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

by Schow, Ryan

  Along the way, they lost cattle, broke wagon wheels and snapped axles. The tensions ran high, as they would with anyone on such a grueling journey. Eventually, they took to each other, giving in to hostility and division rather than cooperation. The decision to change routes had been their undoing.

  People started dying.

  Eighty-seven people began the trip from the Midwest to California, but only forty-eight actually survived. No one wanted to think about it, but they’d lived off the bodies of their friends and family in an attempt to outlast the winter, to reach the thaw, to complete their monumentally brutal trek.

  We have over fifteen hundred miles to go. Already we’re hungry, thirsty, battling with disease, bad luck and a pack of goat humpers who stole our mother freaking cars. If we don’t make it to California soon enough—if we get caught in the upcoming winter, or worse—what’s to say we won’t suffer our own cannibalistic difficulties? Would any of us turn on the other? Would I eat someone I liked, or loved, to survive?

  Looking away from the old woman on the couch, I decide I’d starve to death and die long before I made a meal of someone I knew.

  Finally I hear Ice prying at something in the kitchen. When I join him, I see he’s got a rug pulled back and a trapdoor-sized section of the floor opened.

  “Whoever did this, they didn’t realize there’s a small root cellar down here.”

  My brother is on his hands and knees, feeling around in the dirt beneath the floor. He pulls out a gunnysack of something I suspect are potatoes, and hoists them onto the floor with a thud. I open the sack and smile. Potatoes, all fist-sized, most in good shape. There are roots protruding from them, and some black eyes, but nothing we can’t clean up. After that, Ice starts handing me little metal cans of Spam that I stack up on the floor next to the potatoes.

  We get six total.

  He pulls his bearded face up and says, “On any regular day, I’d eat my own ass before calling Spam a meal. But that was before. I guarantee you tonight, this smeary paste is going to taste like steak.”

  “Better than eating old ladies,” I grumble. He frowns. “Sorry man, this is kind of hitting me hard. The lady on the couch.”

  “You want to know why they cut her head off,” he says. A statement, not a question. I nod. “Some people…you can’t understand them. There are just things wrong with them, things sane people will never be able to rationalize.”

  “If they hadn’t found our food,” I ask, “if the guys who took our cars would have found us empty handed like we are now, do you think we would have been their intended meal?”

  Standing up, shutting the trapdoor and covering it back up with the rug, he says, “You can’t let your mind go there. You need to hack that curiosity off at the knees.”

  “If we see them,” I say, sliding the Spam in the gunnysack with the potatoes, “we need to kill them.”

  Ice grins and says, “You’re getting more and more like me every day.”

  “It’s a practical decision, not an emotional one.”

  “Same here, brother.”

  “You didn’t have to kill those people in Mexico,” I tell him. “It wasn’t survival.”

  “Some people just need to die, Fire.”

  “But you liked it…”

  “No,” he says, “they deserved it. As far as I was concerned, I was doing humanity a favor.”

  “Same here,” I say.

  “See?” he says, brushing past me. “You and I are the same.”

  Food in hand, we make our way back to the others. We reach base camp by nightfall. No one seems happy to see us.

  Okay…

  Then again, the energy is low, emotions are high and they have very little in the way of the necessities.

  “The kids are getting worse,” Adeline says as she pulls me into a half-hearted hug I know is weak from lack of strength rather than an absence of love. “I was worried about you.”

  I produce the food and Morgan goes to work preparing it. While we were gone, they found pots and pans and some water, but not much food. To my delight, they also found a stack of paper plates and some napkins. The only thing worse than eating Spam is watching others eat it with their fingers.

  “We had some food, but it wasn’t much,” Xavier says. “We didn’t know if you were going to be back here tonight, otherwise we would have rationed it better.”

  I pat his shoulder and ask how he’s doing. Face to face, he looks too skinny. Like a crack addict. I probably don’t look much better. I smile and my lips feel thin, my teeth too big.

