Living Forest (12 page)

“Crash, crunch, smash,”

A squad car flies above my head and collides into the ground behind me, tumbling in a hole. I see the moving barrier of trees a great distance ahead of me. As they walk, other trees come to life and join the march towards town. Shocked and stunned, I don’t know what to do. I say to myself over and over again,

“This shit isn’t real. It’s just a nightmare. WAKE UP!”

The most shocking factor I find is that I am awake. This is real and I’m alive. Both my arms raise high in the air, resembling giving praise. An energetic tone strikes my voice,

“I’M ALIVE!”

This scream echoes for a great distance across the near barren land, much like yelling in an empty auditorium. The sound of trees crashing quickly interrupts my moment of glee and brings me back to reality. The only things I can think of doing are run to my grandfather’s house and get a four-wheeler. Even though I still feel this entire anger dwelling from what has been done to my ancestors, something inside tells me I’m the only person alive to stop these kindred spirits. I’m not so sure I really want to do that from what Sleeping Star has shown me. I feel they deserve it, but I remain conflicted. The people today had nothing to do with these horrible massacres, just their ancestors.

Would you stand for unknown invaders to walk up in your house, take it over, rape and kill your family, and do nothing to stop it? Would you expect justice or enact revenge? This is the behavior that the early settlers in North America shown my ancestors who owned this land. The defamation of my people is even taught in schools. They don’t teach you about what really happened to us, but only what they want you to believe. In this thought I find myself asking how many people truly deserve to live here.

Topping the hill, I see trees have taken out everything I have left. My home lay crumbled to the ground. Both quads are destroyed, and no other vehicles remain on the property. Looking around the rubble I find a mirror. I don’t look good at all. The right side of my face is swollen more than the left, but I don’t feel the pain. I’m not blinded by the swelling around my eyes, and I don’t even taste the blood that has painted my teeth. I’m not sure what Sleeping Star has done to me, but it feels like I’m nearly invincible.

A rock lying underneath a board grasps my attention through the mirror. I notice it because it’s the ceremonial stone axe which I thought was left back in Mississippi. I don’t know why, but I feel the need to take it with me. Not sure if it’s special, to me it’s just a really old stupid rock covered in blood and attached to a stick. Finding a few clothes scattered underneath the rubble, I put everything in a bag and walk down the treeless driveway to Highway twenty. It’s not like it’s a long walk. Only four miles separate my driveway to the edge of town, but its twelve miles of steep hills and rough terrain to the end of my driveway.

Walking down the long pot-holed dirt road that’s my driveway, the land is empty. Both sides of the road were once impenetrable to even walk through due to the overgrowth of trees. If it wasn’t for all of these hills, I’d be able to see the City of Jay from here. Near the end of my driveway is when the ground turns flat and prairie like. Three hours quickly pass me by. Looking on the highway, no cars travel, in fact I don’t hear much noise at all. Houses that are on the opposite side of the road to my driveway are destroyed. The Highway’s demolished with holes and chunks of rubble everywhere. Again, no trees can be seen anywhere no matter the size. I begin to feel the deaths of many innocent men, women, and children burn deep in my soul. They scream out to me in my mind.

“Why us, what did we do to you?”

I can not answer them back, and there’s no one near me. There’s only one thing I can do, that’s to think to the thoughts.

“I don’t know who you are, but if you see and feel what I felt you should understand your crimes.”

The voices reply back in an impudent way,

“We don’t care what happened to your entire race. Look what you’ve done to us now.”

I reply to my thoughts in the same impudent manner,

“If you fail to care about us, why should we care and spare you? Your whole lives are built on greed and you take what you want regardless of who you’ve hurt. Prove me wrong if you want this to stop.”

The voices end. Silence begins to comfort my mind. Walking over the last hill before the long straightway to the city, as far as I can see everything is destroyed. There looks to be a person still alive, so I begin running to catch up to them. I only have about three miles left to go which took me twenty minutes to complete. The person I see is a woman sitting outside of the gas station on the corner. As I approach her, I notice tears flowing down her face. Her hands are shaking with a cigarette lit and pressed tightly between her fingers. Her voice quivers as she speaks jubilantly to me.

