Adrift

by Travis Smith

  Several were already looking when Patrick stormed thoughtlessly out of the dwelling he’d just ransacked, but when he stumbled to a halt and dropped his dripping satchel, the silence of the day was broken, and nearly one-hundred pairs of listless eyes flocked to his position. For a moment, nothing moved—not even his heart, it seemed. He froze, staring wide-eyed at the horde of half-dressed, half-dead predators, who were frozen and staring right back. When one finally broke the lull by beginning to shuffle forward, a wave of motion swept across the silent crowd. Patrick’s paralysis broke, and he turned back into the cottage and slammed the door. It was only after he’d slid a heavy table in front of the door and heard the legion of sick people begin pushing against its weight that he realized he’d left his bag on the ground outside. He’d left his only weapons far beyond his reach.

  He frantically searched the den and kitchen areas for anything that could be used for defense, but the table against the door was no match for over a hundred hungry, horny, determined individuals. He had mere moments to make an escape.

  Patrick ran down the short hall to the bedrooms in the back of the cottage. He felt a twinge of relief when the first room he entered had a window and that no one seemed to be wandering directly outside it. As he kicked the window out and leapt through, slicing his arms on jagged glass, he heard the table in the den finally tip over and the door slam inward.

  Once outside and on the back side of the row of houses lining the crowded streets, Patrick noted as many as five lurkers meandering in the small grassy area behind the houses. He easily slipped past them and outran them as they slowly began trundling toward him. Something about his not being sick must have made his flesh more appetizing to the infected—or more sexually appealing.

  He made it past several houses along the long street and to the point where the road met the large central square of Onton. Walking out from behind the last cottage, Patrick was greeted with a district that looked somehow thrice as crowded as the street he’d walked into before. The poison must have been distributed not only to Onton, but to every smaller, outlying district in northern Fordar. His mind flittered for the thousandth time to wondering what type of person would do such a thing and what could possibly be gained by turning the world into … this.

  His face nearly bounced off of an older woman’s exposed bosom before he was able to bring himself to a halt. The woman, covered in dirt and sores and bite marks, looked down at him briefly before reaching out her bony arms hungrily and seizing his shoulders. If her body wasn’t so emaciated and diseased, her fingernails may have torn through his shirt and skin as he writhed from her grip, likely infecting him on the spot, but as it was, her brittle nails cracked and peeled off of her fingertips. She gave no sign that she had even felt most of her fingernails flaking entirely off her body, but merely stumbled forward in an attempt to seize the boy anew.

  Patrick spun and found himself face-to-face with another small pack of lurkers that he’d just run past, and he was forced to run between the cottage and the adjacent one. When he reached the street, however, he found there was nowhere to go. Scores of the things were still pouring into the house he’d just escaped far along the street to his left, larger hordes swarmed in the market square to his right, a small group was following him around the buildings from behind, and the street before him was peppered with individuals already interested in his business. He rammed the door of the cottage beside him, and it gave way easily.

  Inside, the boy barricaded the door as best he could with what he could find and made his way toward the back of the house. Soon the things would be swarming all four walls and coming in the front door. He would have no way of escaping and getting back to his own home, which he had fortified well over many days using strong bits of wood and heavy furniture. He’d have to find a weapon and jump out the back window again. Better to face a few of these things out in the open than get trapped in here with nowhere to run.

  He glanced around for anything sharp or long and blunt, but the door popped open sooner than he’d hoped, and he was forced to flee down the dark hall. It wasn’t until he’d bolted into the small bedroom that he realized why the area was so uncharacteristically dark.

  There was no window.

  2

  Patrick frantically looked over his shoulder and saw the approaching shadow in the den. He had nowhere to go. He was trapped without a weapon for the first time since this whole incident began. The room was empty save for an old bed that had been flipped haphazardly against the corner. How many had seen him come in here? How many were actively pursuing him through the front door? Did he stand any chance at all of plowing back down the hall and out the front door without getting scratched or bitten or raped?

  He heard a thump behind him and bolted into action. If the things hadn’t seen him come in this room, maybe they would get confused. He ran and wedged himself in the corner, between the wall and the bed on its side. Trying futilely to quiet his breathing, he cursed himself for ending up like this—trapped in a dark room behind a bed, his life depending on a group of lurkers getting confused by his disappearance and walking back out the front door.

  The woman from the street entered the room silently. Patrick could smell the death on her. Her grey, dying, sagging flesh. The foul, rotted meat she’d been consuming. He imagined what it would be like to feel his mind shut down, how long it would take after she pinned him and bit into his neck like a piece of juicy fruit. He would probably be the freshest meal she’d had since turning. He wondered how long it would take for him to fade out completely, to become a willing participant in this sick apocalypse and let her push his limp boyhood into her and ride it until he squirted his tainted seed that would never spawn.

