Chantal tried to line up her shot, though the canoe Skeezix was in — the target of the attack — was actually between her and the beast, both the canoe and its sail providing the attacker with a partial screen.
And even if she hit the thing, its momentum would probably still bring it, thrashing, into the starboard canoe with enough force to do structural damage, not to mention making it hard for the three occupants to stay aboard. Where the hell was the brain in that thing? Right behind the eyes, presumably. She braced the barrel against the gunwale, sighted on the left eye, which was now rolling back for protection, making the giant fish appear blind. “Skeezix, get down, down, down! I do not want to see your head creeping into my sight picture!”
Skeezix complied, with alacrity.
She slid her finger into the trigger guard … steady …
And then something else came out of the water beside the starboard canoe and hit the advancing shark in the side, just behind the head, with a loud splat that turned into a resounding thud.
The marine behemoth shook, giving up some of its speed. It turned, flipping its head completely out of the water, a head that towered six feet in the air, showing a mouthful of triangular white teeth in rows, probably only seven or eight inches long though they looked twice that size, trying to snap its jaws on its small attacker. It was close enough to the starboard canoe that Skeezix and both paddlers caught faces full of spray. But the five-foot dolphin was gone, sounding for the depths.
Wait. The first little mammal might be gone, but now a second came in like a torpedo from the opposite direction, off the bow of the starboard canoe, leaping at the last moment, then lowering its nose to slam into the gills on the huge shark’s right flank with its bulbous, insulated forehead. Hitting the sensitive gills interrupted the giant fish’s breathing.
The monster was confused. The canoes were starting to pull away. It shook itself to splash more water over its gills and turned to close the canoes again, from behind. Which is when the third dolphin hit its gills, this time on the left side, again.
And here came the first little five-foot mammal once more, leaping from the water right behind the third, smashing its own forehead into the same sensitive gills at full speed, threatening to rupture the capillaries and cut off half the big beast’s oxygen supply.
The shark, thrashing first one way and then the other, was unable to turn fast enough to catch any of its bite-sized tormenters. And it had not lived this long by staying in the game when the odds turned. For now, it had had enough. Bending its body into a wide 180-degree turn, it dove to the southeast, sounding for the deeper water of the channel, and the island full of tasty seals beyond.
And now all aboard the two canoes let out a ragged cheer as they saw rocky bottom seven feet down and rising as their momentum threatened to beach them on the welcome sand and gravel of Warwick Point. The two stern men dipped their paddles, using them as rudders, elegantly turning the craft so they would just skirt the rocks of the point itself. Overhead, the three angular leather pterodactyls flapped for altitude and drew away, disappointed in their hopes for a meal of easy scraps. Eighty yards out, the three dolphins performed little surface-breaking victory leaps before turning east, as well.
The paddlers took it slow for a bit, passing their water skins and panting to make up their oxygen deficit, though there were smiles all around, and vows of friendship to the dolphin god.
* * *
The Pthang were preparing to unstep their masts and furl their sails, but Chantal through hand gestures convinced them to leave the sails up and try letting their booms out 45 degrees to starboard. The reed-mats didn’t belly out as smoothly as nice triangles of woven hemp, but with a little trial and error they got enough of a vacuum forming ahead of the wind-curved sails to build some headway, even heading due north with the westerly wind to port. The teen-age paddlers shrugged and nodded to each other; it would help.
They stayed close inshore now, heading almost due north, past Rocky Point and then Conimicut Point, where the bay finally started to narrow into a recognizable river channel. If this had been Earth One they’d be looking for the upscale yacht harbor of suburban Barrington across the way, though of course the shores of the Bay here looked as unsettled as something out of James Fenimore Cooper. Now Gaspee Point, which had been Namquid Point till the British revenue cutter Gaspee had run aground there in June of 1772, while in pursuit of the little packet Hannah. The Sons of Liberty — led by Abraham Whipple, South Main Street tavernkeeper Joseph Bucklin, and John Brown himself — had then proceeded to row out and burn her to the waterline. Threats to try the culprits in London led to the establishment of the first American Committees of Correspondence, and every schoolchild knew where that led — at least in the historical continuum in which Matthew and Chantal had grown up.
Less than five miles to go to the place where the city of Providence should be but, of course, wouldn’t be. It was past midday and the paddlers wouldn’t be able to stop for much of a lunch before turning back if they wanted to beat the sunset, though the long August evening would presumably help. Just Fields Point ahead, now, where the river would narrow to less than half a mile in width, marking the beginning of what the visitors from Earth One thought of as Providence Harbor.
And then one of the bow paddlers pointed and gave a cry. The others strained to see, but soon everyone but Matthew — possessor of the oldest eyes in the company — could make it out.
“A man waving on the beach,” Chantal confirmed. “They seem to recognize him, he’s certainly dressed like a Pthang.”
“Meaning he’s wearing pretty much nothing?”
“Exactly. There are others with him, too, working their way down out of the bushes to the beach. The way they’re moving, I’d say at least one, maybe two of them are injured.”
