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

by Ryan Schow

Is this pre-teen jabberbox really playing chicken with his life? Does he not remember his brother is laid out on the table because of me?

  “Kill him,” Ice says.

  The little turd blows a bubble, stares at me with that one eye. Instead, I pull the gun back and say, “Do you know that when a kid’s guts are spilled, they don’t smell as bad as an adult’s, but the stink lasts longer?”

  “My guts will smell like Taco Bell, because that’s what I had for dinner last night.”

  “Aren’t you Americanized just fine,” I remark coldly.

  “Whatever, white devil.”

  “Nasr,” Kamal warns.

  “If Father were here, he’d kill these two already,” the boy says without pretense.

  “Well he’s not.”

  “Where is your father?” Ice asks. To up the ante, Ice pulls out his gun and puts it to the older brother’s head. Kamal isn’t as willful as his younger brother.

  “Kill him,” Nasr says.

  “What’s wrong with you, kid?” I ask.

  He only frowns at me, so much so that I smack the look off his face, knocking his little body to the ground in a heap. I feel horrible, because this isn’t me, but his father took my children and if I have to go through him to get to his dad, so be it.

  Like my former SAC, Ryan Wright, said before getting the kind of lead poisoning that leads to a dirt nap, there are no more rules. There’s just getting it done or not getting it done.

  Kamal remains tight-lipped but frightened; Nasr is coming back around.

  I grab Nasr by the hair, drag him to the nearest bathroom and say, “Let’s see how well you hold your breath.”

  Two minutes in toilet water and the little chode finally spills the beans. He tells me his dad keeps the stolen kids in boxcars at a railyard, but he can’t say which one. I’ll admit, interrogating a smart-mouth kid is not my cup of tea, and it’s certainly not in my wheelhouse, but what other choice do I have?

  Right now, I’ll do whatever it takes to find my kids. But I already told you that, didn’t I? Yeah, so this is yet another one of those moments I’m not so proud of.

  Whatever…

  “If you want to find my father, you could call him!” Kamal offers from the other room after hearing his younger brother gagging and choking on toilet water.

  “Do you have his phone number?” I hear Ice ask him.

  “Yes, I do.”

  Ice drags Kamal in the bathroom with him then says, “We have a number, do you have a location?”

  “Just a railyard,” I tell him.

  “There are tons of railyards around here,” Ice says. “This is Chicago.”

  “Does your phone work?” I ask Ice.

  He pulls it out, checks the bars and says, “It turns on. You’ll have to try it though.”

  “Is it a blocked number?”

  “No.”

  I reach for it; he hands it to me.

  “Give me the number,” I say, looking right at Kamal.

  The thirteen year old recites the number. I punch it in, hit send. It rings through and I wait, hopeful, my heart mule-kicking in my chest. When it goes to voicemail, I say the same thing I was going to tell Diaab if he’d picked up.

  “This is Fiyero Dimas, and you have my kids. Now I’ve got both of yours. Kamal and Nasr. If I don’t get Brooklyn, Orlando and Veronica back by nightfall, I’m going to start cutting off body parts.”

  With that, I hang up the phone, look at my brother and the boys and say, “Let’s duct tape and zip-tie these two rodents and hit the road. We’ve got to check on Xavier, see if Adeline and Eliana got over there okay.”

  Ice just stares at me, like he’s got something heavy on his mind. Then: “You’re playing at a different level, brother.”

  “Do you have a problem with that?”

  “If you do this, you won’t come back in one piece, not if you follow through on your threats with these kids.”

  “Did you come back from losing your wife and girls?” I challenge. He remains perfectly silent. “That’s what I thought.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  I think about putting Nasr and Kamal in the back seat. Then again, if we’re heading over to Xavier’s and there are a bunch of kids running around—plus Adeline and Eliana—it’s going to irritate me if I have to explain why I have two boys duct taped and zip-tied in the back seat of a purple muscle car that’s clearly seen better days.

  So the trunk it is.

