The Age of Hysteria: A Post-Apocalyptic Survival Thriller (The Age of Embers Book 2)

by Ryan Schow

When Yahoo! opened as his home window, he saw pictures of the drones, stock photos of President Dupree, several articles about the dangers of unmanned aerial vehicles and how the military was preparing to counter them. Instead of freaking himself out more about the unmanned drone swarms, he opened an article titled: US MILITARY EXPLORING DEFENSE METHODS AGAINST DRONES.

  The crux of the article was that there were no streamlined ways to deal with these UAVs. The budget was wide ranging and the writer suggested the military was taking a sweeping approach to data collection. They talked about machine guns, electronic jamming, even laser canons. He perused through several other articles, which was enough to just about freak him out at the idea of UAVs going off the radar.

  He glanced at the clock on the bottom of the computer screen.

  “Five o’clock?” he said. Where had the time gone? He went back to bed, woke up at six thirty with his phone beeping.

  Jill: LEO TOLD ME EVERYTHING

  Rock: LEO HAS HIS OWN FANTASIES THAT SOMETIMES GET IN THE WAY OF THE TRUTH

  Jill: R U WITH HER NOW?

  Rock: I’M AT THE SHOP. NEED TO DELIVER HER CAR AT 7.

  She then asked if he made love to her, although her word for making love started with an F and was four letters long. Can I buy a vowel? Just one. He text to tell her she was stupid, that Amber Gunn wasn’t trolling for D.

  Jill: MADONNA USED TO DRIVE THROUGH THE STREETS OF LA HAVING HER WAY WITH BOYS.

  Rock: THIS IS A NEW GENERATION. THEY DO INSTAGRAM, NOT INSTA-DISEASE. GO BACK TO BED.

  She didn’t text back, but by then it was time to pick up Amber. Maisie. Hopefully Maisie. He didn’t want to see Amber. Not at all.

  Leo came in for work as he was pulling out in the Lamborghini. He saw Leo arriving, but was so mad at the kid that he gunned the engine and tore off before he could open his mouth and speak his mind.

  He wouldn’t lie: the car was incredible. And it got the looks. Oh, how it got the looks! He had the feeling that if he had this car for a week, his problem wouldn’t be getting one girl, it would be keeping it down to just one girl. As with any thrill though, the feeling would pass, and then it would dissipate and he’d forget all about it.

  When he arrived at the Hyatt, she was ready and waiting. As Amber. She smiled, waived, the old personality back.

  She walked around the front of the car, inspecting his work, then smiled, came to his side to where he’d rolled down the window.

  “You want to drive?” he said.

  “I want you to drive,” she said. “You look better in this than I do.”

  “That is you there, right? Maisie Sullivan?”

  “The one and only,” she said. She leaned down, kissed him on the cheek, then sauntered around front and got in like a lady, which in that car was no easy task. He let off the brake, eased on the gas and pulled out of the hotel parking lot, the engine at a tempered growl.

  “Let’s go to your shop, we’ll settle up, then I can get on my way, unless you want to have breakfast?”

  “Do me a favor and look up, will you?” he said, his voice changing.

  She leaned forward, glanced up through the windshield. That’s when she saw the swarms of drones.

  “What’s going on Rock?” she said, fully spooked now. “I saw this on the news, but it didn’t look so bad. Or maybe it looked worse, I don’t know.”

  They came to a stop in traffic, his window still rolled down to the sound of sirens. Several police cars flew by, driving up on the sidewalk by them, the officers using their loudspeakers to warn people to move.

  “Rude!” Amber said.

  “That’s not normal,” he replied. “None of this is normal.”

  They were driving down L Street, past the State Capitol, which was big and stately, and totally gorgeous that time of year. He cut over on 9th Street, passing the California State Treasurer’s office, then he hung a right on Capitol Mall just before the California State Library. Capitol Mall was a divided road that would take them straight to the famed Tower Bridge, which crossed the Sacramento River, then into his neck of the woods.

  On Capitol Mall, traffic slowed almost to a stop. Police cruisers were now passing the halted traffic all around them.

