Adrift

by Travis Smith

  It is the most ubiquitous phenomenon in the history of the universe, and yet it is the single greatest fear of every individual who has ever lived.

  It is the only guarantee to every living creature. Often occurring even before birth, it is an unbroken promise made upon fertilization.

  It is as mysterious and misunderstood as any notion known to man. In truth, though, there is nothing magical about it. It is merely the absence of life. It brings us back to a state of being before our conception. It returns our matter to the world around us, as entropy demands.

  It is a cessation of bodily function, a cessation of thought, and it is no more terrifying than any of the insurmountable horrors we encounter on a day-to-day basis. Yet we try to rationalize it. We create stories about it. We develop myths to explain it, to explain existence. We conjure religions, falsifications, cults, lies, unjust fears. And when our time finally comes, even our very minds, in their final moments, create fictions into which we may escape and find solace. They take us to a different reality, an anti-reality. Our reality is that we are dying, but our oxygen-deprived brains tell us that we’re relaxing on an island, that we’re staring into the warmth of the sun, and although our bodies may be lying in a cold pool of blood while our muscles convulse and our dying form shivers, grows frigid, our minds tell us that we are looking at the sun, that we are travelling toward the warmth of the universe’s infinite embrace, that we are ascending into the heavens, into eternal glory and happiness and freedom. So we go toward the light not knowing what’s on the other side—not caring—because that warmth draws our frigid form like a magnet draws a heap of scrap metal. Though there is naught but darkness beyond that light, we embrace it in our final moments. We embrace the light, and, for once—in our final opportunity to do so—we embrace the unknown. We embrace not knowing what’s on the other side, because our dying minds convince us that it is bliss.

  While we should embrace this unknown our entire lives—live them to their fullest extent—we neglect it until our dying breath, as we move into the light.

  “Fuck that,” Patrick muttered.

  4

  “Fuck that.”

  Patrick raised his leg and planted a foot squarely in the creature’s chest just before the former man fell in on top of him. He kicked, and the emaciated walking corpse stumbled backwards into the towering flames with minimal resistance.

  Most of the thatch roofing had completely collapsed. A large portion of the clay side wall had crumbled, leaving a fiery doorway for interested lurkers to wander through, heeding not as the flames engulfed their tattered clothes and melted their thin, cracked skin from their very bones. Patrick took a hasty inventory of this damage as he pulled himself upright from his seated position and struggled not to collapse as the hazy world spiraled around him. He took in a breath that burned his throat with thick smoke and made him cough hoarsely. He had to move fast.

  He seized the nearest lamp bomb and bothered not to light the fuse. As a second monster from outside ambled through the house’s crumbling façade and emerged completely ablaze like a demon from hell, Patrick threw the glass bulb and hit the thing directly in its expressionless, skeletal face. A burst of fresh, bright flame erupted in the small house, seeming to double the temperature in the room. Shards of glass and flaming droplets of oil sprayed beyond the wounded creature and lit the others in the yard behind her. The fire didn’t seem to hurt the monsters, but it certainly slowed them down if they burned long enough.

  Patrick turned to the door and kicked it as hard as he could. The old chunk of wood splintered and burst open to reveal a vast horde of lurkers outside, all of which appeared to be meandering silently toward the flame like moths. He wasted no time in snatching up his satchel of supplies and removing his pair of long-bladed shears. The small stake holding the two blades together at the center snapped easily as Patrick ripped the two halves apart, leaving him with a long, sharp blade in each hand. He stepped through the door without another thought.

  Suffocating was one thing, but Patrick had no intention of letting one or more of these abominations get their hands on him. He refused to become one of them.

  He swung the blades as hard and as fast as he could, and each swipe brought another creature to his feet. The blades sliced easily through the frail necks of these sick, dead monsters. Patrick could feel resistance only when he hit their spines, and while he couldn’t cleanly remove the heads with one blow, the damage was sufficient to stop their motor functions. As he made his way out of the inferno that was once his home, clearing the smaller horde directly outside his front door, Patrick’s breathing eased, and his head began to clear in the fresh air. He swung harder and faster and dropped one, two, three, four foes in a matter of moments. Before long, Patrick was standing in a pile of twitching corpses and a puddle of thick, black, barely flowing blood.