“Oh my God, I thought I was the only one left alive.”

Her voice turns to weeps as she cries,

“Everyone’s gone. They’re all dead and I watched them hang in trees. The trees…”

If the trees didn’t kill her then she should be here
.
I reply with care to this woman.

“It’s okay, you’re alive. I know the trees are alive and this is no dream. My ancestors are giving us this land back.”

She vilely screams,

“Is this all your fault? Did you kill everyone I love? What did you do to the trees you demon? I’ve never smoked a cigarette in my life and look what you’ve done to me. Why don’t you just kill me too?”

I don’t know how to respond, I thought she’d be happy. Instead she’s ready to die herself. Maybe too many years of lies has brainwashed my kind to believe that we’re at fault. I got to find out why she feels this way. A guilty tone carries my voice to say,

“This is because of me, but you don’t know why this was done. How many members of your family were raped and murdered by the English settlers? Do you not know how much has been stolen from us through hate and greed?”

The weeping woman rises from the ground flailing her arms at me connecting a few times. Stumbling back, I fall to the ground, but I quickly manage to get back up. I move far enough away from her to avoid physical altercation again. She angrily screams at me,

“You son of a bitch, you’re the only murderer I know. You killed my husband and my children. They’re now stuck in a…”

She begins to erratically bawl. I say nothing more to the weeping woman only because now she has me at a loss for words. I don’t think she understands me, but maybe it’s I who doesn’t understand. I pick up a few bags of chips and some non-smashed bottles of water that lay scattered in the rubble. Walking north through town, no store or building is left standing. The roads can’t be driven on due to smashed vehicles and sunken holes the trees made upon the impact of walking. If I’m to go anywhere fast, I need something that can go nearly anywhere. I reach the once proud Delaware County Court House and find that it also didn’t survive the terror that the living trees brought.

With the gloomy outcome, I’m finding it very difficult now to agree with my ancestor’s destruction. That woman’s traumatized face when she said her husband and children were killed is still haunting me. I continue to walk down Highway fifty-nine in search of transportation. Also, I need to catch Sleeping Star and ask him to stop this. He’s destroying too much and it’s my fault. I didn’t know that he’d do this.

I hear soft whimpering cries come from a ditch drain ahead. I cautiously move to the noise to see who or what it is. From this distance I can’t tell if it’s a person or a dog that’s terrified. Anxiously I speak,

“Hello, who’s there?”

A familiar female voice confusingly responds,

“Hollister... I- is that you?”

Quickly I reply in an investigative manner.

“Who are you? Are you hurt? How do you know me?”

The female voice reluctantly responds,

“Please don’t kill me Hollister. It’s me, Amanda.”

Chapter Eleven

With Hollister confused on what to do with Amanda, Sleeping Star wreaks havoc across this state quickly gaining an army of trees to fight at his side. Sleeping Star has another agenda on his mind besides destroying everything, he wants to live again. When he was banished from his tribe, he didn’t stay like they told him to do. He traveled to exact revenge through the help of the Aztecs. Seeing through the eyes of Jack and feeling through Sleeping Star’s soul, we will continue.

Billions of trees now cluster along the Texas state line. Everything from Jay, Oklahoma south has fallen to the trees. Only a few thousand people remain alive in these areas. The trees continue to infect others, spreading across the United States of America. On the Texas side, millions of soldiers come to fight against the trees to give their families enough time to escape into Mexico. The border patrol in Mexico is refusing to take in American refugees, shooting anyone caught crossing the border. A short war ensues, but quickly turns to fighting together once the trees start to cross over into their territory.

