“A kid, huh?”
“Yeah—well, maybe he wasn’t exactly a kid…you know…” Toby’s face was solemn and serious for a ten-year-old. “Gee, I just don’t remember!”
“Okay,” Jarvis grunted. “I’m leaving now, and you do as I say.”
He worked his way along the limbs to the next street and climbed down. Store fronts leaned drunkenly, show windows shattered, mostly masses of rubble. He heard a sound of crashing glass, followed by coarse laughter. The sound came from a ruined liquor store. He and Toby had not been the first to return.
He took to the trees again, came down later by a clothing store he recalled. Inside, he changed from his cheap suit to khaki pants and shirt, found socks and heavy-soled tennis shoes. He gathered clothing for Toby and moved on to a sporting goods store next door, which yielded a .30 caliber rifle, ammunition, sheath knife, canteen, blankets, pack, and other sundries he felt that he and the boy would need to assure survival. He rolled the blankets in a tarpaulin and strapped them to the pack.
He felt heavy and fatigued. Climbing among the enormous branches had tired him unusually. He stumbled down the uneven street and found a supermarket around the corner, one he remembered from last night. He heard the scuffing of feet and took again to the trees, watching anxiously, hoping the approaching group would pass the supermarket by.
They were men and women and a few children, perhaps a dozen all told. Several of the men carried rifles, and one had a pistol strapped to his waist. They have come to know the need for weapons, Jarvis thought.
He regarded the children and thought of Toby. Toby would do well with a group like this. But there was no place here for him. Men and women were matched in numbers. He would be an extra, an object of suspicion. There would only be trouble. Too, there would be groups of men only roaming the forest. There were bound to be clashes, sooner or later, between the men groups and the mixed, over possession of the women. Jarvis wanted no part of that.
When the street was clear again, he climbed down and entered the shattered supermarket. He opened a can of corned beef, found bread, took a carton of warm milk from the defunct dairy case, and ate his first meal of the day.
Thereafter, he filled his pack, selecting carefully, picking among tumbled shelves and heaped cans that surrounded the base of the enormous tree growing in the middle of the sales floor.
He had finished and was buckling his pack when a noise made him duck out of sight behind the tree. A youth, a crouching silhouette against the dim outdoors light, came in at the front. Jarvis’ sharp ears picked up sounds of other feet outside, and he could tell by the youth’s actions that he was desirous of avoiding the owners of those feet. The slim figure half ran, as noiselessly as possible, toward concealment behind Jarvis’ tree and they came face to face.
“Don’t be afraid—” Jarvis began, and stopped.
The youth was a girl, perhaps twenty-five, her ashen hair cropped short in the prevailing feminine style. Even in the near dark of the store, he caught the glint of green in her eyes.
She gasped, rigid, with one hand against the rough tree trunk. The noise out front was coming in—a crashing of heavy boots kicking among the cans, loud voices, coarse comments.
The girl crouched down suddenly, her head cocked to mark the progress of her pursuers, a wary eye on Jarvis. She was at bay, undecided what move to make next.
“Quick!” he breathed. “Up the tree! They’ll never catch you up there!”
She glanced at him, cool, measuring him, but the set of suspicion did not leave her finely modeled features.
“With you, I suppose?”
“With me, or without me. Or would you rather wait here…for them?”
“I think they would kill you,” she said coolly.
“But they wouldn’t kill you,” he said. “Not for a while.”
A dull flush mantled the flesh over her cheek bones. She jerked erect, gave him another piercing look, then climbed rapidly upward, finding secure hand and footholds in the sheath of fissured bark.
Jarvis slung his pack over one shoulder and rifle over the other, then followed her. They climbed into the open, through the shattered roof, and paused momentarily on the lowermost branch. He glanced quickly around for an avenue of escape, found what he sought, and hustled the girl along with him until leaves screened them from view of the ground.
