Fanatic Surviving (Dove Strong) Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Dove Strong Trilogy

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  Preview of Sent Rising

  Thank you

  You Can Help!

  God Can Help!

  Free Book Offer

  Fanatic Surviving

  Dove Strong Trilogy #2

  Erin Lorence

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales, is entirely coincidental.

  Fanatic Surviving

  COPYRIGHT 2019 by Erin Lorence

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the author or Pelican Ventures, LLC except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  eBook editions are licensed for your personal enjoyment only. eBooks may not be re-sold, copied or given to other people. If you would like to share an eBook edition, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with.

  Contact Information: [email protected]

  Scripture texts in this work are taken from the New American Bible, revised edition Copyright 2010, 1991, 1986, 1970 Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, Washington, D.C. and are used by permission of the copyright owner. All Rights Reserved. No part of the New American Bible may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

  Cover Art by Nicola Martinez

  Watershed Books, a division of Pelican Ventures, LLC

  www.pelicanbookgroup.com PO Box 1738 *Aztec, NM * 87410

  Watershed Books praise and splash logo is a trademark of Pelican Ventures, LLC

  Publishing History

  First Watershed Edition, 2019

  Paperback Edition ISBN 978-1-5223-0229-2

  Electronic Edition ISBN 978-1-5223-0217-9

  Published in the United States of America

  Dedication

  To the real Savannah, who would offer her last water bottle to anyone in the desert.

  Your loving heart inspires me.

  Dove Strong Trilogy

  Dove Strong

  Fanatic Surviving

  Sent Rising

  1

  Thunk. Gilead’s blade sank into the X scratched on the pine. Dead center. A breath later, Micah Brae’s steel nicked the trunk’s bark and scuttled, disappearing in the frozen groundcover.

  My brother’s grunt of disgust reached me up in the crow’s nest where I huddled out of sight. “Pathetic, Brae. Keep your knife horizontal to your target until you release it. Like this.”

  Thunk.

  I focused on the sunlit branches overhead instead of my brother’s and neighbor’s knife-throwing session—their way of preparing for the Reclaim. The war’s first attack on the godless Heathen was broadcasted for May 15, a month and a half away. And they thought this would make them ready?

  Next to me on the snug lookout platform high in the maple, my grandpa surveyed the tree-filled horizons in his systematic way. I leaned my elbows back on the woven blanket, evidence he’d slept up here, despite the biting Central Oregon nights. My mom said he slept in the tree to be extra cautious—with the war between us Christians and Satan’s people approaching. But that wasn’t the real reason. Grandpa was obsessed with sighting his missing son, my Uncle Saul, who I’d discovered back in September, alive, crazy, and nearby, roaming the Oregon Cascades.

  “If Uncle Saul wanted to come home, he’d have done it years ago, Grandpa. You know that, right?”

  He grunted.

  My frown fell on the barkless, white pole in the distance. A dead tree with an eagle’s nest on top, marking the corner of our property. Next to it ran the rutted path on which Wolfe Pickett had driven me home. Wolfe, the Heathen teenager I hadn’t seen in six months, two weeks, and five days, who’d changed my mind about the nonbelieving population.

  My frown deepened into a squint.

  Under the third bleached branch from the trunk’s bottom, a woodpecker had whittled out a bird-sized hollow. Did another note wait for me there? Could I check before sundown without my family noticing? Wolfe had already left me two secret messages in this hole.

  Hey, Dove. I’m better and up for a visit. How about next Saturday? Su casa. Let me know. Wolfe

  And then...

  Dove, I know you got my note. Is this about the bean plant I killed? Tell me when it’s good for me to come see you. No killing this time. Wolfe

  I’d taken the notes but left no response. Stay away, Wolfe.

  He wouldn’t shed any more blood because of me. Last September my brother had stabbed him on our property for hugging me. Gilead would have killed him if I hadn’t blurted out that I loved this unsaved guy and his intense little sister, Jezebel.

  I rested my warm cheek on my knees.

  So what if I loved a couple of pagans from the town of Sisters? Didn’t love mean I didn’t want them to die? At least the Spirit reassured me it was fine to love nonbelievers even if my family didn’t applaud this.

  “Being equally yoked in marriage is God’s will, Dove. It’s biblical. You marry a lost soul, and you’ll bear a burden you won’t be able to carry.”

  “Amen,” my aunt had agreed.

  Why did my mom keep blasting me with this spiel? Marriage? How dumb. I was only seventeen. Gilead’s nineteen. Had she ever cornered him to give the “equally-yoked” talk? I was willing to bet my year’s quota of honey-roasted squash she hadn’t.

  I grabbed a promising pinecone and cracked it against the platform. After a few taps, its nuts knocked loose.

  “Here, Grandpa. Eat.”

  With a grunt, he picked out a couple from my palm. We sat in the sunshine, chewing and spitting hulls while knives clattered and thudded below. Maybe this squirrel food would hold my stomach until dinner. Then I wouldn’t have to leave this hidey-hole or my grandpa, the one family member who never referred to my unexpected relationship with nonbelievers that kept me awake at nights.