  “Tough times, Fire,” he says, unable to hold my eyes. “Tough times.”

  We devour the potatoes and Spam. It tastes like a five course meal packed into two paltry meals, but sadly, my stomach still feels hollow, the few bites of food and a half cup of water doing almost nothing to sate my hunger.

  I check on the sick kids and they’re sleeping, but they’re sweating, and Kamal is writhing, quietly moaning to himself, almost like he has a fever. I almost check his forehead, but then I pull back. There’s a small pustule just above his eyebrow. Slowly, I move away from the children, breathing shallow, thinking I was stupid to come over here.

  By now, they’ve been quarantined far away from everyone else, at the edge of camp.

  “Do you think that if they’re breathing and the wind catches their breath and it gets in us, do you think we’ll catch what they have?” Brooklyn asks me.

  For the second time this week, I wonder if we should kill them. Because if Brooklyn’s right and we let this continue, this disease could get us all.

  “I don’t think so,” I say.

  “But you don’t know, either,” she says, peering up at me. We’re sitting around a fire, the two of us and a few others. No one cares about this conversation.

  They all seem barely awake.

  I slowly shake my head and say, “I’m sorry, honey. I’m as in the dark about this as you are.”

  “I think I should move further away from them,” she tells me. “We all should.”

  “Okay,” I tell her. “You’re right.”

  The next day the kids are worse, if that’s possible. If anything, this deepens mine and Ice’s resolve to find our cars, and by proxy, the kids’ medication.

  Chapter Eighteen

  DAY 22…

  We find enough food and water to hold us over, but the children are now being eaten alive by this disease. Constanza is breathing shallow and fast. We can’t keep up with all the boils on her skin. Any hour now, I think she’s going to pass. Then again, I felt the same way three days ago. And three days before that. How her little body has hung on this long is a miracle to us, but a curse to her. She’s in an incredible amount of pain.

  “Shouldn’t this thing kill you sooner?” I ask Eliana when we’re out of earshot of the kids.

  She’s from Guatemala and most assuredly has more experience with infectious diseases than me. At least that’s my assumption based on the way she talks about them.

  “It should have, yes. But diseases mutate,” she explains. “The particular disease might have lost its potency over the years, especially if she continued to successfully treat it.”

  “And now?”

  “Now her body is fighting it,” she answers.

  For hours at a time, I quietly wonder about the Donner party, what they must have felt when desperation took hold of them on a neurological level. I try to equate it to us, wondering if we’ll ever get to the point they got to, but then I think about us as a group and right now I know we’re not so desolate. Desperation is starting to nag at me though, to dig into my brain here and there, telling me we won’t make it, that people are going to die…maybe even me.

  Looking around, my gaze falling upon everyone, knowing none of them are thinking the same wretched thoughts I’m thinking, I try to put my head back on straight.

  The good news is that in addition to some food, Ice and I found the barn, which would make for a much better shelter than
this. The barn isn’t comfortable, but it keeps us from enduring the nighttime elements. And most important, it puts up walls between us and the sick kids.

  We get them situated by the fire. No one enjoyed separating themselves from the kids. It feels like we’re leaving them out in the cold while everyone else is relaxing inside. I hate that feeling. We’d taken a vote though. The margin was slim, but the vote for separation won out. The argument was that if we didn’t protect ourselves first, we wouldn’t be able to care for them. It’s already been hard enough to care for ourselves. We’ve practically given up finding food. Instead, we’ve tapped a nearby stream for water hoping to keep going and gather up our wits after a day’s rest.

  It’s hell carting the water up to the barn, but we’ve been boiling and drinking it to stay alive. Unfortunately, it’s done little to sustain us. We’re all slimming down, getting tired easier, losing our tempers much faster. I don’t even recognize my arms anymore, or my hands. They’re so skinny, the veins like little blue trails meandering under skin that’s crepey-looking and clearly dehydrated.

