Wastelands

by Jack Porter

  I realized during my attempts that Ash wasn’t wandering randomly into the Wastes. Instead, he was guiding the wagons along what looked like a trail, an area of dirt that seemed harder packed than the rest. And I wondered if there might be an actual road somewhere beneath.

  I was stumbling at least in part because I was walking right on the edge. But if I was to walk more in the middle, perhaps there would be fewer rocks in my way.

  So thinking, I dropped back to behind the first wagon, and held onto the back of it, near where the cow-beasts for the second wagon were tethered. And I tried once again.

  This time, I didn’t stumble. This time, I kept striding along, as confidently as a blind man who knew where he was.

  And this time, I reached the point of balance I was striving for.

  I don’t know what I’d been expecting. Just a moment of peace, no more than that. Instead, I felt a huge influx of energy, as if I was standing in a waterfall of it. Instinctively, I opened myself to this energy, this manna from heaven, and drank of it like a thirsty man might drink from a trough. In a matter of seconds, I felt myself swell, growing strong once again, as if this was all I needed to survive.

  And more than survive. I could thrive on this alone. It filled me up like I was a hot air balloon and it was a propane burner.

  It was a whirlwind of energy, and it quickly took me to heights of joy I’d seldom felt before.

  And then, all at once, the flood of energy turned into a trickle, and I knew I was done.

  It felt like only seconds had passed, but when I opened my eyes, I realized it had been much longer than that. The landscape was subtly different, as if we’d traveled much further than I thought, and the sun was appreciably lower in the sky.

  I had been walking with my eyes shut for minutes. Maybe even half an hour. In that time, I’d been completely oblivious to anything that had happened, and I couldn’t help but wonder if that was a bad thing given how dangerous this world seemed to be.

  Nevertheless, the energy I’d gained was real. It was still there. No longer did my bones feel weary. Instead, I felt strong.

  I couldn’t help but let out a laugh. Then, with a smile on my face, I almost skipped back to the front of the caravan and took my place next to Ash once again.

  17

  As the sun touched the horizon and the colors in the sky grew more intense, like a multihued, broken aurora, Ash guided the wagons a little way off the trail and wheeled the first one about to form a protected area in the middle. He looked at me and grunted.

  “I’ll set up camp. Have you forgotten how to hunt?” he asked, and I’d swear he was actually teasing me.

  I decided to take Ash’s question at face value. “One way to find out,” I said. With that, I turned into the wasteland and tried to think like one of the small creatures I’d seen throughout the day. Did they live in burrows? What did they eat? Could they suck the moisture from the scrubby plants that clung to life in this place?

  With nothing better to do, I unlimbered my sword and held it ready as I wandered randomly into the dusk.

  “Here, little rabbit,” I called quietly. “Come out, come out, wherever you are. I’m not going to hurt you.”

  Then I chuckled. It was definitely my intention to hurt whatever I found. At the same time, I figured it would be humane. One quick slice with the blade, and that would be it.

  And if the rabbit turned out to be the size of a horse, it would make little difference to my strategy, or to my sword.

  I’d been wandering in the dusk for maybe a quarter of an hour, doing my best to soften my footsteps and making sure not to drag my sword in the rubble.

  It turned out that sneaking along in the dusk was something I was surprisingly good at. I barely made a sound as I glided over the sandy earth. I couldn’t even hear the rustling of my own clothing.

  But so far, the wasteland seemed just as quiet.

  I was beginning to wonder if I was wasting my time, and if I would have to show up back at the camp empty-handed. But then, just before I was ready to give up, I heard what I’d been hoping to hear.

  Movement from somewhere up ahead, near an outcropping of boulders.

  Sensing a chance, I quickened my pace, knowing that whatever was moving wasn’t far away. Silently, I made my way over, enjoying the slight thrill of the chase. With my sword still resting on my shoulder, I crept around the boulders until my target came into view.

  Then I stopped in my tracks.

  It wasn’t a rabbit.

  Well, there were rabbits—a trio of them strung up together, gutted and ready to eat. They’d been killed by an experienced hunter, who was even then stacking dried bits of wood into a hollow in preparation for a fire.

  I had come up behind her and could see that from this angle, she wasn’t quite human. Dressed in leathers and carrying more than one set of knives, she had a long, thick tail like that of a lizard, and had hints of scales on her shoulders and thighs.

  Despite the animal-like quality, she was definitely, luxuriously feminine, and from this angle was pretty much everything a man could desire.

  I knew without asking that this lizard-woman was who had been trailing us. And I was interested to find out why.

  “Hey,” I said.

  As fast as could be, she dropped what she was doing and spun to face me, a hunting knife in each hand. The expression on her face was feral and wild, and I knew that this woman’s first response to any threat would be to attack. Yet she was beautiful as well, the type of woman who would grace the cover of magazines despite the scales on her cheeks and the horns at her temples, a dark-haired Amazonian huntress who defined the word fierce.

  But when she saw me standing there with my sword held casually over my shoulder, instead of launching herself at my throat, she turned on the spot.

