Nightmare Journey

by Dean R. Koontz

  Jask nodded.

  That was a possibility.

  They walked back to their littered campsite in the limestone, carefully stepping over and around pieces of the demolished blue soldiers. They dragged the fallen mechanicals away from their camp and heaved them into the tall grass, and they straightened up the gear, which the red and blue men had thoroughly trampled.

  “Now what?” Jask asked.

  “Now we try to get some sleep,” the bruin said. But he did not make any move to lie down. He wiped at his blunt snout with one thick, furry hand, and he seemed not to be in a good mood — though his anger was not directed solely against Jask, for once. He cleared his throat, spat, and said, “We could have made a fatal mistake here.”

  “How's that?”

  Tedesco sniffed at the air as if he found something offensive in the crisp night breezes. “We forgot that we're in the Wildlands and not at home. Because the place looked so damned peaceful, we let ourselves get sloppy. We're not going to make that mistake again; we can't afford to make it if we're going to survive.”

  “Aren't you exaggerating the situation?” Jask asked. Suddenly they seemed to have reversed roles. Jask never thought he would hear himself defend the peaceable Wildlands.

  “No,” the bruin said shortly. “I'll take the first watch. I'll wake you in a few hours; then you can play sentry until after dawn.”

  Tedesco scrambled to the top of the limestone formation and sat down where he could survey the entire meadow.

  “But,” Jask said, “nothing really dangerous happened. They weren't out to harm us.”

  “The next time they may be,” Tedesco said. “Now get some sleep. I'll wake you if I need help.”

  16

  In the morning, after a meal of roast rabbit and wild fruit and berries, Tedesco checked his compass and his maps, pointed the way, and started them on a new routine that lasted more than two weeks and was even more demanding than what they had subjected themselves to during their tedious journey through the bacteria jewels. After breakfast they walked no fewer than thirty and usually more than forty kilometers a day, no matter if the sky were clear or if they were pelted with cold rain. In the late afternoon or early evening they stopped and set up their camp, ate a dinner of fresh game and fruit. Then, together, they did their exercises — Tedesco, so that he might get back into shape after his ordeal in the jewel sea, and Jask, so that he could add muscle to his slowly thickening biceps and chest. They took turns at watch, slept a bit less than they would have liked to, and began the next day as they had begun the one before it.

  In the rich forest through which they traveled there was an abundance of life unlike the beautiful but barren landscape of the jewel sea. At first they encountered only small animals that were too frightened of them to pose any serious threat. They killed what looked edible and went on, undisturbed, waiting for the moment when they would finally come across a formidable beast, as they knew they eventually must.

  Among the trees lay the ruins of ancient metropolises, grown over with crawling vines, nests now for rats and rabbits and squirrels, all but unrecognizable as the works of man.

  They passed many curious artifacts that had survived the centuries intact, or nearly so, but they investigated very few of them, lest they stir some antagonistic force they were not equipped to deal with.

  On the third day after they left the meadow they came across a column of yellow metal that gleamed as if it were new, despite its antiquity. It was ten meters in diameter and soared sixty meters into the air, unhampered by the crush of trees and vines that proliferated elsewhere. Indeed, where the vines and undergrowth had edged too close, they were blackened, as if a flame had been touched to them. Around the pillar, etched in perfect block letters, was this wisdom: JESUS SAVES, TRUST IN HIM… JESUS SAVES, TRUST IN HIM… The legend wound around and around the magnificent column, repeated perhaps a thousand times.

  “Who was Jesus?” Jask asked.

  Tedesco looked up at the shiny tube with its cryptic message and said, “He was a god.”

  “When?”

  “Before the Last War.”

  “What happened to him?”

  Tedesco smiled. “Died, I guess. Killed as all gods are.”

  “Gods can't be killed,” Jask said.

  Tedesco smiled even more openly and said, “I'd agree to that.”

  “Of course.”

  “Because,” Tedesco added, “they were not alive in the first place, just figments of the imagination.”

  Jask refused to let himself be dragged into that, by now, familiar argument. He approached the recessed door in the base of the yellow column and said,' 'Can't we have a look inside?”

  “I wouldn't recommend it,” the bruin grunted.

  “We have our rifles.”

  “And we may not get a chance to use them. Death is always swift, otherwise it isn't death but injury.”

  “When we began this trip,” Jask said, “I was the coward, afraid of every new experience. Now it seems—”

  “I'm not susceptible to that kind of psychological game-playing,” Tedesco said. “If you want to go in there, by all means go. I'll wait out here and have an apple. We can afford a rest break, but for no more than ten minutes.”

  “I'll be back by then,” Jask assured him. He touched the ornate handle of the golden door and jumped, startled, as it swung in without any effort on his part.

  He stepped into a tiny foyer from which a series of roughened metal steps led downward.

  “The church was underground,” Jask said.

  “Umph,” Tedesco said, leaning against the door jamb and chewing a mouthful of apple. “Probably built it during one of the wars; didn't want it blown to smithereens during a ceremony.”

  “Didn't they trust in their god?” Jask asked.

