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

by Schow, Ryan

  Everyone to a man and this one ugly woman gave a curt nod. Then, he looked silently at each and every one of them, his eyes finally landing on the meek kid who couldn’t stop wondering why he was here, why he sat among a company of killers.

  He gave the boy no answers just yet.

  In his heart, he knew one or two of the remaining four understood the boy’s purpose. So when he turned and said, “Get him,” he expected most of them to pounce.

  Only the woman moved.

  She sprung from her seat and attacked the boy with such ferociousness, it was like a Piranha striking fresh meat. Of the three men present, only one other came close to moving like this, but he was slow compared to this ravenous vixen. The kid was already screeching and wailing, for the woman had become a firestorm of violence, beating down this boy in a way Demon had never seen. Her hands were small, balled fists, but her feet and elbows were reliable for those big, finishing shots. When she was done with him, when the boy laid there, his gaze empty, the pains of this world having left him, there was nothing left but silence and her rapid breathing.

  She got to her feet, her red hair damp with sweat and hanging in her face, her blue eyes winding down from the frenzy. Standing tall, she pushed her hair out of her face and looked at him. She seemed almost embarrassed, no longer so rapacious.

  “How do you feel?” he asked her.

  “Fine,” she said, the corners of her mouth turning down, her eyes so flat and lifeless it was as if nothing happened at all. Her eyes flicked to her male counterparts, but only for a second.

  Demon wondered if she was thinking about killing them, or worse, killing him.

  “There are people who hunger for this level of violence because this is the only outlet for their unrestrained wants and needs. These are your rage murderers. Your homicidal maniacs. And then there are those who like to take their time. Romance their victims. There is the stalking, the planning, the execution and then the killing. You each have your rituals. Every last one of you knows exactly what you want, exactly what you need.”

  He knew about the woman, but now he was focused on the men. After his statement, he registered their surprise, and perhaps he even glimpsed a bit of reverence. Not only did they underestimate her, they underestimated him as well. It would seem as though he was one of them, and this earned him their respect.

  To the woman, he said, “What I want right now is you.”

  “Why her?” one of the men asked.

  “Other than the obvious? I appreciate her response time. There was no hesitation. She did not care who he was, what his life was like, if he had a family, a wife, a boyfriend, a dog that needed him when he was gone. She saw a target and she hit it. For her the act of killing was the meaning. I need someone like that, so the rest of you will leave, but if you’d like”—he said, looking at the woman—“I’d like you to stay with me.”

  She very slowly, and very sparingly, gave him a nod.

  The others stood and left.

  When they were gone, he said, “I was once a Latin King. I killed my way into the position I held and I liked it. I took my first life at age six. It was just a man leaving a grocery store at night. I didn’t kill him for any reason, even though I was told I needed to do it and that would be reason enough for anyone else. For me, I just wanted to hear the sound of skin ripping. After a hundred murders, I lost count. I don’t care anymore. And do you know why?”

  “Because a few kills makes you a murderer, but hundreds of kills is just you and you do murder.”

  “Yes,” he said with a creeping grin. “I do murder. How many people have you killed?”

  She stared at him, unblinking, not saying a word.

  “That look could mean you killed just this one,” Demon contemplated, “or maybe you killed hundreds. Looking at you, I like that I do not know.”

  Again, she said nothing. Nor did she offer him an expression. For a second, he thought the air dipped a few degrees between them. A slight shiver ran down his back as he stared into her eyes. They say the eyes are the windows to the soul. Behind hers, he saw only empty space, an incredible expanse of darkness.

  “What was your first kill?” he asked. “Be honest, you’re in good company.”

  “Sparkle,” she said.

  “Dog or cat?”

  “Hamster.”

  “How?”

  “Same way I killed him,” she said, looking over her shoulder at the dead kid on the floor.

  She’d beaten the kid to death, but killing someone wasn’t as easy as it looked in the movies. The body is built to survive, to endure even the worst abuse. The kid on the floor—his body was weaker than most. Still, it took five or six solid stomps to send him to the other side.

  Someone as meek as him wasn’t going to survive this new dark age anyway. Guys like him were timid, dependent, wholly incapable of the grit and wherewithal to take your surroundings by the balls and squeeze. He was dead already, he just didn’t know it yet.

  “When you killed Sparkle,” he said, “what did you feel?”

  He studied her expression, this mangy redhead with a crowd of freckles around her nose, pocked skin and eyebrows that were too thin for her face. The way she stared back at him, how her shoulders were hunched slightly forward, her chin extended just a bit, she was a tethered soul with so much potential.

  He expected a sneer to overtake her as she spoke of need or an abundance of pleasure, but it didn’t, and this pleased him. These days faux serial killers were a dime a dozen.

  This woman, he mused, she might be the real thing.

  “For the first time in my life,” the ginger said, showing him an upper row of coffee stained teeth, “I felt silence inside.”

  “How did you sleep that day?” he asked.

  “I did not dream.”

  No trauma.

  “What did you kill next?” Demon asked.

