Pahnyakin Rising (22 page)

“What if I can’t get there?  How am I supposed to let you know?”

“Tell someone to sound the alarms,” she answered without skipping a beat. 

Dodge opened his arms.  “Come here real quick.”

They fit together like the last puzzle piece pressed in the void to finish a complicated design. 

“Don’t do anything stupid,” he warned her softly. 

“Same for you.”

“The dumbest thing I’ve ever done is let you go on that run alone.”

She inhaled his musky scent and closed her eyes.  “Well, now you have the chance to make it right.”

He cleared his throat and pushed her gently.  “This is me telling you to fulfill your destiny.  Go, before they have a chance to find us.”

Dresden pressed her toes to the ground and leaned upward.  She kissed Dodge’s left cheek.

“Thank you.  I’ll see you soon, okay?”

He nodded.  “Okay.  Shepherd’s house is the only one on this side of town with electricity.  You should notice it right away; he never turns off his porch light.”

-22-

Dresden offered Dodge a light wave before following the flickering light of the burning generator to the end of the alley.  It would all have been so much easier if she had direct access to the back yards of the homes behind Loretta’s, but the six-foot-tall decorative brick wall was placed along their borders back in Dresden’s time, as a direct result of ornery teenagers trespassing and littering.  It was in pristine condition for being erected so many years before, perhaps the one piece of Easton that looked untouched by the Pahnyakin-Human war. 

At the end of the alley she peeked her head around the corner.  Admittedly, her stomach was rolling like the strongest of tides and crashing against her abdominal walls.  She worried she would be caught right off the bat, failing herself, Dodge, and her people. 

She took a sharp left once verifying the coast was clear, followed by another quick left to someone’s backyard.  She crept closer to the home and ran her hand along the gritty white siding until it came to an abrupt stop.  In the dark, she took her first right and sprinted closely along the home’s side with no moment to waste. 

Dresden stopped at the home’s front and scanned each end of the narrow road as accurately as she could expect to in the dark.  It was her sense of hearing that saved her; to her left, at least half a block away, Dresden identified three Pahnyakins speaking to one another.  She reached to her right and was pricked by the itchy needles of a pine tree.  Dresden dropped to her hands and knees and crawled behind the tree.  She soon realized a space between the house and three trees planted next to one another served as a suitable hiding place from the approaching creatures. 

The girl did not realize she was holding her breath until she heard a Pahnyakin shuffling in the grass directly in front of the row of trees.  Her lungs burned and the veins in her forehead throbbed. 

Why was it just standing there?  Did it know she was hiding just inches from its feet? 

She had no breath left to hold. 

Dresden exhaled with a gasp and the Pahnyakin clicked for the others to stop. 

‘This is it,
she thought. 
They’re going to take me.
’   

She clenched her eyes closed and waited for the moment when the Pahnyakin would peel back the rubbery twigs of the trees and snatch her by the hair until she stood. 

Go,
it clicked instead.               

Dresden was too nervous to breathe a sigh of relief.  Her legs were jelly as she stood.  She waited for what seemed a lifetime, honing in on every and any sound and prayed the creatures were truly gone. 

The teenager sprinted across the street, guided by the light of a waning moon coming out from behind cotton clouds.  She rolled as she tripped over the curb but bounced back like she had never taken the tumble. 

As she continued to sprint between houses, up ahead she could see Dodge’s two-story, blue-sided house.  Just as Dodge said, the porch light was left on.  Nothing about the home’s exterior would cause Dresden to believe it was not simply a home from her time.  It was in the same condition she had seen it last.  Even the black-lined globe covering the porch’s light bulb looked brand new.  Shepherd’s focus needed to be redirected if he paid that much attention to insignificant details, Dresden thought to herself. 

Nearing her destination, Dresden forced her remaining energy to her legs and pushed off from each step as if it would be her last.  The air she breathed through her mouth and nose was not enough. 

Remembering her own safety almost too late, she skidded to a stop and checked the street for Pahnyakin troops.  Her stomach churned but she ignored the bad feeling.  The girl raced across the street and up the five steep concrete stairs to the white-wooden front porch.  She briefly glanced at the wooden swing hanging from the covered porch by two steel chains affixed to each end. 

“Please,” she begged to herself.  “Be open, please.”

She placed her hand on the cold golden knob and twisted.  Dresden pushed the door open effortlessly. 

Nick Shepherd’s home could have stood to be cleaned, but it was still far from the disaster Dresden expected it to be.  She instantly recognized the red and white abstract oil painting that took up most of the beige speckled wall to her left as the one from Easton’s historical galleria.  Dresden never pegged Nick for an art connoisseur, but something in her gut told her he didn’t have the painting to appreciate, but instead kept the piece in his home as a mark of status.

She turned right and overlooked Shepherd’s living room.  Sports-themed books were stacked on a mahogany coffee table and topped with dirty bowls with silver spoons poking over the sides.  The room smelled of freshly-burned firewood.  She glanced to the brick fireplace and could see the remainders of two charred logs. 

Dresden shook her head and continued left into the kitchen.  The light above the stove hummed gently.  Dishes were piled over the top of the double stainless steel sink and the bagless white trashcan pushed against the black refrigerator was overflowing with empty cans of fruit cocktail and canned ravioli.  Her mouth watered.  Ravioli was a far cry from squishy Vienna sausages that fell apart in her fingers before she could even get one link to her lips. 

