The Age of Embers (Book 4): The Age of Exodus

by Schow, Ryan

  The next morning, on our way out of town, Orlando and I head into the neighborhood to grab the jugs we stashed and fill them with water we can later boil or treat with Clorox. We only have to tap one hot water heater to get the fill. After that we lug the jugs back to camp.

  “What’s it like on the bus?” I ask Orlando.

  “Pretty chill,” he says.

  “That tells me nothing,” I say, switching up hands. This water feels like it weighs about a thousand pounds right now.

  “Kind of quiet, I guess,” he says. “Alma and Carolina are pretty close, and Uncle Ice talks with Eliana about strategy mostly. But sometimes they talk in their own personal code. I think they’re trying not to let on that they’re a couple, even though they’ve already made it clear they’re a couple.”

  “That’s just modesty.” When he doesn’t have anything else to add, I ask, “How is Veronica doing?”

  “She’s alright, I guess.”

  “How are you two as a couple?” I ask.

  He looks at me and says, “I think we need to sneak off somewhere.”

  Nodding my head, I know the feeling. There’s something about intimacy with Adeline that has always kept our relationship on the rails during tough times. But these aren’t tough times. These are brutal times.

  “Make sure you bag up, or at least pull out early. We don’t need anyone getting pregnant anytime soon.”

  “I know, Dad. I don’t have any condoms, but I’ll be careful.”

  I look at him seriously and say, “I’m not joking. Don’t take this lightly.”

  “I know,” he says. “I’m responsible.”

  Back at the vehicles, we load up and head out of the city, far enough into Iowa to be passing nothing but farms and farmlands for hours. Fortunately I80 takes us along the outskirts of Davenport, but up ahead is some kind of a casino. I ease off the gas, tell Adeline to use the binoculars to see ahead. It looks like there’s a mob of people in the highway.

  She looks through them and says, “I don’t know what they’re doing. There are just a bunch of people there.”

  “Any of them armed?” I ask.

  “Not really,” she says, hesitant. “Maybe a few from what it looks like.”

  I slow the vehicle to a stop. The other vehicles slow down and pull to a stop behind me. Draven, Ice and X head my way for a SITREP.

  “Maybe forty or fifty people up there,” I say, handing Ice the binoculars. He looks through them, then hands them over to Draven and Xavier. Eliana joins us, waiting for her turn to look through the binoculars.

  “We still have that one round in the rifle?” she asks.

  “Yes,” I tell her.

  “I think I should ride on top of the bus. I can use the scope to identify hostiles. If they don’t part for us, I’ll shoot the first one to draw on us and you plow through there at full speed no matter how many of them try to block you.”

  She looks at me when she says this. The lightless heat in her eyes rattles me a bit, I won’t lie. Still, I nod my head. She’s right.

  To me, Draven says, “They’ll hustle the women and children out of the way fast, leaving only the hostiles. Are you up for this, Fire?”

  “I’m not worried about running people over,” I say, even though I am a little. “I’m worried about the windshield not holding. Or people shooting it out the second they realize we’re not pumping the brakes.”

  “We can get the kids and Adeline on the bus with us,” Ice says. “You just keep your head low and next to the A-pillar.”

  Just thinking about what I’m agreeing to has my stomach swelling up into my throat. I don’t want to do this—just barrel through a crowd of people minding their own business.

  “Is there another way around?” I ask.

  “No,” Ice says, firm.

  “If they’re in the road, it’s because they want to stop drivers going through, or because they just don’t care,” Xavier says. “We need to show them they can’t stop us and they need to care enough to move their asses and quick.”

  “Okay,” I hear myself say. I feel detached from the statement, the reality of what I’m about to do so much worse than the discussion of said reality. “I’ll send Adeline and the girls back to you.”

  The moment I’m alone in the car and we’re in play, I get that terrible feeling in my gut.

  “Just do it,” I tell myself.

  I fire up the beast, drop it in gear and ease off the brake. Behind me, Eliana’s in a prone position on the roof of the bus, sighting up the scene.

