His feet drag in the sand with slow heavy steps.  He cradles her in his arms like the Madonna.  Her lone arm and legs hang lifeless and contorted.  The water drifts off his suit as it constricts on his skin.  It tightens around him.  His knees buckle.  She falls to the ground and her liquefied insides press outward as she spreads out and flattens on the blue sand.

     “Chandra.”  He falls forward.  His chest is pressed against her back. Consciousness is lost. 

******* 

“Vance.”  Bron shakes Vance violently.  “Wake up.”

     Vance’s eyes slowly open and his eyes adjust to the faint candle light in the room.  The walls are barren.  Bron is standing over him and is shaking Vance’s shoulders.

     “I’m awake,” says Vance.  “Where am I?”  Vance looks around the room.  He’s lying down on a plain mattress with a lone white sheet, and there is a wooden box in the corner where a candle flashes light across the room in a series of yellows, oranges and reds.

     Bron turns away and looks to the door.  The candle light reveals a large gash that runs from his forehead, down over his crooked nose and down into a dark, brown beard that runs up into his cheeks.  The candle light turns his brown hair into a fiery auburn. “It’s not safe to talk here.”

     Vance sits up in the bed and rolls the sheet down.  “Where am I?”

     Bron walks over to the door, cracks it open, looks around, closes it and looks back at Bron like a hawk.  “You’re at one of the safe rooms.”

     Vance slides his feet over the side of the bed and sets them down on the cold metallic floor.  “What are you talking about?  What did I do?”

     “The G’Bree are after you,” says Bron as he walks over to the candle.  He cups the back of the candle with his hand, makes a ring with his mouth.  The candle flickers and goes out.  “They know that you were involved with Chandra.”

     Bron’s footsteps are heard as they shuffle towards the door.  It opens just a little.  A shiver of light shines through and runs across Vance’s brow, hazel eye and cheek.  The door opens a little more and Vance rises to his feet and follows Bron’s silhouette through the door.  The hall is dim, and the two of them are merely shadows that shift down the long hall.  Bron first stops short of the corner.  He peers around the corner.  “It’s cleer.”  He glides around the corner.

     “Wait.”  Vance follows him around the corner, and Bron is already a good thirty feet ahead.

     Bron’s jacket tails waves in the air as he turns around and puts his finger to his mouth.  “Shoosh.”

     “But…” They pass by a litter of doors and orange windows that fill sections of the hall like a rising suns on a cloudy day. 

     At the end of the hall Bron is looking through a peep hole.  “Our ride should be here in a moment.”

     “What’s going on?” asks Vance.

     Bron doesn’t turn around to respond.  His broad back speaks answers Vance.  “They found out about you and Chandra.”

     “What are you talking about?” responds Vance with a heightened tone.

     “They’re here,” says Bron while cracking the door open and sliding out onto the street.  Vance doesn’t move at first, but Bron turns and waves him on.  The low height hover car is a navy blue and has detailing that looks like a beta fish’s fins jutting out in several streamline directions; all while moving from the front and bent backwards.  The door dematerializes for a second and the two get into the back of the car.  Bron slides up against the far door.  “Drive.”

     The driver hits a button after Vance’s tailing leg is pulled into the car, and the door reappears.  The driver looks over his shoulder and glances at Vance.  “The city is swarming with grounders.  They’re looking for you kid.”  Turning forward, he punches on the six button panel a seven key combination and holographic viewing screens appear between Bron and Vance in the back seat.  This is what they saw.

     The screen stabilizes into a mixture of blue, red and yellow lines that create a holographic landscape.  They are looking down on the city and see a white flash slide through the streets. 

     “That’s you, as you may have figured out,” says the driver. 

     Vance’s voice waves like a leaf in the wind as he answers, “But that was when I was running to find her.  What does this have to do with anything?  What’s going on?”

     The hologram shifts and morphs.  The two watch as the streak of light passes through the city and comes up to the beach where it stops for but a moment and a man emerges and jumps into the great bay.

