Rise the Phoenix

by Ely Page

  “It is all you can do for now,” Rodan said, turning to leave. “Just remember to never be surprised.” With that, he left Dylan’s office.

  Dylan had to think about it for a moment, but what Rodan had just said made sense.

  Babies were everywhere. As spring turned to summer, everyone who had been pregnant had given birth. Cribs and rocking chairs were constantly being made by Shawn and Terry, the two furniture makers in town. Cloth diapers were being turned out by the dozen from Leah and Mindy, two of the seamstresses in Hope.

  Dylan was teaching a sword defense and attack class when Rodan walked in. Rodan looked concerned and signaled to Dylan that he needed to speak with him immediately.

  “Sam, Dan, you two keep practicing what I just taught you,” Dylan said, as he was working directly with those two. “The rest of you work on lunges and thrusts!”

  “What is it, why the look on your face?” Dylan asked when he reached Rodan in the corner of the gym.

  “I am afraid that an attack is imminent.”

  Dylan’s heart raced. “Are you sure?”

  Rodan nodded his head yes.

  “When?” Dylan rubbed his hands together as sweat started to pour off the top of his head.

  “Before nightfall.”

  Dylan scrambled to prepare. Starting with himself, he took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Then he turned to all the people in the gym.

  “Listen up. Practice is over. The real fight is coming our way. Go home hug your loved ones, then come back here to prepare for the fight.”

  Everyone looked scared but did what Dylan said. They all went home, and Dylan did the same, but only after stopping by the grain elevator with Rodan and directing him to sound the alarm five minutes after Dylan left, to give everyone some time at home.

  Dylan walked into his house to see that Leah was feeding John, sitting in the rocking chair.

  “Hi. I wasn’t expecting you home this early,” Leah said, sounding happy.

  As soon as she was done talking, the alarm went off, and her happy expression and tone disappeared. Fear washed over her.

  “Oh, God no, not an attack, not now,” she said with tears welling up in her eyes.

  Dylan walked over to her and the baby and wrapped his arms around the both of them. Leah broke out crying. Dylan gave her a kiss on the forehead, and then he kissed baby John on the top of his bald head before starting to walk away.

  “Promise me you will come home. Please, Dylan, promise me.” Leah begged Dylan to stay alive, to make a promise they both knew he couldn’t keep.

  Dylan turned and walked out of room, unable to hide his emotions anymore. He left without saying a word.

  Leah felt angry and alone, but more than that, she felt afraid for her baby, for Dylan, and for herself. She held the baby even after he fell asleep; she didn’t want to let go of him even though she had a million other things she could be doing.

  Rodan and Charley were waiting at the academy when Dylan came back.

  “Are we ready?” asked Charley.

  “No, but in truth, we never will be,” Dylan said frankly.

  A few minutes later, all the battle-eligible citizens of Hope had arrived. Dylan and his lieutenants ordered them to take their weapon of choice. Dylan had assigned most of them a specific weapon based on their strengths.

  Hope’s battle group looked imposing as the more than two hundred fifty men and women walked toward the gate. During the walk, the sky grew darker, the air colder. Porter swore he even saw a snowflake.

  Leah couldn’t stand to be alone during the fight. She grabbed all of baby John’s things and headed to the attack shelter.

  The watchman on top of the lookout next to the gate reported no activity outside. Just then, a thunderous clash came from the sky. As everyone looked up, they could see some kind of movement in the clouds.

  “What is that?” Charley asked in awe.

  “That,” Rodan answered, “is not good. Dylan, we need to open the gate and spread out. It appears the dragon of Hell has arrived.”

  “Open the gate!” Dylan shouted as he jumped up on the wall’s walkway. He looked over the town’s ragtag citizen army. He didn’t have anything to say as he looked into every set of eyes that gazed back at him. He saw fear and determination, which was what everyone looking at his eyes saw as well.

  “Let us defend Hope and all the innocent, newborn babies that have come to us as gifts from God,” he finally said.

  Cheers rang out. Dylan jumped down from the walkway and was the first one out the gate.

  With Rodan at his side, Dylan looked up to the sky as the dragon from Hell flew in and out of the clouds.

  “I don’t understand,” Rodan said mostly to himself, but the comment didn’t escape Dylan’s ears.

  “What don’t you understand?”

  “Huh? Oh.” Rodan was knocked out of his deep thought. “The dragon is a protector that makes sure no one can escape Hell. I don’t know why it would be here.”

  As Rodan finished speaking, a thunderous roar came from the dragon. For the first time, it flew completely out of the clouds. It was a glorious creature to look at. It was golden, with a shine that would have been blinding in the sun. It must have been forty feet long, and its wingspan seemed even longer than that.

  The dragon circled over Hope, tracing the wall. It continued to do that as it flew lower and lower still, frightening Billy, who was in the crow’s nest on top of the grain elevator. He didn’t know what to do, so he used a mirror signal and pointed it at Dylan and Charley, hoping to get some kind of orders.

  Dylan saw the mirror signal’s sharp light. He looked at Rodan. “Billy up in the nest wants some orders. What do you think, should he take a shot at it?”

