Adrift

by Travis Smith

  Patrick continued gasping for air and squirming from the weak grasp of the nearest creatures as he observed more and more of the things collapsing all around him. A series of explosions rang out from behind him. He turned his head to find four more of the former townspeople lying on the ground, unmoving. Another fell as he watched. Then another, and another. He found that one of the things would collapse in a finally dead heap with each small explosion that he heard.

  At last he felt a much stronger hand grip his shoulder. As the fingers dug painfully into his armpits, he closed his eyes and awaited what was to follow. He wheezed as his body was dragged across the grass and out of the fingers of the horny corpses that surrounded him, but none ever fell upon him to have their way with him. Instead, Patrick opened his eyes to the most shocking sight since finding his nude, dying father waiting for him so long ago.

  A healthy boy stood above Patrick, sunlight gleaming off his golden blond hair. The boy was perhaps only slightly older than Patrick himself, and his face contorted in an expression of stern consternation as he demanded, “What the fuck is all this?”

  “Wha … Who?” Patrick stammered.

  The boy held a black, metal machine the likes of which Patrick had never before beheld. The device was as long as his arm, and when he held it up to his chest, several deafening explosions echoed from the tip of it. Patrick winced and looked to the crowd of his former neighbors standing before the barn with thick smoke billowing from its caving roof. For each explosion the device created, another creature’s head lolled sickeningly. Bits of brain and gore sprayed from the holes created, and the creatures dropped to the ground at last.

  “Come on! We have to get out of here!” someone else yelled from the other side of the hordes.

  “Hang on! There’s someone here!” the boy standing above Patrick called back.

  Patrick gazed up at his savior with an overwhelming sense of bewilderment and shock. “What is that thing?” he asked.

  “What the fuck are those things?” the boy demanded again.

  “I—” Patrick looked back at the monsters as though he’d never seen them before. “I don’t—”

  Just then a thunderous crash emanated from within the barn. The loft had finally caught fire and collapsed atop the masses. Patrick looked up at the window from which he’d fallen. The charred skeleton that had forced him out was hanging wretchedly halfway out the window. Its bony arms still clawed at the wood of the barn, and its head twitched sporadically.

  “We have to go. Is there anyone else inside there?” the blond boy asked.

  “Lots of—” Patrick stammered again, still unable to comprehend the situation in which he had found himself. “Lots.”

  “Come on,” the boy demanded. “We have to go!”

  He heaved Patrick upright and grabbed his wrist to lead him around the barn, holding the death stick in one hand and sending out explosions into the still overwhelming crowd.

  10

  The world moved in slow motion as three strange boys led Patrick swiftly away from his home. He trundled in silence as his brain struggled to comprehend the fact that he was surrounded by real people again. In all the time he’d spent sitting alone, silently contemplative, Patrick had fantasized but never truly considered the possibility of seeing other survivors. The sudden real prospect of leaving Onton and the horrors he’d faced behind him made Patrick realize that, deep down, he’d never actually expected to make it out alive. Survive, sure. But he could only fight and forage on his own for so long.

  Patrick turned to look over his shoulder at the tower of flames in the distance. The barn had completely caught fire, along with everyone inside, and had turned into a massive inferno of finality. Patrick’s entire life lay beyond those flames. His childhood, his innocence, lay beyond those flames, as charred and lifeless as the countless corpses within. His memories, his friends, his family—all left behind to wither and rot out of existence. Even the terror he’d withstood since the incident was sloughing away like dead skin on a dry, windless day. What Patrick felt in this moment was not relief or gratitude toward his saviors, but a sick, heavy knot of irrevocability. Whether further death and torment lay ahead, or whether a new life of peace and happiness could be founded, as Patrick looked back upon the desolation he once called home, he knew without doubt that he would never be the same. The life he had once known was over.

  And he would never return.

