Project Lazarus (41 page)

“Here…” he offered, “take this.”

The duct tape was quickly wrapped around the box, after the papers were stuffed in.

“Seal it as tight as you can, it will keep out the elements.  How long before Jackson gets to them?”

“How long before the fire goes out on Cotter?” She asked.

“Don’t know.”

“How long before anyone will be able to sneak into Cotter?’ She asked.

“After the town turns to dust.”

A horrified look crossed her face.  Would the notes survive?  Was it all in vain?

“I know what you’re thinking Natalie.  It doesn’t matter anymore.  Did you do what you wanted with your life?”

She didn’t answer, she simply told him, “I can live with myself.  I am true to myself.”

They were striking from the air now.

“Guess you were right about the drones,” she panicked.

Sherriff Traves knew time was running out and kept his eyes glued to the road, “Old man Rivers farm,” he yelled.

“Go..go..” She hurried him.

He was speeding at nearly 90 miles an hour heading down the grass of the farm.  A bomb missed them in the distance.

“There’s the barn,” she yelled past the noise, “take a sharp left.”

His training kicked in and he did a sharp turn quickly in the grass that nearly burnt it.

“They tried to kill the Dempster boy?”

“Who?”

“Charlie Dempster’s son.”

“Why?”

“Charlie had the Amazon man resurrect him a long time ago.  The military man tried to kill the boy. Some kind of sacrifice but the boy survived.”

“I don’t get it,” Sherriff Traves mumbled.

“I’ll tell you all about it when we survive.  There.  There, do you see it?”

The gravel road was right in front of him now.

He stopped the car abruptly.

Natalie jumped out, knowing this was part of the plan.  The car jerked forward with the abrupt halt.  The Sherriff followed her and with a small shovel they dug up the strange earth behind the large weeping willow and buried the tin pencil box with the notes.

This was no normal activity under any circumstance but she felt a bit like a serial killer burying a body.

It was a miracle.  The sounds ceased long enough for them to bury the notes. 

They jumped back into the car and peeled down the fading gravel road.  Dust flew up behind him.

“The son?  He’s killed.”

“No,” she answered. 

“Unbelievable.”

“When was the last time you prayed Sherriff Traves?”

“Right now,” he confided.

“Keep praying.  That’s what saved the boy.”

He looked at her puzzled, “If we get out alive, it will be one hell of a story.”

“Yes, Sherriff Traves, it will be one hell of a story.”

The bombs that were growing closer were ceasing now and they felt relieved.  The secret road appeared to be that- just another secret in Cotter.  Perhaps, this one would save lives and not kill them.

He smiled, “I can’t believe it Natalie, there’s the main road,” he looked back and forth in amazement, “no road blocks.”

Freedom and escape felt sweet in that moment for both of them.  They had all lived through the terror that Cotter had become and now Cotter was almost in the rear view mirror.

Dare they breathe again?

Sherriff Traves sighed, the eerie silence was too good to be true, that’s what his gut told him.

He looked at the young reporter.  He didn’t have the heart to tell her.  She was too young to die in this selfish war.

Sherriff Traves suddenly lost control of the wheel, covering his eyes from the blinding object.

“Good God,” she exclaimed, watching the burning event hurl towards them.

Dr. Neville Woods was still in shock from the events in Cotter.  His assistant cracked under the pressure and wandered off into the streets which were filled with angry people on the verge of killing each other over supplies.  He spent endless hours trying to understand and study the living dead, whether from heaven, hell or in-between.  When he finally caught up to the Chuttle boys they had disappeared.

He wandered aimlessly now through the woods in search of solitude and answers but mostly the Chuttle boys.  They had witnessed the first man raised from the dead.  Surely they had the answers.

He was dehydrated and weary.  While his search had begun for the Chuttle boys, he quickly realized the world had changed again.  He watched in amazement as the skies opened up and bodies ascended in the hundreds.  He stood in horror as he listened to the agony and the destruction of those returning to hell.

It was over.  He rested his long lanky body on the ground and sighed in the silence, as all residents of Cotter who remained at one point or another had done.  He contemplated escaping but where would he go to?

Dr. Woods was a smart man.  He knew there was no place for the living outside the walls of Cotter, the bombs and fires told him so.  He wondered if he should just lie in wait.  It was only a matter of time before he was found and killed.

But the same curiosity that allowed him to dissect a tiny bug when he was only ten years old, raged on inside him.  An old spark was lit and it was on fire.  He was determined to get to the Chuttle boys before his death.  They were a missing piece to the puzzle and he was more than ready for answers.

He tried to pick himself up off the ground but his body rebelled.

“Come on,” he yelled to an empty world that had no desire to hear him.

He tried again but there was no magic in him.  The spark wasn’t enough to get him off that soft bed of leaves and grass intermingled together that he had rested in.

“Come on,” he tried to push himself up with his hands now.

He fell and rested on the ground exasperated from the journey.

There was evil in that forest, men waiting to kill other men.  These men kept secrets and they needed to keep those secrets hidden.  Dr. Woods was foolish.  Surely, those men heard his cries and would come for him soon.

But there were others in the woods, those with no harm as their intention.  Hopefully, they would find him first.

He fell asleep fast and although only hours passed, it felt like days.

