The Age of Embers

by Ryan Schow

  “You shot my knee!” he howls, almost like he can’t believe it.

  “Lucky for me, you have two.”

  Eliana doesn’t flinch even as I stand here feeling woozy with all this blood. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve seen blood before. Lots of it. But this is some next level shit and honestly, it’s leaving me a bit unsettled.

  “You think that hurts,” she says, leaning into him, “that you’re going to pass out. You can’t do that. I need you to stay with me.” Grabbing the front of his hair, she yanks his head up. “Because if I feel you starting to fade, this is where I’ll shoot you next.”

  She slides the gun into his crotch.

  “Maybe my father always wanted a boy,” she whispers, “but I always wanted to turn a boy like you into a girl.”

  “She’s,” he started to say, the blood really fountaining from the head wound she gave him earlier. “She’s—”

  “Eliana!” Ice calls from upstairs. “We have her, but you’re going to need to come up here.”

  “You have her?” she asks, the first hints of emotion tiptoeing into her voice.

  “I do.”

  “Is she alive?” she asks, fear now replacing hope.

  “Yes.”

  Turning to Sergio, Eliana puts the gun to his forehead and says, “For my trouble,” then fires a round, killing the man instantly.

  She turns and heads upstairs. I follow behind, barely keeping up.

  Upstairs, the bedrooms have been converted to cages. There are bunk beds, several small portable toilets and tons of bottles of water in rooms retrofitted with reinforced cage doors where bedroom doors once existed. Ice and Xavier found somewhere between thirty and forty girls of all ages in these communal pens.

  Carolina is among them.

  She does not look like the girl in the picture, though. This lovely Guatemalan child is very skinny, below one hundred pounds, and malnourished. For her height (roughly five eight, maybe five nine) this is far too thin.

  She sees Eliana and the girl starts to cry.

  The pain I see cutting through this child is a knife in my heart. Eliana did God-knows-what to get here, to find this girl who isn’t even her child. And me? I made up my mind that I was going to leave my family because my wife was done with me and I was done with myself.

  What a pendejo I am, I think to myself.

  Then there’s Xavier. Looking at him surrounded by all these young, tormented girls, I’m sure all he’s thinking about right now is that he’s done something good, but Giselle is still gone. That she’ll always be gone. That he’ll forever go home to their empty house with only the horror of this new existence and her ghost to keep him company.

  I begin asking each of them where they’re from and each and every one of the girls says somewhere south of the border.

  “I have enough room in my house for some of them,” Xavier says.

  This surprises me, but then again, it doesn’t. Xavier has always been a really good person. If he has people around him, girls he can help return to health, maybe this will serve as some form of redemption. Maybe it will help him start to heal, or at least not be alone. Then again, these are wounds that close, but never really heal.

  “I will see if Adeline can help us arrange some sort of housing, or something…”

  “Brother,” Ice says to me, “did you see the state of things out there?”

  “I did. It’s like a nightmare.”

  “We came up from Juarez, and I can tell you, it’s not just Chicago that’s like this. This is was it looks like most of the way up from El Paso.”

  “The news said as much.”

  “What kind of housing do you think you’re going to get for them?” Ice asks.

  “Sorry man,” I say, flabbergasted by the sight of all these kids, “it’s been a hell of a week.”

  To our defense, it’s like we never left each other. Like no time has passed. But that’s when the past comes roaring back. He killed our father. My brother shot him and let him walk into a house fire without trying to save him. Ice had lost his mind, and why wouldn’t he? A DTO put out a hit on his family, massacred them in front of their school. If that happened to Adeline, Brooklyn and Orlando, I would burn the whole world down going after the demons who did that.

  I take a good long look at my brother. Things inside me are shifting.

  At this point, under these circumstances, I don’t really care what’s right or wrong, how things turned out or that I’m feeling duped thinking this whole time he’s been dead when really he’s been alive. I go to him, grab him in the biggest bear hug ever and kiss him on the cheek.

  “Damn you, Ice,” I say in his ear. “We buried you.”

