As soon as they were sure Terry and Remi were in their rooms sleeping, they started getting ready for their trip to Rotterdam. Taylor found one of the kids to watch over Lark, showed him how to check her pulse, and told him to go get Terry and Remi if anything went wrong. Val went to the store room in the greenhouse and grabbed a sack, filling it with bread and jelly. Asher ran off somewhere and returned with a flashlight for each of them.
They stopped for a moment in the courtyard to check that everything was in order and then Asher led them past the cherry blossom patch, past the fishery, past the crest of the gulch and out into the open field towards Rotterdam. Val looked back instinctively for a blur of yellow hair following them but, of course, there was nothing.
The moonlight glinted off Rotterdam’s buildings making them visible even from a distance.
It took a few hours to get to the outskirts of Rotterdam and aside from a few animals rustling in the high grass, there wasn’t much else to see. As they got closer to the city, the buildings loomed over them like dead creatures.
Asher picked up his pace and started jogging through the grass. He kept this pace for a few minutes and then bolted ahead without warning. Val and Taylor raced after him, trying to keep up, afraid that they might get lost in the sea of yellow grass.
“Asher! Slow down! You’re going to lose us!” Taylor shouted from behind Val.
But their feet hit something hard and they looked down to see black asphalt and realized that they had walked out into an open street, tall buildings all around them.
Asher turned to Val and Taylor and spread his arms our, a grin across his face. “Welcome to Rotterdam!” Asher shouted, his voice bouncing off all the surfaces of the silent city, the words getting lost in the gaping gouges in the buildings above them.
The streets were cracked and it crumbled under their feet as they walked. Now that there was no more grass blocking their view, Val could see that all of the buildings before them were standing precariously on rusted out foundations, threatening to buckle and topple over as they should have years ago. Val was speechless, having been told stories of but never having seen one of the forgotten cities before.
“Hell of a place, huh?” Asher said.
“You know, you’re not supposed to have been coming out here alone. It’s dangerous.” Taylor said.
“It’s only been a few times. Besides, there’s nothing around here that can hurt us unless you fall out of a building or something. Here, listen.” Asher stopped walking for a moment and tilted his head so that his ear was pointing down the road.
Val tried standing as still as he could and watched Asher’s posture, trying to mimic it. At first he couldn’t hear much, but then it became clear that there was an entire orchestra going on in the city. Val could hear water dripping, leaves rustling, the thin metal of cars popping in the changing heat of the night, animals scurrying around in the empty buildings. The bareness and emptiness made every little sound bounce around and come back larger. It was a much more subtle movement than the one Farthing was writing. The city may have been abandoned long ago, but there was a kind of life to it that Val was sure couldn’t have existed before.
Then, as if in response to their listening, there was the blare of a horn that echoed back towards them through the buildings.
Asher dropped his voice. “There. There it is. That’s a ship coming in for a supply drop, either from the Dome or from a fishing trip. There’s one freighter in this dock that goes out for weeks or sometimes months at a time, getting supplies or fishing for whales.” Asher started walking faster down the road and made a turn towards the source of the sound of the horn. He jumped on cars, hopped over potholes, squeezed in-between bushes and holes in the buildings. Asher looked back at Taylor and Val periodically and told them to put their foot here not there or to aim for a particular spot when an obstacle called for a long jump. They went through places where people must had lived once, the remnants of their lives scattered on the street and among the overgrowth. Asher knew the city well; he had clearly been here more than just a few times.
They reached another opening in the street and the buildings stopped, giving way to open water and an open sky reaching above it, stretching far into the distance and meeting only at the horizon. The road ended in a sheer drop into the water and in stepping up to the edge Val could see that they were at least twenty feet above the water, waves crashing into the cement wall.
The dock was close by, extending out into the water, a striped pillar with a rotating light at the top out at the end of it. There was a large ship in the distance which was just barely visible, a tiny black speck becoming larger.
They stood in silence watching the ship inch its way closer until it stopped at the dock, workers reeling it in with a net of ropes. There was a ramp that was lowered from the ship to the dock and a group of about a dozen workers started to unload large crates marked with different symbols. As a crate marked with a cross was carried out and placed on the dock, Asher pointed.
“There are the meds! See the way the crate is marked?” Asher started to run up to the dock from the street and Val and Taylor followed. They stopped behind a stack of crates just far enough away that they could see the workers but the workers couldn’t see them.
The workers finished moving crates off the ship and disappeared into the boathouse. Val, Asher, and Taylor were just about to approach the crates that had been unloaded when the workers reappeared holding long, thick rods in their hands that each had a large spearhead and hook at the end.
Asher froze up. “We should probably come back later.” He said.
Asher got up but Taylor grabbed his elbow and gave him a stern look. “Come on, Asher. We’re already right here, let’s just grab the meds and get out. Lark needs them, remember?”
Asher deflated a little and crouched back down behind the crate. “Alright, how do we do this?”
