Fire, Ruin, and Fury (Embers Saga)

by Matthew Taylor

  “I’ll get on that,” Camila answered, glancing at Levy Chi. “Levy’s from Great Lakes Province.” Chi nodded as assent.

  “I’d like to do a humanitarian mission as we start,” Minister Goodwell inserted.

  Ohhhh crap, here we go.

  “We’re going to put a church in Denver near the shipping hub,” Minister Goodwell continued, “and there’s been an incident near Glenwood Springs. A train accident.”

  OK, this makes some sense.

  “We could deploy some emergency relief supplies. Lay the groundwork for the Church. If you can get us some supplies—food, clean water, first aid, blankets—”

  “Pharmas,” Calden inserted.

  “Pharmas,” Minister Goodwell relented. “Put them on the ship we were promised. Maybe quickly add the new church insignia on the ship. Minister Jackson could go right away.

  Rashid was skeptical, but Alias could tell the old man was falling under his father’s spell and finding it harder to reject his arguments. Rashid finally agreed, setting in motion a flurry of activity that reached fever pitch when they added the administrative and logistical challenges of moving the big-top ministry.

  Dawnita Jackson would set off that night. Levy in a week, accompanied by Anderson. His mother and father would close-up shop in Ogallala, along with his sister. Alias would leave to join Rashid the next morning.

  Now, with dawn breaking the next morning, Alias fidgeted in his chair, still staring at the dust swirling at the top of the tent. He ruminated on the bizarre week that saw him help his family ally with the Ellies, drive away half of their Ministers, scatter the rest, and dismantle everything they had built together over the course of his entire life. In hours, he would be separated from his family, so soon after this extended family dissolved.

  “Some kind of week,” his mother said, sitting down next to him. Alias couldn’t answer, lest the tears in his heart flood to his eyes and reduce him to nothing. They sat in silence for a few minutes with only the whistling wind and the flapping of the tent filling the space between them. He wasn’t sure how long they had been sitting quietly together when the grumbling of distant engines crawled into his consciousness.

  “We’ll see you in a few days, sweet boy.” Camila cupped his cheek in her hand, as she always did when she was overtaken by love for her first born. “Safe traveIs,” she added, planting a kiss on the top of his head.

  Safe travels, he repeated to himself, realizing that in all his life he had never gone anywhere without the adoration of his mother close at hand.

  Chapter 15: Joshua’s Reflections

  (Joshua Goldbloom)

  Joshua Goldbloom leaned against Oscar, his brother’s antiquated garbage truck made work vehicle. His blood relatives sat around a solar-charged heater on the other side of the truck, catching up from their years apart. He wanted to rejoin them—and now he had to rejoin them permanently—but he needed a few moments to process everything that had just happened.

  What had started as a brief family reunion at his ministry’s revival event had unexpectedly turned into a short leave of absence and a trek across the badlands to retrieve his wayward sister and her kids. He hadn’t seen any of them in years, and they hadn’t all been together since he was still in his teens. He had been savoring the joy of having everyone together when the call came from his real home, the traveling Ministry of Ascension. He had earlier been so wrapped up in the quest to rescue his sister that he had downplayed the coming encounter with the Ellies, and he could barely believe his eyes and ears when the V-plat conversation with the Goodwells unfolded.

  Within a couple hours, the family he’d lived with for the past two decades—the family he’d chosen to spend his life with—was gone. The family of his distant past—the family he’d thought he’d left forever—was now his future. His head swam with the shock and the feeling of being anchorless and rudderless, despite a faint but distinct sense of a tide carrying him slowly, inexorably back to a familiar shore.

  Twenty years, he paused, rubbing his forehead. Has it really been twenty years? He tried to work out the math in his head, calculating back to the day he left his home and the family business in Paola for a life with the traveling ministry. The goodbyes on the day he left were again fresh and painful in his mind, as if they were yesterday.

  I had to go, he reassured himself, even if the journey led me back here.

  He had said that to himself innumerable times over the years since the family came apart, starting with their parents’ deaths in the Avian Flu Pandemic. They’d been talking for years of abandoning the dry, wasted region for the north, where there was still clean water and fertile soil—somewhere that’s still green. But the agricultural consortium had clamped down on independent farmers, and they would never make enough from their ranch and small power business to buy a license and the things they would need to restart. So, they watched their farm slowly succumb, inch by inch, acre by acre, to the relentlessly encroaching desert, which took farm, town, and city along with it.

  Nevertheless, he and his siblings owed their parents a debt of gratitude, having learned so many of the skills they would need to make their way in the world. Power generation and distribution, water reclamation and purification, hydroponics and low-water farming, construction and machine repair, basic robotics. But as the cities of the region teetered and collapsed, there was less and less demand for even these skills. And as they grew up, with the goals and ambitions of adults, they realized one by one that they couldn’t stay.

  Joshua’s sister, Nessa, had moved in with her temperamental boyfriend, Kahleb, who seemed to enjoy the anesthetic effects of methylhol more than Joshua wanted to admit. She was the first to move off the ranch to Olathe for work with Kahleb on an Agricultural Consortium project, and their idle talk about a new life out West became more frequent and earnest.