  “What do you think is going on?” Amber asked. “Besides the obvious, I mean.”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “It looks like the problem’s coming from those three high rises ahead.”

  There were three buildings towering before them, twenty or thirty stories tall and built right next to each other in an L-shaped configuration. 5th Street cut in between the buildings, and it appeared to be blocked with cars all the way through the intersection. This was part of the reason Capitol Mall was stopped up. The cops, however, were making their way down 4th Street, possibly one block over to N Street. Overhead there was a helicopter hovering, a guy hanging out of the side with a rifle and tac-gear.

  “That’s a police chopper, not a news chopper.”

  “And that means…” she asked.

  That’s when they heard the sounds of gun fire. This wasn’t the cops responding to a perp with their rifles. No, not at all. Rock knew what that big, concussive echo was coming from. Someone was shooting a fifty caliber semi-automatic rifle from high ground.

  “Did you hear that?” he said with a fair amount of dread. “Active shooter.”

  “How do you know?”

  “You see that guy up there in that helicopter?” he said over the sounds of dozens of sirens.

  She leaned forward, looked up through the windshield.

  “Yeah.”

  “That used to be me. I worked Chicago SWAT until a few years back.”

  “You went from SWAT to gift wrapping cars?” she said, looking at him. “What precipitated that kind of a change?”

  Another big boom echoed through the downtown airway. People were rolling down their windows, listening to the sounds of gunfire, just to be sure.

  He turned to her and said, “I left Chicago because I killed my brother.”

  She swallowed hard then said, “Why would you do that?”

  “Because he killed my father.”

  Staring at him, maybe looking for something that told her to either run or relax, she finally allowed herself a breath before saying, “I think I’ve finally found something we have in common, Rock Dimas.”

  “Yeah?” he asked, seeing drones starting to cluster all around the State Capitol in his side view mirror. “What’s that?”

  “Dead dads.”

  Seconds later, a pack of very large drones began launching missiles into the State Capitol and surrounding buildings.

  Chapter Eight

  Rock’s instincts to stay calm in the midst of chaos kicked in. He turned to Amber. She looked like she wanted to pass out. Her eyes were on him, then they were roving around the skies. He didn’t tell her about the attack on the Capitol Building because he didn’t know whether to run, to stay in the car or to just gas it and go despite the damage he’d do to the car.

  Amber listened to the sounds of the sirens, the shooting, the city. Her window was down, like his, and he wasn’t sure if he wanted her to roll it up.

  So yes, he froze.

  “Breathe,” he finally told her. He was speaking to himself as much as he was speaking to her, but she didn’t need to know that.

  “That’s easy for you to say,” Amber turned and said.

  “No it’s not,” he said. Tears streamed from her eyes, her wig slightly off kilter. “But we’re in this together, so we should—”

  The words fell short in the back of his throat. Behind him, more drones descended on the State Capitol and the surrounding buildings. A half dozen missiles dropped from the wings of the drones and headed straight for the capitol. Up ahead, a fleet of drones dropped out of the sky and banked hard their way.

  “Oh, no,” he whispered. “No, no, no, no, no…”

  Not half a mile up, muzzle-flash from four wing-mounted Gatling gun pods signaled the worst.


  “Get out of the car!” Rock screamed.

  Amber froze, her eyes on the horror unfolding.

  “Go, dammit, get out!”

  She finally opened the door and Rock leaned over the center console of the customized Lamborghini to shove her out. The second she went, he looked up in time to see the drones bearing down upon him. As fast as he could, and as uncomfortable and impossible as it felt, he scrambled over the center console and hugged both sides like his life depended on it.

  The screeching rattle of gunfire tore two lines all the way up the front of the car, through the roof (pelting both seats), then down the back, fully incapacitating the super car.

  Outside, Amber couldn’t stop screaming.

  Rock ignored her, grabbed the cell phone from his back pocket, then maneuvered himself back into the seat and called Fiyero. The line rang through to voicemail. He left a message because he wasn’t sure if he’d be able to make a call again.

