by R. L. King
“I’ll have to work it out as we go along, won’t I?” he said, zipping up his jacket with rather more force than was necessary. “Get moving, or I’ll have to find a way to open it, too.”
As Prudence had predicted, Joshua had come out of his weird seizure after about five minutes and seemed none the worse for his experience beyond reporting the same horrifying visions he had reported during previous instances of the attacks. As soon as he was back to himself, he had looked up at Stone, and a meaningful glance had passed between them.
Verity peered out the window. “Here comes Jimmy with the Jeep. And I see some other people coming, too.”
“Almost ready,” Stone said, slinging the strap of a leather bag over his shoulder.
When the group realized what was going on, many of them volunteered to come along and help. “You’re gonna need us,” Sykes told Stone. “Even though they probably don’t know you’re coming, if that really does mean the conduit’s opening there’ll be a lot of them to deal with. Plus, you’ll never find the place without us to show you where it is.”
“All right, then,” Stone had told him and the others. “Get whatever weapons you have, and vehicles capable of making it as far as possible, and meet in front of our cabin.”
By the time the three of them came out, about ten people waited around two four-wheel drive Jeeps. Jason looked around, identifying faces: Sykes, Zoe, Jimmy, Spike, Duke, and several other men and women they had not met yet, but had seen around the compound. Some of the Forgotten carried guns; a couple had bows with quivers of arrows on their backs.
Prudence and Joshua were there, but both stood back from the group. Jason wasn’t surprised: neither of Harmony’s two leaders was physically suited for this kind of mission, and they knew it.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” Stone asked. “I have to warn you—it will be dangerous. They’re up there protecting one of, as far as we know, only two ways they have to get into our world. That means they’ll be even more bloodthirsty than usual. Last chance to back out.”
Nobody moved. “Let’s do this,” Sykes said, and climbed behind the wheel of one of the Jeeps. Jimmy got into the other one.
Stone, Jason, and Verity rode in Sykes’s Jeep along with a couple who introduced themselves as Dahlia and Gerard. Sykes drove slowly; the roads were mostly clear but a dusting of snow still covered them. It had been snowing lightly but steadily for most of the day, and had only stopped recently.
“You said it’s ten miles up to Decker’s Gap?” Jason asked. “Does that include the part up the impassable road?”
“Yeah,” Sykes said. “We’ll turn off in about eight miles. There’s no sign—they took it down a long time ago, and every time somebody from the road department tries to put up a new one it disappears, so they gave up. Even the turnoff’s hard to spot, so keep your eyes open.”
They rumbled along, the dazzling headlights of the Jeeps casting eerie shadows off to the sides of the road. Twice they saw deer, but they must have had a better sense of self-preservation than the one Stone had hit because they stayed put, watching the cars go by.
“Dr. Stone?” Verity asked at one point, her voice soft.
“Yes?” Stone swiveled around in the shotgun seat to face her.
“You—do have some idea what you’re planning to do about this portal, right?”
There was a long pause. Finally, the mage took a deep breath. “I hope so, Verity. But I won’t lie to you—I’m not anywhere near ready, so I will be making things up as I go along. If nothing else, we’ll go for the brute force method and find a way to seal up the cave. I don’t know if that will close the portal, but at least it will make it difficult to reach for a while, until we come up with something better.”
“There’s the turnoff,” Sykes announced, pointing and slowing down.
The others immediately turned to face in the direction he was indicating. Jason blinked and stared hard into the blackness. “Where? I don’t see anything.”
“I don’t either,” Verity echoed. From where she was sitting, the trees appeared to be growing uniformly along the side of the highway with no visible break.
“Told you it was hard to spot,” Sykes reminded them. Carefully edging the Jeep along, he turned the wheel to the right and only then did they see a narrow opening in the trees, only slightly wider than a single lane and covered with low-hanging branches. A snowy trail that looked more like a wide horse path than a road snaked off and disappeared into the darkness.
