The Guardian

By Amy McCorkle

In a world on the brink of self destruction Nala Washington is on the run. Stripped of all human and civil rights she seeks sanctuary in an abandoned church. When she encounters a child exhibiting signs of a social disorder, she must expose her own illness in order to save her.

Hunted for being mentally ill she must decide, will she run forever, or can she save the world.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Amy McCorkle
• Release date: Sep 18, 2019
• ISBN: 9781393991908

Amy McCorkle

Amy is a successful award winning and bestselling author. As well as a fierce mental health advocate. Her films and scripts have garnered her 160 awards and 100 nominations. Her breakout film Letters to Daniel is being distributed by Green Apple Entertainment.

Book preview

Table of Contents

Title

Copyright Information

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

About the Author

Also by Amy Leigh McCorkle

The Guardian

Amy Leigh McCorkle

Copyright © 2019 by Amy Leigh McCorkle

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be copied or transmitted in any form, electronic or otherwise, without express written consent of the publisher or author.

Published by. Healing Hands Entertainment

ISBN Number: 9781689009409

The Guardian is a work of fiction. All names, characters, and places are the product of the author’s imagination, used in fictitious manner. Any resemblances to actual persons, places, locales, events, etc. are purely coincidental.

Printed in the United States of America

First Edition

Prologue

It is the year 2025.

In a post-apocalyptic world, a dictator has risen to power under the guise of a peacemaker.

He is a man of hatred. A man of fear. A man who believes he is doing the work of God.

Out in the world is a woman stripped of her human and civil rights because she struggles with severe mental illness. Diagnosed with bipolar disorder she fights to survive. Hearing whispers and the voice of God, she must decide. Get out in front and lead. Or hide and watch the world fall apart.

Chapter 1

Nala stumbled through the neighborhood, not sure how much more she had left to give of herself. She needed sanctuary. A place to sleep without worry. A place where she could eat, drink and possibly, if she allowed herself a moment to believe, pray.

But she didn’t want to believe. She wanted to be well. She would do anything to be well and have her life back. Anything, but advocate for a world that seemed to want nothing to do with her. She had advocated in that world and what had it gotten her?

A dead best friend and caregiver.

After that she was bandoned by others.

Family who were trapped in a labor camp, a euphemism for an eventual death sentence. It was something she couldn’t deal with.

She rose her head and looked forward. Was that a church?

Churches at one point had been sanctuaries for those marginalized by society. Women, immigrants, the mentally ill, really anyone who wasn’t in a position of high power and swimming in cash.

Churches were also known to be stocked with food and water. Sometimes they even had medication. She doubted this place had medicine, however, she was dying of thirst and she’d forgotten how long it had been since she’d eaten a good meal.

The voices in her head tormented her more and more with each step. Whispers en masse let her know she wasn’t alone. It wasn’t fair and it wasn’t right. Until a single voice seemed to pierce the crowd of voices and led her towards the church as if it were a beacon shining through the darkness of her mind.

It is home. It is My Sanctuary for you. the voice said.

She didn’t know whether to follow the voice or to ignore it. So many times her mind had betrayed her. Would this time be any different?

Nala trudged on. The church was small, looming like a beautiful haven in the distance, where all her troubles might melt always if only she could find her way there. The whispers were dancing along in her mind and her skin. They were tugging at her, pulling at her, demanding that she ignore the voice and find her way someplace else.

Her legs were cramping, her back was aching and her feet were screaming. And in her heart Katie was still there lighting the way with that mysterious voice letting her know that God had a home for her, if only she kept true and walked into the church ahead.

Sweat soaked her skin as the hot summer air blew like it always did, with the scent of honeysuckle nearby, and pushed her on. As her soul grew increasingly weary she wasn’t sure she was going to make it.

The black asphalt was so hot it threatened to make the rubber on the soles of her shoes gummy. Her hands wrapped around the first set of double doors and they refused to give. Her heart was about to break as a lump formed in her throat and her chest tightened.