  The woman stopped and stood silently in the center of the room, and Patrick resisted a suicidal urge to peer around from behind the bed to see if she was leaving. The moment dragged torturously as he sat upon his hands and knees, one hand over his mouth, listening to the silence and smelling the woman’s stench. When the arm holding him upright began to tremble and he thought he could take it no longer, he heard a rustle and a thump as something hit the bed. The bed continued to jostle, as though the woman was attempting to pull it away from the wall with her frail arms. After a while with no change, Patrick accepted that the bed was going nowhere, and he couldn’t resist peeking around to see what was causing the ruckus.

  He slowly looked around the bed and observed that a man had followed the woman into the room. He had pinned her on her stomach against the bed and was engaging unabashedly in an act that not so many days ago had been secret and personal and mysterious in this community.

  Patrick quickly looked away and noticed that no one was immediately following down the hall. If he would be given a chance today, this was it. He glanced again at the occupied couple and stood up, observing their newfound complete lack of interest in him. He debated saying something, asking if they could understand him, but he knew it was of no use. He’d tried it innumerable times already. He made a stealthy retreat to the bedroom door and looked down the hall to ensure no one else would impede his escape. When he made it back to the den with the door standing wide open to the street, he saw that no others had pursued him inside. They’d already forgotten. Out of sight, out of mind.

  As he prepared himself to bolt out the door and flee straight through the crowd in the square, Patrick noticed a large oil lamp and book of matches on a table in the kitchen. He imagined a quiet, hardworking family sitting down to a candlelit dinner, huddling around the oil lamp to keep warm in the night’s chill. That same family had likely lain around that same lamp less than half a day later, choking on a thick black cloud of poison that had momentarily engulfed the town. Now they were likely wandering around, naked and raw and dying, with nary a memory of civilized dinners by lamplight, nary a memory that they’d ever even had a family at all …

  The lamp was still mostly full of oil, and the book of matches had several remaining. Patrick looked into the
street and observed his undignified neighbors and peers, wandering about naked and, for all intents and purposes, dead. They may look like they had direction or were enjoying themselves during acts like the one going on in the back bedroom, but he knew they were suffering. These people were sick, so sick that they no longer even realized it. They no longer realized anything. Patrick didn’t just have an imperative to kill to survive, he had an obligation to put these things out of their misery if he was able. No one in the street seemed to be interested in this cottage any longer, which meant that he had time to spare, and he was able.

  He took the lamp and matches and walked cautiously back toward the bedroom, where he found the couple still going at it against the bed.

  “I’m sorry,” he muttered, unnoticed. “I’m sorry this happened to you.”

  A lump rose in his throat as he poured some oil out onto the ground and splashed a little onto the couple.

  “And I’m sorry I can’t get this over with quicker,” he said a little louder.

  He tossed another splash onto the man’s back, and the thing didn’t even groan, despite how much the oil must have stung in his lacerated flesh.

  Tears finally spilled from Patrick’s eyes as his frustration mounted. These two couldn’t even notice his presence now, and if they did, they’d either want to eat him or fuck him too. Would he ever be able to just talk to someone again? Would he ever love or be loved again? His own father had come at him dick-first in an attempt to have his way with him. Patrick vowed to avenge everyone he’d ever known and everyone he’d have to kill, should he be given the opportunity to meet the man responsible for this mess.

  “Look at me!” Patrick screamed.

  He threw the glass lamp at the man’s back, where it shattered and sprayed the remaining oil all over the couple connected together in an unnatural act of mating. The man shook his shoulders, but otherwise gave no sign that he’d even noticed.

  Patrick flicked a match alight and tossed it at the puddle of oil on the floor. It immediately erupted and engulfed the pair in yellow flame. The two continued writhing like animals even as the flames caused their thin, grey flesh to bubble and melt from their very bones. They at last began groaning in indication that they could still feel pain, but they didn’t even possess the instincts to escape that pain. Patrick watched mesmerized as the two died slowly and painfully and almost silently in completely uninterrupted coitus.

  3

  Patrick stared in horror as the couple slowly burned to death. The slow-burning flames licked their way up the wall, where a lot of the oil had sprayed when the lamp shattered. The cheap clay wall slowly crumbled and melted, and eventually a large portion of the dry roof caved in and fed the growing flames.

  When he finally turned to leave, Patrick saw a flock of lurkers behind him, just over an arm’s length away. Now he was trapped in a burning room with far more than one or two on his trail. He could see at least eight coming down the hall. He turned on his heel and faced the flames. There was nowhere to hide now, but at least he had an option for escape.

  He leapt onto the overturned bed without a moment’s hesitation and placed his hands atop the fiery, crumbling wall. His hands immediately recoiled in painful protest, but he forced them back down as his momentum bounced him off the bed and carried him up and over the wall through the growing hole in the roof. As he came down on the other side, the wall crumbled in half, and Patrick swiftly rolled out of the way of the collapsing chunk of burning clay.

