A Granddaughter's Journey

[Jana (DELETED 5000)]

Breathe with me
It's all I can ask of you
Breathe with me
It's all I can take from you

Dance with me
Feel the rhythm of the earth
Dance with me
Let them know just what it's worth

Hold the sunlight in your hands
Feel the weave of nature's plans
Let it flow deep with you at last

Cry with me
The earth is weeping
Cry with me
Her blood seeping free

Every creature on the earth
Knows just what the world is worth
Swimming deep within the sea
Flying high for all to see
The heart of nature races fast
Humanity shall know at last
Mother Nature cries for us
Mother Nature dies for us

Hold the sunlight in your hands
Feel the weave of nature's plans
Let it flow deep with you at last
Ohh, at last

Deborah looked up slowly from her notebook, smiling at the song she'd written. Her grandmother would have been proud of it. It was a song that spoke to their relationship, most definitely. Her grandma had been the driving force in her youth when her mother passed away.

The green gel pen in her hand was clicked into its lid and slid into her purse as the plane began its descent.

"Now arriving at Harper Rock International Airport," the pilot, a woman who sounded like she might be in her early thirties, said over the intercom. "Have a safe time here."

Lifting her carry-on bag, she stuffed her notebook into it and pulled her headphone earmuffs onto her head, clicking her MP3 player on. She walked to the beat, down the aisle, out of the plane, to the baggage claim, where she stood tapping one foot as she waited for her two large suitcases to make themselves known. If her bags were lost, she would be suing the company, as her grandmother's ashes were tucked into one of them, a steel and mother-of-pearl urn wrapped carefully in a piece of her grandmother's crocheted blanket, the last thing she'd ever attempted to complete. The blanket would remain unfinished, the pieces split up among those listed in her will. The most completed piece, a two-foot square of intricate blue and purple yarn design, was around the urn for transportation.

When the suitcases finally appeared, she hauled them off the conveyer belt and set them upright, laying the carry-on bag on top of the largest and tying them together. The middle-sized and largest cases were to be dragged on their wheels to the rental car location. She'd reserved a four-door sedan, a simple, tan car that could pass as nondescript, which was waiting for her in the parking lot.

"Hello, Miss Vaughn," the rental clerk said upon checking her ID card and passport. "We've got your car right outside the door here. Would you like some help getting your bags in?"

"No, thanks," Deborah replied. "I can do it just fine."

The clerk slid a sheet of paper over, which was signed in curling script of the redhead's legal name. But it wasn't the name she'd made for herself. she was a performer, a singer, and her stage name was Jana Walker. She almost signed that, but paused to remind herself and turned a J into a D in a very practiced flourish. Then the simple key ring was handed over and she was off, out the door, to the car awaiting her. She piled her suitcases into the trunk after carefully extracting the urn and placing it in a box she'd slid into her carry-on. From there, she set it on the floor of the backseat.

And then she was off, driving down the streets of a city noticeably colder than the one she'd grown up in.

[Jana (DELETED 5000)]

Jana. That was what she had been calling herself for years in non-government company. To the government and anything associated with it, she was Deborah Rose Vaughn, twenty-two-year-old redhead from San Jose, California, raised by her grandmother and given as much opportunity as the woman had been capable of, but to the rest of the world, she was Jana Walker, fiery-haired stage queen with a flair for dramatic clothing and overdramatic performances.

It was never a double life, because it was all one person. Jana and Deborah were the same woman, but one name was for certain company, while the other was for another sort of company.

She drove around the city for a few hours after settling into the apartment Toshiru had been kind enough to offer her, looking for the place her mother and grandmother had spoken of. She soon discovered it was just north of the quarantined district of the city. The Chrononaut was most certainly still there, its sign still glowing brightly. Carefully, the redhead slipped down the alley between the nightclub and the neighboring apartments, the delicate urn clutched in her hands, close against her chest. She'd made it herself, by hand, at her grandmother's request when she'd first fallen ill. She'd known it was coming - that was the only reason she'd taken it so well. Now came the hard part, though.

Letting go.

"Well, Grandma," she said softly as she knelt on the riverbank, "this is it. The final goodbye."

"Not really," that voice whispered, the voice that had been plaguing her.

And then she realized it. Her grandmother was haunting her! Giving her advice!!! And she had been following it without even realizing what she was doing!!!!!!

"Grandma, why would you do this?" she whispered. "I thought you'd crossed over. I hoped you had. Why would you hang on?"

"Because you need me, little one," Grandma replied.

Now that Jana thought about it, it made a lot of sense. She did need her grandma. Her support. Her advisor since childhood. The anchor that had held her in life when her mother died so suddenly. This was an even more major life-change. Her grandmother needed to be there, part of her, while she navigated it.

