Chou pointed to her left. “That way. But if you’re thinking of leaving, I would advise you wait until the morning. We have no idea where we are or what’s in these woods.”
Phillip shook his head. “Well, as I said, lady, I have absolutely no intention of—”
We froze as a sound, half-snarl half-growl, echoed through the forest from somewhere close by.
“Is… is it a wolf?” Albert said, suddenly at my side, his two hands clasped tightly around the fingers of my left hand. I instinctively drew him closer to me.
“Maybe a coyote?” Phillip said quietly, though I knew from the tone of his voice he didn’t believe his own words.
Living all my life in California, I’d heard coyotes on an almost nightly basis, and whatever creature that bone-chilling snarl belonged to was most definitely not a coyote.
“Probably just an owl or… something,” I said, not wanting to scare the boy any more than he already was.
“Shhh!” said Phillip, “listen.” He took a quick step back as something large moved through the undergrowth beyond the light of the fire. “Jesus!” Phillip hissed. He stumbled backward, narrowly escaping falling into the fire.
“Quiet, all of you,” Chou whispered, staring into the darkness beyond the range of the fire as though she could see whatever was moving there. She picked up the heavy branch she had used to club the mechanical bug with, gripping it firmly in both hands. Not daring to move, we remained where we stood for several minutes, listening helplessly as the thing prowled through the darkness around the perimeter of our camp.
From somewhere even deeper in the inky blackness, the unmistakable sound of a woman’s high-pitched scream reached us. It was followed by a man’s panicked yell, his words unintelligible.
Our visitor gave a few short snorts that were quickly followed by the sound of it padding away through the underbrush, presumably drawn by the screams.
“It’s gone,” Chou said with certainty after another minute had passed.
Despite the sureness of her words, I wasn’t convinced the thing wouldn’t come back and said so.
Chou said, “I will stand watch and keep the fire burning all night. I believe that will keep it at bay. You should rest.”
Phillip, his face pale in the orange glow of the fire, turned and said, “I think you have a point about waiting until morning.” He grinned sheepishly, and I couldn’t help but smile back, relieving some of the fear I still felt.
“You should all try and sleep,” Chou announced. “Tomorrow, we should leave as soon as the sun rises. Whatever that creature was might be less fearful of us in the daylight, and we should find more defensible shelter as quickly as possible.”
Despite the myriad questions still clamoring for answers in my brain, I knew Chou was right. How we had all arrived here on this island was confusing enough, but the events of the past hour made everything before them pale into insignificance on the Weird-Event-O-Meter in my head. There was no guarantee any of these strangers knew any more about what was going on than I did.
The rush of adrenaline that had saturated my body began to fade, replaced by a growing exhaustion. I sat down close to the fire and watched my three companions.
Phillip didn’t seem like he was likely to slit my throat in the middle of the night, and Chou had been the one who saved all of us. We would all undoubtedly be alone or dead if she hadn’t shown up on the beach when she did. And little Albert? Well, he was just a scared kid.
“Come on over here,” I said, beckoning Albert. He did as he was asked and sat down beside me. “I won’t let anything hurt you,” I promised him. He laid down next to me with his back to the fire, one hand cushioned between his head and the now dry leaves surrounding the fire. I did the same, facing him. Over the next few minutes, I watched his eyes gradually close and the slow, intermittent flare of his nostrils as he succumbed to sleep.
Phillip sat with his back against the tree trunk. He pulled his windbreaker tightly around him and closed his eyes. It wasn’t long before he too was asleep.
Chou leaned against the log and stared deep into the campfire’s flames.
That was the last thing I saw before my eyes closed and I drifted away too.
Six
I woke with a start.
Albert still slept beside me, curled up in a tight ball like a kitten. The campfire burned weakly. A dull gray light permeated everywhere. Phillip lay asleep on his side just a few feet away, his back toward us. Chou stood off to the left, her cloak pulled tightly around her shoulders, looking out into the woods.
