by S L Dearing
Horror tinged its way up my spine and I slightly pulled away to look at him. “Yes,” I whispered.
“Where?”
“M-my shoulder,” I stuttered, my stomach flipping. His eyes sought both of my shoulders and, seeing what they didn’t before, he gently set me down on the ground, tugging the clothing away from the wound.
“May I?” he asked softly, his intent eyes studying me. Unable to speak, I nodded. Nathaniel gently probed the wound like my brother did. Except he went deeper. I couldn’t keep in my cry of surprise as a wave of agony passed over me. I clinched my fists tightly, my nails digging into the soft tissue of my palm. But I didn’t care. Blood started to well out of the wound again, spilling down my arm. I tried to keep my breathing natural but I didn’t succeed. “I’m sorry,” he whispered to me, his eyes taking in my expression. “But I must do this.”
“Don’t worry about me,” I rasped. “I’ll be fine.”
“I hope so,” he muttered to himself. I mentally rolled my eyes at that comment.
Suddenly, Nathaniel reached his backpack, which he had thrown on the ground next to him, and pulled out a pair of tweezers. I flinched and looked away as he buried them in my flesh. It felt like my shoulder was already numb - actually, I was sure my entire body was.
“Aha!” Nathaniel exclaimed, jerking the tweezers out. I gave a small yelp as something was yanked out of my skin. In the tweezers grasp it held a little object, which was flashing red.
“What is it?” I asked breathlessly.
“A tracker,” he replied solemnly.
“What?” How could that be when Ricky told me I was free of those? That he had saved me from going through that?
Nate gave me a surprised glance, assuming my shocked expression meant that I had no idea what he was talking about. “It’s a device that trac-”
“I know what it is!” I snapped, annoyed. “My brother checked me for one of those and said I didn’t have any, that I was free, safe or whatever.”
“He must not have gone deep enough.”
“Apparently.”
He studied it for a few long moments before shaking his head and briskly walking away a few feet, arching his arm back and throwing it far away from us. I stared, amazed.
“Wow,” I said when he came back to me. “That was something.”
“It’s nothing, really.”
“Yeah right,” I answered, laughing.
“We need a plan,” he said, suddenly all business.
“A plan?” I asked, dumbfounded. “A plan for what? I accomplished mine already. I got as far away from my town - and life - as possible.”
“We can’t just stay out here for forever, you know. We need to go somewhere.”
“Oh right. Can’t we go from town to town or something?” I teased. “We’re only children, Nathaniel. We can’t exactly have a plan.”
“I know,” he sighed. “I can’t help but to think ahead of time. It’s how I was raised.”
“I understand that,” I said softly. “I really do.”
He didn’t say anything else after that, but I knew he was still thinking of our future. I knew he was still trying to get all of the details together tonight.
“We shouldn’t be trackable anymore,” he said suddenly, catching me off guard.
“That’s good?” I muttered.
“Yes,” he said, just shy of a snap. “It sure is wonderful.”
I glared at him, this boy who was now reminding me of my brother and this afternoon. I fiercely shook my head, trying to clear it.
Nathaniel all of a sudden wrapped his arms around me, pressing me against his chest. He looked deep into my eyes before leaning towards me. Our lips met and I was surprised by the shock of it. It was like I was jolted by electricity. I stood there, letting the kiss drag on and his hands run along my arms, holding my hands. Finally he broke away from me. We both gasped for breath, and I gave him a soft kiss on the lips before moving away.
“Raven,” he said breathlessly, “you are the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”
I opened my mouth to respond, only to slam it closed again. I tried a few other times, but nothing came out.
“Surely you were told that before?”
I mutely shook my head.
I turned my attention to the sky which - from this perspective - had no moon. Nate followed my gaze and instantly began digging for something. A few seconds later, he produced a flashlight. I stared, scooting closer to him so I don’t have to be in the frigid darkness. I touched him lightly, gesturing to his bag as I asked, “What else do you have in there?”
