Rise the Phoenix

by Ely Page

  Not really knowing what to do, Greg and Ollie put Jason’s body on one push cart and Nick on another. They used the carts to move Jason and Nick back into the city walls.

  Once inside, Hope seemed to be pretty active after Mike, Will, and Rich saw the condition that Jason and Nick were in. When the carts came out of the barn, they had Chris woken up and directed some other people to help Ollie check the well-being of the other animals in the barn.

  Mike, Hank, and Laine went with Ollie back out to the barn. Mike and Hank stood guard as Laine helped Ollie tend to the animals. Ollie would have to rough butcher Myrtle to get her out of the barn.

  Chris looked over Jason, but like Greg, she already knew there was nothing she could do. Jason had died almost immediately after the dog bit into him.

  As far as Nick was concerned, he was simply knocked out by the beast. He came to on his own once he was taken to the clinic.

  Laura came running in a robe. She was hysterical as she saw her husband of just over a year laying like a piece of meat on a cart meant for food. She was crying; she tried to speak but was unable to. Greg comforted her, holding her close as she looked at her husband’s lifeless body.

  At the break of the next day, Dylan had Porter, Ben, and Andy up and ready to intercept the newcomers.

  They made their way to the bridge and just in time. The newcomers were just approaching. A standoff still happened when the two groups met each other, neither side knowing the other’s intentions.

  “Why are you encroaching on our land?” Dylan asked in the most demanding voice he had.

  Weapons were not drawn, but they were held so they were easily seen. The people standing on the other side of the bridge looked tired, frightened, hungry, dirty, and young. They all looked younger than Dylan.

  “We came here in search of the American tribe,” said the young dark-skinned man with a British accent.

  The American tribe? Dylan thought to himself.

  “I am Xavier. We have come all the way from Switzerland. We are the last of our tribe, and we were sent here by someone—God maybe, we don’t know.”

  With the events of the night before and the loss of the lead elder, the people of Hope talked about what happened, but they all knew that they had to move on like business as usual.

  Greg woke up at Jason and Laura’s house. He was on the chair in the living room, and Laura was sleeping on the couch. Greg had brought her home after she saw Jason’s body. Not many words were spoken as Greg walked her home, but she had said something that haunted Greg and made him feel even more hurt. Laura told Greg that she was pregnant and that she’d just told Jason earlier that day.

  When Rodan heard the news about Jason, he felt guilty for not protecting him or at least being aware of the danger the men faced out in the stables.

  “Didn’t Jason come to you last night to let you know?” Rich asked him in the grain elevator office.

  “He came to my room when I was in deep concentration, observing Dylan meeting with the newcomers. He didn’t say a word and then he left. I still should have known something was wrong.” Rodan felt failure wash over him.

  Leah went to the armory as soon as Emily came over to watch John and Frankie. She felt now was the time to start working on her new arrow design. She scrapped the latest design and started a new one. She had exactly how she wanted it to work in her head. Putting it to paper wasn’t as hard as trying to build it would be. She’d never tried to build anything before, and the materials she needed were scarce. Nobody in Hope had taken up metalworking, at least not yet, and all she had to work with was a blowtorch and a hammer.

  Leah looked at her blueprint again. It wasn’t exactly what she wanted, but it was a start.

  “Now to see what I can do with a hammer,” she said, lighting the blowtorch and heating the little piece of metal laying on her work bench.

  “What’s your feeling for them?” Dylan asked the three other guys with him. He wanted their input before he decided between leading the newcomers back to Hope or leaving them there to die.

  “I think they are legit. I am not getting any bad vibes from them,” Porter said, looking at the group again.

  “Yeah, I agree. I think they’re safe,” Ben agreed.

  “Andy?” Dylan asked.

  Andy’s response was more restrained. “I don’t know. I don’t feel comfortable with strangers coming back to our home, but that’s just me.”

  The three of them looked at Andy to see if he would say yes or no.

  “I guess we should bring them back. We need all the help we can get,” he finally said.

  “Emily is watching John and Frankie this morning,” Greg said after Jenny asked him what Emily was up to.

  Jenny looked up from her work station. “Oh yeah, wait, where is Leah?”

  Greg took a seat on a chair at the end of Jenny’s work station. “She said that she was going to work on a new arrow for her bow.”

  Jenny was the only person in Hope with a degree in electrical engineering. Her job was given to her right away when she arrived in Hope. She ran the power station for the town. Hope ran on some solar panels and a mid-sized wind turbine; it wasn’t much, but it gave the town enough power so everyone had refrigeration and a few lights on in their house.

  Dylan and Porter led the newcomers toward Hope. Ben and Andy brought up the rear. They said it was to protect the under-armed Europeans, which was true, but they also didn’t trust them completely yet either.

  Xavier walked closer to Dylan after Dylan waved him next to his side.

  “So, Xavier.” Dylan looked at the young man, guessing that he couldn’t be any older than nineteen. “What happened to your tribe?”

  Xavier had a brief look of pain on his face before he spoke. “We had set up in a town just outside of Zurich. Living that close to a major city made most of us uneasy, but our tribal leader Peter said it was a great location because we could run into the city when we needed some supplies.”

