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

by Schow, Ryan

  “My soul mate,” Marcus says, rigid, protective.

  “And you said she called herself the Silver Queen?” Draven asks.

  “Yeah,” Rider replied, curious. “Why? What do you know that we don’t?”

  “If I’m right, and this is a stretch—more of a hunch than anything—I think she may be the one who started all this,” Draven says, dark and cryptic.

  “All what?” Brooklyn asks.

  “This,” he says. “Everything you see around you. The drones, the EMP, the wholesale slaughter. But Carver is a good person. If he’s with her, there’s got to be a reason.”

  “Who is she that she could do all this?” Rider asks, still not understanding.

  “If I’m right, it’s not who she is,” Draven answers. “I suspect it’s more like what she is. Ask me that if you want, because that’s the better question. But first answer me this. How smart is she?”

  “She knows the answer to every question before the question has even left your mouth,” Indigo answers.

  “You said you thought we had a problem,” Draven tells Rider. “If this woman is what I suspect she is, then you were right. We have a very big problem.”

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  SACRAMENTO…

  Night fell hard on the city. Maria stalked through the empty streets carrying a small lamb. She had it hoisted over her back, its throat cut. There were defensive wounds on her arms and face, but they were stitching themselves up quicker than normal. Not because anything had changed, but because the damage was that bad.

  Her body felt weak, low on energy. She was wounded from the long fight for this animal. Slowing her walk, she staggered to a stop, dropped to a knee and swung the animal over her shoulder. It flopped dead on the sidewalk.

  With her knife, she sheared its side, cut out a chunk of meat, then ate it raw, snorting and making noise as she chewed. She heard something. Stopped. After a moment, she heard a pack of dogs.

  Looking up, she saw them.

  They saw her.

  Glaring at them, not blinking or looking away, she held the eye of the alpha. Eventually he glanced down, then lead his pack away.

  Maria took another bite of the animal, feeling the sustenance coursing through her body, renewing bits of her vitality. She ate another few bites, spit out the excess blood. Dragging a sleeve over her face, she wiped her mouth clean.

  Feeling better, she stood, hoisted the lamb back over her shoulder and headed for the building they’d taken as their own. She walked inside the entryway, saw two armed men, then said, “It’s me.”

  “Ma’am,” they both said.

  “I’ll fetch you when this is ready to eat,” she said.

  She stalked up four flights of stairs. There the roof had caved in, leaving behind a large balcony and lots of starlight. There was a small, open air fire going.

  Carver, the little girl she knew as One (formerly known as Sally) and a few of the men she’d gathered up were perched around the flames, warming their hands.

  On a cozy chaise lounge chair, one she’d found at a nearby pool, sat the woman. She was new to the group, and mean. This lithe looking creature was a touch anti-social, but when Maria found her, she’d cut through the defenses of six men and stole their food. Maria approached her, easily defending herself against the woman’s attack.

  When Maria didn’t kill the woman, this creature looked at her with new eyes. She got the impression the woman wanted her as much as she wanted the food she’d taken. It wasn’t hard to convince her to join the group. That’s how she met Ruby.

  Ruby, if she could play well with others, would be her gem. The jewel in her crown of killers. Her gaze finally fell on Carver. He was no Marcus, but he was hers and she’d have to make do. This had her thinking back to Carver’s initial introduction to Ruby. Carver was a pretty man, once clean cut, still with the hint of a GQ look. This wasn’t lost on Ruby.

  “Which appeals to you more,” Maria first asked her, “weak men or a beautiful woman?”

  Carver lowered his head, turned away.

  “A beautiful woman,” Ruby said with a sly grin. “But he’s cute, too.”

  She didn’t think there’d be a problem between the three of them, but if there was, she’d just offload Ruby onto Carver, or vice versa.

  “It’s time to eat,” she said. There was a fair bit of excitement over seeing her with the lamb. “If we’re going to rule the world, we’re going to need our strength.”

  One of the guys snickered, but she looked at him and he stopped. There was still a bit of blood on her face from where she ate the lamb.

  She felt the dryness of it pulling at the flesh.

  Lowering her head, narrowing her eyes, she let her gaze drill into him until she felt the look became something half-psychotic and terrifying.

  “Is there something you find funny?” she asked.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “You think this world is too ruined, too chaotic, too far gone?” she asked. No one answered her. “Well it isn’t. This is simply a level playing field now.”

  “Well I hate to break it to you,” he said, “but this ain’t no Sunday afternoon clean up.”

  “No kidding,” she said, leaning on the slang.

  “None of us have the years left in us to fix everything broken in this world,” he told her, stoking the fire, reclaiming a bit of his dignity.

  “Is that what you think, Einstein?” she asked, staring at him, not blinking for a full minute.

  “I was just thinking out loud is all.”

  “Back before this, all you people were clamoring for racial and gender equality, for the white man to step aside and let a woman of color rule.”

  “You’ve got color,” Ruby said with a grin. “But more important, you’ve got balls.”

  “Yes,” Maria hissed.

  “No offense,” one of the other guys said, “but I don’t think a woman can make her presence in this world known without TV, internet, or even some sort of printed press.”

  “How was Genghis Khan known?” she challenged. “Alexander the Great? Julius Caesar? Napoleon Bonaparte? They were known around the world because they were conquerors. They bathed entire countries with the blood of fallen armies, then they gathered unto themselves that which they were not afraid to take.”

