Pahnyakin Rising (29 page)

“Go,” Dresden said softly to Dodge. 

She watched his hand as it hesitantly slipped from hers.  He walked backwards and stumbled. 

“You can change your mind,” he said.  “It doesn’t have to be this way.”

“It’s always had to be this way,” she replied.  She inhaled deeply and lifted her chin.  “It’s for the greater good.  Dodge…
Go.
”

He looked to his left and blinked while taking a hard gulp.  He looked back to her and nodded his head slowly. 

Dodge turned and Dresden watched as he felt his way through the room and stepped over the bodies and tools on the floor. 

He stood at the closed door and looked back to her longingly.

Dresden lifted her lacerated palm to her mouth and blew him a kiss.  She gave him her last sad smile before he bit the right corner of his lower lip and pushed the door open.

The girl turned towards the Gaia.  Its calves scraped across the floor as it attempted to move.  Dresden glared at the creature with a sense of self-satisfaction.  She found pleasure in the Gaia’s defeat. 

It let out a banshee shriek that brought Dresden to her knees.  She pressed her palms over her ears and squeezed, but even the dulled squeals overpowered her.  Dresden winced and could feel a stream of blood running from her nose.

Once again, she collapsed next to the Gaia and was face-to-face with the dying being. 

“You lose,” she whispered with the last breath in her aching lungs.

-27-

The girl woke to blackness and blinked to loosen the tightness in the corners of her worn-out eyes.

She sensed something next to her and in panic reached for her screwdriver.  The girl frantically patted her denim leggings from her hips to the lower portion of the pants, until her fingertips hit the side zipper of her brown leather boots. 

Dresden clenched her hand.

No pain.

She groaned and forced herself to roll on her back.  White speckles in the night sky sparkled and silver clouds spread to make way for the cratered moon.

The teenager turned her head and gasped.  She jumped to her feet and stumbled back. 

The lifeless Gaia was curled in the fetal position on the Wotomack Bridge. 

“What is going on?” Dresden whispered to herself. 

She quickly whipped around and squinted to the field.

There they stood, just like before: four Unies and two Imperators. 

Her heart fluttered. 

Without a weapon, she knew she could not dismantle the Pahnyakins.  She looked to her feet.  She couldn’t get away in these heeled boots.  Why would she ever own something so impractical? 

The six beings didn’t move.  They stared onward.

Dresden didn’t take her eyes from the Pahnyakins as she walked across the rickety bridge.  The wedge heels of her boots clomped on the wood below. 

As she continued moving forward, through the overgrown field, only then did the Pahnyakin troops move forward. 

Dresden took rapid, shallow breaths and began walking backwards with a knot in her stomach at the idea of backing up into another one of the invaders. 

The Unies and Imperators paid her no mind as they hurried to the Gaia’s side.  They stared down at the purple lump of metal and to one another. 

Dresden shuddered and pulled the sleeves of her navy sweater to the center of each palm.

As if coming to a sure realization, the Imperator raised its head and looked in Dresden’s direction. 

It was a menacing feeling and that was when she knew
they
knew
something.
  Is this really what would start it all?

Dresden sucked her lips inward to lubricate her dry skin and turned from the beings.



Dodge didn’t take kindly to being woken in the dead of night by quick rapping on his bedroom window. 

“What are you doing, Dres?” he sighed impatiently as he hung out of the screenless hole.

Dresden’s experience flooded from her mouth like a raging river.  Dodge listened with a look of skepticism over his smooth face but couldn’t help but to believe her just a
little
due to her insistent and serious tone. 

He sighed again halfway through her story and told her three times they would talk about it in the morning.  He had to admit, though, as he walked back to bed, that a sword with a built-in stun gun was a
genius
idea.

Dresden called repeatedly to Mayor Bago’s office and to every state senator’s office she could think of.  Nobody seemed to believe her.  Everyone she encountered simply laughed off the girl’s claim that she could decipher the Pahnyakins’ clicks. 

“Sweetie,” Mayor Bago said condescendingly, “even the military can’t do it.  Do you honestly expect me to believe that a seventeen-year-old high school student has figured out how to break through their code?”

So Dresden went straight to the source and began calling military bases.  She was connected to switchboard operators and was often laughed at.  Several operators disconnected the calls or warned her not to call again. 

She finally got through to Senior Airman Luther Mong at Scott Air Force Base.  She knew he only listened to what the operator had called a “wild theory” to shut her up, but the longer he listened and the two spoke of Chemehuevi and Morse code, the more Mong believed her.  Dresden was genuinely surprised when Lieutenant General Mick Holliday was waiting for her after school days after the phone call to Mong.  (Her parents were surprised as well and were ready to ground her on the dime, fully believing another of her experiments landed her in hot water.)

Dresden’s “wild theory” checked out and military branches around the globe translated messages between the Pahnyakin species detailing plans of attacks. 

Though the girl’s efforts were great, they were not enough to stop the Pahnyakins from attacking.  Her efforts, however, did enable the human race to prepare. 

Chicago and San Diego were destroyed.  Washington, D.C. was evacuated for months and was left in shambles after fighter jets shot down Pahnyakin ships en route to the White House. 

Easton was not left untouched.  Its people looked to Dresden as a hero, a leader, and challenged her decisions just the same as they had done when she traveled to the future. 

The girl faltered several times but succeeded more.  She refused to go down.  She refused to let her people surrender to the Pahnyakins. 

Dresden welcomed wanderers to Easton with open arms and worked with Dodge to teach her people combat methods.  The two grew closer than ever and were often viewed one in the same by onlookers admiring the couples’ ability to maintain loyalty and love through disaster.

  Dresden fearlessly led her own armies through the Pahnyakin rising, destroying silos and tearing down the invading race until it was humanity’s rising. 

Her people had won.

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