by R. A. Rock
Fierce Flight
A Post Apocalyptic Survival Adventure
(Book 2 in the Drastic Times series)
By R. A. Rock
Copyright R. A. Rock 2018
for my boy - I couldn't fix all those plot holes without you
Want to find out how this whole adventure started?
Choices were made in the far distant future that resulted in
Chad, Yumi and the others ending up stuck in time in post apocalyptic Canada.
How did they get there?
Get Fierce Future to find out!
I wrote Fierce Future: A Drastic Times Prequel Novella exclusively for you and it isn't published anywhere. But you can get it for free as a thank you gift for joining my Drastic Times Reader Group, which will also get you cool stuff like more stories written just for you and other goodies. Plus you'll be the first to know when a new Drastic Times book releases!
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Table of Contents
Wild Man
What Happened?
Did it work?
Searching
Finding Yumi
Decision
Sick
No Modern Medicine
Soul Bond
Certain Death
Weapons
Gideon
A Guide for the Journey
Canoeing
Camp
Ghost Town
Pack of Dogs
Out of Control
Insanity
Out of Control
The Wastelands
The Terrors of the Wastelands
Noah's Flood
River Rising
To Cross or Not to Cross
Crazies
Out of the Frying Pan
Proof
Overnighting
The Morning After
The Edge of The Wastelands
Construct of a Construct
Contact
Pastoral
Winnipeg
All Is Lost
Regaining Their Powers
Hunting
They Figure it Out
They Get In
Jealousy
Playing Nice
The Party
Knockout
FInding Her
Yumi's change
Adamantium
Sub Basement
Stuck
Still Stuck
Fixed
Execution
Locked up
Adamantium
Death Knoll
United
Aftermath
Wild Man
Yumi
The Wastelands stretched away in every direction, promising certain death but I ignored them in favour of paying attention to the probable death before me. The river swelled and approached the top of its banks. The torrent was rushing past so loud I could hardly think. My mind was filled with thoughts of whether it was still safe to cross until I heard Chad say my name over the incessant roaring of the water.
There was a really strange tone to it that put me on edge immediately. “Yumi, turn around very, very slowly.”
I blinked and did as he said, moving so carefully that I almost couldn’t bear it.
What was behind me?
“Keep your eyes on him,” he said, and in his blue eyes there was both fear and wariness. “And then back towards me. Slowly.”
My heart was pounding and I felt water dripping off my body from our earlier soaking.
I had confronted a lot of people in my life and I was an experienced fighter. Chad knew that, so if he was worried about me, then that meant that he thought I couldn’t beat this guy.
And that freaked me out.
I pivoted almost imperceptibly, an inch at a time until I could see… him. And when I caught sight of the… creature… before me, my pulse kicked up another notch.
He was a tall guy but he had a pot belly of fat that didn’t jiggle at all as he stood there, panting. It looked hard like a pregnant woman’s. And he had purple blood shot eyes that showed no white around the iris. His long blond hair was matted and full of dirt and twigs. But the worst were the open sores all over his body. They looked painful and disgusting. His legs and arms were spindly. And I couldn’t see how he would be very difficult to take in a fight.
But I knew right away why Chad was afraid of this man.
He was crazy.
You could see the madness in his dark purple eyes with no visible whites. And he reeked of an odour that was sickly sweet.
Crazy people were unpredictable. You never knew what they were going to do. This guy was looking at us like we were his next meal, which would explain the fear in Chad’s eyes.
I backed one slow step at a time towards Chad and Audrey, being careful to find good footing each time. Finally, I was standing beside Chad and I felt a little better.
“Do you think we can take him together?” I whispered.
The man didn’t react when I spoke.
Only watched us.
In an extremely creepy way.
“We could, but do you want to get that close to him?” Chad said so softly I almost couldn’t hear him.
Good point.
What if he had an actual disease? Those sores did not look good.
“No.”
“Then we run as hard and as fast as we can. Audrey, you with us?” he said, never taking his eyes off the creature.
There was no answer and we both realized that after all the fuss she had made, when she saw this guy, she had taken the rope and started crossing. Who knew if she would make it? It was too dangerous to cross now until the river crested and the water started going down. We both knew that — though Audrey wouldn’t.
There was only one thing for us to do right now and that was to run as far and as fast as we could get before this guy got us.
“Ready?” Chad cut his eyes over to mine and knowing he had my back made me feel better about this situation.
Before I could answer him, though, the man seemed to lose patience with our whispering. He raised his arms and roared like an animal. He didn’t even sound vaguely human.
“Go, go, go, run!” Chad yelled, pushing me a bit and taking off.
He didn’t have to tell me, I was already moving. There was no way I was letting that thing touch me. But I tripped and went down into one of the huge puddles with a big splash. The caustic liquid itched and burned on my skin as I went down.
