Bridgers 1_The Lure of Infinity

by Stan C. Smith

  Fifty yards to the forest. Desmond realized the trees weren’t like any he’d ever seen. They had green structures at the branch tips, but they looked nothing like leaves. Instead, they were round, semi-translucent orbs about the size of a baseball. The twigs they were attached to were only a few inches long. And those were attached to thicker branches no more than two feet long. These in turn were attached to two-foot branches connecting to the main trunk, which resembled a green, upside-down carrot. These branches would be totally useless as spears.

  When they finally arrived at the forest edge, the bird creatures were still maintaining their distance. The forest was bordered by smaller, brushy plants, all of them with green orbs for leaves. They pushed their way through the brush and into the forest.

  The sunlight beneath the trees had a strange, green hue from passing through the bubble leaves. Desmond looked to one side to see what the creatures would do. They moved silently and gracefully among the trees, now coming directly toward the humans. He looked in the other direction—the others were doing the same, as if they’d been waiting for the humans to enter the forest.

  Infinity was watching the predators, too. “Pick a tree and climb, now!”

  Desmond didn’t need to be told twice. Fortunately, the trees were easy to climb, with thick branches growing near the ground. The green trunk was surprisingly soft to the touch, but this didn’t impede their climbing. He and Lenny were ten feet up before Desmond turned to look down.

  Infinity and Razor had taken Xavier to the base of another tree, but it was too late to help him up. The creatures were less than ten yards away and steadily creeping closer.

  Infinity and Razor stood shoulder to shoulder with their backs to him, each of them armed only with a jagged rock. “Climb with your arms and good leg,” Infinity instructed Xavier.

  Xavier grunted and sobbed, trying to pull himself up.

  One of the creatures broke away from the others and darted over to Desmond and Lenny’s tree. It stood beneath them, looking up with large, round eyes and circular pupils. Its head was the size and general shape of a large dog’s but with a thick beak almost ten inches long instead of a muzzle. And Desmond now noticed that the creatures had forelimbs. They were small, like those of a velociraptor, with long, clawed fingers.

  Lenny threw his rock, striking the creature’s neck and sending it scampering back.

  Four of the creatures were still circling Xavier and the bridgers. They crept confidently, like they might attack any second. “Higher!” Infinity shouted at Xavier, although he was obviously doing the best he could.

  “Shock and awe, on my lead,” Infinity said.

  “Damn right,” Razor replied. “You take the head, I got the feet.”

  Were they really going to try to fight the creatures with their bare hands?

  “Climb, Xavier!” Desmond shouted.

  The creatures stopped circling and crouched, preparing to lunge at the two naked, seemingly helpless humans.

  Infinity screamed savagely and thrust her arms out, hurling her rock at the nearest creature’s face. In a blur of motion she kicked the thing in the side of its head as it was trying to avoid the rock. Then she was all over it, knocking it to the ground, her legs encircling its chest until her feet locked together. She clamped her arms around its head, trying to hold its beak shut, and attacked one of its eyes with her teeth.

  Razor circled to the back of the animal, threw himself over the body, and grabbed the hind legs. He wrestled with the flailing limbs, keeping the claws away from Infinity.

  The other creatures seemed startled by this vicious, coordinated attack, and they nearly stumbled over their own feet trying to back off. They stopped at ten yards out and watched, ready to run if necessary. The restrained creature began screeching, and the others backed off even more.

  This was a crucial moment, and Desmond saw a chance to help. Still holding his own rock, he descended to the ground. “I’ll kill you!” he screamed, and he rushed at the nearest creature and threw the rock.

  This was apparently the tipping point, because two of them turned and ran back out of the forest.

  “Get back up in the tree, tourist!” Infinity ordered, her strained voice barely audible above the shrieks of the creature beneath her.

  The two remaining predators began creeping toward Desmond, their bodies held low to the ground.

  He rushed back to the tree and climbed until he was next to Lenny again.

  The predators came to the tree’s base and looked up.