  A few lurkers were scattered behind the house and staring uncomprehendingly at the commotion inside the cottage, but Patrick had enough time to get to his feet and watch as the growing crowd inside walked hungrily into the flames and began struggling to pull themselves up and over the burning wall. They flocked like moths into the fire, never taking their listless eyes from Patrick. Not even as their skin bubbled and dripped from their bones did they look away to pat out the flames. The few who were still wearing bits of clothes never even tried to rip them off as they went up and mixed the searing fabric with the melting flesh beneath. An unearthly stench began drifting out of the cottage, and that, combined with the image of these brain-dead people walking unwittingly into their own torturous death, brought Patrick to his knees retching and dry heaving, his empty stomach convulsing and quivering inside his abdomen.

  Before the scattered individuals nearby made their way closer to Patrick, he pulled himself together, got to his feet, and ran headlong through the market square, which had thinned out considerably as the lurkers travelled in hordes toward the burning house.

  Patrick skirted around the groups still in the market and raced frantically behind the cottages lining his own street until he found his house. He trekked quietly around the perimeter to ensure that no one would notice him enter. When he felt sure enough that he was relatively alone, he pulled down the heavy table he’d used to block the cottage’s only entrance while he was away, walked inside and set the table back upright against the doorframe, and closed and barricaded the door.

  He slumped against the wall and rested his head on his knees. Letting out a shaky sigh of relief and revulsion, he began to cry silently, and his tears didn’t slow until nightfall began.

  4

  That night it seemed that the weather’s sickness had finally broken. Strong wind whipped the tall grasses to and fro, laying entire sections perfectly flat for several moments before ripping them back upright and slamming them back to the ground. In the market, unattended stands of decaying foods were flipped unceremoniously, voiding them of their contents and lightening them enough for the violent wind to hoist them and hurl them into the sides of vacant buildings, creating clangs and crashes that echoed throughout the town of Onton. Stalks of the dead corn were ripped from the earth and propelled through the sky like withered spears. Blackened ears with shriveled kernels rained down upon roofs to create hollow knocks and smashed through thin windows to create sharp crashes of shattering glass. The unwell inhabitants strolled thoughtlessly through the streets, unmindful of the rising calamity around them. Their darkened, decaying flesh sagged from their faces and thinning arms and legs as the skies above them darkened to match. At last the rain began, and it started with such ferocity that Patrick heard not the sounds of increasingly powerful raindrops but a sole deafening crash that could have been a single sheet of water descending upon the town or—just as likely—the entire sky collapsing down upon him. The rain fell with a fierce weight that pounded on every roof in the district, and the wind drove the pounding water sideways as it fell, slamming it into windows and doors. The receding day had darkened to a pseudo-nightfall with the heavy cloud cover, and thunder crashed directly overhead, vibrating everything in the town, right down to Patrick’s very teeth, which had already begun to chatter. Lightning lit the town with a stark brightness that rapidly faded and left him with half-recalled visions of moving shadows and silhouettes outside the windows. The tin outdoor ovens and furnaces rattled and echoed ominously in the powerful wind and rain.

  Since the animated shells of Patrick’s friends and neighbors were silent and unwise, the only way he had learned to identify their presence was by detecting movement and the ruckus of their disturbance of various items in the environment, and while his own cottage was heavily fortified to keep the dying mutants from getting in while he slept at night, he had grown accustomed to the silence of the previous days; this abundance of stimulation granted him great woe. His throat clenched painfully with every slam against the walls and windows, every thud upon the roof, every flash of lightning and crash of thunder. His heart raced through the night, and his hand grew tired as it ceaselessly clenched and unclenched the small knife he held for protection. His sense of profound loneliness doubled and then doubled again with the sounds of the storm. For the third time that day, Patrick felt the sting of hot, bitter tears in his eyes.

  The storm stayed strong through the night and into the next morning.

  5

  Patrick waited
most of the day for the storm to end. When it finally did, he was so exhausted from the previous day—as well as from not sleeping that night—that he promptly collapsed in the silence that followed the storm.

  The next day he took the sharpest knife he had, which was a small kitchen knife, and prepared to set out to reclaim his lost satchel that held his preferred weapons, as well as to check the corn fields for any sign of new growth after the rain.

  His walk toward the fields was eerily quiet. He passed through the market, which had been flooded with lurkers the last time he was there. Patrick wasn’t sure where the crowds travelled on days when no one was around, and he wasn’t sure how they had managed to regroup so suddenly and silently two days ago, but he was determined not to let it happen again. Or to, at the very least, be better prepared if and when it did.

  He walked slowly toward the street where he’d been ambushed while pillaging the vacant cottage for food. He hadn’t yet figured out their behaviors flawlessly, but he was somewhat surprised to find everything so vacant. Patrick was used to noting at least one or two lurking somewhere inside a house or building in the distance. Today he could see no movement. An ominous weight settled in his gut as he held his small knife at the ready, wondering whether this was a fluke or if the storm had had some strange effect on their behavior.