“You weren’t kidding about them not wanting to be found,” Jason said.
“It used to be wider—still unpaved, but a full two lanes wide. They’ve been working on it at this end to make it hard to find, I think. I’m guessing it’ll widen out a bit as we go.”
The other Jeep left the road and picked its way along close behind them. Both vehicles moved at no more than five miles per hour; the terrain was far too uncertain to risk going faster. A couple of times early on, Sykes had to get out and clear some healthy-sized branches out of the road, and once he called for Jimmy to help him move a large rock.
“How far do you think we’ll be able to get in the vehicles?” Stone asked. The road had widened somewhat as Sykes had predicted after a few hundred feet, but it was already increasing in its incline. They climbed steadily now.
“Not sure,” Sykes said. “Haven’t been up here in a long time. We’ve been pretty sure this is a bad place to be for quite a while, so we don’t get near it. We’ve tried hard to keep out of the Darkness’s way—no point in tempting fate and making them think we’re a threat. But in any case we shouldn’t get too close, or they’ll see our lights and it’ll tip ’em off. We’ll have to be careful with light anyway. Good thing it’s a clear night and the moon’s out—if they do have guns, we’d be sitting ducks for them otherwise.”
Jason leaned back and watched out the window as they crept along. The road grew more bumpy and winding as it continued climbing up at a fairly steep grade. “Getting out of here when we’re done is gonna be fun,” he muttered to Stone.
“We’ll worry about that when we’re there,” the mage said. “Another reason to leave the Jeeps and walk the last bit—hopefully the Evil won’t find them and disable them.”
At their current speed, the trip was excruciatingly slow. Everyone strained their eyes out the front window to spot any potential hazards in the road, but so far the view was nothing but snow and trees. Jason kept glancing nervously off to either side, as if trying to detect any Evil lurking in the forest. So far, he’d seen nothing—even the deer and small animals seemed to be avoiding this place.
When the obstacle appeared it wasn’t at all subtle or hard to see. Sykes hit the brakes and stopped the Jeep in front of a large tree, over three feet in diameter, that had fallen across the road, blocking the entire passage.
“We’re not getting past that,” he said grimly. “No way we can move it. Unless you can magic it out of the way,” he added, twisting in his seat to face Stone.
“Sorry,” Stone said, shaking his head. “I might be able to move it, but it would take a lot out of me. I want to be fresh when we get up there.” He too glanced around now as Jason had been doing, scanning for potential ambushers. “We should get the Jeeps off the road and hide them if we can. If they do have anyone lying in wait, this is where they’ll know we had to stop. At least the trees are a bit sparser out here.”
Sykes got on his radio and relayed the plan to Jimmy, who backed his own Jeep down the road as far as he could before he hit a turn, then pulled it off into the trees. Sykes did likewise, and soon the two vehicles were parked, lights out, about fifty feet into the forest. “Everybody out,” Sykes said. “We walk from here.”
They gathered at the back end of Sykes’s Jeep and he handed out flashlights. “Don’t use these unless you have to,” he told them all. “For one thing we don’t know how long we’re gonna be here so we don’t want to run down the batteries, and more important, once they see o
ur lights, they’ll know we’re coming. They might already know. So we don’t want to give ’em any targets. Dr. Stone, any other things we should know?”
“Stay together in small groups once we get to the town,” Stone said. “Don’t ever go off alone, but going in as a big group will only tip them off, I think. Mr. Sykes, have you got any rope, or large zip-ties?”
Jimmy answered. “Plenty of rope,” he said, heading to the other Jeep. He returned with two large coils. “Why?”
“Cut it up into sections about three feet long and give two or three to everyone.”
They all looked at him, confused—even Jason and Verity. “Why?”
“Remember—everyone we’ll encounter up here is a normal human being like you and me—they’re just possessed by the Evil. So I’d really like to avoid killing them if we can. Don’t put your own safety at risk—if it’s you or them, obviously you’ll do what you must. But if you can get the drop on anyone, knock them out, tie them up, and stash them somewhere. I’m hoping that Verity here will be able to deal with a few of them, and possibly get us some other allies who will fight on our side, or at least run away.”