  Then, nearly two weeks after our cars were taken, everything changes. Whether it’s for the worse or better, it’s hard to say.

  Any change from the norm, however, is good.

  Eliana left that morning on her own, pissed off and staggering out into the fields. She takes these walks, sometimes. They help her blow off steam. When she first left, I didn’t know it. None of us did. When I realized she was gone, I was too weary to care. Caring is something you put on hold while you’re dying. Then she returned later that afternoon with a big smile on her face.

  Whatever news she brought us, I perk up immediately.

  “I found them,” she tells me and Ice, the grin still holding fast to her dirty, thinning face.

  I draw a deep breath, feel a chill settling over me. I look over at Ice and he’s looking at me. Turning back to Eliana, I ask, “Are you sure?”

  She nods, drained yet delighted. It’s a strange emotion to see on her. I think maybe because she’s so damn dirty, her body so run down. Her hair is matted and her body is too thin for a woman, yet not masculine enough for a man. She can’t feel good. I barely even feel good looking at her. And now, if I look at her long enough, I still can’t see beyond this mess enough to remember the beautiful woman trapped under all that.

  It’s like that for all of us. How we’re all losing so much weight. How each of us is wearing down, hanging on for dear life in the hope that we’ll get that miracle we’ve all stopped counting on.

  But maybe Eliana is an angel. And maybe her finding the scoundrels who stole our vehicles is the miracle.

  “How many of them are there?” I ask.

  “Too many for me to go hand-to-hand with,” she says, flopping down on the ground and stretching out. “Honestly, I barely even made it back here.”

  “Can we get there before dusk?” I ask.

  She shakes her head.

  “Can you get us there in the darkness?” Ice asks.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Then we’ll go first thing in the morning,” I tell her and Ice.

  The next morning, the first fight that breaks out is between Eliana and Ice. He says she isn’t coming, that she’s a liability being tired, and her reply is simple, forceful and pure Eliana: “The first ass that’s going to get kicked is yours if you stand in the way of me going.”

  The squabble continues, others intervene and an outburst finally occurs. Harsh words and cursing echoes slightly in the still air of the barn, but in the end, Eliana relents.

  I had my money on her, but I won’t tell my brother that.

  “Whenever you’re done with this embarrassing lover’s quarrel,” I finally say, tapping my bare wrist where a watch should be, “we’re wasting precious time.”

  Eliana gives me a venomous glare, but I say, “Even I know you’re run down, El. Best put the brakes on and let us do this.”

  “You’re just as run down as the rest of us,” she hisses.

  “Yeah, but we’re not that emotional about it. And you? You can’t wait to get a hold of them. That’s what makes you dangerous, but that’s also what makes you dangerous to us.”

  Ice glances at me, then at her.

  “He’s right,” Ice says. She turns away from my brother, still fuming and unable to look at either of us. Ice gets closer to her, puts a gentle hand on her shoulder. “I’d kiss you, but you need a bath and I don’t want to get something.”

  “I’ll pretend you already did and that I liked it,” she grumbles, pushing him away.

  “If we find any deodorant,” Ice says, “you get first dibs.”

  She folds her arms, squeezes them closed. “Dick,” she says with a sly grin and a sideways glance.

  “Vajeen,” he jokes back, making her laugh.

  “Be careful,” she tells him. Looking at me, she says, “You too, butthole.”

  Grinning, I blow her a kiss, she flips me off, then I track down Adeline. She’s talking to Veronica, who says she’s not feeling well, which is concerning. The upside is she’s probably dehydrated, so it’s not a sickness as much as it’s that we’re doing the stupidly impossible and paying the price for it.

  At least that’s my hope.

  “Any of your joints hurt?” I ask the girl.

  She shakes her head, no.

  “What about your armpits?” I ask.

  “No,” she replies.

  I know Adeline’s going to ask if we are prepared for this which means I need a plan. Knowing what we could be walking in to and how much of the day we’ve already lost, we don’t just need a plan, we need a good plan. No, a great plan.