"I am always with you, Child. You are never alone," the voice said to her.

A few tears slipped free as she stumbled around the corner and fell face first to the ground sobbing.

It was all too much. The heat. Her mind working against her. The lack of medication. The lack of human companionship. The hunger and the thirst.

Send me a sign. Show me the way. She thought she was losing it. That perhaps the only way she would ever know sanity again would be to lie there and die. Since when had she asked God to show her anything?. Since when had she believed?

But the truth was this, since the bomb had dropped she, and those like her, had begun to manifest gifts and powers like healing, the acceptance of God into their hearts, and so many other things, how else to explain it?

She calmed herself the best she could, turned her head and looked to the side. There was a set of glass double doors. Nala pushed herself up to her knees, wiped her hands off on her jeans and with determination cleared her tears away and got to her feet. With the last bit of hope in her she made her way to these set of doors.

She pulled with all she had with her raw hands. When the doors opened, a blast of stifling hot air met her. As she stepped inside her knees wobbled. She looked to her right. There was a kitchen and a reception hall.

She let the doors close behind her and made her way into the kitchen, where packs upon packs of bottled water sat. She tore one out of the packaging, twisted the top off and began to gulp the water down.

As she drank the water, visions of the same men came to her all over again. It was hard to determine who they were, if they were real or if they were her disease wreaking havoc on her senses all over again.

One was of a black man keening at the bodies of his wife and son and a white child tied to a tree. It only came in flashes. Then soldiers came upon him and there was a fight.

She dropped the bottled water and it clattered to the ground spilling everywhere. Slowly she walked through it, holding the sides of her head. Crying out wordlessly she made her way pass the nursery, into the foyer, and, finally, the sanctuary.

"You are here, child. You are Home" the voice said.

Nala was blinded by a brilliant white light and the vision of the second man who had been haunting and following her since Katie’s death five years earlier.

There he stood on the altar, the pews having been extinguished by the intensity and the brilliance of the light. She envisions him at the gate of the labor camp. He is crouched and ready to help the line of prisoners behind him escape.

She hears all the children calling him Father Shane. And all the men and women calling him Father McDougal. One by one they file out of the labor camp’s wrought iron gates. He’s been there a long, long time. Even though they call him Father, Nala instinctively knew it was a moniker of respect and affect not one of status.

He was a true man of God. A man of mercy. Who at times was not afraid to act violently. His past was a mystery to Nala, but as she stood there taking in the scene being shown to her, she wanted to believe it was real.

Since she had no medication available to her and no therapist operating above market; her last therapist was rumored to be operating a black market psychiatric doctor’s office. There was, in this church, only part of the answer.

When she was a child she knew the difference between God’s messages and her sick mind sabotaging her. In this world, without the treatment afforded to others on the black market, she often couldn’t tell the difference between what was live and what was Memorex.

Even her therapist cautioned her, where visions were concerned. But of all the visions she had ever had, this one was the brilliant and the most God-present she had ever felt.

Again, without the medication, the therapy and the support of loved ones, it was impossible to differentiate between a psychotic break and what in her heart at one time she knew God was trying to tell her.

She hated the governor who had whispered words of peace. She’d known the man was a liar. That was a vision that had nearly gotten her assassinated when speaking at a mental health awareness convention.

At twenty-eight she had built a platform for herself that many people looked up to and followed. Many had reached out to her, sharing their stories of recovery or knowing someone who had the disease. It was hard. A heavy burden that took a village to keep running.

Father Shane looked over to her, grief and pain in his eyes. He went back to filing the children, Increasing the impossible burden upon his shoulders.

With blonde hair and piercing ocean blue eyes, his shoulders seemed to weigh down with each man, woman or child who slipped through the gates never to be seen or heard from again. Then he looked to her again, he acknowledged her presence with a nod and he said, I will come to you. When the time is right. I will be there. God will send me. And then as quickly as the vision began the vision vanished.