  “Break its damn neck,” Razor snarled.

  With her legs still locked around its body, Infinity pulled back harder on the creature’s head. “I’m trying!”

  Suddenly the two creatures below Desmond and Lenny began climbing. They gripped the branches with their beaks and hind feet, quickly maneuvering themselves upward like parrots.

  “You’ve gotta be kidding,” Lenny said.

  A rush of panic overtook Desmond. The creatures had evolved to climbing these trees. No wonder they had been in no rush to attack earlier.

  “Climb, you guys!” Xavier called out from his own tree.

  They climbed, but the predators didn’t stop. At twenty yards up, Desmond and Lenny ran out of tree. Seconds later the two creatures were within reach. Rather than rapidly snapping at Desmond and Lenny’s feet, the beaked creatures carefully and deliberately opened their jaws and reached upward, following the movement of the humans’ feet with their round eyes.

  “Jesus, this can’t be real,” Lenny said as he kicked at the gaping beaks with his bare foot.

  Desmond kicked too, knocking one of the beaks to the side but not deterring the creature’s efforts.

  Suddenly one of the creatures caught Lenny’s foot. It then began backing down the tree. Lenny cried out as he started sliding down with it. Desmond grabbed his arm and desperately held on.

  Lenny’s terror-filled eyes caught Desmond’s. “Don’t let go, Des!”

  The other creature latched onto Lenny’s leg just below the knee. The weight of both predators tore Lenny from Desmond’s grip. They dragged him down, his arms and head violently striking branches all the way to the ground. The two creatures immediately began dragging away his now-limp body.

  “Lenny!” Desmond began climbing down. From the corner of his vision he saw Infinity and Razor get up and rush to Lenny’s aide. The creature they’d been holding kept kicking, but it didn’t get up.

  Desmond jumped past the last few branches. One of Lenny’s attackers was running away. The other was in a life-and-death struggle with the two bridgers. Infinity had a solid grip on its head, but Razor was struggling to contain its thrashing feet. Razor was red with blood, but there was no telling if it was his or the creature’s.

  “I’m letting go,” Infinity cried. “Get back!”

  Razor scrambled back, and Infinity released the head and rolled away. The creature got to its feet and took off for the open hillside.

  Razor collapsed onto his butt, holding his blood-soaked abdomen.

  Infinity was already at Lenny’s side. Desmond rushed over to them. He stared down in horror at the condition of Lenny’s leg. It was completely shredded, much worse than Xavier’s fracture. His foot hardly resembled a foot at all. The creatures’ beaks must have been unimaginably powerful to do such damage.

  Infinity slapped Lenny’s face. “Wake up, tourist. I need you to focus.”

  Lenny moaned, barely conscious.

  Infinity swiveled her head to look at Razor, who was still sitting, clutching his belly. Then she glanced up at Xavier, still in his tree. She stood up and faced Desmond. “Listen to me, tourist. Priorities have changed. Forget whatever purpose you came here for. We have a new purpose—survival. We’re here until 7:00 PM tomorrow night. At that point we can bridge back alive or as heaps of half-digested goo. I prefer alive. All of us. Understood?”

  Desmond was shaking and didn’t trust himself to speak, so he just nodded.

  “We h
ave severe injuries, but right now priority one is defense. We have to make safety our number one priority.”

  He wiped the blood from his throbbing nose and flicked it to the ground. “Okay, what can I do?”

  “We need concealment. And weapons.”

  6

  Shelter

  Infinity’s strength was starting to fade. The tourist, Lenny, was fading in and out of consciousness, so she had resorted to a fireman’s carry. She was slick with sweat, and so was the tourist, which made it even harder to hold on to his naked body. They had trekked perhaps a half-mile without seeing anything that would provide a place to hide or any debris that could be fashioned into weapons. And the forest of bubble-trees was only getting thicker. At least two of the predators were still following them, hanging back a hundred yards, perhaps hoping for them to leave behind one of the wounded.

