Traveler, L.E. DeLano [book series for 12 year olds .TXT] 📗

them are anywhere in sight. No one’s in sight. I am completely and utterly alone.

I get to my feet, rubbing my arms for comfort, and also because it’s really, really cold here. The sky is overcast, and it looks like it might rain any minute.

I am standing next to a trickle of a creek, but it’s clogged with garbage and chunks of charred wood, forming a stagnant pool. The water has a greasy coating. I can barely see myself, but I might be able to see well enough to use it. It’s hard to tell with the hazy cloud cover darkening the sky.

I have no idea where I am, but the Traveler doesn’t appear to have followed me. I crouch down next to the pool, holding my breath so I don’t have to smell it. I reach out, clear my mind, and touch the murky, swirled reflection showing in the water.

My hand slides into a slick of goo and I pull it back, shaking the nastiness off it and wiping it against my jeans. Gross.

I take a deep breath, really concentrating this time, and I nearly fall in, trying to push through the water. I try one more time, willing myself to the other side, to Finn, and still I am here. Wherever “here” is.

I stand up, looking around, but I don’t see a house or a business or anything that could possibly have a better mirror. And since I’m not smart enough to have thought to keep one on me—I make a mental note to do that from now on—I’m going to have to walk until I find something. I decide to follow the creek, hoping to find clear water somewhere, but it dries up not far from where I was.

I feel like I’m making pretty good time. A glance down at myself shows that I’m wearing what I wore at Mugsy’s, instead of whatever I’d be wearing here, which means—I guess—that there is no me here. So the Traveler pushed me through to a reality I don’t exist in. I’m also standing out like a sore thumb in head-to-toe gold and fuchsia.

I pick up my pace, wondering how long it’s going to be before the Traveler finds me. Off to one side I see the only thing that could pass for cover. It looks almost like a landfill of some kind, made up of large piles of garbage and felled trees. It almost looks like a tornado was through and leveled a town and they pushed all the rubble into a long, long pile that stretches as far as I can see. I need to get on the other side of it, because the Traveler could be following, and soon.

Maybe I can find a broken mirror in the pile if I look. I just need to find a clear reflector to get me out of here. Murky, possibly diseased water is probably not the best way to go about this.

I walk for what feels like hours, but without a working phone—I can’t get a signal at all—or a watch, who knows? It’s likely been less than that, but it feels like a lot longer. I haven’t found anything along the way that I can use as a mirror, either.

The sun is beginning to sink in the sky, and it’s getting even colder. I’m starting to think that I’m not going to find shelter before evening when I find the road. It’s half-buried under dirt and fine grayish powder, and chunks of it have crumbled off at the edges.

I follow the road in the same direction that I was walking toward, keeping to the edge of the rubble pile, and just as the sun drops to the horizon, I see the houses. It’s a small town, and strangely, even though it’s twilight, there are no lights, not in the street and not in any of the homes. I get a creepy sense of foreboding about this, and I slow my steps a bit, trying to pay closer attention, because I just kicked something hard as I was walking and it rolled off in front of me.

That’s when I realize I’m walking through a graveyard.

I kicked a human skull, and there are bone fragments all around me. Not one of them is intact—all are broken, shattered. I crouch down to look more closely in the remaining dim light and I see the marks upon them—like they’ve been gnawed. The bones are of all sizes. Large adults. Smaller adults. Children.

I stagger to my feet as the horror hits me like an icy fist in the chest.

I am in Finn’s world.

The Traveler doesn’t need to follow me. She knows I won’t live long. Not here.

The town in front of me now becomes a place to be feared instead of a safe harbor. I need to get out of sight. Who knows what’s hiding there, waiting for someone clueless like me to stumble in?

But I have no choice. I have to go. I need to find a mirror. A puddle of clear water. A piece of polished metal. Something. And the houses in town are my best chance for finding any of those things. More than anything, I need to get out of sight, and I’m not about to curl up for the night on a pile of skeletons.

I make my way more carefully now, grateful that I have my hearing again, but starting at every sound in the deepening night. It’s eerily quiet for the most part, but that just makes the tiny sounds stand out more when they occur. A shift in the rubble. Wind picking up. A thump that I can’t define.

I crouch down, running as quickly as I can until I reach the side of a house, flattening myself into its shadow. I’m panting with exertion. I stand there a few minutes, waiting and listening.

And then I hear it. Far off and barely discernable. Could it be human voices? I can’t tell for sure. I am tempted to hide