Chapter 4

John was living his life in fear, he was being followed everywhere by dragons, or things that looked like dragons, and his fear made him more vulnerable to the bullies at school. Everything was going bad for John, but what would fix all of his mood swings was to be able to walk again. If he could do sports or even hobble it would change everything. But it was only a fantasy.

Next week someone came to the door of John's two story white house and his dad answered the door. John had rolled to the hallway leading to the door when his father opened the door and a man in a black suit and tie stood in the doorway. He mumbled a few words to John's father and his eyes grew wide.

"Go to your room son," demanded his father in a steady voice.

"But wh--"

"Just go!" he said raising his voice to make his point.

With a "humpf" John turned around, rolled down the hallway, turned into the family room, and turned on the TV. Obviously what the man said had to be worth a lot of information otherwise his father wouldn't have been so interested.

All of a sudden John had one of his mood swings again. Why should he be left out? He had a right to know what was going on, he was fifteen. With a frowning face that hurt if you did it for a long time John bolted out of the family room but quickly stopped when he came to the archway leading into the main hallway. If he went in there he was sure to get in a lot of trouble. He eavesdropped instead.

He first heard his father say, "Can you really fix his legs?"

The man replied, "Yes we can but there may be a few side effects."

"My son is completely miserable so I don't think he'd mind. But I do want to know how it works."

"Well what we do is perform surgery on his legs and insert the drug into the main arteries so they will spread out more."

"What will it do to the rest of his body?" John's father asked.

"That's where the side effects come in," he explained, "He may develop the need to move as much as he can because the drug is designed to create it's own energy and will make the tissue extra sensitive."

"Is that all?" his father asked with a chuckle. John took that as an insult because it sounded like his father didn't care how much he got hurt, but this news was too exciting for John to be angry now.

"No, this is a list of all of the side effects," said the man as he passed over a folder of papers. "That also contains all the info on where it is, how it's done, and a free plane flight plus $100 extra," he added as John's father accepted the folder full of misplaced, different colored papers.

"I'll talk it over with him and see what he thinks," said his father as he closed the door and quickly added, "Thank you." He spun on the spot amazed at what happened and started walking toward John's hiding place.

John was so excited that he didn't even realize what he was doing.

"I'll do it!" he yelled.

* * *

Of course John got in trouble for eavesdropping but considering the circumstances his father let him off the hook. They got packed and ready to go within a week, but when they got to the airport the bottom of their mouths were 100 pounds. They were flying first class for free!

It was almost too good to be true. Instead of the stupid bag of peanuts, they got served an entire meal with everything. John got a huge plate of spaghetti with cheese bread on the side and extra marinara sauce. His father got a medium-rare Filet Mignon with a side of mashed potatoes and vegetables topped off with gravy. His mom got the super-dee-duper, extra filling salad. John didn't understand her, they get a first class flight with anything they want and all she gets is a salad.

There was still one thing that John was having trouble comprehending, if they lived in San Francisco, and he was being taken south to the bottom part of California, almost to the border, than why were they going down?

"Please fasten your seat belts, we are about to land," announced the pilot over the intercom.

John could have just been having too much fun but the flight didn't seem to have taken very long. In fact, when he looked out the window all he saw was land that looked dead and sandy. But they were in an airplane so he didn't know what it was.

The lady in back of John was fat and obviously rich seeing as she was one of those girls from the TV shows that always has her rich husband give her all the money she needs. When the flight attendant was heading to the back to buckle-up, the fat lady asked her, "Why do we have to land?"

She replied, "I believe that we're out of gas."

That caused an awful lot of chattering amongst the passengers. As they got closer to the ground John knew that it had to be sand on the ground. But why were they in a desert? The only desert this size was Death Valley. The other passengers realized it too. They would have landed fine had they not said, "We are now entering Death Valley, please remain in your seats until after we land."

Screams from all around were combined with people clicking their seat belts off and running around like a bunch of morons. Since John couldn't move out of his seat anyway, he just remained seated without a hint of panic. Trying to calm all of the passengers down, the pilot said, "Please settle down, we only need to stop to put emergency fuel in, they didn't fill the tank up when we were at the airport so we need to fill it up with our emergency fuel to go 300 more miles."

It calmed down maybe 40 people but most, including the fat lady, didn't believe what he was saying. As they got closer and closer to the ground it was clear that they were in Death Valley. John was wondering how they were going to land in sand, because it would just move aside and absorb the blow from the wheel, causing the wheel on the 200mph plane to snap off.

Sure enough, that's what happened. They came down and hit the dirt and when the wheel hit the sand, it flipped the plane into a nose dive straight into the sand making it fall over on the roof of the plane.

Many people died in the horrible wreck, all John could remember was the impact of the wheel in the sand, and he had knocked himself out on the seat in front of him.

What was guessed to be three hours after the crash John woke up, everyone alive made his or her best attempt to get out of the plane. John of course needed help so he tapped his dad's shoulder mumbling with his bleeding jaw, "Dad, I need help getting out." But his father didn't answer, he hadn't woken up. John faced his mother, neither had she, his parents were dead.

His dad's injuries were much more severe than his mom's. He had a dent in his skull and his neck was broken, both of his arms were disconnected and his nose showed sign of massive blood loss.

His mom's back was broken and her left eye socket was punctured, but that was all. John started to cry but when he couldn't breathe from his broken nose, he stopped. He knew that he had to leave them there so he crawled out of the plane using his hands and when the people already out saw he wasn't using his legs, they decided to help.

That night was for grieving of the lives that they had lost. Everyone was honored except the pilot who was stupid enough to get all of them in this mess.

What had started as a happy trip, ended up as the worst day of John's life.

John didn't sleep that night, he was too depressed. He wasn't the only one but most of the people cried themselves to sleep.

The next day, 45 of the 70 survivors out of the original 500 people were sent to get water. John obviously wasn't chosen because he couldn't walk so he staid at the "camp" to grieve. During that time he had the most extreme mood swing ever. He was furious with the stupid pilot for killing his parents, he was sad that they died, and now he was going to die because if Larry didn't beat him up in the first place, he wouldn't be here. John was in a mix of intense feelings for a while where he couldn't stand to live. There was no point of it anymore, he had no family, he had no friends, he had no purpose for living. Normally he would just be depressed and have no purpose for living but after his parents died he felt it was wrong to live. Why couldn't it have been him? He had no life but his parents did. It made him cry because he didn't deserve to live, he was a nobody. All of the people that died were more important than him; he was a nobody, a stupid nobody he thought as he banged his fists in the sand.

"I want to die!" he yelled, "I want to die!" He was mentally collapsing but when he was about to kill himself from his depression, a mountain of sand came shooting out of the earth getting larger and larger until the sand fell away revealing the same giant bird John saw. When it surfaced it destroyed the remains of the airplane, causing pieces to go everywhere crushing everyone except John because he was right next to the creature that was so powerful that not a single piece went less than 40 feet.

Once the sand cleared, the bird spread its wings, and before John, stood a four story Dragon. . .