The Quell

by E S Richards

  “Easy there, Len,” Harrison said with a laugh. “Stop trying to show off!”

  Len scoffed in response, pushing out the kickstand of his bike and allowing it to rest at an angle. “Everything all right?” He asked, querying why the group had stopped. It seemed too early for a water break; they hadn’t been on the road for much longer than an hour.

  “I think there’s something up ahead,” Harrison replied, rummaging through his rucksack until he found the binoculars.

  Len and everyone else watched Harrison silently as he raised the binoculars to his eyes, focusing on something in the distance. Squinting once more, Len tried to see what his friend was looking at. He could just about make out some sort of white object in the distance, but as for what it was, he couldn’t even hazard a guess. Harrison remained still as he studied the object, his face expressionless.

  “What is it?” Amy asked after a moment, her anxiety heightening over the unknown.

  “It looks like a camp,” Harrison eventually replied, leaning over and handing the binoculars to Amy. “Although I think quite different from the one we’ve just left.”

  Amy gasped, lifting the binoculars to her own eyes and checking for herself. “How do you mean?” She asked nervously as she looked through the magnifying lenses, taking her time to survey every part of the camp. “It looks the same. Surely it can’t be?”

  “I think it is,” Harrison nodded as Amy finally handed the binoculars to Maggie. “But this camp hasn’t been taken over. What I think that is, is an actual government aid camp. It looks official. I think that is the real deal.”

  “A real one?” Maggie questioned enthusiastically, hope outwardly present in her voice. “Do you think it’s safe?”

  “It looks like it,” Harrison replied, reaching back over for the binoculars so he could have another look. Len could only watch his group nervously, waiting for his turn to see what they all already had. “Everything seems to be in order. This could be the camp we’ve all been waiting for.”

  “What do we do?” Len finally joined the conversation, tired of waiting to see the camp for himself.

  “I think we need to go there,” Harrison answered after a moment’s thought. “They could have information that we need, and vice versa. I think this camp has just become our next destination.”

  Chapter 7

  Floating in the middle of the ocean, Andy felt like his life was over. A day had passed since the storm. Since Brett and Cory had disappeared. Their bodies would likely never be found. Claimed by the sea never to be seen again. The four of them who remained in the lifeboat had barely said two words to one another since then. Andy had been tempted to jump into the ocean and search for them himself. In fact, it had taken both Bryan and Lucas to hold him back and keep him in the boat. He had screamed and cried out in protest, refusing to let himself give up on his crew. On his friends. But he’d had to. They were long gone now and, thanks to the storm, Andy had no idea how far the lifeboat had been blown off course. He had expected to see land by now, but there was nothing but the deep blue ocean that rolled out for miles in every direction. They were well and truly lost.

  None of them had any idea what to do and, while he knew he wasn’t really, Andy still felt slightly responsible. It had been his idea to take the lifeboat and try to find a way back to Australia. Realistically, if they had stayed on The Mako, they would all still be fine. They could’ve fished the waters forever and the water purifiers that made the seawater drinkable would’ve never broken. The six of them could’ve lived there indefinitely, waiting on the ocean for someone to finally come and rescue them.

  But now the six of them could do nothing together again. The six of them had become a foursome, and Andy blamed himself. Brett had been his best friend. They had known each other for years, been on countless expeditions all over the world, and shared even more time together when back on home soil with their families. He had been more like a brother to Andy than his real one was. They had been family, and now Brett was dead. Then there was Cory. He was only nineteen years old and that was all he was going to get. The young boy had shown so much potential. He had had a future working at sea, whereas now he didn’t have a future at all.

  Andy knew in his head that they were both dead. Bryan, Lucas, and Pablo had argued against him, stating that there was a chance they had both survived the storm. Andy didn’t believe that though. It had been one of the worst storms he had ever experienced on the ocean. In reality, he knew they were lucky the lifeboat hadn’t completely capsized. With waves that big and visibility so poor, there was no way Brett and Cory would’ve been able to keep their heads above the surface for very long. They were both strong swimmers, but they were no match for a force of nature. Eventually they would’ve been forced to stop fighting and let the ocean take them, succumbing to a dark and watery grave.

  It made the ocean different for Andy. Before when he had looked out over the water, he had been filled with happy memories. He had remembered everything he had achieved and the good times he had shared with friends while at sea, celebrating their success or hunkering down and pushing themselves to overcome the next challenge.

  That was impossible for Andy to see anymore. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t get the image of Brett and Cory out of his mind. He pictured them floating just beneath the surface of the water, waves breaking over their heads as they tried to push through, to gasp that elusive mouthful of air. It was horrible. The scene Andy had fabricated was so traumatizing that he hadn’t been able to sleep without seeing it replay over and over again in his head. He couldn’t even look around the lifeboat at his surviving friends, their faces somehow contorting into Brett or Cory’s in his head. All that was left was for him to stare at the bottom of the boat, his head hanging down between his knees, as the lifeboat drifted meaninglessly through the ocean.

