Seal Two

by Sara Shanning

  “You’re saying that currently there is no American government?” Marcus sat calm and straight, his face a mask of focused scrutiny.

  “Half of the presidential security detail were Axis. Silently biding their time until…” Irv’s tight shoulders dropped, hopeless defeat stealing the tense lines. “Executed. Media channels all over the world opened and they executed them all while everyone watched.”

  Chloe was a mass of tears. Patrick wrapped an arm around her shoulders, but looked close himself.

  “Making a statement.” Marcus stood up, his eyes narrow, shifting his jaw from side to side. Ashar watched his jawbone pop. “It’s a takeover.”

  Irv nodded in agreement. “Yes. But allegedly not Axis. A new government is rising up and stepping in, trying to take control. They’re calling themselves One World Order. They’ve sent out a mass broadcast requesting troops from all over the world to destroy Axis, but as of now, no, there is no US government.”

  “I don’t even know what to think about that,” Patrick stated, running a hand through his hair. He set the uneaten food on his leg down on the ground, tugging his son close. “I wasn't fond of the way the government was running things, but we can’t operate without leaders, can we? Doesn’t this leave us vulnerable?”

  “We’ve been vulnerable since the moment the United States government floundered,” Marcus said, his voice full of reproach. “I’ve been under US command, fought for this country.” His chin tightened, lifted slightly as he looked at everyone with a challenge in his eyes. “The military is as overrun with politics as everything else. It’s just a game.”

  “What are you saying?” Mariah questioned.

  “Wait… other countries sending troops is good, isn’t it?” Carl asked. “That means whoever is stepping up is trying to help us.”

  Marcus shook his head. “I don’t trust it. Government is corrupt. It’s a power struggle. I’m sick of fighting for the wrong thing. That’s why I’m here, and not out there rallying troops myself.”

  Ash put a hand on Irv’s shoulder and immediately his bones tingled, and felt hot. Fear flowed into him, a direct current from his palm against Irv’s shoulder straight to his bones. He pulled back in shock at the unfamiliar sensation and the feeling and emotion ebbed.

  His mind reeled, and he turned his palm to look at it, then lifted his eyes to see if Irv was aware of what had happened. Irv still seemed lost in his thoughts, dazed into silence.

  “Irv, what aren’t you telling us?”

  The fear had not been his, he was sure of it. The depth of it worried him. Fear seemed to be what had taken over Irv and coiled him into the huddle beside him.

  Troubled eyes rose to his, a slow lifting of lashes. Irv’s blue eyes were so dark they looked almost black. Furrows creased the bridge of his nose, and his mouth was parted, his breathing shallow. With his wild, dirty hair, it was like looking at a dying man.

  “Ash…” It was a plea, a word soaked in desperation.

  Compassion surged, a need to ease some of the pain he saw in his friend.

  “Irv, tell me,” Ashar encouraged, prayers tumbling in his heart. Tentatively, he reached out to touch his hand to Irv’s arm, and like before, a current shot through him, of despair and uncertainty. The bones on his back heated, and again, when Ashar lifted his hand away, the sensations stopped.

  Curious, struggling to grasp this new development in him and to process what he thought maybe were Irv’s inner feelings, he peered at his hand like he had his palm, expecting to see a change that wasn’t there.

  “Ashar.”

  He lifted his eyes back to Irv, nodded encouragement.

  “I think God… I think He told me… this whole One World Order government that’s rising up… they aren’t different from Axis. They might be Axis. They could be worse.” Perplexed, he shook his head. “It’s all a lie. I don’t understand everything that is happening. I’m confused. I don’t know what to think. I’m… afraid. I always thought it would happen, but… It has. I’m so confused.”

  For Irv to be voicing that he may have heard from God was startling. Encouraging. A curious unfolding, founded in enough belief to state in front of the entire group. Ashar wondered again if Irv had accepted that God was not what he had seen portrayed in his youth.

  “Why do you think that?” Marcus demanded.

  Irv shook his head, his eyes still locked with Ashar’s. “God told me. That’s the only reason I have.”

