The school day came to an end for Alex as it always did; with dozens of students filling the hallways in crowded clusters just as they had been in the morning. Alex walked out of his last class of the day and pulled his cellphone from his pocket as soon as he entered the hall. With school hours over, Alex planned to meet up with his friend Seth in front of the school building, where ordinarily he and Nickole would be picked up by their mother. He flipped open his phone and typed a text message to Seth, “Hey Seth, I’ll meet you out front.”
He made his way quickly to the nearest staircase where he would descend to the lower floor. The doors to the stairwell were being held open by the groups of students all heading down. Alex pushed his way through the hordes and down the stairs. Once at the bottom, he felt his phone vibrate. He opened it up to see a response text from Seth which read, “Alright. Already there.”
As he finally passed through the front doors of the school, the sunlight was bright and the grounds were once again packed with students boarding school buses. Alex looked around for his friend. What caught his eye was what sat on the side of the road near the end of the school ground; a large, black Ford F-250. He recognized it as the truck belonging to his friend Danny’s brother. Hetrick had been working on it for the past several months, fixing what needed to be repaired and adding a few new features to it. Standing by the truck, Alex saw Seth there talking to Danny. Seth looked out and waved for Alex to come over. He quickly headed over to join them. The low roar of the truck’s engine filled his ears as he approached it.
“Hey, there you are,” Seth called out as Alex walked over to stand beside him.
Alex looked over at Danny, who was leaning against the passenger side door of the F-250. He was wearing a Mossy Oak camo hat and a black tank top. Perhaps a bit too light for April, but he never cared. In fact, it was the sort of outfit he seemed to wear all year round.
“Where’ve you been today?” Alex asked Danny.
Danny just rested himself against the truck door casually with his hands hanging in his pockets. There was no way he had been sick earlier. “Oh you know,” he began with a grin. “Couldn’t afford to come to school today.”
Alex just glanced over at Seth, who was not sure what to say. “Couldn’t afford to come to school?” Alex laughed as he repeated his words. “Never heard that one before. What were you doing this time?”
“I had to help Hetrick.” Danny replied. “He had a tow job to take care of out near Wilmington and his friend had to cancel on him. So I went along with him this morning. Had to help my brother so we could make time to take the truck back out on the paths today. That’s important, isn’t it?”
Just then, the driver’s side door opened and Danny’s brother, Hetrick, got out and walked around the front of the truck. He looked like a bigger, older version of Danny. He wore a similar camo hat and a red “America” shirt with the sleeves cut off. He leaned against the hood of the truck and took a can of Copenhagen chewing tobacco from his pocket. He twisted the cap off and placed a pinch of it into his mouth. “What do you kids think?” he said with a deeper voice than his brother’s, gesturing to his F-250. “Got the last of the leaks fixed up this week so we can take her back out right now.”
Seth nodded in approval. “You said you wanted to go out near Roger Brook, right?”
“Yeah. Danny told you, I guess?” Hetrick responded. “I wanna see if I can find where that rocky road goes. The one that we found last year.”
Alex was about to say something, but suddenly another voice spoke up behind him. “Alex, Mom’s waiting for us.” He turned around to see Nickole stop in front of him. He was sort of hoping to slip away without her seeing him.
“Just tell her I’m going over to Danny’s for a while,” he instructed her. “I’ll be back later.”
Nickole just stared back at him with a serious look. “Well that would be fine with her, Alex,” she said back, “but then that means I have to go home with her, and I know where you guys are really planning on going. So do I tell her the truth, or do I tell her your truth?”
Alex raised his eyebrows. Was it him or did Nickole just give him an ultimatum? It was certainly a tactic he had never seen her use before. Regardless, Alex knew what it was she wanted. He sighed and rolled his eyes. “Do you wanna come with, Nickole?” he asked reluctantly.
“I’d love to! Thanks for asking,” she smiled.
Alex ignored her sarcasm. “Just tell Mom-”
“I got it,” Nickole interrupted him. She turned and quickly headed back over to their mother’s car.
He turned toward his friends and shook his head. Danny looked a little confused. “What is it?” he asked curiously. “Your mom doesn’t let you drive around with us?”
“She’s too strict,” Alex answered. “I’d never be able to go out with you guys again if she knew what we do or how far we’ve gone. So you don’t mind if she tags along with us, do you?” he asked, looking at Danny’s brother.
Hetrick shook his head. “Not at all,” he replied. “I don’t recommend it, though. It gets pretty rough out there and I can’t keep my eye on her.”
“I’ll keep an eye on her,” Alex said. “She’ll be fine. I don’t need her telling her mom where we’re going.”
Just then, Nickole came back to Alex’s side. Alex noticed she no longer had her backpack with her. She didn’t say a word, rather she looked eager to leave with them.
Alex waited for her to speak. “Well?” he asked. “What’s the word? What did you tell her?”
“She’s fine with me going with you,” Nickole replied.
“Wait, she’s letting you come mudding with us?” Seth asked, surprised.
“No,” Nickole said back. “I told her you were gonna drop me off at a friend’s house and then you guys were going back to Danny and Hetrick’s place. I also told her you guys would pick me up later and drop Alex and I off at home.”
There was an awkward silence among the small group as they seemed to be impressed with how fluently Nickole lied to her mother, Alex most of all because she was never one to lie about anything. He did not think she had it in her.
Hetrick just shrugged it off. “Ok,” he began, breaking the silence. “Let’s go then, everybody in.” He turned and headed back to the driver’s seat. Danny jumped into the passenger side and the other three all piled into the back row of the truck. Watching out for the dozens of other students crossing the street, Hetrick put the truck in gear and slowly pulled out onto the main road.
