by Susan Lowry
Chapter Twenty- Eight
A Dream Come True
(October 17th, Year Three, PA)
“Look… it’s Mickey Mouse!” Ben said.
Travis sat down on the floor beside the toddler, who had his nose in a book and his finger over the face of Mickey.
“Read Ben a story?”
“Okay,” Travis agreed, “But, do you really want Mickey again?”
Ben nodded firmly, pulling the cardboard cover back from Travis and searching the hard pages until he’d located the beginning. Travis started to read pointing to the words as he went, but by the fifth page he recognized a whimsical look in Ben’s eyes and was not at all surprised when Kate brought them apple juice a few moments later.
Jack, who was sitting at his desk in the living room, glanced up over his reading glasses. “Do you really think it’s a good idea for him to ping for everything he wants instead of using words?”
Kate turned toward him. “Well, his language skills are just fine, so I don’t see why not.”
Jack shook his head. “I guess…” he conceded, going back to his work.
Travis felt an unpleasant twisting sensation in his stomach and guzzled his drink. “Uh… I think I should go now… Rose probably needs me to help with the twins,” he said.
“Okay son, but don’t forget,” Jack asserted, “we’re meeting Eduardo in a couple of hours. Up at the hotel. We’re going to make something special for our hardworking mothers according to Eduardo.”
“I know. Bye-bye Ben.” Travis rushed out the door eager to inhale the fresh air.
Ben had been pinging with Kate and Jack on an increasingly frequent basis now and Travis could tell the toddler was already quite adept. He’d longed for such communication with his own parents and grimly realized what an ongoing torture it was going to be with telepathic children around him. Constant reminders of what he would be missing.
Generally, Travis preferred to escape the hassle of Rose’s demanding new duo, Clairissa and Willard. Noah was much calmer company, April was charming and funny, but Ben was still his favourite of all. Yet, no matter how many times he tried to be happy for the toddler’s growing ability to ping, he just could not do it. Lately, it was making him physically ill, and he didn’t know what to do about it.
Eduardo chuckled, as Travis traipsed after him up to the hotel. “Rose thinks we’re adapting twentieth-century roles. Listen to me carefully son when I say this — you don’t argue with a new mother, not ever — it’s a very tender time. You’ll be in the same boat one day,” he advised, with his peculiar Spanish pronunciation.
“No I won’t,” Travis denied with annoyance. He’d made up his mind not to become a father, not ever. “Nobody can force me into a decision like that.”
Eduardo scoffed with an outburst of laughter intended to lighten the subject and held the door open for Travis to enter the hotel lobby. They were first to arrive and when they reached the kitchen Travis flicked on the lights.
“Well then, thanks to all your help my good man — we’ve got apples up to our eyeballs! And what are we going to do with them all, eh? So look at what I’ve decided.” Eduardo handed him a recipe book.
Nobody had thought to ask Travis what he wanted to do with his Sunday. There were worse things than making candy apples though, he figured, and although five males together in the hotel kitchen felt odd – especially with Jack, Chris, Kevin, and he, taking orders from the tattooed Eduardo – it wasn’t the most horrible of pastimes.
“You ever been to Buenos Aires, Travis?” Eduardo questioned, as he dropped a sack of sugar onto the counter.
Travis shook his head.
“It’s in my country of Argentina, where I ran my famous restaurant.”
“People came from everywhere in the world to eat my fabulous menus. Yes, it is true — it was legendary, because I was the greatest culinary chef in all of Argentina.” He raised his eyebrows and laughed.
The sugar melted to a thick, gooey syrup over the stove and when the thermometer reached three-hundred and five degrees the mixture was ready.
Kevin was busy at the other side of the kitchen with Jack and the astronaut making pastry when Eduardo returned for a taste of the candy.
“Okay… I forgot to tell you. A pinch of salt will always help, together with the sweetness — you’ll see what I mean,” Eduardo said, rubbing salt from between his fingers into the pot and giving it a last stir. “Now the apples are ready to start dunking.”
In the end, Travis had enough candied apples spread out on the aluminum countertop to last all of them for days. He grabbed the tongue-depressor handle of one of his creations, snuck out successfully into the dining room, and sat at a table by the window.
He would get a tablecloth from the cupboard full of linens, and then some china and cutlery when he finished the delicious, crispy apple, which Kevin and the astronaut had helped him pick the other day. Maybe he would put out some candles and some autumn decorations too.
He took another bite. Would Noah be telepathic too? He wondered. Certainly April and the twins would be. Suddenly the apple seemed lacking in flavour and the coating too sweet… something was wrong with it and he wasn’t hungry anymore.
