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

by Schow, Ryan

  “Meaning?”

  “That’d be some dirty ass Riverdale fornication,” he says, referring to one of the worst rated parts of Chicago before all this. “Like, how do you keep a decent erection with flies buzzing around the dirtiest parts of your woman?”

  I can’t help laughing, even though the visual makes my stomach roll.

  “Thanks for that,” I grumble. “I’m not hungry now.”

  “Bro, we’re all hungry.”

  “What are we doing about Nyanath’s Plymouth?” I ask, changing subjects.

  “You saw it, man. The Voyager is done. We tried to get it over, but there’s no use. It’s too heavy. All that Mad Max crap the hillbillies put on there.”

  “That extra weight kept us from blowing over, I think,” I tell him, remembering how the winds had whipped around us, and how they’d beaten so violently against the cars.

  “On the bright side,” Xavier says, “it’s one less gas tank to feed.”

  “So we’re okay on the gas situation?” I ask.

  “I already said we were. We salvaged what we could, including the Voyager. But siphoning gas from an upside down car is like trying to milk a tipped over cow.”

  I can’t help laughing, but it’s a short, defeated laugh. Almost like I was trying to fill the space with a response and didn’t quite realize it until the noise left my mouth.

  “Like I said, we got some gas along the way, so for now we’re good,” he says. “And don’t be too down about the car because not only can we make do, we’ve found a place to stay for a minute. It’s a barn that’s warm and keeps us out of the elements.”

  “Did the barn come with a house?” I ask.

  “The house is occupied by a family who was kind enough to let us stay when they heard about our circumstances.”

  “How long?”

  “They said we could stay through tonight,” he answers. “They also told us where we might be able to find some gas. We’re heading out there in the morning. Plus there’s a creek up the way where we found some relatively clean water we’ve been filtering. He’s got a Berkey water filter he let us borrow. The water straws Draven and Orlando found are done for, so we’re thinking about stealing it. It’s in great shape and the water tastes incredible.”

  “Why not just ask for it?” I ask.

  He shrugs his shoulders and says, “Don’t want to kick a gift horse in the nuts over a water filter when we could just use bleach in the future.”

  When we drive onto a long country road, pass a farmhouse, and pull up in front of a barn, I see our friends and family gathered around a campfire burning from inside a fire pit outside the newer looking structure.

  My family gets up at the sight of the car. Morgan heads for us when she sees Phillip. After leaving in the middle of a rainstorm, after abandoning my family in search of the dead children, it’s heaven being back in their arms. Adeline keeps kissing me. Maybe it’s because my face is clean, and even though hers isn’t, I don’t care. I kiss her anyway.

  “What’s for dinner?” I ask, looking at a veritable feast before us.

  “We found a can of creamed corn, and there’s French cut green beans and watercress in the bowl over there.”

  “What’s on the spit? Rabbit, right?”

  “Orlando killed them,” Brooklyn says, clearly proud of her brother.

  I watch Draven as Brooklyn speaks.

  He doesn’t look at her.

  Strange.

  The way the two of them started out, I thought they were going to end up liking each other. But after Draven bashed the ginger’s head in back in Chicago, it seems something in Brooklyn can’t ever truly let her guard down. And then there’s Eudora, of course. Her death weighs so heavily on Draven, but it weighs on us as well. We pray nightly that her soul made it to heaven in spite of the way she died.

  Speaking of Draven, I can pretty much count on my former neighbor being in Morgan’s proximity. They shared a car and the responsibility of the boys. I’m certain this is why Morgan is so depressed. Ross was her responsibility. She failed him. At least, that’s probably what she thinks. There’s an air of sadness about her that might confirm my theory. Not that understanding would have any tangible result.

  Even though something like ten years separates the two of them, it makes me wonder about their interactions. Were they gravitating toward each other out of responsibility, or something more? It’s probably nothing. Partnering up in the apocalypse like Nyanath and Xavier have done doesn’t mean you fall in love. It just means you have someone to lean on when the crap gets chin deep.

