Five Days Dead

by James Davis

  He considered blasting a couple of them but pulse fire worried him now and he avoided it when he could. You never knew what it might attract. So instead of drawing his blaster he went to the cab of his pickup and pulled out the baseball bat from behind the seat. His own scye was stowed in his pack with his eyeset, but he knew better than to try and use it. In his condition, he would just fly it into the side of the canyon.

  He tried to be nonchalant as he walked toward the scyes, which is no easy thing to be while highly inebriated, but he must have pulled it off because the scyes didn’t fly away. One floated closer to him and he knew whoever was on the other end was trying to communicate, but since he wasn’t linked they probably thought he was just a harmless neand. After a quick scan, the scyes went back to hovering at the edge of the Wedge Overlook and Harley took a few meandering steps closer, bat in hand. He didn’t know if it was possible for a metal ball to give off an air of superiority, but the five scyes seemed to be doing a good job of it now as they tried to ignore him. He planted his feet, gripped the bat with both hands and took a swing at the closest scye.

  He made good solid contact with the bat on the scye and it flew out into the canyon, wobbled for a fraction of a second and then plummeted toward the canyon floor. The four other scyes scattered, hovered over his head for a moment and when he flipped them off they flew out into the canyon and disappeared. He grinned with satisfaction and went back to his beer.

  He chased his beer with a cigarette and dropped the butt into the empty can. He carefully placed the beer can on top of a beer wall he was building beside his battered blue cooler he had sat next to the boulder. The beer wall was now four stories wide by four stories tall and waved precariously in the soft breeze of the desert. He fished in the cooler until he snagged another beer and hauled it out, slammed the lid and popped the beer’s top. The vibration of the cooler’s closure rattled the beer wall and it tumbled down, 15 of the 16 empty cans clattered to a stop beside him, but the 16th can rolled toward the cliff’s edge. He stuck out his foot and caught it before it could tumble over the side.

  He started to bring the fresh beer to his mouth but found himself looking at the empty can he had saved from tumbling over the side of the cliff and stopped with the new beer three inches from his mouth. Five days ago he would not have stopped the empty can from falling over the side. Five days ago he would not have built himself a beer wall. Five days ago he would have tossed the empty cans over the side of the cliff and flicked the cigarette butts over the side as well, vaguely wondering if the cigarettes would start a fire in the valley below but not really caring one way or the other. Did that matter? Was that a change in character? Was that enough to bring back the man with the gray eyes to keep his dark promises? He moved his boot blocking the empty can and let it roll off the side and then swept the rest of the cans over the side with his leg, spilling beer down his chest in the process.

  He stood and paced back and forth along the cliff edge, suddenly worried and just a little bit afraid that staying in character was going to be more complicated than he had ever imagined.

  The wind was picking up and a dust devil careened blindly into his truck, spewing sand through the truck’s open driver’s side window. Harley held his breath and waited for the Gray Walker to appear. The dust devil spun itself out. He sat back down, placed his beer between his legs and dug another cigarette out of his shirt pocket, cupping one hand around his lighter as he lit it up. The wind coiled around the boulder and he put his hand over the beer as dust turned his dark hair something closer to gray. Before long he wouldn’t need the dust to help turn his hair gray, no sir, before long he was quite sure he would gray without any help at all. He had never found a gray hair on his head, but five days after the day he should have died he was sure they would be coming. He had once heard stress and worry could make you go gray and he had plenty of stress, plenty of worries.

  His eyes burned, a little from the dust, a little from the sun, but mostly from exhaustion. With the cigarette still dangling between his fingers, he let his eyes close and felt sleep rushing forward to take him. He couldn’t seem to get enough sleep anymore. As he slipped away his dreams turned to his mother and he remembered her through his clouded vision as a woman who loved him and whom he loved back. Then he remembered the promise he had made to his father that he would take care of her.

  He had lied.

  When he woke, he thought of the Wrynd. King Orrin and his tribe were gone, but they would be replaced and there were more Wrynd out there. The Wrynd from the Phoenix Hub would eventually find their way to even a town as small as Kayenta. If his mother stood a chance against them, he needed to go to her. Her only chance was if her son lived up to the promise he had made to his father.

  “Come home.” She had written in the notebook. And before that “Love You. Miss you. I’m Sorry.”

  Harley tossed his last beer over the side of the Wedge and kicked his now empty cooler after it, listening as it clanked against the side of the cliff on its way to the bottom. He stood up, flicked away his cigarette and stumbled toward his truck. It was time to go.

  He drove slowly away from the Wedge, back toward the world he knew. The gravel road came to a fork and he stopped and put the truck in park so he could smoke another cigarette. To his left was the road home, to Orangeville. To the right he could cut through the desert, cross by the Swinging Bridge and keep going until he was in Kayenta. If his mother was to live, he needed to turn right.