  For a long time she stared at him, not once blinking. She did this for maybe a minute, her eyes perfectly still. If she was thinking, she was concealing it like no one in history before her.

  “My neighbor’s horse,” she finally said, her eyes staring straight at Demon, but unfocused.

  He laughed, more out of surprise than anything.

  “Why a horse?”

  “It was bigger than the human body,” she said, her eyes clearing, focusing.

  “If you can kill a beast like that,” he said aloud, “you can kill any human you want.”

  “Yes.”

  “If I tell you to embrace this side of you, to let it out into the open, what will you do?”

  “I will kill anything you put in front of me.”

  “The guys I ran with, we took our victim’s heads, a tradition that carried on from those who came before us and from those who came before them. Do you have a problem with that?”

  “No.”

  “Can you savor a meal, or do you need to gorge yourself to quiet the voices?”

  “I’ve always paced myself.”

  “How do you feel about killing kids?” he asked.

  “Would it bother you if it didn’t bother me?” she replied, again, no expression.

  “It wouldn’t.”

  “Then I feel fine about it.”

  “Good,” he said. “Then that’s where you and I will start.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  After Jill stormed out of the room, Rock walked gingerly down the hallway to what was once his master bedroom. Since he’d been gone, it was remodeled, and then deconstructed to fit a more utilitarian look. Walking into it now, seeing it as an infirmary/recovery room didn’t strike him as good or bad. He just couldn’t bring himself to care. It was crazy how your priorities could shift on a dime in the middle of a crisis.

  “That was quick,” Janice said, the RN looking at his ribs, specifically where he was holding them.

  “The mattress was too soft,” he lied.

  The mattress was just fine, but Jill was too angry for him to deal with. He loved her, and h
e didn’t want to hurt her, but he knew the same thing she knew, the same thing he’d always known: she was too aggressive of a woman for his taste. He preferred a calmer, more centered mate. Someone who knew how to relax. That wasn’t Jill.

  When Janice finally left, it was just him and Maisie.

  “Jill seems nice,” she said, breaking the silence.

  “No she doesn’t,” Rock answered. Hell hath no fury…

  “Does she know?”

  “Yes.”

  That single statement sent them back into silence, an eternity of it. He found himself drifting off, his mind overloaded with guilt, with uncertainty, with pain. There were so many emotions crashing around inside him, he honestly didn’t know how to sort them all out. Then again, he was also thinking about independence, a return to self, the future of humanity.

  Finally he said, “My brain hurts. Do you want to go on a walk?”

  “I don’t think you’re ready for it,” Maisie said.

  “We’ll go slow. Besides, I think better this way and I need to think. Get my head straight, you know?”

  “I thought you said your brain hurt.”

  “It does.”

  “Are we going to talk about how the world is no one’s oyster and as a society we’re pretty much fu—”

  “Is there anything else before I lie down for a nap?” Janice interrupted from behind them. Maisie startled. Rock did not.

  “No, we’re fine Janice,” Rock said. “But thank you.”

  When the older RN left, Maisie said, “I’d love to go with you, but I think that’s going to cause a problem.”

  “What is?”

  “Me being out with you. This is your house. I’m just a stray dog to these people.”

  “But you’re my stray dog,” he joked.

  “This isn’t funny, Rock,” she said, finding no humor in his statement. “We almost died, I’m in your house with your girlfriend, and I don’t think I can get home. I’m a fish out of water here, in case you missed it.”

  “First off, Jill’s not my girlfriend, and second, that’s why we can’t take this life so seriously. I mean, we have to when it comes to survival, but all this other crap, for now, we shouldn’t take much seriously.”

  “Um…I’m not sure if you know, but the world has ended, we’re in hell, and I’m Jonesing for a bump of coke so badly I can tell you what every cell in my body is doing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Being excessively pissed off!” she said.

  “Why?”

  “Because even though I was a casual user, it took the edge off. My face is itching like crazy, Rock. It feels like fire ants are crawling beneath my skin, and it’s hurting, and all I want to do is scale the walls and howl at the moon!”

  “That’s a lot of mixed metaphors.”

  “It’s not.”

  “Maybe a walk will help us both. Lord knows lying here in a hospital bed certainly isn’t going to take the edge off anything.”

  “Have you seen my face?”

  “I have.”

  Her face was scratched pretty badly, bruised even worse, and her eye was just now starting to open back up.

  “And?”

  “It has some healing to do for sure, but nothing that won’t recover. Are you afraid of being seen in public? Because the living are almost always going to look better than the dead.”

  “I appreciate the support,” she chided.

  “You’re not Amber Gunn,” Rock told her. “No one is judging you on your appearance.”

  “I’m talking about Jill and you. I’m thinking about why you were with me. Because, I can deal with plain, but this is going to scar.”

  “Again, you’re not Amber Gunn.”

  “Well at least I have that going for me,” she said, easing up. Then: “Why won’t you go back to Jill? She’s very smart, pretty, super competent.”

  “If you walk with me,” he said, slowly crawling out of bed, careful not to make any sudden bends, “I’ll be an open book to any questions you have.”

  “I’m not going.”