A slow smile curled his lips. “What we need until we find a town or something with much more.”
Not long after that, he went to sleep. I sighed, eating cold macaroni and cheese. It tasted disgusting. I lifted another bite to my mouth all the while letting my mind drift off. Letting it overview what happened today. I was abandoned by the one person I thought would never do that. Aliens invaded the world; which had to be going chaotic right about now. Or more likely is. And the most important thing…I learned who I can trust and not. And it sure isn’t my brother, but Nathaniel. For some reason I feel like I can trust him with my life - that he would never let me down. I was comforted by that, my fears slipping away as I thought of him.
My entire life I was afraid, except it wasn’t in the horrified way but the I-don’t-want-to-loose-my-family kind of way. I found myself imagining my life if I had met Nathaniel before this, earlier during my life. Would it have made a difference? No, I decided, more likely not. I would have been blinded by my family and the desire to be with them. I’d probably just blow him off as a nobody. If this hadn’t happened, I would have shoved away the one person I can rely on.
It’s sad, really, but also true. I was shielded the first few years of my life and just went with it from there. The only friend I had besides my siblings was a small tiny kitten that I had grown up with. I smiled as I remembered her. I took her just about everywhere with me, save for the market. ‘She will get stolen there,’ my mother always told me. So she stayed home, up in my small room. I always made up for it when we got back later.
My mind spun forward, to the future. How would we live? How would I? If the world was invaded, then who can we trust? I sighed as I realized that this was too much for a fourteen-year-old. I shouldn’t have to be deciding this until I was in my twenties. But here I was, sitting next to a sleeping boy.
Honestly, the only thing I could think of that we could do was go from town to town, popping in and then back out in a day or two. Only stopping long enough to eat and rest before moving on. But how fun would that be if we did that our entire lives? Eventually we’d run out of towns to go to and then what? Skip state? I shook my head at myself. Who would skip states? That’d be worse than towns.
I reached into the black bag for a water bottle, untwisting the cap and throwing my head back to take a long gulp. I felt exhausted but didn’t want to fall asleep yet. After all what if something somehow found us and we were sleeping? That would not be a pretty thing to wake up to.
I shivered as one of the aliens popped into my head. I pushed the image away, deciding I didn’t need to linger on this anymore. We’ll figure it out. Just like we’ll figure out how we’re supposed to move on from this horrifying experience. How we’re not supposed to be haunted by the images of the fire, the aliens.
I started to wonder how we were going to survive. Yeah it’ll get easier as life goes on, but for right now what are we supposed to do? Once we run out of food and water, what are we going to do? Go find some? Go find a river? Hunt? I had no clue, but those sounded like pretty good ideas. Maybe, just maybe, we could find a few other people like us - outsiders - and join together. Though I must admit that hope was a long stretch. I highly doubted there was anyone else out there in this state. In others, well, there has to be some out there in the world, in each state, wishing he or she would find someone else like them.
I turned my attention back to
Nathaniel just as he rolled towards me. A ghost of a smile rose on my lips as I watched him and realized that not every sign of hope was lost. There was still hope.
CANYON BOUND
JON MESSENGER
Dedicated to:
Always and forever to my wife, Jacki, and son, Alistair. You both are and will ever be my muses.
Author Info:
Jon Messenger (Born 1979 in London, England) serves as an United States Army Major in the Medical Service Corps. Since graduating from the University of Southern California in 2002, writing Science Fiction has remained his passion, a passion that has continued through two deployments to Iraq and a humanitarian relief mission to Haiti. Jon's first series, the "Brink of Distinction" trilogy, was written while serving a 16-month deployment in Baghdad, Iraq.
