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

by Schow, Ryan

So when they arrived at wherever it was they were and his captors grabbed him and pulled him from the paddy wagon, he started to cry. When they told him to shut up, he played flamboyant gay and told them how scared and hurt he was.

  It wasn’t hard to act this way. He was originally from California. He saw this kind of flamboyant reaction to whatever all the time.

  From what he could tell, they’d been transported a short distance down a dirt road from the highway. It wasn’t in sight, but there was only one road in and out.

  As they were perp walked across a dirty stretch of property under the burning sun, he took the opportunity to really get into character. Squealing, sobbing and begging for mercy, he said he’d do anything if they just wouldn’t hurt him.

  They threw him in a large pit with the girls. He wasn’t sure which ones because he landed wrong and was knocked out on impact. When he woke up, he saw who he thought was Veronica. She was looking at him, dazed, her glasses broken, her face cut and blackened by soot.

  “Are you okay?” he asked, low. His voice sounded a million miles away, his vision still a bit soft on the edges.

  She merely stared at him, wide-eyed like she’d seen a ghost and was paralyzed with fear. The large pit they were in was deep and big enough for five people. Nine or ten feet above him, there were metal bars covered with a tarp. The tarp wasn’t large enough, however, to cover the part of the lid that was locked shut with a keyed padlock.

  “Veronica,” he said, snapping his fingers.

  She didn’t break the trance.

  Great.

  He didn’t speak again because he could hear these men dragging various bodies to various cages. Just when he thought it was all over, someone said, “We got room for ‘nother o’er here!”

  A man appeared on the other side of the grate. He tore the tarp back, looked down at them. He leaned forward, peering into the artificial gloom. Sweat poured off his face, dripped down on top of them.

  “Yeah, bring her over here!” he finally said.

  He unlocked the cage and two guys tossed Brooklyn in. Draven caught her limp body, sat her down and looked at her face as the grate was closed and the padlock snapped shut.

  Brooklyn was blackened by soot, same as Veronica. It hid her beauty even more. Looking up at Veronica, he worried for her. Her looks were not as well hidden.

  “You shouldn’t have showered,” he said. She didn’t blink, much less let on that she’d heard or even understood him.

  That’s when the tarp was pulled over the lid, casting them into perfect darkness.

  All night long he heard silence, then crying, then guys telling everyone to shut it and go to sleep. In the morning, he woke to the sounds of chickens clucking and one of the girls in the pit crying softly.

  He put his hand out, found the girl, held her hand.

  “It’s okay,” he said, not sure who this was. In truth, though, it wasn’t okay. Nothing was okay.

  That’s when they pulled the tarp back and started dropping rats in. Draven saw Brooklyn, Veronica, Bianca and Carolina in the gloom with him. All of them were alive, albeit they were all in various states of shock.

  Thank God, he thought.

  If any of these guys came in for them, Draven would pull their freaking spines out. That’s exactly what he thought when they came for Veronica. They opened up the lid and when he looked up, there was a shotgun aimed at him. The shooter fired it, and he felt nothing.

  When he woke back up, everyone was crying, screaming. He didn’t know what happened, only that his head was a screaming, pounding mess. He felt a huge knot forming above his eyebrow. Looking around, he was lost in a haze, unsure of where he was.

  Beside him was a tiny bean bag. The kind riot officers sometimes shoot into the crowd when things got rowdy.

  Slowly, it all came back to him. He knew what happened. They shot him and took one of the girls. He looked around, found they’d taken Veronica. A pit began to form in his gut. One far larger than the one already there.

  Later that day, the tarp was pulled off and they burned under the beating sun. More rats were thrown in the pit. He and Brooklyn scrambled to their feet and stomped on them, killing them. She kicked the furry bodies into the corner with the others, then held on to Bianca and Carolina as the girls sat there shaking.

  The three of them huddled in the corner of the pit, holding each other, just looking at him with dead, defeated eyes. He looked back at them with the same subjugated look. And then he crawled to a corner, laid down sideways and pulled his shirt over the burnt skin on his face.

