Where Is Here?

There weren't always dragons in the Valley. Actually, there weren't always dragons on Earth. It's only been a few years since the Incident, that's what the media calls it now, that brought them back into existence. Before the Incident, there had been a minor regen back in 2002. Only in China though. We watched it on the news. It seemed very far away. We saw the Chinese people donning their headlamps and jet pack fire throwers and metal suits and felt badly for them, but never, ever expected to deal with that here, in the good ole USA. It took them two years to get the regens rounded up and extinguished. Years later, Chinese scientists traced the regen point of origin to a cave in Yunnan. Some spelunkers stumbled, literally, over a pit filled with glowing rocks. Or so they thought. A minor earthquake caused an avulsion of the cave wall, uncovering the regen eggs. Now, I don't know about you, but there's no way in hell I would think that pulling rocks, pulsing with amber light, out of an obviously once buried pit, deep in a cave in China was a good idea. Then again, I would never BE in a cave in China just for the thrill of exploration. I wouldn't even be interested in watching that on TV. I'm more of a Ted Lasso, Hallmark Channel, Marvelous Mrs. Maisel kind of gal. Sci-Fi was never my thing. It even took me a while to come around to the Marvel Universe, but my kids finally broke me down by swearing that beyond all the theatrics, was an amazing story. We watched it back in the early days, when everyone was still in hiding. They weren't wrong. I was expecting something akin to an 80s miniseries about a werewolf outbreak, but now I'm hooked. Maybe, in some small way, it's also because the Marvel Universe, doesn't feel so far off from our own now.

In the beginning we started hearing on the news about them. Small sidebars at first. A new break out of regens in China. Right away there was talk of these ones being the result of lab testing. Maybe even warfare. These regens were different, they were saying. Faster, stronger and with the strange ability to find anything with a beating heart within a 25 foot circumference of them. Considering they'd found out last time that you need to get within 6 feet of them to extinguish them, that ability made them a hell of a lot more deadly. Great. Just another overblown news story, right? That's all I thought, until I ran into a friend from Taiwan at the library. She pointblank told me to start paying attention to it. That she was worried this was going to be bad. I took her seriously and started listening, but still, the idea of dragons flying around Connecticut, was just a little more than I was willing to worry about. Especially since Mike and I had just booked a trip to take our two youngest to Kid Vegas, down in Florida, while our older kids were headed off to other destinations. Colorado for our sons, Hawaii for my daughter and sister. We had big plans over that next month and I was busy with all of that. Dragons took a backseat to making sure everyone packed their underwear.

The news started talking about the regens at the top of the hour, instead of 10 minutes in, a few other friends started talking about it. They were worried too. I kept listening and packing. More people around me started talking about it. Especially anyone in the medical field. We all learned the logistics behind how regens actually BECOME extinguished. Turns out, it was a medical procedure, that had to be performed by doctors and nurses. Insane, only in a sci-fi flick kind of shit, right? No wonder they were afraid. They were becoming dinner. We'd now all seen the videos of doctors and nurses, outfitted in the metal suits, flanked by similarly outfitted soldiers, attempting to get close enough to make the injection that would extinguish the flame in a regen, rendering it not entirely harmless, but completely controllable. It seemed that once that fire went out, so did it's need to destroy everything in it's path, as well as it's ability to think independently. Someone figured out that metal of any kind not only protected people from being dusted, but now they were speculating that it may also offer protection against this new variant's ability to track anything with a heartbeat within that 25 foot radius. I didn't really want to know how that had been realized. Despite all the talking though, life hadn't changed a bit. The kids still had practice. We still had to get everyone up and out the door to school in the morning. We still had birthday parties to buy presents for. It's so crazy to look back now. I remember being annoyed with myself for forgetting to delay the monthly Amazon shipment of toilet paper, because we already had a ton. How could I ever have suspected that in a few months, I'd be thanking the Amazonians profusely. Crazy. I don't do too much reflecting anymore. Most people don't. Sigh. Sorry, I'll pull it back. It's a long story and I get side tracked.