“My name is Jeff Jarvis,” he said. “You can trust me if you wish. If you don’t—” He shrugged.
She looked back the way they had come, raking the leafy vault for signs of pursuit. She sat down quite suddenly and looked up at him, wilting, all the reserve gone out of her.
“Thanks,” she said humbly. “I was so scared, I didn’t know what to do. I’d never have thought of climbing up here.” She rubbed her hands over her face. I’m in rotten shape. They must have chased me a mile. All I could do was run, then hide, then run again.” She hesitated again. “My name is Jo—Josephine Crane. I’m grateful, even if I don’t look it.”
He said, “You don’t have to be. For all you know, I’m as bad as they are.”
“You aren’t,” she said, “or you wouldn’t suggest it. Anyhow—” A hint of defiance blazed again in the green of her eyes. “—You’re only one and I can take care of myself with you.”
“I’m sure you can,” he agreed. “But I already have a partner waiting for me…”
Her glance met him, quickly. “A girl?”
“Boy.”
“I wouldn’t be sure of myself against two of you.”
“The other one is ten years old. His name is Toby. He’s waiting for me a few blocks over, in the crotch of a tree.”
There was respect in her look. “Your son?”
“No. I found him. Something like I found you. His family is dead.”
“Poor kid!” She shuddered.
“He’ll be glad to see you,” he said, almost hopefully.
Her look told him she was turning his tacit proposition over in her mind. It was as if he had said, “You can throw in with me, or go it alone, as you choose.”
“I’d like to see him,” she said quietly.
There was no more to it than that. He turned, cradling the rifle on his arms, and strode along the ten-foot-thick limb toward the spot where he had left Toby. He could hear the quick rustle of Jo’s footsteps behind him.
Ten minutes later, he paused, his brow winkled with a worried frown.
“I left him in this crotch,” he said crisply, and he’s gone!”
“Are you sure it was this one?”
“Yes…no—let me look.” He knelt on the limb and peered downward through leaves, picking out remembered landmarks. He straightened. “It was here.” He darted his glance around, not daring to call out.
“Jeff! Jeff—is that you?”
He looked up quickly, gladness knifing into his heart. Toby’s round, brown face peered down from a screen of leaves hiding the next uppermost crotch.
“Come on down,” he said softly. “It’s all right. This is Jo. She came back with me to meet you.”
Toby’s small form wriggled into sight, clambered down the trunk. He was glad, that was all Jarvis could tell himself. For some reason, he had been almost panic-stricken at Toby’s disappearance. But the boy had only followed his instructions and hidden himself when it seemed that discovery threatened. And now they were re-united…and they had Jo with them. In time, he knew, that would present a problem. He opened his pack and produced food for the others, and while they ate, he had time to think.
CHAPTER 3
They traveled westward, in search of Eamus Brock. Was there still an Eamus Brock? Had he foreseen this mysterious catastrophe, and had that been the reason behind the letter he had written to Jarvis? And what was the connection between Brock and little Toby Carter? T
he boy’s thoughts on the subject were even more formless and vague than those with which Jarvis tormented himself.
As for Jo, he found out very quickly that Eamus Brock was no more than a seldom heard name to her. A man of Brock’s financial background and contribution to science had to be heard of to a certain extent.
“Brock—the atom motor man,” Jo had responded to his cautious questioning. “I’ve heard of him. Who hasn’t? He developed the force-field shielding for small atomic engines—used in cars, boats, and aircraft. That’s the one you mean, isn’t it?”
Jarvis told her he assumed it was. He didn’t mention the letter. For the time being, he could say nothing of his quest. He asked Jo about herself.
“I’m from Chicago,” she said, “spending a few days down here for Inside America—the picture magazine, you know. I’m a photographer and reporter—I was covering the Fourth of July celebration at the county fair—taking a look-see into the beating heart of mid-America, you know. I flew down in a company ato-chopper. It’s a wreck now. So is the airtel I was stopping at.”