  At daybreak, they returned Veronica. One of them drew open the lid, tossed her in. Draven broke her fall, but she just flopped down and laid there, eyes open, no one home. When they locked up and left, Brooklyn scrambled over and said, “Is she still alive?”

  Draven felt her wrist, found a pulse, then said, “Yes, barely. Feel her crotch.”

  “What?”

  “Her clothes have been taken off and put back on,” he said. “Feel her crotch or I will.”

  She put her hand down there, then gave a soft cry. “It’s wet.”

  “Smell it.”

  She did.

  “Urine or blood?” he asked.

  “A bit of both,” she said. “But mostly blood.”

  Everything slowed down in his mind and that’s when he realized that, come hell or high water, he was going to gut every one of these guys or die trying.

  “They raped her, didn’t they?” Brooklyn whispered.

  “Fight them if they come for you. If they shoot me again, you fight for your life, you got it?” he asked, dead serious. “Tell me, Brooklyn. Say you’ll fight!”

  “I will!” she said, tears in her eyes, a deep and profound sadness causing her voice to break.

  Over the next few days they were treated like animals. They did their business in a bucket, they drank dirty water and they ate some kind of meat from that same bucket.

  No one wanted to ask about the meat. It was cooked, but tough. Sometimes it was attached to a bone. Bianca had a piece that looked like a cooked finger.

  Brooklyn threw up.

  Draven kept eating because it kept his energy levels up.

  They came for Brooklyn five days into their imprisonment. The second the shotgun came into the pits, Draven ducked fast. The bean bag round glanced off his head hard enough to daze him. He wasn’t out cold, though. He pretended to be, but he wasn’t. When he heard the man’s feet drop into the pit and Brooklyn start to curse at him, he tried to find that moment.

  When the guy stepped over Draven, he rolled over fast, reached up and grabbed his balls. He clutched those two grapes as hard as he could and started yanking on them like he was trying to rip them off. He was in fact looking to tear open the guy’s sack. The stock of the shotgun came up, then drove down on him.

  Dazed, falling backwards, he could only lay there, seeing things in pieces: Brooklyn swinging on this guy, the struggle, her raking her nails down the front of his face, him hitting her and her hitting him back. Draven moved, tried to get in on the mix, but he took another blow to the head with the shotgun and everything went black.

  When he woke again, Bianca was holding his hand in the dark, and he was laying in Brooklyn’s lap.

  The cold stillness of night had fallen upon them. He didn’t know how long he was out, but time was relative. No. Time was inconsequential.

  “Are you awake?” Brooklyn asked.

  “Yeah,” he said.

  “How do you feel?” she asked as he sat up.

  “Like someone used my head as a soccer ball,” he replied, leaning his back against the wall.

  Bianca sat next to him, Carolina silent, her knees pulled up to her chin, her arms wrapped around her shins.

  “Where’s Veronica?” he asked.

  “They took her when they couldn’t take me,” Brooklyn said. “And I wouldn’t let them take Bianca or Carolina.”

  “Why didn’t they shoot you?” he asked.


  “He tried.”

  “And he missed?”

  “I hit the barrel in time. The loud noise caught everyone off guard. That’s when I attacked him. He said next time he comes in, if I act like that, he’s going to drop a grenade in here.”

  “They’re keeping us for a reason,” Draven said.

  “We’re food,” she replied. “Food and entertainment.”

  He knew exactly what she meant. It made his heart ache for what they were doing to Veronica. That night, instead of Veronica, they pitched Adeline into the pit and slammed the lid shut.

  Draven tried to break her fall, but she hit the side of the wall, knocking her shoulder and the side of her head. She was dazed, but not out. Brooklyn immediately attended to her.

  Seeing all this unfolding, trying to formulate a strategy, he looked for a weakness. Something he could exploit. There was nothing obvious. But there had to be something! Some way!

  When Adeline finally got her wits about her, she heard Brooklyn speaking to Carolina. Immediately she fell into happy, sobbing hysterics, grabbing the girls, all three of them.