  And vanished into thin air.

  I couldn’t believe it. Sure, the sun was all but gone, leaving only the last vestiges of daylight in the sky, but that didn’t account for what I had seen. One moment, the woman was standing before me, and the next she was gone. Vanished. The rabbits were gone too, a split second after she was, as if she’d grabbed them as an afterthought.

  So, she hadn’t teleported or anything like that.

  She was still there but had tricked my eyes into not seeing her. Somehow, this woman could fool my senses.

  I didn’t like the thought of an unknown hunter trailing after me. So, given she could trick my eyes anyway, I closed them, held my breath, and listened.

  At first, I heard nothing. I knew this wild woman was doing the same. Trying to be as silent as possible, to not to give her position away. But this new me, this martial warrior, seemed to be pretty good at that particular game. I waited, barely breathing at all, and strained my senses as far as I could.

  I couldn’t hear her moving. Not even the slightest scrape of her feet against the ground. She was standing so still her leather didn’t creak or scrape against itself. But, if I focused really hard, I thought I could hear her breathing.

  “I know where you are,” I said. “Why are you following us?”

  There was a sharp intake of breath. I had been right about her location. I smirked. But she didn’t answer. Instead, she took off at a run, charging into the gloom as fast as he she could, sacrificing silence for speed.

  I cursed again, clipped my sword back into place on my back, and gave chase.

  This new me was far more surefooted than even the Rogan before my injury. I found I could glide over uneven terrain with little effort, moving far more swiftly and silently than I would have thought possible. And while I couldn’t see my target in the diminishing light, I could hear her as she scrambled away.

  Or at least, I could for much of the time. As I drew near, she froze in place and held her breath, forcing me to use every sense I had to make sure of her location.

  I had to slow down to do so, and she used the opportunity to burst away in a different direction.

  It was an odd,
surreal game of cat and mouse played out under the light of a multi-hued aurora that hid all but the brightest of stars. For me, the game was frustrating, but also fun.

  My quarry, however, didn’t appear to take as much pleasure from the chase as I did. I could almost sense the tension in her whenever she froze in place, and she punctuated the burst of speed with insults and angry curses directed my way.

  It was just a matter of time before I caught her. She was quick and cunning, but I was simply faster and more surefooted. Sooner or later, I would catch up with her, or she would zig when she should have chosen to zag.

  She must have known it as well, because it wasn’t long before she gave up on her darting, pausing tactic and tried something new.

  Out of nowhere, her string of kills came flying towards me, aimed at my face. I instinctively swayed out of the way, but that was just her opening gambit. I heard a grunt of effort, and even though I still couldn’t see her, I knew what was coming. This strange, disappearing woman had decided her best chance was to fight.

  Without being able to see her, I was at a serious disadvantage. Without a doubt, she knew how to use those knives she carried. But even without the use of my eyes, I was able to lock on to her location.

  The sound of the grunt she had made. The grinding of her feet against the gravelly earth. The faintest hint of something in the air moving toward me.

  Even her natural scent, which smelled like wild roses.

  I knew without even thinking that she’d taken a low pose in an effort to duck under any attempt at a counter. She had chosen speed over accuracy and was aiming to slash me across the stomach, opening my belly and spilling my entrails. And she was already positioning herself to leap back away, to scamper back into the darkness to either disappear once again or wait for an opportunity to finish me off.

  I could have drawn my great sword and blocked her strike, or even lopped off her hand. I could have stepped in close, rendering her strike next to useless, and tapped her on the head hard enough to make her sit down on the ground.

  Instead, I took a casual step backward, just far enough to feel the breeze of her blade as it went by. Then a step forward again. Even though I couldn’t see it, I knew where her wrist would be. I wrapped my hand around it after her swing had missed me and stuck my foot out at the same time.

  I used her own momentum against her. My foot prevented her from regaining her balance, and my hand on her wrist rendered her defenseless. A simple shove in the middle of her back and she went down in a heap with me on top of her.

  It was a tantalizing place to be, but I had other things on my mind. All at once, I could see her again. She was lying face down in the dirt with my hand around her wrist, having used her other hand to help break her fall.

  With my bodyweight pushing her into the dirt, all she could do was let loose another stream of curses.

  I listened to her for a moment before leaning in close. “Who are you?” I demanded. “Why have you been following us?”

  She just took another breath and continued cursing.

  So I had a choice to make. In a world as dangerous as this one seemed to be, it probably made more sense to slit her throat than to keep her alive. But while I’d been more than happy to kill the goblin back in my time, and hadn’t missed a beat when it came to defending myself from the hybrid creatures next to the spaceship, this was different.

  With this woman, I had other options. I didn’t actually have to kill her. And besides, she was beautiful, a fact that I couldn’t deny even in the developing darkness. A ten even with her scales and tail. Maybe that didn’t warrant giving her a free pass, but in my old life I’d rarely been close to anyone in this league. So maybe it counted for something.

  “Do you have any more of that string you used to gather your kill?” I asked lightly.

  She paused in her cursing for long enough to answer. “Why should I tell you?” she demanded.

