by James Axler
“Mebbe there is,” J.B. said sourly, “but that kind of figures that something out there knows what these people believe and is moving us all about like pieces in that old game you and Doc like. And that’s just as hard for me to believe in as spirits and ghosts.”
“So maybe it taps into what we’re thinking, what they’re thinking. That’s a whole lot of maybes.”
J.B. collected a number of maps from the wall and from old storage units. Map reading would enable him to orienteer that much better.
As they left the redoubt, then parted company with Little Tree, both J.B. and Mildred were wrapped in their own thoughts. Only when they felt it was safe, and they could not be overheard, did they give them voice.
“You saying to me that something is guiding us, like spirits or some rogue comp, even coldhearts who might still be hiding out underground?”
“I don’t know, John. I really don’t. But it’s a possibility we need to think about.”
“Mebbe you’re right,” J.B. stated. “Tell you one thing—there’s some weird shit happening out there. We’ve seen that. And the farther out there you get, the weirder it is. Something’s causing that to happen. Mebbe the same thing made us see what we did. Whatever it is, we need to be triple red if it can fuck with our heads. ’Cause even if it isn’t actively hostile, it sure as shit isn’t friendly.”
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Seventeen
The stars were in alignment, and the time had come for preparations to cease, and for the fulfillment of the prophecy to begin. The warriors who would accompany the pairs on their quest into the plain, in search of the answer, the secret that would enable their tribe to become the one that would lead the world to a better way, were finally selected.
Now, on the night before they began their journey, the revered explorers were the subject of a celebratory feast. In each tribal gathering, all were gathered in their finest garb. Sweetly spiced meats and potent brews were consumed, and the explorers were given the finest of sendoffs. The shaman of each tribe conducted ceremonies that would cleanse and protect those who were to venture forth, ensuring that the spirits were on their side, and they were safe from vengeful or playful ghosts.
And then, when the shaman of each tribe had concluded his ritual, the chief of each tribe stood in front of the assembled throng and delivered an address that was intended to stir those who were to stay behind and wait, as much as it was intended to spur on those who were about to depart.
And it was then—only then—that, in each tribe, each pair of chosen ones realized that they were not alone.
THE SHOCK OF HEARING the chief elder’s words as they rang out across the plateau made Ryan pause. A sliver of spiced jackrabbit halfway to his mouth. Slowly, he turned to Krysty.
Looking at him from across three rapt warriors, lost in their leader’s words, the Titian-haired woman raised an eyebrow. As soon as they could find a moment when they could not be overheard, it was vital they talk.
TALK WAS SOMETHING that Doc could never help. Even before the Pawnee chief had finished his speech, the old man leaned across to Jak and whispered urgently in his ear.
The albino teen was less voluble than Doc, and a sharp elbow to the older man’s ribs soon silenced him, if only for a moment.
When the chief had finished, and music had started to play while a ritual dance began, Jak took advantage of the silence and leaned into Doc. “Sorry for hurt. Should keep mouth shut till safe.”
“I know, I know,” Doc said, “and you were perfectly correct, dear boy…But you realize what this may mean?”
“Hell of a big chance.” Jak shrugged.
“Not really. We started from the same place, and couldn’t really wander that far in the time we were apart. If there are two other tribes on this plain who have the same aims, then…”
“Yeah, mebbe. What that shit Mildred say about not chilling chickens?”
“Counting, dear boy, and you’re right. Nonetheless, it is now our imperative to—”
“Get away from rest as soon as possible,” Jak finished with a decisive nod.
Doc grinned. “Exactly.”
FOR MILDRED AND J.B. the revelation was not exactly the shock it may have been for the others. The Otoe had gathered in one of the fields that had been left fallow for the season. A ceremonial fire had been lit, and the tribe had gathered around it. Despite the surprise they both felt at the words of the chief, they remained stoic, betraying no emotion even to each other, let alone to the warriors around them.
But Milled Red had been carried from her earth lodge to witness and partake in this feast. As the oldest member of the tribe—even if a woman—it had been almost a necessity that she see the beginnings of the goal for which she had been waiting all her life.
Mildred and J.B. used the cover of the celebrations to approach her.
“Oh, well, I think I know what you want to ask me,” the old woman said before either of them had a chance to speak. “If I knew of the other tribes, why didn’t I mention them?”
“Something like that,” J.B. murmured.
The old woman shifted painfully, grimacing, then said, “Think of it this way. If I had mentioned it, you would have been itching to escape and search for your companions. For which I would not blame you. But—and this is important—by staying here and learning much of the prophecy, and looking back at the old times, as I’m sure you have,” she added with a wry smile, “then are you not better equipped to try to find your companions once you have left the village, and are no longer under close observation?”
“So how do you know that we won’t just make a run for it and leave all thoughts of the prophecy behind?” Mildred asked. “After all, you might be skeptical, but you’re still Otoe.”
The old woman laughed. It was a harsh, grating sound, but not without warmth. “True enough. I have always lived with the idea of the prophecy. Yet I have never been convinced by stories that have no real basis. It may prove to be true. Yet even then, that is no guarantee that it will give the people exactly what they wish for. There is some old saw about being careful when it comes to such matters.
