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

by Schow, Ryan

  He turned to see a coyote near the three of them. He wasn’t attacking. Rather he was sniffing the air near them. In that second, he weighed his options. Risk everything for the contagious kids who probably wouldn’t live or try to stave off the pack and save Alma?

  He went after Adeline and Alma. She was further away, still on the ground and struggling to maintain a hold on the coyote’s tail. The dog was dragging her through the dirt and unwilling to let go of Alma, who was still screaming, but with less vigor. Before he could get there, Adeline’s grip on the animal broke and it ran off into the night. Eliana and Phillip immediately took chase.

  “Are you alright?” he said the second he caught up with Adeline.

  “Go!” she screamed, waving him on.

  Draven took off, pushed himself to his limits trying to catch up. He caught up to Phillip quickly, who was bent over and gasping for breath.

  “Get back with Adeline and the others!” he screamed at the child as he sprinted past him.

  By then, Eliana was so far ahead of him he could barely see her. He put on yet another burst of speed, but the woman was as fast as him, maybe faster. He tracked the sounds of screaming as he ran, and when he finally had her in sight, she was facing off with three coyotes.

  Draven started yelling at the top of his lungs, trying to catch up quick enough to even up the odds. He was winded from the fight, out of oxygen from the run. Fortunately the dogs saw him coming and bolted. Eliana dropped to her knees, falling into a fit of uncontrollable sobbing. Dropping down beside her, wheezing, his chest burning, he was unable to shake the feeling that he was going to puke.

  “They took her!” Eliana wailed, her cheeks wet with tears, so much raw pain in her voice. The thought of the child stopped him. By now the rabid dogs would be tearing into her, devouring her, all of them whipped into some sort of mad frenzy.

  He couldn’t let that happen. Letting go of Eliana, he ran after them. He followed the barking sounds, the howling sounds, the yip-yip-yipping sounds of the feeding pack until his lungs finally gave out and he stopped. Breathless, he plopped down in the thin grass, not sure where he was but knowing by now the child was most assuredly dead.

  He didn’t know when exactly he started to cry, but it happened. All the pain locked inside him needed an outlet. Now he had it. Alma being taken was the crack that broke the dam holding back these emotions. Before he knew it, Eliana appeared. She sat beside him, put her arms around him and rested her face into his neck.

  They sat together for a long time, rivals of some sort before, but fully human now, broken for the moment and out of answers.

  “I love that you tried,” Eliana finally said.

  He couldn’t get a single word past the lump in his throat, but she knew. She took his hand, and she knew.

  Chapter Twenty

  By the time I get back to the bus and the purple beast, Ice is beyond worried and we lost any sunlight we could have had a good four hours ago. It is what it is, though. No changing the things you have no control over. Apparently the only thing that kept him from coming after me was that he hadn’t heard gunfire.

  In other words, people hadn’t been shooting at me.

  I all but drop the gas can on the asphalt roadway, stretch my lower back then lay down and lose myself to the ocean of stars above.

  “I found gas long before I found the can,” I say, rapping my knuckles against the plastic side of the red, five gallon gas can. “There’s enough to get us back to camp. We’ll find more on the freeway.”

  Ice takes the gas, divvies it up between the two vehicles according to their size, then says, “Whenever you’re ready, bro.”

  Feeling boneless and weak, I struggle to my feet, drunk walk to the ‘Cuda and crawl inside. I fire up the engine, wait for Ice to signal me with the lights and then we go.

  The night drive through the country roads isn’t bad by any measure. The headlights cast a dim, amber hue over the narrow roads, the desiccated fields, a family of skunks waddling along the edge of the asphalt. There’s a car here or there, rolled onto the shoulder of the road, looted, left behind. By and large, we’re able to travel obstruction free, which almost feels peaceful compared to what we’ve been through.

  By the time we reach camp, all hell has broken loose. Just when my mind starts to unwind, I see people up and huddled around the fire. I barely even have the door open when Adeline and Brooklyn rush up to me.

