“Some could be bats,” Felix conceded. “I’ve only ever seen one, trapped in the loft of a barn. It didn’t look like these. It could’ve been a different kind. But whatever any of them are, they all seem to be flitting that way.” He pointed the muzzle of his rifle down the trail.
“We’re just pushin’ ’em.”
Felix shook his head. “No, they’re flying that way from behind us too, ignoring us. Something’s drawing them. Maybe it’s water.”
Hudgens tilted his wheel hat back and grimaced, rubbing his forehead. Then lifted his canteen as if evaluating the weight. If the water butts in the ship were broken, and it was likely they were, things would get very thirsty. He might consider Olayne a fool, but seemed to agree with his instinct to find water. “Could be, I reckon. Very well. Just a few hundred more paces. Agreed?”
Felix paused, then nodded. “Agreed.”
They didn’t go much farther at all before both of them noticed more sky leaking down through the trees ahead. Hudgens started to quicken his pace, but Felix held him back.
“What?”
“This is wrong,” Felix cautioned.
“What do you mean?”
“Listen.”
The raucous sound of the birds in the woods had increased tremendously all around, but the noise was even louder ahead. If they’d come to a water hole or stream, the flying creatures acted just as excited to find it. Or perhaps there was a village with an abundance of refuse the birds liked—but villagers might not be friendly. Sure that Hudgens was on his guard now, taking his musket in hand, Felix released him, and they crept slowly forward, side by side. The first thing that gave them a dreadful inkling of what they’d find was a splintered spar, wrapped in ragged canvas. Spiderwebs of frayed cables began to festoon the trees. Then they saw the trees themselves had suffered like those around Mary Riggs.
“Lord protect us!” Hudgens hissed, whipping his musket to his shoulder. He didn’t fire. Hundreds of colorful birds—and not birds—crawled on a human corpse lying in the ferny needles near the path, ripping clothing and tearing bloody gobbets of flesh. The things were utterly absorbed in their meal, pausing only to fight over the choicest morsels. And beyond that first horrible sight, Felix and Hudgens found another, and another, until they came to a clearing created by the far more shattered wreckage of another ship, surrounded by what looked like hundreds of bodies, all buried in colorful, riotous mounds of feasting creatures.
“Lord have pity on ’em,” Hudgens murmured. “It’s Xenophon!”
“How can you tell?” Felix whispered sickly. “The ship’s . . . upside down!” It was true, for the most part. The vessel had impacted at least as hard as Mary Riggs, but also broken in half. The bow was perfectly inverted and even more collapsed than the other ship after all the ballast and cargo crashed down and blew out the sides of the hull. Anyone in it or on it would’ve been mashed to paste. The stern was a splintered chaos of ragged timbers splayed out around flattened, whalelike ribs, and the rudder dangled from the sheared-off trunk of a broken tree. Felix fought an urge to vomit. He’d never seen anything so violently destroyed before—and that included the bodies being ravenously devoured.
“I lived near Southampton an’ watched ships come an’ go most o’ me life, didn’t I?” Hudgens hissed angrily. “Even as she is I can tell she was another old whaler, an’ that makes her Xenophon. Aye, an’ the blow must’ve overturned her before she fell.” He shook his head and practically shivered. “Thank God for Captain Holland or we’d’ve ended the same.”
Even as they stood there—live versions of the things the flying creatures ate with such frenetic relish—they were ignored because they were upright and moving. But that might’ve caught the attention of other things. Something almost as tall as a man suddenly rose up from within the thunderous flock of carrion eaters and stared directly at them.
“That’s no bird!” Felix exclaimed with a rising voice. Its shape and posture might’ve resembled a bird’s, and it was covered with a kind of feathery brown-and-white fur with a short dark crest and tail plumage, but it had powerful arms with long, vicious claws on its hands in place of wings. Its tail was long and whiplike before spiky plumage flared near the tip. The biggest, most horrifying difference, however, was the head. Bobbing like a grackle’s on the end of a relatively narrow neck was a head straight out of a nightmare. Large, reptilian eyes glared down either side of a long, narrow snout, jaws bristling with jagged, bloody teeth.
