Fire, Ruin, and Fury (Embers Saga) Read online

  With a more conciliatory posture, Ben started on the path to the police van.

  “I reckon your boys’ll be out soon.”

  Confused by Hernandez’s comment, Ben stood silent for the next few moments until both Felipe and Billy emerged from the orphanage’s front doors a few minutes later. They clutched the same kind of envelopes that Kang had given him, and they carried the same stunned expressions on their faces. Waves of shock, heartsickness, excitement, and relief flowed over Ben in rapid succession, and he quick-stepped over to hug them both.

  “That’s enough, boys,” Hernandez interjected.

  Packed tight in the back on the van, they drove an hour out of town, to a clearing next to a ravine that some long-gone creek had carved into the flat, dry plains. Ben, Felipe, and Billy watched from the van’s windows as Hernandez approached a group of men wearing heavy camouflaged coveralls and military-style helmets, their polarized goggles and balaclavas hiding their faces. The cold wind blew Russian thistles and flurries of snow and dust at their ankles.

  Hernandez occasionally turned to point at the three boys until one of the masked soldiers came to retrieve them. The soldier said nothing as he led them to the back of a war-lorry, where a man who introduced himself as Doctor Chin ordered them to strip down. He then shaved their heads, shined bright lights across their scalps and into their eyes and mouths, and poked and prodded them.

  “You’ll feel a pinch,” Dr. Chin told them callously as he plunged various needles into their arms, snapping one vile of blood after another into a small, whirring machine. A rainbow of lights blinked on his computer tablet. “Sit down and stay here,” he commanded as he exited the lorry.

  “One-hundred Kroners, max,” Dr. Chin said indifferently as he handed his tablet to the group’s leader.

  “Well, Hell,” Hernandez huffed. “I think they’re worth at least two-fiddy.”

  The group’s leader lifted his goggles to study the doctor’s tablet. “They look pretty clean—”

  “An’ they know mechanics,” Hernandez inserted. “An’ one of ‘m’s already got a confirmed kill. They’re young, but big for their ages. Lord knows how big they’ll get with a lil’ doctorin’.”

  Sherman stopped reading, drew an annoyed breath, and placed a shushing finger over his lips as he measured-up Hernandez, who fell completely silent. “This isn’t the local bazaar, Officer Hernandez. Please don’t make the mistake of treating it as such.”

  “They’re still too young, and too weak,” Sherman continued. “Only one is proven. Another has a record of volatile behavior. We’ll pay a hundred-and-fifty Kroners for Holland. Seventy-five for Arrivillaga. And we’ll take Washington off your hands as a favor to your brother.”

  Hernandez waited in silence, pretending to think it over, but really waiting to make sure he didn’t interrupt Sherman. “That’ll be fine, Mr. Sherman,” he stammered. “An’ I can get more—prob’ly better ones next time.”

  Sherman rubbed his eyes before turning to walk away. “Burger, pay him,” he sighed. He then circled his finger over his head, prompting his troops to scramble to their vehicles. Engines roared to life, and the one he called Burger hurriedly keyed the payment on his tablet and gestured for the three boys to follow him.

  Life in Sherman’s gang since that day had been hard, dirty business—just as Officer Hernandez promised. Ben had made more money than he had ever seen in his life, and every Kroner was earned with work Ben fought mightily to burry, only to find more dark holes in his stomach.

  Now, after all the years of trauma, he was a team leader—actually giving orders—and he gazed with a small measure of pride out from the mountain overlook at the Nautilus Compound sparkling in the distance.

  “Hey, Dipshit,” Felipe grunted. “You gonna start helping any time today?”

  “I’m comin’, I’m comin’,” Ben answered with a start.

  “It freaks me out when you go all spacy,” Felipe added.

  Ben ignored the critique. “Get ‘em moving. Showers, uniforms, and inspection. We meet Sherman at the main gate in two hours. Tell Nanner if he’s late or sloppy I’m gonna put my boot in his ass.”

  “Nanner’s already ready. Told me to tell you so specifically.” Felipe and Ben traded a grin, both appreciating Bruce “Nanner” Gibson’s relentless, smart-assed humor.

