Rise From the Ashes: Lena's Story

by Laura Franklin

  A big lake, sparkling in the sun. The far shore was a haze in the light, with mountains rising very close to the shore. The lake was so large that sometimes in the dream he couldn’t tell if the clouds were the mountains. Steve was always standing on the east side of the lake. Always near a bonfire on the pebbly beach. Always surrounded by young people talking, laughing and moving around. They were not the people he was leading now. He could even smell food cooking over the bonfire. It was so real. It was so peaceful. The setting sun was sending out bright orange and pink streaks in the sky. He always woke up smiling.

  Was it a trick?

  How could the devil give him such feelings of peace if it was a trick?

  Was he fighting a vision from God?

  Steve was in agony not knowing what choice to make. Since he had not made a conscious decision, he now realized he was leading his group straight north, straying from the path the authorities had given out over the radio. He felt like he was a homing pigeon. He had no doubt that he was heading directly to this lake, to these strangers. He had prayed over their final destination, but received nothing in response except the dreams. Steve realized he was exhausting himself with mental torture and there were times when he almost missed the sound of engines, almost missed getting his flock off the road and into hiding before danger passed.

  He was going to have to take this on faith. He looked deep into his heart as they were taking a lunch break. The feelings of peace that sunk into every ounce of his body couldn’t be denied. He was going to give over to his dream and take it on faith that he was being led to safety.

  I’ve always been faithful to my God, I have to trust that this is His way of helping me and helping the people that are following me.

  The priest had a renewed energy as they started out for the second half of the day. He tapped back into his motivational personal training skills as he kept them moving on, quietly and with sore feet.

  Kim was the biggest challenge, she wanted to bitch and moan out loud. Time and again he had to walk beside her when she started in. She could drag the mood of the whole group down, and lay them all open to despair if left to rant on about all her ills. So Steve would make sure to touch her on the arm, face her full on and give her a nice glimpse of his eyes, his strong chest and muscular arms. He was shaking his head at himself, but it worked for Kim. She got quieter and softer and tried to flirt with him. He got what he wanted; a quiet Kim. He would softly squeeze her shoulder and say he had to go back to the front of the line, he would be back later, and please, for him, speak only in whispers. It’s hard to bitch and moan in a whisper.

  ~ ~ ~

  The second day out from Brattleboro we heard motorcycles in the distance. All of us were immediately tense. Mick had his gun out and Ed took his rifle off his saddle. Sue and I headed into the trees with the horses again. This time I realized that Mick and old Ed were my only line of defense in this new world. I was going to have to step it up because they were not going to be by my side every second and Ed now had a bullet hole in his arm.

  I am not a religious girl. But listening to the rumble of the motors coming closer, and seeing Mick standing at the side of the road with a gun, I started to say, “Let him be ok, let him be ok,” over and over again. Kind of like a chant or prayer.

  It hit me hard, the biker killers must have been watching, just waiting to ambush any small group that went far enough away from the city.

  This time there were four bikes. Each riding double like before. I squinted; ugly red hair. Doug! The guy on the first bike was my neighbor Doug!

  “Don’t shoot!” I threw the reins to Sue, then I was running out toward Mick and Ed.

  The bikes were actually speeding up, they must have seen us and were eager to get to us.

  “NO!”

  Mick’s arm was coming up. He had never seen Doug, had no idea who the hell he was.

  “STOP, PLEASE STOP!” My words were overpowered by the rumbling of the engines.

  The gun was leveled right at the riders now. Here is where Doug proved he was no dummy. He raised his hand signaling the riders behind him to stop and he came to a very, very fast stop. He put his hands up. No talking, no arguing.

  “Who the hell are you?” growled Mick as the echo of the engines faded.

  “That’s Doug! Friend, dude. Put down the gun.”

  Doug saw me and smiled with relief.

  “Oh, sorry.”

  “My God! You must have been the ones that killed those other riders? They looked pretty rough, did they try to hurt you guys?”

  “Hurt? No, they opened fire on us before they were close enough to say a word or even ask for our food or whatever. They were plain bent on killing us.”

  “Wow.”

  “Yeah. So you guys were catching up to us?”

  “Yeah. It took some us a little longer to decide what we couldn’t live without.” He gave a backwards nod at the others. “But we wanted to head north with you guys, we sure don’t feel safe right now, and we figured we can always come back in the spring if nothing happens.”

  “Glad to have you,” Mick reached out to shake hands while introducing himself.