  In the rest of the boat, the others also sat in relative silence. None of them bothered to row, one of the oars lost in the storm and there being no indication of the direction to travel toward. They would be rowing blind if they chose to, potentially guiding the vessel back to dry land but also potentially pushing them farther out to sea. It was a pointless task and so no one offered, the group allowing their journey to be directed by the mercy of the ocean and its currents.

  Every now and then Lucas and Pablo leaned in and whispered to one another. They kept their voices very low, so Andy couldn’t hear what they were talking about, but he didn’t particularly want to. It didn’t take a genius to guess what they would be asking.

  Do you think we’ll ever make it home? Do you think Brett and Cory are alive? Do you think they’ll manage to find a way home? What do you think had caused all of this? Do you think we’re going to die out here?

  They were the type of questions that swam through Andy’s mind as he sat in silence, watching the small droplets of water that remained in the lifeboat drift from side to side as it rocked with the waves. They were the type of questions that he felt like he had all the answers to, but at the same time none at all. The longer the lifeboat drifted, the less optimistic Andy felt about ever seeing his home again. He would never hold his wife’s hand again, never kiss her lips or see her smile. He would never speak to his parents again, never share a joke with his friends from school or make small talk with a neighbor. His life as he knew and remembered it was over, with likely only a few more days left on his number. Very suddenly and absolutely, Andy had accepted his inevitable death.

  Lucas and Pablo both clearly carried some faith that they would survive. That was the innocence of their youth, neither more than twenty-two years old. They were too young to be taken by the sea, they deserved more than this. They deserved to have a life ahead of them. While the two of them quietly consoled one another and Andy wallowed in his pity and pain, Bryan sat quietly at the other end of the lifeboat, scribbling words down in his notebook.

  Once again, Andy didn’t know the details of what Bryan was doing. Andy guessed that Bryan was pe
rhaps writing the tale of what had happened to them, immortalizing their story on paper so that if their bodies or possessions were ever found, someone would know what happened. It was the sort of thing that old fishermen spoke about when they were pulling in their nets at night. They told stories about finding messages in bottles, detailing people being stranded at sea with no way of getting home. They were ghost stories in a way, but Andy could always believe them. Now he was likely to become one of them, a message in a bottle that would one day be found and told to the world.

  Of course, the old-fashioned method of physically using a bottle was now well outdated. Bryan wrote on specially designed waterproof paper, an invention of the last couple of years, that allowed the ink to permanently mark the page, no matter how wet or damaged it became. If Bryan was in fact writing down their memoir, they could very well be immortalized in print forever.

  The thought occurred to Andy that he should perhaps ask Bryan what he was writing, or ask Lucas and Pablo what they were whispering about. He didn’t though, as another thought also occurred to him and won over. What was the point? Indeed, what was the point of even trying anymore when he had so certainly accepted his death? It was remarkable how quickly Andy had managed to spiral into his hopeless acceptance. He was normally such a positive man, always looking for the solution to his problems rather than sitting and stewing in them. He had changed though. The death of his friends had done that to him, and now, Andy was ready to join the pair of them at the bottom of the ocean.

  ***

  “Andy! Hey, Andy. Wake up, man.”

  Prying his eyes open, Andy blinked in the blinding sunlight several times before he focused on Pablo’s face in front of him. The young boy’s beard had grown extremely quickly during their time on the lifeboat, the bushy mane now making his appearance almost completely different. That, combined with the fear and remorse in his eyes, made Pablo look like a completely different person. But this time, when Andy looked at Pablo, he didn’t see that same look of fear. There was something different there. Hope. A look none of them had seen since they lost Brett and Cory four days ago.

  “What?” Andy croaked, seeing no point in being awake and feeling how weak his body was. Though there was no shortage of food or water on the lifeboat, his appetite had all but disappeared since they lost Brett and Cory. Andy had barely touched a mouthful of food since before the storm, seeing no point in keeping his body healthy while they waited inevitable death.

  “Land,” Pablo grinned, “we can see land.”

  Andy blinked a couple more times, processing what Pablo was telling him. Surely not. He knew the currents that weaved through the waters they had been traveling. Andy had mapped them out in his head over a thousand times during their time adrift on the ocean. There was no chance they would be pushed in the direction of land for several hundred miles.

  “Look!” Pablo spoke again, encouraging Andy to twist his body around and glance behind him. The former captain of The Mako hadn’t moved from that same position in days, spending his days and nights just staring at the now-dry bottom of the boat.

  Groaning as he did move, Andy prepared himself for disappointment. There would be no land. Perhaps the clouds or the waves were playing a trick on poor Pablo, the young boy hallucinating after so many days at sea. One thing was for certain in Andy’s head: they were never going to see land again.

