Crashing Tides

by Gwendolyn Marie

  She turned directly to face the one closest to her—Leander. He seemed to be the captain of the squad, though his age must have been similar to hers. He spoke the inevitable questions of an interrogation, ones she ignored as she studied him. In his face she saw concern—a tale woven in Leander’s features of repentance for having to restrain her. Looking closer she saw curiosity that told yet another tale, contrasting with the guilt. He wanted her here; he wanted to decipher her. For in her mystery, he believed clues would be found.

  “How did you survive?”

  The final question left Leander’s lips almost as if he expected no answer. Her presence mystified him, as if she were a mermaid washed up upon the shores. And the last word that resounded confirmed this, holding such fairy-tale stipulation ... survived. Survived what, she thought, but did not ask.

  He moved his gloved hand close to her, as if to put a wisp of her wild hair back in place. The soldier, the one he had referred to as Hector, almost reached out to cease the movement, but Leander’s own sense stopped the gesture before being finalized. He withdrew as if she was not a human but a vile creature, venomous in nature. Not a mermaid, not serene. Rather, a siren whose song lures sailors to their death. Their song first sounds amorous, harmless, possessing promises of love. Most dive into the rocky waters in hopes to obtain such rapture. A few are not enticed, standing safe on their vessel. But then the lullaby turns tenacious in the siren’s mouth, offering wisdom and knowledge beyond the divine. None can refuse the second calling; their deaths woven in the siren’s tapestry as they abandon the ship, looking overboard for their answer. Seeking everything, but finding solely death.

  And now here she sat, she appeared as the siren who emerged in the aftermath of the destruction of many, holding the wisdom Leander begged for. He was the sailor, escaping death in the first storm, only to be dragged along the ocean bottom in his quest for knowledge.

  But what knowledge did she contain, she thought. None, for she could not even offer him her real name or how she came to be here. If she did answer their questions, they would not believe her, and then what would happen?

  A sharp breath, breaking his trance, brought Leander back to reality. It seemed to her that he shook off the tales of sirens. After all, she would not lure him to death. She was not what he feared.

  “Talk to me,” Leander said, his voice carried a concern of what would become of her if she should not comply.

  Though if she did, she wondered, what would become of him.

  “I will, but release me,” Nyx said.

  Surprised to hear her at last respond, his fears of her being a fiend appeared to dissipate and warmth replaced his hardened features. It seemed the human monsters, like the redhead, could not speak. In her silence, indisposed to the governing social cues, she realized she had left them no choice but to believe the worst. Now her speech demonstrated otherwise. The five words halted her impending death sentence and proved to the soldiers she was human. But even with Leander’s eased disposition, Hector remained solid in his stance, viewing her statement as in-compliance.

  Reaching up again, this time Leander lassoed the piece of hair awry and pulled it back from her face. He tried to offer amity in his action, as if he cared for her well being, and did not wish her harm. She did not flinch from the curious gesture but rather skewed her head to again unbound the strand of hair.

  “I cannot,” Leander said, his voice containing dislike for his position. But for the sake of civilization, for the hope of humanity’s redemption, he had to find answers. “Not yet at least, but the more you cooperate the sooner I can get you out of the binds. Tell me: who are you? Why did you run from us?”

  She took in everything: from the shake of his head to the intriguing frown that crossed his face. However, the frown reflected no sorrow. Instead it reflected the ambiguity of one placed in a position of undesired authority far before his time.

  “We do not wish to keep you in custody,” he continued. “You must understand what is out there and our puzzlement over how you are here. How you even survived is beyond us.”

  Placing his hand up against the playground’s slide, Leander paused. Nyx had forgotten if she had ever slid down the metal slope as a child. Nothing came in recollection. Nothing of her past.

  “You are able to speak, so you are not infected. I see it in your eyes,” he said. “But then who are you? Where are you from? Please ...”

  “Please free me,” she said. She knew the answers she would give would not satisfy them, and her only hope of living would be to get away.

  He walked toward her and revealed a military knife in his hand. The action caused the warrior who had initially saved her, the one named Hector, to react. He had been unreadable during the questioning, standing wordlessly to the side. But now he advanced. Whether he moved forth to assist in her execution—or to stop it—she could not be certain. But Leander did not use the knife to end her life. The blade sheared down to seek rope and not flesh, cutting the strands and leaving her to the independence she so desired.

  Her gaze flashed to Hector, intrigued to see whether relief or disappointment would fill the inscrutable stare due to her release. But he stood, still unreadable to her.

  Leander’s decision illustrated that the soldiers were not mindless killers like the one she crossed in the town. To detain her without reason was making them such in her mind. Maybe Leander saw this, that though humanity was on the verge of collapse, they should not hold someone if they were guiltless.

  “There you go; you are free. Now answer the questions.”

  She stood, about to leave. But not yet, for she mused over his questions of whom she was. Even she did not know that answer, if there even was an answer to tell.

  “I am what stands before you. Nothing more, nothing less. I come from the foam of the sea, to the shore from below,” she said, recalling her previous analogy explaining where she came from. It was enough for her, and she hoped it would ebb Leander’s constant questions.

