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

by Schow, Ryan

  “Get up,” the voice said.

  “I don’t think that I can,” Xavier answered.

  Chapter Eleven

  Ice stepped out of Eudora’s house, hustled inside to check on Orlando, saw he wasn’t breathing and that people were calm but on the verge of not being calm.

  His brother was sitting up on the floor, his eyes unfocused, loose; Carolina was waving air into his face, telling him in Spanish that he was okay, that he just hit his head.

  Eudora said, “Is everyone else okay?”

  “I have to check on Xavier across the street,” Ice said. “If I’m not back in a few minutes, if my brother comes around, send him or Eliana after me.”

  Eudora nodded.

  He slipped out back, grabbed the blood-stained baseball bat as he passed a smattering of dead people in the alley. Keeping tight against the house, he peeked his head out into the street.

  There were bodies everywhere.

  What a mess.

  What he didn’t see, however…oh boy…there they were—five guys heading for Xavier’s front door. Rookies by the look of them. They had an assortment of weapons with them, but he didn’t see a gun.

  “Hey,” Ice said, walking out into the street. They all looked. All five of them stopped what they were doing and focused on him.

  He just kept walking.

  One of the guys moved to the front with a pistol, aimed it him, fired. Ice moved ever so slightly, the bullet whistling by him. He didn’t change his pace. Never even gave these morons an expression to read.

  These guys, this gang of misfits, upset a rather harmonious neighborhood vibe, and for what? For some things they could have found elsewhere?

  Another shot rang out, then two.

  The first of these two shots went wide, the second clanked off the metal baseball bat. Even though the bat jolted in his hand, he held on to it and kept his pace steady. He was within fifteen feet now and two of the guys took off. The shooter fired again, aiming at Ice’s head this time, but the gun dry fired.

  “Oh, hell no,” the failed shooter said.

  One guy jumped the porch on one side, running back where he came from. His buddy jumped the porch railing on the opposite side, both cowards rushing for cover.

  Ice had eyes on the gunman only.

  He seemed to freeze.

  Ice walked up to him, socked him square in the nose. His head rocked backwards. Grunting, the teenager covered his nose to staunch the blood.

  This was no man.

  Up close, he was just a boy.

  “This is how we end our species,” Ice growled, grabbing him by the ear and dragging him off the porch. “Guys like you think taking from guys like me is as easy as pointing a gun and squeezing the trigger? Let me tell you something, pipsqueak, it’s not.”

  Ice hauled him out into the street, then shoved him away, giving him a righteous kick in the rear end for good measure.

  Standing there in the middle of a once peaceful(ish) neighborhood, he looked at the disaster these people caused and thought it was all so very needless.

  “The rifle jammed!” Draven called out from the third floor window. “But you’re all clear from here.”

  “Thanks for nothing,” Ice grumbled as he headed around the back of Xavier’s requisitioned home.

  When he got into X’s backyard, he saw the door standing open. Someone did a number on it! He walked inside, stepped over a few bodies inside, then saw his brother’s friend laid out on the ground, blood coming from his nose and mouth, eyes closed with his lips moving ever so slightly.

  Xavier finally opened his eyes and looked up at him.

  “Get up,” he said.

  “I don’t think I can,” Xavier replied.

  “I can carry you over my shoulders like I would a child if you want,” Ice said. Looking around at the scattering of dead men, Ice imagined it had been a hell of a fight. “Or you could get up like a man and help me secure this neighborhood.”

  Xavier managed to get to his feet; Ice helped him the rest of the way up.

  “You okay to stand on your own?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” Xavier said, touching the inside of his lip and pulling back a bit of blood. “Need to get my bearings is all.”

  “You spotting?” Ice said, grinning, looking at Xavier’s hand.

  “My face is on its period for sure,” Xavier half-heartedly joked. Ice tried to help him, but Xavier pushed his hand away and said, “I got it. Thanks.”

