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

by Schow, Ryan

  “Eliana and I can make lunch while you guys figure that out,” Adeline said. Then, looking at Eliana, she added: “If you want, that is.”

  Eliana was happy to be included. She didn’t want to show it because people changed, but she was starting to get along with Adeline, and because of that she wanted to do things with her, for her.

  “I’d like that,” she finally said, deciding to take a chance on the woman.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Eliana offered to teach the girls how to fight after their lunch settled. Adeline asked Brooklyn to come out back to train with them, and Eliana insisted Carolyn join them. The three refugees, for now, they were to sit things out. Alma and Bianca stayed outside to watch, but Veronica wanted to be back with Orlando and Constanza went inside because her stomach wasn’t feeling well. She was fighting a cold, or maybe she had the start of a stomach flu.

  Eliana began to teach the three of them the basics of a punch, how to hold their fists, the positioning of their hand when they impacted the body so as not to crack their knuckles, or break their fingers and/or their wrists.

  “No matter where your opponent is standing,” she said, “cut their body in half with your eyes and aim for the middle. How you don’t break your wrists is you line up the outside edge of your hand with your arm making a straight line. Then you hit with the top two knuckles, not the bottom two. Those are the first to break in a fight, but that’s just from lazy punching.”

  She pulled Adeline forward, showed Carolina and Brooklyn where to hit, the put a hit on Adeline. It wasn’t hard, but she hit the woman in the ribs enough to see what she’d do. Predictably, she winced, folded her body then stepped away with that look Eliana knew well. It was the same look her father had beaten off her face when she was a child learning to fight.

  When Adeline visibly began questioning her desire to be there, Eliana said, “A pretty woman like you in circumstances such as these is not destined for an easy life.”

  “You’ve said as much before,” Adeline replied.

  “You need to toughen up.”

  “I agree,” Adeline said. “Just not today. I mean, did you need to hit me that hard?”

  “That was not hard.”

  “My ribs would say otherwise,” Adeline said with a smile.

  “Is that what you’ll say to them?”

  “To whom?”

  “To the men who get you again,” Eliana said, referring to Diaab Buhari, the man who beat her and took her children. “To the people who want what you have. Maybe it’s your children again. Maybe it’s your body. And if things get really bad, maybe it’s your life.”

  “C’mon, Mom,” Brooklyn said. “We can rest at sundown.”

  “I’m good for now,” Adeline said, starting to walk away while favoring her rib.

  Before she got five feet, Eliana grabbed her and put her in a choke hold. Adeline started to squirm, but the hold was clean, her body going slack in seconds. When she came to, when her eyes cleared and she knew where she was again, she saw Eliana and startled. Eliana started to choke her again.

  “This is your life now, Adeline,” Eliana hissed into her ear. “What are you going to do?”

  She fought back, but Eliana held her, tightened her grip.

  “Right now someone is taking all your precious things and you can’t do a thing about it.”

  Adeline was wearing out. She passed out in seconds.

  “That’s enough,” Brooklyn said.

  “Stand back,” Eliana warned, “or I’ll do this to you, too.”

  She looked at Carolina for help, but the girl had seen this type of training before and so she had little if any emotion about it.

  “But she’s my mom,” Brooklyn said.

  “Then you should be thanking me,” Eliana growled as she let go of Adeline’s limp body. When the woman came back around, her eyes clearing, she frowned.

  Eliana grabbed her again, choked her out.

  Brooklyn went inside, frustrated.

  A moment later, she came outside and put a gun to Eliana’s head and said, “You choke her again and I’ll shoot you.”

  She looked up, drilled Brooklyn straight in the vagina, and when she folded, Eliana took the gun, ejected the round, pulled the mag and thumbed out the remaining rounds all the while her eyes were on the girl.

  The second she was done, Eliana shoved Brooklyn away. She fell down on her butt on the concrete with that same look in her eye Adeline had, the same look she had as a child.

  When Adeline came back to, she choked her out again. Eliana did this over and over again, her eye on Brooklyn the whole time. When the girl left, Eliana continued for another two hours until Adeline did the one thing Eliana had been waiting for her to do: she flipped her off, the middle finger staying up even as she passed out.

  Now Eliana smiled.

  When she came to the next time, Eliana took her hand, helped her up. She wobbled on her feet a bit until she got her bearings. Eliana took her hand, offered her support.

  “They’d pass around a woman like you,” Eliana said. “I’d die if that happened to you or anyone else because I went light on you.”

  “Who would pass me around?” Adeline asked, her throat raw, scratchy sounding.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Eliana said. “You just have to know you’re weak.”

  “But I’m not helpless.”

  Eliana drove a fist into her solar plexus, stood back as the woman gasped, folded over then staggered back a step or two looking like a fish out of water as she tried to get air.

  “You’re helpless now,” Eliana said, moving in on her. “You can’t breathe.”

  Adeline fired out a shot that Eliana stepped back from.

  “Good.”

  The second Adeline got her air back again, she said, “Why didn’t you let me leave?”

  “Because I want you to survive.”

  “I’m not you.”

  “You’ll never be like me,” Eliana said.