“The missing hunting party,” Matthew nodded.
Sure enough, once the two canoes were pulled up on the rocky shore the situation became clear. Avoiding both arachnids on the prowl and thundering saurians larger than they cared to tackle, the four hunters had been driven much further north than they originally planned, till they decided their best course was to lay up near the beach where they could tend the wounds of their two injured comrades while keeping an eye out for precisely what they’d now spotted — the Godsend of an unscheduled canoe from home.
They had some meat — like most subsistence hunters, they’d been able to saw off and carry along only the choice cuts, which usually meant the legs. These were a couple days old and already drawing flies; the visitors tried not to cringe too noticeably at the already ripening smell of what these men obviously considered to be the fruits of a successful if danger-filled expedition. Turok and Old Henry had explained that surplus meat — like that from the tyrannosaur Chantal had killed in battle as well as the mate she’d dropped in the clearing when she first arrived — would be sliced and hung on racks to dry into jerky, providing food for lean months to come.
Once the newcomers’ presence had been explained, Chantal and Matthew went to work using up the meager remainder of her First Aid supplies dealing with the injuries of the two hunters who had gotten the worst of their encounters with the thunder lizards. The Pthang already understood setting and splinting broken limbs, fortunately, and seemed to have done OK in that regard. Chantal was surprised at how well some of the remaining nasty slashes seemed to be healing, though one was refusing to close, oozing enough yellow fluid that she decided to sprinkle in the last of the powdered antibiotic she had on hand.
There was no question of taking the canoes further north at this point. Four full-grown men and the precious meat, added to the original four paddlers, was a full load. The Pthang didn’t want to seem inhospitable, but it was obvious they had to turn south before losing any more daylight. They seemed very pleased when their guests made it clear they understood and were ready to tackle the last couple of miles to their destination on foot. Matthew would carry Chantal’s empty rifle case. Given wha
t they’d been through, she preferred to keep the weapon at the ready.
The Pthang tried to give them more food than they could carry. Laughing and gesturing “Enough!”, Matthew and Skeezix stowed what they could in a couple of makeshift backpacks, adding a water skin each across their shoulders till they looked like Basque sheepherders ready to strike out for the high pastures. After that was sorted out there were handclasps all around and the two canoes — now fully loaded — turned quickly for home.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
On foot, the travelers from Earth One found the last two miles of their journey — along the stretch of waterfront where the berths and quays of Providence Harbor would have stood, back home — uneventful. When they reached the mouth of the Providence River itself, however — the Seekonk curving off to the east beyond Fox Point — they were all a bit shocked by how different the landscape looked.
In its two-and-a-half centuries of human habitation back on Earth One, the river had been tamed into little more than a picturesque canal suitable to provide a nice waterfront vista for the downtown seafood restaurants. Here, though, considerable waterflow obviously still poured from the north during spring runoffs, and hurricanes untamed by locks and gates obviously swept up from the south each fall, resulting in enough erosion that the little river poured down into the wider Seekonk from between a pair of substantial bluffs, dotted higher up with the entrances to a series of caves.
So Worthy’s casual instructions to his two hit men — that they should walk west several miles before activating their headset resonators to return to their own dimension — actually meant they’d had to find a way to cross this miniature chasm, and then climb the bluff on the west side, before proceeding further.
And that was as far as they’d got.
On the sandy slope below one of the cave entrances, a considerable ways up the slope to the west, a dead spider — a big one — lay drying in the sun. And now, from the cave mouth itself, someone was waving. Someone wearing clothes.
“Here! Up here!” shouted Worthy Annesley’s bodyguard and personal assistant, the tall, slim black man Bucky Beausoleil, waving his shotgun.
Matthew, Chantal and Skeezix turned and started up the slope, which was littered with rocks and stones that varied from the size of a cobblestone to a few as big as a Buick.
“But watch out for the big spiders!” Bucky shouted, pointing downslope to their north.
“Now he tells us,” sighed Chantal.
Sure enough, they could now spot at least three of the giant arachnids off to the north and slightly above them on the slope, where they’d been lurking behind some of the larger boulders. Two, which were almost a hundred yards off, held their positions. But the closest one started working its way in their direction, angling to cut them off just about the time they’d be likely to reach the cave mouth where Bucky was sheltering.
“Faster!” Chantal shouted. “When I stop, you two keep going. It looks like they’re not following Worthy’s guys into the caves.”
“When you stop?” Matthew asked, puffing a little as he followed Skeezix up the steep slope, the two of them still burdened with their makeshift backpacks full of food.
“Just keep going!”
Sure enough, their eight-legged pursuer was picking up speed — damn, but these things were fast.
Bucky continued to wave them up to the cave mouth, but Chantal noticed he was making no effort to sight his gun at the approaching monster. How many days had he — or they — been here, holding the damned things off? Chances were his piece was empty, or damned near.
“Did Worthy send you?” Bucky yelled.
“More or less,” Matthew shouted back as they continued climbing. “Long story.”