Jimmy was already cutting up the rope, and Jason helped him hand out the sections as he prepared them.
Stone continued: “This is a very small town, right, Mr. Sykes?”
Sykes nodded. “Tiny. Even when it was normal, it only had maybe a hundred people. I’d be surprised if there were thirty up here now. They don’t come down often enough for supplies to support many more, especially in the winter, unless they’re going a lot further than the surrounding towns to get ’em. They can hunt up here and get water, but they’d need other supplies.”
“Perfect. So that means we won’t have that many of them to subdue. I’m hoping that at least some of them are at the cave since the portal is open. We don’t know how long it stays open, of course, but I’d imagine at least some of them would be interested.”
“What about the Evil coming through?” Verity asked.
“What about them? If I’m correct, they’ve got to have some sort of ‘protective coating’ that allows them to exist in our world until they commit to their first host. If that’s true, though, I don’t know how long it lasts. Either they’ll be hanging about or they’ll get out of there fast so they can go find somebody to possess. Either way they’re no threat, since we’ve all but proven that Forgotten can’t be possessed, and they haven’t had any luck with Jason or myself either. So their pickings up there will be slim. We’ll have to watch anyone you evict, though, Verity, to make sure they don’t get re-occupied.”
“Let’s get going,” Jason said. “It makes me nervous, just standing around here talking.”
They set off as a group, moving around the fallen tree. Sykes eyed it, frowning. “Yeah, this didn’t just fall. Look—it was cut, then pushed over the rest of the way.”
“How do they get to town, then?” Verity asked. “They can’t just move it out of the way, can they?”
“They probably have another way around it,” Jimmy said. “If we looked around a while we could probably find it and get the Jeeps in closer, but that would take time.”
“Let’s just hike,” Stone said. “The closer we get before they figure out we’re coming, the better. How far do you think it is, Mr. Sykes?”
Sykes considered. “Not too far. Maybe half a mile or so.”
Because the trees grew farther apart up here, they decided it would be safer to move off the road. It proved to be an unpleasant slog. The snow wasn’t deep, but rocks, fallen branches, and other obstacles covered the uneven ground, hard to see beneath the white blanket especially in the moon’s scant light. The Harmony group mostly dealt well with it, but the three from California didn’t have it so easy.
“Careful, Jason,” Verity warned when he tripped over a root and nearly pitched headfirst into a tree. “You don’t want to mess up that knee again.”
Jason muttered something under his breath, but otherwise didn’t answer.
The night was cold and, aside from the group crunching its way through the snow, quiet. There were no sounds of birds or animals; it was as if the forest was holding its breath, waiting for something to happen. Stone, Jason, and Verity trudged along, focused on the next steps, the spinning thoughts in their heads, and the constant low-grade stress of trying to look everywhere at once to spot potential ambushers. Jimmy and Sykes had taken the lead, the others falling into a slow, steady pace behind them.
“I think I see a light,” came Zoe’s soft voice after several minutes, from near the front of the group.
The others moved forward, spreading out and peering into the dimness in the direction she was pointing. “There,” Jason said, pointing, too.
“All right, then,” Stone said. “Let’s split up. Mr. Sykes, can you give us any idea of where the cave is from here? Will we have to go through the town to get to it?”
Sykes paused a moment to get his bearings, then pointed off toward the south. “It’s there,” he said. “If you skirt the edge of the town you’ll see a path heading off behind the church. Follow it up a hundred yards or so and you’ll get to the cave. Be careful, though. The trail’s pretty steep, and if they’re watching, they’ll be able to see you before you see them.”
Stone nodded. “We might be able to do this with minimal interaction with the town itself, then,” he said. “Here’s the plan: Jason, Verity, and I will head up toward the cave. Mr. Sykes, is the trail you refer to the only way up there?”