  “As much as most men,'' the bruin said. He spat out a seed as large as a strawberry. “In theory they knew he protected them. In reality it was every man for himself.”

  Jask stepped onto the first stair, listened to the sound of his footstep echoing scratchily down the winding well.

  Nothing responded to his intrusion.

  On both sides yellow metal light standards were bolted to the smooth walls at intervals of ten feet. Half of these no longer functioned, but the other half provided sufficient illumination to show him the way. As he progressed, the lights behind him went out and new lights sprang up ahead, so that there was always a pocket of impenetrable darkness close at his back and another not too terribly far ahead.

  Three hundred steps later, six complete turns in the stairwell behind him, Jask walked out into the main chamber of the church. Of the four hundred lights placed there, a hundred and fifty popped on, leaving a few corners shrouded in shadows but providing him a fairly good idea of the nature of the place: rows and rows of pews, a railing around the section where the ceremony took place, an altar and one enormous symbol fully thirty feet high and twenty wide, a cross of silvery material that had spotted with rust during the eons since it had been venerated.

  Jask was fascinated by two things: first, the great number of pews, enough for five thousand celebrants, more than the number of men in the entire enclave from which he came; secondly, the fact that the worshipers apparently paid obeisance to the great cross and had no provisions on their altar for the placement of things of Nature, plants and animals, the things man should attribute to the benificence of his gods. The first item was simply a mathematical shock. The second was a moral indignation. Why worship idols when god's creations, plants and animals, were the things meant to be idolized?

  He was still standing in the middle of the church, considering this, when something crashed in the back of the chamber.

  He whirled, bringing up his power rifle to face whatever was behind him. The rear of the church lay in so much shadow that he could not make out the thing until it moved again. It had entered the main room through a pair of double doors barely wide enough to admit it: a huge crablike creat
ure fully four meters across and three meters high, traveling on six jointed legs, its antennae quivering back and forth, its enormous pincers exceeded in ugliness only by its serrated beak, which it slowly opened and closed without making a sound, an act that would have been less terrifying if accompanied by noise.

  Jask backed down the center of the church, clambered over the altar rail and watched the behemoth cautiously.

  It did not move.

  He went to the back of the altar and looked for another exit from the main room.

  He did not find one.

  He went back to the rail and stared at the crab.

  His eyes had adjusted to the dim light well enough to see its beady eyes, set deep in a mottled green and black carapace.

  “Tedesco!” he shouted.

  The crab scuttled forward.

  “Tedesco!”

  The crab made a throaty rattling noise.

  Jask decided that quiet was the best course. Besides, Tedesco seemed to be too far away to hear his cry.

  Jask walked to the far side of the church, putting as much distance between himself and the beast as he could.

  Its eyes followed him, bright and red.

  He stepped over the altar rail and stood next to the first pew, gauging the distance from there to the opening of the stairwell at the rear of that main chamber. He had not seen how fast the crab could move, and he really should know that before deciding whether to run for it or not. Once he made the stairwell, the crab would not be able to follow, for it was twice as wide as the entrance to the steps. Still, if it could move fast and could capture him before he even reached the steps, the entire issue of its size would be academic.

  The beast did not move.

  Jask walked slowly along the aisle toward the back of the church, the barrel of his rifle directed at the creature.

  It scuttled easily along the rear of the room, toward him, stopped, watched him, waited.

  Jask had stopped, too. Then he began to move again, easily, carefully, hoping not to antagonize it any further.

  The crab came a few yards closer, so near the exit that it was unlikely Jask could squeeze past even if he moved too fast for it to react properly.

  He went back to the railing, climbed over it and put his back to the altar.

  The crab entered the center aisle and stood there, antennae jiggling, waiting, its beak opening and closing like the well-oiled jaws of a pair of pliers.

  “Tedesco, help me!” he shouted at the top of his voice.

  That brought the crab at top speed, its legs rattling against the metal floor, sharp-edged shell banging the wooden pews on both sides. In less than two seconds it scurried the length of the church, slammed into the waist-high altar rail and reared up toward him where he stood beneath the cross, jaws working rapidly but silently. It was so close that Jask could see the four different rings of color that were in its tiny eyes — black, brown, purple and amber.

  He fired the power rifle at point-blank range.

  The crab rose, tottered backward, came down on all its legs, shuttled hastily to the left and settled into a defensive posture, its six legs bunched beneath it, nothing open to injury but its nearly impregnable green and black shell.

  This reaction made Jask wonder if the beast might not be, to some degree, sentient, capable of communication on a human level. In this strange world, there was no telling what form a human consciousness might take. But when he delved into its mind, he was confronted with vicious, inhuman images of blood, spilled ichor, entrails, excretion and death. He withdrew, shaken, certain that there was no gram of intelligence in the monster.

  He opened fire on it again.

  Light lanced out, danced on its shell.

  It closed its eyes again and watched him with eyes, shielded with thick gray lids.

  When he stopped firing, it opened its eyes again and watched him with an obvious hunger.

  He crossed the front of the subterranean church once more, walking away from the crab, stepped over the altar rail and started to move along the side aisle, one eye on the stairwell to the surface, one on the crab.