It was about a twenty minute drive out of the Lake Placid area as they headed toward the edge of the Adirondack mountain ranges. In the back of the truck, Nickole was sitting in between Seth and her brother. She remained quiet the entire time, listening to the four boys yammering about their own interests; cars, girls and other teenage topics in which Nickole had no interest. Several times she found herself wondering why she was even there. Nickole began to analyze the choice she had made. Her relationship with Alex was becoming distant, their mother was not fond of his friends and frankly, neither was she. Come to think of it, Nickole hardly had any interest in driving around with them at all. So why did she risk lying to their mother for Alex? Maybe she thought of it as her chance to try to strengthen her relationship with her brother, by taking part in his own interests. Plus, going out with him
Alex revived from his black out to a throbbing pain in his temple. There was a sharp ringing in his ears as he struggled to open his eyes. At least, tried opening his eyes but could not tell the difference. The space around him was even darker than the closure of his eyelids. He was dazed and disoriented from the cave in. Alex’s eyes flew open and he hurried to his feet. As he tried to stand up, he bashed his head off of a low hanging beam. The incident had caused most of the mine’s structure to cripple, but he could not see a thing in the intense darkness. Alex cried out and put a hand to his head as he fell back against the wall. He was breathing heavily and beginning to panic. He brought himself down on all fours and felt around the tunnel. His hand suddenly came upon a familiar object. Alex gasped as he found the flashlight Hetrick had given him. He scrambled to find the button to turn it on and a dim
The tunnel never got any lighter as Alex crept farther down, and the beam from his tiny flashlight hardly did him any justice. The air around him was cold and moist. He could feel it coming through his thin hoodie. Worst of all were the thoughts that kept gnawing at his mind; would he be able to find a way out of here at all? No, that was morbid thinking, he told himself. The tunnels could not possibly go on forever, and even if they did, he knew where the entrance was, or what was left of it. Help would come as soon as possible. However, the thought of being buried alive had a mind-bending power over Alex, and he was simply not willing to wait for help to arrive. If this was a mine, then surely there was another access point to the surface of the mountain, whether it was an air duct, an auxiliary entrance, or the main entrance itself.
It was late into the night, but Rowan found no sleep. It was not often that she was able to truly relax behind the walls of the Citadel. Many mixed thoughts would rush through her head while she sat awake with burning eyes. Her quarters was built mostly of a wooden structure and the walls were hung with the hide of deer and bears to keep the space insulated and warm, and the bed she was sitting on was nothing more than a roughly sewn mat on the floor. In her hand, Rowan was fiddling around with a small, carven necklace. It was one of the last things handed down to her by her late grandmother and she never let it out of her sight. Sometimes, just like tonight, when she was alone in her Citadel quarters, she would remove it from her neck just to grasp it in her hands. It helped her recall days long ago, before her home was taken; days when she would watch
As they walked, Rowan glanced back several times. All her nine years were spent in peace here in the valley, and she had grown to love everything about it; every blade of grass and every stone in the river, and all of the people she called her family and her friends. Such a love that one might ask themselves, ‘Would they fight for it? Would they die for it?’ The two of them headed back to the outskirts of the village when they were suddenly greeted by a young man, about his mid teenage years, rushing up to them. “Delmar!” he called out. Delmar smiled as the boy stopped before them. “Morning, Matheus,” he replied. Matheus caught his breath as fast as he could before speaking again. “Sorry to bother you,” he said coyly. “I was looking for your father.” “He’s back
Miles away, it had also been a long, sleepless night for Nickole. All of her mind was centered around the events of the previous day. She was a twelve-year-old girl who had witnessed her brother vanish in seconds inside the darkness of an unstable, abandoned mine. It was traumatizing, and no matter how many times Alex’s friends tried to assure her that he was going to be alright, Nickole’s irrational mindset caused her to visualize the most horrific possibilities. What chewed Nickole up almost as much was the part she played in Alex’s predicament. For months, all she wanted was to strengthen the old relationship she had with her older brother. Their mother had been so protective and sheltering ever since their father left, and while Alex was out with his friends for most of the afternoon, she hardly had any time during the day to spend with him, if he even spent time with her at all. The one time she had
Meanwhile, in the midst of the Dark Zone, a single figure was riding by horse through the trees in the faint morning light. The fog, though still very heavy, was slightly blocked by the woods of the mountains, and so even just after dawn, it was quite dark at ground level. The rider traveled swiftly, zigzagging through the woods along a narrow dirt trail. He was a young man, in his early twenties, and he was one of the people of the valley of Ravenna. He was wearing a ragged, leather chest plate, on which he carried a large knife in a holster and a wooden longbow on his back. There was also a harness attached to the horse. One side of it held a quiver full of arrows and a stone sword in a scabbard on the other side. The man wore a brown hood over his head, under which his face showed an expression of ceaseless hate and resent as well as a few old battle scars.
The day was beginning to wear into the afternoon, and yet Alex found himself making no progress finding his way out of the mountains. He had followed the irregular ridge as far as he could, but when the terrain became too rugged and steep for him to continue, he was forced to turn away. Now his aimless path had led him deeper and lower into the mountain ranges. He was exhausted and quickly dehydrating. He was certain that as long as kept heading in one direction, he would eventually come to the end of the mountains, or at least to some sort of civilization. Still, no matter which way he went, he could be miles away from anything, and there was no guarantee that the terrain would even be traversable. How did this happen, Alex wondered. How, in the course of one day, did he manage to get himself into a situation like this? Nothing about it made sense. As the sun rose higher into the sky, the soothing heat o