Getting over the disappointment of no truck, Ben continued on his way, stepping up his pace. He wasn’t going to sleep. He vowed to take short breaks and then get right back on the road. He was too close to rest now.
The road was better than most he had run across on his trip and the traveling was fast. The next day he saw a large outline of an old blood stain on the road. Whoever had bled had probably died, but there was no body. Most likely animals had dragged it off and disposed of it. In the bushes, however, were the tattered remains of a t-shirt. He recognized it as Lila’s. His heart was pounding and he was sweating.
“Oh, God, please let Lila be alive.”
He found himself running. When he was exhausted, he would walk a ways, and then start running again.
Finally, nearly two months after leaving Washington, and over six months after leaving Lila, he reached the dam. It was still there. Washington was flattened, but the dam held. He could see cracks in it, so it might not always hold, but for now it was doing its job.
He looked in the parking lot and saw the truck. That almost surely meant Lila was alive! He made his way down to the dock and picked out a boat. Ben pulled on the outboard rope and the motor started. He cast off and slowly started his way to the cabin. Too slowly! But he just had to be patient. It wouldn’t go any faster. Finally, he rounded the bend and saw the cabin in the distance. Smoke was coming from the chimney. A few moments later he saw someone come onto the deck. It was Lila, and she was holding a child!
*****
(Lila)
She was chopping wood, with Katie on the porch watching. She was having trouble with a large piece and had stopped to pry the axe blade from the log when she heard a noise. The sound of a motor … an outboard motor. She hesitated only a second longer to make sure, then she dropped the axe, grabbed Katie, and ran through the house to the deck. She looked out across the water at a small boat with one person. Could it be? She grabbed the binoculars and focused in. It was Ben! Omigod, she thought, It really was Ben! She jumped up and down with Katie in one arm, while waving with the other. Tears were streaming down her cheeks. She ran down the stairs to the dock and waited …
Epilogue
I sometimes wonder what my life would have been like if the disaster had never happened. I know it’s a futile thought, because I could do that with just about anything. What if I hadn’t found the courage to get the gun away from Coke? What if Lila hadn’t gotten pregnant? What if I’d wiped all the maggots off my leg wound and not let them do their job? What if …?
“What if” is really stupid. What happens, happens. We had no control over the events of that day, but we had control over our lives after it. That’s what kept us alive. I look at what we have—oh yeah, Lila’s pregnant again—and realize that while certain things from our old life are missed, what we’ve found in our new life far eclipses any of that.
We had to grow up so quickly. When I think back to the two socially awkward kids we were, and what we became, it’s mind-boggling. It’s too bad there had to be so much violence and heartache involved, but maybe it was the only way we were able to find the strength we needed to survive.
But we’ve finally found the peace we were looking for, and the beauty we see every morning when we wake up never ceases to take our breath away. I know we’ll do some more traveling at some point, but it’s hard to think about leaving paradise. Do we really want to venture back into the cities? Do we want to take the chance of encountering more of the negativity that we fought our way through to get here? Maybe things have settled down now that the quake is history.
Sometimes we hop in the old truck and make a trip to one of the towns on the outskirts of the national park. Ralph always accompanies us on our trips. We’ve found the best routes around the cracks in the earth. We always go together now. We load up on books and certain essential items, but we’re careful not to bring too much of our old life back to the cabin. I think it’s the fear that we’ll begin to incorporate that life in with our new one. Nothing would depress us more. In fact, we are becoming so self-sufficient, our trips to town are much less frequent. Following the directions from a book, I’ve constructed a smokehouse in back of the cabin. It will keep our meat from spoiling and carry us through the winter.
On one of our forays into town, we ran into Nick and Jason. You could’ve knocked us over with a feather. We hugged and cried. Jason called it a massive coincidence, but I knew better. There are no coincidences. But it was quite a shock. We brought them back to the cabin and they stayed a month. They were heading west to see how badly the earthquakes had affected the rest of the country. They had had their own adventures since leaving us on the trail, and had seen a lot of the worst of human nature, as we did. But they also encountered numerous examples of people helping people. So it does still exist. That’s encouraging. They ran across Jack in their travels. When they all discovered their shared link with us, they spent a few days together. They said that Jack is doing well. He latched onto a woman with two kids, and they seem happy. Like Nick and Jason, Jack and his new family are traveling around the country. A lot of people seem to be doing that. Maybe many of them are feeling a freedom from the old way of life. Once people get over the shock and the mourning, in its own way, it’s exciting to be part of a new world. Nick and Jason promised to stop by if they come back this way. I wonder if we’ll be here? We’re both itching to see the ocean again. Someday.
