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

by Schow, Ryan

  No one wanted to talk about the meat they were fed, or speculate on whether it was human or something else, and that was just as well. No one wanted the answer. They dared not even think of the question.

  They only worked to get the hell out of there.

  Draven and Brooklyn found the keys to the various vehicles, located two they could travel with—a Dodge truck old enough to run and a station wagon that was also working. The Dodge would only fit two people, but the station wagon would hold seven. When it looked like these cars would serve their purposes, they began to siphon gas from the other vehicles, but stopped when Phillip found the extra stores of gas. There were six five-gallon cans, all full.

  The men humped them to the back of the Dodge, loaded them up, secured them with straps. Inside the house, there was some food and water. There wasn’t much, but there was enough canned goods to get a little food in all of them.

  Eliana went looking through the rest of the house gathering up blankets and anything else she could get her hands on. She found their sleeping bags and some of the other items from the bus, but they could only use about half the items because they’d been ruined by the smoke.

  She did find a box of grenades stashed in one of the closets, and for this, the woman finally managed to smile. There were eight of them. All new looking.

  She loaded them in the front seat of the Dodge and put a blanket over them, not telling anyone what she’d found. Then she went back to work, searching the rest of the house. She found a 1911 pistol with some ammo, but it needed cleaning badly. She also found a small stash of shotgun shells. They were slugs and a few bean bag rounds she assumed were from the police cruiser out front. Unfortunately, there was no more buckshot left.

  Outside, Fire, Ice and Draven were building two pyres for the kids. One large enough for both Veronica and Orlando, the other for what was left of Chase.

  Adeline and Brooklyn were a mess, understandably so. Phillip worked, too, but his face was a perpetual white pall. This little boy lost his parents and both his brothers, and he’d lost Morgan, whom he’d clearly come to like.

  The girls tried to comfort him, but he wanted to work with the men. Maybe that was so he could get his mind off his losses, or maybe he just needed to do something. It was hard to say how the nine year old was processing so much.

  In the end, Ice let the dogs out of the cages and off their leashes. Eliana and Fire had weapons on them in case they tried to attack anyone, but they just trotted off into the desert, finding their own way to whatever future they had in mind for themselves.

  Phillip only spoke when he insisted on being the one to carry his brother’s remains to the pyre they built. Fire carried Orlando, and Adeline was there to hold her boy’s hand. Eliana found Veronica’s pants, dressed her, then asked Draven to carry her down. He did. She was laid to rest beside Orlando, their bodies arranged together.

  As they stood around the deceased, they held their heads low and closed their eyes. Draven had asked to say a word or two for them.

  No one objected.

  “Lord I ask you to accept these three souls and reunite them with the others into your Kingdom. They were good people, the same as Constanza, Ross and Kamal. The same as Alma and Eudora. Grandma if you can hear me, please take care of our friends until we’re able to come and join you ourselves. And Lord, thank you for the lives you’ve allowed us to have thus far, we’re sorry for what we’ve had to do to survive, and please, if you can see it in your heart to provide us guidance for the road ahead, we will listen. We’re listening. Amen.”

  Everyone said “Amen,” and then Brooklyn lit the kindling beneath her brother and Veronica, while Ice helped Phillip with Chase’s pyre.

  When they stood back, all of them watched their friends and family go, the flames gathering up around the wood and the bodies.

  The sun was going down, the temperature dropping, but there was still sunlight left. Enough to cast an eerie glow over them and the onset of night. To look at them, in their malnourished, wasted states, it would seem like ghosts had gathered around the freshly dead.

  Although they were destroyed by these mounting losses, if there was anything to be happy about, it was that Orlando, Veronica and Chase no longer had to be in this hostile wasteland.

  There was no joy in the world right now, not in the transitional state they were in, but when the masses died off and the earth was once again settled, there was some quiet hope that they would flourish again, free of the worry of war, of the conflicts and aggressions of those trying to survive, and of the fear that food would run out and they would starve to death.

  There was hope, but it was a faraway thing, a glimmer of light in the shadows of death and loss. But it was there. And if they never reached that hope, that ideal, if others died, too—and they would—then the glory of heaven and all their loved ones awaited them.

  In the distance, a pack of coyotes began to yip and howl. Everyone pulled a little closer together, and when it was time, they loaded into the vehicles as a group, said one last prayer over the recovered two-ways, then found their way back to the highway and left this nightmare behind.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  UNKNOWN NUMBER OF DAYS…

  Eliana and Ice are ahead of us—Eliana driving the Dodge, Ice in the passenger seat. Draven’s driving because I’m in no condition to do so. My brain is stuck in neutral, my heart barely beating, my memories working in reverse, stuck in the past, locked down on something no longer real.

  I can’t stop thinking of Orlando, how he was, who he might have grown up to be. There were so many things I’d wanted to teach him, to do with him. But in the end, I missed most of his youth by being on the job, which made me seethe to the point of silent tears. Looking out into the pitch black night, it’s easy to see how much life I let slip away, for I busied myself with things that in the end were depleting, not fulfilling. People are life, and the people we love are everything. I lost sight of that, but I know that now. Perhaps this devastation, this cleansing, will serve as a constant reminder of everything I once forgot.

