The Age of Embers {Book 3): The Age of Reprisal

by Schow, Ryan

  The guy standing at the bottom of the stairs of the hotwired bus dropped from a perfect headshot. Xavier looked over the sights, instantly bothered by what he did. What he had to do. Still, a clean headshot was one less enemy he needed to worry about.

  Besides, they couldn’t lose the bus.

  That was their way out.

  He’d hoped that one shot, maybe two, might send the horde running. Instead, they dug in like ticks, not the least bit spooked.

  He didn’t understand.

  There were thousands of homes out there to rob and loot, and plenty of old cars that might start. Why hunker down and try to steal their things after a couple of deaths of their own?

  It made no sense.

  A man in a trucker’s ball cap stood up from behind a car where he was hiding and fired off a slingshot. It nearly hit Ice, causing his friend to wince.

  A slingshot?

  The marble sized rock Captain Slingshot sent Ice’s way could put out an eye, definitely gash open thin skin—like on the forehead—but could it kill someone?

  Xavier refused to take the chance.

  Standing in the first floor front room, the window open to a thin mesh screen, Xavier peered though his scope, his breathing shallow. He zeroed in on where he thought the would-be assailant would stand and lined up the shot. The second the attacker drew back the leather pouch and stood, Xavier squeezed the trigger.

  The round entered the assailant’s skull clean, his hat flying off, a spray of red exiting the other side. Xavier heard cursing among the ranks, but it was a low, frenzied chatter he couldn’t seem to understand.

  “C’mon guys,” Xavier muttered to himself as he scanned the street just outside the scope. “Take your spoils and leave.”

  Depending on what they did next, this would either be an all out war or a victory for the home team. For these looters, it was clear, there would be no victory.

  They had no idea who they were up against.

  When he’d first seen them, when Xavier barely managed to avoid getting shot ducking out of Fire’s house, he’d sprinted across the street heading for the house he’d recently taken as his own. At that time, there were so many of these people he couldn’t count them on the fly.

  Now as he scanned the street, he saw none.

  Everyone had hidden.

  At that point, he opened his field of view one hundred and eighty degrees to avoid tunnel vision and that’s when he saw them. At the other end of the street, a good forty, maybe even fifty people, were coming together from different neighborhoods converging in on theirs.

  The breath fell out of him and his shoulders sagged.

  Good God, this was going to be a war.

  He sized up the mob through the scope, scanning the men and women heading his way. All of them were armed with one thing or another. Behind them, a half dozen more were pushing large carts full of stolen survival gear and food. These people were not necessarily armed with guns, but what they did carry could certainly do some harm in a close combat contest. These were things like hammers, baseball bats, tire irons, pruning shears, kitchen knives…

  Leading the pack was a wiry looking man with cold eyes, a serious mouth and hands he’d made into fists. He had a shotgun slung over his back and sneakers that looked too white for the apocalypse.

  Xavier knew the type right away—they were the meth dealing, pants sagging, kid killing drug dealers that had so recently infected this once great city.

  He absolutely despised these kinds of guys.

  From a distance, he could be twenty years old or forty. Through the scope however, his bad skin and thinning hair gave him away. He was mid- to late-forties for sure. And ugly. A god-awful ugly. His was the kind of face no mother could ever be proud of. It wasn’t misshapen by abuse, like you see on retired boxers, or late-career MMA fighters. No, his face was scarred by things far worse than acne or the occasional pummeling. It looked like he’d suffered a barbed wire beating, some clipping shots from fists with finger rings or brass knuckles, and a nick or two on his cheek that could very well have come from a blade fight he might have lost.

  On this pint-sized, maybe one-hundred and thirty pound menace, were no other obvious clichés. He didn’t have a mile long scar cutting a line down his face at an angle, or a bald head with tattoos covering everything but his eyes and mouth. He bore no gang markings to speak of, with the exception of some ink on the knuckles of both his left and right hand.

