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    Laphatton
    Laphatton
    Laphatton
    Ebook142 pages1 hour

    Laphatton

    By Dana Kelleher Bost

    ()

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    About this ebook

    The year is 2064, and the world is in chaos. Our story begins at a Survival Training Camp for teens on Roosevelt Island, New York. As the campers pick through the ruins that the war left behind, four young souls stumble upon a time portal and are transported to the 1600s. They arrive with three books, a chess set, needles and thread, and a new feeling: hope. The Lenni Lenape Tribe in residence on the island have noted their presence, and so begins the tale as the interlopers try to carve out a future from the past.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAustin Macauley Publishers
    Release dateMar 28, 2024
    ISBN9798886938807
    Laphatton
    Author

    Dana Kelleher Bost

    Dana Kelleher Bost is on her fourth reincarnation, this time as a writer. She spent a decade traveling the backroads of Virginia as a visiting nurse, then a decade as a full-time mother of two boys and a part-time photographer, which led to a twenty-four-year stint as an English/Drama/Film teacher at a private school in Virginia. This is her first novel.

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      Book preview

      Laphatton - Dana Kelleher Bost

      About the Author

      Dana Kelleher Bost is on her fourth reincarnation, this time as a writer. She spent a decade traveling the backroads of Virginia as a visiting nurse, then a decade as a full-time mother of two boys and a part-time photographer, which led to a twenty-four-year stint as an English/Drama/Film teacher at a private school in Virginia. This is her first novel.

      Dedication

      Dedicated to

      HOPE

      Copyright Information ©

      Dana Kelleher Bost 2024

      All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher.

      Any person who commits any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

      This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

      Ordering Information

      Quantity sales: Special discounts are available on quantity purchases by corporations, associations, and others. For details, contact the publisher at the address below.

      Publisher’s Cataloging-in-Publication data

      Bost, Dana Kelleher

      Laphatton

      ISBN 9798886938784 (Paperback)

      ISBN 9798886938791 (Hardback)

      ISBN 9798886938807 (ePub e-book)

      Library of Congress Control Number: 2023917449

      www.austinmacauley.com/us

      First Published 2024

      Austin Macauley Publishers LLC

      40 Wall Street, 33rd Floor, Suite 3302

      New York, NY 10005

      USA

      mail-usa@ austinmacauley.com

      +1 (646) 5125767

      Chapter 1

      Dysphoria

      Harken knew he had to speak soon. If he didn’t, he would be labeled a weirdo, so he mumbled a greeting to a few others and tried to look normal. He ached for the familiar and later that afternoon upon shutting his door, number 27, he paced about his six by twelve-foot cubicle trying to remain aware of his breath, his footfalls, his heartbeat. The fist in his chest gradually relaxed. His thumb and forefinger toyed with the satchel of coffee beans in his coat pocket. He worked one free and munched on it. Raucous voices rang out up and down the corridor, and he wished he could do the same.

      Next door in number 25, Phoenix pulled a white rat out of her pack. She held it to her nose and took in its smell. Its pink ears stood straight up. Suddenly it leapt onto her face, found a foothold in her nose ring and then disappeared into the brim of her hat. Phoenix retrieved a dictionary printed in 1983, forty-seven years before the power turned off for good and opened to page 665. The word she sought was Herodotus: n. 1. 484? – 425? BC Greek historian. 2. a crater in the second quadrant of the face of the moon; about 23 miles in diameter. She looked out the dirty window at the moon and repeated the definition.

      Across the hall in room number 22, Sol raised his right foot to rest on his left knee, turning it to investigate the splinter that ran deep into the pad beneath the big toe. He pressed on either side of the angry redness and let out a shriek. The splinter edged forward. He gritted his teeth and squeezed again. Ready for the pain this time, he rolled back onto his cot and chanted a favorite line from a story about a girl named Alice, When a thing happens, you stand it whether you can or not. The splinter had to come out or he wouldn’t survive tomorrow, the first day of camp.

      Fifteen children, ages twelve to fourteen, lay down on their cots. Some studied the cracks in the ceiling, some fell asleep easily and some listened to the building, a crumbling ruin of what was once a Smallpox Hospital located on Roosevelt Island, New York.

      All night the moon pulled the tide up the East River. The restless wind chattered around the island, stirring up trash and irritating the monkeys who huddled in the few remaining trees. The monkeys were descendants of the island hospital’s lab chimps who were set free when the electrical grids went down for good, and the internet went dark forever. Mankind, steeped in arrogance and greed, almost destroyed the planet.