  “Yeah, hey Fire,” he said, breathless and tentative, his eyes on the now burning Sacramento skyline, “if you’re coming this way, brother, you’d best be careful. This whole place is a kill zone right now. Not safe at all. If these drones don’t smoke me, then I’ll be in Loomis at the address I gave you. I’m kind of up to my eyeballs in it right now, and I’m not sure I’m going to make it. If I don’t, well then…you know, man. You know. Call me when you get this message. If you can’t get through, send a text. And if you’re in it, too, just…yeah…just be careful.”

  He almost hung up, but he didn’t.

  Not yet.

  In the gritty skies behind and above him, a burning Boeing 767 came barreling down through the skies, the twin engines thrumming at a deafening roar. Rock looked up, saw the gutted fuselage was on fire. It was spewing seats, people and burning luggage. He watched the raining cargo collide with the earth. Seated bodies smashed into glass buildings, cars and the street; luggage hit the ground like bombs, exploding open, clothes and toiletries blasting out everywhere on impact.

  He had to turn away it became that bad.

  Rock felt so far removed from the scene, from the chaos, that he almost forgot to have an emotion about all this. When the plane thundered overhead and the noise subsided enough for him to hear himself think, he said the only thing he could think to say to his brother’s voicemail before hanging up.

  “If I don’t see you again,” he said, his voice choked up, “I hope you make it, and I hope you have a good life. I love you, brother.”

  Amber stood beside the car, bawling, appraising the damage. The custom Lamborghini was freshly wrapped in pearl blue with matte black striping, and it was dead where it sat.

  Rock hung up the phone, suddenly seeing what the actress wasn’t.

  “Get down!” he screamed as the next drones headed straight for them, opening fire on everyone not yet dead, the two of them included.

  Amber dropped fast and hard; he dropped, too, rolled under the truck beside him because he wouldn’t fit under the Lambo. When the drone rocketed over them, the first wisps of smoke from engine and gasoline fires began to permeate the air. He scrambled to his feet, ran around the front of the super car and found Amber.

  She was flat on the ground, shoved halfway under the car. “Amber?” he said. He knelt down beside her. “Amber, are you okay?!”

  She moved, rolled over and sat up. Her eyes were dancing madly in their sockets, her coppery red wig half turned. She pulled it off, tossed it aside, then sat up and hugged Rock.

  He worked himself out of her frantic embrace, then said, “We have to go. Now.”

  By that time, people were scrambling out of their cars and sprinting past them, looking for buildings, shelter of some kind.

  He’d never seen so many terrified people at one time.

  A young woman was holding her neck with a dripping red hand, trying to keep up with her boyfriend. Powerful spurts of arterial blood shot out from between her fingers. Her face was pale, her legs wobbly, her eyes heavy, draining. When she stumbled past them, a squeeze of red caught Amber across the face, startling her.

  Gasping, appalled and pawing the blood away, she got to her feet and looked around like she couldn’t believe what was happening. A sudden, paralyzed stillness settled over her.

  It settled over them both.

  A crush of bodies ran past them on the streets; they were also moving en masse along the wide lawn dividing the one-way lanes on either side of Capitol Mall. Worse still, the pace this massive body of people were moving at was near frenetic.

  An older women fell; a child was trampled on, tripped over, left behind.

  The drones swooped down on them, a hail of gunfire ripping up the lawn, and then laying waste to no less than forty people right in front of them.

  Amber couldn’t even cry out.

  Rock grabbed hold of her arm, steadied her. Fresh tears streamed from her eyes. Her legs were uncooperative, her brain unable to process so much at once.

  Rock said, “We’re not going that way, Maisie. But we need to go now.” He let go of her arm, took her hand, then looked right at her and said, “We’re going or we’re dying.”

  She snapped out of it.

  Letting go of his hand, she reached down, removed her heels and tried to steady herself. He took her hand again. She let him. With untold horrors at their back, they started running toward the sounds of gunfire, the road block of cop cars and beyond that, the Tower Bridge.

  If they could get out of the downtown kill box, his shop was a few miles further.

