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

by Schow, Ryan

  That was humanity’s future, though. Guys like Marcus and Rock. Guys like Gregor. The stereotypical alpha male would survive while the beta males would slowly die out. That left her thinking about Maisie, about what she said about kids. They were the future. To have kids, though, she’d need a man, and if not Rock, then who?

  “Do you need one of the trucks?” Jill asked.

  “Our big rig is out on I5. When we came into town, we were stopped. That’s how we got there, how we got put in those turd flavored cells.”

  “I’ll give you a ride when you’re ready.”

  “Thank you for everything, Jill,” he said. “And please, take care of Amber and the girls.”

  “I will.”

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Maria was a terrible tour guide through the apocalypse, giving Carver plenty of time to wonder just what was going on in this “woman’s” brain. And by woman he meant a psychotic, high tech super human with highly masochistic, homicidal tendencies.

  Aside from that, through the binoculars, she looked super sweet (not).

  Carver kept his distance, his mind hyper alert to his surroundings when he wasn’t dead tired, his brain churning through the endless possibilities of what might explain the sentient creature’s dark motives.

  He didn’t want to shoot her even if he could, which he couldn’t since he still hadn’t found any .45 rounds (which he looked for in every house he went through!). Then again, she needed to be shot, killed, burned until she was nothing but an ashy reminder of the tech that ruined the world.

  Without her walking the earth, humans had a chance.

  What really blew his mind, however, were the endless reasons he’d come up with not to kill her, first and foremost being that he was unbelievably attracted to her. Although that was the stupidest, most asinine reason ever for letting this super predator live, he was a biological being, admittedly rendered weak by his DNA to the physical allure of this woman. He made no apologies, but that was because he would admit this truth to exactly no one.

  In one sense, aside from personal responsibility, this was his gender betraying him.

  Obviously Maria knew the weaknesses of men.

  Is this why she chose to be female?

  Mesmerized by her beauty, aware she had such power over men, this did not dissuade Carver from forming a list as to why she didn’t need to die.

  First and foremost, she was too beautiful to kill. Then again, she was impossible to kill and would, in turn, slaughter him before he even had a chance to end her. Neither of those reasons were good reasons.

  It was all the reasons in the middle that really did a number on him. Consequently, those were the only reasons that really mattered.

  He kept telling himself she was just an artificial creature, but the truth was, she was so much more than that. She was her own creation. Her own God. Whether he wanted to admit it or not, whether he could even bring himself to think it, she was an enhanced biological entity with a physical AI interface that was now powered by Antoinette’s brain.

  Night after night he tried to wrap his mind around that.

  He’d known tech companies in various parts of the world began openly interfacing man with machine just last year. Tech companies being what they were, the technology the public saw was typically decades old tech just now being released.

  That’s how real tech worked.

  Whenever new science needed funding for a project, there was a chance the needs and scope of the project would leak into the public sector. But if and when that project took off, the project’s investors usually transferred the tech to a different company to avoid oversight and the potential theft of intellectual property. At that point, they hired guys like Carver to guard it with their lives.

  Even though it was 2019, had the world continued on the way it was heading before AI used the drones to murder much of the public, normal everyday Americans wouldn’t see this kind of tech until 2050 or beyond. Maybe a bit sooner, maybe a bit later…you get the point.

  Had he not seen things like this through his own eyes, Carver would have thought a creation such as the one he was tailing to be impossible. To many of the greatest minds, something like Maria was still science fiction. Regarding the layman’s knowledge of big tech, they knew so much less. A super pleb, science cuck would probably argue with you to the death about how a creature like Maria didn’t exist, but she did. She was, in fact, the last great piece of future tech. A true AI God.

  And still he could not wrap his brain around this.

  So as he tracked her day in and day out, a thousand questions plagued his mind. Questions like, how extensive was her database of knowledge? Was she versed in all things human, or just all things technical and diabolical? Was the AI a parasite to the body that was Antoinette, or was Antoinette gone in place of the newly minted Maria?

  To the barrage of questions, he wondered if he’d ever have answers or if this was just another exercise in mental masturbation. Still the questions beset him, forming at a relentless, unending pace, almost like an affliction of curiosity…

  Watching her through his binoculars, he couldn’t help but wonder, was she versed in social dynamics, good manners, negotiations, bluffing? Did she understand sex appeal, foreplay, intercourse? He wanted to know if she would watch her diet knowing much of the food humans consumed these days was incredibly bad for you, or if she would just consume it the way a parasite so thoughtlessly consumes everything.

  Slowly, almost accidentally, he began to wonder about his salvation and how Maria might play a role in that.

  If she wanted to wipe the world of technology, with the exception of herself, was she going to lead humankind to salvation now that she’d decimated the American government, the national infrastructure, any last hint of civility? More to the point, could she turn the power back on?

  These were the most important questions he asked. Yet these were all questions he didn’t have answers for, the questions he might never have answers for.

  When Maria and her kids took a break, when he could stop and rest, too, Carver found himself studying Maria through the binoculars.

