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

by Schow, Ryan

  Peaches is a rotund woman with a smile as generous as her hips and bosom. She likes to talk a lot, which seems to put Bobby on edge, but not so bad that he tells her to clam up or makes subtle digs.

  “I appreciate how friendly you are to a pair of down-and-out strangers,” I tell the woman. “It makes me think the world’s not all bad.”

  “Everyone likes Peaches,” Bobby says, eliciting a smile from his wife. “I mean, now that I think about it, have you ever been cross with anyone, Darling?”

  She shakes her head, no.

  “How could anyone not like Peaches?” Phillip says.

  The three of us laugh, the lighthearted moment a godsend after all that’s happened. The blessing both Phillip and I need.

  Bobby (just call me Bob) doesn’t look like the Bob I skewered back at the hillbilly homestead. Nevertheless, every time I call him Bob I think of Shish Kabob and try not to smirk. I hear Adeline in my head telling me to grow up. It’s what keeps me from bending to my ill-timed, often inappropriate gallows humor.

  As we’re drying off and eating a light meal with these two wonderfully generous people, the truth is, I’m looking at (Shish Ka) Bob and Peaches and thinking of them as Mr. and Mrs. Meat and Fruit.

  We’re eating a homemade stew, which Phillip is slurping on, and Peaches is reading us a passage from the Bible. For a second, I have to pinch myself. Then I double check my stew and make sure the beef cubes are really beef and not, for example, the neighbor.

  Or some random stranger.

  If this was a horror movie, this would be the point when I’d tell Meat and Fruit how the stew was amazing and then the camera would pan into the kitchen where some poor schmuck would be laid out on the counter with body parts cut off and blood everywhere.

  But alas, it’s just beef and this isn’t the movies.

  That still makes me wonder, is there any good to be found in this new world? That’s when I clear my mind and focus on Peaches and her reading. It’s been a long time since I cracked the Good Book, so I’m not sure of the passage. One thing is certain, though: when I close my eyes and listen to the words she’s reading, Peaches sounds like an absolute angel.

  Outside, the thunderclouds and the darkness blot out the day, and though I want to get back with my family, I told myself I’m not leaving without finding the kids.

  “You two can sleep here,” Bob finally said, “but I have to check you for weapons.”

  “I don’t have any weapons,” I tell him. “I just want to find my kids. So go ahead. Do your thing.”

  “You can search me, too, Bob,” Phillip says, trying to sound older than his years. “I don’t have weapons either.”

  “Peaches, will you check the boy?”

  “If it’s okay with him, and his father,” she says, standing up and straightening the front of her house dress.

  “He’s not my dad,” Phillip says. “My mom and dad are dead. Probably my brother, too. Mr. Dimas is my neighbor.”

  This stills them, almost makes them start to worry, but then I tell them the story of Chicago and how they’re about the best thing that’s happened since this whole trek West began. Meat and Fruit seem to relax, and that’s when I reiterate to Bob that it’s okay to do a pat-down of us both.

  With that over, he says, “I sleep with a gun and shoot straight at night.”

  “I need to head out and try to find my kids before we think about staying the night,” I tell them. I think they think that now that we’re fed and it’s late in the day we’re calling it quits until the morning. We aren’t. In fact, Bob, Phillip and I scour the nearby farm lands until just after dark before returning.

  “We best get some sleep,” Bob says in a dark house lit only by a few homemade candles. Peaches is already in her nightclothes.

  “I’ll be in bed until day break,” I tell Meat and Fruit, “then Phillip and I will be on our way. We sure appreciate your hospitality. Like I said earlier, it’s not something we’ve seen much of lately.”

  Peaches nods, her sweet face, that angelic voice still caught in my head, reminding me that in times of need, there will always be someone heaven-sent.

  Dear Lord, I pray that’s true…

  We find Constanza dead on the edge of one of the fields of a nearby farm, her back and neck broken, half her clothes torn away from her. I think I shouldn’t let Phillip look, but I can’t stop looking at her myself. Her injuries are extensive and disturbing.

