Chapter 4: Abandoned

Tybalt startled awake. He rapidly examined his surroundings, trying to make sense of his place and location. Within a minute, his heart settled to a more natural rhythm. He had forgotten that he had been welcomed by a kind family on the outskirts of the New Federation of Borealia. Lifting himself from his straw pallet, he appreciated the rays of moonbeam that illuminated the tiny hutch. Tybalt swung his feet onto the ground. Pain reminded him of his mortality.

He stepped into the buckskin boots that had been beside the bed. The soft leather fit his feet almost perfectly. While a bit larger than ideal, they would have to work. He tied the leather strips that laced up over the throat and tongue of the boots. He stretched his aching limbs, trying to push his stiff muscles into greater flexibility and diminish the pain. His exercises were in vain. Stress and tension still nested deep within his muscular tissue.

Tybalt felt his stomach yawn with hunger and his mouth yearn with thirst. Aldous had said that food -- and presumably drink -- waited for him on the kitchen counter. Tybalt peered out of the window of the hutch. The moon hung in the middle of the night’s dome. He expected that the night neared closer to dawn than to dusk. A sufficient hour for his plans.

Slowly, he crept to the door with his makeshift cane. He pushed open the creaky door, trying to minimize its noise. He did not want a single action of his to wake the family that slept somewhere within these residential walls. He moved into the kitchen, slipping through the door the family had left unlocked. Whether it was for his sake or because no one visited these parts, he was relieved that he would not need to break in.

Once inside, he saw that upon the wooden table, on a well-used plastic plate, rested a cold meal. He hovered above the set meal, analyzing the food upon it. Two slices of dark bread, a dollop of butter, and a few cuts of salted meat waited on the plate. Beside it, a small clay bowl held two boiled eggs, neither of them husked of their shells. In the middle of the table, he saw a tin pitcher of water and a few metal cups. He propped his makeshift cane against the table and poured himself a small serving of water, feeling the wet condensation on the sides of the pitcher. He lifted the water to his lips. Its cold soothed his thirst and filled a certain primal suffering of dehydration. He touched his cracked lips, not realizing how long it had been since he had a proper drink—aside from the wheat whiskey.

He looked around the kitchen for that bottle, finding it on one of the shelves beside another two clear bottles filled to the brim. The bottle he had been served from was made from glass, but the other two were reused water bottles, waste from the former age. He plucked all three bottles from the shelf and brought them beside his breakfast.

He gnawed a chunk of bread while he examined the room. The kitchen, like the rest of the house, had been made and furnished with wood. Being so close to the woodlands of the north encouraged them to build from these natural resources rather than scavenge for metals and other materials from the former age. Still, while the home could have fit neatly into the great centuries prior to the industrial era, certain features broke the illusion, such as the borders of an old television set framing intricate needlework and an old-world plastic shower curtain being used as a tablecloth.

Tybalt rolled a slice of the salted meat and bit into it. The taste filled his mouth with saliva. He could hardly keep himself from scarfing the entire platter. He took his time, sipping cold water between gulps. Soon, he finished everything except for the eggs. He carefully unshelled one without making a sound and ate it.

Tybalt looked around for a bag. He wanted to save the other egg for later. Plus, he reminded himself, he was going to rob this family. He couldn’t trust them. No one could be as nice as they were. They were planning something against him, and he needed to hurt them before they could hurt him. He needed to get some distance between himself and them.

He peeped into the other room, leaving his cane by the table, and saw a backpack salvaged from the old world. It had been mended and restored. Undoubtedly, before the catastrophe, the bag had been used by a teenager to transport his textbooks to high school. For now, it would be the bag that he would fill with plastic bottles of alcohol and a hard-boiled egg.

Tybalt poured himself a heavy drink of wheat whiskey and slugged it back. He licked his dry lips, tasting its sweetness amid the stinging in his mouth. He needed more than liquor if he was to survive the wastelands on his own. He scoured the kitchen, finding a plastic bottle. In the old world, it held a sweet carbonated beverage. He seized it from a pantry cabinet and filled it with water from the pitcher. He tried to carefully pour the water, but he spilled some on himself. In jolting from the spill, he dropped his makeshift cane against the floor. It clattered with a bang. He cursed out loud.