  11

  Patrick nursed his wounded hands in silence while his three new companions set up a small camp at sunset. He was still reeling from the events of the day. He’d embraced death twice in one day and somehow still managed to find escape with the help of real people, something he never thought he’d see again. He couldn’t even remember the last time he’d had a conversation with another person. A pang of insurmountable grief came over him as he thought of his long, one-sided talks with Stora. In this moment, Patrick couldn’t afford to wonder how the cat was faring.

  “I got somethin’ might help that,” one of the boys said, pointing to Patrick’s hands as he reached into his own pouch and procured a small bundle of herbs.

  “Thank you,” Patrick croaked.

  The silence had been long and uncomfortable on the short journey southward from Onton, from which billows of smoke could still be seen rising in the distance. It seemed all four boys had experienced something that had never been expected, and none knew just how to proceed with casual conversation.

  When resting places were established and the boys had all relinquished their gear and mysterious weapons, the three older boys sat down together, leaving Patrick standing uncomfortably off to one side, prodding the backs of his hands, where wet sticky leaves were soothing his searing skin.

  “So,” the blond boy who saved Patrick said at last, “you gonna tell us what the hell was happening back there?”

  Patrick shrugged, unsure how to respond.

  The other two looked at one another uncomfortably and gestured for Patrick to come and sit. “You can join us, y’ know.”

  At last Patrick did step forward and slowly took a seat among the boys.

  “I’m Philip,” said the tall, thin boy beside Patrick. “That’s Jake.” He pointed to the shortest and stoutest of the trio, a boy who looked much older than the others as he’d already passed his coming-of-age phase and grown a patchy beard. “And that’s Brandon,” Philip concluded, pointing to the blond-haired boy who had rescued Patrick.

  “Brandon Dare,” the boy said as he extended his hand to be shaken. In the dim light of the day, Patrick could see that his savior was not so immaculate and angelic as he had previously appeared, rays of sun radiating from behind his figure. The blond boy had deep cuts and bruises all over his face. Greenish circles emanated outward from both eyes as some very apparent wounds were healing. The white of one of his eyes was completely red, as though he’d been beaten until the eye filled with blood.

  “Oh, I’m Patrick,” he replied, nervously taking Brandon’s hand as he swallowed hard and paused. “Oliphant.”

  “Pleased to meet you,” Brandon said.

  Patrick only nodded in response.

  “Well, we’re travelling south to Mitten,” Brandon announced at last. “You’re more than welcome to tag along as long as you like.”

  “What’s in Mitten?” Patrick asked.

  Philip and Jake glanced at each other again, but no one said anything for quite some time. “Things to tend to,” Brandon said at last.

  “What are those?” Patrick asked, pointing to the pile of metal weapons the three boys were carrying.

  “These?” Brandon said, picking one up. He shrugged. “Some sort of strange musket, I reckon.”

  Patrick stared in awe. “I’ve never seen a musket like that.”

  “No? Everyone’s got ’em nowadays. They’re easy to use and mighty good at dealin’ death!” Brandon smiled perhaps too warmly as he made this claim. “Semi-automatic, it says,” he announced, reading the side of the
weapon.

  “Who’s everyone?” Patrick stammered.

  Brandon shrugged again. “All The Baron’s men. Don’t know where he got all of ’em, but we got these few in a vicious riot we started way back when,” he said proudly.

  Patrick sat quietly struggling to take this all in. “Where are you lot from?”

  “Well I’m from Proxy, south a ways from Mitten. These two’re from the city themselves.”

  “What are you doing up here?”

  “Well we’ve been making our way north, lookin’ for a suitable place to stay, but now we’re doubling back to Mitten for a piece.”

  “To … tend to things?” Patrick asked.

  Brandon nodded. “That’s what I said. You got a lot of questions for a fellow won’t even answer what he’s doin’ hanging out with those things.” Brandon pointed back toward the tower of smoke billowing over Onton.

  Patrick shrugged and stammered. “I—I didn’t have any place to go.”

