Surviving the Improbable Quest

by Anderson Atlas

  “Whoa.” Rubic ducks. “Don’t worry about it. Everyone has trouble casting when they first try. You should’ve seen your father. He was terrible at it. But before I knew it, he was catching fish bigger than mine.” Allan moves his fingers in the air wanting to type a note.

  “Sorry kid. No iPad out here. I didn’t want it to get wet. Just try and talk to me. Try and use your voice. Doc says there’s nothin’ wrong with your vocal cords.” Rubic waits, but Allan doesn’t say anything. He sighs then lets Allan return to casting. “You know, it’s amazing what our brain is capable of if we only give it a chance. We can think anything we want. We may not be able to change the bad things that happen, but we can change how we react to ’em. And if you want to talk again you have to start tellin’ your brain to do it. You can heal yourself, buddy, if you only try. We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars. Some guy named Oscar Wilde said that.”

  Allan feels bored already. He casts the worm into the river again and sighs. He doesn’t get any nibbles and can’t even see the fish. He should be here, standing on two legs, with his father. He reels the hook and worm back to the fishing pole and casts the hook far downstream.

  A rumble, like the bass of a large speaker blasting low frequencies, shakes the ground and disturbs the mostly placid river. Overhead, the birds leap into the air and flutter away in panic. Snapping and cracking of trees echoes between the canyon walls. Allan and Rubic slowly turn to look upriver. The rumble grows louder and louder. A wall of water appears and crashes toward them. It looks like the teeth of a giant machine lashing out, crunching all that gets in its way. Trees fall, boulders slam into each other, and branches as sharp as spears fly downstream. Rubic hoists Allan out of his chair and runs. The water slows him, holding on to his legs like a million little hands. Just before they get out of the river the water hits them.

  Rubic’s feet sweep out from under him and he drops Allan. The water sucks them in, rolling them around in its muddy, frothy wake. Something sharp hits Allan’s side. He opens his eyes, but the water stings them. He sees his uncle’s body and reaches out. Rubic grabs his hand. The two are swept over a cluster of boulders, and they fall down a waterfall. Rocks and boulders and debris, bound together by the force of the flood, chase them.

  Silence surrounds Allan. He closes his eyes and rolls in the churning wake. It feels like he is dying, but it’s an illusion. His senses shut off, and his life force gathers around the vital parts of his body. He’s close to death, but not close enough. He has felt this before, on the day he lost the use of his legs.

  Chapter 2

  Of Dreams We Travel

  Allan’s eyes pop open. He’s alive! The pine trees tower over his head, and a raven sits on a branch cawing at him. Probably waiting for him to die. He realizes he’s been unconscious.

  Allan pulls his torso out of the mud. Dizziness swims through his brain, but settles. It’s bright. The sunlight hurts his eyes. Rubic! Allan turns and sees his uncle lying face up ten feet away.

  Allan scoots through the muck and reaches Rubic. He grabs his uncle’s hand and squeezes, his mind screaming, no, Rubic. Don’t be dead. Allan listens for a heartbeat. At first he doesn’t hear one, but then it comes. It’s slow and uneven. Tears burst out of Allan as he shakes Rubic, trying to wake him. Rubic doesn’t wake. But is he breathing? He isn’t.

  Panic swarms through Allan as if his veins were filled with tiny piranhas. In swim class Allan was taught how to get someone breathing if they had lungs full of water. He has to roll Rubic on his side. If that doesn’t work he’ll have to start chest compressions. He tries to turn his uncle, but the boulder has pinned Rubic’s arm and a part of his chest. He pulls and pulls and pulls harder. Breathe! His mind roars. Allan thrusts his arm under Rubic then dredges out mud and small rocks. His finger jams on a stone, sending pain signals into his overwhelmed brain. The stone is too big to dig up, but he tries again. His fingers slip off it. Rubic’s torso is heavy and sinks into the mud. Allan isn’t strong enough. He pulls on Rubic’s free arm to no effect. Without legs and the leverage it’s hopeless.