“We’re going west, Toby and I,” he had told her. “I may be crazy, but I have an idea that if there’s any way out of this…this woods at all, it lies to westward.” More than that he restrained from telling her. “Toby says there is a railroad a few miles west of here—”
“About twenty miles,” Jo said. “I noticed it when I flew in—I came in around by way of Kansas City. Do you think the forest extends that far?”
He shrugged. “There is one sure way to find out. Feel up to the hike?”
She grimaced wryly. “I’ve nothing to lose. Let’s go.”
Toby had changed into the clothing Jarvis had procured for him, and the man shouldered the pack and rifle. They struck out toward the west, largely following Toby’s guidance to the edge of town, treading an airy passageway along the limbs of the giant trees.
They continued all that day and the next. They covered more than twenty miles, and they found no railroad. Within a few hours of leaving town, Jarvis had known they would not find it. The going had been hard. Humid heat oppressed them with no hint of a breeze in the dim depths of the forest. They had to stop often for rest. Not more than three miles from town, the broken highway they had been following disappeared, was swallowed into the ground, which began to rise steadily, and their way led them farther and farther into strangeness and an unknown land.
A terrible suspicion grew on him and alternated with doubts of his own sanity, and he was overcome with the obvious uselessness of their mission, in spite of the fact that the urge still burned strong in him to press on westward, ever westward, in the hope of ultimately finding Eamus Brock. The answer lay in him—Jarvis was sure of it. Once they found Brock—if they did—all would be made dear.
And then, his suspicion became almost a frightful certainty when they dropped down to the ground to rest, and his attention was taken by the shards of rock now littering the forest floor, which had become almost precipitous. The rocks were bits of rotten granite, and the alluvial overburden of midwestern America had never contained such rocks as these—nor such a slope as they now climbed.
They should, of course, be traversing farmland, Jarvis told himself, even though overgrown with the instantaneous forest. But the humus was thick and spongy underfoot, and this was land as land had been since time began. They were no longer in the Midwest—no longer in America—good God! Were they no longer on the Earth at all?
The forest began to thin around them, and bits of honest sky, a startling blue, showed occasionally through the leaf screen, gilded with sunlight in its upper reaches. From the length of the day behind them and the angle of the sun’s rays, Jarvis deduced it was nearly sundown. The girl and the boy were obviously leadenly fatigued. His own feet felt shod in iron shoes, and his load weighed him down to the point of exhaustion. He cast a glance around the silent, gloomy forest floor.
Here was as good a place to camp as any, he thought. Darkness was squeezing in and not many more minutes of daylight were left to them. He located a suitable crotch not too high off the ground and stretched the tarpaulin for a shelter. He remembered last night’s rain that had caught them shelterless in the depths of the forest, and the booming of the great wind that had flailed among the treetops, but which had reached as far as the ground level only in sporadic gusts. If it should blow and rain like that tonight, it would be worse, as the trees were more open here.
They ate sparingly of their provisions and he ordered Jo and Toby into the crotch as the last light of day dwindled into gloom. He had rigged the shelter for them—he could find rest elsewhere.
He leaned his back against the base of the giant trunk and tried to compose his thoughts into some kind of order, without success. He felt hemmed in by the forest, stifled in its masses of greenery, unable to rationalize the bizarre events that had befallen him. If only he could climb up, up toward the stars—there, perhaps, might lie an answer of sorts.
He stood, turned his face to the rugged trunk, and began to climb. He passed the crotch where Jo and Toby were collapsed under the stretched tarpaulin and continued upward, his eyes fixed on the faint gleam filtering down, not daring to look into the Stygian pit below him. He made his way by feel alone from branch to branch, driven, somehow, upward and ever upward toward the far, far crown of leaves that shimmered with a faint reflection of twilight against the purpling sky.