  “Well, you have a choice. Either I can tie you up and make it more difficult for you to slip your knife into my gizzard, or I can cut off your hands and make it impossible. Either way, I’m taking you back to my camp. So, which is it?”

  Even as I voiced my threat, I wasn’t sure I could carry it out, but she didn’t know that.

  I felt some of the tension leave her body. “I have more twine,” she admitted.

  18

  Despite my threat, the fierce woman with the strange ability to vanish tried to slip away from her bonds two more times. The first time, she misjudged her ability to get free, and I dumped her on the ground and re-tied her wrists without bothering to comment. The second time, she managed to get free, and disappeared again as soon as the twine was off her wrists.

  But she must have been tired from our earlier games. I caught up to her within moments, and this time she didn’t have her knives. I’d taken all of them from her after our first game of chase, and had kept them on me ever since.

  At least, that’s what I thought. Somehow, she’d managed to keep at least one. This time, I’d tipped her onto her back, and had to block a lightning fast slash at my throat.

  “That’s enough of that,” I said, casually plucking the knife from her grip. “Or do you want me to follow through with my threat?”

  By then, she knew I’d been bluffing, and kept trying to fight as I bound her wrists once again. Even though the sun had fully set by then, there was still enough light that I could see her clearly. I couldn’t help but take a moment to admire how she had been put together, my gaze lingering on her breasts and the smooth skin over her collarbones.

  She caught me looking and increased her struggling. “Men!” she spat. “You’re all the same! One thing–if you’re going to rape me, then kill me first!”

  Her words shocked me, but I quickly realized they probably shouldn’t have.

  But to assume that was my intention just because I was a man irritated me more than it should have.

  Even though I was holding her down with my weight and leering at her. I’d already shown her there was little she could do to stop me no matter what I chose to do.

  So maybe her impression of me wasn’t unfounded.

  It was a troubling thought, and I frowned. “I have no intention of raping you. However, I’m also getting tired of chasing you. So,” I said, but instead of finishing my sentence, I let my actions speak for me. In a smooth, fluid motion, I stood, helped her to her feet, then picked her up and threw her over my shoulder, wrapping one arm around her legs at the knees to keep her in place.

  “Let me go!” she yelled as she started to kick. “You filthy son of a whore, let me down right now, or I swear I’ll will carve out your tripes and feed them to you–”

  She might have gone on, might have resurrected the earlier cursing and insults. But I was done marveling at my own strength, at how easy it seemed to be to support her weight and keep her in place. And I was growing tired of listening to her screech.

  “Stop,” I said flatly. “First, if I do let you go, I won’t do it gently. You will crash headfirst onto the ground. Second, you have proven yourself untrustworthy. You haven’t told me who you are or what your purpose might be. So it’s either this, or I kill you. Your choice. Third, we are not the only ones in this wasteland. I’ve seen others, keeping just out of sight, but they are there. I would prefer you don’t call any more attention our way than you already have. So be quiet. If I hear one more shriek or curse out of you, I will stuff a gag in your mouth and tie it around your head so tight you can barely breathe. Have I made myself clear?”

  To my complete and utter surprise, the woman stopped struggling and cut herself off mid-shriek.

  Yet she wasn’t completely done talking. “I’ve seen them as well,” she said. “Creatures of the wasteland. Semi-human, mutants of different sorts. And there’s something else, something stronger. I don’t know who or what it is, but I do not like the way he feels in my mind.”

  I had no idea what she meant by her last statement. I was simpl
y happy that she seemed to be open to reason. “Then stop with your noise,” I reiterated.

  I shifted her weight on my shoulder a little and set out over the wasteland.

  19

  That’s how we were when I re-entered the camp. Ash had managed to get a decent fire going, but instead of sitting close to it to keep warm, he stood on guard, his looming form facing toward me.

  “It would seem your hunting skills are a little different from most,” he rumbled, and I could sense the humor in his words. “Although,” he continued, “I am unsure if we have the time or equipment necessary to cook something like that at the moment.”

  That was all it took to set the woman off again.

  “What? No!” she began, and started to struggle. But I was tired of holding her, so I unceremoniously dumped her on the ground.

  “Quit it,” I said. “We’re not going to eat you. Your catch, however, is another matter entirely.” With that, I held the creatures up for Ash’s inspection. The giant nodded once, reached for them, and within a very short time, had set them to cook over the fire.

  Only then did he return his attention to my bigger prize. “And this?” he rumbled.

  “This is our shadow,” I replied. “I thought we might persuade her to tell us her name and what she was doing. And how she is able to effectively disappear in front of my eyes. It’s a neat trick, and I’d like to know how it’s done.”

  By then, the woman had managed to sit herself up, and was glaring at me and at the meat she had caught, looking resentful as she did. Yet it seemed the walk had done her some good. She’d had time to consider her options.

  “My name is Camille,” she said shortly. “I’m on a pilgrimage of my own. These lands are dangerous, and I did not want to face them myself.”

  “You could have just said so when I asked you the first time,” I said. “What about the disappearing?”