The Outcast and the Survivor
Written by Trevor A. A. Evans
Text Copyright © 2015 by Trevor A. A. Evans
Published by Thirteen Crossroads Publishing
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without permission from the author, except in the case of brief quotation in articles and reviews.
www.thirteencrossroads.com
Preface
The story that follows is part of a chapter-series, The Outcast and the Survivor. It has been made available on Kindle and Nook as a convenience, since it is available free of charge directly on the Thirteen Crossroads Publishing website. The story will continue with a new chapter being released each month until the last chapter is published in December 2017.
Chapter Five
“Where are we going?” I wheeze, feeling the straps of my pack and my bow tugging awkwardly against my ribs.
Wade doesn’t answer. He doesn’t even seem to notice or acknowledge that I said anything at all as we continue moving with light, swift footsteps down the long hallway. I glance back toward the entrance to the room I was in. The guard lies there unconscious on the ground. At least I hope unconscious.
I didn’t notice any blood when we were rushing by, but in truth I tried not to look because I didn’t want to see any. Wade may well be the ruthless person Anastasia wants me to think he is, but that’s not how I want to see him. Not right now. I want him to be the person I need him to be, someone I can trust to help me accomplish what my father sent me to do.
We reach a corner at the end of the hallway and stop. Wade carefully peers around it and then takes a step forward.
“Wait,” I whisper, pulling him back toward me.
“Kaela, we don’t have time for me to—”
“It’s not that I don’t believe you,” I interrupt, “but there’s no going back from this. I need to know why we have to keep running.”
His eyes squint together and his face tenses up, hardly the look I was hoping to see. It reminds me of being a child again, like he thinks he’s protecting me by withholding the truth.
“You promised honesty,” I remind him.
“Yes, I did,” he concedes. “Did Anastasia say anything about me?”
“She said that she asked you to leave Sanctuary.”
“Hardly,” he lightly chuckles. “To the lava trenches, maybe. She had me locked up and condemned the moment I arrived.”
“But why?” I ask hesitantly.
“For the same reason that I came to get you now. Anastasia didn’t call in my debt because she was desperate to find you, though that’s what she’d have you think. It was because she wasn’t the first one to ask me to. I don’t know how she found out, but she must have. It’s the only explanation that makes a lick of sense.”
“So Eliana did send you,” I cut in.
“Maybe,” he pauses. “Those who seek you rarely use names. They were supposed to be here in Sanctuary, but they’ve gone missing. We’ll search for them, but first we have to escape.”
Footsteps echo down some distant tunnel, interrupting Wade’s line of thought. He looks around in a couple of directions trying to determine where exactly the sound came from. His hands have a slight twitch to them, nervy and not like him, though I can’t blame him since he was a dead man a short time ago. Still, there is one more thing I must ask.
“How did you get away?”
His eyes return to mine, his cryptic guise once more in place.
“I have my ways,” is all he reveals, and that’s all I want to hear as my eyes shift back to the motionless guard he left seemingly lifeless on the cold floor.
Wade again creeps toward the corner, motioning for me to follow him. Around it is another long hallway, and we move down it and beyond through several more.
The next time we take a break, a dark feeling runs up my back, giving me goosebumps and causing every hair on my body to stand on end. The air is still, so silent that it seems like we could be suspended in time, yet it does not feel empty or quiet, but rather like there is something crawling over every inch of my body. Like Anastasia’s eyes are on me, her fingers slowly draping themselves around my arms and throat.
“The exit is beyond the next room, but it’s watched,” Wade abruptly says, startling me so much that I have to resist the impulse to yelp. “We don’t have time to wait for a change of guard. The only way we’ll get out is to push our way through.”
He finishes there but continues staring at me as though he senses my unease with his apparent preference to solve problems with bloodshed. The straight-faced look he gives me suggests that he wants me to be at peace with what’s about to happen, so I make a request to try and satisfy my conscience.
“Just don’t kill them.”
After a quick nod, he scurries down the rest of the hall and across the room. I try to keep pace, but he seems intent on staying ahead of me, eventually disappearing from view around a distant bend in a corridor beyond the room.
The sounds of a struggle soon follow, but they go silent before I can catch up and see what is happening. As I come around the bend, I find Wade standing at an arched doorway with two guards lying on the ground next to him.
“Hurry,” he calls out. “This won’t go unnoticed for very long.”
The way we leave Anastasia’s palace is different than the way I came, but it leads into the city all the same. The doorway we exit is itself shielded from view by a couple of buildings, but once we get beyond them, we are immediately back in the throng of Sanctuary’s impoverished population.
Wade ushers me through the crowds as we try to blend in, but like before, it’s almost impossible to not stand out. Several people glare at us in a way almost suggesting that they know what we’ve done, so I try to avoid eye contact. Doing so makes it hard to stay out of the way, however, forcing me to keep my head up and accept a few leering eyes now and again.
Once we get a good distance away from the palace, I start telling myself that we’re in the clear, but deep down I know that any second we could be forced to again run for our lives. With each guard we pass, it feels more and more inescapable that someone will recognize us and try to bring us back to Anastasia, and sure enough, this happens as we approach the passageway leading to the lower levels of Sanctuary.
“Stop,” a sentinel near the entrance calls out, reaching down to grip the handle of his sword as he places himself in our way.
Before he can unsheathe it, Wade charges at him and knocks him up against the wall.
“Run,” he then calls out to me.
I get beyond them and turn around just as Wade is slamming his fist hard against man’s jaw, knocking him down against a stack of boxes. Beyond the two of them in the distance, the crowd of stunned refugees parts down the center, revealing a line of soldiers in fast pursuit. I look hopefully at Wade, sure that he must have planned on this and knows how we will still be able to get out of here in one piece.
“Come on now, we’re almost home free,” he reassures, grabbing my arm and pulling me with him down a steep stairway into the first lion-filled room.
Although the room is devoid of people, its caged occupants immediately take notice of us and begin growling and eagerly pacing back and forth within their enclosures. My admiration of their beauty overtakes any fear I have of them, but as they begin to gaze back the way we came, I turn and wince at the sight of our pursuers, who are only moments from catching us.
The next three levels are also lacking in guards, which seems strange to me until I think about who filled these rooms when I first arrived here. The only people I saw appeared to be ca
retakers for the beasts. A couple of them were moving from cage to cage giving the lions meat and some sort of feed. Their absence would be no surprise in the dark of night.
As we approach the final room, Sanctuary’s entrance, Wade slows down. This area, if I remember right, has a number of outposts stationed in it, and Wade’s sudden caution seems to indicate that it will be no easy task getting through the soldiers here without being sneaky.
He looks at me and presses his finger to his lips as we creep out onto the platform that overlooks the wide cavern. To my surprise, the glow of morning light is already pouring in from the opening at its far side, providing an aura of red that overpowers the flames and torches and casts a faint shadow of sorts over where we stand.
The guards scattered throughout the entranceway are faced away from the platform, or are otherwise distracted from looking our direction. Wade quietly descends the ladder, and I follow after him. Once we reach the bottom, we move along the wall of the room away from the light and near some lion enclosures. The lions take notice of us, but to my relief don’t do anything to attract any attention.
What does eventually reveal our presence is the clattering of metal armor as the guards chasing us arrive at the platform. Those between us and the entrance turn around, but just as they begin to reach for their swords, Wade pulls out his gun and points it at them, bringing their movement to a halt.
“You must know what this is, what it can do,” Wade says