“Far as I know,” Sykes said. “Remember what I said, though—they could have made changes since I was here last.”
“Fair enough. The rest of you, come with us to the edge of the town, then spread out and find places to hide and keep watch with your weapons. If you see anyone trying to come up the path toward us, subdue them. Again, try not to kill anyone—aside from the fact that the vessels are innocent people, committing murder could cause quite a lot of trouble for your community. We’ll try to avoid that.” He paused, his gaze moving over the small group of Forgotten. “And listen to me: if things go badly awry, get yourselves out of there. I want your word on that. This isn’t your fight, and we’ve lost enough friends to the Evil without having to attend any more funerals. Get out—get help if you can, but don’t try to take them on yourselves if things go wrong. Do I have your word on that?”
Jimmy started to say something, but Stone cut him off. “Your word.”
Sykes sighed. “Yeah, okay. But we’re not gonna leave you here if we think there’s a way to get you out. And you’re not thinking of this: what if they’re all up there at the cave? There’s no way you’ll be able to handle them all on your own.”
“Well, we’re not planning on going up there with guns blazing,” Stone said. “We should be able to get close enough to tell whether they’re all there or not. If they are, we’ll come back down here and we can go up together. There won’t be much point in guarding the path up if they’re already there.”
That seemed to satisfy Sykes. “Okay, then. We’ll be down here if you need us. Any of you guys know how to do a bird call or something as a signal if you need help?”
“Er...no,” Jason said. “Sorry. Fresh out of bird calls.” Verity nodded agreement.
“I’ll send up a flare,” Stone said, holding up his hand so it glowed faintly with bluish magical fire. “If you see a blue flare, come up and help us. If you see a red one—get the hell out. Understood?”
“Got it,” Jimmy said. The others nodded.
They all set off, moving through the trees with Sykes in the lead. It wasn’t long before all of them could see the lights—just a few, dotted here and there among the dark rising forms of the town’s few buildings. Sykes held up his hand and motioned them farther south; they spread out more and kept hidden behind trees as much as possible. They couldn’t hide themselves completely—even those who were used to the area didn’t move noiselessly—but so far no one had heard or seen any sign of hum
an habitation.
Jason half-wondered if they were on a wild-goose chase and the Evil had vacated this little town a long time ago—if they’d ever even been here in the first place. He realized how much hearsay and guesswork their plan depended on: most of what Stone hypothesized wasn’t based on anything more than educated guesses and his limited understanding of the information in Daphne’s notebooks. Not a lot to go on. More than we have otherwise, though, he reminded himself, trudging on.
“There’s the church,” Sykes whispered after they’d worked their way around about half of the town’s perimeter. He pointed at a single-story building with a steeply pitched roof and a tall steeple on the front. “The path should be close.”
He waved the others back, and he, Stone, Jason, and Verity moved forward, skirting the edge of the church. Sykes took the lead again, moving slowly and scanning the area for any sign of the narrow pathway. He stopped and touched Stone’s arm to stop him as well, then pointed. “There.”
They had to look hard to spot it: a narrow path leading up between some bare trees. “All right,” Stone whispered. “We’ll head up and see what’s going on up there. Look sharp and fire your gun if there’s trouble down here. Jason, Verity, move in close. I’m going to use the disregarding spell. It should allow us to get closer before they see us.”
“Good luck,” Sykes said, looking worried. He clapped Stone on the shoulder, nodded, and then moved off back toward the others.
Jason took a deep breath. “Okay, here goes,” he said. He and Verity moved in next to Stone, and the mage cast the spell over them, using one of the crystals he’d gotten from Madame Huan to help him maintain it. Together, they crept up the narrow path, keeping careful watch for anyone approaching from the sides.
The going was steep; Jason was glad it wasn’t far. His knee twinged a bit—not sufficiently to qualify as pain, but he could see how it might get that way soon if they had to walk too far up this rock-strewn ascent.