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

by Schow, Ryan

  “We’re two people with four cars,” he answers me. “Do the math.”

  “So we make two trips,” I say, distracted, not thinking.

  “How hard did you get hit in the head?” he asks, poking the giant knot on my forehead.

  Wincing, coming back to life, I swat his hand away and say, “Really hard.”

  “Let’s deal with them now,” he says, offering me a hand. “Because if we don’t do this now, we might as well just take two cars and not come back.”

  “No man, you’re right. Let’s get this over with.”

  I take his hand and he pulls me up. Somehow I manage to get to my feet, and by some greater miracle, I manage to stay standing.

  It’s got to be worse for Ice. I took out two guys, he took out three. It almost bothers me that he’s the one doing the heavy lifting.

  “Gonna need help with the big boy,” he says. The sharp end of the two-by-four is broken off in his kidney, but he’s laying face down in the dirt, his head a mess of red. I spot the big rock lying in the dirt beside him and don’t look away.

  “You brain him?”

  “Yeah, but it took forever,” he says, fatigued.

  “That’s a big ass pumpkin head.”

  Ever since I saw the tarped body and the frozen child, my stomach has been threatening to empty out. Looking at this wildebeest, seeing a gathering of splinters sticking out of his back, I swallow hard and often, then finally look away.

  “His skull is about a mile thick, too,” Ice says, giving the brained man’s head a solid kick with the toe of his shoe. Then, leaning down beside him, Ice feels for a pulse. Looking up, he laughs and says, “The sack of crap is still alive.”

  Unbelievable.

  Running a hand over my beard, scratching behind my ear, I feel my expression change, almost go to frenzy. I don’t want to do this. Just keep killing people. But we have to do something with them. With all of them.

  “Go find something that will do the trick with this guy,” he says.

  “Why don’t we just run his head over with the bus?”

  “What if his skull cracks and a shard punches up through the tire? Did you see any new rubber in there when you were inside?”

  “I wasn’t inventorying things while you were out here,” I say.

  “What the hell were you doing?”

  “I met Bob.”

  “Just go find us something,” he says, looking down at the mutant beast.

  “Why don’t we just shoot him?” I ask.

  “Ain’t wasting bullets on these donkey knobs, not when we have the upper hand.”

  Wandering into the barn, I see a bunch of small tools—hammers, a pipe wrench, chains, a crowbar…but then I see a chainsaw.

  I pick it up and it weighs a hell of a lot more than it looks, as most really old machines do. Unscrewing the cap, I sniff and catch a strong whiff of gas. A little shake reveals sloshing.

  Yep…there’s enough gas for this.

  Closing the cap, I hoist this mechanical beast up on a nearby workbench, give the starter cord a jerk.

  It sputters a few times then dies.

  I yank the cord again and this time the engine turns over and rumbles to life. I finger the trigger and the saw’s chain zooms around the guide bar, a bit of exhaust puffing out the front muffler. Shutting it down, I drag the thing out front. I’m so weak right now it feels like it weighs a metric ton.

  Ice levels me with a glare and says, “Are you kidding?”

  “You worked for the cartels, so I figured you want something…sensational. Maybe even a bit nostalgic.”

  I pass him the chainsaw; he takes it. “Good God, did you pick the heaviest one?”

  “Fire it up,” I say.

  “This is going to get messy,” he tells me, as if I don’t already know. “Then again, it’ll be over quick, and without much fanfare.”

  “Easy peasy, quick and easy,” I say a bit too cheery.

  “We have to make sure there are no more of them,” he says, giving the starter cord a yank. The engine turns over, but doesn’t catch. “Have that gun ready in case there’s anyone else.”

  He rips the starter cord again and the machine jumps to life in his hands.

  Gripping it, looking over and me, he squeezes the trigger and the long line of teeth roar to life in a shaky, metallic sounding sprint. He presses the business end of the saw into the back of the big guy’s neck and the whole body jumps, a rooster tail of red catching Ice all up the front.

