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

  “I thought I proved that already.”

  “You had a concussion,” Draven said, frowning, “you weren’t in your right mind.”

  “I was operational, though.”

  “But it’s taking a toll, right?” Draven asked.

  “A bit, but I’m here, aren’t I?”

  “When you see someone you love…die, it changes you. When you kill someone that someone else loves, when you become that person’s nightmare, it changes you, haunts you, and in some cases, it can ruin you. This is the world we live in. And these are the lives we’ll have to take to protect ourselves and the ones we love.”

  “Who do you love?” Orlando asked.

  Draven stopped, turned and glared at Orlando. “Right now I don’t love anyone that needs protecting.”

  “So how do you go on? I mean, if you’re going to paint this ultra bleak portrait of the future, and tell me I have a good thing with Veronica—which I do when she’s not sobbing for hours on end about her dead grandparents and this crappy new existence—then where do you fit in to all this?”

  He studied Orlando for a long time, the wheels in his mind turning. “I don’t know,” he finally admitted. “Tasks, I guess. Survival so that I can get through these times, find something to love, maybe someone to be with if that’s what fate holds for me.”

  “This isn’t exactly the ideal dating climate,” Orlando said.

  This had Draven thinking about the couple back on Woodlawn just doing it in the open without a care in the world. Orlando was right. Before, there was the internet, clubs, gyms, grocery stores—all great places to meet women. But now…now there were severely limited choices. Maybe he’d never have someone to love. What would life even be worth at that point? He thought about this until he didn’t. The truth was, he was done with this life. And he wasn’t going to California.

  “Maybe one day I’ll find my Veronica, someone to lose myself in,” he said without a trace of emotion. “But right now that’s not even on my radar.”

  “What is on your radar?”

  “We have enough food and resources right now,” Draven told him. “It’s not ideal, but we’re not starving. We’re not desolate.”

  “My dad says we’ll be fine,” Orlando said.

  “He’s lying to you.”

  “My father may be a lot of things,” Orlando said, defending his old man, “but a liar isn’t one of them.”

  “The day when you’re not fine,” he said, walking by the Ross discount store, “it’s going to come one way or another. Personally I’d rather go out in a gun battle, or a knife fight, or even being beaten to death with a pipe wrench long before I’d want to waste away from hunger, malnutrition or sickness.”

  People were going in and out of the Ross, mulling about, talking with each other, just hanging out. Further into the parking lot, some guy was bashing another guy’s head in on an old sedan and no one cared. On the pavement was a bunch of things that had spilled out of a ripped plastic bag. There were eyeballs on the merchandise, but no one was going for it.

  “Do you really think it will come to that?” Orlando asked, his gaze locked in on the madness unfolding.

  “Look around at all these people, at these houses, at the lawlessness. How many deaths are we responsible for? You participated in one. Since this started, I’m personally closing in on double digits. How many will it be in a month? Six months? A year?”

  More people were now joining the fight, some of them running out of the half burnt store to give and get their licks. For a second, Draven thought of joining them. The idea of being able to hit something or hurt something held a certain lure. He was so distraught by Eudora’s suicide that he wanted to beat the sadness out of him. Really just stack all that pain on the end of his fists and give it to someone else for awhile. Someone crappy. It wasn’t his fight, though. He’d soon have his own fight to contend with.

  “I dreamt of the ginger,” Orlando admitted.

  Looking at the twenty-something kid, slightly taken aback, he said, “I did, too.”

  “Her face was a mess when we were done with her.”

  “I know,” Draven said, unable to stay the image.

  “I think I got her eye with a rock,” Orlando said as someone started firing a gun and killing the people in the crowd.

  Draven stopped, Orlando stopping with him.

  Up ahead, they heard the sound of a big engine approaching. Whatever it was, it sounded intimidating. A Humvee suddenly appeared and armed troops hopped out of the vehicle. They began pepper-spraying the crowd. The mob dispersed immediately. A man’s voice took to a bullhorn, telling everyone to get on their hands and knees, that dissidents would be executed on sight.

  “Come with me and hurry!” Draven said.

  They made a run for a nearby van. Both of them ducked behind it and watched as the soldiers disarmed the men and women. After that, they got in their Humvee and took off. People started shouting and throwing things at the truck, and that’s when someone started hitting someone else, spurring on the fights once more. The tussle was short lived, however, due to burning eyes and skin.

  “What exactly are we looking for?” Orlando asked. “Because you’re not following the map Nyanath gave you.”

  Draven was still thinking of his grandmother. And of the dreams. They were so bad, he hardly got any sleep, and what sleep he got was fitful, overshadowed by struggle.

  Everyone he’d killed over the last two weeks was in his head, vying for his attention, just waiting for him to close his eyes and drift off so they could haunt him without interruption. Murder was a disturbance you couldn’t shake off, a sickness of the heart that sat in your chest like a smooshed together ball of lead.