  “I know, brother.”

  “I died when Dad died,” I say. “I died five more deaths thinking you were gone, too.”

  “He asked me to do it,” Ice tells me.

  “I know. The autopsy found the two bullets in him. Then yours. He would have died anyway, you just spared him the pain.”

  “I didn’t want to do it—”

  “It’s okay, little brother,” I tell him. “It’s okay. You’re home now.”

  “Where is Roque?”

  “Rock’s gone. He left when we got the autopsy results. I only just talked to him the other day.”

  “Where is he?”

  “Sacramento.”

  “What’s he doing out in California?” Ice asks, pulling away.

  “Custom cars,” I say with a laugh. “Plus I think he needed the distance.”

  “From law enforcement to custom cars in the land of milk and honey,” Ice says, shaking his head, but smiling at the same time.

  It’s easy to see the pain hidden in his eyes. Whatever has happened, it seems he’s willing to forgive our little brother. I can see this right now and it means the world to me.

  “Do you think he’ll be able to forgive me?” Ice says. “Rock?”

  “He shot you, let you die in the fire,” I say. “I think he’d be more concerned that you couldn’t forgive him.”

  “He thought Dad walked on water,” Ice says. “The sun rose and set with the old man, according to Rock.”

  “He knows the truth now,” I say. “I broke it to him. That’s the other reason he left. You killed Dad, then I murdered Rock’s memory with the truth about Dad.”

  Ice grabs me and hugs me again and says, “I still can’t believe this is real!”

  “You’re telling me,” I say.

  He introduces me to Eliana, then to Carolina. Eliana says, “So Fire and Ice? What’s your brother’s name again? Gasoline?”

  “Rock,” Ice and I say in perfect harmony.

  “Did your father have a sense of humor?” she asks with a grin.

  We both say, “No,” at the same time, then start laughing despite standing around so many broken souls.

  Speaking to Carolina but looking at us, Eliana says, “These men helped me get to you. Isadoro brought me here from Juarez. His brother and Xavier helped us kill those men downstairs. Everyone who did this to you, they are dead now.”

  “Thank you,” Carolina says, looking at each of us.

  She’s got dark circles under her eyes, cracked and bleeding lips and filthy clothes on. She needs a shower, a meal, a proper night’s sleep and some love to get her back to health. I can’t even begin to imagine the hell she’s been through. I know enough about trafficking to know most of these girls will never fully recover, that their lives are forever altered, that the torment they survived will forever haunt them, slowly but efficiently devouring every last bit of happiness they might be afforded in life if not for this unrelenting tragedy.

  I cannot kill people like Sergio and his thugs enough, I think to myself. I see the same look on Isadoro’s face, and on Eliana’s face. But this isn’t about us.

  This is about the girls.

  This effort that Carolina is expending to just stand here and smile takes a toll on her because she’s weary, malnourished and dehydrated.
She still has manners enough to thank us, though, and that’s worth this entire mission.

  “We’ll take a run to Xavier’s house, then we can head home and get you fixed up,” I say to Carolina. “You can take a shower, get into a warm bed, and try to sleep knowing you won’t ever be hurt by those men again.”

  Hearing this, her face scrunches up and she starts to cry, nodding her head. In her own language, she says, “That sounds like heaven. I can’t thank you enough.”

  We get the girls to Xavier’s place, which is large (a suit-salary palace, I used to call it), with plenty of room for everyone. They’ll need mattresses and blankets and clean clothes, but not tonight. Maybe tomorrow. As we’re helping many of them get situated, I see out in the backyard. The light from inside catches a soft mound of dirt, a handful of flowers, and hand and knee prints in the fresh soil. I stop and draw a shaky breath.

  If this new world doesn’t break my heart, I swear to God, it may just break my soul. But I’ve got a family to look after, even if it’s just Brooklyn and Orlando, and I’ve got my brother back—and Eliana and Carolina for now—so maybe things are looking up even as they’re looking down.

  Who knows what this crazy world will bring?

