She grabbed his arm. “Follow the slope. There’s a stream at the bottom. Don’t move fast—move smart. The only sure defense is to not be seen.”
He nodded. “I won’t be long.” He descended from the tree, thinking about Infinity’s condition. He was worried—she wouldn’t have allowed him to do this if it weren’t absolutely necessary.
Once on the ground, Desmond realized he could no longer hear the bird creatures talking, either due to his lower position or because they had separated to renew their search. He crept down the slope to the stream, watching and listening for any movement. After quickly refreshing the layer of mud on his body, he used both hands to gather what he could carry. Several minutes later he arrived back at the tree, apparently undetected. He pressed the lump of mud to his belly and tried climbing with his other hand. This wasn’t working, so he had to take what mud he could in one fist, looping that arm over limbs when needed. Several drops of Infinity’s blood hit his face as he climbed.
When he was halfway up, a noisy chittering sound erupted from above and to his left, startling him. At first he didn’t see it, but then it moved—a small black animal with a pale gray belly. It could only be described as a squirrel with a beak and feathers. And it was angry.
Desmond looked down uncomfortably, aware that the noise the squirrel was making could alert the bird men. He waved his arm at it and spoke in a whisper. “Get!”
The squirrel stopped. A few seconds later it started again. Desmond tried shaking a limb, having no effect. Finally, he resorted to throwing a chunk of the mud he’d collected. This sent the creature scampering away, and it jumped to another tree and disappeared. Again he checked the area below for signs of their pursuers and then continued climbing.
Finally, he positioned himself beside Infinity. “This is all I’ve got.”
“It’s enough. Hold it out right there.” She pressed one of the halves of the bubble leaf over the hole in her hip. Holding it in place with one hand, she grabbed half the mud with her other hand and placed it on the leaf. “Hold my arm. Don’t let me fall.”
Desmond didn’t like the sound of this, but he turned and gripped her arm below the shoulder with his free hand.
“Watch what I do,” she said. She pushed her finger two inches into the wound, forcing mud into it, the leaf folding up around the mud as a sheath. Her head slammed back against the soft bark of the tree as she stifled a cry. Desmond held her steady. She looked back down at her hip, pulled her finger out, and stuffed more of the mud into the hole until it was full. She then closed her eyes, taking deep breaths.
“You okay?”
She handed him the other half of the leaf. “You need to do the exit wound.” She then leaned to the side, turning her right butt cheek toward him, and gripped a limb that was above her head.
“You’re not serious. I can’t do that.”
“Don’t be a pussy, Decay.”
He looked at the wound. Blood was still dripping out, and the layer of mud on the skin around it was stained red and smeared into messy patterns. “Why do you need the mud? Can’t I just push the leaf in there?”
“The mud makes a good plug. Shove it in so it expands below the wound opening. When it’s wider than the opening, it won’t fall out. Please, Desmond, just get it done.”
“Well, if you’re resorting to using my real name… hold on.” He put some mud on the leaf and jammed it into the hole.
She bucked and stifled another cry.
He then packed in more mud until he was sure it was wider than the hole. “Finished.”
She eased back to her sitting position and rested there with her eyes closed. Finally, she said, “Thirty-six hours can be a long time.”
He huffed out a quiet laugh and then stared out at what was now obviously the western sky. “Well, at least we have good seats for the sunset.” The clouds above the horizon glowed with a shade of red not quite like any sunset he had ever seen on his own world. Or maybe that was just his imagination.
She opened her eyes and stared at the sky. “No humans have ever seen the sun set on this world.”
“I imagine you’ve had a lot of opportunities to say that.”
“Not really. Most tourists aren’t crazy enough to bridge to a world with an eighty-million-year divergence.”
For several minutes they watched in silence as the sun dropped behind the other treetops. Desmond suddenly realized the temperature had dropped at least ten degrees. When the sun was no longer visible, the relatively silent forest seemed to wake up. Countless insects, and probably other creatures Desmond couldn’t even imagine, began calling. It was a living symphony of sounds completely alien to human ears.
By the time Desmond spoke again, he had to raise his voice above a whisper in order to be heard. “It’s going to be a long night. I don’t think I’ll be able to sleep without falling.”
She didn’t answer.
“I keep seeing the way you killed that bird man in my head,” he said. “Where did you learn to kick like that?”
“I learned it before I was ten. It’s a 540 kick. Because you spin 540 degrees. I figured it was a move a stupid bird wouldn’t expect.”
“So you’ve always been a fighter?”
She waited a few seconds before answering. “Before I was seventeen, I fought because I had to. After that I fought for money.”
“Your online profile said you were a mixed martial arts fighter.”
“Mostly. After high school I tried making a living at it. Six years. Something I don’t recommend. Then a rep from SafeTrek came to my training club and gave a spiel. They were looking for good hand-to-hand fighters. Because weapons don’t bridge. Adventure and good pay for the right person. So I applied.”
“Doyle told us you’re the best bridger he’s ever seen.”
She blew out a brief laugh. “Only because I haven’t died yet.”