     The man swims through the ruff waters until he sees the cloth in the water.  He starts to play with his buoyancy control, bobbin up and down with the water.

     “That was a slick move, kid,” says the driver.  I’d never of thought of popping up and down in the water like that.

     “Yeah, well…it just sort of happened I guess,” answers Vance.

     The car swims up through the streets and markets.  The setting of the second sun sets the entire city ablaze with green and yellow rays.  People roam the streets and alleys while trading and bartering for used goods and over ripe produce.

The display continues in the car, and they watch as Vance swims over to the pool of blood and disfigured body.  He slides up under her and takes her to shore. 

     “Her arm blew off when she hit the water…” says Bron with a humming tone. 

The driver pauses the projection.

“It sank before you got there,” continues Bron.  “They didn’t do it to her.  I watched the scene earlier.  I didn’t think that you would like to see it again.”

Tears begin to cup Vance’s eyes.  “Why did they do this?  What’s going on?  Why are you showing me all of this?”  His voice cracks as the words fall off his tongue, “Was this because of me?”

Author's Note: this story will be broken up into three or four sections, roughly one thousand words each and new sections will be posted on Tuesdays.  The first few thousands words are based on a dream which I then carried on.

She falls like a star towards the horizon.  A lightning bolt of a man leaves the mechanical forest in response.  Electricity trails behind Vance with a static pop that echoes through the trees.  A beam of solid white light is all that is left from his passage.  It fades away within seconds.

     His legs pump.  His heel touches the ground, and his weight shifts to the balls of his feet and then to the tips of his toes until the ground is pealed away and the next foot makes contact.  His arms swing with passion.  His breaths are shortened and shallow.  His mind is focused.  His muscles flex.  His mouth exhales.  His nose inhales.  He stretches his steps farther and pushes off the ground harder.  His heart beats faster and stronger as his eyes follow the body down from the sky.  It slips through the haze of fog and rolls down underneath the horizon and the faintest of splashes are seen in the distance.

     Vance runs through the Dreb Markets where the poor and infected live and shop.  No heads turn as he speeds through their streets.  He passes through the park where a break in the canopy of the mechanical forest allows the fluorescent blue sunlight to fall onto the orange grass he speeds over.  He continues toward the Pikni Bay he saw her fall into. He runs by and no one notices.  No one watches as a bolt of lightning moves through their streets.  No one cares.

     The kids on the sea shore are making silicon castles.  The sand gives way under Vance’s first step.  His second step kicks a whirlwind of sand into the air.  The kids turn and scream as Vance tumbles down into the sand.  He lifts his face out of the sand.  The sand on his wet cheek and brow glow blue from the sunlight reflecting.  He lifts his arms out and pushes off the ground. 

The water is cold.  It bites at his chest.  The kids all gather on the shore and jump and yell at him like a circus of monkeys.

     His airtight suit constricts.  The once orange suit with a gray collar line looks deep purple beneath the waves toppling around him.  His left arm pops out of the water and slides back in just as his right arm emerges, only to bury itself into the waves again.  His swims through the water like a pianist’s fingers quickly surfing along the surface of piano keys.  He kicks muscular legs that sink all too easily.  He presses a button on the cuff of his sleeve, and his suit puffs up a little and buoyancy is gained finally.

     The waves crash ahead of him but through the crest windows he sees something floating up ahead.  It shifts up and down in the water.  As he gets closer, he recognizes it.  It’s her scarf.  He stops short of it and looks around.  He starts to play with the buoyancy control.  Vance inflates and deflates the suit quickly while kicking and trying to push himself upwards with his arms until he looks like a purple and orange buoy bobbing up and down in the water.  He sinks deeper in the water and bobs higher with every attempt while trying to scan the waters from a high point.  He comes down into the water and pencils himself.  He flushes his arms down to his sides and inflates the suit until finally breaking through the surface.  He flips through the air like a dolphin.  He does it again and rides up a wave that sends him flipping through the air and in that moment, he spots her.

     “Chandra!” he screams as the sea tries to take him in.  “I’m here!  I’m coming!”  He spits all the water out of his mouth and flushes it out his nose like sneezing horse.

