by David Boyle
The Grotky did not truly sleep, and instead were able to control their level of consciousness. By means of the putra ki they were able to rest while remaining as alert as the situation demanded. And if their situation were to improve, the possibility existed that he could allow himself the luxury of the Kartuchu.
Creatures called from the darkness.
A luxury that here could well remain forever unrealized.
*****
Firelight danced across the ceiling, though Hayden barely noticed, Ron sprawled beside him atop his sleeping bag, already fast asleep. The questions kept coming. The ones they’d asked; the ones they should have.
He hated sitting on his hands. Rescue meant they wouldn’t have to leave the island, except maybe to get food… and then only at their choosing. The campsite was near perfect and showed no sign of ever having been flooded. There was water nearby. Firewood for the taking. Considering Wheajo’s conviction that his superiors were already looking and would eventually find them, they had everything they could possibly need.
Then why the disquieting feeling?
How long until they were rescued was the issue. Or was it the dinosaurs? Or finding the food Ron insisted was so readily available?
Could it be he was asking the wrong question?
Every issue they’d discussed had aspects that were certain to make life interesting. Yet all involved some tangible aspect—making sure the island was uninhabited, better clearing their campsite, finding food, and a myriad of others. All of them activities, some possibly dangerous, that they would personally and collectively be forced to deal with. The uneasiness he felt was far more nebulous. A snippet of conversation perhaps… remarks about the ship swirling like smoke in the dark and gloomy recesses of his skull. Whether a thing or a feeling, it defied not only resolution, it defied his every attempt to even describe it.
Exhausted and perplexed, frustrated by his failed logic, Hayden Prentler fell at last into a listless sleep, the ethereal something still grating on his mind.
10
He latched onto the dawning sensation, and came to the conclusion it was simply noise, the sound, perhaps, of birds chirping. A piece of his mind wondered if that made any sense, and decided it couldn’t decide. There were other sensations as well, his growing consciousness edging slowly toward the reality on the other side of his eyelids.
A creepy image scurried away. We’re canoeing, right? In the mountains? He touched an exposed shoulder, then fumbled and snugged a corner of his sleeping bag to his throat. Lucky you didn’t freeze to death.
But then, it didn’t feel that cold. Not really.
Sounds combined with an image… and he cracked an eyelid, a fuzzy expanse of gray-green nylon then taking its place. Even without his glasses, Mark could make out the reinforcing ribs in the rip-stop material. It was dark—had to be early—and the tent was right where it was supposed to be. He yawned and tried to go back to sleep. They had a long way to go today.
Another image spilled from somewhere in his head, this one of people pounding through a cane thicket, a big-headed monster closing in the distance. Crisp and clear, chilling even—the noises, the smells—the vision seemed almost real. There were other pieces too: rapids that vanished in a fog, an island. Dinosaurs! Where the hell did they come from? Mark snuggled deeper. Wow… now there’s some crazy shit.
When had he read that thing about dreams? College maybe. The paper had been written by Dr. Sally Panghorn, a dream study specialist at the University of Illinois at Chicago. She was a firm proponent of the belief that dreams were mental relief valves that had evolved to allow humans, and possibly animals, to deal with stress. Deferring to others the interpretation of dream content, she had focused on determining why some dreams “…are inconsequential weaklings while others are so extraordinarily powerful.”
Starting with the premise that people dream every night, Dr. Panghorn had performed sleep related studies to determine what, if any, relationships existed between the level of (perceived) stress and dream imagery. Those studies resulted in two primary findings: first, that stress was indeed a major instigator in the elicitation of traumatic dreams, a.k.a. ‘nightmares’; and second, that stress levels were proportional to reported dream intensity. The people whose lives are generally uneventful typically report dreams of such inconsequence that the details are forgotten shortly after awakening. On the opposite spectrum, if an individual is stressed—they find a new lover, were robbed or raped, or had endured battle—the dreams reported were often excruciating; wonderful in one instance and terrifying in another. Furthermore, the imagery could linger for exceptionally long periods, and could, in rare instances, be incorporated into long term memory. The stress induced dreams in essence becoming ‘real’, with later recollections mistakenly perceived as actual events.
While the good doctor’s proposal wasn’t particularly intuitive, it had the advantage over competing theories by way of application to personal observation, which for Mark Bennett was especially relevant since he seldom took anyone’s word for anything. He had at the time thought back to his youth, and had made solid connections with some of his scariest nightmares and bad times at school or at home. Later too, to the flood of vivid dreams when he’d changed jobs, and again when he’d put the addition on the house. Weird, scary ones. And the other kind as well, the ones you tried not to forget, like the ones after he’d met Carol, then Marie.
A classic example, he nodded confidently. Dinosaurs! “Humph! Where do you come up with this shit?”
Still….
He thought about the frogs they’d had for dinner, and how they tasted. Then couldn’t stop the continuous string of—memories?—images that marched through his head. So where and what was this stress? The cold? That didn’t make sense; he’d come close to freezing too many times for that to be the case. Unless….
