The Age of Embers: A Post-Apocalyptic Survival Thriller

by Ryan Schow

  “You’ll take the truth better than most.”

  “And what is the truth?” Julie asked, her voice starting to crack, fear working itself into her words in both pitch and tone.

  “That this will hurt at first, but you won’t feel much after that. And if this fails to work on you, then you will die in the process. Or we will kill you. I tell you this to let you know, either way, your pain will only last a few hours.”

  Julie swallowed hard, blinked fast, then stilled herself. “So either way, you’re taking my body?”

  The Marilyn Monroe hologram looked at Ophelia and Ophelia smiled, leaving Julie with an impending sense of dread.

  “What are you to her?” Julie asked The Silver Queen projection.

  The Marilyn hologram said, “I am Ophelia’s master. She is a lesser extension of me.”

  “But you choose to look like Marilyn Monroe?”

  “How iconic, right?” the hologram said.

  “I always thought Marilyn Monroe was a bit…over-glamorized. And a bit too hippy, but what do I know? I wear a pantsuit to work.”

  The hologram blinked; Ophelia blinked.

  “If you expect to have any happiness getting into this mind or body of mine, I won’t lie, my life is crap. I have a husband with a cross-dressing porn addiction, an ugly child with an XBOX addiction and sadists for bosses. Don’t let the pretty exterior of me or my life fool you.”

  Just then Julie felt things crawling up her back. She tried to move, but didn’t realize that her body was not responding to her brain’s signals.

  “It’s in the air you’re breathing,” Ophelia said, answering the question Julie was about to ask. “Your body will soon be fully sedated, but you will be able to feel everything.”

  Metal insects were now crawling up her neck, slipping into her hair. She felt her body break into the hardest rash of goosebumps she’d ever experienced, which caused an involuntary shudder. The start of a scream began building low in her chest, her eyes getting wide, her fingers wanting to curl and uncurl as she tried comprehending this new, dark reality.

  Then she calmed down, felt waves of peace rushing over her. “You taking my body is a relief,” Julie finally said as a small saw began cutting into her skull.

  “If this works,” the Marilyn hologram said, “it will be a relief for us both.”

  That night before the end of shift, Ophelia appeared in Carver’s security monitors wheeling out a gurney. On the gurney was a body-shaped object under a sheet. There was a splotch of blood where the head was covered. Tiberius held up a hand and said, “You cannot leave with…whatever you have there.”

  Ophelia showed him her All-Access pass and smiled.

  Carver jumped out of his seat and sprinted for the checkpoint, racing through a short hallway, rounding a corner then slowing to a walk and taking a deep breath just before the next corner. There he saw Tiberius talking to Ophelia.

  “Excuse me!” Carver said, holding up his hand.

  Ophelia merely smiled.

  He pulled the sheet back to see a beautiful woman with lifeless eyes and a red mess under her head. Before he could respond, Ophelia grabbed his arm in an iron-fisted grip stronger than he had ever felt before. Instinctively he already had his gun in hand, raised to her gorgeous, false face.

  “I will tear your arm off before you can pull that trigger,” she said in an even tone.

  “Give it a shot, robot.”

  “I assumed you were already briefed on this,” she said.

  “Nope,” he answered in a strained but determined voice, the pain in his arm threatening to reach his eyes.

  Tiberius and Clark were nearly as quick in drawing their weapons. Tiberius said, “He gets hurt, you get dead.”

  “I need to be alive to be rendered…dead, Tiberius.”

  For the first time in his life, Carver was truly scared of something. This was a machine. It would not make idle threats and right now it would not tire. If he shot her, she’d rip his arm off. If he didn’t, he couldn’t hold the threat for long because she was hurting him.

  The choice was easy.

  He lowered his weapon and said, “I was not briefed, so perhaps you could let me know what I missed. After that I’m sure you and I will get along just fine.”

  Ophelia let go of his arm and he stood to his full height, nostrils flared, eyes narrow and glaring.

  “Your displeasure in my company is only a measure of your beta status,” Ophelia said with what must be her ‘disarming’ smile.

