with four motorists who just don’t care about their wellbeing.

  The pig scuttles off to the side of the road, and the dogs spread out from the middle like the parting of the red sea. Purple Moses coming through…

  Up ahead, we see the animals’ owners. There are four guys brandishing weapons—a bat, a baseball he’s bouncing in his hand, an axe and a pitchfork. Two of the guys have makeshift shields.

  “Dammit, can’t we just have a clear freaking path for once?!” I scream, the outburst making everyone jump.

  I slow down, let the rumble of the engine wash over them. The idiot with the baseball winds up and sends us a heater straight down the pipe. It hits the windshield and bounces off leaving a spider web crack where the rear view mirror should be.

  “Son of a—”

  I juice the gas, steer toward that little mud goblin first. The group spreads when I give no sign of slowing down. Adeline is telling me not to do what I’m about to do, but guess what…I’m doing it anyway. Best they get to know the real me early on so they can accept me later when it really counts.

  I swerve for the guy who threw the ball, the bumper catching him in the thigh. The thud is a satisfying sound, but seeing him thrown with force into the guardrail as we roar by gives me the most
pleasure.

  He had no idea what we went through trying to get that windshield.

  The body smacks the metal guardrail, bounding back out in the street in time for the bus to run over him. In the side view mirror, I see Eliana hunkered down. The jolt nearly dumps her off the roof. She just about loses the rifle, but saves it at the last minute before flattening out on the roof.

  Xavier and Draven swerve around the body, and that’s when I see the road ahead. For a good half mile, there’s nothing but freeway.

  “Splendid!” I announce.

  “What the hell was that?” Adeline shouts. Before I realize it, she’s hitting my arm. Like really hitting it.

  “Collateral damage,” I answer, swatting her hand away.

  “That was a person!” she screams.

  “Now it’s a statistic,” I quip. With a smile I turn to her and say, “Tough times in Chicago, baby doll.”

  I might have started laughing, but sometimes that happens just before you start crying and totally lose your mind.

  By the time we reach the 171 interchange, we’re using our cars to push other cars out of the way. Twice we have to get out, release the shift lock and put cars in neutral to move them. I even have to crawl over a dead body at one point. A few flies land in my hair, on my arms…one even flirts with the idea of crawling up my nostril until I blow snot on him and show him what it means to tussle with a Dimas.

  Sweating, pissed off and suckling on a small cut on his finger, Xavier says, “At this rate, it’s going to take us months to get to California.”

  “It might take that anyway,” Draven says.

  “Oh, Charles Manson finally speaks,” Ice says. Draven levels him with a stare that Ice waves off. “Nice to have you back to the land of the living.”

  “If we’re going to make it, we need to gather up food every night,” Draven says.

  “You think?” Xavier asks. My former boss isn’t Draven’s biggest fan, but he does respect his skillset.

  “We’ve got twenty mouths and four gas tanks to feed,” I say. “And two thousand miles between here and there.”

  “Of course we do,” Ice retorts.

  “We should have never left,” I say. I didn’t mean for it to come out, but dammit, maybe Adeline was right. Maybe she was right all along.

  “If we weren’t meant to leave, big brother,” Ice tells me, “you’d still have a house. And Draven would still have his grandmother.”

  Chapter Eleven

  We’re an hour away from sunset when Xavier radios in and says we should make camp. He’s right. I was hoping for another mile. And then another.

  And then maybe another more.

  By now we’re approaching Caton Farm Road. Ice radios in and says, “There are houses up here. Take this exit.”

  I take the exit, move around a three pack of smashed cars, then take a right on Caton Farm Road and the first right onto Old Oak Ln. Half the houses have been reduced to ash. Even the air smells smoky and dead. Up ahead, in the middle of the road, is a massive pile of corpses. Smoke is billowing off the bodies, and low slung flames burn between limbs, torsos and heads. Beside the pyre is a man with a shovel. He’s pushing the bodies around, trying to let in oxygen for a hotter burn.

  “Don’t look,” I say.

  Everyone’s looking.

  The man bends down, lays the shovel on the ground and picks up a rifle. I hit the brakes, lift up both hands. I know he sees me through the scope. He motions that I should back up. I answer with a thumb’s up, then slowly back up the car. Everyone behind us gets the picture and pretty soon we’re gracelessly turning around. Together we head to the housing community across Caton Farm, but there are stacks of burning bodies there, too.

  I grab the walkie-talkie, press the push-to-talk button and say, “Let’s get back on the 55 and see what we find up ahead.”

  “Roger that,” Ice says.

  Xavier and Draven chime in with the same response.

  As we approach the turn off from 55 to Interstate 80, we see a massive pileup all over the interstate, crossing all lanes of traffic both on 55 and I80. We pull to a stop. This is the biggest accident we’ve seen so far, and it’s nasty.

  I get out of the car. Ice and Xavier join me. Draven stays put, which is just as well. We walk the scene of the accident, see dead bodies, dried blood, a few blow flies here and there. The stink sits in the air like a beer fart—thick and unrelenting. We don’t see any downed drones, and judging by the decomposition of the bodies, this accident happened awhile ago. Early on for sure.