  I have my window down to hear more, especially a gunshot from Eliana, but I’m praying to God we don’t have to do this.

  Before long I’m five hundred yards out and closing. People now see me, I’m sure of it. But no one is moving. I speed up, but they hold their positions.

  “Move you fools!” I growl.

  This is the second I can either ride the brakes and toe the line or flat out go for it. I have to toe the line, I have to! Nope. No can do. I bury the gas pedal, my hands and heart trembling, my vision momentarily blurred due to a rush of lightheadedness. The Barracuda roars, the wheels gripping the asphalt.

  “Move dammit!” I scream. I shrink the distance to one hundred yards and closing fast. At this point, I’m committed. Looking behind me, I see the bus is keeping up.

  People start to move, some of them scattering. Then I hear a gunshot and I see a guy in the road ahead drop. The shooting starts, but we’re already out of bullets. Two shots pierce the windshield, slam into the seats. The glass holds though. Another shot enters, nips my trapezius muscle, but only barely. The scream tearing out of my mouth the second the Barracuda smashes into the scrambling masses is sharp and hostile.

  Bodies start hammering the grill, bumping off the sides of the car, the A-pillars. The impact is harsh and jarring, the Plymouth’s body suffering but not faltering. Fortunately I hit everyone hard enough that they don’t come crashing directly into my windshield, and by proxy, my front seat. One does hit the top edge of the roof line, spider webbing the glass, but not so bad that I can’t see through it.

  I don’t even bother looking back because I know it’s a massacre of bloody skid marks and mangled bodies behind me. My only hope is that the kids aren’t traumatized seeing what I’ve done. What we’re doing. Then again, I’m traumatized with what I’ve done and what we’re doing, so maybe having such hope is futile. Maybe this whole train of thought is just one gargantuan waste of time.

  When the caravan successfully clears the scattering crowds, it looks as though none of us survived this unscathed. I wonder how much carnage is on our bumpers. I wonder about the other vehicles. When the two-way crackles to life, it’s Draven calling me.

  “How’s your ride?” he asks.

  “Windshield took a couple of rounds, but so far it’s manageable,” I answer. “Bumper has to be hammered to all hell, and parts of the hood are tented, but this is old Detroit we’re talking about. How’s everyone back there?”

  “Mortified,” he says, his voice grim.

  “Can you see the kids on the trailer?” I ask, referring to Constanza, Ross and now Kamal.

  “Yeah,” he grumbles. “Think deer in the headlights.”

  “Did you…run over any of them?” I ask, cautious about what I say because I know everyone in every car is hearing this.

  “Yeah. Parts mostly. Nothing too big. One of them got caught under Xavier’s undercarriage. It’s still there—oh damn, there it goes. Okay. Good God! Anyway, yeah…looks like I’m going to need to wash the windshield here pretty quick. That’s what I wanted to tell you. If you see somewhere to pull over, it’s like I went through a red rainstorm.”

  “10-4,” I say.

  As the miles stack up, we pass a few houses, then see a red framed General Store (Gas, Donuts and Pizza!), and pull in. The Food Mart has been looted, nothing but turned over shelves and empty beer and soda cases, and a dead clerk. It looks like someone shot him and left him for dead. And dead
, it seems, was about two weeks ago.

  In between two gas pumps we find one bucket with what looks like a squeegee handle sticking out. Draven gets out of the car, walks up and pulls out the dripping wet squeegee. The smell is swampy and dank. But water is water.

  He looks at me and smiles; I smile back, but it’s very awkward. At least the cleaning sponge isn’t shredded and the rubber squeegee looks intact.

  I glance up at the sky, hear a bird screech, then let the warm breeze wash gently over me. It’s good to get out of the ‘Cuda. Some days it feels like riding in a padded cell and all I want to do is scream.

  Draven scrubs the blood off the windshield, then does the same for Xavier’s Plymouth, the bus and finally the Barracuda. I’m out looking at the damage done to the front of the Barracuda. It’s not as bad as I thought, but things are definitely smashed.

  I have Adeline work the lights. Only the passenger side works. The other light isn’t broken, but it’s turned in, the front grill smashed with along the drivers’ side half of it.

