Cruel World

by Joe Hart

  Empty.

  Denver latched onto the stilt’s wrist as it withdrew its arm, its hand clutching Ty around the chest. The big dog bit down, bone cracking in its jaws. Ty screamed again, his cries brimming with pain and intermingling with the stilt’s roars. The truck jerked again, and Quinn’s head connected with a wheel well. His vision swung, and he put out a hand as Ty was dragged from the backseat, his legs kicking broken glass in glittering pieces. There was blood on his small face, his unseeing eyes stretched with terror.

  The stilt dragged Denver along with Ty to the back of the truck.

  “Quinn!” Alice screamed.

  He found his feet, the world still pin-wheeling. The stilt roared and tried to bat him from the truck, but he crouched, feeling the passage of air over his head. Quinn took a step and brought his foot down as hard as he could on the slender arm holding Ty just before the point where it rested on the tailgate.

  There was a loud snap of bone.

  The stilt screeched, the sound making his eardrums ripple.

  Denver shook his massive head.

  Blood spurted across the truck bed, and the stilt tripped and toppled. It fell in a tangled heap on the highway, rolling, as skin and flesh were peeled away against the blacktop. Quinn pulled his eyes from the sight and dropped to his knees beside Ty who lay on his back, soaked in crimson. The stilt’s hand still gripped him around the chest, and Denver yanked on the shredded meat where the wrist ended. Quinn pried the spasming fingers from around Ty’s torso and jerked it out of Denver’s clutching jaws. He tossed the splayed hand over the side of the truck like an enormous spider before pulling Ty into his lap.

  “Is he okay?” Alice screamed, not watching the road at all.

  “I’ve got him!” Quinn yelled. “Are you all right, champ?”

  Ty shuddered and coughed, spitting out the stilt’s blood that had found its way into his mouth. He vomited and Quinn held him, wiping at his face. There were several small lacerations on his cheeks and forehead that bled freely.

  “Are you okay?” Quinn asked again when the boy had quit gagging. Ty settled into his arms and slowly nodded.

  “I think so.”

  “Any pain inside your stomach or chest?”

  “Nuh-uh, not really.”

  Quinn sighed and pulled him closer, kissing the top of his head. “You’re okay; I gotcha now.”

  “I think I wet my pants,” Ty said in a small voice that barely carried over the wind and rain that lashed them.

  “I think I did too, buddy,” Quinn said. The tiniest of laughs escaped the boy, and Quinn hugged him tighter as they flew down the highway through the storm.

  Chapter 31

  Up the River

  They spent that night anchored in the center of the St. Croix River.

  Quinn steered them to the middle of a broad expanse that could have passed for a lake, except for the constant current trying to bring them downstream. They cleaned their wounds, disinfecting the cuts on Ty’s face along with setting Denver’s leg as well as they could. The huge dog laid still through the whole procedure, snarling only once near the end when Quinn moved his leg slightly to wrap it tighter. Despite her assurances that she was fine, Alice had sprained her ankle in the ten-foot drop from the awning to the truck. She joked that it couldn’t have happened to the leg she’d gotten shot in and how Quinn was going to have to carry her most places from that point on. He said he would gladly oblige.

  The following days were easy and quiet. They cruised north up the river, passing patches of dense forest and large suburbs alike. Once a group of stilts spotted them coming around a bend near a campsite. The tallest of the herd had waded up to its thighs in the water before roaring impotently at them while they passed well out of reach. Ty had at first shrank from the creature’s cries, but as they faded, he stood and stuck his tongue past his lips in the direction of the diminishing sounds.

  They all shared the master bed at night with Ty curled peacefully between them and Denver lying on his own blanket near the mouth of the hold. On the third day, after they’d circumvented an impassable damn by scouting and finding a smaller boat on its other side, Alice sat next to Quinn as he guided them across a wide lake, all the while consulting the phone’s mapping application that miraculously still functioned.

  “Why didn’t you just shoot him?” she asked after a time.

  “Who?”

  “Gregory. You pumped him full of the virus instead.”

  Quinn chewed on his bottom lip. “I wanted to be sure. If I’d just shot him, there was no guarantee it would’ve killed whatever Rodney had become. I took a chance thinking that re-injecting him with the virus would dissolve the bone again. I couldn’t stand the thought of that thing controlling the stilts, having them do its bidding. I couldn’t leave Gregory like that either. Even though he probably deserved it.”

