Rise the Phoenix Read online

  ©2019 Ely Page. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses

  permitted by copyright law.

  ISBN: 978-1-54396-025-9 (print)

  ISBN: 978-1-54396-026-6 (ebook)

  Contents

  Prelude

  Part I: The Gathering

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Part II: Home

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Prelude

  “I’m off to work, Grandma!” Dylan shouted over the loud volume of the TV. He looked at his grandma but she acted like he didn’t exist. Like usual if the TV was on, there was no point talking to her.

  He opened the front door and as soon as the creek of the old door hinge made it to her ear, Dylan’s grandma shouted, “Bring me back a pack a smokes!” She threw a lighter at his feet. “And I need a new one of those too.” It was the only time she said anything to him before he left for work and when she needed something. That way she knew she could avoid having a conversation.

  Dylan walked out of the old crumbling house that he had always called home. He started walking down the sidewalk and through the old, crumbling neighborhood of Charlotte, just as he did every day. The weather was really nice; the day before had been cold and rainy. It felt like spring had finally arrived. He walked by a house where the whole family was playing in the front yard. He smiled at them as he passed in what felt like slow motion. He felt so empty and alone on the inside.

  Dylan had never had a family to play with. No brother or sister, none that he knew of anyway. He’d never met his mother or father. Dylan never knew what happened to his parents. His grandma only talked about them once, when she told a younger Dylan that his dad was the reason his mom was dead. He had lived with his maternal grandmother, the only family he knew, for as long as he could remember.

  Seeing that family reminded him of how he had always felt, desperately wanting a family of his own. Dylan would say he was jealous of his friends at school because they all had moms and dads, but he would also be lying because he didn’t have any friends.

  After his daydream-filled walk, Dylan made it to work.

  “You’re late again!” Walter, his manager, shouted as soon as he walked in the door. Worse yet, he said it in front of all the customers. Dylan looked at his watch. Fifteen seconds, that was all he was late by, and if he could make it to the clock in time, he technically wouldn’t be late. “What are you doing?” Walter asked with a thick snobby tone.

  “I am clocking on,” Dylan replied with as much edge in his voice as he could.

  “No, no, I need you to get some fries out of the freezer now! Clocking on can wait.”

  Dylan hated working at a fast-food place, but he hated Walter even more. He went to the back of the building and opened the heavy door to the walk-in freezer. He went to the right and grabbed a box of fries off of the shelf in front of him, then turned around to go out. Just then the door shut and Dylan tripped over something, and the box went flying out of his hands, crashed against the wall, and broke open. Luckily for him, the fries where inside paper bags, and two of the three bags didn’t break open.

  As he bent down and started to pick up the loose fries, Dylan felt the floor shake. He didn’t know what it was, but whatever was going on was getting more violent with every passing second. When the shelves around him started to move, he tried for the door, but a shelf fell down in front of it before he could get there. In a panic, he covered his head with his hands and curled up on the freezer floor as tight as he could.

  After what felt like an eternity but was only a few moments, the shaking was over. Dylan didn’t know if that was an earthquake or what. He got up off the floor and moved the collapsed shelf that had blocked the door. He pushed the latch and the door opened just enough for him to peer out.

  “Wow!” Dylan said out loud as he first glimpsed the back of the restaurant. It looked like a tornado had gone through it; part of the roof had collapsed and there were pieces of equipment everywhere. He then looked down at the ground to see why the freezer door hadn’t opened all the way. Lying on the ground up against the door was the body of one of Dylan’s coworkers.

  “Molly? You OK?” Dylan asked as he tried to open the door further to get out. He squeezed his lanky body through the narrow opening and knelt down beside Molly. He grabbed her shoulder and she turned, revealing wide-open eyes full of panic and a huge gash across her forehead. “Oh, geez.” Dylan let go of her and backed away as soon as he figured out she was dead.

  He started to look for other people in the restaurant, hoping that somebody was still alive. He turned a corner and saw Walter on the floor, his face burned from the oil in the fryer.

  Panic struck Dylan like a ten-pound sledgehammer when he thought about his grandma. He ran out of the shattered glass door at the side of what was left of the restaurant, then sprinted to his grandma’s house as fast as he could.

  In tunnel-vision mode, he didn’t even notice that cars were crashed and the buildings all around him were collapsed or on fire. He had no idea he was the only thing moving.

  Dylan dropped to his knees as soon as he reached his grandma’s front lawn. There was no house there now. It was nothing more than a hole in the ground. The gas line must have burst, and his grandma was a smoker, she probably had one lit up and boom, the house had blown up. There were pieces of the house that had spread out like a bunch of giant toothpicks.

  As soon as Dylan got ahold of himself, a new feeling came over him. Purpose. For the first time in his life, he felt like he needed to be somewhere. He got up off his knees and started walking again. He had to hurry; there was somewhere he had to be. Though he didn’t know where, he knew he would find it.