  Shaking it off, spitting, he says, “We’re going to have to find the antibiotics and get back ASAP.”

  My stomach lurches, looking down at the dead guy with the chewed up neck.

  “They snorted them,” I hear myself say. I can’t take my eyes off the sight of so much gore. It’s both horrendous and mesmerizing.

  “Are you kidding?” he says. For some reason, I get the idea he’s not bothered by the things he’s doing.

  I shake my head.

  “Here,” he says, walking toward me, “hold this.”

  I take the sputtering chainsaw as he wipes his eyes with the only clean part of his shirt. Taking the saw back, he walks over to the other guy on the ground, the last one he beat up, and he says, “Check this clown’s neck, see if he’s got a pulse.”

  To my supreme consternation, he does. I hear the chainsaw roar, look away, hear the grinding teeth tearing into flesh.

  “When did you become such a pussy?” Ice asks when he’s done.

  I turn around and he’s got more red on him. This time he was smart enough to look away.

  “I stopped drug deals,” I say, walking towards the man who first attacked me. “You cut people’s heads off. The way I see it, I’m not weak, you’ve just lost your mind.”

  “While everyone else looks away, squeamish, uncertain, the alpha males do what no one else will. That’s what separates me from you, brother, what we’re willing to do to survive.”

  “These last two years…”

  “Taught me plenty,” he says over the sound of the motor, finishing my sentence. “It taught me that a body is just a meat sack, like a cat, or a hog, or a steer. The only difference is we wear clothes, walk upright and talk. But really, your life has no meaning but what you assign it. Mine had none at all, but the guys I killed? Their lives were full of meaning. They were cogs in a wheel of human death, suffering and eradication. This isn’t the first time I’ve used a chainsaw. And it isn’t the first time I’ve found meaning ending mutts like these.”

  He kicks off the motor, fixes me with his gaze.

  “I wish none of this surprised me,” I finally say. “What you did, how you made your living...but if I think about it, in a weird way, it kind of makes sense.”

  “When we got t-boned and you beat those guys to death back in Chicago, you did that because you were pushed to the edge and no longer regarded them as human. In other words, they had no value beyond being an outlet to your insanity.”

  “So what?” I say, not wanting to bring that up.

  “So you needed all this rage to drive the animal out of you. I only need a tool and a good reason.”

  “If it matters, there are dead people inside. One of these idiots, a kid in the freezer and some dude in a tarp wrapped up with all those black blood boils all over his legs.”

  “There could be ten kids in a freezer inside there and for me, the only reason I need is that they put a gun to Morgan’s head and stole our stuff.”

  “Well I need more than that!” I explode.

  “You have your frozen child,” he says, handing me the chainsaw.

  “I’m not doing it. You do it.”

  “What happened to the guy inside?” he asks, disappointed. “You were attacked, yes?”

  “Yeah, I was.”

  “And?”

  “He’s dead.”

  “How did he die?” Ice asks, shading his eyes.

  Just then, some crazed lady comes running out of the house in a filthy housedress with
bared yellowed teeth and a fanatical look in her eyes. She’s got a butcher knife raised overhead and she’s running right for us.

  I lift the pistol, dump a round into her forehead. She drops face-first to the ground, her head skidding to a stop in the dirt beside the big guy.

  “You needed a reason,” Ice says, like he’s capping off a point.

  “I just shot that lady,” I say, detached.

  “I’d have shot her even if you hadn’t,” Ice says. He knocks my shoulder, bumps me out of my fog. “You awake in there, big brother? It’s guilt by association. And you and me? We’re judge, jury and executioner. We make tough decisions, we don’t lament them when they’re made and we sure as hell don’t waiver or hesitate.”

  “You scare me, Ice,” I finally say. “And it hasn’t gotten any better since you hooked up with that psycho broad of yours.”

  “Eliana?”

  “Who else?” I ask.