I scrambled up and ran but the man was only a few steps behind me. I could hear his laboured breathing and the grunting noises he was making.
Oh God.
I prayed to whatever deity watched over time travellers from the future who were stuck in post apocalyptic northern Canadian hell to please not let me fall again.
Because if I did, this man would kill me or infect me.
And I had a feeling that either way…
I would be glad to die.
What Happened?
Yumi
Earlier that month…
I. Was. Dying.
Okay, not really.
I had died before and I knew what it felt like.
Maybe I should rephrase.
I wished I was dying. Because my head hurt so much, I wanted to be dead.
I pressed my hands to my temples, which ached so bad, tears were running down my cheeks and I couldn’t stop them. The agony was widespread but I could pinpoint the source of it — a spot in the middle of my forehead where my ante-prefrontal cortex was. A sudden fear hit me and I prayed that the organ responsible for our mental abilities hadn’t been destroyed when we had time travelled, the way Shiv had thought it might be.
I tried to contact the other members of my team telepathically, then remembered that time travelling suppresses our powers. Probably because of whatever had happened during the time travelling which had caused the killer headache.
How had I ever agreed to testing the bracelets?
I mean, I had been the one to suggest at the last minute that we not go. But against my better judgement we had decided to go anyways. And now that we had got stuck in post apocalyptic Canada in 2020, it seemed like the stupidest idea ever.
I had a terrible longing to go home to our time. We had been here in this time for almost a month and I was tired of not having conveniences. I was tired of there being no hovercrafts and space travel.
And I was so tired of hiding who I was. Because so few people had developed the ante-prefrontal cortex — the brain structure that gives us our abilities — yet and there was still the smell of witchcraft and brimstone around anyone who showed any sign of Telepathy, Telekinesis, Precognition, or Manifestation, we had to hide our mental abilities.
In our time, we were at the top of the social pyramid — our powers making us a hot commodity and putting us in the highest social tier.
But here, we had to hide it. And I was sick of it.
The food was good but so simple, I missed some of the cuisine from other parts of the galaxy that I usually ate all the time. I liked Earth food well enough, but it got bland after a while.
We had just attempted to return to our own time. But based on how I felt, I figured we hadn’t made it. And the thought made me feel hollow inside. I couldn’t stay here much longer. I needed to go home so badly that my insides were twisted with the wanting.
I tried to open my eyes but couldn’t even pry one of them open. Chad always said my eyes were almond shaped. He always liked their shape and colour. But why was I thinking about what Chad thought about my eyes right now? Maybe my brain had been damaged more than I realized.
I put my hands to my head and willed the pain to abate. I could feel that my long black hair had come loose and was a mess. The dryness of my tongue made it hard to unstick my mouth and tasted as if I hadn’t brushed my teeth in a month. I hoped that I hadn’t been unconscious for a month. But no. That was impossible. It had probably only been an hour or so that I had been out.
I wondered what had happened. We had all had such faith that Shiv could fix the devices. He was a genius, after all.
Guess he hadn’t.
Or wait. What if we had actually got home?
Back to our own time — 2481?
I forced my eyes open, hissing as the agony ratcheted up another notch but I ignored it, needing to find out whether we had made it or not. I have a fairly high tolerance for pain and I endured the suffering for a moment before my eyes cleared enough for me to see.
It was night. But there was enough light to see that I was still in a forest in autumn. That didn’t tell me anything. We had left from a forest, too. And the air was cool on my face, not unreasonable for fall in northern Manitoba at any time in the past two thousand years. I lay on some soft moss that would have been quite comfortable if my head wasn’t splitting in two. When I turned onto my back with a groan and looked up, I was surprised to see people.
Standing above me were two ruggedly handsome men with dark brown hair. They were twins. And beside them stood two little twin girls.
No wait. I had double vision.
But even so, all four of them looked familiar to me — even in the faint light from the stars.
I blinked and as my eyes came into focus, I recognized the father and daughter.
“Yumi?” the man said, in confusion. “God you look terrible. Are you alright?”
“Why is she so white, Daddy?” the two little girls said in unison.
It was Matt.
We hadn’t time travelled at all.
God damn it all to hell.
I couldn’t take it. I couldn’t take it.
I couldn’t believe that we hadn’t made it back home.
And I bit my lip trying not to cry. I was the toughest member of our team and one of the best fighters in the galaxy. But at the thought that we were stranded, probably forever, in this foreign place and time, I burst into tears.
In misery, I curled into the fetal position and sobbed.
And I didn’t care who saw me losing it, because I hadn’t ever felt this desolate.
And there was no hope of ever feeling better.
Because we were stuck here.
And we would never be able to leave.