“No. The reason that I am convinced that you will see this matter through has little to do with the Grandfather, and everything to do with fate. It is a much harsher taskmaster, and shows neither favoritism nor interest. You have been set on this course by blind chance. Blind chance has thrown your companions an equal lifeline. Of course, we don’t know that for sure. Coincidence is a friend of this land, however…
“You will follow the path that fate and chance has set you. In many ways, there is little else you can do.”
The old woman gave a little chuckle as she finished. Despite the tenor of her words, her voice betrayed no malice. She was simply stating the facts as she saw them.
J.B. looked at Mildred. There was resignation both in his tone and written on his face. “She’s right. It’s like we’re caught in a current, and we’ve just got to see where the tide takes us.”
MILDRED AND J.B. WERE riding at the head of their party when the first storm hit without warning. The skies were clear, the ochre-tinged blue forming a haze over the sun as it beat down on them. There was no sign of any cloud cover, and yet it seemed to J.B. that in the blink of an eye, a vast bank of dark, thick, broiling cloud had grown almost directly above them. The air grew thick, charged with static, and although the temperature did not change, the kind of heat had a textural change that was palpable. From a dry scorching on any exposed flesh, the air now became clammy and sticky, sweat forming on their skin and weighing heavy as the moisture seemed to increase in mass, almost too weighty to move and roll down their necks and backs.
“Where the hell did that come from?” Mildred murmured, casting a wary eye at the cloud, which was black and gray shot through with yellow.
J.B. shrugged. “Seemed to appear when I blinked.”
“I wonder what it’s going to do.”
As if the elements had chosen to
answer her directly, the first drops of rain began to fall. As heavy and round as the globs of sweat that would not dislodge from her brow, they hit the ground around the gently pacing horses with a force that kicked up globs of muddy dust, pitting the surface of the prairie with tiny pockmarked craters. They hit the flanks of the horses, stinging like stones tossed from a distance, causing the animals to snort and toss as the strange intrusions disturbed them.
They were no less disturbing for those who rode on their backs. The heavy, mordant parcels of water seemed to sting the skin as they landed.
Chem rain. That was no ordinary cloud that rumbled and danced above them, unleashing its deadly load.
Yelling to one another to find cover, the exploratory party turned its horses, scanning the land around for something that would provide cover. Anything, given the urgency of the circumstances, would be a relief.
Was it fate or the hand of the Grandfather that saw them close to a small rock hill, with a cave in the face? Or was it that the storm was only happening because they were near to the cave?
If the latter, then there was a chance that something omnipotent was manipulating them. But they could not waste time to wonder about that. They had to take their chances as they arose, and so they rode for the cover that the cave provided. Their faces, forearms, any exposed skin, itched as the rain hit it with an increasing force. Skin became waxy, then soapy, as the acids locked into the parcels of water were freed by contact and ate away at the top layer of epidermis on every rider.
As if this were not enough, the rain was now falling harder. The drops fell so closely together that they be came almost like a constant stream. Sheets of rain fell in front of them, making progress akin to riding through a waterfall. The streams of liquid made their skin blister and ulcerate at a rapid rate; the going underfoot became treacherous and thick, a quagmire that caught at the hooves of the horses, making them slip and stumble.
Yelling instructions or encouragement to one another became impossible as the coruscating rains fell harder, driving into their mouths, nostrils and eyes, making it all too easy to lose their bearings.
More by luck than judgment, testament only to their ability to set a course against all obstacles, the exploratory party made it to the cave. They had scattered, but somehow all managed to find their way to shelter. Using water from their canteens to wash the chem rain from their eyes, they looked out on the land. It was lost now beneath a bubbling, churning river of mud and water that was swept along by what kind of a current they could only guess.
“Better not rise too much,” Little Tree murmured to J.B. “You notice something? This is no big cave, and it gets narrow down the back, there.”
J.B. squinted into the darkness that lurked behind them. It was a dim light, but even so he could see that Little Tree was right: the cave quickly narrowed as the walls and ceiling closed in a funnel. He turned and looked at the river of mud that was flowing past the opening. The rain still fell, and the mud lapped closer and closer to the mouth of the cave, seemingly inexorable in its search for them.
And then, as suddenly as it had started to fall, the rain ceased. The sheets dried to a few desultory drops that glittered with chemical colors in the sun that now poked yellow fingers through the dark of the fast-scattering chem cloud. In less than a minute, the storm cloud that had lain so heavily was gone, the rain now nothing more than a memory as the skies returned to their ochre-streaked blue. As the exploratory party watched from the cave mouth, the rivers of mud hardened and baked with a ferocity and speed that was almost shocking. Where only seconds before there had been a churning quicksand of viscous fluid earth, there were now hard-baked ridges of dirt that rose and fell, tracing the contours of the flow in a way that would make progress on horseback slower. Columns of steam rose from the ruts as the air reclaimed the water, the rains now rising back to…what? Nothing but blue, now that the cloud that had birthed them was gone.
