Robinson Crusoe 2244 (8 page)

A second shudder ran through the ship and the warning he’d been dreading appeared: FUEL CELL DEPLETION IMMINENT. The kilometer display blinked twice before the screen went entirely blank with a spark. Smoke filled the cabin. Robinson wanted to scream.

Then he saw the silhouette of land in the distance.

Unfortunately, the flyer was losing altitude and speed. It had gone from thirty meters over the surface to ten. The engine was trying to compensate but didn’t have the juice. When the ship dipped again, the boy knew in his heart he would never make land.

Almost as if he were being punished for the thought, a final shudder shook the flyer. The rear thruster sputtered and the vessel lurched. The boy grit his teeth and wrapped both hands around the yoke to hold the ship up, but its engine’s gasps were unrelenting.

It’s impossible to say why he called out to his mother in that moment. He knew she was dead, but he still found comfort in her spirit. He’d set his course by her numbers but never considered that she might be his true north. Even as the ship fell to a meter above the water, he smiled at the thought,
If only she could see me now
. With a deep breath, he threw both feet onto the instrument panel and pulled the yoke with all his might.

The nose rose just as the first wave clipped the bottom of the flyer. The ship bounded across the surface of the water several times like a rock skipping over a pond. The boy fought to hold on to the yoke, but it was ripped from his hands as the next wave met the ship flush. His body was thrown with incredible force, the leather straps cleaving at his flesh as his head sprang forward with a snap. The ship tumbled and spun, its bones and body breaking, but when it settled, the cabin was intact.

A single blinking light revealed it was also upside down.

He was alive, but the ship was quickly sinking. He groped for the locks of his straps and fell in a painful heap to the inverted ceiling. And then he heard a pop.

It came from the view screen at the point of the bird’s impact. The glass had splintered under the pressure of the crash and water had begun trickling in. Robinson shook his head, pleading for it to stop, but the fissure inched its way toward the outer edges of the view screen. The trickle increased. With no place to hide, Robinson did the only thing he could; he strapped a carton of rations across his chest in the hope that they might help him survive.

The view screen exploded.

The wave hit him like a thunderbolt, slamming him against the back wall. He felt little of the impact. His body was too shocked by the freezing cold water to register anything else. The cabin filled so quickly that he barely managed a single gulp of air before the water closed in around him, the swirling deluge tossing him around like a toy.

Weightless and dazed, Robinson knew he had to move quickly, but in the torrent of water, he had lost all sense of direction. His mind floundered and debris spun around the cabin, caught in a vortex of underwater eddies. The air in his lungs quickly dissipated and the fear of drowning sent waves of panic shooting through him.

And then he felt a slight tug at his neck. At first, he thought it was debris, but as his hands touched his mother’s locket, he knew his prayer had been answered. It was pulling upward, the oxygen inside of it defying gravity in its own quest for escape. He let its buoyancy guide him.

As he passed through the view screen, Robinson felt the sting of glass bite into his leg, but the pain was nothing compared to the fire in his lungs. He kicked and the pressure lessened, but then his chest started to convulse from the carbon dioxide building in his lungs. With each stroke, the underwater tide pulled him farther out to sea. Just when he was certain he would drown, his head burst through the surface of the water.

Robinson managed one great intake of air before a wave struck him. Saltwater flooded his mouth and he retched, but he kicked hard for shore until his feet struck sand. Exhaustion overtook him. He lumbered up the beach and collapsed as the night closed in around him.

Time returned in a flash as the frigid surf washed over Robinson’s legs. His eyes vaulted open and he gasped. He was alive. He tried to sit up, but every muscle in his body screamed in protest. The pain was so intense he feared he might pass out again.

It was morning, but the sun was obscured by fog so he couldn’t guess at the time. His clothes were wet from the high tide. Not surprisingly, his shoes had been torn from his feet. The pain there was intense. Only when he dredged several small pieces of coral from the wounds did he understand where the pain was coming from.

He looked for the flyer, but it was nowhere to be seen. What did fill his vision shocked him. On a reef, several kilometers from the shore, was a graveyard of ancient sea vessels—hundreds of ships of incomprehensible sizes and shapes. They congealed like driftwood, spines exposed, innards spilt out, noses jutting hundreds of feet into the air while others lay splayed at odd angles or felled like trees. All bore the scars of salt and time. It was a daunting sight.

Robinson saw another curious thing not far from the waterline. There were two metal markers atop a rusty pole peeking out of the sand. Both were greatly eroded, but he could still make out one faded word: Avenue. It wouldn’t be until much later that he remembered the sign was written in his own language.

Farther to the north, scores of buildings protruded from the ocean like broken teeth in a waterlogged mouth. Most were rotted and had collapsed in on themselves. Man might have tamed this area once, but nature had reclaimed it.

Robinson was too dazed and weak to process the devastation around him. He felt starved and searched the beach for the rations he’d strapped to his chest. He found them bobbing near the waterline. To his relief, they were dry. He opened the first pack and inhaled three servings of sour biscuits.

Afterward, he attended to his feet. Saltwater was one of the earth’s great antiseptics, so he went back to the surf to scrub his feet clean. Then he took off his jacket and tore long strips to bandage them until walking was bearable.