The week leading up to our trips was busy. We all packed up and headed off to our respective trips. I was excited for this KV trip with my littles Colleen and Erin, they were both at the perfect ages for it. 7 and 4, respectively. Princess heaven for Erin and villains magic for Colleen. We'd taken all the kids at around that age. The magic never gets old. Shannon, our oldest girl, was headed to Hawaii with my sister, Aileen and our older boys Ian, Big Jon and Neel were headed to Colorado to go snowboarding. It felt strange to be vacationing separately, especially since Shannon's 16th birthday fell when they would be in Hawaii, but it was also great. The big kids really weren't interested in Princess mania and the littles were, well, little. So we were going off on our own adventures and looked forward to each other's pictures and stories afterward. Well, I looked forward to that. I have no illusions that the kids were dying to hear about how many times I'd made everyone ride "River Around the World". They all knew because it was probably about the same as I'd made them. They just can't understand the need to sit down and take in a peaceful, leisurely ride in the midst of chaos. They couldn't then anyway, I wonder if they would appreciate it now, after these past two years. So much has changed. We've all changed as people. I don't only mean my family, I mean the collective, global, entire world of humans, WE. Sigh. There I go again, side tracking and sighing. I've always meandered my way through a long story, but the sighing is new, and I don't think it's going away. On the scale of coping mechanisms I've seen develop in people, I'll take the sighing.

We saw the big kids off and headed for the airport ourselves. It was Erin's first flight. Colleen had flown with Aunt A and Uncle Steve the summer before. She'd gotten to sit in the cockpit and get wings and everything. We have that picture on the museum wall. Things that used to be normal, that will probably never be again. The flight was easyish. I absolutely despise flying in airplanes. It's terrifying. Trapped in a tin can, thousands of feet in the air with zero control over your fate? It is a testament to people's wanderlust that anyone thought that was even a good idea. I know some people genuinely love it, but me? I usually require a valium and ambien cocktail, after which I pull the meal tray down, lay my head on it, like I'm back in second grade at St. Clare's, and say "Wake me when we're landing.". Unfortunately, my good old mothering sensibilities will not allow me to take that luxury when I've got the kids in the tin can with me. I can't be comatose. What if there's a disaster, but more likely, what happens when someone has to pee, or needs to know how to use the headphones with the in air entertainment center, or needs a snack. At least they keep me distracted.

We landed at MCO, and any northerner who's flown somewhere warm during the winter knows that feeling of walking off the plane in your all wrong clothes and being slapped in the face with heat, blinding sunshine and palm trees. It takes a minute, and a quick bathroom airport outfit change, but I swear you can hear the collective sigh of relief from everyone. I hadn't overplanned this trip as much as some of the ones in the past, either. I made last minute boutique reservations for the girls, but we got them in and made it work. They had a magical afternoon getting all gussied up in the likeness of their favorite princesses. We went to watch the day time parade on Magic Row and all the marchers stopped to ooh and ahh over them. They were beaming. Colleen ended up shedding the dress pretty quickly though once we got outside. It was unseasonably cold, I didn't blame her! She was happy to keep her hair and makeup, but wanted to lose the costume for a sweatshirt and sweatpants. Erin was nothing short of thrilled to walk around in her costume of riding cloak and pants. That costume was actually perfect for the weather. We went to one of the fireworks shows one night and I had to buy towels to use as blankets because it was freezing and all the blankets had sold out! We should have known then something was wrong, but we just didn't even know what we didn't know. By our third morning there, we all needed a little break from the magic and decided to spend as long as it took riding the whole air car system. It was a great view, the girls loved it, and we got to sit still and not be crowded by so many other people. We were on our second or third transfer and Colleen was delighting us with a little song about how much she loves her family when Erin jumped up, clapping and screaming "LOOK! Mommy, LOOK!" as she pointed out the door side of the glass box we were in. Colleen stopped singing and started yelling, "Erin!! SIT DOWN AND BEEEEE QUIET! I'm singing here. Mom!" and I was so caught up with keeping the peace that I didn't get to glance over quickly enough. Until Colleen looked over and her mouth fell open with silence. I actually felt the prickle on the back of my neck as Mike and I both whipped our heads in the direction they were looking. Soaring along, seemingly with us, since it appeared to be staring back through the doors right at us, was what looked to be a dragon. I looked at Mike, he looked at me, we both looked back at it. Colleen quietly let out an amazed and breathy "Whoooaaaa", and Erin was still clapping, but was also waving in between claps and sing songing "Hi Mr. Dragon! Hi!", and I would have sworn it stared straight at her, before it tilted off to the right and disappeared through what almost looked like a mirror. We all sat, stunned and silent for a minute. Then Mike let out a loud, if somewhat nervous laugh. I looked at him and he smiled, shaking his head, saying "Gotta love Kid Vegas." It was something we always said a lot when visiting there. They always managed to pull off the most amazing shows and rides and effects. I started to giggle in that half hysterical way you do when your adrenaline has been tweaked just a little, but you realize you're safe and it wasn't real. "Oh my God, that scared the ever loving crap out of me!" I was finally able to say. "Holy cow, I'd never heard of that surprise before, it must be new. I wonder what character that is." We spent the rest of the ride, and the next few transfers, until we'd made it full circle back to our own hotel, trying to remember all the KV movies and shows that featured dragons. We kept telling people about the incredible dragon hologram on the air cars, and some of them even wanted to check it out. That was the last time any of us thought of dragons as being cool and majestic.

