The power of her disgust and the sense of betrayal she felt surprised her. She supposed she’d wanted him to be her hero, someone she could count on to protect her, and the disappointment of reality tasted bitterly familiar.
They refilled their bottles at a shallow stream, washed off the worst of the blood, and continued on. Come late afternoon, they were following a game trail through a thicket of prickle-leaved brush when a bald, red-bearded man stepped into their path. He wore leather britches and a vest and carried a rifle like Pierce’s.
“Well, if it isn’t the prodigal son come back,” he exclaimed with a trace of an Australian accent. “Didn’t expect to see you again, mate. Not after last night.”
“We went to ground,” Pierce said.
“You found our camp, then?”
“Yeah.”
“Where’d you pick up the rookie?”
“Canyon by the harries’ nest.” Pierce introduced the man as Thor.
This close, Callie saw the red stubble on his skull and the gray hairs threading his beard.
“The others are just over the ridge,” Thor said. He paused. “We heard hunting cries earlier.”
Pierce shrugged. “Not a problem anymore.”
“You gonna go back and get them?”
“Nah. They were pretty big, and the main group’s still out there.”
Thor’s eyes narrowed. “Well, Garth’ll want to hear about it. And meet the girl, o’ course.” He winked at Callie.
Pierce moved by him without comment.
As they emerged from the brush and descended the slope, Callie asked, “Why would you want to go back and get them?”
“Towns pay out bounties for dead Trogs.”
Oh.
At the foot of the slope, a stream curved through a grassy meadow, widening at one point to form a quiet pond. Beside it stood a black nylon dome tent amidst bedrolls, packs, pots, piles of tanned hides, and other paraphernalia. A man tended a spitted haunch roasting over a small blaze near the tent. Others sprawled or sat about the grass while, at the forest’s edge, two men skinned the carcass from which the haunch must have come.
At Pierce and Callie’s arrival all activity ceased. Then a blond woman threw aside the rifle she was cleaning and leaped up. “Hey, Garth! Pierce’s back!”
Gazellelike, she bounded from stone to stone across the stream. Behind her a big dark-bearded man with a ponytail emerged from the tent.
Soon Callie was surrounded, feeling as if she’d fallen in with the Hell’s Angels. From the stink she guessed they hadn’t been to a Safe-haven in some time. The men wore beards, mostly unkempt, though one man’s was plaited into braids. Their long hair was worn loose or, like that of the one called Garth, tied into ponytails, and battle scars abounded. One man wore an eye patch. Another had lost part of an ear. All wore leather vests and boots like Pierce’s, and all bristled with weapons—knives, crossbows, SLuBs, rifles—stuffed into belts and boots and pockets and strapped on in leather harnesses.
“So are they after us?” asked the blond woman. Long-limbed and full-busted, she had cover-girl-perfect features. Even with a dirty face and raggedly shorn hair, she was gorgeous.
“Not anymore.” Pierce’s guardedness returned.
“Did you take care of them?” asked Garth. A solid, muscular man with bristling brows and craggy features, his mien was one of long-accustomed command.
“I killed one.” Pierce gestured at Callie. “She got the other two.”
His friends exchanged glances.
The blonde pasted a smile on her face—to stunning effect—and said, “I’m Rowena.”
“Callie.”
“Well, Callie, two Trogs in one day is quite a feat for a rookie. How long you been down?”
“Ummm . . .”
“Three days,” said Pierce.
Rowena’s blue eyes widened. “And you did it with a SLuB? You must’ve been close.”
Callie thought of the creature’s suffocating weight and shuddered. “Yeah.”
Again there was that subtle exchange of glances and sidelong looks at Pierce. Then Garth smiled at her, the expression softening his features.
“Who’d ever believe such a pretty face could hide so much grit?” His gaze was so openly approving she flushed.
Rowena frowned at him and turned to Pierce. “Trogs hit us two nights ago.”
“Who’d they get?”
“Killed Lem and Charlie right off. Took Josie, Jon-li, and the Parson.”