We'd made it to morning.
The rain had, thankfully, stopped, but the cloud-choked sky, visible through the treetops, was as dull and gray as the insipid light, painful to my eyes.
“Good morning,” I said quietly, hoping not to rouse Albert or Phillip.
Chou turned and smiled at me. “Hello. How are you feeling?”
“Good,” I said, shooting a weak smile in her direction. I actually felt much better than I had in, well, forever. My mind was surprisingly clear, free of its usual clutter. My muscles felt strong, energized like I’d spent a week on a beach somewhere rather than a few hours of sleep on a damp mattress of rotting leaves in the middle of an unknown forest.
Phillip suddenly sat bolt upright like he’d been pricked with a pin, making me gasp and jump. He looked left then right, as though he had no idea where he was. When he saw me and Chou, he relaxed a little.
“Wasn’t sure last night wasn’t just a bad dream,” he said. He pushed an unruly tongue of hair out of his eyes, scratched his head, then added, “Unfortunately, it wasn’t.”
I knew exactly what he meant. This was all so… out there. I mean, that didn’t even really begin to describe the events of the last twenty-four hours. But maybe today we would get some answers.
Phillip stood, stretched, then began to walk away from the camp.
“Where are you going?” Chou asked.
“I need to take a leak. That okay by you?” he said, before disappearing behind a tree. A cloud of steam appeared a few seconds later, and he exhaled a contented sigh.
“I’m hungry.” I turned to see Albert getting to his feet, rubbing the sleep from his eyes.
“Makes two of us,” Phillip said, rejoining us, wiping his hands on his windbreaker.
“Here,” said Chou. She handed each of us several large pieces of something woody-looking and white. “Coconut,” I exclaimed, taking a bite. “Oh my God, it’s delicious.”
“There’s water over there.” Chou pointed at the two conch shells full of water resting on top of the dead log.
“Where’d you get this?” Phillip asked, sniffing at the coconut.
Chou nodded back in the direction she had said the beach was.
“You snuck off while we were still asleep?” Phillip said.
“And snuck back. I have enough supplies for us for the next twenty-four-hours if we limit ourselves. There will be little time to waste today. We must find permanent shelter soon. We will not be able to survive long in these woods if the weather turns.”
“You mean we need to find a settlement or a village,” Phillip continued.
“I do not believe that we will find anything of the sort on this island,” Chou said.
“What? Why?” Phillip said between chewing pieces of his coconut.
“A suspicion, at this point,” Chou said. “But one which I believe will be proved correct.”
“Well, are you going to share?” Phillip said.
“Not yet. When I am certain, I will.”
I said, “No matter which of you is right, we can’t live on coconut and rainwater forever.”
“You are correct,” Chou said, “we need to find a water source and food, too.”
“I don’t expect we’re going to find a 7-11 anytime soon,” Phillip said gruffly.
“What’s a 7-11?” Albert asked.
I looked down at the kid, surprised he’d never heard of the favorite store of
pot-heads and road-trippers and weekend drunks of all ages. But then, he was British, so I guess that would explain why. “It’s a store… a shop.”
Albert nodded as though he understood, but I wasn’t really convinced he did.
“Maybe we should head to the mountain?” I suggested, turning my attention back to Chou and Phillip. “If we can get above the forest’s canopy, we might be able to see where we are, or maybe we’ll spot signs of civilization. We should at least get a better idea of the size of the island.”
“I vote we head back to the beach,” Phillip said, matter-of-factly. “There will probably be rescue boats or planes or something looking for us.”
“I don’t think so,” Chou said.
“Don’t think we’ll be rescued or that we should head back to the beach?” Phillip said.
“Both,” said Chou. “Meredith’s idea is the better one. We do not know where we are or…” she paused as if she had been about to say something then thought better of it. “We should head to the mountain.”
I kicked dirt over the fire, extinguishing it.
“Are you ready?” Chou said to Albert, smiling and reaching out a hand for him to take.
