Enjoy the AU within an AU!
Shout out to Phoebe Miller for beta reading!
Fact #156: If anything were to survive an apocalypse, it would probably be dragons and cockroaches.
Season: In the future, I don't even know
Grover dragged the back of his wrist across his brow.
The sun on the island could be merciless on a good day, but when it combined with the humidity after a particularly heavy rainstorm, it was excruciating. It was in these moments he would have given anything for a blizzard with temperatures below freezing.
He glanced over his shoulder at the house. "Hey, why don't you come help your old man?"
Will trudged out of the door over to him. "Did you find more MREs?"
Grover straightened up. "Don't sound so excited about it."
"Come on, Dad, they taste horrible," Will said. He grabbed one of the crowbars leaning against the palm tree and jammed it into the small gap between the boards of the sturdy crate. "Isn't MRE short for Meals, Rarely Edible?"
Grover rolled his eyes and grabbed the other crowbar. "You'll appreciate them later when it's either one of them or grass."
"Think I'd rather eat the grass," Will said.
They heaved and snapped the top of the crate open, the old nearly disintegrated padlock simply popping off.
Will frowned. "That doesn't look like MREs."
Grover reached inside. Dust had managed to settle on the top layer of cans despite the protective crate. Most of these crates had been ransacked by now, but a few could still be found if one knew where to look. It's like the island had been prepared for an apocalypse to happen with all its food and weaponry hidden away in disused bunkers all over the place. He was glad for it, as it was how he had been able to provide and protect his family all these years.
He blew the dust off the label. A smile formed. "I'll be damned."
"What is it?" Will asked.
"Spam." He looked inside the crate again. "A lot of Spam."
"What's Spam?"
"Dinner, that's what. Help me carry this inside to the crawlspace," he said.
The house, while void of electricity, had the hum of life. A quiet life, to be sure, but life nonetheless. Renee kept on top of laundry, cleaning, and gardening with the help of Samantha, and everyone else pitched in to make living more bearable. Lee. Glenfield. Davidson. Their families. Many hands lightened the load.
He and Will stashed the cans in the wall behind one of the pieces of furniture. Only the nonperishable items went in there, things that couldn't be gotten into by insects or mold. It was their just-in-case supply. Alongside the newly added cans of Spam were cases of ammo, MREs sealed in an airtight tub, and other odds and ends.
After pushing the couch back in place, he walked through the hallway into the kitchen. The windows were open as was the door. A cross breeze was the only available source of cooling down.
"Hope that trip was worth it," Renee said, not looking up from the sink. Though it no longer ran water, it made a good basin for washing vegetables off with some of the runoff water from the storm. "You know I hate you going too far away from the house."
"I know, baby, but Lee was with me," Grover said. He held up one of the cans he had kept back. "And it was worth it."
Renee's eyes lit up. "Spam?"
"The holiest of preserved foods," he said. He looked down at the can with a slight frown. "Wish there would've been some Twinkies in the box, too."
Renee swatted him. "You don't need Twinkies."
"I'm sure Spam's not at the top of the health food list, either," he said. He set the can aside and examined one of the vegetables she had been washing. "The sweet potatoes are big."
"Composting the chicken manure really did the garden good this year," Renee said with a nod towards the chicken pen visible through the window.
Shaded by the big trees that surrounded the house on the hillside, the pen was almost camouflaged. The only evidence of chickens were the hens themselves and the clucking. He had been reluctant at first to trade a perfectly good fishing net for a dozen chicks, but once they had raised them up and started getting eggs, it was clear the trade had been worth it. Now they had to keep them concealed so someone didn't get any bright ideas.
Samantha screamed.
He pushed away from the counter and busted through the door as did Renee. He grabbed Samantha in his arms.
"Honey, what's wrong? What's wrong, baby?"
She pointed up the hill to the dense jungle.
He swore and pushed her and Renee back into the house.
"Will, get in here!"
Once his wife and kids were in the innermost room of the house, he met Glenfield at the backdoor, rifle in hand. They both crouched and watched through the windows to either side of the door.
"It's them again," Glenfield grumbled.
Grover glared.
Dragons. Two of them. One was a patchwork of greens and the other darkened from brown at the snout to black at the tail tip. They both had impressive racks of horns and dense scales that he knew from experience couldn't be pierced by bullets.
All of the families and houses in their small community had become overly familiar with them as of late.
The brown one stepped up onto the porch at the back, the boards creaking under his weight. "You think anyone's home?"
The green patchwork one snorted. "Let's knock."
Grover and Glenfield leapt out of the way as the dragons bulled through the door. The brown one swatted the rifle out of Glenfield's reach and the green one simply stepped over Grover towards the inner part of the house.
Grover struggled to his feet.
"What do you want?" he questioned.