  When the immediate area was somewhat cleared, Patrick ran back inside and picked up another bomb. No time to waste, he threw the unlit container at the nearest of the still innumerable encroaching horde in the streets and soaked them in oil. The affected creatures hardly reacted to the spray. Four bombs remaining, Patrick threw his shears in his satchel and his satchel on his shoulder and scooped up two more bulbs. The first he splashed in the grass, creating a trail from the soaked lurkers walking toward him and the open flames in his cottage. The second he threw directly between the end of the oil trail and the fire, connecting the two and igniting the trail and several of the nearest creatures that were still standing.

  Patrick snatched up the remaining two lamps in each hand, turned toward the center market, and ran for his life.

  5

  Patrick dodged the slow-moving lurkers as he ran along the streets and yards toward the center of Onton. Once he had escaped the mob outside his cottage, he felt that he could safely maneuver the streets without getting caught. He had no concrete plan, but every creature he passed turned to follow him as quickly as their decaying, dehydrated bodies would allow. He began to wonder if he could lure them all into one dead-end chamber and set it on fire. That would take care of nearly every one of these things at once.

  Patrick leapt and weaved through the crowd, which was thinning as he moved farther and farther from his home. He ran as fast as his legs would carry him, despite how slowly his pursuers were following. Moments ago, he had accepted the idea of death, but now, as the image of an old barn flashed through his mind, he could finally see a way out. Now Patrick would accept nothing short of finding his new friend and seeing that island together in reality. The only thing standing in his way was this mess.

  At last the streets were clear, save for random, sporadic stragglers here and there. The old wooden barn was in sight. A hasty glance over his shoulder lent Patrick a heart-stopping view of hundreds of his emaciated former friends and neighbors stumbling after him. Patrick dropped his satchel and the two lamp bombs just inside the large entryway to the barn. His momentum carried him to a dismayed halt as he reached the back wall of the barn to find no doors. No windows. No exit.

  “No,” Patrick muttered.

  He put his palms on the wall and pressed, hoping against hope that something would give way and leave a small hole through which he could escape.

  “No!”

  He slammed his fists again and again against the dry wood, but nothing would give. Patrick fell to his knees and closed his eyes tight. He’d made his plan whilst running down the road, moments after nearly dying, but that didn’t stop his disappointment. Those things would be making their way into the barn any moment, and Patrick had no other alternative. Would simply running away even be worth it? How long would he last in unknown territories before he ran out of viable food and water? How long before he stumbled upon a larger town, filled with even more of those monsters?

  Patrick stood and turned back toward the door. He had barely escaped his home, and he would be damned if he was giving in now and letting those creatures have their way with him. He was five steps past it b
efore he realized what he had just walked through: a ray of sunlight. He turned back to face the dark wall behind him. The sun was entering the barn through a window high on the wall, just over a loft. Patrick frantically scanned the loft until he saw the ladder leading up to it. He’d run right past it on his way in!

  He climbed the ladder and crawled his way over the mounds of dry, dusty hay that was heaped on the loft space. Finally at the window, Patrick looked through the glass at the ground below. He could fit through the window, but the fall would likely sprain his ankles and send jolts of lightning up his legs.

  After a moment’s deliberation, Patrick decided the risk was worth it. He hurried back across the loft and stepped onto the ladder. Below him stood no fewer than ten lurkers, more entering all the while.

  6

  “Shit,” Patrick groaned. He was too late. The crowd was already starting to make their way into the barn, where he was trapped. “It’s over.”

  Twenty, thirty, forty of the creatures came wandering through the barn door. Some meandered aimlessly inside while others noticed Patrick above them and began clawing at the ladder, which was built continuously with the loft, so Patrick couldn’t knock it down.