  I glance into the back seat, see Adeline with her head resting against the cool glass. Brooklyn is beside her, asleep but holding Adeline’s hand. Carolina is tucked into Brooklyn. In the back seat, the one facing the rear window, I can’t see the kids’ heads, but Phillip is back there with Bianca and my heart is crushed thinking about what little Phillip must be feeling.

  We’ve all taken the kids under our wings, but as adults, we’ve all managed to be there for each other, too. Like family. Exactly like family.

  My gaze falls on Draven. He looks over at me.

  “Thank you for everything,” I say.

  It’s all I can manage because my emotions are welling again. He sees this and smiles. There’s something about him I’ve really come to like. A quiet strength, a steadfastness that’s obvious, the ability to love and protect those he loves.

  “What are you thanking me for?” he asks.

  “For being you. For coming with us on this trip. For being invaluable to our family, our group, to all of us in this life.”

  He smiles, eyes back on the road, and then he says, “My father was a tyrant. But he gave me what I needed to be who I am today. I never thought any of this training would ever matter, almost like I thought he prepped me for a life I’d never live. But here we are, living it.”

  He looks at me, then he looks back at the road.

  Continuing, he says, “I never thought much about my father, because I always felt bad for the one I had. You’re a good father, Fiyero. I wish mine would have been more like you.”

  This is the point where everything really hits me fast and hits me hard. The crushing weight on my chest threatens to stop my heart. I can’t hold it in any longer. This dam of emotion. I try though. I try and I fail.

  We drive for nearly three hundred miles, cruising through the night and into the day, stopping a few times to gas up the vehicles, take a pee break, stretch our legs. I gr
avitate to Adeline and Brooklyn. They are like me, lost in a haze. We don’t speak. We aren’t at the place where we can handle words between us. Brooklyn hugs me and she starts crying. This starts me crying, too. Then Adeline is sobbing, too and we’re just holding each other.

  This is how great of a group we have, though. All of them come to us, hug us, cry with us, and then when we’re all cried out, we get back in the vehicles and make that final leg of the journey, reaching the California border in no time.

  At the border, we’re met with a road block and three people. These are just regular guys. Not in uniform, not armed, just some self-appointed frisking committee. Eliana is driving in front of us and Ice is in the passenger seat. Ice gets out and within a minute or two, it’s starting to look like they aren’t going to let us through.

  “What the hell?” Draven grumbles, pissed off, clearly at his wits end.

  “What’s going on?” Brooklyn asks.

  “Not sure,” I say.

  An uncomfortable tension starts to gather in the air, a warm sweat rising to the surface of the skin beneath my collar. One of the guys moves toward Ice, and Ice steps back. Draven and I are out of the car, but not before Eliana.

  She slides out quick, fires a round into the guy going after Ice, then charges the big one while Ice takes the closest one. Knowing there was only one round in the weapon she fired, she’s about to take on the big one in her depleted state.

  She won’t win.

  By the time we get there, though, she’s already kicked him in the nuts, palm struck him in the nose and shoved something down his pants. Now she’s turning and waving at us and yelling, “Go back!”

  Ice has already started running, too.

  The man blows up in a huge, bloody BANG! And then it’s over. I’m sitting there staring at her and she’s staring at me, and then a very shocked Draven asks, “Did you just drop a grenade down his pants?”

  “Yeah,” she says.

  She starts to laugh and Draven starts to laugh and that’s when I say, “I think we’ve all lost our minds,” and then suddenly we’re all back to laughing.

  But this is no humorous matter. We just blew this guy up. Now I don’t want you to get the wrong idea about us—we’re not casual murderers. We don’t enjoy this. It’s purely a matter of survival. Looking around, I can see Eliana just wants to kill anything hostile, and Draven is back on edge again. This trip nearly killed us.

  All of us.

  We’re loopy, delirious, dehydrated and in need of so many things. Basically, we’re at that point where things as twisted as this only seem funny because the second you stop laughing, you’re going to fall into a catatonic state and never pull out of it.

  When we drive through the road block, the trip down the mountain is gorgeous. Huge pine trees line the roads for miles. I roll down my window, inhale the fresh scented air.

  “This is beautiful,” Carolina says. She hasn’t said much. After Alma and Constanza, she began to recede inside herself.

  It’s difficult to process all this as an adult, let alone a child. I still can’t believe the things I’ve done, or what’s happened to us. It’s so bad, I feel a separate side of me forming, some alternate version of myself that never really knew the first version because one version can’t really know the other without being either disgusted with what I’ve become or disgusted by how soft I used to be.

  At the bottom of the hill, we see road signs for Loomis, and this has me nervous. All along the trip I thought of Rock, of who he is, who he came to be, how we will be as brothers again. And I can’t help wondering how he’ll react to Ice being alive.

  I also worry about our appearance. We look like the kinds of people who’d gut you for a smoke, or sleep in our own crap because it’s softer than the hard ground. And then I wonder if he’s even alive. With so many people dead, it’s not hard to imagine he’s one of them. The only thing that makes me believe we’ll see him again is the notion that the Dimas brothers are survivors, and that he survived.

