by Jensine Odom
Mom just shakes her head and continues to put away our groceries.
The front door slams open unexpectedly, sending our dogs into a riot of excited barks and yips. They recognize whoever just walked in. I peer around the corner from the kitchen to find my sister, Caitlin, wearing an overstuffed backpack and hauling in a large duffel bag.
“Come to join the party?” I ask humorously.
“I’m concerned by your definition of party,” Mary remarks.
“This isn’t a party.” Caitlin huffs, plopping her heavy bag onto the couch. “This is the apocalypse.”
“Apocalypse?” I ask curiously.
“Yeah. This is happening all over the world,” she replies, swinging her arm in a wide arc for dramatic effect. “It’s all that was on the T.V. until the power was cut. They had said the utilities would all be shut off for safety reasons, then turned back on when things settled down, but I don’t see this getting any better.”
“Me neither,” I agree, shaking my head in disbelief at the magnitude of these events. “It seems like Mother Earth finally hit the big red reset button.”
“Yeah.” Caitlin huffs again, dropping her backpack beside her duffel bag. “Come help me with my dogs.”
We get her two dogs into the backyard, then I help Caitlin get settled in my room. While Mom cooks dinner over the small propane stove my brothers try to get any radio signal, but there’s nothing; just dead air. Maybe we’ll check the neighbors with a HAM radio tomorrow.
We eat dinner in a stunned silence, each of us caught up in our own thoughts on what’s going to happen next, then trudge off to bed. Unable to sleep, I watch the volcano from my window until I get tired, falling asleep to the odd, quiet stillness broken only by the snores of my family.
✽✽✽
The Earth continued to grumble throughout the night, all while the newly made volcano angrily spewed magma and ash, lighting up the dark sky with an eerie glow, its embers sparking several more fires. It’s morning now, and the tremors have quieted some, but the volcano continues to erupt.
The sun glows an ominous red through the thick smoke filling the air, bathing the world in a muted orange. Ash falls like snow, thankfully no longer hot by the time it reaches the dry grasses near us.
The pocket of water that supplied our community well collapsed in one of the aftershocks, leaving us with only the water we collected in jugs. Luckily Caitlin had brought some of her five-gallon containers, essentially doubling the amount of water we could store.
The quakes and volcano show no signs of calming, rattling the ground and showering more lava frequently throughout the day. The farmer’s alfalfa fields to the north of us get swallowed by the Earth in one particularly violent quake, leaving a mile-long rent in the ground and exposing the crumbled limestone caverns beneath.
By the next morning the ground ceases to shake as often and the volcano spews less violently. Our neighbors are packing up their vehicles with anything they can carry and invite us to join their convoy. They’ll be leaving this afternoon, if we want to join them, heading east for Texas where some of their family lives.
“We survived here for the last few days just fine,” Mom reasons stubbornly.
“Yes, but now we have no running water. Even if we don’t go with them, we’ll have to leave,” Caitlin counters gently, trying to coax Mom into understanding.
“We must leave Pride Rock,” I joke, and Caitlin glares at me.
“What?!” I shrug, fighting back a laugh.
“Why can’t we just hunker down here?” Mom asks, a little panicky. “We can go out for supplies and come back.”
“You do realize that others will be doing that, too? And they won’t be as nice as us?” I point out, a little harsher than I intended, and take a breath. “Staying will be dangerous, now that the Earth is calming, but I don’t think going with our neighbors is a good idea, either. Everyone’s going to be driving somewhere. There won’t be enough gas, and if we’re going to be stranded anywhere, I’d rather it be the devil we know.”
“I second the motion,” Mary pipes up.
“I third the motion,” Zebulon adds.
“Fourth,” Tristin raises his hand.
“I agree with Xerxia,” Caitlin says, and we all look hopefully at Mom.
“Fine!” She throws her hands up, huffing in exasperation. “When do you want to leave, then?!”
“We’ll decide in the morning, then start packing.”
We inform our neighbors that our path takes us in a different direction and wish them luck as they drive away in their small motorcade.