When he was done, he looked around to decide his course. In that moment, he felt a terrible loneliness. The sight of so much destruction—of a mighty empire so hastily felled—made him feel small and insignificant. For the first time, he wondered what chance he had of surviving here. Civilization had been undone. This continent stood in ruin. Had the victor that had wrought death by air and engineered diseases survived? Could water or food contaminate him? Or had the disease already invaded his lungs?

His started west across the hot sand with his rations strapped to his back and his mother’s locket securely around his neck. After a while, the dry sand became wet marsh, with soggy earth, verdant grass, and tall reeds. Through the ankle-high water, he saw all manner of life existing above and below the surface. There were snakes, insects, tadpoles, and frogs. Since he didn’t know what was poisonous, he avoided everything.

In time, the marsh became a bog with shallow water falling away to indeterminate depths that rippled, bubbled, and churned with unseen life. Several times he was forced to double back, crossing levees and narrow peninsulas only to realize he’d come that way before. The sun continued to rise—the heat along with it—until he was winded and soaked with exertion.

Mosquitos feasted on his skin and the husks of long dead trees bit at his feet. The bandages continued to unspool, forcing him to stop and retie them again and again. Finally, when he was certain he would never escape the wetlands, he saw a broken chip of road dangling limply over the far side of an embankment. He skipped the remaining way through the shallows and scaled his way to the top of the incline.

Standing atop the hill, he’d have never known the bog existed. Storefronts lined both sides of the road with faded signs Robinson was surprised he could read—the writing of the One People. Most of the windows were broken out and weeds overran everything. Other than an occasional bird passing overhead or a rodent foraging in the shadows, little else stirred.

When he reached the far end of town, Robinson found an old log to rest on. He gauged by the sun that it was mid-turn. Thirsty and tired, he opened his bag of rations. Thankfully, whoever was in charge of the emergency provisions had thought to include several candles and a piece of flint with an instruction booklet. Unfortunately, there was no water, so he went in search for it and found a small pool between the roots of a gnarled tree. Only then did he realize he had nothing to collect it in. He sifted through a number of ancient items until finally kicking a corroded cap off one of the old carriages.

The cap made the water taste of rust and earth, but it went down like wine. He had to force himself to stop after several liters to avoid getting sick. Then he took inventory of his rations. By his count, he had a three-day supply.

He needed a plan. His mother’s numbers might have led him to this continent, but not to a specific destination. He needed shelter. He also needed a weapon. He had no means of procuring either so he stalked around until he found a dead branch that could double as a walking stick or a spear before setting out again.

The two-lane road led to one with four lanes, which surprisingly led to a military base, its name still discernable on a rusty sign. The fence surrounding it had a heavy lean, but the rusty wire protruding everywhere still looked treacherous. Rather than risk cutting himself further, Robinson continued along the perimeter of the fence until he found a section that had fallen away entirely.

The base was flat and sprawling, made up of large areas of paved stone blemished by a handful of trees and shrubs that had erupted through the rubble. Sunlight reflected off something in the distance. He moved toward it.

Squadrons of flyers in a profusion of shapes and sizes littered the area, though many seemed capable of supporting no more than a pilot or two. Looking closer, Robinson found most were outfitted with weapons, though how they worked was beyond him. Still, this brought up the questions he’d been pondering again and again: How had a civilization so replete with advancements failed to stave off its own extinction? Had the Great Rendering spread so quickly that not a single one of these flyers had gotten off the ground?

At the far end of the tarmac sat a number of cavernous hangars and the main body of the base itself. Waves of heat radiated off the pitch as the sun reached its apex. As Robinson passed the last hangar, he saw the doors were half open. Inside was another flyer that was four stories high. This one was unique. He could still make out the multiple shades of blue and white surrounding its two-dozen oval windows. It also bore a strange circular sigil with prominent words underneath. Unfortunately, they were too faded to read. Robinson wanted to step inside for a closer look, but the heat was rising and he was already out of water. His feet had also begun to burn through his wrappings, forcing him to jog the last one hundred meters to the main building.

The moment he passed through the door he froze in his steps. He was seeing the face of evil for the first time.

The metal doors had been rent open, their glass surface long gone. Inside the enormous vestibule, the walls were stained black with streaks of old blood. Mottled pools of it also covered the floor. A great many people had tried in haste to raise two fortifications to block the entrance, but it was clear by the mountain of refuse scattered around the room that they had failed. The walls and roof were peppered with holes and brass casings were scattered across the floor. Not a single skeleton had been left behind.

As much as Robinson was hoping to make this his shelter, there was no way he could spend one night inside. As he turned to leave, his foot struck the edge of the fortification, causing a rumble from above. He leaped back, narrowly avoiding the avalanche of metal chairs and boxes as they slammed into the ground with a deafening clamor.

When he regained his footing, Robinson saw that something cylindrical and metallic had spilled out from the debris. He grabbed it and gave it a shake. It felt empty and light. He tried the top, but it wouldn’t budge. He banged it against the floor. This time the cap opened. The smell inside was pungent but not entirely unpleasant. He tucked his new drinking goblet into his bag and left, relieved he wouldn’t have to drink from the rusty cap any more.