Wings fluttered nearby, the leaves above rustling briefly. The newcomer twittered, its shrill call blending with other sounds of the forest, and for the first time this morning he listened… really listened. The staccato song was a dead ringer for a chickadee, though the others he couldn’t place. And softly, a series of brassy sounding honks.
Mark flipped open his sleeping bag and sat up. He had to squint, but there were his boots and socks; his river hat, clothes bag, and sneakers shoved in the corner alongside his crumpled yellow dry bag; his jeans and a ratty green long-sleeved shirt tossed in a pile nearby.
He frowned.
The shirt was damn near half as old as he was, and had more miles on it than his canoe. Twice he’d retrieved it from the trash, the shirt so thread-bare you could virtually read a paper though it. A reminder of their earliest outings, packing it had become more a tradition than an item to actually wear. Especially in the chilly mountain air. Why then would he have bothered…?
He blinked, then reached to the pocket stitched to the wall of the tent and got his glasses. Tradition huh? Yeah well, you do wear it every now and then. When it’s warm. You know… like yesterday? The voice in his head was laughing; his hand shaking as he slipped his glasses on.
So long as he’d restricted his view to inside the tent, everything was perfectly normal. Not so beyond the mosquito netting. There were cut fronds scattered across the ground, and shrubs with red and yellow flowers, the last vestige of his self-made illusion crumbling when he recognized the blue-suited Buddha beside the still smoldering fire. A few scant yards away was a living, breathing, outta-this-world alien.
The events of yesterday came flooding back—the race downriver, the stunning flash, the dinosaur in the canes—all impossible, yet real events. Head games had, in the past, helped him through some hairy situations, and normally Mark didn’t mind playing. Not this time. Not when his fears had gotten close to getting the upper hand. Fear was a greedy little bastard that had a tendency to monopolize the game. He tried wrapping his brain around the thoughts swirling in his head. The majority were manageable, the darkness yet with that evil little grin. You
’d like to get rid of me, wouldn’t you? Make me leave you alone so you can sleep at night? Well forget it, ‘cause where I stand—his fears held out the frightening possibility of endothermic dinosaurs—you need to be scared, and you need to STAY scared!
Mark clenched his jaw. “And what, make like a turtle?”
Outside was an entire world just waiting to be explored, and he wasn’t about to let some pea sized bit of tissue in his head stand in the way of doing just that. He had no doubt the new reality was a dangerous place. But what the heck? So was Hell’s Gate. An inapt comparison maybe, but what difference did it make, here or there, when you could end up dead if you happened to mess up? Fear was that tingle along the back of your neck that made sure you recognized danger. After that, it was up to the individual whether to take the chicken route through life or meet the situation head on and embrace the rush.
Even if you end up dead?
Bugles sounded softly in the distance like some marvelous call of the wild.
Mark found himself nodding. “If that’s the price of living… yeah, even then.”
Mark reached for his pants, shifting his attention to the world beyond the walls of his tent. Birds were chirping from one, two… at least three different directions; another sound too, very faint, like snakes hurrying through dry grass. He shoved a foot through a leg of his trousers and remembered the rapid at the end of the island. The big one where Ron had managed to agitate an entire herd of dinosaurs. Which seemed strange now that he thought about it. In all their years paddling together, he didn’t recall the guy ever having gone quite so ballistic.
He’d just had a preview of what stress could do to his head, and he didn’t like what he saw. So were Ron’s actions really so over the top? Or Charlie’s? And while it wasn’t showing—not yet at least—it wasn’t inconceivable that Hayden or Tony could also succumb, the question being: when and to what degree? Being here was going to be an interesting experiment in interpersonal relationships whether the participants were willing or not. The curious part was—“Must you engineer everything to death?” Marie grumbled in his head—the experiment was already years in the making.
People naturally tended toward activities they enjoyed, and for Mark and his still sleeping companions, the one they had in common was canoeing. As with many outdoor activities, the rewards for successfully running a major rapid were fleeting and largely illusory, while the risks clearly were not. He’d never thought much about it, but they were all risk takers to one degree or another, and he only now realized that they had down selected themselves to some sub-category of Type A personality individuals who happened to live in close proximity to one another and liked to both paddle and drink! Whether those similarities would help or hurt in the present situation was TBD. At the very least, Mark hoped that all the nights they’d spent and the risks they’d taken together would allow each of them to see past the quirks that could well crop up in the days ahead. For his part, Ron needed to get lots better control of his temper. At that, Ron had a relief valve. Give him a target to put a bullet in, and he’d be happy, if only for a while.
Mark snugged his belt and clipped the buckle. Marie was right, as usual. If he hadn’t been so damn analytical and allowed the practicalities of how to pack his bow, some arrows, and his quiver to stop him, he would have been in the same situation as Ron. Okay, almost the same. His bow was—or would have been—no match for the killing power of a rifle. Even so, it would have given them another weapon. Then too, Charlie might not have felt so alone, and they’d both have had the means to possibly kill a dinosaur. Mark slipped on his socks. There had to be little ones, right…?
How cool would that be? To draw on a dinosaur and kill one with an arrow? Probably never happen, but it was fun to think about.