“I’ve never seen so many of them,” said the blond guy with the twin beard braids. “Like sand mites charging out of a burrow.”
“We’re lucky they were wanting a firewalk,” said Rowena, “or they’d have gotten us all.”
“Li and Jo and the Parson,” Pierce pressed. “They’re dead?”
“We didn’t find any bodies,” said Garth.
“Muties probably ate them,” Rowena offered.
“So you’re not sure.”
“Pierce!” Annoyance sharpened Garth’s voice. “They’re dead.”
Another awkward silence ensued. Then Rowena slid her arm through Callie’s. “Garth picked up a pair of boots for me in Harford that turned out to be too small. Maybe they’ll fit you, and you can get out of those bedroom slippers. Your feet must be killing you.”
As Callie let herself be led off, she noted Garth draw near to Pierce. “The three you killed,” he said quietly. “They were the only ones?”
She didn’t hear Pierce’s answer, for Rowena was talking again. “I remember my first days here. If Garth hadn’t found me, I would’ve died.”
“You’ve been together awhile, then?”
“Four years.” She pushed aside the tent flap and motioned Callie inside.
Beneath a scattering of paper and leather maps, a sandwich of wrinkled blankets took up most of the tent’s floor space. Shoving the maps aside, Rowena sat and began rummaging through a large pack.
“Where’d you get all this stuff?” Callie asked.
“Oh, all over.” Rowena pulled a bloodstained work shirt from the pack and continued to rummage.
“You mean they have tent and blue jean factories here?”
The woman looked up, puzzled, and then nodded as understanding dawned. “Our kidnappers supply them to those who serve them. They trade it to the rest of us. Boots, weapons, clothes—you name it, someone’s offering it.”
“And they trade it for. . . ?”
“E-cubes. Dragon hides. Redhorn. Blood crystal. We’ve done well on the hides this run. Got enough to make us all armor, with plenty to trade.”
“Armor?”
Rowena pulled a pair of jeans partway from the bag, then stuffed them back in and followed them with the shirt. “Rock dragon hide is tough. Harries can’t bite through it. Crossbow quarrels can’t pierce it.
Even SLuB fire can’t get through. If we ever do find our way to the Inner Realm, believe me, we’ll need it. Ah, here we are.” She pulled a pair of hiking boots from behind the pack. “Hold on and I’ll find some socks.”
“The Inner Realm,” Callie repeated. “That’s the middle of the doughnut, right?” She recalled Pierce telling her about this. “Surrounded by the cliffs with all the gates.”
“Right. Then there’s the Outer Realm—where we are now—and then the mountains to guard the outer edge. But the exit’s in the Inner Realm, so that’s where we have to go.”
She passed Callie a pair of thick cotton socks, then the boots. “Go ahead and try them on.”
Callie sat and pulled off her dusty “bedroom slippers.” “What about on the other side of the mountains?”
“Nothing. We thought for a while that there might be a way there, even launched an expedition.” Rowena snorted. “Now there was a fiasco! The air’s too thin, you don’t go more than a day without a storm, and the winds are horrific. It took us four tries to reach the top. Only to find ourselves at the edge of a sheer vertical drop. Like when they thought the earth was flat, you know
? It just falls into nothing.”
Callie slipped her foot into the first boot.
“It’s probably some kind of illusion,” Rowena went on. “A cosmic moat or something. Still, not the sort of thing you want to go rappelling into.” She gestured at Callie’s foot. “How’s it feel?”
“I think it fits.” She snugged the laces.
“For years we heard talk of a canyon breaching the cliffs that guard the Inner Realm, but the terrain’s so rough in the only likely spot, it’s nearly impossible to find. We figured for a long time it was just a rumor, but last year we met a guy who’d actually found it. Almost reached the rim, in fact.”
Callie put on the second boot. “Why didn’t he go all the way?”
“Ran into muties coming off the top. Killed most of his party. He was about the only one who got away.”
“And you’re up for a repeat performance?”
Rowena shrugged. “Trogs don’t come down the trail often; otherwise, everyone would know where it is. But that is why we want the dragon hide.”