  “Eliana is a survivor,” he says, walking over to the woman I just shot. With the toe of his shoe, he turns her face over, sees a blank expression. He draws his foot back, her face settling back into the ground. “She’s just the kind of woman we need.”

  “Still…” I say.

  “What scares me about you is that you don’t think like this. Our ancestors didn’t hesitate, or they would’ve died. We’re now our ancestors, Fire. We’re now the survivors.”

  “Are you saying you’re your own daddy?” I joke half-heartedly, even though I’m not feeling so jovial at the moment.

  Grinning through the gore, he says, “I am. By the way, you know when you said you wanted to fight when this was all over?”

  “Yeah,” I answer, remembering how pissed off I was that he got the better of me in our brief dust up back in Chicago.

  “I’d win for the very reasons I just laid out,” he says with a sneer.

  “Devolving into a Neanderthal doesn’t make you a better fighter,” I argue.

  “No, but going that extra distance is what makes me a better survivor,” he counters.

  He might have a point. I won’t admit it, but it just might be true. In the distance, we hear the start of yipping coyotes. We look at each other.

  “Strange,” I say.

  “Not really,” Ice says. “They have coyote overpopulation problems out here.”

  Climbing inside the bus, I fire up the engine and it turns over, purring so nicely it sounds fresh out of the wrapper.

  “Wow, that sounds cherry!” Ice says, standing inside the stairwell. “Go try your hunk of crap.”

  I start the Barracuda and the engine turns over, smooth. The heady rumble is music to my ears. I give Ice a thumb’s up before realizing they not only tuned up the engines and fortified the glass, they replaced the windshield and the passenger side window as well.

  “Well, I’ll be damned…”

  We leave the hillbilly homestead, but just as we’re getting started, the bus chugs and shakes to a stop on the side of the road. I head back to where Ice is stalled out and looking at the gauges.

  “If this thing’s accurate, the tank’s bone dry,” he says.

  “I’m low, too.”

  “If not for bad luck…”

  “They probably siphoned the gas for the generator,” I say as Ice gets out of the bus. “Like I said, I’m low, too.”

  “It’ll get dark before long,” he says. “We can’t just leave them here. And we can’t leave them unattended.”

  “Then I’ll go find some gas,” I say.

  We’ve been at this long enough to know that everything takes longer in the apocalypse, including the hunt for gas. It takes even longer when you’re in a rural community and everyone is armed. Looking at Ice, he’s a freaking crime scene through and through. So logically, I’m the one that will have to go.

  I toss him the gun, then say, “Protect our stuff.”

  He catches it and says, “You might need it.”

  I start walking, then over my shoulder, I say, “Just protect our stuff.”

  In the distance, the coyotes are howling again, but by then I’ve got more important things to consider.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Draven lit the campfire at dusk and helped prepare the scant meal, hoping to assuage some of the hunger that was now plaguing them all. Xavier had been hunting all day. He’d killed two rabbits. And Morgan? She received a hero’s welcome when she returned to camp carrying three cans of red bean chili.

  The kids made faces when Draven told them they were having rabbit chili, but when it came supper time, when the food cooking over the fire started to take on this wonderful aroma, a look of profound hunger overtook them.

  “That’s what I thought,” Draven mumbled with a sly grin.

  After supper—which was good, but not nearly enough food—all everyone could talk about was what might have happened to Fire and Ice. Eliana said they’d be fine, that if they didn’t get back soon she’d head out looking for them. She didn’t seem worried, even though Adeline was clearly on edge.

  “Do you really think your father’s okay?” Draven heard Veronica lean in and ask Orlando.

  “I’m sure he is,” he said, hushing her.

  This was not a conversation anyone wanted to give any more attention to. They’d already talked the subject to death earlier. But night had fallen, and the sky was ink black and speckled with stars. All around them they heard the sounds of insects, small critters, even a few frogs. It was peaceful against the crackling of the fire and the smell of the campfire smoke.

