by David Klass
We must have entered a new level of stratosphere. The air suddenly seems even thinner. Or it could be the cumulative effect of Gisco’s explanations. I can barely see straight. So this commander in chief of the Dark Army came back himself?
Yes. You look like you’ve heard enough for one day, Jack. It’s cold up here. And the way the wind is spinning us is not conducive to clear thinking. Perhaps we should curl up together and take a snooze.
I shiver and struggle to my knees. I’m not going to take this lying down, I tell the dog. So the Grand Poobah of the whole Dark Army is here, in our world? That’s why we’re heading south? To find him?
I wouldn’t call him that to his face, if you ever meet him. Jack, don’t try to stand up.
I pull myself to my feet and gasp in several quick breaths. What damage is he doing down there?
Everything he can. He’s deforesting the Amazon. Wiping out huge tracts of irreplaceable virgin rain forest, the destruction of which is having a terrible effect on the future earth and strengthening the hand of the Dark Army.
I stagger and almost fall out of the gondola.
The dog catches my leg in his jaw and pulls me back in. He guides me gently down again to the wicker gondola floor. Gisco lies next to me, protectively, like a living, breathing quilt. Go to sleep, Jack, the dog advises. Enough for one day. You’ll need your strength.
To save P.J.? I ask, starting to fade out. How can you be sure she’s alive, and that he took her? And why would he do that? If he’s accomplishing his objective and turning the future back to darkness, why mess with my old girlfriend?
Because he had another reason for coming back, Gisco says. An extremely personal one. You killed his only son. He wants revenge.
25
Soaring through icy air. I can feel Gisco’s heart beating. Didn’t I read in a Jack London novel that gold miners caught in blizzards in the frozen north slept next to their sled dogs for warmth? Now I understand it. Huddling on the floor of the balloon’s gondola with a living blanket that reeks of unwashed dog fur. The gale intensifies, sweeping us southward at increasing speed.
Night comes on, or maybe it’s just the storm itself, reaching out tentacles like a giant octopus and squeezing out the sun. The only light source is the blue flame that flickers from my dad’s watch. It heats the air beneath the balloon, keeping us up so high I feel disoriented and groggy. I’m confused by Gisco’s explanations and still reeling from P.J.’s disappearance and the dinghy’s suicide, weak from hunger and cut loose from all moorings.
Time crawls by as we whirl through a seemingly endless vortex of dark storm clouds. Days and even weeks may be passing on the earth far below, but we’re somehow above and beyond that. We’re off the clock and outside the calendar, in the spin cycle of a meteorological monstrosity. Sunless days blur into moonless nights as we hurtle toward a fateful confrontation in the remote Amazon.
Maybe it’s the altitude, maybe all I’ve gone through since my ill-fated attempt at a homecoming in Hadley, but I sink into a paralyzing listlessness, a deep torpor.
My stomach rumbles—I can’t even remember my last full meal, yet I have no desire to eat. My mouth and throat are dry, but even though we sometimes fly through wet mist I make no effort to drink.
I vaguely feel Gisco trying to force potato chips into my mouth. I’m aware of him reaching out to me telepathically: Jack, are you okay? Give some sign if you hear this. Move your fingers or your toes. Jack?
I don’t move. I still have questions for the dog, and I know he has more answers, but I keep silent.
Deep sleep, like slipping into a yawning cavern. Hallucinatory dreams. I see time as a blue river, flowing right by our gondola. There I am as a boy, playing football along its banks, in Hadley Park.
Time twists and suddenly I’m with P.J. at our make-out spot on the night before all my calamities began.
The dark band of river in front of us. A full moon hanging in the sky like a swollen sex gland.
P.J.’s warm, sweet lips on my own. Our hands on each other’s bodies. Our need for each other. Our closeness.
“Not tonight,” she says.
“When?” I ask.
“Soon,” she promises. “Just be patient.” Her face and words fade, and it’s like a door closing.
The door opens and P.J. looks out and screams. She’s in her home in Hadley, staring outside at something truly terrifying on her front steps.
Whatever it is, it yanks her outside. Her feet rise off the front porch, and she starts to fly away.
