*****
The whole family sat around the TV the following evening watching the numbers being read off. Their mother clutched the ticket in her hand, her eyes wide. “7, 18, 32, 49, 63 and 8 is the megaplier.”
Leah turned to Hannah. “We just won one-hundred-twenty-five million dollars. What do we do now?” Leah felt the tears prick her eyes. How in the world could a twelve year old coordinate saving the human race? How could anyone think of asking it of her?
Hannah felt the tears coursing down her cheeks. She’d wanted to be wrong this time. She’d wanted it with everything inside her. “We buy land.” She pulled out the family’s atlas and opened it to the page she’d already marked. “Here.”
Emily stared at it. “Idaho? You’ve got to be kidding me!” Emily was very much a social butterfly. She had a lot of friends in Texas and the very idea of moving to Idaho made her sick.
Hannah had drawn a huge box Northeast of Boise in the Salmon River Mountains. “That’s the area we need to buy.”
Leah blinked a couple of times. “How big is that area?”
“Twenty-five square miles,” Hannah answered without hesitation. “We need to build walls around the inner sixteen square miles. We leave a mile on the outside in every direction as added protection.”
Emily folded her arms across her chest. “I’m not moving to Idaho! All my friends are here.”
Hannah turned on her sister. “Yes, you are! You’ll die otherwise. Do you want to be killed by a bomb, a rifle or a grenade? Of you could always starve to death. Which option would you prefer?” Hannah wanted to slap some sense into her little sister. Why couldn’t she listen just this once?
“Enough, Hannah.” Leah turned to her younger daughter. “I know this sounds crazy, Em. It does to me, too. But Hannah’s never been wrong. She got the lottery numbers right. She’s never done that before. We need to do this.”
Emily burst into tears and ran from the room, screaming, “I won’t go! You can’t make me!”
Hannah looked at her mother. “Mom, I’m sorry. I know I sound crazy, but we have to do this, and we have to do it fast. I had a vision of the first family we need to find.” She paused for a moment looking down at her hands. “The boy is going to be our leader.”
Leah sighed. “And just how do you think we’re going to be able to convince people to move into the wilderness with us?” She hated asking. She knew her daughter would have the answer, even though she really didn’t want to know.
“I have a plan. First, though, I need to get with someone who can draw the people in my vision. Kinda like a police artist guy? How do we find someone like that?”
“What are you going to do with the picture?” Leah couldn’t see herself going from city to city trying to find people in a picture.
Hannah grinned. “Facebook, of course.”