  As they sprinted past the twenty-five or thirty story building above the Morton’s Steakhouse he went to last night for take out, explosions rocked the earth at their feet. Glass from the high rise blasted out everywhere from maybe ten or twenty stories up. Part of a huge Predator drone rained down on the streets behind them.

  Another flat grey drone swept the deck so low if they hadn’t ducked, they would have gotten haircuts, easy. The missiles hit Morton’s. Another drone was on its tail, sending two more missiles into the building’s base. The speed at which these UAVs moved, the precision, was terrifying, overwhelming, daunting.

  “Faster!” he screamed.

  Glass was raining down behind them, the building tilting, starting to crumble. They both put on an extra burst of speed, racing toward the onslaught of drones because there was nowhere left to go. Smaller drones equipped with Gatling gun pods were now opening fire on the cars and people running the opposite way as them. The drones were killing everything.

  They closed in on 5th Street, saw the gridlocked traffic ahead, about got trampled to death by a horde of lunatics running in all directions. A white Nissan Maxima jumped the curb in front of them, sailing out into the stopped traffic at an otherwise unreasonable speed.

  He grabbed Maisie, kept her from getting hit.

  The sedan slammed into the side of a Chevy Silverado coming to a ferocious stop. A body smashed through the center of the windshield, slammed into the corner of the Silverado’s cab and spun around, landing in the back of the truck in a dead heap. Inside the Maxima, there were two people in the front seats, their faces smashed into the deployed airbags.

  Beside him, Amber was whimpering, gasping for breath, face slicked with wind-sheared tears and smeared blood from the girl with the bleeding neck. They hurried past the accident, avoided looking at the dead bodies in the cars, the stumbling, dying masses, the people like him who were on the verge of losing it.

  There was literally nothing to use as cover.

  Capitol Mall was a wide, divided road flanked by gigantic glass buildings now being hit by drones in an all-out assault. It was just like one of Amber’s movies. But this was no movie and Amber/Maisie was now slowing down, nearly hyperventilating, on the brink of quitting based on the look in her eyes.

  Rock spun and grabbed her hand. In her eyes he saw sheer terror, but there were also hints of resignation, defeat.

  “We’re too exposed,” Rock screamed. He was panting as well, sweatin
g like crazy and realizing how out of shape he felt when it came to cardio.

  The drones were circling above like vultures, firing into the masses, coming after them again.

  Up ahead he heard automatic gunfire, the police chopper and ground units most likely firing on the drones. They huffed it onto the grassy center divide. He was afraid the gravel was cutting into Maisie’s bare feet. It was a stupid move being that imperiled, but they needed to get across the street and that was the only way to do it.

  “Stop, Rock…I can’t…” she said when he started to pull her.

  She drew them to a stop right out in the open, both of them unable to breathe. His body was overflowing with adrenaline, his muscles unable to keep up. He knew he had popcorn muscles, the kind that were only for show, but damn…he didn’t think he’d gas out this quick!

  Where he couldn’t be active, he chose vigilance.

  His eyes were everywhere, tracking every single drone, panic infecting him at a cellular level. People ran by, but many of them found shelter. The drones held back, attacked other parts of the block. Maisie lifted her foot, examined all the cuts on the underside, and was then struck so hard, she went down flat on her back on the grass.

  Everything went from slowing down and pulsing to lightning quick again.

  Rock went after her, picked her up as a mob of people descended upon them, bumping and slamming their way past them.

  A young girl had crashed right into Maisie, knocking them both down. Rock had Maisie, who looked stunned, and the girl was scrambling to her feet, putting on the shoe that had come off in the collision.

  She looked at them both, unsullied terror standing tall in her eyes.

  “Are you okay?” Rock asked.

  The shock rendered her mute, but not helpless. The second she had that shoe on, she stood and sprinted after the group.

  Rock reached down, helped Maisie up, then said, “We can’t stop. Seriously we can’t.”

  She tried to run, but it was a hobble. The impact from the girl—being winded only a moment ago and the cuts in her feet all filling with grass and dirt—served to slow her progress.

  It didn’t matter to Rock though.