I call out to her. Reach with my hands. Grab for anything—an ankle, a foot even.
I miss her, but suddenly I’m airborne, too. Ripped skyward, yanked away, to use Gisco’s phrase.
That same out-of-body sensation I felt on the dinghy. I’m pulled out of my own skin. Can’t fight it. The pain is unbearable.
Dragged along on a magical leash.
And then set down, plunk, in a teeming jungle clearing.
A building nearby. Concrete. Terrified voices from inside. Pleading for food and water.
It’s a prison. Squalid. Rank. Suffocatingly hot. People suffering. Men. Women. Kids. Crowded into cells. Their faces pressed to the bars. Their eyes desperate.
I’m beyond them now, moving down a hallway past empty cells. Shackles dangling. Thick, rusting chains on stone floors, like coiled snakes. Who’s imprisoned here? Ghosts?
A light up ahead. Glinting off bars. A solitary cell. One voice, familiar, shrieking in terror. It’s P.J.! Calling my name.
She senses I’m near. Begs me to help.
I see her now. Clothes hanging in rags. Her arms chained above her head. Standing helplessly. Facing the door to her cell.
Fingers unlock it from outside. No, not fingers. Something strange going on. The jailer is not human. A shadow shuffles inside. It’s as big as a piano!
It crawls toward her. Eight legs. Hairs on those legs. Bristles that twitch. Eight subhuman eyes watch P.J.—a pair in the middle and three on either side. As it crawls forward it makes a hissing sound, by rubbing its jaws together. Its fangs gleam in the bare-bulb light.
A tarantula! It’s less than three feet from her now.
P.J. twists away from it in horror. “Jack!” she screams. “Save me!”
My proximity to her is heartrending. I can see her clearly. I can almost touch her.
It’s P.J. and not P.J.—she looks exactly the way I remember her, and at the same time she’s changed.
Half a year older. She’s obviously been through pure hell. Hair, which was always carefully cut and styled, now long and uncombed. Sparkling hazel eyes now red and swollen. Face and body thin and haggard, as if she’s been suffering for weeks.
But the vibrancy I loved is still there—the spirit and courage and resolve to live still burn in P.J.’s eyes, even as they widen with fear.
“Jack, please do something!”
I’m so close to her I can feel her breath, but there’s absolutely nothing I can do. I’m just a presence, a shadow, a consciousness without substance.
I have no voice to answer her desperate pleas, no arms to protect her with, no legs to kick away the loathsome creature that slowly circles her.
All I can do is watch.
And I know this is all my fault. P.J.’s connection to me has taken her out of a world of love and safety, to this realm of pain and peril. In a few seconds it will cost her her very life. And I can’t save her—I’m present but utterly powerless, culpable but deprived of any chance to redeem myself.
The first bristles of the goliath tarantula touch P.J.’s bare skin. She cringes. Her terror-stricken eyes are now on a level with the spider’s own. She glimpses its hunger. Understands that it will devour her.
Its head swings forward. Her breast is punctured by the loathsome fangs.
A cry of pain and fear rips from P.J.’s throat. It’s unlike anything I have ever heard …
That cry … I desperately try to answer.
B
ut I’m airborne. Yanked back and away at tremendous speed.
Hurtling through smoke and fire.
Fighting all the time to stay with her. Shouting her name into the swirling miasma. “P.J., I won’t let you die! P.JJJJJJJJJ … .”
Hellfire crackles around me. Yes, I’m in hell. The Devil’s booming voice: “Welcome, Jack.”
No, it’s thunder. And the hellfire is lightning.
Jack! Don’t do it, Jack.
I’m standing up on the edge of the gondola, trying to jump out, shrieking P.J.’s name over and over.
Gisco is fighting desperately to keep me from leaping to my death. He has a hold of my right pants leg with his teeth.
Jack, I can’t hold you any longer.
The fabric frays and rips.
Nothing more restraining me.
The face of death beckons. A handsome old face. Gleaming, sharp teeth. Cold and merciless eyes.
Time to end the pain.