The dragon whipped its head around and stared at him. Yellow eyes narrowed into slits.
Grover held his ground though his spine felt ready to turn into jelly. He had heard that once upon a time, when there had been law and order in the land, dragons had been people, too. They would walk among humans without being noticed. Were completely as civil as the next guy.
No more. That was a fairytale now. All the dragons he had ever encountered did as they pleased and humans were for the most part powerless to stop them, as evidenced by the two of them now combing over the house.
The brown one flicked a tongue out.
Grover crossed his arms and frowned deeply. It was one of those lizard dragons that smelled things with their tongues. They could track down humans for miles and miles with those tongues. He'd seen it happen.
"Over here," the brown dragon said.
He could only watch in mute anger as the dragons pulled the couch away from the wall and simply tore the wall open. They cleaned out the crawlspace with their big forefeet and sat examining the contents.
The brown dragon chuckled. "Haven't seen Spam in a while."
"Ugh, MREs," the green one said.
"Meals, Rejected by Everyone," the two dragons said in unison.
The green dragon craned his head around to look at him and Glenfield. "You guys' stash seriously sucks."
Grover shrugged. "That's what you get when you raid a poor folk's home."
"There's gotta be something better here," the green dragon huffed.
He got up and started prowling through the house.
It made Grover's skin crawl. The green dragon had to duck through most of the doorways, his tail carelessly knocking things over as he went. A ridge of stiff scales swayed side to side on his back as he stalked, checking vents and cupboards and floorboards on his way.
The brown one was longer and sleeker looking, but no less heavily armored. He was busy loading the contents from the crawlspace into the cobbled together rucksack slung across his body.
One precisely placed shot to an eye socket would end them. With them in such close proximity, it was almost impossible to line up a shot like that and take it before getting taken down by the remaining dragon.
"What do we have here?"
The hidden door to the cellar banged open. His kids yelled.
"No! No, no, no! You leave them alone! Take the food and get out of here!"
Grover rushed the dragon without any thought to his own safety. The dragon backhanded him into the wall. The world faded to a blur of colors. The walls swirled into the ceiling and the dragon's scales formed a kaleidoscope in the middle of it all.
His ears rang. The colors began to sharpen into focus again. His eyes watered. His head pounded. And he was shaking. No, wait. He was being shaken.
"…baby, please, please, wake up…."
Renee.
Grover groaned as he sat upright. He covered his eyes with his hand. "I'm awake. Are you okay?"
"I'm fine, baby, I'm fine." Renee was crying.
He forced his eyes open. "The kids?"
"I'm here, Daddy," Samantha said from beside him.
Grover looked around. The room tilted. He braced himself on the floor. The dragons were gone. Glenfield was gone. As the ringing in his ears stopped he noticed it was quiet except for them huddled on the floor. He must have been out for longer than he guessed.
Something was missing.
He gripped Renee's arms. "Baby?"
A fresh stream of tears flowed from Renee's eyes. "They took Will."
There were few things on earth that could move a man to do what Grover was doing. Renee had wanted to come, but he couldn't bear to let her follow him. Most of the others were too afraid to follow, or chose to remain behind to protect the rest of the community. This part of the island was off limits to the various communities that had banded together. Only the extremely desperate ones ventured this far into the island.
He paused on an outcropping. From this height, the lush jungle appeared to roll away like a crumpled green blanket, the lack of humans allowing it to travel down to the shore where it turned into the endless expanse of ocean. The afternoon sun sparkled on the waves. It was like a picture from an old postcard.
Except for finding a blood stained patch of ground where he had found Glenfield's rifle a hundred yards down the slope, it was a paradisiacal scene.
Releasing a shaking sigh, he turned back to his hike. He gripped his backpack straps tighter and readjusted both rifles on his shoulder. It was more of a mental comfort than a physical protection. Out here, thugs like those dragons that had ransacked his house and stolen his son ran rampant. The Spam he could forgive. But his son?
His son was one of the few things on earth that could move him to go into dragon territory.
There were rumors of humans who lived among the dragons out here. It was almost like an underground network of either incredibly brave or incredibly stupid humans. He hoped the rumors were true and he could locate one to point him in the right direction to save his son.
After hours of walking and coming across no one, not even any dragon tracks, he finally sat down on a rock. He stared out at the billowing grass just beyond the edge of trees. He'd be exposed out there. Easy pickings.
What was he doing out here? Was he even going in the right direction? There were barely any trail markers. After finding the blood and rifle from Glenfield, there had been nothing. He was pretty sure he'd been following a boar trail for the last two miles.
What was Will thinking? Was he terrified? Did he know his dad was coming for him? Was he already…?
Grover scrubbed his hands over his face. The same way there were few things to send a man out into the deep jungle, there were few things that made a grown man cry. And Grover was tough. Not many of the tragedies in his life drove him to tears.