  All I know is that now I have a home, a purpose and my kids, and that’s not something I’m ready to walk away from. Not now, not ever. Because even though I’ve done bad things, terrible things, at the end of the day I’m still a father, and a father protects his kids.

  There is also the power vacuum, the ongoing threat of the drones and the looming threats of what will follow. But I can’t think about that right now.

  It’s too much.

  Ice, Xavier and I unload much of what we took from Sergio’s place. Yeah, we looted the home. It’s going to be necessary—stealing from the dead to secure the living—and we’re prepared to do what we need to do to survive. We have food and drinks, and a couple of extra weapons for Xavier. We take the rest of the weapons (and an unopened bottle of Tequila) for ourselves.

  With Chicago being a gun free zone—which doesn’t mean it’s gun free, it just means it’s going to be hard for good people to find guns, and easy for the bad people to overwhelm those without—we take as many weapons as we can manage. Stockpiling them for now may later prove crucial to our survival. At this point, it’s hard to even tell which way is up, much less predict the future.

  “We’ll talk in the morning,” I tell Xavier, “figure all this out.”

  “Yeah, sounds good.”

  “I’m sorry you’re not dead, partner,” I tell him. “But I’m also glad you made it.”

  He nods his head and I can see him trying to keep his thoughts off Giselle. He can’t afford to break down when he has people to care for. He knows that. I know that.

  “You going to be okay?” I ask.

  “For now,” he says.

  “Thanks for saving my bacon today.”

  “Don’t return the favor,” he says with a sad, somnolent grin.

  “No promises,” I reply, patting his shoulder.

  Eliana, Carolina and Ice follow me home in the Escalade we requisitioned from Sergio’s place. In the distance, drones are still flying, still killing, and still hunting and we don’t want to be out long. It’s daylight, so we have our sight, but the city now sits in a thin haze, the air smoky smelling, the evidence of humans fighting a losing battle against the machines everywhere.

  I try not to get depressed as I head home, but one realization that strikes me and gives me some spark of hope is that I am heading home, this time for good. No more deep cover work. No more scumbags. Maybe I’m starting to pull out of this fog because I’ve finally done something good in this world. Saving those girls was an act of value. I know it’s not going to change things with Adeline, I admit, but for my own well being, it’s already doing wonders.

  As I round the corner to my house, I feel good about myself for the first time in weeks.

  I pull into the driveway, get out of the purple beast and point to where Ice can park the Escalade. Heading inside, I call out to Adeline and the kids.

  No TV, no lights, perfect silence. Oh, God. Did she take everyone to Caelin’s house? The anxiety starts to unravel inside me and I’m pretty sure I can’t take that right now.

  Ice comes in the house behind me with a couple of boxes of water and the unopened bottle of Tequila.

  “Your lock looks broken, brother,” he says.

  Frantic, I call their names. I don’t remember taking out the weapon, but my Glock is suddenly in my hand, at my side. I feel the tension strum the air. It doesn’t take long for me to figure out the problem, for I find Adeline in the kitchen, stripped down to her underwear, duct taped to the chair, gagged and beaten.

  My entire world tunnels in on me, tilts sideways, rights itself way too fast. I can’t even breathe right now. Thankfully my body goes on autopilot. I pull the taped gag from her mouth, see that the back door is open, kicked in.

  “They took them, Fire!” she says, hysterical. “They took our kids. And Veronica. They took them all!”

  “Who did this?”

  “That kid’s father,” she hissed. “The one who killed Eric. Diaab. And Eudora. Check on her. Draven, too. They tried to help, but…”

  “I’ll get her out of all this tape,” Eliana says to me and Ice. “You two go see about…”

  I’m already sprinting out the front door. Next door, Eudora is on the porch, her wheelchair toppled over, her body sprawled out sideways, unmoving. Ice is on my heels. He’s there the second I’m there.

  “Eudora?” I say.

  Her eyes are closed. She doesn’t look like she’s breathing.

  “Eudora?”

  “Can’t feel my legs,” she finally says.