  “There’s no guarantee of an afterlife,” Draven said as they stood and moved on. “You have your faith, the hope that you can stand before God and rationalize your life, but maybe there is no God. Maybe life is reincarnation. Or maybe when you’re dead, everything left of you will just decompose and become part of the earth. You never know, we could be standing on our ancestors, those who came before us, died before us, became part of the earth beneath our feet.”

  “Where are you going with all this?” Orlando asked.

  “The only guarantee you have in this life is that you’re living now, and you’re going to die soon enough, so you make the most of what you know. That was before. We’re now in the after. And in the after, the only consequences we have left to face are consequences of our own making. You can’t think in terms of life or death, living or dead, salvation or damnation.”

  “So if I have to kill, you’re saying I should just do it without thought or hesitation?”

  “That’s exactly what I’m saying,” Draven said, serious.

  “And if I’m hungry, thirsty, or cold, I just steal what I need and feed when I’m hungry, not caring if it’s someone else’s food I’m eating or their things I’m taking?”

  “It’s not so black and white,” Draven answered.

  In the distance, the departing sound of the Humvee’s engine fell silent, but then the bullhorn cut through that silence echoing the same message they’d heard only minutes ago. This had Draven wondering where those guys were staying, what they were eating, how they saw themselves in this new apocalyptic dark age. Were they the gatekeepers? The law? Justice? Were they former military? FEMA? Cops without wives banding together to try to keep the peace?

  “Do unto others before they do unto you,” Orlando said, the curiosity burning bright in his eyes. “Like that?”

  “Sort of, but not exactly. If we’re going to travel with others, as men, we must feed and clothe those who cannot do so for themselves, and we must do this before we feed or dress ourselves. The girls, me, your father and uncle, Eliana and your mother…this is your pack, your tribe, your people. You protect them and care for them first. And you defend them first. So right now, you and I are just two people, but we are tribe. So I protect you and you protect me.”

  �
��So for now, we’re looking for food, but we are doing it peacefully, stealing what’s not being used, and trying our hardest not to infringe on the well being of others, even if it takes a long time.”

  “Normally I’d say yes,” Draven said.

  “But we’re fed, we have water and shelter and we’re not in imminent danger,” Orlando argued. “So why would this be any different?”

  “If someone tries to take from you, go all the way to protect yourself,” he said. Then: “Could you have killed that woman in the street? Beat her to death with Chase’s bat the same way I did?”

  Orlando looked away, seemed to give the question due consideration.

  “If you can’t say yes, then you put your tribe in danger,” Draven said. “That’s not having my back, or your family’s back. If you have one enemy, you must dispense of her or him as quickly and as efficiently as possible because there could be another in the wings, or two, or ten. There could be some guy in a second story window lining up a shot the same way I stood in the second story window of my own home shooting the first wave of attackers. I’m proof you have to worry about the second guy, the sniper, death from on high.”

  “Do you really think it will come to that?” Orlando asked.

  “I do. Especially on this trip. This trip is probably the most dangerous thing you’ll do in your life. It’s the desperation of people right now, the lawlessness of what’s to come, and they’ll want what you have—food, supplies, transportation and especially your women.”

  “Our women?”

  “No one will want to talk about this, but we are men and men have needs and desires. Most of these dick farts you see on a daily basis spend their whole lives trying to figure out how to get laid in a society where it’s wrong to inappropriately touch a woman, or move too fast, or be overly aggressive with your words or language. What happens if all you have to do is pick the girl, then take her and have your way with her? That’s what Eliana has been preaching to the girls. That’s why they haven’t showered, or bothered with makeup. That’s why they wear baggy shirts and sweatshirts, tight bras, guys’ pants and shoes. They’re terrified of being wanted by those guys who couldn’t get a woman in civil times but have no problem taking one in these increasingly uncivil times.”

  “I wouldn’t want to be a woman in the dark ages.”

  “These are about to be the dark ages, Orlando. We’re at the edge of that abyss, getting ready to descend.”

  “Humankind made it before,” Orlando said, “they’ll see their way through it again.”

  “How very optimistic of you.”

  “You think I’m wrong?” the kid challenged.

  “Time evolved into the dark ages, and then they evolved out of them. People knew hard times and they lived in them because they had no choice. We lived our lives with the benefit of choice. Choice to work at a Starbuck’s or a bookstore. Choice to fight for a living, or play sports, or write books. People didn’t have much choice in those times. Life was grueling, miserable, always dangerous. You couldn’t choose to go to the grocery store and buy frozen burritos or a head of lettuce or a steak. You had to make your flour, grow your lettuce, own a cow and slaughter it yourself. Choice. It’s what we’re used to. It’s what made society so good, but it prepared us for nothing.”

  “That’s what my dad has been saying.”

  Leveling Orlando with the most serious face he knew, he said, “Chances are good you’ll be dead in a year after having died a horrible death. This is your fate, my fate, our fate and the sooner you embrace it, the better prepared you’ll be to adjust and survive. But make no mistake, your life holds no value for anyone but you and your tribe, and if you become someone’s wall, they’ll run right through you and never think twice.”

  Orlando stepped back, visibly reeling by the abrupt and rather forceful diatribe of words.

  “How did you get this way?” he asked.