  If your eyesight is even halfway good, you can’t miss the blood. It’s all over it. And there’s some hair in the grill.

  Shaking my head, trying to ignore the carnage, I wiggle the light back in place. The fit is tight in the housing, and so far it’s being uncooperative. A few solid kicks puts it back in place. Then again, Adeline’s frowning at me so I decide it’s less violent to check the duct tape on the windshield and passenger window. So far they’re fine, but not great. I apply another layer on the inside and outside holes in the windshield hoping they don’t split. After that, I tape the perimeters once more for good measure.

  “This thing is looking more and more janky by the day,” Ice says as he walks up on me and the purple beast.

  “It pushed a big rig trailer out of the way, then plowed through a pack of morons with minimal damage.” Pointing at the grill and the hood with pride, I say, “This is all that happened. This is why we keep her.”

  Grinning, he says, “You ought to see the bus. All the blood, none of the damage.”

  “It’s the rubber I’m worried about most,” I tell him. Our tires aren’t bad, but we have a long way to go and some horrible travel conditions ahead. “We go through a tire, lose our tread, round the edges wrong and we’re going to have to improvise.”

  “This whole trip is about improvisation,” Ice says. “Did the kids get the next round of antibiotics?”

  “Yeah, they’re good,” I tell him. “Adeline and Eliana are checking on them now.”

  I almost ask about Morgan—who’s been very upset about Ross—but now she’s helping Draven wipe the windshields dry with an old shirt.

  Then something occurs to me. “Who’s watching the boys?” I ask.

  Chase and Phillip went off to take a leak, but now they’re throwing rocks at the General Store’s windows. The ones that aren’t already broken.

  “They’re entertaining themselves,” Ice says with a lopsided grin, like somehow this is all amusing to him.

  “How’s Xavier?” I ask.

  “Hard to say,” he says. “Vacant mostly.”

  “Something’s definitely still off with him,” I say. “It’s not just me, is it?”

  He shrugs his shoulders and says, “He’s your friend.”

  “Yeah. I think it’s Nyanath. He might be having feelings about her, Nasr and Kamal. If that happens this quickly, he’ll withdraw big time.”

  “Kamal is taking a turn for the worse,” Ice finally says. I can tell he needed to tell me, but that he didn’t want to.

  He’s right. Shaking my head, I don’t want to know this. For whatever reason, I keep hoping the Amoxicillin will reverse whatever this sickness is and everything will go back to normal.

  “Has he got the boils yet?” I ask. Solemnly, Ice nods his head. “For the love of God.”

  “Yeah,” he says.

  A slightly stronger breeze gusts over us, the weight of its silence heavy, the smell like earth and dust. It’s a ghost town out here. Just the sounds we’re making, and the faint whispers of a thousand spirits who were once normal people like me and my family.

  For whatever reason, I start to feel really sad.

  “Stop throwing rocks at the store!” someone from across the street yells.

  We all startle. Turning, I see a middle-aged man in a robe with a hunting rifle in hand and a crazy crown of gray hair. He’s bald in the middle of his head, scruffy in the face, skinny in the body. Nothing about him speaks to his sanity. Judging by what I see, this is a nut about to crack.

  Then again, aren’t we all?

  Bowing up, I say, “They’re not doing anything that’s not already been done.” Then, turning to the kids I say, “Keep playing, don’t mind him.”

  “Mind me!” he screams.

  “Go back in your house, butthole!” I roar. Grabbing my empty pistol out of the car, I rack the slide and aim it at him. “I’m not gonna tell you twice!”

  “You gonna shoot a helpless man in his robe?” he howls, like he’s lost his mind. It’s almost like he can’t decide between mania and whining.

  “Damn straight. And I’ll hit you. All I need is one bullet and a reason. Right now I got both, so you’d better shut your piehole, turn around and scurry back into that rat’s nest you crawled out of.”

  He lowers the rifle. I lower my pistol. He stands there for the longest time with the rifle at his side (the end of the barrel sitting on the dirty asphalt) and his middle finger pointed at me.

