Traveller - L.W. Samuelson (free e books to read online TXT) 📗

Logis, they were gone. Their loss became heavy, painful.
Lori stood by his side as he guided the boat back across the Snake. Tears streamed from Traveller’s eyes. “I’ll never see them again,” he said.
Lori put her arm around his waist. “It’s okay dear one. We’re your family now.”

Once the boat was headed back, the sun became unbearably hot. Traveller shed the blue robe he was wearing. The heat intensified, searing every cell in his body.
The river turned turbulent with large waves rocking the raft. Lori wavered before she disappeared into the foaming mist of the water. He found himself alone again struggling mightily to guide the boat to safety. He tossed for days on the river with the sun beating down and the waves battering against his boat.
He fell to the deck unconscious. When he opened his eyes again, the raft had disappeared. Traveller found himself manacled to a dungeon wall. His arms and legs had turned to lead. His head weighed a thousand batars. It was impossible to move such weight. Trapped in his own body, he watched as a contingent of Lizerians approached swinging broad strokes with their heavy swords. Their leader rushed forward. With a mighty swing, his blade flashed. Traveller raised a leaden arm to parry the blow, pain shot through his wrist as the blade bit, blood spurted from the gash. The spurt transformed into a river of red draining his body of its remaining strength. His head fell to his chest. The Lizerians disappeared. He blanked out.
He found himself back on the raft, inside the shack. A long white insect with a thick proboscis landed on his right arm. It inserted its sharp needle of a nose into his flesh. Instead of drawing blood, Traveller could feel a cold substance enter his body. It took only a moment for the strange bug to leave. The liquid it had inserted slowly warmed and dissipated. After a while, the searing heat lessened. The strange liquid seemed to have chased the burning away. Night fell bringing darkness.
When light returned, the raft no longer sat on the Snake River. It floated on the ocean. He found himself strapped to its deck, unable to move as the insect returned. Again it injected him, this time with blood, blood that filled his body. The heaviness he had felt for so long left as it mingled with his own blood.
A woman stood over him. He knew it was his mother, and yet she was black. Her beaten, harried expression softened as she explained, “I sorry Willy. Don’t get paid till tomorrow. Den I buy sumpin’ to eat. You can make it till den.” She hugged him and left.
Traveller had never experienced hunger before. He wouldn’t have known what it was if his mother hadn’t mentioned food. Now he felt his stomach churn with emptiness. It growled its displeasure at being denied. As the day wore on, the hunger pains demanded satisfaction. “Mommy!” he heard himself cry out. “Mommy!” he cried. Once Traveller started crying, he couldn’t stop. The hunger prodded him on.
The door to the shack opened. An angry black man entered. He was lank with bloodshot eyes, poison on his breathe, stubble on his chin. He knew the man as his father, yet perceived the threat of violence. “Shut up for I gib ya some pin’ to cry ‘bout,” he said as he staggered forward with a cigarette in his mouth. Acrid, killing smoke filled the room. Death rode on the white vapor.
Traveller couldn’t quit crying, the demands of the hunger were too strong. “Please Daddy,” he sobbed. “I be hungry.”
“No ‘scuse ta cry. Don’t be a baby,” he said in drunken contempt.
Despite feeling his father’s anger demanding the satisfaction of a violent lashing out, he cried. He cried because he was hungry, he cried because he missed his mother, he cried because he was alone, he cried because it made him forget his hunger.
Then his father snapped. “I give ya sumpin’ ta cry about!” he yelled grabbing Traveller’s arm. He pulled the smoking, red-ended stick from his mouth then held it on the back of Traveller’s hand. The smell of burning flesh was nothing compared to the deep scarring, horrific pain. Traveller’s cries turned to screams of agony as the cigarette burned deep.
With no hint of humanity left, banished by the lust for alcohol, Traveller’s father screamed, “I tole ya ta shud up! Shud up! Shud up!” In that instant, Traveller saw the cruel, sadistic Lizerian that had cut him earlier. It grabbed his other hand, maddened into insanity when he tried to resist. This time the cigarette came down to be moved around and around in a torturous circle of pain. “I teach ya to shud up when I say!”
“Please Daddy, please,” Traveller sobbed. “I be good Daddy.”
“You be good? You be good for nothin’,” his father said with contempt before standing back and kicking Traveller in the stomach.
He took one last look at his son as he opened the door. Traveller saw the twisted, dark soul through the blurr of tears as the evil spirit that was his father said, “God damn baby. Ain’t worth a shit.”