  “Quit being a baby,” he said, standing up and walking over to her. “Your legs work just fine, your arms work just fine. So you have some cuts and bruising, so what?”

  “It’s my face,” she said, turning to him with a stern look, like he didn’t get it. He did. Men just don’t think like women and in this they differ significantly.

  “In case you hadn’t noticed,” he said, pointing to his face, “You’re not the only one who was dragged out of a crumbling building. Now get your ass out of bed, Hollywood. You’re acting like a basic bitch right now.”

  Lying there, looking at him with so many questions in her eyes, she wasn’t sure how to respond. That’s why he smiled and gave her the look. In her circles, Rock knew the term “basic bitch” was neither mean nor uncommon. It was a wake up call to pull your head out of your—

  “An open book, huh?” she said, interrupting his thoughts.

  “You can read me to your heart’s content.”

  “And when they drag me from my sleep and burn me on the cross for being a harlot?” she asked.

  “I’ll be the guy roasting hot dogs at your feet.”

  She laughed, swatted at him playfully, then got out of bed. When they left the house together, they drew the attention of a few people, but thankfully they didn’t see Jill.

  The road ahead was two lanes surrounded by lush green fields, decades old trees and plenty of brush to keep the landscape interesting. At one point, the trees canopied over the road completely, nearly blotting out the sun, the silken air drifting softly over their skin. Just ahead, however, there was a six car pile up, and most likely a handful of dead people.

  Such are the times, he thought. Beauty coexisting with destruction, the dead on display for the living, a constant reminder that the Dark Ages have returned, and that it will be a slow transition into the shade of a long, hard night.

  Rock was not a poetic person, but in the times they were in, he’d taken to musings and musing turned to creative thought. He found when he was under too much strain, he’d lean on a creative phrase in his mind. This, above all else, kept him from losing his temper, or falling into fits of frustration.

  “What are you thinking?” she asked.

  “The poetry of the damned.”

  “Care to share?”

  “I’d rather return to the conversation we started earlier.”

  “Okay.”

  He stopped in the road for a second, looked at her and said, “You said things have changed, which is obvious. Everything has changed. Myself included.”

  Was he asking a question? He didn’t know.

  Yet she was looking at him with bright eyes, and half a face in near ruin. For some odd reason, to him, this made her beautiful. So beautiful his train of thought derailed, if only for a moment. He was not the kind of guy who wanted to be anyone’s savior. And damaged women weren’t his thing. But in this case, it was the vulnerability Maisie couldn’t hide that made her seem so real.

  Jill was a woman, but she was also an idea. She was perfection. Strong and assertive, able to lead entire squads of women through three unyielding boot camps a day, sometimes so naturally beautiful he couldn’t catch his breath. She was not like those women who spent their youth obsessing about makeup, expensive clothes, the merits of today’s fashion. No, she was just herself. No pretense, a straight talker. There was something refreshing about that at first. Now that he’d been with her, he missed the feminine side of a woman. The softer, more nurturing side.

  “I could spend the rest of my life with Jill if I wanted. But it wouldn’t be an easy trek. At her worst times, she’s the very definition of toxic femininity, and honestly, it’s the wedge that continues to drive us apart.”

  “Contrary to popular belief,” Maisie said, “we’re not perfect creatures. Everyone has a little toxic humanity in them that leaks out on our worst days.”

  “Hers can be extreme.”
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  “If this hadn’t happened, if I hadn’t come into your life,” she asked, “would you still be with her?”

  “I think so.”

  “And that’s why we can’t be together,” Maisie said, her expression dampening.

  “Explain,” he said, walking again.

  She fell in beside him and said, “Men who leave women for another woman aren’t leaving the relationship because it didn’t work. They’re leaving because they found someone better. What happens if we’re together and you find someone better? Or worse, what happens if you start to miss her, even though she had issues?”

  “I see your logic,” he said, coming up on the accident. “For the record, I’m not perfect either, so I’m not blaming her for everything.”

  “I kinda figured that out already.”

  Rock stopped to look at the cars. Most of them were burnt, destroyed by fire. The one that stopped him, the one he was staring at, was a nondescript sedan, it’s front end buried in the back end of another car, its hood tented.

  “Do you think they suffered long?” Maisie asked. She was beside him, looking in the blackened window of the car at the two shadows in the front seat.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “But I’d think so.”

  She stepped forward, tapped the passenger side window. It disintegrated into a cascade of blackened safety glass. The outside was charred metal. The inside worse. Parts of the car looked melted, others merely ravaged by an all-consuming fire.

  Rock reached in, tapped the charcoal shape of what was once a woman’s body. The entire shape crumbled to ash in the seat.

  His heart leapt. This was once a living, breathing person. A heart once beat in her breast and she once loved someone enough to marry them.

  She might have even had children.

  Taking a deeper look, studying the airy haze of airborne ash, he said, “Yeah, I think they suffered badly.” Then looking at her, he added, “But sometimes I wonder if they aren’t the lucky ones.”

  “You really surprise me, Rock,” she said, taking his hand and walking him away from the scene that was now so deeply affecting him.

  “How so?”