  Allan starts to pound on Rubic’s chest. Water leaks out and he gurgles. Come on Uncle! Allan tips Rubic’s head to the side and more water spills out of Rubic’s mouth. He begins breathing. Allan sits back and gasps. Water drips from his hair and stings his eyes. Or is it sweat? Allan shakes Rubic, but he doesn’t wake up. Blood coming from Rubic’s crushed arm runs into the water. Allan knows he needs to get help. He shakes Rubic again. Get up! Get up! Get up! The sun peeks over the nearby peak, but being wet makes him shiver.

  Allan cries. He’s got to get help, but he can’t walk. He’s helpless, weak. He couldn’t save his parents, and now he’ll watch his uncle die. He’s alone now, worse than before. He touches Rubic’s beard and wonders how his parents died. Was it painful for them? Allan touches his own face. Maybe his mother got to touch him one last time. Tears blur the light. The life he faces now would be filled with total strangers. He’d be unconnected and unloved. Something twisted and evil came for Allan the day of the car crash. It was Death, and it wanted more than his parents, more than Allan’s legs. Did it want his uncle now? Maybe it wants him.

  Rubic lay pressed into the mud by a large boulder. The cool water rushes by him keeping him wet. His skin looks pale.

  No! I can’t let this happen. The river isn’t very deep here. I can do something. Allan screams inside. He reaches the riverbank and collects rocks and sticks. As the sun makes its way through the sky, Allan builds a dam around Rubic. When he is finished, the water is diverted away from his uncle so he won’t freeze in the cold mountain water. The next step is to get help. Allan has to get back to camp. There’s a cell phone there, there has to be. Allan takes a deep breath and rolls into the water then lifts himself up. The water isn’t moving very fast, but it has strength. It lifts Allan’s body as he pulls himself across. At the other side he drags himself out of the water. He’s still small and thin, but his arms are strong from being a powerful swimmer. He sits up and pushes himself backward. He turns his head to see where he’s going and then continues scooting backward.

  Grass and leaves swipe Allan’s arms as he scoots along. The vegetation wipes off the mud that has dried on his skin. On closer inspection he sees that it’s not mud. It’s a little pink and there’s a metallic smell to it. He scratches a glob of the goop off his forearm. It’s something else, something foul. The trees are caked with the pink stuff as well. Allan uses his hand to clean a wide swath off a nearby tree trunk. The trunk is white underneath. He continues to remove the substance off the trunk. The flood brought some foul chemical with it.

  Allan flips onto his belly. Dr. Jenny, his spirited physical therapist, showed him how to crawl on his knees, but he’d never bothered to practice. Now it seems that might be an alternative way to move. Allan pulls himself onto his knees. He picks up his left hip and leans forward on his arms. His limp, but heavy leg falls forward. He puts his weight on the knee. Then he picks up his right hip and lets it fall forward before returning the weight to it. In this manner, he begins to slowly crawl forward. Sweat drips off his forehead like his head is a rain cloud.

  If only he’d eaten this morning. There’s no protein bar, snack or drink in his pockets. They’re all in the pockets of his wheelchair. In desperation, he bends down and drinks from a puddle. It tastes bad, sharp, and stings the back of his throat, but it’s still water. So he drinks again and then rests on his belly.

  After crawling up a small slope, Allan rolls onto his back. He’s tired. His eyes burn. He can’t do this. He’s going to die along with his uncle. Will he be able to walk in heaven? Or will God provide a solid gold, diamond-studded wheelchair? Allan giggles at the thought of God sitting in his throne, “Can’t use your legs in heaven, but, hey, you don’t need them. You’ve got angel wings.” Allan laughs harder. He sees himself fluttering around on little wings as his legs flop like overcooked spaghetti. He can’t stop laughing. Head-splitting
laughs roll out of his chest until his head thumps.

  After what seems like hours, but is only seconds, Allan settles down. He sits up and pushes his torso backward. He wonders why the image of little angel’s wings on his back is so funny.

  Without explanation, Allan’s thoughts move on. He notices his vision has blurred a little. Then he notices patterns dancing in the pine needles. They look like little skeletons locking arms and turning around and around in a macabre kind of line dance. All the pine needles look like this and then the pattern changes.

  Allan sees a bug lying on its back in front of him. He flips it over so its wings can fold out of its shell. As it flies away it leaves a trail behind it like one of those propeller planes that drags banners through the air. Allan rubs his eyes. Why am I seeing things?

