The Age of Hysteria: A Post-Apocalyptic Survival Thriller (The Age of Embers Book 2) Read online

  The Age of Hysteria

  Ryan Schow

  River City Publishing

  Copyright

  The 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 HYSTERIA

  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

  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 (May, 2019)

  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

  First and foremost, here in America we live in a politically charged climate the likes of which I’ve never seen before. These days I do so much writing and research, I don’t have time for political discourse, nor will I make the time. To be perfectly blunt, I don’t care for politics. As a writer, and ultimately a story-teller, my only aim is to give my readers the best experience possible, and I feel the best way to do this, especially with this subject matter, is through a politically neutral lens. On this plane, I pray that I’ve succeeded.

  Now on to better things…

  In my previous series, The Last War Series, I created a Pinterest page for each book with photos of the characters, places and cars as I envision them. I post many of these photos on the Private Facebook Fan Page as “character introductions” while I’m working on the new books, which I’m told only heightens the reading experience. I have done the same thing with The Age of Hysteria. Below are several links. The first is to the Private Facebook Fan Group, the second to the Pinterest Page for The Age of Hysteria, and the third is to the VIP email list. The VIP email list is merely a way for me to get you updates on the books, pre-release dates, and sale days, not only for this book but for those in several of my other series as well. So, without further adieu…

  CLICK HERE for the Private Facebook Fan Group

  CLICK HERE for The Age of Hysteria Pinterest Page

  CLICK HERE to join the VIP Email List – If you have already read The Zero Hour, enter anyway to get the book as this will add you to the list. Simply disregard the second email because this has the download like to the free book. I do not spam, ever.

  Chapter One

  Sacramento, three days before the attack…

  Amber Gunn drove into the parking lot in front of Roque Dimas’s shop and no one knew what to do except stare and try not to wet themselves. Maybe it was because she was the Hollywood “It Girl,” or maybe it was because she’d driven into the lot in a pearl blue Lamborghini Aventador with black matte striping and burnished copper rims.

  “Wow,” Roque said.

  He ran a hand through his hair, stroked his longish beard to smooth down the more unruly strands and pulled his white t-shirt at the bottom to straighten out any wrinkles.

  The thing about this red-headed Hollywood starlet was wherever she went, Amber Gunn seemed to make a statement. The statement she was making right then was clear: I can show up anywhere, even on the industrial side of Sacramento, and my life is still so much better than yours.

  “Bro, that’s a four-hundred thousand dollar car,” Leonardo said, breathless. “And I think that’s Amber Gunn. In fact, I’m sure of it.”

  “It looks just like her,” Roque “Rock” Dimas said.

  “You want me to help her?” Leonardo asked.

  He was Rock’s twenty-three year old apprentice. The skinny Italian kid was learning to vinyl wrap cars with both the precision and the speed needed to help take Rock’s shop—Pimp’d Out Rides—to the next level.

  “I got it,” Rock replied, stepping outside to greet her. Then, almost as an afterthought, he said, “But I promise I’ll introduce you.”

  The Lamborghini’s door opened in typical fashion: straight up rather than out. The woman who got out of the car moved with such liquid grace it stilled him. With long coppery-red hair, big cat’s eye glasses and an overly bejeweled hand, Amber Gunn made her appearance.

  Rock set his mouth in a flat, expressionless line, but the truth was, the woman was breathtaking. Looking at her, all he saw was shoes, legs, skirt, blouse and hair. Rock and Amber couldn’t be more different. He was scuffed white Converse, ripped blue jeans and a vintage white t-shirt in need of a wash. She was ready for the club; he was ready to sweat out the next three jobs in a garage.

  He almost couldn’t breathe, which seemed ridiculous. Then again, she wasn’t just an image. She was an ideal. The goal. Guys wanted her and girls wa
nted to be her.

