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- Herausgeber: Al-Mashreq eBookstore
- Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
- Serie: Tomorrow
- Sprache: Englisch
Sunrise Tomorrow by Arthur Leo Zagat is a compelling and heart-stirring novel that explores the resilience of the human spirit against the backdrop of an uncertain future. When a catastrophic event leaves the world on the brink of collapse, a small group of survivors embarks on a perilous journey to find hope and rebuild what has been lost. As they navigate through a world transformed by disaster, they encounter both allies and adversaries, each shaping their quest for survival and renewal. Will they find the dawn of a new beginning, or will their struggle end in despair? Discover a story of courage, sacrifice, and the undying quest for a brighter future.
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Seitenzahl: 109
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024
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Table of Contents
Sunrise Tomorrow
PART I
I. — 'WARE PLANE!
II. — HUNTSMEN, WHAT QUARRY?
III. — SALUTE THE PRESIDENT
IV. — PERIL FOR A PATRIOT
PART II
V. — MAGICAL CITY
VI. — HIS EXCELLENCY THE SPIDER
VII. — TO SAVE A TRAITOR
VIII. — NO TYRANT RULES THE SKY
IX. — THUNDER IS A FRIEND
Landmarks
Table of Contents
Cover
Sunrise Tomorrow
PART I
Dikar shouted a warning and West Point was a tumult of cries and the thunder of guns..
The road to liberty is long and perilous, but Dikar must lead his warrior Bunch down it swiftly—if America is to see again the bright sunrise of her matchless heritage.
I. — 'WARE PLANE!
"WHY don't they come, Normanfenton?" Dikar asked the tall, loosely built man beside him. "What are the Asafrics waitin' for?" They were standing in front of a gray, grim building and it rose almost as high, it seemed, as the Mountain that, till two nights ago, had been all the world Dikar and the Bunch knew
"Why don't they come to punish us for what we have done?"
Two nights ago the Boys and Girls of the Bunch, with the Beast Folk from the tangled woods below the Mountain, had fought to take from the Asafrics this great gray building and the other gray buildings that made up West Point.
A pitiful few against the black- and yellow-faced many, with bows and arrows and knives against rifles and huge guns, they had fought and won. But the loom of these walls was now a gray weight overhanging Dikar, and a heavy dread of what brooded beyond the hills had taken the place of the blazing joy of that victory.
"Maybe they don't quite believe we have done it, son." Normanfenton's massive head, black-bearded, lined with worry and sadness, did not turn to Dikar "Or maybe they're waiting to find out how we did it, how strong we are and what weapons we have."
From under the dark, bushy brows thoughtful eyes watched the bustle on the grassy, flat field that stretched before them, ten times as big as the Clearing on the Mountain. "From what the farmers who have been flocking in here have to say, not many of the black soldiers who escaped us can have gotten through to New York. All over the countryside they were waylaid that night, their throats cut, their bodies hidden."
"At least we have accomplished that much, sir," Walt put in from the other side of Normanfenton. "Our people would not have dared even to scowl at an Asafric, much less lay a finger on one, before we pulled this thing off. At least we have given them courage."
"Courage?" Normanfenton's gnarled hand, bigger even than Dikar's, closed slowly into a fist. "God grant that it does not turn out to be only rashness we have inspired in them, that we have not merely brought on them even worse cruelties than they already have had to bear.
"I am not at all sure, this morning, that this adventure of ours is anything but sheer madness. We are still without news from beyond the circle of cannon and machine-gun nests that give us a little safety here."
"We ought to hear something pretty soon." Walt came only to Normanfenton's shoulder. "I've just come from where Colonel Dawson and his men have been working to rebuild the radio."
When Dikar first brought him to the Mountain from the woods below it, Walt had looked and smelled more like an animal than a man, his rags crusted with dirt, his eyes, somehow both frightened and fierce, peering out of a mask of matted hair. "They hope to have it in shape very soon now, and then we'll be able to get in touch with the Secret Net." Now he had scraped the hair from his hollow cheeks and lean jaw, and in West Point had got new clothing to wear, gray-blue with shiny buttons. "But the waiting is hard, I'll grant you that."
"Yes," Normanfenton sighed. "The waiting is hard." He too was dressed in one of the gray-blue uniforms great piles of which had filled a stone house at the other end of the big field that was called the Plain. "But I have a notion that it is a good omen—to be waiting here."
"A good omen, sir?"
"If history does repeat itself." The big, gnarled hand gestured to the scene before them. "Look at the men drilling out there. More than two hundred years ago other men marched and countermarched on that very Plain, their commander-in-chief a man named George Washington.
"Look at the women and children and old men crowded around watching, no longer sodden with despair, hope dawning in haggard faces that so long have known no hope. Just so must the Colonials have looked who watched Washington's men."
"I see what you mean, sir," Walt's face lit up. "The parallel is amazing. Look. The Continentals had their Indian allies and we have Dikar's Boys from the Mountain, strolling about half-naked, knives in their belts, bows in their hands and quivers slung over their shoulders."
WHEN they'd first found the store of gray-blue clothes, the Beast Folk, throwing away the rags that hung rotting from their starved bodies, had sung and danced with joy in their brave, new dress.
But not so the Boys and Girls of the Bunch. They had liked the shining buttons and the color of the uniforms, but the stuff had itched their skins and cramped their limbs, and they had torn it off again, refusing to have any more to do with it.
"Yes," Normanfenton agreed. "Do you recall, Walt, that Washington once wrote about this fort where we are starting our own rebellion? 'It is the key to America.'"