  He pushes through a thick fern entangled by some type of parasitic plant that wraps around the ferns. On the other side is the largest, most beautiful flower he has ever seen. It has hundreds of tiny blue petals surrounding an orb of light-blue fur. He guesses the fur is actually pollen. The bulb is about as round as a softball. There are patterns in the pollen, and Allan is transfixed for a moment. The petals that encircle the pollen bud twitch as if the flower doesn’t like being stared at. Allan smells the flower hoping for a perfume smell, but instead sneezes. Pollen goes everywhere. He sees sparks in the cloud of pollen. Miniature fireworks pop off all around him. His body wretches and he sneezes again. He drops the strange flower, wondering why he is so allergic to it. He usually doesn’t have to worry about allergies. He continues to sneeze repeatedly and feels like he’s about to pass out. He can’t pass out. He can’t. The fireworks multiply and rain down on him. They seem to bend the daylight beyond like a lens.

  Pain tears through Allan’s body. He feels stretched and twisted, squeezed in a giant hand. As quick as the pain comes on, it vanishes. The colors around him change and so does the foliage. Bird songs, cricket chirps and a faraway hoot have never sounded so unusual, so alien. The flower he’d dropped no longer sits at his side. It’s gone, along with that fern. A different kind of plant surrounds him. It isn’t green, but teal. Dark red veins twist through the leaves like it’s riddled with an infection.

  He looks around, wanting to continue toward camp, but which way does he go? The ground is no longer littered with pine needles. Instead he’s on a thin marbled moss. The trees are thinner and have circular shapes on the trunks instead of crackled bark. Where’s camp? He glances around feeling dizzy. Keep going. I need to keep going. If I was crawling in the right direction before, then I’ll need to continue that way. I’ll run into the road, if it even exists anymore. Allan feels shaky and nervous and squeezes his eyes shut.

  Allan looks up, startled by black shapes speeding across the forest floor. They wisp by him and leap over rocks and bushes. He can’t focus on them, but they look like deer. One comes right at Allan and he flinches. The thing stops a few feet away. Its shape is reminiscent of a deer, only not solid and more like smoke. Allan should feel afraid, but instead feels peace come to him. The deer-like shape comes close to him, and he reaches out to touch it. The smoky deer’s snout doesn’t touch Allan’s skin, but flows over his fingers. Allan instantly knows what it is. It’s called a Dream Spirit.

  Allan hears its voice. It’s a soft lilting sound, whispers on the wind. No, not on the wind, Allan can hear it in his head, like it’s one of his own thoughts. You can’t be real, Allan thinks. The Dream Spirit’s eyes widen showing a white expanse inside its head, contradicting its shadowy form. There’s a whole world in there. Its voice warms Allan’s muscles and calms his nerves.

  It says, “I will give you strength. You are on a noble path and you will succeed. Ignore the things that haunt you. Push ahead, boy from Earth. The future is a birthing star, always will be, for the star is ever growing, ever changing. That is the power of now. Go. Save your Uncle.”

  Something causes the deer-like Dream Spirit to look up and dash away. Allan watches the rest of the stampede pass by. He’s left speechless and in awe. That couldn’t have been real, could it? I . . . I am dreaming. Wake up, wake up!

  Allan squeezes his eyes shut. He wants to continue, but he’s so scared. For the few moments the Dream Spirit was with him he was safe. Now, he’s alone and something strange is happening to him.

  Allan lies down. His cheeks rest on the dry needles and the fallen leaves. He wants to continue, to save Rubic. But how?

  Chapter 3 (eight months previous)

  Beep, Beep goes the Machine of Life

  The intense roar of the crowd deadens every time Allan’s head falls below the waterline. But when his ears rise above the splashes he can hear them again. His fans. He hears them yell his name, and then the sound vanishes, replaced by the silent peacefulness of the being underwater. Allan feels his heart beat in his chest like a caged monster. Energy pumps through his body at dizzying speeds. His arms pull the water, and his legs power a tornado behind him.

  Allan’s eyes follow the dark blue tiles at the bottom of the pool until they end in a ‘T’. At the perfect moment he tucks his head under him and twists. Memory, deep in his muscles, guides his every move.