  “What the hell happened to her before this?” Bob asks. I’m assuming he’s referring to the black boils all over her body.

  “We think it was some variant of the bubonic plague. She was trafficked here. We ended up pulling her out of a stash house with a bunch of other kidnapped girls.”

  “She wasn’t yours then?” he asks.

  “I have two of my own back at camp, but we lost Constanza and Phillip’s brother, Ross.”

  “Why don’t you let me get her back to the farm. I can tarp her up, help you bury her.”

  “I don’t want her to contaminate your land,” I say.

  “Would you want to burn her?” he asks.

  I glance down at Phillip and he looks up at me. “If we find your brother?” I ask.

  “He always liked fire,” Phillip says.

  I look up at Bob and give a solemn nod. Later that day, we find Ross on the top of a nearby roof that’s cratered where he hit. Phillip and I look around the farm for people, but in the end we walk right in the back door. The place looks tossed, all the cabinet doors open, the pantry looted and near bare, all the drawers pulled out and dumped over.

  “Hello,” I say aloud.

  “Anyone home?” Phillip asks, his voice rather large when he wants it to be.

  We stand there, listening to a pressing silence. My eyes, however, are roving over the spilled contents, looking for something of value. There’s an old lighter and a bundled sock, but that’s about it. Judging by the look of the lighter, I wonder if it even works.

  Phillip holds his nose and looks up at me. I smell it, too.

  Dead people.

  “If anyone is here, we mean no harm,” I call out. “Please come out. We just want to get up on one of the roofs.”

  The silence presses on.

  “Stay behind me,” I look down and tell Phillip.

  Moving into the house, I follow the smell, which leads me to a bedroom. Tied to the bed, shot with what looks like a small caliber weapon, are two bodies. A man and woman. I push Phillip back and say, “Don’t look.”

  “I saw them,” he says, panicked, fear in his voice.

  “They’ve been dead awhile,” I say. Then: “They didn’t suffer.”

  I shut the door, grab the lighter on the way out, then head into the other buildings looking for a ladder.

  We find an old one and some tarp, saddle up to the roof, then I climb up and take a look at Ross. I turn away, still my emotions. The world blurs behind wet eyes, but I refuse to cry. This kid suffered enough. He took a wild ride on two tornados and clearly died on impact. Wrapping him in the tarp, I lean over, scoot the edges under his broken body then carry him down. We make a funeral pyre and lay his body on top of it.

  “Do you want to say a few words?” I ask Phillip, the lighter in my hand.

  “I love you, Ross,” he says, choked up. That’s all he can say, and I don’t blame him. The boy was now one of the lucky ones—he was able to escape this hellish new earth.

  “When Ross stabbed that man back in Chicago, the one who tried to take me, do you think he’ll go to hell for that?” Phillip asks. He’s looking up at me, his face full of consternation.

  I smooth out his hair and say, “Not a chance.”

  “Are you sure, because I think it’s what killed the man. And thou shall not commit murder is something in the bible.”

  “Actually I think Draven shot him after your brothers wounded him. Wounding isn’t the same as killing. And do you think God would send Ross to hell for protecting his brother?”


  He shakes his head.

  “Alright then, let’s see if I can get this lighter to spark.”

  Ross is laid out on a row of old two-by-sixes that are sitting on cinder blocks outside the barn. We’re far enough away from other potential fire hazards for safety, although with the downpour that battered the earth for the better part of yesterday, it’s hard to imagine anything would catch fire.

  Underneath Ross and the two-by-sixes, we scraped together a generous amount of kindling from one of the barns. I stuffed several rolled up “cigars” of newspaper under four different sections of the kindling, but none of this will burn if the lighter runs dry.

  I thumb the flint wheel for the first time and get sparks. I do this again. Then I do it again and again and again, and just when I’m about to give up, a little flame appears. I put the flame to the newspaper roll just in time for the lighter to flame back out. The newspaper roll, however, begins to glow, and then it catches fire.

  I grab it, then fan it ever so slightly as I touch it to the four ignition points. With all four corners burning, I toss what’s left of the rolled paper into the kindling. Standing back, Phillip and I watch the pyre begin to burn, the flames licking up over Ross.