The thought of his son out here with dragons and his lack of a solid plan was too much.
He buried his face in his hands and wept.
"Must've been pretty bad."
He almost fell off the rock.
Another man had sat on the rock next to him and he hadn't even noticed.
"What're you doing sneaking up on people like that?" he questioned.
The man shrugged. He looked like a native of the islands, one of the few that had survived the first and second waves of the apocalypse. Rugged and well built with dark eyes that had seen many of the same horrors Grover had.
"Not many people come out here, brah," the man said.
Grover narrowed his eyes. The man was remarkably calm and collected, more so than anyone should be this far into dragon territory.
"So, either you're completely lolo, or desperate," the man said and looked him in the eye.
The man was unarmed. It should have made him feel more at ease, yet all it did was raise more alarm bells.
"What're you doing out here?" Grover asked.
"Currently, talking to you," the man said.
"I've never seen you around any of the communities," Grover said. His mind raced. Maybe this man was one of the humans that dared to live this close to dragons. He could be the lead he was looking for.
"I live up here."
So the rumors were true.
Grover stood up a little too eagerly. "Listen, my son was taken by a pair of those scaly monsters. My friend tried to track them down, but I found his rifle back on the other side of the ridge."
The man stood up and dusted off the back of his jeans. "You know what the two dragons looked like?"
"Know what they looked like? Man, I'm never going to forget what they looked like. Those two punks have been harassing the communities for months," Grover said. "The one's short and brown, and the ringleader is a bigger green fella with spikes and big horns."
The man nodded. He gestured for Grover to follow him out into the open grass.
Grover hesitated. Something about this didn't feel right.
The man turned around once he was out in the thigh high grass. "You can stay out here by yourself all night if you want. I don't recommend it."
Grover glanced up at the sky visible between the tangled canopy of leaves. It was flooded with orange and yellow with purples beginning to creep up from the east. He'd never get back to the community before dark.
Making a choice, he stepped out of the shelter of the jungle and joined the man in the field.
"You ain't afraid of being exposed like this?" he asked.
The man smirked.
The horizon was crimson and a velvety indigo had overtaken the rest of the sky. Silver stars started to stud the expanse above them. A cool breeze wicked the sweat away and provided a much needed relief to the hot and humid daytime temperatures.
Grover had run out of water a while ago. He'd barely eaten, his appetite nonexistent. He could feel the effects of that now.
"I hope there's actually a safe place at the end of this walk and you're not leading me on a merry goose chase around the top of this mountain," Grover said. He planted a hand on a rock and panted for breath.
The man paused on the invisible trail only he seemed to know. He was barely breathing hard. "What would you be doing right now if you were at home?"
Grover chuckled. "Probably sitting down to eat sweet potatoes and wild boar. Maybe some Spam."
"Spam?"
"Found a whole crate of it. But those two thugs took that, too."
"Don't know when the last time I had Spam was," the man laughed softly. "Just you and your family?"
Grover shook his head. "No, I've got some friends living in the house with us. Safety in numbers, you know? Fat lot of good that did us today."
The man folded his arms over his chest. "What do you do when dragons show up in the community?"
"We've got the rifles, but that rarely does anything other than piss them off," Grover said. He sighed. "All we can do is let them take what they want and hope they leave without doing too much damage."
"I heard one of the groups in downtown Honolulu have killed a few," the man said.
"I heard that, too. I think it's all a bluff to scare the others away. How would they pull that off, anyway?" Grover asked.
"Get them tangled up in a net and drown them in the canal."
Grover leapt forward.
His heart fluttered in his chest and his hands fumbled with one of the rifles. The man that had led him out here grabbed the barrel and turned it down toward the ground.
Standing on the trail behind them was a dragon. Lit starkly on one side by the setting sun and thrown into deep shadow on the other, it made for an imposing creature. It was taller than the two that had raided Grover's house, but not as densely armored. Fins instead of spines ridged its spine and slender horns graced its narrow skull.
"Chin, what're you doing?" the dragon questioned.
"Steve, he's the kid's father."
Grover looked back at the man, Chin, in bewilderment. "The kid? Will? You've known where my son is the whole time?!"
The big dragon exhaled sharply, clouds of steam blowing from his nostrils. He passed by them on the trail and whispered something lowly to Chin. Then he disappeared into the twisted shadows of the trees.
"What the hell was that?" Grover questioned.
Chin simply motioned for him to follow him.
More on edge than he had been the entire trip, Grover followed up him the trail until it leveled off on a flat point. The trees were old and extremely tall. They butted up against a cliff on one side and dropped away in a steep slope on the other.
A small fire burned in the middle of the trees, casting dancing ribbons of light on the ground and surrounding foliage. Two other large forms caught the warm glow and reflected it off their scales.
