The Age of Embers: A Post-Apocalyptic Survival Thriller

by Ryan Schow

  I feel it gathering strength and force.

  If you can imagine a dam holding back too much water, but starting to fracture under the strain, the fissures not only showing but widening, then you might have the slightest idea what’s happening to me.

  When that dam breaks, all hell will break loose and I won’t be able to stem the tide of chaos.

  “We thaid we’re thorry,” Eric says.

  This isn’t me. It’s never been me. Or has it? Somewhere along the line, having spent eight months working undercover in the new Sinaloa cartel while my wife stopped loving me and my daughter got hurt, something in me just sheared away, leaving me raw but unfeeling, ill-tempered yet dispassionate. I think I’m becoming a walking contradiction, a new case study in dramatic overreaction.

  Sadly, I think it’s only going to get worse because if this kid doesn’t stop asking questions, I’m pretty sure I’m going to turn this car into a kill box.

  Fortunately Eric is quiet enough for me to work on getting my head straight. Unfortunately my thoughts keep racing back to Adeline. The fissures are deepening, widening; my chest is a bomb that’s about to go off. I start to tap the steering wheel, but then the tapping becomes pounding and the next thing I know I’m having an absolute fit in the car.

  “Get ahold of yourself,” I say aloud, not caring that Eric, Freddie B and Marcello are witnessing all of this.

  “You goth thome therious problemth, bro,” Eric says.

  I turn and unload on him, hitting him relentlessly right up to the point that the ‘Cuda hits the curb, slams into a small Toyota utility truck and stalls out. For that split second, I stop hitting him, pull back and stare into his watery red eyes, eyes so glassy and pumped with fear it makes me wonder what I’ve become.

  I look in the backseat at the other two boys. Marcello looks concerned. Freddie B looks like he’s enjoying the show.

  I’m seeing all of them, but what I’m seeing most is Adeline kissing Caelin Boyle, of all people. God, I hate that guy! Twice I’ve seen the billionaire financier coming and going back when El Chapo was head of the Sinaloa cartel. Now he’s texting my wife? Telling her his marriage is a failed marriage as well?

  I try to start the car. The engine turns and turns, slowly, trying. Then it catches and we’re back in business. Backing up the ‘Cuda, seeing the damage isn’t so bad, I drop the Hemi in gear, bark the tires and blaze a trail through the mass of wrecked and bullet-riddled cars. I swerve here and there to avoid cascading rubble that’s dumped and poured right out into the streets. And, is that? It is. It’s a pancaked four story apartment building (what did that—a missile?). Everywhere I go, there are confused and scared people, some gathering together, others wandering aimlessly, alone.

  I catch movement in the rear view mirror. Someone’s throwing things at the car. A few of them hit; one cracks the back windshield. I don’t care. To hell with them. Ahead of me, some kid is hurling a chunk of rock at the car. I swerve, blow by him, barely manage to avoid the arcing brick of stucco.

  A drone zips past us flying low and fast. I look up through the windshield to see if there are more coming. Is this what’s hitting the city? Why are they doing this? And who’s controlling them?

  I try putting thoughts of Adeline behind me. How can I though? She’s my wife! The mother of my children! My brain remains faithfully against me. It reminds me that this is the woman who refused to chip away the ice clustered around her heart when it came to me. It showed me all the ways she did not welcome me home. And so now I’m steeped in this mess wondering how far I’m about to go, wondering if I’ve already passed the point of no return.

  Between you and me, I’m pretty sure I have. I’ve basically committed career suicide; now I’m just stacking up life sentences.

  Eric starts to sniffle, like he’s going to cry. I backhand him too hard. I’m still upset that his phone is full of pictures of my daughter. I can’t get that look in Brooklyn’s eyes out of my head.

  Worse still, I can’t break loose of the thought that I didn’t protect her.

  Before my time in the DEA, I didn’t like hurting people. I think that’s what separates normal folks from the psychos. But now I want to hurt these boys. I want to kill them. This has me wondering, have I now become the psycho?