  He was looking at Ashar for confirmation. Hoping for an answer that Ashar did not have.

  “Trust your gut, Irv. If you feel like God told you, you should believe it.”

  Monty snorted. “Do you ever listen to yourself? That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.”

  Chloe sniffled, anger making her shake as she spoke, husking her words. “God is the reason we all are out here living in the middle of a bunch of trees, sleeping in dirt and eating the same food every day, and missing… missing our family members that have died, our friends.” She choked on a sob, wrapped her arms around her middle and bent into herself, crying. “He didn’t do anything to help. He just let all those poor babies die, people’s parents and children and neighbors.” Her words came out in broken, wet spurts, her pain and grief triggering the same emotions in others.

  Kate and Luke both began crying. Patrick had closed his eyes, lines of grief deep on his face. He reached out for his children, awkwardly pawing the air until he found them, and pulled them close. Even Carl looked upset, wetness glistening in his eyes.

  Did they all think that? Ashar slid his finger into the hole in his jacket, curled his finger to rub the fabric above it. He couldn’t take their grief from them. Their pain. Did that mean he was failing? He felt as unsure about the future as they did, but he wasn’t consumed by fear. He liked it in the forest. Liked what they had built.

  He met Mariah’s eyes across the circle. There was sympathy in her eyes. “We are safe here,” she said. We’re alive. Perhaps there is a hand in that we are all missing.” Her words were soft, gentle. Ashar was thankful, even if he wasn’t sure she meant God’s hand.

  “This new government could stop the war?” There was more a question in Carl’s words than confidence. “Mariah’s right that we’re safe here, so there’s no reason to do anything different than we have been.”

  “There’s no way we will recover from this,” Monty said sharply. “America is done for.”

  Patrick held up the hand that wasn’t rubbing his daughter’s back. “Can we just try to be positive? The government can’t just be wiped out. Don’t they have contingency plans for that?”

  “Not if they’re all dead,” Marcus said dryly. “Irv, tell us what you know about this One World Order you speak of.”

  Ashar looked at Irv, who still seemed heavy with the weight of the news he had brought. Irv had come back to tell them, to warn them, that the world was more dangerous than ever. “Are you going to leave again?”

  “I need to sleep,” Irv muttered, looking around at the rustic wooden shelters.

  “Sleep in mine,” Ashar offered. “Rest as long as you like. I can bunk with one of the others if I need to.” Ashar used his chin to motion. “Last one on the left.”

  Irv nodded and rose, his retreating steps slow as they dragged along the ground, his head hung low.

  “Can we even trust him?” Monty demanded. “We don’t even know him.”

  “I know him,” Ashar reproached curtly. “Why would he make things like that up?”

  “What if this really isn’t even close to being over?” Patrick asked. “What then? We can’t live out here forever. We’ve been lucky the weather has been okay, but when winter gets here it will be cold. The fish will be harder to catch, the berries will be gone. The kids don’t even have coats.”

  Monty stood up. “It would have been easier if we had died too.”

  Chloe, whose tears had stopped, pulled Kate away from her husband and close. She shook her head. “This is hard, b
ut I don’t wish we had died. I’m afraid, but I have my family. I have my babies.” She wiped at her tears.

  “Well, I don’t,” Monty snapped angrily. “My family died. I watched my mom get blown to pieces and my father crushed by a wall. I had to dig for hours through the rubble to get to my little sister and it didn’t matter. She was dead! Blood everywhere, and that means she didn’t die quickly. She suffered! So good for you, that your family is right here with you, but look around! Does anyone else have someone still with them?”

  None of them had talked much about what they had gone through the day the war had started. Ashar realized as he listened to Monty’s tirade that he and Irv had been blessed to be away from it all. Secure, tucked away in a shroud of trees, and oblivious to the up close and personal trauma so many had suffered.

  Maybe that was what weighed so heavily upon Irv’s shoulders now, all he had seen since he had become a wanderer among the remnants of what had been. Had he watched people die? He had spoken of Axis shooting people, but Ashar hadn’t considered that he had personally watched. He had assumed it was a detail he had collected.