  I take Adeline by the back of the arm, gently, wait for her full attention.

  “Are you heading out now?” she asks, concerned.

  “We are.”

  “But you have no weapons,” Veronica says.

  Her skin is a bit pink, a thin sheen of sweat mapping her brow. Orlando is standing by her, worried but looking like he thinks he should keep his distance in case she’s getting what the others have. The truth is, I’m worried, too.

  “We’ll find something on the way there,” I tell her.

  “Like a rock or something?” she asks.

  I wish I had Orlando’s slingshot. A gun would be nice, or the axe, but the slingshot…that would be ideal. Quiet, good for distance, great for disabling an opponent without killing them. Maybe we’ll find it in the bus when we get it back.

  “Be careful,” Adeline says, hugging me, and then kissing me.

  Pulling back, looking at her, seeing pronounced cheekbones, sunken eyes and brittle hair, I can’t believe we’re at this point in our lives. When we got married and said our vows, I never thought “for better or worse” would be us surviving an extinction-level event. Or having to run down an alleged pack of inbreeders who stole all our stuff and left us for dead.

  “I will,” I tell her, cupping her cheek. She presses her head into my hand. “I love you, Adeline. You and the kids.”

  “Me too, Fire,” she whispers. “Come back to us.”

  I’ll be the first to admit, Ice and I are totally unprepared for this. Then again, it is what it is. Being an undercover agent, I was sent into my first assignment—a life-threatening situation—and told to improvise. The situation wasn’t ideal, but in the end, I figured things out. Back then Xavier said, “You’ll always figure them out. Sometimes by the skin of your teeth, and sometimes with serious complication.”

  “That’s reassuring,” I told him.

  He said, “If you don’t get killed, and you get better at your job, then pretty soon you’ll have yourself a steel coated spine and some big boy balls, something every good agent develops by not being a wuss.”

  In spite of his sarcasm, he was right.

  But now this…

  I tell myself I’m prepared. That Ice is competent. That in the end, we’re going to win, get our vehicles and return to our loved ones untouch
ed. I repeat this mantra in my head all the way there.

  My brother and I follow the directions we were made to memorize, arriving sometime later at a grassy hillside overlooking a large homestead. The radiant sun is high in the sky, the afternoon heat warming our already weakened bodies. It’s hot, but not as hot as Chicago. I’ve been wondering if the unusual weather has anything to do with the nuke’s proximity to earth when it detonated. It felt like it was directly over Chicago. We’ve been talking about that, making educated guesses, and sometimes uneducated leaps, and this is the conclusion that we agree makes most sense. I guess we’ll never really know.

  The homestead Eliana sent us to is an old farmhouse and what looks like a six-bay garage with two of the three garage doors opened wide. The garage is taller than the house, one set of doors almost large enough to service a big rig, if necessary.

  Around the side of the garage, there’s an array of old farm equipment scattered about, much of it looking rusted and out of commission. My gaze falls on a big tractor with weeds growing up to the tops of its tires. Outside the garage I see our bus. It looks different. Very different.

  “What the hell?” Ice mumbles.

  “They’re fortifying the vehicles,” I tell him. “I think they’re highway robbers. Or they’re trying to be anyway.”

  The bus has thick steel bars welded over the side windows, an archaic looking brush guard, and metal slats over the wheels to protect them from being shot out. There are four more bars crossing the windshield, which will protect the glass should the bus strike an animal or humans, or whatever else it wanted to drive through or over.

  Deeper inside the garage, one of these turd burglars is turning a wrench on the front of the Plymouth. Not my Plymouth, Nyanath’s. It looks like he’s attaching a new metal grill, one that looks way too strong for the car. A moment later, a familiar sounding engine roars to life and someone drives the Barracuda out of the deeper shadows in the shop. My heart sinks. I barely recognize it as it parks next to the bus. The driver gets out and appraises the work.