The Age of Embers

by Ryan Schow

  “I thought you were battle hardened,” he says.

  “You’re only tough until you get hit, X. Trust me on this one. Take four shots when you’re not expecting it and we’ll talk.”

  “Just throw a little dirt on it while I deal with this idiot.”

  Xavier heads over to the guy still crawling for his gun. Xavier rolls him over. He’s got a big patch of red on his stomach, and another on his thigh. He’s not going to live.

  Everyone else is dead.

  I start gathering up the guns, the wallets and the cell phones and search the bodies for spare mags, knives, chewing gum or mints. In terms of tangible loot, I collect seven pistols, a sawed off shotgun with a black pistol grip and one stick of spearmint gum. Just inside the door, under the kitchen sink, there’s a box of Glad plastic bags. I pull one out, then hurry back out of the house to gather up the goodies.

  Through openings in the house, I see the front finally caught fire. The flames aren’t huge right now, but they will be.

  “Damn,” I hear myself say as awareness dawns on me.

  These houses are so close that the spreading of the fire will be an inevitability. And since there are no emergency services, the second a blaze gets going…oh, God. I’m starting to think we might’ve done a bad thing.

  A really, really bad thing.

  This is about to be a catastrophic nightmare. Not just for this house, but for the entire block. How many people are still living here? How many are hunkering down to ride out the war? What’s done is done, though. I have to tell myself that, even though I’m feeling lower than a pregnant ant right now.

  “I’m taking these to the truck,” I tell Xavier, hoisting the black bag over my shoulder, the AR-15 in my free hand. “The place in on fire, by the way.”

  Out front, there are four people with fire extinguishers at the front of the house trying to put out the fire. They’re getting ahead of it, but it’ll take more than what they’ve got to put a stop to it. A young girl is grabbing a garden hose from the house next door and dragging it over, water pouring out the end.

  The older gentleman leading the mock fire brigade turns, sees me and says, “You FOOL!”

  “DEA,” I say.

  “I don’t care who you are!” he hisses, his jowls shaking, his eyes like bullets. “If this thing takes off, you can kiss this entire neighborhood good-bye!”

  From across the street, a pair of women are hurrying over with more fire extinguishers. I set down the bag and ask for one of the canisters.

  “Let me help,” I tell her. She’s scared, so she doesn’t fight me.

  Instead of keeping a safe distance, like the others, I realize this is my fault—our fault—and so I race inside the wall of smoke intending to hit the blaze at the source. I squeeze the metal handle, let the dry chemical mixture do its job. When that’s out, I return to the front of the house where someone is handing me a second canister. Back inside, I manage to extinguish the rest of the flames, and that’s when I hear shifting.

  Someone else is upstairs. But upstairs is about to be downstairs, and I’m about to be a pancake if I don’t get out of here soon. Instead of making my way to the front of the house, I duck out the rear just as the house collapses from the weakened support beams.

  A few minutes later, I hear the rustling sounds of someone pushing their way through the wreckage inside.

  AR-15 up, one round chambered, I’m ready to roll.

  Then a young girl comes out. She’s Mexican and she’s badly cut. God, she must be twelve or thirteen years old!

  “Are you okay?” I ask, hurrying toward her. She’s shaking her head no. She shows me her arm and underneath the skin is pulled back, flayed. I take the sash off her dirty yellow dress, find a clean part and wrap the wound.

  In Spanish, I say, “This is going to be tight, but we have to stop the bleeding.” Her face is damp from crying and dirty; she gives me an agreeable nod. Then I ask, “Were you with these people?”

  She looks down, shakes her head no.

  “How did you get here?” I ask. Then it occurs to me. “Did they…take you?” She nods. “Did they…do things to you?”

  Now she’s still. I close my eyes, my worst nightmares confirmed.

  “Are you American?” I ask.

  “Honduran,” she says in the softest, most wounded voice.

  “Did you come here with your parents?”

  “Mother.”

  “Where is she now?” I ask.

  “Dead.”