  “No place better than that?” Brandon asked incredulously. “No better friends than those things?”

  Patrick shrugged again.

  “I never seen anything like it,” Jake grumbled. “I still thinks I’m goin’ batty.” The other two boys nodded.

  “So you’ve never encountered those things?” Patrick asked, finally accepting that the grim reality he’d been living was not necessarily the case for the rest of the world.

  “You joking?” Brandon asked. “I’d’ve put this fire-stick in my own mouth before I stayed in that place.”

  Patrick closed his eyes and shook his head, dazed. “There was a—a thing in my house one day,” he said, finally telling the story that had weighed on his adolescent brain for as long as he cared to remember. “It was like a tube shape with these curled prongs at the base, so it could stand up, you see?”

  The three older boys listened in growing horror as Patrick painted vivid pictures not of his countless traumas and burdens, but of a young boy who’s mind had been forced to enter a dark realm of madness. A young boy who was rushed into adulthood and then riddled with torment until his psyche crumbled and collapsed as fast as the burning barn they’d just put behind them. Patrick’s story was filled with stutters and stammers and long pauses with shaky breaths. His recounting verged on incoherent as the pace of his speech rose and fell and rose and fell with his heaving chest. His saviors shared glances and listened as politely as one could hope, but they grew uneasy with Patrick’s tale. Unsure of what was true and what had merely been a product of the storyteller’s damaged imagination, the listeners nodded and waited patiently when Patrick had to stop the story and stifle his own sobs as he lamented the loss of his feline friend and his uncertainty about her fate.

  When the boys finally lay down for slumber, Patrick glanced around in the silent darkness around them. “What if those things find us?” he whispered.

  “We’re plenty far away from those things,” Brandon said. “I told you, they aren’t out here anywhere else.”

  Patrick nodded slowly, uncertain.

  “And if they do,” Brandon placed a hand on the pile of weapons beside him, “we have plenty of ammunition for these.”

  Patrick lay awake for a great while after the other three boys slept. He stared into the sky, shaking, stirring and jumping at every sound in the distance. Even when he finally slept, his slumber was broken and uneasy.

  As the boys journeyed farther and farther south, Patrick continued startling at every chirp and creak in the night, and he did not get a full night’s rest for quite some time.

  The Cave:

  Part 5

  The Stranger continued back through the altered version of the passageway he’d just traveled, simultaneously retracing his steps and forging a new path.

  As he stepped, he glanced down at the cleft in the stone beneath his feet. The crack had appeared while his father spoke, and it seemed to extend the entire length of the cave, however long that may be.

  While he pondered, a low, distant rumble broke his muse. He turned back toward the source of the sound and stared into the darkness as the rolling thunder rapidly approached. He felt the earth begin to quake beneath his feet, and the crack in the stone began to vibrate and then widen between his legs. An enlarging chasm formed below him, and he stared into the abyss as stony debris of all sizes fell from the ceiling, the walls, and the floor alike. As the gorge widened, he shoved himself to one side when the gap grew wider than he could spread his legs above it.

  He backed up against a far wall and watched in helpless shock. The chasm continued to grow, and The Stranger could not begin to imagine what may possibly exist below this dreary, unlit nightmare. The ground on which he stood began to soften and sink beneath his boots. The jagged stone turned to a mush like wet sand as it slid and sloped downward toward the growing chasm. The Stranger clung to the wall behind him, but it was no use. Before he knew it, the ground below was slick and covered in a moist moss, and his boots were sliding downward. He collapsed to his bottom and slid toward the jet-black canyon, clawing and clamoring for a handhold.

  When his feet dropped over the side and dragged his body with him, The Stranger finally found a grip around a small stalagmite growing upward toward the ceiling. When he grabbed hold and stopped falling, the morphing of the cave stopped abruptly. The rumbling and crashing of crumbling debris ceased, and the gap stopped widening and deepening below him. The only sounds that remained were The Stranger’s panicked, shallow breathing, his heart pounding in his chest, and blood roaring in his head.