  He did not step toward her, giving her an acceptable periphery. Still, he did not find her answer sufficient. She saw that in him. The soldier continued to go against the tide no matter how strong the current, wanting answers even if she had none to give, for his questions were not just about her. The way that he looked at the abandoned playground, the town’s collapse. It was as if it was new to the soldiers ... and they were but foreigners to the travesties.

  “A name then?” he asked.

  To give a name contained the same indomitable limitations as the binds that had kept her. To give a name would be even more severe than the rope, for the restraint was intangible and not easily cut by the corporeal knife. Still, he had shown her compromise. Therefore she spoke the name that she had given herself in the fellowship of the fire, out loud for the first time.

  “Nyx Arethusa.”

  The Fisherman’s words now came to her. Arethusa—the orchid, which she had made her surname. The percipient warning of the Dragon’s mouth remembered. The Fisherman’s unyielding whisper spoke in her mind even though the illusion of the weathered guardian did not come to sight. She only saw Leander.

  “As said, I am Leander—captain aboard the Thalassic.”

  He spoke with a sincerity shining through his previous demeanor. For him the tides changed, and the first breakthrough was met. He continued, introducing the rest of his squad, first motioning in the distance to the two that secured the outer area.

  “Megaira and Diomedes.”

  As Leander spoke their names, Diomedes called out with a smile, “Just call me Dio!”

  Nyx looked toward them. The two looked like opposite ends of the spectrum. Dio was large, both in height and width. He was not fat per se but the pounds of muscle he carried were not rigid and cut as one would expect from a soldier. Features caramel and broad, his ancestry must have been American Indian. His face had an everlasting cheer to it; he probably saw a bright side to everything, taking life as it came.

  She smiled
at him from the distance, and he returned her greeting with a genial wave and grin before returning his attention to surveillance of the area. The other soldier, Megaira, had a slender form, chiseled and probably not an ounce of fat on her. Golden hair outlined fair skin. Her face the stark opposite of Dio—looking for a fight even where none existed. One glance at her, and you knew to beware. She paid no mind to Nyx, regarding her as one would an inanimate object.

  “I owe much to them,” Leander continued, “as you now do to Hector.”

  As he spoke the last name, he referred to how Hector had saved her life from the redhead. But she wondered otherwise: did Hector really save her, or just damn himself.

  She focused upon Hector. His face was unchanging. The body epitomizing what is expected of a soldier. His expression showed nothing more than it needed to.

  Leander continued and she looked at him again, wondering what he expected from her now that introductions had been exchanged.

  “We can offer you protection,” he said. “I would not recommend you venture forth alone. That Chaot is far from the last. They are everywhere, the land is theirs. Where we travel is not much safer, but at least you would not have to walk through hell alone, lest you become it.”

  He said these harsh words meaning no animus. He said it as if it had become the jarring truth of the age—an age absent of the civilized.

  “Chaot?” she questioned. Even with her amnesia, she knew the meaning of the sky, the birds, humans, cars. But not Chaot.

  “Yes, like that thing in the street you came across,” Leander explained, his surprise clear as to why she would not know of them. “You do not know of the term ... or of them?”

  She could lie and say it was just the term she did not know, for what would happen if she admitted the truth? Clearly she had missed some event that had shaped humanity, and that had become the world these soldiers now lived in. Nyx couldn’t remember things from before, or how it used to be, other than assumptions. Was it even an event she had missed, or was this the world as it always has been.

  “Did you come from a place without these?” Leander continued, taking her silence as the latter. An edge of hope in his voice, or incredibility, for perhaps he thought it was impossible that one could live without knowledge of and free from these things.

  “I do not remember.”

  Leander nodded, accepting her answer for that was probable, more so than a fairytale of a land not touched by the pandemic. “I will check you over, you may have suffered head trauma resulting in some memory loss fighting with the Chaot. But until your memory returns, know to be wary of the Chaots. A bite, saliva shared, even a substantial scratch from one of those things would make you susceptible to the disease they carry. Any direct form of bodily fluid contact. Once infected you will suffer the same fate of the Chaots.”

  Leander studied her for a reaction, surely wondering about her lack of knowledge surrounding the Chaots and if it was in fact due to a hit. She registered no terror, only a stark realization of what the world was now: life and love definitively cut short, making once comrades into enemies as the contagion transformed its victims. A disease so strong it could break the minds of the most dedicated warriors with but a wisp of its tendrils.

  “Come with us. After our operations, we will go back to our base, the Thalassic. You should be safe there.”

  At the corner of her vision, she could not help but see Hector’s gaze. He looked at Leander with what she believed to be objection but he remained silent, too restrained by duty to misstep authority. It was evident, she believed, that Hector did not wish to compromise the safety of their homestead, the Thalassic, nor did he desire having the extra weight of her hindering their operation. Not only could she be a liability in such a hostile environment but also an anchor to their movements and mission.

