Page 28 of Only the Small Bones (Slow Burns & Tragic Beginnings #1)

Malcolm

Asher spent a lot of time at that porthole, and I let him. I was too busy staring at the walls to stop him. As long as the sun was up, he only moved for bathroom breaks, or to huddle in close to me whenever the bolt slid back on the door. Sometimes, if I wasn’t too numb to move, I’d wrap my arms around him protectively.

“Gargantuan is on his way,” Asher said, getting down from the table to sit with me on the bed. He sounded less hopeful with every sunset, but he hadn’t given up completely. “I think the water makes it hard for him to find us, but he will.”

“Yeah, I’m sure he will.”

“What’s wrong? You don’t talk as much as you used to. Is it because I said you talk too much?”

“No, I’m just tired.” I lifted my arm so he could settle into my side.

“So why don’t you sleep?”

“I sleep when you sleep.”

“No you don’t, you talk when I’m asleep.”

“That’s because I talk in my sleep.”

Asher didn’t buy it. He gazed up at me with worry in his eyes. “You’re coming with me and Gargantuan, right?”

“Of course,” I breathed, forcing a smile. “We go together.”

“We go together,” he repeated. “Malcolm and Asher forever.” He balled my fingers into a fist before bumping it with his like I’d taught him.

Asher fell asleep, and I began talking again, only he wasn’t the one I spoke to. Not anymore.

Even with everything going on in my head, I thought I’d been doing a good job at keeping track of the days. Either I was off, or we’d docked earlier than the man in the suit said we would.

“Time to go,” Declan barked, storming into our room and tossing our shoes at us. Asher startled awake, yelping when one of his shoes hit him on the shoulder.

“W-where are we going?” I asked, slipping my shoes on after telling Asher to put his on.

“No questions, now turn around.”

It was still dark out, but through the porthole I spotted a hint of light in the distance. The sun would be up soon.

Declan yanked on us until we stood side by side facing away from him. I took Asher’s hand as he started to cry. I wanted to hit Declan, to give him a matching scar on his other cheek, but the last time I did something stupid, they took Asher away from me.

Declan jerked our hands apart, first tying my wrists behind my back, then Asher’s. “It’s okay,” I whispered to Asher, but I couldn’t control the trembling in my body.

The whole ship sounded alive, orders were being shouted, and footsteps sounded from every direction. Asher and I were gagged next, and I nodded at him, trying to reassure him with my eyes when I couldn’t with my words.

Young men and women were being herded above deck. It hadn’t been just the four of us held prisoner on this ship. There were at least twelve more.

“Move it,” Declan ordered from behind us when I froze. Asher and I started walking again, faster this time as I searched the new faces for the two girls who’d been in that basement with us.

The morning air was cool, and I almost tripped over a crate as we hurried to keep up with the small crowd ahead of us. Declan continued to shove at our shoulders impatiently.

There were other boats docked along the port, and a huge warehouse and crane up ahead. We were the only ones around, though, and it felt like we were hurrying to make sure it stayed that way.

The sky began to brighten as the ramp was lowered and more orders were yelled. Two men appeared, each carrying one end of a body bag. I’d seen enough of them lined up behind caution tape in my neighborhood to recognize them now. Two more men appeared carrying another one. I remembered something the man in the suit said.

“You’ve already cost us two packages.”

I looked around again and still didn’t spot the girls. I became dizzy, the voices filling my ears, the visions I’d started having last night popping up in front of me. Asher bumping into me snapped me out of it, and I continued to keep pace with everyone else.

Nothing looked or felt familiar to me, and the signs along the dock were all written in symbols. I dry heaved behind the cloth covering my mouth.

“Round that group up and load them in there,” Declan told a tall, skinny man once we’d cleared the walkway. The man nodded, grabbing two young girls I’d never seen before and shoved them into a truck that already had a driver seated. A few other men dragged more girls that way.

“You two go in here,” Declan said, forcing us into a box truck with images of fruits and vegetables on the sides of it. Asher and I hurried into a corner and crouched down together. Men rushed over, stocking it with crates to hide us, then Declan rolled down the door, locking it.

