Lamp Black: Second Edition, Disaster, Preparedness, Survival, Awakening (The Gatekeeper Book 2) (2 page)

J
ohn sat on a wicker sofa at the back porch and watched the ash fall slowly to the ground before him. Jenna had seen enough of it at the front door earlier that morning. After scooping up a handful of ash and talking to John about it, she decided to return to bed for a couple more hours of sleep. John almost followed her, but there was way too much going on in his mind; too much had happened to bring him to this particular point in time for him to relax enough to return to bed.

He considered his first dream, the one that set his mind into motion about preparedness some eight years earlier. It was a dream that literally changed his perspective on life, and it all came rushing back to him while at work three days ago. In a single moment of awareness, his entire life changed. He thought of it as his spiritual awakening, but it was much more than that, more than he could grasp in a single moment of thought. John couldn’t believe so much had happened to him, and around him, in such a short period of time.

Even with the old dream, the first dream, John doubted himself and his impulse to prepare. Not until he saw the news reports of increased seismic activity around the Yellowstone Caldera, and make the connection to his dream, did he begin to question his sanity. He didn’t want to associate the news with his dream, it was too bizarre, but he couldn’t deny the feeling of truth behind the association. People just didn’t have dreams of premonition these days. It was unreal, and he began to wonder if he had actually lost his mind. Then there was a second dream. Just the other night, a new dream that solidified his awareness of the impending disaster. In fact, he’d had a highly detailed
dream every night since first hearing the news report. Like the environment around him, John’s mind had gone gray.

He wasn’t overly worried about survival. He was prepared with enough food, water, camping equipment, and other necessary supplies, but he wished he had listened to himself, that he had prepared more before the ash started to fall. Despite the fact that he was preparing when the ash began to fall earlier that morning, he still had many other preparations he wanted to accomplish. There was work still to do, but no more time to do it. With the ash falling around him, it would be difficult to do anything constructive. All he could do at the moment was sit, and watch, and hope the ash didn’t fall too heavily for too long and collapse the roof of his shop, or worse yet, the roof of his home.

John was surprised at how quickly the ash had arrived, given that the earthquakes were only a day old. There were several moderate shakers, ones that did little overall damage to his home, but definitely got his attention. That same night he was shown people along the West Coast, and in the central portion of the Midwest, that weren’t quite as lucky. Several large cities were hit with prolonged and massive eight and nine point scale earthquakes. They were essentially ruined well before the ash even reached them. John wasn’t sure what had caused the quakes, but he thought they were triggered by the eruption of the Yellowstone Caldera. Apparently the entire Pacific “Ring of Fire” was now alive again. John wondered what happened first, the activity around the ring of fire, or the eruption. Nothing was certain except for the destruction. Nothing beyond that was clear except being prepared, and bracing for survival.

The vision of the damage wrought by the earthquakes and eruption was real and vivid. John shared the spiritual experience with Jenna, but he could tell she was unsure about how to process the information. John told her everything, every detail of what he saw, that a huge, ragged hole had been blown out from the surface of the earth where Yellowstone had once been. She nodded, looked solemnly out
at the ash, and said nothing. When he thought about it, he realized he was probably the only person alive to see the caldera since the eruption, and he wasn’t quite sure how to respond to that.

Vision or not, John knew what he saw, and that it was a real place and time. He couldn’t explain it, but he just knew it was real. He had traveled to the eruption sight with his unborn grandson, Adam’s son, and been shown the destruction. He was first shown the completely destroyed City of Boise, and then the ash covered remains of Salt Lake City. Finally, on his last stop before returning home, John was shown Oklahoma City. It had not yet felt the ash, but the ash was coming. The inhabitants of the city were deep in the throes of social chaos. Lawlessness was rampant throughout the streets, and people were fleeing it by the thousands, having seen the approaching wall of ash.

Many of the images of destruction upset John very much, but they didn’t surprise him. He had researched previous prehistoric eruptions of the caldera and knew that a modern-day eruption would forever change the landscape of America. But he quickly learned that there was a big difference between imagining how the destruction would look, and actually seeing it for himself. The images he saw in his vision would be forever burned in his memory, and he remembered them in such detail that he felt he could paint them if he was an artist.

