by M. C. Norris
“Dale!” she tried to shout, but her parched throat produced only a rasp. She needed a drink. She needed a long, cold drink. She dragged herself up to the river’s edge, and she plunged her face down into the wonderful water. God, it felt so good. She was going to drink like a deer until her stomach couldn’t hold another drop, and afterward, she might just roll on in, and enjoy that little bath that she’d been denied back there on the beach.
Lifting her drenched head from the water, she gasped for breath. A broad smile spread across her face, and she began to laugh for no reason at all. She didn’t care. If a howler came charging after her tonight, at least she was going to die with a bellyful of cold, fresh water, and somehow, that made the thought of dying seem a little bit better. She washed the mud from her hands like a raccoon, and then pushed back her hair, wiped the water from her eyes. She pinched the fluid from her nostrils, gave a sniff, and then gazed down at her own reflection.
A face with bulging eyes stared back, bloated and pale. It was not her own. Half-engulfed in the mouth of an enormous salamander, Dale gaped back at her from the bottom of the River Styx. The unblinking pearl eyes of the monstrous amphibian stared too, while saffron gills fanned on either side of its discus head.
Thrusting herself away from the river’s edge, Sandy crab-walked back into the weeds. When the pile of sharp wood shavings bit into the palm of her hand, a new and terrible version of the men’s afternoon on the riverbank became evident. They weren’t sitting around whittling for pleasure. They were desperately making a spear. They needed a weapon to stab that dead-eyed monster flattened on the muddy bottom with poor Dale, their only hope for survival, clenched in its toothless maw. Sandy balled her fist into her mouth, threw back her head, and began to scream.
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22-D
They froze in their tracks. Neither had to ask if the other had heard her scream. They just reacted, spinning back in the direction from which they’d just come, and charging back into the darkened hollow. No telling which of the girls was in trouble, but it was almost certainly one of their own. Not one more. Not one more was going to die on his account.
Peanut was already way ahead of him, with an eager spear in hand. Younger, faster, stronger, the teen was better equipped to handle whatever dangers awaited, but that didn’t mean that Nate wasn’t feeling conflicted about not calling the kid back. He’d made a promise, after all. He’d assured Peanut that he would be considered an equal from here on out, a fellow man who could make his own decisions. The problem was that Nate was once a kid of his age, and he remembered that most of the decisions he’d made at that time were usually pretty stupid ones. The kid would have to learn the same way he’d learned, back in the school of hard knocks, that reacting impulsively and physically to a perceived threat was rarely ever the smartest choice. Nate had to wonder, as he watched Peanut’s form growing smaller as the distance between them spread, if he’d have reigned back another grown man outrunning him, or if he was just being unfairly biased on the basis of age?
Who was he kidding? The kid was right. They should’ve all made spears. This place was no state park with marked walking trails, tame wildlife, or public restrooms every hundred yards. There was no other way to react to a threat in this jungle than with some sort of an impulsive physical response, which went against a civilized lifetime of training the male mind to always calm down, and think things through. That didn’t always work here. The only choice that a man in a place like this really had was to either stand up and be a man, or sit down, so the man behind you can have a better view of what’s attacking your people. This was exactly the sort of world in which humankind was forged. Its inherent dangers at every turn were what made us so violently reactive, so prone to praise our castes of warriors and conquerors, because it was by the spilt blood of our heroes that the rest of us survived.
Peanut, like all young men, wanted so badly to be one of those heroes. Who didn’t? What guy at his age desired anything more than to earn the respect of other guys, and the adoration of the girls, by charging out there to kick some ass, and take some names? Honestly, that never really changed, even decades after high school was over. It just evolved from schoolyard showboating and fights to the more complicated arena of your career, where you still did your share of showboating, and you still beat down the competition, but you did so with your mind, and your talent, rather than with your fists. Same as it ever was, always had been, and always would be. Boys will be boys.
Eventually, he could see them. It was Sandy, and thank God, she didn’t appear to be in any immediate danger. Peanut was kneeling beside her, homemade spear in one hand, with his other resting on her shoulder in a consoling manner. Yeah, he was still just a kid, but one day, hopefully, if he was lucky enough to survive that long, he had all the right ingredients for becoming a good man.
“No, we can’t go back.” Sandy was crying, and shaking her head, as Nate jogged onto the scene. “We have to find the girls. They’re lost.”
“What’s happened?” Nate asked, struggling to catch his breath.
“Donovan’s snapped,” Peanut replied.
“He burned up all the firewood—said he thought he saw a ship, or something—and he drank all the beer. He’s completely drunk right now, and …”
“And, what?”
Sandy cupped her hand over her mouth, her face pinched. “Dr. Kimura and John are both dead.”
“What?” Nate knelt on the other side of her. “The hijacker?”
Sandy nodded.
“But he seemed to be coming around pretty well, just as we were leaving.”
“I know,” Sandy said.
“Dead?”
“Their bodies were moved, dragged clear out of camp, and the girls are both missing.”
“You don’t think Donovan had anything to do with …”
“I say we go back there right now,” Peanut said, “and put a foot in his ass.”
