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

  The alpha, the knuckle dragger who called them girlfriends, he turned to Orlando and screamed, “SHUT UP!”

  That’s when Draven drew his blade, whipped it across one guy’s throat, then took a quick step toward the alpha and drove the blade up into the soft hollow of skin just beneath his Adam’s apple.

  He stared deep into the man’s eyes as he realized his fate was a surreal moment, a horror show he wasn’t prepared for. He didn’t blink, didn’t look away. Draven kept his vision wide, though, made sure to he was aware of the remaining two men.

  One of them rushed him, but Draven was positioned for this. In his mind, he’d known this would be the move.

  He snapped a side-kick off the attacker’s chin, sending him stumbling backwards, his teeth rattled. It was fast and ferocious, but this was a kick he’d worked on for years.

  Orlando went after the fourth guy, ducking under a wild haymaker before coming up with a liver shot that had the dirty beta staggering backwards and gasping for breath. Still wired, far from finished, Orlando shoved him off his feet so hard, he landed on his back, gasping for air, wide-eyed and filled with panic. Orlando took a threatening step toward him. The guy tried to both crawl away from the scene and suck in a breath at the same time.

  It was an ugly, terrified, defeated look.

  The beta whose chin Draven rocked turned and scurried away, holding his mouth and trotting a bit sideways. By then, Orlando’s guy got to his feet enough to fall back with the other guy.

  “Should I go after them?” he asked Draven.

  “It’s time to go,” he said.

  He yanked the blade out of the man’s throat. The alpha dropped to his knees, then fell forward, Draven getting out of the way in time. He was still twitching, face down on the pavement and gulping like a fish out of water.

  A red pond began to form around him.

  Orlando suddenly seemed horror-struck looking at all of this, but quite frankly, Draven was suffering the same emotion as well.

  As a martial artist, Draven was only to practice defense, meaning he only engaged with an opponent when he was attacked. Is that what happened here?

  They threatened, but Draven had attacked first. In hindsight, maybe they were only trying to scare them and steal their stuff.

  It doesn’t matter…

  Looking down at the near dead bodies—the alpha and the one whose neck he slashed open—he felt a sickness creep inside of him.

  Taking a deep breath, resigning himself to the task ahead, he knelt down and sliced open the first man’s carotid artery, making sure he cut deep enough to do the job.

  He did the same to the second man.

  When he wiped his blade on the back of the beta male’s shirt and stood up, his eyes found Orlando’s eyes and the expression he saw was one of restrained dread.

  “It was the humanitarian thing to do,” he told Orlando. “Giving them quick deaths. It alleviates unnecessary suffering.”

  Orlando looked like he didn’t know what to say. Like he was struggling for the words.

  “I know,” Draven said. “I get it.”

  “You could have just hit him,” Orlando said, “like I did with my guy.”

  Draven held his gaze, then shoved his blade back into the sheath. “What? So all four of them could have bum-rushed us later? If that happened, maybe we would have survived, but maybe we wouldn’t have. Do you like those odds? Because I don’t.”

  “We would have survived.”

  “You can’t know that,” Draven said.

  “Because we’re the good guys,” Orlando answered.

  “There’s no such thing as good or bad anymore, Orlando. Haven’t you been listening?”

  “I don’t believe that,” Orlando argued.

  “This kind of thinking is going to get you killed. Get your wagon, let’s go.”

  Orlando did as he was told, but Draven wasn’t done speaking.

  “Just so you know, it’s that kind of schoolyard weakness that had you trading punches rather than doing what it took to survive.”

  “I survived.”

  “For now,” Draven challenged.

  “So I should have just killed him them? That’s what you’re saying?”

  Grinding his teeth, staring at the kid, he almost wondered if Orlando was right. “Let’s get out of the open,” he said.