  It didn’t take our little group long to get a game plan. The motorcycles would ride five miles up the road and set up a rest or lunch camp. The ones on horseback would move along at a trot. The horse riders, because they would be moving slower, would be looking around for other horses or things that would be useful. Then all would eat a little something, take a break and load up anything found onto the bikes. Then repeat. They figured the bikes had enough gas to keep this up for a few days, especially if they jacked any gas from cars left in front of empty houses. As the bikes filled up with supplies, the people riding behind the drivers would switch to horses they also found along the way. We also knew that gas supplies would not last all winter, so even if we didn’t need them now, we would need horses and pack horses for everyone as we moved along, same idea as when we left Brattleboro a few days ago, may as well keep any good horses we pass now.

  The saddest thing was that when we would take a look at a house, if the people there were dead, we just couldn’t do anything it. We couldn’t bury them or make a cool Viking-like funeral pyre. We had to just keep on. There were just too many and burying them would turn into all we would or could do.

  I nabbed a sweet little black handgun at one house. I showed it to Mick and he said it would work fine for me and we found a box of bullets for it. So at our rest stops I learned how to load and the safety issues and the whole group was listening and watching as Mick showed us all the basics. Guess it wasn’t just me who figured we all better know some basic self-defense and gun use.

  Ed was having a little trouble holding his rifle due to the bullet wound in his arm. He also hadn’t been able to really sleep since the earlier attack. I was starting to get worried about him. I liked this quiet guy. I started to set my mind to thinking about natural treatment for wounds and natural sleep aids, surely I had read or heard tales about wound treatment in my life … now if I could only recall them. Then I went back to shooting practice.

  I was also sweet on Mick, I guess that is clear from what I have written so far. Let me tell you I don’t often blush, but I was getting all hot in the face when Mick was standing behind me and showing me how to hold my arm out to shoot. I was trying to play it cool. Then I looked over and saw Sue grinning at me. I had to grin back. Hell. Why fight it? I could die tomorrow, I may as well kiss whoever I want to. So I leaned back into him and felt his breath on my neck. Ah, now that was sweet.

  That was all the encouragement Mick needed. That night he came over and sat around the camp fire with his arm around me. We weren’t being gross in front of the others or anything, but we weren’t going to pretend.

  “I’m glad you gave me a sign you were interested in me,” Mick told me as we took a walk late that night.

  “No use playing games in this new world.”

  “Right. We don’t have to care
about anything except what we want.”

  “Mick, it could be all the excitement. What if we start something now and it fades?”

  “I’m a big boy, you just tell me.”

  “I feel like we have been friends forever. I don’t think it will fade, but what if?”

  “Strange, I feel like we have been friends before too. If it fades, I’ll still like you, we can still be friends. I know that sounds corny, but really, we don’t have to act like people around us used to act. We can be classy, and just be friends. I’ll promise you that. We can start a new after the bombs trend – being kind to each other even if you break up.”

  His kiss was so soft and warm. I’m not going to write details in this journal, but you can guess that we were together that night and from then on we were a couple and we acted like it. Nothing over the top. But we would walk side by side, sometimes hold hands. Always sit by each other. No one in our group gave us any hassle over it either. Sue did take me aside and mentioned that we didn’t know what the dirty bombs had left behind, to be careful about getting pregnant and to be emotionally prepared for a baby to not make it or to be deformed. Gee, that was something I never thought about. How depressing. But I wasn’t about to get pregnant in the midst of being homeless and wandering around the countryside. I’ll save that for 30 years down the road, thank you.

  That night Mick and I curled up a few feet away from the fire near a big boulder. It had flecks of silver and gold in it and Mick told me he thinks granite is good luck. It gave him a good dream about his horse. I laughed at him. Laugh was on me.

  I had two of those vivid dreams that night. The first came almost immediately and was short, but it stayed in my memory just as solidly as all of these other vivid dreams did. It started with a flash of Ed jerking back as a bullet bit into his arm. I hadn’t seen it happen, so I guess I was seeing how it really happened. Then I saw Ed tossing and turning in his sleeping bag. Yeah, I knew that. Ed had said he hadn’t slept at all. Then I saw a nice garden. Weird. Then it was like I was pulled right to the lettuce. Suddenly a hunk of lettuce just snapped over. I watch the milky-sap oozing out. Then I saw a vision of a younger Ed drinking a glass of milk. Ha! Pretty clear what my dream wanted me to do.

  My second dream started with four strangers sitting around a bar. They were joking with each other in a trashy way. Rough too. Then they walked out into blinding sunlight. I got a creepy feeling when the white light faded and I saw them getting on motorcycles, their helmets looked just the ones of the people we killed. In my dream I could feel that they were coming for me! I felt a need to run, to hide. I didn’t wake up out of this dream like I normally would from a bad dream – it ran until I saw them riding down the road and pulling out their guns.

  Then I woke up to Sue shaking both Mick and I.

  “You guys were both having a terrible dream.”

  “It was like a warning or a flashback…”

  “Mine too.”

  “Flashprequel, is what I would call it.”

