The Age of Embers: A Post-Apocalyptic Survival Thriller

by Ryan Schow

  “Do you know exactly where we’re headed?” Eliana asked.

  “Tucumcari, New Mexico,” he said. “It should take us five hours, six tops.”

  Fortunately they were moving into the desert where traffic was running at a faster clip. With no idea what they were up against in the miles ahead, they stopped off in Orogrande, which was about thirty-five miles outside El Paso.

  “What are you doing?” Eliana asked.

  “Getting gas.”

  Isadoro got out of the car, stretched, felt all the pain in his face and on the back of his head from where he was attacked by both Jose and the psychotic coyote. The day wasn’t exactly going according to plan, but at least he felt like crap.

  Isadoro topped off the tank, then he and Eliana headed inside, leaving the boy in the car outside. Ice grabbed a map while Eliana stocked up on food and drinks for the road. Before they were about to pay, Ice went back, found some topical anti-biotic ointment and some Band-Aid’s and grabbed those as well. The clerk’s face was pasty white, his eyes wide and rattled. He had long red hair pulled back in a bun with his side-wispies flaring.

  He’d been glued to the television since the moment Ice and Eliana walked inside.

  Eliana still had her hat pulled low over her head, but Isadoro had his eyes peeled for anything and everything that put them at risk of attack. Ice’s eyes drifted up to the wall mounted TV that sat angled away from the ceiling.

  Drones were attacking both Houston and El Paso, and the ticker tape at the bottom of the screen read: DAY TWO WITH NO WORD FROM THE PRESIDENT.

  “You have any idea what’s happening here?” Eliana asked.

  To Isadoro, she looked like a human nightmare: dirty, smelly, like something out of Night of the Living Dead. With her hat and her voice tuned just right, she could pass for a small man—one erring on the side of femininity, of course, but a man never the less.

  “Yeah. Drones, man. They’re freaking everywhere.”

  “Then why are you at work?” Ice asked.

  “They’re hitting the big cities is what the boss says. Not this little speck of dirt in the middle of no where. Besides, I can’t lose my job. Can’t do it even if…even if…”

  Eliana said, “Do you have a family?”

  He shook his head, no.

  “Are you staying with friends at least?” Ice asked.

  “My boss was my friend,” he said, some of the color rising back into his cheeks, along with an obvious anger.

  It was apparent the clerk felt like he was in danger. Maybe they were all in danger if this thing was already out of hand with no response from either the President or the military.

  Out in the car, Eliana handed a water over the seat to the kid in back who might never have been taught good manners. Ice got the feeling he wouldn’t speak a word until they either died, or they somehow got to where they were going.

  Isadoro looked at Eliana and said, “He have a name?”

  She looked at Ice, then back at the kid, who immediately turned and looked out the window.

  “No,” she said. “Not right now.”

  “You got a story on him?” he asked.

  “I do.”

  “Care to share?”

  “Maybe at the next stop,” she said, cutting him off. “But not now, no.”

  He started the car, checked the gauges then merged back on to Hwy 54 thinking this was the best way to avoid the bigger cities. They couldn’t get around all of them, though.

  Alamogordo, New Mexico had a population of over thirty-thousand, and it sat north-east of Holloman AFB. The drone activity would be high. Maybe even too high. It took less than an hour to get to there, and before they arrived Ice saw the road ahead had become a damn shooting gallery.

  A pair of smaller drones zipped by them, veering off to the right and left as they headed into the residential areas.

  “Were those the gun pods you talked about?” Eliana asked, unable to keep the panic from her voice.

  “Yes,” he said.

  She opened the window, slid her body out and tried to stand as high as she could without falling out. She dropped back down inside the car a moment later and all but screamed, “Get off the freeway! They’re coming back!”

  The same two drones were cutting a trail down the line of cars in front of them. Ice, Eliana and the boy braced for gun fire but the gun pods ran empty a few cars ahead of them. Ice swerved out of the stopped lane of traffic onto the shoulder of the road only to be hammered from behind by something huge.