  Draven wanders over to me and says “Hey.”

  “How’s Morgan?” I ask.

  “She’s upset about Ross and trying to help as much as she can, but her leg is hurting pretty good.”

  “Is it infected?”

  He shakes his head and says, “We got to it in time.”

  “That’s good.”

  “You’re telling me,” he says. “How’s the rabbit coming?”

  “Smells amazing,” Brooklyn says. She’s looking at me when she says this, not Draven. I wonder if she’s still scared of him.

  How can she be?

  She saw what Ice and I did when we rescued her from the train, from Diaab Buhari. She saw us beat two guys to death and it didn’t seem to scare her away from us. Then again, Draven crushed the woman’s head in with a spiked baseball bat.

  “Right now I’d eat a dead cat, I’m that hungry,” Chase says, coming up behind us. Then, looking up at me, he says, “Did you find my brother?”

  “You didn’t talk to Phillip?” I ask.

  He shakes his head. He’s been with Carolina and he’s clearly smitten. I want to grab the kid by the neck and throttle him.

  “We found Ross and gave him a proper burial,” I tell him.

  “Thank you,” he says before turning his eyes back on the rabbit.

  “Your brother died, Chase,” I say, my eyes boring into him. Thinking of having to dig him out of that roof, build him a pyre then watch him burn, I feel my blood pressure spiking. “You should have come with us.”

  “I know,” he says, looking at the meat.

  I grab his shoulder, haul him around. “Your brother died, Chase.”

  He shoves my hand off and says, “Back off, man.”

  I didn’t mean to grab him by the side of the head, but before I knew it, I had him by the short hairs and I was twisting. The kid grimaced, and then he rose up on his tippy-toes and started to squeal. Ice stepped in, got in my face.

  “He’s just a kid,” he says, his features pinched, his eyes unblinking.

  Looking at Chase, I say, “Phillip’s got more grit than you’ll ever have, you little turd.”

  Shoving his head away, I stare him down, not even sure who I am at this moment. I just think that if your family dies, you should act like you care.

  “He was already dead,” Chase says, holding the side of his head where I tore at his hair.

  I take an aggressive step toward him, but Draven moves to block my way just as quickly. Then he turns around and says, “Know when to be quiet, kid.”

  “We’re all short on our tempers here,” Draven says in my face, low but serious.

  “It was his little brother,” I hiss.

  “He was covered in black boils and rotting to death, Fire,” Draven says, still keeping his voice so low I can barely hear him. “Ross dying the way he did was better than him suffering any longer and you know that. Chase is relieved for his brother. Plus he spent the whole day you were gone crying.”

  Turning away, snorting in a big breath, I see the others looking at me. Dammit, I need to keep it together!

  “I’m sorry Chase,” I turn and say before I do anything worse than I’ve already done.

  “Beating up on kids now?” Brooklyn says as she brushes past me.

  That’s when I see Nyanath and know she’s had it worse than all of us. I tell myself to quit being an ass, to grow up and rein in my temper
.

  “Thank you for going after them,” she says to me. She pulls me into a hug and says, “I know that had to be difficult.”

  “It was,” I say feeling the pain creeping up again.

  “I’ve told you this before and I’ll tell you again. You’re a good man, Fiyero Dimas,” she tells me. “Better than the way you behave sometimes.”

  I pull back from her, look her in the eyes and say, “You’re right.”

  She smiles, pats my cheek, then steps around me and says, “What can I do to help with dinner?”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  DAY 25…

  The first thing everyone wanted to know at daybreak was if anyone felt sick. Draven looked at every single one of them. When asked, no one raised their hands. Thank God. All eyes were up front and present. Draven asked if anyone had any unusual marks on their skin, if they were running a temperature, or if they had a headache. No one said a thing. There wasn’t even a hint of secrecy in anyone.