Mark zipped the tent open, then sat with his feet past the door and pulled on his boots. The scents of a million new and exotic plants teased his nose as he tied the laces. The shrubs nearby had blossomed overnight, pockets of color showing about the forest, a veil of smoke drifting slowly into the trees. Add twigs and a few minutes puffing, and their fire would be awake too.
He grabbed his hat and got up. The forest was quiet, the leaves hanging limp in the morning air. He looked past the tent and across the river to the far shoreline and its strange assemblage of vegetation. A pinkish glow was painting the horizon, the sun either not yet risen or hidden behind the trees. He checked his watch—11:35—and wasn’t surprised that he’d have to reset it. Get everyone together, pick a time to call noon, and they could all be in sync with a time that made better sense.
No one was stirring, including the alien, the legs and arms folded in what seemed an uncomfortable posture. The fire had been fed during the night, so he had to have been up at least once. And maybe it was the lighting, but the uniform wasn’t quite the blue it had been yesterday. Could be it was asleep too. A living uniform. Very strange. Then again, the double-lobed skull was going to take some getting used to as well.
Another of the brassy sounding honks tripped along the river.
Wheajo wasn’t going anywhere, but wait too long and the dinosaurs might. He started for the forest, hesitated, then looked to the hanger tree. The rifle was missing, but Charlie’s compound was there. Wake him and ask… or just take it? What the hell? He can bitch later.
Mark plucked the compound from its hanger, hefted the thing, got a feel for the riser, then tried drawing the string back. A couple of inches, and he stopped, the serving carving like iron into his fingertips. “Holy shit.” He took a breath and tried again, this time hooking the string at the joints before pulling, his left arm bouncing when the eccentrics rolled over and the draw weight dropped suddenly to less than half. He held for a three count, and let down. “Damn,” he whispered, “what the hell you got this thing set to, Charlie?” Unsure how well he could shoot the thing, if a critter popped up Mark knew he could at least make an impression. Better a bow with too heavy a draw weight than go into the woods unarmed.
The bugles called again.
He went to his tent, strapped on his fanny pack, then grabbed the bota and a glove for his shooting hand. A last glance at the campsite and he hurried into the verdant green of the still sleeping Cretaceous forest.
The woods were darker away from the clearing, the sun still too low on the horizon to reach any distance into the overhead leaves. He moved cautiously, always on the lookout for movement, and at first glance noticed only the major differences in the trees. Except for wanting to know if a particular type provided either cover or munchies for the critters, he’d never paid much attention to which trees grew in the forests he’d hunted. If the game he was after liked it, so did he. Beyond that, the trees and ground cover mattered only to the extent that he could move quietly enough to stalk within shooting range. Here, every animal would be unlike any he’d ever seen. Which by itself was exciting, so long as he saw them first.
The forest was noticeably different from the woods he’d hunted in Wisconsin and Illinois, and even more so from those in Colorado, the growth patterns, even so, seeming much the same. He moved quickly where the ferns allowed, and slower when they didn’t, at times stopping altogether to watch and listen, and also to check that he hadn’t snagged a leaf or a twig with an eccentric. Seeing more than a few steps ahead was often impossible, and that, more than anything, made him nervous. It was unlikely there were dinosaurs of substance on the island or someone would have either seen or heard them, though smaller ones were a distinct possibility. He was taking a risk, certainly, but the same could be said for running rapids in the boonies. If there were dinosaurs, hopefully they’d run the other way when they heard him. And if not… hell, he’d just have to shoot them.
At least that was the plan.
The little wind there was, was in his favor, and so long as the currents didn’t muddy the situation, Mark was confident he had the upper hand.
He began to recognize subtleties in the undergrowth, and noticed that within the other
wise uniform cover of ferns were pockets of shrubs and bushes associated with the deadfalls that lay scattered and rotting about the forest. Some were substantially thicker than others, the ferns providing an easier and quieter passage than the outwardly shorter routes through odd sections of brush. Scout ahead and stay clear of the deadfalls, and progress could be made with no more or less difficulty than through forests of the Midwest.
Mark had hoped to track the bugling while keeping sight of the river, but the trees along the bank were too dense. Flowering plants were scattered throughout the forest, with thick communities growing at the margins. There were even patches where they had somehow managed to outcompete the ferns, the forest floor in places carpeted in color. Pretty too, if damn near impossible to get through. He was making progress regardless, his fingers crossed that when he got to the dinosaurs he’d actually be able to see them.
It was obvious once he noticed, but he came to realize that he hadn’t crossed a single trail. Whether rabbits or deer, elk or whatever, the locals always made and used trails. Yet here those pathways were conspicuously absent. Mark pressed on, curious, and took ever more careful note of the plants he was wading through. He started counting, and gave up at fifty after covering barely a hundred yards. Some smelled, well, good enough to eat, and it struck him as strange that virtually none showed signs of having been touched by anything approaching the size of a deer. Mark swept his hand through a batch of particularly fragile leaves, and pulled up blinking. Not only weren’t there animals here at the moment, with so many varieties of undisturbed plants—“Some of these have to be edible”—the odds were increasing that the island was rarely visited by outsiders.