  “What are you two talking about?”

  Mick put his fingers on my face, then tapped my lips. “Let’s make 100% sure this is the same dream. Whisper to Sue who you dreamed about and I’ll do it too. See if we really do say the same thing.”

  Sue was astounded as she nodded at us.

  Mick and I just nodded. The dream had been too strong and we now knew this type of dream was not normal. It was powerful, stayed with us and really seemed like communication. But from who or what? Also some of these dreams seemed to show what was going to happen, and some of them showed the past. How were we going to know the time frame of any of these dreams?

  “We both had a premonition type dream before. This one was warning us, but it had already happened. The warning came too late. That’s even creepier than a dream that comes true.” I shivered.

  Chapter Seven

  The man who was shot first in the gang riding the bikes at us is rising up in front of my face. So close I can touch him. But something is not right. It is almost like I can see into him, like he is turning transparent. This is another real dream, but how can a man be turning invisible? It seems like he is rising up, but there nothing behind him to track how fast he is going up. A speck behind him seems to glow now. Purple and blue, then more colors swirl in as the speck gets bigger. The man is now more ghostlike, the speck starts to look like Saturn, with faint rings shadowed over the planet. The last of the man nods as he fades into the brightness of the planet.

  The night before we had the prequel dream; my neck had been stiff, so last night I used my backpack as a pillow and we were camped along a granite cliff. This is when I started to suspect what was behind the dreams, or part of what was behind it. It had to be the sparkling quartz. My little rose quartz stick, the flecks in the granite boulders. These visions came to use when we fell asleep near them.

  We decided to test the theory out. Mick and I would sleep on the bare ground that night near the fire. We would give my rose quartz to Ed and Sue would find some granite and make a bed/nest on top of it.

  Sure enough, neither Mick nor I had any dreams. Ed had a dream of a big lake and people having a bonfire on the shore. That was a new one, but seemed respectable. Sue had what she called a vision of Saturn. I had not shared that with anyone yet, it was too odd – it felt both sad and like the completion of a job well done at the same time. Weird.

  Great, so we knew one part of the puzzle – quartz either gave us the dreams or made it easier for us to tap into whatever was sending them out. But what the hell, or who the hell, was sending this information to us?

  Then Sue dropped another bomb on us.

  “What about the superpower senses we have now?”

  “What?!” I sputtered.

  I still remember the how clear the morning light was. Shock will do that to your memory.

  “I can see much better than 20/20. Ed says he can hear the squirrels again, he had been losing his hearing, but it’s better than when he was 20 now. I just figured you two would have something like that, since you were the ones having the dreams first.”

  Mick leaned forward frowning in thought. “Fast reflexes. That’s what I think I’ve got.”

  “Damn. I feel cheated.”

  Mick grinned at me.

  Sue was chewing on the end of her finger. “Maybe it is something that will show up later.”

  I shrugged. “This is pretty creepy. The whole thing, but even more now with superpowers.”

  They looked at me with blank faces.

  My PR training must have made me jaded. “Well, people are people. Somebody is going to have some superpower and turn bad and use it against the rest of us. What if the Taliban or other bad guys have it? Then they find us?”

  Blank faces turned to worry.

  “I don’t mean to be a Debbie Downer, guys. Just thinking out loud.”

  “You’re right though. Maybe because I was driving and using my reflexes when the dirty bombs went off – that my reflexes were active and got juiced up or whatever. Sue, what were you doing?”

  “Oh My God! You must be right! I was bird watching. There are so many birds along the river, I was sitting on my porch and looking through binoculars.”

  Ed had wondered over with a pan full of bacon and potatoes. “Interesting,” was all he had to add.

  “Superpowers is a little boyish, don’t you think?”

  Sue nodded. Mick looked uncommitted. I smiled. Boys were boys, I guess.

  “Let’s call them enhanced ability, or something like that. We also don’t want someone overhearing us and trying to force us to do some superman stuff. I watch movies you know!” I grinned to show I was not totally serious, but not totally joking either.

  We then dove into breakfast as the sun climbed up and warmed us. The day was still clear as a bell. At the first garden we passed I gathered up an arm full of lettuce and squeezed as much of the milk out as I could. I told Ed I’d like him to try to drink it. He shrugged, couldn’t hurt. What
a trooper. He knocked it down and just made a face. Then we soaked some of the milk on new bandages and wrapped the wound. I don’t believe he said a word or ask a question. That’s Ed.

  I was worried because his arm looked red and swollen, almost like the day it was shot – and it had been quite a few days now. No improvement that I could see, and I felt that meant that soon infection was going to set in. With a wound so high on the arm – I figured that would mean death if we didn’t run into a doctor along the way. I sighed, no use talking about it. I would just have to hope the lettuce milk would work. I kept walking on.