Tybalt needed to act quickly. He screwed the bottle’s cap on tight and tossed it into his bag. Now, he needed to take as much as he could. On the kitchen counter, he found a loaf of bread covered with a cloth. He wrapped the cloth around the bread and shoved it into the bag. He started to rummage through the various kitchen drawers as fast as he could. While they had been filled with all sorts of cooking implements that he couldn’t identify, he found the knife drawer. He proceeded to grab the largest and sharpest of the knives and place them on the counter.

“What are you doing?”

Tybalt spun around, seeing Ansel, the youngest child, standing in the kitchen. He wore a long sleeping tunic that appeared almost like a dress. The boy rubbed his eyes.

Tybalt froze in place. He did not know what to do. He was caught by a witness during his act of theft.

“Hey there, little one. Ansel, right?” he spoke in a soft voice. He limped closer to the boy.

The boy nodded his head.

The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

“I’m just having a little drink of water, then I’m going back to bed. Why don’t you go back to bed and forget you saw me?”

The little boy happily nodded to him.

As the boy turned to return to his bedchamber, Elowyn entered the kitchen. Tybalt’s primal drive for survival seized him. He grabbed the boy with his good arm and stumbled back against the kitchen counter. He took a knife from the counter and pressed it against the child’s neck.

“One wrong move and I’ll kill him!” Tybalt spat.

Elowyn began to shriek with worry.

“Quiet!” Tybalt ordered.

Instantly, Elowyn fell upon her knees. Tears poured down her face. Her sorrows became mute. With silent sobs, her mouth quivered and gaped with fear.

“What’s going on?”

Aldous and Oswald rushed into the kitchen. They saw the blade in Tybalt’s hand pressed against Ansel’s throat.

“Please,” Aldous begged, “don’t hurt the boy. What do you want?”

Tybalt remained silent. He needed to keep his plans quiet. The more they knew, the more they could use against him.

“Please,” Aldous begged, his palms stretched out before him, asking for mercy.

“Take me!” Elowyn said in an outburst of sorrow. “Take me!” She ripped at the laces at the throat of her nightgown. She exposed her clavicle to the stranger. Her long hair stuck to her damp cheeks and slashed across her face with pitiful pleas. “Just don’t kill the boy! Don’t kill him!”

Tybalt’s chest tightened in agony. He could not bear this outpouring of this womanly emotion. He stoned his heart against her pleas.

“Do as I say,” Tybalt said coldly.

“Anything!” Aldous said, pushing Oswald behind him.

“Open the front door.”

“Go!” Aldous commanded Oswald. His teenage son went and opened the front door. He stood by it, waiting for further orders.

Tybalt took the bag and tossed both of its straps over one shoulder.

“Make way,” he said.

The mother and father of the poor boy stepped back from the stranger and went toward the walls of their home.

Tybalt took the glass bottle from the table and finished the whiskey. He was going to try to run from them as fast as he could, even with an injured leg. This draught was preventative self-medication. He put the bottle back onto the table with an oddly delicate gesture.

Ansel remained in his grip. The boy, whose face was streaked with tears, stayed emotionless. He appeared to be more shocked by the betrayal of a man his parents trusted rather than by the blade to his neck. Tybalt pushed the boy forward and moved him to the front door. As they passed the boy’s mother, Elowyn extended her hand with a mournful grasp. She tried her best not to impulsively steal back her precious child from this traitor.

Oswald pressed himself against the wall near the front of the house. He shimmied toward his father, his back staying against the wall. He did not want to be the cause of his younger brother’s death.

Tybalt reached the exit. His breath became seriously labored. He could feel his body mix alcohol, adrenaline, and anxiety. The decisive moment sped toward him. He could feel his pain numb to the survival instinct. His fingers around the knife appeared white due to the strength of his grip. He would need to act as fast as he could. He needed to run.