  The second Adeline took a breath, Eliana cracked her on the chin so hard, she dropped to the ground, knocked out. She went and sat down on the ground beside her.

  When she came back to, Eliana said, “Do you know how many times I could have killed you? Raped you? Taken your kids?”

  Eliana knew she was a live wire, but it didn’t matter. Survival wasn’t about playing nice. In the real world, survival was knowing others would take from you if they could, kill you if they wanted, do worse things to you if the inclination overtook them.

  “You may not know it,” Eliana said, “but you did good.”

  “Who taught you all this?” Adeline grumbled, rubbing her chin and moving her jaw around to make sure nothing was broken.

  “My father. He was an enforcer for the mob in Guatemala. He told me all my life that I was weak, that women were weak, that he was ashamed he had a girl. But we’re not weak, and we can push as hard as we’re pushed.”

  “Who says we’re weak?” Adeline asked.

  “Men. Any man. They think we’re women, so we’re weak. We’re not. Well, you are, but I want to change that.”

  “We’re strong in other ways,” Adeline said.

  “Like how? Because of our ability to endure? Because we put up with other people’s crap and don’t break? You mean like that? Because that doesn’t mean anything now. Where we lack physical size and bone density we will make up for with speed and skill. We might not be able to knock out a man like he can knock out us, but a man has balls, a throat, two eyes. He can be stopped if we obliterate his soft spots. But that comes later. First you need to know how to stand, how to hit, how to not quit when someone puts a beating on you, the kind you wonder if you can take.”

  “I didn’t quit,” Adeline said.

  “That’s because I refuse to let you,” Eliana answered.

  Brooklyn was out there again, Carolina still seated with Alma and Bianca, none of them having interrupted the training once.

  “I don’t think I can be diffe
rent,” Adeline said, standing up.

  “No with that mindset you won’t,” Eliana said, standing up beside her. “You have this thing in your head you have to unlock. It’s a side of you that you were raised to ignore. That part of you who wants to get even, to hurt the mean girls, to walk away from a bad conversation, your screaming kids, the man you let beat you.”

  “Fire never beat me.”

  She slapped Eliana so hard, the woman staggered backwards.

  “What the—?”

  “You’re a pretty face with air upstairs,” Eliana barked. “Wake up, Adeline!”

  She slapped her again, this time hard enough to draw blood.

  Adeline swung back.

  Eliana saw it coming—she’d been trying to draw it out of her all day—and for that reason, she took the shot. It was a closed fist to the cheek.

  The second she came back from the punch, Eliana pushed Adeline.

  Adeline pushed her back, then swung at her again, her shot a little faster, but too hard. Eliana moved to one side, then the other, both punches going wide. Adeline didn’t lose her balance, but she wasn’t stable on her feet either.

  On the third wild shot, Eliana ducked under her fist, slid behind her, hooked an arm around her throat. In seconds, it was lights out again.

  “Have you got the stomach for this yet, Brooklyn?” Eliana said, holding her mother captive.

  Brooklyn looked down.

  Well, she thought, at least she had the balls to pull a gun on me.

  Adeline came around with a big frown and wobbly eyes.

  Eliana said, “Whatever you think you have the minute you have it, against someone more prepared than you, trust me when I say, it’s not enough. You have to know that. It’s in believing such a thing that you will push through even the toughest days of training.”

  Adeline laid down in the dirt.

  “Being pretty in this world will get you killed, or worse. You’re not your looks anymore. All you are is what you can do. If you can fight, you’re a fighter. If you quit, you’re a quitter and quitters die. I know you’re good at things, Adeline. You cook really good and from what I hear at night in the other room, you can have some amazing sex, but those things aren’t survival.”

  “I’m not you,” she said, holding up her hand just in case Eliana hit her again.

  Smiling at her, offering her a helping hand, she pulled Adeline to her feet and said, “Not yet you aren’t. It’s just the first day, though.”

  “But I will be?” she asked, taking her hand.

  “One day at a time,” she said, pulling Adeline in for a hug.

  She didn’t do this because this was how she was trained. Her father never showed her an ounce of compassion. Eliana pulled her into her arms and hugged her because the woman needed to know Eliana was not her enemy.

  “As for today,” Eliana said, “I am impressed with you. You’re going to be a great fighter when I’m done with you.”

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Jill didn’t want to give up on Rock, but it was getting hard not to. He was intent on pushing everyone away while he healed. And he was healing. First it started with him going on his walks and swimming laps in the reservoir, then it was him working around the house, helping gather wood for the fires and finally leveling the land to make room for more people in bigger tents.

  He met everyone in the commune, became somewhat friendly, but the part of Rock that shut down when he had other things on his mind left him somewhat vacant in their conversations.

  Even Maisie was starting to notice it.

  Jill still didn’t like the girl, but she was going through hell herself, according to Rock, so she kept her distance. Rock found Maisie a two-man tent and set her up with a place among the other tents, but on the outside edge a little further from everyone else.

  He seemed to know what she was up against.

  Jill knew it intimately. Her brother had a coke addiction. He OD’d when he was nineteen. Kicking a coke addiction cold turkey was no easy task. The psychological addiction was the worst part, especially when you were detoxing.