  “I just want to say I have a problem with this,” Ice says as we’re heading over to Xavier’s house.

  “Join the crowd,” I say.

  “Serious, brother. This might be going too far.”

  “First off, you told me to shoot Nasr back at the house,” I say. “Second, my kids are still gone. So between now and then, what changed?”

  “I was trying to scare him,” he says. “I wasn’t really thinking you’d shoot him.”

  “I might have if he tried to blow another bubble. But since I didn’t, I thought maybe I’d try to at least use a little common sense and not scare the women,” I tell him.

  “So the trunk…” he says.

  “Once we get done with Xavier, we’ll head back to my place, treat these little fellas with all the care and compassion a retired hitman like you could ask for.”

  He nods his head, then shakes it, like he’s okay with what I said, but bothered that we’re in this situation in the first place.

  Again, join the crowd.

  “So what’s up with you and Eliana?” I ask. “It’s obvious she likes you. And she’s not exactly unattractive.”

  “I like her,” he says.

  “But?”

  “There is no ‘but,’” he says. “You didn’t see what she went through, who she is when she’s got the proverbial gun to her head.”

  “First off, I know what she does when she puts a gun to your head,” I say, remembering what she did just before we found Carolina. “Sergio Villarreal’s brains are still drying on the floors and walls inside his living room.”

  Ice shrugs his shoulders, gives a slight chuckle I almost miss. “She’s from another world, Fire. You wouldn’t even have a clue about life south of the Mexican border. Hell, I don’t even know how bad it is down there. But I can tell you this, that girl has got some God-sized cajones doing what she did.”

  “Which is what exactly?” I ask.

  “Leave the only family or home she’s ever known to travel up the migrant lines into Juarez. It didn’t matter whether I was coming or not, she was after Carolina and come hell or high water, that girl was going to find her.”

  “She’s lucky she wasn’t raped, or killed,” I say.

  “The guys who did try to rape her? They’re every bit as dead as Sergio was when we left him there.”

  “What?”

  “She’s not the cute and cuddly type of girl you meet at the mall, or inside a Starbuck’s waiting for your Cappuccino, Fire. This girl will dig your heart out with a rusty spoon if she needs to and not think twice. We’re pampered here in America, protected from the world’s worst filth by cops and lawyers and judges. But down there? It feels like everyone in power is corrupt. Like everyone’s on the take.”

  “Is she planning on going back?” I ask. He shrugs his shoulders again. I add, “Well if she can keep that spirit up, we just may need it if things continue on this path.”

  “Does it bother you that she almost killed you?” Ice asks.

  “Not at all.”

  That’s the last we speak on the way to Xavier’s because the drones are now moving to the suburbs, which means at some point they’ll be close enough to us that we may have to leave earlier than planned. That’s not ideal, but then again, none of this is.

  “What the hell?” Ice says.

  Up ahead, hovering over the street a hundred feet in front of us, sits another four propeller drone. The civilian kind. I let off the gas, cover the brake, my eyes zeroed in on this thing.

  “Do you seen an
y guns?” Ice asks.

  “No.”

  We ease up to it, pull to a stop five feet away. Maybe because I’m scared, or uptight, or just plain pissed off, I roll down the window, lean out and shoot it. The thing bucks and drops, landing hard on the asphalt, some of its parts scattering.

  “You see any more of them?” I ask.

  “Negative.”

  “What do you think that’s about?” I ask, slowly driving over it and proceeding with caution for the next few blocks.

  “They’re spotters, I think,” Ice says. “Have you ever heard of the grey man philosophy?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “It’s about blending into your environment, especially in the event of societal unrest.”

  “Is this just coffee table conversation,” I ask, “or is there a point?”

  Up ahead, there’s another drone doing the same thing and now I have to say, I’m feeling a bit unnerved. This one is sitting level with the windshield. We pull up right in front of it. At this point, I’m so close I can see its High Definition lens focusing in on us.

  “How’s this for blending?” I ask, showing the floating robot my two middle fingers.