  They left the dead in the parking lot. Draven took the lead while Orlando fell slightly behind. With his situational awareness in high gear (meaning his head was on a swivel), they pulled the wagon into a nearby neighborhood, the wheels on the cracked pavement making too much noise. Up ahead, in someone’s front yard, he saw an abandoned grocery cart with a few too many things in it. He didn’t expect to find anything of value, but it was at least worth a look.

  With a small stick he’d picked up beneath one of the many Chicago trees, he poked around in the mess. He pushed aside an old blanket and found an empty water bottle with the top shoulder crushed in; there were greasy food wrappers and some old candy bars; there was also a cardboard roll that once held toilet paper; and beneath all that, there was a dead rat. It was about the size of a small cat, its mangy fur matted, its body flattened by death and the weight of all this crap.

  “Typical,” Draven muttered, turning away as he let the blanket settle back over the contents of what was really just a dumpster cart on wheels.

  He looked up at the house, saw a small sliver in the drapes close. He wondered if the former owner of this cart found a way inside the house and was now an official squatter.

  “We’ll skip this one,” he told Orlando.

  At the next house, they found four sleeping bags (jackpot!) and a pack of lighters in the back of a kitchen drawer under a bunch of papers, pens, spare keys and a Target gift card. Two houses later, they had sunscreen, Band-Aids, some Advil and a full bottle of Tylenol. All useful if any of them got hurt. Rather, when any of them got hurt.

  That was when Draven found something he never expected to find. The very sight of it sent his heart racing! It might have even caused him to change his mind on that which he’d been planning.

  “What’s got you looking so happy?” Orlando asked.

  “A gravity fed water filtration system with two water straws you guys can use to filter stagnant pond water.”

  “No way,” Orlando said, reverent.

  “Bro, it’s like we just won the lottery!” he said, animated. “Without clean water you’re dead. You get that right?”

  “I’m not one of those survivalists, or whatever, so this isn’t going to mean the same thing to me that it does to you. But I do get it.”

  “Let me explain it to you this way,” Draven said. “Every time you take a regular crap, you can thank me for my contribution. Because water born illness will turn your guts inside out and make you feel like you’re giving birth to an angry badger dipped in hot sauce.”

  “That’s a truly disturbing visual.”

  Smiling, like he’d gotten his point across, Draven said, “Now you know.”

  A few minutes later, Orlando broke the silence. “We could use this, yes?” He was holding up a small grill grate.

  “Yeah. It’s perfect.”

  When he was in the Boy Scouts, Draven got his Wilderness Survival merit badge by sleeping in the woods without anything but three matches and a pound of ground beef. He made a fire and cooked the beef in a patty on a flat rock he’d set in the fire. It was the best burger he’d ever had. Since there was no way they could cook a meal for almost two dozen people on a rock, having the grate would prove useful.

  In the back of one of the cabinets, he found a backpack and a stash of corned beef hash, sardines and olives. He asked Orlando to wear the backpack so he could stay mobile. The kid agreed. Soon they’d filled it with batteries, toilet paper, hats and miscellaneous pairs of sunglasses.

  “We have more than we need,” Draven said. “If you want to head back, I can catch up.”

  “I’m not going without you.”
>
  Shaking his head, thinking this wasn’t a complete waste, but he hadn’t done what he came out there to do, Draven reluctantly agreed.

  They were heading back home when a thrown hunk of metal slammed into the side of Draven’s face. A flash of pain blossomed in his cheek, sparking in him that old, explosive rage. He looked down at the ground and saw a closed combination lock. The silver lock blurred for a moment behind double and even triple vision. He stepped sideways wrong, corrected, then tried to stand still against a surge of vertigo. He put his hand to his head, drew back blood.

  Great.

  “Give us your stuff!” someone shouted.

  Draven looked up, saw the murky shape of a large, male body. Blinking his eyes, trying to clear his head, he stood up straight, looked right at him. As the clarity of sight returned, he realized he was looking at a kid who was maybe fourteen or fifteen years old. He was very tall for his age. Just over six feet. A bunch of his friends joined him—older teens by the look of them, none as large.