  “Father?”

  She shrugs her shoulders.

  “Can you walk, or do you want me to carry you?”

  “Carry,” she says.

  I lift her and she winces. If she doesn’t get medical attention soon, she could die. When I manage to get the girl out front, one of the women rushes to our aid, her eyes only on the girl.

  Before this good Samaritan can take the girl from me, I set the child on her feet, kneel down before her and take her hands in mine. “Are there more of you? More girls together?”

  She nods her head.

  “Are the people you’re staying with doing bad things to all of you?”

  She nods her head again. “Si.”

  “Where?” I ask. The woman who came to her aid tries to take her, but I shoo her away. She grunts, reaches for the girl again, but I look up and say, “Wait!” in a voice that’s raw and gravely from smoke inhalation.

  She waits.

  “Where?” I ask again.

  “Two oh eight oh one,” she says, her eyelids bobbing, her eyes gathering up an incredible shine.

  “20801, what?”

  “Irving,” she says.

  “Irving what?” I ask, leaning closer.

  “She needs help,” the woman is saying, her eyes on the girl’s blood soaked arm.

  “Be quiet!” I say. “Irving what? Way, drive, lane?”

  “Irving Park. Storage unit one six three.”

  “That’s enough,” the woman says, two more women joining her. She removes my hands from the child’s hands, then walks her to the home across the street.

  “She is but one girl in an entire storage unit of girls,” I explain. The remaining women seem to understand. “Take care of her. She’ll need to go to the hospital.”

  Xavier is at my side.

  “Irving Park is out by O’Hare,” he says. “Just off 49.”

  “Since when did Los Rojos start trafficking little girls?” I ask. “They’ve always been about the drugs.”

  “Everyone’s diversifying,” Xavier answers. “Let’s go check it out. If it’s legit, we can’t go in half cocked. We do that again and we’re dead. I’ll tell you one thing. These guys look like you. I mean, you could pass for one of them.”

  “You act surprised.”

  “I am,” he says, “but I’m not.”

  “You’ve never been deep cover, X. You’ve always been suit and tie kind of guy. The kind of guy who wants to go home with clean hands and a smile.”

  “Saved your ass, right?” he groused. “And besides, do you see a scratch on me? Even one?”

  “Why do I get the feeling you’re upset about that.”

  “We all have our time,” he seems to say. “Mine will come. Mine will come and I’ll be back with Giselle. Best to get ours while the getting’s good, and as long as I’ve got guns, ammo and gumption, the getting’s definitely good.”

  “Don’t let your death wish cloud your judgment,” I tell him as we head to the Tahoe. “You’re still a suit, but now you’re also my partner.”

  “I hear that,” he says.

  I commandeer the Tahoe, drive us out of here. Of the two operational checkpoints we crossed through to get here, one is down and the other looks abandoned.

  “This is about the time cops, firefighters and EMTs realize we’re not coming back from this,” Xavier says. “Right now they’re all about covering their own bacon.”

  “You had to know this time would come.”

  “Y
eah,” he says.

  “Good news, though,” I tell him. “We can go weapons hot with zero consequences.”

  “Brother, that’s about to be our way of life if we don’t get some military assistance up in here and right quick.” Grabbing his phone, scrolling through it while fishing out a signal, he says, “Go to O’Hare. It’s off Hwy 19 and Hwy 45. If I can get a—there it is...got a signal. Stop the truck, pull over there.”

  I cozy up to a curb while Xavier gets directions via the phone’s GPS. Twice he shakes his phone, then taps the screen hard in frustration.

  “Have you got it yet?” I ask.

  “Take 25th Avenue all the way to Addison. Addison will take us past 45 and we can hop on the 19 from there. Hwy 19 is West Irving Park Road.”

  We make our way through a slew of stalled out and abandoned traffic, and we have to alter our route about a dozen times. The further we get from downtown Chicago, the less destruction we encounter. That doesn’t mean we don’t see any drones. They are certainly out in force, they’re just not where we are.

