Rise the Phoenix

by Ely Page

  After a few minutes of contemplating what Rodan had said, Rodan cut through Dylan’s heavy head.

  “And we have one battle left. Win or lose, it doesn’t really matter.” Rodan took a drink of water.

  “What do you mean it doesn’t matter?” Dylan was confused.

  “There are only two ultimate battles with any real meaning. The first will be in Israel, and the second will be in Heaven, when Satan makes his final push for the throne of Heaven.”

  Dylan didn’t even know where to begin with his questions. “So, there are other tribes out there?”

  Rodan stood up. “Yes, the Israelis are far more enduring and powerful than us. Ultimately, if we here in Hope die, they will be the last people on Earth.”

  The next spring felt different than all the others spent in Hope. A drought had started the season off without a drop of rain in sight. The city’s water system was running dangerously low. Showers and baths were forbidden; only the washing of wounds was permitted. Everyone had to start using outhouses that were built around town as the water to each house was shut off. Water for drinking and cooking was rationed out at city hall.

  Water started to be hauled in by horse from the lake, but that abruptly ended when, as the fishing corps were doing their job, Charley noticed that several dead fish started to float at the top of the lake.

  “Something’s not right,” he said to the other guys on the boat. “Let’s head to shore to see what is going on.”

  The guys grabbed their oars and were heading to shore when Gus started to feel his oar getting lighter. He pulled it up out of the water to see half of it was missing.

  “Guys! You might want to look at this.” He showed everyone the oar.

  “What is going on?” Devon asked with shock filling his voice and his eyes.

  “Acid. The lake is turning to acid,” Charley said with a pit in his stomach. “We need to get out of the water now, before the boat starts to get holes in it!” Charley shouted, grabbing another oar and putting all his strength into paddling.

  As the five men put all their effort into getting back to shore, they didn’t notice that Cael, the young man from Frank’s tribe, had come up to the lake with a bucket to load the tank on the horse-drawn wagon. By the time the boat got close enough to the shore for the men to look up, Devon noticed that Cael was going to walk into the water. He shouted, but Cael didn’t understand what he was saying, and he walked in with both feet.

  Severe, agonizing pain shot through Cael’s body as the skin on his feet and ankles instantly melted away. He collapsed into the water, falling face first. Water boiled around the young man as the acid ate away at his flesh.

  The men on the boat got sick to their stomachs watching the event unfold, but they had a more urgent problem, as their aluminum jon boat began eroding underneath them.

  “We have to hurry, we don’t have much longer,” Charley said.

  With his oar completely gone, Gus had an idea. He grabbed his rod and reel and cast as far as he could toward land. He was trying to hit the wagon that was attached to the horse. He missed with his first cast, but instead of wasting time reeling it in, he grabbed Charley’s rod and did the same thing. This time he successfully hooked the wagon.

  “Charley, grab your gun and fire,” Gus said, holding on to fishing pole with both hands.

  “What, why?” Charley asked, distracted.

  “I need you to scare the horse so he can pull us on shore.”

  Charley pulled out his handgun. “Do you think the line will hold?” he asked.

  “Let’s pray to God that it does.”

  With that, Charley shot his gun and, sure enough, it startled the horse into running inland. The men on the boat were in for a ride, as the horse pulled harder than expected. Devon almost lost his balance; Joe grabbed his shirt just before he tipped over the back.

  Before the men knew it, they were safely back on land.

  “Oh, wow, what just happened?” Charley asked, catching his breath.

  The men walked over to where Cael had fallen into the water. There was nothing left of him; the acidic water had devoured all hints of his existence.

  The men from the fishing crew ran as fast as they could back to Hope. As soon as they arrived, all of them went to find Rich.

  “Rich, something bad is happening to the lake,” Charley said when they found the lead elder just outside of town hall.

  When Rich heard the panic former lead elder’s voice, he assumed the worst. “What happened?”

  The men all looked at each other to see who would tell Rich.

  “Cael is gone.” Charley said, in shock.

  Confusion clouded Rich’s brain. “What do you mean he is gone?”

  “The lake ate him. There is nothing left.” Charley said choking up.

  Rich still didn’t understand.

  “The lake turned to acid while we were on the boat fishing,” Charley answered. “We watched helplessly as Cael walked into the lake with a bucket to collect water. We tried yelling at him, but he didn’t hear us. The acid ate him away, along with our boat, and you can forget about getting any fish or water from that lake.”

  Rich went to find Rodan, Jim, and Dylan. He wanted to see for himself what was going on at the lake. It was vital to Hope’s survival and for food and drinking water. If it went bad, and with no rain in sight, things could turn ugly in Hope, fast.

  The men walked in silence toward the lake, all thinking about what they were going to see when they got there. It appeared on the horizon. Steam rose from the lake’s surface. What was left of the fishing boat was on the shore.

  The men stepped to the edge of the water, staying back far enough that they wouldn’t get touched by the tainted water if a wave came up. They could see the fish coming up to the surface and then disintegrating as they reached the air.

  “Oh, my,” Rich said, looking at the deteriorated boat.