“No, it ain’t,” Hudgens agreed, taking a small step back. The creature uttered a rasping, guttural bark that cut through the noise of the feeding flyers, and two more just like it raised their frightening heads to regard the newcomers as well. “Bloody hell,” the artilleryman breathed, obviously frightened but amazingly calm. “We sure found somethin’—if we get back to report it.”
Bolstered by his companion’s composure, Felix took a step back as well, murmuring, “Whatever you do, don’t run.” There’d still been black bears in Ohio when he first began to traipse the woods, and though he’d never seen one, men had always told him it was sure to chase him if he ran. That made perfect sense. He’d seen cats chase big dogs when they ran. Conventional wisdom agreed that if he couldn’t kill the bear (always preferable in the Ohio of his youth), he should simply ease away. If pursued, he should roar and growl and make himself appear as big and aggressive as possible—and prepare to fight for his life. Often, that would discourage a bear, unless it was a sow with cubs. In that case, there was no telling how it would react. Of course, whatever these things were, they weren’t bears. Running still seemed stupid.
The trio of monsters watched them intently as they picked their way back through the shattered trees and rapidly disappearing corpses, all while flying things swooped around them, lighting among others with challenging cries or squirting streams of yellowish shit. They’d almost retreated to the first body they discovered, and one of the monsters had tired of watching them and returned to its meal when Hudgens suddenly stumbled and fell on his backside—right on the edge of the feeding frenzy. The obsessed little diners exploded into flight amid indignant shrieks, snapping and clawing at both men as they took to the air. Hudgens cried out in anger and pain as several attacked his face and he flailed at them with his musket. This regained the full attention of all three larger monsters. Perhaps his shout and thrashing convinced them he was injured. Exploding through their own clouds of greedy scavengers, they came at a trot.
“Jesus!” Hudgens shouted, leveling his weapon. Klaksh—boom! The musket roared and downy fuzz sprayed off the side of one of the charging creatures. It squealed and nipped at the graze even as the loud shot sent thousands of colorful carrion eaters thundering into the sky. Hudgens was already tearing at a paper cartridge with his teeth as Felix hauled him up. “Should’ve frightened ’em off like that when we first arrived,” he snapped furiously, likely embarrassed as well, as he primed his piece with a small portion of powder from the cartridge before pouring the rest down the .69 caliber barrel and stuffing the paper-wrapped ball down after it with his fingers. He was just drawing his shiny steel ramrod when the flock of swirling bird-things cleared enough for the men to see they hadn’t frightened the bigger monsters at all and they were right there.
Felix already had his rifle shouldered and squeezed the trigger as the closest beast coiled to pounce as it ran. The smaller, more finely tuned lock on his lovingly maintained .54 caliber 1817 rifle snapped and ignited the charge with no discernible delay. With a distinctive crack, its ball struck the creature right in the nose, exiting the palate in a shower of blood and teeth before continuing on to blow a spray of bone and brains out the back of the monster’s head. It fell writhing on the ground, kicking and flailing its long, bristly tail. The other two monsters paused, both at the sight of their dying pack member, as well as—possibly—the different sound the rifle made. Felix didn’t have time to think about that
since they didn’t hesitate long. Both snarled and leaped.
Cursing loudly, Hudgens slammed the ball down his barrel and threw his ramrod at a rushing beast before raising his musket again. Felix was essentially disarmed except for the club his rifle had become. Mounted riflemen were issued the same 1840 sabers as dragoons, but they were ridiculously cumbersome and virtually useless (he’d thought) for a trek through the woods on foot. And Private Hudgens was right; rifles did take longer to properly load. Felix could’ve done as the artilleryman had and dispensed with the cloth patch that took the rifling to spin the ball if he had a few more seconds, but the creature was on him like lightning, hurling him to the ground, slathering teeth grinding on the stock and barrel Felix only barely managed to slam between its jaws before they tore his face or throat away. He heard the boom of Hudgens’s musket and a screech, but then there was more cursing and a cry of outraged pain.