  “Dove!” My cousin Trinity’s voice sang from close by, no doubt from inside our tree home, since it was too clear to be from the junk piles. “Dove, Gran wants you!”

  Grandpa extended his hand for the rest of the pine nuts. Making sure not to knock against the giant emergency bell that hung within reach above our heads, I climbed on branches to my home’s larger platform.

  Once in our main living space, I took a backward step toward the open doorway. I should have taken my time in the branches and not rushed to get here. I took another step back.

  My grandma faced me, spider-web fragile in her willow chair. Mom stood behind her, clenching the chair’s straight back, an odd, tight smile pulled across her sun-stained face.

  I braced myself for the marriage spiel.

  Gran heaved herself to her feet, revealing bulkier homespun apparel than what she u
sually wore to shuffle around on the platforms. “Dove, child, go find your backpack. We’re going to fix the blasphemous mistake. God wants peace and not war. He knows it, you know it, and I know it. We’re heading back to the mountain to get it straight with that Council. Obey, child. I have no time for your gaping at me. Go get that pack so we can leave.”

  The mountain? The Council? My past failed mission came crashing down so hard I staggered.

  Last summer, I’d been commissioned as God’s messenger for peace. I’d traveled to Mount Jefferson, Oregon’s Christian Council, and carried my family’s and a next-door neighbor’s prayer votes for peace. And on September 15, the fifty Councils had tallied America’s Christians’ votes. Despite my best effort to obey God, a decision for a war we called the Reclaim had been made.

  A human mistake. God didn’t want a war.

  Before I’d left last summer, Grandma’s vision revealed me reaching Mount Jefferson, and my own dream later showed the importance of halting the startling red that flooded the nation. I wasn’t brainless. I knew what the growing crimson color meant. The red meant massive bloodshed—specifically our people’s blood. And as God’s special messenger for peace I should have stopped this bloody threat by getting to my Council. But my journey’s successful arrival at the mountain with votes, my arguments against violence with fellow messengers, and all the hours on my knees among other prayer warriors hadn’t stopped it. The Councils had announced war.

  And now I had to make the trek again.

  I glanced over my shoulder to the green, fuzzy canopies beyond our property and then squeezed my eyes shut.

  Travel back into the devil’s territory? My hands shook. But not because I was scared of his attack. Satan would strike—using snakes and hunters to do his evil deeds— and I would handle them. Bring on the snakes! No. I trembled because of a secret knowledge—an unknown threat—that kept me awake at night.

  Lord, there’s a pull I’m too weak to fight, even wearing Your armor. Part of the world out there draws me—like a heaping pile of compost draws a fly. Will the pile collapse on me this time? Trap me so I can’t escape? Will I choose not to escape? Is that what happened to Uncle Saul? Almost eight years ago, he left on the same journey to the Council. Maybe I’ll end up haunting the nonbelievers’ roads and towns too...maybe Sisters? Will I never return to my family if I leave?

  Should I tell Gran no?

  I sighed at His reply. My feet traveled two steps forward.

  “Yes, Grandma.”

  2

  “You murderer! Look at your hair! You massacred it.” Trinity pounced and gathered my now collarbone-length strands into a short tail and attempted to coil it. I’d left the rest of my blonde hair on the floor near my hammock next to the ancient scissors and family mirror.

  I sniffed. It didn’t look that bad. But I glanced down at the factory-made blue pants and black, zippered jacket I wore. Should I have not...?

  I squared my shoulders, which were weighed down with my bag, and returned my mom’s and aunt’s stares. “It’s smarter to blend in out there. So we’re not spotted and attacked so easily.”

  I spoke the truth. My last trek into enemy territory had taught me the safety of blending in. Not that I was about to offer to search the junk pile for some castoffs for my grandma to wear instead of her homemade clothing. Or suggest she cut off her long, coiled hair like I’d done.

  Mom drifted nearer to me, holding out her hands. “Dove. Daughter. You want to be a...camouflaged Christian? And look like a...a worldly woman? I don’t think it’s wise—”

  A thump sounded, and I crossed my arms.

  Gilead stepped onto the platform trailed by Micah. “Whoa!”

  A crowd of chattering, little-boy cousins swung in from different limbs. At least my grandpa, following in back, didn’t react to my changed appearance. Instead, he scowled at the black radio dangling from his hand. The bottom half was missing except for some wires, which he jiggled so they danced. “Radio. Seems to have got broke. Somehow.”

  I shrugged. Other than the initial news of the Reclaim date, our radio hadn’t announced anything worth hearing. The radio had been a gifted provision from the Council to each departing messenger so families could receive important information and stay united. It blurted out news of sporadic attacks cropping up in Portland, where I assumed the Christians who broadcasted were stationed. Last week a believer hurled a rock into an enemy’s truck. The projectile had struck the pagan driver and caused the vehicle to flip. But the radio reported no more Council news.