It was fully dark by the time he reached the top. The sky was milky toward the east with a semi-pearlescence of the haze that seemed everywhere to fill the sky, stifling the poker-thrusts of the stars, so that only the brightest gleamed dully through. Jarvis settled himself in the topmost crotch of the tree, straddling a relatively thin limb, his back pressed against the trunk. Up here, perhaps, he could think more clearly. He could examine the puzzle in the light of the moon that was rising, lighting the east. There was something—the moon—to connect him with the world he had known. He waited with a feeling of excitement—waited for that familiar luminary to show itself—waited for whatever message of hope or despair its appearance might bring.
As he rested there, relaxed, unbothered by the fact that the ground lay hundreds of feet beneath, his eyes fixed on the sky, he let his mind wander among the hot points of the visible stars, not daring to attempt identification of any, wondering, guessing, dreaming…
Then he stiffened in his perch as the moon came out of its cocoon of haze. The hair prickled on the nape of his neck. Of all the unexplainable phenomena he had observed, this provided the least explanation, the least hope. Not one moon but two rode the night sky, in twin chariots of splendor, and the haze poured over their shining faces in a thin wrack that all but obscured the fine details—almost, but not enough to make him think he was seeing double.
One was the familiar moon of Earth, that was quite clear. Its face showed distinctly the mole called Mare Crisium as well as other well-known marks of selenographic topography. The face of the other moon, though indistinct, was patently different-enough that Jarvis knew it was different.
For endless minutes he took in the spectacle of celestial nonsense—a familiar moon and an alien moon riding the sky trail together, no more than a few degrees apart. As the night hours passed and the twin moons climbed into the sky, he first guessed, then was certain, that they not only traversed the same plane, but also turned slowly about each other, revolving on a point between them that was their mutual center of gravity.
It must have been midnight when he gave up his lunar watch and descended stiffly to find a place of rest. The twin moons cast a brilliant glow down the trunk. Settling himself in a crotch above his companions, he heard a scratching from below, and Jo’s voice, calling softly.
“Jeff! Are you up there, Jeff?”
He groped for her hand, shining whitely in the double-moon-light, and pulled her up beside him.
“Jeff, Jeff!” she murmured. “Fm scared! What’s going to become of us?”
“Everything will be all right. Maybe the world has been destroyed, but there are a few like us, surviving. The world can become peopled again.”
“But what about us, Jeff?”
“We’ll survive, too.” He smiled grimly. Whenever they paused for rest, or stopped like this at night, he felt the ache of it inside him—the desperate urge to be up and moving, to be traveling westward—to Eamus Brock. “We’ll survive, all right,” he repeated, and pulled her around so that he could kiss her.
CHAPTER 4
It was still in the forest, and Jarvis dozed, holding Jo pressed against him. Clouds began to stream across the faces of the twin moons, and the whine of wind rose higher and higher in pitch. His dreams were heavy, disturbed—he was Proconsul, the primitive ape; then he was Man and he met himself, the ape, face to face, and there was no bond between them, only hatred, rage and murder.
Then the wind struck in all the fury of the storm, and the rain lashed down, warm and sluicing. Purple lightning flared among angry-visaged clouds and the racket of thunder was a continuous peal, rising and falling in a many-voiced bellowing of crashing vapors.
There was no protection against the furious elements. Awakened, dazed, Jarvis clung to Jo and she to him while the screaming wind threatened momentarily to pluck them from their airy perch.
Abruptly, the wind died and the rain fell straight down in splashing torrents that dwindled slowly to trickles, then to a misty spatter. Throughout the forest a dropping began, a tock, tock, tock of water dripping. The storm clouds broke, and slanting bars of moonlight raked the forest crown, danced among particles of moisture floating in the air. Suddenly the clouds hustled away, the sky was a velvet black, spangled with brilliant stars, and far away, the voice of the thunder grumbled like distant cannonading, then faded into silence.
The 7th Golden Age of Weird Fiction MEGAPACK®: Manly Banister Page 58