Felix tried to push the monster off him, but it was incredibly strong and had to weigh almost as much as he. Worse, even as it clutched him with one arm, the curved claws piercing his wool jacket and flesh of his shoulder, the claws on the other hand were raking his chest. So far only one had painfully slashed him, the others defeated by chance and the heavy leather cartridge box strap. The thing had other claws, however, and it cocked a leg forward to deploy one on the inside of its ankle that looked like an oversize fishhook. Felix screamed as it tore into the flesh of his thigh, instinctively knowing it would rip downward and fillet the muscle from his leg. He’d be finished, then. With a desperate, gasping effort, he heaved the thing to the side and bashed its face with his rifle butt. Shattered teeth flew as it tumbled away and he managed to stand.
For just an instant, Felix saw Private Hudgens. He’d discarded his musket and had his short, gladius-like sword in one hand, his bayonet in the other. The points of both were bloody. He was limping, but so was his attacker as they cautiously circled each other. Felix’s opponent stood and prepared to lunge again. He wished he had a bayonet, but riflemen were trained to keep their distance and were emphatically not supposed to get into situations like this. That was deemed sufficient reason not to issue them bayonets.
Situations like this! Felix snorted almost hysterically to himself, bringing his rifle back over his right shoulder—God, it hurts!—and taking a stance, left elbow forward, ready to smash the iron buttplate into the monster’s head like a pile driver. It gurgled at him and shifted, muscles tensing.
There was a fluppering sound, followed by a thunk!, and Felix was amazed to see what could only be a large-diameter arrow with oddly oversize fletching protruding from the monster’s side. The beast shrieked and snapped at the shaft, just as another arrow struck very close to the first. Foamy orange blood spewed from the creature’s nostrils, and it hacked out a clump of lung. Wheeling away, it took three bounding steps before collapsing and kicking as more blood exploded from its mouth. Felix turned to Private Hudgens, who fell to one knee, gasping from pain, exertion, terror . . . and now what? His attacker lay with four long arrows in its chest.
“There are more of you after all. Well fought!” came a strange voice speaking English, but with an equally strange accent. Perhaps a dozen dark-skinned men with long black hair began emerging from the gloom of the forest. All wore soft leather tunics, leggings, and moccasins, but most also had bright-colored breechcloths of finely woven fabric. About half were armed with bows taller than they were, each with deadly arrows nocked. The rest carried spears as long as the bows, brandished just as menacingly. The points on the weapons were four to six inches long, cunningly knapped from greenish obsidian as clear as lightly colored glass.
“Savage red men after all, it seems,” Hudgens gasped, “an’ glad I am to see ’em too—I hope.” His breath caught then, as did Felix’s, when two more men approached, clearly escorting another . . . being. It was the same height as the men, about five three or so, dressed much like them, except the leather was less weathered and soiled and the seams were decorated with small bones, shells, and a riot of feathers. The breechcloth was bright green. What most caught their attention and astounded them—aside from the fact it wore a long-bladed basket-hilt rapier at its side and carried what looked like a British-style musket of an older type than the Mexican Army used—was this “person” looked for all the world like an upright cat. Its sky-blue eyes were proportionately larger than a cat’s, and more rounded ears were lower on the sides of its head, but except for darker and lighter patches on its face, it was covered in dark tan fur. And then there was the long, fluffy tail, of course, swishing rapidly from side to side behind it.
“God in heaven, what is that? Where the devil have we found ourselves?” Hudgens whispered, words nearly overwhelmed by the returning cloud of birds.
Felix was struck nearly speechless, terror and dread rising again, heart pounding in his ears. “Are you . . .” he managed fearfully, then had to clear his tight throat to continue. “Are you a demon? Are we dead and gone to hell?”
The cat-thing’s face around its eyes never changed, but it blinked rapidly and formed what could only be a grin. Rather disconcerting itself, considering the long, sharp canines it revealed.
“I’ll leave you to decide if you’re in hell or not, but you’re not dead,” the cat-creature replied with a stern but surprisingly soft voice, touched with what sounded like amusement. “And I’m no demon. At least not to my friends. Hopefully, you’ll be among them.”
