Overthrown II: The Resurrected (Overthrown Trilogy Book 2)

by Judd Vowell

  “Where are we?” she asked.

  “We’re free,” he answered.

  ΔΔΔ

  Camp Overlord was empty, save for the dead soldiers killed in battle. What the Liberation Effort had once transformed into a thriving rebel headquarters had been deserted. The concrete walls that had housed its living quarters and training rooms were half-standing, with jagged holes and sheared remnants of rebar throughout. Charred vehicles and lifeless bodies were scattered across the camp’s grounds, lasting symbols of the battle that Jessica barely remembered and a reminder that there had been no winning side on that day in the distant past.

  “I can’t believe it,” Anna said to the others. “I can’t believe it’s all gone. That they’re all gone. All that we had worked for, just...gone.” Her last syllable was barely audible as her voice faded in disbelief.

  “If it makes you feel any better, Anna, the ANTs lost an awful lot that day, too,” Jacob responded. “I’d even venture to say that you guys got the better of them.”

  “But at what cost?” Anna asked, more to herself than anyone else.

  The group meandered through the destruction, investigating areas that might give them clues to where the survivors may have gone.

  Jessica moved slower than the others, the effects of the Propofol delaying her pace. A few steps into her exploration, she noticed some unusual graffiti on the side of a half-burned humvee. It was a combination of letters, a symbol of sorts, crudely spray-painted in apparent haste. It stirred a memory in Jessica’s mind, from a time before the Great Dark. Her head drifted for a moment, her eyes blurring as she thought of her mother Meg, and the day she had discovered a shoebox full of letters and photographs from her mother’s childhood in an upstairs closet. The love-notes a teenage Meg had written included a strange signature line: a T descending into an L that intersected two sharp angular lines to form the final letter A. “True Love Always,” Meg had told her, giggling a bit as she said it. A simple schoolgirl sentiment that suddenly meant so much to Jessica. She began to miss her family deeply, wondering if Henry had made it back to the farm, and if her mom had still been alive when he did.

  Jessica's vision gradually refocused on the symbol in front of her now as her memories left her. Instead of her mother's T-L-A, the spray-painted sign on the side of the humvee appeared to be a T descending through two Os. Or was it a sideways 8? She couldn’t decide.

  She heard Anna approaching. “What do you make of this, Anna?” she asked.

  Anna walked up to the burned-out vehicle, standing next to Jessica and tilting her head sideways in curiosity. “Well that doesn’t make much sense, now does it?” She continued staring at the strange design.

  “Could be a message,” Jessica guessed. “Some kind of code.”

  “If it is,” Anna said, “I’m not sure what it’s trying to tell us. Nothing I’ve ever seen before. It's certainly not a Lefty sign.”

  “I think I’ve got your answer, ladies,” Jacob yelled to them from a short distance away.

  Jessica and Anna turned and saw him standing on the opposite side of a wall that had lost its top half in the first battle of the Second American Revolution. They could just see his head peering at them over the torn concrete blocks. “I’m not sure what it means, but here it is, plain as day.”

  The two of them walked toward the wall and turned once they reached its other side. And just as Jacob had said, there it was, written in plain block letters, stirring another memory of family in Jessica. The design made perfect sense once she saw the two words it represented below it. A capital T intersecting the symbol for infinity. And then the phrase that she had not heard since the last time she saw Henry:

  TRIUMPHS FOREVER

  PART TWO: FINDING THE WILL

  1.

  T he first morning that I felt conscious again was dreary and wet. The windows in my bedroom were open halfway and a damp breeze brushed against my face. The rain outside was light but steady. There were slight rumbles of thunder every now and then, a great distance away. I listened for a few minutes without moving. I realized that my focus was back, my senses returned. I raised myself up to an angled position, using my forearms and elbows to support me. It was painful, but I could do it. That was desperately important.