  The boy in the next lane falls farther and farther behind. Allan’s lead fuels the clamor of the crowd. The echo is almost deafening.

  Allan reaches up and touches the end of his lane, letting his body gently collide with the pool wall. He won, and by the look of it, by a body length. Allan holds up his hand, and the crowd claps a thunderous response.

  So goes Allan Westerfield’s thirteen to fourteen, one-hundred-meter, local swimming committee, freestyle race. He’s now qualified for the Nationals.

  Allan lets the water fall off his swim cap and cascade down his face as he listens to the announcer call out times. He beat his best time by half a second! Allan looks across the sea of happy faces in the bleachers and listens to the clapping.

  Allan sees his mother’s face. She isn’t smiling or clapping. Did she even see me? I was great! He expects her to run to him, to squeeze him until he bursts, but she is motionless. Did she see him pull that last meter? Did she hear the cries of his name? Of course she did. Allan’s energy plummets. There’s only one reason she’d be so furious.

  Allan pulls himself out of the pool and grabs a towel. A few of his teammates give him high fives, and his coach gives him a hug. “So proud of you. You’re going to be swimming at the Olympics if you keep beating your time like this.”

  Allan can’t avoid his mother’s glare. He reluctantly approaches her, knowing why she’s mad. She holds up his report card. Her grip slightly crumpled the paper. Even still, Allan can clearly see two F’s have been highlighted in yellow. One in math and the other in science.

  “Get dressed. We’re leaving now.”

  “But.”

  “No. Now.”

  Allan shuffles into the boys’ locker room and emerges in his blue and grey school uniform.

  “You can’t swim with grades like these,” Mrs. Westerfield hisses, keeping her voice as low as possible. She grabs his shirt collar and tugs him toward the oversized mahogany door that leads to the main hallway.

  Allan doesn’t say a word. He knew this day would come. It’s calling out the beast in his mother, and no athletic excellence or fancy award could ease her anger. He wants to shrink into a tiny marble and roll away or clink down a gutter and into a storm drain where he will be safe.

  Mrs. Westerfield practically drags him down the wide hallway. Its walls have accumulated a myriad of awards, photos and student artwork. Now that he’d won the one-hundred-meter freestyle, he might actually get his picture on the wall.

  “You weren’t even supposed to race today. You have to have a 3.2 GPA to play sports. You don’t have a 3.2 GPA. Do you know what that means?”

  Allan shakes his head.

  “You’re in the best private school in the state. Your father and I aren’t paying for you to swim. We’re paying for you to learn.” For a few moments, the o
nly sound is the clicking of Mrs. Westerfield’s heels on the tile floor. “Besides, without that GPA you will be disqualified. All your efforts might go down the drain.”

  Disqualified? No, they can’t do that to me. Can they? Allan looks at the polished wood paneled walls of Greenville Academy. He can’t believe they’d strip him of his trophy just for not turning in some work. He’d come so far here.

  It wasn’t always were he wanted to be. Greenville Academy’s prestigious austere used to haunt Allan every time he walked through the towering front doors. Everyone is too smart, too driven, too . . . something he isn’t. Until taking the lead on the swim team, Allan had never felt like he belonged at the academy. They do not want average kids, kids that can’t figure out algebra or memorize the periodic table or grasp Latin. He hates Latin. If Allan had his way, he’d go to public school where he didn’t have to do two hours of homework a night or wear an ugly polo shirt every day.

  Now, Allan wants to be here. He’s been accepted. Today, the kids that usually ignored him cheered his name. Their parents will talk about him. He is now the fastest swimmer Greenville has ever seen.

  “You’ve never done this before,” Mrs. Westerfield hisses. She is normally a lean woman, but her outrage amplifies her muscles and veins. Her hair and eye make-up appear darker in her rage though it is mid-day and sunny. She’s normally very pretty, a good mom. But on occasions like this, she morphs into a surly, fire-breathing troll queen whose cruelty reigns over Allan and his father. Her nails dig into his arm as she pulls him down the steps toward the car that idles at the curb. They feel like claws. “You’ve never lied to me like this. You are grounded from Max and your video games for a month, or more. Your father and I haven’t quite decided, yet. And unless you bring up these grades, and fast, you will not swim on the team again. Do you hear me?”