  Jill told Rock to make sure Maisie kept busy, stayed hydrated and ate when everyone else did.

  The days were manageable, but at night she’d be sweating and sobbing her way through the early hours before exhausting herself into a fit of sleep. Jill was aware that he’d gone and slept in her tent with her on those tougher nights, but as far as she could tell, they hadn’t been together sexually.

  Within a few weeks of Rock being back, the homestead was starting to take shape. They’d tilled and seeded the fields, dug a pond that didn’t leak, tapped the well and got everyone healed and was now stocked up on food enough to give everyone a chance to breathe.

  Jill made it known they were not taking on new survivors, but when she did this, Gregor stood and said they’d procured a home up the street that they would be making available for more people if they needed help.

  When she asked Gregor why he’d chosen to stay, he nodded his head and said, “LA is probably a wasteland, and though I have people back there, we’ve got people here, too. Besides, the guys took a vote and decided we’re going to stay put.”

  She didn’t expect herself to be so happy to hear that, but she and Gregor had been getting along great, and the rest of Gregor’s team were hard working and fun to be around. Alphonse (Alfie) was the only one she worried about. He was a bit of a hot head, but Gregor told him his father beat him a lot as a child and he was battling with family genetics.

  “I want to check out that Walmart,” Gregor finally said.

  Jill didn’t readily agree, but she wanted to get away for awhile and she was getting sweet on Gregor, not so much because of his looks, but because of his competency and his friendship.

  “Yeah, sure,” she said after a moment’s thought. “Let’s go.”

  It took a couple hours of navigating through untold levels of destruction before they were finally able to get off Highway 80 and over to the old Walmart center. When they approached the facility, they were stopped at a checkpoint by armed guards in BDUs.

  “We’re here to see Ham Sandwich,” Jill said.

  The man told them where to go, then let them pass. Jill looked at Gregor who looked back at her and said, “I don’t know about this.”

  “Yeah,” she replied, “but we know Ham Sandwich.”

  Together they laughed, but it was the first time Jill had seen Gregor nervous.

  When they got out, they were met by a stern man with no sense of humor, and barely even any personality. Apparently the men in the refugee business took their job seriously.

  When Ham Sandwich came out to greet them, it was with a big smile.

  “Wow,” he said. “I’d all but written you guys off.”

  “We’ve been getting our bearings,” Jill replied. Then looking around, she said, “Looks like you guys have some operation here!”

  “Indeed we do,” he replied. “You want the five dollar tour?”

  “Yeah,” Gregor said with a smile.

  Jill knew him well enough to see he wasn’t relaxed, he was only putting off the air of relaxation. They followed the soldier inside anyway.

  What they saw shocked them to the core.

  From the second they walked in as far as the eye could see, there were chain link cages filled with people. She smelled the air, but it was clean, meaning they weren’t living in squalor, even though they were caged.

  “After the Walmart closed, they used this place as a storage facility for boats and RV’s, old cars and travel trailers. And there were a ton of big rigs, plenty of them with some pretty fancy sleepers. Most of these vehicles are around back and serving as housing for the staff. If you ever decide to come aboard—if you’re invited, rather—that’s where you’d stay. You’d get the sleeper in one of the big rigs, obviously, not an RV. But whatever. Inside here, though, don’t let the cages fool you. They’re up for the occupant’s protection. You never know when two people are
n’t going to get along, or some guy doesn’t get a morning erection and try putting in someone not on board, you know?”

  Jill and Gregor nodded their heads together, but Jill was personally horrified.

  The other men in BDUs were walking in the gigantic warehouse, talking to each other, to the people in cages. It wasn’t hard to spot the guns on their hips. But if they were there to help people, to get them food, shelter and safety, why did they need guns?

  “So these people are here of their own free will?” Jill asked, sounding almost in a daze.

  “Mostly they are, yeah. A few of them look like they’ll fit for the larger plan, but we can’t be sure. This takes time. Most of the people we find are either desperate or in a state of agitation. If they get here and stay agitated even after they’re fed and cared for, we cut them loose.”

  “What if they pose a risk to society?” Gregor asked.

  “Then they do,” Ham Sandwich answered. “We generally take them to the far end of our perimeter and give them a nudge in the other direction.”

  “Makes sense,” Gregor said.

  “So how big is your group now?” Ham Sandwich asked.

  “A couple of families,” Gregor said. “Plus the guys you met at the hospital.”

  “Like I said. You’d be a good fit here with your backgrounds.”

  “What if we have more people?” Jill asked. “Good, capable people we picked up along the way?”

  “Are you talking about the families in your group?” he asked.

  Jill gave a noncommittal nod, a “kinda-sorta-maybe” look that Ham Sandwich seemed to understand.

  “Well I’ll tell you this,” he told them, “there is no better time to plan for a utopia than now. We have no laws, no society, nothing to govern the strong or the weak. So now we can choose who we want, eliminate those who don’t belong, and get down to a society that functions in perfect harmony with each other.”

  “So why do you need cages?” Gregor asked.

  “Like I said, it’s to protect some from others. Also, it’s how we sort them out according to responsibilities and rations.”