  On the table next to my bed was a full glass of water. It immediately reminded me how thirsty I was. Without thinking, I reached for it and lifted it to my lips. I hadn’t noticed how dry my mouth had been until the water was inside it. My tongue and gums and cheeks seemed to soak it up like the soil around a drought-stricken tree. I finished the glass and fell back again, my stomach aching with fullness.

  The rain continued to fall as I tried to remember how long I had been crazed and incoherent. My memory was dull, but I had a grim feeling that it had been days since I had been truly awake. And that feeling begged one question – “How did that water get next to my bed?”

  2.

  H enry had been home for eight days before I was aware of his presence. I had reached the point in my disease of hallucinations and foggy vision, and I didn’t know if he was real or imagined until that ninth morning. He told me later that he thought I was dead when he first saw me. I had thought I was dead, too.

  He was changed, no longer the boy who had left with his sister and father on a near-hopeless mission to save me. So much had happened on that journey, I learned. Too much for a child. I guess that’s why he had transformed into the young man who nursed me back to life.

  The medicine was the key, just as it had been the first time. Some people build an immunity to the effects of specific drugs. But not me, not my cancer. It was the same version of the disease the second time around. Meg’s Spine Cancer 2.0. Lucky for me, Dr. Raj’s miracle cure was still making miracles happen. I often wondered about the good doctor who gave me renewed life. I wondered where he was, if he were still alive in the Great Dark and still giving hope to others in some way. Most times I thought he was. The world was a better place with him in it, so I kept him there.

  Henry had smashed my life-saving pills into powders and mixed them into water along with crushed vitamins from storage in the farmhouse’s basement, forcing me to drink the potion in between bouts of fitful sleeps during those first days that he was back home. I know now that his timing was magical. I don’t think I would have survived another twenty-four hours without his intervention.

  The disease had ravaged my body, inside and out. It had taken me to the end. I knew it that rainy morning. Henry came into my room not long after I had woken up. He wasn’t expecting my consciousness. My voice was out of practice and nearly inaudible, but I forced something out when I saw him. “Good morning, Henry.” It startled him.

  “Mom?” he asked, searching for true acknowledgement.

  “Yes, my baby, it’s me.” My energy was already fading, but I reached up to him the best I could. He put one knee onto the bed and leaned toward me. We hugged for a long time, until I lost the strength in my arms to keep them wrapped around him any longer. As he stood back up, I asked, “Where’s Jessica? And Dad?”

  “Later, Mom,” he replied. “You need to rest more.”

  I wanted to resist his vagueness, but I couldn’t keep my eyes open. I fell back asleep and dreamt of the four of us together again.

  3.

  M y appetite returned two days later. I was able to sit up in bed and sip from spoonfuls of soup, fed to me by an attentive Henry. Its flavors attacked my taste buds like nothing I had ever eaten. Henry still crushed up my medicine and vitamins and stirred them into water, making that part of my nourishment easier. He was such a good caretaker. But he was still avoiding the subject at hand: my missing Jessica and Gordon. I had finally regained enough strength that third day to fight his denials.

  “I need to know, Henry. You can’t avoid telling me what happened anymore. I can handle it.”

  He had been standing at my bedside, but he turned and walked to the window to answer my request. He stared out over the farm’
s land for a minute before he spoke. His hardening revealed itself in the way he spoke about the journey.

  “I don’t know how to say it, Mom, so I just will.” He was still looking into the distance, his back to me. “They’re dead. As much as I wish it weren’t true, it is.”

  Somehow I had known. My brain wasn’t functioning at its best quite yet, but I had known. A wife and mother lives by instinct more than anything else. Gordon and Jessica’s absence had alerted my instincts to prepare for Henry’s words. I had steeled myself, and therefore my reaction was restrained. I would grieve later.

  “How?” I asked. The one-word question that would lead to the worst knowledge I would ever gain.

  “Mom, does it matter, really?” He turned from the window and asked with pleading in his eyes. He didn’t want to talk about it, I could see.

  “Yes, Henry, yes it does. It matters to me more than you might ever understand. Tell me. I need to know.”