  Ahead and to the left she saw a brighter area, possibly a clearing. Any change in the terrain was worth checking out, so she veered left. Razor and the other tourists were lagging behind, so she paused. It was critical for everyone to stay together.

  Razor and Desmond supported Xavier, at this point just dragging him along. Xavier was conscious but was exhausted from hopping on one foot. Razor’s face showed no signs of pain, but his labored grunts and staggering stride told a different story. He was in bad shape. If the predator’s claws had penetrated an inch deeper, they would have spilled his guts. As it was, he was losing blood fast.

  “Keep going,” Razor grunted as the three of them caught up.

  Lenny moaned as Infinity hefted his body higher on her shoulders for the hundredth time. They all trudged on.

  Soon they emerged into the clearing. It seemed to have been created when several large trees had fallen, knocking over additional smaller trees. The trees had fallen into two main piles. Their fleshy green parts had rotted away, revealing woody structural trunks, like skeletons. Chest-high green stalks were growing nearby in several clusters, and they looked rigid. Possibly rigid enough to be useful.

  “I’m putting you down,” Infinity said as she took a knee and rolled Lenny off to one side.

  Lenny moaned again, still barely conscious.

  Infinity stood up and faced the others. “We’re stopping here. It’s the best place for shelter we’ve seen.” She pointed to the larger of the two piles of tree skeletons. “That’s our starting point. I think we can all fit beneath it. We’ll use the trees from the other pile to reinforce it. Razor, can you work?”

  He nodded. “Damn right.”

  “You and Desmond get the wounded inside there. Then start reinforcing the structure. I’ll go search for something we can use to make weapons.”

  She scanned the forest, pausing her gaze in the direction they’d just come. She had seen movement—brown shapes slinking smoothly among the trees. But she couldn’t tell how many. She scanned the ground. Rocks were plentiful but mostly buried, probably difficult to remove. She shoved one with her bare foot, confirming this. She shoved another. The second one moved, so she worked it free with her hands and tossed it near the jumble of tree trunks. She gathered three more and placed them beside the first.

  Razor and Desmond had already moved Lenny’s limp body into the interior of the pile of logs and branches, and now they were helping Xavier crawl through the jumbled branches. He whimpered and huffed but didn’t cry out. He was proving to be tougher than he looked. Assuming Lenny didn’t have a severe concussion or other damage they couldn’t see, and assuming they weren’t killed by predators in the next thirty-four hours, the two injured tourists would survive until bridge-back. It was surprising what the body could endure for a day and a half, especially if antibiotics, medical equipment, and good surgeons were available upon returning.

  Infinity moved to the center of the clearing to inspect the stalks growing there. The first thing she noticed was that swarms of insects were buzzing around the three or four greenish balls at the top of each stalk. Like the weird leaves on the trees, each of the balls was bigger than her fist, and she could see right through them. She squeezed one between her fingers until it burst. The air around it immediately smelled sweet, and dozens of insects swooped in from the other stalks, hovering there as if sucking in the aroma. Interesting, but not useful.

  She gripped one of the stalks and wrenched it from the ground. It had a fleshy surface like the larger trees, but there had to be something hard inside for the stalks to stand erect. She took the stalk to the rocks she’d dug up. It didn’t take long to grind the end of it down between two of them. She had been right—the center was dense, and it held a good point.

  She smiled to herself for the first time since bridging to this world.

  Infinity found what she had been looking for, a low area with a small stream. Luckily it was within eyesight of Razor and the tourists.

  Unfortunately, the stalking predators were also within eyesight. The damn things had gradually moved closer to the crude shelter. And now more had arrived. She had counted at least eight, but she couldn’t be sure because they kept moving, weaving back and forth between the trees in a way that made her nerves raw. If this behavior was a strategy to drive their prey to panic, then it was effective. The tourist Xavier had become fixated on it. Razor had finally put Xavier to work grinding points on the plant stalks, which seemed to be shutting him up.