  The second he realized how overcome he was with her, he shut his emotions down. He didn’t like people like her, so by extension, he didn’t like her. That meant, whatever she wanted, or needed, he didn’t have to give it to her, because he didn’t want her money, and he couldn’t care less about basking in the glow of her celebrity status.

  “You’re a long way from Hollywood in a car that doesn’t like long drives,” he said, matter-of-fact. He lifted a hand to shade his eyes.

  “You’re telling me,” she replied with her trademark smile.

  Amber Gunn was nowhere to be found in 2017, but in 2018 she hit her stride and then, all the sudden, she was everywhere—the movies, TV, the internet, magazine covers, daytime and nighttime talk shows…

  Rock didn’t go to the movies, but he happened to be dating this yoga instructor at the time who had a thing for Hollywood documentaries, so they watched all three of the E! Channel features on Amber Gunn. Yes, all three.

  Rock didn’t want to, but he knew her story well.

  Most people did by now.

  Amber was an unfortunate girl whose parents died when she was eighteen, a girl who found herself relegated to the street by the age of twenty-one. With the help of a movie producer who saw something in her no one else could see, he nursed her back to health, placed her with an acting coach, then coaxed a pretty incredible acting skillset out of her.

  According to the Variety Magazine Rock had in the shop’s waiting area, Amber just signed on to star in the next “Star Wars” spin-off series. Now there she was, standing right in front of him.

  “Rock Dimas,” he said, extending a hand.

  She took it and said, “Amber Gunn, but it seems you already know that.”

  “Honestly, I wasn’t sure who you were until my employee told me you were an actress or something.”

  “Oh,” she said, her smile faltering some. “I was wondering why you weren’t acting star struck.”

  “First off, I’m not fifteen. Second, I don’t do star struck,” he said, shoving his hands in his pockets. He knew he should smile, soften the edges of his attitude a bit, but he just couldn’t bring himself to do it.

  “I love my fans, but sometimes, honestly, a girl can only take so much squealing and uncomfortable laughing before things get exhausting.” She said this in a very down-to-earth tone, as if it was the most adult thing this twenty-something had ever said.

  This surprised him.

  He was used to seeing the bubbly version of her in romantic comedies (rather, in the commercials for romantic comedies) and the tough-as-nails version of her in action films (he’d seen two of them and they were good).

  He wasn’t sure what he expected when he first met her, but he didn’t think she’d be so pragmatic, so, almost…normal.

  Clearing his throat, standing up straight, he said, “I think when Leonardo meets you, he’s going to squeal and laugh uncomfortably. He’s my apprentice, but he’s also young enough to still think Hollywood walks on water.”

  “We do,” she grinned, pulling off her sunglasses. He’d seen her with freckles before, but now he didn’t see a single one. What he did see were her big green eyes.

  Now he liked her even less.

  Instead of letting his distaste show, he walked around the gorgeous blue super car and saw the problem right away. Amber followed his eyes to the hood of her car. There was a tear in the vinyl and a fair amount of rippling in the surrounding wrap.

  “Yeah,” she said. “Apparently there’s some blistering, too.” She pointed to the other side of the hood, closer to the windshield.

  He saw four or five problem areas.

  “Is this isolated to the hood,” he asked, “or are there other spots on other panels?”

  “Just the hood.”

  “How long ago did you buy this?” he asked.

  “Just now. The seller was from San Jose. He met me in Sacramento with the car on a flatbed. I’ve literally had it for like half an hour.”

  “Did the seller tell you that you’d need this done?”

  “He did. I got a steal knowing I’d have to repair it, maybe even do a full wrap.”

  “You won’t need a full wrap.”

  “I would appreciate it if you could check over the rest of the car for…issues while you have it.”

  He walked around the car, acutely aware of her presence, but refusing to show even one ounce of interest in her. After all, she was just a person with a pretty good job who got paid a lot of money to sell her soul to the highest bidder.

  “Looks like it’s just the hood,” he announced. “I can wrap it, so long as you have the colors.”

