Encountering Darkness: The Great Pursuit (Book One)

Chapter Twenty-Two

Amy and Pete walk along the stream, and Amy wonders who, the person she leads, is. Is he telling the truth about everything? Is he someone she could trust?

There is one thing she knows for sure, the voices are real. Only, Amy isn't sure Pete heard the voices correctly; what if they weren't leading them astray? She only feels she had to get away from her village and this direction seems like a good way to go. The problem is that many people did not venture this way. By continuing this way, she is venturing about as far as she has ever gone.

The stream is more like a river, wide as the eye could see, and it moves quickly. Amy finds it tempting to push Pete in the river. She is almost being beckoned to. The voices in her head are telling her so, but she understands (at least she hopes

she knows) that these voices were only messing with her. Amy considers she is crazy, but only if she had known these voices were not hers. But maybe they are her own voices?

It's not like I haven't killed anyone before. What would be the difference this time?

While she leads Pete up the stream, there is almost no grass. There is just a type of dirt, except the dirt has a grayish tint to it, almost like it is ash. Amy knew the damned have been to this area because everywhere she looks she sees that everything is dead or dying. The sun is darker in this area and it is colder, almost like the sun has shade.

"Pete?"

"Yeah?"

"When you came into this world, what do you remember seeing?"

"Not much, it was dark and I could barely see anything. I don't remember any grass and there was almost no sound except for the voices I heard."

"What was on the ground instead of grass?"

"It was hard to tell, but it seemed to have been dirt. There was nothing living around except this one tree in the middle of nowhere."

"Hmm...."

"Why, what are you thinking?"

"Well, this area here has almost no grass and instead a dirt or ashy colored ground. The sun seems to be dimmed and it seems to be colder here."

"And?"

"And I believe this land is beginning to look like the land you started off in. Have you heard any animals since we found the stream?"

"No." Pete's eyes open wide.

"You see? The only sound we hear is this stream, which is really more like a river anyways. There is nothing else. I'm figuring out the damned destroy life or take it away or something. Whatever the case, I bet this same thing is happening to my village."

Amy leads Pete across the path she understands he took. As they are walking, the grayish ground begins to turn into patches of grass. The sparse grass turns in a fuller and fuller grass. Amy notices something else too. In the air, there is a smell she remembers from long ago. She cannot quite place it. Then she notices a different looking thing on the ground. She stops and drops on her knees to look at the object.

"Why are we stopping?" asks Pete.

"What is this?" wonders Amy.

She picks up the thing that she couldn't place. It has ten little things coming out of the center. The center being a blackish color. She puts her face to it and smells it.

"Pete. What is this? I remember this from when I was a girl."

She puts the item to Pete's nose. Pete laughs, "Really? You didn't have flowers in the town where you came from?"