The next day we had designated as a pool day, but it was nowhere near pool weather. It just kept getting colder every day we were there. Everyone was talking about the crazy weather. We'd started to notice some strange things, like workers installing cameras that pointed at the sky, but we built that into our belief of the dragon being a hologram and decided this must be a new series of special effects they were building for our entertainment. We skipped the pool and rented a rickshaw and took the girls riding around the boardwalk area. I started looking at the events for the day and saw they were holding a special villains night at the main KV park, First World. We had dinner reservations in World Cuisine City and Erin was too little for a night excursion, but that didn't mean Colleen and I couldn't go. Right? We'd have our dinner with the princesses and then Mike and Erin would head back to the hotel, while Colleen and I headed back to First World for the after hours. I was just as excited as she was. I couldn't wait to see what KV could do with their villains being celebrated. We said our goodbyes at WCC and headed off in separate directions. Mike and Erin were able to just walk back to our hotel from there, but Colleen and I had to go take the train back to the FW. It really is an amazingly efficient transit system they have there.

Took us some time and a lot of patience to get over to First World, since the other parks were closing and throngs were headed out, but we were in no rush anyway. We stopped and had our picture taken in front of the WCC golden globe all lit up for the night. That's still one of my favorite pictures from that trip. Proof that fun was had. On our way into First World, I noticed that some of the security people had changed into different uniforms. These ones had some sort of backpacks, but again, we were in KV. Things like that are par for the course. The second we came through the tunnel onto Magic Row, we BOTH clapped and squealed! The castle was lit up in Deep Purples and Greens and Blues, in true villain fashion. Villains were now walking Magic Row where princesses had been just a little while ago. And by KV standards the park was empty. We immediately decided on the rides we wanted to go on while we had the empty park. We hit pirates folly first. NO LINE!!! We did that twice, then moved on. We only had a few hours and we didn't want to miss the villain parade at the end of the night. We made our way through the lands hopping on all the most popular rides, at least twice since we could, and finally ended up at Galaxy Coaster. Again, EMPTY! The only reason we rode it only 3 times instead of 4, was that the walk to get from the outside of the building, to the actual ride is so incredibly long. It's meant to hold hours worth of people on line. We were running through it and it still took a few minutes to get through. It was Colleen's first time ever on the ride, or any ride of that magnitude really. She loved it. Her face was lit from within by the time we decided to have our picture taken out front and then headed off back toward Magic Row, holding hands and swinging our arms together, to watch the parade. Much, much later, when I finally saw those pictures, my heart stopped when I realized that behind us, from the top of the ride building, were two fluorescent green, vertically slit eyes, staring out over us. I've had times where I've wanted to burn that picture and times when I've wanted to frame it. For now, it lives in a plastic container in the closet.