  His older brother Christian married his childhood sweetheart, Honey, who moved in with them on the ranch. After all their years together, she had become like family, even before she moved in, though she was prone to bouts of depression and manic streaks—swings they would only partially control with the pharmas they could afford. Joshua worried about the future of their children, when Emily and then Tim were born, and these worries only grew after Honey was assaulted while foraging after a flood swept through Kansas City. She became even more erratic and unstable, and Joshua feared she would one day be the undoing of his brother, niece and nephew.

  How they both ended up with those two, I’ll never understand, he thought of his siblings.

  They were probably equally baffled at him the day he announced that he was joining the Ministry of Ascención and set out for a life of faith on the road. Nessa hesitantly endorsed his decision, if only because she had become so desperate to leave herself. Christian was visibly opposed to the idea. He was as flustered as Joshua had ever seen him, but his brother’s mild and even temperament precluded him from standing in the way.

  They both knew that Joshua’s heart had always been more devout and spiritual than theirs. He was the only one of the kids who had willingly and enthusiastically gone to church twice a week with their parents. He was the one who steadfastly tried to reconcile his family’s declining fortunes with the benign will of God and the direction of a higher order. He was the voice of charity and forgiveness when the world’s violence came over the V-plat news. He was the tireless promoter of keeping faith in God’s Plan when the fires chewed through the drought-ravaged countryside, only to be followed by floods of water and mud, more drought, and plagues of insects.

  No one was surprised when he started studying for a ministerial certification at night after work. His parents insisted that he learn a trade so he would always have a technical skill to fall back on, but they were deeply proud of his commitment to Jesus and the God they worshiped and feared. If Christian were set apart as the first born and the most mature and stalwart, and his sister were the baby and the only girl, Joshua was the one who was most like their
parents—studious and devout.

  On some level, everyone knew he would forever be restless in a life with the family business, which by this point had all but replaced farming on their desiccated land. It just wasn’t God’s purpose for him. Still, no one—including Joshua—expected his departure to be so sudden and definitive.

  Joshua only knew when he met Minister Alias Goodwell at a social event at the local church. That was the day his life was changed forever. Minister Goodwell, whose small caravan of traveling Ministers was passing through, was inexplicably disarming. Joshua felt instantly comfortable with him, and he could sense that Minister Goodwell’s charisma would attract a following.

  More importantly, Minister Goodwell’s philosophy and lifestyle valued simplicity, non-violence, and healing. Goodwell had less to say about Joshua’s own religious centerpiece, restoring harmony with God’s nature, but the two recognized the opportunity to integrate their messages into something better.

  When the first light of dawn peeked over the rolling hills of Paola, and they realized they’d been talking all night and it was time to part, Minister Goodwell came right out and asked Joshua to join his new ministry. It wouldn’t be an easy life, traveling the Commonwealth, but they could learn from each other, build together, and enrich the world with a message of peace and harmony.

  To his own astonishment, Joshua said he would just need to go home, pack his things, and say goodbye to his family. It was the only spontaneous decision he could ever recall making, and despite the bout of uncontrollable crying he had when he left the family ranch forever, and the small void he carried with him every day thereafter, he never really regretted it.

  Joshua hadn’t seen his sister in person since that day, and he seldom saw Christian either. Nessa had made good on her dream to move to California-Sur, and Joshua’s ministry never ventured that far west. Every few years, as the ministry crisscrossed the Commonwealth, Joshua met up with Christian, his increasingly neurotic wife Honey, and their beautiful kids. They sometimes interacted over V-plat, when they had the money at the same time, but it was so infrequent that he never really got to know Emily or Tim, much less Nessa’s kids, Paul and Victoria. Still, he made a point of sending messages and whatever small gifts he could afford to his nieces and nephews.

  Otherwise, Joshua spent the next twenty years with the Goodwells and the handful of Ministers they picked up along the way. It was a complete life, every day filled from sun-up to sun-down, rain or shine. Praying and studying. Ministering and sermonizing. Evangelizing and recruiting. He appreciated the influence he had on the ministry’s doctrine and direction, which increasingly blended nature, peace, and healing in a way that he hoped helped their parishioners change their lives and strive for renewal. They had touched hundreds—thousands—of lives.

  Joshua also stayed busy keeping the necessities of survival—power, water, waste management, machine repair—going. He had also began teaching Minister Goodwell’s two children, Alias and Jasmine. The two had taken a liking to Joshua from the start, and Camila Goodwell soon asked him to become godfather to their kids—an honor Joshua readily accepted—and to take charge of their education.

  What he missed of his blood relatives, he tried to make up for with his adopted family, especially Alias and Jasmine. Two kids were never more different, though they were both smart and eager students, and they stuck together like peas in a pod. Jasmine was sweeter than her brother, and the religious lessons came more easily to her. Alias was more enthusiastic and skeptical of everything. He was quicker in math and science. Their evening lessons became the highlight of his days, and as they grew up, he liked knowing he had some role in shaping them into the kinds of leaders he felt the world desperately needed.

  Now, leaning again on Oscar, Joshua pinched his eyes to forestall the tears rising up.