  Between the forks, off in the distance he saw a cloud of dust against the mountainside and he watched as it drew closer and closer and as it did he could see beneath it a swarm of activity. He climbed out of his truck but could still not see clearly what was kicking up the dust. He climbed on the hood and cupped his hands over his eyes and strained.

  It was a herd of horses running toward him from the desert and he marveled at their number. There were hundreds and leading the way was a painted horse he recognized.

  The horses drew closer and before he quite knew what was happening they had encircled his truck. Still they galloped around him, growing closer with every revolution and while he was afraid that they might try to kill him he could not quite keep the crazy grin from his lips as the horses slowed to a trot and then a full stop before him. He was surrounded and they all looked at him with their dark eyes and he could see the wildness there within them. But for the first time in five days, Harley Nearwater was not afraid.

  The painted horse came to him then, nodding its great head and pawing at the ground, and Harley sat on the hood of his truck, grinning like a fool and not even caring if the horses got caught up in the Rages and stomped him to death.

  The painted horse nuzzled his arm and Harley reached out a tentative hand and touched the side of her face and then caressed her softly and he was not in the least surprised when he started to cry and hugged her.

  “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” He said over and over and over again and the horse seemed impatient with him and nodded some more and Harley finally understood and hopped off the truck.

  The other horses backed away and he stood in front of the painted horse and she pawed the ground again and he understood completely what she wanted and he threw himself upon her back and she carried him away into the desert. She trotted at first and then she galloped and before he could quite believe what was happening she was running and all of the other horses, hundreds of them were running with her and Harley sat up straight on her back and held out his arms and laughed like a he had never laughed in his life.

  After a time, the painted horse brought him back to his truck and he slid off her back and she let him caress her face and he thanked her for everything she had given him and then the horses trotted away and disappeared into the desert and Harley Nearwater was alone once again.

  He looked up at where he knew the Wheel must spin and even though he could not see it, knowing it was there gave him comfort. As he climbed into the cab of his tru
ck, he knew that from deep within an apple orchard a sad and lonely old man had reached out and told him he was sorry for denying him the simple gift of an apple that might have made all the difference in the world.

  He had sent the horses to make amends and Harley understood they were not only meant to make amends but to guide him back to a path that he must walk alone for a little while longer.

  He had been put on the shelf. He didn’t know what the gray man meant by that, but he had agreed to the bargain. What he did know was what the Gray Walker meant when he told him he needed to stay in character. Turning right would be out of character for the man who was Harley Nearwater and must be again.

  He remembered the voice in the darkness, the mouth full of razors and the gray gray eyes making promises. He did not ever want to see those eyes again. He would do anything to avoid seeing them again. Anything at all.

  He turned left and headed for home.

  He would remain on the shelf.

  He would remain in character.

  Afterword

  The events of Five Days Dead serve as prelude to a much longer tale that spans nine novels and more than 3,000 years. It will collectively be known as the Book of the Shepherds.

  How Five Days Dead came to be and how the nine volumes of the Book of the Shepherds will come to be I find a bit of a mystery. It would be so easy to tell you that I planned all of this, but it would be a lie.

  While I am not one for deep introspection, I am distinctly aware there are cracks and chasms in my psyche and it is from within those fissures the voices in my head whisper to me of people and places that have a story that needs to be told. I am trying to listen and, as best as my limited abilities allow, get their story straight.

  I have spent most of my life listening to their pleas and ignoring them because it is far easier to listen and nod politely than to do anything; because doing something is hard…too damn hard. During the course of my life I have, from time to time, plopped down in front of a typewriter or computer and put on paper some of the things my mind has whispered to me. I didn’t realize for decades that all of the voices pleading for attention in my imagination were telling the same tale, just from different points in the narrative.

  I started this story when I was 12 years old, somewhere in the middle of the telling. I began with the seventh novel in the series. As a 12-year-old boy, pecking away on the refurbished Smith Corona typewriter my Dad bought me for Christmas, I had no idea I was starting in the middle of a series. I just had this story that screamed to be told.

  The final pages of that first novel were scratched into a couple of old Mead notebooks (the ribbon on the Smith Corona ran dry and I didn’t have allowance money for a new one. It was 1977 and every penny I had to spare went into the price of a ticket to watch Star Wars again. I watched it 14 times that summer).

  When I finished the novel, I packed it away in an old boot box I stole from my Mom. It’s still in the same box and sitting quite comfortably in the closet of my office, waiting for me to crack the seal and go back in time to when I was a boy of 12 and the world was ripe for the picking.

  My second novel, which is the first novel of the Book of the Shepherds, I started in high school. It was called Grayland (and will be called Grayland again) and it consumed me for the next 22 years. I started it as a teenager and finished it in my late 30s.