  “What are we going to do? This is our only source of fish and water,” Jim said, concerned.

  “I don’t know, we—” Rich was cut off by a loud rumbling coming from the ground.

  “I think we need to back away from the lake,” Dylan said as he started to walk backward.

  “I agree with Dylan,” Rodan said, doing the same.

  Just as the men started backing away from the shore, the rumble grew to a full earthquake, and the water in the lake shot up into the air like a giant geyser. The men had problems keeping their balance as they tried to get as far from the lake as possible.

  The water went up a hundred feet in the air and fell back down into the old lake bed, only there was no bottom and the water disappeared into what was now a giant hole in the ground. Once the ground stopped shaking, the men timidly walked back toward the lake.

  “What happened?” Dylan asked.

  Nobody had an answer for him. Dylan had flashbacks to the time that fissure had opened up near Hope and taken his old friend Will down to Hell.

  “It is bottomless,” Jim said.

  As he spoke, another rumble started, but this time it was low and slow.

  “Something is coming back up the hole,” Rodan stated, looking down into the bottomless giant pit.

  “We should back away again until this thing is stable,” Dylan stated.

  Everyone agreed and they all walked a few hundred yards away.

  After nearly a half hour, a bad odor touched their noses, and they all knew it was coming from the old lake. The rumbling had stopped, and the men thought it was safe enough to get a closer look at what was happening.

  They were all shocked. Rich looked at Dylan, Dylan looked at Jim, and Jim looked at Rodan. None of them could believe what they were seeing. The men were staring at a nasty, smelly, brown sludge, where a beautiful freshwater lake had been just a few short hours ago.

  “I believe this
is a sign that we must prepare for the end, and soon.” Rodan stated what everyone else was thinking.

  “I am pretty sure you are having twins,” Chris said to Leah, who was at the clinic for a routine checkup.

  “Are you sure? How can you tell?” she asked the doctor excitedly.

  “I heard two heartbeats when I had the stethoscope on your abdomen,” Chris said, putting the aforementioned stethoscope down on a table.

  Leah didn’t know how to feel about that. On one hand, she was excited, but on the other, she was terrified to raise four children so young.

  “As your pregnancy gets longer, you will need to take extra care of yourself,” Chris said, sitting down on a stool and looking at Leah. “Carrying two is different than one. Things could be more complicated, especially the birth itself.”

  Leah definitely felt terrified now.

  “What are we going to do?” Rich asked.

  He was frustrated with the drought, and now the only other nearby source of water was gone. He’d called a town council meeting immediately after coming back from the lake.

  “We can send a small party and the horse-drawn cart to the creek a few miles east of here,” Andy suggested.

  “Well, it is further away than the lake, but you are right,” Rich said, looking at Andy. “Until we get some rain to fill the wells back up, it is our only choice.”

  Chapter 16

  “Are you OK, honey?” Dylan asked from the next room after he heard Leah shout out in a brief moment of pain.

  “Yeah,” she said, recovering from the episode. “Just a contraction, nothing serious yet.”

  Leah was covering as much as possible. She knew something wasn’t right with the twins. Her due date was seven weeks away, but she knew there was no way she would make it that far. Dylan didn’t look like he believed Leah was OK, but before he could question her, Frankie started crying in the playroom. Dylan went to find out what happened.

  With Dylan distracted, Leah left the house and went to find Chris. The pain had come back and it was getting worse.

  “Oh my, honey.” Chris’s forehead creased in concern as she examined Leah. Without the use of the modern equipment a hospital or clinic would have, Chris had gotten good at diagnosing most problems. “Well, something is wrong.” Chris put the stethoscope on Leah’s abdomen. “You need to have a C-section. I can only hear one heartbeat. I know you are not full-term, but the babies need to come out before things get worse for you or them.”

  Leah was in full panic mode. She couldn’t imagine having something wrong with her babies.

  “You stay here,” Chris said, gathering a few things. “I need to get Hanna and Sarah here to help, and I will send someone to tell Dylan.”

  Dylan, Leah thought to herself. She felt guilty about not telling him what was going on, but he would know soon enough. She lay on the clinic examination table alone, holding her belly and praying all would turn out for the best.

  With the town’s supply of fish gone and freshwater scarce, Rich started sending hunting groups out again. Ollie didn’t raise enough beef, pork, or chicken to feed the growing town. The corn and grains he grew weren’t enough either, and with the dry weather, the crop was failing.

  Nina in the greenhouse was struggling to keep most of her plants alive. She was limited on how much water she could use. Things were looking bleak, and if they didn’t turn around soon, famine could set in.

  “I was wondering where she went,” Dylan said when Hanna and Ben came to his house with their three kids. “Is she OK?” he nervously asked Hanna.

  “I don’t know all the details, but you and I need to go to the clinic now. Ben will watch the kids until Margret can get here.”

  Dylan and Hanna left Ben alone with five wild and crazy children.

  “OK, where do mommy and daddy keep their special adult drinks?” Ben asked John, who just smiled and ran to play with the other kids in the den.

  “What is going on, Hanna?” Dylan asked as they quickly walked to the clinic.

