The Outcast and the Survivor: Chapter Five
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with a sly confidence.
One of the guards nods and starts to back away from us, prompting the two soldiers next to him to follow suit. The three of them get completely out of the way, backing up toward the far wall of the cavern where another group of soldiers is standing. This doesn’t stop the soldiers on the platform, who continue to descend and come closer, but it’s enough to keep everyone else from interfering with our exit as we move across the room toward the entrance.
Once we are almost all the way there, a familiar voice yells out.
“Wade!” Severin roars while marching across the room toward us. “You can’t stop us all with that thing.”
“No,” Wade concedes with a soft, unexpectedly playful tone, “but look at your soldiers and tell me which ones want to be the first to charge into a bullet.”
The comment gives Severin pause as he and the rest of the soldiers around him stop their march.
“Even if you get down this mountain, there’s nowhere you can run where we won’t find you.”
Wade lifts the gun again and points it directly at Severin.
“So maybe I should stop the person most set on finding me before the search even begins.”
“Kill me now, Wade, and you lose what few friends you have left,” Severin sneers.
“I’ll have to make sure I’m not the one to kill you then,” Wade replies.
In what seems like the blink of an eye, Wade flicks his gun and fires two deafening shots, each aimed at the locking mechanisms of two separate lion enclosures. The doorways are immediately broken open, and the beasts hurl their bodies against them to free themselves entirely.
Most of the soldiers have little choice but to withdraw back up to the platform or to other elevated areas within the cavern, Severin included. The few guards with shields use them to protect the others and cover their retreat.
I am so stunned by this change of events that I forget about escaping entirely, that is until Wade once again grabs me and leads me toward the entrance. I glance over my shoulder, worried that maybe some of the soldiers are still chasing us, but then I realize that Wade had perfectly positioned himself so that the lions would drive the soldiers the other direction.
“What’s the next step?” I gasp exhaustedly when we stop at the ledge overlooking the wide gorge beneath the entrance.
“We glide down the mountainside.”
“You mean like a bird?” I puzzle as he removes something from his pocket, a thick leather strap a couple feet in length.
“Yes, now come over here and make sure your pack is closed and secure,” he instructs.
I tighten the strings that hold the contents of my pack together and step over to Wade, who has reached up and wrapped the strap around a long metal wire that runs from above us down across the gorge. I had noticed it before, but didn’t think anything of it. Now I understand how we’ll finish our escape.
“Reach up around my shoulders and hold tightly as though your life depends on it, because it does,” he says with a smirk.
The moment I do, he jumps off of the ledge, and we descend so rapidly that it feels like we are flying. The wind rushes by furiously, which is as terrifying as it is exhilarating. In little time at all, we are already halfway down. I look back up at Sanctuary simply to rejoice at how far away we already are, but my jubilation is immediately brought to an end as I watch a soldier at the top begin swinging his sword at the line.
“They’re cutting the wire!” I yell into Wade’s ear.
He turns his head, and just as he does, it snaps, loosening all of the tension in the metal line and sending us into a fall. Wade thinks quickly and grabs directly onto the wire. I nearly lose hold of him as he swings us with it toward the cliff side, which is only a few dozen feet away.
We violently crash into the rocky wall, jolting my grip free, but Wade reaches out with one hand and grabs onto me.
“Where do you think you’re going?” he jests as I look up at him and smile in relief.
“Plummeting to my death seemed like a good idea there for a second,” I wink.
He pulls me up to where he is, and I begin the fifty foot climb up the rock wall ahead of him. Once we both reach the top, I glance up toward the entrance to Sanctuary, where the soldiers have only just begun their descent down the thin mountain trail. Still, I let myself become slightly dispirited.
“We can’t outrun them forever,” I say almost out of breath.
“Definitely not,” Wade responds rather factually. “Good thing I thought ahead. Let’s keep moving, we’re almost out of here.”
With that, he heads quickly toward the tunnel leading to the bridge. I sprint after him, determined to once again demonstrate that I have the endurance and strength to handle whatever difficulties and trials lie ahead.