  Patrick looked over to the window, weighing his rapidly declining options. He could smash it and jump down, but would it even be worth it without any of his weapons or supplies? For all he knew, the things could be filing in below the window just as they were below the ladder.

  His muse was broken when one of the things touched his hand. He shrieked, alerting all the others to his current position, and leapt backward. The creature was clumsily but successfully using the ladder. Patrick turned himself over on his back in the tiny, short-roofed loft and planted his foot in the middle of the man’s face. The frail man tumbled backward without any resistance at all and landed with a sickeningly light thud on the dirt below.

  “I can do this all day!” Patrick yelled down. He bothered not feigning confidence, for the creatures surely couldn’t comprehend, and his voice sounded as pitiful and unsure as the squawk of a baby barn owl.

  Sure, Patrick could continue knocking the monsters off the ladder one by one, but he would certainly grow weary before they did. Another man made his way to the top of the ladder, his mindless cohorts clawing at his bare thighs and genitals. Patrick placed his foot on top of the man’s head and thrust his leg. The man collapsed in a heap that sounded as light as a smock being tossed from a bed.

  “This is it,” Patrick muttered. He was trapped up in this loft, and he would never be able to get down safely. All of his weapons were down below getting trampled by the hungry, horny mob. He didn’t even have a way to take his own life.

  A woman peered at him from atop the ladder this time. Her dull face was expressionless. Her eyes told no story of who she once may have been. Her mouth gave no hint as to her affect or intent, but Patrick knew. He placed his foot on her face and kicked her down to the dirt, where she would soon stand back upright and claw her way back to the ladder again, utterly unfazed.

  Patrick looked back toward the window. It would be his only option. He couldn’t sit up here forever, and he refused to become the prey of these undead freaks. His weapons and supplies were gone. The lamp bombs were gone. But he would have to make do with only his wits and the contents of his pocket.

  The matches!

  Patrick reached into his smock pocket as the next man reached his infected, bony hand over the top of the ladder. He thumbed the box of matches he had dropped inside and regained a tiny shred of hope for survival. A handful of matches remained inside, and Patrick plucked out three of them as he pushed the next man from the top of the ladder. He scooped a large clump of hay together at the top of the ladder, struck a match, and dropped it on top just in time to use his foot to push yet another creature off the ladder. If he could just keep the things at bay for long enough for a sizeable fire to take …

  The drought finally seemed to have worked in Patrick’s favor, for the dry straw caught flame instantly and burned up before it could even get hot enough to ignite the wood of the barn. He pushed a little more hay into the embers and leapt backward as the flames grew and spread along the hay all around him. Frantically, he began shoveling armfuls of hay over the side of the loft and atop the hordes of creatures below. There was ample supply to create a roaring furnace, but he cursed himself for not throwing some kindling down below before lighting the flame. The fire was spreading all around him, and he was running out of time and room to act.

  Once a sizeable mound of hay was heaped at the base of the ladder, Patrick struck a second match and dropped it below. Hay coated the mangy hair and haggard faces of the uncaring creatures below; it heaped in piles at their feet and covered Patrick’s trampled satchel, inside of which were two oil lamps that had surely been crushed by now. If he could get that to ignite, this plan-on-the-fly might work after all.

  But the match puffed out as it drifted to the earth. Patrick took a moment to kick one last woman from the top of the ladder. Before she fell, her few remaining tufts of hair sizzled and withered as she stuck her face in the flames at the top of the ladder. Patrick glanced at his wounded hand. Long, white blisters ran the length of three of his fingers and a portion of a fourth. He balled this hand into a fist and winced as the burn seared to create fresh agony. He took only a moment to steel himself before burying this hand in the fiery mass of hay before him and shoving it over the side of the loft space. The creatures below made no sound as balls of flaming straw rained down upon their faces, but Patrick’s cries echoed along the silent streets, where scores of the creatures were lined up outside the barn, as though politely waiting their turn to climb the ladder inside.

