Pahnyakin Rising (24 page)

He examined the black box.  It dangled from the sword by thin spliced wires that travel to the blade.

“Got your screwdriver?”

Dresden nodded and reached in her pocket.  She handed him the tool and he pried the cover from the box.

“Holy crap,” he laughed, peeking at the back of the cover.

“What?”

“It’s over twenty million volts.  Did Shepherd know you had this?”

She nodded.  “Well, I had it when he saw me, anyway.”

He shrugged his shoulders.  “And he didn’t say where he found it?”

“No.  Why?”

“This is, obviously, handmade.”

“Yeah.  So?”

“So…It just makes me wonder what kind of person would make something like this.”

She laughed.  “Mad that you didn’t get the idea first?”

He scrunched his lips and brows before nodding.  “Yeah,” he said, “I kinda am.”

She watched, intrigued, as Dodge stabbed at a lever inside the control box.  It broke off and Dodge shook it out.  The golden fleck floated to the ground.

“There.”

“That was it?” Dresden skeptically asked.

Dodge placed the cover back on the box and returned the control box back to its cubby in the handle of the sword.  He wrapped the tape tightly around the handle and held the weapon far ahead of his body.  He used his left hand to scoot Dresden back and he anxiously pressed the button.

What were once inch-long bolts became stretching strings of electricity that danced around the sword’s blade. 

Two women screamed at its first crackles. 

Dodge released the button and looked over to Dresden.

“This is about the coolest thing I’ve ever seen.”

She shifted her weight and twirled her screwdriver in her palms.  “So how many do you think it can take out?”

“Ten,” he answered positively, “at least.”

  Dresden grinned and an excited giggle escaped from her lips.  She slipped the screwdriver back in her pocket and turned to the group.

“Okay,” she said with her endless smile, “let’s do this.”

“Are we all armed?” she questioned.

Greg lifted the bottom of his hoodie to expose two guns around his belt, in addition to the pistol in his hands. 

A mousy blonde teenager nodded and held up a knife. 

“We don’t have much,” Dresden acknowledged with a straight face.  “The odds are against us.  They always have been.”

The crowd looked dismayed.

“But,” Dresden said, “we have something they don’t have.” 

She paused.

“We have purpose.  We have a will to survive.  And as long as we focus on that, we have the power to beat them.  Now, don’t think we’re all going to live.  But don’t think you have to be a hero, either.  We’re in this together.  We’re in this as the human race, not as some amateur battalion from Easton, Indiana.”

“As we get closer, we’re going to hit roadblocks.”  She motioned to the bag at Dodge’s feet.  “And we’re going to use those grenades when we have to.  We’re going to fight.  We’re going to be just as ruthless as they are.”

“There are just so many of them,” said a brunette with a pixie-cut.  Tears of fear rolled down her sunken cheeks.

Dresden shook her head.  “It doesn’t matter.  We’ve survived this long, and we’re going to fight like mad to save ourselves.  We
can
win this, and we
will.
”

“Are we ready?” she asked.

The group nodded.

“ARE we
READY
?” Dresden demanded, lifting her chin.

“Yes,” her people cheered in unison. 

Dresden turned her head to Dodge.  “We ready to roll out of here, Dodge?”

He nodded and grabbed the bag of grenades. 

“Yeah.  We’re ready.”

The teenager, just a shell of this person only days prior, neared the group.  Her people moved to let her through. 

“Let’s go get our lives back,” she said firmly. 

-24-

She and Dodge knew the odds of survival for even half of the group were slim to none.  Their glances to each other exchanged the acknowledgement, but neither mentioned it aloud. 

Dresden ordered the group of 17 to spread out and be alert as they walked along the road south of Easton.  The girl recalled the road well; she road as a passenger as her mother drove the two clothes shopping in Bale, a city triple the size of Easton.  It was always a long car ride.  Bale was two hours away and the “scenic” route wasn’t all that scenic in the teenager’s eyes, unless viewing one cow pasture on a long, straight road of empty field and an occasional patch of trees was interesting to someone. 

“Keep an even pace,” Dodge instructed the group as they neared their second mile.

His feet ached, but he wouldn’t complain.  He reached out and brushed Dresden’s left hand as they led side-by-side.  She wriggled her fingers against the edge of his hand but remained alert as she scanned their surroundings.  Bullfrogs and crickets croaked and chirped from the fields.  She heard a coyote howl in the distance.

She stopped two and a half miles from Easton and shook her head.

“What?” Dodge asked.

Dresden paused momentarily and slanted her eyebrows.

“What do you hear right now?” she asked him.

He shrugged and listened to the dead silence of the mid-night.  “Nothing.”

She nodded.  “This is a trap.”

How had she
not
have noticed this the first time she took a group through this spot?  How could the other Dresden had been so clueless?

She spun around to address the group.  “Nobody moves, do you understand me?  Don’t even take a step unless I tell you to.”

Dresden extended her hand.  “Someone give me a flashlight.”  She glanced at Dodge.  “Get one of the grenades out.”

“But there’s nothing out here,” he argued.  Still yet, he sighed and opened the bag he dropped from his shoulder. 

“Exactly,” she said.  “What happened to the crickets?  It’s too quiet.  This is a trap, I’m telling you.”

Dodge’s eyes darted about.

He pulled the white canister from the bag.