  As Felipe scurried away, Ben paused again to gaze at the gleaming Nautilus and soak in the moment. Then he turned around to join the others in getting ready. Everyone had to be prepared and polished before entering the Nautilus and beholding the splendor, the likes of which none of them had ever seen.

  Chapter 4: The Las Vegas MAC

  (Paul Lancaster)

  Paul Lancaster jostled through the plaza of the Las Vegas Migrant Assistance Center, which was filled to overflowing, a sea of humanity swishing this way and that. Colored lights in the cement pulsed rhythmically to guide the currents of people, merging them and splitting them apart. Paul and his family followed the yellow lights that blinked in unison with the wristbands they’d been given when they disembarked the train from Cali-Sur. As they pushed through the throng, he was grateful for his mother’s foresight in tying them together with a small rope. She seemed unphased, if she was even aware, that his father straggled behind them, unattached, as she shuffled them through the crowd towards the public health center—the Commonwealth’s euphemism for the bio-security screening checkpoint.

  The pace was slow, as each traveler was iris scanned, registered, screened for diseases, and provided an electronic voucher for food and sedatives. The shade of the overhead canopies couldn’t hold back the desert heat in summer and were even more useless against the biting winds of winter. After almost an hour in bitter cold, everyone was shivering and tired as they came closer to the public health center.

  That’s when Paul heard the deafening blast of the warning siren. Back home, the same noise called out fire, mudslide, deluge, or tsunami. Here it signaled haboobs or black-dusters. In any place, it meant “take cover.” Steel shutters rolled down over the heath center’s distribution windows, and while some in front of them began to bang on the windows out of fear, hunger, and desperation, his mother knew enough to turn and scrum their way back to the cover of the train car.

  The guards pacing the catwalks overhead recognized the danger, but also knew the drill. They moved quickly and deliberately to small crow’s nests overhead and activated misting sprinklers. A faint blue-gray gas wafted onto the crowds below, and Paul felt a calm, almost dreamy sensation creep over him with each breath.

  A three-story hologram of Operetta, the OmniComms’ almost ever-present avatar, appeared over the crowd, her sickeningly sweet voice echoing over the platform.

  “Please remain calm. Follow your designated color lines to your station. Obey all MAC security officials as you proceed.”

  She repeated the message on a loop as the morning sky turned dark, and the first wafts of brownish-gray dust floated over the platform. Paul watched the guards on the catwalks don gas masks as they directed the subdued human traffic. In a dreamy daze, Paul and his family arrived back at their train and clambered aboard the railcar with the other passengers. A guard inside the train pulled the ceiling hatches closed and lowered plywood sheets over the windows before jumping down from the boxcar and slamming the sliding door shut.

  The dimming light streaming though the seams in the ancient boxcar was snuffed out in moments, and the car went black. Paul could feel the talc-like dust entering his nostrils and lungs, and he heard shuffling and shouting as the passengers stuffed rags and clothing into the small seams and gaps in the walls, ceiling, and floor. The air became hot and dense as the dust penetrated anyway, parching his throat.

  Paul huddled with his family on the floor, as he had many other times during the megastorms back home. “Hunkerin’,” his parents called it. But this was somehow more terrifying. The darkness. Strangers all around. The din of a thousand tons of sand scouring the roof. The dull ache of h
unger in his empty stomach. The spinning sensation from the sedatives in his bloodstream.

  It was getting to his sister Victoria, as well, sending her into small, subtle dry heaves. His mother gently pulled back her hair into a pony tail and held it there. He reached out to find his sister’s hand in the dark and gently rubbed her back.

  At long last, a man crouching next to the boxcar’s door frame lit a headlamp he had fished from his knapsack. The light shone like a blade, cutting to and fro through the dusty haze—here and gone. But Paul was so relieved by the presence of any light at all that his anxiety subsided.

  Though time crept slowly in the boxcar, Paul reckoned it was over two hours before the first peach-orange streams of natural light began to penetrate the seams of the boxcar. With the strengthening light, voices began again outside, followed by shuffling footsteps. Then shouting, and finally the CRACK-POP of gunfire. He looked at his father, sitting in a ball in the corner, shaking from withdrawals, and he felt as ashamed as he was afraid.

