Nightmare Journey

by Dean R. Koontz

  Approximately twenty meters above the shattered street, the broken sections of the second-level roadway swept in what were clearly once-graceful arcs from one peak of ruin to another, sometimes breaking off in midair, thick beams dangling precariously but held well enough to have lasted out the bitter centuries. Here and there the roads crossed pylons or struck through the center of buildings, twisting out the other side and curving away in another direction. Beneath the roadways, twisted, charred, vine-eaten machines, which may have once been the vehicles that traveled the skyway, lay quiet and dreaming, dulled and pitted and useless.

  They passed through a courtyard ringed by the smashed and rotting walls of stone and plastic buildings and found, miraculously, a pocket of cleanliness and perfection in the midst of the post-holocaust city. Here, pillars of glass, rising fifty meters into the sky, each easily ten meters in diameter and as clear as fine crystal, ringed a dark glass floor, upon which had been traced curious designs in crimson frost.

  “What's this?” Jask inquired as their feet squeaked on the slick floor.

  “I don't really know,” Tedesco said.

  “Then how is it so undamaged, while the remainder of the city died so long ago?”

  “I haven't the answer to that, either,” the bruin said, stepping up the pace.

  Jask genuinely desired answers to these questions, for the strange place had intrigued him more than a little — yet he was perversely pleased that Tedesco lacked this knowledge.

  They passed beyond the glimmering glass columns, stepped off the shining floor and walked on through more mundane scenery, through crushed blocks of stone, jagged sheets of glass, twisted steel beams, the yellowed bones of men, the bones of other less identifiable creatures, past machines of all shapes and sizes, past a row of six pyramidal buildings where the doors were ten meters high and twice that wide and opened on unknowable chambers or devices, past statues of men who had presumably once been famous, past statues of creatures who were in no way similar to man and who were even too unhuman to be classified as tainted creatures, quasi-men, statues that could only be of beasts. But who, Jask wondered, would erect a monument to a nonintelligent creature? They passed more of these, some broken, some in perfect order, passed a great glass bell with what appeared to be thousands of names etched into its sweeping surface, passed an amphitheater with one seat and a multitude of stages. Shortly they came upon the most unexpected sight of all: three man-sized maintenance robots busily removing the debris from a wall that had recently collapsed for half its length.

  They stopped.

  They watched, perplexed.

  All three robots were in bad repair, tarnished, stained, creaking, with tortured limbs and gap-edged joints, each as tall as two men but somehow diminished by their ruined facades, just as an old man, though keeping his full height and stature, oftentimes seems tiny and frail and useless. One of these three machines had a broken tread. It bumped around on its two good strips while the damaged band flapped loudly in its wake. Another had only one good digited extensor arm with which to gather the trash, letting the other three limbs slap wildly about, jerking this way and that without purpose like the afflicted arms of a cerebral palsy victim. The last machine was blind, ramming heedlessly into obstacles, slapping its scoop hands into empty air when it wished to gather rubble, succeeding at making any achievement at all only because it relied on its audio receptors to take its clues from its two companions. Yet the three of them toiled industriously, scraping up the slag into their bulbous middles, where they had considerable storage facilities, trundling the stuff away to licensed garbage dumps.

  “Why do they bother to clean up this one thing?” Jask asked, fascinated by the noisy trio. “Why worry over a single pile of stones in the midst of disaster?”

  “Who can say?” Tedesco asked, shifting the weight of the rucksack on his broad back. He wiped sweat out of his eyes and sighed deeply. “They're still clanking around, guided by the orders of men long dead, as alien to this demolished city as we are. Who can say what they mean or what they expect?”

  “If these machines survive,” Jask said, “perhaps others survive, in better condition — perhaps enough of them to risk dissecting a few to see how they're constructed.”

  “Perhaps,” Tedesco said. “But we haven't the time to linger and find out. Come along, we must get moving again.”

  The robots kept at their work.

  One limped.

  One slapped at the air.

  One stumbled blindly.

  Wearily Jask hefted his gray cloth sack full of supplies, slung it over his back as the bruin had taught him to do, and followed in the dusty steps of the quasi-man, now and again turning to look back at the rattling, banging, merry crew of workers until they were no longer visible and the sounds of their mindless labor had been swallowed up by warm air, sunshine and the sound of their own footsteps.

  As they walked through the last of the antediluvian metropolis, the thrusting green heads of trees now visible as the forest neared, Jask wondered, for the first time, how strange and unacceptable the Wildlands must be. If here, so close to the white cliff and the fortress, lay ten thousand unfathomable mysteries, what even more inexplicable and awful things lay in the Chen Valley Blight and beyond? Here, according to the theology he had been taught, Nature at least maintained some grasp on the land, held out however minimally against the Ruiner. What madness had been perpetrated in lands where Lady Nature had no control at all, in the wild places?

  They walked in a place where the ruins were far less momentous than they had been, scaled down by wind and rain and made the home of silent, quick-footed animals that watched the two espers but were not seen.

  They walked on a cracked road where the vines, scrub and trees had nearly covered the gentle mounds of powdered stone.

  They walked, at last, in the full depths of the forest where no signs of man lay upon the earth.

