The entire situation had been beyond the understanding of Finkle’s eighteenth-century mind. King had tried to explain his theory to them while back at the camp, but they couldn’t quite grasp hold of what he was trying to say. Of course, it wasn’t until the apparition of Jenkins’s father had appeared that everything had clicked for King. The encounter had triggered a recollection of a theory he’d read once, about the possible true nature of ghosts. Something to do with folds in time occupying the same space simultaneously. The memory was faded. Difficult to pin down, but the gist was easy enough to grasp.
Time, the article had said, was not a straight line. It was more like a big ball of twine, clumped together. Certain points along the twine touched other points. When both points intersected with the material world, a Time Fold might be created, which would allow a person from one era to physically glimpse into the past or future. The theory speculated that when someone saw a ghost, they were actually looking into the intersection of two different points in time…seeing people or things of the past, slightly out of sync with the observer’s own world.
That was the theory in a nutshell anyway, and it seemed to fit. Why it was happening here, in this jungle, King couldn’t figure out. Nor could he grasp how the strange vine illness was part of it all.
But for now, that mystery would have to wait. At the moment, he was focused on Time itself and all it meant for the struggle he’d endured for nearly three millennia. Temporal waves crashing in from one time period to the other, were bringing the flotsam of another era into this one. The prospect energized him more than anything he could remember since being trapped in the past. If his theory was true, he might have just found a way to return to his own time without having to wait for the agonizingly slow ticking of the clock. He might be able to rejoin his family much sooner than he’d anticipated. That was, if he could get to the bottom of what was happening. And that simply required he continue assisting the aging scientist and the Irish privateer in their search for the mythical Fountain of Youth.
He’d done a lot crazier things for worse reasons.
“So have you seen any signs of the witch?” Reardon’s question jerked King from his thoughts.
Honestly, King had almost forgotten about the mambo bokor, ever since forming his current theory of the strange phenomena. She’d simply ceased to be a priority for him, with visions of a way home dangling in front of his imagination. He chastised himself for such shortsightedness. It would be a grave mistake to become so blinded with the possibilities that he failed to see the knife in the dark.
King shook his head. “No, I haven’t. We lost her tracks a while back.” He hacked down a small sapling blocking their path with his sword. “But we can assume she’s still heading for the Fountain. Maybe even already arrived, which means we need to be on our guard even more.”
With the foliage blocking their way cut down, they started marching again. They walked several miles in silence, but King brought them to an abrupt halt when the jungle erupted with an ear-splitting screech from the other side of the river.
Brahaayaaaaaaah!
“What was that?” Reardon asked. “It didn’t sound human.”
“A bird, possibly?” Finkle offered.
Putting a finger to his lips, King motioned for silence. He crouched low, bringing his sword up in a defensive stance and keeping his eyes fixed on the opposite river bank.
“I say, what is going on up here?” Greer was barging toward the front of the line; his grating voice was an octave higher than normal. King spun around, slamming his palm over the quartermaster’s mouth with a growl.
“Quiet,” he hissed.
Another similar cry rang out from several miles away on their side of the river. It came from somewhere deep inside the forest.
“Whatever they are,” King whispered, “there’s more than one of them. And they seem to be communicating.”
They huddled there, waiting for another ten minutes. When no more cries reciprocated, King stood up and glanced around. All was quiet. The only thing that could be heard was the ever-present chatter of birds and other Florida fauna foraging near the river.
“It seems as though whatever they were, they’re not interested in us for the moment,” Finkle said.
“I’m not so sure.” King turned, scanning their surroundings. “Something just doesn’t feel right.”
“I say we move on,” Greer stepped past King and brought up his musket to his shoulders. “Whatever it was will find quite a fight on its hands, should it choose to attack us.”
King struggled against the urge to smack the irritating quartermaster across the back of his head. Then he noticed the fine red welt, hardly visible, across the back of the Englishman’s neck.
