Displaced

by Drake,Stephen

  “You want it done? Do it yourself!” Burns spat at Whittier.

  Whittier just stood there looking at the machete as it wobbled back and forth.

  “Oh, come on! I was only kidding,” Whittier stated. “You didn’t think I was serious, did you?” Murdock couldn’t see the cold grin on Whittier’s face, but could hear it in his voice, and he knew he not only meant it, but was very serious. “Help the poor man up!”

  Burns and the third man helped Collier to his feet and cut his hands free. Collier pulled his shirt back down and rubbed his wrists. After a rest, all four men left, traveling toward the pod

  When they were out of sight, Murdock climbed down from his perch and started down the path away from the stream. As he walked, he mulled over the scene. He’d intended to scare the hell out of Collier to ensure he wouldn’t cross the stream again; his personal belief system had kept him from beheading Collier, especially for something so minor. He saw Collier as an incompetent fool, not the brightest crayon in the box, but since Murdock couldn’t give life, he believed he shouldn’t take it lightly. To him, execution of any type was murder. He would and could kill in a fight, if he had to, but to take a man’s life when he could just walk away was wrong.

  He was glad that Burns and the other man had proven that they had some honor by refusing to execute Collier. But Whittier’s callousness disturbed him most. Apparently, Whittier could order that someone should die, but he didn’t have the intestinal fortitude to carry it out himself. Typical politician, he thought. He refuses to carry out his own edict because his own hands have to remain clean. He thinks rules and laws apply to everyone except him. He is good at manipulating people, though.

  He was now already long past the point, in his new domain, at which Burns and Collier had penetrated. Now, no trees grew on the right side of the path, though when the trees had thinned, he hadn’t noticed. What he saw now was rock — almost as if a huge slab of rock had been dropped in the middle of the trees. The rock appeared to have a very smooth surface, with no purchase anywhere close to the path. Murdock continued on, and not long after, the bower had stopped.

  A huge meadow stretched before him. Murdock stopped to take it all in. Though he’d assumed he had been walking a fairly level path, from where he stood now he saw a low valley. The path continued into the meadow and then curved to the right, following the base of the rocks. He took a few more steps into the meadow and looked up and to the right. It wasn’t just rock. It was a mountain.

  Though the day had grown late, Murdock pressed on. In the distance, he heard the distinctive rumble of a waterfall.

  As he continued on the path, Murdock’s senses were on alert. Why am I feeling so exposed, so vulnerable? he thought. As he walked, the path curved a little to the left to follow the foot of the mountain, then turned sharply to the right, all the while remaining flat.

  Murdock stopped. The valley continued on for a mile or more and was hemmed in by the mountains on this side. He saw more than one mountain now. The waterfall also rushed about a quarter mile from where he now stood.

  The waterfall rose six hundred feet or more in the air, with a large volume of water running off it. To Murdock, it looked magnificent. He looked down the path of the falls and saw it empty into a large, fast-flowing river that went off to his left for the full length of the meadow. A large cloud of mist billowed at the point that the water from the falls hit the river. The path he currently walked led to the base of the falls. Murdock paused. Depending on the availability of game, he felt he could live here.

  4

  The first night away from the others was quite restless for Murdock. His feelings of foreboding grew as the sunlight failed; the darker it got, the more the feelings wore on him, so much so that he spent that first night in the vicinity of the falls, off the path against the mountain and under the trees. His sense of foreboding was not so great here as it had been on the path out in the open. Though his large fire helped, the night was filled with strange noises and even stranger dreams.

  Dreams were something new to Murdock. He couldn’t recall ever remembering dreams when he woke. Now, in these dreams, he was in a strange, very dark, shadowy place. He could just make out a single figure, large and menacing.