But the frigid air blasting my face has revived me enough to remember who I am and where I am headed. P.J. is in the Amazon and I have to find a way to save her. As inviting as death seems, I force myself back from the precipice, and fall, shivering, into the basket of the gondola.
26
Jack? Are you okay? I’ve been so worried . . .
How long was I out for?
Days, I think, Gisco responds. It’s hard to keep track of time up here.
I see what he means. We’re still sailing through dark clouds. It could be morning or night. Where are we?
I have no idea. According to this compass, we’ve been heading almost due south.
I peer over the side. For a moment I think I see the outlines of enormous soldiers marching in columns beneath the swirling black mist. Then they’re gone.
Did you see something?
I blink. No. Not now. But I did while I was asleep! It wasn’t really a dream—it was more like a vision. Gisco, we’ve got to do something!
What did you see, Jack?
P.J.’s in terrible danger. She was in a jungle prison. And this … awful creature was menacing her.
Sounds like you had a nightmare, complete with its own hobgoblin. Our imaginations really know how to scare us. I once ate a bad piece of cheese before bed, and dreamed a six-headed cat was chasing me around an exercise wheel …
No, Gisco, this was too vivid to be a dream. P.J. could see me and I could almost touch her. It wasn’t some figment of my imagination or some product of indigestion that was threatening her. It was detailed and real—a spider. A tarantula! But giant-size. What’s wrong?
Gisco suddenly looks very upset.
A tarantula? You’re positive?
Hairy, with eight legs and eight eyes. Doesn’t that sound to you like a tarantula? What is it, dog? A little arachnophobia?
You remember how Dargon was a chimera, a human with the genetic attributes of several different animals?
For a moment I recall Dargon clearly, as I saw him during our last battle on the lip of a volcano. The eyes of a raptor, the aquiline nose, the strength of a bull. A melting pot of nasty animal genes. Yeah, I assure Gisco, I’m not likely to forget that guy anytime soon.
His father also had his DNA monkeyed with. Or maybe I should say snaked and spidered with.
He’s gonna catch me in his web like Spiderman? I try to make a joke of it, but Gisco is creeping me out. There’s something spooky and alien about reptiles and spiders, especially the poisonous variety.
Tarantulas don’t spin webs, Gisco informs me. They run down their prey. But now I believe your vision, Jack. So he is here! I can feel Gisco tremble telepathically.
I have quite the reverse reaction. If this is the guy who took P.J., I want to settle things with him soon face-to-face, eight legs or not. What’s his name? I ask the dog.
He doesn’t have a name. He doesn’t have an age, or a place of birth that anyone knows. He’s mysterious for the worst reason. Everyone who comes up against him dies horribly. They say he likes to do the killing with his own hands, or even with his teeth.
I remember the fangs of the spider in my vision. So let me guess, dog, you’re about to tell me I’m the only one who can stop this spidery sociopath, just like I was the only person who could find Firestorm?
Nope, you can’t stop him, Gisco answers. No one can stop him. He’s far too powerful.
I look back at the dog. He’s so scared and miserable I think he’s actually telling the truth.
Then why did you bring me back? I demand. Why did you go to such trouble to find me, and break me out of jail, and get me on this balloon to the Amazon? Clearly you want me to do something. But at the same time you say we don’t have a prayer of stopping this guy.
Correct. There’s a contradiction there, and you’ve just put your finger right on it, Gisco declares. I’d love to clear it up for you, but we have a little problem here.
Don’t try to distract me, dog. I know your tricks.
Gisco is peering over the side of the gondola. He looks about as worried as an old dog can.
I follow his gaze downward. There, through the swirling miasma, the gargantuan soldiers are visible again, marching in endless columns. No, not soldiers, mountain peaks. Rocky, snowcapped, and formidable.
What are they? I ask him, trying to visualize a topographical map of the hemisphere with the different large mountain ranges. The Appalachians? The Sierra Madre?
I believe they’re the Andes.
The Andes? I repeat, awed. My God. I’ve always wanted to see the Andes!
Yes, well, you’re going to get your wish. Our balloon seems to have sprung a leak and we’re losing altitude fast, Gisco observes, so I think we’re about to crash into them.
