Dragon Rising: The Untold Story of Asher Grey (Eden's Root Trilogy Book 4) Read online

  ­­Dragon Rising

  The Untold Story of Asher Grey

  By: Rachel E. Fisher

  Table of Contents

  In the Beginning

  Inescapable

  A New Dawn

  A Million Ways to Die

  Something Worth Fighting For

  The Time is Now

  The Lobos Domesticated Us

  What’s Mine is Mine

  Only the Promise Remains

  Tread Carefully

  He’s Afraid of Me

  Succession

  A Promise Remembered

  Now What?

  Copyright

  Text and image copyright © 2014 by Rachel E. Fisher. All rights reserved.

  Visit my website at www.rachelefisher.com

  First eBook Edition: August 2014

  Summary: In his freshman year at Columbia University, future journalist Asher Grey is forced to face his darkest demons when the world falls to pieces. A champion Tai Chi swordsman, he will be tested to his limits just to survive. With a heavy heart and swift hand, he must reach deep inside himself to discover what it means to be a Dragon.

  In the Beginning

  May 28, 2033

  I woke to screams. Again. This time it was a whole f***ing gang. Twenty+ men. Three women…girls, really.

  I didn’t do a thing but empty my stomach.

  There was a creak and Asher straightened, clicking off the keychain, the sickly blue LED glow vanishing. He waited in the darkness, his back pressed to the wall of the supply closet. His free hand tightened around the hilt of his sword.

  The seconds ticked by punctuated only by the sound of his breath, each moment of silence more reassuring. He exhaled, and flicked the keychain back to life. It would help if he could find a flashlight, but it was getting harder and harder to move around the city now that the gangs had taken over. When he’d found the rack of garish, “I heart the Yankees” baseballs at Duane Reed, he’d swept them all into his pack, buoyed for just a second by the promise of light in a City gone dark.

  He barely used them, reserving them for the nighttime hours spent hunting for precious food. Since what he’d dubbed “Foodmageddon” had begun, the landscape of New York City had changed irrevocably. Not the physical landscape of course, though several serious fires, the flooding of lower subway levels, and some unexplained explosions at the south end of the City might beg to differ. But he barely left the five block radius around his school….because the human landscape had changed the most.

  Since everyone fled fearing nukes, the City was largely abandoned, the towers and subways now skeletons and blood vessels in a dead body, a corpse left to rot in the summer sun. At times he imagined walking out to the center of one of the Avenues and standing there alone, certain that he was the last man on Earth.

  It deepened the ache for his parents. What if he was one of the last men on Earth? Not “were,” not the subjunctive…the subjective. What if he WAS one of the last men on Earth? The thought rattled around his brain like a psychotic marble.

  He shifted, his toes prickling, the protest of a crouch held too long, of pinched blood thrumming at its bounds. The pain sharpened his thoughts, reminding him of the realities. Being morose would get him nowhere. The truth was that most times, if you did hear the sound of another human being…you’d be sorry.

  His eyes fell to his journal and for a moment his mind seized, the writer’s block springing not from blankness, but from the jam of emotions clogging his throat. What could he add to his confession? Who was left to judge? His tears welled in acid pools, the sting of dehydration serving as both reminder and betrayal. His mind settled and his fingers found life again.

  I keep thinking about my roommate Jeff, wondering where he is…if he made it. Probably snuggled into some post-apocalyptic kibbutz in Jersey by now and the joke’s on me. That was that kid’s kind of luck.

  Asher’s lips tugged as the tears fell, carving their way down his already grizzled chin. “Damn you, man. I hope you made it.”

  His fingers flicked, returning him to the darkness that made so much more sense than his smile…or his tears.

  June 4, 2033

  Body count – 37: 15 men, 18 women, 4 children.

  Days without food – 4.5

  Days without sleep - 3

  Temperature – Surface of the Sun

  By now nearly everyone’s gone that’s going to leave. I have no idea how many people are still in the City, but it’s kind of hard to conduct a census, given that those of us that are left keep trying to kill each other. I’ve seen a few families and thought about asking to join them, but when you watch Jane Hatfield Mommy shoot June McCoy Mommy in the head over food, you tend to back away.

  Just sayin’…

  You know what’s weirdest?

  The quiet.

  When the wind blows you can hear signs clatter and slap, and trash cartwheels from sticking point to sticking point, but there’s nothing else.

  When I first moved here last fall I never admitted that I was nervous. It’s not like I’d ever really left Chicago. But that first night, when sirens floated up from the streets I slept with a smile on my face. It felt like home.

  Now it’s a silent, sticky wasteland.

  June 7, 2033

  Body count – 48: 21 men, 22 women, 5 children.

  Days without food – 0. Found a stash of nuts and mints in a desk in the writing labs, TG. The nuts are giving my stomach fits, but hey, at least mint helps, right?

  Days without sleep - 6

  Temperature – Surface of the Sun and Rising

  Too damned tired to think. All this hiding by day and scrabbling by night is making me feel like Gollum. Not that it helps the way a stupid mint brings tears to my eyes. Food’s become the goddamned Precious.