He chewed robotically while tracing the streams of afternoon light across the line-up of dining room tables to the window. At the far shore the lake was a giant mirror in which upside-down maple trees were topped with orange and yellow spheres splattered with patches of red.
He was envisioning his father spreading thick pigments onto a canvas, interpreting the scene before him, when something made him gasp and he choked on a bit of food. He jumped abruptly to his feet, coughing, and the apple dropped to the floor. When his windpipe cleared enough that he could breathe, his heart was pounding against his ribs and it had nothing to do with choking.
All he could think to do was run.
There was no time to shout out to the men. Travis raced to the entrance of the hotel, and was through the heavy doors in a flash. He ran as fast as he could out to the country road where the women had wheeled their babies through the falling leaves to enjoy the afternoon.
As he sped up the road toward them he was shouting as loud as he had ever done in his life, screaming in his mind!
Please don’t do it. No Sarah… don’t!!!
***
Travis could see Sarah’s tall figure from a distance, a ways up from Lucy and Rose. She was in front of the strollers aiming her pistol but from his perspective the rest of the scene was still hidden behind foliage.
He raced toward them through the last group of trees and finally came to a stop next to Rose. His lungs made brash wheezy gasps and his throat stung as he focused on Kate, who was backed against the confines of the fence at the side of the road, clearly prepared to sacrifice her life for Ben and the others.
The night of Noah’s birth flashed into his memory. But he hadn’t been certain then, hadn’t trusted his own eyes – it had been too dark, and by the time they’d come from Lucy’s room to see, it was gone, and he’d wondered if it had been another one of his visions – the demon coming back in a different form.
The women had cried out telepathically to the men, not even thinking of him, but their terror had reached him and Sarah had clearly received his reply. She had not pulled the trigger, not yet… but she remained with her feet planted firmly apart, steadying her aim. She did not understand what Travis intended to do.
Kate glanced at Travis and then gaped at the danger towering over her. She pressed her body further against the fence. It must have been nearly five-hundred pounds and was ready to rip her in half. One swipe of those monstrous claws would do it and they were being waved threateningly so close to Kate.
Only a grizzly could have reached such hulking proportions or act with such inherent aggression. He had learned that, and he understood how prone such an animal was to attack when defending its young, that of all the bears in the world, a grizzly was most certain to deliver on its threats. A
nd sure enough, out in the open were her two babies, obviously in distress.
The mother’s head alone was a hulking block of weight, which she turned to view her whimpering cubs. They were trapped within a triangle, the three corners consisting of Kate directly in front of the mother; Lucy, Rose, and Travis at the south corner, and a gridlock of strollers to their north in front of which Sarah stood with her gun. Upon seeing Travis, Ben had begun to wail.
Travis kept his ground in front of Lucy and Rose but with his added presence the mother could not have been more enraged. She continued to target Kate. With flattened ears and protruding lips she opened her massive jaw, lifted her head and bellowed ferociously, exposing long sharp fangs.
Her strong odour hit Travis’ nostrils. She lowered her body to the ground and fixed her eyes on Kate. It could not be clearer to Travis that these were not idle threats and Sarah was going to fire.
“Don’t shoot,” Travis repeated. Sarah was too emotional to receive his pings, but she heard his voice and suddenly realized what he was doing.
“Get back Travis!” she yelled.
Trembling, Travis walked slowly toward her and the cluster of strollers.
The grizzly clanked her teeth together and then, doing something with her cheeks, sucking in air and then blowing them out, she made several popping sounds.
“Please Sarah… don’t shoot! I – I can make her stop. She’s already starting to hear me, can’t you tell? So just… listen to me ping to her.”
“Travis!” Sarah warned, as the mother continued to bellow at Kate so loud it hurt his ears.
Travis stepped closer to Sarah, until he was by her side, and pulled the gun down. “Keep still and concentrate. I’m pinging you now, so please listen!”
His heart was pounding so fast it made him feel faint, and it was infinitely more difficult to concentrate with the tingling in his feet, but he knew he was beginning to reach her. If he could just hang on his message would soon make sense to all of them.
She was slapping at the ground now, and vegetation around her. Travis sucked in a deep breath and let his mind relax; then he gathered his thoughts, formed what he needed her to understand in his mind and pushed it toward the bear in a penetrating spear of energy. Then he slowly began to walk away from Sarah and didn’t stop until he was halfway between her and Lucy – directly in front of the bear.