  He closed his eyes tight and considered letting himself fall. What sort of life was this? No light, no food, no direction. He scarcely had any memories left and subsequently no drive to carry on with his quest. To fight to simply stay alive in this tomb was as futile as it was mad. He counted slowly to three and prepared to let himself drop.

  But when he finished, he simply couldn’t bring his arms to let go. He was too cowardly to take his own life even in this wretched state.

  As if in response, the cave began to transform again. The Stranger gasped and opened his eyes. The stalagmite in his hands softened, and so too the stone wall against his dangling body. He looked below and saw the walls of the black abyss beneath him closing together. The stone below seemed to turn to water, and the two walls crashed together like opposing waves in the sea. As the waves came together, the thick, murky water began to rise upward toward The Stranger’s feet. He braced himself as the substance engulfed him from below and rose to his chest.

  At last the transformation ceased again, and The Stranger lay suspended in a dark pit of tar. He slowly began sinking within the substance, and he struggled only minutely.

  You will never see your son again, his father whispered in the darkness.

  The Stranger closed his eyes and allowed himself to submerge.

  You will suffer an eternity in this blackness.

  Chapter 13:

  From Shackles to Sea

  1

  “What are you doing here?” The Stranger demanded in a harsh whisper.

  “What do ye think?” John replied, still grinning. “I’m here to save ye yet again!”

  “To be sure,” The Stranger said, curtly, “but how did you get here?”

  “Do ye wanna share tales of exploits, Stranger,” John asked, procuring a ring of keys from behind a nearby barrel, “or do ye wanna crack on?”

  The Stranger nodded impatiently and extended his bound hands for the keys. “Give me those.”

  John tossed the keys to him, and The Stranger began shoving key after key into his shackles. The chunks of wood from his previous attempts at escape clogged the keyhole, and for a moment he feared that none of the keys would fit, but at last, one slid undeniably deeper than the previous. The Stranger knew this was the one. He tried to turn it with one awkwardly angled hand, but the key would not budge.

  While The Stranger worked, John leaned behind one of the tarp-covered crates against he wall and retrieved h
is sword and sheath, which he began refastening to his waist.

  “Have you one for me?” The Stranger asked.

  “No need,” John said. “We won’t be doin’ any battles tonight.”

  “You sound confident in your plan,” The Stranger remarked.

  John swallowed hard as he wondered again where Maria and Robert had gone. They hadn’t shown up for the first part of his plan, and he’d been making it up as he went along ever since. “This is an escape,” John said. “I didn’t risk my life to get into battle against a full crew of pirates with you.”

  “And clearly you didn’t consider the possibility of both of us encountering a life-threatening situation during this escape!” The Stranger snapped back, furiously jiggling the key within his shackles.

  John closed his eyes and reminded himself that the ingrate was under an unimaginable amount of stress.

  “Can you come help me out of these so that I may at the very least use my hands in defense?”

  John approached The Stranger and tried to turn the stiff key in the hole. “Are you sure this is the one?” he asked. It didn’t turn at all, and when John went to draw it out, still it would not budge.

  “It’s the one,” The Stranger said. “Just turn it harder.”

  John twisted the key as hard as he could, but it never moved. “This can’t be the key. You’ve gotten it stuck.”

  “I got wood in the key hole,” The Stranger barked. “You have to work around that! This is the one. I tried the others, and this one fits!”

  John tried turning the key forward and backwards, but it was firmly lodged within the hole. “Now we’re really fucked,” he muttered.

  He looked around the room in the vain hopes of finding an axe or something he could use to break the chain binding, but of course nothing was there. At last he leaned his full weight on top of the key and forced it deeper into the lock. It clicked home and turned easily, popping the steel cuffs open from The Stranger’s wrists.