  When we’re finally able to navigate our way around the roadway wreckage, we turn on W. Irving Park Drive, find the address and pull up to the front gate. The sliding metal fence is closed. After a fair amount of less than subtle police-style fence-banging, we realize there are no managers here either.

  “Security cameras,” Xavier says, pointing them out.

  “They’re just feeds for the office staff,” I tell him.

  “Yeah, but they’ll have internet access,” Xavier replies. He thinks about it, then says, “Who cares, let’s go.”

  I follow his lead.

  We hop the fence, trot through an industrial sized warehouse containing mostly large storage units, and then we find the unit the girl gave us: one sixty-three.

  I put my ear to the metal rolling door, listen for voices inside.

  I don’t hear any.

  I give a light knock, much to the chagrin of Xavier. When there’s no response from inside, I stand back and shoot the metal lock twice. The thing breaks open and Xavier just stands there, looking at me.

  “Now who’s got the death wish?” he says.

  I roll up the metal door to an awful smell. Groaning, we both plug our noses and turn away. When the gate is up and natural light is shining inside we both see and smell the cages.

  There are maybe ten large dog cages, each big enough for a German Shepard. Instead of dogs, though, there are kids in them. Two to a cage. Half the cages are empty, the other have kids in them—dead kids.

  “What the hell!” Xavier says.

  I feel myself starting to shake. The hurt becomes rage and the rage hits my heart like a canon. I turn and stalk toward the office, Xavier in tow. We hop back over the fence and I shoot the lock out of the front door.

  Inside, an alarm goes off.

  “Rip that down,” I tell Xavier. He grabs a hold of the siren, rips it down, tearing it free of the wires.

  The noise stops.

  I move through the office, yanking open filing cabinets and rifling through files until I find the file I want. Unit one sixty-three. Clearing the nearest desk with one swipe of the arm, I open the file, spot a name and a home address.

  “Bingo,” I say.

  Xavier and I take a short drive and find ourselves in a neighborhood far nicer than mine. The monstrous stucco houses have sprawling front yards, lavish ornamentation and metal gates stuck between tall stucco walls. Most of these mansions have some sort of security system, complete with cameras, and that’s going to be an issue. Or not. Who really knows? If Ryan was right, if this truly is the end, then what we do won’t have legal repercussions.

  We just need to survive long enough to dispose of this human garbage.

  “Right there,” Xavier says, pointing to the house.

  Xavier snaps a series of pictures of one of the less stylish homes. I slow as we drive by, but I don’t stop. The gate is wide open to fit the extra cars now parked in the driveway. There’s a big S-Class Mercedes-Benz, a Cadillac Escalade and a full sized Denali that’s overdone with chrome. Who knew what was parked in the four car garage, or how many guys were inside?

  “Can you imagine the douchebag circus going on right now?”

  “Probably got dogs, too,” Xavier says.

  “We need a way in that doesn’t have us pushing daises,” I say, thinking out loud.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’m thinking I should go in cold. No guns. Just scumbagged out and looking for a new home. I think that’s the only way.”

  “Thank God you got the wallets,” Xavier says, referring to the wallets we took off the guys we just smoked. If anything, they’ll be my way in this place. Well, they’ll at least give me enough credibility to gain entrance. But that’s all I need. That’s all I can hope for.

  “So what do you want to do now?” I ask.

  This is where the light goes out in Xavier’s eyes. “I’ve been thinking,” he says, somber, “I want to go and bury Giselle in the back yard. She needs a proper resting place.”

  I can’t help thinking of all the bodies we’ve seen just sitting in cars that caught fire. Some of them were only partially burned; others were charred. A formal burial for Giselle seems a lot more respectful.

  “I’ll help you,” I tell him even though I’m so exhausted I can hardly stand it.

  “I only have one shovel,” he says.

  “We’ll take turns.”

  Looking at me, he says, “I appreciate that, Fire, but this is something I have to do on my own. I need to grieve, and then I need to try to get some sleep.”

