The Age of Embers {Book 3): The Age of Reprisal Read online

  The Age of Reprisal

  Ryan Schow

  River City Publishing

  Copyright

  This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you are reading this eBook and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy so that you may read it with a clear conscience and not one day end up in hell over a shitty technicality. Thank you for respecting the hard work of the author.

  THE AGE OF REPRISAL

  Copyright © 2019 Ryan Schow. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, cloned, stored in or introduced into any information storage or retrieval system, in any form, or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical without the express written permission of the author. The scanning, uploading and distribution of this eBook via the Internet or via any other means without the express written permission of the author or publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Author’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents—and their usage for storytelling purposes—are crafted for the singular purpose of fictional entertainment and no absolute truths shall be derived from the information contained within. Locales, businesses, events, government institutions and private institutions are used for atmospheric, entertainment and fictional purposes only. Furthermore, any resemblance or reference to an actual living person is used solely for atmospheric, entertainment and fictional purposes.

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  Cover Design by Milo at Deranged Doctor Design

  Visit the Author’s Website: www.RyanSchow.com

  Contents

  Also by Ryan Schow

  Foreword

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Your Voice Matters…

  Afterword

  Also by Ryan Schow

  THE AGE OF EMBERS SERIES (ONGOING):

  THE AGE OF EMBERS

  THE AGE OF HYSTERIA

  THE AGE OF REPRISAL

  THE COMPLETE LAST WAR SERIES:

  THE LAST WAR

  THE ZERO HOUR

  THE OPHIDIAN HORDE

  THE INFERNAL REGIONS

  THE KILLING FIELDS

  THE BARBAROUS ROAD

  THE TERMINAL RUN

  THE COMPLETE SWANN SERIES:

  VANNIE (PREQUEL)

  SWANN

  MONARCH

  CLONE

  MASOCHIST

  WEAPON

  RAVEN

  ABOMINATION

  ENIGMA

  CRUCIFIED

  Foreword

  ATTENTION READER! Please make sure the book you are reading is the most current version. Earlier versions of this book, even the book released on day one, will admittedly have had a typo here or there, as is often the case. I am alerted to these errors missed by the editors and have gone in and corrected them. This is an ongoing project to insure the book is as close to error-free as humanly possible. To make sure your book is up to date, simply go to your Amazon Account by clicking MY ACCOUNT, then select YOUR ORDERS, and finally DIGITAL ORDERS. There you will see your most recent eBook purchases. On any of these books you will see boxes to the right of the product. Select CONTENT AND DEVICES. This will take you to a line listing of all the eBooks you’ve purchased. Find this book and if there is an update available it will say UPDATE AVAILABLE. Click this for an instant update and then you’re done! You can do this will all your books, even if you bought them months, or even years ago. Thanks so much, and enjoy the book!

  Chapter One

  We hoped to God that being indoors and inside a bedroom wallpapered in aluminum foil would protect us enough from most of the low level radiation the EMP put off. Not to go too basic on you here, but there are three kinds of ionizing radiation we’re worried about right now: alpha particles, beta particles and gamma particles.

  Basically we’re concerned about the effects of radioactive decay on the human body after the blast, which is where gamma rays come in. At the risk of sounding overly technical, you can’t let the fallout sit on your skin—or worse, get into your lungs—or you’ll pretty much become meat soup one day or another.

  Instinctively I know there are other factors to consider, but as you can tell, I’m no nuclear physicist. And being a former Chicago beat cop, or even a DEA agent, they don’t prepare you for this kind of thing. I just know I don’t want to die because I turned into a hot pocket. And I don’t want anyone close to me to die either.

  Me, Adeline, my brother Ice, Eudora, Xavier, Carolina and the nine year old refugee who decided to stay with us, Bianca, are all hunkered down together. We’re waiting out the worst of it in this room covered floor to ceiling with shiny strips of crinkled foil. Next door, Eliana, Draven, Veronica, Orlando, Brooklyn and two more girls we’ve taken in (Alma and Constanza), are doing the same as us. As a group, we knew this was coming. We’re well aware of the drill.

  Seventy-two hours.

  That’s how long we agreed to wait if an EMP went off. We’re officially closing in on that timeline.

  By now everyone’s feeling a little crazy. We don’t want to stare at the foil walls anymore, smell other people pooping into a five gallon plastic bucket in the closet, or listen to the noise of mouths crunching on processed foods, slurping down water, snoring or complaining.