“Geez, Dresden,” he exploded.  “You’ve had a thermite grenade in here the whole time?”

She flicked away his concerns with her left hand and he shook his head as he placed the canister back in the bag. He gripped a single M67 in his hand and slipped the bag’s strap back over his shoulders.

Dresden turned to her right and clicked the flashlight on.  She slowly lifted the beam upward and shined the stream across the field.

“There’s nothing there,” Greg sighed.  “But we’re out in the open for when they
do
come by.”

“Shut up,” Dodge called to him, with an unsettling feeling sweeping over him.  “She’s right.  This is a trap.”

“And just how do you know that?” Greg challenged.

And it instantaneously made all the sense in the world to Dodge.  She had died here.  The story the earth had to tell jumped up and slapped him in the face so hard that all he could do is stand with his jaw crooked and his lips spread to beg her to turn around, to not make the same mistake again.  He wanted to drop to his knees and plead for her to run, just run, Dresden, and never look back. 

“Everyone turn on their flashlights and aim at the directions around us.”

“Dresden,” Dodge whispered to her.  “We don’t have to do this, you know.”

By the expression on her pale face one would think she had already experienced death.  She was unafraid. 

“Yes,” she nodded.  “We do.”

Beams of light lit up the surrounding fields on either side of the group and the teenager squinted to see where the light ended and the darkness began. 

“Shine ahead of me,” she directed. 

Dodge pulled a six-inch purple flashlight from his pocket and clicked the rubberized button at its end.  He twisted his wrist back and forth rapidly.

“Wait, go back,” she urged.  Her words came together as one.

Dodge sighed and slowly shined his light from left to right.  There wasn’t anything to be seen in the road, he thought.

“There,” she pointed. 

“What?” he asked skeptically.  “I don’t see anything.”

She grabbed his right hand and squinted.  From twenty feet away, Dresden traced Dodge’s fingertips over the distant white cobweb she saw stretching from one side of the broken road to the other.

“It’s a tripwire,” he said in awe. 

“Do you think they’re waiting, or do you think they’ll come out when it blows?” questioned the mousy brunette from the back of the group.

Dresden crept closer to the wire and shined her light in a reverse u-shape around the line’s perimeter. 

“There’s absolutely no place for them to hide here.  If they’re here, they’re at least far enough back that we can’t see them unless we travel in their direction,” she called to her people.

She continued inching closer to the wire.  Dodge’s heart raced and his breathing became erratic.

“Dresden, what are you doing?”

“Just wait,” she said, holding up her left index finger behind her back. 

The toes of her boots were centimeters from the taut wire.

“Dresden,” Dodge scolded sharply.  “Get away from it.”

Always one to test the waters on her own, she raised her left foot and pressed her lips tightly together.  Her hands wobbled as she carefully guided her foot to the ground on the opposite side of the wire. 

“Dresden, are you serious right now?” Dodge yelled.  He stripped off his bag and hurriedly put the grenade back in.

She lifted her right foot just the same until she stood on the other side.  She ignored Dodge’s shouts and walked forward.

Dresden shined her flashlight on the road ahead and to both sides of herself.

“You’re out of your mind, I swear,” Dodge hollered.  “Are you
trying
to get killed?”

She shook her head and called back, “If they were here and really wanted me, they’d have me by now.” 

Dresden faced the group.  “Cross over—one at a time.  If you’re behind someone, shine your light at the wire.  Last person over, someone will shine from this side.”

Dodge was the first to go over to the other side.

“Sorry for freaking you out,” Dresden apologized.

He shook his head.  “Don’t even talk to me for a few minutes.  I can’t believe you would do something so stupid.”

She couldn’t help but to laugh.  “You should.  It’s all I’ve been doing since I got here.”

She had a point, he thought to himself.  He turned and watched as the rest of the group crossed.  Some clenched their eyes tightly as they stepped over, each certain
they
would be the one to trip the explosives Dodge could see crudely and shallowly buried at each end of the line.

Greg was the last to step over, but instead he stepped back and sprinted towards the group.

“No,” Dresden called. 

But he didn’t listen.  Dresden grabbed Dodge’s hand and pulled him as she ran forward. 

Greg laughed as his sneakers hit the pavement on the other side.

“What’s wrong?” he teased.  “Didn’t think I had it in me?”

Dresden stomped towards him and poked him in his boney chest.

“You could’ve wiped out half of us just because you wanted to show off.”

He put his hands up and his elongated fingers pointed at the starless sky.  “Relax.  I was just messing around.”

“And it’s going to get one of us killed.  If you want to mess around, do it when you’re on your own.”

She motioned back to Easton.  “Go on.  You want to mess around?  You can turn back now.”

“Sorry,” he muttered.

“Don’t let it happen again,” she warned.

Greg wandered to the back of the group to pout and the rest watched in silence as Dresden returned to lead them.

The group walked without words for ten minutes before Dodge nudged Dresden’s arm.

“Think you’ll ever get back?”

She shrugged.

“What do you think you’d do if you could go back?”

Dresden licked her dry lips. 

“Try to stop it, I guess,” she replied with another shrug.

Dodge nodded. 

“Maybe try to contact the military or something,” she continued without Dodge pressing for answers.  “And I’d be able to save my parents…and yours.  I’d be able to stop all of this, don’t you think?”