  “Real subtle,” Ice says.

  I let off the brake, ease forward. Just before the drone touches the windshield, it lifts high enough to avoid an impact, but it settles down beside me just outside my opened window. Ice is looking at it now and he’s frowning, just like me.

  “Oh boy,” I say, looking just past Ice’s shoulder.

  He turns and sees it, too. Another drone. This one is hovering at the same distance from the car as the other one, and then there’s a third.

  “Punch it, bro,” Ice says.

  No need to tell me twice. I mash the gas, rip through the gears. The drones keep up and now I’m thinking it’s time to stop and shoot these things and any more that show up. But how many are there?

  We come to the end of the block, I cut the inside corner hard, blast through an overturned garbage can because I have to tap the brakes and ride the gas, keeping the fishtail slide controlled but slick and clean.

  The drones stay with me. With us. Ice has got his gun out now and he’s looking like he’s about to jump out of his skin.

  I round the next turn, then slam on the brakes and slide to a stop in the middle of the street. Floating windshield-high are seven or eight drones. Every single one of them seems to be waiting for us.

  “Diaper change,” Ice mumbles.

  “I’ll second that motion,” I tell him. We’re on the same page. The drones next to us, they’re turned our way, videoing us.

  “Guns?” I ask Ice.

  “Don’t see any,” he tells me.

  I hold up my gun, show it to the drone. “Your buddy’s still sucking asphalt a few blocks back,” I tell it. Next to me, Ice is aiming at his, but not pulling the trigger.

  “ROE?” he says. Rules of engagement?

  “They’re unarmed, but they want something, I think,” I say, my eyes on the lens floating before me. “I just don’t know what.”

  “Yes, but ROE?”

  “I don’t know,” I tell him. Then to the drone, I say, “If you don’t get the hell out of my face, I’m going to do to you what I did to your friend. Do you understand that?”

  The drone moves back several inches, the four propellers whirring, then he moves up another inch or two. Who the hell is controlling these things? The drone then turns to his pack and they all shoot straight up.

  This one stays put, though.

  I still have the gun trained on it, the barrel aimed right at the big eyeball-shaped lens. All his friends are gone, but he’s still there.

  “Better not blink, bitch,” I tell it.

  Right then, the drone launches straight up and then it’s just me and Ice and this big, grumbling Barney-mobile.

  “Do you think we’ve been marked?” Ice says.

  “I don’t know.”

  We make it to Xavier’s without further incident, but truth be told, this is freaking me out. Whomever has control of the drones just did the impossible.

  “Did you crap yourself?” Ice asks.

  “I think so.”

  We pull up to Xavier’s house and the Tahoe sitting out front. My eyes then fall on Giselle Reed’s burnt car sitting in the driveway. There’s ash scattered all around it.

  Seeing this, my heart sinks.

  I’ve been so mad, so on-the-very-edge of losing it, that things like my former lieutenant’s dead wife keeps escaping me. Now that I’m looking at Xavier’s footprints in the ash, I’m thinking about what he must have been thinking the moment he found her.

  Oh, God…

  Ice looks at the charred car again and he feels it, too. Xavier buried her recently, but he couldn’t get the car out of the driveway. And me? I’m one mistake away from being a lost cause, a casualty. Worse than dying, though, would be losing Adeline, Brooklyn or Orlando.

  I almost lost Adeline. Then again, I don’t have her as it is. On the high side, it felt really good to beat the snot out of Caelin Boyle, her side dish. And it feels even better hearing that I now have a way back to Adeline.

  I just have to get the kids.

  Adeline steps outside, sees me and hesitates. Yeah, so I’m pretty sure I look like death warmed over. She says hello to Ice, who leans in and kisses her lightly on the cheek, and then he heads inside. Finally she walks into my arms, hugs me and starts crying.

  “I can’t believe Giselle’s gone,” she says, her nose stuffed from crying. “And the kids, too. Oh, God…the kids.”

  “I know, sweetheart.”