  Eliana screamed; Ice hit the brakes and turned around.

  Behind them, a guy with a motorcycle helmet and mirrored sunglasses had hit the car and was rolling through the dirt away from his downed bike. He got up quickly and started yelling at Ice. He was throwing his arms around like a mental patient having a fit.

  “Just go,” Eliana said. “He looks fine, just a bit mad.”

  Ice hit the gas and they raced up the road, doing a little off-roading here and there to get out of the way of people doing the same thing Ice was doing.

  In the sky ahead, there were a few plumes of smoke. The destruction was nothing like El Paso, but in a town this size, much of it concentrated around the highway, every ounce of destruction seemed to be on display.

  To the right, the Chili’s was in flames, the Taco Bell was a bombed-out mess and the Applebee’s Bar & Grill was on fire and currently being evacuated. They freeway was seven lanes wide, but congesting fast.

  One of the larger Predator drones roared in, dropping low and unleashing a single missile into the Quality Suites.

  “Get off here!” Eliana said, pointing to Mercury Avenue—a narrow two lane road cutting in between the White Sands Motel (still standing) and the Magnusen Hotel & Suites (currently in flames).

  Ice stomped on the brakes, then cranked the wheel hard to the right and fought the sliding front end. When he regained control, he stepped on the gas, which didn’t mean much in this one hundred and twenty seven horsepower zero pounds of torque gas saver.

  “We’re out in the open here!” she screamed, surrounded on all sides by single story houses and open land.

  “I’m trying, but this freaking rice burner isn’t exactly fast!”

  A large residential neighborhood lie ahead, but these were neither large nor impressive homes.

  “Why the hell are they even here?” Eliana asked about the drones, damn near frantic.

  “Keep it together or you’re going to scare the kid!” Ice finally shouted.

  She was right. If the drones were only attacking heavily populated areas, why weren’t they hitting Las Cruces or even Roswell?

  “They’re coming from Holloman, AFB. This is the closest city,” he explained. “Hold on to something!”

  With his foot firmly on the gas, he swung the small import hard to the left at a Y in the road that took them into a neighborhood full of more single story homes on small plots of land sectioned off by chain link fences.

  In the distance, the Sacramento mountains carved up the horizon, like uninteresting brown humps against a smoky sky that seemed drab only because they were in the Chihuahuan Desert. It didn’t help that the gray haze of destruction was starting to blanket the city.

  Isadoro hit the A/C’s recirculation button, hoping they could keep most of the smoke out of the cabin of the car, but it was about to get nasty.

  “We need to get out of this town and fast,” Eliana said.

  Ice didn’t need a reason to let off the gas, but traffic gave him one. Still, he completely disregarded any civility on the road. Judging by the mayhem he was encountering, everyone else seemed to share his sentiment. For these people, however, this was home; for Ice, Eliana and Little Mr. No Name in back, they were only passing through.

  Before long, they came to another sharp curve in the road. Ice was going too fast, but it was too late. He dipped the car hard into the curve, hugging the right side of the street, but then he shot out wide, the front wheel drive predictably s
quealing, the traction too light on old tires. This shoved him up and over the rounded curb of the sidewalk and into the dirt where the undercarriage rattled like it was being hit with buck shot.

  The Civic flew out into the two lane thoroughfare of S. Florida where Ice managed to miss one car just in time to clip another. The back end bucked as he stood on the brakes, but their momentum carried them up into the paved driveway of a six bay do-it-yourself auto wash.

  Just then a fleet of smaller drones flew over and peppered the cars stuck in the accident with gunfire. Not wasting anytime, Ice pulled up into the wash bay and waited to see if the drones would come back. The loud scraping sound coming from the Civic wasn’t good.

  “This is crazy!” Eliana finally exclaimed.

  In the back seat, using the rear view mirror, Ice saw the boy shaking. His eyes were round and wild, like he was flat out terrified.

  Join the crowd, Ice thought.