  “You thinking about those kids?” I say.

  His eyes are faraway, not dead like mine, but close enough. “Thinking about a lot of things,” he says.

  “They stunk like they were dead awhile,” I say, my own mind snared by the horror of that storage unit. “A few days for sure.”

  “Stop talking about them.”

  “I can shut my mouth,” I tell him, “but my brain is still in a dead sprint.”

  “I know,” Xavier says. “Why don’t you just drop me off at home. You can take the truck and pick me up in the morning. Or maybe I can find something.”

  “What time?”

  “Ten a.m. okay with you?”

  “Ten’s good.”

  “It’ll let you see your kids one last time,” he says. “Cherish that.”

  I’m thinking the exact same thing.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Adeline could not get her hands to stop trembling, and the flutter in her heart left her feeling breathless, a bit manic. It was like that when she was overwhelmed with frustration. Or strangled with anger. Or so sad she felt like she was falling inside of herself and desperate to cry, but unable to shed even one tear. Now, as she lay in bed feeling powerless, a slave to her emotions, the push and pull of big decisions nearly crippling her, she couldn’t find her footing.

  How can we come back from this? she wondered.

  As the days passed with no clear reason for the attacks, and no real way to stop them, the only end she saw was the end of Chicago as she knew it. Her drapes were open to let the light in, but the light had a dim, eerie quality to it. If she focused her eyes, she could see the bits of ash in the air, air that smelled like soot, like the brunt smell of a dying world.

  Was the ash floating through the air the flaky remnants of homes and buildings? Or was this people, animals and plants? She didn’t know. Chicago had three million residents. Surely the little white flakes she was seeing were ashes of the dead. Statistically, this would be the case. The thought depressed her. Turning away from the window, she pulled the blankets up to her chin and relished the heat. It would be gone soon. Maybe this whole house would be gone, too. Along with her kids. Maybe she would be gone. There had to be thousands dead, tens of thousands. Maybe more. Why shouldn’t she be one of them?

  We’re all immortal, until we’re not.

  She unlocked her cel
l phone’s screen, stared at the last text from Caelin. He said he was going to talk to his wife about getting the kids someplace safe. He said he was sending her to her mother’s home fifteen miles away in Downer’s Grove. From what he was hearing, the Chicago suburb hadn’t been hit yet. That was their last communication.

  When Adeline heard the truck pull up in front of the house, she crawled out of bed, peeked out the window. Fire was getting out of the SUV his SAC had driven over. Where was Xavier? His SAC? The very sight of her husband sent her emotions careening in another direction entirely.

  He looked even worse than before, more tired, more weary.

  An hour ago, when she last left the kids to come upstairs, Orlando and Veronica were on the couch cuddling, the TV on, the volume turned low. When Adeline asked Veronica if she needed to get home, or let someone know she was okay, the girl said, “I live with my grandparents. When I told them Orlando’s father was some kind of super cop, they seemed to feel better.”

  Outwardly Adeline had smiled at the super cop comment, but inside, she couldn’t help resenting Fire for his work. The stress of the job had turned an otherwise caring man into a hardened authoritarian. Then the DEA took him away completely. There was so much good in the man, but it had been buried under the weight of a career that seemed to never add to a marriage, only take away from it.

  They lost touch with each other years ago. She was convinced there was no way back. Those kids who found each other and fell hopelessly in love, the Adeline and Fiyero of days past, they were people she could hardly even remember.

  Brooklyn was in the kitchen when Adeline started upstairs. The girl popped her head out and said, “We need more food.”

  “Talk to your father about that,” she replied, exhausted.

  “I’m talking to you,” she said, impatient. As Adeline stared at the girl, she wondered if this attack on her had taken her daughter from her the same way the DEA had taken her husband.

  “Honey, I’m so tired right now. Can’t we do this in an hour?”

  “No, Mom. We need to inventory our food. Because if we don’t have enough, we’re going to have to go shopping, but if we wait too long, there will be nothing left in the stores.”