The kid nodded enthusiastically and took hold of her hand.
“As I’ll ever be,” I said.
“Now wait just a damn moment,” Phillip blustered.
Chou walked away. “You may do as you wish Phillip Yeoman, but we are going this way.”
Looking back over my shoulder, I saw Phillip stand his ground for a good ten seconds or so. Then he grumbled something under his breath and jogged after us.
We’d only walked about ten yards from the camp before Phillip stopped abruptly and said, “Holy sh...” He glanced at Albert, finishing his sentence with, “...Shmoly! Would you look at that.” He pointed down at the ground in front of him.
A set of tracks, paw prints to be exact, ran in an arc through the wet earth of the forest floor back in the direction of our camp.
“Were those made by our visitor last night?” I said.
“Undoubtedly,” said Chou.
I knelt and placed my hand inside one of the prints. It was easily four times the size of my hand and three times as deep. Big and heavy. The print showed the outline of four distinct toes, each with a deep indentation at the top of them, presumably from a claw.
“It must be huge? Do you think it was a bear?” I asked.
Chou didn’t respond, her head was on a swivel, turning left and right as she scanned the forest looking for any sign of whatever the prints belonged to.
“It’ll be a big son-of-a-bitch if it was,” Phillip said, his decorum momentarily lost.
Albert pushed closer. “Bears have five toes,” he said, “this one only has four.”
“Really?” I said.
Albert nodded enthusiastically, then added, “But tigers have four toes and a dew claw, like a dog’s, so the tracks might be a from a tiger.”
“Oh, that’s just great. That’s just freaking great.” Phillip turned rapidly from left to right, his eyes jumping up and down the trees as if he expected to spot the beast watching us. “So, we’re being stalked by a big cat? Freaking wonderful.”
“The tracks are heading away from us,” Chou said. “I don’t think whatever predator these belong to is still in the vicinity, but we shouldn’t test my theory. We should continue onward and place as much distance between us as quickly as possible.”
“Agreed,” Phillip said, for once not looking to argue. He took Albert’s hand in his and started off again.
The forest floor was mostly flat, apart from the occasional mound pushed up by the deep roots of the trees. Still, it wasn’t exactly easy going, winding our way through the tree trunks and brush, but we made decent time. There was no sign of any of the other humans who had arrived offshore with us. If it hadn’t been for the screams last night, I might have begun to doubt I’d seen anyone at all. But the forest was alive with life; birds of every size and color, odd-looking rat-like creatures that burrowed deep into the leafy forest floor when they sensed our approach or scampered up the trunks of trees. I even saw what I thought might have been a monkey high up in the branches overhead but it moved so quickly through the upper-canopy of the forest I couldn’t be sure.
We’d not taken more than two-dozen steps away from the prints before a large bird with breathtaking plumage exploded from a nearby bush with a clap of frantic wings, sending all of us a foot into the air in surprise.
“Well, that doesn’t make any sense,” Albert said after he watched the bird fly up into one of the nearby trees.
“What doesn’t?” I asked.
“The trees are all wrong,” the boy said. “And the animals, too.”
Chou stopped and knelt before the boy. “Explain,” she said, gently.
“Well, that’s a California Redwood,” Albert said, pointing to a huge tree towering over everything else. He pointed at another growing just ten feet away from it. “And that’s a Manna Ash.” Then he pointed at another tree I’d assumed was just a run-of-the-mill conifer. “That’s a Mountain Hemlock. And there were coconut trees on the beach.” Albert walked over to a large bush and gently pulled off one of the long tongue-shaped leaves from it and brought it over to us. “And I think this is a Glossopteris.”
Phillip sighed, “So? So, what?” He turned to Chou. “Is there a point to this zoology lecture?”
“Dendrology,” Albert shot back. “Zoology is the study of animals.”
Phillip rolled his eyes and said, “You’re making my teeth itch, kid. How the hell do you know all this stuff, anyway?”