  Xavier knew this clown by his walk.

  He’d spent the better part of his life seeing this city’s worst offenders and nearly every single one of them had that defiant, arrogant walk. It was the I’m-going-to-kill-your-mother-when-we’re-done-here walk.

  When you’re on the force, when you enter an organization as complicated as the DEA, you can’t really break that look down without first acknowledging that something was wrong deep in the souls of these guys. The look in his eyes, however—the determination on his face and the confidence in his gait—suggested he’d had some success running with a rough crowd.

  In Chicago he could be anyone.

  There were enough drugs, gangs and low level street thugs in the Windy City to populate a normal sized town. But Chicago was no more, and guys like this would stop being the exception and start being the norm. Regardless, he was there now, and he was making his way down the street with his civilian mob and all their little weapons.

  As this string bean and his posse approached the kid-shaped ash pile on the ground—the tweeker who burnt to death when his meth lab caught fire—he held up his hand and everyone behind him fell to a stop.

  He snapped his fingers, causing a young kid to push through the masses up next to him. The kid held out a small plastic device, pressed a button, waited. A moment later, he looked up and shook his head, no.

  Geiger counter?

  Smart.

  Sizing the string bean up through his rifle’s scope, Xavier saw knuckles that looked like they’d punched a few walls in anger. On his right hand, the numbers 323 were tattooed in blue ink. On his left hand were the numbers 312. He assumed these were area codes.

  323 was East Los Angeles; 312 was Chicago.

  Stupid ass California transplant.

  323 started towards them again. What changed the tone of everything was a shrill screaming that cut through the silence, followed by a gunshot and then more screaming.

  Xavier turned to the source of the noise.

  Moments later he watched Fire drag a woman out of the alley between his and Eudora’s home. He had her by the collar and it didn’t look like he was brimming with compassion.

  “Are you insane?” he grumbled under his breath.

  The only thing he could think of was that Fire had lost his mind. Of course, his friend didn’t know about 323 and his gang, but he would know soon enough.

  Still…

  Fiyero dragged this woman out into the middle of the street and announced to the cowering half of this crowd, “You draw on us, you die. You try to take our things, you die. You walk into this neighborhood again, even one of you, and you die, starting with her.”

  Yeah, Fire had clearly missed the mob at his back.

  323 and the gang picked up their pace and the crack-skinny woman behind 323 pulled out a long rifle and aimed it at Fire.

  “Dammit,” Xavier mumbled as he lined her up in his sights.

  He saw the nod from 323 to the woman and groaned. 323 had just given her the green light to take out Fiyero. Xavier squeezed the trigger, caught her in the throat.

  “Rise and shine, bitches,” he muttered.

  He pulled back off the scope, eyed the masses from a distance. He needed to measure their reaction. People hunkered down, some of them even scrambling, but 323 stood his ground, unafraid to die, unwilling to even break his stride. The next thing he knew, Xavier’s house was taking fire. Glass windows broke out and rounds crashed into the walls, furniture and décor all around him.

  He scrambled out of the liv
ing room, back into the kitchen with every intention of heading out the back door. He reached for the door’s handle, but stopped when through the glass he saw four men headed his way. They didn’t look like they knew his position, but they were armed with bats and knives, and they were headed straight for him.

  Unfortunately, the door’s lock was broken. He’d kicked it in days before the EMP went off. Stashing his rifle, his pistol in the other room where retaliatory gunfire was winding down, he cursed to himself for being foolish then grabbed a paring knife off the counter, took a deep breath and braced for impact.

  The minute the men tried to come inside, Xavier showed them it would not be that easy. Unfortunately not everything went the way he hoped it would.

  Chapter Six

  Half winded after dragging the woman down the alleyway and into the street, I stand here in the open, more pissed off than afraid.

  My head on a swivel, eyes looking for anyone else who would crash our neighborhood, break into our homes and threaten us with their guns, I prepare to speak my peace, hoping it’s enough, that we can end all this without any further loss of life.