Asher and I stared at each other as the engine started up and the truck began to move at high speed. We fell to our butts, and one of the crates nearly toppled over on us. I pushed myself up quickly, using my shoulder to keep it steady. Doing so must have caught the knot Declan made on the rope tying my wrists, because it loosened a fraction.

I sat back down, twisting my hands until my wrists felt like they were on fire, until I got one of them free. I tugged down the cloth tied over my mouth, then pulled Asher’s from between his teeth too.

“See,” he whispered through his tears, “you are a Small Bone.”

“Yeah, I guess I am.” I didn’t tell him it wasn’t the size of my wrists that helped me, but Declan’s poor knotting skills. “I’m going to loosen your rope, and then cover our mouths again. We have to pretend we can’t get out of them, then when the time is right, we run as fast as we can.”

Asher didn’t like the sound of that idea. “B-but what if we get caught again? W-we s-should just wait for Gargantuan.” He hadn’t said his superheroes’ name with much faith this time. It was more of a desperate plea for me to not get us taken away from each other again.

“We have to try,” I said, feeling my blood pulse in my veins. “This might be our only chance.”

“But y-you said you wouldn’t try anything. You promised the man with the glasses.” His body shook with his quiet sobs. The truck turned sharply, slamming us into the corner we were in.

“I have a bad feeling,” I said in a hushed tone, letting my fear slip free in front of him. Asher either hadn’t seen the bags holding the dead bodies, or he was too young to understand what they were. “We go together,” I reminded him of our pact. “Malcolm and Asher forever.”

Asher nodded, tears sliding down his cheeks as I fixed the cloth back over his mouth. I loosened his ropes, then slipped back into mine. We sat with our heads pressed together, my mind feeling like a strand of loose thread unraveling.

The crates went blurry in the truck, and suddenly I was looking into the watery eyes of my mother. “Momma?” I mumbled behind the damp cloth, straightening and squinting. She mouthed something, but I couldn’t hear her. Her body took on a more solid shape then, her voice louder.

“Come home, Malcolm,” she cried, and my heart pounded.

“Momma,” I repeated. My grandpa showed up next, his coughing rag in his hand. He didn’t look so good.

“We miss you, Mally,” he said, and I whimpered his name even though it was muffled.

Asher nudged my leg, startling me, and the crates returned. I glanced over at him, seeing worry mixed in with his tears. I turned back to the crates, craning my neck to see around them. My mother and grandpa were gone. I fell back against the wall of the truck, closing my eyes. Asher rubbed his cheek up and down my shoulder to console me.

There was a loud boom, followed by the truck swerving and tires screeching. It sent me and Asher crashing to the other side as crates fell all around us. Declan and another man cursed from the cabin of the truck, while Asher and I groaned from the impact. I kicked a couple of crates off of us as we struggled to sit up.

The passenger side door slammed, and I could hear Declan yelling for the other guy to call for an extraction. The rolling door went up, and Asher and I squinted against the sunlight hitting us in the face. Satisfied that we were still alive, Declan slammed the door closed again, picking up his conversation with the other guy.

“Did you make the call?”

The guy answered in another language.

“English!” Declan shouted.

“I said I was about—”

“Give me the damn phone,” Declan growled.

A moment later the door rolled up an inch. Declan hadn’t locked it in place. Asher and I turned to each other, then I listened to Declan explaining that the truck had caught a flat. He yelled for someone to get there now.

“We’ve got a drop-off scheduled in two hours!” he shouted. “We can’t be caught out here on this road, do you understand me?” He continued to yell as I hurried out of the ropes again. I tip-toed around the crates, then lowered to my stomach to peek under the door. I removed Asher’s ropes next.

“What are you doing?” he whispered, panicking, when I pulled the cloth from his mouth.

“We have to go. Look,” I pointed to the rolling door. “Gargantuan made a way for us. We have to take it.”

He looked unsure but also curious.

“There’s a field straight ahead, with a tree line at the other end of it. We just need to make it into the trees.” The field was huge, the tree line so far away I could barely see it. We needed to make it much further than that too, but I just needed to get him moving. We’d run and figure out the rest later.