Then there’s the issue of his apparent spiritual awakening. John didn’t know what else to call it, only that he knew something had changed within him, and that the change was spiritual in nature. He had absolutely no idea what it all meant, or why he was caught up in it, but he couldn’t deny it. John remembered reading a story about a Soldier who received a serious blow to his head and was forever changed by the experience. The man had been hit on the helmet by a stray bullet and knocked unconscious, and when he awoke he was able to see and talk to spirits.

John didn’t understand the opening of his awareness. He didn’t recall ever receiving a blow to his head, but yet here he was, talking to spirits, or at least one spirit anyway. In fact, he was never hurt in all his
combat deployments. He had a lot of near misses, but he served three combat tours in the Middle East without suffering so much as a single scratch. He sometimes joked that his guardian angel must have been working overtime to keep him safe, but that idea didn’t seem so odd now. He wasn’t sure if Eli was his guardian angel, but it made sense.

John’s relationship with Eli was something he was still trying to get a handle on. Eli appeared to John in his first vision after the dream early Wednesday night, or perhaps Thursday morning. He couldn’t quite remember. His mind was so filled with recent events and activities that he barely wanted to eat. In fact he probably wouldn’t eat if it wasn’t for Jenna making him. When Eli first appeared to John as a little boy, he was instructed to place a special key, a key of light, against his chest. John did as instructed and Eli immediately became a young man of about Adam’s age. Many things were spoken between them after that, but John understood very little of it. Something was said about their connection, but again, John didn’t understand what it all meant. He hoped, that in time, he would come to understand, because he really wanted to tell Adam about Eli. He just didn’t feel the time was right, at least not when the ash was falling.

John sat and contemplated all that he had seen and done since Wednesday and tried to see what he should do next. It felt a little like he had lost control of his life. But the strangest thing about the spiritual experiences is that he was more concerned about them than the disaster. He was ready for the disaster, it was tangible and real. The survival piece, and all the work and effort that it demanded, was seemingly more doable than the spiritual stuff. Three dreams, three visions in a row, and he knew there would be more. He didn’t know how he knew that, he just did. Strangely, he was actually at a point that he looked forward to sleep so he could see and learn more, have more spiritual experiences.

He tried to sort through and organize everything he had seen in his head, but the challenge of incorporating his visions into some form of reality was unlike anything he had ever faced. John was skilled and
experienced in collecting and organizing random bits of information, and forming them into actionable intelligence, but this was totally different. He needed someone to talk to, someone wise in things metaphysical, but he knew no one. Jenna was his only audience, but she was uncomfortable talking about his stories of communicating with spirits, and seeing distant, or even future events. She didn’t understand his visions, and they worried her. Her concerns made John feel even more isolated.

John not only struggled with his spiritual experiences, but with the purpose of them. He wondered what Eli meant when he told him he would have an impact on the world. He reasoned his first challenge would be to understand why he had spiritual access to Eli in the first place. The next time he saw Eli, he would ask him that very question. But every dream, every vision thus far, offered John very little in terms of opportunities for open dialogue with Eli.
Well, that wasn’t entirely true
, thought John. He understood parts of what he saw, but he was absolutely stuck on why he was given such access in the first place. For the first time in a life time, John realized he really didn’t know who, or what he was.

John stood up and reached for the wooden yardstick laying on the patio table. He walked to the edge of the patio, and with his arm exposed to the falling ash, he slid the three foot ruler down, into the ash, until it hit the ground. The ash came up the stick to about four inches. John loosely calculated that the ash was falling at about two-and-a-half to three inches an hour. He pulled the yard-stick clear and watched as a small gray cloud of dust swirled around the neat rectangular hole. The ash was more powder than ash. He knew that if the wind picked up, the flying ash would reduce visibility to zero. That would make breathing very dangerous without some form of protection, like a breathing mask of some kind. He heard the door open and turned around to see Adam approach. Neither spoke as Adam reclined in a wicker seat next to John. After a moment, John turned to Adam and said, “You’re up early.” “It’s not that early. It’s almost eight. Mom sent
me to check on you. She’s in the kitchen making breakfast. She’s making two packs of bacon,” replied Adam, with obvious delight.