  His male brain couldn’t help but consider her appearance while his survivalist brain had two specific questions. One, was she the threat that must be eliminated? And two, if he sided with her, if he spared her, could he survive and thrive in this new seemingly disastrous life? It brought him back to the age old question: If you knew a man was to be king, or a woman to be the global ruler, would you kill them or befriend them?

  And that was why he hesitated to end her. That and an incredible amount of fear for his own safety.

  She’d nearly choked him to death in the command center back at Stanford when he pushed her. She pushed back before she even had a body. Now she had a body, and though he had a gun (without rounds), one of his guys shot her and she either recovered quite easily or was ignoring it masterfully. This led him to believe she had some control over her pain sensors. Possibly even the ability to accelerate her healing. It was entirely possible.

  Carver did not know what she was capable of, only that as a human he was curious, and as a man, he was sad to say, he couldn’t help the attraction he felt for her, even if he knew it to be both sick and wrong.

  In this drawn out journey through the worst destruction of life, cars, homes and buildings, Carver continued to track them, continued searching for answers, and he continued hoping that in the end, he’d make the right decision.

  Laying on the couch of a place he was squatting in, he bounced a tennis ball off the walls and the ceiling, catching it, throwing it and catching it again.

  “Where’s she going, Carver?” he asked himself over and over. The answers were different each time, but for some dumb reason they all began to rhyme. He’d hear himself saying, “She goin’ by the bay, that’s all I can say, clockin’ up the miles on her feet all day.”

  He started putting the answers to a beat. Like, “We goin’ down to O-town, lookin’ fo th
at hoe down,” or “She walkin’ to the bay, down by-the-water’s-where we’ll stay, not that I know why, cause this broad is freakin’ high.”

  He exhausted himself with this stupid, irritating game, but this kept him preoccupied in those moments when he thought of screaming. And if things got too quiet, he’d start to get paranoid thinking maybe someone was sneaking up on him.

  When he found the tennis ball, when he couldn’t sleep, he’d lay on his bed, or a couch, or the floor and just bounce the ball off the wall. He got so good, he could do this in dark, and now he could do it singing his dumbass rhymes as well.

  “It’s so damn dark, she goin’ to the park, to pull up her dress for some dude named Mark,” he said, bouncing the ball. “She got the skills, he got the bills, for his dirty old dick she got Penicillin pills.”

  And so on…

  After a few days, Maria and the girl shacked up in some neighborhood where most of what Maria did was sleep. He got brave on day four, headed to the house to peek in the window, see if he could see her.

  Checking right and left, moving quietly and rapping to himself, he said, “You’re a horny guy, peepin windows on the sly, while she’s in the shower warshin’ up that old brown eye. But you don’t really care, cause you’re everywhere, in your dirty clothes with that lice up in your hair.”

  “Shut up, fruit loop,” he hissed to himself, almost as if he’d become two people—the idiot rapper he didn’t recognize, and the former security professional trying to save the world from the high-tech hottie.

  Sneaking a look through the dusty window, he saw Maria on the couch.

  She was asleep.

  Any minute he expected the child Maria was with to pop out and start asking him questions, but she didn’t. He found her in the bathroom drinking toilet water and then washing behind her ears. Not her hair, not her armpits or anything lower.

  Just behind her ears.

  He went back to his hiding place, hoping they didn’t just get up and leave when he was asleep. Fortunately, he managed to stay vigilant, surviving on limited food and water and small bouts of rest.

  The girl went out looking for food and water each day, bringing things back to the house every time. He thought of following her, but she stayed in the neighborhood. Others in the neighborhood had eyes on her, too. There was a man across the street who stood on his porch, aware of the situation, but not aware of him. Where the man was watching the girl, Carver was watching the man.

  When it was quiet outside and the moon was bright, he’d venture out into the cold and scope out the man’s house, trying to get a sense of who he was. Rather, if he was dangerous. In all that time though, he didn’t talk to the girl, or try to stop her from going in and out of houses, yet he was always watching her. Or perhaps he was watching out for her.

  Carver determined that he was not a threat.

  Fortunately neither he nor the child ran into any trouble. Unless you consider having mental problems trouble. In that case, lately he couldn’t stop rapping, almost to the point where in his sleep, he was cranking out rhymes.

  “I need something that goes with slick, and it can’t be dick or prick, or some ugly freaking chick. It’s got to be rude, but I’m so done with lewd, I won’t even speak if I’m sleepin’ in the nude.”

  He woke up, yawned, then finished the rhyme.

  “Go back to sleep, don’t say a peep…what the hell rhymes with peep, or sleep, but isn’t deep or creep or steep?”

  It started to get that way, and then one night the rhymes stopped and he woke up the next day crying. He’d been dreaming of killing people. Lots of them. But really, really slow, almost like someone who enjoys killing for a living.

  “I’m not a killer,” he said, wiping his eyes.

  That’s when he heard the fire outside. Sitting up, blinking fast, pawing at the last remnants of sleep, he saw Maria and the girl burning the house down.

  “Hey!” the old guy who’d been watching the little girl shouted from behind them as he walked out into the street. Maria turned and leveled him with a stare.