“O-okay,” he whispered, eyes wide with terror.

I lifted the door in small, slow movements, sweating by the time I got the gap wide enough for us to slip under. I went first, then helped Asher down. Declan was still shouting orders into the phone. I couldn’t see or hear what the other guy was doing.

Asher and I gripped each other’s hand as we started to walk slowly, moving faster when Declan’s voice grew more distant. After a while I stopped checking over my shoulder to see if they knew we were gone. All my focus went to the forest up ahead, to my mom and grandpa standing there waiting for me with smiles on their faces.

“ I knew you’d come, ” I mouthed as my lungs burned and my legs started to ache. My mom reached for me, urging me to move faster, and my grandpa sat at my piano, smiling while he pretended he could play. He liked to do that.

The world around me moved in slow motion as the trees melted away and my bedroom appeared. My poster of Florence Price still hung above my bed, and my piano sheets had been changed to the ones with musical notes on them. My mom knew they were my favorite. Our kitchen, which could only hold the three of us comfortably, appeared next. My grandpa’s big silver pot sat on top of the stove, and I could smell the jambalaya on the breeze. I ran faster, even when my legs began to feel like noodles, even as Asher’s tiny hand began to slip from my grasp.

I turned back to find Asher on the ground, reaching for me, crying my name. Declan chased after us, screaming his fury. I looked back to the tree line, to my mother’s urgent shouts for me to hurry, to my grandpa’s body slumped over my piano. He didn’t have much time. I had to get back to him.

“Asher, you have to get up,” I begged, falling to my knees in front of him.

“I-I can’t,” he breathed, both of us watching as Declan, and now the other man, ran for us.

“ Please ,” I cried, helping him to his feet. “They’re waiting for us.”

His legs were much shorter than mine, and he was tired, weak, and still a little sick. We both were. He tried to run again, sweat and dirt soaking through his shirt, tears falling down his face as I shouted to my mother for help.

We trampled over wild flowers, purple and yellow and white. All beautiful, none of them ugly like this moment. Asher stumbled again, and I tried to carry him, tried to drag him home but I couldn’t. I may have been bigger than him, but my bones were still small.

“I-I’m going to get us help, okay?” I stammered, seeing the two men get closer and closer.

“No!” Asher screamed, latching onto my shirt. “Please don’t leave me. Please don’t leave me.”

“I-I’ll be back. I promise. I’ll come back for you.” I peeled his fingers off me, my tears blinding me from the sight of his pain, but I could feel it. My heart broke under the force of it.

“No, no, no, no,” he pleaded. “We s-stay together.” He crawled toward me as I backed away, my gaze bouncing between him, the men, and my family waiting in the trees. “Malcolm, please !”

“Gargantuan will be here soon. He’ll keep you safe until I get back,” I sobbed. “I’m so sorry.” I turned, looking toward the trees. “I’ll find you. I’m s-sorry.” I ran as fast as my body would allow, driving me closer to the forest.

“Malcolm!” Asher screamed, my name ripped from somewhere deep inside him. “Malcolm! You said you would keep me. Please don’t leave me. Please, Malcolm . ” The fear in his voice shot through my heart.

I’d spent so much time trying to be brave that I’d forgotten I was just a boy. All the fear I’d been hiding wrapped around me now, and all the courage I’d been pretending to have floated away as I ran for the safety of my mother’s arms. I couldn’t do this anymore, couldn’t survive this any longer. I wasn’t strong enough, my mind had taken all it could take.

I was so close now, each step giving me the strength to move forward, every breath fueling the fire in my lungs. My mother smiled wider and my heart felt torn in two different directions. She stretched her arms out toward me, and I could feel her happiness crash into me.

I’ll come back for him. I’ll come back for him , I told myself.

Asher’s voice reached me again in the distance, almost too faint now for me to make out. I hesitated for a second before my feet crossed the tree line, stumbling when his last words pierced my heart.

“Malcolm and Asher forever!” he screamed, right before a gunshot rang out.