Desmond wasn’t sure how to respond to that, so he stared at the sky. The first stars were showing up. He knew the stars would be pretty much identical to those he’d see if he were back in his own universe. Not much could happen to stars in only eighty million years.
“Your turn,” she said, just loud enough to be heard over the night creatures. “Tell me about yourself.”
“What do you want to know?”
“Nothing really. I just figured it was your turn.”
He turned and stared at her in the fading light. She may have been smiling slightly, but he couldn’t tell for sure. “I can tell you this,” he said. “I don’t want to die here, but I’m not excited about going back.”
She shifted her head slightly to gaze at him. “Not what I expected.”
“Well, I’m going to have almost nothing to show for this excursion. I had carefully planned an entire sequence of observations, focusing on the types of data I’m good at recalling. That all went out the window seconds after we arrived. Other than random things I’ve encountered, I won’t have much of anything for my dissertation. They’ve already given me too many extensions and free passes. Three years in my PhD program, and now I’ll never finish. I think I was in over my head from the beginning anyway.”
“I thought you had a photographic memory.”
“Recalling information isn’t everything.”
“Why did you leave your hiding spot and follow me?” she asked, changing the subject.
“The bird men were chasing you. I waited until they had all passed by. I thought you might need help. Turns out I was right.” He watched her, but she didn’t respond. He noticed she was shivering. He said, “The temperature has dropped more than I thought it would. I’m afraid it’s going to get pretty cold by morning.”
“The air here is dry, that’s why.”
“You’re cold already.”
She nodded. “It’s the blood loss.”
He looked down at the two limbs supporting them. Hers was wider than his. “Um, I’m not trying to be a creep, but maybe we should—”
“Yes, we can
save heat by reducing surface area. And you’re not being a creep—you’re being smart. My body needs rest or I’ll be worthless to you tomorrow.” She inched forward on her limb, leaving a gap between her back and the trunk. “Sit behind me.”
At this moment it seemed anything he could say would be awkward, so he silently got up and maneuvered into place behind her. After a bit of fumbling, he was able to place his feet on the limb with his knees bent outward and her legs resting on top of his feet. It was reasonably comfortable. He put one arm around her waist. With his other hand he gripped the same limb she’d clung to when he had plugged her wound.
They sat this way for several minutes without talking. It felt surprisingly comforting having her warm body against his.
Suddenly she gripped his leg so hard it hurt.
He was about to protest when he heard it, too—a creature moving on the forest floor below. He glanced down, but the space below was an ocean of blackness. Each step the creature took produced a low thud on the soil. It was large, much larger than the bird men. It stopped every few steps, and he could hear it sniffing the air. It must have tracked their scent to this tree. It began walking back the way it had come but then doubled back and stopped beneath them again. Could a creature that large climb the tree? It walked back and forth several more times, and then it wandered off, its footsteps slowly growing fainter and fading away.
Desmond let out a long breath. “I can’t imagine putting myself in situations like this for a living. But I bet you’ve seen some amazing things.”
She leaned her bald head back to rest on his chest. “You don’t see things the way I do. You see things that amaze you. I see only threats.”
He considered this. He suddenly had a new understanding of the vast differences between her life and his. She had grown up fighting, probably for her very life. Then she had continued fighting to survive, but in a different way—to make money. And now she was fighting to save the lives of tourists.
“Do you enjoy what you do? Being a bridger, I mean.”
“Not today.”
He decided to change the subject. “Infinity is a good bridger name. But I wouldn’t mind knowing your real name.”
“We don’t tell tourists our real names.”
“Well, this tourist saved your life today. Don’t I deserve a little more?”
Her shoulders shook once, perhaps a brief chuckle. “Maybe you do. My name’s Passerina.”
He had heard that name before. Suddenly he made the connection. “The painted bunting!” He moved his hand from her belly and put his finger on the tattoo on her chest. “That explains the tattoo.”
She didn’t respond to this, so he moved his hand back to her waist. He would have to hold on to her all night to keep her from falling if she fell asleep.
After a few minutes of silence, he said. “It’s cool that your parents named you after a bird.”
She didn’t respond to this.
“It’s also cool that you keep having the tattoo re-inked.”
Still she didn’t respond.
He sighed. Maybe she just didn’t feel like talking. Then he noticed her breathing had become rhythmic. She was already asleep.
Desmond looked up at the stars. He tightened his grip on the limb he’d been using for stability and tightened his other arm around Infinity.
10
Pets
August 4
Infinity’s eyes flicked open. Her surroundings had changed. Instead of darkness and stars she saw blue sky and bubble leaves. She wasn’t sure it was real. She had awakened so many times, each time struggling to differentiate between reality and disturbing dreams about Razor being attacked again and again by beaked predators. Something tightened around her waist. A warm arm.
“You really awake this time?” The voice was inches from her ear.
“I think so. Yes. Shit. I can’t believe I fell asleep.”
“You needed rest.”
“I suppose you stayed awake all night. Otherwise I would’ve fallen, and I’d be busted up on the ground.”
“Yeah. It’s a good thing I’m dehydrated. Taking a pee would have been awkward.” Desmond shifted his weight to the side, and hazy memories came back to Infinity of him doing that over and over during the night.
