Marooned

by Travis Smith

  4

  That night the five kids sat around a small fire far outside of the little town north of Mitten that they had just escaped.

  “What was all that about?” Brandon had demanded as they fled from the area. “We could’ve all been caught!”

  Patrick had given no response. He ignored all questions and remarks and sat in a sullen silence into the night. He sat apart from the other boys, as he had always done since they met, and stared numbly at the flickering flames, remembering his final moments in Onton.

  He noticed but did not acknowledge the pretty girl eyeing him with suspicious intrigue from the other side of the fire. She had yet to address him, but she had cast him several loaded glances since the quintet had left her home.

  “I thought I’d never see you again,” she said at last to Brandon.

  He put his arm around her and pulled her close. “Should’ve known I wouldn’t let that happen.”

  She wore a long white smock that hung to halfway down her thighs and hid some short undergarments beneath. Brandon put his hand on her thigh and lay his head on her shoulder. Patrick’s eyes flicked to Brandon’s hand, and he noted the frightful state of the girl’s skin. Her thighs wore numerous dark bruises that seemed to intensify higher up her legs. Her smock covered the worst of it, but various shades of blue, purple, and green disgraced her milky skin. A smattering of scars was also visible in the light of the fire.

  She seemed to catch Patrick looking, for she squirmed at Brandon’s touch and pulled her smock down lower, but she placed one hand on the back of the boy’s blond head and pulled his face closer to hers for a passionate kiss.

  After an extensive silence, the couple stood without a word to anyone else and excused themselves from their company. When they disappeared into the darkness of a nearby copse of trees, Jake and Philip both sniggered and nudged each other like schoolchildren. They looked across the flames at Patrick, but he had already cast his gaze determinedly back into the pit of the fire.

  5

  At some point in the night, Brandon and Olivia returned to the dwindling fire. Philip and Jake had both fallen asleep, but Patrick remained motionless, staring, lost in his own troubled thoughts. He made no greeting to the returning couple.

  The couple lay together for a time, and Brandon soon grew still. His breathing slowed as he fell into an untroubled sleep of which Patrick was silently envious. He brooded into the dead of night, heart still pounding from adrenaline and determination. If he had met the men responsible for the atrocities in Onton …

  He glanced up to find Olivia watching him through one half-open eye. Her head lay on her sleeping lover’s shoulder, but her gaze unquestionably fell upon Patrick. When their eyes met, his pounding heart did a somersault and fluttered. He dropped his gaze and busied himself plucking at some grass by his crossed legs, struggling to focus on his woes and not on the beautiful girl watching him from across the fire.

  Several times before sleep found him, Patrick found himself casting glances across the dwindling embers to see if she was still looking. Oftentimes he found her eyes closed, but a few times he thought he caught her looking, and the pleasant fluttering returned to his chest to mask his mounting unease.

  6

  The next morning the boys busied themselves packing up their camp while Patrick lay on his back staring at the sky. He had decided that he could no longer go on travelling with his new crew—not knowing what he now knew lay just south of their position alongside the mountains. He lay there unmoving, hoping the others would simply overlook his presence or decide to leave him behind without questioning him.

  “Is all well with ya, Pat?” Brandon asked, tearing down any naive hopes Patrick had of a clean break.

  Patrick nodded.

  “Ya need some extra rest? We could make some good time back north if we decamp soon.”

  Patrick heaved a loaded sigh, feeling the eyes of the other four resting heavily on him. “I can’t go on with you lot,” he said at last.

  Brandon nodded in understanding, but Jake and Philip both rolled their eyes.

  “Why is it ya feel this way?” Brandon asked, sitting in the grass next to his friend.

  “They know what happened to my home. They destroyed everything …”

  “Yet they didn’t manage to get you,” Brandon said.

  “That doesn’t matter. They have to answer for what they’ve done,” Patrick maintained.

  “How you gonna make ’em do that?” Jake demanded gruffly.

  “It’s none of your concern what I intend to do! In truth, I haven’t figured it out yet, but I will not carry on to find some new home and ignore what they’ve done!”

  “Okay,” Brandon said, struggling to relieve the rising tensions. “I think what Jake means to say is ya don’ know what waits for ya in there. We’ve seen it.”

  Olivia nodded. Patrick looked over at her and saw the look of concern in her eyes. Rather than soothe him, this only frustrated him further. He sat up in a huff and made to storm off alone.

  “Just forget it. I thank you all for helping me, but consider us even after yesterday. Good luck to you each.”

  “Where ya goin’?” Brandon called. “You don’t even want a gun?”

  Patrick rushed away from the others empty handed. When he was out of sight and hidden amongst the nearby trees, he sat and pushed his back against the stump of a fallen tree. He squinted his eyes shut tight and fought back tears of frustration.

  “I don’t need your help,” he muttered. “I don’t need any of you.”