  “I buried my grandfather after the BLM and the Feds shot him to death,” Draven admitted. “And I took care of my paralyzed grandmother because they shot her in the back when she tried to haul my dead grandfather inside the house to safety. They were shot on their own property, in violation of both state and federal laws.”

  “I heard something like that,” he admitted, unable to hold Draven’s eyes.

  “It was wrong, yes, but dead is dead. And paralyzed was permanent. So I was raised to fight, to defend myself, to go to jail for winning a fight rather than suffer the consequences of losing a fight.”

  “But you seemed so normal before this,” Orlando said.

  “I was never normal. Nice, yes. But normal? No. There’s a saying that says ‘Never mistake kindness for weakness.’ There are people like me everywhere. People who are nice, congenial, aware of the needs of others and willing to put those people before themselves. I am that way because in a second, without a moment’s thought or consideration”—he said, snapping his fingers—“I could end your life. Just extinguish your light and that would be that. When you don’t fear for your life, when you fear for what you’ll do to others if forced down that road, you begin to think about the more important things in life, things that don’t involve fear, or chest thumping. That’s why karate students are always so polite, why they have good manners and genuinely feel good to be around. Send one of those students, a guy or a girl like me, down that long dark road, and you will see something else entirely.”

  “Like Eliana?”

  “Yes.”

  “I heard she stabbed a guy in the ear with an icepick.”

  “She did.”

  “My father said her eyes were jet black and vile,” Orlando said. “His words not mine.”

  “That’s how they get when you’re in the fog of war, when you’ve been touched by the killing chill, when all you can think of is to burn the fields and lay waste to everyone.”

  They came to an apartment complex bisected by a road. On the other side of the small neighborhood was a shortcut to a parking lot and the more seedy edge of another neighborhood not as nice as Kenwood.

  “Does it seem too quiet to you?” Draven asked.

  “I guess.”

  “Let’s hit this neighborhood first, see what we can get,” he said. “Keep your eyes open, just in case.”

  For the next few hours Draven and Orlando scavenged through most of the houses, finding only a few of them still had their original occupants. Judging by the look of some of those houses, the neighbors were helping each other out, and staying under as few of roofs as possible.

  “You taking all our stuff?” the guy who answered the first door said.

  “No,” Orlando answered. “We’re leaving town and just looking for necessities. We were attacked and our homes were burnt down.”

  “That’s terrible,” he said, still wary.

  “It’s about par for the course, my friend,” Draven said. “You have family out of town? Somewhere safer you can go?”

  He shook his head.

  “Well you might want to try. It’s not pretty out there, and soon it’ll be downright ugly.”

  “They’ll get the power on,” he said.

  Draven looked at Orlando and Orlando said, “I hate to break it to you, but that flash in the sky was a nuclear bomb. It fried everything. There’s nothing left to turn on.”

  “The electric companies deal with power outages every year,” the guy said, folding his arms over his chest and narrowing his eyes.

  “This isn’t a downed line or a blown transformer,” Draven said. “Imagine if you put your cell phone in the microwave for two minutes. You’d fry all the circuitry, right?”

  The guy nods his head, reluctantly, trying to decide whether or not he believes him.

  “What would be the chances of turning that phone back on?”

  “Not good.”

  “What if you had no spare parts, no replacement chips, or SIM cards?”

  “Is that what you think is going on?” he said, his emotions now starting to surface.
Draven and Orlando slowly nodded their heads at the same time. “If that’s the case, if what you’re saying is true, then we’re dead. All of us.”

  “Not if you get some food and supplies, and get out of the city.”

  “And eat what?” he said, getting panicked. “Stay where?”

  “There are no instructions for this catastrophe, mister,” Orlando said. “Just gather what you can, as much of it as you can carry, and get to safety.”

  “Me and mine are safe right now,” he said, tucking the emotions away. Then, just before he shut the door, he said, “Don’t take everything.”

  What they managed to gather up fit into a big black Glad bag stuffed into a red Radio Flyer wagon. They had three houses left to loot when they bounded down the steps and grabbed hold of the wagon’s handle.

  Draven turned around, spotted potential trouble—four guys, all of them in their late teens or early twenties.

  They cut through the neighborhood, but not before they let Draven and Orlando know they had been seen. Draven’s internal warning system rocketed him into a state of hyperawareness, but after a few minutes, it felt like there was nothing to worry about. That’s when two more appeared from the other side of the street, walking out from between two houses, as if they’d come from another neighborhood and were cutting through backyards.

  The two of them looked at Draven and Orlando for a long minute. Then one of them yelled, “Where’re you two homos going?”

  “To your brother’s house,” Orlando shouted back.

  “What if I am my brother?” he barked. He was a big kid, a handgun at his side, a challenging look of agitation on his face.

  Draven said, “Are you your own sister, too?”

  The kid’s size didn’t concern Draven, nor did the piece. It was the steely gaze that had him thinking the situation could go either way. When the kid didn’t answer, when the question seemed to both confound and preoccupy him and his stupid friend, Orlando quickly hopped the fence, then said, “Give me the stuff.”