John nodded. He realized Jenna was probably trying to use up their perishable foods, something he had only mentioned in passing. It never ceased to amaze him how lucky he was to have such a smart and resilient woman like Jenna for his wife. And she made really good bacon too, with just the right amount of crispiness.

“It looks like the surface of the moon,” said Adam, and then he gasped with concern. “Dad, we forgot to put a tarp over the firewood.”

“Yes we did,” replied John. “And we can’t do anything about it now. The ash is dry. It shouldn’t hurt the wood. We’ll cover it up as soon as we can, but I’m glad you’re up. I need your help with a few things . . . after we eat breakfast.”

It was Adam’s turn to nod. “Sure thing, dad. I’m thinking we’ll be working every day from now on.”

John grunted and let the subject drop. His mind was still on Eli. He really wanted to tell Adam about his visions, but Jenna insisted he wait a little longer, at least until they could see how Adam was handling the disaster. Jenna asked him not to “overload,” Adam. John saw the wisdom in her request, but he also knew that his son was taking the disaster much better than he thought possible. He was very proud of Adam, and of Abby too, for that matter. His kids were taking everything in stride, but Abby had yet to see the ash and John was curious to see her reaction to it. “Is Abby up?” he asked, without turning away from the falling ash.

“Not when I got up, but mom was going to get her. I bet she’s up now,” answered Adam. “Do you want me to go get her?”

“No. Let her move at her own pace,” replied John.

They sat together in silence, father and son, and contemplated the change that continued to occur before their eyes. To John, it seemed like God emptied His furnace and dumped the ash on the earth. John thought the literal comparison was undeniable. No matter the source of the ash, that’s exactly what had happened. The ash falling before
him was fine and light. It fell slowly and gently, like so much gray powder. It was strangely beautiful and hypnotic, but also desperate, as if the destroying angel was busy applying the last bit of seasoning to the earth before baking it in a fiery oven.

John noticed the ash stuck to just about everything it touched. The nearby trees were gray, barely discernible in the heavy mist-like quality of the air. John could see the outline of the pool cover. The stakes and ropes stood defiant against the accumulating ash, but little else was discernable in terms of detail. He watched the ash collect on the bushes near the patio. When the weight of the ash exceeded the strength of the leaves and branches, it fell through to accumulate on the ground like the sand of an hourglass.

Slowly but surely the ash was rising, and John wondered how much would fall before it stopped. He knew the sun had risen, but it remained hidden behind a dark and heavy sky. No rays penetrated the gray gloom that surrounded them. The only light came from a patio bulb. The one-hundred watts of energy that illuminated the patio exceeded that of the sun by many degrees, and cast a yellowish tint on the sad, gray landscape that was once his back lawn.

John caught the shadow of movement in the yard, and he stood. His right hand instinctively moving to his hip, reaching for a weapon that wasn’t there. Startled by his dad’s sudden movement, Adam also stood up. The shadow moved closer. At first, John thought it was a dog, but when it entered the edge of the light, he saw that it was a doe.

She was coated in ash and blended completely with her alien surroundings. She shook her head and blinked her big, dark eyes at John and Adam. Her eyes were wet and moist, despite the heavy dryness that surrounded and covered her. Fine droplets of gray mud had formed at the corners of her eyes and clung to the lower edges of her lashes and around her muzzle. She stared at them for a moment, as if wondering if the humans could offer her some hope of sanctuary, but then quickly turned and leaped off into the darkness.

The back door opened, the sound of it had returned the doe to her more familiar sense of reality. Like the roadrunner in a cartoon, the doe left behind a small gray cloud of ash as it kicked up its feet to beat a hasty retreat. John wondered what would come of it in this environment. It saddened him a little. He never before considered how the ash would impact the natural wildlife in the surrounding area. He knew it would be very hard on them, with no available food or water.