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

by Ryan Schow

  Diaab tore his mind off his boy’s death and instead allowed himself certain indulgences. Violent fantasies of reprisal sprung to life inside him. He thought of retribution because retribution nourished and fueled the soul. Sadly, grief did nothing but diminish it.

  Diaab made a fist with his hand. It sparked pain in his arm, became starbursts in his mind. Inadvertently, his gaze fell to his son’s hands. There were two perfect holes going right through the center of each palm. Eric said that’s where Brooklyn’s father shot him.

  Almost on their own, his eyes went to Farhad’s face. One eye was a blown-out hole, the flesh heat-seared and nasty. His other eye was untouched. This is where Diaab placed his attention. His hand came to rest on his son’s arm. He looked down, surprised by this, surprised by his body’s emotional response to his son.

  Have I really ever loved him? Diaab wondered. Perhaps he had. Is this not what love is? The feeling of loss, the need to take an eye for an eye?

  “Dimas,” he heard himself say. That one word, that hideous name, fell from his mouth like a sin.

  Okot remained silent.

  “Let us make him more presentable,” he heard himself say, the detachment he was feeling inside him more apparent than ever.

  “Will the boys want to see him first?” Okot asked. Diaab’s assistant knew him all too well. He gave a single, sharp nod. “In his current state?”

  The two drivers simply waited at the front of the pickup, ready to move the child when told, but smart enough to leave private conversations private. Diaab wanted to kill something, anything. Perhaps these men sensed this. They would not see such expression in his face, because that he kept flat, emotionless, but the air…oh, he felt the charge in the air!

  His anger needed an outlet.

  “All day long those two watch television,” Diaab whispered of his young sons in a ragged, somewhat hostile voice. “They think doing their homework and receiving an A is an accomplishment. They do not think for themselves. To be in this world, you must think for yourself! For that, fear is the best motivator. Seeing their older brother in this state will give them something to ponder. It will be for the best, don’t you think?”

  “Yes, sir,” Okot said, surprised that Diaab would ask his opinion on such a matter. “I believe you’re right.”

  Okot rewrapped the boy, then nodded to the driver and passenger of the truck. Both men joined them at the tailgate.

  They lifted the body and one of them said, “Where shall we take him, Mr. Buhari?”

  “Set him on the kitchen table,” Diaab said. “Lay him on his back unwrapped from head to toe.”

  When the men left with Farhad, Diaab looked at Okot and said, “We will move forward from this. We will find a way out of such crippling…grief. To do this, we must restore our good name and at the same time, we must avenge Farhad. Despite these unsettling times, the Buhari namesake must stay intact.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Diaab was never really himself unless he was moving forward. His entire life he fought to stay ahead of the sullying masses—those who would work to undermine him, those who would find ways to drag him down to his knees and demand he submit.

  America offered him such opportunity. Here, he’d succeeded where in Sudan he had failed. With an abundance of opportunity, laws that protected him and a never-ending supply of human cargo, he’d shipped the spawn of the white devils to his home country where they were treated accordingly. Now these American devils had killed his son. Perhaps not with their own hand, but by circumstance alone. Dead was dead, and Farhad was no more. Even worse, having suffered such a blow, he was no longer the king of his palace but a slave to the suffering of peasants.

  As Okot moved to join the men, Diaab reached out, grabbed his servant’s arm. “We must send a message,” he said.

  “Eric was not message enough?” the Sudanese behemoth asked.

  “He was the message until we became the message, my friend. And do you now what that message was?” he asked. Leaving neither time nor room for an answer, Diaab said, “The message was clear. Never return to the Dimas home again. They think they can kill my child and not even feel bad about it. Well I feel bad about it! And so we will go back.”

  “I will go with you, sir.”

  “These devils cost my son his life, Okot. They abused him and led him to slaughter. Then that coward allowed his wife to do his bidding for him. He could not even come to the door and face me like a man! Instead, he sent his woman.”