  I won’t lie, it sucks being stuck in here.

  Fortunately for us, and for Chicago proper, it’s been very windy outside. At times, the sides of the house creak and strain against the evening gusts, the whipping force rattling doors and windows.

  Sometimes it’s not that bad, a little howling at worst.

  Sometimes, however, the tune of the wind hits just right and it sounds like someone moaning. Last night, the gusts were so ferocious, we thought the world might be coming apart at the seams.

  Carolina was scared, as was Bianca—who wouldn’t let go of Carolina’s arm—but Eudora said the wind was good. She told the young girl it should blow a lot of the radioactive fallout someplace else as opposed to right down on top of us. I was never in love with the wind, but after what happened in the skies above us, all this wind just might be our saving grace.

  Every so often Ice moves enough of the aluminum foil aside to peek throug
h one of the windows. He’s got a thing for updating us on weather conditions. He’s always talking about the wind. I think he just wants to look outside because he’s cracking inside.

  When it’s gusting outside, he announces which direction the wind seems to be blowing, and if there are any dead animals or insects that he can see. From what we can tell, the weather is definitely weird, but nothing has died in our line of sight, so that’s encouraging.

  “Which direction now?” I ask as my brother stares outside.

  “Looks like it’s blowing east,” Ice tells me. “Northeast, too. But mostly east.” He puts his hand to the glass, then says, “It’s a little hot. Hotter than normal, I think.”

  I put my hand to the glass, look at him and concur.

  “Can a nuclear bomb blow a hole in the atmosphere?” Adeline wants to know.

  As much as I expected her to really fall apart in this situation, especially knowing our kids are next door (having been closest to Eudora’s house when the blast hit), she’s been holding up rather well.

  Actually, I’m impressed.

  It doesn’t hurt that I’ve been holding her, comforting her, basically not being the absent, scatterbrained hard case with a death wish I got to be when I was working fifteen hour days for the DEA.

  Not to get too gross here, even though reality can sometimes get this way, Eudora is sitting in what she’s been calling her “stinky plastics.”

  She refused to nestle her bare butt on the rim of the bucket to relieve herself. And she sure as hell wasn’t having anyone help her go to the bathroom in a dark closet.

  Being wrapped in plastics, she assured everyone she could change herself out when the seventy-two hours were up. Of course, this has done nothing for the growing stench.

  Sitting in poopy diapers makes you no less intelligent, though, which is why she chimes in with an answer to Adeline’s question about holes being blown in the atmosphere.

  “Scientists speculated about this before, throwing caution to the wind when they were testing high altitude nukes back in the sixties,” Eudora says. “I read somewhere they wanted to see what affects this would have on the atmosphere, and that they weren’t really sure if what they did would end the world or not.”

  “And?” Adeline asked.

  “Other than creating some pretty crazy weather anomalies—at least from what I can remember—there were no lasting affects on the atmosphere.”

  “If what we felt was the only nuke,” I hear myself saying, “it would have to be big to zap the entire country, right?”

  “You’d need more than one,” Eudora said. “And based on what we felt a few days back, this was no small affair.”

  The older woman was sitting in her wheelchair, her gaze having fallen on the nine-year old refugee, Bianca. She and Carolina had become inseparable since they were first rescued from that halfway house for sex slaves not too long ago. Neither of them had spoken ten words since this all began, but the girl didn’t leave Carolina’s side once except to step into the closet and do her business.

  “What we need is a Geiger counter,” Ice says. “Something to measure the radiation. We need to know if it’s safe to move, or if our faces will just end up falling off in a few years.”

  I cast a careful look at Adeline.

  She doesn’t want to leave. She knows Chicago is fast becoming a toxic wasteland, but she loves our home and isn’t terribly excited about going all the way to California.

  “That’s just insane,” she’d said.

  If not for my brother Rock and the message he left on my phone, Adeline would be right. We’re a tight family, though. At least we once were. Now that Ice is alive, I believe we can be that family again. What I don’t say, though, what I’m now thinking, is that Rock could be in trouble in Sacramento. And even if he’s not, we up to our necks in it here in Chicago.

  Still, the whole idea of traveling that far seems downright crazy. What I don’t tell my wife is if we’re busy planning for an impossible task, one that will have almost too many factors to consider, it will keep our minds off the suspicion that much of our civilization is about to become one giant dumpster fire.

  That’s when we hear noises just outside the door.

