He looked around the crowd, which now consisted of just about the whole town.
“So, as Aaron said, you can accept our gift in the spirit in which it is being given and get over your anger, or we will be happy to move on to another town and present them with it. Let’s put an end to this, shall we?”
“As I said, Ozzie doesn’t speak for the rest of us.” The man turned to those around him and gauged their mood. “I think I can speak for everyone else when I say thank you. We very much appreciate the gifts. I hope the four of you will join me for dinner. I’m sure between us, we can put you up for the night.”
“We will take you up on the dinner invitation,” said Sean, “but we’ll set up camp across the river. However, we’ll be back in the morning to give you some training on the generators and help you make sense of the directions for building more. They are actually quite easy.”
*****
Two days later, they were heading home and Ben was deep in thought.
“Your conscience is finally clear,” said Aaron.
“It is. You know, over the years I’ve had to kill a lot of people and it bothered me less than blowing up their power plant. Maybe it’s because it affected innocent people. It wasn’t right. They didn’t deserve it. It’s troubled me for a long time.”
“And now you’ve made it right.”
“I have.”
He looked around him at the sky, the landscape, and most of all, at Lila.
“Everything is right.”
Epilogue
Lila and I go often to visit Cat and Simon in their new home in the valley. Wade and Yuki live just a mile away from them. Some of us journeyed down to help them build their houses. Like Peter, they were able to combine rock and wood, using rock overhangs as the rear rooms of their houses, and constructing wooden fronts.
They spent the fall preparing their gardens for the next spring, experiencing bumper crops their first year. Although we haven’t seen him in our trips down, Cat says Peter comes by on occasion to visit. The kids have developed a nice relationship with him.
Cat told us Peter’s story. That would be a hard one for him to get over, and in all honesty, I doubt he’s over it. After all, knowing that you are partly responsible for the downfall of mankind is not exactly something you recover from. I think visiting Cat and the others is good therapy for him. I wish him luck.
Cat and Simon are married now. Lila performed the ceremony. It was actually a double ceremony as Wade and Yuki tied the knot as well. So far, no hint of kids. In fact, none of them seem much interested in having children. Some of the parents think that as they get older that will change, but Lila and I aren’t so sure. They seem perfectly content to just be with each other and the animals. But then, the animals have always been Cat’s first love.
In Yellowstone, things are good. People seem genuinely happy that we turned down most of the solar panels and the generators and kept only one for the doctor’s office. Those are really more suited to areas not as spread out as Yellowstone, like Paradise or Monett—although we heard from Brian in Monett that they turned them down as well. They always seemed happy to forgo modern conveniences, so I wasn’t surprised to learn that.
The Pony Express is working better than anyone ever expected. As far as we have determined, all of the communities in the United States have been accounted for. There are forty-six of them. Many are small, just a couple of dozen residents, but all are thriving. In fact, it was the small communities that were most excited about the solar and wind power, and that makes sense to me. When the larger communities got them working, they shared them with the smaller ones. I still have trouble believing the amount of cooperation I’m seeing all over the country—all over the world, if Angus and his crew are any indication. I have to wonder how long the cooperation will last. Luckily, the world population is so small, it will probably take several hundred years, at least, for the negative elements to rear their ugly heads again.
William and Harry both survived and are doing well. Emma, John, and Diana resumed their lives in Yellowstone and don’t seem to have any desire to travel. We wondered for the longest time about Zack and Darcy. We assumed that they were still alive someplace, but they never returned home, much to the sadness of Zack’s parents. Darcy’s mother died—she had been ill for some time and died during a particularly cold spell during the winter—but she never seemed all that bothered by her daughter’s disappearance. About a year after the fight with the miners, the Pony Express delivered a letter from Zack to his parents. The letter was sent from Monett, but he made it clear that they were just passing through, with no destination in mind. He spent the letter raving about Darcy, her growth, and their love for each other. When I told Cat about the letter, she said she wasn’t surprised about Darcy. She said she always felt that Darcy had more inside her than most could see.
Cat told us the story of the trip and the conflict between Zack and Morgan. In their own ways, Zack and Darcy were in the process of becoming outcasts—if only in their own minds—and were probably perfect for each other. Who knows? Maybe they will show up one day.
The word from Paradise is that they have set up many windmills and have solar panels spread throughout the town. Morale is high and history has been forgotten, thank God! Knowing that they are doing well has eased a lot of the guilt I’ve felt over the years. Maybe someday it will be gone forever.
When I think of Cat and Simon and Wade and Yuki settling on their own pieces of heaven, I can’t help thinking that after all this time, the planet has finally healed itself. It doesn’t remember when we were trying to kill it. It has given us the chance to start over. The conflicts are gone; people genuinely want to help other people; and the young people who are growing up in this new world are stronger and more aware than we ever were.
I really can’t predict the future, but based on what I can see around me now, I certainly have grounds for hope.
And I’ll take it.
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 a series of five children's mysteries in the Arthur MacArthur series. 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, or his Facebook page, Author Andrew Cunningham.
An excerpt from Andrew Cunningham’s Amazon bestselling thriller Wisdom Spring
Wisdom Spring
Prologue
Looking like a waterlogged waif in the periphery of my headlights, she couldn’t have been much more than five feet tall, and had no belongings that I could see. She was standing on the most deserted stretch of highway you could ever imagine, thumb out in a deflated sort of way. In the darkness and the rain, I almost missed her.
It’s amazing really, how many things can go through your mind in just a few seconds. In the time it took me to put on my turn signal and pull over, I had already questioned the wisdom of picking her up, flashed to my father’s endless stories of hitchhiking in the early sixties as a teenager, and was presented with the sad realization that even if she turned out to be a whack-job, I really didn’t care. I no longer cared about much of anything. But I was oddly intrigued. How did she get to this god-forsaken spot? How long had she been standing there?
I stopped the car and waited. Despite it being a major highway, there were few headlights or taillights in either direction. The only sounds were the clicking of the turn signal and the soft swishing of the windshield wipers. I switched off the turn signal. The competing rhythms were going to drive me even crazier than I already was—like two metronomes slightly ou
t of sync. That was better. Without the competition, the windshield wipers were fairly quiet—the advantage of an expensive car.
The passenger door opened and she got in. Close up, she appeared older than I thought in the brief splash of my headlights. Maybe her late-twenties. I was close about the height though. Five-one, at best. Her hair was blonde, but looked darker plastered to her head from the rain. Wearing only a thin windbreaker to protect her from the elements, her blouse, jeans, and sneakers were thoroughly soaked. She squished as she sat down on the leather seat.
Mumbling an apology for getting my seat wet, along with a barely audible thank you for picking her up, that’s when I noticed the tears. Funny how I was able to see the difference between tears and rain. It wasn’t my business though, so I ignored it.
Putting the car in gear, I asked, “Where are you headed?” again knowing that I really didn’t care.
She was silent for a few seconds, then shook her head in resignation.
“To Hell,” she answered.
I smiled for the first time in weeks. Granted, it wasn’t much of one, but for the first time since the funeral, someone said something I could relate to.
“I’ll take you,” I said. “I’m going that way myself.”
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Eden's Legacy (Eden Rising Trilogy Book 3) Page 21