  7

  Patrick continued flinging the already-lit hay down the ladder for as long as his burned hands could stand the pain. Even while he flailed as quickly as he could, the scorching flames spread out in either direction along the hay-covered loft. Luckily the wood had yet to catch fire, or Patrick may have already come to a crashing demise in the middle of the crowd below.

  When he’d spent as much time shoveling fiery straw as he was willing to risk, Patrick made a frantic, hunched dash across the loft toward the window, taking care not to smash his head on the roof just above him. Thick white smoke had filled the barn, and he could scarcely breathe another moment in this environment. He reached the glass window and maneuvered his body around onto his back again so that he could kick out the glass and peer outside, but what he saw below brought a sick dread to his gut. The front entrance to the barn must have been overcrowded, for the sick creatures had completely surrounded the entire building and were clawing at the wooden façade below.

  This is it for sure, Patrick thought. I can’t believe it ends like this after all I’ve done.

  He’d fought to survive in this hellish plague for nearly half a season. He’d suffered through the drought, suffered the loss of his family, his friends. He’d taught himself to kill and to provide, and, in the end, he’d taught himself to love again. Now he was completely surrounded by monsters who would be upon him in moments. His best remaining option was to lie here and let go, hoping to burn to death before the creatures could reach him.

  At last Patrick closed his eyes and thought of Stora.

  Okay, girl, I’m coming back. I’m coming back to the island.

  8

  A series of rapid-fire explosions jolted Patrick upright. The sounds stopped for a moment before doubling in number and volume. They were coming from outside the barn, where the only sounds were an oddly comforting roaring crackle of burning hay and the shuffle of hundreds of sizzling feet on the ground below. The smell of sick, burning flesh and hair filled the barn, and if Patrick had eaten in the past two days, he might have vomited from the stench. He looked through the broken window, where the dense clouds of white smoke were being sucked out and spreading into the deceptively clear, blue skies above. Tens of tiny explosions were rattling off to the right of the barn, while t
wice as many were ringing from the left. The sounds appeared to be growing nearer, and Patrick tried to lean his head out the window to locate their source, but a frail hand fell upon his ankle before he could get a good look.

  Patrick shrieked and turned to face the grim nightmare at his feet. The fire was doing little to slow the voracious corpses below him. Three had made their way up the ladder and onto the loft, heeding not the flames, and a fourth was just about to the top. Patrick couldn’t tell if the thing grabbing his ankle had once been a man or a woman. What stared eagerly at the boy from a mere arm’s length away was a grinning abomination, the almost bare skull of a sick, undead heap of bones encased in melting skin. What little tattered garb the creature may have worn had completely burned and melted against its body. The gray, decaying skin was blistering and bubbling beneath the flames. The mangy tufts of hair were completely burned away to the scalp, which too was melting from the very skull beneath it. A set of gray, charred teeth grinned at Patrick; no lips remained to cover them. The monster’s dull eyes had bubbled and melted out of their sockets, leaving two gaping holes behind. Its genitals were no longer discernibly male or female. Only a dripping, bubbling, blistered patch of red-black flesh remained in the pubic region.

  Patrick writhed and pulled his ankle from the thing’s frail grasp. He pushed himself backwards until he felt his back drag across the shards of glass that remained in the window.

  He toppled from the barn window and landed with a thud on the ground below. A puff of smoke escaped his mouth as the impact forced the air from his lungs. As he writhed and attempted to catch his breath, Patrick’s head rolled side to side to observe a sea of brown, bony, bare feet surrounding him in the grass.

  9

  Tiny explosions continued to pierce the silent day. As Patrick watched the legion of feet through blurred eyes, a woman fell to the ground, unmoving. A man followed closely behind her. Then another man followed suit. The corpse collapsed not far from where Patrick lay, its listless, unseeing eyes staring straight into Patrick’s own. Small clumps of gore lay in a puddle beside the body, and more still oozed slowly from a hole in the thing’s head.