  “Why did you do that?” Draven asked. Orlando was next to him, glancing between the blood on Draven’s head and the mob of boys now forming in the street.

  There must be twenty of them.

  Their leader, he had that bad bully look in his eye. The same look he planned on seeing in the eyes of everyone skilled enough or mean enough to survive. On an adult, this would be expected, but on a kid this age, it was worrisome.

  When the kid mad-dogged him with his eyes, offering neither justification nor explanation, Draven reached for his blade but stopped. Movement caught his eye. Instead of knifing this oversized nitwit as an example to the others, he drew a deep breath and knew he’d really stepped into it.

  Behind this big oaf and his high school posse, two adults—both of them grown men—stepped out of the house across the street. They were not men to be trifled with, not with their size or the steely looks in their eyes. They didn’t say anything either. They merely stepped out onto the porch to observe.

  “Say something, you freaking lug nut,” Draven growled at the kid.

  Getting in his personal space, the kid looked down at him and said, “You entered the wrong block with your little wagon.”

  He said this almost nose to nose with Draven. Shoving the kid back, he said, “We realize that now.”

  The kid just laughed, then looked up at his daddy (or uncle or whatever), who had a trucker’s cap on and a few years beard growth.

  “Orlando, go,” he said. “I got this.”

  “No you don’t.”

  “Just take the wagon and go,” Draven turned and hissed.

  “Neither of you are going anywhere,” the kid said. “Not with our stuff anyway.”

  Looking around, Draven took a different tack. Even though the switch inside him was flipped, he let some of the emotions inside of him leak to the surface. He used the emotion to show fear, perhaps even project cowardice.

  “It’s just…we were hungry and went down the wrong road. We’re sorry. We’ll leave.”

  He held up his bloodstained hand and started backing up, but there were people now circling behind them.

  “Get the hell out of here, Orlando,” he hissed low and mean. “Just run.”

  “No.”

  Shaking his head, dropping the act, he said to the kid and those closing in on them, “If you’ll just let us go, we’ll be on our way. We don’t want any trouble.”

  “Looks like you have some good stuff in that Red Flyer,” he sneered.

  “It’s just toilet paper and some batteries.”

  “Every single one of us goes to the bathroom…and we got flashlights and things that might use them batteries.”

  They pressed in closer.

  “Who’s in charge?” Draven finally asked, firm. “I want to talk to your parents.”

  “Except for my dad and his brother up there, they’re gone, man. Everyone’s gone. Don’t you know? If they ain’t here, they ain’t never coming back. That’s how it is. It’s Lord of the Flies twenty-four seven.”

  “How do you even know what that movie is?” Draven asked.

  “My dad watches it on Saturdays.”

  “Look man, I just want to talk to the person in charge,” he said. “I want to make a deal.”

  “I’m in charge,” he said, bowing up. “So you can talk to me.”

  Draven stepped back quickly, whipped out his pistol, shot the kid point blank. His head rocked backwards, blood spatter hitting a few of the guys behind him.

  Turning to Orlando, he said, “Go, dammit!” The kid looked mortified. Everyone did. Turning back to the masses, Draven roared, “Now who’s in charge?”

  The dead kid’s father was stalking down the stairs, his face blistering red, his hands fists at his sides.

  “I am!” he shouted back.

  Draven sent his last round right into the man’s chest. He stumbled backwards, hand to the wound, his eyes wide, all that anger quickly becoming surprise, then dread, and then finally resignation.

  “I can do this all day!” he announced, tossing aside the empty weapon.

  “Then do it,” one kid said, spots of red all over his face.

  Draven was about to get what he originally set out for: a way out, vengeance, a clean death. It didn’t matter what guys took him, or how many of them he took down with him, but he knew this was a one way trip.

  He was never going to leave Chicago.

  Not now, not ever.

  He turned and pushed Orlando away and said, “I said go, you dumb son of a bitch!”