  And why don’t I care if I have?

  The lines between rational and insane are blurring and I can’t tell wrong from just. I glance over at Eric and all I can see is me putting a bullet into the back of his head then dumping him in the lagoon. It’s like that for all three of them.

  “How many other girls did you do this to?” I ask.

  “Juth her.”

  “First off, no. Second off, if you tell me the truth, maybe I won’t kill you.”

  “Maybe a half dothen.”

  “Shut up, Eric,” Freddie B snaps from the back seat.

  Eric shuts up.

  “When we get to where we’re going, Eric, I’m going to kill Freddie B first, so you don’t have to worry about him. You need to worry about me. Now how many?”

  “Thix, I think,” he says, his lip looking worse than ever. “No, theven,”

  Rahm Emanuel was famous for saying, “You never let a serious crisis go to waste.” Emanuel characterized such a crisis as being an opportunity to do things you could not conceive of doing before. Perhaps this crisis is the perfect cover to do what I need to do, what has to be done for the betterment of society. Things colored in the insane, however, this highly immoral and illegal behavior, I would have never given any of this consideration. Not before the attacks. But now? Now I’m thinking all kinds of things. Now I’m thinking it might be okay to do what needs to be done.

  This is what criminals say, I remind myself.

  Or unlikely heroes...

  Smoke so thick you can hardly see is now boiling into the streets. Ahead a Hyundai sedan smashed so hard into the back bumper of a water delivery truck, it caught fire where it lodged itself in. The Hyundai’s tented hood is an inferno. A slight breeze kicks up, pulls the smoke in a different direction. The choking haze thins out enough for me to see some lady with burns snaking up her arms and neck. She’s coughing on the side of the road next to a dead guy in a flower printed button-up who’s flopped face-down on the asphalt.

  People are trotting her way to help her as we drive by. I would stop if not for the situation I am currently embroiled in, because I can still remember what it was like to be a good civil servant, and possibly even a decent human being.

  The purple beast with the banged up front bumper rumbles past the Hyundai and the water truck. Eric is looking out the window at the surreal scene, his body jumping every so often with a the residual effects of pain and quiet crying.

  “Are the dronth doing thith?”

  “Yeth, Eric. I’m pretty thure they are,” I say, tired of hitting the kid.

  Rather than hop on Heroin Highway (the 290) and make my way out to Lake Michigan where I can properly kill these three and dump their bodies in a bigger body of water, I zig-zag my way up W. Madison Street avoiding all kinds of bedlam on my way to Garfield Park.

  There are tons of shade trees for cover from an aerial assault and access to the waterline. There are literally dozens of places along the Garfield Park Lagoon where even a first time serial killer could dump half a dozen bodies without drawing unwanted attention.

  But with everything unfolding, I don’t even care if I’m seen that’s how chaotic things are starting to feel around here.

  W. Madison on a good day is a dismal drive past squat brick buildings painted crème and adorned with ugly bubble graffiti. This extra wide street is half commercial buildings and half open lots blanketed by weeds and wind-blown trash. The truth is, it’s the wide streets that made me think W. Madison. Still, it’s like smash up derby here mixed with a bit of Beirut in the early 80’s. And now my cell phone is ringing again.

  I check the number, pick up.

  “Xavier,” I say.

  “Where the h
ell are you?! I’ve been calling for the last thirty minutes!”

  “Tying up loose ends,” I say, looking at Eric. Checking the rear view mirror, seeing the other two boys with their zip-tied wrists daisy chained together, I add: “And if you’ve been calling, it isn’t coming through. Not sure if you’ve seen what’s happening outside, but it’s so damn surreal I can’t get myself to respond beyond the feeling of detachment from reality.”

  “Of course I’ve seen what’s going on! The field office is gone. It’s gone! Like half the building got hit with projectiles and the top half teetered over and dropped onto the Post Office below. Which is gone, too. Completely flattened!”

  “Jesus,” I hear myself say, my brain stumbling around as I try to comprehend the sheer number of dead.