  She, however, did not want to accept Leander’s offer. She was puzzled over the proposed safety granted by the Thalassic. If the Chaots now roamed as dominant, how could Thalassic serve as the impermeable harbor? A question she did not ask; an explanation left unsaid by Leander. But that was not the reason why she rejected the sanctuary proposed by the soldiers. One can go so far as to put restraints upon others in order to safe-keep them from the evils of the world. They believed that they knew what was best. However, it is in that belief that they would take away all free-will. The shelter soon becomes a cage. No longer is the free truly so, but now a prisoner. Though the fault is the prisoner’s own, having gone willingly in the shelter. And she would not accept this.

  “I leave it in your hands, Nyx,” Leander said.

  Her head arched in wonder, hearing her name on another’s lips for the first time. It was bittersweet. An attraction, a craving, a curiosity filled her interest towards Leander. With his offer the captain may have insinuated that it was her choice, but she wondered if it truly was. She believed he instead led her to believe the choice was hers in order to make her into a willing captive. She would not be incarcerated by such delusion. And even though the soldiers seemed trustworthy, it was not enough for intuition told her that in their company she would be reduced to a detainee whether intentional or not.

  “I am sorry, I do not trust you,” she said. She did not trust it was indeed her choice to go with them. And so she turned and left, running bullheaded through the grass.

  Hector, took aim by instinct at the fleeing survivor, but Leander placed his hand up. The weapon lowered at the unspoken order to stand down. Though she did not see it, a silent understanding passed between them. Nyx was the only thread offering clues to this disease, whether being able to lead them to other potential groups or somehow even being the cure they sought, being a survivor when there should be none. They would not allow her to escape; they would follow to see where she would lead them.

  Chapter Four: Leander

  Three and a half years previous: On the Marshlands

  Through the swamps, through the marshes, through the forests, through the snow, two soldiers hiked. Leander waded in the marsh. It was up to his waist in a frosted sludge and he held his pack high over his head. Dio struggled to his side, the weight of the larger man clearly making it more difficult. They were dropped in unknown Maine territories, and needed to use their skills to survive the cold wetlands and find their way to the check point in a four day period. But as he looked toward Dio uncertainty rose if his partner would prevail. He could leave Dio and complete his training, graduating with high honors. Or carry the weight for two, and not meet the deadline. However, it was not even a choice to Leander. They were comrades and he would not abandon him.

  Dio stumbled with fatigue, falling deeper into the water. But before the murky depths consumed him entirely, Leander reached out and grabbed him. Just in time, for the packs hovered dangerously close to the water. With their supplies wet their chances would dwindle to nothing, for they needed a way to warm up after finding a drier area. They had also tied their winter wear to the packs while passing the swamps, and those would provide a barrier against hypothermia soon, as long as the clothes stayed dry. Pulling Dio up, Leander grabbed his pack and put it over his own. The weight pressed against him as he used the rest of his strength to steady Dio and allow him to rest.

  “You should leave you know. Leave me behind. If you’re late for the check-point you can’t go on.”

  “Leave and miss the fun? Never, man,” Leander answered.

  “I don’t know why they put us through this anyway,” Dio said. “Not like we will ever use it.”

  Was it even the survival and war skills that the training taught, or rather was it the bond created between the soldiers? The training stripped the men of all that they were, and it left them with only each other.

  Dio reached in his pocket, shivering, he pulled out a photo now stained with water. Trying to smooth what he could, he then showed the worn memento to Leander.

  “My family. My little girl, Cassie. A couple years serving aboard the Thalassic will more than fulfill the requirements of t
he director position at the local Aquarium. Then I’ll be home with them. Man, though, if I knew I would be waist deep in ...” Dio said, breaking into a hearty laugh before he finished. Joking to the end, in spite of the hunger and overwhelming exhaustion. “Never told anyone, but damn, I hate deep sea diving. And here I am applying for service in the Thalassic. In a goddamn undersea colony.”

  A look at the picture opened a piece of Dio that Leander had never seen before. The cheerful bloke sat with his wife flanked to his side. And squished in-between was a young girl. Missing one tooth in the smile, curly hair that seemed to bounce even in the still photograph.

  “Wish I had something like this,” he said as Dio placed the photo back inside his pocket.

  All his life, Leander had worked toward studying the oceans and serving his country. He had never placed himself first, but rather his work. From the coast of Maine, as a child he would sit and look out toward the dark grey expanse, daydreaming of the time when explorers would venture down below. And now he had his chance. Unlike Dio, he trained not simply to secure another job; rather this was his life. All he wanted was to be below the sea, and soon alongside Dio, he would be. But still something was missing. The thing that he saw in Dio’s photograph.

  Leander looked out, seeing only overcast marshes in their path. That ... and a lone orchid, a fusion of pink and purple fighting against the gloom. A smile caught his lips as his sight settled on the willful flower, growing despite the odds. It gave him peace. He did not search for such a sight, yet he found it. As with love; you do not search for it. It blooms when it is ready to, as the orchid does.

  “Come on, one more day. Don’t want to be late. Even if I have to carry you over my back, we are going to complete this together,” Leander said. Dio started wholeheartedly laughing again in response, and his laughter became infectious.