  He came back to the bed and sat down, taking one of my hands in his. For the next hour, he related the story of his journey to me. He told me about wild animals and even wilder men, and how he and Jessica had learned to defend themselves against both of them. He told me about meeting a group of fellow travelers and joining them for the remainder of their trek. Then he told me about the rebellion against the terrorists who were inflicting the darkness upon us all.

  I learned of a place called Camp Overlord, run by a group who called themselves the American Liberation Effort, or “Lefty” for short. I learned that Lefty helped him and Jessica break into the ANTI- grid and get the medicine I so desperately needed. I learned that Henry barely survived their escape.

  Henry paused and held his breath for a long moment at this point in his story. I could tell he was struggling to continue.

  “It’s alright, Henry. Take your time.” I began to wonder if he had thought about these events at all since they had occurred, or if he had pushed them down deep until they were hidden, like so many survivors do.

  “This is not easy, Mom,” he said, his voice trembling.

  “It’s not supposed to be, honey,” I replied. “But I think you may need this as much as I do.”

  He continued, keeping his eyes closed as he described the battle that began to enclose them at the Lefty camp. He described Gordon finding a way out of the camp, across the growing battlefield. And he described Gordon’s death, so close to salvation.

  “It was peaceful, Mom, I promise,” he said, and I believed him. I knew my Gordon too well. I remembered his strength and his soul. “He passed with ease,” Henry added.

  I held my composure, tilting my head back onto the pillow below me and staring up to the ceiling. My heart began to hurt so much. I could feel pressure building in my chest, so I breathed deeply. “I’m sure he did,” I said. “Go on.”

  The next bit was the most difficult to hear. Even more difficult than hearing Henry describe the death of his father. This time, it was Jessica’s turn, a mother’s most dreaded nightmare. Losing a child is like losing a limb, like having an arm or leg ripped from your body. I soon understood that. You live on, but it’s impossible to live the same way you did before. The missing part of you is large and painful, an ever-present reminder that you are not whole anymore. There should be a name for mothers who lose children, but maybe there isn’t a word strong enough to describe the anguish and want and guilt.

  “I tried to stop her, Mom, but she was gone before I knew what she was doing,” Henry told me, desperation sneaking into his tone. “She sacrificed herself. For me. And for you.”

  It was too much to bear. To know that my precious, vibrant Jessica was gone. And by choice. “Thank you, Henry. But I can’t hear anymore right now. Let me rest, sweet boy.”

  He got up from the bed without another word, his eyes weary from reliving his harrowing experience. He picked up the tray that held my almost empty bowl of soup and carried it with him out of the room. And as he gently closed the door behind him, I began to weep. I cried for a long time, until the sobbing wore my body down and I couldn’t stop myself from sleeping.

  4.

  I started my comeback with yoga. Eventually.

  The simple act of walking came first, of course, which I did on the tenth day of my awakening. That morning I woke with resolve, to stand and then to move. Lying on my back, breathing slowly and deeply, I slid my left leg out from under the sheet that had been covering me for so long. My knee bent, and my big toe touched the rigid hardwood a second later. I eased my left heel down and let the softened skin of my foot adjust to the unfamiliar feeling of the floor. The movement reminded me just how long I had been held hostage in my bed, by an unrelenting cancer that was finally starting to waver. Once my feet were steady, I stood and walked the length of floor to the hallway, then a few steps more to the hall bathroom on the farmhouse’s second floor. It was enough to make me feel light-headed.

  Each day after that, I walked further, a few steps at a time. Soon enough, I was descending the stairs, even though Henry was forced to carry me back up to bed the first few times I made it that far. But with each trek down the hall, or to the kitchen, or eventually to the backyard (that first smell of fresh air was heavenly), I gained confidence and strength. And, most importantly, I began to believe that I was actually going to survive. So the logical next step was empowerment of both body and spirit. It was time for yoga.