The Bunch had wanted to stay the way they'd always been on the Mountain; the Girls wearing only thigh-length reed skirts and circlets woven from leaves to cover their deepening breasts, the Boys only small aprons of twigs split and deftly plaited. Dikar could not yet quite understand why Normanfenton had said no, but Normanfenton was the leader and he must be obeyed, and so they'd worked out what Walt called a compromise.
In the little stone house there far across the Plain that had been given the Bunch for their own the Girls took from their beds soft, white cloth and cut this into short lengths and wound the strips about themselves. When he saw one of these wrappings on Marilee, Dikar's gray-eyed mate, Normanfenton had called it a sarong, but Dikar knew only that Marilee was no less beautiful than before, and that she thrilled him as always.
He himself had led the Boys up on the wooded hill beyond which curved the farthermost line of pillboxes, and had brought down a fawn with a single arrow. Scraping the hide clean, he had draped it up over his right shoulder and about his trunk and thighs.
"'The key to America,'" Walt repeated. "Yes, I recall reading that."
Dikar's broad brow furrowed. He had learned since they came here that a key was a little iron that would make a door open, but he couldn't figure out how West Point could be that.
Biggest of the three, broad-shouldered, his spread legs stalwart as two saplings, his lean belly plaited with flat muscle, he was a puzzled youth trying to understand the talk of two oldsters.
The fawn's fur lay golden-brown against the living bronze of his skin, sun-dusted with gold. His thick mop of hair and silken young beard were bright-golden, and the clear, deep blue of his eyes was gold-fringed by their long lashes.
"And you recall that those who held this key," Normanfenton was saying, "were as poorly equipped, as meagerly trained as we are, that they faced an enemy as powerful. But they won liberty for America."
"They won it, yes." Though there was sunlight upon it, a shadow darkened Walt's gaunt face. "But their descendants lost it. America had grown great, so great that we were certain none would dare to attack us. We forgot the warning that 'eternal vigilance is the price of freedom.' And so, when the black and yellow hordes swept up from under the round of the world, we were unprepared, and though we fought desperately we were beaten, and liberty was dead in the land."
"Not dead, my boy," Normanfenton said softly. "Only chained. If they who once gathered here were not dismayed by the appalling odds against them, why should we be? With faith in God and ourselves—" A cry broke in on him.
IT was a deep-toned howl that filled the air with fear, that rose and fell and rose again and broke the gray lines of marching men, broke the close-packed border of watchers into dark fragments scurrying toward the gray buildings like brown leaves driven by some sudden storm wind.
"'Plane!" Dikar sent his deep-chested shout ringing across the field. "'Ware plane!" Someone of the Bunch might not know, might have forgotten what the siren meant. "'W-a-a-re plane."
The other two dived into the safety of the great building behind them but Dikar leaped out into the rushing crowd. He was threading deftly through it, was running lithely toward the long, low House, far across the wide and open field, that was the dwelling of the Bunch.
Beneath the siren's howling a little girl whimpered in fright. A little boy cried out, thinly, "Mom! Where are you, Mom?"
Dikar's throat went dry and he was cold all through, remembering, out of a Long-Ago vague as the memory of a dream, a little boy that was himself crying, 'Mom! Where are you, Mom?' as Dick Carr ran through a city's night-swallowed streets, cries of other little children all about him, over him a siren's howl, rising and falling and rising again and filling the dreadful night with the last alarm that city was ever to know.
All of a sudden the Plain was empty except for Dikar loping across its wide green. The wail of the siren was fading and Dikar heard now a new sound somewhere in the over-arching blue, a low hum such as the wild bee makes.
As he ran, Dikar looked up to find the thing that made the sound. He saw long black fingers lift above a jagged roof-edge to point slantingly southward, saw in the sunny south sky a tiny black speck that grew even in the instant he saw it. It grew and became a black hawk soaring on outstretched, motionless wings, became a black and threatening plane small-seeming enough to be held on his two spread hands.
And Dikar remembered, out of a Long-Ago Time of Fear, just such planes flying high over a doomed city, remembered the death that had dropped from their bellies, the thunder of death that had shaken the city beneath him. And Dikar was young, and he did not want to die.
II. — HUNTSMEN, WHAT QUARRY?
THUNDER boomed in the sky as Dikar ran. The thunder came from the guns on the rooftops. Little puffs of white cloud spotted the blue around the black plane, but it came on.
It was climbing upward on a long slant. More cloud-flowers blossomed in the sky. Soft and white, they trailed the black bird across the blue, but the plane was lifting itself above the reach of the guns.
Dikar felt the coolness of shadow about him and knew he had reached the little House toward which all this time he'd been running. He stopped, stood staring upward.
"Dikar!" a clear, sweet voice cried his name from inside the House. "Dikar, you big silly, stop standin' out there. You'll get hurt."
"No, I won't, Marilee." A white pole rose straight and proud out of the middle of the Plain and from its high top waved a bright flag, striped white and red, and star-spangled on deep blue. "The plane's too high up to hurt anybody."
Circling now in the sky above the flag, the plane looked no bigger than when Dikar first saw it, so he knew it must be awful high. The guns, too, knew it was so high there was no use their trying to reach it and so they had stopped thundering. "It's just flyin' around and around, like the baldy eagle that has its nest on the dead pine at the Mountain's tip-top."
"The little birds hide when the baldy eagle's in the sky." Marilee's voice was very near. "But you haven't the sense of a sparrow."