"What will happen when I don't need you anymore?" she asked, her voice quite, like the little girl she'd once been, asking when her mother would come home for three weeks after the unfortunate accident.

"I will move on. You probably have forgotten that your mother used to visit you as well. Until you were twelve, actually."

But she did. She'd mistaken them for dreams so many times...

"Where are you?"

"I have no physical manifestation capabilities, my dear. But I am here. With you. Always. You will never see me, of course, but I will always be there, with you, guiding you gently. I am your conscience, your intuition. I am here for you, my Deborah."

Jana nodded slowly, lifting the lid of the urn with a gentle hand and setting it aside. Very gently, she poured the ashes out onto the riverbed, where the water would carry them away come the next rain. She didn't know how she knew exactly that this river was what her grandmother had meant on her deathbed, and she didn't want to ask.

"Go to where the power of earth and sky have little influence and spread the ashes where the water will steal them."

[Jana (DELETED 5000)]

She was getting better with her gun. The new Glock was nothing she’d ever been interested in, but after discovering the lumbering creatures living in the lobby of the new apartment building – Toshiru had moved them recently into Corvidae Flats – she’d decided that a gun would be necessary. She’d seen swords and such, but the gun was more her. Blades weren’t her forte and never would be.

The only problem was that she kept running out of ammunition.

”Be careful, little one,” her grandmother’s wise and guiding voice murmured to her. ”There are more than just these that you must fear.”

As Jana ducked around a couch in the lobby, only to fire over it at one of the creatures, she growled, “Think I don’t know that?”

”I know you know. But there’s one behind you.”

“****,” she hissed, just as one of the bullets struck the zombie in the head, causing it to explode in a cloud of decayed brain, skull, and flesh. Then she spun around, coming face-to-face with a fanged creature. Only slightly more intelligent than the zombies, these fanged things were near impossible for her to fight. The zombies, the simple, decaying creatures, they were easy. These were difficult.

She had yet to kill a single one of them.

Its rotting fingers reached for her throat, even as she started backwards. The couch blocked her escape. The only thing she could do was what she did – she raised her right foot and kicked the rotting creature in the gut, firing towards its face. It didn’t take it down, but it did slow it down. And make it angry.

“****, ****, ****!” she hissed, looking around. Her path to the elevator was clear. She bolted, pressing the button impatiently. “Come on, come on!” She was thankful the elevator worked, but it could be uniquely slow. Like the building was centuries old.

The rotten fang was coming toward her, even as the elevator doors slid open. She ran through, pressing the button for the seventh floor and urging the door to close, trying desperately to calm down. Calm was hard to find after running from one of those. She had to be calm.

She’d seen her housemate drinking something too bright red to be red wine and too thick to be Kool-Aid. She didn’t want to ask him what it was, but she had a horrible feeling that it wasn’t something she wanted to drink.

[Jana (DELETED 5000)]

She was definitely going crazy. So many creatures swarmed, she was damn sure she'd been bitten twice after accidentally falling asleep in the elevator, and left to wander, ending up in another ******* district! Her neck was still sore, but the woozy feeling had dissipated within a day (and after a good, thick peanut butter sandwich with blackberry jam). She didn't even leave the house for a couple days afterwards, she was so nervous about it all. Her roommate was probably watching her like a hawk. She didn't care. She needed time.

"Little one, listen to me," her grandmother's guiding voice murmured. "You cannot hide from your problems. This is something you'll have to live with here. Have faith. Better yourself. Find a place to sing, and sing. I have faith in you, my little one.

"But, Gramma," she murmured, in the isolation of the shower, "I can't just ignore this."

"Then find someone to talk to. Someone who believes."

Jana nodded slightly, even though she couldn't see her grandmother. "I'll try, Gramma. I love you."

"Love you, too, little one."

She finished her shower quickly, stepping out, drying her hair, and bundling it into a braid, before she slid into what she called her hunting gear. A black tee shirt, black jeans with a stretch waistband, and a fitted motorcycle jacket. The Glock handgun fit neatly into her hand, with the extra clips in the pocket of the jacket.

Quickly, as she left the bedroom, she scrawled out a note for her roommate on a Post-It note and stuck it to the doorjamb. Out for a zombie hunt, back in about an hour. If I'm not back then, I'll be back in at least a day. Jana.

It seemed a new necessity. This city was strange, and she was living in the quarantined district now. She couldn't leave the apartment without the gun living here. She stepped into the elevator and made her way to the ground floor once again. Each time she did this, she knew she learned more about herself. She was never afraid to pull the trigger.