  “You okay back there?” Ice asked. The kid awkwardly nodded his head. “Good, because we need to get the hell out of here!”

  He started to go, but the loud scraping sound persisted. He got out of the car, checked the streets and skies for drones, then proceeded to rip the front bumper off the car completely. When he got back in, his face was damp with sweat and his hands were cut where they’d been nipped by sharp sections of the torn bumper.

  He wiped his bloody hands on his pants, then dragged his sleeve across his forehead and started the car. When it was safe, they returned to S. Florida, which looked to be a straight shot from one end of town to the other.

  Unfortunately it didn’t go all the way through town, but instead dead-ended at a T in the road at 1st Street, a major thoroughfare.

  On the left, it looked like the city’s main grocery hub was burning, lots of cars were on fire, and bodies were everywhere—some sprawled out on the ground, others fleeing for their lives. On the right, the school had been obliterated.

  “Go right,” Eliana said.

  He spun the wheel right, stepped on the gas, drove a half mile then hung a left onto Washington, another thoroughfare that looked like it was heading in the right direction.

  “The good news is there are a ton of long, straight roads,” Ice said.

  “But the bad news is there are a ton of long, straight roads,” Eliana said, knowing they could go fast, but they were exposed to drones who could go faster than them and looked to be targeting the low hanging fruit.

  They were low hanging fruit.

  “I think they’re going for the more populated areas of the city,” Eliana said over the noise inside the car.

  “I’m thinking the same thing.”

  They managed to clear most of the traffic jams, the pile-ups and the shot and abandoned cars. He figured it was because the smart people had already gotten home, and this was no tourist trap. Not by a mile.

  Ice found an opening and gunned it. They were making good time at about ninety miles an hour, going hard for as long as they could push it.

  “You okay?” Eliana asked.

  “Peachy,” he said.

  In truth, Ice’s heart was in his throat, his blood pressure through the roof. He might have slightly shat himself in the accident/attack a few miles back, but he couldn’t be sure, and he wasn’t about to stop and check.

  “Whoa, whoa, WHOA!” Eliana shouted when she turned her eyes back on the road. One hand shot out to the dash, the other went to the passenger window, bracing herself for impact.

  The road they were on was about to end.

  Isadoro stomped on the brakes until he felt the back end of the Civic starting to break loose. He let off the brakes so as not to lose control. They blew through a chain link fence, creating a massive ruckus as they plowed into a forty foot stretch of dirt road that had been prepped for paving. He hung the wheel to the right, sliding the back end around and pulling them to a slow but violent stop.

  Just ahead, a wider thoroughfare bisected the one they were on. This was the road they needed to get to. The car had stalled out, though. It wasn’t unexpected. With the engine dead, a mighty dust cloud broke over the top of them, the recirculating system failing to filter out all of the dust.

  “Diaper change,” Isadoro announced, but no one laughed.

  One look at Eliana and he saw a face just as bloodless as it was dirty. Her terrified eyes and flaring nostrils told the tale. She’d need a diaper change for sure. He looked back at the kid and it was the same thing.

  It was settled then, three diaper changes and pronto.

  “Everyone okay?” he asked.

  Out the side of the car, he saw an angry looking man with cowboy boots, a hearty belt buckle and a braided straw cowboy hat stomping through the dirt their way. He had a rifle in hand and a sour look on his face.

  “We so don’t need this right now,” Ice mumbled in English as he tried starting the car again.

  The little engine just turned and turned, not quite catching. The grouchy looking cowboy arrived, tapping on Eliana’s window with the butt of the rifle. She jumped and squealed at the same time. The man motioned for Ice to roll down the window.

  He did, reluctantly.

  “You kids okay in here?” he asked.

  “We were almost killed by those drones back there,” Eliana said in halfway decent English. She sounded scared, shaken and weak, but in her left hand, Ice saw she had her pistol ready to go.

  “What the hell you doing out anyway?” the old man barked, dropping the niceties.