  Who were they to question his purpose? They had no idea what he’d been through, and now they regarded him a fool because he refused to turn his back on all he’d ever loved that had been ripped cruelly from his hands. Not a single one of them was prepared to help him, but he’d put his own life and concerns on the line to rescue Brandon’s stupid girlfriend …

  A light footstep nearby broke a dry twig and snapped Patrick from his muse. He opened his eyes to see Olivia starting to kneel beside him. Before he could say anything, she placed her hand on his arm in a comforting gesture that should have been futile, but the warmth that spread through Patrick from the site of contact was anything but ineffectual. Her palm rested upon his forearm, and her fingers curled under and grazed his thigh. The act was surely unintentional, but it sent tingles running in all directions through Patrick’s skin and bones. His hair stood on end, and he was thankful that not much of his skin was exposed for her to notice.

  “I know what you’re feeling,” she whispered to him.

  His breath hitched in his chest as he looked into her eyes. Her dark hair flowed in waves over her shoulders, and her brown eyes carried a sincerity that weighed more on Patrick’s own heart with every moment he continued to look into them. She made broken seem beautiful, and Patrick could almost condone every passion she stirred in the lives she’d touched.

  “How could you know?” he asked, not altogether impolitely.

  “I’ve lost a lot, too, you know.”

  Patrick nodded and glanced down at her bruised thighs. “How could anyone let that happen to you?”

  “It’s not just that,” she said. “When everything came crashing down, I lost everything. They imprison and enslave anyone who opposes The Baron and his will. No one has reason to get hung up on those they damage anymore …”

  “Your mother?” Patrick asked.

  Olivia nodded. “The women and children are usually the ones who resist the most. For whatever reason, men crave power. It’s like an instinct … and the more they get their hands on, the more they need.” She paused for a time, seeming lost in her memories. Her hand still lay on Patrick’s arm. “My mother … my friends … their mothers … nearly all of them were taken and imprisoned. They saw their husbands do horrid things in the name of The Baron, and many of them simply couldn’t stand for it or fake it any longer. The women are tortured and enslaved, and the children are tortured and brainwashed in the hopes that they’ll b
ehave more loyally later in life. Only the submissive and the unspeakably cruel remain to live freely.”

  “So why did no one take you?” Patrick asked.

  “My father made sure of that.” A dark shadow cast over her eyes, but her honest beauty was still mesmerizing.

  “Then there must be some part of him that still cares.”

  “The only thing he cares about is getting paid.” She tugged at her smock with her free hand in an attempt to cover her thighs.

  “Paid?” Patrick asked. He was not familiar with the term.

  Olivia shrugged. Her soft eyes glossed over with fresh tears. “The others … They come by and give him metal coins for time alone with me.”

  A knot coiled inside Patrick’s gut.

  “It’s a measure of worth now,” she explained as best she could. “A value of your level of power.”

  Patrick sat in a sickened silence for a few moments before offering a measly, “I’m sorry.” It felt as ineffectual falling from his mouth as the dead toad his old friend Stora had dropped on his stoop before he was forced to leave Onton without her.

  She wiped her eyes with more composure than Patrick himself could have mustered and gave his arm a gentle squeeze. “I know you’ve suffered as well,” she admitted.

  “Well,” Patrick stammered, feeling insecure about his own troubles now.

  “I can’t imagine what you had to go through … but I can tell you my father was not involved.”

  This took Patrick by surprise. “But … how can you know that? He had the same—”

  “He found that,” she said. “I know not what it is, and I know not what they are up to, but my father found that vial a time ago and has been obsessing over it ever since.”

  “Oh,” he replied lamely.

  “And, please, Patrick, take heed of my words: You cannot take them all on yourself. You know not what they’re capable of.”

  Patrick was again at a loss for words. If she spoke the truth—and her eyes told him that she would never consider any alternative—then the others were right. He was a fool for thinking his retribution was just and an even bigger fool for thinking he could enact it on his own.

  7

  Olivia led Patrick back to the others. “I’m sorry,” he said with downcast eyes. “I was being rash …”

  “Everyone understands,” Brandon assured him. “We just want ya to see that there’s nothing to be gained from returning there.”

  Patrick nodded, allowing everyone to breathe a sigh of relief before he presented a counter-proposal: “Unless we go in together. Unified. With a plan.”

  The still air seemed to tug around them like a heavy blanket as at least three pairs of eyes rolled in unison.

  Olivia, certain she had soothed his mind, cast him a dissatisfied glance.

  “I know,” Patrick interjected before anyone could pick up his jaw and contest. “I know that none of you share my wrath. I know that I cannot ask you out of vengeance.”

  Olivia cut in before he could go on. “Your vengeance is misdirected!” she reminded him. “They are all dreadful men, but Resin did not infect your town.”

  “I accept you at your word,” Patrick assured her, his voice more even and his mind more composed than before his departure, “and if I accept that, I cannot help but wonder why he has those vials at all. Why would he be experimenting with potions in your home?”

  The others sat in a heavy silence.

  “If he isn’t responsible for Onton, then he envies the man who is.”

  “What are ya proposing?” Brandon asked after a while, though the look in his eyes told Patrick that he already knew.

  “They’re trying to make a weapon back there. I know you all only want to find a new place to settle down—and, trust me, after what I thought I’d be stuck with forever, I want the same—but what good is settling down if Resin and his men succeed in bringing those beasts to the next town over? And the next town after that?”