  Together they walked outside, appraised the damage. Overall, they counted fourteen bodies, none of them from their camp.

  “We’re going to need to do something with the dead,” Xavier said.

  “Yeah, pray they don’t get up.”

  “This ain’t a zombie story, my friend,” Xavier said, patting Ice’s shoulder. “Even though I feel like one.”

  Ice barked out a jovial laugh, then said, “Back in Juarez, when the cartels wanted to make a point, they’d cut off their heads and hang them by their ankles from bridges or lamp posts.”

  The light mood suddenly turned to dark clouds and thunderstorms.

  “I’m not cutting anyone’s head off,” Xavier said.

  “I know. I’m not suggesting that. All I’m saying is we have a chance to make a point with these bodies.”

  “Okay, I’m all ears,” he said as they crossed the street and moved into the alley. “But no gross stuff. I have a weak stomach when it comes to the desecration of the body.”

  Ice started laughing.

  “What?”

  “You wouldn’t know it looking at that crime scene you created.”

  Xavier shrugged his shoulders and said, “Self-preservation brings out the worst in us.”

  “Truth,” Ice said.

  When they got back to Fiyero’s place, Fire was looking a bit peaked. He was clearly preoccupied with Orlando. The boy had gone into a coma. Ice hung at the back of the kitchen with Eliana. She slipped her hand into his, reached up and kissed him. He kissed her back. That they survived wasn’t lost on him. Still, his heart was breaking for his older brother.

  Adeline was holding Fire; Adeline and Brooklyn were crying; all their hands were on the boy.

  “Did someone put a flashlight in his eyes?” Ice asked.

  “I did,” Eudora said.

  “And?”

  “No dilation,” she replied. “We tried motor responses, too.”

  “Nothing?”

  “No.”

  “Pain stimulus?”

  She nodded her head.

  “And?”

  She shook her head, leaving Ice without answers.

  There was no way to tell how bad the coma was in this case. The likely cause was injury from blunt force trauma. The swelling of the brain was either from the initial punch to his temple, or from him hitting his head on the fall.

  “If he doesn’t come around by tomorrow, we’ll need to find an IV and nutrients,” Ice said. “Otherwise he’ll starve.”

  “Let’s not plan on him being this way for much longer, Isadoro,” Adeline said over her back. Her eyes were red, the flesh around them puffy with grief. Even the tip of her nose was raw from crying.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I just don’t know how easy finding things like this will be.”

  She nodded her head, then turned back to Fire and said, “Should we get him to a bed? I mean, will that be okay?”

  “We could try hypothermia,” Eudora said.

  They all turned to her. She was right. If the problem was brain swelling, and they were able to reduce the inflammation by cooling his body to the point of hypothermia, they might be able to reverse the swelling enough to induce consciousness.

  Adeline said, “Will that work?”

  “It might,” Fire said, a touch of hopefulness registering in his voice. “We could try it. Even though the weather is weird and hot, it’s also been really cold at night.”

  “I’ll stay up with him,” Eliana said.

  “Me, too,
” Adeline replied. “But we’re not doing hypothermia.”

  Ice looked at Fire, his brother’s face getting worse with each passing moment. “Regarding all this, brother, we have to make a statement.”

  “You worried about blowback?”

  He nodded.

  Xavier said, “Ice has some interesting ideas about how to deal with that.”

  “I do,” he replied.

  Looking at Ice, knowing what he knew about him, Fire said, “Juarez-style?”

  Ice gave a slow nod.

  He excused himself from Adeline and Brooklyn. “We need to see about the readouts on the Geiger counter. No one even seems concerned about radiation levels.”

  “The guys coming in the houses had masks on,” Eliana said. “But the guys outside didn’t. They had counters, but they were not wearing masks.”

  “Most radiation levels fall fastest in the first seventy-two hours,” Draven said, surprising all of them when he strolled through the back door and into the kitchen like a ghost. “We got through most of that already.”