  Diaab had half a mind to kill one of his other sons and leave him at the Dimas’s doorstep just to show them they took nothing from him that he would not have taken himself first. But which child to kill? Thinking like this only served to stoke the fires of rage within him. Within seconds, his hostility was at full boil.

  “Get Nasr out back and bring a gun,” he told Okot, his words clear, but his mind in turmoil.

  “Sir?” Okot asked.

  He turned in a fever pitch and said to his assistant, “Get my boy! Get a gun! You know what I must do, Okot. You know the position I am in!”

  Okot knew.

  Diaab met him in the backyard. Okot had Diaab’s youngest boy’s head pinned to the open barbecue grill with a gun pressed to the soft spot beneath his ear.

  The boy wasn’t squirming.

  “Did you see your brother?” Diaab shouted at the boy.

  “Yes, Father.”

  “You will never know the sacrifice of a child from a father’s viewpoint!” he said, his body rigid, the tension snaring him. “We bring you into this world so that you may have what we have, or better. So that you may be who we’ve become, or better. We gave you and your brothers this life so that you may fight this fight beyond our furthest days! You know this, right?”

  The boy was not crying, even though Okot was smashing his cheek into the cold, metal grate. The boy was not frowning, not even with a loaded gun to his head.

  “I know this, Father,” the child said, not a stitch of worry in his voice.

  Nasr was just seven years old, but Diaab had never met a boy so ready to be a man. Through the haze of madness Diaab was currently embroiled in, he managed to take pride in his son for the courage he was displaying. Still, he was seeing red.

  He’d been turned away by a woman.

  A woman!

  “Here, in America, you can become whatever you want, until you become one of their casualties. Your brother was a casualty, Nasr. He was ripped from our lives, brought back to us a broken child. Never forget, we are not here to become the white devils, we are here to defeat the white devils, one stolen child at a time.”

  Okot did not look up at Diaab, only down at the boy. Diaab knew he did not want to kill the child, but Diaab knew that the smallest of nods meant Okot should pull the trigger. Diaab also knew Okot well enough to know the man would not hesitate to follow orders.

  Diaab felt compelled to give the boy an explanation. He would have wanted one himself given the reversal of roles.

  “If someone can so easily take something from me that I am not willing to give,” Diaab growled at the boy, “then I must give them nothing to take. That is why I am going to kill you today. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, Father,” he said. “I know that I am your weakness.”

  “You are not my weakness, Nasr, you are the point I am making,” Diaab said in a more tolerant tone. “Do you know the point I am referring to?”

  “That you have no weakness,” the boy replied.

  Right after the boy said that, Diaab watched his son adjust something in his mouth. What is that? Diaab needed only wonder a moment, for he soon realized the boy had bubble gum in his mouth.

  Diaab blew out a frustrated breath.

  Then, in that very moment—with a gun pressed to his head and his father telling him he was going to sacrifice him—seven year old Nasr Buhari blew a very large bubble, let it pop, then pulled the gum back in his mouth and said, “I’m ready, Father.”

  Okot looked
up at Diaab. He signaled his assistant, and true to Diaab’s beliefs, the man proved yet again that he was perfectly capable of taking orders.

  Shortly afterwards, Nyanath showed up to work on the gunshot wounds on his arm. She looked at him and he would not hold her gaze. The twenty-two year old looked so much like her mother, which was to say she was a strange but handsome looking woman with a gentle soul.

  “What happened here?” she asked.

  “Work issue.”

  She was still upset at Diaab. Quite frankly, he was surprised she even came over. When Farhad was a boy of just ten, Diaab gave him a new puppy. He was told to kill it. Diaab’s father made him do that as a boy, so he made Farhad do that as well. Like Diaab, Farhad did not hesitate. Nyanath changed that day. She loved that puppy, more than she could ever love her mother or father.