Colonel Jeffries has taken over the job of rebuilding the government. Good. He seemed like a competent leader. The soldiers that are left are loyal to him, and survivors are trickling into Washington with hope. I wish him well. It won’t be easy, but it’s a start. I’ve kept my promise to Jeffries to spread the news about the “new” Washington whenever I run across someone, which isn’t often. Nick and Jason have promised to carry the news, as well.
Lila opened up one night and told me of her experience with Peter. What could I say? I admit that there was more than a twinge of jealousy, but it was two lonely people in a world turned upside down. Lila thought I was dead. How could I begrudge her a little happiness in her sorrow. As hard as it was for me to picture her with another man, deep down I was grateful to him. He may have saved her. Someday, I hope he comes by so I can meet him.
When I held Katie for the first time, my legs buckled and I had to sit. It was an overload of emotions. She was more beautiful than I could have imagined. The significance of her birth was overwhelming, as well. She was one of the first children born after the disaster. This is the only world she knows. She has nothing to compare it too, whereas, the rest of us will forever be comparing—for good or bad. She will be able to do with her life what she likes, because the world has been given a clean slate … a do-over. She will have none of the prejudices we were all raised with, and a strength that very few of us had in that life. I was so proud of Lila for everything she had gone through and the mother she had become.
Katie is growing so fast. She looks a lot more like Lila than me (thank God!), with Lila’s black hair. I put her in the backpack and take her with me hunting sometimes, and have taught her to fish, sort of, but we spend most of our time playing. Ralph watches over her, and they play a lot together. We finally remembered to pick up a ball and a couple of gloves, and Lila and I play catch. It’s relaxing, and we spend that time talking and laughing.
We still don’t miss people, although seeing Nick and Jason was a treat. We don’t miss the pettiness, the egos, the anger, the selfishness, or the neediness. Nick said that the legend of Ben and Lila has taken on a life of its own. We’re now responsible for heroic actions a thousand miles from where we ever were.
Good. They can have their stories. As for us, we have the life we wanted. And it was worth it all to get here.
The End
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; About the Author
Andrew Cunningham is the author of the Amazon bestselling thriller Wisdom Spring and the thrillers All Lies and Deadly Shore, as well as the post-apocalyptic Eden Rising Trilogy: Eden Rising, Eden Lost, and Eden's Legacy. As A.R. Cunningham, he has written the Arthur MacArthur series of mysteries for children. Born in England, Andrew was a long-time resident of Cape Cod. He and his wife now live in Florida. Please visit his website at arcnovels.com and his Facebook page at AuthorAndrewCunningham.
An excerpt from Eden Lost, Book 2 in the Eden Rising Trilogy
Eden Lost
Prologue
Seven years ago the world died.
I often think about who we were before the catastrophe. I was seventeen, and Lila was a year younger. In so many ways we were both behind others our age in maturity. But then I wonder about that. Were we really? Because somehow we ended up alive when so many other “survivors” of the event couldn’t make it.
We learned self-preservation in a hurry. We saw some of the worst of humanity and some of the best. Sadly, I think the worst overshadowed the best. But maybe that was what we needed to experience in order to gain the skills and the strength to keep going.
Our story of overcoming adversity became a rallying cry for some. “The Legend of Ben and Lila” was a source of hope for so many. We became folk heroes up and down the east coast. And then we disappeared. We never wanted the folk hero label. It was thrust upon us by others—the scared, the needy, and those without hope. I often wonder how many of those people made it beyond the first year.
It was a massive electro-magnetic pulse from a nuclear weapon originating from our own country—from our own (now late) president—that was the cause. So powerful, it wreaked havoc with the human electrical system, killing anyone who wasn’t lucky enough to be far enough underground—or in an industrial freezer, as Lila and I were. All electricity died along with the humans. We have to assume it was a world-wide event, because we’ve never seen a plane, or any indications that other countries fared better than us.
So Lila and I faded into the background. Our journey away from the death and destruction toward a peaceful life was a hard one. We often had to bring ourselves down to match the lowest level of human consciousness in order to survive. But somehow we did, and we found what we were searching for—a remote cabin on the shores of a beautiful lake in the Great Smoky Mountains. Away from humanity—what was left of it—we could live our life in peace. That’s all we wanted.
In the months following the great catastrophe, we developed the skills to live off the land, to defend ourselves, and to defend others when necessary. Often it was skill, and sometimes we were just lucky.
But our luck couldn’t hold out forever….
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