  He took the deepest breath ever, then let out a long sigh and held back a smile. He didn’t want to appear overconfident.

  Eliana assigned each girl to a woman to check them out down by the spring. She wanted a thorough inspection of their backs, their butts and the backs of their thighs for boils. It was a good idea. Constanza was patient zero in their little group, and she was dead. They had to make sure the disease died with her.

  Fire and Ice were checked out by Adeline and Eliana, and Veronica inspected Orlando. Morgan offered to look Draven over, which surprised him—although it made sense to him because they’ve been traveling together for weeks now. Xavier paired up with Nyanath—neither of them seeming to be weirded out by it in the least.

  When Draven walked down to the spring with Morgan, she was talking to him about this and that, but he was a little bit nervous. It had been a few months since before the attacks that he’d been with a woman, and even then, he’d been shaved, showered and clean. He couldn’t even stand the smell of himself and he had no idea the condition of his clothes or body once they came off.

  All the sudden, he became modest.

  When they got to the spring, she said, “Alright, let’s get this over with.”

  He took off his shirt, startling at how much weight he’d lost. He turned around, feeling her step forward, feeling her hand on his back, the warmth of her palm, human touch.

  He closed his eyes, drew a deep breath, realized man and woman could not walk this earth alone. There was something nourishing in the physical connections with others that they’d been missing. No, that he’d been missing.

  “Take down your pants,” she said.

  Draven tried to sense something in her voice, nervousness maybe, arousal, but he heard none of that. He simply stood beside the creek, watching the riparian habitat in full swing. He unbuckled his pants, hesitated a bit, then took them down, underwear and all, and stood there, about as self-conscious as he’d ever been.

  He felt her hands on his butt, trailing down them, not sexual, just…curious. He heard her lower her body, then felt her hands go to the inside of his thighs, grazing him, but not making mention of it. She stood and said, “No boils,” then went and sat down on a rock and watched the slow moving water bubble along.

  “When you think of everything we’ve been through,” she said, lost in the beauty of the creek, “it’s hard to imagine places like this still exist. But then you see it and your heart cries out for it and you realize this is what you’ve been missing.”

  Draven pulled up his pants, buckled his belt, then put on his shirt and sat beside her.

  “The sound of the water is hypnotic,” he said.

  She reached out and took his hand, then she turned to him and said, “There is so much ugliness in this world, Draven. I’m not sure how to process it all.”

  Her expression was one of deep internal strife. The pain infected every part of her. And yet he liked the way she looked. He’d never been with an older woman before. Not on a social basis or sexually.

  “Maybe we should take a few extra minutes and soak all this in,” he said.

  They sat there, holding hands, listening to the bubbling waters, watching the shadows of brook trout swim by, following the occasional slow moving cloud of gnats roaming over the water’s surface. Birds chirped and there was the occasional scuttle of something in the nearby brush, something to let them know that life was still happening all around them, that they were not in the cauldron about to boil to death. She laid her head on Draven’s shoulder and Draven lowered his head against hers.

  “This is perfect,” she said.

  When they walked back up to camp, he and Morgan went right to work helping the others pack the bus and the cars. Eliana and Carolina returned the water filter to the farmer, thanking him and his family for their hospitality. After that, they hit the road.

  The two-way crackled to life about an hour later.

  It was Ice.

  “Until we’re full up on supplies again, we need to scour all visible neighborhoods until we are gassed up and loaded for bear with food, water and weapons.”

  Everyone agreed and the scavenger hunt began just under an hour later. There was a lot of knocking at first, but then there was just breaking and entering. The group needed a baseline of supplies, but Draven knew food and medicine was the real treasure. Specifically antibiotics, pain meds, bandages and maybe some whiskey for the ladies and gents.

  Most of the homes they went through were ransacked, burnt to the ground or cleared out, presumably by the owners as they tried to escape. They hoped the homes that were only half burnt would have been avoided by looters, leaving them something, anything. But alas, they were blessed only with an abundance of bad luck and short tempers.