  Xavier paused long enough that Dylan cut in. “Your tribal leader is the one who picked your location?” Dylan put as much shock in his voice as he could without alerting the others.

  “Yes,” Xavier said, sounding disappointed. “At first we all met in a small village in Southern Germany, but Peter said we needed higher ground and that we had to be near a large city. Many of us protested, saying that we wanted to stay where we were, but in the end, he won and we all followed him.”

  Xavier paused again. He looked as though he was fighting back tears. “We were unprepared when those creatures came out of Zurich. Nobody was trained to fight, none of us knew what we were doing. It was a bloody massacre.” Tears freely flowed down the young man’s face, but he continued to tell the story. “The seven of us survived because our dead brothers and sisters fell on us in battle, and those creatures didn’t check under the dead bodies.”

  Xavier couldn’t talk anymore, and he fell back with his group. A girl in the group gave him a hug and a kiss and held his hand as the walk toward Hope continued.

  Leah was getting frustrated with her switch arrow. It wouldn’t open up on impact like she hoped it would. She looked at it some more. Not only did it not open on impact, but the thin metal tip bent down when it hit the target.

  There was a knock on the door of Leah’s little workshop, which was a small room at the back of the sewing shop she worked at. Greg walked in on his own.

  “What’s going on, Mrs. . . . uh, I guess I don’t even know what Dylan’s last name is,” he said.

  Leah smiled for the first time that day. “Just trying and having no luck in getting this,” she held up an arrow in her hand, “to open on impact.”

  Greg held out his hand. “Let me take a look.”

  Leah handed him the arrow.

  “And you wanted this to open on impact, right?” he asked as he looked it over.


  “Yes.” Exasperated, Leah sat down on her chair like a sack of potatoes.

  “I don’t intend this to sound mean, but you don’t really know what you are doing, do you?” Greg and Leah both chuckled. “I can help you with the design, have you talked to Dan about what metal to use? Cause I can tell you that aluminum as thin as you have it here, while lightweight, will bend just as easily as I can crush an empty pop can with my hand. You need something else. I am not a blacksmith, but Dan is. Let’s go to his shop right now and talk to him about this. I know he can help.”

  Leah had no idea there was a blacksmith in town. How could she have not known? She reluctantly got up and followed Greg out the door. She wanted to do this all by herself to show Dylan how good she was at helping the cause, but she figured having a working weapon now versus one that was in development for three years was a better idea.

  On the way to the blacksmith shop, Greg pulled out what seemed like an ordinary shotgun shell.

  “What is that?” Leah asked as Greg put it in her hand.

  “That,” he said with pride, “is what I have been working on for the better part of a year. Instead of shot in the shell, I put in a thin, five-inch-long, razor-sharp blade that, when fired from the gun, will expand to its full length and cut right through the spine of a wambei.”

  Leah handed the shotgun shell back to Greg. “That is impressive. Is that what you used last night in the barn?” she asked as she looked at her own weapon.

  “No, I used regular buck shots. I showed you that to help you,” Greg said. “I failed at almost everything I did in my old life, and this little shell is the first success I have had here.”

  Leah looked at Greg. “No, your first success is being a good father to Emily, and that is bigger than anything.”

  Dylan stopped a few hundred yards outside Hope’s gate. He raised his hand, letting everyone else know to stop.

  “You all stay here. I will go into Hope alone and bring out the town elder to meet you before you go in.”

  Dylan then made a signal with his hand, telling the sharpshooter up in the crow’s nest that he was OK to enter.

  Dylan went inside the walls of Hope and immediately headed to town hall. There inside were Rodan and Rich.

  “Rich, Rodan, where’s Jason?” Dylan asked.

  “That is a long story,” Rich said with bags under his eyes from the long night.

  “The seven people from Europe are outside the gate. I figured you better clear them before we let them in,” Dylan said, wanting to get this over with so he could go home and see his family.

  Rich told Dylan about the attack and what happened to Jason, and that Rich had just been named the new lead elder by what was left of the elders.

  “Hello, and welcome to Hope. I am Rich, the town’s lead elder.” Rich looked to Rodan before he said another word. Rodan looked back at Rich with an approving nod. “I’d like to welcome you inside, where we will take care of you and get you back to full strength. Why don’t you all follow me, and we can get you settled in.”

  The seven newcomers went with Rich. Rodan stayed outside the gate with Dylan, Porter, Andy, and Ben. Dylan had a questioning look on his face.

  “I sensed nothing impure about any one of them. They are good people who will benefit us greatly,” Rodan answered the unasked question.

  They all then went inside the gate and back to their homes.

  The Europeans were barely settled in when Dylan felt the same thing he’d felt when he realized someone was coming from another part of the world. He decided it was time to find Rodan. He searched Rodan’s favorite place, the grain elevator, but he wasn’t there. Dylan went around and asked some people if they had seen Rodan, but nobody had. There was only one other place to look.

  Dylan lifted the heavy door in the floor of one of the massive empty, concrete silos. He went down with a flashlight.

  “Rodan?” Dylan yelled as he started walking in the rarely used tunnel system that Rodan, as Oni city maintenance manager Stan, had built with his own bare hands.