  It wasn’t God’s purpose for me, he insisted to himself, desperately trying to reconcile twenty years of toil with the reality now confronting him.

  After all he had shared and accomplished with the Ministry of Ascención, his dearest friend and leader had forged a pact with the very demons that had driven the world—and his own family—to ruin. The two-decade loop now tasted of futility as his conscience forced him to leave his religious path and return to a future of building and repairing electrical and water systems. He anguished over the thought of leaving the ministry. But he couldn’t do anything else and live with himself. It was the second spontaneous decision he could ever recall making, and he was equally certain it was the right choice, despite the pain.

  Joshua dabbed his eyes with his sleeve, realizing then he had no use for his Minister’s robe, but had nothing much else to wear. He pushed off from the cargo hold of Bambi and sloped back to his brother, sister, nieces, and nephew.

  How do I explain this to them?

  He took some guilty consolation that he was returning to his family in much the same way his sister had—in failure and destitution. His brother, who had taken care of them both after their parents died, and who was most devastated when they both left, would never see it this way. Christian would be too elated at having his siblings back together, and he wasn’t the kind to think in those terms anyway. In that way Christian was the best example of God’s Will for people on earth, despite being a half-hearted believer. Joshua smiled at the memory of sometimes thinking about his brother when writing sermons about how to live.

  Nessa would surely feel the same sting of humiliation he did. That would surely be eclipsed by the relief of having delivered her children from deprivation. Joshua has no such consolation.

  The kids, he suspected, were the only ones who might see his return as something shameful. Another mouth to feed—attached to a man they hardly knew. Victoria and Paul seemed understandably elated to just be safe though, and Emily had turned out to be among the kindest young women he had ever known. So, much like Christian that one would never guess she was also raised by a bi-polar mother.

  No, the feeling of failure and shame is my own making, he decided. Nevertheless, he resolved to wait until the children were asleep to tell Christian and Nessa that he too would rejoin the family, leaving his life in the ministry forever. They would talk through the mechanics and tell the kids the next morning. He projected forward to how the conversation would unfold and winced at the idea of the sympathy his siblings would offer when they learned of his life’s work unraveling in a day. He immediately thought better of it.

  They won’t have the time or energy to offer consolation. In fact, they’ll look to me to be a ballast—especially Nessa—especially for the kids.

  He battled his urge to pull his Minister’s robe, the most manifest symbol of his loss, from his body and leave it on the ground before returning to the group. The thought of burning it flashed into his mind.

  I can’t give any indication that I am anything but a pillar. Not a hint. …And I can’t go back to the group naked.

  He smiled to himself again, then took a series of deep breaths to solidify his composure. He rocked his head back and forth to release the aching stress from his shoulders. He pushed all his love for his siblings—and for Emily, Paul, and Victoria—to the front of his mind, straightened his posture, flattened his robe, and forced his first step back to the group.

  Chapter 16: Return from the Rescue

  (Emily Goldbloom)

  Emily Goldbloom’s Aunt Nessa prepared a supper of assorted finger foods for the family as they made final preparations for the next leg of their trip. Drought-oat bread and biotein slices flavored like shrimp—or at least what Emily had been told shrimp once tasted like. It wasn’t Emily’s favorite, but she was too hungry to object, and she knew better than to express any negativity when the group was already coping with so much stress. Anyway, she was still bursting with joy watching her family gather around their ramshackle fold-up table to eat. Her father Christian was beaming, which always made her happy. The addition of her Uncle Joshua, Aunt Nessa, and her cousins Victoria and Paul filled a
hole she didn’t know had existed.

  Part of her good feeling came from knowing that it almost didn’t work out this way. That any of a thousand misfortunes could have befallen her family on their detour from Ogallala to Denver to pick up her aunt and cousins. The return trip had all the same risks. If they were too late getting back, their deal with Shay could’ve unraveled, along with all the good fortune they had finally stumbled upon.

  She still couldn’t believe her father had risked so much when he decided they would split from the work convoy for a jaunt across the Desert Plains Territory to fetch Nessa, Victoria, and Paul. But the desperate call from his sister, abandoned by her husband at the Las Vegas Migrant Assistance Center and only half-way through the perilous journey east, was all it really took. A new wave of migrants was washing over the Commonwealth’s borders, and their kin were especially exposed and vulnerable.

  Her father still hadn’t finalized arrangements for her relatives to live and work once they arrived back at Shay’s camp, and leaving the company convoy would worsen matters all the way around.

  Even if the deal falls apart and they give away our jobs, she assured herself, we’ll find work. There’re always solar panels to be fixed, generators to upgrade, wind turbines to be cleaned, biomass generators to be installed. And there’s always storm repair and coding jobs on the Global Labor Auction. We’ll be OK. Paul’s a decent coder. Victoria’s better. Mom knows book-keeping, when she’s functioning. Aunt Nessa being a nurse’ll always help. Uncle Joshua can probably talk his way into getting us bigger projects. We’ll be OK.

  She didn’t really buy her own pitch, even as they arrived in Denver and found her wayward relatives.

  “Someone has to go get them,” her father insisted when her mother flew into a rage at the idea of him leaving. “They’re family.”