  Infinity didn’t want the stream for its water. She and the others would drink only if necessary. Hornet had told her once about a tourist getting violently sick within minutes of drinking water on a world with a divergence far more recent than this one. Different plants and animals meant different soil. Different soil meant different groundwater. No, what she needed was mud.

  She stepped into the water, and her bare foot sank several inches into the streambed. Perfect. She scanned the area to make sure the predators weren’t approaching, and then she scooped up mud and began smearing it over her skin, quickly covering every inch of her body. It immediately soothed the insect bites she’d sustained. Like the water, the insects here could be different. So different, in fact, that their bites could be highly toxic. A layer of mud on the skin would keep most of them from biting. She gathered as much as she could carry and went back to the others.

  Razor and Desmond had done a decent job of carrying logs from the smaller pile and using them to reinforce the shelter. With the supporting logs wedged into place, there were only a few holes, which were big enough for a human to fit through but too small for the predators that were stalking them. The shelter’s biggest weakness was the top. They didn’t have enough logs to close it off completely.

  Lenny was now out of his semiconscious stupor and was sitting up with the others within the shelter. “That’s a good look for you, Infinity,” he said as she approached. This idiotic comment was a good sign that he hadn’t suffered a serious head injury.

  Ignoring him, she leaned into one of the shelter’s openings and dumped her load of mud at their feet. “Spread this on yourselves. Leave nothing exposed, not even your open wounds.”

  Xavier looked up at her, his face pale from blood loss or shock. “Are you crazy? I can’t put mud on this.” He nodded down at his fractured leg, which was tinted deep shades of black and blue.

  “Yes you can. You’ll be patho-cleansed when we bridge back. The mud will hide your scent, and it’s decent camouflage. Plus, it’ll stop the biting insects. If that’s not reason enough, think of it as putting on clothing.” She turned to go get another armload. But then she froze.

  Their situation had reached whatever tipping point the predators had been waiting for. They were coming—and fast. Infinity crawled through an opening to the interior of the shelter and jammed two short branches in place to close it off.

  “Good God,” Lenny said. “It’s a killer bird convention.”

  Infinity peeked through the maze of limbs. There were now at least fifteen predators—no wonder they’d decided to attack. She grabbed the sharpened stalks and handed them out to the
others. “Position yourself so you can use both hands. Thrust hard—into the eyes or mouth. Push like you’re trying to break through the back of the skull. If they try to claw you through the openings, grab their feet and pull. Then I’ll—”

  The predators suddenly jumped onto the pile of dead trees, shaking the entire shelter. The tourists began shouting and jabbing wildly.

  The creatures covered the shelter, scrabbling over each other and tearing at the logs with their beaks, tossing aside the smaller sticks and ripping pieces off the larger branches.

  Infinity thrust her weapon into an open beak, feeling a satisfying impact with soft tissue and then bone. The creature screeched and retreated but came right back.

  A long leg came in through one of the gaps, its claws nearly impaling Infinity’s face. Desmond shot his hand out and grabbed one of its toes. He quickly pulled back on it, bracing his feet against the logs.

  “I’ve got it!” He cried.

  Infinity rammed her weapon into the predator’s abdomen with all her strength. It went deep. She tried yanking it out, but the creature twisted and squirmed, pulling its leg from Desmond’s grip and breaking the sharpened stalk. The predator fell back, writhing on the ground.

  “Hit the abdomen, between the legs!” Infinity shouted.

  At that moment a predator’s head and neck came through a gap above Xavier, beak open and darting straight for his head. Razor flipped his stalk around and jabbed it sideways with one hand, piercing the creature’s eye. Razor pushed harder and the stalk made a sickening crunch as it broke through the back of the eye socket, and the creature went limp. Razor pulled the stalk out and the head hung loosely above Xavier’s.

  “And hit the eyes!” Infinity cried as she stabbed again and again.

  Another head came through and was stabbed by three sharpened stalks at once.