A lithe dragon sat near the fire, poking at a large leaf on a flat rock placed on one side of the fire. Grover's mouth watered. Fish. It had been a few weeks since he had eaten fish.
Sitting opposite of the lithe dragon was another one. Not as tall as the others in height, but bulkier in the shoulders and rather menacing looking with the wings spread to either side of it, the keeled scales, and huge claws.
His heart froze.
Leaning against the golden scaled dragon was a young girl. A young human looking girl and another kid. His son. Will.
"Will!"
Will's head whipped around. "Dad?"
Will bolted up from the ground. Grover ran through the makeshift camp, paying the two dragons no heed.
He wrapped Will up in his arms. There was nothing more he wanted to do than hug him close and never let him go. But Will eventually squirmed free. He hurriedly checked him over. Amazingly, he wasn't worse for wear.
"Are you okay, son?" he asked, blinking back tears.
"I'm fine, Dad," Will said. He batted Grover away as he tried to kiss his head. He smoothed out his shirt. "Dad, stop. You're embarrassing me in front of Grace."
"Who?" Grover asked, still floating on the clouds from the shock of seeing his son unharmed.
Abruptly, he came back to earth when he followed Will's tilted head to the young girl about his age next to the golden dragon. He straightened up and pushed Will behind him.
"Really? You don't think if we were going to eat you, we would have done it already?" the golden dragon asked.
The young girl slapped him in the shoulder. "Danno."
"What is it with you bringing in the strays, today, cuz?" the lithe dragon cooking asked.
Chin put his hand on Grover's shoulder and gestured for him to sit on one of the logs by the fire.
Grover's first instinct was to run. To run as fast and far as he could with his son in tow. One look back at the black jungle steeped in the shroud of night confirmed his fear that they wouldn't get very far.
As much as he didn't want to be around not one, not two, but three dragons, he didn't want to be blind in the dark on an unfamiliar mountainside with his son.
He sat, keeping Will close to him despite his son's muffled protests.
"I'm so sorry, Will. I'm so sorry I couldn't protect you," he said.
The dragons fell silent at his quiet apology to his son.
"It's okay, Dad. I'm okay."
"No, it's not okay. I thought you were…I thought I had lost you."
The big dragon from the trail, Steve apparently, slipped back into the camp without a sound. For something as large as he was, it was downright terrifying that he could move that stealthily.
"Oh," Will said intelligently. "I don't know what they were going to do with me, they kept talking about prices, but when they stopped to eat, I ran."
"Kid's fast," Steve said.
Will looked up at the dragon and smiled. Actually smiled.
"I ran right into Chin, Steve, and Danny," Will said.
Grover glanced up at the golden dragon who must have been Danny.
"We'll just say that those two finally got to pick on someone their own size," Chin said.
"Schmucks like those give the rest of us a bad name," Danny said, gesturing with those massive claws on his front feet. "I thought Will here was going to pass out when we brought him back to our camp."
Will tucked his head down and covered his face with his hands.
"Until he saw Grace," the lithe dragon said, waggling her brow ridges.
Grover squinted at the young girl. Only now did he notice that she had auburn scales on her forearms and in patches on her face. At one time dragons had shifted between human and beast, but no one had seen a dragon do that in a long time. Decades.
"And where are you from, Grace?" Grover asked. His nerves started to settle. For the time being they weren't on the menu.
Grace jerked at thumb at Danny. "He's my dad."
Grover's jaw almost dropped.
"I know, she got the good looks from her mom's side," Danny said, seeing his surprise.
Seeing a human with scales was odd in and of itself. Hearing that she was fathered by a big dragon like Danny was mind bending. He was having a hard time wrapping his head around it.
He looked around at the small group. Dragons who weren't savage. Dragons who had saved his son.
"Let me get this straight," he said, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, looking at each and every member of this strange group. "You guys are dragons just living out here, saving random kids, and beating up other dragons?"
Steve huffed and bared his many curved fangs. "We only use violence if absolutely necessary."
"Which it usually is with this guy," Danny said.
"Shut up, Danno."
"Bite me."
"We try and help people as much as we can. We had heard that a kid went missing earlier today, so we set out looking. That's what we were doing when Will ran into us," Chin explained.
"So, what're you? A bunch of vigilantes?" Grover asked.
Chin grinned. "Something like that."
Grover furrowed his brow. This was going to be an interesting night.
Next time on "Dragons", it's a weird crossover. Let's just say it involves a set of blond twins, a poor candy counter girl, a rich hotel heiress, and Five-0 trying to solve a kidnapping. A cookie goes to whoever can guess what the crossover is, lol.
I know this chapter wasn't much, but I think it kinda set something up for maybe another visit in the future? And I had fun writing it, so that's what counts.
Thank you guys for reading, reviewing, faving, and following!
