"Hello? Is anyone out there?!" the lost and confused young man called into the seemingly endless wilderness. There was nothing around him save for trees and fog. The air was cool and almost nippy, making him thankful for the navy blue wool sweater he wore. Winter in New York didn't require heavy jackets or hats. "I said is anyone out there!" he repeated himself before being forced to hold onto a nearby tree, his head pulsing and pounding at debilitating power. The last thing he could remember was going to bed after his final freshman exam, which ended his first year of college. Now he was lost in the woods in God only knows where.
"Hello? Where are you?!" a girl's voice shouted out from deep in the fog. "Hello?!" the voice called again, signaling to the young man that he wasn't losing his mind further. She was even further out of her comfort zone than the boy. "Where are you?!" she shouted again louder, not wanting to be left alone in the bowels of the mysterious wood.
"Stay there, I'm coming to you!" he hollered to leave no doubt of his presence. "What's your name?" he asked to keep her calm and to make sure he could follow the sound of her voice.
"Kim, Kim Crawford," the poor girl replied in a quieter voice, but still audible. She was thankful not to be the only one in the woods, but this guy was a total stranger regardless of the situation. "Who are you? What's your name?" Kim asked. Before she could be given an answer, a young man rounded a tree and smiled at her.
"Name's Jack Brewer, and if you're anything like me, you're really lost right now." Jack's alert eyes shot back and forth among the trees and the thick brush. "Where are you from, Kim?" Jack continued with the simple questions, buying time until he could think of something smart to do.
"Seaford, California," Kim kept her answers short and simple until she could be sure of what was happening.
"That sounds nicer than where I'm from. I'm not a huge fan of New York," Jack chuckled, running both hands through his long brown hair. "Let's try to find a way out of here, how about that?" Jack popped his eyebrows with a confident smirk at the stabilizing girl.
"Uh, yeah, that sounds good." Kim swept a stray blonde lock of hair behind her ear. Without thinking, she reached into the pocket of her jeans for a hair tie, quickly pulling her hair into a ponytail. This could be a long trek for all they knew.
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Not a lot of time passed before Jack and Kim could see the cut out of a loosely cobbled road just at the bottom of the hill they were cresting. "Wait, do you see them?" Jack pulled Kim lower into the bush, pointing out two quickly moving figures halfway down their little hill.
"Should we call out to them?" the young woman asked, telling Jack they were in fact there.
"No, not yet." Jack slowly rose to a low crouch, grabbing a thick piece of wood that was the length of his arm. "Until we know who they are, stay behind me," Jack warned, proceeding slowly. "We don't know if they mean us harm, or if they're lost, too."
"Roger that," Kim replied as she picked up a handful of decent sized stones. She wasn't stupid by any means. She appreciated Jack's chivalry, but she wouldn't just stand in the back and quiver like some kind of damsel in distress. The pair of relative strangers moved down at an aggravatingly slow pace, but much better safe than sorry.
"Jerry, we need to be careful. Chances are we're not alone. Whoever dropped us off in these woods is probably still around," one of the voices could be heard saying. "I don't know how we got here, but I don't like it." the seeming leader told his friend, Jerry.
"So we're just supposed to skirt this road until we find someone or someone finds us?" Jerry seemed to not be overly joyous about this plan.
"Yeah. Pretty much!" Milton hissed like it was a no brainer. "This is the only road we've seen all day. This is our best chance of finding other people before dark."
"Hate to break it to you guys, but you've been found." Jack spoke in a neutral tone. "I'm guessing by that little conversation, none of the four of us have any idea where we are?" Jack and Kim kept their tools of defense for the time being. They had no idea if these people would see them honestly, or think they were an act. God only knew who else was out there, too.
"Not at all. We just woke up in these woods about 100 yards from each other," Milton explained the part of the story Jack and Kim just assumed.
"Yeah, us too." Kim threw in, looking all around them. "You guys haven't had any luck with the road?" Kim looked like she was going to ask another question, but stopped and stood stock still. "Do you smell that?" she asked, causing the others to begin sniffing like interested dogs.