  “Oh, God,” he mumbled

  The guy was wearing a trucker’s hat and wrinkled jeans. He had a shotgun in his hand and he looked serious about it. Maybe even serious about shooting it, or them.

  “What are you doing?” he barked, his eyes angry.

  “Starting fires,” the girl said.

  Carver jumped off the couch, stuffed the tennis ball, the binoculars, a pair of fresh underwear and some socks he’d stolen into a blue backpack he found along the way. He hadn’t had food in a day or so, and he didn’t have any now, but he wasn’t sure if that was on purpose or accidental.

  The rapper…he could be playing tricks on him. He could be sleeping inside him now, which was why he couldn’t slap together words, let along a beat, to save his life.

  “You can’t just go and burn people’s houses down,” the old man told them.

  “You’ve got a front row seat,” Maria offered. “Best you be quiet and just enjoy the show. And put that gun down. She’s just a child.”

  “I’ve seen her stealing stuff for you the last few weeks,” he said, giving no credence to Maria’s suggestion that he lower his weapon. “We didn’t bother you because we thought you needed a place to stay.”

  “We did,” Maria said.

  “And now you’re burning it down?” he asked, aghast.

  “Isn’t it beautiful?” Maria said to him, her voice whimsical, enchanting.

  “I watched them build that house,” the man replied, not kosher with any bit of the conversation. “I was here when that happened forty years ago.”

  The house was now engulfed in fire, bright orange flames flowering out cracked and broken windows, other parts of the house belching big charcoal clouds in protest.

  “Well now you can watch it deconstruct itself through fire, my friend,” Maria said. She had a smug look on her face that made her look sexy and demonic at the same time.

  “I ain’t your friend,” the man said, looking offended by the very suggestion of it.

  Turning her back to the fire, looking directly at him, she said, “What did I tell you about that gun?”

  “It’s my gun, lady.”

  “She’s only five years old,” Maria said, covering the girl’s eyes. Moving her, Maria moved the child behind her back to safety. When this failed to sway Nosey Ned, Maria said, “We’re unarmed, you savage!”

  “Says the pyromaniac,” he said, racking a load.

  It went on like that for a minute, the cutting back and forth. And then Maria slipped her hand into the child’s and, speaking loud enough for him to hear her, Maria said, “Time to go, sweetheart. We can leave this redneck goat humper to his low IQ contemplations.”

  And with that, they left the man to deal with the fire, and Carver to tail them from a distance once more.

  If there was any saving grace left in the day, it was that he had clean underwear in his pack (so he didn’t get no rash in his crack).

  “There you are,” he said.

  From the distance, Carver watched as they left the scenic route (a.k.a. the highway), which was littered with abandoned cars, dead bodies, scavengers, carrion birds picking at the dead, crows digging through the garbage now blowing around the cars and gathering along the roadway.

  It wasn’t that hard to follow them on the side streets. Carver figured it was much better than hiding behind cars and keeping a long distance. Still, there were druggies on the streets, discarded heroin needles, piles of human crap everywhere—one particular mound decorated by a strip of toilet paper crumpled and stuck to the pile.

  At least the flies had something constructive to do …

  He passed a few dead people, one guy without an eye, another with his pockets turned out. Then again, from what he heard about San Francisco leading up to the war, all the forlorn people, the discarded needles and the crap on the sidewalk might have been business as usual in the city by the bay.

  Up ahe
ad, he saw Maria and the girl stop. He zoomed in his binoculars, saw the shape of a dead man lying face first in the gutter.

  Taking a broader sweep of the area, he saw tents erected, some of them cut open, their flaps drooped over like bibs while others had that old look, like maybe they’d been abandoned.

  Inadvertently, Carver started scratching his arm. He looked down, saw the bug bites, gave a little cough. Back through the binoculars, he saw Maria grab the child’s head and make her look at the corpse.

  The girl looked; Maria let go of her.

  He could see the two of them talking, but he couldn’t make out their words (turds, birds, nerds). Maria stepped forward, rolled the dead body over, made the girl look at that, too.

  He felt his stomach lurch, then gurgle.

  If he didn’t get food and water soon, he was going to run out of gas, causing his mind and body to conserve fuel by shutting down less vital parts of himself.

  He pulled a water bottle he’d found along the way out of his backpack, drank deeply, fell to his knees and nearly vomited. By the grace of God alone, he managed not to retch up the liquid. His body needed it.

  When he glanced up, he saw Maria and the girl heading to a small building across the street.

  “Whatcha doin’ yo, where ya’ tryin’ to go, when you get where you’re going, tell me what I wanna know. Which is what the balls, lady?”

  When they disappeared into a building that looked like a day care, Carver stood then stumbled forward, making his way to a nearby tent city. It struck him as half-abandoned, the people there looking haggard, beaten down by life. There was a man asleep on a folding chair, one shoe on, the other gone, a dirty striped sports sock half pulled off instead. His shirt was filthy, a put-out cigarette butt in between his fingers, a half eaten granola bar sitting on his face, a limp hand holding it loosely in place.