“No,” Sandy said. “We can’t go back there. It’s not a good place anymore. All the wood and rations are gone. Here. I brought you these.” She opened up the fold of her shirt and handed them each a can of soda.
“I kind of have to agree with Peanut,” Nate said. “I mean, what if those girls get back there before we do? If Donovan has really flipped as badly as you say has, then what do you suppose he’ll do if no one else is around to protect them?”
“Tara is the only friend I’ve got left who’s my age,” Peanut said, “and if anything happens to her—I’m all alone.”
“You’re not alone,” Sandy replied.
“You know what he means,” Nate said, “and it’s not like we have much choice. We certainly don’t stand a chance of surviving the night in this jungle. At least back there …”
“What?” Sandy threw up her hands. “What have we got back there? We’ve got nothing back there. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. There’s no food, no water, no fire, and now there’s no one left to make another one.” Tears spilled from her eyes, as she gestured toward the spot in the stream where Dale disappeared. “I saw him down there. I saw it, with him.”
“You saw it? The thing that took him?” Peanut leapt to his feet, scanning the water, spear shouldered. “Where?”
“It was right there,” Sandy replied. “I only saw it for a second.”
Peanut growled at the water. “If I could just see that thing just one last time, I swear to God …”
“Come on,” Nate said, throwing Sandy’s arm over his shoulder. “Looks like you’ve got yourself one hell of a bum ankle.”
“I twisted it coming down the hill.”
“You want to give me a hand here?”
Peanut lowered his spear. He turned begrudgingly from the stream, and positioned himself on the other side of Sandy. They counted to three, and lifted her to her feet. The sprained ankle was already beginning to resemble an eggplant. Nate didn’t want to say anything, but he knew by looking at the severity of the injury that it would’ve been better
if she’d broken it. Ankles sprained that badly took a long time to heal. “Maybe you can use that knife of yours to whittle her some crutches tonight.” Nate winked over Sandy’s shoulder.
The jungle all around them shook beneath a roar so deafening that it knocked the three of them back down into the weeds. They covered their ears, but it didn’t stop. The blast kept coming in an ascending tone that eventually held to an earsplitting crescendo. After what seemed an eternity, the howl ended in chuffing, demonic laughter. The hijacker was right. This place was Hell, and by the sound of things, they’d managed to wander right down into Hell’s deepest pit, where the devil himself had awakened.
“What do we do?” Sandy whispered. “Oh my God. It’s coming to get us.”
There were only three options, so far as Nate could discern. They could head downstream to the beach, where the devils all liked to dance by the light of their double-moon, they could sit here and do nothing, which was just as certain of a death sentence, or they could try and make a run for it back uphill.
Nate pointed to the slope behind them. “At the top of that ridge, there’s an abandoned vehicle.”
“I saw it.” Sandy nodded vigorously.
“Let’s go,” Peanut said, grabbing Sandy beneath her arm.
Nate took the other, and they lifted.
Heaving their combined and awkward bulk up the slope, they moved as a single, crippled creature. Behind them, they heard branches snapping, or were they whole trees? The howler seemed to have picked up their scent, or perhaps it had pinpointed the exact spot where it had heard Sandy’s scream, because it was pushing steadily through the lowlands in the direction of the river. Loose dirt sloughed beneath their steps. It dropped them to their knees, while stones tumbled downhill. They grabbed for every branch, every sapling for support, but every step taken by one dragged the weight of two others behind it. They had to synchronize their steps, but Peanut’s legs moved so quickly. Nate could barely match his pace.
Behind and below, a great tree splintered and fell. They heard the splash of its canopy in the river. It was coming. There was no way that they were going to make it to the top before it spotted them, and ran them down. In Nate’s mind, the choice was pretty simple.
“You take her,” Nate said, throwing Sandy’s arm off his shoulder. He gave them a parting glance, and then turned back downhill. Not one more. He would be next, but not either one of them.
“No!” Peanut shrieked. In a split-second, the kid had him in a headlock.
“Get off me, Peanut. You’ll get us all killed!” Nate grappled with the teen, whose thinner arms were somehow wirier, and more difficult to wrestle into submission than those of a grown man.
“Then we’ll all die together,” Peanut said, “but nobody is going back alone. Not again. I won’t ever watch that happen again!”
Nate realized that even the most altruistic act of sacrificing your life to save those of your friends could in fact be a selfish one. He wasn’t the only one around here who without the strength to carry the burden of another death. Peanut was no different. “I’m sorry. I’ll try my best to keep up. I promise, but you’ll have to get her to the top.”
“Swear to God! Swear to God you won’t ever stop, and you won’t ever turn around!”
Nate nodded, and raised his right hand. “I swear to God. It’ll have to catch me, drag me down.” Another tree cracked like a rifle report, and careened down into the river. “Now, go!”
Peanut scrambled back up the slope. Nate was close behind him. Even with Sandy’s crippled weight on his back, the kid was able to match Nate’s pace. Her burden approximately equaled the differential between their two decades in age. Long steps, big reaches, brought them closer and closer to the top, as the mighty crow of the howler resounded through the woods. They heard a great splash, as the predator crossed the river in a single step.
“Don’t turn around, Nate!”