I lay in bed, listening to the Earth groan deep beneath me as she continues to settle. Thunder Volcano no longer rages, but only simmers, lava dribbling over the edges of its rim, and the fires have nearly burned themselves out. Another day or two should suffice; then we leave.
✽✽✽
I had hoped, in one of my last thoughts before sleep, that I would wake the next morning to find the world back to normal; the flood plains weren’t full of cooling lava, the innocent mountain we had hiked on wasn’t a volcano, and this was all just a very vivid dream.
The gunshots that just rang out from our kitchen, followed by yelps and the sudden silence of our dogs barking, gives me a stark reminder that the world isn’t right at all. Not anymore.
My heart in my throat, I quietly slip out of my bed, grabbing the sword my family always teased me about buying, and make my way to the kitchen. The floor creaks beneath my feet, louder in the morning stillness, and the two men currently raiding our house turn towards me in surprise.
They may have been armed, but they weren’t ready to use their weapons on people. My brother and I were. He must have been woken up by the gunshots, too, and now stands across the house from me, his own sword at the ready.
Our eyes meet. I nod at his silent question, and we move.
With him taking the first man by surprise, stabbing clean through his back, I get the chance to dispatch the second, slicing off his head with surprising ease, the shock of death forever etched on his face as it rolls across the floor.
“We leave today,” Mom states, her face pale as she stands in the doorway of her room, staring at the amount of death and blood on the floor.
A black SUV rumbles up to our driveway, the men inside glancing at our door expectantly. These must be the dead scavengers’ friends. We don’t have long before they realize something’s up.
“Tristin, get the rifle. I’m going out the front door with my bow, you go around the back.”
Reading the play, Tristin nods, grabbing the assault rifle we procured from Walmart and waiting for my signal. Taking my bow, a handful of arrows, and the man’s head, I walk noisily out the front door, barely hearing the creak of the back door.
“Looking for this guy?” I yell to the SUV, surprising the men inside, and hold the head up, rolling it at them as they angrily jump out of the vehicle. All four of them. No, five. One guy was in the far back. I thought there was only two.
“You’ll regret that, bitch,” the lead guy yells, cocking his sawed-off shotgun.
He has limited range on that; he’ll have to get close. Drawing my bow, I nock an arrow, praying to whatever god is listening I can actually do damage as I loose the shot.
The man’s eyes go wide as my arrow sprouts from his throat. Blood spurts out of his mouth as he gurgles and falls to his knees. That was a lucky shot; I was aiming for his heart.
Thinking I’m some kind of Katniss, the other men become wary, spreading out in front of me.
“You’ll pay for that,” the next man in the chain of command bellows. “That was our pa!”
“Well, maybe you shouldn’t have fucked with my family,” I scream back, adrenaline coursing through my veins. “Now!”
At my que, Tristin steps around the large pine tree, rifle at the ready. Before he can get a shot off, a gold Dodge Ram comes flying into our front yard, running the four men over.
Instinctively, I aim my bow a
nd Tristin sights his rifle as the door opens. A man with gray hair and a Navy Veteran cap steps out, assessing the situation.
“Xerxia?” he asks, blue eyes meeting mine.
“Steve?” My voice breaks, and I drop my bow, the arrows in my other hand clattering to the concrete sidewalk as my mind catches up to what just happened.
Steve pulls me into a hug as the tears begin to fall, the stubble of his fresh beard rough against my forehead. “It’s alright. You did good here, kid. They’re dead, and not you.”
I take a shaky breath, and another. The third is steady, and I step out of Steve’s arms, wiping away the tears these men don’t deserve. “I know. I saved my family. We saved our family.” I smile at Tristin, hugging him tight for a moment then retrieving my bow and arrows, including the one sticking out of the Scavenger’s neck. “Thanks again, Steve.”
“No problem. When I heard them boys plotting to raid a neighborhood today, I figured I’d follow them. Glad I did.” He gives me a fatherly smile, reminding me of the kind my dad used to give me before he died. “Say, if y’all need a place to stay, I’ve got a compound with plenty of space.”