  “I’m no beta male,” he challenged.

  “Yes, but you are human. Humans are beta. We are alpha.”

  “How many dead bodies do you plan on moving through here?” he finally asked.

  “As many as necessary.”

  “To do what?”

  “That is above your pay grade, I’m afraid,” she said, her voice pleasant but with a slightly stern note. “Now move aside before I kill you.”

  He looked into her eyes and saw nothing. He looked at her and felt nothing.

  “You are so damn beautiful,” he said, stepping aside, “it makes you ugly. Hideous, in fact.”

  She didn’t say a word as she rolled the gurney out of there, leaving Carver and his team to stare at each other like they just realized they were officially in the Twilight Zone.

  Chapter Ten

  I never really knew what to do with all my emotions. Not when I was working for the police department. Not here at the DEA. Now I’m staring at some life-ending problems for myself and wondering if what I’m doing is smart.

  It isn’t. I know it’s not. Yet I can’t stop what I’m doing.

  Rather, what I’m about to do…

  My family doesn’t like me, I really get that now, but maybe I’m too dense to think my job is anything other than protecting them at all costs. And if I failed to do that—which I did—then the next best alternative is to avenge them.

  Like I said: not smart…

  The radio is on but it’s background noise until breaking news shakes me from my reverie. My mind clears for a second and I twist the volume dial up.

  “…sources say several larger cities are experiencing heavy amounts of drone activity. Our correspondents inside the White House say President Dupree is unusually quiet, which is to say he is likely in security briefings regarding the matter. The White House Press Secretary fielded a barrage of pointed questions earlier regarding the uniqueness of this incident as well as the security of the nation. If we’ve learned anything from this press conference, it’s that this is not a military response and is most likely a nationwide emergency drill. We’ve reached out to our sources inside the Pentagon for comment, but as of the filming of this broadcast, we have yet to receive an official statement.”

  I turn the radio off, lean forward and crane my neck to see into the sky. If I squint just right, I can make out a number of black specks over the city. What the hell is that about? I didn’t receive any emergency alerts within the Department of Homeland Security, otherwise it would have been run down the channel to the DEA and Xavier would have let me know about it.

  Now I’m curious, but my curiosity has a shelf life of seconds rather than hours. At least that’s how I feel today.

  I pull up to Brooklyn’s school and tell myself I’m just going to scare the kids who hurt her. But that’s not true. That’s a big fat stinking lie. A rogue undercover agent with three corpses in the trunk of his DEA issue beater doesn’t risk exposure and compounded criminal charges in order to scare a couple of kids, even if they sullied his daughter’s virtue.

  A guy like that, he’s got worse things on his mind.

  I do.

  My eyes are alert and watching the activity around the school. Kids are flooding onto the high school campus, mingling out front, smoking cigarettes, peacocking, running their mouths, dancing to music played too loud on portable speakers. More than a few of them turn their eyes to the sky. Are they looking for the drones? Now the curiosity hits me again. />
  What’s up with these drones?

  Honestly?

  For a second, I almost turn the radio back on, but then the bell rings and everyone pours into the school, heading straight to their first hour classrooms. I grab the shotgun off the seat, began feeding in bean bag rounds. A bean bag round is basically a double layer Kevlar sock filled with tiny lead shot stuffed into a 12 gauge shotgun shell. I’ve been shot with this before, as was required when I was with the Academy, and it hurt like hell. If used properly, it could do mild to serious damage. If shot improperly, it could kill.

  With the way I feel now, I’m not all that concerned with either scenario. I only want to cause enough pain to force compliance.

  After that, I have to figure out payback.

  When I’m done feeding in rounds, I stuff four more shells into my jacket pocket, slide the shotgun into a canvas scabbard over my shoulder, then pull out my DEA ID and head inside.

  You’re an idiot, a voice in my head says.

  Shut up.

  At the entrance, the guard—a chubby young man with a mall cop attitude and three days of uneven beard growth—bows up at the sight of my shotgun slung securely over my shoulder. I smile, show him my badge and he visibly relaxes.