  “So, tell me what happened, girl. Why did you sound so sad when you called?” Angie asked her friend after they hugged. They met at the place they’d been going to since they were kids: the mall.

  Leah started crying before she could even speak a word.

  “Oh my, girl, I know what the problem is. You don’t need to say a word, that cry has Morgan written all over it,” Angie said. Leah buried her head in Angie’s shoulder, and Angie wrapped her arms around her friend. “Hey, listen to me, you are a beautiful young woman and there are plenty of men out there.”

  Leah removed herself from Angie’s embrace and looked at her friend eye to eye. “He left for Texas last night,” Leah said. She bit her lip before continuing. “He called me after he already left, saying that he wasn’t coming back and that he loved me but he had to go and be his own person. His own person! What does that mean? How could he leave me, after what just happened between us? After I just lost our baby!” Leah could barely get the last word out. She burst into a fresh round of tears.

  “Come on, let’s go to the bathroom and clean you up, and then I’ll buy you an Orange Julius, how’s that sound?” Angie tried to be as soft-spoken as possible, which was hard for her, but Leah appreciated Angie’s effort.

  The two young women went to the restrooms by the food court. Not even a second after the door sh
ut behind them, the entire building began to shake.

  “What is going on?” Leah asked, scared.

  “I don’t know, I don’t think we can get earthquakes here,” Angie said with panic in her voice and concern on her face. As she spoke her last words, a piece of ceiling fell down on top of Angie, and she in turn fell down on top of Leah, covering her completely.

  Leah screamed until the shaking stopped. The lights went out, but an emergency light above the door turned on after a few seconds.

  “Angie, I think it’s over. You can get off of me now.” Leah waited a second but she received no response. Just then she felt something wet and warm fall on her neck “Angie?” Leah touched her friend’s neck with her free hand then looked at her fingers. It was blood. “Angie!” Leah shouted, squirming out from underneath Angie and the heavy piece of ceiling as fast as she could.

  Leah got on her knees and pushed the piece of ceiling off of her friend. She then started to shake Angie. “Angie, wake up, we need to get out of here.” Leah started crying again, not knowing what to do.

  She got out her cell phone and dialed 911, but there was no signal. She left the bathroom to look for help. She didn’t think that Angie was dead; she refused to even consider that as a possibility. She had to get help for her friend.

  She looked around the food court but all she saw were arms and legs sticking out from underneath tables and parts of the collapsed glass ceiling, which had shattered everywhere. A few fires had started at the cooking stations.

  “Hello? Is there anybody who can help me?” An eerie echo went out. Leah started to walk around, stepping over large debris and trying to find anybody still alive but having no luck. She started to feel sick to her stomach

  She went back into the bathroom. Leah stood looking at her motionless best friend in the faint, weak light. She sat down on the floor next to Angie. She broke down crying, finally acknowledging that Angie was dead.

  After a few minutes she stopped crying. Leah brushed aside hair that was covering Angie’s face.

  “Thank you for being my best friend since preschool,” she said. Leah gave Angie a kiss on the forehead. “I will miss you. Goodbye.” She got up and went back to the door. Leah gave one last sniffle and left the bathroom.

  She made it outside and was in total shock when she saw that the parking lot where her car was had sunk thirty feet into the ground. All she could see was a giant pile of cars in the bottom of the pit, just inches from where she stood.

  She walked along the edge of the building until she passed the giant sinkhole. She knew there was a police station just a few blocks away. She thought she would go there for help.

  Leah had tunnel vision as she ran to the police station, not acknowledging the total destruction that surrounded her on all sides. She hadn’t yet realized that she was the only living thing moving.

  She walked into the police station saw a cop lying on the floor right in front of her with what looked like a shot gun sticking through his chest. Leah almost threw up seeing that, so she turned around and walked out to collect herself.

  Calmed down enough to think rationally, Leah decided that she would go home and hope that her parents would be there, that they’d still be alive. If not, she would wait, but for what she couldn’t tell herself.

  Leah got a few blocks from her house feeling less and less sure that anybody else was alive. During all the walking she had done in the two hours since the earthquake struck, Leah had not come across another living person. In fact, as she thought about it, she hadn’t seen any animal alive either. She felt so afraid and so alone.

  She stopped at the end of street she’d grown up on. She looked at all the destruction around her. Her entire life was gone now. She couldn’t see her house, but that didn’t matter. Leah decided not to go home; she realized there was no home to go to now. She started in the opposite direction, not knowing where she was going but knowing she had to get there, and fast.

  Part I: The Gathering

  Chapter 1

  “There, that’s the last box, Frank,” Corey, the stock boy of the local old-fashioned general store, said as he put a large box of freeze-dried food in the back of a SUV.

  “Thanks, Corey. God bless you and have a good day,” Frank said as he put a five-dollar bill in the young man’s hand with a handshake.