     She’s face down in the water.  The blood pools out of her arm, nose and mouth.  Her body sways underneath the water, suspended by a loan bracelet on her left arm.  Her breast collar floats next to her.  It is torn into pieces and two fine satin looking strands float in the water.  One goes up to her floating wrist while the other has sunken.  They would have led down to her wrists.  Her hair weaves through the water like the vines of a willow tree.  She looks like a long strand of lifeless kelp.

     He swims up next to her and reaches down below the water and cups her waist in his arms.  Her body feels like trying to grip water.  It tries to collapse around his arm and fingers.  “Oh, Fahja!” he screams.  He runs his other arm under her neck and brings her face to the surface.   Her neck slides around his hand so he moves his hand up to the back of her skull where he can get a grip.  He slides underneath and behind her and increases his buoyancy.  Her flattened nose emerges first.  Her eyes are smashed back into their sockets and look like caves and her tongue with the tip bitten off hangs out of her mouth like a dead deer’s.

     “No!”  He pulls her naked breast up to his and squeezes.  She feels like gelatin.  He grits his teeth. His brow crashes down into his cheeks.  “Ahhhh!”  He strains his neck and waves his head back and forth.  His teeth slowly separate.  His lips part.  His jaw drops.  And he roars like a giant on a mountain top.

     Tears slide out of his eyes and mingle with water.  “I’m sorry Chandra.  I’m so sorry.”  Still teary eyed, he looks back to a different part of the shore than wear he came from.  He puts her underneath his arm and swims through water.  The body is heavy and leaves a long trail of blood that looks like a floating crimson carpet.

To Reach the Tower

     I made my own way through the exterior castle grounds.  In a revolving manner, I had trounced through the lowlands a mile’s distance from the central castle keep.  It stood on the peak of the highest hill of the surrounding moorlands.  Grass covered the rolling countryside with a mix of dying bronze blades and yellow-green patches waiting for the next rainfall. 

After passing a tour group by the parking lot, I spotted my cousin Heather under a weeping willow and joined her.  The summer day was tortuous when expose to the sun and thankfully, was only grueling when standing in the shade of the willow.  Portions of the crown’s slender branches hung so low that they seemed to rest on the ground.  Through the dangling branches, I saw the gray, weathered stone tower built into a hill that she had been looking at.  A gentle stream, to wide and probably to deep to cross without submerging to one’s shoulders, ran between the tower and us.

Heather is a gal that stands around 5’6” and has bright cheeks and wavy, blond hair.  She should be a stand-up comedian.  She’s usually beaming with excitement and if you know her, you’re waiting to hear the next story that she tells with universal clarity and exaggerating gestures.  However, when I turned to speak to Heather, underneath those dreary branches, her face was heavy with distress and sullen.

“You wanna go check out that tower?” I asked.

She looked down at the tour map she held then turned to me, “We can’t get there.”

“Why not?”  I really wanted to see the crenellations on the top of the tower walls.

“Because of the crocodiles.”

“Crocodiles?”

“The ones over there,” she said and pointed to my 7 o’clock.  I turned and through the lime green willow leaves a gray sidewalk stood out with dark green grass on both sides.  My attention was drawn to the right side of the sidewalk.  A row of white, dilapidated, one story houses stretched probably half a mile off.  Each one had a walkway leading up to the porch and where the left side of the porch ended, stood a white, picketed gate protecting the way to the back yard.  Nothing spectacular.

My gaze panned to the left of the sidewalk.  A river was to the far left, or was it the moat?  I disregarded it because a white sign caught my attention.  It was fifteen feet left of the sidewalk and closer to the yard of the second house.  A small sheet of plywood a foot from the ground had been nailed to a 2x4 signpost.  In red paint letters on white wood it read, “Beware of crocodiles.”