Nate dared to steal a glimpse back over his shoulder, and the sight of what was tearing its way up the slope behind them was enough to stop a weaker heart from squeezing off another beat. A greyhound bus swaddled in buffalo hide lilted over gigantic ostrich legs. The sheer scope of the thing was astounding, but it was the disproportionate size of its pompous head that really drew the attention of the eyes. Bobbing with every plod, the topknot thatch of wispy feathers concealed all but the faintest suggestions of a face. There were eyes, red as burning embers, but any other facial features were left up to the imagination, aside from fleeting glimpses of discolored and broken teeth. There existed no creature, real or imagined, that was more horrifying than a howler.
“Faster! God, go faster!”
Sandy seemed healed by the power of terror. Pulling loose of Peanut’s shoulder, she knuckled-down, and galloped uphill in great lunges with her one good leg. The technique was working. For an instant, she was keeping up with the uninjured men, until a loose rock sliding beneath her single foot brought her crashing to her belly.
It was over, and they seemed to sense it. They’d had a good run, the three of them, faring better than most in a world where humans had no business being alive. Nate collapsed beside Sandy, held her tight, and turned to face the horror. Peanut hoisted his spear, bracing it against his hip in a stance meant to inflict a parting injury to their predator, a scar on the monster’s hide, by which their last stand would be remembered.
As the howler’s matted jaws unhinged their racks of yellow daggers, the thought occurred to Nate that just a day ago, they were just three strangers sitting on an airplane. Unconnected, happy and complete, their lives were isolated from one another by their differing backgrounds, ages and agendas. From the moment that they’d boarded that airliner, they’d never have guessed that in a few short hours they’d be stripped of the most precious people in their respective worlds, whose absences would be replaced by a couple of perfect strangers who happened to be seated around them in nearby rows. Their lives would crash together, and would culminate on a jungled slope where they’d be forever united as fodder for a monster that had no place in their world. In another life, they might’ve been good neighbors, coworkers or old friends. They might’ve gotten together on weekends to enjoy backyard barbecues, sporting events, or an occasional summer fish fry where they’d tip back brews and laugh about their little triumphs and problems well into the twilight hours. In any timeline, they’d probably have been good friends. Nate could almost see envision some alternate timeline where he and Sandy were espoused, and Peanut was their son, or where all three of them were siblings, because there was no doubt that the three of them would forever be connected by this terrible end.
Nate took Sandy’s hand. He was proud to die with these two. It wasn’t a fate he’d ever have chosen, but it was one he was willing to accept. He considered himself fortunate, more fortunate than he probably deserved. He’d been blessed with a happy childhood, a loving family, a home, and he’d sailed the oceans with his soul mate, his mermaid, the love of his life. In his final seconds Nate closed his eyes, squeezed Sandy’s hand tightly, and he thanked God for all that he’d been given—and to his amazement, God replied.
From the ridgeline came a blast of sound so tremendous that it halted the looming howler in its tracks. Clouds of litter billowed downhill in a rush of fetid air that swept the ground of all debris in its path. Loosed earth and stones came spilling down the slope. Trees snapped and toppled. Scabrous columns dragging whole root balls slammed to the ground, bouncing, and rafting right past them down into the gully.
A new challenger had arrived. Bristling with garish plumage, the creature thundered right over the top of them, tail slashing, to slam headlong into the howler with all the force of a derailed train. Entwined, they toppled, shattering trees like Popsicle sticks. Flesh ripped up like old carpeting. Bones popped. The challenger was a different sort of beast, streaked in lurid patterns of black and orange that warned in nature’s common tongue of coloration that this was no creature to be tested. The jagged beak
sprung wide as it lunged for the howler’s throat. Clawed forelimbs plowed ruts through the dark feathers. Rear legs slashed at the howler’s belly, until innards bulged and spilled into the leaves.
Enraged by the stink of its own viscera, the howler rolled, ripping loose of its attacker with a thrust of its legs. Blood fountained from either side of its lacerated throat as it rose to its feet, entangled in a glistening net of its own intestines, and flung its gaping maw over its opponent’s smaller, parrot-like head. Immediately, every seam in the newcomer’s skull began to fold.
Had the brawl of beasts not been half so deafening, the three spectators still wouldn’t have needed spoken words to seize this obvious opportunity for a retreat. Running, limping, clawing their way uphill, they fled the certain death that they’d somehow been spared. When they finally stopped, the trumpeting howls of victory were far below them, but they were still too frightened to speak. Piling through a shattered passenger window, they crawled between the seats to form a sweaty huddle in the back of the wayward vehicle. They leaned on one another, clung to each other, but said nothing. Not a word, lest they utter some displeasing word that might change the mind of whatever god had intervened.
Hours later, when the silver edges of the tandem moons peered down through the canopy, Nate closed his eyes, just breathing and wondering if there had ever been more than one moon on their planet? If so, when, and what was the fate of the missing twin? His psyche practically demanded that he lean in that direction, because there was nothing else on which to lean in any other. If they were still on planet Earth, and if their home planet had once hosted two moons, then that still evidenced a deficit of hundreds of millions of lost years, but at least they were still at home.