  Aware that the Wildlands were close at hand, Jask grew increasingly miserable until, finally, he knew that he would soon have to take out his knife and use it on himself. Even that sinful act was preferable to entering a place where Lady Nature exerted no power and could offer her creatures no blessings whatsoever.

  9

  Merka Shanly — female, Pure and badly frightened but determined not to show it — was hauled out of the drain in the basement of the village inn by two of the younger and stronger Pure soldiers, who, despite their size, were very nearly dragged into the muck with her. She was filthy, soaked through with stagnant water and her own perspiration, her dark hair hanging in unlovely clumps across her narrow shoulders. She had dropped her cloak in the flight back from the place where Kane Grayson had died, and she had not bothered to pause and locate it. She wore only the one-piece, toe-to-neck stretch suit that was standard for all Pures beneath their cloaks, and despite her condition, she was not unaware that it accentuated her attractive figure.

  “I must see the General,'' she told the two who had pulled her from the tunnel. “I have extremely important news.”

  She was conducted out of the inn and down the main street, an altogether unusual spectacle, trailing water and strings of moss behind her, brushing her sticky, matted hair away from her left ear. She was the center of attention for the spiraling, mutated flies as well as for the Pures and tainteds who watched from the street and from behind curtained windows.

  “I think you had best stand off a bit,” the General said when Merka was brought into his company.

  So she stood alone just outside the shade thrown by the massive oak, stinking even more intolerably for the effect of the relentless heat of the sun.

  “Your name is—”

  “Merka Shanly, Your Excellency. And I have vital news.”

  “You destroyed the espers?”

  She bowed her head a second in contrition, but raised it almost instantly, not about to be subdued. “We encountered them, sir. Kane Grayson was murdered by the creature that looks like a bear, but I manag
ed to escape them after my rifle was batted from my hands.”

  “So far,” the General said, “you've reported nothing more than abysmal failure.”

  His tone did not put her off, for she noticed that his eyes often strayed to the prominence of her breasts and the narrowness of her waist. She wondered, fleetingly, if she had anticipated this meeting and had lost her cloak, subconsciously, on purpose.

  She said, “I will not attempt to justify the way we bungled our assignment, Your Excellency. But I believe I bear news important enough to salvage some of the situation.” Before he could speak, she went on, “Both of the espers carried provisions. The bearlike mutant was toting a huge rucksack that appeared to be well-stuffed. The deviate, Jask Zinn, carried a smaller, gray bag also obviously crammed with supplies. From what I saw of them, the deviate and the tainted creature were functioning in complete accord.”

  “Then Zinn compounds his crimes by consorting openly with tainted beings?”

  She wiped a smear of mud from her pretty face and said, “Yes, Your Excellency. Though it amazed me to see him form such a close contact in so short a time, and with a beast, a twisted man.”

  “He is a mutant now himself,” the General reminded her. He shifted his gaze from her breasts to her eyes and found that these were the most startling blue he had ever seen. “Tell me, what do you extrapolate from the fact that they were provisioned?”

  “That they mean to leave the town.”

  “Of course.”

  She batted away the flies. “And they'll leave it by means of the storm drains.”

  “Yes.”

  “And that — perhaps they intend striking out for Chen Valley Blight.”

  The General's guards were obviously shocked by the suggestion and unwilling to put any credence in it. They looked quickly at one another, smirked openly.

  The General said, “Why do you think this?”

  “If they were to go anywhere outside the Blight, we could follow them.” She licked her lips, tasted foul water, did not grimace but went on: “or radio other enclaves to be on the watch for them. In the Wildlands, however, they are safe from us— though they will have other, worse things to contend with.”

  “I believe that my own conclusions mirror yours,” the General said, putting a stop to the smirking of his guards, who now, abruptly, nodded their heads wisely, as if they had always known and believed what the young girl said was true. The General said, “We will take the necessary steps to head them off before they reach the Chen Valley Blight. You have done well, Merka Shanly.”

  She thanked him, not too profusely (lest he suspect that she was attempting to ingratiate herself) and not too vaguely, just enough to let him know that she was deeply moved by his approval but was somewhat shy about it as well. Neither thing was true, of course.

  “I will send an escort of two soldiers to accompany you back to the fortress immediately. You appear to be exhausted, and little wonder.”

  “I'm fine, Your Excellency. I wish to remain here and join in the battle.”

  “Nevertheless,” he said, “I wish you to return now. Upon returning to the enclave, bathe, relax and attire yourself appropriately for a late dinner in the military suite tonight.”

  She looked amazed and seemed to have difficulty finding her voice.

  “With you, sir?”

  “Of course, with me. Who else occupies the military suite?” He smiled at her to let her know that he was not being rude, but jovial. “I suspect this matter will be settled by then, calling for a celebration. We will have fine wine, entertainment and several other enjoyable dinner companions to make a good night of it.”

  “Yes, Your Excellency.”