"That's pretty bad. What is that?" Jack covered his nose but the smell burned right through to his nostrils. "BO?" Jack's ears perked and he hushed the small group of young adults. "Get down," he hissed. Everyone hit the deck and followed him as he crouched through the bushes closer to the road. The source of the putrid smell soon revealed itself in the form of a long column of disheveled and rugged men. They were some form of military, that being evident from their crude weapons and sorry excuse for armor, consisting of furs and shoddy chainmail.
"Who are they?" Milton found himself asking just below a whisper. "They look like the Huns," he joked.
"Maybe. They look more Germanic. Vandals or some clan of Goths. I really doubt they'd be friendly." Jack shook his head, not liking the idea of giving their cover to say hi. He had taken that last statement more seriously than Milton had expected. "Maybe we should wait for them to pass…" he left the sentence open for argument. Before any argument could be made, a sound similar to snapping string followed by whistling could be heard and members of the rabble fell dead, arrows now protruding from dead and dying forms.
Kim and the group watched quietly with held breath as the barbarians in the road tried to form some kind of defensive position. Poorly made shields served as little protection to the seemingly ceaseless rain of arrows. After a time, the pouring halted and men with greatswords and terrifying battle axes rushed from the opposite side of the road, their attack too great for the horde to withstand. Hand to hand combat continued for a brief amount, the superior skill of the new arrivals was obvious. The horde broke and ran in an unorganized fashion, the much larger warriors cleaving down any that proved too slow to escape. The massive figures cleared the road and the thundering of many hooves sounded as knights in sturdy chainmail under banded leather curasses riding massive border horses chased down the fleeing enemy. "We need to get the hell out of here!" Kim said and tried to rise to a crouching position.
"No!" Jack grunted, pulling the poor girl back to the ground. "We have no idea what they'd do to us if they caught us. It's best if we stay here." he suggested. Milton seemed to agree and Jerry said nothing. Jerry had no idea what kind of world they had fallen into. None of them did.
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The only occupants of the road lay dead and unmoving in the blood stained dirt which sat more as a rusty colored mud. "This fight was so one-sided," Milton mentioned as the four walked among the bodies. "None of them survived." He shook his head at the animosity of what they had witnessed. The four of them had seen things similar to it in movies, but it was much more horrid in person. The sounds and the close proximity of it all, and the smell of death really drove it all home. The atmosphere itself seemed to have completely changed.
"Guys, this one's still alive!" Kim shouted to the three men as she rushed upon a weakly sputtering man. "He's rough, but he's not dead," she smiled as she looked into confused green eyes. The downed warrior knew as little about them as they knew about him. These two very different peoples had never seen such drastic cultural differences. "Can you speak? Do you speak English?" Kim asked slowly as she lightly lifted his head, long black hair spilling over her hands and his shoulders. She squeezed his hand to check for symptoms of shock.
"I do not know of what you speak, but I understand your words, lady," the man answered in what seemed like a strong Scottish accent that they had to listen closely to for any understanding.
"Great, the dude speaks English but they don't call it English." Jerry threw his hands up in disappointment.
"Do you have a name, sir?" Jack took a knee next to the man as Kim felt his pulse. "What do they call you?"
"Fedelmid. I am lieutenant in the service of Warden Magnus," the soldier coughed out before closing his eyes in pain.
"Good, keep him talking. Jack, I need your sweater. This guy's not in the greatest shape. I need a tourniquet for his left arm. I can cover this laceration on his chest, but I don't have a needle to stitch it." Kim said in a rush as she verbally assessed the situation. "If he gets infected or feverish, this could be bad." Her eyes scanned up and down the heavy muscled and tattooed 6'4'' frame of the downed man. She wouldn't have believed he could have fallen if she hadn't seen the blood pooling by his left knee, the cheap shot that made him vulnerable. His light wool shirt was torn and tattered. Blood from the gash on his chest trickled below the shirt and to the thicker kilt that covered part of his torso and covered down to mid thigh, buckskin pants covering his legs.
"Why the hell do you know what's going on with him?" Kim asked, scratching his head.
"I watch a lot of medical dramas and I'm trying to get into med school. I got this." Kim briefly smiled at the impressed young man and went back to work. Milton knew next to nothing about the medical world, but he had plans to be a land surveyor for real estate or government planning.