“You speak English!” Felix said harshly, accusingly, as if that were further proof the creature was a demon.
It took a breath, and Felix noted that its chest swelled like a woman’s, with female breasts under the buckskin tunic. “I speak several languages. English is one I had not used much for . . . a number of years.” She—it had to be a she—rapidly blinked her eyes and made a kakking sound. “And you speak English, as did the other few survivors we managed to rescue before the monsters began to swarm. How interesting. Does that make you demons?” She cocked her head to the side as if awaiting a response before continuing. “Allow me to introduce myself; I’m Varaa-Choon, warmaster to the great Jaguar King Har-Kaaska.” She gestured around her. “These are my warriors, my ‘Ocelomeh.’ We offer you aid in this terrible world, at least until you learn more of it, just as we did eleven others we found alive.”
“You saved people here?” Felix blurted.
“We just saved you,” Varaa-Choon reminded, eyes narrowing slightly. “Some of the others were badly injured and may still die. All were hurt worse than you, even after your fight with the garaaches.”
“Garaaches,” Felix murmured, kicking the dead monster that almost killed him. So spellbound had he been, it took the sudden movement to remind him of his leg and shoulder wounds. He hissed at the pain.
“Garaaches and other things. Few of the greater dragons roam the dense forest, particularly during this dry time. Their preferred prey stays closer to water, and the trees restrict their movement.” She gestured in the direction of the broken ship, and her tail whipped more rapidly behind her. “With the smell of so much meat on the wind, however, more dangerous things will come. We must be gone. Wild garaaches will avoid the scent of so many of us, but it doesn’t deter the tribal kind, or the greater dragons. Bind their injuries so we can move,” Varaa-Choon told the men around them, who lowered their weapons and approached. It was Felix’s first indication the Ocelomeh understood English as well. Private Hudgens quickly scooped up his musket and took a limping step back.
“You won’t be disarmed as long as you offer no violence,” Varaa-Choon hastened to assure them, then added matter-of-factly, “You’ll be killed at once if you do.” Private Hudgens reluctantly stood while a pair of men knelt to examine his bloody foot. Apparently the . . . “garaache” had hooked his shoe with a claw and torn it off, badly gouging the flesh underneath. Two other men inspected Felix, cutting his trouser leg and peeling his jacket back so they could view h
is other wounds. All the while, they carried on a rapid conversation in a language Felix couldn’t identify. Varaa-Choon was looking at the wreck of Xenophon. “Once the predators are done, we’ll return and pick the bones of your ship more thoroughly. Others we saved told us you were at war with the people of the land you thought this was.”
“Its president, not the people,” Felix loyally countered.
Varaa-Choon snorted. “You make such distinctions? Your world must be much different from ours,” she added cryptically. “In any event, I’m also told there are weapons in the wreck—powder and shot, perhaps even cannon. We’ll come back when it’s safe.”
Felix was more and more confused by the strange warmaster, and virtually every word she said. The situation, the creatures that attacked them and the wounds they inflicted, Varaa-Choon herself . . . all left Felix in a kind of growing shock. But what was all this about different worlds? It was too much. He was a good Lutheran boy from Ohio and still couldn’t banish the conviction he was in some kind of hell, or at least trapped in a terrible nightmare.
But Varaa-Choon obviously assumes Private Hudgens and I are survivors of this wreck, and don’t even know about Mary Riggs. What of the other ships that were with us? Are they lying shattered in the forest as well, their people being eaten? Utterly bewildered, Felix didn’t know what to do. His instinct for secrecy in an enemy land was to keep his mouth shut, but these people weren’t acting like enemies. One warrior had just handed him his gnawed-on rifle! Maybe they’re Maya Indians, Felix thought. They have to be, don’t they? Aren’t some of them fighting Mexico too? But what of this “Varaa-Choon” creature? She isn’t only a different race of human; she isn’t human at all. What does that leave, besides demons? Then there was her comment about “more dangerous things,” and “greater dragons.” What are they? More important, are they or these “Ocelomeh” more dangerous to our comrades at Mary Riggs?
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