He had pierced through the grizzly’s anger with enough distraction that she swung around in mid-growl, bringing her hulking weight to face the road. She leered at Travis. Then, she twisted back to Kate, bellowing again to be certain she had made her point.
Travis stayed firmly in his place. With every molecule of mental energy he again created a penetrating shaft and directed it at the bear. She glowered back at him for a moment and then with her ears cocked forward, grunting, she peered up the road at Sarah and the babies, and then past Travis to Lucy and Rose, who had finally begun to back away down the road giving her the space she needed to lead her offspring to safety.
She gazed at her cubs speaking to them in grunts, and Travis moved backwards until he was off in the grass by the edge of the road. The grizzly ambled toward him and her cubs followed until she sat in the middle of the road calmly regarding him.
Suddenly Lucy joined in, her pings filling his mind in a soothing collaboration with the bear. Travis nearly fell over as the spark from Lucy flared within him igniting their memories with such continuity he felt as if they’d never been lost. Her energy vibrated through him and out to the bear adding a richness of meaning he could not have relayed by himself.
Both he and Lucy felt the animal’s reactions to their pings – liberating, brightening light, relief, and fascination. She was entirely absorbed, appreciating this new pleasure with trusting wonder. Her fear for her young had been quelled, replaced by a desire for more of what he and Lucy could give her.
And then a fourth voice entered the mix. It was Kate, who had relaxed enough to comprehend what was happening. That was joined by Sarah and together they managed to convince the bear it was time to take her cubs back to their den. The message had been comprehended perfectly. She almost smiled in a similar way that a pleased dog might have done as she and her young ambled across the road and into the forest.
Kate immediately ran over to Travis. As she held him in her arms, sobbing, Travis noticed for the first time that not far down the road the men had arrived. He was not sure how long they’d been there, but Jack had just lowered his rifle.
“Oh Travis,” Kate cried, still holding him tight. “No words can express how I feel about you. It’s just that your phone call in the dead of winter reached me in the aftermath of the plague… and then your voice was in my head all those months, and you brought me Jack and Lucy and the others.
“And now… this?
“What kind of being are you Travis? What wonderful, extraordinary person did we find?”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Where the Wild Turkeys Live
(October 31st, Year Three, PA)
Travis blinked at the digital clock beside him and pulled the blanket off of his nose. He was officially ten and he couldn’t wait to start the day. If all went well, Rose might agree to let Eduardo give him a tattoo.
The twins were going to wake soon so he needed to hurry or he’d never get out of there without being seen. He stepped into his jeans, yanked a sweater over his head and crept out of his bedroom. Grabbing his jacket, Travis slipped through the back door into the crisp autumn air.
Only a soft glow from the lake illuminated the trail as he hiked past the cottages. An unseen owl hooted from above and Travis paused when he heard it, checking his pocket for the treat he’d lifted out of the pantry the night before. The scent of decay, organic and wild, lingered in the air, mingling with the freshness of a crisp new day and Travis breathed it in gratefully, energized by the infinite spirits surrounding him. A delicious thrill wriggled up his spine, for this was to be a momentous, historical day.
He walked on roots that had weaved their paths between time-worn rocks and grown so large they jutted out from the earth protected only by a thin covering of soil, spreading out in complex communication with the forest. The western edge of the lake was where the wild turkeys lived and when he reached the trunk of a fallen tree which had come to mark the edge of Moonstone Resort, he knew he was close.
There, he could glance through the branches at the tiny old cottage with bright red paint trimming the windows where Jack had stayed last spring and then Kevin, a few months later. He heard the flutter of wings, as the poults that had grown over the summer flew to their roost in the trees.
He continued further into the woods winding his way along the edge of the lake until he found the trail that led back out in the open. There the shoreline was flat rock where he had first seen the turkeys drinking from the lake.
Travis sat at the edge of the water and waited while leaves blew past him into a molten gold mirror reflecting the rising sun. Soon, he felt her presence and smiled. There was rustling behind him in the wood and, remembering the muffin in his pocket, he placed it beside him.
Her steps crunched in the leaves and Travis turned to see Angel, with her beautiful white and gray coat. She paused for a moment and when their eyes met she limped toward him. He watched her approach until her thick fur brushed against him. She lapped up the muffin, panting with excitement and then stretched out extending her front legs.
They stayed by each other for hours, pinging. Travis had once only dreamed of such a possibility. To Angel, the taste of muffins was pure joy.
The End
Books by Susan Lowry:
Ping — From the Apocalypse
Ping Two – Across the Valley
Vegan Occasions — Vegan Recipes for Special Occasions
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www.susan-lowry.com
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