  What kind of friend was he that he hadn’t bothered to look beyond the surface of the words? To consider the emotions and reality being experienced by mankind outside of the forest? He prayed, sure, but he wasn’t broken for the people suffering.

  Remorse filled him. He squeezed his jaw together to stop a rush of tears. He wrapped his fists around the hem of his jacket and squeezed, feeling the seam press into his palm.

  He needed to be alone.

  Rising, he left the group. None of them seemed to know what to say to Monty, and he had no words either. He needed comfort. He changed direction when he remembered that Irv occupied his shelter and sought the woods.

  Ashar found a quiet place bathed in a single sunbeam that was still lighting the sky, a beacon of hope that brought tears to his eyes. Cheeks wet, he sank to the hard ground and bent until the prickle of dried pine needles and grass pressed into his forehead.

  “Why did you place me here?” he cried out to God. “I’m failing! Over and over again I fail these people. I can’t lead them, I can’t help them. I’m just here.”

  Ashar wrapped his arms around his body and clutched at his sides. He felt the rough spine of his bible through his jacket and pulled it out, sitting up and flipping the pages to Proverbs.

  He brushed at tears to see the words, reading them aloud from the page he had opened to. “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding.” The words offered the comfort he sought, and were so pertinent he was startled.

  The air brushed softly over his wet cheeks. The light flickered as it filtered wispily through branches. Pine was pungent from crushed needles strewn over the ground. All around him giant trees rose high, but scattered among them were fallen and broken trunks and limbs, left to rot on the forest floor.

  Life went on; moss and mushrooms climbing the dry bark, vines twining home around them, forest grass and ferns waving uncaring around them. Just like the woodland around him, outside of the woods, life would go on again. People would find a way to survive.

  Around him was beauty, an untouched vast expanse of the Hand of God. He was privileged to live in it, to be thriving in it.

  Ashar ran his fingers over the soft worn pages of his bible, remembering the countless times he had held it in his hands, reading it to alleviate his loneliness. He had never felt the words so strongly in his heart. He’d been reading them, learning them, but not feeling them.

  He wasn’t alone any more. No one was using him for personal gain, or looking at him like he was a freak. It didn’t matter that none of them knew his secret. They saw him. Knew him. Accepted him for who he was.

  The world could fall apart and eternity could rush in, but here, hidden from all of it, they had been given a chance to live. Fearing possibilities wasn’t going to help any of them.

  His body relaxed. Ashar leaned back against the tree, lifted his face into the shifting light. The shadows and quiet of his solitary spot wrapped around him like a blanket. The turmoil that had driven him there faded, chased away by the vibrancy of life all around him.

  “Okay, God,” he whispered, letting his words flow into the air and be carried off by the breeze. He wanted to hang onto the feeling of peace as long as he could, hold it close and treasure it. More turmoil would come. More pain. More grief. They wouldn’t go through it alone.

  Chapter Fifteen

  All but Monty and Irv were still congregated around the fire when Ashar returned. Carl was hunched over it, keeping the flames burning. Sorrow was thick as he sat. He looked at each of the faces around him.

  All of them meant something to him. He would die trying to protect them. No harm would come to them if he could help it. With God’s help, he would do his best not to fail them.

  He reached into his pocket and took out the Bible, opening it to Psalms. He began to read, hoping that David’s struggles would speak to their broken hearts.

  No one got up and walked away. Kate left her mother’s side and came to kneel at his feet. Carl settled next to him on the stump Irv had vacated. Chloe began to cry again, but silently, swiping at the tears with one hand while her other pressed flat over her heart. Mariah stood, the intensity that was a part of who she was focused on the words.

  Ashar read until his voice was dry, his eyes flickering over the group every once in a while, gauging if they still listened. Swallowing, Ashar licked his lips, read a few more verses before he had to clear his throat and wet his lips again. Marcus brought him water and he drank deeply.

  Mariah stepped forward. “I want to read more of that,” she declared. “Do you have another one?”

