The Wine Dark Passage: An Apocalyptic Coming of Age Story

By Wayne Kyle Spitzer

The Silent Protagonist

Meet Pang "The Mouse" In-Su, a 13-year-old Korean deafmute girl, whose silence speaks louder than words. Pang grapples with the weight of a disordered world, haunted by memories of loss and the relentless pursuit of survival.

 

The Enigmatic Captain and His Companions

Captain O'Neil guides the USS Sarpedon through the wine-dark waters. Alongside him, Enge Puckett, a steadfast companion, adds a touch of humanity to the stark reality of survival. Together, they navigate through the remnants of a world that has succumbed to the whims of time, where primitive people and dinosaurs roam in the shadows.

 

The Elon Musk-like Enigma

Enter Steve Dannon, an Elon Musk-like figure, whose private compound, Chryse Planitia, beckons like a forbidden sanctuary on Vashon Island. Dannon, reminiscent of Conrad's Kurtz, hides secrets that echo in the whispers of those who dare to challenge his fractured reality. As the crew embarks on this odyssey, Dannon's enigma looms large—a force that can reshape destinies or plunge them into deeper darkness.

 

A Heart of Darkness in the Pacific Northwest

In this Pacific Northwest dystopia, the crew must confront the perils of a distorted time, facing not only the remnants of a lost world but the shadows of their own morality ...

From The Wine Dark Passage:

We watched as he gestured to what appeared to be a large hand crank near the edge of the lock.

Do it, O'Neil seemed to indicate.

And he moved toward it—even as something moved with him through the shadows; something sleek and dark and stealthy as a panther. Something which was joined by three other somethings as Jarnel took up the big, iron handle and began to crank it—pausing to take off his coat and roll up his sleeves, completely oblivious to the fact that he was being watched. That he was being stalked.

What happened next happened fast; so fast that I was still shaking Puckett's shoulder, telling him to fire, fire!—when one of the things leapt onto Jarnel's back and just held on tight: curling its talons so that they dug into his thin, wet shoulders, seeming to rake his back with its sickle-clawed hindlimbs, closing its jaws about his neck and jugular. Nor did it stop there but only got worse, as the other velociraptors, the other murder birds, descended on him like flies, like jackals—knocking him to the ground, burying him as if in quicksand, making it impossible for anyone to even shoot at them for fear of hitting Jarnel himself.

Not that there would have been any point—he was clearly dead already—as Captain O'Neil spoke into his mic and the sub moved on through the now-open gates. As the raptors snarled and fought over Jarnel's corpse and I looked toward the sky at the fat, bloody moon (which was partially obscured by the semi-luminescent clouds; the so-called Flashback Borealis, which shown red as Abaddon); noting that the world hadn't remarked on his death in the least but only continued to look on in perfect silence: impenetrable, inscrutable, having nothing whatsoever to say—nothing to add or take away—like we ourselves, I supposed.

And then it was time to get ready—as we were more than halfway there. Time to go over the plan once more and to steel ourselves, steel our shivering stomachs, for what was yet to come. To get square with our gods and Buddhas so we could go ashore at Camp Burton—where there was a small port tucked into a heavily forested cul-de-sac—and do at last what needed to be done.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Hobb's End Books
• Release date: Dec 25, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223017721

Wayne Kyle Spitzer

Wayne Kyle Spitzer (born July 15, 1966) is an American author and low-budget horror filmmaker from Spokane, Washington. He is the writer/director of the short horror film, Shadows in the Garden, as well as the author of Flashback, an SF/horror novel published in 1993. Spitzer's non-genre writing has appeared in subTerrain Magazine: Strong Words for a Polite Nation and Columbia: The Magazine of Northwest History. His recent fiction includes The Ferryman Pentalogy, consisting of Comes a Ferryman, The Tempter and the Taker, The Pierced Veil, Black Hole, White Fountain, and To the End of Ursathrax, as well as The X-Ray Rider Trilogy and a screen adaptation of Algernon Blackwood’s The Willows.

Book preview

An Apocalyptic Coming-of-Age Story

OTHER BOOKS BY THE AUTHOR

Legends of the Flashback, Books 1-3

X-Ray Rider and Other Dark Rites of Passage

The Devil Drives a ’66 and Other Stories

The Place: Stories from the Region Between

The Witch-Doctor Diaries

Beyond the Black Curtain

Napoleon

An Apocalyptic Coming-of-Age Story

by

Wayne Kyle Spitzer

Hobb’s End Books • A Division of ACME Sprockets & Visions, Inc.