27
We come down fast, spinning out of the stormy sky so that I half expect to land on the Wicked Witch of the West. Or make that South. Because, on closer inspection, these are definitely the Andes. Nothing in our hemisphere could be so awesomely grand.
Jagged, glacier-capped peaks spear skyward to impale us. Twice we almost slam into rocky cliff faces. At this speed the impact would surely kill us. Gisco, we have to try to find a way to steer this thing.
There is no way. It’s a primitive contraption not meant for surmounting mountain ranges. The dog lies down on the floor and covers his eyes with his paws.
Then what can we do? Gisco, get back up.
Prostrate yourself. Pray to whatever gods you believe in to spare your wretched life.
How about if we transfer our weight in the direction we want the balloon to move? Or maybe we could lean outside the gondola and alter the airflow? Gisco?
O Great Dog God, you paragon of perfection from your withers to your dewclaws, it is your humble servant Gisco, beseeching you from this precipitously descending dirigible.
If there is a Great Dog God, Gisco, he’s written you off long ago as a faithless opportunist who only dials him up in moments of grave danger. So come help me try to steer us into that valley. It’s our only real chance …
O Four-footed Master, ignore this two-ankled fool. As I whirl through the mountain valley of death, I scrape my stomach before your divine dogness. Be thou my German shepherd, I shall not want, and deliver me from evil, and I swear I won’t eat any cake for a year! I’ll get up every morning at dawn for a fast jog—
Gisco, stop this. We have only seconds. I need you to help me try to steer this thing! Why should some all-powerful canine give a damn whether you wake up early and exercise, or if you give up cake?
The dog is too frightened to respond. He’s lying on his stomach, his whole body quivering in terror, while his thick paintbrush of a tail flails weakly back and forth as if he’s waving a flag of surrender to the craggy mountains.
Beneath us, a deep rift of a valley has opened between two colossal peaks. We swoop down into it, and suddenly a boulder as big as a house looms dead ahead!
I close my eyes and prepare for death, but somehow we hop over the giant rock. I blink a
nd glimpse a sheet of dazzling white unfolding in front of us.
Then a jarring bump knocks me off my feet as the gondola touches down on the lip of a glacier.
We career wildly over snow and ice as Gisco and I are tossed around the gondola. I try to brace myself, but it’s like clinging to a sled when you’re heading down the Matterhorn. Miraculously, we immediately start to slow. Our toboggan has an unexpectedly good set of brakes.
I glance back and understand—the balloon is acting like a giant parachute! We slide off the glacier, skid through mud and ice, and come to a stop near a little mountain stream.
Gisco, we made it! We’re alive! You can stop whimpering in fear.
Fear? Those were chuckles, the dog says, standing back up and trying to regain his dignity. Once more I laughed in the face of death and lived to tell the tale.
Aren’t you going to thank the Great Dog God for your salvation?
There’s no time for religious mumbo jumbo now. We’ve got to see what the damage is to our balloon. It’s our only way out of here.
I grab my father’s watch, and in seconds we’re standing by the deflated balloon, examining a small, jagged rip in the nylon.
At least it’s not such a big tear, I say.
Where are we going to find something to patch it with in this mountain wasteland? And, more important, what are we going to eat?
We’ll forage for food.
I’m a dog, not a bear. Berries and wild grass are not my style.
Maybe you can find something more to your liking on one of your early morning jogs, I suggest.
Gisco ignores me, and peers down the hill. There! he exclaims. That’s the answer to all our problems.
I see nothing but barren rocky slopes.
Follow the river, the dog advises. Water always leads to civilization, and civilization leads to a hot lunch.
Following the stream downhill with my eyes, I spot a mountain hut carefully concealed between two boulders. It must be completely invisible from below. Near it are terraced fields of green crops.
Gisco, that hut was built with privacy in mind.
Nonsense, the dog responds, trotting downhill. You know nothing about the camaraderie and hospitality of the mountains. No doubt there’s some stalwart campesino inside whose sturdy wife will be only too happy to fix us a hearty goat stew.