The Story of Caroline

Prologue


2314


         World War III broke out because technology had become too much, and was creating huge snags in the earth that people had been ignoring for a thousand years. The human race was almost wiped out when people started to understand that they couldn’t live like that anymore, it just wasn’t meant to be.

The unhealthiness of the air, there could be no more cars that ran on gasoline, no more factories that polluted the sky. The Earth couldn’t take it.

They converted to windmills and solar electricity, moved out of heavily populated suburban areas, and started to grow their own food.  Just like the people a thousand years ago, all the creatures from the myths and legends started to return as the earth slowly
Became healthier, and roamed the forests once again like they used to, all those years ago.

People were not less civilized, but quite the opposite, they now knew what would happen to the world if they forgot to care for it. Some people had made it their life’s hobby to recreate items that had once run on gas and convert it into solar energy.

Lots of people had gone back to using horses but some had created their own original way of transportation. Most of them used falcon fans, a top seller high-speed solar powered fan that came in all different sizes. They were silent, too, so as not to disturb their neighbors. 

The peoples’ looks had not changed, daily family life was no different, siblings still went to school and came back not wanting to do homework.

“Caroline, Caroline, wake up!” shouted Caroline’s bossy mother.
“I’m going over to Stacy’s and I want you to wash the floor, do the laundry, feed the animals and make the beds, ok? Do you think that you could do that for once?”
         “Like I do every day,” Caroline grumbled to herself as she got out of bed. “But not today!” she thought to herself. “No. Everything will go exactly as planned. Today, I’m free!” She thought to herself excitedly. She and her friend Jackson, who lived by himself in a barn, were going to see the world. (In other words, run away) Caroline and Jackson didn’t see it like that though, they had carefully planed it out; she had been fixing up her dads flying machine, which was a jet black knee-board fashioned to a pair of 12 inch wings on either side of it. Under each wing was a simple, high speed fan called a Falcon Fan. The knee board is a little tricky to steer, having to adjust the fan speed if you wanted to go anywhere, but it was pretty easy once you got the hang of it.
She opened her closet door and quickly grabbed her back pack, then, she ran to her dresser and shoved four days worth of clothes into it, along with a book ‘just in case’ drawing pad and pencils. Shaking with excitement, she hurried into the kitchen to grab meat, cheese and fruit, both dried and fresh. She packed them carefully into a tiny cooler and headed for the garage. ‘Why am I hurrying?’ she thought to herself, ‘mom won’t be back until late, I have all the time in the world! Still…. I want to hurry.’ She walked unevenly through the garage where her dad had spent so much of his time working on the knee board, but never got to finish. Caroline’s dad had died of a heart attack about a year ago and ever since then, her mom had become an alcoholic and went to her boyfriends house every day when she said that she was going to her friend Stacy’s house. She left Caroline all the chores, and when ever she brought her boyfriend over to their house and Caroline refused to be their little servant, Bert, (her mothers boyfriend) had beaten Caroline to the ground while he was drunk and then locked her out of the house. The thing that hurt Caroline the worst though, was not the beating, but the fact that all her mother did about it was laugh. Caroline had sat on the front step and cried until Jackson, who had suspiciously been walking down the street at the time offered to share his red barn with her. She accepted, having no where else to go for the night, and there they had made their plans to run away.
Caroline shook her head to clear it of the bad memories and pulled off the sheet covering the knee board. She smiled happily, and started the fans. Buckling in her legs and the cooler, she turned up the power so that she was hovering above the ground. She looked around for one last time before she pushed the button to open the garage door, tightened her back-pack straps, and zoomed off, trailing the cooler behind her.

She flew over the town where she was born with no regrets. Shortly, after flying for about five minutes, she came to the field where she and Jackson had agreed to meet at. She saw him sprawled out in the middle of a dirty quilt with a scruffy beat up back pack lying beside him. His brown checkered beanie hat was covering his face from the sun and his sandy brown hair stuck out in all different directions. A bird was sitting on his toe, cleaning its feathers.  Caroline landed the knee board silently and went to go sit on the quilt beside him. Jackson had been mysteriously dropped into a corn field next to his red barn on a very cloudy day when he was about five. He had raised himself, stealing other people’s food and buying clothes with money that he had either pick-pocketed, or won from the local barmen playing poker. Most of the boys in the village were not allowed to play with him, unless they snuck out to play. Being seen with Jackson was the height of cool, everyone wanted to be like him, except Caroline who had spent too many nights sleeping in his barn because she was locked out of her own house and had found it very unpleasant. That was one of the many reasons that Jackson liked her so much, she didn’t worship him for being a loner. In fact, he was the one who followed her around like a puppy begging for attention. Jackson had a way with birds to, they loved him. There was always a bird sitting on his shoulder, and often he would whistle with them as he was walking down the street. His favorite, a robin who he had named Birdy had been taught to fly to carlines window and chirp until she came outside then Birdy would fly a little ways and wait for her, leading her to Jackson. Some times, if Caroline didn’t feel like playing, she would feed Birdy some bread crumbs and it would eat them greedily and fly back to Jackson chirping apologetically. Jackson usually wore the same thing, a brown beanie, a plaid coat that was two sizes to big for him, grass stained jeans with holes every where, and no shoes. He hated shoes with a passion, though he did have a pair that he had stolen from a boy who had tried to spray paint Jackson’s barn because the boy’s girlfriend had dumped him because she had a crush on Jackson, who only had eyes for Caroline.