“When did you get this?” King brushed the jagged red mark with his index finger.
“What? What are you talking about?”
“Oh, my.” Finkle drew closer, pressing his spectacles up onto the bridge of his nose for a better look. “Is that a…”
“A scratch, yes.” King placed both hands on Greer’s shoulders, and spun the man to face him. “Try to remember. When did you get that scratch?”
Greer reached behind his head and felt for the scrape. His eyes ballooned out as he frantically began probing the mark with the tips of his fingers. “I-I wasn’t even aware I was scratched. I’ve no idea when it happened.”
“It’s probably nothing to worry about,” Captain Reardon said. His encouraging smile was anything but genuine. “Could’ve happened anywhere. Doesn’t mean he’s going to turn into some God-forsaken tree.” He spat on the ground after he said it. “In a million years, I ne’er though I’d say a sentence such as that.”
As if in answer, there was a shout behind them. Every man in the group turned toward the voice, guns, bayonets and swords at the ready.
“Captain!” The shouting was clearer now, as the shouter drew closer. And from the sound of it, the man was in a near panic. “Captain!”
A few minutes later, Rob Jenkins burst through the trees, turned at the water’s edge and moved toward them at full speed. He nearly ran into one of his fellow crewmen before his legs gave out altogether, and he sank to the sandy bank. His eyes were bloodshot and wild. His mouth was twisted in a ghastly rictus of fear. His clothes were in tatters, revealing deep cuts to his chest, arms and legs.
Reardon crouched beside the man, taking him by both shoulders and giving him a steady shake. “Calm down, man! What’s wrong?”
Jenkins trembled uncontrollably, gasping for breath between sobs. But King knew this fit was different from the one that had rendered him so inconsolable earlier that day. Before, the man’s tearful sobbing had been from something more akin to guilt. Emotional pain, maybe. This was something else entirely. Something that could only be described as terror. One glimpse at the man’s newly whitened streak of hair at his temples confirmed as much.
“It’s Cook Nichols,” Jenkins said, after struggling to collect himself. “He’s dead. Ripped to pieces in front of me.”
“What?” Reardon asked. “How?”
“It was Shawn O’Steen, sir.”
King looked over at Finkle, a silent question on his brow.
“The young man who was infected by the vines. The one the cook was watching over in camp,” the scientist whispered back.
Jenkins continued between labored breaths. “Something happened to him. He changed, just like all the rest. Nichols thought he was dead. We started packing up our gear, planning on rejoining you, when we heard the…the…most bone-chilling howl we ever did. When we looked in Shawn’s direction, he was gettin’ up from the ground. Only, it wasn’t him. It was…it was somethin’ straight from the pits o’ Hell, I tell ye.”
“Describe it.” King stepped forward, his piercing eyes searching Jenkins’s tattered body up and down.
“It looked different than the shrub-people we seen earlier. This was bigger. Much bigger. The vines wrapped around him were harder, full of thorn
s. The parts that were human you could see through the web of vines looked like they were covered in moss. The brightest green moss anyone’s ever seen—even in Ireland.”
“So it killed Nichols, but you managed to get away?” Greer sneered. He was baiting the scared man, and everyone knew it.
“Greer!” Reardon shouted. “Enough of that. Come over here and sit down, Jenkins.” The captain led Jenkins over to a log, and helped him down. Then, he handed the man a filled water bladder, and smiled. “Rest here, while we discuss our options.”
The captain turned to address the rest of the expedition just as the jungle around them exploded in a chorus of unearthly, bestial howls. Without further warning, the trees around them shook violently. The thunder of large footfalls echoed all around them, before three large plant creatures burst into view.
The group turned to run in the only direction they could—into the St. Johns River—but they were blocked by five more creatures wading up to shore and a wall of thick, thorny vines rising up from the water like monstrous tentacles.