  “The rubble buried W. Adams Street completely. And it freaking demolished the first six floors of the Marquette Building, so that’s a mess, too. South Dearborn’s now ground zero, and I can’t even say how many of our guys are dead, but man, from what I’m hearing, it’s most of them.”

  “Xavier,” I say, a leaded sickness tunneling though me, making me both hot and cool at the same time, “how soon can you get to my house?”

  “I’m not going to your house, Fire. Didn’t you hear me?”

  “Of course I heard you, X,” I say. “You’ve been screaming everything into my ear.”

  “The survivors are meeting at the offsite location—”

  “Are you talking about Near West Side, in the Chicago Office of Emergency Management across from Skinner Park?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I have a couple of things to do, but I’m close. I’ll get there as quick as I can.”

  “Unless your family is in imminent danger.”

  “They’re okay.”

  “Good, good. This thing is no joke, Fire. Just drop whatever it is you’re doing and get here,” he barks before hanging up.

  “Guy thoundth like he’th lothing hith mind.”

  “Look around you fat headed louse,” I snap. Glancing over my shoulder, I say, “All of you clowns. Look around!”

  Ahead, between us and Garfield Park, at the corner of W. Madison and N. Hamlin, is a gigantic cloud of billowing smoke. It looks like a massive pile-up at the intersection. Several of the cars in the accident have caught fire. From what I can see, most everyone has cleared the scene. But I can’t see everything...

  Bystanders, probably a lot of them drivers of the wrecked cars, are pushing through the heavy smoke, arms flapping like crazy birds. They’re covering their eyes and mouths, gagging and coughing and bawling and screaming. They flee the scene as best as they can, looking ahead, behind and above them. Like death is going to rain down from on high at any moment.

  “Dronth probably did thith,” Eric said.

  “Looks that way.”

  Glancing up in the skies, I don’t see any drones bearing down on us, or anyone else for that matter, but that doesn’t mean they’re far, or finished here. The tension in my chest refuses to subside.

  “Who do you think ith doing thith?” Eric asks, lighting that fuse in me. “Manning the dronth, I mean.”

  “For the love of God, kid, don’t you ever stop running that mouth of yours?”

  Eric falls silent.

  “You got a mean streak in you,” Freddie B says.

  “You’re about to find out just how deep it runs,” I grumble as I navigate my way around the wrecked cars. The smoke is now coming in through Eric’s open window and clogging my throat. I try not to cough.

  The purple beast then rolls over something crunchy (broken glass?) and we hit something with substance (door handle, or side molding?). Whatever it is, it’s nothing so substantial that it causes damage to the car or the tires.

  Through the grayish haze, the trees and paved walking trails of Garfield Park, the lagoon appears. I drive onto the grass straight into the public park, heading right for the waterline. Fortunately with the shifting breeze, the smoke is now blowing the other direction and I can see without suffering what will surely become a pair of bloodshot, burning eyes.

  I park the ‘Cuda, get out and walk around the other side. Eric’s bound hands are out the window, cutting into his wrists where they’re daisy-chained to the side mirror. I cut the zip-ties with my knife. Eric groans at the sudden movement in his arms. Without empathy or remorse, I yank open the door, grab him by the collar of his shirt and drag him out of the car.

  “On your knees facing the water,” I tell him.

  His fear becomes pleading, which quickly becomes crying. Up the street, the shrieking of fire engines and police cruisers rise over the crackling sounds of burning cars, and the concussion sounds of things blowing up further away. Listening intently for a moment, their pitch fades and I realize they’re now heading away from us.

  That’s just as well.

  Vengeance as righteous as this doesn’t require witnesses.

  Back inside the purple beast, I cut the zip-tie holding Marcello’s and Freddie B’s wrists together.

  “Marcello,” I say motioning to him. “Get out of the car and join the camera man over there. You stay put, Freddie B. I see you make a run for it, I shoot your leg, then slowly empty the mag all the way up your body, missing everything vital. It’ll take awhile for you to bleed out, but long enough for me to drag you back to that fire we just passed. They say there’s nothing worse than burning to death. Are we clear?”