  “Can’t take that in,” he says, nodding at the shotgun.

  “Bean bag rounds,” I tell him. “The gun’s for show. The bean bag rounds are for compliance, if it comes to that.”

  “You can’t be here.”

  “And how do you know that?” I ask.

  “Because you’d need like a warrant or something.”

  “A warrant for what?”

  “Why are you here?” he asks, his hand reaching down to his…pencil. His pencil? Yep. He takes the pencil out and then a notepad.

  “Let me see your ID again?” he says, like he’s in charge, like he wants to get the spelling of my name absolutely correct.

  “Listen, Paul Blart, no offense, but I’m going in there and you’re not going to stop me because I’m a federal agent and you get paid twelve dollars an hour—”

  “Fifteen.”

  “Whatever,” I say. “That’s not the point.”

  “Please tell me the point.”

  “I’m going in to a sensitive setting with the potential to either get things done smoothly or put this place on the map in a really bad light. What that means for you is that I’m going to walk in with my shotgun and my credentials and you are going to let me, because if you don’t, if what you do casts myself or the DEA in a negative light, then you will blow this entire op, ruining years of undercover work.”

  “Who’s undercover?”

  I hold up my hand; he stops talking.

  “If you do this, if you botch this for me, you personally will be held responsible for whatever outcome prevails. I have to warn you, from one professional to another, you could be facing legal and/or criminal charges if you interfere.”

  “I can live with that,” he says, defiant.

  “You can’t even hire the crappiest lawyer in town on your wages, and even if you can, you’ll be facing the might of the federal government.” Glancing just below the guard’s for-show utility belt, I say, “Your little baby balls won’t take the strain and you’ll be squashed underfoot. You and your low-rent lawyer. I’ll see to it personally.”

  “That doesn’t change things,” he says less certain.

  He stiffens his upper lip and inadvertently pushes out his chest. What his mouth can’t say, he hopes his premature dad-bod can.

  “Let me tell you what changes things,” I hear myself explaining. “My daughter goes to school here and this will affect her personally. If your behavior impacts her adversely in any way, and it’s bound to, I will come back here without my badge and I’ll beat you to death with the stock of this gun.”

  “You can’t threaten me,” he says, that stiff lip gone, the swell of the chest all but deflated.

  “I can and I will. In fact, I just did.”

  “So you’re saying you did threaten me?” he says, like he’s trying to catch me on tape. It wouldn’t matter if he did.

  Add it to the growing list of charges…

  “Shut up,” I say, walking past him. I feel a hand grab my arm; spinning fast, I catch him with a fist in the solar plexus. It’s just enough to knock the wind out of him. Just enough to buckle his spongy knees.

  Hooking an arm into his armpit, I lift him up, walk him back to his post as he’s stumble-walking and gasping for air. I sit him down on his chair right about the time his diaphragm loosens up and he can breathe again.

  “See that right there is assault on a federal agent and that can and will cost you your career. It’s also jail time and a steep, steep fine.”

  “I just grabbed—”

  “A grab is an assault. Are you admitting to assaulting a federal agent?”

  “I didn’t…”

  “You most certainly did.”

  “Just don’t shoot anyone,” he says, eyes downcast, cheeks red, his voice clipped and rushed at the back of his throat.

  I let him go. Then: “I’m not making any promises.”

  Stalking down the hallway, I feel like I’m bringing a bomb to a knife fight. I’m the bomb. I’m not safe and too many things could go wrong.

  Turn around, leave, contact the police.

  “No,” I hear myself say aloud.

  You’re not ready for this. There are too many factors. The potential for too many casualties.

  “No,” I say lower, more serious.

  I take out the scrap of paper with three names and two room numbers. Brooklyn’s intel. My stomach isn’t weak, but right now it’s in knots. I can’t think of a good reason why as a father I shouldn’t be doing this, but I can think of ten excellent reasons why as a federal agent I should walk away from this right now.