  He missed his grandmother, but she was gone and now he was with these people. Further away, one of the kids started to cry. It sounded like Kamal. Nyanath got up and walked twenty yards away to where the kids had been quarantined.

  No one liked that they were so far away, but no one wanted to breathe the same air as them either.

  Draven closed his eyes for just a second. Sleep overtook him quickly. But then there was a commotion, sounds that made him stir, and then screams that ripped him from his slumber completely.

  His eyes shot open to a massive fight between the group and what looked like a pack of wild dogs. Blinking hard, shaking off the sleep, he tried to make sense of what he was seeing. One of these dogs was dragging little Alma off, the child screaming in horror, in pain.

  Adeline dove for it, catching its tail near the haunches. He started kicking his way out of his sleeping bag, eyes on the chaos, unblinking. The more his vision sharpened, the more his senses returned, the more he realized they were not merely dogs, they were coyotes.

  Two of them were in a stare down with Eliana, but she was low, her hands out, her eyes shadowed in firelight. One of them lunged hard, which it shouldn’t have done because coyotes aren’t that vicious toward humans. She rolled with the hit, then grabbed and tossed the animal into the fire while shaking off the other. She clapped her hands loud and shouted at it, but it didn’t run.

  Have they become rabid? Draven thought as he finally broke loose of the bag.

  The now burning dog scrambled out of the coals without a hint of grace, yipping and yelping as he ran into the night. He wouldn’t last long, less than a minute at best, before the flames overtook and consumed it.

  Two more coyotes joined the fight, which again, struck Draven as completely uncharacteristic of these animals. Xavier fought off one while kicking another away from him, which should have sent the animal running.

  But again, it didn’t.

  He rushed the dog, who saw him and high tailed it back a few feet before turning around, dropping low on its front legs and letting out a ferocious growl.

  A hard chill shot up Draven’s back, his skin breaking into goosebumps. Had these things been eating humans? Dead ones? Is that why they were acting so violent? He grabbed one of the campfire rocks, held it like a weapon.

  “There’s something wrong with them!” Xavier shouted.

  “No kidding,” Draven growled.

  All around them were barking, lunging dogs. They
went after legs and arms; they tried to corner Bianca. Draven threw the rock at the one after Bianca, striking it on the hind leg. He startled, then shuffled off a few feet before going back after her. Veronica snatched up Bianca, kicked at the coyote two or three times before it got the message and held back.

  By then, the largest of the pack had Morgan by the leg. She tried to back up, but fell down and cried out when the thing gave a jerk on her leg. Phillip intervened with a thick but crooked stick he was wielding like a sword. He went right after the animal’s head. Screaming wildly, he swung over and over again like a crazy man.

  The animal looked like it was about to relent, but not before taking one last run at Phillip. The stick finally connected, catching the beast right on the nose. It backed up, but it didn’t back off. In a truly impressive display of might, Phillip hunched down and started barking at a rather loud volume. Draven had done the same thing to the St. Bernard.

  Did Orlando tell him the story?

  More dogs circled the group as they fought for their lives against the ambush. In such an uncharacteristic display of abnormal coyote behavior, seven or eight of these beasts barked and snapped at everyone, lunging and nipping and barring their teeth, kicking up dust and filling the night with their murderous noise.

  Half the survivors were now pulling together around Morgan. Everyone but Phillip. He was in a stand-off with the other dog. Draven charged the coyote the second it went after the nine year old. He caught it right in the ribs. The dog pitched sideways, landing on its side where it fought to get to its feet before loping off into the night.

  “Get back with the others!” Draven screamed, putting Phillip down and giving him a shove toward the group. He wasted no time getting to the pack.

  He spotted Adeline in the distance, wrestling with the dog who had Alma. The fight to save the child was still on. Xavier went after her, but he was cut off by three more of the pack. The dogs were bounding back and forth, almost like they were playing with him, except this was real. That’s when they heard the kids screaming: Constanza, Ross, Kamal.