  “Thanks, Frank,” Corey said as he looked at the bill and then back at Frank. “Hey, Frank, do you mind me asking what all that food you and Alice have been ordering from the store the past few months is for?”

  “Oh,” Frank said with a blank face. He looked at Alice for a moment while he thought of a good answer. “We are stocking up for a large trip that Alice, me, and a few friends will be taking.” Frank looked down at his feet before finishing the answer. “A bunch of us are going on a mission to South America. Food where we’re going is scarce, and what is there is bad, so we are going to bring them some of this.” Frank looked at the boxes in the SUV before he shut the lift gate. “They are going to think this is a gourmet meal.” Frank smiled uneasily as he and Alice got into the SUV and drove away without looking back.

  “You OK, dear?” Alice asked in her sweetest voice from the passenger seat. She had a concerned look on her aging face.

  “I don’t like lying, it’s not right,” Frank said after a moment.

  “Oh, sweetie.” Alice put her hand on Frank’s leg, giving him a nurturing touch. “You didn’t lie to Corey. In fact, you told him exactly what we are doing with all that food.” Alice could see that Frank felt a little better about what he said to Corey; she always had that effect on Frank. Alice grew a slight sideways grin. “Now, don’t tell him the truth about why we have so many weapons.”

  Frank pulled the SUV into the garage and pushed the button for the automatic door to close.

  When Frank and Alice got out and met at the back of the SUV to open the lift gate, Frank froze and looked at Alice. She saw a face of great worry and concern, but Frank did not show any fear in his eyes. Without a word, he grabbed her hand and they walked as fast as they could to the corner of the garage. Frank lifted a small sheet of plywood off the floor, revealing a solid steel door.

  It took both of them to open and lift it. Alice went down first and Frank was close behind. As soon as he shut the door above him, the earth began to shake all around them.

  Frank wrapped his arms around Alice as they hunkered down low to the floor. They both began to pray, and Alice also began to cry, thinking about all the wonderful people that were dying just then. After Frank had prayed, he thought about Corey and what that innocent young man was going through right at that moment. Frank also thought about all the wonderful people he had met in the long years of his life and wondered if they were going to survive or perish.

  The two senior citizens held each other for a while longer after the shaking had stopped. When they thought it was over, they looked at each other and then got up, feeling as ready to face what was ahead as they could. They knew it was over, and they knew that it had just begun at the same time. Nothing would ever be the same ever again. The hardest part of their lives was ahead of them, and they didn’t have much time before they were going to start having company.

  “I will get some blankets and some water ready. I am sure that they will be somewhat thirsty and tired by the time they get here,” Alice said as Frank helped her out of the bunker.

  “I will clean up some of the damage and get the generator going.” Frank said, then paused. “It is going to be a long and tough night.”

  As he looked around, Frank noticed that there wasn’t much damage to their house or garage. Even the fence still looked in good shape. Curious, Frank walked to the front of the house. He was in awe of the total destruction. Every single one of the houses on his street, in his neighborhood, was gone, reduced to nothing more than piles of sticks. He knew it was the power of God, but how could every house on
his street be destroyed while his stood completely alone? Even though he knew the answer, he still asked why.

  As he started toward the house’s back door, Frank heard a loud clash of thunder. He looked up at the sky. Coming in from the west at a high rate of speed was a meteor, and behind that followed a rushing front of what looked like storm clouds full of ash and fire.

  “I pray they all get here unharmed,” Frank said to himself as he opened the back door and entered the house to help Alice prepare.

  Just as Frank and Alice finished preparing their house, their first guest arrived with a knock on the front door. Frank opened the door, there stood a frightened, thin, and pale young man of maybe seventeen or eighteen.

  “Hello, young man, and welcome,” Frank said with a warm smile. “I take it you made it here with little trouble?”

  “I—I don’t know why I came here, but I am glad to see someone else alive,” the boy said, still in shock.

  Frank put his arm out to welcome the man inside. Alice peered around the corner just then.

  “What’s your name, sweetie?” she asked in a motherly tone as she approached.

  “Dylan,” was the young man’s only reply as he walked inside. Dylan looked around the house in disbelief. “Your house is untouched while so many others are gone.”

  Frank and Alice looked at each other, then Alice took Dylan’s hand. “You must be thirsty. Let’s get you some water.” She led him to the kitchen as Frank looked on.

  “That boy is going to need a lot of work.” he said to himself. Just then, another knock came at the door.

  Less than twenty-four hours after Dylan first arrived, the house was like an airport terminal. All night long there was one knock on the door after another. Teenage girls like Leah and Hanna, stayed with each other, same as the teenage boys Ben, Will, and Andy stayed in a corner opposite the girls. Dylan kind of stayed by himself as much as he could in the small room.

  The house was getting crowded, and although everyone there was grateful to be alive, they had all lost loved ones and were all still reeling from the death and destruction they had witnessed.