  “Shhh,” I tell everyone, tiptoeing up to the bedroom door. Gently pulling the aluminum foil wrapping aside, I ease my ear against the cool wood of the door and listen.

  Looking back, my eyes meeting Ice’s eyes, I say, “Someone is rifling through our stuff out there.”

  “Eliana?” he whispers.

  I shake my head. Not Eliana. She knows better than that, as do the kids. “I think we have intruders,” I tell everyone in hushed tones.

  Ice has his gun out; I grab mine. If we run out of bullets, I’m pretty sure we can take down whomever is left using Eudora’s diapers as a weapon, but let’s keep that between us for now.

  We’ll call that Plan B. Or Operation Poopy-Pants.

  “I’ll go first,” I tell my brother. “You head to the second floor, I’ll leapfrog to the third.”

  He nods, then we go.

  The downstairs floor isn’t exactly ransacked, but it’s clear whomever is in here is looking for valuables. Not jewelry or money, perhaps they’re just trying to get some survival items. We’ve got plenty of food, for sure, and water, but they would have already seen that and moved on.

  Ice heads to the second floor in stealth mode. I clear the first floor bathrooms and the coat closet, and then I’m heading to the third floor, quiet as a mouse, listening for the sounds of intruders.

  It seems pretty quiet.

  By the time I get to the second floor, Ice is done and we’re both moving to the third floor. That’s when we see a head poke out followed by a pistol.

  We’re suddenly dodging gunfire.

  Ice and I pull back and press ourselves out of the line of fire. It blows having the low ground in tight quarters, but we’ve dealt with worse so we dig in.

  I look at Ice and he’s calm as a Hindu cow.

  When he’s ready, he gives me the nod. Together, we ascend the stairs, sticking to the inside wall knowing there’s no place left for this person, or people, to hide.

  We hear voices, exchange glances. Another series of gunshots blast several holes in the wall opposite mine and Ice’s head.

  This son of a—

  Clenching my jaw, grinding my teeth, I look back at Ice. I swear to the good Lord above, if I get killed in my own home by a couple of crackheads…

  We get to the top of the stairs, take more fire, peel off one another. When we have the hallway sufficiently covered, we advance ground, heading for Orlando’s room where it sounds like they’re now holed up.

  “These are strange days, my friends,” I say in a loud voice, just outside Orlando’s bedroom. “No need to lose our lives over a simple misunderstanding.”

  “Who are you?” one of them asks, his voice slightly muffled.

  “I live here,” I tell him. “This is my brother, Ice. We’re riding this thing out, same as you. The misunderstanding is that you’re here when you need to be elsewhere.”

  Two more gunshots ring out, both rounds exploding through the wall right next to my face. Drywall dust powders my eyeballs and to be honest, as pissed off and as cranky as I’ve been—as we’ve all been—the value I’ve started to place on human life has officially taken a turn for the worse.

  All God’s creatures are potential enemies now, all just targets if it means protecting my family. Or maybe I’m just wired wrong.

  I don’t know.

  Lately I’ve wondered if yielding to my more animal instincts is the right thing to do. I’ve been praying about it every night since this started. So far I have no answers. But this isn’t the time for introspection. Self-examination in the middle of a crisis is a death sentence.

  I creep my eyes across the threshold, see one guy looking out the bedroom window, signaling someone outside. The other guy is half watching him, half watching the door. Both men have
white painter’s masks over their mouths and noses. This lookout spots me, his eyes flashing wide.

  I squeeze off two rounds, put them both down.

  “I think we have company,” I tell Ice, motioning him inside. Isadoro pops his head around the corner, then slides past me and checks the closet and under the bed. I head for Brooklyn’s room, clear it. Meeting back in the hallway, his face is a shade lighter.

  “There’s like two or three dozen of them outside,” he tells me.

  Right now my heart is kicking more than I realize and I tell myself to stay calm. That even though this is my house, I’m prepared for this.

  My family is prepared.

  As we’re headed down the stairs, Ice whispers, “I’ll go out front, you take the rear. If they don’t go away on their own, put ‘em down. No hesitation, just like those two clowns upstairs. And no dicking around. If the fight’s out front, get out front. If it’s out back, know I’m there.”

  Looking at him, frowning, I say, “I’m almost offended at the implication.”

  “It’s both our asses, brother,” he whispers.

  “So you say.”

  The second we make the first floor, Eliana bursts through the back door and says, “Guys, we’ve got a serious problem.”