Follow the writings of Jon Messenger and discover exclusive content:
http://www.facebook.com/jonmessengerauthor
https://twitter.com/jonmessenger
http://www.amazon.com/Jon-Messenger/e/B00558459O
Canyon Bound
Chapter One
Tommy found a rusted BMW and climbed onto the hood. Standing on the abandoned car, he scanned the next stretch of Interstate 15. Cars cluttered the road in various stages of disrepair as far as he could see. He jumped down from the hood of the car and walked down the grassy median a few dozen feet, stopping occasionally to look into the interior of the cars he passed. Nothing immediately caught his attention, aside from the abandoned Starbucks coffee cups and discarded cell phones.
When he checked the door of the nearest luxury SUV, he found it locked. Swinging his backpack off his shoulder, he unhooked the small hatchet strapped to its side. Tommy drove the blunted back of the hatchet into the window, which shattered loudly.
“What was that?” a voice called from the rear of a truck that was behind him.
“Just checking a car,” Tommy replied. “Go back to pissing.”
Tommy reached in and unlocked the door. Opening the SUV, he passively brushed aside the largest piles of broken glass, knowing it was impossible to remove it all.
Tommy retrieved the drink, glad that the glass hadn’t spilled onto the Starbucks cup. It sloshed faintly as he lifted the cup. Smiling, Tommy pulled off the plastic cover and peered inside. His soft smile faded to a frown as a veritable rainbow forest of colored molds stared up at him from its floating bastion on top of the coffee. Tossing the cup unceremoniously into the passenger’s side, the coffee immediately soaked into the fabric of the bucket seat.
Climbing back out of the car, Tommy sat down in the overgrown grass of the median and pulled a bottle of water out of his backpack. The murky fluid within was a far cry from the clear tap water Tommy used to enjoy before the Rapture.
Tommy shook his head at the word. Rapture wasn’t the best description of what happened to the rest of the world, but the name had stuck in the media outlets as the world vanished, one person at a time. From cars, from planes, from the dinner table, they vanished one after another, until only he remained, a lone man in the ghost town of Los Angeles.
Replacing his bottle of water, he took stock of what still remained. A few bottles of murky water, some energy bars with an expiration date sometime in the next century, a box of matches, a broken mason jar, and a small shard of flint. That’s all that remained of their provisions after the long trek from Los Angeles.
No, Tommy reminded himself, that wasn’t all there was. He pulled out a faded and tattered brochure from the front zippered pocket of the backpack. The picture on the front was difficult to make out but Tommy didn’t need to see it clearly to know what it represented. The sun-bleached letters across the top pronounced, “Grand Canyon”, in large, enthusiastic letters. Tommy pulled the brochure close to his chest and clung to it while he sat in the grass.
“You still think they’ll be there?” the voice asked, as Tommy heard footsteps crunching on the gravel on the edge of the road.
Looking up, Tommy saw the silhouetted figure watching him with its hands on his hips.
“We’ve already gone two-thirds of the way from L.A.,” Tommy replied, rising his hand to block out the setting sun. “Yeah, I think they’re still there.”
The figure walked forward until he could sit in the grass across from Tommy. The man’s round, youthful face smiled broadly, showing little of the exhaustion that Tommy was sure he felt.
“All this because you found a brochure in a pile of rocks?” the man asked.
Tommy nodded without a reply. It hadn’t been just a pile of rocks, he reminded himself. It was a perfectly stacked pile of rocks, with freshly churned earth around it where the rocks had been dug free. Sitting atop the pile, like a beacon of sanity in an otherwise insane world, was the brochure for the Grand Canyon.
“Alright,” the man shrugged as he stood again. “My bladder’s drained and we’re losing daylight. I guess we should get going then.”
Tommy sighed, his sigh turning to a groan as he tried to stand. Stiff leg muscles and calloused feet protested walking any further. Tommy replaced the brochure in the backpack, zipped all the pockets, and lifted the pack onto his shoulders. “You want to carry the pack for a while, Jim?”
James turned with a comically sour expression before shaking his head.
“It’s all you,” James replied.
Tommy shifted the weight of the pack as his companion started walking down the road. For a while, Tommy just watched James walk away, before he started walking hurriedly, trying to catch up.