  Rodan thought about it for a moment. “I think he should stand down for now. I don’t think it would be wise to provoke it.”

  Dylan agreed and gave Billy the stand down signal.

  Screaming could be heard from the people still in their houses as they saw the large mythical creature flying overhead.

  “Why aren’t those people in the shelter?” Charley screamed.

  “I’ll get them there,” Greg said from the ground next to the platform.

  “I will help,” Ollie said, going with Greg.

  A few minutes passed, then it all started. The dragon let out a fierce cry and then unleashed its mighty power as fire came from its mouth. The flame didn’t hit anything; it was almost like the dragon had given a warning shot. The second time it opened its mouth was a different story.

  The dragon moved outside the city wall and laid fire over one of Ollie’s wheat fields, completely destroying the crop and charring the earth.

  As if attacking the crops wasn’t bad enough, on its way back over the town, the dragon flew full speed into the wind generator, knocking out the town’s only source of power.

  The dragon then targeted something near the base of the grain elevator. Panic ran through the minds of everyone watching. The dragon was attacking right where the shelter was, and Greg and Ollie hadn’t returned from taking the last of the people there.

  “Shoot, shoot now!” Dylan yelled, signaling at the crow’s nest to let Billy know to open fire. “Sharps, take aim and fire with malice!” Dylan barked to the sharpshooters in the crowd. He and several others ran toward the grain elevator.

  The first shots hit the dragon in its long neck. It quickly focused on where the shots had come from. The dragon closed in on the grain elevator, ignoring the shots it was taking from the sharpshooters near the gate across town. Its piercing red eye looked closely at Billy, putting absolute fear into the new father’s heart. Billy managed to raise his rifle. He shook uncontrollably at first, then he looked the dragon in the eye closed his own, thinking about his baby daughter. He felt calm and collected.

  Billy opened hi
s eyes. The dragon was facing him now, with its mouth opening and steam beginning to escape. “I’m ready. Are you?” he said to the dragon as he squeezed the trigger, firing right into the dragon’s mouth at the same time a jet of fire engulfed him.

  The dragon screamed with pain and briefly lost control; it fell several feet, its tail nearly touching the ground. The dragon started to fly up again, but not before Porter managed to stick a pack of C4 explosives on the back of its tail. The detonating cord almost ran out before Porter had time to hit the switch.

  Dylan saw what Porter was doing and turned around. It seemed like slow motion as he yelled, “Everybody down, now!” He turned around just in time to see Porter hit the button and lay flat on the ground himself.

  The explosion was loud. Pieces of the dragon’s flesh rained down on most of Hope’s army. Porter and Dylan were the first ones up off the ground. Words were spoken, but nobody could hear over the ringing in their ears.

  Dylan signaled to two people near him, Heather and Grant. He pointed at them, then at his eyes, and then at the crow’s nest at the top of the elevator. They both got the message; Dylan wanted them to go up and check on Billy.

  Right after that, someone pointed to the other side of the elevator. Smoke was coming from a building over there. Dylan, Rodan, Charley, and several others all ran around the massive building. They had forgotten that the dragon had been shooting fire out of its mouth. When they rounded the corner, they saw what the dragon had hit—the old lumber yard where the town kept all of its firewood for heat during the winter. Dylan made a spraying hose gesture, and Porter grabbed Fred. The pair ran toward the fire station.

  A few minutes later, the two men came back with one of the two working vehicles in town, the fire truck. Fred hopped off the back of the truck with the end of the hose that attached to a fire hydrant. He screwed it on the hydrant that was right there. Bert, Porter, and Jerry all grabbed the other end of the hose. As soon as it was ready, they turned it on and started working on the fire.

  Charley and Dylan ran to the shelter under the elevator to make sure that Greg and Ollie had made it safely with the people they had gone to help. Relief came over Charley when he opened the door to the elevator’s basement and saw Greg standing right in front of him.

  “Is it over already?” Greg asked.

  Charley and Dylan smiled when they could hear again.

  “We think so. Porter blew up the dragon,” Dylan said, smiling.

  “That’s what that loud noise was,” Jenny said, holding her and Porter’s baby, Tank. “That’s your daddy, always doing crazy stuff.”

  Heather came back from the crow’s nest to find Dylan. “Billy is gone,” she said, looking and sounding shaken. “You need to look over the east wall too. The dragon is still alive.”

  Dylan, Rodan, and Charley all went to the platform overlooking the east. It was there they saw the dragon. The lower half of its body had been blown off, but it was still trying to spread its wings and fly. However, its balance was gone, and it kept falling back to the ground. Dylan thought about letting it suffer its own fate.

  “Dylan, I think it is best that you put that thing out of its misery and return it to Hell where it belongs,” Rodan said, not taking his eyes off of the struggling dragon.

  Dylan got off of the platform and went to the gate, walking through it with propose. He rounded the wall and slowly made his way to where the dragon was. The dragon was crawling on its front arms; steam poured from its mouth as it breathed heavier with the struggle it was putting itself through.

  The dragon turned and faced Dylan when it realized he was stalking it. Dylan could feel the steam exiting its mouth growing hotter; it seemed to Dylan that the dragon was building up fire to attack him.