  “Well?” Pablo questioned as he watched Andy, making sure he was looking in the right direction. “Where do you think it is? Do you think it’s home?”

  Andy shook his head. Not in disagreement, but in complete and utter disbelief. There was land. Lucas and Bryan sat in front of him in the lifeboat, both also staring out at the landmass that was slowly appearing in the distance. It wasn’t a trick of the light or a mirage of any kind. It was real. It was land. And it was hope.

  Chapter 8

  Driving ever closer to the government relief camp, Harrison doubted his decision for the millionth time. If he didn’t desperately want information about the state of Canada, he would’ve definitely advocated for their group to avoid the camp. Despite knowing it was definitely set up by the government—and still under their command as well—he still didn’t really trust it. The last camp was evidence enough of how much people had changed since the solar crash. Just because the government officials still wore uniforms and had jobs didn’t mean their mental state hadn’t devolved like everyone else’s.

  But Harrison needed information. Getting to Toronto and finding Nina was his key and only focus now. Len had his family back together again and Harrison felt like he was running out of time to find his own. Plus, once Amy and Maggie had confirmed that this camp was nothing like the one where they had been kept and looked promising in terms of being an official setup, they both eagerly wanted to visit.

  Len was the only member of their group who had argued against it. They had everything they needed to make it to Canada, that there was absolutely no need to stop at the relief camp. Had it not been for the potential information, Harrison would’ve agreed with him. Stopping was risky to them no matter where it was, but at this point he was willing to do anything to finally reunite with his daughter.

  It didn’t take long for the scouts of the camp to notice them approaching. It was impossible to miss three motorcycles speeding toward you, especially with zero other vehicles on the road. Harrison knew they would be ready for them by the time they arrived and so made no attempt to slow down or take any further precautions. Weapons would be pointed at them from inside the camp and questions would be asked. Harrison would be ready, of course, but only so long as they were willing to answer his questions as well.

  James wriggled awkwardly in front of Harrison. The young boy seemed to enjoy being on the motorcycle; he hadn’t complained or gotten upset or scared at any point of their journey, his eyes scanning the surroundings that whizzed past at high speed. Now, though, he seemed a little uncomfortable. Harrison didn’t blame him, feeling the same way as he finally started to ease off on the accelerator, the gates to the camp approaching in the distance, guards manning towers on either side.

  The design of the camp was almost exactly the same as the one where Amy and Maggie had been kept. That confirmed Harrison’s suspicions that the group of men had overthrown the government officials who set it up. After how poorly they performed during Harrison’s rescue mission, he was surprised they had managed to commandeer the camp at all. It just went to show that even though the officials wore uniforms; they weren’t as well trained as they would like people to believe. Finally pulling his motorcycle to a halt, that thought didn’t leave Harrison oozing with confidence.

  “Stop where you are!” A voice shouted down from one of the guard towers next to the gate, delivering the redundant instruction to Harrison, who already sat across his stationary bike. “Dismount and put your hands in the air!”

  Harrison did as he was told, helping James off of the bike and standing in surrender as instructed while Amy, Maggie, and Len pulled up alongside him. The same command was repeated from the guard tower, nothing else said until all five of them—including James—stood to the side of their bikes with their hands in the air.

  “State your names and business here,” the same official continued to shout, not once lowering the state-issued M16A2 assault rifle that he pointed down at their group. Another man at the same tower did the same, accompanied by two on the opposite side of the gate. The four weapons didn’t waver as Harrison stepped forward slightly to reply, his eyes trained on the first official but his mind completely aware of where the other weapons were. His Glock still rested at his waist while the A3 rifle lay over his back.

  “I’m Harrison Cooper,” he spoke loudly and clearly, making sure everyone could hear him. “This is Len Rodgers, his wife Amy, and their son James. We have come from Chicago, traveling through several places, including South Haven in the south and then later passing by Grand Rapids. This is Maggie, who we met just a couple of days ago at a camp lik
e this. Though that one was no longer under government control.”

  “No longer under government control?” The same official repeated, raising his eyebrows slightly at Harrison’s statement. “How so?”

  “It had been taken over by a group of men who were keeping women prisoner there,” Harrison replied matter-of-factly. “They kidnapped both Amy and Maggie, so Len and I broke in to rescue them.”

  “Where was this camp?”

  “Just south of the Huron-Manistee National Forest.”

  Upon Harrison’s explanation and location of the previous camp, the officials at each tower leaned into each other and began to whisper between them. Harrison remained standing in place, not moving an inch as he watched the two pairs converse, discussing the information that had just been shared. Harrison had to assume they were aware of the other camp, though he wasn’t sure how they would react to finding out it had been taken over and the government officials forced out.

  “And what is your business here?” An official from the other guard tower eventually shouted down at Harrison, taking the lead in the conversation. “You don’t look like you are in need of aid.”