But none of that surfaced in this moment. She couldn't remember a word of it, all she could say was, "Can't believe we had to fight a Chinese chameleon army to be able to forget our differences."
Martha smiled.
"Have we forgotten them?"
"I don't know, have we?"
They both paused. Joanna was the one to break the silence. "About time, don't you think?"
"I sure do. I sure as heck do."
Joanna reached out her arms and her mother accepted the hug. They held each other for a few seconds, when Martha finally said, "Tattoos, huh? And a lot of them, I see. I think you missed a spot over there on your left arm."
For just a second, Joanna was about to respond with anger, but then she decided not to and laughed instead.
Two months later
Chapter Ninety-Two
Ridge Manor, Florida
Martha was wearing her favorite dress to the grand opening of the old inn. The one with the flowers. It was no longer because of the pattern or the fact that she looked slim in it or even the color that she now loved it so much. It was because of how she got it back. She had dropped it on the boat on the night she fled from the Bahamas and thought she would never see it again. But she did. A couple of weeks after the Chinese Chameleon people had disappeared, she had received a call. From the Bahamas. On the other end, she had heard the wonderful voice of Shortcut Mike.
"Boss Lady must be sad," he said.
Never had she heard such a sweet sound over the phone. Martha had shrieked in happiness at hearing him.
"Why is that?"
"Because she doesn’t have her favorite dress. The one with the big flowers. Boss Lady needs to look nice for Boss Lady's man."
They had chatted for a very long time after that and Mike had told her about how he had survived getting back to the island and how he had been put in jail by the Chinese before they finally all left suddenly and he could get back to his family. One day, after it was all over, he wanted to go fishing and borrow his friend's boat. He had found the dress in the bottom of it and decided Martha needed it back.
She had received it in the mail a week later.
Martha was more than thrilled to see how everything had quickly gone back to normal. The media had been all over the story of the invasion and how it could be that the rest of the world and, most importantly of all, why no one in any other state had realized that Florida had been invaded. Where was Washington? they asked. Where was the president?
They had thought the state was hit by a hurricane, was the official explanation. They had seen it on the radar, a surge of some sort, and couldn't determine if it was water or clouds they could see but it had covered the entire state and the Bahamas. A strange weather phenomenon, they called it. Unexplainable. But the state had lost all its power during this strange weather and no one dared to fly over or go down there to see what was going on till it had moved away. But it had been lingering over the state for days and no one could explain exactly what it was. They used lots of words like El Nino, and La Niña and global warming, but none of these terms could really explain what it was. Especially not when the citizens of Florida finally were liberated and told the tale of strange Chinese soldiers with claw-like feet and tails. After that, the media stopped talking about it and especially about how easy it had been for these chameleon people to invade an entire state and its many military bases.
Martha didn't care anymore what they said or didn't say. She was so thrilled to have her entire family once again living in the same city.
And today was the best day of them all. It was the day when Joanna finally opened up her inn that she had worked for months to get ready. Wayne had helped her, a lot, and Martha couldn't quite let the thought go that those two seemed to grow more and more fond of each other as the days passed. It was the sort of thing a mother could spot way before they saw it themselves.
"Ridge Manor Inn is going to be the pride of this town," Mayor Mary Stephenson said in her speech.
She was up for election next year, and there were speculations about her and whether she was going to retire, but Martha knew her old friend would never let her beloved town down. The dolls would have to wait.
"I never said I would do that, are you kidding me?"
Martha turned and shushed the couple standing behind her. It was Mr. and Mrs. Johnson. After the initial joy over being reconciled had subsided, they hadn't been able to stop fighting, like they had before Susan had disappeared.
After the mayor finished her speech, Joanna appeared, her guitar in hand. A rush of pride went through Martha's body. Joanna cleared her throat and looked at the crowd and, for the first time since Jack died, she sang a song in front of an audience. With eyes closed and tears rolling across her cheeks, she sang Seasons in the Sun.
In the middle of the last verse, Joanna broke down and cried and the song ended abruptly. Ellie Mae was the first to react. She let go of Martha's hand, ran to her mother and hugged her, the microphone still on, when she spoke, "It's okay, Mommy. He's in a good place now, remember?"
"I know, sweetie," Joanna said. "I know, baby."
"It was Jack's favorite song," Joanna turned and said to the crowd, wiping away her tears while everyone made sympathetic noises.
Ellie Mae went quiet, then lifted her eyes, looked at her mother, and said pensively, "Mom, I think I wanted him to die; am I a bad person? Is it my fault he died?"
The crowd went completely quiet while Joanna stroked her daughter's hair. "No, baby. It’s all right. I wanted him to die too. He was in pain and so were we. Now, it's time for us to live a little again. You wanna do that with me?"
The girl nodded. "I'd like that very much."
They hugged again and not a single eye was dry. Joanna chuckled, took off the guitar, and rose to her feet. She walked to the ribbon, grabbed the big pair of scissors, looked into the crowd, and said, "I now declare The Ridge Manor Inn to be open. And I will promise you to make sure we never run out of Tabasco sauce."
Joanna said the last part with a wink, just before she cut the ribbon. Everyone cheered. They were all there. All the citizens of the town that had survived. Old Doug Morrison, Mrs. Zetterman and Mrs. Young, everyone from the bank, Barney from the hardware store, Tim, Nick and his wife, Shannon, Sheriff Wayne, and his daughter Arlene, even Miss Trudy, who was a little worried about this new possible competition in town.
