Previous Challenge Entry (Level 4 – Masters)
Topic: HIKE (07/07/22)
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TITLE: Walking on Mars | Previous Challenge Entry
By Dennis Gallemore
07/08/22 -
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He lay still for a few moments, forcing his breathing to slow, forcing his thoughts to do the same. Both were difficult but both were essential if he were to survive. He was still kilometers from his ship, the Icarus. The first ship to carry humans to the Red Planet, Mars.
He began to hallucinate as exhaustion crept back in. Sophia Willoughby, the only other member of the crew of the ill-fated expedition left alive, stood mere meters from him. Oddly, she wasn’t in an environmental suit. He couldn’t make sense of that, but there she stood.
“Dante, you’ve got to get up. You’ll die out here on this God-forsaken world if you don’t get back to the ship.”
She was right, his fevered brain reasoned. When he and two other crew members, Allen Storm and Jill Overton, had used the sole ground vehicle to explore the surface, disaster had struck. Hitting an outcropping of the razor-sharp black rock hidden by shifting sands, their vehicle had flipped over, crushing his two fellow explorers.
He had been the driver and even though there had been no way of foreseeing the accident, at least the rational part of his mind that was left told him so, he was crushed, not by the weight of the vehicle, but by guilt.
Sophia couldn’t be standing in front of him, that same part of his mind told him; she was back in the Icarus. Still, she continued to chide him. “I thought you were tough, Dante. You always acted all big and bad like you were. Yet here you are cowering on the ground. Get up and get walking! You bragged that you used to hike all over Alaska!”
He forced himself to stand, the effort nearly draining him of his remaining energy. “I’ll make it back and I’ll show you!” He shook his fist at the apparition as it slowly disappeared from sight.
He trudged on, his GPS showing the direction and distance. Now, only a kilometer remained. He could see the Icarus upright on the horizon. Safety. Deliverance.
“Sunday,” he suddenly said aloud. “By all that’s holy, today is Sunday.” He thought of the little church he attended back home on peaceful Sunday mornings, the pews filled with family, friends, and neighbors.
He was closer now. The radio had been damaged in the accident; there was no way to let Sophia know what was going on, but she had to know there was trouble. He and the others had missed several radio check-ins.
Mission protocol called for any remaining crew members on the ship in such a situation to stand by until ten hours had passed since a missed check-in. After that, a rescue attempt would be made using a second vehicle, in this case, a vehicle that had caught fire shortly after landing from a shorted battery, a vehicle that was completely useless.
“I will walk with you.”
He spun around, searching for the origin of the soft yet oddly powerful voice. When he turned completely around, He was standing there, his arms outstretched, his penetrating blue eyes searching his very soul.
“Jesus?” He stared in fascination. Another hallucination, his rational mind suggested. His heart felt otherwise.
“I am He.” He smiled and turned toward the Icarus. “Come, walk with me.”
Dante forced himself to keep pace with the vision. “You can’t be real.”
“I assure you; I am very real.”
“I don’t think I can make it to the ship.”
“You can, not because of your own strength, but because of my strength that flows through you, even on this world so far from your own. My presence is everywhere. Seek and ye shall find, even on the shifting sands of a distant world. Behold, I am with you.”
He stumbled on and then he was there. The Icarus stood in front of him, and Sophia, enclosed in an environmental suit, was making her way toward him.
He turned and found that He was no longer there. He looked back and saw two sets of footprints, but one set, ever so slowly, vanished before his weary eyes.
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Fresh approach and I agree Jesus is Lord - of all the planets. He made them all.
Nowhere too far for Him to reach us.
Wow. So many gems in your paragraphs.
Gem hunting on Mars I have been.
Thank you.
Is this fiction or non-fiction? How I wish you had indicated. Whatever it is, this entry is, simply, superb. Congratulations!
The description of the adversity Dante faced physically with his breathing and every movement exhausting him and his thoughts added depth to your story.
The times he felt he couldn’t make it a battle in the mind.
I liked the comforting thought of his church and friends. A good reason to push on.
I feel this is a good lead in to the appearance of Jesus and a reminder we are never alone.
It is a never ending battle between the mind and heart.
Great ending of the vanishing footprints.
Very well crafted throughout.
Thank you for your story.