      The population that survived struggled in a lawless land of rival groups. The year was 2064, thirty-four years after the first missiles were fired and still, it was chaos. The monkeys, unlike humans who could escape the island, were hemmed in by the river. Twenty or so eked out a miserable existence, and no one bothered them. In fact, until today, no one came to Roosevelt Island at all, and the three inhabitants who did live there were in for a surprise. Now, the island had its first visitors since before the war, sent here for survival training, and the camp director knew just what to do. Nothing.

      Chapter 2

      Impunity

      On the other end of the island, the infamous Octagon Asylum sat in ruin staring out at Manhattan with its dark eyes. Exposed to the weather, its medical equipment had become a sculpture garden of rusted abstract art. Before the war, the most difficult patients wandered its halls. All had committed serious crimes: murder, fraud, grand larceny. Conditions there were dreadful, and the staff was known to be brutal. Ironically, the downfall of the modern world set those imprisoned in the Octagon Asylum free. Most disappeared into the chaos on the mainland, but some remained and like every other species, produced offspring.

      Garnal, one of the three island residents, shoved a rag into the crack below his glass door. He was colder than usual and wrapped himself in another blanket. Outside, the gas pumps stood glistening. He found it comforting to look at them. The station had been his home now for twenty-eight years if he had kept track. There was a blue Volvo sedan permanently parked at the pumps and a Mercury Marquis pulled into the far bay where he slept. Tonight, he was jumpy. He had seen a boat approach the island and discharge what looked like a lot of people.

      His hand shook slightly as he retrieved the key ring from its hook and with short, shuffling steps, he scurried from lock to lock. Once secured, he stood and like countless others from the beginning of time, gazed up at the moon and wondered. Then he turned, hung the keys on their hook and slid into the Mercury Marquis driver’s seat. He hit the lock button and listened for the reassuring click. Now, he could sleep.

      As she did every night, Cedar checked to see if Garnal’s door was locked. Safe, she thought. Cedar had just turned thirteen, if she had known her actual birthday, but birthdays were a thing of a decadent past. In her small world of three, Cedar set her own rules. Hunger drove her. Tonight, she hopped on her bicycle, a rattletrap of unfamiliar parts, and headed down the moonlit path that led to the old hospital ruin to see if she had netted anything off the pier. If so, she would share the feast with Garnal and Slacker, the third and oldest island resident.

      The reliable moon did its job lighting her way. Cedar flew. She stood on the pedals and held her arms outstretched. The wind tasted of rain. Her sandy brown hair was long and tangled into explosive clumps that had no plan. She was a modern-day hunter-gatherer who survived by her wits. Too young by pre-war standards to be crawling about with a knife in her mouth, but the day of the sheltered childhood was over.

      The predator in her felt something in the air, and she slowed to a crawl. All her senses relayed danger and just then, she spotted the source. A boat bobbed in the river, and there was movement near the hospital ruin.

      Quickly, she hid the bike and clambered up one of the few surviving trees. What was happening on her island? She decided to settle in for the night, close enough to see it all.

      Chapter 3

      Servitude

      The next morning at 5:00 AM, the camp director strode up the steps and marched into the dormitory hallway. His sharply curved beak-like nose and pointy chin almost touched. He was disappointed to see just one recruit up and ready, Phoenix. She was always early, always the first, always prepared. It drove some people crazy, but she didn’t care. Why not be first? She knocked on Sol’s door just as the camp leader stuck four dirty fingers between his thin lips and let out a shrieking whistle.

      Phoenix jumped, and the remaining doors flew open. Suddenly, the hall was full of poorly clad, greasy haired children of all shapes and sizes. Poor hygiene was a way of life now, and this generation knew nothing first-hand about the daily shower of days gone by. Everyone was talking at once until four filthy fingers once again produced a fireworks of shrieks. Spit flew, and the recruits fell silent. Slowly, he did a 360 degree turn and stared into their eyes.

      I hope you are ready for Survival Challenge Week! He paused dramatically. You don’t look ready. In fact, you look quite dull to me, and there is no place for dull here. How many here have been to some kind of school? Hands went up, seven. The director sighed. How many can read? All hands went up. Maybe that’s what set them apart, he thought. Report to the courtyard immediately! he barked, and the hall emptied out.

      The director stretched to his full height of six feet and followed them outside. The recruits stood in silence, but their presence had set the monkeys chattering, and above them all perched Cedar watching, counting, listening, calculating.

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