The Crest
Chapter 41: The Empaths Meet

The eclectic group of plant empaths gathered in the two-thousand-acre campground. There, amidst the tents and campfires rested a bizarre aggregation of thousands of humans: shamans to army veterans, healers to botanists, gardeners to eco-warriors. Standing out in this complex of tents were the last prehistoric era communicators with the plant world. Here were the evolutionary leftovers, whose brains never lost their capability to connect with the plant world. These were the pure empaths, here were the listeners of the trees; they detected frequencies that others could not. Here stood those that smelled the emanations from the ground; here were humans that sensed the psychological health of the plant kingdom. Here were the raconteurs who communicated with the plant world through visions and dreams, and conveyed their stories to humans.

Their numbers swelled. Twenty thousand entered the Greater Portland Enclave, driven by unknown signals, connected by some connection with the plant kingdom. Axel Stephenson was one of them.

Axel thought about how he’d been processed into the enclave. He’d been profiled and categorized as one of those people, an empath. The misanthrope despised groups and abhorred the hippie stereotype.

Damn the hordes.

He saw an important person take a microphone in front of the group.

“Welcome to the Greater Portland Enclave. My name is Danielle Fournier. I am the executive director of FORC. We welcome you with open arms. Our mission in FORC is plant science, specifically plant communication. You are here because something led you here. We believe plants chose you to come here but we don’t have firm evidence for that claim.” Danielle’s disciplined scientific mind struggled with that last sentence.

Gunfire erupted in the distance. The director paid no attention.

“We’re attacked daily by those who would like to destroy us personally, destroy our research, our nursery, and our science. We will not let that happen. In the coming days, we hope you will contribute to our mission here. Our primary goal is to protect our five million strong nursery seedlings, the best climate-adapted tree stock in the world, and of course, to defend FORC. Welcome again, and I wish you a good day.” Danielle walked out to talk to the crowd.

Axel looked out at the multitude of empaths and grew nervous. What the hell am I doing here? he thought. He didn’t interact well with people let alone thousands. His anxiety heightened, setting off his PTSD. He thought about going back out to the char, into the abyss, back to Ashland. This hippie scene was not his.

Damn the eccentric beatniks.

“Vet?” a man nearby asked.

“Yep.” Axel replied.

“Me too. I’m Bones,” the man said.

They shook hands. “Interested in a cup of coffee?”

“Sure,” Axel replied. “Just get me out of here.”

“I know just the place.”

The two vets walked to a quiet corner of the dusty campground. Axel watched as the other man pulled out a gasoline stove from his backpack, and lit it up. Within minutes, the water boiled, and the man added coffee directly into the pot. He poured a cup for his friend and himself.

“That group out there,” Bones waved with his hand, “we have the same thing in common, not unlike you, most of ’em are not good with groups or socializing but they’re good with plants if you know what I mean.”

“I get it,” Axel replied.

“You can relax. It’s not what you think. This is not some formal situation, you can do what you want here, nobody’s forcing anybody to do anything. I’ve been here for a month.”

“That’s good to hear,” Axel replied.

“The Shift created this clusterfuck, you know that, right?”

“Yea.”

“Society has to reinvent itself. That’s what we’re trying to do here.”

“Well, hopefully it doesn’t involve me.”

“It does involve you. You know they’re coming, right?”

“What do you mean?” Axel looked nervous again.

“The Antisis. They’ll be on our doorstep in a week,” Bones said.

“How do you know that,” Axel asked.

“That’s the word from FORC and the madam Executive Director. I trust them and they’re getting nervous, they’re organizing. What’s your thing?” Bones asked.

“My thing?”

“Your skill set,” Bones said.

“I read history if that’s a skill,” he joked.

“History’s good man, but what are you going to contribute to the community? Are you a healer, nurse, carpenter, cook?”

“None of those, I’m afraid. I’ve always been a warrior.”

“We need experienced soldiers to defend the tree nursery. Those young kids on the Crest aren’t trained, they’ll get over-run when the Antisis shows up in mass. There’s gonna be breaks in the Crest. We have to be ready.”

“No fucking way am I picking up a gun again,” Axel said, irritated.

Damn the fucking armalites to hell.

“I said the same thing man and nobody here is forcing you, but you’re gonna look pretty fucking stupid when the Antisis arrive and you’re sitting around.”

“Don’t care. I swore off violence.”

“That’s the sign of a good warrior. You only fight when you have to.”

“Even then, I’m not joining,” Axel said, now clearly irritated with the pontificating of the other man.

“Tell me, man, you travel all the way to FORC following some signal, and you’ll let this place get burned to the ground. That makes little sense. And you’re gonna end up fighting anyway if you want to save your own life. These Antisis don’t care who the hell you are,” Bones noted.

Axel looked down at his feet and sipped his cowboy coffee. He thought about the wendigos and the horrific scene he witnessed. “What do you need from me?”

“We need help in fighting the Antisis when they come, and believe me they will come. It sucks because most of the army guys swore that they’d never pick up a gun again, just like you, but guess what,” he paused, “here we fucking are. The good news is that this will be our final battle with these freaks. We win this one man; we can rest easy. There’s a group of former military dudes already created. We call ourselves 'Team Cybes.”

Axel laughed. “Are you kidding me?”

“Nope, it’s appropriate for a bunch of guys spending their days taking shrooms hoping to connect with the otherworldly beings out there. I’m assuming that’s how you got here, with the help of the psilocybin goddess herself,” Bones said.

“Yes, I followed a scent of some kind, I’m not sure about this plant empath shit; they treat us like we’re some kind of freak show.”

“I agree, but that’s only a label they use around FORC. They’re a bunch of geek scientists, they eat that weird metaphysical shit up. They need to measure every little thing and stick a probe up the ass of every tree.”

“They’ve lost the wonder of it all. Can’t they just accept a mystery in the natural world?”

“Not this crowd.”

“I’ll think about your group,” Axel said.

“Great man, we meet every morning at 9 am for coffee and training. Hope to see you there. By the way, we have a mascot, a mountain lion. It's hanging out in the nursery. Still wild. Go check it out brother, might be good for your soul.”

"I will," Axel replied. Intrigued.

Axel thought about the situation, and his daughter somewhere in the Vancouver enclave.

"Damn my luck,” he said to himself.

His mind switched to the mountain lion. He'd have to pay a visit to the cougar.