FIVE YEARS LATER – LOS ANGELES
Johnny Gage looked around the table at his shift mates. He no longer wondered why the spirits had sent him here or what he needed to learn. The things that he had seen since he started this job! How some people could be so foolish and others could be so brave was beyond him many times and beyond his partner as well. He was now one of the firemen/paramedics in the program that had been signed into law two and a half years ago. He and his partner, Roy DeSoto, were also considered the best paramedic team in the state and possibly the country. He was the first man to learn any medicine at all from his tribe in over 70 years. Although his grandfather was a shaman, his training had been cut short by the white men who had killed his teacher.
And it had been Johnny who had discovered just what the white doctor's medical clinic was doing to the members of his tribe when he was twelve. If the spirits hadn't led him to his nephew, the wonderful little boy would be long dead now. Oh spirits! How could they have tried to murder a newborn child and then call it a still birth? Even if the child was born an Indian he deserved to live and in one of the worst horrors that had happened to the tribe in years was the discovery that the doctor, instead of just delivering his sister in law's child, he had removed her womb completely. There was a certainty among the tribe that there had been no medical reason for it. He was even more certain now. It had been an act of genocide, especially for such a small tribe who depended upon all of their members to bring children into this world.
He had never thought he would have a second tribe, but the spirits had guided him here as well as back home. Only now it was often to save his fellow firemen. The spirits had directed him to save each of the lives of his shift mates more than once. The vision dreams of the long winter still plagued him, but at least after his first few months in LA he knew what needed to be done to save his people. The trouble was, his people now included the firefighters and families of Station 51 shift A and two doctors and a nurse at Rampart Hospital.
There was a very large back to the land movement going on and there was a great deal of resources here in LA that Johnny had taken advantage of. He had shipped back to the reservation books on solar heating and greenhouse gardening, how to books on different types of construction and different ways to generate electricity to run hydroponics other types of gardening under lights. He had even gotten books on basics that all of his people already knew and sent them home with a letter stating that it had happened once before that they had lost information that 'everyone' knew. These books would help to prevent that from happening again. He sent animal raising and care books both for the animals they had always had and for ones that most of his people had never seen before except in pictures.
But the best part of that first year had been when he had sent an order of baby chicks to his sister and her husband. He had been right; they had very quickly taken to raising the animals and sharing them with the rest of the tribe. Four and a half years later there wasn't a single family that didn't have at least a single chicken. He had spent six months researching exactly what kind of chicken would do best on the Rez and the scrounging birds had done well, although not as well as the breeders would have expected because the Rez wasn't the best place on earth to raise anything. But still, the hardy animals that Johnny had sent over the last four years had done very well with careful watching and even more careful husbandry.
The funniest thing for Johnny was that so few people outside of his tribe knew about the situation. His tribe was turning their lonely and forgotten piece of wasteland, at least in the white man's eyes, into a place where they could wait out a nuclear winter and then rebuild afterwards. And the only white men that knew at all were all sitting at the table with him. Not that they really knew what was going on. All that they knew was that he had an interest in the back to the land movement and that he was sending information, animals, supplies and equipment back home to his family.
He had never once considered what being accepted as a firefighter would mean when over three quarters of the firefighters in LA were white, including his oh so blond and blue eyed partner. It was enough to make him ashamed of himself. How many times had he been told and shown by the spirits that it was only those who deliberately turned away from the land that were not to be trusted? How could he have forgotten the tribal history his grandfather had told him of white children and sometimes even older people who had been taken in raids and added to the tribe? A short little bark by the laughing coyote next to Chet Kelly froze Johnny in mid bite.
The other firefighters noticed Johnny's frozen state and glazed eyes but pointedly ignored it. That Johnny had a gift was a matter that was never discussed after the first time Johnny had declined answer questions about it. In fact he had been so very uncomfortable talking about the subject that even Chet, the station prankster and Johnny's personal nemesis, had never brought it up again. That didn't mean that they hadn't learned to tell the signs when Johnny's gift was acting up though. None of these men would be alive if they weren't observant. The glazed eyes meant that Johnny was seeing something again. Four times in the first three months Johnny had worked with them they had seen that look. Each time Johnny had led them straight to a lost victim of some kind. It was enough to convince even the most stubborn of men that Johnny's gift, whatever it was, was real. And that it was something to be grateful for. They didn't know how many times Johnny had seen or heard something that had helped or even saved their lives. When he was ready he would say something to who ever needed to be told. In the mean time they would keep their guard up a little higher.