  “I thought I lost you,” Adeline whispered through hiccupping crying.

  “I’m okay,” Brooklyn said.

  “Who else is here?” she asked, looking around the gloomy, dead rat and feces smelling pit.

  “Draven’s here,” Bianca told Adeline. “He’s keeping us safe.”

  Adeline reached out to him, found him. She then pulled everyone into a group hug that didn’t last long enough.

  More days passed and the sun only seemed to intensify in the heat, cutting the nights short. They were in the Nevada desert with murderous cretins, and it was looking like there was no way out. Draven could fight and defend himself and others in a fair fight, but this was not fair. His energy was depleted while theirs was not. Plus they had weapons and the high ground.

  You’re SOL pal, he told himself.

  By now, he’d lost count of the days. The water came, the meat came, the rats came. Then sometime in the night, the padlock was unlocked and several men dropped into the pits.

  They never came at night before...

  He tried to fight them off, as did Adeline and Brooklyn, but the men caught them all asleep, so taking Bianca was easy.

  Draven nailed one of them with a solid hook shot to the face, but the guy got around him and choked him out pretty easily.

  When he woke up, it was day and Bianca was still gone.

  Adeline was crying. Brooklyn was crying. Carolina was crying. He felt so dead on his feet he was slow to move, even slower to stand.

  “Where’s Veronica?” he heard himself ask.

  “Gone,” Carolina said, defeated.

  “Is there any water?” he asked, weary sounding, his words slurring. “Any food?”

  “I think we’re eating people,” Brooklyn announced.

  He fell back down, sitting against the wall, his lips so dry and parched, his tongue sticking to the top of his mouth.

  Get it together, he warned himself.

  When they threw Bianca back in the pit, Adeline caught her, breaking her fall. The girl was conscious, alive. Brooklyn and Carolina closed in on the child and said, “Did they hurt you?”

  The nine year old shook her head, no.

  Thank God.

  “What did they do to you, sweetheart?” Adeline asked.

  “Made me eat meat,” she said. “They wanted to see if I was going to be sick. Or die.”

  “How do you feel?” Draven asked, scooting in.

  “Okay, I guess. Did Phillip come back yet?”

  “He’s not with us,” Adeline said. “He was with Orlando and Ice. They sent me here to be with the women, and Draven. Why do they think you’re gay?”

  “Because I acted gay when they caught us,” he replied.

  “Why did you do that?” she asked.

  “Did you see Phillip?” Draven asked Bianca. She nodded her head. “Were they making him eat meat, too?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Draven, why did you pretend to be gay?” Adeline asked again.

  He turned and stared at her, not sure why she’d asked the question the first time, let alone the second.

  “So I could be with the girls and try to protect them,” he replied.

  He looked up at the bars, thinking, strategizing, trying to work something out. Nothing was coming to mind, though. His head hurt and was stuffed with cotton. It’s a wonder anything worked in there.

  “I might have underestimated you,” Adeline finally said.

  Ignoring the comment, Draven stood up, never once taking his eyes off the grate he and the girls were under.

  There has to be a way out of there, he thought. There just has to be.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  This freaking guy is crushing me to death. I’m not going to talk about what happened earlier, but I will say this, I’ve crossed a line I can’t hop back over. It’s like when you kill someone, you can’t ever unkill them. You can never really unring that bell. Same thing when you…dammit, I don’t want to talk about this. All I can say is my energy levels didn’t exactly spike, but a little bite to eat allowed my body to energize. The resurgence I gleaned from…what I did…it wasn’t enough, though.

  It isn’t enough.

  Feeling around his lifeless body where I can, I don’t come up with a set of keys. Maybe they’re in his pockets where I can’t reach. I try shifting this sloth’s weight off of me, but he’s too heavy and I’m permanently fatigued. Plus it’s getting hard to breathe. Now I know why they call it “dead weight.” I’m being smashed into both the ground and the back wall, and this guy is face planted dead on top of me.