  “I don’t think that is going to work for you,” Dylan said, mocking the dying creature. “I will not let you do harm ever again.”

  With those words, Dylan plunged his sword into the beast’s neck a split second before it could breathe fire on him. He sliced all the way around, climbing over the creature until the dragon’s head fell to the ground, completely severed from the rest of the body. Its blood was a fiery orange color, like flowing lava. Some spilled on Dylan’s booted feet, and surprisingly it burned through. Dylan had to take off his favorite pair of boots. He stood there a minute watching them melt under the dragon’s blood.

  “Hey, how’s it going, dragon slayer?” George said as he closed the gate behind Dylan.

  Dylan had never in all of his life imagined that he would see a dragon or actually kill one. It was like something out of an old fairy tale. The attack was something nobody, not even Rodan, had expected. It was completely different from the battle almost a year earlier. They couldn’t believe that Satan thought that sending a dragon would wipe Hope off the face of the Earth.

  “I’m so glad that you came back unharmed,” Leah said, giving Dylan a big hug when they met each other outside of their house. She looked down at Dylan’s bare feet. “Where are your boots?”

  Dylan just smiled and walked inside the house, holding John in his arms.

  Billy was laid to rest with all the others who had fallen as heroes. If it wasn’t for Billy, the dragon could have done unimaginable damage.

  “What are we going to do about that?” Charley asked Jenny as they surveyed the destroyed wind generator.

  “I don’t know. This one is beyond repair,” she responded.

  The town had a few diesel generators, but they weren’t nearly enough to replace the power the wind turbine generated.

  “There is some power still stored on the batteries, but only a couple of days at half power,” Jenny said, overlooking the damage.

  “I might have a solution,” Rodan said, joining Charley and Jenny at the base of the turbine.

  “What is that?” Jenny turned to face Rodan.

  “There is a place in Lawton, the place where I got this turbine. Now, it was delivered on a semi, so I don’t know how getting a new one will work. But if a new turbine could get here, I can help put it together. I watched in great detail when they erected this one.”

  “Greg. Greg was a truck driver,” Jenny said to Charley.

  “Good. I will ask around to find some others to see if they can help load a trailer,” Charley said before walking off.

  Jenny and Rodan went to find Greg. They found him with his adopted daughter, Emily. They were going over a math assignment that Greg had made up for her. With only a handful of teenaged children in Hope, no formal education was available.

  “Hi, Greg, Emily,” Jenny said, approaching the porch they were sitting on.

  “Hi. To what do we owe this visit?” Greg asked with a grin.

  “We have a job for you.”

  Greg grew slightly skeptical. “Oh yeah, what’s that?”

  Jenny and Rodan explained the plan of having Greg and a few other guys go to Lawton, get a semi-truck, and bring back what was needed to replace the turbine. The generator’s base was still good, but they needed the top two sections of the tower, as well as the turbine and the propellers.

  Greg agreed to do it. Charley came to Greg’s house with help; he brought with him George, Kevin, and Porter. Jenny had figured her husband was going to go; she knew she couldn’t keep him from an adventure.

  The four men took Rodan’s old city maintenance pickup and drove it to Lawton. They found the place that Rodan had talked about in an industrial park. Luckily, they found everything they needed on-site. Greg knew it would be a fight to get the semi running after it had sat around for a year and a half without being started. George and Kevin loaded the semi’s flatbed with a forklift, and Porter did what he did best—provided protection with his trusty Barrett in his hands.

  By the time George and Kevin had the load secured, Greg had finally gotten the truck started. They got on their way. Thankfully, it was an uneventful trip. Th
e only problem was navigating the roads in such a large vehicle. Most of the time, Greg had no problem pushing cars out of the way with ease. Sometimes the other guys had to get out and move them by hand.

  The return trip took about three times as long as the drive to Lawton, but relief came over everyone in town when they heard the semi’s loud horn go off as Greg approached the site of the old wind turbine.

  Jenny and Rodan supervised as Ben, Will, and Trent erected the new wind turbine. It took a week and a half, but the town was back to full power as soon as the tower was complete and operational. The wind blew steadily for several days, as if a gift from God. The storage batteries were at full capacity, and for the first time since they arrived in Hope, Jenny had to turn the turbine off for a few days.

  A few months later, a new building was being stocked with new firewood, which was very hard to get as it involved long trips to areas most everyone felt were too far from home. But it needed to be done if they wanted to make it through another winter.

  Baby fever swept across the town again. Women who had just given birth in the spring were starting to get pregnant again as fall approached. Chris trained Sarah to help her with doctor duties. Sarah, who was from the Canadian tribe, had just started medical school when the old world ended, but she had done some studying on her own. She and Chris both agreed that specializing in the care of all the town’s new children would be her calling.

  Chapter 11

  Dylan was out on his typical morning run when he ran into a group of four men and one woman at the gate, looking like they were getting ready to go out. Dylan grew suspicious, as they looked like they were prepared to go on some sort of invasion or raid.

  “Where are you guys going?” Dylan asked with a little authority in his voice.

  “We are going to . . . to get some supplies,” Eric said.

  “Who is sending you out?”