Aftermath of the Reckoning

Chapter 15

In the parking lot of the Piedmont Police Department, an old pontoon boat rested its weight on four dense foam blocks. In a prior life, it had know the far reaches of Lake Wappapello, serving its owners proudly as a seaworthy vessel.

Today, covered in a fine patina of rust and mildew, it served Friedrich Johansen as he sat on the back edge, watching the morning sun drench the clouds with gold and crimson paint. As a man with little interest in the artistry of nature, he procured no joy from the spectacle; his thoughts were elsewhere.

Wendell should be back by now.

Like a labrador playing a game of fetch with his owner, Wendell never failed to carry out his assignments, though sometimes he made a mess of things in the process. In this situation, Johansen didn’t care who Wendell made a mess of, just so long as he returned it to his possession.

In the last five years that Johansen served as tribe leader of the True Sight and, colloquially speaking, the mayor of Piedmont. He refused the live the rest of his days watching over the fools that called this town their home, that clung to him for support, for survival.

Even prior to the Reckoning, Johansen always excelled at survival. As the fifteen year old son of a farmer in the rural parts of central Nebraska, his family remained untouched by disease for the first year. They subsisted on corn and soybeans grown on the farm and remained isolated from town after the initial news reports.

They might have gone on living that way if it hadn’t been for a sick group of looters who found their residence and broke into their home. They were all teenage boys, each showing the early signs of White Eye. His father, prepared for such a circumstance, killed all three individuals with a shotgun.

However, it was too late. His sister and mother contracted White Eye and died in the space of a month. Johansen grieved with his father for the next several days, until his father started experiencing severe seizures and died of a heart attack a week later.

Such tales were commonplace among survivors of the Reckoning, his experience no better or worse than any other in the tribe. Everyone could empathize with each other and used that to sustain a will to endure.

In a way, the Reckoning leveled the playing field. Tribe leaders existed and certainly some tribes leveraged greater control over their environment, however the socioeconomic structures of the past evaporated. The disparity between the rich and the poor, the powerful and the weak, these concepts ceased to exist.

Except for the deviants. This truly struck a cord in Johansen as he pictured God throwing a curveball that favored only left-handed batters. Johansen might have been able to overcome his own jealousy of those he witness with aspects, had it not been for his own aspect, which he viewed as more of a curse.

In the time after the Reckoning, Johansen first continued to work on the farm, alone. He lacked the full experience of his father and struggled to grow food. Their remaining livestock, already reduced in numbers, died off in the months to come as he fought to combat a drought that ravaged the land.

In a moment of despair, in the dusty corn fields, he fell upon his back and looked into the sky. The ninety degree temperature cooked his well tanned face and bathed his body in perspiration. He closed his eyes, felt the earth mingle with his sweat, and heard the plant life around him speaking in a language he did not understand.

However, he felt the need of the plants, he felt the hunger and thirst they experienced. And he harmonized with these feelings and allowed his own life energy to be consumed. It felt strange, yet freeing as if he could give in completely and rest eternally.

As abruptly as it began, the harmonization ceased and he stood and dusted himself off. Johansen returned home that night for sleep and awoke the following morning to find a miracle. Half of his field now thrived with acres of healthy corn and soybeans.

Over time, Johansen learned the full potential of his abilities and learned to control which plants he fed. He also learned of the consequences. While he should be a young man in his twenties, he appeared to be an overweight balding man in his forties with back and knee problems. His aspect gave life to the land around him at the expense of his own vitality.

The True Sight didn’t follow him because he led well, rather they used him because he enabled their survival. Johansen did not consider himself to be a cruel individual, but he refused to give his own life just so that others, strangers really, could live longer and more easily.

So he held full control over the food supply in the tribe and sold to Pennyworth as he saw fit. It was his life after all. If his tribe wanted nothing more than to feed off him like leeches, he would at least profit, in whatever sense that was possible in todays times. With each passing year, as he looked in the mirror and saw age twist his features, bitterness fed on love in his heart.

A small part of him still wanted to help others, to give without seeking recompense. After all, in the early years, that is when he’d experienced the most happiness as he helped small groups of people satisfy their hunger.

That is why, a year ago, when he discovered the Bloodflower, he knew he must possess it. Not only did it offer him the gift of life, perhaps immortality, by that fact alone it offered concrete hope for all the survivors that existed today, far exceeding the scope of his small tribe. With the Bloodflower, he could remove all limits from his aspect and repair the world.

And in doing so, he could also govern the world. For who wouldn’t want to serve a benefactor that provided all needs free of cost? After all, everyone served something or someone; most served their own stomach. True freedom existed as an illusion in the minds those too afraid to grasp reality. At least with his leadership, he could ensure a comfortable illusion shared by all, equally, and without strings attached. They would insist on his crowning and who would he be to refuse the people? Certainly not Mayor Fredrich Johansen, the giver of life.