“We’ll gladly take the offer,” Mom pipes up from the porch, bags in hand. “Seeing as how we don’t have anywhere else to go.”
“W—we need to bury our— dogs,” Mary sobs behind Mom, her dog’s fluffy body hanging lifeless in her arms.
“Alright. What about these guys?” I point to the bodies littering our yard; I wish I could just incinerate them with a touch.
“They can rot where they lay. They deserve no respect,” Zebulon states coldly.
“My thoughts exactly,” I agree.
✽✽✽
I reach the top of the hill before everyone else, stopping to scan our surroundings. Fluffy clouds like cotton candy float on the far east horizon, and down the sloping hill below is a large green metal barn, the walls smudged black from a recent fire.
That’s strange. There haven’t been any wild fires in some time. Not since Thunder Volcano quieted down and most of the population fled the valley.
“What do your elf eyes see?” Mary jokes from halfway down the slope behind me, stopping to swipe the sweat off her forehead.
“Please tell me it’s shade,” Tristin pants dramatically, just reaching the bottom of the hill. “I don’t think I can take much more of this heat!”
It’s well into summer now, some months after the Earth reclaimed herself, and the New Mexico heat is especially sweltering today, made the worse by the sticky humidity of an impending thunderstorm.
“Sanctuary,” Caitlin calls, reaching the top of the hill beside me.
“Thank the Maker,” Zebulon crows from beside his brother.
“Alright, you babies,” I scorn, shaking my head and laughing. “We can stay here for the night. It’s close enough to Thunder Mountain Inn that if we leave first thing in the morning, we can beat the midday heat.”
“Have you met any of us, ever?” Mary asks, finally getting to the top of our perch.
I laugh. “Yes, that’s why I’ll be waking you up at first light, not waiting for all you lazies to get up of your own volition.”
Caitlin, Mary, and I wait for Zebulon, Tristin, and Mom to get up the hill with us. After giving Mom a moment or two to rest, we wind our way down the deceptively steep hill.
It wouldn’t normally take us this long to go this far, but our loads are doubled thanks to the good Scavenging run we’re coming back from. The extended rest will be much appreciated. And the shade. Especially if these clouds make good on their promise of rain.
We’re halfway across the open grass field when a strange roar breaks the muggy silence, sounding somewhere between Godzilla and a T-Rex. We stop dead in our tracks and scan the horizon; probably not the best thing to do.
“What was that?!” Zebulon asks, voice slightly higher than normal.
“I don’t know, but we should probably get going. Fast,” I return, and pick up the pace, my heavy backpack bouncing against my back as I lightly jog.
Another roar comes, this time much closer. Mom’s flagging, and with a cry she trips on a clump of grass, falling to her knees hard. My brothers and I turn back for her as another ear-splitting roar tears across the landscape, stopping us dead, and we finally get to see just what’s making those sounds as it flies over the barn in front of us.
“Oh, shit!” My brothers and I yell in tandem.
Any other expletives are swallowed by the dragon’s maniacal scream, fire engine red scales glinting brilliantly in the mid-afternoon sun and amethyst wings spread wide as the beautiful beast descends on us.
Year of the Dragon
IT’S early spring, though you wouldn’t know it from the snow that covers the ground. Save for the tiny hints of green peeking out from white powder here or there, it looks for all the world like winter.
I’m not really sure why I’m here again, this place I had once called home. There’s nothing left for me; Scavengers took what was left behind.
Still, my feet led me to this place, and I aimlessly wander into the yard. The skeleton of our wooden fence surrounds me as I pass by the screen door that hangs precariously on its hinges. It creaks when I run a finger across the partially legible writing on its surface. ‘Please DO NOT let door slam’ it had once said; now it just looks like chicken scratch.
I set my heavy backpack down on the decrepit wooden table near the fire pit as I move farther in. The chain-link gate sits before me now, and I walk into the yard where our dogs had once played. Only their dilapidated houses remain, colorful ruins sprinkled amongst the crystalline snow.
