Awakening the Mare (Fall of Man Book 1) (12 page)

I stood completely, then went to check on my
mother. I heard voices. I recognized my mother’s but not the other
voice.

I walked the narrow hall that led to the
living room. My mother sat in a chair and beside her, kneeling, was
a woman. The woman had long, thick, curly auburn hair and a
beautiful face. She smiled at my mother, then removed a tube from
her arm.

She was taking my mother’s blood.

“You are very gentle, Nezil,” my mother said.
“The woman last night was tough.”

“I have been doing this for a while.” She
stood and smiled again. “I’ll make sure they get this.”

“Please tell Nito for me.”

“I will,” Nezil said. “She knows.”

In a flash of anger, I knew Nito was taking
my mother’s blood. A tradeoff of some kind to keep my mother and
sister safe. All because of me.

Nezil placed the tube in her satchel. She
then pulled out a small velvet sack and placed it in my mother’s
hand. “Nito says she placed extra in here to buy your little one
the best dress when the dressmakers come to town.”

“Thank you. I will. Not much longer and I
will not have to do this. Give Nito my thanks, and please tell her,
I will deliver Vala.”

No.

No.

I backed up. It was a dream. It had to be a
dream. My mother was selling her blood to Nito with the promise of
giving me to her?

There was no way. My mind was playing tricks.
The dream was a nightmare. I spun, raced down the hall and out the
back door.

Just as I stepped out into the cool night
air, Nito appeared.

She stood before me with a wicked smile.
“Wake up, Mare. I am coming for you soon.”

With a feeling of falling a hundred feet and
a hard thump to my chest, I sprang awake and sat up, out of
breath.

The sky was getting light. My fire had
dwindled to a smolder and the beach was quiet.

The ocean had moved closer and the
temperature had dropped. My body shook from the chill and from the
dream.

Grabbing the blanket, I pulled it around my
shoulders. I was awake now and falling back to sleep was not an
option.

Something about the dream shook me to my
core. I kept telling myself it was not real. It couldn’t be.

In the morning, everyone was responsible for
cleaning their area and fixing the fire pit for the next beach
night. I had not seen Tanner and was worried that I would not. When
I was finished cleaning my area, I waited by the stairs while Davis
took command of all that was going on.

Finally, Tanner appeared. He offered me a cup
of hot brown substance, and a plate of eggs. He gave me both with a
tired smile.

I accepted them gratefully.

“You did not sleep?” I asked him.

“No, I was on watch after clean up. You did,
though.”

“You watched me sleep?”

“No, that’s creepy. I checked on you. Did you
sleep alright?”

I shook my head. “My dreams were bad. They
depressed me.”

“I’m sorry. The good thing is, they’re only
dreams, right?”

“Right.”

“You have a busy day.”

“I do?”

“Yep. You get to go to the museum and then
you go into the bunker for your deprogramming.”

“Tanner, you, Davis, Marie, and Snake are all
I know. Please tell me I will see you when I am in this
deprogramming.”

“Do you want to?”

“Yes.” I nodded, enjoying the food he
brought. The drink was bitter, but I did not want to shadow his
generosity by showing my distaste for it.

“Then I’ll find a way. For now, I’ll leave
you with Davis and I have to get some sleep.”

“Please do. You have Sybaris eyes.”

“I have what?”

“Darkness under your eyes.”

“Oh, yeah. Lack of sleep does that to
you.”

Tanner stayed with me until I finished
eating. He talked about cleaning up the dead Savage Sybaris and
then how he would go to his field job after he had gotten some
sleep. He also spoke of training to be a soldier. He spoke so
highly of being a soldier that a part of me longed to do that as
well.

However, as it was explained to me, I had a
lot to do first.

I was curious and nervous about the bunker. I
was also excited about the museum. I had heard of them, but never
saw one.