“This can’t be happening!” Greer shouted, taking aim at one of the creatures and firing. The metal ball slapped through the wood-armored chest of one of the creatures, ripping a hole through its back and disappearing into the woods beyond. The creature, however, appeared unperturbed by the impact. It rushed forward with another howl.
King lunged with his Grecian sword clutched in his hand. He wasn’t entirely sure what was happening, but he knew enough to understand that this was a coordinated attack. It wasn’t the mindless, instinctual act of unthinking monsters. It was precise. Well thought out. Organized. The creatures had trapped them, sealing off their only means of retreat, so that everyone could be picked off one by one.
As he approached the creature rushing toward John Greer, King brought the blade down on its extended, bark-covered arm with a bone-crushing smack. The sword sliced clean through, causing a spray of chlorophyll-green fluid to come rushing from the severed limb. The creature screamed while the arm began to regenerate. It then wheeled around, and backhanded King with its uninjured arm.
King flew backward and struck the ground with a thud. His vision began to darken from the impact, but he willed himself to stay conscious. Focused. When he looked up, the creature was lunging directly at him—its newly formed arm extended with dozens of sharp, thorn-like claws reaching for his torso.
22
As the creature’s claws came within an inch of King’s chest, the world suddenly grew dark. It wasn’t the hazy blackness of unconsciousness that dimmed his vision, however. As he prepared to fend off the blow, he suddenly found himself completely alone in the woods. Where it had been near dusk just a second before, now it was deep into the night, just at the start of the twilight before dawn. The sky above swirled with hues of midnight blue and purple, trimmed at the horizon with a ribbon of pale blue. Stars flickered high above, with constellations completely alien to King.
Propped on his elbows, he glanced around. The river was much narrower now, little more than a creek really. The vegetation was denser. The air more tepid, almost suffocating.
Where am I?
Though the landscape was vastly different, his instincts told him he was precisely where he’d been when struck by the plant creature.
So what happened?
He knew the answer before it even fully formed in his mind. Somehow, like the plastic army man and the iguanodon, he’d slipped into Time. The question, of course, was when? The past or the future? Considering the size of the river and lack of erosion marks near the water’s edge, he was guessing it was the past.
Deciding he needed a better look around, he tried picking himself off the ground, only to find himself pinned to the moist soil underneath him. He jerked his arms, struggling to propel himself up, but it was as if a five hundred pound weight was sitting atop his chest.
“Well, this is just great.”
He tried again, but still, his body wouldn’t so much as budge, other than to sink deeper into the wet, muddy soil. He lay there, struggling futilely to rise but failing every time. Minutes passed, and all he could do was keep constant vigil for any wild beasts that might be roaming the jungle. Eventually, boredom overtook him, and he decided to sleep, hoping his situation might improve under the light of day.
At sunrise, he awoke, but still was unable to move. Though he knew it was a ridiculous notion, it felt as if the Earth’s gravity had quadrupled overnight. Then, there was also the dull, throbbing bite of pain welling inside his gut. He couldn’t quite identify the source, but it was there all the same, and he didn’t know why his body wasn’t healing itself to remove the discomfort. After nearly eight more hours of increasingly intense pain, he fell asleep once more.
He awoke in the dead of night. An explosion, followed by a great rumble in the air had startled him from his sleep.
“Geez. What now?” He was beginning to think he would have been much better off sequestered in his sarcophagus on Kavo Zile.
He glanced up, homing in on the direction of the sound, just in time to see a blinding streak of red-orange light burning away the darkness. The falling object rumbled, the sound waves jarring King’s bones from even this distance. It shot diagonally toward the ground. From its trajectory, he figured the object would strike the Earth three or four miles to the west, on the other side of what would become the St. Johns River.
The moment the calculation was completed, he was struck with another horrible realization. He was nearly at ground zero for a Volkswagen-sized meteorite that had broken through the atmosphere and was about to hit the planet. It was hardly a ‘world-killer’, but it would certainly play havoc on the general landscape for the next few millennia. And he wasn’t entirely sure what its effects would be on even his incredible regenerative capabilities.