  He’d put a fist up slowly, then unrolled his middle finger like he was twelve. Then he held it there. Like a slimy little turd.

  A good thirty seconds of this passes. Enough time for it to get uncomfortable. I can feel the tension rising in the others. Or maybe it’s my imagination. Pointing my gun back at him, I begin walking his way, fast, purposeful. He turns and runs, the wings of the butter-cream robe flapping behind him, the barrel of the rifle scraping along the asphalt.

  He ducks inside his house, slams the door shut. I see the drapes move, and a small hole in the fabric appears. Half his face is looking out at me.

  “You holding out on us?” Eliana asks, pointing to my gun.

  “Bluffing,” I say, drawing back on the slide to reveal an empty chamber, then dropping the mag to show it’s dry, too. “I’m fresh out. Same as you.”

  “We need to get the hell out of here,” Morgan says, scared.

  “I second that,” Draven replies.

  Within minutes, we’re back on the road, already weary, with forever and a day to go.

  Chapter Sixteen

  DAY 11…

  The antibiotics aren’t working as quickly as we hoped, but they’re working. Maybe taking some time off from traveling has helped. Last night, after we circled the vehicles and made a fire, we decided it was time to enjoy a few day’s reprieve, let our minds and bodies heal. It’s hard to believe nearly two weeks have passed since we decided to leave Chicago. In some ways, it feels like it’s been twice that long.

  The morning air is crisp and clean, but it’s warming up quickly. We’re camping just outside the town of Newton, Iowa. Running parallel to us is Hwy 6. So far, it looks like a lot of farmland. That means farms. And farms mean living space, quarantine space and maybe even a few beds and blankets.

  “I’d kill for a good night’s sleep right about now,” I tell Adeline.

  “I’d kill for you to take a shower and shave while I take a bed and no longer have to listen to your snoring,” Adeline says.

  Smiling, I look at her. She grins, then takes my hand and squeezes.

  Looking around, the guys look shaggy and dirty, and the girls look ragged, worn down and thin. We’ve all lost weight, we’re all hungry, and none of us have escaped the effects of dehydration. We need water. We need food. We need more gas.

  “I’m hungry,” Nasr says.

  “We all are,” Nyanath tells her little brother.

  Phillip’s stomach growls loud enough for half of u
s to hear. He makes a face then says, “Talking about being hungry makes me even more hungry.”

  In their makeshift tent on the back of the trailer, among our dwindling (nearly non-existent) supplies, Constanza, Kamal and Ross are sitting among themselves. Their bodies are marred with boils, the skin hanging a bit loose from losing weight too fast. Each one of them suffers from bloodshot eyes and mouths so dry their lips are split open and bleeding.

  They look like zombies.

  We try not to look back there, but you almost can’t help it. These three precious souls are dying. Wasting away under the rot of a disease we can’t seem to get a handle on.

  Kamal has a large black boil on his neck, Ross has two on his throat and shoulder. Constanza—patient zero—is faring worse than all of them. Eliana is back there, cutting the boils open and draining too many of them to count.

  Ice is worried Eliana will catch the disease, but her immune system is strong, she is taking the antibiotics with the kids and she’s shown no signs of the illness.

  “I say we move a little closer to town,” Xavier says. “Maybe a couple of us can find an abandoned farm house we can use as base camp.”

  “What if there are people?” Orlando asks.

  He wants to know if we’re going to take someone’s farm by force.

  We’re not.

  “Then we’ll move on until we find a place where there aren’t people,” Ice replies. “We’re survivalists, not savages.”

  This earns him a sideways glance from Xavier, who now knows Ice’s true history over these past two years.

  We draw straws for the recon party. Draven and I draw the shortest straws. I can’t say I’m upset that I’m teaming up with him. He’s proven to be competent at what he does. It’s just, he seems like he might have more screws loose than Eliana, and I want to trust the man or woman who has my back.

  Together, Draven and I scout through the outskirts of Newton, moving from farm house to farm house. This is a slow process because each house sits on a crap ton of acreage, and most of these farmsteads are occupied.