  I’ve decided to stop keeping a body count after today. All 11 additions are from one site, a grocery store on 93rd. Someone trapped the family inside - easy enough with steel plates over the doors. Do you think when the soldiers barred those doors that they imagined what would happen if some sickos trapped people inside and lit a match? The ones that tried to run had been gunned down but most were still inside, pressed against the bars.

  Human kindling…

  Why am I still writing the date? Scratch that. Day 9 in HELL.

  June 10, 2033

  Days without food – 3

  Days without sleep – 0

  I dreamt of Mom this afternoon. My first real sleep in almost a week and that’s what comes. Now I know that God is dead. I really wanted to prove Nietzsche wrong. Not to be superior, but because I hated the asshole. But he was right.

  In the dream I was covered in hot blood, still pumping from the body beneath me. I’ll never forget Mom’s eyes. They were so wide and dark that I could’ve fallen into them. The man whose life was emptying in streams onto my feet – he’d had a bag of candy. She found us just as I shoved the salvation into my mouth, the chocolate melting in black rivers between my fingers like blood.

  I woke up gagging, but when there’s nothing in your stomach, all you get is pain. No relief.

  Awesome.

  I keep promising myself not to kill (including myself), not if I don’t have to. But what if I have to?

  God help me.

  Oh, yeah. I already decided He’s DEAD.

  Long live the Superman.

  June 16, 2033

  Days without food – 5

  Days without sleep – 1

  I’m doing better at getting sleep now, whether that’s from exhaust
ion or adaptation, I don’t know. Either way, I’ve managed to avoid the gangs so far. I’m alive and that’s all that matters. If I can keep it together…if I can survive this first wave of death, someone will get things back up and running, right? There’ll be radio or an Army convoy, or something. There has to be.

  This can’t be all there is.

  IT CAN’T BE. IT CAN’T.

  Can it?

  I want to write…to document what I’m seeing. The ache is so bad it makes me shake. But I can’t. Every time I try to write this insanity crystalizes and my hand seizes.

  This can’t be.

  Not the barricades.

  Not the gangs.

  The guns.

  The rape.

  The starvation…

  My stomach burns brighter than my will.

  June 20th, 2033

  Days without food – 0

  Days without sleep – 0

  Thank God I still have my journal! I have no idea why it matters, but it does. It’s…

  Anyway. I was robbed last night while I slept. I guess I should be grateful that I’m still alive. (And I’m not being tortured. Bonus.) And I’m grateful that they didn’t see my sword and take it.

  It sucks that I lost the beans though. Goddammit. I haven’t eaten anything real in… I was saving it like dessert. Isn’t that crazy? Moldy donuts for dinner and a bean can tucked in my fist like it was chocolate pudding. And now it’s gone.

  Remaining possessions:

  1 jian, thank the Great Powers of the Universe

  1 t shirt, grey

  1 pair sweatpants, 2 holes

  1 pair sneakers, already falling apart

  1 charcoal hoodie

  1 journal

  Unfortunately when they took my rain jacket they got the pic of Lacey. I don’t know why that matters to me either. The likelihood that she’s still alive is about nil, I’m sure. She was about as prepared for the apocalypse as Helen of Troy was for rejection.

  Maybe that’s unfair.

  Shit.

  Sorry, Lace. Wherever you are, I hope that it’s better than this hellhole.

  Anyway, I miss that picture. It was more a piece of me than a piece of her. We’d been broken up for what…almost a year? But that picture, her laugh breaking bigger than the frame… It was me at sixteen.

  I fucking miss me at sixteen.

  July 4, 2033

  Days without food – 6 (I’m getting to be a pro at this)

  Days without sleep – 3 (see aforementioned new skillz)

  In honor of this fantastic holiday, I’ve spent the last hour wondering what independence really means. It’s been 6 (66 ha, ha) weeks in HELL now. I keep thinking that staying here was the stupidest thing I’ve ever done. But what was I supposed to do? I couldn’t just WALK to Chicago. Could I?

  Could I?

  This is the delightful refrain of my dreams, punctuated by a gasping, sweaty arousal, if I’m lucky enough not to be ambushed. It’s becoming pretty clear now that surviving outside these disgusting, vicious… …Shit, I’m tired of trying to describe them. They’re gangs. Gangs are gangs. Before, during, and after. But in the “after” surviving without them seems nearly impossible. There are always the Lifer fights, but those guys are all gang guys, lets face it. The shit I’ve seen these past few weeks????? My highly expensive vocabulary fails me.

  Now, trapped in this concrete DMZ, it seems to me that I spent too much time studying everything else and too little studying the gangs of New York. Or at least the gangs of Harlem and the Bronx. That would have been waaaaaaay more useful.

  By the way, generally speaking, if you see gang tags run like hell. (In case anyone finds this journal on my body consider this advice my gift to you. Unless you killed me, in which case, screw you, mother******.)

  If you have the balls and stupidity to climb to the top of one of the towers in this twisted geodesic landscape, you see the same sunset over the Park - only now there are hundreds of tendrils of smoke dotting the horizon like streamers.

