Yonder

Chapter One

            The infant crawled on all fours chasing the small red train circling the wooden castle. It had gone around the circle almost six times but every time the toddler crawled around the corner, something new and exciting always awaited. Every once in a while the infant would rise above the tracks and be cradled by a mother and a blue bottle.  The only and last time the child was ever plucked off the rails, arms of a stranger grabbed hold and would not let go. There were screams near similar to the moments the infant had come into this world. There was fire and flame. Two figures lay on the ground, pools of red around their heads. The infant giggled and squirmed. The puddles were the same color as his train.

            “Come on, you,” A voice whispered next to the baby’s ear. The arms tightened which made the child only squirm more. It was a soft voice. Not of a mother. Mother was next to the train puddle.

            Everything was train-colored. The above was red and the bottom was red. The voice and the arms weren’t red, though. They were smooth and the color of Mister Panda. Not the night color, but the pretty color; the happy color. There were roar like in the Dream Place, where Mister Panda wasn’t. The mean dark people were over the two figures on the ground.

            The infant squirmed some more, then cried, then yawned. The baby fell asleep. The arms relaxed.

Ten Years Later. Autumn.

            Wood crackled.

            “God, Felix, don’t burn yourself!”

            Felix frowned. “I haven’t so far!”

            Echo mimicked him. “Just sit back a little bit more, please.” She scrounged around the outside of their perimeter, searching for sharp rocks.

            The boy gave in and inched back and held his hands. “It’s real cold,” he moaned.

            Echo tossed a couple in the direction of the boy. “I know,” She sighed, approaching him. “Just stay near the fire.”

            “-But you just said-!”

            “-Forget what I said!” Echo chuckled. She sat down and picked up one of the rock pallets. “This one looks good; write ‘Felix likes Echo’!”

            Felix looked disgustingly at the rock pallet, and put down the shard of rock in his hand. “No way, ew!”

            Echo laughed again. “I know,” She smiled, “how about just your name?”

            It took Felix a second, but he managed to pick up the shard of rock and position the pallet so he could have enough light to write his name. It was sloppy and barely legible, but Echo patted him on the head. He brushed her off protesting that he wasn’t five anymore.

            Echo couldn’t help but smile as the boy scrawled his name in the rock. He spelled it correctly but it was just legible. Felix seemed to realize this. He suddenly threw the rock he was writing with far behind them.

            “It wasn’t that bad,” Echo’s smile dropped. This had happened before. Many times before… Almost every time. Echo put her hand on Felix’s shoulder.

            He shrugged her off almost immediately and stood up with the small pallet rock. He trudged towards the ocean, yards away, and skipped the rock with all his might. It was still skipping by the time Echo had caught up with the boy. Then it dropped into the water. The ripples corrupted the crystal clear image of the milky moon. The moon hadn’t been that pure since the day the world died.

            “See!” Echo clapped wildly. “If you could put as much effort into writing as you do, skipping rocks, you could be a novelist by now!”

            Felix frowned. “What’s a novelist?”

            Echo jogged back through the sand, picked up their backpacks, and put out the fire. She reached in her bag and pulled out two books. “The people who wrote these!” Felix grabbed them, glanced at them, then handed them back. Echo chucked. “And if you could write, you could read them too, imagine that! Two life skills if you managed to stay focused for five seconds!”

            Felix ripped his bag out of Echo’s hands. He pulled out a 9mm out of his bag and cocked it, quickly shooting it. Echo shrieked as the bullet shot past her shoulder. She turned around as the whimper of a feral creature matched a large, hideous dirty dog that fell to the ground and rolled out onto the beach. Foam was dripping from its muzzles and its eyes were practically popping out of its head. Barnacle-like mold was growing on its boney legs.

            “See!” The twelve-year-old smiled despite the twenty-three-year-old falling to her knees, holding her heart. “I’d rather know how to do that than read some silly book!”

            Echo controlled herself and stood up. She turned around and went to examine the dog. “It’s getting worse…” She murmured.

            “What?” Felix asked yet he pulled his backpack on his back and followed Echo as she ran in the direction the dog came from. “Where are you going?!” He called out.

            “If there’s one dog, there’ll be more dogs… where there’s more dogs, there’s people…”

            “Do you really think anyone would still keep pets at times like these?!”

            Echo stopped and turned around. “Not pets… food…”

            They continued to run until they reached the top of the hill. The two burst out in quiet laughter as they approached a barn, but they stopped as soon as they saw the fenced in area containing about a dozen dogs.

            “They’re all infected,” Echo bent down in front of the barbed fence. The dogs were all bloody and battered up; some with a limp and some with only three limbs.

            “Hey, Echo,” Felix called from the other side of the fence. Echo jogged over and noticed a small hole in the corner of the fence. “This must be how that dog got out. Are you sure people are eating these things? I mean, can’t you get infected??”

            “No, you would get infected,” Echo said, standing up. “Anyone with common sense should know that.”

            “Well, if the dogs weren’t showing symptoms, they owners probably wouldn’t have even thought they were infected!”

            Echo grabbed Felix’s wrist and they stood up, walking towards the house. “That’s what I’m afraid of. Keep your gun out.” Felix pulled the pistol out of his belt and Echo quickly opened her backpack and pulled out a long serrated switchblade that, when opened, was about the size of a small sword. “Stay behind me,” Echo ordered.

            Felix didn’t even have to be told twice. He could already hear the crashing of plates and growls that used to belong to civilized men. He and Echo braced themselves upon entering the death sentence. If either of them were to be bitten, the past ten years of survival would have been for naught. The Bird would win. The disease would win. Chaos would win. And the only thing Felix could remember how to spell besides his own name was ‘chaos’, so he damn well knew it was important.