Albert smiled broadly, showing all of his less-than-perfectly-straight teeth. “Books,” he said. “I like to read.”
“Go on,” Chou encouraged, a smile forming on her lips; not condescending, but one a teacher might use when a pupil has finally grasped a concept that had eluded them.
“Well, that bird we saw just now, I think it might have been a Monal, and I definitely saw a Leithia running up a tree.”
Chou didn’t take her eyes off the boy. “Tell us, why this is important,” she whispered.
“Most of these trees, and I don’t recognize all of them, they shouldn’t be growing together at all, especially not in this climate. They all come from very different ecologies around the world; cold, hot, humid. They shouldn’t thrive here, not together.”
“At the risk of sounding like I’m repeating myself,” said Phillip, “So, what?”
Albert’s cheeks grew red at the older man’s dismissive tone, but Phillip saw the daggers I was sending him, and some of the condescension evaporated. He wasn’t a bad man. He was just a guy who was under a shit-ton of stress and wasn’t handling it quite as well as the rest of us.
“Sorry,” Phillip said, throwing a pained smile at the boy, and ruffling his hair gently. “Tell us the rest.”
“And this,” Albert said, holding up the leaf he’d just pulled from the bush, “is a leaf from a Glossopteris.”
“Okay,” Phillip shrugged.
“It went extinct during the Great Permian Extinction. And the bird we saw, I think it was a Himalayan Monal which lives in Nepal and shouldn’t be here.”
“And what about that other thing? What did you call it, a Leika?” I asked.
“A Leithia. A giant dormouse; it’s extinct, too.”
Phillip took a step backward. “So, just let me see if I’ve got this straight? You’re telling me that we’re walking in a forest full of impossible trees, filled with bushes and animals that went extinct before man even walked the Earth? Oh, and did I forget to mention the thing that was apparently looking to add us to its meal plan last night?”
“Yes,” said Albert, smiling happily.
Phillip gave the boy a confused stare for about three seconds, then shook his head and turned back to Chou. “What if the kid’s wrong?” he said.
“He’s not,” Chou said.
“But what if he is?” Phillip insiste
d.
“He’s not,” Chou repeated.
“No sense. This makes absolutely no damn sense at all,” Phillip muttered and began walking again.
As the day wore on, the meager afternoon daylight grew even weaker, and it became apparent we would not even reach the foot of the mountain by the time darkness came around again. Although there was no way to accurately measure how far we'd walked or how far we still had left to travel, Albert was convinced we must be getting close.
“The ground’s been slowly rising for a while now. It’s getting steeper, so we must be close to the mountain.”
“We should make camp soon, then,” Chou said, “before it gets dark. We will strike out again in the morning.”
“No argument from me,” I said.
“Or me,” said Phillip, and with that, he leaned his back against the trunk of a nearby tree and allowed himself to slide slowly down it until he was in a sitting position. “Wish I had a damn cigarette,” he mumbled as he patted the pockets of his jacket. “Damn lighter’s vanished, too.”
Albert gave a little gasp and reached into his pants’ pocket. He pulled out a silver-colored Zippo lighter and held it out to Phillip. “It fell out of your pocket when Chou was carrying you to the forest.”
Phillip reached out and took the lighter from the boy’s hand. “Thanks, kid. Don’t suppose you have my cigarettes in there, too, by any chance?”
Albert shook his head.
Phillip sighed, then, with practiced ease, began to rapidly flip the lighter’s lid open then closed. “Weird thing is, I’ve smoked since I was fifteen, but today I don’t even really want one.”
“Those things would have killed you anyway,” I said, wondering if his tobacco addiction had been cured just like my pain-killer addiction had.
“Bit late for that, sweetheart,” Phillip replied. “Truth is, I think it might be a bit late for all of us.”
We gathered dry wood and stacked it at the foot of a tree whose wide branches and dense leaves we would spend the night beneath. It would provide cover if the cloud-packed sky made good on its threat of more rain.
The Paths Between Worlds Page 5