When we reach the bridge, Wade doesn’t have us cross it but instead leads me along the canyon wall southeast in the direction of the clouds of steam. We get closer to the river as we move further down, eventually reaching the shore and becoming completely encompassed about by whiteness.
“Here, I’ve found it,” Wade calls out after briefly searching the rock-covered ground.
“Found what?” I say confused.
“Our ride out of here.”
After a few labored tugs on a large, camouflaged canvass covered in dirt and rock, he unveils a small boat kept here in secret right beneath Anastasia’s nose. I was right. We can’t outrun Anastasia’s guards, but a river can.
“And if they see us floating by?”
“Then they are welcome to swim after us,” Wade quips. “They won’t want to follow us when they figure out where we’re going anyway.”
“And where is that?” I reply hesitantly, already anticipating his answer.
“The marshes.”
I pause for a moment as Wade pushes the boat down into the water and think back to what Minerva said about the marshes, that I should avoid them at all cost. Obviously Wade has a different attitude about them.
“Is that where Eliana will be?” I ask.
“No,” Wade replies dryly, waving me into the boat with his hand.
“Then why are we going there?”
“Because we need to disappear before we can go south.”
Something tells me that there is more to the answer than that, but given our current circumstances, I’ll take half of the truth for now. Really, I am too exhausted to think beyond the dilemma at hand and won’t consider it over until we get beyond the bridge, which I expect will be filled with soldiers.
The bridge comes into view shortly after we emerge from the cover of the steam, but to my relief, there is no one in sight. As I think about it, I realize that we didn’t actually take that long to get to the river and find the boat. It’s very possible that our pursuers are still making the descent down the mountain.
I breathe peacefully once we are well beyond the bridge. Glancing back, I notice that some soldiers have finally reached it, but they can do little more than gape out at us. We made it.
Coupled with a warm breeze and the knowledge that we are safe, the river ride provides a rejuvenating tranquility. I have been on a boat a few times before thanks to the reservoir above Kalepo and the canals throughout the plateau, but those places were also filled with the sounds of the city. Here, the river flows quietly with a serenity I always associated with nature but never had the pleasure of experiencing before being exiled. It seems strange to think it, but I have become partly grateful for my exodus, if only for these moments of utter beauty.
I rest for some time and try to ease my mind about what will come next. My fatigued body makes this easy on me, and I am able to fall asleep for a while without problem. When I wake up, Wade is still at the head of the boat, mindful and vigilant, like the true protector I hope he is and remains.
“One of the soldiers told me about you,” I say to him.
He glances back at me but doesn’t respond.
“She said you were a ranger,” I continue. “That yo
u and others like you shielded people from danger.”
“I bet that’s not all she said,” he counters.
“No,” I momentarily trail off before remembering something reassuring my father used to tell me.
“You know, no one stands upright, for good or for ill, based solely upon the past. It’s as much in the lives before us that our true character lies, in the decisions that we have yet to make. If we intend to write our futures with goodness, then that is who we are, regardless of what evils we’ve done.”
“That’s a nice truism,” he scoffs, “but life is hardly so simple. Maybe you just want to believe that because I have your life in my hands, because of what I’ve done or what you’ve heard—”
“I haven’t heard anything,” I interrupt.
He looks down.
“Then you’ll be better off keeping yourself from finding out.”
Wade turns back toward the river, and the conversation abruptly ends, leaving an uncomfortable aura in its wake that disrupts the peace from before. I try to fall back asleep, but I can’t, at least not as fast as I’d like. As much as I wish it weren’t, my body is at least rested enough to let me worry.
Maybe Eliana is gone forever, and it is too late to do whatever good was expected of me. Maybe the quest I was sent on is hopeless beyond repair because of what happened before I even got here. Maybe this world stone I carry will never do the good my father intended of it. I know he would have me believe that there is hope yet, but I just can’t see it right now.
At some point, I drift into a deep slumber, but am then shaken awake