Davis came for me after I had finished eating
and took me to a horse drawn carriage. There was a sense of
familiarity about the carriage and I took comfort in that. It was
just he and I and we rode the overgrown streets of Angeles City for
nearly one half hour, arriving at a building that was long and
huge.

The front had an arched entranceway, and like
everything else, was overgrown with vines.

“Last stop.” Davis reached to the back of the
carriage and pulled out a large sack. “This is your new wardrobe
and belongings. Your bunker teachers will help you with them.”

“This is the bunker?”

“No, this is the museum of man’s history. The
bunker is under this.”

He stepped from the carriage, secured the
horses, then helped me down. I placed both my own bag and the new
one over my shoulders and followed him up the path to the
building.

The sign by the door clearly read ‘Museum’
but over the previous name, written in red ink was the word
‘Man’s’.

Man’s Museum.

“It’s quite awesome in here,” Davis said.
“People come here all the time.”

“Even though they know man’s history?”

“Absolutely. We like to be reminded.” He led
me to the double doors. “Don’t let the outside fool you.” Davis
reached for the door. “We take great care in preserving what was
here, but we also added our own new division. Things we’ve
collected and added. Come on.” He opened the door.

The sunlight streaked through the windows,
adding a warm feeling to the wooden and marble interior. Stepping
down the small staircase, I was immediately greeted with a huge
sign. On the left side of it was a picture of a man. He wore dark
clothing, a vest, jacket, and a tie like most Sybaris wore. His
legs were crossed and he had a studious look about him.

“T.S. Eliot,” Davis said. “A great writer and
poet. We thought he would be fitting for this exhibit. We call this
the T.S. Eliot wing.”

“Why?”

“Because of a poem he wrote,” Davis said.
“This is part of it. It’s called,
The Hollow Man.
You can
read the whole piece inside.”

This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

Not with a bang, but a whimper.

The words were strong and sobering. I read
them out loud, the last of which rolled from my tongue in a
whisper. “Not with a bang, but a whimper.”

“How true that is.”

“I thought this was a museum about man’s
history. Is it not?”

“It is,” Davis said. “Man makes history every
day. This place will tell you about how we lived. And sadly, you
are also about to learn how we ended.”

We were alone in the building and Davis’
voice echoed against the hollow and somber walls of the museum. I
felt humbled and ready to absorb all that I could. With an open
mind and heavy heart, I followed Davis.

It was bigger than I, round, and beautiful.
Davis called it a globe. I had never seen one and once he told me
exactly what it was, I could not stop looking.

“This is our world.”

“It is huge,” I replied.

“Yeah, it is. And all of this....” he
motioned about the globe, “had people at one time. Do you see now
why I hold out hope that there are others?”

“Yes, I do.”

“We are just a speck.” He moved the globe and
pointed to Angeles City, in a land labeled ‘California’. “This is
where we are.” He turned the globe. “This is where the Sybaris are
said to have originated and ruled at one time. And this…” he spun
the globe a little, “is where the end began.”

“India.”

“One point three billion people. Roughly one
thousand people per square mile. To give you a comparison, the
United States averaged eighty-five people per square mile.”

“So the people in India were crowded.”

“Very. Not as crowded as areas of China. But
crowded enough that a bacteria, unable to be stopped by modern
medicine, spread like wildfire. It started as a fever and then BAM…
it was everywhere.”

He took me by my arm and led me down a hall.
On the walls were large images with words encased in glass. “These
are old newspapers we are preserving them. This is the first of
them.”

I looked at the images. Bold wording saying
‘
Virus!’, ‘Millions dead!
’ Images of crying people wearing
masks. One image was of soldier standing near a pile of burning
bodies.

“The beginning,” he explained. “And then…” he
stepped further down.

China Closes border.

“It hit the next country,” I said in dawning
realization. “You mentioned that one as being crowded.”

“You got it. This was about six months before
everything went insane. The bacteria was being pretty much
contained to overseas. Really taking its toll. We had the means to
travel by air. But all of that was shut down so no one over there
could make it here with the sickness.”