  She nodded and wound a piece of stray fishing line around her finger before looking at him again.

  “Where are you taking us, captain?” she asked, pinning him with one flash of sapphire eyes.

  “I’m not a hundred percent sure yet.”

  “Bullshit. You’re not fooling anyone. You know exactly where you’re going. You’ve known since we stopped at the marina.”

  He hesitated but only for a moment. “When Harold Roman was dying, he said something to me.”

  “Okay.”

  “He said ‘I Royal’. I thought he was trying to tell me his name was Royal. But he wasn’t. He was trying to say Isle Royale.”

  “Isle Royale? What’s that?”

  “It’s an island off the coast of northern Minnesota in Lake Superior. That’s what most of the documents and maps were about that he had in his pack. You were right; he was planning a trip. He knew more about the stilts and their biology than most people, and he figured that that island would be one of the best places for refuge.”

  Alice watched him for a long time and then glanced at Ty and Denver who rode on the floor together in the bow.

  “How would we survive there?” she finally asked.

  “It’s got a population of moose as well as an interior lake with fish, not to mention Lake Superior on all sides. There’d be plenty of food. The island itself is fifteen miles offshore, and I don’t see any of those things swimming that far, especially with how cold the water temperature typically is. In the winter, we won’t have to worry about them at all since they’ll have to migrate south to keep from freezing to death. There’s visitor lodges there that we can live in, plenty of wood to burn.” He studied her face, how the sunshine lit her hair into a raven flare each time the wind caught it. “What do you think?”

  She stared ahead at the water glimmering beyond the boat. He waited, content to watch her rather than the scenic landscape that slipped past them. After a time, she turned back to him.

  “I think I’m in love with you,” she said. His jaw slackened and he blinked. Alice laughed, tossing her head to one side and leaned in, kissing him firmly on the lips. When she drew back, she smiled and stroked the side of his face. “Let’s go to your island.”

  Epilogue

  3 Years Later

  The lure splashed, hitting the water in a spray that caught the late fall sunlight.

  Ty began to reel, jigging the rod with an expert hand as he felt the bump of a fish testing the bait. He froze, slowly bringing up the slack line until it tightened, the jerking tug transferring through the rod into his hands. He snapped his arms up, setting the hook and began to reel again, the tension of the fish making him whoop with delight.

  “Another one?” Quinn asked, casting his own line out again into the lake.

  “Of course.”

  “Oh listen to you, great white fisherman.”

  “You’re just upset that a blind kid can out-catch you.”

  “And you’re pretty cocky for someone who’s only been fishing for three years.”

  Ty laughed and drew the whipping perch out of the water, catching it as it swung towa
rd him on the end of the line. In a matter of seconds, he had the fish off the hook and strung on the shining stringer that trailed into the water at their feet. The other four fish swimming in place that were threaded there flipped indignantly until he released the chain holding them.

  “So that’s four to one,” Ty said, baiting his hook before casting it out again in a graceful curve of line.

  “You’re gonna beat me again,” Quinn said. He scratched at the thick beard covering his face, still not fully used to the feeling of it there even after growing it for over a year.

  “Are you going to take me to shore when you go this time?” Ty asked.

  “Absolutely not.”

  “But I’m almost ten,” he protested, jigging his rod harder.

  “You’re barely nine.”

  “But you said yourself that you hadn’t seen one of them in almost two years.”

  “That doesn’t mean that they aren’t there.”

  Ty fell silent for a long time. The air was already cooling, winter’s breath coursing in from the west. Soon the snow would begin to fall, their journeys outside of the main lodge limited to gathering firewood from the extensive pile ricked against the back wall and to the portable fish house that they would erect once the ice was thick enough to stand on.

  “Do you think we’ll ever live back on the mainland again?” Ty asked, pulling Quinn away from the preparations he was going through in his head. The question caught him off guard, and he looked at the boy, growing tall now, his steps steady and sure on any of the hiking trails that snaked across the island like a child’s treasure map.

  “Do you want to go back?” Quinn asked.

  Ty jigged the rod, tipping his head to one side, looking so much like his mother in the sun.

  “Not really, I guess,” he said finally. “Do you think about them a lot, your dad, Teresa, everyone you lost?” Ty asked after another pause.

  “Yes, I do.”

  “And you miss them?”

  “Very much.”

  “But you’d never want to go back to your home where you grew up?”