  He opened his hand and showed them the plastic white Geiger counter. “Gamma rays are very low,” he said. “We should be alright.”

  “How did that thing survive the blast?” Ice asked.

  The EMP took out most electronics. The device Draven was holding had a digital readout. Meaning it was powered by solid state electronics and was subject to destruction from the pulse.

  “It could have been shielded,” Eudora said. “Anyone concerned about radiation levels would shield it in a faraday cage.”

  “What is a faraday cage?” Carolina asked. She was holding Bianca’s hand. The girl had her head against the side of Carolina’s arm. Alma and Constanza had now crowded into the kitchen as well.

  “It’s like a like a box made of specific metal that stops the electromagnetic pulse from ruining the microchips powering these electronic devices,” Draven said. “Devices like the one I’m holding.”

  Carolina nodded her head, like she was slowly starting to understand.

  “And it says we’re alright?” Adeline asked.

  “Levels of radiation are at higher levels than what would be constituted as normal, but they aren’t strong enough to be harmful,” Draven answered. “Long term, though, we probably don’t want to risk that kind of exposure.”

  Saying that, he looked at his grandmother, but Eudora looked away.

  “We need to get out of town,” Ice said. Looking at Eudora, he added, “You and Draven, too.”

  “We’re staying put,” she said. “This is our home, and our town.”

  “Some of this will blow over,” Eliana said. “But these guys, if they come back and it’s just the two of you…”

  “When will you leave?” Draven asked.

  “Come with us,” Brooklyn said.

  “Not until Orlando is conscious,” Fire replied. “And Draven’s right. It’s not smart, getting unnecessary exposure. If we wait a few more days inside, give Orlando a chance, then whatever fallout is sitting outside the city will hopefully dissipate by then.”

  “In the meantime, what do we do about these guys who attacked us?” Adeline asked.

  “Like Xavier said,” Ice replied, “I have some ideas. Does anyone know anyone who has a hacksaw and some rope?”

  “Help me get Orlando to a bed and then I’ll help you find what you need,” Fire said.

  “I have some ideas of my own,” Draven said.

  “You want to share?” Fire asked.

  “Not really.”

  After they got Orlando to a bed, Fire, Ice, Draven and Eliana scoured the street with their Geiger counter looking for anything worthwhile. They picked up bats, hammers, several guns (with little or no ammo), brass knuckles and the slingshot.

  But they didn’t find rope or a hacksaw.

  When Draven looked up, he saw the woman’s face in the window, and the three boys who survived the assault were standing on the porch.

  He went to the boys first.

  “You guys okay?” he asked. All three of them nodded their heads. “Your parents come back yet?”

  “We finally agreed,” Chase said, his younger brothers nodding like they knew what he was about to say. “They’re probably dead.”

  “So it’s settled then?”

  “What’s settled?” Ross asked.

  “That you’re in this alone,” Draven replied. “Just the three of you.”

  “All we need is each other,” Chase said.

  Phillip and Ross were looking at Ice with steely eyes. It was cute actually. All three of them wouldn’t last another assault on the neighborhood, especially if reinforcements were alerted to their strategy and their personnel.

  “Maybe today that would have worked,” Draven ruminated. “But what works one day might not work the next.”

  “Did you shoot that man?” Phillip asked, his hard expression breaking.

  “I did.”

  All three of them nodded at once—a thank you. He nodded back—an understanding. Then he asked if they had enough food.

  “We do,” Chase said.

  “Well we’re eating just before sundown, so if you’re hungry for company, you should come over and meet everyone. One of these people might save your life again and it would be nice to know their names when you thank them.”

  “What’s your name?” Phillip asked.

  “You forgot already?”

  “Didn’t care the first time we met,” the boy said. “All’s we know is you’re the guy with the crazy grandma.”

  “Don’t let her hear you say that,” Draven warned. “It’s Draven by the way.”