  At this point, I have no idea how many people there are out here. I know there’s at least fifteen, maybe twenty tops. I don’t see them, though. In this moment, I’m seeing all the places they could hide and assessing the situation.

  Fortunately the woman at my feet quit fighting me. Whatever small bouts of gunfire I just heard stopped so the only noise I hear is her endless sobbing. It seems she’s let her emotions take their course—grief this time, no longer rage.

  I want to feel bad for her, I really do. That would be a mistake, though. A mistake that could cost me my life. If there’s any chance of surviving this, it’s knowing I have enough leverage to both keep her alive and put a stop to this thing before it escalates.

  “You shot me,” the woman was now sobbing.

  My gun is aimed at her head, my finger on the trigger in case anyone’s got a scope on me.

  “Be quiet,” I tell her. Then, as loud as I can, I issue my ultimatum. “You draw on us, you die. You try to take our things, you die. You walk into this neighborhood again, even one of you, and you die, starting with her.”

  Suddenly a rifle report barks out into the early afternoon air, drawing my attention to Xavier’s new home.

  The return fire is loud and boisterous, but short lived.

  Now I find myself glancing over my shoulder, seeing the ascending mob I missed, feeling my insides clench something fierce.

  How the hell did I miss that?

  Was my tunnel vision so tight that a converging crowd of this size escaped me? My body overheats almost immediately. This is what happens when I’m overcome with a state of dread.

  Before I was mad. Irate. Now I’m realizing how badly this war is affecting my instincts.

  Behind me, on my porch, Ice’s voice booms out. “If I hear one more gunshot, I’m going to open this woman up. Surely you don’t want that! I don’t want that. But if—”

  A crack in the air jolts the woman’s head and she drops dead at Ice’s feet.

  The shot came from somewhere inside the ascending mob, not from the original group I was addressing. Is this new threat just part of the old threat? Is this the second wave rolling in?

  This is worse than I thought if they’re going to kill their own people just to prove a point.

  Or had they been trying to hit Ice?

  Ice kept himself tucked out of view, but honestly, I’m not taking any chances. The second I think it’s time to run, another deafening boom shakes the air around me. A guy wielding a knife behind me drops dead in the street. Only ten feet separates me from what could have been my death.

  I look up and see Draven in the third story window.

  For the record, I feel a lot better having him on my six, but this is still a really bad predicament.

  “I don’t want to hurt you,” a sinewy looking rodent of a man calls out. By the look of it, he’s the leader here. Now he’s fifty feet away and coming right for me.

  “But I want to hurt you,” I say back, a touch louder.

  “Please,” the woman at my feet cries. “Just let me go.”

  “I’m not even touching you,” I tell her, my gun to her head.

  “Just do it,” she’s saying. “Pull the trigger and take all this misery away.”

  In that second, I’m watching someone hand the skinny man a rifle and that’s when I know I have no leverage. I look up at Ice and he’d staggered backwards a few steps, his legs wobbly, the woman’s blood splashed all over him.

  “In this future we can work together, help each other out,” the mini-thug calls out. “Before I take this next shot, I want to know if you’re willing to talk. This is your chance to live.”

  “You just killed an innocent woman!” I explode, my voice gravely and pumped full of furious indignation.

  “And I will kill more until we find the ones we want!”

  “The ones who?” I yell.

  “The ones that will make up our group. We need a killer like you. Someone with the balls to do what you and your people are doing.”

  “Just let me go or shoot me,” the woman at my feet is now saying. She’s reaching for my gun, but I’m smacking her hand down, giving her a warning kick as the gravity of my haste sets in.

  I put myself between the people who were trying to kill us and the man killing his own people. What an idiot!

  Draven might be able to pick off a few, but what if he misses one of them? I’m out in the open. How good of a shot is he when he needs his eyes to be everywhere at once?