Bright reddish-orange lights glow through thick blackish-grey clouds. The light’s that which is made from fire, and the clouds are made from smoke. Many choppy whipping sounds echo, sounding like a fleet of hummingbirds. Roaring screams above, explosions ahead and distant whistling sounds speeding this direction fill the air. Car, trucks, and flaming trees can be seen hurling into the sky, colliding with helicopters, planes and tanks. Speaking to the trees,

“Brothers and Sisters, continue to drive them away from our land. I must head north to my bones.”

As I turn to leave, Jack’s eyes witness a devastating view. Miles upon miles trees with angry white glowing male and female Natives, stand inside them, stretching across the horizon. People dangle from limbs like impaled Christmas ornaments. They continue to kill, smash, and hurl those brave enough to stand in their path. The massive armies of trees begin to fade into desolate land. Resulting in what looks to be the aftermath of a war zone. Pieces of dead bodies pollute the ground along with much metal debris and smoldering coals.

Moving north, the land is bare from trees. I continue to race through much land. Tiny figures lay ahead in the distant, clustering to holes in the ground like a frightened fox. A fire quickly breaks out into a wall trying to protect the small band of people from my torment. Calling forth,

"Rise from the ground to do my work.  Entangle, enslave, and suffocate until they become dirt."

Roots rumble from the ground underneath. In a full circle around them, rock and dirt flings through the air in massive amounts as roots rise high above their heads. The rooted jail creaks and squeals with every movement. The dome, made from roots, curls down at the center top and wiggles its way back into the ground. Screams bellow from the people below,

"Noooo... God help us."

The roots keep wiggling further into the ground, quickly enclosing the people and tangling them in vines. Sounding in the air as death bears down on the remaining survivors,

“Crunching, cracking, tearing, and ripping”

Now passing by the red rooted cocoon, black smoke is seen in the distance. Screams from jets flying low, rumble through the branches of my tree. Low tone chants begin to emerge from me. The deep chant sounds like,

“Heaiya heeyua heeyua, Heaiya heeyua heeyua.”

Lightning pierces the sky, strikes a jet engine, and ignites the fuel.

“Snap, Crack, Boom,”

Rumbling concussions rip through the upper atmosphere. Strike after strike lightning crashes down around my tree leaving me unharmed and still destroying everything in its path. The darkened skies of shifting wall clouds make seeing any distance nearly impossible. Baseball size hail rains down from the sky, and funnel clouds begin to spin across the open land miles ahead in sight. People and vehicles tumble through the spinning twisters of air, still yet I continue to tread towards my grave.

Jack’s eyes now lay looking at Hollister Wolf holding the last true living Templar Knight, his daughter, Amanda Mason. Anger races immediately through me. I debate which task is more important, Life… or to eliminate the only thing that can eliminate me. Shear winds tear through the land, forcing flight to everything not anchored to the ground. My voice resonates through the atmosphere,

“Hollister Wolf! You will not live with her, you both will die. I’ll return as a God and all that remains will perish to the afterlife.”

I watch Hollister and Amanda run into a Jeep, a tornado quickly lifts it through the air out of sight. I press forward with evil joy knowing their soon fate, but I know a secret they don’t. This secret though, may no longer challenge my newfound existence. Closing in on the burial ground, I see dead trees or non-walking trees. Trees just standing proudly like they once had. Timber lie polluting the ground like a protective barrier will not let any trees in or out.

I stop moving just within touching distance of a transparent barrier. At times Jack’s eyes can see a rainbow like light glistening through. The ground beneath us trembles. No words come from me, but chanting can be faintly heard underneath the ground. My roots dig deep, fishing for my bones. One by one, root after root they appear as I prepare for my resurrection.

At the heart of the tree where my soul stands, the roots bring forth my bones. The tree separates at the grain allowing the roots to place my bones inside. My vision gets shaky as I watch my sight being pulled away from the tree top and be brought forth to the heart of the tree, face to face with Sleeping Star. I am Jack Mason, the last male Templar that holds the secret of my ancestors. My ancestral grandfather waited at the coast, but none return. We searched for our legacy, our history. I found the truth and now at my death, I know the curse that came with the truth weighed far heavier than I could’ve ever imagined.