  “I don’t know any more than you. Has Leah been acting like something has been bothering her?” Hanna asked.

  Dylan thought for a moment. “She has been kind of keeping her distance and holding her belly a lot lately, and earlier today she disappeared. Obviously, I know where she went now.”

  “How could He do this to us?”

  Andrea and Charley had started a heated conversation with Jim just outside of the church. Jim was perplexed by the question.

  “What do you mean ‘do this to us’? Are you implying that God is punishing us with a lake of poison and no rain?” Jim was getting just as angry as the couple in front of him, and it was taking all the patience he had in him not to raise his voice.

  “We are supposed to be protected. We are supposed to be able to repopulate the world,” Charley said.

  “How are we going to do that if we starve to death?” Andrea added.

  Jim was about to reply when Rodan walked up behind him.

  “You seem to be in a heavy conversation,” the old solider said, looking all of his thousands of years of being.

  “Why is God letting this happen?” Andrea demanded.

  Dylan and Hanna made it to the clinic.

  “Get ready!” Chris commanded Hanna. “We need to do an emergency C-section on Leah.”

  Dylan’s heart pounded in chest as he watched his wife lying on a surgical table, clearly in pain and troubled about what was happening. Dylan didn’t think he could open his mouth without crying, so he just did what he thought was best. He stood by the table and held Leah’s hand.

  Chris came back in the room all ready to go with her surgical tools. Sarah came in right behind her with two carts the clinic used as bassinets. Hanna finally came in after getting herself cleaned up.

  The room was crowded. It wasn’t very big, but everyone present needed to be there, so Chris made do with the situation.

  “We are going to get started now. Can you feel this?” Chris poked at Leah’s belly where the incision was going to be made.

  “No,” Leah answered exhaustedly.

  Nervous but steady and calm, Chris took a deep breath. “OK, here we go.” She put the scalpel to Leah’s skin and cut.

  It was just a few minutes but it felt like an eternity, as Chris was being extremely careful with the procedure. She had done C-sections before, but never on someone she was so close to.

  “Sarah, are you ready? Baby number one is coming out,” Chris said as she put her hands inside Leah’s body.

  “I am,” Sarah said, closing in so she could take the newborn from Chris as quickly as possible.

  Leah and Dylan both felt like nervous wrecks. Leah also felt so hopeless laying on the table. She so desperately wanted to care for the children already, to hold them and nurture them.

  “Here comes baby number one.” Chris pulled out a tiny little human and handed the baby quickly off to Sarah.

  “It’s a girl,” Sarah exclaimed as she got the baby to cry while cleaning her up.

  Dylan and Leah felt a brief moment of joy hearing they now had a daughter, but that was shattered by what happened next.

  “The boy is not breathing!” Chris shouted as she pulled the baby out of Leah.

  He had the umbilical cord wrapped around his neck. The boy clearly looked smaller than his twin sister. He also had a much grayer complexion than his sister. Hanna quickly took the still baby from Chris, laid it down, and immediately started to attempt to resuscitate the newborn. Chris turned back to Leah to clean her up and sew her back up.

  “Dylan, could you come here please?” Chris said quietly.

  Dylan walked over to Chris and leaned into her so she didn’t have to speak loudly.

  “If you want your son to be baptized, you go up front and tell Diane to get Jim here stat,” Chris said, never taking h
er eyes off of the work she was doing to Leah.

  Dylan left the room to tell Diane the office assistant what was going on. She left the clinic at a rapid pace. Dylan returned to the room and to Leah’s side. He didn’t know if he should stay by her or by their son as he struggled for life; it didn’t take long for him to make up his mind. Dylan left Leah’s side and walked up next to Hanna to watch as his newborn son, who was struggling now to breath.

  “I have a heartbeat,” Hanna said, “but it is weak and slow.”

  Dylan reached out with his index finger, and his son’s little left hand wrapped around it. The little boy opened his eyes and looked at Dylan. Dylan thought that his son had the most piercing green eyes that he had ever seen. The girl started to cry. Sarah brought her over to her twin brother. She calmed down as soon as she touched her brother. The boy seemed to smile, although everyone knew newborns couldn’t smile.

  Jim came in the room with a small bowl of holy water. Leah didn’t even notice his presence, as she was clenching her teeth, feeling for the first time as Chris sewed up the incision.

  Jim quickly preformed the baptism ceremony. Putting the bowl down on the counter, he gave the small boy a quick touch on the forehead one last time and stepped away. The boy never let go of Dylan’s finger or his sister’s arm.

  The baby boy took a deep breath, closed his eyes, let his heart beat one more time, and died holding his daddy’s finger with his left hand and his twin sister’s arm with his right. The baby girl let out a soft whimper. Dylan dropped a tear on his little boy’s still stomach.

  “What is happening? Why is Jim here? Bring my babies over to me, please!” Leah could tell something was terribly wrong.

  Dylan picked up the little boy’s body, and Sarah picked up the little girl. They both walked over to the waiting mother, who had just got done having surgical glue and stitches put on her stomach. Leah was crying. It wasn’t for anything that happened to her; it was her intuition that told her that her baby boy was gone.