We made it over to Magic Row and found a good spot on the curb in front of a garbage pail, to sit and watch. If there's a garbage pail behind you, no one can come crowd you, a KV truth I learned long ago since I'm not a huge fan of big crowds. I always figure out how to find us space. The sanitation crew was already starting to get ready to close down the park and were coming along behind us, emptying the pails. We stood up, allowing the friendly woman easy access to pull out the full bag and replace it with an empty, clean one. We sat back down just as we started to hear the music coming from the beginning of Magic Row. I don't remember the floats now. I remember the two of us clapping and laughing. I remember the giant evil octopus on wheels, making her way down the parade route, to thunderous applause. I remember the evil step mother, peering down her nose at Colleen and I as she rode past. I think that may have been the last thing we saw, before we heard the screech. The ungodly, ear splitting shriek that broke through the night. At first everyone was looking around, assuming it was some aerial effect. Then we heard it again just before the giant boom and crunch as the enormous animal landed on and partially crushed the castle. For a minute there was only the music from the parade being pumped over the speakers, then came a thunderous applause from the crowd, all elated at the visual effects playing out before us. I watched as the creature seemed to look up and down and all around, taking in it's surroundings. I felt that same prickle on the back of my neck as I had in the gondola, but that dragon was tiny compared to this one. That one was maybe 7 feet long. This one had to be more than 200 feet long. It started to move and pieces of the castle started to fall away. I stared in awe and pulled Colleen closer to me. Suddenly, I was afraid. I wasn't cheering. I was frozen. Everything else around me seemed to disappear and all I could do was watch in horror as the dragon opened its mouth and dusted everything within a 25ft circumference of it. Dragons don't turn their bodies. Just their heads. Their heads can do a complete spin on their necks, as if they aren't even attached to their bodies. Then all hell broke loose. The regen started moving down the castle to start walking up Magic Row, toward us. From the corner of my eye, I saw a second, slightly smaller dragon readying to land over toward the Galaxy Coaster. As I turned to grab Colleen, I saw the little one. The one we had seen in the gondola, that I now knew wasn't a hologram. At least I assumed it was that same one, in that moment. Colleen was crying and clutching to me and we were trapped. Frantically, I looked around and people were running everywhere, cramming into the shops, knocking each other over, just trying to get away. I did the first thing that came to mind. I grabbed the garbage pail and started trying to flip it over. It was heavy and I could barely move it on my own. I was starting to really panic. The heat from the circles of fire the big one was using to casually dust everything in its path was creeping up on us and I knew it was getting close. A guy with a little girl in tow saw what I was doing and understood. "You help me, and I'll help you" he half screamed, pointing at the two pails next to each other. We were able to flip the pails over and get the kids under, then we made eye contact and nodded a silent thank you and good luck and crawled in with our girls. I don't know how long we were actually under there. Time stopped mattering for quite a while after that. Colleen was shaking and crying in my arms and I was trying to keep us both quiet, because I had no idea if these beasts could hear or not. It was amazing I'd managed to pull the metal fact out of my shocked and panicked mind when I did. "It's ok, babe. It's ok. We're safe in here. We just have to be quiet." I whispered. She shakily nodded back, trying her 7 year old hardest to calm herself down. The sounds we were hearing were nothing short of horrific. People running, screaming, crying, begging. Glass breaking. The guy had the foresight to move the pails back against the buildings in a small depression between the windows. A little more out of harms way and less likely to be knocked over. Glass from the windows on either side of our pails, and probably all the windows in that building was raining down on our pail. Colleen screamed into my shoulder and it was all I could do not to scream as well. The temperature in the pail was creeping up to scalding and we were sweating. I was trying to rip away the plastic bag before it could melt on us, and accidentally brushed the metal with my hand. It singed immediately and I couldn't hold in that cry, but Colleen reached up and clamped her hand over my mouth. I pulled us both more into the center and away from the metal as much as I could. One wrong move and it was going to hurt. As quickly as it had all gone wrong, as if a switch had flipped, there was silence. Complete, and utter, eerie silence. That felt even worse. We sat there, tangled around each other, sweating and terrified that our breathing was too loud. Every once in a while we'd hear some sort of crunching sound, but that was it and we had no idea what it was. My Mom ears are usually pretty good at discerning sounds, but I had no frame of reference for this one. So we waited. Shattering the silence, came that ungodly shriek again. Two lower pitched, but equally loud shrieks seemed to