  I step out and take them both in my arms.

  Their bodies feel so good against mine. These two women and Orlando, these people are my home, my reason for living. I block out whatever the hell happened here and just smell my wife’s skin, feel the weight of her against me, tell myself they’re okay, that I’m okay. Suddenly, for the briefest moment, I’m not feeling my fatigue anymore, or my injuries.

  I didn’t realize they were crying at first, but now I hear the unmistakable sounds of grief. I hear this in Brooklyn’s sniffling, and I feel it in her trembling body, how she’s holding on to me so tightly. My senses flare. I pull back from them, look at Adeline’s face, see the tracks of her tears against the glow of the bus’s headlights.

  “What happened, Adeline?” I ask. “Is everything okay? Where’s Orlando?”

  Orlando is walking over to us, his brow turned down and his mouth set. He’s wearing the kind of look on his face I know all too well.

  Forged in the fires of adversity, his emotions beaten out of him with the disappointments, the fears and the tragedies of life, he’s growing, changing, becoming a man of responsibility, a man of strength, a man who might one day have a family, lead other men, build a thriving community.

  Whatever changed in him, it changed back in Chicago, when he was out scavenging with Draven. I knew they got into a tussle with a pack of morons—that Draven could have died—and I knew Orlando both took a beating and was forced to kill that day. But for him to wear this look? Now? For me to notice it in a span of seconds and give it this much thought?

  It terrifies me what he’s about to say.

  “A pack of coyotes snatched Alma,” he says, his words leaden, bursting with defeat. “Then they turned on us.”

  “What about everyone else?” I ask.

  Ice comes up, sees the commotion, and says, “What the hell happened here?”

  “You missed all the action, Uncle Ice,” Orlando says, his tone changing slightly, toughening up a notch. Then, seeing the blood all over Ice, and the beating on my face, he says, “Well, maybe not.”

  “We ran into a mess of our own,” Ice says, looking over everyone’s shoulders, taking inventory of the people, looking for Eliana. “Where’s El?”

  He walks around us, heads towards the others. That’s when everyone sees Ice and stops dead in their tracks.

  “It’s not my blood,” he announces.

  By now I realize Brooklyn and Orlando are telling me about the rabid coyotes. “Where is Eliana?” I ask.

  Adeline pulls me back into a hug, settling into me the way someone who’s had the fright of a lifetime does, and then she says, “Eliana and Draven went after Alma.”

  “How many coyotes did you say there were?” I ask.

  “Ten of them, more or less,” Orlando says. “It’s hard to say.”

  A few minutes later, two figures break through the darkness, one of them dragging something big behind them.

  “They’re back,” Bianca says in Spanish.

  I’m surprised the nine year old is even talking at all. Then again, she’s practically attached to Carolina at the hip.

  “When we were attacked, Carolina hurried up to check on the kids,” Orlando said. “I think when the coyotes smelled them, their sickness, they backed up and took off. Carolina thinks their sickness might have saved her life.”

  “She just left Bianca behind?” I ask in English.

  “It was crazy,” Adeline says, humbled. “Everything was moving way too fast.”

  Ice walks out into the field to meet Eliana. She sees him and run
s for him. They come together in a fierce hug, but then Eliana steps back and looks down at her clothes and Ice’s.

  “Now they can be filthy together,” I tell Adeline.

  Draven walks into camp, dragging a dead, half-burnt coyote by the tail. The bulk of the burns are up around the animal’s shoulders. Its head is roasted right down to the skull.

  “Why did you bring that thing back?” Morgan asks, sitting by the fire with her pant leg ripped open and shallow bite marks exposed.

  Without a word, or even a glance in her direction, he drags the dead dog over by the other side of the fire, drops him in the dirt then says, “I need a knife.”

  Xavier tosses his to Draven. He catches it by the handle, then starts to skin the dog.

  “Draven?” Adeline asks, walking toward him. “What are you doing?”