Callie tied the second set of laces. “I guess you haven’t found the Benefactor the manual refers to?”
“Honey, I found four of them, and every one wanted years of my life in exchange for their ‘help.’ ”
“The manual says there’s only one who—”
“The manual says a lot of things. Most of ’em aren’t true. So—they gonna be okay?” She gestured at the boots.
Callie flexed one foot and stood. “I think so. Are you sure you want to give them away?”
“They’re no use to me.”
Outside, the camp had settled back to normal, blanketed now in gloom. Pierce lay under a tree sound asleep. Garth perched on a log by the fire, poring over a map. Beside him, the cook shook a silver can over the spitted roast. A small black woman with a crown of dark braids sat across the fire. Two others stood at the pond’s edge, skipping stones across the water.
As Rowena zipped the tent shut, Garth turned and, seeing them, smiled. “I guess the boots fit.” He patted the log beside him. “Come talk to me, Callie.”
As Rowena gathered the pieces of her rifle, Callie perched uneasily on the log’s edge.
Garth leaned against her. “Now tell us what really happened with that mutant pack this morning.”
He smelled of sweat and dirt and something vaguely sour. Uncomfortable with his closeness, she eased away from him, watching Rowena settle beside the black woman across the fire.
“The whole story, this time,” Garth added.
Callie hesitated, wondering at her reluctance. Why should she try to cover for Pierce’s shortcomings? Especially since these people appeared well acquainted with them.
She started with their discovery of the ruined campsite, but when she came to the part where the Trogs had jumped them, she faltered, glancing around at Pierce, still stretched out in the grass.
“Go on.” Garth touched her knee. “The thing was on you.”
“Well, I realized then I still had my SLuB, so I shot it. Then I shot the other one off Pierce.”
“It had him pretty good, huh?”
“I thought it was eating him alive. . . .” She trailed off, puzzled. It could easily have hurt him, but it didn’t. Why not?
“It probably happened so fast,” Rowena ventured, “he didn’t have time to draw another weapon.”
“Yes, it happened very fast,” Callie agreed. Would I have remembered to draw my weapon if it hadn’t been in my hand? Would I have been able to?
Why didn’t that mutant hurt him?
“Oh, come on, Row,” Garth said. “You know Pierce’s reflexes. He should have nailed him. But he lost it. Again.”
Rowena studied her nails.
“Fact is,” Garth went on, “he’s getting flat-out unreliable. Somebody’s gonna get killed ’cause of him.”
“So what do you want to do? Leave—” Rowena swallowed the words, glancing guiltily at Pierce, slumbering on unawares.
Then the black woman murmured, “He may be unreliable, but if he’d been with us two nights ago, those muties wouldn’t have surprised us.”
Garth grunted. The two stone skippers joined them then, shifting the conversation to other things. Presently the rest of the group came in, too, and Rowena made the introductions.
The tall black man with the eye patch was Whit, once a star basketball player at the University of Illinois. John was the blond Viking with the twin beard braids and the gold earring. The black woman who’d come to Pierce’s defense was LaTeisha. She was a nurse from Sacramento, and the group’s official medic. The rest of the names Callie didn’t remember longer than the time it took to get them all confused. It would be several days before she would sort them out.
As darkness settled, the cook sliced dripping slabs of pink meat and passed them from knife to knife. Callie used the opportunity to move across the fire, and Rowena took her place on the log.
“We could get mess kits in town,” John explained as Callie awkwardly accepted a knifeful of the meat, “but the more stuff we have, the harder it is to move. And sometimes moving is the difference between life and death.”
“I can appreciate that.”
“It’s cleaner, too,” said LaTeisha. “No dishes to wash. Although”—she peered at her own slice, then picked off a four-inch-long hair—“sometimes you have to watch what the food is seasoned with.” She glared at the cook. “Don’t you bother to clean this stuff at all?”
The man kept his eyes on the meat he was slicing. “It’s cooked, isn’t it?” he grumbled in a Middle Eastern accent. “Fire killed all your little bugs.”