  The beast suddenly rose on its spindly legs and rushed at him, over the pews, only slightly delayed by these obstacles.

  He opened fire.

  The crab scuttled sideways, fell, drew in on itself, lying across the pews, watching and waiting.

  He started walking again.

  It came up and was after him, fast.

  As it leaped at him, he fell and waddled forward between two rows of pews, under it and into the central aisle of the church. When he looked up, he found it had scurried to the rear of the room again and was waiting for him directly in front of the entrance to the stairs.

  He aimed, fired, snapped off one of the beast's antennae.

  It did not seem to mind.

  He retreated up the central aisle, remembering how fast it had been able to cover that same territory earlier. When he stepped over the altar railing and was again beneath the cross, the thing scuttled forward, closing the space between them by half before it settled down under the protection of its shell once more.

  Jask had not thought to pray to Lady Nature for Her aid, but now it seemed the only course left open to him. He was tainted, of course, an esper that should never have the nerve to call on Her, but he reasoned that he was less distant from Her original creatures than was this monstrous crab, clearly a child of the Ruiner. So he prayed.

  When a light flashed like a preview of Judgment and the enormous crab leaped, Jask cried out in sheer joy, for he was certain that Lady Nature had answered his unworthy prayers. This spiritual excitement lasted only a brief moment, however, for he saw Tedesco standing at the rear of the church, in the mouth of the stairwell; the bruin had fired upon the beast from behind, startling it. Now that it was confused, facing enemies in two directions, it was extremely vulnerable. Jask lowered his power rifle, took aim, fired.

  Tedesco fired at the same time.

  The crab issued a throaty roar and wheeled sideways, leaping onto the pews and rushing toward the side of the church.

  Tedesco stepped fully into the room.

  The crab scuttled toward the doors through which it had originally forced its way, its single antenna bobbling, stopped when Tedesco caught it with a full charge across its beak. It reared back, slipped, fell, rose up, ran into a second buzzing wave of light, wheeled about.

  Jask stepped forward. When the beast ran for the front of the church, he shot it in the belly and flipped it over despite its size.

  It lay on its shell, all of its legs kicking furiously, making noises like a thousand fist-sized stones rolling down a graveled incline.

  When Jask reached the rear of the great room, the bruin said, “I was tired of waiting for you.”

  “I was unexpectedly delayed.”

  “You overstayed your ten-minute rest period,” Tedesco said.

  “I'm sorry.”

  “Ready now?”

  “I guess so,” Jask said.

  The crab kicked and croaked for help.

  Perhaps it had a goddess of its own, a divine being to whom it could cry for consolation, a perverted Lady Nature of tainted monsters it could plead to for deliverance from suffering.

  In a way Jask hoped this was so.

  “One thing,” he said to the bruin.

  Tedesco turned away from the steps, oblivious of the uproar caused by the wounded beast. He said, “Yes?”

  Jask nodded toward the towering cross at the front of the church and said, “This Jesus…”

  “What of him?”

  “They had reason to worship him?”

  “As much as you have for Lady Nature.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Books.”

  “Not recountings of old myths, but books ancient enough to give you a firsthand picture?”

  Tedesco said, “Yes, old enough.”

  “They were serious?”

  “They were.”

  Ja
sk looked toward the crab.

  It kicked, dying.

  “Then they were wrong,” Jask said.

  Tedesco seemed interested. “How so?”

  “Can't you see?”

  “Tell me.”

  Jask shrugged. “It seems evident to me that this creature was not meant to be worshipped, but loathed.”

  The six, spine-covered legs of the overturned crab kicked more feebly, like the legs of a lazy cyclist.

  “You think that—” Tedesco began.

  Jask interrupted him, nodded toward the defeated beast and said, “You can't possibly say that such a thing was part of Lady Nature's plan.”

  “No.”

  Jask pointed at the beast. “That thing is a perversion of Nature, a random mutation without ecological function.” He shuddered and said, “I esped its mind before you came down. It's terribly vicious, blindly violent.”

  Tedesco began to laugh, his rifle slipping away from the dying crab. He hugged himself, tears of mirth rolling from the corners of his eyes, down his dark cheeks, to get caught like crystal pieces in his thick beard.

  “What's the matter?” Jask inquired, perplexed.

  Tedesco turned, unable to answer him, and he started up the winding stairs, leaning against the metal wall.

  “I don't see anything funny,” Jask said.

  That only set the bruin laughing harder than ever, and they had to stop while he bent over, holding his furry belly and cackling like a lunatic.

  Jask decided it was best not to say anything further. He was angry at Tedesco for taking the whole affair so lightly, but he did not want to lose his temper.

  Two-thirds of the way up the stairs, Tedesco turned and said, “What did you imagine that beast was?”

  “Their god,” Jask said, without hesitation.

  “Jesus?”

  “Yes.”

  “I thought as much!” the bruin roared. He started up the stairs again, chuckling in a more restrained manner now.

  Jask thought his companion's behavior was juvenile, though he did not say so. He did not feel like complaining about anything after such a narrow escape from the pagan god.

  17