  Gilead slouched closer. “The radio was the first casualty of war. My bad. Almost as bad as...this.” He flicked my zipper and started to hum.

  Micah, glancing at me every third word, stuttered about how the electronic got crushed during his and Gilead’s sparring practice. It had been an accident. A freak gust of wind that had knocked it into their path was the real culprit. And all the while, Trinity watched him with a satisfied smile, as if she’d finally discovered a person too perfect to improve upon.

  I gagged behind my palm. How could my talented, artistic cousin fall for our skink-boy neighbor who’d shown up a few months ago and wouldn’t leave? But I’d spotted her newest piece of artwork at our garden’s perimeter. The sculpture depicted a familiar, angular face with dark, Brae irises and spider-leg lashes.

  Grandma cut Micah off with a slashing hand motion. “Gilead, you do realize that this demolished radio is our only communication with our people about the Reclaim? This is no humming matter.”

  He jerked up as if surprised at her scold. “What’s left for us to know? We attack May 15. That’s what the radio people said.”

  “Don’t be so sure, Grandson. Dove and I are going to see that the decision is changed. We’re heading back to the Council at Jefferson for the true ruling, and it may take us longer than mid-May to return. So how will you know what to do come May 15?”

  My brother’s brow cleared. His lip twitched—almost a smile. “If God wants me not to fight, then He’ll have you home before the fifteenth with the good news. Or He’ll fix the radio. I still have faith, Gran. Even if some of your other grandkids have lost theirs...and want to dress up like Jezebels.” He knocked my zipper again.

  I bit my tongue because Gran brought her knuckles to her hip. “Gilead Jonah Strong. You will not fight in sin.”

  We Strong kids don’t argue with the adults, but Gilead did...and almost crossed the line of disrespect this time with his typical, pigheaded fierceness. He wouldn’t be the only Christian not to fight on Reclaim Day. Gran and I would make it home before then with a changed answer if God’s will was for peace. He wouldn’t even agree to wait for us in case we were a few days late.

  In the charged silence that ensued, my aunt whimpered. My grandpa stepped forward with a straighter spine than was natural for him and cleared his throat twice. But what could he do? If only he was the powerful grandpa he’d been years ago. Back then, he could hold both me and Gilead in place with one arm. Or if only his son, Jonah, had lived. If he hadn’t been murdered, my dad would still be scrappy enough to knock some sense and respect into my hulk of a brother.

  “You’re a lamebrain, Gilead.” I moved to the top of the ladder and began to climb down. “But it’s a deal. We return with the Council’s new answer for peace...and you lay down your knives and leave the godless alone. Now come help Gran down so we have a chance to get there and back before you make yourself a dead lamebrain.”

  ~*~

  Mount Jefferson filled the horizon faster than it should for an arthritic old woman and a homesick seventeen-year-old. How had we come so far in four days? Last August it’d taken me weeks to get this close.

  The painstaking length of that summer trek must have been Melody Brae’s fault. Melody, Micah’s twin sister and the Braes’ family messenger, empowered with her spiritual gift of being ultra-alert to danger, had led us on zigzagging detours through the farmland and high desert country. Her panic had dragged us off course a
nd wasted time.

  But I wouldn’t lie and pin the whole difference in journey on Melody. My grandma and I weren’t making a pit stop at Mount Washington this time for a Christian “warrior” to accompany us. We would stay far away from the mountaintop villagers—or MTV—and avoid the closest town of Sisters with all its godless citizens, including the Picketts.

  “Good,” I told the cicadas’ electric buzzing in the sagebrush. “The last thing I need is to run into Wolfe or Jezebel now.”

  “Amen.” Four shambling steps ahead, my grandma picked her way straight through the piles of red lava rocks, as if following an invisible beacon.

  “Keep away from the unsaved, Dove. Especially the male ones. I always knew you had brains somewhere in that skull of yours.”

  My toe scuffed against the rocks, and I faltered. “Well I don’t plan to pick up any males of our kind either, Gran. The last ones about killed me.”

  She didn’t reply. She probably understood that I referred to Reed and Stone Bender, the macho Christian brothers from last September who’d tossed around violence as easily as throwing around pinecones. Although Stone had disobeyed his warrior brother’s last orders to silence me. And he’d made a kind offer...

  I trudged toward the snow-capped peak. It towered as a sky-reaching reminder of how I’d failed my last mission of peace, of how the prophetic red grew. I glanced behind, eastward, toward home.

  “What are they’re doing now, Gran? At home?”

  “Praying.”

  “Even Gilead?”

  She didn’t reply to my stupid question. It was daylight. He’d be running drills and doing target practice.

  “You think we’ll make it home with a new decision in time? To stop him and Micah from attacking?” Why couldn’t I shut up?

  My grandma plunged into a stream’s weak current without seeming to notice it. It was the only response I got.

  3

  Governor Ruth, the silver-haired leader of the Oregon Council, waved at us from the slope’s crest. Behind her lone, cloaked figure, the dense forest continued to climb until defeated by higher crags and snow.