  Dylan walked down one tunnel after another. He had only one tunnel left, and at the very end of it, he saw Rodan on his knees, his hands held together and his chin tucked into his chest. Dylan decided to wait until Rodan was done before he said anything. He waited a long time; Rodan didn’t move for two hours.

  “OK, Dylan, I am ready to talk now.” Rodan didn’t move as he spoke, startling Dylan out of a short nap.

  “There are more coming,” Dylan said in a sleepy voice.

  “Yes, I know,” Rodan said, getting up from his position of prayer. “I was in discussion with God. He said the last of the humans from South America are coming to us. We shall welcome them, as they will be an asset that we cannot do without.”

  “Do you know how long it will take them to get here?” Dylan asked, getting closer to Rodan.

  “It depends on their route of travel. Unlike the Europeans, they have options on how to get here, land or sea.”

  An ice-cold chill came over Hope. Something wasn’t right; it was the middle of summer. Dylan climbed up to the crow’s nest.

  “Hey, Fletcher, have you seen anything different today?”

  Fletcher was in the middle of his shift as the observer/sniper on top of the grain elevator.

  “No, just the line of clouds that came in with the cold.”

  Fletcher was shaking. He wasn’t prepared for the cold, but luckily for him Dylan had figured as much and brought a jacket and a hat. He handed them to Fletcher. While Fletcher was putting those things on, Dylan picked up the telescope and did a perimeter sweep. He started by looking as far out as he could see, then brought it back in until he spotted something. It looked like steam had started coming out of the ground. He didn’t know if it was a pond adjusting to the rapid temperature change or something else.

  “Take care. I will see you later,” Dylan said as he put down the scope and started to descend the latter.

  “Yep, thanks a lot for the jacket and hat,” Fletcher said.

  “No problem.”

  Dylan grabbed Will, Porter, and Greg as he headed out to see where that steam was coming from. He told the guys what they were going to look at. None of them were too concerned about it, but Dylan had everyone bring a weapon with them anyway.

  The fissure in the ground could be seen clearly as they approached it. Dylan was cautious, scanning the area and making sure there was nothing and nobody around them.

  “It looks clear all around us. I don’t see anything out of place. Do any of you see anything?” Dylan asked the guys with him.

  They all shook their heads no.

  Dylan cautiously walked closer to the open crack in the earth. It was wide enough for a person to fall through.

  “What do you think it is?” Will asked no one in particular.

  “I don’t know, but it sure is putting off some heat, isn’t it?” Porter said.

  Steam rose out of the hole at a steady pace.

  “It must have formed from stress,” Greg suggested. “With all the earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, you know.”

  Immediately after Greg finished talking, steam stopped coming out of the ground.

  The four guys closed in on the hole. When they all looked down into it, they saw only blackness. Dylan felt uneasy about it and backed away from the hole.

  “You guys should back up. Something is not right about that.”

  Greg and Porter heeded Dylan’s warning. Will was fascinated by the bottomless emptiness; he couldn’t turn away.

  “Come on guys, let’s head back. There is nothing we can do here, and it’s not that big of a deal. At least it’s on the opposite side of town from Ollie’s stable.” Dylan said as he started walking away.

  They started to head back to Hope. Greg and Porter walked around the hole. Will jumped over it, but he never
touched the ground again as he was caught in midair by an unseen force.

  “Will!” Porter yelled, getting Dylan and Greg’s attention.

  Not even a second after Dylan turned around, Will was sucked into the hole so fast it seemed almost impossible

  “Will!” Dylan shouted as he got closer to the hole.

  There was nothing any of them could do.

  “What just happened?” Dylan asked, shocked.

  Greg and Porter where too stunned to speak.

  Dylan knew that Will was taken to Hell, and that his loss would hurt. Dylan, Greg, and Porter left the fissure. The three of them immediately went to see Rich at the town hall to tell him what happened. Rich asked the men to take him out to see the fissure. The group picked up Jim the pastor on their way out so he could perform a blessing over the area.

  “It’s gone.” Dylan had more he wanted to say, but he just couldn’t believe that the hole had vanished.

  “Are you sure this is where it was?” Rich asked.

  “Yeah, it was dead center in between those two oaks.” Dylan pointed at the only trees that were close by.

  “Jim, will you please bless this area? Then let’s pray for Will’s soul and get out of here. This place is giving me the creeps,” Rich said.

  “Right away.”

  Jim opened up his Bible and started blessing the ground. Then the five men stood and prayed for Will before hastening back to the comfort of Hope’s walls.

  Dylan told Leah about what happened as soon as he made it home. Will was Dylan’s last roommate from before he’d moved in with Leah and, other than Greg, the last of his friends to not have married yet.

  The fall harvest was just finishing up when four people made it to Hope from South America. An older woman, Lupe, a married couple Jose and Elena and a fifteen year old girl named Carmelita. Things seemed to be going well for one of the last places of humanity on Earth, even with the loss of Jason and Will. It didn’t last.

  The last cart full of grain had just made through the gate to be processed when the crow’s nest alarm went off.