  From the time I started the book to the time I finished, I somehow survived my teenage years, completed an eight-year stint in the Air Force, fathered two children, suffered through a divorce, discovered the joys and heartache of being a single parent and found the woman I plan to share the rest of my life with. When I typed “End” on the last page, I knew I had produced a work of science fiction and fantasy that would never be read. It was a 200,000 word, 22-year odyssey that was part creative process and part exorcism. It was a doorstop. It now sits in the closet of my office not far from my first novel. I boxed it up and put it on the shelf and waited. For 10 years. Then I let my mind return to the world I dreamed and the story that first started whispering to me when I was a boy.

  For more than a year I just mulled it over, that first novel scribbled by a 12-year-old hand, that second novel, started and stopped and started again through my teens, twenties and thirties. I sat and I tried to piece it all together. And I dreamed. I dreamed a lot. When I was done and ready to write I understood where everything fit. I knew what tale was to be told, when it started and when it ended. I knew something about the Shepherds and I knew about the end of everything. Or so I thought.

  Then I became haunted by the sandy voice of Harley Nearwater, whispering in my head.

  “Before you can tell where we’re goin’ you have to tell where we’ve come from, don’tcha think?” Harley whispered in my mind.

  I found he was right, and it is not something I share with you happily. Harley Nearwater is a pain in my ass and it appears that he will continue to be so for years to come. He will be with me for a while longer, whispering from the cracks and chasms of my mind. But right is right, so I looked back, over the years and along the path of this tale to the very beginning and then beyond, and it was there I found Five Days Dead.

  The next novel, Grayland, the first volume in the Book of the Shepherds, takes place 10 years after the events of Five Days Dead. Ten years after an old shepherd retreated to his orchard and a young man of promise and his children returned to their home without their wife and mother; 10 years after a marshal escaped with her life from dark shadows with the knowledge that the world was not as she supposed. Ten years after a gray wanderer on the path used his power to put a lone cowboy, a catalyst, a no-account, a man of little to no character, on the shelf for safe keeping…

  …Ten years closer to the end of everything.

  Welcome to the future.

  - James L. Davis

  August, 2014

  Grayland

  The Book of the Shepherds

  Volume I

  James L. Davis

  Excerpt

  Off the Shelf

  The Gray Walker sat on the rickety swing next to Harley Nearwater and threw his boots up on the banister, his long legs crossing comfortably. He looked sideways at Harley, smiling softly, his gray eyes a swarm of other colors, some darker, some lighter than the gray which contained them.

  “Nice view.”

  “Ahhyep.” Harley rasped, trying very hard not to let his voice, his hands, his soul, shake in fear and hatred and longing.

  “Been some time, hasn’t it, since last we met?” The gray man seemed quite pleased and, truth be told, he was.

  “Ten years or so.”

  “That long? Wow. Well, I’ve been busy. You?”

  Harley gritted his teeth. “Not so much.”

  The Gray Walker chortled and jumped to his feet, slapped his hands together and turned to face Harley Nearwater.

  “It’s nice to see that your talent for stimulating conversation is just as it ever was Harley. It truly is. But I wonder if you might do me a favor?”

  Harley looked up, met the Gray Walker’s gaze and managed to hold it. “Favor?”

  “Favor.” The man with the gray eyes flashed his hands and where they had a moment before been empty they now held items Harley recognized. In his left, the Gray Walker held Harley’s old Stetson, and he plopped it on Harley’s head quite happily and gave it a friendly tap. In his right, the gray man held Harley’s holster and blaster.

  “Ten years is quite long enough.”

  A storm seemed to be brewing around Harley as his strange visitor talked, a raging wind that blinded his vision to everything but the blaster in the gray man’s hand, deafened his hearing to everything but a roar of hatred and desire and need, sharpened his will to nothing more than a longing to reach out and take the weapon from the hand that held it.

  “What?” Harley finally managed, realizing the gray man had been talking, but he had not heard.

  “I said, things are about to get intrestin. There is a little o
ld Shepherd who has stirred from his sorrow and dared to peek out of his orchard. A man and his children who are what you made them are returning to the Wilderness. Yes, indeed, intrestin developments are on the horizon. There will come a time not too long from now when I might be of a mind to make you an offer, an offer of simple direction for the chaos in your veins. An offer fitting of your talents.”

  He held out the blaster and holster. “But for now…feel free to run amok.”

  Harley stood and met the outstretched hand with his own, and his hands did not shake when he took the holster and strapped it around his waist, did not shake when he took the blaster and slid it home.

  The Gray Walker nodded and with a blink he turned to dust and blew away in the morning breeze.

  Harley straightened the hat on his head and looked to the south and his eyes stormed. His mother was dead at the teeth and claw of the Wrynd. He had failed her in the end, after all. But now he was free of the Gray Walker.

  He had been taken off the shelf.

  What that meant was for some there was going to be hell to pay.

  “Good enough,” he said.