  The second Nyanath set foot in America, she asked if she could attend an American college. Here she burned all of her hijabs. She had beautiful hair, lovely enough to catch the eye of a man from Morocco, a man who had long ago been seduced by the American traditions. Saїd had asked Diaab for Nyanath’s hand in marriage and Diaab reluctantly accepted, stating there was but one condition. The condition was that Nyanath never come home.

  Saїd accepted this condition.

  To so brazenly show her hair in public was not only disgraceful to the Buhari family, it was punishment for a past she could not let go of. An act of defiance that continued even to this day. Now she was home. She was home without her hijab, but with her knowledge of emergency care and medicine.

  These were concessions he never thought he would have to make, but they were concessions never-the-less.

  “Do you see what’s happening here?” she said as she pulled out the buck shot and stitched up four individual wounds. “I could be at the hospital taking care of people shot by drones, not by shotguns. Where are my brothers? If I’m going to be here, in this home that was never mine to begin with, the home that you forbid me from returning to, then you should at least let me see them.”

  “About that…” he said.

  Chapter Eleven

  When Nyanath saw Farhad’s ruined body, she fell into fits of hysteria. Her younger brother, Kamal, stood beside her as she wept. She and Kamal had been close. Much to his displeasure, Diaab could not stand the wailing, so he and Okot left early.

  They took the Ford Ranger for obvious reasons.

  Okot and Diaab were on their way to Brooklyn Dimas’s home, but drones were still roaming about, creating chaos, causing irreparable damage to the city and outlying neighborhoods. Okot was not sure they’d make it all the way there. Ash fluttered in through the air vents, visibility remained pitifully low due to pockets of smoke and the air was so quiet it seemed to have a pressing weight to it.

  “This is eerie,” Okot said to Diaab.

  “Our mission is ordained, therefore we will have the passage we need,” Diaab said. “Do not fear, my friend.”

  “After this, I wonder if this city will survive,” Okot said as they drove into a blinding haze. Visibility was now less than ten percent in some places. At the last minute, he swerved for a dirty white cat that darted out into the street, drove over a red tricycle, then hit a playpen and kicked it out of the road.

  “I don’t think it will, Okot.”

  “What will we do?” he asked, turning on the windshield wipers because the ash was becoming too thick to see through.

  “We need to get what’s left of our cargo out of the US, gather up our people and what’s left of our families and flee this cesspool.”

  On the seat between them were two pistols, a handful of zip-ties and a burlap sack with half a dozen sets of handcuffs and some duct tape inside. Diaab pressed a palm to his arm where it was bandaged. The wrapping was tight, but perfect. Having a bit of pressure on the wound seemed to help ease the pain.

  “With your permission, sir,” Okot said, “I’d like to take care of the old woman.”

  “The one who shot me?” Diaab asked. “In the wheelchair?”

  “Yes.”

  “Fine, I don’t care,” he said, the pain in his arm drawing on the last of his patience. “I just want the kids. We get them, then we can go.”

  “Will you need my help?”

  “Enjoy yourself first, then join me.”

  When they finally arrived at the house, Okot drove up to the curb and cut the engine. Visibility was much better there. Nearly one hundred percent. There were bits of ash in the sky, but currently no smoke.

  Okot glanced over his shoulder, saw the old woman wheeling her way out onto the porch, most likely drawn out of her den by the engine noise. She had her shotgun laid across her lap. A quick glance around produced no signs of anyone else.

  “Can I suggest something, sir?” Okot said.

  “Of course.”

  “With your arm being what it is, perhaps you should wait for me,” Okot said. “It might be best to go in together since we’re not sure what to expect.”

  “I’ll think about it,” Diaab said.

  The very large, very black man then got out of the truck, the springs lifting, his gaze fixed on the old woman. Recognition passed through those aging eyes of hers. As if a gunshot had gone off in his head, Okot broke into a sprint, heading right for her. The woman fumbled with her shotgun, giving him the seconds he needed.