Chantal had the strongest thighs, so she was in the lead when she stopped about twenty yards short of the cave mouth, dropping to one knee and shouldering the big 50. “Just get your asses in that cave.”
No one argued with her. She had only two rounds left in this last magazine, she reminded herself. Although she’d tried to bring as much ammo as she could reasonably carry, .50-caliber cartridges, bigger than Dona Solana’s cheroots, were heavy. She had not envisaged two days of open combat. Better wait and do this job with one shot. The big crawly thing was thirty yards away, now twenty yards, huge and hairy and skittering straight on, clacking its horrible jaws and fangs; chances were it had never seen a firearm.
Finally the head filled her sights, complete with slavering fangs, and she squeezed off the round. Thank God; yellow and pale blue spider brains blowing out in cheerful profusion as the creature tilted sideways and started slipping down the slope to her right, finally flipping on its back near its days-dead comrade. Even after this one stopped sliding, its awful legs continued to twitch for a while. Chantal followed Matthew and Skeezix up and into the cave.
The new arrivals dropped to a knee and took a few seconds to catch their breaths.
“They don’t follow you into the caves?” Matthew asked Worthy’s two hit men — the smaller white guy was indeed there with Bucky; Chantal could never remember his name.
“They don’t like the shotguns. Once we killed that big guy you see down the slope they decided to hide behind the rocks down there and wait us out.”
“So you’ve been here, what, four days?”
“About that.”
“With no supplies?”
“You can say that again,” complained the little white guy. Arvin? Alvin?
“This is a whole network of caves,” Bucky replied, obviously working to stay patient with his companion. “There’s a spring fur ther back, so we’ve been OK for water. But yeah, what little food we carried gave out two days ago.”
“Lost your headset resonators?” Chantal asked.
“No, we’ve still got ’em, although we’re not sure how long the batteries are good for.”
“So why didn’t you jump back to Earth One?” Chantal asked.
“Now there’s a good question,” remarked little Alvin, with a level of sarcasm Chantal figured she would have found hard to take for four hours, let alone four days.
“Actually, we were planning to go tonight,” Bucky answered, calm as ever. “First off, our instructions were to not cross back till we’d made it at least a mile west of here. Two guys matching our description popping out of thin air back onto South Main Street, carrying shotguns? Out of the frying pan into the fire.”
“Which was a good argument for the first two days,” the smaller, white button man replied, his voice dripping sarcasm. “But there’s no reason we couldn’t of gone last night, or the night before. The cops don’t leave crime-scene tape around a courthouse for more than a day.”
The taller fellow took a deep breath. “Alvin is impatient,” he acknowledged. “I don’t much blame him. As of this morning, we’d both about given up hope of seeing any help from home. Then you’ve got the problem with the topography here, the elevation. You may have noticed you just climbed about fifty feet above the river level, maybe sixty. Call up a vortex from here and step through to our Providence back on Earth One, chances are you’d find yourself falling fifty feet to the ground on the other side. I don’t care how well you tuck and roll, fifty feet means broken bones, which can really slow down the rest of your getaway.”
“There are buildings, right?” Alvin asked. “With roofs?”
“And finally we did try, once, but what we could see through that vortex looked hinky to me. It shimmered, flickered. Didn’t look right.”
Little Alvin snorted and rolled his eyes. “Hinky,” he sneered under his breath.
“Metal ores in these caves?” Bucky continued. “Something those big spiders are doing to mess up our equipment? I don’t know. At any rate, we were going tonight. Out of other options, or so it seemed till you all showed up. Moon’ll set well before midnight. I figured our first step would be to work our way down close to the river, quiet as we could, then open a vortex, hope we’ve got enough battery power and hope a
ny kind of hornet’s nest we raised last Thursday at the courthouse has died down. Of course, we always hoped Worthy would be sending someone to help us out. A little surprised it’s you three, which is not to say we’re not happy to see you. Anyone can get edgy when the food runs out. Don’t suppose you’ve got some rations in those packs?”
“Oh. Sure,” Skeezix smiled and made himself useful, digging into his own makeshift pack and divvying up some of the food the Pthang had sent along from the treehouse village that morning. Worthy’s two men didn’t stand on ceremony, but dug in.
“This is good,” Bucky smiled. “What kind of meat is this?”
“Tyrannosaur,” Chantal replied matter-of-factly, “cooked with wild grapes and some tarragon, I think.”
They only stopped chewing for a few seconds.
“Go easy, gentlemen,” Matthew advised. “Cory sent along half a dozen of the newest model headsets with Chantal, their battery packs should be fully charged. We’ve also got a pouch of fresh-picked peyote, along with a little tea in the lady’s thermos. You probably don’t want to have full stomachs when we down these plant helpers. And I agree with the decision you reached this morning, for what that’s worth. I can’t see any benefit to hanging around here any longer, waiting for our eight-legged friends to work up their courage to probe us again, especially given the ammo situation. I propose we dose up, plan on calling a vortex and getting out of here within the next 90 minutes.”
The Miskatonic Manuscript (Case Files of Matthew Hunter and Chantal Stevens Book 2) Page 24