  Ashar shook his head, his fingers tightening on the pages. He didn’t want to share his Bible. It was special to him. He stared down at the small print, not wanting to let it go.

  It hurt. The whisper of surrender. He forced his fingers to loosen, his thumbs sliding lovingly over the paper to the edges as he closed it. Looking at Mariah, he held the book out to her. Her eyes shifted between him and the book before she reached out and took it, gripping it in her hand and holding tight.

  “I shall guard it with my life,” she promised before walking with purpose toward her shelter.

  “Who wrote those words?” Carl asked.

  The air felt altered, lightened. Glancing around, Ashar saw peace.

  “Well, God did, but the words I read were written by a man named David and he is speaking of his own trials.”

  “Yeah, I don’t get it,” Carl replied.

  “God wrote the Bible,” Ashar explained. “But he used people to do it. Most of Psalms is written by David. He was a shepherd, and then a King. He was a man after God’s own heart, it says in the Bible.”

  “It sounded like he suffered a lot.” Chloe spoke, her words only partly a question.

  “He did,” Ashar agreed. “But he never forgot that God was there through it all for him to reach out to.”

  “Could you read more of it later? Are there any little girl stories?” Kate asked.

  “I will. Mariah wants to read it for awhile, okay? I think there are some stories you would like in it.”

  Patrick stood up, grunting softly as he lifted a sleeping Luke to his shoulder.

  Adam stood up. “I’m um, going to get started cleaning up.”

  “This morning was exhausting. I’m going to go and nap with the kids,” Chloe said softly, waiting for Ashar to nod before she led Kate after her husband.

  “I’m going out to scout,” Marcus announced.

  “So can you explain to me how someone can go through all of that and just be okay?” Carl followed Ashar around the fire as he helped with the clean up from their breakfast.

  “I don’t think the authors were okay,” Ashar disagreed. “The Psalms are full of emotion, laments and praise in difficult circumstances.”

  “Okay, but I don’t get it. How do you go through cr
ap and learn to be okay? How did this David do it?”

  Ashar paused in raking coals. “Well, I think that he never forgot that God was not the author of pain, but the healer of it. That if he trusted that God was there, no matter what, that he would be alright, no matter what was happening to him.” He felt the truth of the words as he spoke.

  Carl leaned back on his heels, crossing his arms and narrowing his eyes at Ashar. Ashar waited patiently, watching Carl’s thoughts through the expressions in his eyes.

  “So… how do you… know God is there?”

  A rush of warmth slid over Ashar’s bones. “Faith.” He didn’t know what else to say. Didn’t know how to explain it. He felt like he was just figuring it out for himself. “Carl, I think faith is something that you learn. It’s a trust issue. For me, the more I understand God, the more my faith grows.” Ashar handed Carl a folded square of fabric and picked up one for himself. They could talk while they searched the forest for nuts. Marcus had suggested they stockpile as many as they could find before winter.

  Leaves rustled, and an eagle cried out above them, the sun spearing down to highlight sections of the forest floor.

  “Is Irv going to be okay?” Carl swatted at a swirl of gnats.

  “He will be. He just needs time to settle himself.” Ashar hoped he was right.

  Both paused when, far ahead of them, branches shifted and swayed, then a deer jumped free, altered its course to the left and loped away. Ashar held out a hand to keep Carl still. They weren’t close enough to have spooked it. He listened.

  There was the hum of the wind in the trees. Birds calling. He scanned the foliage, searching for anything out of place. Carl was tense beside him, his eyes wide and darting, his mouth parted.

  Ashar tried to think of who was at camp and who was not. Marcus had gone back out to scout, he remembered. Marcus would announce himself if he was close.

  “You two friendlies?”

  Ashar swung his gaze right, trying to determine where the male voice had come from.

  “Yes! Are you?” he answered. His fingers sought and stroked the thin edge of the hole in his jacket. If they weren’t friendly, he and Adam were vulnerable. After all that Irv had just shared, he couldn’t afford to trust that they were safe. He scanned around them for somewhere to hide, for a weapon.