  “Crystal,” he says, trying to be tough with rosy cheeks that may or may not have seen a few errant tears.

  Marcello awkwardly climbs out, falls on his face when his toe hooks on the door sill. I grab him by the hair, drag him kicking and screaming over to Eric.

  “Get on your knees facing the water and keep that mouth of yours shut,” I tell him. It takes a minute for me to get him down and settled, but a few well-placed shots to his kidneys forces compliance.

  Freddie B, good to his word, remains still.

  “Out,” I say, waving him my way.

  He gets out, walks to the other boys, gets on two knees and faces the lagoon. This is the difference between a man who knows he’s wrong and a crybaby who’s trying to make impossible things right.

  Beyond the lovely trees and low slung skyline of the outer city is the soaring downtown cityscape. Chicago proper is multiple columns of smoke, a swarm of buzzing drones (are there really that many?) and the flickering orange evidence of dozens of skyscrapers on fire.

  Eric is a mess, and Marcello is pleading to me in Spanish—as if I give a crap what language he grovels in—but Freddie B, that stalwart bitch, he just sits there, calm as can be. Is he thinking he’s going to survive this? Does he have that slightest spark of hope?

  No, he knows what’s coming.

  I can’t help wondering if Brooklyn thought the same thing when they’d taken her. Was she resolute in what was going to happen to her? Or did she wonder if they would chicken out before doing something unforgiveable? My mind is buzzing with all the darkest possibilities. My brain is cracking again. I mean, the horror of her enduring them putting their fingers inside her, licking her, then photographing it all for later…

  According to Brooklyn, this was Freddie’s idea. He was the ring leader. Eric was just a stooge, and not as grabby as the others, which I find almost impossible to believe. Brooklyn said he just wanted it all captured on his new iPhone because the camera was that good.

  I take out a throwaway gun I picked up from a two year old bust. That’s the pop gun. The get-it-done gun. All three boys are on their knees and my conscience is clear.

  My phone rings again. It’s my boss. Not Xavier.

  My other boss, Paco Loco.

  I pick up.

  “Where the hell are you?” he’s all but screaming.

  “Found the boys,” I say calmly.

  “Well get back here already! We’ve got a small window of opportunity that you are personally wasting for me! For all of us!”

  “The guys are dead, Paco.
Shot dead by three douchebags after last night’s buy.”

  Now he stops, falls still.

  This blustering fool, he’s not the top of the food chain. He’s three layers down from a full meal. He’s like a diet Big Mac. The Junior Whopper. As much as I despise this guy, he’s a means to an end. Because of him, I now know the command structure and most of the top players. But this idiot…

  “Where are you now?” he says, stern again.

  “Corner of W. Madison and N. Hamlin in front of Garfield Park. Big accident. This is the dump point, not the kill location.”

  “What happened? Give me the details.”

  “We made the buy, but these three morons jumped us after the transaction. I avoided the ambush because I was on the phone away from the guys. I got the jump on them, though. I’ve got all three of them now.”

  “Who were you talking to?” he asks. “On the phone, I mean.”

  “My freaking mother. The Pope. What does it matter? With everything going on, I’ve forgotten everything but my own name and these scumbag’s faces.”

  “You doing them now?”

  “I’m talking to you now. Could have done them in the last ten seconds if I wasn’t talking to you.”

  “Now you are.”

  “And they’re still breathing because of it.”

  “What did you do with the bodies? The boys, I mean.”

  “Ours are in the trunk.”

  “Dump ‘em separately when you’re done and get back here. And get the lead out of your ass, because we’re gearing up for a Chi-town marketplace massacre. We’re going but we need guys and guns. If we’re not careful though, if you waste any more of our time, See-Jing (Cártel de Jalisco Nueva Generación, or CJNG) is going to move in. We get control, we get their guns, a few of their guys and then we take See-Jing and break them in half. But in this case, for real ese, if you’re not first, you’re last. And if you make us last, I will personally put two rounds in your skull, one in each eye. Comprende?”