“And if you dropped it in the dirt, would you trust the fire to take care of that, too?”
“You don’t like it, you cook.”
“Maybe I should.”
“No way!” cried John the Viking. “We’d starve. You’d be sterilizing the knives and throwing out half the food.”
“At least we wouldn’t break our teeth on the rocks or die of food poisoning,” LaTeisha retorted, pulling the blackened rind off her slice and tossing it into the fire.
“What is this, anyway?” Callie asked, biting gingerly into the seared flesh.
“Redhorn,” Garth said.
“Another engineered bioform?”
“All I know is it’s a big reindeer that roams the mountains. Horns are s’posed to be a more powerful aphrodisiac than dragon horn.”
Pierce appeared out of the darkness, sliding around Garth’s shoulder to accept a slice of meat from the cook. From every side Callie saw the others’ eyes flick to him and away. He took the meat and a cup of coffee, then retired to the fringes behind Rowena and LaTeisha, avoiding eye contact.
“So, Callie,” said Garth, when they’d finished eating, “tell us how they got you.”
“Huh?”
“Your capture story. How you got here. Everyone has one. Was it a bogus experiment, or were you dead?”
“Dead?”
Rowena laughed and slapped Garth’s back. “I told you it’d be an experiment.”
“What do you mean, dead?” Callie asked.
“Well, some of us are here on a second-chance-at-life arrangement,” Rowena said, cocking a brow at her seatmate. “Garth, for example, was mugged in south L.A. and left for dead before our alien friends found him.”
“So what kind of experiment did they get you with?” John asked, rolling one of his beard braids between thumb and forefinger.
“It was supposed to improve decision making.”
“Decision making?” Garth whooped with laughter. “Decision making? Oh, now, that’s precious. And you just walked in and signed up for it?”
“I needed the money,” Callie said, annoyed. “How was I supposed to know they were aliens?”
Garth held up his palms defensively. “Hey, I’m not tryin’ to step on toes. We’re all here, ain’t we?”
“I was picked up at a workshop thing, too,” John told her. “It was supposed t
o help me stop smoking.” He made a face. “Well, I’ve stopped.”
“Only because there’s nothing to smoke out here,” said Whit in a startling bass voice.
“Were you really dying?” Callie asked Garth.
“Babe, I was dead. Watched my blood run out in a big dark puddle around me. Things got all foggy, and I saw those bright lights people talk about. I thought, okay, you’re finally cashing in, big guy. Gonna meet your Maker. Or maybe that other fella with the pitchfork!” He laughed, and so did the others. “Turns out it was these other guys. Next thing I know, they’re patching me up in their weird infirmary. Like Row said, I’m on my second life.” He grinned. “Or maybe it’s Purgatory.”
LaTeisha, the nurse, had also died. Her small car had run off a country road, and she’d gone through the windshield. She woke up in the same alien infirmary.
“I was on a cruise,” Rowena said, standing to pour herself more coffee. “Sun. Sea. Hours of nothing to do but work on my tan. It was heaven.”
“I’ll bet it was,” Garth leered. The other men laughed.
Even here, in the worst of conditions, Rowena’s sensuality throbbed. Her blue jeans molded a slender waist and curved hips like a second skin, and her scoop-necked T-shirt clung so tightly it left little to the imagination.
“Three days into the cruise,” Rowena went on, “and well into the waters of the Bermuda Triangle, we sailed into fog.”
Someone whistled the high-pitched four-note warble of the Twilight Zone theme song.
“All of a sudden the ship lurched, the deck tilted and everyone started screaming. Panic flew like swarming harries: ‘We’ve hit a reef!’ ‘We’ve sprung a leak!’
“We were all fighting to pile into the lifeboats when suddenly this handsome kid is standing beside me asking if I want to be part of his experiment. I thought it was sort of a strange pickup line, but what the hay! ‘You bet,’ says I. ‘Anything to get me out of this mess.’ So he dumps me here.” She grimaced. “Not what I had in mind.”
“It hasn’t been all bad,” Garth said, pulling her into his lap. “You found me.”
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