She pulled his arm from her waist and sat up straight. Her hip burned as she shifted, and she sensed that it would have been much worse if she hadn’t slept. “You’ve saved my life twice now,” she said.
“A couple more times and we’ll be even.”
She inspected her hip wound. It looked infected as hell, but it wasn’t bleeding. The plugs were doing their job. If she made it to bridge-back, they’d bombard her with antibiotics, give her a few weeks off, and then assign her to another excursion. She leaned back against the warmth of Desmond’s body. “It’s August. Why is it so cold?” She pulled his arm around her waist again, which helped.
He shifted again. “Like you said last night, the air here is dry, maybe because these trees don’t transpire like ours do. And there are countless other changes that could have occurred in the last eighty million years.”
She began weighing the merits of several courses of action. Based on the sun’s height above the eastern horizon, bridge-back was probably twelve hours away. Maybe the safest option was to stay where they were.
“We need to get back to Lenny and Xavier,” the tourist said, as if he had sensed what she was thinking. “They may need our help.”
“They’ll be safe until bridge-back. If the damn bird men are still crawling all over this area, the last thing we want to do is reveal your friends’ location by attempting to go there.” She was glad they were contained where they couldn’t get out. It gave her one less thing to worry about. But she decided not to share this with Desmond.
“Maybe you’re right. But I wish we could at least check on them—see if they made it through the night okay.”
She decided she’d better get his mind off that idea before he started dwelling on it. “Tell me about how you managed to arrange this excursion. Most tourists either pay for it with some kind of research grant or they’re filthy-rich adrenaline junkies. The three of you seem different.”
“I share an apartment with Lenny and Xavier back in Columbia—South Carolina, not the country. We’re all in biology degree programs at USC, so we have that in common. We were drinking one night, and Lenny suggested this idea for my dissertation. I knew it was crazy, but later I couldn’t stop thinking about it. And things gradually fell into place. Xavier liked the idea and wanted to come, which was fortunate because his family owns a chain of New York bookstores called Middle Earth Books. Have you heard of them?”
She shook her head. She was already losing interest in his story, but at least he was thinking of other things now.
“So Xavier approached his dad about—”
Infinity grabbed his leg to shut him up. She had seen movement below.
“What?” he whispered.
She pointed, slowly. Something was coming. As it drew nearer, she saw that it was one of the bird men. A smaller two-legged creature walked just ahead of it, straining against a rope leash. It was leading the bird man directly to their tree.
The tourist whispered in her ear. “You’ve got to be kidding. They have pets?”
The pair stopped directly below, and the smaller one sniffed at the base of the tree. The bird man gazed up, trying to spot them.
A chittering rattle suddenly erupted above the humans’ heads. Infinity glanced up. The same damn feathered squirrel from the previous day clung to a limb a few yards above, scolding them with an alarmingly loud call. Perfect.
Desmond waved his arm at the creature, trying to shoo it away.
A shrill whistle came from below. The bird man had spotted them and was calling to the others. It whistled again, even louder.
“What do we do now?” the tourist hissed.
There was only one clear choice. “Climb down!” she said, rolling to the si
de and clutching another limb. “I’ll take this one out. We’ll run before the others get here.” She twisted sideways, and the fire in her hip nearly caused her to fall. She gritted her teeth and tried to ignore the pain. She started climbing down.
The bird man whistled again and again, aware of what they were trying to do. Infinity assumed it was also preparing its weapon, but she was too busy negotiating the tree limbs to keep an eye on it.
“Infinity, it’s too late!”
She paused and looked. Another had arrived, and she glimpsed several more running through the forest. By the time she got to the ground, there would be too many. “Go back up!” she urged as she started climbing. They needed to get out of range of the crossbows.
They climbed until they were at least sixty feet from the ground and could go no higher. At least ten bird men were now standing below, each with its own tracking animal. They stood in a cluster, looking up and chattering to each other. Infinity was pretty sure she and Desmond had climbed beyond the effective range of the primitive crossbows, but the creatures might still try to climb partway up and shoot them. She and the tourist could possibly fight them off if they tried climbing all the way up to drag them down. But not indefinitely. Again, she realized she had chosen a terrible hiding place. Their only hope was to sit tight and try to hold them off until they gave up or until bridge-back. At this point it seemed unlikely they would give up any time soon.
The bird men continued talking for several minutes. Infinity was constantly adjusting her weight, trying to find relief for her hip. Abruptly, the squawks and whistles stopped. The creatures gathered around the base of the tree. Their heads began moving, and Infinity could hear sounds of scratching and crunching.
“What the hell!” the tourist said. “They’re chewing on the tree.”
He was right. The bird men were biting the tree and tossing aside chunks of the soft, green bark. Infinity watched, not wanting to believe what she was seeing. Within a few minutes, they were through the soft outer layer, and the sounds of their gnawing beaks became louder and more frantic. Based on the size of the chunks they were now tossing aside, progress was slower. But they were still making progress.
Bridgers 1_The Lure of Infinity Page 10