  Finally, Morgan found a home where the occupants were dead. She was in and out a few minutes later, holding her nose, her eyes watery and red.

  “Looks like the owners were eaten by their dogs. They’re dead in the back room. In the corner. Rottweilers.”

  “What else?” Draven asked.

  “The pantry’s got food in it, and it looks like there are several five gallon jugs of fresh water and a countertop filter. I just can’t be in there…”

  Draven waved the others over and said, “We have something here.”

  As Morgan fought to hold her stomach down, everyone else flooded into the house. Everyone but Veronica.

  “Are you okay, Morgan?” she asked.

  Morgan nodded her head, swallowed hard, then thanked the girl.

  Looking at Draven, Veronica said, “Dare I go inside?” to which he shook his head and said, “Probably best to sit this one out.”

  When she could stand up straight again, Morgan sucked it up and went back inside with Draven. She left the kitchen and garage to those who were already there. Instead they decided to check for any kind of weapons stash.

  The two of them walked down the hallways, checking the linen closets, peeking behind toilets, lifting the lids and glancing inside the toilet tanks. He didn’t like doing this, ransacking someone’s house, but it had to be done.

  Morgan looked like she was enjoying it less than him.

  In the hallway, she stopped to look at pictures of the family that lived there. There were pictures of kids and grandkids on the walls, pictures of the dogs as puppies.

  “This is so sad,” she said.

  It is, he thought.

  Out in the living room, she was pulling the cushions off an army green couch when she saw the gleam of silver.

  “Draven,” she said.

  Tossing the cushion she was holding aside, she pulled out a snub nosed .38 Special then held it up.

  She checked the cylinder, saw one round and spun it.

  Still one round.

  “We’ve got camping gear!” Orlando called out. Morgan jammed the short barrel revolver in her back pocket and the two of them headed toward the joyous sounds of victory. In the garage, Orlando showed everyone the tents, fishing poles, tackle box
, camp stove and lantern that he’d found.

  For a brief moment, the black clouds that had befallen the group seemed to lift, giving everyone a reason to sit back, smile and take a breath. Draven took in the moment. Honestly, he wasn’t sure he’d ever see this day again.

  Little did he know there was one more surprise…

  “I have good news as well,” Fire said as they were looking through all the loot. With a subtle grin, he said, “I found three bottles of blue label in the back of the geezer’s cabinet. Either he or the missus was hiding a drinking problem, but the fact that I found them guarantees a good time for all when the time is either right or necessary.”

  This time, the hugs going around were fierce and genuine.

  What a truly amazing find!

  After they loaded everything up, the three car caravan hit the road again and they made it four more hours before stopping for a bathroom break and a stretch. Everyone seemed slow to return to the cars. Finally Chase said, “I’m done with this day.”

  “But there’s like three or four more hours of daylight,” Brooklyn said.

  “Don’t care,” he said, plopping down on his sleeping bag.

  Everyone sort of looked around and nodded in agreement and that was that. They were staying. In the distance, Draven saw a strip of hole in the wall restaurants and a three story hotel.

  “I’m going to see what I can find,” Draven told the group.

  “Can I come with you?” Morgan asked.

  He nodded and they set off on foot. He zeroed in on the hotel first since he was sure the restaurants were now just greasy floors and counters with nothing left to eat but sprinkles of pepper and whatever crumbs might have been left on the edges of the grill.

  “Do you still have the gun?” he asked.

  She showed him her .38 with its one round. Looking at her for the first time that day, really looking at her, he saw she’d lost more weight. He could see her face and her figure now, which he couldn’t before. She was an attractive woman, older or not, and it wasn’t lost on him.

  He looked away for a moment, then she said, “What?” with a jovial smile.

  “I like the way you look,” he said, eyes on the road ahead.