  “Who are you? What are you? Why are you here? Where do you come from?” the dark form asked. “There is great danger here! Go away! This place is not for you!” Time after time, the dark form repeated itself in his voice. Sometimes, a flash of lightning illuminated the area, and Murdock saw thousands of robed figures, but never their faces nor any feature. In his dreams, he tried answering them, but when that failed, he tried ignoring them. Neither option worked; it made for a long night.

  He awoke early, well before sun-up, and walked to the entrance of the bower. A thick mist hung over the low valley. Murdock could barely make out the path winding around the base of the mountains. A small herd of deer, maybe a dozen animals, walked toward him on the path. They hadn’t detected him. As he watched, it seemed some of them disappeared, as if they had fallen off the path into the mist. The rest of the herd hugged the mountain side of the path and kept going.

  Then the one in the lead saw him and froze. The animal seemed uncertain what to do, and the rest crowded it farther ahead. The herd bolted past him; in a few seconds, they had all vanished down the path.

  They had startled Murdock as well. He was not a short man, but he could have walked under the biggest ones without bending down. Oddly, only six animals of the original dozen had run past him, but when he checked the path, it was clear. Where did the rest go? I’m sure there were more than six animals, he thought.

  Curious, Murdock cut and trimmed a small tree of about an inch or two in diameter, making a nice ten-foot long pole. With the small machete, he sharpened one end, turning the pole into a makeshift spear.

  He then walked to the edge of the path and probed the tall grass with it. The edge of the path, he now saw, dropped off considerably just a foot or so off the path. The grass that he saw just a few feet in from the path was longer than his spear. But this wasn’t just a path —it was a ledge.

  Murdock quickly backed away from the edge. Then he found a smallish rock and threw it into the grass. It swished as it passed through the grass, and then nothing. Either it fell a very long way, he thought, or it hit something soft enough to not make a noise I could hear.

  After a second or two, he heard another swishing sound. Murdock backed up into the bower a few yards and waited silently, his spear at the ready. Something was heading his way.

  By the sound of it, several of the somethings were coming, but Murdock saw nothing. He decided to proceed to the river without investigating further.

  As he approached the falls, Murdock noticed that the ledge had gone from dirt to bare rock some thirty feet from the falls. At the edge of the falls, he turned to look downriver. Both sides of the river were rock-lined and were on the same plane as the ledge he had just traveled. The river itself flowed as straight as an arrow. This is not a natural formation, he thought. It looks more like a mote, than anything else, but what could it be used for out here?

  He walked on the wall downriver for a quarter mile, keeping close to the river’s edge and looking into the river as he walked. Spotting some rather large fish close enough for him to spear from the edge, he managed to get one speared and up on the wall.

  As he walked back, Murdock sensed that something in the high grass on his side of the river stalked him, but he saw nothing in the grass. It might be better to stay away from the edge and get back to the woods quickly, he thought. He managed a slow trot, for him, and covered the ground quickly, but he didn’t relax until he was back at the bower.

  While the fish cooked, Murdock sat and mulled over all he knew about this place. He had seen the deer, which were the size of large elk, come from the falls area, but he hadn’t seen any sign of their crossing the river. Because the sides of the river were rock, tracking their origin would be extremely difficult. He
knew from his hunting experience that elk, which ranged over hundreds of miles, could trot faster than a man could run — and could do so for miles. He also knew that the larger the animal, the more food was necessary for sustenance, which meant that their range was larger.

  When the fish was cooked, he ate his fill. Not far from his camp was a wide-leafed plant. He gathered several of the leaves, rolled the left-over fish in the leaves and filled his pockets with them. He also fashioned a sling out of the small diameter rope he had taken from Collier.

  As he left the campsite, he’d decided to follow the foot of the mountain back toward the transport pod. He hadn’t noticed any smaller game trails when he had traversed the bower, but he was sure there had to be some. After some close inspection, he found a game path that followed the foot of the mountain. As he walked, he periodically picked up some rocks and practiced with the sling. He knew he wasn’t being quiet, but stealth was secondary to the need to practice with the sling before he actually had to use it.

