SOLO ELITE THE GREAT AWAKENING

We set off down the road covered in the gray ash toward the direction Adam said he believed the Swine went. The loudest thing heard over the next few miles was the sound of our footsteps as Adam and I walked shoulder to shoulder. Our sight was limited due to the ash that rained down like clockwork from above, blanketing everything in sight—every tree, every limb, every leaf, totally engulfed by the gray powder.

The road was untouched, showing no signs of pedestrian travel and was almost nonexistent to anyone not familiar with the area. I myself wouldn’t have noticed any path if it hadn’t been for Adam directing my gaze toward a row of arching trees that interlocked. Within the first hundred yards I was confronted with the reality that this would be no brisk walk, but at least my lungs didn’t hurt, which felt amazing. Beyond the leaves I could see that the same massive cloud above Kenosh had now moved miles ahead of us and was spewing out an even thicker plume of the ash.

Adam pointed through the trees and said, “That’s where we’re headed.”

I asked Adam why the ash had been coming down from the sky. He explained that, if a person’s will to live is taken from him or her, the body’s spirit exits in the form of ash, and their bodies go back to the ground from which they came. He also said that he didn’t know why the big cloud seemed to be feeding off of the ash and that it had only formed after the Swine took everyone.

”One thing is for sure. The ash has fallen even more since you arrived, which means the Swine has been busy destroying the people who have any hope about your return.”

I lowered my head and kept walking and was at a loss for words.

We came upon several fallen trees which lay directly in our path.

“Well, how do we get around this?” I asked, throwing up my hands.

“No problem. Follow me,” said Adam, ducking under a large branch.

I grabbed the tail of his shirt and followed him as we wove our way through the branches while Adam hacked the smaller limbs with his sword. “Darn, there is no way through here,” said Adam.

Suddenly we heard the sound of limbs snapping and something quickly approaching us.

“There it is. Look, it’s a fox!” said Adam, as a fox’s head appeared from the branches.

“He went under that tree trunk. Look, there’s light, and it’s clear on the other side!”

I was the first to dive under and squeeze my way through to the other side.

Adam soon followed next, crawling on one elbow and tightly pressing his hat to his head with the other hand.

“Adam, stop worrying so much about your hat. Look, I broke the chain to my necklace while crawling through, and I’m sure my hair is a mess,” I said, laughing. I stuffed my compass in my front pocket, then I looked up to where I thought the cloud would be, and, to my surprise, the cloud had vanished, and there was nothing more than a blank canvass.

Turning back to Adam, I was just about to tell him of our unfortunate situation when I realized why Adam had been holding on to his hat so desperately this whole time. He was standing there, distraught, rubbing his head where his hair used to be. On his right arm was a white hospital bracelet that I had never noticed before. Feeling that he might be embarrassed, I said, “Don’t worry. I think you look better now, just as you are.”

I wanted to hold Adam, so I did, and he willingly did the same. He collapsed in my arms and cried and confessed to me that he had been sick for some time now. I asked him about the hospital bracelet on his wrist, but he told me that he didn’t remember how or even when he had gotten it, but that others had them to. I admitted to Adam about my illness as well and that I’d battled it for most of my life. Instantly I felt as if I had known him forever because he reminded me so much of Teddy and what he had to go through with his illness.

There was a different atmosphere between us now. In that moment I wasn’t Robin the Great but a human being, just flesh and bone. I threw my arm around Adam and looked out into the desolate land and asked, “Are you ready?”

Adam nodded yes and said, “But there is just one more thing I need to do.” He tore off his bracelet and threw it into the wind. “OK, now I’m ready, but there are no more trees to guide us to where the road is.”

So we continued in the direction we believed we were already traveling. Along the way we stopped for lunch and rested between two identical boulders that gave shelter and cover from being seen. Adam had brought jerky and biscuits for us to eat. I took a bite of the biscuit, and immediately I started coughing, and my eyes began to water as I struggled to breathe and swallow. While slapping me on the back, Adam offered me a drink of water. To my relief I was able to dislodge the rock-hard biscuit from my windpipe but soon after drinking came a nasty bitter aftertaste. I frantically spit it out all over the place.

Adam looked at me and laughed and asked, “Are you OK?”

“Where in the world did you get that water?” I asked, almost on the verge of puking.

“From the well back home of course,” he replied.

“You must have gotten mud along with it. Yuk!” I said, still spitting out the taste.

Adam laughed and said, “That’s too funny. We’ll wait here and rest for an hour or so.”

We rested our heads against the rock and closed our eyes. The wind that danced across the top of the rocks put us in a deep coma-like sleep. Hours had passed, and evening had come. An unsettling feeling filled in the air; the atmosphere seemed to be unstable, randomly twirling little dust tornados around us.

“Robin, wake up. Do you hear that?”

“Hear what?” I replied.

“That strange winding noise.”

“Oh, yeah. I hear it, and it’s coming from my pocket!”

I reached deep in my pocket and pulled out my compass and opened its silver facing. My eyes grew as I watched the needle of the compass spin rapidly in circles. When a strong gust of wind came rushing down from above, kicking up the ash from below my feet into my eyes, my eyelids instinctively shut, and I immediately flailed around, seeking something stable to hold on to so I could stop to wipe my eyes.

The wind blew past the ridges of my ears, making a painfully loud screeching sound, when suddenly Mama’s sweet voice came through like a soft blanket, sheltering my ears and calling me, saying, “Robin, it’s Mama. You can wake up now. Mom is here for you, baby. It’s OK.”

With all my might I frantically reached out for Mama’s voice and called for her, but I was unable to find her. The wind rapidly faded as quickly as it came and so did her voice. I collapsed on the ground and buried my forehead in the dust and cried. I could hear nothing more than myself sobbing, when I noticed the sound of my winding compass subsiding. I rolled over and sat up and wiped my eyes and said, “Adam, the needle stopped on my compass.”

Adam scrunched his eyebrows and wrinkled his forehead and slid off the rock and hovered over my shoulder. He said, “Oh, yeah, it did. And it’s pointing southeast.”

“My grandpa said that this compass would help me get home if I ever needed it. Adam, this is it. This is where we should go!”

“Well, given the fact that we are lost anyway, I’d say that is as good an idea as any,” Adam said while grabbing his belongings beside the bolder.

We set off in a southeasterly direction, toward the blank canvass, throwing rocks into the nothingness along the way. Adam started humming a tune that became contagious, so I found myself humming along. Adam turned to me when he realized what I was doing and said, “Would you like to learn the words?” I nodded my head yes, and we did our best to pass the time by teaching each other songs. Walking a little farther in front of me, Adam jumped up and down with excitement and screamed back to me, “Look, Robin. It’s the road! I don’t know if it’s the same road, but it’s a road!” Walking along, rows of trees appeared through the ash as we headed toward them, and, sure enough, in the midst of nothingness, we found a road.

While gripping the compass in my pocket, I quietly whispered to myself, “Thank you, Grandpa.”