  And that was when they rushed him. These guys weren’t scared. That was what concerned and excited Draven the most. He socked the first attacker in the mouth. Fractions of a second later, the mob overwhelmed him. It was all flying fists and feet. He was punched in the head, the arms, the gut. But he gave worse than he got. For awhile, anyway.

  Then there was an adult in the mix, his punches hurting worse, his voice a ragged tear of cursing and growling. Draven killed this man’s brother, his nephew. He didn’t blame the guy for his outrage, for his need to avenge his family.

  Still he kept at it, thinking of Eudora, of a world without her, without anything—no home, no family, no sense of a future.

  When his legs finally gave out, the thrashing pile of bodies came down on him, crushing his chest, his stomach, squishing the wind right out of him. He couldn’t breathe when a shin found its way across his throat and pressed so hard breathing became completely impossible.

  Am I ready to die? he wondered.

  He thought so.

  That was, in fact, what he set out to do—go out in a blaze of glory. As much as he could fight to protect those he loved, his grandmother was the only person he ever let himself love and now she was gone. Which meant he lacked any real purpose.

  She died so that he could live, though.

  This is what got him.

  He knew her well enough to understand her intentions for him. That’s why he finally managed to work the blade from his side and get it into someone’s body.

  He wasn’t sure what he wiggled the tip of the knife into, only that he heard screaming and knew he’d penetrated flesh.

  The shin dragged itself off his neck, the foot scraping over his face.

  He fought and wiggled under the writhing, violent masses, giving his arm enough range to stab something else. He could barely breathe and there was a knee now riding up on his eye and smashing it with its weight, but that wasn’t enough to stop him.

  Then someone grabbed him by the balls and started to squeeze as hard as they could.

  Seeing red, he devolved from human into animal.

  It happened in an instant.

  Beyond his switch from normal to enraged was another switch he didn’t know he had. His was the plight of a man who knew he was about to die. This secondary switch activated something far worse than rage. He’d cut loose and started stabbing everything he could. He was screaming and thrashing and cutting, stabbing, biting and
clawing at everything in front of him.

  The hand let go of his nuts and the pile began howling and scrambling away from him, which loosened the pile and let him really work.

  That didn’t mean he was out of the woods just yet. The fleeing masses only meant fists and feet could make their way in again. Someone started punching him in the face over and over again, but he just kept stabbing at everything around him.

  The screaming hit a crescendo, which only made him fight harder through the chaos. His energy was waning though, the exertion of will taking a measured toll. He was only human. That’s when he felt the pile settling back down on him. Then someone pinned his arm, and a boot smashed down on the side of his face.

  He left the Dimas household that afternoon intending to pick a fight he couldn’t win. In that, he was successful. But he never expected to change his mind. Not in the middle of the fight. It was unsettling.

  Never in a million years did he imagine he would die a horrible death wanting to live.

  Chapter Seven

  We’re standing over the purple beast, looking at what we’re about to do, not thinking this will work but praying it will.

  “This is going to be the most Jimmy-rigged crap job I’ve ever done on anything,” Ice tells me. He’s not wrong.

  “It’ll have to do,” I tell him.

  The windshield we procured isn’t exactly a clean fit for the Barracuda. We didn’t intend it to be. What we needed was a windshield that was close enough. We found brackets and screws we could use to create mounts on the A-pillars, but whether or not they’ll hold is anyone’s guess. It’s not like we’re making a run up to the store and back.

  The trek across country is at least two thousand miles under conditions we can’t yet know. All I know is this: if we have to do any kind of off-pavement travel (which is bound to happen), the last thing we need are the screws rattling loose and the windshield falling out.

  “I have an idea,” I say.

  Heading inside the Buhari household, I walk straight to the closet that should have freaked me out. I’ve come to think of this as the child-snatcher supply closet. Said closet holds a tremendous amount of duct tape and zip ties that I’m about to put to good use.