  It wasn’t enough time.

  She swung the 12 gauge around, fired a round. He’d already zigged, then zagged and dove out of the way. She racked a load, but by then he was on his feet again, taking ground.

  She tracked him with the Remington, but he knew never to run toward a shotgun in a straight line. He was zigging, zagging, eyes on her the entire time.

  The boom of the second shot going off didn’t startle him. If the buckshot was missing him, it was only barely. Okot took the porch stairs fast, grabbed the front of the shotgun, ripped it out of the woman’s hands and slapped her across the face so hard she tumbled out of the wheel chair, unconscious, perhaps even dead.

  A round cut through the front door, catching him in the shoulder. The impact wanted to spin him around, but Okot was too big for that. Grunting, growling, he kicked in the front door, the casing splintering but not breaking.

  He expected the second shot, so he turned sideways, stepped back. The report came as anticipated, the bullet blasting through the wood.

  Okot whipped out his own gun, kicked the door even harder this time. It swung open, giving him the shot. He fired three rounds into the house.

  Moving inside quickly, he threw the door shut behind him.

  Before him was a living room full of antique furniture; beyond that was the kitchen. Weapon out, working to ignore the pain in his arm, Okot moved cautiously, the gunman gone, or in hiding.

  To the right, the hallway was clear. Same with the stairs above it. He crept toward the kitchen, intent on clearing the ground floor first. He didn’t hear the kid sneaking through the hallway, but he sure as hell felt the first shot to his kidney.

  Okot swung his good arm around. The attacker ducked, drove a fist straight into his floating rib. Okot winced, tried again to grab the kid. He was a ghost, though—behind him one second, out in front of him the next.

  It was best to just shoot him.

  Before he could even get off a round, the kid stepped sideways and slapped Okot’s gun hand with force. The gun almost dropped. A fraction of a second later, he was hit with a ferocious kick to the inside of his thigh.

  The Sudanese warrior wobbled, the dull, debilitating pain sharp enough to both hurt and surprise him. He squeezed off a round, but the boy was a tireless wraith. As the frustration began to mount, Okot’s energy started to wane.

  He fired three more rounds at the boy; all three shots missed.

  The ungodly onslaught of violence upon Okot never seemed to end. He winced and wobbled, his brain unable to track the inexorable pace of the attack. No matter how hard he tried, he was a half beat off every pivot, every block, every
strike.

  For the first time in his life, Okot wondered how badly he’d misjudged this situation. The kid remained a tornado of aggression, circling Okot, doing damage first to his torso, then to his legs. A kick to his knee-pit sent him crashing down. With this, Okot’s fear grew in both size and scope.

  Tapping into deeper stores of energy, he drove an elbow backwards (his injured shoulder flaring wildly with pain), missed, then shot the other one backwards.

  This time he connected, bone to body.

  The contact was a breath of fresh air, a renewal of his fighting spirit. Okot managed to get a hand on the boy, grabbing what was there (an ankle), then yanking back has hard as he could. The kid’s legs came out from underneath him. He landed on his back on the hard wood floors with a mighty woof!

  Grunting as he stood his big, beaten body up, a heady mix of both rage and anxiety crashed through him. By the time he was up, the boy was now a half beat behind him.

  A wicked grin overtook Okot’s dark, sweat slicked face.

  It took a bit of work, but he managed to get ahold of the kid, first by his arm, then with a handful of hair. Moving in quick and with a gigantic hand, he drove the kid’s head sideways into the wall. He dropped immediately.

  Okot sucked in a gigantic breath, his chest constricted, four or five ribs in particular hurting but not broken.

  When he let out his breath, he centered himself.

  Looking down, he thought about shooting the kid, but breaking his neck felt like it would be more satisfying.

  That’s when he heard the gunshot next door. He stopped in his tracks, his first thoughts going to Diaab.

  The man said he wasn’t going to kill anyone. Had that changed?