Yes, it was indeed a very good day for the citizens of Ridge Manor and especially for the proud grandmother, who stood in the crowd of people holding the hand of her husband Carl, who had recently received a new hip. On the other side of her stood her son Josh, a newly pregnant Irene (it was still a secret) with Marley holding her hand and their ugly dog Bella on a leash next to them.
No one in town had spoken about the invasion since. No one asked questions or sought answers. Mostly because they knew they were never going to get them. It was just one of those mysteries of life that was never going to be solved or explained, kind of like the Swamp-Ape.
It wasn't that they had forgotten it had happened, but they had all decided it was time to move on.
Rumor was later told around town that when Sheriff Wayne took down the old Stromberg-Carlson from the wall of his office, it rang again, not once or twice, but three times.
He never picked it up.
THE END
Afterword
Dear reader,
Thank you for purchasing The Surge. I hope you enjoyed it. I had a ton of fun writing it. This book is of course mostly a product of my - sometimes crazy - imagination. There are however a few things that I have taken from the real world. Like using Tabasco sauce to get rid of chameleons and like the Chinese teleporting something to outer space. It actually happened. You can read more about it here:
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-40594387
and:
https://www.hunker.com/13405944/how-to-get-rid-of-chameleons
The idea for the Chinese invasion actually c
ame to me on our trip to The Bahamas this summer. Our driver - who called himself Shortcut Mike - told us how the Chinese were buying land all over the Bahamas and building big hotels and condos. He also told us they donated the stadium to the islands and that it was the Chinese government who was behind it. I have later heard that they are also buying lots of land on the African continent. I couldn't stop thinking about it when I got home. What if the Chinese took over all of a sudden, and what if they weren't really Chinese?
But again, that's just my imagination. It doesn’t necessary mean an invasion is upon us.
At least I don't hope so.
Thanks again for all your support. Don't forget to leave a review if you can. It is greatly appreciated.
Take care,
Willow
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About the Author
The Queen of Scream, Willow Rose, is an international best-selling author. She writes Mystery/Suspense/Horror, Paranormal Romance and Fantasy. She is inspired by authors like James Patterson, Agatha Christie, Stephen King, Anne Rice, and Isabel Allende. She lives on Florida's Space Coast with her husband and two daughters. When she is not writing or reading, you'll find her surfing and watching the dolphins play in the waves of the Atlantic Ocean. She has sold more than two million books.
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For a special sneak peak of Willow Rose's Bestselling Post-apocalyptic Novel Girl Divided turn to the next page.
Prologue
Chapter 1
Even the people starting the fire probably could never foresee the havoc and destruction it would cause. Maybe they could and maybe they wanted it. Maybe that was why they did it. But, then again, do people really want war? Or does it just happen?
The people of the Calvary Temple Baptist Church, who met in the red wooden building on Alvin Callender Street in the heart of New Orleans, certainly never thought of this bright and unusually hot Sunday morning as a turning point in history when they arrived at church just before ten o'clock as usual.
To them, it was a Sunday like every other.
Well, that isn't entirely the truth. Something was very different this morning, something that had all the churchgoers’ attention, but it wasn't something they spoke about out loud. Instead, they whispered as they passed, or stared at Tiffany from the pews in front of her with curious eyes and some anxiety.
Tiffany knew they were staring and whispering behind her back, but she cared very little. She loved her newborn baby girl, no matter if people talked and whispered about her freakish appearance. It was, after all, not her fault that she looked the way she did.
How could anyone act like this toward a young child?
Next to Tiffany sat Gregory, her husband. He was sighing and rubbing his forehead, partly because of the heat, but mostly because he was not enjoying the many stares and glances falling upon him, wondering, could he really be the father? How could they have had a little girl like that, being as they were both black? How had they had a child that was half white and half of color?
But the child was his. Tiffany had assured him repeatedly. She had not been with another man. No one could explain why the girl looked like this. Not even the doctors. Maybe it was a lack of mel
anin, they stated. But no one knew for certain what caused it. There had been records of children with one blue and one brown eye before, but never of one having one entire side of their face and body white, the skin and hair as white as snow, and the other side black and dark as the night.
But that was the way Jetta was. And Tiffany loved her just the same.
"Let's close our eyes and pray," Pastor Lawrence said.
Tiffany did, holding baby Jetta close to her chest while she slept. Only three weeks old and she was the dearest thing. Tiffany had heard so many stories of how the baby would ruin her sleep, but there had been nothing of that sort from Jetta. She had been sleeping…well, like a baby…ever since birth and never fussed much. The quietness along with her appearance had made Tiffany's mother anxious.
"The child is evil, I tell ya," she said, spitting on the floor. She was trying to drive out the demon in her whenever Tiffany wasn't looking. "I can smell it on her skin. Death and decay from the pit of hell. Still smells burnt. She is sent here to destroy us all, I tell ya."
"She is no such thing," Tiffany had told her, laughing even though she was slightly anxious. Her mother had always believed in all that old superstition. Growing up in New Orleans, Tiffany had listened to it all her life. All the nonsense about the spirits and gods walking among us, but Tiffany never quite bought into any of it. Still, when you have listened to things like that your entire life, you never can stop wondering, what if? What if there is something to what she is saying?