  By the time the EMP hit, most of the cars were either shot to hell or blown up by drones, or they were able to clear the road and get to safety. This might have been one of the first places the drones really got in a good strike.

  But speculation and a cold beer is still only worth the price of a cold beer, so we instead focus on what we can do about this.

  “I’ll get this car,” Ice says, looking at what he can move, “you guys grab your own.”

  We release the shift lock in the first sedan and Ice pushes it out of the way. Xavier and I do the same for two more cars. Most of the doors are open or the windows are broken, but there are some that require us to break the glass to gain entry. Draven is suddenly there, breaking into his own car, shifting it into neutral and pushing it out of the way.

  Together we have to work to dislodge a four pack of cars, and we’re sweating to all hell under the last embers of a blazing hot sun, but it’s working.

  “I’ll check up ahead,” Xavier says, wiping his brow. “Beyond that big rig. See what’s behind it or if that’s the cause of this all.”

  He is referring to a jackknifed rig blocking the two tight lanes of traffic and lodged in between two guardrails.

  Looking behind us, the scattering of cars is not concerning but frustrating. The bus will have to scrape and nudge past some of this twisted metal, but no one cares about their car’s cosmetics. Then again, the more vehicles we move out of the way to clear a path up front, the more we make a mess behind us.

  The continuing thought is this: Sacramento is so far away it might as well be another planet. And this crap? Playing valet in the apocalypse? We’re wasting daylight, human resources and patience. How many times will we have to do this? How long will that make our journey to California? It could be weeks. Months. Good God, talk about depressing!

  In one of the cars, I drag out a body that’s in bad shape. The car was smoked but not burnt to the metal. The driver, a woman, was half turned to ash. With the door pulled open and a small eddy of air entering the cabin, some of that ash whisks apart, becomes airborne. I pull away, knocking the back of my head on the car’s roof line, but not before getting the powdery cooked smell of her in my nose and mouth.

  I turn and cough.

  “This is not a big deal,” I tell myself. It is, but it isn’t. It can’t be.

  “What’s wrong?” Draven asks.

  “Just snorted up some of that lady,” I tell him, pointing to the body.

  Draven walks over, grabs the other side of the woman—the side that’s not burnt—and yanks her out. It’s a mess of ash and withered organs. I look away, hold my stomach down. Blood I can handle. Snorting the dead and seeing parts of their organs?

  Yeah, not so much.

  Forcing myself to look at this woman, to think about the dead and how they moved on, I can’t help but think of them as victors. They escaped this world. Then again, I also think about my wife and kids, and my once dead brother. Brushing myself off, I force myself to consider different thoughts. These different thoughts, however, lead me right to Rock. I wonder if he’s okay. If he’ll even be alive by the time we reach California.

  Adeline is right beside me; Eliana walks past to help as well.

  “Are you okay?” she asks.

  “Yeah, fine. I inhaled some of her,” I say. Shaking my head, I say, “I’m really glad you didn’t leave me.”

  She shakes her head, smiles, then leans forward
and kisses me. It’s a quick peck on the lips, but it’s chock full of meaning.

  “Did you taste her?” I ask. “Because I think she got in my mouth, too.”

  “And you let me kiss you anyway?” she asks.

  “It’s kind of like an apocalyptic-threesome, if you think about it,” I say with a grin.

  Laughing dismissively, almost like she can’t believe I’d go from distraught to juvenile, she shakes her head and says, “And here I thought all this would make you grow up.”

  “This is gallows humor, babe. Not immaturity.”

  “Are you sure?” she asks.

  “Better watch out,” I tell her.

  She steps out of the way as Draven begins pushing the car backwards. Turning the wheel, he navigates the Kia Optima off to the side of the road, but not before the front wheel rolls over the dead woman’s arm. The good one, not the one burnt to the bone.

  Adeline turns, her stomach lurching.

  “You ready for that threesome?” I say, totally juvenile.

  She’s hit with a single, convulsive dry heave that never really becomes a full-blown five-alarm pavement splasher. This apparently gives her the strength and focus to wave me off and mumble something divisive. Laughing out loud, I suppose I should hold her hair back or something, just in case she pukes for real.

  When we clear the path enough to get to the big rig, we’re faced with the first real problem. It seems all our efforts to get through here tonight have been for nothing.

  “This sucker is lodged in here tight,” Xavier says, frustrated and tired. The front bumper is smashed into one side of the guard rail, and the back bumper is smashed into the other.

  Four heads are better than one, I think. And five are better than four. Ice, Draven, Xavier, Eliana and I just stare at this behemoth.

  “We’re screwed,” Ice says.

  “Feels like it.”

  Adeline slips her hand into mine and looks up at me.

  “Feeling better?” I ask.

  “I am.”

  “We’re trying to find a way past this,” I say. “Got any ideas?”

  Right now the sun is going down, but at least a warm breeze has scrubbed away some of the stench. I wonder if that’s why everyone we come upon seems to be burning stacks of bodies. To purify the air.