“Crocodiles?” I stated with confusion.  At one instance, I was seeing green blades of grass blowing in the wind.  My perception shifted as happens when looking at an optical illusion like a reversible figure.  At one moment you see the positive space of a vase and then you see the positive space of two human faces staring at each other, but remains the exact same image.  The grass swaying in the wind became rows of ossified scutes gently wobbling the 12’ length from a neck, down a back, and all the way to the tip of a leisurely oscillating tail.  Rows of beige teeth appeared as a row of grass rose diagonally and changed into a snout.  I saw its right eye, and two of its stubby legs.  If not for the helpful sign, I would have had to make an educated guess as to whether it was a gator or a croc.  But the sign said “crocodiles.” 

Five more camouflaged crocs popped out of the grass like spelling errors read aloud.  Croc #2 was five or six feet from both the side walk and far side of the sign.  Numbers 3 and 4 were an 1/8^th a mile down the riverbank and rested beneath a willow.  #5 was in the yard of the first house and #6 with the second house.

“You’re right,” I said.  Getting to the tower was going to be quite a problem.  They were different hues and shades of green.  They clapped their sharp-toothed jaws at one another. 

Each of them had a spiked collar on their neck that were chained to stakes in the ground.  The chains for 5 and 6 were tight enough that they couldn’t reach the sidewalk.  1 and 2 were the primary problems.  They were sun bathing close to the croc warning sign but had enough length to their chains that they could probably reach us on the sidewalk. 

I had already set my resolve to see those tower crenellations and wasn’t going to be deterred by mere crocodiles.  The problem now, was my out of shape cousin Heather.  Catching her would be easier for them than catching a turtle on a sandy embankment.

They were big boys and girls too.  Snout to tail, they probably ranged 10-15ft. long.  The crocs probably weighed what, between 300 and 400lbs?  But how fast could they really run to catch me if I was the distraction? 

I jogged in place to warm up for my run as I pictured myself sprinting down the sidewalk and veering toward the river.  I pass #1 with about 15’ between us.  Hopefully, I garner #2’s attention while doing this.  When I’m 2/3^rds the way to the river, I straighten out and run along it.  Those two crocs then pull away from the sidewalk.  Heather runs down the sidewalk while #1 and 2 chase me toward the river.  With her life the wager, there’s a battle between #5 and #6’s hunger verses the tensile strength of their chains and stakes.  As for me, I hope the chain length of croc #2 and crocs #3 and #4 don’t overlap and that I do my best to skirt my way between all of them then curve back toward the sidewalk unharmed.  And hopefully there aren’t any more crocs that haven’t been spotted yet.

I bent over and touched my toes.  I needed to be as loose as possible to pull this off.

“What are you doing?” Heather asked.  Her face had been struck with awe by my audacity.  Her mouth was a gaping hole and one brow lifted as the other sank, making her face appear lopsided.

“I’m going to distract them while you run down the sidewalk to the road past the houses.  It leads to the tower over there,” I pointed, so she’d look at the majestic craftsmanship that deserved admiration from arms length.

“Are you crazy?”

“Nope.  Just fast.  I can outrun them.”

She glanced at the crocs.  Then back at me.  “You can’t outrun them.”

Unfaltering confidence filled my voice.  “Sure I can.”  With a mocking tone I asked, “How fast can they be?  Look at how big they are.  They can’t be that fast.”

“Grizzlies are big and fast.”

The advice given to me as a 6yr. old child visiting Yellowstone National Park floated to the foreground of my thoughts.  The park ranger stood with arms akimbo outside the Old Faithful Lodge and told us, “Never try to outrun a bear.  Climb a tree instead.  Many full-grown bears can weigh up to 1,000lbs and still run up to 25mph.” 

I ran the plan through my head again.  My valiant attempts to outrun the crocs digressed into a futile race ending with either the partial or the entire digestion of my body.

“You know what,” I said to Heather as I stopped stretching, “There’s probably some five or six towers with better crenellations that I can check out up close.”

Still, a part of me wanted to run over and try to touch the white, warning sign without being bitten.  I looked croc #1 in the eyes.  He looked away.  My finger tips pressing against the white woods was the sole thought on my mind for at least ten seconds. 

I sprinted for the sign and took Heather’s words away as I did so.