Chapter Two
The pair left the road as they tried to restock their dwindling supplies. Tommy pulled one of the energy bars free from the pack and took a small bite before wrapping it up again and replacing it. The small bite was supposed to quell the growling in his belly, but all it did was further upset his churning stomach. Despite the strong desire to eat more, Tommy refrained, knowing the protein in the energy bars was the only protein he was likely to eat in the foreseeable future. Most of the animals that normally lived in the forest were gone. The stories he had always read about animals reclaiming the world after humanity disappeared had proven discouragingly wrong. Tommy hadn’t been close to any animals during the Rapture to know if they, too, had disappeared.
Color caught Tommy’s eye as he pushed his way through thick underbrush. Wrapped tightly around a young elm tree, a vine climbed toward the tree’s upper limbs. Broad leaves, reminding Tommy almost of a maple leaf, spread from the vine, and brightly colored berries – in shades of blue, purple, red, and yellow – sprang from small stalks. Reaching up, Tommy removed a handful of the berries and rolled them in the palm of his hand.
“Are those edible?” James asked, coming up from behind him.
Tommy shrugged. “No idea. I’ve never seen berries like these before.”
“Then maybe we should just leave them alone,” Jim said hesitantly.
Tommy knew his friend was right. Not for the first time since the Rapture, Tommy wished he had bothered with Boy Scouts when he was younger. He was a city man all his life. The closest he had come to learning edible plants was in the organic foods section of the grocery store. Despite his reservations, the rumbling in his stomach returned at the sight of the berries.
“I can’t. I’m starving. I’ve got to eat something.”
James opened his mouth to rebut his friend, but he knew Tommy was right. Their food stores were nearly depleted, and neither of them was familiar with the plants growing in the region.
Tommy tilted back his head and dropped the berries into his mouth. Biting down, the berries exploded with juice, which ran satisfyingly down the back of his throat. The flavor was earthy and the texture was gritty. He ground through the thick husk of the berries and swallowed nervously.
His stomach didn’t immediately reject the food, which gave Tommy hope. For long seconds, they both stared at one another.
“They seem okay,” Tommy said, finally breaking the silence.
“They’re okay no
w.” James voiced Tommy’s subconscious concerns. “Doesn’t mean you’re not going to keel over dead in a couple hours.”
“Then I have a couple hours before I need to be concerned,” Tommy joked.
Turning back to the vine, he retrieved hands full of the berries, dropping them carefully into one of the empty water bottles. He replaced the cap when the bottle was full and set it back into the backpack. “Did you find anything?” Tommy asked as he retrieved the pack.
“There’s a small stream up ahead, but the water looks a little sketchy. It’s got a bit of a sheen to it.”
Tommy let James lead him a short distance through the woods until he could hear the bubbling of a stream. As they broke through a pair of pine trees, they found the creek, cutting its way through the heart of the forest.
The smell struck Tommy first, a combination of rot and the acrid scent of kerosene. James was right; the water reflected rainbow patterns in the filtering sunlight. The oil on the surface of the creek didn’t mean the water was completely contaminated, Tommy reminded himself. He had already drunk from water that looked far worse, but passed the potable and palatable test.
Dropping the backpack again, he pulled the broken Mason jar from the bottom of the bag. He leaned forward, forced the jar through the glossy surface of the water, and scooped up some of the clearer water underneath.
Tommy felt the greasy coating on his hand and arm after pulling the jar free of the water. Setting the jar aside, he reached back into the backpack and retrieved the box of matches. He heard the faint rattle of the half-empty box when he shook it. The center of the box slid out when he pushed on the end, revealing the small stack of strike-anywhere matches within.
Steeling himself against his disappointment, Tommy struck the match against the side of the box, admiring the sudden flare of orange and yellow flame. Tommy lowered the burning match to the jar and set the flame against the surface of the contained water.
Immediately, the water ignited in a vibrant blue flame. The blue flame burned angrily, consuming the contaminants within the water sample before dying down and finally extinguishing all together.