  Dead weight.

  That’s when I come across the sheath with a knife handle sticking out. “Yes,” I hiss, victorious.

  After a bit of work, I manage to jostle the weapon loose and get a good look at it. It’s a four inch blade, nasty looking. There’s dried blood on it, which means this is no virgin blade. Good. That’s when I start calling out for help.

  “Angus?” one of the guys from up top says, his body casting a long shadow over us. My head is all but hidden beneath him, my legs splayed out, my arm tucked into his side. I’ve got the blade, but it’s concealed.

  “I think Angus had a heart attack,” I say, my voice reflective of my struggle to breathe. “It happened when he pulled up his pants.”

  When I realize what I just said, that the man’s name is Angus, it makes me a little sick. Like I just ate some Angus beef and it’s not settling well with me.

  “Angus ain’t no queer,” the man said. “Angus! Buddy! Whatcha doin?”

  “He’s frickin’ crushing me to death, man,” I gasp, for real. “Get him off me. I can’t breathe!”

  He pulls a key out from his pants, unlocks the padlock then hauls open the heavy metal grate. He disappears for a second, long enough to swing a rickety wooden ladder over the side.

  “You try anything funny,” the guy says, “and I’ll shoot you. Eat you next.”

  The statement he makes off the cuff, almost like he forgot to guard his words, is chilling. My grip on the knife tightens.

  “What am I going to do?” I ask, sounding strangled. “Can’t breathe.”

  When the man comes over, he says, “Jesus almighty, Angus. Just when you think you know someone...”

  He leans down, grips Angus by the back of his shirt with both hands, and that’s when I angle the blade and slice hard across the inside of his wrist. He folds in from the pain and I drive the blade right into his side, twisting and turning as fast and as hard as I can.

  His elbow collapses and he half drops down on top of Angus.

  I rip the blade out, drive it in three, four, five more times. He’s still moving, looking at me and trying to grab me with his good hand, but it’s slow going and I’m well hidden.

  With him now on me too, I really can’t breathe so well, but my stabbing arm is on autopilot. Twelve, thirteen, fo
urteen more times I get this guy. I’m stabbing, twisting, bumping across bone and getting in soft flesh. This is my life or my death. As the fight goes on, however, I’m thinking this is my life. Like I’ve bought myself another day.

  I’m looking into his eyes now. Not a foot away. He’s looking at me, too. There is awareness one minute, but then there’s a clearing of his eyes, and then nothing.

  The blade falls from my hand as I try to figure a way around this. I don’t need keys, a ladder or an open grate. For now, my escape is clear. I grunt and shift my body, but the weight of these two is too much. The spark of frustration becomes a flame with every failed attempt to free myself. Then it becomes a bonfire and I really go for it, pushing and growling and wiggling here and there.

  I get no where.

  Spent, out of breath, my bones now bowing and aching under the pressure, I finally come to accept that I am pinned down here. I got some energy from eating a bit of Angus. Looking at him now, his dead face half on mine, I tell myself I can’t, I won’t. Seeing his friend piled on top of him, seeing those lifeless eyes glassed over and partially covered by a pair of lazy eyelids, I know that I can’t do that again. Even if it means I might die. If it does, then it does and I’ll give life a try on the other side, if there is such a thing.

  Ice was in his own dirt pit, listening to his brother scream for help. The skin on the side of his face and the back of his neck was fried from the sun, he was enervated and alone, too tired to be pissed off. But that didn’t mean he wasn’t still thinking of ways to get out.

  He was.

  It took him two days of laying in the same spot for his plan to work. One of his many abductors dropped the water bucket down. He didn’t move. The guy feeding him dropped a slab of meat down. He still didn’t move. When one of these clowns unzipped his fly and pissed on the side of his face, he didn’t move. Some of it puddled in his ears and drizzled over his lips, but he was committed. So he still didn’t move.

  Not an inch.

  His body ached worse than anything he’d ever experienced, but then one of them came down into the pit to check on him and that’s when he prepared to make his move.