  Murdock tried to keep track of how far off the bower path he was as he walked. He had walked for the better part of the day when he heard water running. At the same time, he also noticed another path that seemed to go up the side of the mountain in roughly his direction of travel. But he stayed close to the trees, for now, as he didn’t feel so exposed.

  Eventually, he came to a small clearing with a stream. Though he knew this was the same stream that he had found while he was with the others, he knew he was now many miles upstream from the transport pod. He couldn’t have said how many miles, or even how he knew that, but it just seemed right, somehow. After resting a while, drinking his fill in the stream, and filling his water skin, Murdock decided to backtrack to the path that went up the side of the mountain.

  That path went up gradually and at times widened to ten feet or more. Murdock rounded one of the many bends in the path and stopped to look out over the area. He saw the tops of the trees a couple of hundred feet below him, as well as the stream and the clearing he’d just left. As he looked out farther, in the direction of the bower, he saw nothing but tree tops. Being this high, he thought, I should be able to see the bower. It must be further away than I thought.

  As he turned from the over-look, he noticed that a huge rock obscured what looked to be a cave entrance. Had he not stopped, he would have passed it, but coming down the path, he would have seen it clearly.

  Pulling his twelve-inch machete, Murdock decided to explore the cave’s interior. As he entered, a breeze hit him in the face. That meant the cave was well ventilated, but he couldn’t see inside.

  While his eyes adjusted to the gloom, he sniffed the fresh, warm air inside the cave. He didn’t pick up any animal scents. If this was truly an empty cave, it might work as a base.

  Now Murdock could see a large room just inside the entrance. The breeze seemed to come from the back of the room, but it was just too dark; he couldn’t see that area clearly. He stripped off most of his gear, left his spear pointing into the rocky path to indicate where the entrance was, and went back down the path to get firewood.

  The sun had set before he returned to the cave. He started a fire, noticing that the smoke went out the entrance to the cave and the flames flickered, as if someone were gently blowing on them.

  The fire lit the cave, allowing Murdock a better view of his new home. The room had a fairly high ceiling, and the floor was not level but canted downhill toward the fire. A narrow walkway ran uphill and spiraled toward the center of the room just inside the door. Behind him, toward the back of the room, a tunnel headed down in a spiral toward the center.

  Picking up a good-sized piece of wood from the fire, he followed the narrow walkway upward. It ended in a larger ledge, about the size of a large bedroom, and overlooked the main room.

  The tunnel, on the other hand, was long, wide, and high, forming an almost a perfect circle. Enclosed in the tunnel, Murdock could walk down it without stooping. The walls were quite smooth, almost as if the tunnel was drilled. His flaming brand cast a lot of light, allowing him to see several yards in front of him.

  The farther he went, the tighter the spiral became. He figured he was several yards from the outside of the mountain, but the tunnel seemed to follow the same cant and grade as the path he had walked up on the outside. After several minutes, he reached the bottom of the tunnel.

  Again he was in a large chamber. When he entered the chamber, Murdock noticed another tunnel immediately to his left, as well as one straight in front of him. The one to the left was straight and mostly level and it seemed to go toward the outside of the mountain.

  He followed this tunnel. It ended abruptly in a small slide of stones, but the flame on his brand leaned somewhat back toward the chamber he had just exited, and he felt a light breeze on his face.

  Murdock decided to explore the other tunnel. In that tunnel, the grade remained the same and continued to spiral down. The walls of this tunnel were no different than those in the tunnel he had first descended. After several minutes of walking, this tunnel ended in another chamber.

  He estimated he was several hundred yards under the surface. The chamber was quite warm and very dry. When he raised his brand, he saw a milky, white substance along the walls of the chamber. Inspecting the substance closely, he wet his fingers, touched them to the white band, and then tasted them. This is salt.

  He knew from the color it was relatively pure. Taking a good-sized rock, he hit the white band with it. A few chunks of the white crystals flew off the wall. Murdock gathered them up and returned up the tunnel.