  Bowing my head, I say a prayer. Then a little hand slips into mine and I pray for Phillip, too. I pray for his safety, for the strength to see him through this, for the strength for all of us to see our way through this.

  And then I open my eyes, lift my head and watch Ross burn.

  Just before we leave, a single thought leaves my brain and hopefully finds God. The thought is more like a question, and in my mind, the question is more like a barked shout.

  Why would you do this to us, God?!

  I don’t expect an answer. Honestly, any answer He could provide wouldn’t even matter. Not now. Not with all that’s happened. Not with what’s happened to our kids.

  When we get back to Meat and Fruit’s farm, Constanza is wrapped in a tarp and sitting in a bundle at the end of their driveway. Sitting beside the tarped girl is a shovel, a jug of water and brown paper bag, like a sack lunch.

  “About a quarter mile up, there’s an old field that hasn’t been tilled in two years,” Bob says, meeting them outside. “That was Frederick’s farm. Old man Frederick died three winters back. He’s buried out there, too. Not in the field, but on the property. His wife, she nearly lost the farm. Took her life before that happened. She’s buried there, too. Out back of the house. You can put this child wherever you like. If she wants company, though, the bank foreclosed on the property ‘fore all this went down so feel free to bury her with Frederick and his wife. Name’s Virginia. Real sweetheart before bad luck turned things sour. She and Peaches used to sing in the church choir together.”

  “Is your wife’s birth name really Peaches?” I ask.

  “Why wouldn’t it be?” he says, looking right at me. “Peaches is a good name. A Christian name.”

  “It’s just unusual,” I say, thinking Peaches is more of a stripper’s name than a good, God-fearing Christian’s name.

  But whatever.

  “Gwyneth Paltrow named her kid Apple,” Bob says. “Plus lots of other people name their kids after fruit. And fruit’s good for you, right?”

  “It is,” I say.

  “Well Peaches is good for me, thank you very much,” he says.

  “I meant nothing by it,” I say, as honest as the day is long. “She makes a hell of a stew, and her voice is enchanting. I think everything about her is sweet, including her given name. What’s in the bag?”

  He looks down at the sack lunch and says, “You need a little fat on your bones, and Peaches says she’s got some to get off hers, so she’s sharing her food with you. I personally like a woman of her size. And to be perfectly honest, I’m afraid of what she’ll look like when she loses all that weight.”

  “True love is stronger than the ravages of time, or in this case, the difficulties of an apocalypse. You love Peaches, right Bob?”

  “I do.”

  “Then you’ll be fine. Please tell her I appreciate everything she’s done for us.” Sticking out my hand, I add, “And thank you so much for your hospitality, your graciousness, and the beds for the night.”

  “Will do,” he says. “Oh and just leave the shovel at the house. I still need it.”

  “Sure thing, Bob,” I say. “Thanks again.”

  He nods his head as I hoist Constanza’s body over my shoulders and tell Phillip to grab the lunch and the shovel.

  We hike down the road to Frederick’s farm, stopping only when we locate the graves around back. I finally set Constanza down, then take a load off on the back porch to let my back settle. Twisting and turning, I pop a few vertebrae back in place, crack my neck, then take a deep breath.

  Phillip is already digging. It makes me like this kid even more, which is tough to do because I already like him so much as it is.

  We wear out the rest of the daylight digging what amounts to a five foot grave, then lay Constanza to rest. Before shoveling the dirt over her, Phillip opens the lunch bag. He pulls out two apples and a fried egg sandwich that’s cut down the middle.

  It’s the best egg and apple combo I’ve ever had. Then again, I’d eat a field mouse at this point in the hopes that my body could convert the rodent into even an ounce of energy, that’s how run the hell down I am.

  When we’re done with lunch, we fill Constanza’s grave with the excavated dirt, then stand before the mound of fresh soil. I clear my throat, then speak.