  She reached inside the car, came back out with a printed piece of paper and said, “The guy I bought the car from, he said to give you this.”

  Rock took the sheet of paper, recognized the distributor and found the listed color codes for the pearl blue and the matte black. “I can get this for you in a day or so and have the job done in three.”

  “Three days?” she asked, a little pouty. “I’d prefer you do it in two.”

  He ran his hand along the affected surface of the wrap, then said, “I can do a crappy job and get it done in two. But then you’ll be back somewhere else, dragging my name through the mud because you insisted I do a three day job in two. The only thing I see is you unhappy. Is that what you want?”

  “It’s just tape,” she tried reasoning, her youth now starting to show. Perhaps she was not so pragmatic after all.

  “No, it’s not just tape, Ms. Gunn. There’s a process. And then there are measurements that must be exact. Judging by this right here”—he said, flicking the edge of the wrap along the front lip of the hood—“I’d say the person who did this either didn’t prep the surface properly, or they didn’t do the post-wrap heat. And the cut isn’t right either. The wrap was too short by one, maybe two millimeters.”

  “I don’t know what that means.”

  “If the vinyl is pulled too tight without enough post-wrap heat, then your adhesion will be for crap and a wrap like this will last you one, maybe two years.”

  “It’s fourteen months old,” she said.

  “There you go.”

  “Can’t you like, pull it tighter?” she asked. “Maybe glue it or something? I mean, you have to have adhesives for this, right?”

  “The original wrap has to go,” he said. “And this is a half million dollar car brand new, right?”

  “I didn’t pay that for it.”

  “With all due respect, the only people who would primer a car like this, or rush it knowing what it is—or who you are—are either hacks or morons.”

  “That’s not true,” she said, losing her confidence by the second.

  “You’re right. Maybe not just hacks or morons. Maybe it’s also guys being told they only have two days to do a three day job by women with no experience in vinyl and no respect for people’s knowledge of their craft. And just so you know, it’s only three days if I put your job ahead of someone else’s.”

  “I appreciate that,” she said.

  “I didn’t say I was going to do that,” he replied.

  “Yes, but…”

  “Like you said, I’m not one of your squealing fans. I don’t care about Hollywood, or the movies, and I’m certainly not star struck by any stretch of the imagination. You people have lost your freaking minds, as far as I’m concerned. No offense.”

  “It’s not my ecosystem,” she replied, taken aback.

  “Yet you reside in it,” he said. “Like I said, I don’t mean to offend you, but people like you are usually told whatever it is you’re told because you’re the talent and you don’t piss off the talent, right?”

  “I suppose,” she said, putting her glasses back on.

  “Well here I’m the talent, not you,” he said. “Here you’re just a paying customer, and I have lots of those. Some days more than I can handle.”

  “I’m only a paying customer if I decide to use
your services,” she said.

  “Let’s be real, Ms. Gunn. You have a reputation to uphold. Imagine driving all the way to L.A. with that tear in the wrap. The wind shear alone will lift and pull at it in ways you can’t even begin to imagine. So now you roll into Hollyweird in your three-hundred thousand dollar car with what looks like some burnout’s version of an after-school project for a hood wrap. And you don’t have either the time, the patience or the resources to flatbed it out there—”

  “I have assistants for that,” she said.

  “Perhaps you should have sent them instead. At least when they drive this beast into the city all wonky and ratchet, the paparazzi won’t be flocking to photograph the car. Can you imagine the societal beating you’d take for driving a car like this into that human cesspool?”

  “I wanted to drive it home.”

  “Nevertheless, what I’m saying is the job will take me three days if I put your job ahead of my others.”

  “I’ll double your price if you can get it done in two,” she said.

  “You’re not really listening, are you?” he asked.

  “Time is more valuable to me than money, right now,” she said, straightening her back and fixing him with a look.

  “Same here,” he said.

  Now she was stuck. She knew it and he could see it. For a second, he wanted to smile, not because he was a sadist, but because he won.