Slowly Nala made her way to the middle of the sanctuary, took a seat in right row of pews and sat down. She leaned forward, clasped her hands and bowed her head. After a moment she looked up towards the crucifix.

We haven’t talked in a while. When You took Katie I figured We had nothing left to say to one another. Still I have this disease. Still I’ve managed to survive. No thanks to You I have a gift to heal that couldn’t save the one person who meant anything to me anymore. It’s hard to hide when all you want is to be left alone to die. Untreated bipolar disorder is a waking death. Doing it alone is torture. Now You send me two visions. If it’s You and not the illness, then how am I supposed to help a man grieving his family? How am I supposed to welcome Father Shane into my life, when all want is to give up? Tell me. Show me. I’m beyond acceptance at this point. It will take You leading the way for me ever to want to take another breath again. Because right now, all I want to do is die.

Then there was the sound of the reception hall doors opening. Nala scrambled and hid in what must’ve been the secretary’s office. She was done with this world, she thought, until the sound of a man weeping caught her ear. Getting down on her hands and knees she crawled to the door and opened it a crack.

The black man from the first vision was carrying a limp and lifeless body of the little girl she had seen tied to the tree. Caked in grime and blood he lowered the little girl’s body to the altar. Dipping his head he pressed his ear to her chest and let out a mournful cry.

At first it seemed he might lay down alongside her and join her, torn he sat back on his knees. I did as You asked. You said there was life in her still, so I brought her here. I am here. But where are You. Please, I’ve believed in you since I was kid. All I’m asking is you keep your promise and bring Lillian back to me. Please, you’ve taken my blood for my sins, please don’t make this little girl pay for them.

As he spoke, Nala was inexplicably drawn to them like a moth to a flame. She knew what was expected of her if she revealed herself to this stranger and child. That she would be called upon to use a gift that may or may not heal this child and bring her back from the brink. God was calling on her. Why, she would never quite know. The point was He was calling on her and she needed to answer. She had to at least try and save the little girl. If not, Katie would haunt her from the great beyond forever. And even when she died, Katie would be sure to yell at her into an eternity.

Finally she rested a hand on the man’s shoulder. His shoulders just sagged, he was as prepared to die as she was. It seemed this act was all of their last hope.

Sitting across from the man on the other side of the little girl Nala looked him square in the eye. I only have one question. Do you believe?

I don’t know anymore.

That makes two of us.

Nala brought her hand to rest on Lillian’s chest and closed her eyes. She seemed to go into a trance and speak in tongues. Slowly her hand began to glow white and the white light spread to Lillian’s chest pulsating with the rhythm of the young girl’s heartbeat.

Nala lifted her other hand, speaking louder, more intensely until the sanctuary was alive with the electric presence of God and his spiritual kingdom. Lillian’s upper body arched into the air until Lillian coughed and gasped for air.

Lillian! the man called out gathering the little girl in his arms and burying his face in her hair.

As her hand fell away Nala felt the Holy Spirit leave her. The light died away, and it was all she could do to sit upright.

Lillian… the man murmured repeatedly.

Nala was numb. Why had it worked with Lillian and not Katie? Tears came to her eyes. While she was happy for the man, she couldn’t help but grieve anew for her friend. It wasn’t right. It wasn’t fair. Then heard the voice of God. It wasn’t time.

Whatever can I do to thank you?

Well, for starters you can tell me your name.

It’s Michael. The name is Michael. And yours is?

Nala.

Nala, we need to talk.

Chapter 2

Nala watched Michael tend to Lillian. They had dug out some old freezer burned pizza, cooked it and now each of them were eating and drinking water.

It’s okay, baby. It’s safe to eat it.

Michael folded the napkin and handed it to the little girl.

How long has she been in your care?

A year, maybe two, Michael said. "At the end of the world you lose track of time. Birthdays cease