He had spent several hours in between runs thinking about what Coyote was trying to tell him. That Chet was a son of Coyote had never been in doubt, what with the way Chet loved practical jokes but the idea that Coyote was pushing was, well more than a bit strange to him. Chet Kelly wasn't a man that was the ideal raiding candidate, after all. But every time he thought of the raids and the people who were adopted into the tribe through the raids (and no other way! to Johnny's astonishment) Coyote would bark, dance or just plain go nuts trying to move his attention to Chet. The signs were unmistakable. The trouble was he had no idea of how to handle it. Johnny had been trying to figure out what he was going to do about Chet all day when he opened his locker door and got hit with one of the Phantom's water balloons. Roy waited but all Johnny said was, "That's it. If Coyote wants his son, he can have him!"
Roy was surprised. "What no ranting, no raving? And who's Coyote? Another personality like the Phantom?"
"Nope," Johnny said still calm. He walked over to the day room where the rest of A shift was sitting around watching TV. Roy followed him, not completely understanding why his partner, who was well known for his yelling fits whenever Chet set off one of his pranks, was so calm.
"Chet," Johnny said, standing over and dripping on him.
"What? And can you not drip all over me?" Chet asked with a grin.
"I wasn't going to say this where everyone could hear it, but right now I just don't care. Get your affairs in order. Coyote is coming to claim you and he can have you as far as I'm concerned!" John turned his back on his fellow fireman and stomped back to the locker room.
Chet sat there in shock and the others wondered out loud what the hell Johnny was talking about. "I'm dead. I'm a dead man walking." Chet said in a daze.
"What do you mean Kelly?" Captain Stanley knelt down in front of Chet.
"Coyote is one of the spirits. He's the Father of Mischief. It's kind of like a Patron Saint of Practical Jokers or something." At the blank looks he was getting Chet explained, "I did a lot of research into Native American cultures. Basically they believe in God, they just call him the Great Spirit. Then there is Mother Earth and Father Sky, they're kind of like a combination of Archangels and nature or the world itself, I really had a hard time with that one. Umm, the Great Spirit gave people life, but Mother Earth and Father Sky provide life for everyone and everything." Chet shrugged, "Like I said, I had a hard time figuring that one out; especially since I figured Johnny didn't want to talk about it. The way he is about his gift and his privacy, I didn't want to be pushy, you know? Anyway, where we have guardian angels, they have animal spirits. Coyote is one of them. Johnny just said that a spirit wants me."
Captain Stanley walked out to where Johnny was cleaning up the water mess in his locker. "John, just tell me, is Chet going to die?" he asked softly.
"Let me explain it this way, Cap. Chet Kelly is going to die, but the Phantom is as far as I know going to live for a very long time." Stanley gave him a puzzled look. "He's going to be kidnapped Captain and this last little stunt of his convinced me to go along with it. He won't be hurt, but he won't be coming back either. And he's really going to want to pay me back by the time he's done."
"Kidnapped, Gage are you crazy?"
"Don't worry, Cap. You can even watch if you want to. You see, this kidnapping is going to save his life. You know I'd never want to see him hurt. On the other hand, letting him stew about this and then find out after he gets through the kidnapping that it's all been a prank designed to save his life is very appropriate for Coyote's son." Johnny grinned. "It'll also be a great revenge for all of these damned water balloons!"
Stanley grinned in agreement. "Now it is to save his life?" he wanted to make sure.
"Yep, in fact, I'm probably going to have to arrange for similar things to happen to all of my family here in LA. Something very bad is coming, Cap, something so bad that I really can't explain. You would never believe me. Hell, I don't want to believe, but I've had the visions for far too long. The vision dreams are never wrong."
"All right, I'll even help. I'll tell Mike and Marco what's really going on if you tell Roy. It'll be good for Chet to get his life straightened out anyway. And as for the rest of us, well, we trust you Johnny. You've never steered us wrong before, you won't now." Stanley reassured the young man.
"Then the rest of you had better get your affairs in order as well. It won't be safe to stay in LA much longer. We won't be able to stay for more than six months at the very most and we have to get the kids and wives out of here long before then. They'll need a chance to get settled in. I'm going to send Chet ahead first, so he can be settled when they show up. They can lean on him and since they all know him he'll have their trust from the start."
Stanley waited until Chet was lying down in the bunkroom and Roy and Johnny were out on a call before he told Mike and Marco what Johnny had told him. "So something really bad is going to happen to LA and we need to get our families out? Including us?" Marco asked. It wasn't that he didn't believe Johnny and getting Chet out of LA this way really would be the perfect revenge but he didn't like the idea of just leaving when he knew an emergency was coming.
"From the look on Johnny's face, Marco, I think if we stay we all die," Cap said grimly. "I don't like it either and I'll be bringing that up with Johnny but if we trust Johnny's gift at all we have to get our families ready to leave. Maybe if we aren't here at the station when it hits or something, I don't know," he shrugged. "He said he'd be making arrangements for our families to get somewhere safe. It'll be the same place he's sending Chet."
"Chet'll look after our families," Mike said satisfied. "And having him chew on it for a while might mean that the Phantom will get some rest too." The other two looked at each other. They hadn't thought about that. It was looking like there was more than one upside to this situation.