  Quinn wound in his line and secured it to the pole before coming close to Ty and embracing him.

  “This is my home.”

  They brought the fish up to the four-wheeler that waited for them on the trail beside the lake and climbed on, Ty holding onto Quinn’s waist as they rode back to the lodge. When the low buildings came into view through the trees, Quinn guided the four-wheeler close to the first one, stopping beneath the heavy boughs of a pine.

  “Can I clean them?” Ty asked, picking up the stringer.

  “Absolutely; less work for me. Don’t cut yourself.”

  “I won’t. Here Denver!” The great German Shepherd rose from the bed on the rear deck of the lodge and trotted to the boy, the hobble in his hind leg barely noticeable. Ty grabbed the bar of the upraised collar Quinn had designed, and the dog lead him in the direction of the fish-cleaning shack farther down the shoreline. Quinn watched them go, something tightening in his chest at the sight of them walking away.

  The sun was beginning to slide behind the tall trees that lined the bank, casting fire across the water in undulating waves. He moved down to the lake’s edge, walking out onto the dock that jutted into the cold water. He stood there for a long time, looking across the lake, the land he knew was there unseen. He closed his eyes, and for a moment, he was back, listening to the water rush against rock, the breeze caressing his face, the ocean before him.

  He heard her approach and only opened his eyes after she’d slipped an arm around his waist.

  “What are you doing out here?” Alice asked.

  “Dreaming dreams.”

  “Are they good ones?”

  “Not as good as the one I’m living.”

  The whole world was quiet save for their breathing, the lake’s eternal movement, the sun’s descent. She glanced up at him.

  “You’re reliving it all again, aren’t you.” When he didn’t reply she continued. “Honey, stop. You have to quit this,” she said, guiding his head down to hers. She kissed him, held his face in her hands. “Your father loved you beyond anything.”

  “And it destroyed the world,” Quinn said, swallowing. “Because of how I am.”

  “It’s not your fault. After all the times we’ve discussed it, after what you’ve put yourself through, you know you couldn’t have done anything different, you know that.”

  “It doesn’t change anything.”

  “Listen to me. You brought us here. You made a life for us. We wouldn’t have survived without you.”

  “You would have been fine. You’re the toughest person I’ve ever met.”

  “No, I’m not. The boy in that little shack over there is, but he wouldn’t be here today if it weren’t for you.” She brought her lips to his again and then gazed into his eyes, looking from one to the other. “Remember what you told me a long time ago? About hope being stronger than anything?”

  He nodded.

  She brought his hands down to the slight swell of her belly.

  “I haven’t forgotten.”

  Author’s Note

  As always, thanks so much for reading. I appreciate you coming along on yet another journey. I hope the ride was as fulfilling for you as it was for me to create.

  The idea for Cruel World was born of an image that came to me out of the blue some time ago of a boy sitting with his father in a room full of books. The boy was afflicted with a deformity that kept him from doing all the typical things that someone his age would have partaken in. He did not go to school, he didn’t play with other kids, he had no one besides his doting father who wanted only to protect him from the cruelty outside their walls. The original title I had for this story was The Bookseller’s Son.

  What evolved from there became Cruel World. Of course my singular idea transformed into something frightening and thrilling as is the nature of my contemplation. I wanted to know how someone who was cut off from the outside world, someone dubbed as a physical ‘monster’, would deal with being released from his sanctuary/prison into a world filled with real monsters, both human and not.

  I have unending respect for the resiliency of those who suffer from some type of physical or mental disability, and hope that I conveyed my admiration throughout the book. Those of us who are blessed with healthy bodies and mental abilities should reflect more upon the notion of lacking such traits that are often taken for granted. The suffering that many endure goes unnoticed at times, and just by realizing how fortunate many of us are would go a long way in the extension of kindness and empathy.

  Once again, I hope you’ve enjoyed the book, and if you have feedback, I would love to hear from you in the form of a review, an email, or by reaching out via social media. Thank you for your company and I hope to have a new place for us to go soon if you’re up for the ride.

  Joe Hart

  November 2014

  Other Works by Joe Hart

  Novels

  Lineage

  Singularity

  EverFall

  The River Is Dark

  The Waiting

  Widow Town

  Short story collections

  Midnight Paths: A Collection of Dark Horror

  Short Stories

  “The Line Unseen”

  “The Edge of Life”

  “Outpost”