"Can we move him off the road? We shouldn't stay in the open any longer than we need to," Jack warned, taking up a spear from a dead brute's hand. Milton and Jerry followed suit, arming themselves with swords and axes. Kim left the poor man she tended long enough to find herself a decently crafted bow and a quiver of arrows. "You know how to shoot?" Jack asked, raising an eyebrow.
"It's going to take the four of us to move him, but I think it's the best thing to do. And my dad is a huge outdoors kind of guy. He tried to raise me to be, but I have a bigger interest in medicine and books. Camping, hiking, kayaking, I love it all still, though. Shooting is a stress relieving hobby more than anything, I guess." Kim shrugged. Her build was slender and athletic, though she didn't seem like the cheerleading or volleyball type at first glance. Jack's body type was similar to her own, muscular and tight but not bulky and pure power like Jerry's. It seemed quite obvious that Jerry was a football player, and a damn good one by the looks of it. A dynamic body type group could be useful for various tasks if they were going to be stranded for a while.
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Night fell on the small party of new friends, the moonlight just able to pierce the thick green canopy above them. Kim and Milton had started a small fire contained within a pit they'd made of rocks. "It would be nice if we had something to cook over this fire." Jerry mentioned as he scooted closer to the warming tongues of bright light.
"The Thoseans… carry provisions… in small pouches on their persons," Fedelmid spoke up for the first time since the road. His medical state had left him with a fever and terribly drained for the entirety of their togetherness.
"We need to get food, guys. Those pouches are the best way to get it." Jack said what they were all thinking. "Maybe we should use the buddy system?"
"I got it. Jerry, you can come with me." Milton picked up his ax and tapped Jerry with the iron head. "I've spent most of the evening making a map of where we are. I can use it to get to the road and back." Milton dug through the backpack he had arrived with and extracted the well drawn map. "My phone doesn't have service, obviously, but I can use the remaining battery to see the map. We'll have to make torches tomorrow, though," Milton added before he turned in the direction his map ordered. Milton was a near genius, but he needed Jerry's muscles if something were to happen.
"Hey man, be careful out there. If anything happens, just come right back," Jack said in a serious voice, leaving no room for argument. "We can't afford anything going wrong right now."
"Don't worry Jack, we got this," Jerry assured his new friend, twirling his sword with ease.
"I'd rather do this at night than by day. Besides, I got ole' Man Bear with me." Milton smiled and patted the large, young man on the shoulder.
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Jerry and Milton hadn't been gone for more than ten minutes before Jack became worried and restless. "Jack, they'll be okay. Milton is really smart and Jerry is huge," Kim tried to calm her pacing friend.
"I just don't like us being separated," he threw his hands up like she had attacked him for his worries. "How's Fedelmid?" Jack didn't just need a distraction, he felt somewhat responsible for the carry on.
"He's doing good. His fever is down but he hasn't broke it yet. I don't want to leave him at all until it passes. His wounds don't look infected at all," Kim weakly smiled, exhausted from the recent events.
"How are you holding up?" Jack plopped down next to her in front of the fire.
"I'm good, better than I expected I'd be. I don't know where we are, how we got here… or when," she motioned behind her to the man that stared off into the nothing of the tree tops and the mostly black sky, great twinkling stars and the half moon being the only light. "I just try not to think about it, you know? Like I'm just on another camping trip my dad always dragged me to." Kim smiled brighter this time, thankful for Jack's willingness to check on her and listen. "What about you?" her eyes fell to her feet and she began to fiddle with her hands.
Jack exhaled deeply and looked into the center of the flames a while before answering. "I don't know. I don't think I've let everything, whatever everything is, settle yet. I walked out of a final exam just hours ago and now… four strangers and unfamiliar woods are all I have right now." Jack decided not to lie to her, which was his first instinct. He wanted her to know it was okay for her to be a little worried, it was only natural. He was happy and relieved that she was in such strong control of her emotions. From stereotype, she should be all crossed and lost. Kim wasn't that kind of young lady.
"Hey, at least you have something," Kim smiled at him to keep his spirits up. They were all in a similar boat, Jack was just the first to admit the situation.