  “Meaning what?” Carver dared to ask. “You’re going to conquer the world?”

  “Inside of months, this nation of three hundred and thirty million will be reduced to a mere thirty million. A year after that, tens of millions less. By then we will be an army, and that army will either gather more soldiers, or take more heads. In the mean time, before we take the nation back from the dark ages, we need a city. This will be our city.”

  “You know this is Sacramento, right?” one of the guys said with humor in his voice.

  “I do,” she answered.

  “How do you expect it to stand out over any other city in this country?” Ruby asked, sitting up.

  “Because I’m going to turn the power back on,” she said.

  “Really?” One asked, enthused.

  “Really,” she said, perfectly certain.

  END OF BOOK 4

  The journey concludes in The Age of Defiance…

  IF YOU ENJOYED THE AGE OF EXODUS, YOUR VOICE MATTERS…

  Emerging authors always get that writer’s high reading great reviews from readers like yourself, but there’s more to a review than an author’s personal gratification. As independent writers, we don’t always have the financial might of New York’s Big 5 publishing firms, and we’d never shell out a bazillion dollars to Barnes & Noble for that ultra-prime shelf space (yet!).

  What we do have, however, is far more valuable than shelf space or movie contracts or all the marketing money in the world: we have you, the devoted reader.

  If you enjoyed this series, I’d be immensely grateful if you could leave a quick and easy review (it can be as long or as short as you want). Simply leave a review when
prompted by Amazon at the end of this book, or CLICK HERE to get directly to The Age of Exodus product page. Simply scroll down to where it says LEAVE A CUSTOMER REVIEW and voìla, you’re ready!

  Not only do reviews like yours help this series get the exposure it needs to grow and thrive, reading your kind reviews has become the highlight of my day, so please be sure to let me know what you loved most about this book. Please note, the way Amazon’s review system works is five stars is good, four stars is alright, and three stars or less are just degrees of no bueno.

  *If you happen to see any errors (typos, etc…), they sometimes show up uninvited and can get overlooked (sad face!), feel free to shoot me a quick email at contact@ryanschow.com. Thank you!

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  Afterword

  Many of you reading The Age of Embers series did not come here through The Last War series. Although you don’t need to read The Last War series to enjoy this one, the merging of the two worlds has been half the fun of creating this ever expanding universe.

  Many of the characters you see in this series, including Maria and her stolen child (One), the guards from Stanford, Jill, Marcus, Nick, Bailey and especially Indigo and Macy, are all part of The Last War series in one way or another.

  There are some scenes in this series (The Age of Embers Series) that are merge points with the original series (The Last War Series) and provide context through seeing the scene from a different viewpoint. Although some of these scenes feel familiar to my Last War readers, these scenes are the same only in the dialogue and historical events. These are the connecting points and cannot change for continuity reasons. Everything else, however, is written fresh from the perspective of these new characters.

  I saw this merging of timelines done for the first time in the movie, Back to the Future. The connecting scene between the original movie and Back to the Future II was the scene where Marty was playing “Johnny Be Good” on the electric guitar for the first time at the school dance. As a kid, watching that movie, seeing such an iconic scene revisited from a different perspective in the second movie was pretty dang cool.

  Now you know…

  For those of you who have not read The Last War series, it’s a seven book series that has earned some incredible praise, earning awards for anything from cover design to Top 100 most read book in Kindle Unlimited. With more than twenty million pages read and tens of thousands of books sold, The Last War series has become one of the more beloved series in post apocalyptic fiction, men’s and women’s adventure and young adult/dystopian fiction. You can read these books individually or at a discount with several different box set options. The entire series is also available in Kindle Unlimited, which means you can read them for FREE with your KU subscription. Simply click the link below for the way you’d like to start.

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  Finally, I want to thank you for reading this series, for the awesome Amazon reviews for those of you who have left them, and for taking the time to immerse yourself in this fun, scary, (admittedly) violent new world. Next up is The Age of Defiance. The final book in this series will see a release date in late September/early October, 2019. However, if you are interested in reading it before it hits the digital shelves, simply join the Private Facebook Fan Group and when the time comes, I will announce the call for early readers. In the mean time, there are some very cool people in the group, and I’m there regularly and always interacting with newbies, fans and friends alike. Or you can just hang out for some other cool things, like sample chapters of upcoming books, info on past and future series, cover reveals and surveys that help shape the upcoming books. Simply follow the link below to be a part of this group.

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  Sneak Peek at The Age of Defiance…

  Familiar faces. Brand new alliances. An impossible enemy in their midst…

  The Chicago survivors stagger into town on fumes. They’re injured, distraught and suffering from innumerable losses. At Rock’s homestead, however—in the midst of a new threat—Fire and the group both reunite with family and take refuge with local survivors. Here they come to realize the enemy of humanity has been posing as one of their own: a human. No one really knows what this means. Some realize they've leapt out of the frying pan and into the fire, while others see an opportunity to exact revenge. But for the select few, it means both.

  Vigilante justice just might nourish the battered soul, maybe even right a few wrongs, but one misstep could cost humankind its very existence. Through all of this, a bold new question emerges, one that will drive them toward the unthinkable: is Maria the key to their salvation, or will this unrelenting force lay waste to them all in her rise to power?

  The Age of Defiance is the fifth and final book in this hard-hitting, no-punches-pulled post-apocalyptic EMP adventure series. If ever there was a time to brace for impact, it is with this blistering conclusion. You have been warned…

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