Tybalt pushed the child onto the floor and sprinted out of the house. He could hear the boy’s family members scramble to the child and check if he was injured.

Tybalt ran as fast as he could. He needed to place as much road between himself and the family as possible. Every step he took with his left leg seared with immense pain. He could feel the unsteadiness of the alcohol in his limbs. The spirit had loosened the tension in his injured body. He pumped his feet beneath him, stumbling over the unevenness of the road. Despite his wounds, he managed to ignore and reject the shooting pain. Each step felt as though a barbed arrow flew from the base of his ankle and up into his spine. Still, he needed to run, to escape.

“Run, scoundrel! Run!” Aldous’s voice rang over the stillness of the nighttime air.

Then, with the crack of gunfire, Tybalt heard the whistle of a bullet fly by his left ear. The old man had missed his shot, but only barely. With this greater danger, Tybalt picked up his speed. He stepped harder and faster. The pain responded to the intensity.

Another eruption from the old man’s rifle. This time, the bullet hit nowhere near Tybalt. A minuscule cloud of dust and dirt sprang from the ground a few yards behind him. He was certain that the old man would try another shot, so Tybalt kept running. The greenery around him rapidly changed. The organized fields of flax on his left turned into unkempt vegetation. The order of the farm and homestead fell to the order of the natural world. Weeds and shrubbery sprouted wildly on both sides of the road. The sound of the final bullet rang out somewhere in the distance.

Tybalt kept his brisk pace until he could no more. He slowed his gait and stumbled off the road. Among the young trees, he crept for cover. He surrounded himself with the summer foliage of this patch of new woodland. These trees had reclaimed this stretch of once irradiated expanse. Like the centuries before the catastrophe, small creatures scurried between their branches. Worms shifted the soil deep below the ground, and beetles crawled along its surface.

Tybalt settled into the thicket, resting his back upon one of the older trees. His chest heaved with fatigue. He could feel the new damage to his wounds. He checked his leg wound in the brief light of the dying night. Rolling up his coarse linen pants, he saw blood seep past the bandage Elowyn had so lovingly wrapped. Tybalt recalled the generosity of the family and struck the back of his head against the trunk of the tree.

There could not be people that kind. There must have been something sinister beneath the surface. There could be no other explanation.

Tybalt shook his head from those thoughts. He needed to forget the last day and think about the coming one. Then, in the descending rest, he felt his stomach churn with nausea. The weight of his midnight meal mingled with the agitated whiskey. Without warning, his body rejected all of it. Tybalt bent far from his seat and regurgitated.

Wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, Tybalt sought a new place to rest. The lingering smell of his vomit made him more sick. He reached for the various branches of the overhanging trees and the tall shrubbery around him. He settled into a new spot, shifting the knapsack onto his lap. He realized that his hand still gripped the knife he had used against Ansel. He let go of it. The knife tumbled to his side. Tybalt lifted his hand and gazed at the wounds he had inflicted upon himself. He had gripped the knife so tightly that his nails had dug into his palms and made four thin bloody crescents. He extended his fingers straight, feeling their resistance. They had curled so tightly against the knife’s handle that they seemed to have forgotten how to rest with an open palm. He placed his right hand upon his knee and let it rest.

With his left hand, he opened the knapsack and looked at his small loot. All he had was a hard-boiled egg, a half-loaf of bread wrapped in cloth, and three plastic bottles: two of clear wheat whiskey and one of water. He wished he had pocketed the other large knives from the kitchen counter.

He picked up one of the bottles and drank from it. It was whiskey. He swished the burning liquor in his mouth to rid himself of its putrid taste and then spat. He closed it and looked for the bottle of water. Finding it, he drank a third of it.

Tybalt zipped up the bag and placed it to his side. He looked at the night sky through the canopy of the thicket. He could only see little glimmers of their light. Then, he closed his eyes and fell asleep.