Copyright © 2024 by Wayne Kyle Spitzer. All Rights Reserved. Published by Hobb’s End Books, a division of ACME Sprockets & Visions. Cover design Copyright © 2024 by Wayne Kyle Spitzer. Please direct all inquiries to: [e-mail]

All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. This book contains material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this book is prohibited. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without express written permission from the author. This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

For my sweetheart, Trinh. And for my father.

Author’s Note

––––––––

These are stories of the Flashback, the time-storm that vanished most the world’s population and returned the earth to primordia, and thus are all connected. What they are not are chapters in a novel—even though they follow an approximate sequence and all come together in the end (and along the way). All of which is my way of saying that if you treat this book like a novel you will almost certainly be disappointed. If, on the other hand, you are able to take these stories as they were intended; i.e., separate but overlapping tales which share the same universe and eventually merge—I think you’ll enjoy reading them as much as I enjoyed writing them (in what has been a 30-year passion project). Either way, know this: I’ve given you my very best. Take heart, take care, and as always, thanks for reading.

––––––––

—WKS

An Apocalyptic Coming-of-Age Story

Before

THE WINE DARK EARTH

I look at the shadow of the Sarpedon’s conning tower, rippling through the waves like a boxy, black sail, its periscopes and radar like spikes on a war helm. Because it hurts my mind to stare at the illuminated cloud above—the Flashback Borealis, as they call it—which hangs over Seattle like a shroud, for very long, I have again diverted my eyes; this time to the water—the dark, roiling, whitecapped water—which, reflecting the cloud’s ephemeral light, has become the color of wine, the color of blood.

Atop the sail are three shadowy figures: a tall, thin man in a pea coat and captain’s hat (Captain O’Neil), a shorter form with long, windswept hair (Beth), and yet another—bearing what is called in Korea the 2-block haircut—a figure so short that only her head is visible.

A figure, I suppose, which is me. Pang In-Su. Survivor of the Bainbridge boat fire. Teen member of the Delta Dawn excursion force, which will go ashore soon. American-raised Korean deafmute whom, because of her big ears (never let it be said that God doesn’t have a sense of humor), they call The Mouse.

The Captain offers me his binoculars, which I take—they are heavier than I expected—and I look through them: at the towering office buildings and mirrored condos, black against the red haze, and the multicolored lights, which flicker, specter like, amidst the stoic, wine-dark clouds. Amazing, I sign. That they can see so close. I focus on an American flag—which is blowing from the mast of a sleek, blue-white tower with an angled roof. It’s almost like you’re there. Right up against the buildings. I look at Beth, incredulously. How?

She moves to sign but pauses, as though realizing she doesn’t know, then exchanges words with the Captain—which I am unable to read.

He says it’s because they contain prisms, she signs—even as the hair whips frenziedly about her face, stabs at her eyes. Little crystals, which serve to bend and refract light.

I hesitate, shaking my head. I don’t know anything about that. About prisms.

I watch as she communicates with the Captain—verbally—but look away as he begins to explain, down through the plexiglass shield in front of us, to where the great, domed snout of the sub is parting Elliott Bay like a torpedo.

At last, she signs, A prism is a faceted block of glass that splits light into its constituent colors. When light enters a prism it is refracted so that all the colors of the spectrum are dispersed—spread out—and you can see them.

I look at the cloud, like a scaled-down interstellar nebula only right here in Earth’s atmosphere, and the many-colored lights, which pulse and flash. And what then? Do they ever recombine? I mean, do they ever become one again?

Beth only smiles, as though seeing something in me I could not possibly see myself, and lolls her head toward the Captain, at which I can read: She asks if the colors are ever reunited. And she winks at him.

She translates as he speaks: They can be, yes. By using a second, parallel prism, an inverted one, which recombines the colors of the spectrum.

I think about this but can only shake my head. But—I don’t get it. How is the light refracted in the first—

There is a commotion and I look down to see Engineering Officer Puckett, who has stuck his head up through the hatch, and watch as they talk back and forth. It’s hard not to notice how thread-worn he looks, how pale. I worry over how exhausted he must be: keeping everything functioning, everything up and running, and with only a skeleton crew to help him. Keeping us all afloat, literally—with ten men instead of one-hundred. More, he seems upset—although about what, given the darkness of the tube and my insufficient skill at reading lips, is hard to say.