  ΔΔΔ

  During my first cancer fight, long before the Great Dark began, I embraced not only the physical elements of the yoga discipline, but also the philosophy of it all. Like most Westerners in the 21st century, I had only thought of the exercise as a trendy new workout regimen before Dr. Raj. But with his guidance (which was immeasurable in so many ways), yoga became my solace. And to this day, I believe it saved me as much as anything else. Or should I say, I wouldn’t still be here without it.

  Now let’s see if I can describe exactly what the ancient Eastern practice did for me the first time I battled cancer. I think that’s important, considering how essential it became to my survival. I’ll start with the cancer, which sought to destroy not only my body, but my mind, too.

  I’ve now had two incredibly different experiences with life growing inside of me. The first was pregnancy. Natural and organic, dynamic and destined. It was difficult at times, even painful. But until things started to go wrong, before Jessica and Henry decided to venture into this world too early, everything about it was right, if that makes sense. The second form of life that I’ve had growing inside of me was cancer. Unnatural and alien, malignant and unfair. Cancer breeds and multiplies in a grotesque and abnormal way. I could feel it happening. And all I ever wanted to do was reach through my skin and rip it from my insides, damn the consequences. But I couldn’t, and I never knew if it would ever go away. Cope with that. Trust me, it’s not easy.

  I use the word cope, but in the end the real verb was conquer. “Right now, Meg, inside your body,” Dr. Raj had explained, in his calm high-pitched voice, “there is a battle occurring. If the one side wins, you will surely die. But if your side wins, you will have granted yourself life. And you will be a stronger woman for it.” I soon understood his words with clarity – that to keep myself alive, to continue raising my family, to sustain and survive, I had to defeat the disease that was trying to kill me from the inside out. And medicine, surgery, science – those were only partial efforts in the attempt at victory. The rest was up to me.

  After my first diagnosis, I couldn’t run any longer, which had been my passion for as long as I could remember. I just didn’t have the strength for it anymore. So I agreed to give yoga a try. “Focus on your mind AND body, Meg.” “Ok, Doc,” I remember thinking sarcastically at the time. But he was right. The meditative power of my yoga regimen was invigorating and restorative. I began to believe that I would win. And the workout, while simple and slow, was surprisingly intense. I regained muscle tone that had disappeared in the first days of disease. I felt energized again, ready t
o wrangle with my cancer. I finally owned the monster inside of me, and then I destroyed it.

  Meg – 1, Cancer – 0.

  ΔΔΔ

  The scary thing about monsters is this: they never really go away. You kill one, another appears in its place. And they can take so many different forms. Even people can be monsters. Just a few weeks before the Great Dark began, another monster appeared in my life, this one an exact replica of its predecessor. It was the same cancer that I had defeated once before. So it only made sense to get back to yoga. Once, that is, I was back from the dead.

  My stamina built with each step I took at the farmhouse, and my resolve to fight mounted with every day I found myself still alive. I revived Dr. Raj’s voice from my first battle, instructing me without ego. “Combine the body and mind, Meg. Center your spirit with your physical being. Acknowledge your existence. Know that you are alive, and that you are stronger than the cancer trying to kill you. Above all else, breathe.”

  And with that in mind, three weeks into my resurrection, I spoke aloud to a distant Dr. Raj as I lowered myself into Child’s Pose. “I’m still breathing, Doc. Now let’s kick this cancer’s ass.”

  5.

  T he summer of Henry’s return to the farm was hot and desperately dry. We didn’t know we were in the midst of a drought until the rainless days became rainless weeks. After all, weather had become completely unpredictable with the loss of mass communication brought on by the Great Dark. Instead, we had learned to depend on our senses, smelling a thunderstorm a few miles away, or feeling a cold front on our skin as the wind blew. But there was still mystery in precipitation and temperature, never knowing what change may come in the overnight hours. Our dependence on predictive technology summed up in a missing weatherman’s nightly report. He would have told us that we needed rain that summer, something we figured out soon enough.