She taped his shoulder to wake him up. He grunted. She shook it. He snorted. She shook it harder, grabbed his beanie and slapped him with it.
“Stop… stop…. I don’t like it…” he said and rolled over, grabbing his beanie as he did. Caroline sighed, he had always been impossible to wake up.
“Jackson! WAKE UP!’’ she shouted in his ear.
‘’what?’’ he said irritated, heaving himself into a sitting position and rubbing his eyes sleepily. 
“You wouldn’t wake up.’’ She said, ‘’ we gotta go, come on! There’s no time to lose, I want to see things! I will leave without you, you said yourself you didn’t have any reason to come.”
‘’ ok, ok keep your shirt on! But uh…. Do you have anything to eat? I’m starving.” He complained.
“Not for right now and your always hungry!” she teased.
“Yea well…” he laughed, “what are you waiting for? I just can’t seem to get you moving!”
“But you were the one… oh I see how it is. But seriously, let’s go. I’ve always wanted to see the ocean, so we’ll go there first.” She decided. The flight was a little uncomfortable having no back seat, but the knee board had handle bars and seat belts, and the person who wasn’t driving could sit comfortably behind the driver and dangle there legs off the back. It wasn’t easy to sleep, but it was possible. The knee board only had three instruments:  speedometer, GPS and an altitude gage. They flew until around dusk, where they had dinner and changed drivers.
Caroline looked at her watch,
“Err… 1:30” she groaned, “Time for me to drive.”
“I let you sleep late, wasn’t that nice of me?” Jackson asked.
“Oh yea, so generous.” She said sarcastically. She took off her seat belt so that she could turn around and lay her head on his shoulder, and clung to his waist with all her strength as he spiraled dangerously up towards the clouds.
“WHAT ARE YOU DOING?” she screamed.
“Don’t panic, I wanted to see the clouds, they make feel at home.”
“You could’ve told me, I didn’t have my seat belt on.” She said, half joking.
“Well you could’ve told me.” 

They broke through the clouds and sat, staring at the beautiful, moon bathed scene before them. The clouds had taken all different shapes; at least, they looked like it.  They saw all sorts of weird animals like hippos and dinosaurs, cougars and fish, just like you would if you went out on a beautiful day and lay down on the grass to make out shapes in the clouds.
“Oh look! Look… it’s a dragon!” she exclaimed.
“Where? Oh yea! See, I told you it’d be fun.” They flew on ‘till sunrise, threading in and out of the humongas, puffy clouds. Caroline had no doubts that she had made the right decision in running away, she was having the time of her life with Jackson, and knew that she was going to learn a lot more about the world if she was acutely seeing it than if she were sitting in a dusty classroom reading dull paragraphs about its ancient castles and sights. They stopped on a cliff that was right above the ocean. She got off the knee board and stood, staring out at it. She had never imagined seeing anything so big; it seemed to go on forever. She looked straight down at the rocky cliffs, where at the bottom she could see the ocean pounding against them. She sat down heavily and Jackson sat down next to her. Caroline laid her head on his shoulder and he kissed her, softly, on top of her head.
“Caroline, I…”

BOOM! A sound like thunder made them jump to there feet. Kangaroo/people (like centaurs but with kangaroo bodies) had surrounded them and were booming there tails on the ground, hence the noise.
“Lemarons! Ugg, were dead!” Jackson groaned.
“wh…” Caroline started to say, but the rest of her words were drowned out by the net that was thrown over them.
“I’ve heard of these before! My dad used to tell me stories about them!” she suddenly rememberd,”there really horrible to! Oh Jackson… I don’t want to die!”
“Look! There making another net! Why are they doing that?” he exclaimed with fear.
“Dad said that when ever they would capture things, they would sacrifice half of what ever it is their god, Poseidon. Maybe that’s what the other net is for!”
“You can swim right?” Jackson asked suddenly
“Um… yea. That’s a stupid question! Why are you asking me that?” she wailed.
“Listen, you’re going to be fine ok.” He said quietly, “you’ll have more of a chance of living if you’re taken to the ocean, so make sure you are.”
“But what about you! What will you do? What if I never see you again? Ple...”
“We’ll make it ok.” He cut her off and promised, “We’ll be fine.”

The lemarons cut the net open and grabbed for Jackson. He dogged around to the back of the net and nodded at Caroline to move forward. She did and was put on to a little cart and rolled speedily away towards the ocean. She lifted her head up to see Jackson staring sadly back at her and he got smaller and smaller as she rolled closer and closer towards the cliff. They had tied him to a pole and were running around with sticks, occasionally poking him in the stomach she could see something in the distance that looked like soldiers on horse-back, riding towards the lemarons village.  Tears blinded her as she rolled off the cliff and a cry of help caught in her throat as she plunged down towards the crushing rocks below her. The cart rolled over and over and luckily, when it hit the water, she was on top. Spluttering and gasping for air, she was slammed up against at rock by a huge wave that knocked the wind out of her. Caroline could see nothing but black, and slowly sank into darkness.


Jackson tugged at the ropes binding his wrists. He could hear something rumbling in the distance.
“sounds like horses…” he muttered to himself. He craned his head around and saw, to his emence relief and shock, soldiers galloping twards him.