  The stranger with the headlamp snatched his attention again, this time standing up with a screwdriver, and hurriedly detaching a metal pole from the wall. Stepping over the other passengers on the floor, he barred the door with it and leaned-in to keep it in place, just as angry hands began wrestling with the exterior door latch. The stranger grimaced to keep the door shut. Paul unconsciously leapt to his feet and went to the aid of the stranger. Without a word, the man guided Paul into position leaning on the pole. He then crouched down and reached into his knapsack again.

  The stranger drew a pistol, causing a fearful gasp among the passengers.

  How the hell did he get that on the train, they pined. But the man was unphased. He steadily aimed the pistol at the boxcar’s door and cocked the hammer—poised to put down anything that came through. No one said a word for several uneasy moments—an eternity to Paul.

  More bursts of gunfire outside, more shouting and screaming, and the angry hands on the latch finally gave up.

  The stranger remained crouched, eyes laser focused on the door until the sun streams graduated from peach-orange to yellowy-gold, and the shouting and gunfire became more distant and infrequent.

  It was still and quiet for some time before Operetta’s voice rang out. “The platform is secure. All visitors remain in your positions until further instruction.”

  The stranger rose back to his feet and placed a hand on Paul’s shoulder, relieving him of his duty on the bar. He put his pistol back into his knapsack and removed the pole from the door. He pulled the handle and slid open the door to reveal a platform inches deep in ash-like dust. Masked guards trudged through the powder, barking orders, and waving to passengers to remain in their rail cars.

  At long last, when boredom and irritation had finally superseded Paul’s terror, a flatbed cart pulled up next to their boxcar, and two soldiers began passing out jugs of water and shiny-foil food packets. As the distraction of sustenance passing through the cabin faded, fear and suspicion of the stranger with the illegal weapon crept back into the minds of the passengers. For his part, the man just squatted on the floor gazing fixedly on the wall in front of him and guzzling water from his jug.

  When the speakers announced permission to disembark, Paul saw some of the passengers began exchanging glances.

  Do we tell? he wondered, along with the others. …He can’t have a weapon here. He could rob us—or worse—once we get moving again, and no one would hear him over the noise of the train.

  Paul could taste the tension in the boxcar, and he couldn’t deny his own doubts. But he mostly felt admiration for the stranger—and a guilt-tinged desire to take his mother and sister and go wherever this man was going.

  Paul’s father got to his feet suddenly, as if he had heard Paul’s thoughts, stumbled toward the boxcar door, and unceremoniously hopped down to the platform.

  “Be right back,” Kahleb grunted. Before Nessa could object, Kahleb had vanished into the milling crowd. Paul looked to his mother questioningly, but she could only offer a look of disappointment. That expression soon changed, though, as she started frantically rummaging through her knapsack, and her face went pale. She keyed at her wrist-plat, and then looked back to Paul, speechless and heartsick.

  In less than an hour, Kahleb emerged from the crowd, newly energized and excited—with the tell-tale glassy eyes of methylhol. He hopped back aboard the train, offering a lively greeting to Victoria, who pulled away in disgust. Agitated by the affront, but still manic, his father then looked to Paul—knowing better than to catch his mother’s bitter glare. Paul also turned away, though he knew the cold shoulder would only hasten his father’s crash.

  In a couple hours—maybe sooner—he’ll come down. There’ll be an outpouring of regret. Teary and promises that it’ll never happen again. Then, when he’s siphoned the last bit of dignity out of us, he’ll pass out. Eight to twelve hours later, he’ll wake up with the shivers and shakes already setting in. The sickness’ll consume him again, bit by bit, ‘till willingly leave us destitute for another fix.

  Nessa, who’d been “managing” his father’s disease for years, stood up from the floor and edged toward her fidgety husband. She leaned in.

  “Enjoy it,” Paul heard her whisper. His father glanced back at her, pretending not to understand what she meant—refusing to acknowledge what they all knew. What everyone in the boxcar knew. But there was something in her tone that even Paul recognized as new. Over the years, Paul had seen her sympathetic, tearful, angry, and even resigned. But this was something else.