The fresh powder blankets the area in a white veil, covering up the turmoil that occurred here, and suddenly everything’s like a blank canvas, waiting to be painted with memories.
They play like a slideshow in my mind. The last time we had a snow like this, my family and I outside building a snowman in tank tops and shorts despite the snow; throwing snowballs until we were all soaking wet. The snowman had completely melted by that afternoon. Bonfires on warm summer nights in the pit we dug; roasting hot dogs and marshmallows, trying to see if we could roast one three or four times before there was nothing left.
What I wouldn’t give to have just one s’more right now; burnt sugar, creamy chocolate, crunchy graham cracker, and just a hint of smoky flavor. Just the thought of it makes my mouth water. How different our lives have become in such a short amount of time.
It’s been roughly a year, give or take a few days, or weeks. Time’s different now and gets away from me. Anyways, it’s been about a year since the dragons made themselves known.
The kind we’re dealing with are the western European version. Four-legged. Massive wings. It doesn’t matter where they supposedly originated, though; they wasted no time spreading across the globe, even reaching us down here in the middle of rural New Mexico. Who knows, they may have been here all along.
They’re not as big as Hollywood would have you believe, no taller than your average house—about ten or so feet—and they’re damn near indestructible. Bullets do absolutely nothing to them, nor high carbon steel; I discovered that the hard way when my family and I had our first encounter with that red one.
To save Mom from its clutches, Tristin decided the best thing to do, in that situation, was to open fire on it. The bullets from his thirty-aught-six bounced right off its bright red scales, only succeeding in angering the creature further. When I tried slicing its leg with my sword the high carbon steel shattered like it was only glass.
We were just lucky to make it to that barn alive, sporting only a few scrapes and bruises. By morning the dragon was gone. Now we’re more careful, always keeping an eye on the sky when out in the plains.
Dragons were the ace up Mother Nature’s sleeve, quietly slumbering deep within the earth until the day they could rule once again, unopposed, snacking on us helpless humans. Or so the story goes. I don’t really buy it.
There are alwa
ys three sides to a story, right? One side and the other, then there’s the truth. So far, we have one side, made up to scare children and adults alike. I don’t know if we’ll ever get the other side, but I’ve been gathering information to make at least an educated guess as to what the truth is.
There seems to be two factions of dragons; we’ve come to call them the Beauties and the Beasts. The Beauties are more intelligent, and as their name implies, beautiful, with brightly colored scales. They seem to be searching for something. Every time we’ve encountered one of them, they’ve left us alone after a while of hiding, or were discouraged by injury; you can cut their scaleless faces.
In the second encounter we had with a Beauty, a magnificent golden dragon, I managed to slice across its cheek with my bladed bow. It didn’t seem to like that, and abruptly left.
Then there’s the Beasts. They’re the dim-witted bullies of the dragon world, plain colored and just plain mean. Unlike the others, they don’t give up, and are impossible to injure; Their faces are completely covered in scales, rendering them completely impenetrable. The one encounter we’ve had with a Beast ended in the death of Mom and Caitlin.
The memory comes back, unbidden. We were hiding in a house, but the Beast knew, and it wasn’t giving up its meal. As we were ducking past a window, the dragon peered in, separating Mom and Caitlin from us.
Mom’s face when the flames engulfed her still haunts me, and Caitlin’s scream still echoes in my mind. Had that black Beauty not intervened, we would have all died.
With the numbers of dragons growing weekly, we’ve had many more encounters, and the two factions have begun to fight over territory. These battle royales last anywhere from a matter of minutes to a few hours, depending on the size and number of dragons in the tussle. No dragons are killed, though. Injured, yes, but never mortally wounded.
It just seems too organized to be the whims of simple beasts fighting for scraps, but every time I mention there may be more to the story, that there just may be some way to appease these beasts, I’m treated like I’ve lost my mind. Most people usually leave at this point, backing away slowly, not making eye contact.