  He watched her depart with the two soldiers who had pulled her from the drain, watched the provocative sharp lines of her slim, flat buttocks. He hoped she was as pretty beneath all that mud and moss as the eyes gave a hint she was. If her face matched her body, she would remain in the military suite long after dinner. Yes, long after. He was, of course, the chairman of the Committee on Fruitfulness…

  10

  The dense forest was a combination of tainted growths and pure strains, Jask knew, though he was not readily able to identify those varieties of plant life that were solely the handiwork of Lady Nature, nor those that had been touched by the corrupt hand of the Ruiner. He could see, though, when they were drawing near the Chen Valley Blight, for he watched the forest — partially mutated as it was, dumb and senseless as it was — wither rapidly, as if it had no desire to flourish beside that blasphemously barren land that had long ago been consigned to the rule of the Ruiner. The trees dwindled, grew sickly and bent, changed in color from fresh green to an unhealthy brown-yellow. The undergrowth, too, developed new character, became somehow threatening, thornier, laced with ropy vines like tentacles, ugly and cold and clearly mutated far beyond Lady Nature's original design.

  Tedesco lead the way, carrying both of the antique rifles, which Jask, somewhat against his will, had shown the mutant how to use. He led them off the obvious paths and approached the entrance to the Wildlands as if he expected to find Pure sentries guarding the way.

  Jask followed.

  Shortly they came to the end of the forest, where they had to hunch over in order to remain hidden by the dwarf trees. They stared across the hundred yards of utterly bare earth to the place where the Chen Valley Blight began, and they saw all of this:

  •prisms rising up, towering overhead like the monstrously crested waves of an alien sea, jagged-edged against the comparably unspectacular blue of the sky, appearing to ebb and to flow, shift and wash as water on a beach, but in reality as stationary as the stone Jask felt he had been turned into;

  •bright sunlight dancing along the brittle edge of the waves, piquing them with what might have been seafoam but was actually as insubstantial as the air, a tangible and frothy glare;

  •color, riotous color, reds and blues and greens and yellows, burgundy and black, orange and crimson, amber, emerald, violet, sienna, countless subtle shades both bright and pale, shimmering, writhing, moving as if they were alive, color so full of activity that it appeared to be sentient;

  •tunnels in the waves, winding caverns, boring holes, shelves, culs-de-sac, some large enough to admit the two of them, others only big enough to pass Jask Zinn, channels into the heart of the bright, hard sea, which made the massive structure seem, abruptly, less like a sea than like a mammoth growth of coral…

  “Bacteria jewels,” Jask said.

  They stretched on either hand for several miles, glittering until they fell away beyond the curve of the horizon, a numbing extravaganza of explosive tint, related to the clump of bacteria jewels that served as a landmark between the enclave and the tainted village from which they had fled, but much larger than that tiny growth, inconceivably more extensive.

  “How far—” Jask inquired, pointing stupidly, his slim hand trembling before him.

  “A hundred miles,” Tedesco said.

  “That much?”

  The bruin seemed humbled by the display fully as much as Jask was. “Perhaps twice or three times that,” he said.

  “So bright.”

  “Even brighter by dark,” Tedesco said. “Likely, it is no older than the formation that stands outside my village — but has found some richness in the soil or the air, or in some other circumstance, which caused it to sprawl so.”

  “The Ruiner caused it,” Jask said, adamant.

  Tedesco said, “There is no such creature.” He turned away from the soaring wall of luminescence, looked both ways along the barren no-man's-land between the stunted woods and the Wildlands. “We seem to be alone.”

  Jask said nothing. As Tedesco stood and beckoned him to follow, as they stepped out onto the dark, dead soil, he drew his knife, looked at the blade and wondered where best to drive it into himself. He did not want to linger. He wished a swift death.

  His suicidal reverie was interrupted by a barked, military command in
a voice he knew too well: the General. An instant later the sound of prewar weaponry ripped apart the stillness of the borderland as the Pure soldiers sought to get the espers properly in their sights.

  “Quickly!” Tedesco shouted.

  The earth boiled up, foamed like a mad creature, settled into slag at Jask's feet.

  Unthinking, terrified, he leaped across the molten pool and ran after the lumbering man-bear.

  The General issued another command.

  A bolt of energy caught one of the reaching tips of the wavelike upper structure of the bacteria jewels, shattered that into a fine, bright dust, like glassy snow that settled over them.

  “Here!” Tedesco called, turning, standing beside one of the larger channels between the arms of bright crystals.

  Jask ran toward him.

  Tedesco opened fire on the soldiers who had ventured out onto the baked surface of the unfertile land. One man screamed, danced backward, brought down, flaming, by a weapon he had never expected a tainted creature to possess. Another, decapitated by the bruin's second shot, stumbled forward, spouting blood, waving arms that were no longer intelligently directed; after a few erratic steps, the corpse collapsed into a gory bundle, gripping fingers frozen as if they wished to scratch a burrow in the soil.

  A beam burst against the wall of jewels next to Jask, cored it, reaming out chips of glassy stuff.

  A moment later Jask leapt into the opening and kept on running, the roar of the battle deafening as the crystals picked it up, amplified it, gave the illusion that an army bayed at his heels.

  He ran for several minutes, following the winding course of this channel of the great labyrinth, until, at last, he stumbled, exhausted, and fell to his knees on the polished floor.