Traveller danced in the flames of Willy’s life. The dirty looks, the stares, the whispers of ‘nigger’ burned hot. The voice of Willy’s father saying, “You be good for nothin’. Piece of crying shit, dat’s all you are,” stoked the fire, kept it burning with intense heat.
What Willy knew as hell, Traveller knew as Willy’s life. It burned within him as his body reacted to the transfusion. He felt inferior, unworthy of happiness or anything good. No wonder he couldn’t hold his head up. No wonder the heaviness in his chest increased with each new slight, each new sadness. The white heat of rejection threatened to consume him in its flames.
Only the undying will to live allowed Traveller to fight the caustic combustion that raged inside his immune system. It attacked Willy’s foreign blood trying to reject it. Traveller teetered on the brink of death. His temperature spiked to extremely high levels for a Benwarian. The hand of death reached for him offering to deliver him from the inferno of pain.
“Come,” the black specter beckoned, “let me bring the peace of nothingness. Come, take my hand. I’ll lead you to the land of the unfeeling. The pain will cease, the fire will stop. Come, you’re burning up.”
Traveller, tired of the pain, held his hand out.Chapter 27 - The Final Battle

The nurse removed the thermometer from underneath Traveller’s tongue to stare at it in disbelief. “One hundred seven degrees,” she informed Dr. Graham.
“Let’s get him in an ice bath. If we don’t bring his temperature down, we’ll lose him,” the doctor said. He and the nurse left the room.
Lori put her hand on Traveller’s forehead, “Please dear God don’t let him die,” she prayed. “I love you Traveller,” she whispered.
Ten minutes later, Dr. Graham followed two orderlies into the room. They were pushing a tub filled with ice cubes and water. One of them pulled Traveller’s sheets back and then the pair of them gently lifted him into the water while Dr. Graham held his wounded arm to keep it from getting wet. Lori held his head. The ice cubes clicked together when the alien dislodged them as he sunk into the water.
Traveller lay limp, un-responding. Dr. Graham’s expression of resignation caused Lori’s hope to waver momentarily before she remembered Traveller’s touch, his kind expression, his belief in his friends. He can’t die! I won’t let him, she thought. Please God, don’t let him die.
“I’ll go get your friends,” said Dr. Graham. “There’s nothing we can do for him now. His temperature hasn’t come down. I can‘t find a pulse.”

Jesse, Tim, and Willy entered the room a few minutes later. Their laughter and campionship had been replaced with a glum sense of loss. Lori still held Traveller’s head. The ice cubes were melted now, the water luke warm.
“Let’s lift him back onto the bed and dry him off so he can die with dignity,” Lori said.
“I git his feet,” Willy said.
“I’ll get under his arms,” Jess said moving his sister out of the way. He pulled Traveller forward and up. With tears streaming down his face, Willy grabbed Traveller by the ankles. Together, they picked the alien out of the water and placed him back on the bed.
“Let me dry him off,” said Willy moving everyone back. He took a towel the nurse had left and began gently rubbing his friend down. Tears continued to spill down his face.

***
Traveller’s soul left his body. It hovered above the hospital bed. Being free of his painful shell enticed him to embrace death, to be free of the searing, burning torture of his fever.
One last look before I go he thought. He saw Lori, her head buried in Jesse’s chest as she sobbed. Jesse held her with his head down. He, too, was filled with grief. Tim sat in a chair along the wall with both hands over his face. I’m sorry I can’ t stay, the pain is unbearable.
Traveller glanced back just before his finger tips touched death’s hand and saw Willy. Willy who had endured so much pain, Willy who only wanted to be whole again, that very same Willy was toweling his alien body down as hot tears fell against his blue skin and darkened into navy.
No my brother. I will not let you give your precious blood in vain. Taveller pulled his hand back, stared into the eyes of death, and returned to his shell. His body shuddered; he gasped as life rushed back into it. The blood of his brother had saved him. The fever broke, the burning pain was banished.
He breathed rhythmically, one side of his body in tune with the other as life once again coursed through his veins.

***

Willy jumped back in alarm his eyes white and wide when Traveller moved. “What da hell hapnin’?” he yelled.
“He’s breathing!” Lori exclaimed. She pushed away from Jesse. “Go get the doctor.”
Jesse left as Willy, Tim, and Lori held each other and jumped up and down. “He’s alive!” Tim blurted over and over again.
“You saved him Willy. You saved him,” Lori said gratefully.
Dr. Graham followed Jesse back into the room. “Gotta move back guys, so I can see what’s going on,” he said smiling.
The doctor held his stethoscope to Traveller’s chest. One side of his heart would beat, followed in quick succession by the other in a strong rhythm. With an expression of consternation, Dr. Graham felt his patient’s forehead. “I do believe his fever has broken.”
The nurse, who had followed Jesse and the doctor in, inserted her thermometer under Traveller’s tongue. After a few moments, she announced, “96.9 degrees, I think he’s going to make it.”
Lori hugged Dr. Graham, “Thank you Doctor G., a thousand times thank you.”Chapter 28 - Recovery

Traveller awoke the next morning in a strange room. Lori sat in a chair next to his bed. "Lori, Lori,” he whispered. She stirred but didn't wake.
Willy, sitting against the far wall, did open his eyes. He jumped up. When he got to the bedside, he held his hand out. Traveller took it and the two men shook hands as an understanding passed between them. "Man honky, I thought you never wake up," Willy said smiling.
“How are you my friend?” asked Traveller.
“I be okay. How 'bout choo?”
“I’m alive thanks to you my blood brother. I’m thinking I’ll be stronger than ever in a few days.”
“Shoot, you better be. Got some old black blood