“The spirits are playing with us, testing us,” Little Tree said softly.
Mildred looked at J.B. “Yeah, or someone or something….”
Wary now of the elements that lay beyond the cave, the exploratory party mounted their steeds and ventured out into the now clear day.
Was this an error of judgment? It seemed that way, as in only a few short minutes they found that the same baking heat that had dried the mud rivers and scattered the dark clouds had now left them with no shelter from its piteous glare. Not wishing to drive their mounts too hard, the party had started at a sedate pace. Yet even now, after such a scant passing of time, it seemed to be too fast. Under the relentless rays of the malicious sun, they slowed almost to a crawl. The heat was dry and oppressive, weighing down on them like molten lead. Their skins itched from the chem burns, and began to fry under the sun. It was hard to concentrate, to form any kind of coherent thought, but it did occur to Mildred that the weight was a constant theme: first the rain, now the heat. As though something was attempting to sap their strength as they ventured toward the area that was their goal.
Any further such train of thought was arrested by what she could see and hear ahead of them, through the haze formed by the heat and rising water vapor.
R YAN, K RYSTY AND THE Sioux party had also experienced an anomaly in the weather, but theirs was more familiar to them. They had seen clouds form and gather in the distance, each swirl of darkness on the horizon to east and west. Yet their part of the skies remained clear.
Krysty’s hair gathered at her nape, giving her forewarning of what was to come only a few moments before the first wisps of moving air signaled the beginnings of a windstorm.
“The Grandfather sends this to test us,” one of the warriors yelled.
“More likely because we’re stuck between the two cloud pressures,” Ryan murmured to Krysty, “but whatever’s causing it, we need to find shelter.”
The woman nodded. It was unnecessary to add the need for speed that she felt, as Ryan was already ahead of her. A dust storm caused by raging winds was what had got them into this situation, and he was damned if he was going to let the intemperate climate catch him out a second time.
Ryan turned his horse, scanning the land for some kind of shelter. There was little. They had traveled from the safety of the hills that had housed them to a region that was little more than arid scrub. They would have to use the hide sleds that some of the party carried behind their mounts to construct a makeshift shelter.
“Tether the horses, use the banking to make shelter,” the one-eyed man yelled above the already rising and screeching gales. Dust and dirt from the earth around rose in swirls and eddies, already rising high enough to start gritting their eyes, catching in the nose and mouth.
Nearby a small rise in the land formed a shallow bank. It was little, but all they had. As quickly as they could move in winds that started to grow in ferocity and buffet them as they moved, the exploratory party dismounted and tethered their mounts to whatever they could find—scrub, stunted tree root and branch—and struggled against the elements to form the sleds into a primitive shelter against the angle of the bank.
The earth was loose, and it was hard to drive in pegs that could secure the hide. Even then, it was almost flat to the ground, and was cramped when the warriors secured themselves against the dust and dirt that whipped like stones against the hide.
There was barely enough air to breathe, and that which could be gasped was rich with the sweat and fear of the people whose sweat-spangled skins rubbed against one another. But still the dust and dirt rained and blew, and everyone in the party tried to draw shallow breaths to make the oxygen stretch in the confined space.
Perhaps they didn’t notice it at first because of the noise made by the storm, but as the wind abated the clash and clamor of combat became apparent to them.
“Fireblast! What the fuck is that?” Ryan breathed.
When he had struggled out of the shelter and into the now still day, he couldn’t believe his eye….
J
AK HAD SNIFFED THE AIR not once but several times as the war party made its way across the sparse grasslands of the plain. Stunted trees dotted the expanse of flat lands that gave lie to the hills that lay in the distance. The airless skies above them beat down a hazy heat that made every step taken by their mounts seem to pound into them.
“Dear boy, if you cannot blow it out, then at least swallow it down. Your infernal sniffing is driving me to distraction,” Doc said testily.
Jak gave him a blankly impassive look.
Doc shook his head. “Quite right. Remiss of me, lad. Any problems you may have with mucus are the least of our worries right now.”
Jak’s expression didn’t change, though his tone revealed a certain exasperation. “Not got anything to gob out,” he said. “Change in the air, but not make sense.”
“In what way?” Doc questioned, raising his aching and weary head for the first time in what seemed like an age and looking around him. The dull landscape and monotonous skies seemed to him no different from anything they had been since they had begun this forsaken journey. His gaze also took in the warriors who rode with them. They seemed as exhausted by the weather as he did, their mounts as slow and plodding. If any of them were listening to the exchange between Jak and himself, they seemed not to show it—unsurprising, as he had long since decided that the grasp of English held by many of them couldn’t get a grip on Jak’s unique use of the language. Come to that, it was something that he, too, found occasion to question. But no matter. It was apparent that the albino youth was unsettled by something, although in his usual way he did not let in show in any obvious manner.
Jak hadn’t answered Doc immediately. He looked around him, red eyes squinting in the bright sun, the slightest furrow on his brow betraying his bemusement. Finally he said, “Weird. Air not smell like change coming. Not look like, either. But something not right.”