  “Oh, yeah,” Ross said. Then: “What about us?”

  “What about you?”

  “Do you remember our names?” the oldest asked.

  “I do.”

  “And?”

  “Chase, Ross and Phillip,” he said. The three of them looked impressed, but after their initial surprise escaped them, they were back to making that look.

  “We’re old enough to survive on our own,” Chase proclaimed.

  “Have you even gone through puberty?”

  “Two years ago.”

  “What are you doing with your crap?” Draven asked, testing the boys.

  “Chase dug a hole in back,” Ross said. Ross was the middle child. Phillip was the youngest of the three and looked like it. All the boys looked like typical Chicago scrubs.

  “What happens when you fill it up?”

  “I’ll dig another.”

  “How long are you going to do that for?” Draven said, shielding his eyes from the sun.

  “As long as I have to.”

  “You’ll contaminate the ground, and eventually your little Mr. Rushmore of hardened turds will break down and leech into the soil. That’s not a big deal if you’re dumping here for a month or two. Maybe even six months. But did you consider the kinds of infectious diseases you could get from coming into contact with this?”

  “No,” Phillip said.

  Ticking off each of his five fingers, he said, “Cholera, dysentery, E-Coli, salmonella, shigella. But let’s say that’s okay. Maybe you don’t bury it deep enough, or you get heavy winds or rain. Now maybe the top of your dirt toilet blows off and now you’re dealing with different kinds of worms, like pinworms, tape worms or ascariasis.”

  “What’s asscari…ascisarious?” Phillip asked, the word practically tripping over itself in his mouth.

  “Ascariasis is a worm disease. The roundworm disease basically acts like a parasite, laying eggs in your body so you can be a host to these little critters. In your body, they grow from larvae or eggs to full sized adult worms, worms that will reproduce with each other and make more worms. Some people say you can feel them wiggling around in your belly, in your fingers and toes, even behind your eyeballs. That’s because they’re about a foot long when they’re at their full length.”

  He didn’t tell the boys that ascariasis was uncommon in the United
States, or that most likely they’d be fine, but he had a soft spot for these orphaned kids having once felt orphaned himself.

  “That’s gross,” Ross said.

  “And all because you thought you were grown up enough to dig holes in the backyard and dump like men,” Draven said, po-faced and direct. “Here’s a newsflash, Backstreet Girls, reason and logic won’t be your saving grace.”

  “Oh yeah?” Chase challenged. “What will be our saving grace then?”

  The kid didn’t look old enough to drive, but he wasn’t that young either. Draven pegged him for fourteen, if not a day.

  “Brothers in arms,” Draven told him as he turned to leave. He called out to them over his shoulder one last time: “Dinner’s just before sundown.”

  With that, he went a few houses down where he knocked on the door of the woman whose face he’d seen peeking outside.

  She didn’t answer right away. He knocked harder and said, “You can’t just hide in here forever. We have to stick together on this or we won’t make it.”

  Finally the lock disengaged and a very normal looking woman most likely in her mid- to late-forties answered the door. She was not a fit woman, nor was she round. She was about as average as you could get in a woman, plus a few pounds, and her face was white as a sheet.

  “It’s good you stayed inside for all that,” Draven told her.

  “Someone tried to get in my back door.”

  “This is going to be a problem we can’t hide from, and by we I mean you.” He said this and waited for her to say something. When she wasn’t speaking, he said, “We’re having dinner at sundown for our two families and for the neighborhood.”

  “How many of us are left?”

  “By my estimation, three boys a couple of doors down and a kid at the end of the block.”

  “Didn’t he blow himself up?”

  A thought occurred to him. He pulled out the Geiger counter, aimed it at her and pressed a button. She looked at it funny, then started to shut the door. He put his toe down to stop it from shutting long enough to get a readout on her.

  “Are you testing me for radiation?”

  “Yes.”

  She looked at him, scared. Obviously she was aware of the blast that killed all their electronics.