  “We didn’t know you long, and we’re sorry for what happened to you, but you’re a child of heaven and to God you’ll be returned. We lay your body to rest here, giving it over to the earth.” Looking at Phillip, his hands dirty and sweat covering his face from pushing the last of the dirt over her, I say, “You have anything you want to add?”

  “Say hi to Ross if you see him,” he says, “and sorry for this crappy life.”

  I nod my head. That about sums it all up.

  “Let’s get back to the cars,” I say.

  Phillip and I trudge through the fields, looking for the bus. The closer we get to the road, the more I come to believe they’ve left us. The bus is gone. Everyone’s gone. As I get closer, though, on the other side of the road, on the down-sloping shoulder, I see Xavier. He’s asleep on the hood of the Byzantine. It’s parked in front of the overturned Plymouth. He hears me coming and suddenly he’s got a gun on me.

  He’s just laying there, one eye open, the barrel of a pistol laid over his stomach, but on me nevertheless.

  “Where’d you get that?” I ask, not recognizing the weapon as one of ours.

  He moves the weapon off me. “Found it looking for a place to squat and wait,” he says, sitting up, swinging his legs over the side of the Chevy. “Did you find the kids?”

  Phillip pulls up beside me, stopping at my side.

  “Hey little guy,” Xavier says.

  “Hi,” he says, eyes on the ground, then on him.

  “Did you find Ross?” he asks.

  I’m about to say something, but I see Xavier’s attention on Phillip, so I let the boy answer. Phillip gives a curt nod, eyes back on his dirty shoes.

  “I’m sorry about your brother,” Xavier says.

  “I know,” he mumbles.

  “And Constanza?” he asks me.

  “Yeah. Both of them. Where’d everyone else go?”

  “We caught a break, finally,” he says, getting in the Byzantine. “Get in, let’s go.”

  We head up the street, driving to God knows where. Fortunately the roads are clear, but there are a few cars here and there. Each one of them has been run through, as evidenced by the gas tank doors. They all look pried open.

  “That you guys?” I ask as we pass by it.

  “Slim pickings, bro.”

  “How are we on gas?” I ask him.

  “Alright I guess,” he answers. “No one’s got a full tank, but we’re all pretty close.”

 
; “How’s Nyanath?” I ask.

  He turns and looks back at Phillip who has his head in the window and is watching the landscape go by. Out in the fields, there’s a circling of birds that’s breaking up. I roll down the window because it’s stuffy in here.

  The fresh air on my face feels good, cool.

  “She’s a wreck,” Xavier says. “Worse than me, I think. I mean, I lost Giselle, but she lost her dad, two brothers, her husband, her child…I’m trying to be there for her, but all she wants is to be with Nasr.”

  I try to think of what it would be like to lose so many people, how I’d feel if I lost Ice, Adeline, either of my kids—or both of them—and honestly, I wouldn’t want to live.

  “What about Morgan?” I ask. “How’s her leg from the coyote bites?”

  “She’s trying to walk it off,” Xavier says. “She’s got a limp, but I think she’s punishing herself for everything that’s gone wrong. I think she thinks she deserves what’s happening to her.”

  “That’s not right,” I tell him. “She’s trying her best to survive, just like us.”

  “You’re lucky, Fire. Out of all of us, you’ve had the best luck. You have Ice, Adeline, the kids…you haven’t lost anyone, and hopefully you won’t. I pray for that for you, brother.”

  “Thanks, X,” I say. Then: “Dare I ask about Draven?”

  “Not brooding,” Xavier replies. “So that’s good. Plus, he’s helping Morgan. He’s been attending to her leg, and staying there with her when she’s going through the worst of it.”

  “What about Ice and Eliana?”

  “They disappeared into the woods last night,” he says.

  Looking in the back seat, Phillip’s eyes are closed, his jaw slightly slack, his hands folded against his chest. After a second I see he’s asleep and not just resting.

  “A little getaway romp?” I ask, keeping my voice down.

  Xavier scoffs at the comment, then rolls down his window as well. “Eliana’s hot when she’s clean, but she’s filthy right now and looking like a dude. All of us are not our best selves.”