  We’re all just a mice in a maze. Tasty morsels.

  Inescapable

  Asher’s feet pelted the wet asphalt, the dirty squelch the only melody against the bass of his ragged breath. He hit a barricade and leapt upward, grabbing the frame of a car door and slipping on its roof. His free hand sliced open on glass and he cursed as he hit the ground on the other side. Hot blood came, as he knew it would, long before the pain, dripping from his fist as he ducked into the nearest alley and through a door. He slammed into a metal rail in the dark and crumpled, heaving.

  The wheeze of his breath rang in his ears, but he tilted his head, listening for his followers. Rivulets of rain splattered through the shattered windows, last vestiges of the thunderstorm that had ravaged the City. But nothing else…

  He leapt up, peering back down the alley, his eyes skimming over the makeshift barricade marking the Deacons territory. The barricade he’d been stupid enough to climb in search of food.

  There was a clatter and he startled, his grip tightening around his sword. A filthy orange rag flitted across the road and Asher exhaled and then groaned as his stomach growled. Really? he thought, disgusted. A half-dead cat? Despite this admonishment saliva pooled in his mouth.

  NO.

  He shuddered and slid to a crouch, dropping his head. How long had it been since he’d eaten? In the beginning he didn’t count the times he’d picked through trash or eaten something he was pretty sure was half-rotten, but now he counted every bite. It had only taken seven weeks of Foodmageddon to make him salivate over feral pets.

  Then again, haven’t we all gone feral? He scratched his beard and winced at the pain in his palm. Right. He’d cut himself. Fantastic. He toed open the warehouse door to let in the light of the retreating storm. Eyeing the ragged slice in the meat of his palm, he groaned. It was going to need stitches. Now he’d have to use more of his precious antibiotics.

  He reached into his pocket and pulled out a rag. It wasn’t particularly clean, but not much was anymore. He wrapped his hand, sucking in at the sting as the cotton pressed the edges of his skin back together. He pushed open the warehouse door a little more, feeling safer now that it was raining again.

  The rain came harder and he stepped out beneath the sagging awning that used to shade “Goudi Brothers Printing” and took a deep breath. This downpour would keep even the most brutal of the sickos calling the 212 home in check. He retreated inside and began his search for a safe perch. Climbing the catwalks to the very top, just beneath the roof, he found a section of pipes he could slip behind and be relatively invisible.

  Relatively. As he lay down, bunching his sopping hoodie beneath his head, he pulled his sword across his chest and said a small prayer to his parents. Though he missed them every moment of the night, it was in the day when he’d try to sleep that it would hit him – the hollow ache that was not in his stomach.

  Were they alive? Were they looking for him? It was half the reason he’d stayed in the City. He knew that if they were alive, that they’d be looking for him. Now he wasn’t sure of anything anymore. Nothing besides survival. He turned and his stomach knifed, angry at his inability to meet its needs. He grit his teeth and swallowed hard. It was his only solution - just pushing it all down.

  Rain hammered the roof and he took a deep breath, his eyes fluttering. Despite the ache in his hand, his gut, and his heart, exhaustion was finally winning. As sleep overtook him, his ghosts whispered, ushering him into darkness. I wish Jeff had been right, they sighed, because if New York City had been nuked, all our problems would be over.

  ########################################################

  Asher awoke to a scream and sat straight up, nearly braining himself on the pipes above. Ducking just in time, he swiveled, seeking the source of the sound.

  “No, please! You can have me, just let Cassie go!”

  A woman’s cries floated up from below. Disoriented, he shook his head, recalling that he’d crawled to
the rafters seeking a safe sleep. He peered down through the metal grate and sucked in his breath. An older woman with grey bleeding from her salon-blonde stood shielding a young girl, her arms wide.

  “No, Mama!” the girl whimpered.

  Even from a distance Asher could see the slick of tears on the girl’s cheeks and he shivered.

  The man in black didn’t seem so moved. He circled the women, clearly enjoying the way the mother circled as well, keeping her chick at her back. She was nothing special, Asher thought, just another mom in terrible jeans, but her bravery made his heart thump in his chest. Because she was staring down the barrel of a sawed-off shotgun with more determination than he’d seen in the eyes of trained soldiers.

  “Cassie, go! Run!” she urged, her glare still locked on the predator. “You can’t have her!” Her scream rose and shattered.

  The girl didn’t move. Asher didn’t blame her. The man in black was definitely not in on the, “Let Cassie go” plan.

  “Yes!” he crooned, “I can!” His glee rolled off him in fetid waves, a lapping oil spill.

  Asher’s stomach turned. He was flown back to the time when his father had stood just as this woman did, protecting him from a simple bully. That hadn’t been life or death and yet, at five years old, it had felt that way to him. Now, in this moment, his mind begged him to run, to turn and get the hell out of there because a sword was no match for a freaking shotgun and he’d seen too many bodies to be confused about how likely death was these days. These two women wouldn’t survive much longer whether he helped them or not.