“Then how did we as a country fall?”

“War. Don’t get me wrong. It hit here, on the
East Coast. Scientists were battling every day to find a cure for
this thing. People got angry.”

Davis was pointing to different newspapers
and images as we walked.

“Accusations were leveled, then fights broke
out. The Westward Movement started and people headed out here from
the east. There were some nuclear exchanges. Personally, I feel war
was a cover-up for the attempt to burn it out.”

“I do not understand ‘nuclear exchange’.”

“Bombs of fire with power like you couldn’t
imagine.”

Halfway down the hall the images stopped.
replaced with photographs and written word on paper. “Where are
the… newspapers?”

“The world ground to a halt. All of these
papers are firsthand testimonies from people all over the country
that witnessed the world end. That witnessed…the rise of the
Sybaris.”

“It is all here?”

“Yes. You’ll be in this building for a while,
so you can come up and read all of these whenever you want.”

“You have an entire process for me.”

“We do. And I think you’ll like it.” He led
me to a door.

“Are we leaving this part?” I asked.

“Yes, like I said though, you can come back.
This here is the end. We need to start at the beginning.”

We turned a bend and walked into a huge open
hall. In it was a giant but still monster. Its head was huge, teeth
large, and he was in skeleton form.

I shrieked at the sight of it.

“Welcome to the beginning,” Davis said. “To
the world of dinosaurs.”

We moved through the museum at a fast pace.
Davis explained a lot and it was speed learning. There was no way I
was to take it all in. It seemed as if a part of him thought I knew
all of which he spoke of. I did not. I had no idea who the Native
American Indians were, or that there was something called ‘snow’
and people survived in that. I did not see how that was possible.
Temperatures so cold that water freezes, and some falls like a dust
from the sky. It was incomprehensible.

I hoped to never see snow in my lifetime.

There was so much for me to learn, thousands
of years of history was marked in images and statues. I could see
myself spending a lot of time here in this museum.

There was one section that struck me as
familiar, as if I knew it under different names. The look of the
people, and the way they dressed.

It was so familiar to me with the history I
had learned of the Ancients, that I had to ask Davis.

“Were the Pharaohs the original Sybaris?” I
asked.

“There is speculation but no one knows for
sure. Why?”

“Because they look like the Civilized
Ancients. The hair, the body decorations, the paint on the faces,
all but the way they dress.”

“Well, no one can say for certain. Again,
speculation. Some say the Pharaohs were the Sybaris and the
Israelites were the humans. There are so many different theories on
it that no one knows for sure.”

“Israelites. I really would love to know that
side of the story.”

“You can.” Davis reached for the bag he had
given me and slid it from my shoulder. He opened it. “We have a
counsel and they voted that this book be included in the
deprogramming process. Some believe in it, some don’t. Overall, it
really shows how people act and react and it has some good advice.”
He handed me the thick book.

I read the title out loud. “The Bible?”

“It’s a compilation of books told by man of
God’s word. Some believe in God, some don’t.”

“Which God?”

Davis laughed. “To man there is only one
God.”

“Ah, yes, Bon Jovi.”

“Um... he goes by many names.” Placing his
hand on my back, he took me to yet another doorway, this one
leading to a flight of stairs. “Three years ago, a man named Jason
came across the sea and had escaped one of the villages in
Esperanza. He had lived there since he was eight years old. So, at
twenty-one, he was a lot like you. We used books, old magazines and
different things to help him understand our way of life. Even the
way we spoke. See, we use a lot of expressions and clichés, and
things called figures of speech. Those are probably the hardest for
you to get. After his so called ‘light switch’ went off on his
head, he asked if he could help. He designed the system you will
experience now.”

“Was your system not good enough?”

“It was. But he brought up the fact that he
was taught to read on a different level so some of the things we
gave him were hard to understand. He said if he could see it, he’d
learn it better. So we helped him build his idea.”