Taylor let go of Asher’s arm and thought for a minute. “Let’s wait until those guys go back into the boathouse…then we run up and grab some meds. Asher, you have to tell us which ones to take. Then we run back out and go home.”
The workers disappeared onto the high deck of the freighter for almost half an hour. Val opened his pack and offered the other two some dry toast with jelly which they both took. Another half hour after they finished, the workers came off the boat and went back into the boathouse, leaving their spears leaning against the side of the door.
Taylor gave Val and Asher a signal with her hands and they moved towards the crate marked with the cross, trying to find cover behind anything they could on the way. They came close enough to the freighter that they were able to see the deck and what at first looked like a heap of garbage, but upon close inspection, they realized that it was breathing.
It was a dark lump of flesh that almost took up the whole deck of the freighter and it had multiple wounds on its side that were leaking blood onto the deck of the freighter. Its breathing was labored, making sputtering noises as it heaved up and down.
Asher broke his gaze and opened the crate with the cross, ruffling through its contents to find the anti-septic medicine for Lark.
Then there was a shout from the boathouse.
“Stealing from us again? I knew you’d be back here! I knew it!”
A worker had come back out from the boathouse to check on something, and it was obvious by his tottering gait that he was drunk. The worker rushed over while Asher was still going through the crate and tackled him to the ground, pushing his knee into his chest and sliding him further up to the edge of the dock.
“Come on, kid. Aren’t you going to fight back? You’re even worse than the rats we’ve got around here.” The worker’s face came close to Asher’s and he could smell the alcohol on his breath.
The worker brushed his long hair back from his face with his hand and exposed the side of his face to Asher. “Right here. Go ahead, ball up your hand in a fist and put it right here.” Asher felt the pressure from the worker’s knee bending in his ribs and sternum. Taylor latched onto the worker’s back and tried to pull him off but the worker sent up a shoulder to her face and knocked her back. Val just stood there in shock, not sure what to do.
“We gutted another whale today.” The worker said. “When we got to the stomach we had to cut past the ribs. They’re surprisingly flexible, you know? Even in a whale they can only handle so much. They get to a certain point and they just snap like twigs.”
Asher tries to squeeze out a laugh in defiance of his attacker but coughs and wheezes instead. “Is that what you’re going to do to me? You’re going to snap my ribs while nobody’s watching? Get off of me!” Asher pushed his hands against the man’s knee but it didn’t budge even slightly.
The man shifted more of his weight to the knee pressing on Asher’s chest, his teeth bared, then leveraged his other foot off Asher’s neck to stand up. Asher got up and threw a punch at the back of the worker’s head which rebounded like his fist was made of air. The worker spun and caught Asher between his ribcage and hip with a powerful kick followed by a punch to the nose, knocking him off the dock, twenty feet down into the filthy water.
There was a splash. Val rushed to the edge to see Asher sputtering and coughing as he resurfaced. His hair was matted down by the thick film of oil deposits, waste, and blood the ships left from shipping the thousands of tons of whales and supplies. Val turned to the worker, hoping he would kick him in too so that his inaction could be justified but the worker was too preoccupied to notice Val.
Asher swam around gasping, trying to find a way back up. He circled around to the back of the closest freighter and onto a ladder that led to its deck. When he got to the top, he took off his shirt to wring it out. Blood was dripping from his nose.
The worker yelled to Asher. “How was the dip, kid? I pissed in there yesterday!” He started laughing out of control, bending over with his hands on his knees, howling into the ground.
Then Val saw something in a barrel nearby. It was a heavy fishing rod used to catch bigger game; it was made for a commercial fishing ship. The moonlight made the rod’s sleek finish shimmer, a slender white line ran down its side.
Adrenaline took over and in what felt like a single, fluid motion, Val snatched up the rod from the barrel, took it in both hands, and swung the rod directly at the man’s side. The rod sang as it cut the air with its speed, and send a thunder of vibrations through Val’s arms as it landed. He swung again, and again, and again.
It took a moment to realize, but the worker’s howls of laughter turned into howls of pain. He crumpled to the ground and was trying to get up to fight back but he needed his arms to block the blows from reaching his face. The best he could manage was a verbal rebuttal.
“Bastards! I’ll kill you! Just you see! I’ll make sure you rot!” He continued to yell incoherently; he was already hoarse from laughing.
Asher was able to jump the gap between the deck of the ship and the dock and rushed over to Val to give the worker a couple kicks. “Push him into the dock!”
They rolled the man over to the edge, still hitting him so he couldn’t do anything about it. Once he was at the edge they gave him a couple more whacks and pushed him with their feet into the same spot Asher had fallen. One second of silence and then a splash. The lights in the boathouse came on and lit up the dock, but they were already halfway out of the shipyard, Taylor carrying an armful of meds, running as fast as they could back into Rotterdam and out of sight.
Skybox 
One comment