  It’s mid-morning when we pull into the long driveway of the property that’s supposed to be his. It looks just like he described it, but we never really talked so maybe it’s the wrong house. The good news is there are people everywhere, but there is something wrong with them. They’re working, but there are also armed people all around them, some of them in a frenzy. These armed people close in on us quickly. I get out, hands at my sides, palms out to show them I’m not armed. To the woman with the rifle on me, I say, “We’re not here to stir up any trouble.”

  “What do you want?” she asks.

  Two more weapons raise up on me and I say, “I’m looking for my brother.”

  “He ain’t here,” the woman says.

  “I never said his name.”

  “Then say it.”

  “Rock Dimas,” I say. “Although he may be going by Roque.”

  The weapons come down and then hesitantly, her features softening, she says, “Fiyero?”

  A smile creeps over my face and I say, “Is he…alive?”

  She nods, then turns and says, “Go get Rock. Tell him he’s got company.”

  Everyone else begins to get out of the cars and that’s when I see my brother. The emotion wells in me so fast it takes me by surprise. My legs are moving and he’s seeing me and the same thing is happening to his face and body. We come together in a fierce brotherly hug that lasts forever.

  “Oh my God, Fiyero,” he keeps saying into my neck. “Oh, thank God.”

  That’s when he looks up and I feel his trembling body go perfectly still. Like he’s seen a ghost. I stand back, see him and know what this is about.

  “Ice?” he says, the disbelief and the tears welling. He looks at me and then he looks at Ice and I know his mind is struggling to make the connection. “Is that really you?” To me, he says, “Am I seeing our dead brother?”

  “You are,” I tell him.

  He goes to Ice, looks at him, hugs him fiercely and the reunion is everything I’d hoped it would be. He just keeps touching Ice, almost to make sure he’s real, that he hasn’t gone away. And then he pulls back and looks at him again to make sure it’s him. Ice smiles, eyes wet, and he grabs and hugs him again, kissing the side of his face.

  “I thought I killed you,” he says, sobbing.

  “You almost did,” Ice admits in a rare moment of emotion.

  They say real men don’t cry, but that’s a bunch of crap. Real men love their family more than anything, sometimes even to the point of tears. No one will ever fault us for that. In fact, seeing each other, being back together, this is a measure of strength, a trifecta of power through unity.

  Rock greets Adeline and Brooklyn enthusiastically, then asks about Orlando.

  “As you can see, we’ve had a very difficult trip,” Draven steps up and says. “We lost half a dozen people getting out here. Orlando was one of them.”

  New waves of emotion crash through my brother. He wasn’t close to Orlando, or really any of us after what happened with our father, and Ice, but still…family is family.

  “I’m so sorry,” he says.

  Just then, a couple of soldier-looking types come over to join us. I’d seen them coming a minute ago. One of them is a big man, good looking with a heavy beard and big muscles. He has the steadfast look of an operator, someone who’s done difficult things, terrible things in service of our nation. The other guy is a little smaller and looks a little older. He has silver hair slicked back, a slight beard and a tattoos on well built arms. He walks just ahead of the younger man and with a fair bit of confidence that isn’t attitude.

  “Rock, we have a problem,” the silver haired man says.

  “Rider, Marcus, this filthy creature is my brother, Fiyero and this is Isadoro,” he says proudly.

  “Thought you were dead,” Marcus says, taking Ice’s hand.

  “I feel dead,” he says warmly.

  I introduce them to everyone else and that’s when a woman with a bow and arrows join
s us. She’s a beautiful girl with a severe look on her face, like something bad happened. She’s about Brooklyn’s age and scary. They introduce us to Indigo. Looking down, as thin and as fit as she is, it almost appears that she’s got a tiny baby bump.

  “She’s gone,” Indigo says. “She took One and Carver’s gone, too.”

  “What’s the count now?”

  “Fifteen dead.”

  “Did you say Carver?” Draven asks.

  “Yes.”

  I look at Draven, at how he’s responding, then I remember he had a friend near here named Carver. Silicon Valley, I think. Carver isn’t a common name, so I understand his curiosity.

  “Carver Gamble?” Draven asks.

  The four of them look at each other, exchanging puzzled looks, then it’s all eyes on Draven.

  “How do you know him?” Indigo asks, stern.

  “From Silicon Valley, right?”

  “Yeah,” Rider says, now fully alert. “You know him?”

  “Did he…?”

  “It’s the woman he’s with,” Marcus says. “Maria Antoinette.”

  “Although before he left,” Rider says, “he told me she was the Silver Queen. Does that make any sense?”

  I look at Draven as he thinks about this. Then his face goes a few shades of white and he says, “Tell me everything you know about this Maria.”

  “For starters, she killed more than a dozen people,” Indigo says, very intense. “Then she laid waste to one of our encampments and now she took a bunch of our supplies and one of our trucks before leaving.”

  “Why would she do that?” Adeline asks.

  “She said she wanted a king. For some reason, she had Marcus here in mind for that role, but Amber said otherwise and she didn’t like it.”

  “Who’s Amber?” Carolina asks.