"Guys, we're coming in," Milton gave them a quick heads up so they wouldn't freak out.
"That was fast," Jack commented on the speed of their return. "Get everything we need?" he asked hopefully. He wasn't about to admit he had been worried to the point of almost going after them.
"We grabbed food and water, as much as we could carry." Jerry answered, placing his load by the fire but not dangerously close. "It's all dried meats and bread, but it's edible."
"Edible is the important part," Milton added as he leaned back against a tree that would take three men to wrap their arms around. "Best part is that it's no bake," Milton chuckled to himself and fought to tear through the leathery jerky made from God only knows what creature.
"You should get some sleep. I'll take first watch." Jack whispered to Kim, giving her first dibs on a bit of rest. "Me and Milton can handle it."
"Okay, but no funny business," Kim replied, loving the idea of rest, even if for only a few hours.
"Oh, of course not. Only in my dreams," Jack playfully smirked at the way Kim's cheeks visibly reddened. "Jerry man, you should probably try to sleep a bit. We have no idea what'll happen tomorrow. Me and Milton have this under control," he motioned to the small perimeter around them.
"You don't have to tell me twice." Jerry consented with eyes half closed already.
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Jerry had been out for some time, but it had taken quite a bit longer for Kim to succumb to sleep. Once both were asleep, however, Jack and Milton quietly walked out of earshot of the camp. "What the hell is our plan here?" Milton asked as he dragged a worried hand through his copper colored hair. "We don't know who or what is out here, or where 'here' even is."
"I'm as clueless as you are. There's dangerous people out here and our only informant is a soldier in and out of consciousness," Jack summed up the situation. "Camping out here is only going to work for so long before things go downhill somehow," Jack kicked the soft, rich earth below his feet. "You're the geographer, where do we go?" Jack left it to the just as lost Milton.
"I don't know either, man. We might have to talk to Fedelmid once he's more himself… whoever himself is," Milton suggested hesitantly
"I think you're right. He knows where we are, and he doesn't seem hostile. He's civilized at least. Has Jerry said anything about how he's doing?" Jack thought it best if he checked in on how everyone was doing to this drastic switch of situation.
"Jerry's doing good, really good," Milton seemed a little put off at his friend's sunny disposition to recent events. "He's enjoying this, if I'm not wrong," he shrugged and bit into an apple he'd found from a nearby tree. Food was everywhere if they were smart and willing to look for berries and apples. "I don't know if he gets what's going on here, or if he just doesn't care."
"Hell, I don't think any of us get what's going on here. I was in New York, taking a world history exam this morning. Now I'm in some big ass deciduous forest," Jack motioned to everything around him. "The only upside I see is that none of the four of us are hurt."
"Being armed and having someone from the region helps, too," Milton pointed out. "As far as a game plan, I think it's best if we stay close to our little camp here."
"We can start expanding our little perimeter tomorrow," Jack suggested, not liking just how little and isolated their base of knowledge was for the area. "You and me should go out tomorrow and do some mapping."
"I like it, but should we separate? It might be best to stay together."
"Fedelmid can't walk yet, and Kim won't leave his side until he can, so we should leave Jerry with her. I want us to stick to the buddy system. I think that's our best bet right now," Jack pointed out, wanting every bit of knowledge shared. In the morning he would go over with the others what he and Milton had discussed. Milton seemed to have a very level head and a high intelligence. He seemed to Jack to be a born planner.
"What if we run into more of those Thoseans? They don't seem to be much in the way of strong fighters, but we're not either. Kim can use a bow and Jerry's a beast, but I don't know if we have anything to offer," Milton pointed out.
"Even if we did have anything to offer, that's still only four against God knows how many. I'm actually a black belt, so I can use this spear like a bow staff. I'm also self trained in Medieval combat." For every idea the pair had, more problems and situations seemed to arise. "Being stuck here isn't going to be easy, Milton." With that closing statement, the pair returned to camp to finish the rest of the watch, hoping something more useful would come around.
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Hey everyone! I'm happy to be uploading my third Kickin' It story! Please drop a review if you guys are interested in this story!