Another man wandered the forest that day, searching for a way out.  Like Dr. Woods, the wind had been kicked out of him and he was effectively knocked down a notch and put in his place.

The Amazon man was defeated and humbled.  He knew a higher God had taken control of Cotter.  His powers were real indeed but it was obvious they were wicked and evil.  He was ashamed how much he let himself get out of control.

In his tribe, the Arrow Tribe, he began as a healer but his gifts were extraordinary.

He ran crazed through the woods.  He wanted to live and feared men were trying to kill him.  Like Dr. Woods he wanted to be part of the solution.  His life of raising the dead was over for now.  He thought this might be permanent but the fates would decide.

In his mind, now he bowed down to a God that knew the truth, a God that controlled man, fate and the world.  That God had delivered Dylan Dempster from the evil death of another man.  That God had returned the living dead to their homes of heaven and hell.  That God was above him and he dare not ignore worshipping him.

As a healer, he often worked not in silence with people but with a beat, a drum to conjure a slow beating heart to a living stable healthy heart.  He could hear that beat now.  It was strong.  It was telling him something but he wasn’t sure what yet.

That beat rang loud in his ears and heart.  It was muffled by bombs, but still that subtle pat of the drums told him to march on.

It was only a few years into his healing practices that an elder approached him and told him he would mentor him.  The small village rejoiced.  They knew the Amazon man was the chosen man.  He would be the next in line to raise the dead.  They would live on.  Their kind would never die.  It was something the modern world couldn’t understand.  Some of their people were over two hundred years old but often even with the strongest of powers one could only be raised from the dead once.  Two lives not nine or ten.  In rare cases, that changed and it became evident he was more skilled at raising the dead than anyone who came before him.  Men from the other worlds, men of science, sought him out.

In the beginning of the mentorship, the training was unique.  The gift was explained thoroughly and made special.  Looking back now, he never saw the evil or the manipulation of life.  The tribe wanted to live on and this was wrong.

The events in the strange world of Cotter, the world the Amazon man was brought to, made him realize life was short.  It was meant to be lived and then gone.  Perhaps, it didn’t matter much what you did in the time between birth and death.  In the modern world that surrounded him, he didn’t see much happiness or change in the hearts of men and this saddened him.  Surely the God that put an end to the madness in Cotter wanted his creations to have true hearts that beat on just like the drums in the Amazon.

Life was fragile.  And when it was over, it was over.  How would most people be remembered?  It didn’t much matter.  They would be remembered only for a little while, until their families too succumbed to the unknown, the abyss that we all imagine as another life.  If that life existed, he wanted to be a part of it.  He didn’t want to live on but to be one with the Creator.  For the mysterious visionary knew every outcome, even his.

He could hear the strange beats of the drums and remembered back to the first time he raised the young thirty year old man in his tribe from his death.  As his wife and children cried outside, he saw a lifeless body brought back to life with breath inside.  There was a bit of a soul he could have sworn departed making him question the good and evil of what he performed but it was so miraculous he never looked at it in a philosophical manner or a religious one. 

The Amazon man didn’t know the Bible.  He only knew what his mentor told him.

“The dead don’t have to stay that way.  They can come back.”

At the time, it was truth.  Why should it be a lie?

It felt strange knowing he could do something that was supposed to be impossible but having grown up in an environment where the dead came back to life all the time, it became clear it was possible.  It wasn’t only possible, it was easy and commonplace.

In Cotter, he was exposed to the idea this was wrong.  He always felt there was a higher power.  He knew this when he saw his reflection in an object.  He didn’t come from the earth or the sky, his being came from a higher power.

Having been formally introduced to that higher power and hearing his words, he immediately obeyed.

It was alright to help heal but raising the dead or putting them back to the earth would be left for the man with the most power, the man of fates.

When he raised the young man from the dead, he remembered the way the heat radiated from his fingertips like a hot burning fire.  He felt that fire many times before in tribe rituals.  He was the only boy in his tribe without thumbs and he could feel the heat from those phantom thumbs.

The memory was fading now and he began to ponder, even though he swore not to raise the dead ever again, could he?  Even if he wanted to?  And what price would he pay to a Creator who didn’t want him to do such things?  Would he be sent to Hell himself?  Hell was a place he thought was reserved for those he tried to control while torturing Charlie Dempster.

He stared at his restored thumbs.  The answer was clear.

This place was very real and he used it like any of the other malicious men, whose paths he crossed.  His footprint in this lifetime was no good, it was tainted.  He must change it.  He had become like them, jaded and manipulative.  He swore to transform into good.

The drum beats grew louder and he matched his foot pace to their beat.  He stumbled over a man lying on the ground and the drum beat grew so loud he covered his ears.

He was the one.

He looked down at a disheveled and barely alive Dr. Neville Woods.

The man on the ground, hazed and confuse, looked up at the wild man in horror.

The feet he couldn’t grapple to, just hours before were quickly under him.

He studied the wild hair and eyes and the foreign look about him.  After all his research, Dr. Woods knew the man before him was the one brought back from the jungle.

He had sought his answers from two young boys.  Yet, there was his answer before him.  Dr. Woods could almost not contain his laughter.

This was the man with the truth.  By luck, he stumbled across him.  Both men looked at each other quizzically.

It was clear, one was there to teach and the other to learn.