  “When I think about that being you, dead like Giselle, I don’t know, I just…I’m sorry, Fire. I didn’t sleep with Caelin, I just wanted to be loved, to be missed. And I felt that with you leaving and not calling, you’d chosen your job over me. ”

  “You didn’t sleep with him?” I ask, pulling back.

  “I didn’t,” she says. She folds her arms, steps back from me. Then, her eyes unable to meet mine, she wipes away the tears and says, “But I did kiss him.”

  I don’t say anything. Honestly, I can’t think about that right now. Without a word of acknowledgment, because I’m afraid I’m going to say some truly awful things, I step around her and say, “I need to check on Xavier and the kids.”

  She reaches for my hand, but the image of her kissing that creep doesn’t sit well, so I pull my hand away, unwilling to let her touch me.

  “Fire…” she says.

  “It’s okay, Adeline. I’ll get over it, but we have more pressing matters right now.”

  “Why don’t you talk to me?” she says.

  I turn and say, “What do you want me to say, Adeline? I love you, it’s okay?”

  “But it’s not okay!”

  “I know. But I do love you, and I’ll have to find a way around this. In the meantime if you could keep your mouth off other men, that would be the bee’s knees.”

  “He said you beat him up.”

  I feel my expression turn to what she calls “dead eyes.” This is my pre-meltdown face. My getting-close-to-going-nuclear face.

  I can’t believe she called him!

  “I was kind,” I snarled. “If I did things the way I wanted to, he’d be a rotting corpse on our front lawn!”

  “Calm down,” she says.

  “You wanted to talk, right? I’m talking. I’m telling you I know this is my fault as much as it’s yours. I didn’t make you kiss him. And I don’t want to think what you’d be doing with him if I were still gone. But I’m trying to be an adult here. I’m trying to keep it together long enough to find our kids.”

  “I never stopped loving you,” she says. “But I couldn’t see that through all the anger.”

  “I don’t blame you.”

  “Do you think you’ll find our kids?” she says.

  From the Barracuda’s trunk, a muffled banging starts. Adeline turns and looks at the car. She looks at it, listens again
to the banging, and then she turns and says, “Who do you have in there?”

  I have the keys, and the trunk is locked, so really I don’t have to tell her anything. But I’m not into keeping things from her so, “I have Diaab’s boys.”

  “In the trunk?!”

  “Yes, but they’re comfortable, if that matters.”

  With that said, I head inside and, holy cow, there are a ton of pre-teen girls! I immediately see several older girls together talking. One of them is Carolina. Already she’s looking better, and so beautiful—every bit as beautiful as my Brooklyn.

  Eliana touches my arm and I jump.

  “I was just thinking of my daughter,” I tell her. “She and your niece are about the same age.”

  “Ice said you had a bit of luck, but he’s talking to Xavier right now, trying to help him figure this situation out.”

  “We have some leads,” I say, giving up nothing.

  I see Xavier and he raises an eyebrow in my direction. He’s got that look on his face that says he’s overwhelmed, but feeling good-natured about it. That look is a lot better than the other looks I’ve seen him wearing lately.

  He turns back to Ice, who’s writing something down on a piece of paper on the countertop.

  “Anything promising?” she asks.

  “We got the guy’s kids, interrogated them, and then kidnapped them, They’re in the trunk of my car right now,” I tell her. Looking more closely at her, I say, “I didn’t realize how beautiful you are.”

  This stills her. “I don’t know how to take that,” she says. She’s looking at the mess that’s been made of my face, but not saying anything about it.

  “It’s better than being called ugly,” I say, dispassionate. “So I guess it’s a compliment, although I was really just saying it because it caught me off guard.”

  “Why?”

  “Adeline is gorgeous, like you, but she couldn’t do what you can do, what you did. The toughest girls, they always seem to have a rough look about them. You’re like…unblemished in any way.”

  She laughs, then looks over at Ice, who is now looking up at her. I feel their connection, how strong it is and I wonder why they’re not together.

  “My brother likes you,” I say.

  “I know.”