  “Ye wanna save the world?” Philip asked with only a hint of irony behind his grin.

  “I think the world is beyond saving,” Patrick shrugged, “but there’s someone just down out of the mountains who could make it a great deal worse, and we may be the only ones who are still willing or able to do anything about it.” He picked up a pistol and stuck it in his trousers for dramatic effect.

  Brandon looked around at Philip and Jake. Philip raised his eyebrows in a silent exclamation of excitement, but Jake only ruffled his beard grumpily. “What about you?” he asked Olivia, finally taking her again by the hand.

  She seemed deep in thought. She shrugged in response.

  “They have to die,” Patrick said.

  She gave another shrug, but this one conveyed more conviction than her first.

  8

  Over the next several days, the small band foraged for food, tested ideas for their plot, and laughed in a carefree way that only young men and women could achieve in moment of contemplative battle. Philip had convinced himself—and almost convinced the others—that they would be marching into the small town outside Mitten and saving the world. He spun tales of being carried into the center of town high above the heads of the enslaved men and women who would later tell their children and their children’s children about the four young boys who’d saved an entire nation from tyranny and evil.

  “Four boys and one girl,” Olivia interjected with a coy smirk.

  “Absolutely not,” Brandon replied at once. She cast him a dirty look, but he only shook his head. “I’ll not let this foolish task get ye hurt, or worse.”

  Olivia rolled her eyes, and they landed upon Patrick’s own, watching from across the fire, as he often did. The mere instant that he gazed into them before they flicked away, her eyes shared a lifetime of expression and intimacy with Patrick. She was stronger than the four of them combined, and he knew that. If he thought for a second he could convince Brandon, he would have spoken up on her behalf, but the blond boy who’d saved his life in Onton would never stand for willingly putting her at risk, especially when he didn’t seem to fully grasp the enormity of what they may be setting out to accomplish. Brandon was smitten with infatuation, and few things could take that away—it was genuinely more powerful than true love.

  What Patrick saw in Olivia was different. He saw through her alluring exterior—her soft hair and porcelain skin—and into her being. He saw what would outlast her worldly form and carry on enriching lives and touching hearts for generations to come. He saw sincerity and kindness and virtues that transcended a full bosom and young love, virtues that were everlasting and unbreakable, even in the face of a despicable and decadent existence in a failing world. He saw a likeness beyond her eyes that she and Brandon could never share. He saw her pain, and it was not separate from her beauty. The two were one, and they coalesced into something entirely new—a strength that Patrick felt too within himself. They had both experienced horrors to which Brandon and Philip and Jake could only scoff and share fantasies of conquest.

  As Patrick saw all of this amid a hum of incoherent laughter and continued conversation among his mates, Olivia’s eyes drifted back to his own. It was not the first or even the second time she had caught him staring in the past several days, but it didn’t stop his heart from flipping in his chest like a fish in a net. He realized he hadn’t been breathing for a time, and his chest hitched visibly. Olivia saw, and the two of them shared an unobserved grin. She brought her hand up to her mouth and feigned a cough when Brandon looked over and almost caught her staring across the fire.

  Patrick quickly looked off toward the mountains and pretended to be deep in thought to come up with the next rejected idea for a raid plan.

  9

  Scheme after scheme was shot down. No matter how good an idea seemed to everyone, one of the five could always twist it into a catastrophe that ended only in death or worse for them all.

  As the sun began to set on the small crew, Philip and Jake were amusing themselves sharing outla
ndish plans that could end only in chaos and failure to the point of hilarity. Brandon and Olivia were coming back from some alone time in a dark copse of trees. Patrick eyed their return with a temperate jealousy to which he’d grown accustomed. This time, however, the young couple did not appear to be sharing in their usual post-coital bliss. They were bickering quietly and maintaining a slow pace.

  “And every day we sit here is puttin’ your—puttin’ all our lives in more danger!” Patrick could finally hear Brandon saying as they got closer. “We can’t sit around here forever comin’ up with silly plots to take on an entire town of armed adults.”

  “I’m telling you this will work,” Olivia returned. “You can’t let yourself worry just about me. I’ve made it this far, and I am able to care for myself, thank you.”

  “It’s too risky,” Brandon maintained. “I can’t—”

  “What’s too risky?” Patrick called out, unsure whether he was interjecting out of eagerness to stand up for Olivia or to enact their mission with a plan that wasn’t mere foolery.

  Brandon stopped and looked at his friends, apparently only just realizing how close he and Olivia had approached.

  “I have a plan,” Olivia announced.

  Jacob and Philip looked on with wan interest. Patrick flipped both palms up toward her in silent expression: Well?

  Brandon scoffed and shook his head, but Olivia paid him no mind. “We find a place outside the town—a safe place where you can all get hunkered down and well-hidden. Once we find somewhere suitable, I will make my way back home.”

  At this Brandon huffed again. Patrick, too, would have had to admit a certain degree of concern.

  But Olivia continued. “I will go home to my father and tell him I had snuck off from you boys in the dead of night and that I know where you’re hiding.”