  “Just passing through,” Ice said.

  “It isn’t safe out on the road,” he replied, looking around. “‘Specially the highways.”

  “Maybe we can stay with you,” the boy said in Spanish, speaking for the first time. His delicate voice was high, almost like a girl’s voice, and cute. Whatever things he survived that brought him to Eliana, and then here, must’ve taken a awful toll.

  “Hell no you can’t stay with me!” the old man snapped in Spanish. His skin was dry and weathered, the color deep brown from decades of outdoor work. Then, back in English, he said to Ice and Eliana, “I ain’t in the business of taking in strays when I can barely handle my own kin as it is!”

  The boy shut back up. Isadoro tried the engine again, which caught this time. He leaned toward the Hispanic John Wayne and said, “Thanks for your concern. We’ll be on our way.”

  He was rolling up the electric window as he said this.

  Dropping the car in gear, he spun the wheel, did a bit of bouncing around, then navigated through a few untamed ridges of dirt, up a slight slope of land, then onto the paved road that proved to be a highway.

  “Did you know he understood English?” he asked Eliana, his eyes on the rear view mirror looking right at the boy.

  “No.”

  “Does this feel like the edge of town to you?” Ice asked.

  “Yes,” Eliana said. “I guess.”

  “Were you going to shoot him?” he asked. “The old man in the hat?”

  “More or less.”

  “After he spoke like that to the boy, was it more or less that you were going to shoot him?”

  “More.”

  “Yeah, me too.”

  “Now that we know you can talk,” Ice said to the boy over his shoulder, “you don’t get to be silent anymore. Got it?”

  The boy looked away and said nothing.

  “No fresh diapers for you then,” Ice grumbled.

  He buried the accelerator and prayed for no more drones, no more unfinished roads and no more hard-boiled cowboys with rifles refusing to help kids and pretty women dressed as dirty, homeless vets.

  He felt the weight of her gaze boring into him before he actually saw it. When he glanced over at Eliana, she was glaring back at him, a bitter chill in her eyes.

  “What?” he asked.

  “You speak so flippantly, and you make demands of the boy, but you don’t know what we’ve been through.”

  “I’d have a better idea if you told me, but if yo
u’re going to keep me in the dark on this, then I’m going to treat both of you the same way I just did. So either spill the beans or sit back and enjoy the ride.”

  She crossed her arms, faced forward, and began grinding her teeth.

  “That’s what I thought.”

  “And when did you learn to speak English?”

  “My father.”

  “That’s it? That’s all you’re going to say?”

  “He hoped one day I could leave Guatemala and come to America. So he taught me English. He made me read English books, and when he could find them, we were made to watch American movies.”

  He didn’t ask any more questions and she didn’t offer him any more of her history.

  After a few miles, they hit the highway, cornered strong and accelerated out of town with little fanfare and no more attention from the drones.

  “No one appreciates your sense of humor,” Eliana finally said. Like she was holding her anger at bay until they could get to safety.

  “That’s not true,” he said avoiding her eyes, his expression neutral, if not passive. “I appreciate my sense of humor.”

  “You don’t count.”

  “Says who?”

  “Me.”

  “Well you don’t have a sense of humor, so you telling me I don’t count is really you not counting, in which case you should stare ahead and pretend you like me.”

  “But I don’t like you.”

  “No one does.”

  “That is my point,” she said, getting riled again.

  “Not before it was my point,” he said, casting her a quick glance.

  She made little angry fists and growled, which he did not understand, but whatever. He imagined she’d been stressed out since her niece went missing, so he got it.

  “What?” he asked again, not acting clueless, but not letting her throw a tantrum without at least acknowledging that she was out of sorts.

  “I just hate…your stupid face!”

  “Well yours looks dipped in poop and smells just as bad, so maybe you should take a bath before you start telling people their faces are stupid. Besides, I happen to like this face.”

  “Well you’re the only one!”

  “And since my opinion about myself is the most important, I feel just fine about that.”