Did it work?
Chad
Where the hell was Yumi?
When Shiv had called everyone’s name, she hadn’t answered. I glanced around the dark forest that surrounded us. There was no way of telling where she might be. The forest of the future looked exactly the same as the forest we had just come from — four hundred years ago — and was just as impenetrable.
I rubbed my chin thoughtfully, surprised again that there wasn’t a beard there anymore. After the mess on Balcon, I had grown a beard — trying to hide from my troubles maybe. Then when we had stayed with Matt and Nessa, I had shaved it off again. I’m not sure why. I was still a little shocked once in a while when I looked in a mirror to see a clean-shaven Chad in there.
I wondered if Yumi had liked the beard. We hadn’t been speaking back when I had it, so I had never got her opinion. Of course, we were definitely not together anymore so it didn’t matter either way. And now she was missing, so who cared about a stupid beard. I was just trying to distract myself from going insane with worry.
Because I couldn’t believe that Yumi wasn’t with us.
We were back home in 2481 and she hadn’t arrived with us. Needless to say, we were all going crazy with worry.
“Let’s spread out and find Yumi. Then we’ll head for the town,” Shiv said, indicating the direction where the lights of the small city were clearly visible in the darkness. His voice sounded anxious and I knew he wasn’t sure why Yumi wasn’t with us. “She can’t be far.”
We fanned out and searched.
“I can’t wait for a shower,” Audrey said. And I knew that talking was her way of keeping her fear at bay while we searched for our friend.
“I can’t wait for faster than light speed travel,” Shiv said, joining in the game. It was better than wondering what the hell had happened to Yumi.
“Mmmm, I can’t wait for some of Mom’s home cooked lasagna. There’s no pasta in post apocalyptic Canada,” Grace said, mournfully. But when her eyes met mine, they were concerned.
She had finger combed her long, curly red hair and done it in a messy braid down her back, to keep it out of her face, no doubt. My little sister’s normally milky skin looked even more pale than usual from the fatigue and the pain of the headache. We needed to find Yumi so we could all go and rest.
Where the hell was she?
“Did you try using your powers?” Grace said to me and I nodded. Once again our mental abilities were gone because of whatever damage the time travelling did to them.
I looked around as we walked, feeling like something was off. And it wasn’t only that Yumi was missing. I thought and thought and then it came to me.
“Shiv?” I said, coming up beside him. He was hard to spot — just another tall shadow in the forest at night, with his black hair, dark eyes, and caramel skin. “Something doesn’t seem right. Shouldn’t town be that way?”
I pointed in the opposite direction than he had indicated.
“What?” he said, glancing around in confusion and probably doing some calculations of his own. A minute later, he replied. “You’re right, Chad. But the devices could have been off on the location. They were basically held together with duct tape and string.”
I laughed.
“True. I guess I’m just being paranoid,” I said, clapping him on the back. “It’s good to be back.”
We walked along quietly for a few minutes until I spotted a shadow ahead of us in the f
orest. The shadow didn’t make a sound, though I heard the cracks of sticks breaking and leaves crunching under the feet of my team members.
Not Yumi.
“Hey,” a strangely familiar voice said, sounding hostile. “Who are you and what are you doing here?”
“We don’t mean any harm,” I said, raising my hands to show that we weren’t dangerous. “We’ve been hiking on the trails and we got lost. We’re just getting back a little late.”
It was our cover story. In our time, the area around the town was covered in well-manicured hiking trails that went for miles through the forest many of them coming out at Pisew Falls where we had time travelled from when we had tested the bracelets.
“Trails?” the voice said, sounding confused. “Hiking?”
“Yes,” Gracie added. “We’re just returning and…”
“Gracie?” the voice said, puzzled. “Is that you? You’re back?”
“Yes,” Grace said, sounding overjoyed. “We made it. But… who are you? Do I know you?”
I tried to figure out who the voice could belong to as he moved towards us. We didn’t know that many people on Earth because we had lived for years on the space station where first The Agency and now our organization — The Alliance of Protectors — was headquartered. And most of the people we knew in this area of the world lived in a town further north.
“Grace, Chad, Shiv, Audrey, You’re back. We thought we’d never see you again,” the voice said coming ever closer. We stood in a clearing where there was a little starlight filtering down. He was still in the shadow, so we couldn’t see his face.
Who was this and how did he know about the time travel project?
We had kept it completely secret. No one had known about it. No one. Well, almost no one. We had told two trusted friends that we had sworn to secrecy. And this guy was neither of them.
But then why did his voice sound so damn familiar?
“Oh man, I can’t wait to tell everyone. They’re going to be so happy to see you. But wait…” he said, sounding bewildered all of a sudden. And as he came into view, we all gasped in dismay.