“Yep,” he mumbled to himself, as he clenched his eyes shut and braced for the fiery tempest that was about to come. “I would have definitely been better off in my damned coffin.” He inhaled deeply, then growled. “Well, shi—”
King returned to the future past in the blink of an eye, and he quickly discovered what had been causing the sharp pain in his abdomen. The plant-creature’s spindly arm was pinning him to the ground with twelve-inch thorny talons. It had sliced him straight through the gut, exiting out his back. He screamed in agony, then opened his eyes to see the creature up close for the very first time. He stared into the monster’s grisly face. Jenkins had been right. The creatures had once been human. Now, there was a complex webwork of hardened, bark-like vines covering every inch of their flesh in a mesh netting. Their bodies were pocked with sharp, curved thorns. Looking past the thorns, where human flesh should have been, the body was stripped of skin and muscle tissue. The face, covered in a soft blanket of lush emerald green moss, was little more than a skull now. Dark recesses marked where the man’s eyes had once been, completing the cadaverous appearance.
King wasn’t sure whether the man had been one of Finkle’s expedition or that of the British, but it didn’t matter. He could see, however, that the human being that once was, no longer existed. He was dead. Which meant that King wouldn’t have to pull any punches in this fight.
The thought brought a hungry grin to his face.
With a roar that matched the creatures’, King’s fist lashed out, pounding his attacker across the jaw. The flesh of his hand shredded against the thorny impact, but the force was enough to knock the monster aside. King watched as it tumbled over; its twelve-inch claws tore free from his torso. Blood gushed from the opened wound, but the injury healed rapidly, and King climbed to his feet.
With the brief moment he had, he gave a quick sweep of the landscape. The only men from the expedition still upright were Finkle, Reardon and Greer. But the quartermaster was on his knees, holding his stomach, as if in extreme agony. Finkle and Reardon stood back-to-back, swords outstretched and protecting their sickened comrade. King rushed over to them, scooping up his fallen sword along the way, a
nd he turned his back to them as well, giving them a one-hundred-and-eighty-degree wall of protection for Greer.
The creatures lumbered toward them, not nearly as swiftly as before. King didn’t know what was slowing them, but he wasn’t going to look a gift-horse in the mouth. All around them, the remaining members of the crew—including Rob Jenkins—lay curled in fetal positions on the ground. The strange vines were working their way around the bodies, forming cocoons in which their transformations would occur. Eight creatures were bad enough. They needed to be long gone when the others emerged from their dormant states.
“Help Greer up,” King said. Their backs were now to the river, and they were surrounded on all other sides. The vines still loomed behind them, but if King was right, he was already infected. He hoped his condition would help stave off the transformation, but for now, he was certain he could be quick enough to do what needed to be done. As long as his three living companions could follow through with their part.
One of the plant monsters suddenly lunged. King sidestepped, whirled around and brought his sword down across its overextended back. The creature wailed in pain, and stumbled to the ground. Before it could roll over, King was on top of it, hacking deep into its pulpy flesh.
“Run!” King cried. “Into the river.”
The two men, Greer leaning on their shoulders, hesitated. They looked out at the tall, waving vines, then at King.
“I’m coming! Just go!”
This time, they obeyed. Kicking up their legs, they splashed through the shallow water as fast as they could. King gave one final swipe across the creature’s neck, and then bolted after them. He passed them with little effort, swinging his sword as he ran and slicing through the tangle of malevolent vines. They reacted by whipping down upon him with a monstrous rage. Their thorns ripped and sliced at King, as he spun back and forth, cutting the vines at the base of their stalks and clearing a path through which Finkle and Reardon could carry Greer. A minute later, they were on the other side of the wall, and swimming across the river. Fortunately, the current was weak, and they managed to stay on course, straight across. Not so fortunate, there were splashes behind them.
Patriot (A Jack Sigler Continuum Novella) Page 12