  “Making a meal out of this prick,” he grumbles. In the firelight, his eyes look puffy and red, like he’s been crying. He pulls back the animal’s lips, checks the teeth. He does the same with the eyes.

  “Are you checking it for rabies?” Xavier asks, concerned. “Because this is not how coyotes behave.”

  Draven nods, then says, “Looks fine.”

  “Then how do you explain the aggressive behavior?” Adeline asks.

  Draven never answers. Maybe he doesn’t have an answer. Maybe none of us do and that will have to do.

  When he finally throws the dog on the fire, he says, “You should never hate your meal, but this son of a…”

  His eyes get a bit of a shine, and he’s unable to finish the sentence.

  In the wash of a sad, sad silence, I say a prayer for Alma’s soul, then I help Draven with the animal. We turn it over in the fire, cook it evenly. I hate to admit it, but the smell is triggering my hunger. Carolina takes the first small bounty up to the sick kids. By the time she returns, we’ve got pieces of the animal cut off and cooking on flat rocks in the fire.

  Ice and Eliana are nearly inseparable. He’s present with her, but she’s on another planet, her eyes vacant, her face devoid of any expression.

  My heart breaks for her.

  Her eyes meet mine and we lock in on the other’s gaze. I offer her a slight smile. She does the same, then gives me the barest of nods, her way of thanking me for my concern.

  I nod back, then pull the cooked meat off the fire and divvy it out between us. By the time we consume the beast, most everyone’s eyes are bobbing and half the camp is in their sleeping bags, closing their eyes and hoping the night’s attack won’t prevent them from sleeping entirely.

  But it will. Nights like these, they stay with you.

  Before turning in, I search the bus for anything left behind, but everything is gone. All I really hoped for was some antibiotics.

  Alas, Shish Kabob hadn’t been lying.

  They were gone.

  I exit the bus and mosey over to the small encampment of sick kids. The three of them have their own tarps and sleeping bags, but I keep my distance.

  When I head back to camp and crawl into my sleeping bag beside Adeline, she snuggles up to me and tells me Constanza’s boils are worse than ever. She says the girl started puking up bits of black blood, that her eyes are jaundiced and her fingernails have started bleeding. She’s stopped eating entirely. Ross is also covered in boils, his future just as grim.

  “What about Kamal?” I ask.

  “He’s breathing shallow, his sickness different, but the outcome…we’re not sure what to do with him. Maybe he doesn’t have what they have and we’re giving it to him by putting him with Constanza. Maybe he has something else, but now he’ll have this, too.”

  “We can’t save everyone, Adeline,” I tell her.

  “I know,” she whispers directly into my ear. “But we have to try. At least, that’s what I first thought.”

  “And now?”

  “Now I’m so confused,” she says, her tone changing.

  “How so?”

  I pull her close to me, put my arms around her and kiss the top of her head.

  “It’s like, the longer we save them, the more exposure we get, but they’re kids. We can’t just leave them, or…or…”

  “Kill them?” I ask.

  Slowly, she pulls back and looks up at me, her expression haunted, revealed, filled with shame. She gives me the slightest nod, and that’s when I realize we’re on the same page, and that maybe we’ll survive a physical death, but by the time the world rights itself, both of us might have completely lost our minds.

  “We need to get some sleep,” I tell her. “Let’s revisit this in the morning with a clear head.”

  “I miss being close to you,” she says.

  “Smelling the way we do makes it easier,” I joke.

  She laughs, not much, but enough. Whatever I can do to lighten the mood, I think to myself. Before long, the kids are asleep. One of them wakes up screaming, another crying. I never even get to sleep. None of us adults do.

  When the new dawn breaks, I get up, stoke the fire and check on the kids. Constanza is slowly writhing in pain. Ross is quiet, his face gaunt, the black boils on his neck larger than ever, but he’s breathing. Then I see Kamal and realize his eyelids are cracked open and he isn’t breathing at all.

  My heart sinks, dread crowding out the relief.