  As he ascended, he knew one of his major worries was alleviated. Besides what was needed for leatherwork, he’d need salt to preserve food, as well as for dietary needs.

  His brand gave out while he was in the first half of the last tunnel, but the smoothness of the walls of the tunnel defied the darkness. An eerie glow shone from the walls as he walked onward and upward. The further he went, the brighter the tunnel got, until he was at his fire again.

  Walking outside the cave, Murdock saw that it was well into the night now, but he could smell the dampness in the air and feel the change in the wind. It would rain sometime during the night or early in the morning. But as dark as it was outside, Murdock saw no other fires anywhere. Am I that far from the transport pod?

  He decided to move his fire and his gear up onto the smaller ledge above the entrance level. As he curled up next to the fire and closed his eyes, he was glad he had not decided against exploring it in favor of the fresh water stream with its fish. And as he drifted off to sleep, he couldn’t help but wonder if this was a natural cave. It looked more like one that had been made rather than created through natural processes.

  “Who are you? What are you? Why are you here? Where do you come from?” the dark form asked in Murdock’s dream. The dark form seemed to be alone. Murdock thought he was asleep, but couldn’t be sure. Though he could hear the rain, he felt no dampness from it, for it seemed to be in the distance. He could feel the heat from the fire, or so he thought. This time, the dark form wasn’t as ominous, but it still frightened him, for Murdock only feared things he had no control over — and these dreams were not only totally new to him, but, apparently, beyond his control. Just as he was starting to feel fear, Murdock was flooded with feelings of peace and safety.

  “I am Murdock. A human,” he answered aloud in his dream. He was filled with a great puzzlement, not his own, but directed to him.

  Murdock perceived that the voice spoke again. “Will you show us your story?” Now it was his turn to be puzzled.

  “Yes,” he responded aloud in his dream. He was filled with a sense of peace and comfortable coaxing. In his dream, he relaxed and remembered.

  He was taken back to his capture on earth. He saw all the people he knew changed in a way that he couldn’t describe. He remembered running away and the sting of a tranquilizer dart in his right buttock. He saw the brief meeting with the mayor and his being bound and injected
, then falling asleep to wake up in the transport pod here.

  He was then taken back further in his life. He seemed to be four or five when his father had taken him hunting in the woods in Washington State. He just followed along behind while his father stalked a deer with his bow.

  The flow skipped ahead. He was now ten and his father was giving him the rules of his trial: how he had to stay in the general area and survive for two weeks, armed only with a bow and arrows. Murdock recognized the area as that near his uncle’s place in Northern Idaho.

  The flow skipped ahead again. He was now fourteen and at his father’s funeral. He felt the sadness, loss, and pain all over again. He felt the strangeness at having to live with his uncle instead of his father.

  The flow skipped again. He was seventeen and in his final trial. He was naked in the Montana woods. No weapons, food, or water. He had to survive for three months. That was when he had started his buckskins.

  The flow skipped again. He was nineteen and at his uncle’s funeral. More sadness, loss, and pain at having buried two men he had called Father.

  “Mother?” the voice asked. Murdock had never known his mother. His father had told him she had died before he was a year old. Murdock felt consolation flow to him, and that made him feel somewhat better.

  Murdock was sorry that his story was so short. When reviewed in this way, it seemed lacking somehow.

  “You are young. Many things are yet to be added to your story,” came a reply.

  Murdock awoke with a start. His brain felt like a well-squeezed sponge. His fire was low, but he estimated he had been asleep for two or three hours. Going outside the cave, he felt the rain on his face. The dream had really shaken him. All the pain and loss he thought he had put behind him was now fresh in his mind again. The wind was coming up; this was going to be a long night, and he was almost afraid to go back to sleep. He didn’t want to have that dream again. He nibbled on some of the fish in his pocket and drank a little water before going back to his fire.