She crossed the kitchen and followed her intuition to the wooden door at the far side of the room.  Dresden opened the door and, like in the run-supply house, a motion-sensor light came on overhead.  She stared at twenty pine stairs that ended at a white concrete floor.  Cool air slapped at her cheeks and she took a breath before descending. 

Dresden felt lightheaded as she walked slowly down the stairs.  She momentarily feared she would faint and fall from the rail-less steps.  It wasn’t right to take from others, she knew, but she fought her morals and repeatedly assured herself it was for the greater good. 

And she realized as soon as the soles of her boots touched the concrete foundation that Shepherd, too, had the power to fight for the greater good but instead took to hoarding weapons for the day Easton’s people refused to fight for him. 

The teenager knew the white magazine from a documentary she watched on the war in Iraq.  She knelt in front of the knee-high locker and pulled the door open.

“Grenades,” Dresden scoffed with a laugh. “You’ve gotta be kidding me.”

What Dodge said was true: Shepherd kept the good stuff for himself.

Dresden glanced around the room for something to carry items to her war.  She spotted two empty blue canvas hiking backpacks on the other side of the magazine and grabbed one.  Ever-so-gently the girl lifted the 14-ounce pineapple-shelled M67 grenades and placed them in the second bag until five were lined next to one another. 

At the back of the magazine she noticed a white canister with pineapple ribbing at the bottom of its smooth metal.  It had a copper handle pinned to its side. 

She knew what it was, which is why she mulled over the decision to take it. 

Her sense of survival kicked in.  She snatched the canister and placed it upright in the backpack.  She zipped the bag and placed it in front of the open magazine holding the other 20-something grenades Shepherd had stored.

The girl stood and examined row upon row of melee weapons hanging from a tan pegboard that took up the entire left wall of the freezing basement.  She stuffed countless bowie knives in the second bag and picked up a peculiar piece.  It was a black metal bar with a strap at the top.  At the end was a long blade welded to the metal strip.  She slipped her arm through the strap and practiced stabbing the blade in the open air.  It wasn’t practical for her use, but she shoved it in the backpack, anyway.

She then spotted a 12-inch silver blade with six metal buttons embedded up and down its metal.  Its handle was crudely layered in so much platinum duct tape that it was rounded and bulky with a tee handle for her wrist to rest upon.  A black button jutted out on the left side of the handle.  And Dresden, always the curious one, couldn’t resist pressing it. 

The girl shoved the button inward with her thumb and jumped as electricity crackled through the blade and jumped from the metal buttons in blue and white lightning bolts.

She released the button and looked at the legs of her pants.  Dresden slid the blade of the sword through her belt loop and twisted the handle until the back of the blade rested against the side of her leg.  It wasn’t the best place for running, she knew, but until that moment arrived she wouldn’t worry about it.

Behind her stood three wooden gun cabinets that almost reached the top of the nine-foot-high ceiling.  She lugged her backpack to the other side of the basement and grabbed heavy pistols from the inner shelves.  Each one, she inspected to make sure the safety was on before carefully placing the weapon atop the knives until the bag was nearly filled to the zipper.  On her tiptoes, she snatched up sealed boxes of ammunition and shoved them in her backpack until she could hardly zip it closed. 

She pulled each of the bag’s padded straps over each of her arms and positioned the straps over the centers of her shoulders.  Knowing there was a chance she was going to be dead either way by dawn, she lifted the bag of grenades and carried it over her right shoulder.

The weight of the bags fitting snugly against her back nearly pulled her down the stairs.  She leaned forward and huffed with each step taken until she reached the top step.  Dresden celebrated by lifting her arms above her head and giving a hissing victorious roar of a cheering audience.   She chuckled all the way to the front door but choked on her laughter and jumped to her right to avoid being seen.

Three Pahnyakin Unies patrolling the streets were showing interest in the lighted house. 

Dresden breathed deeply and heavily through her mouth.  Her chest was weighted down by bricks of nervousness and her heart pounded. 

‘Not now,’
she thought. 
‘I’m so close.’

The creatures formed a horizontal line to block her if she tried to run through the front door.  She could see the back door from where she was standing; it was just behind the oak staircase that winded to the home’s second floor.  Any moment she made a run, though, would cast shadows against the sheer robin’s-egg curtain over the door’s single-pane window. 

With her eyes closed her right hand gripped the sword’s handle.  She silently prayed as she pulled the blade to the side and from her belt loop. 

“Can you really stop them?” she heard whispered from the living room.  

She lost her breath and for that she thanked heavens because if she hadn’t she would have screamed in surprise.

Nick was crouched on the other side of the door. 

How had she not seen him when she came up from the basement?  

She felt ashamed for playing childish games.

“I heard Dodge say you figured out a way to stop them.  Can you or not?”

He had shed his sweatshirt and was left in a yellow sweat-drenched tee shirt.  He reached for the knife jutting out of his left boot. 

Dresden nodded. 

“Are you sure?”

She nodded again but with a hard gulp. 

She hoped so, anyway.

“If you can make it two blocks up, there’s a big tree next to where Old Man Sweet lived.  Go behind that tree and push on the brick with the white paint splotch.  It opens to his basement and down there is a door to a tunnel that will lead you about a half mile from the cemetery.”

“How do you know that?” she asked.

“Just do it.”

“Okay,” she nodded.  “I’ll do it.”

“Don’t let this be for nothing,” he said softly.

He stood and reached for the door handle.  His eyes were filled with every regret from every mistake he’d ever made, with every apology he never gave.  If she’d ever remember a face of fear, it would Nick Shepherd’s, the
fearless, selfish
leader of Easton.