  Nessa summoned Paul and Victoria to her, and they renewed their trek through the crowds to the public health center, leaving his father behind in the car. When the nurses had finished their scans, a surly fat woman in an enviable, puffy gray trench coat handed each of them their rations. The woman looked in vain for Paul’s father, trying to keep her inventory right.

  “Kahleb Lancaster? Where’s Kahleb? I can’t give his ration pack without him here.”

  “His rations aren’t my concern,” Nessa answered flatly. The woman shot her an exasperated look as if to say, “not my concern either.”

  Nessa snatched their ration packs and lead Paul and Victoria to the edge of the plaza, where the crowd was thinner. They sat down on the cold, dusty concrete, and she encouraged them to eat slowly, giving Paul his first hint at the damage his father’s latest binge had done.

  We’re out of money, Paul realized. He could sense the panic beneath the surface of his mother’s stone-jawed exterior. The MAC rations aren’t enough. We’ll get weak, then sick, then—

  As if to intervene in Paul’s spiral, Nessa stood them up and signaled a nearby worker, whom she asked for a V-plat station so she could make a call. Seeing the officer’s skeptical expression, and without explanation to Paul and Victoria, Nessa assured the uniformed woman that she had more than enough currency to pay for the call. The woman escorted his mother to the nearby console of V-plats. Paul watched her key activation codes into a kiosk, which replied with blinking lights on her wrist-plat.

  With the din of people surrounding him, Paul could only glean fragments of the one side of the conversation he could hear. But he figured out that his mother was talking to his Uncle Christian, who was supposed to meet them at the Troy rail station when they arrived.

  Will he come get us? He can’t possibly risk getting all that way. How far can he get? …How far can we make it?

  Paul watched his mother steel her resolve and force a smile before turning around to share the results. Her face immediately went grave and fearful, though, as Paul’s father shoved through the crowd, seething.

  “Whaddaya scheming at now, you bitch?” Kahleb growled, grabbing Nessa’s arm forcefully and yanking her towards him. “Was that fucking Christian? Think your gonna make off without me. An’ take my kids from me?” He jerked her closer. “I don’t fucking think so.” His father’s lip quivered with rage. “You hear me, bitch?” he shouted. “We’re goin’ to Winnipe
g, like I said. So you can just call your goddamned brother back and tell ‘m we ain’t comin’. …And tell ’m to fuck himself while you’re at it.”

  Paul went momentarily catatonic, paralyzed, as his father unleashed a torrent of hateful profanity. Shaking from an escalating combination of fury and methylhol, his father grabbed his mother by the hair with one hand and punched her in the face with the other. Nessa dropped to her knees, with only his father’s grip preventing her from sprawling onto the pavement. Victoria screamed, panning around frantically for someone who might intervene, only to see the crowd backing up in a blend of horror and fascination. His father pulled his mother down to the ground by her hair, climbed on top of her, and punched her again.

  It was the smack of his fist on her face—and her head on the cement—that snapped Paul out of his paralysis. He charged at his father from behind, just as Kahleb wound up for another blow. Paul intercepted his father’s arm and wrenched Kahleb backward. As Paul fell under his father, Nessa crawled away toward the crowd of onlookers, who only backed-up a little more and continued gawking. Kahleb, seeing his prey escaping, turned his fury on his shackler. He flipped over on top of Paul, maniacally enraged, and drew back for a blow.

  PLINK.

  Kahleb’s head whipped forward at the hollow, metallic sound that echoed in Paul’s ears. His raised fist dropped limply to his side, and a trickle of blood tracked down the side of his head. Still straddling Paul, he dabbed at his wound with his fingers before starting to sway. The charge of anger and methylhol left his body, his eyes rolled back in his head, and he crumpled sideways into a heap on the pavement.

  Paul looked up to find the stranger standing over them, gripping the metal pipe from the train. In an instant, the man had put the pipe quietly on the ground, taken a few almost-imperceptible steps backwards, and withdrawn into the crowd. By the time the disturbance alarm sounded and guards converged on their spot, the man was gone. Paul craned his neck in an effort to spot his savior, but the crowd had filled back in, and the man was gone.