  Sometime in the night, Kamal’s body gave up and finally released his soul. Looking back at camp, seeing most everyone mulling around the fire that’s now just a bed of coals with a small flame and a touch of smoke in the air, I wonder if I shouldn’t finish off Constanza and Ross while I have the chance.

  Kamal has a jacket on. I could take it off, smother Constanza first, then Ross. It would be a mercy killing with what they’re surviving, but can I live with that? Have I done so much already that just adding to the list won’t get me any worse of a standing in God’s eyes, should I ever stand before Him?

  I see myself doing it, really visualize it. The jacket over the face, the stillness before the struggle, Constanza clawing at my arms, fighting with the last of her strength for that next breath, then sagging back down to the ground, her body limp, leaden, dead.

  I can’t do it. No way.

  Turning, I walk back to camp, then feel something brush against my soul, a lightness, something both sad and wondrous, a beauty and a comfort I can’t describe.

  “Kamal?” I stop and ask on shaky lips.

  The warmth spreads through me, and then just like that, it’s gone and I’m left with the void this child I came to love has left behind.

  “Fire?” a voice says, ripping me out of this sorrow.

  I turn and see Nyanath walking toward me. My eyes are soaked, my heart aching so bad it’s filled me with tremors. She sees this, slows, then makes a tortured face and says, “No,” like she knows exactly what she’s going to find.

  I walk to her, take her in my arms and hold her. She tries to get out of my grip and go to Kamal, but I don’t let her. As she cries out, as she struggles, I hold her and tell her, “He was the lucky one, Nyanath.”

  She cries out his name, her tears coming hard, her grief all consuming. Her spirit is so large with anguish I can barely contain her, but then she settles into me and she lets her emotions drain out. This is a woman who has lost too much. A husband, her children, and now her second brother. She has Nasr, but after that, who? Us? We aren’t enough. Strangers will never fill the void of family.

  “Why?” she wails, her pain long and infectious.

  There’s nothing I can say. I can only hold her, be with her, cry with her.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  DAY 23…

  We start the day with a burial, and then a funeral. Xavier and Nasr begin digging Kamal’s grave shortly after hearing the news of his passing. Xavier knows what needs to be done and so when I offer to help, he insists that he and Nasr work alone.

  When it comes time to bury him, Nyanath asks if she can help lower Kamal’s fragile body inside the grave.

  “Of course,” Xavier
says. He helps her with Kamal, and then we help them both out of the grave.

  Nyanath wants to say a few words before we bury him, but her emotions got the best of her. She turns away when we put the dirt over Kamal, then breaks down sobbing into Xavier’s chest as Adeline and Carolina sing the song, “Halleluiah” in near perfect harmony, a surprise to all of us.

  I knew Adeline could sing from the one or two times we went to karaoke, but Carolina? This was truly a shock. A wonderful, slightly haunting revelation.

  In addition to burying Kamal, we take the time to honor Alma, each of us saying some of the nice memories we have of the young girl. It’s mind boggling to think we’ve lost two children on this trip so far, a travesty I try not to wrap my head around for fear of tunneling into depression.

  After concluding the ceremony, we close with a long moment of pain-filled silence, and then we separate as groups, each of us with something to do to get ready to go.

  That doesn’t last long.

  Xavier is still holding Nyanath because she needs it. The girls all gather around, including Eliana, to embrace her and let her know she is loved and that she is not alone. We are not family by blood, but more and more we’re becoming more than friends.

  While Draven and I head back to the hillbilly hideout to get the last two cars, the plan for Ice, Eliana and Orlando is to return to the highway looking for gas they can siphon off to give the vehicles a fill. The big concern is that we won’t have the kind of opportunities for gas in this more rural landscape, but I suppose we’ll know soon enough. When we meet back at camp, it’s to the news that they haven’t found much in the way of gas, but it’s enough to at least get us started.

  So we drive the open roads, stopping for each car, stealing what gas we can find, filling up the cars that need it most. By the time we’re halfway across the state, we’ve gassed up all the cars enough to not worry so much anymore.