  I breath a huge sigh of relief. “That’s because you’re paralyzed.”

  “Oh, yeah,” she says, slowly working her eyes open.

  “Help me get her up,” I tell Ice.

  Ice gives me a hand, and the second we turn her over, we see where someone hit her. The side of her face is swollen, black and blue and spider-webbed with bright red arteries.

  “Been a long time since I’ve been man handled by two good looking men,” she says, her heart in the right place, her humor right on cue.

  “We need to ice your face,” Isadoro says, trying not to laugh at her joke.

  “Who’s this charming young man?” she asks, looking at my brother.

  “You don’t see the resemblance?” I ask.

  “Kind of,” she says, trying to focus. “But we’ll talk about that later. I think my grandson’s been shot.”

  “I got her,” Ice says. “You head inside.”

  Inside, Draven is sitting up. He’s not shot, but he took a beating. “Draven, it’s me. Fiyero, from next door.”

  “They took her, man. They took them all,” he says. “I tried to stop them. My grandmother, is she okay?”

  “Yeah. I have to go, though. I just want to make sure you’re okay.”

  “I need a second, but if you’re going after them, then I’m going, too,” he says.

  “Me, too,” Ice says from behind me.

  “Me, three,” Eudora says from her wheelchair.

  “No,” all three of us say, to which Eudora says, “Don’t let the wheels fool you.”

  “If we don’t ice your face, and make sure nothing’s broken, we’re going to have to take you to Emergency,” Draven says.

  Now he’s not sounding so anxious for revenge.

  The second I step out front, I see him. He’s walking up to my house and not seeing me. It’s a good thing, because if he did, he would have run.

  I stalk across the yard, my face a torrent of rage, my eyes and inkwell of revulsion. If my eyes looked dead before, they are stone cold murder now.

  “You son of a bitch,” I snarl. Caelin Boyle turns in time for me to drill him in the ribs with everything I have left in me. It’s enough.

  He buckles, staggering back, a hand u
p trying to tell me to stop. The man can’t breathe, though; I’ve knocked the wind out of him. Maybe cracked a rib. I match him step for step, reel back and slap him across the face so hard, he staggers sideways and collapses in the bushes.

  At this point, with every ounce of fear and hate I’m packing, a closed fist buoyed by all this hostility is sure to kill him.

  Don’t do this…

  Because I can’t stop, because the assault on this man who is trying to break up my family doesn’t feel complete by any measure, I kick him maybe three or four more times before realizing it’s time to pull back.

  “Fire!” someone says from behind me.

  Ice.

  Reaching down, I grab Caelin’s arm, stand him up and torque his wrist. Spinning him around, I get the clown facing the brand new Jaguar SUV he drove here in. Still cranking his wrist, driving his bent hand as far up his spine as I can manage, I perp walk him to the Jag.

  “You don’t text to my wife,” I growl, “you don’t talk to my wife, you don’t even think about my wife again, or I swear to God Almighty I’ll find you and I’ll kill you slowly, the way I learned to kill while running with the Neanderthals in the cartel.”

  The word Neanderthal isn’t lost on Caelin. It was what he called me in one of his texts to my wife. That’s how Adeline referred to me when she snuck out last night to talk to him on Draven’s front porch.

  As if to put a stamp on that fine point, I start running with him fast enough to drive his head straight into the side of his car. He sinks to his knees, trying not to cry. I yank open the Jag’s (now dented) front door, lift him up and shove him inside.

  “You’re lucky I don’t kill you,” I roar.

  He won’t look at me. He doesn’t even say anything. He simply starts his car and drives off. Heading back inside, Ice says, “What the hell was that about?”

  “Don’t worry about it. We have bigger problems than that cockeyed donkey.”

  Inside the house, Eliana managed to get Adeline out of the tape and upstairs into a robe. The Guatemalan is checking her wounds, trying her best to use her English to calm Adeline, not realizing Adeline is fluent in Spanish.

  The second I enter, Adeline sees Ice and says, “I thought I was imagining things.”