Beth signs (as if noticing my confusion): He’s upset that he can’t go ashore with the rest of us; that he’s been chosen to remain on the ship. But the Captain says the same rule applies to him as it does to himself: That he is essential personnel and cannot be risked. That it’s for everyone’s safety; and that we all agreed to it.

I watch as the fur lining of her hood, which is bunched up at the back of her head, undulates in the wind. I sign, Am I still going?

Yes, she says. We’ll still need you to get us past the retina scan—into the storage facility. But he’s not too happy about it.

I sign, feverishly. Who else?

Just Will, myself, CS Beasley; Petty Officer Slater ... He doesn’t want to risk any more than is necessary.

I breathe a sigh of relief, feeling suddenly strange, suddenly buoyant. Because I like Will. I trust Will.

What I am less confident about is getting us into the storage area of what was once my uncle’s company; i.e., Patriot Foods and Life Preserves (suppliers of ready-to-eat, freeze-dried meals to survivalists and preppers worldwide; people whom, though he’d made a fortune off them, he didn’t seem to actually like). Or that an eye-scan made when I was 12-years-old—so he could watch my delight when, visiting the factory months later, the door to the vault suddenly unlocked (without my hand ever touching it) and swung open like a magic portal—might remain in the system; or that I might have changed so little that it will recognize me fully five years on, or that we will find a truck that still runs—and the keys will be in it—or, failing that, that Benny (CS Beasley) will be able to hotwire one (because he grew up in East L.A. and knows how to do those things); or any of it. Any of the things that we’ve planned and wargamed and rehearsed—but still are not remotely prepared to do. Not in this world, at least; the world left us by the Flashback. Not in Primordia; this Savage and Primeval Garden.

I watch the Captain as he unhooks his mic and studies the shore—then says something into it; which Beth translates. We’ll dock at Pier 59, on the south side of the aquarium.

I look at the shore: at the gray and white aquarium building and the Ferris Wheel on the adjacent pier, which is hung with moss and vine; at the green and white Washington State Ferry—derelict; a ghostship, floating idly next to that.

Beth speaks as she signs: We should get ready.

The Captain nods.

And then we follow Puckett: down through the hatch and into the cold, dark tube. Into the bowels of the ship.

––––––––

Hold, indicates Will, with an upraised fist, and we hold: bunched together beneath the overhang of the aquarium’s entrance like children, like boys playing war, our 45s and shotguns and M14s (for Beth and me) poised; our guts (or at least mine) tied up in knots.

He waves two fingers, which means Column Formation, and we form up; Beth and I near the back, so that we can still see the sub (as well as Captain O’Neil—lending cover from the sail), followed by Petty Officer Slater, preceded by Will and Benny.

Then we wait: as rain begins to spot the pavement and the city lays dormant, comatose—choked with moss and cycads, bereft. Then we watch to see if our arrival has been in any way remarked upon—and if so, by what—as the nearby fountain splashes (silently) and I wonder how it could possibly still be working.

But there is nothing. No cudgel-wielding survivors shambling, zombie-like, toward our position, their eyes full of stark despair. No saw-boned animals—prehistoric or otherwise—stalking us, warily, across the shattered pavement. Just the necropolis; the Big Empty; the stoic, faceless towers standing sentinel for no one. Just five hungry people—all of them expendable.

Go, hurry, indicates Will, and we move out, humping (as Benny likes to put it) around busted down barriers and rubble and construction equipment (they had just finished demolishing the viaduct when the Flashback hit), clamoring toward Pike Street Hillclimb. Watching for people—for life. Watching for Murder Birds—that’s what I call them—raptors with hungry, distended stomachs and the Flashback in their eyes.

Seconds later we’re there, we’ve reached the bottom of the steps—the wide, broken, moss-covered steps—where, again, Will instructs us to hold and we hold, standing in the rain, standing in the open. Exposed—even as a pack of rangy, feral dogs begins sniffing about our trail.

Caution, he signals.

He looks at Beth and me and indicates his eyes; then the rain-dappled foliage to our left and right. Watch our flanks, he’s saying—then points to Ensign Slater, his lips moving rapidly, "And you ... watch the women."

And then we proceed: climbing the cement steps toward the market and my uncle’s two-story warehouse (which is on Pike Street, right next to the original Starbucks). Covering the distance like soldiers; like a seasoned platoon,