answer. I jumped so badly that I knocked my elbow into the side of the pail. It burned, but not as badly as the first time. The heat seemed to be abating and the cold was coming back in, just as swiftly. There was a heavy beating, that made me think of a helicopter landing and our pail was vibrating along with our hearts, then it just stopped. With a snap of a finger, the heat was gone and the cold was back. I reached out gingerly with the tip of my finger to check the metal, and it was also cold again. I hugged Colleen to me so tightly, she finally spoke up, "Is it gone, Mommy? I think they're gone. Can you let me go a little? I can't breathe.", I immediately loosened my grip and tried to see her in the pitch black. I reached out and found her face, brushed her hair back from it and kissed her forehead. "Are you ok?" I asked shakily. She nodded, then gingerly touched my hand, thankfully missing the burn by a finger width, and asked "Are you?". "Yeah, yes. I'm ok. We're ok. I think we're ok." As if on cue a light tapping started on the back of our pail. I knew it had to be our pail neighbors, so I very slowly started to tip our pail back toward the building, allowing us a little space to see out. A whisper came, "I think they're gone. I think we should try to get out of here now, in case they come back." I agreed, but was terrified of what we would see. I whispered back, "Grown ups first, let's see what we see." As I started to crawl from under our safe house, I looked at Colleen and now I could see her, with the light coming in from under the lip of the pail. "Just stay put for a minute. Let us make sure it's safe, ok? Then I'm going to need you to work with me to get out of here and go find Daddy and Erin, ok?" Her eyes were too big and her nose looked so red in her unnaturally pale face. She was heading toward shock. We needed to move. "One minute, just stay still. It's ok." I couldn't even let myself think about Mike and Erin yet. I said a quick prayer that they were safe, and that so was everyone else in our family. When I cleared the lip of the pail, I started to stand up. A hand reached down and helped me to my feet. I started to say thanks, but words escaped me. There was nothing left. No people, no buildings, just small bits of wall left in places. The lamp posts were there and the garbage pails. All the other pails that had stayed at the curb were all now knocked around and rolling in the streets, but intact. Becoming coated in the thick coat of grey dust that was everywhere. That was all that was left. Metal and dust. I couldn't believe my eyes when I turned and looked to where the castle had stood. There was nothing. No castle. No flowers or trees. I could see the wrought iron fencing that had sat atop the stone walls, lying on the ground as if they had been placed there instead. This was what it really meant to be dusted. I'd heard the stories on the news, but they never showed pictures, 'due to the graphic nature'. Looking at it as just a scene, it really wasn't graphic at all, there was just nothing left. The graphic part was the pictures you painted in your mind of all those souls just flying through the air as particles of dust. The reality of that was too much to absorb right then. I tapped lightly on the pail and tilted it a little more, allowing more space for Colleen to crawl out. I looked over at our fellow survivors and watched as he bent down and scooped the little girl into his arms. Colleen stood and wrapped her arms around my waist. He pushed a hand toward me, "I'm Dave", I just stared at his hand like I didn't know what to do with it and as if touching him was going to harm me in some way. He dropped his hand and looked at all of us. "I'm Beth", I finally piped up. "This is Colleen. Thank you for helping with the pail." He looked at me with the most heartbreakingly sincere expression and replied, "That was fast thinking. Thank God you remembered about the metal. If you hadn't.." he choked up and his words trailed off as we all looked around us. We stood there for another minute, just listening to the nothingness before I got the major urge to move. We needed to move. We needed to go find our people. We needed to find out how bad the damage was. "OK, we ready? Let's head out to the parking lot. I've got to figure out how to get back to our hotel and find my husband and daughter". Colleen squeezed my hand hard at their mention but didn't say a word. I realized I still had my day pack on and reached in for a bottle of water for her. I had a few and offered one over to Dave and his daughter, Rachel. The girls took a drink, we took a drink and then we started moving. The brick entranceway with the tunnels was mostly still intact, we'd be able to walk through it, but we couldn't see what we were walking toward on the other side. At least the lamp posts were miraculously still lit. It would have been even more terrifying by only moonlight. I didn't want to move. I wanted to just build us a garbage pail fortress and never come out. But we had to find our others. We had to get out of Florida and back home. To safety.

That was how it began for us. For Colleen and I anyway. Everyone has their own stories of the moment they realized this was really happening and it was going to change our world. Maybe forever. All I could think about right then was finding my family and getting us all back together in one place and keeping us all safe. That became my new mission in life and I had no choice but to accept it.