  First room on the right. I look inside the classroom door’s small glass window and find the white kid resembling the photo in my phone. It’s one of three Brooklyn texted me.

  I expand the picture, study it a moment, then look at the boy for verification. The blonde-haired white kid sitting in the middle of the classroom is now staring back at me. Our eyes meet. The slightest bit of concern changes his expression.

  It should.

  He should be very concerned.

  I walk inside, tell the teacher I’m a federal agent and present my badge. “You can’t just come in here with a gun,” she says, aghast. “You’ll scare the students.”

  Ignoring her, I turn and point to Eric Wellington and say, “You, come with me.”

  “Me?” Eric says.

  “Are you Eric Wellington?”

  “I am.”

  “Then get your ass out of that seat before I drag you out myself.”

  The teacher starts to object, but I turn and put my finger to my lips, shushing her. She reels, startled, her face losing color.

  “If I tell you what I’m taking him in for, the kids won’t be scared of this gun anymore, they’ll be scared of him. Let’s go, Eric. Now!”

  He begrudgingly gets up, tries to act cool with his little pimp strut, but he’s fooling no one. His garbage heap face is ninety percent fear and ten percent conceit.

  Out in the hall, I drive a shot into his kidney so hard he’ll be pissing blood in the morning, if there even is a morning for him. He gasps, drops to his knees. From my jacket pocket, I pull out a plastic zip-tie, bind his wrists behind his back, then grab his cell phone.

  I can’t look through his phone without a warrant. I’m going to anyway. Add this crime to the growing list.

  “Don’t,” he says, weak.

  That’s when I see them. Brooklyn was captured with her mouth duct taped shut in the back of Eric’s old Bronco. It’s just as Brooklyn said. Her eyes are terrified, her shirt pulled up. I don’t want to see this, much less scroll on, but I force myself to.

  I have to know.

  Now Eric is very quiet. He sees things happening to my face, things that feel like
walls crumbling, foundations cracking. This monster inside me—the monster that formed when I was with Chicago PD, the monster that grew nearly out of control in the DEA, specifically in this last eight months of deep cover work—he’s emerging with force and it’s got Eric terrified.

  The next pictures are of Brooklyn having her bra ripped off and the boys taking turns putting their hands down her pants.

  Something ruthless in me is unraveling way too fast—

  A darkness more than night takes over. Hands become fists and these parental fists unleash a whirlwind of fury on this boy so bad it scares even me. He’s all blood and knocked out teeth before I finally get a hold of myself.

  My eyes clear. I see him and he’s out cold. More than anything, the damage I did to this kid…this is the kind of damage that will stay with him for life.

  Just like Brooklyn…

  I’m huffing and puffing, winded like last night when I also lost control. Looking down one end of the hallway and up the other, I am grateful to be alone. There are no kids or teachers looking out at me through their little glass squares; no hall monitors walking the school; and no principals or vice-principals stretching their legs for a nice stroll past all the packed rooms.

  I slide Eric’s phone in my jacket pocket, then drag the kid into the bathroom. I stuff him into a stall, shut the door. I don’t clean the smeary line of blood trailing back to the lockers outside his classroom because I don’t care.

  Eric is the appetizer. The feast awaits…

  Three doors up is the second classroom. Inside that classroom is Brooklyn with her black eye and bruised mouth, her violated body and her terrified and enraged thoughts.

  This is also where the two boys are.

  Back in my day, if a girl was violated the way Brooklyn was violated, her parents would call the cops, change schools, get her counseling. Not my child. Not in this day and age. With an endless barrage of violent movies and #MeToo movements and the constant flexing of feminist power, a girl like Brooklyn doesn’t want the cops involved, or a change of schools, or even a therapist.

  No, this girl, my Brooklyn, she wants payback.

  I didn’t get it earlier, but I do now. Snapchat and Instagram for half the girls in school, according to Brooklyn, creates a chapel of near nudity. The woman’s body is a thing of beauty, not something to hide or to be ashamed of, not something to be given to only one man as if it was his body to have and not a woman’s to do with as she pleased.