  “I don’t work with people who slaughter women and children!” I shout back, even though I just killed a child and shot a woman.

  Do you ever have those moments when your realize the lie you’ve been telling yourself is just that—a big, fat lie? That’s how I’m feeling right now. It’s a sinking, spiraling feeling I have inside me that’s tunneling deeper and deeper, testing my equilibrium.

  “This is a new world, friend,” the man sauntering down the middle of the street toward me says. He’s not that far away now. Should I shoot him? Can I? “We do what we can to survive, do we not?”

  I cast a glance at Ice; he gives me a stern nod, no. By now he’s wiped his face enough to see straight. Even he can see the odds are against us. There are too many of them. Too many for us to take without more bodies and more ammo. Too much open space for me to run through without risking being shot the second everything erupts.

  “I won’t partner with you,” I tell him, standing tall on my position. “You need to take your people and go.”

  Another gunshot rings out.

  The woman at my foot takes a round to the skull, causing her to jolt lightly, then fall silent. Looking down, the world closing in on me, the air falling into a silent and sucking void.

  I can’t believe she’s dead.

  He killed her!

  This is officially the darkest silence I’ve ever felt. Fortunately I still have my wits about me, and that’s when I make a run for it. Gunfire breaks out everywhere.

  If these idiots are going to kill their own people rather than us, they’re obviously insane and trying to prove that point.

  Point taken!

  Right now, all I know is I’m ducking for cover because I’ve oversimplified this situation. That and I know we’re running low on ammunition. You know the saying, outgunned and outmanned? Yeah. Right now, that’s us.

  That’s me personally.

  Chapter Seven

  Draven was about to open fire on the encroaching horde the moment he saw Xavier shoot the woman in the neck. That’s when Veronica started screaming downstairs. Torn for that split second, he paused too long. He lost that critical advantage. Was someone in the house? Obviously there was. If he started shooting up there, would someone come up behind him and shoot him? Would they kill the kids downstairs to get the jump on him?

  Dammit, Orlando was supposed to c
over the entrances!

  He was just a kid, though…

  Even though Fiyero was a former cop, and now a DEA agent, by his own admission, Orlando didn’t have much in the way of real fighting or shooting experience.

  Talk about sad! Especially for a guy who preached about the weakness of today’s men.

  At the risk of leaving Fire, Ice and Eliana unprotected, they had a better chance of surviving an assault than Veronica. Setting the rifle aside, he hurried downstairs, feeling things inside himself shifting to the darker, more menacing elements of his being.

  It’s one thing to shoot someone from a distance. You can avoid looking in their eyes, just call them a neutralized threat and be done with it. But when you’re going hand to hand with someone, when you’re facing off with them one way or another, there’s the real possibility you will humanize them and then go light.

  Draven didn’t go light.

  A guy like him wasn’t trained to go light.

  In order for him to imagine every fight as a fight to the death, his sensei taught him to envision every opponent as an enemy who wanted to take Draven’s life.

  That’s how he learned how to make the mental shift.

  He made that shift now.

  For whatever reason, he started thinking about the day he tested for his black belt in Isshin-ryu, an Okinawan martial arts created in the nineteen-fifties to beat other martial artists. That evening, when he stood across the mat from his most ferocious opponent, in his head, he said, “I’m sorry for what I’m about to do to you.”

  No one was ever permanently injured in the black belt test, but the saying, “The more you sweat in the dojo, the less you bleed on the battlefield,” was about to prove itself out.

  That evening he was about to bleed in the battlefield, and when he saw his opponents, he would apologize to them in his mind for what he was about to do.

  He got down to the second floor, heard the scuffle downstairs, the hard packed sounds of hands hitting bodies, the oofing and grunting of someone getting pummeled.

  Orlando…

  The noise continued. The muffled sounds of someone’s face being smothered. This sounded like Victoria. She belted off another scream, but it was clipped short, muffled by hands again.