Ghostcountry's Wrath (25 page)

…
heat…
fire…his hand was on fire—no, had
been
on fire…had been flayed and boiled and fried all at once; had been cooked beet red…

…
red…
the color of fire, of pain, of…blood…

…
blood…
the taste in his mouth, the warm salty copper tinge…

…and then back to black, but this time he realized that he
was
realizing; that he was noticing things and linking notions, which meant he either
wasn't
dead or that the afterlife wasn't at all what he'd expected.

He blinked and caught the black shifting: lighter, and darker…

Another blink—eyes full open now—and he saw the paler black.

No! It was
white—
had
been for a fractioned second: white as summer lightning…

Lightning…

That had been a sky! A sky of cold turned hot, then cold again.

A third blink, and
up
arrived. A horizon defined itself: a ragged edge of utter dark against a background that, though scarcely lighter, was dimly sprinkled with colors: red and yellow, orange and blue-white—lots of that.

Stars!

He was seeing stars!

White—far off, as it had always been: sheet lightning bleaching a
night
sky, when the last one he had seen was noon day; sheet lightning cutting out the peaks of distant mountains like pyramids of torn paper…

He blinked again, noticed that he was breathing—and that his throat and nose and lungs felt clogged and burny.

A cough brought up water that tasted like sand and tannin and south Georgia. He rolled to his side, coughed again, felt pain stab into his chest and twist. He thought something grated.

Which reminded him that he had a body. He moved again—and felt no new pain save the familiar ones in his ribs and hands, though now he thought of it, the cold was a lot
like
pain. Still, that was okay: it meant he was alive. He had eyes, an up, a down; lungs, a tongue—ribs. And now he had a cold heavy weight that pressed down upon something at once rock-hard and yielding. His fingers slid into it as he explored it gingerly.

It moved back, shifted at that touch.

Sand.

Calvin sat up and, when the world stopped whirling, discovered he was hunched over on a broad beach of gritty black sand, where a cold black glitter hissed to itself a yard to the left: a body of water—probably a very wide river. And there were mountains.

He analyzed the surroundings. The beach—or whatever—was easily fifty yards wide on his side and lay at the foot of a ravine whose fractured, black stone walls rose two to three times higher than he was tall. Before, behind, it twisted along the water, a study in black on black. But now that his eyes were adjusting, he could make out other, paler shapes: fantastic forms, gnarled and grotesque. Some were small—the size of his arm or leg; others were as large as horses or cars or houses, and the bigger they were, the more fantastically they whorled and bent.

A word came to him: driftwood. He was seeing driftwood: wrack tossed up by that vast black river.

He stood carefully, feeling his ribs catch and try to bind pain inside, even as his clothes pulled and grasped at his outer form. He was soaked through! And standing waterlogged in a stiff cold wind was certainly one reason he was suddenly shivering uncontrollably. For a breeze was blowing: a strong one from…well, from whatever direction was away from the water. And when it struck his skin, it made him shake and cringe and want to hug himself…but when it had played with him a while, he felt warmer.

Without really thinking about it, he shucked the heavy object—his backpack—that was weighing down his shoulders and cutting into his collarbones, then skinned stiffly out of his jacket, T-shirt, and bandage. His boots and white tube socks followed, but he hesitated at his jeans. And what was this odd thing stuck in his belt? This arm-long length of pale, polished wood, bladed at the end like a double-headed axe?

War club. It was a war club. Good! He'd carry it while he explored, and explore while he dried off and tried to figure out where he was and what had become of…the others!

With a jolt like a bolt of the pervasive lightning, a whole set of memories awoke. One instant he'd been completely self-absorbed, intent solely on taking inventory of himself and his place in the cosmos. The next—

Sandy!
His mouth shaped her name, even as his eyes strained into the darkness.
Brock!
And… He frowned. What was her name? The weird chick—the panther-woman who had brought them here?

Okacha?
Yeah, that was it! Okacha!

But where were they? They should've all been here, for their wrists had been bound together. But strain his eyes though he would, nowhere could he see any sign of them.

On the other hand, this dark, cramped landscape was scarcely all-revealing. The black sand showed dips and ridges galore, as well as curves and twists of shoreline. Never mind the often head-high driftwood that could conceal any number of secrets.

Well, one direction was as good as another. And with that, he wrung out his clothing as well as he could, then, with the club in his hand and his pack on his back, set out shirtless and barefoot down the beach, having concluded that as heaviest of the group, he should have been spat up first; therefore, following the current would sooner or later bring him to the others.

Or he could simply call them!

Why hadn't he
thought
of that, dammit? His mind was still a major muddle.
“Sandy!”
he shouted.
“Sandy!”
Then:
“Brock…Okacha!”

Again and again, until his throat went raw.

No answer returned, and so he walked.

But not far, for no more than two hundred paces down the beach (it was hard to estimate distance in the dim light), he rounded a particularly large clump of drift-wood—and found himself staring into the wide green eyes of a panther. The beast was sprawled languidly along what had once been a yard-thick limb from a truly gigantic tree before some ancient flood had claimed both trunk and branches. The beast was also wet; its fur glistened darkly, like a seal's. And the eyes…he couldn't tell if the light flickering there marked recognition, violence—or insanity.

“Okacha?” he murmured tentatively, fighting an urge to bolt.

From deep in its throat a growl rolled forth.

“Is that you, 'Kacha?”

The growl became a deep rumble. She was purring! Calvin cautiously extended a hand and stroked the slick wet fur between those troubling eyes.

They closed; the purring deepened.

“Welcome to the Darkening Land, huh? Well, it's sure dark enough. Wish you'd had time to brief us, though.” He shivered again.

The panther growled. The wind twitched a hank of its fur free. It dried instantly.

“Come!”
he commanded it, slapping his thighs as he backed to a spot where the wind would have clearer access.

It blinked lazily and drew back its lips just far enough to reveal the tips of its canines, but acquiesced, bounding heavily down from the branch to pad across the sand. It shook itself, growled—or maybe sang. And as it did, the wind picked up, blew harder, warmer…

And then the world turned to white and heat as a bolt of lightning flashed down from the starlit sky and struck the limb the beast had abdicated. Apparently tinder-dry, the driftwood burst into flames and burned steadily.
Great!
Just the thing to cheer a cheerless place—especially when Calvin hadn't time to build one himself, what with the need to find his friends to whom it would hopefully serve as beacon. Not that he intended to wait around. He was, however, practical enough to spread his wet garments on the sand sufficently close to the blaze for them to derive some benefit from the heat. That accomplished, he returned to the still-soaked panther. “You comin'?”

It cocked its head, but instead of moving toward him, sank down on its haunches and began methodically licking its fur, abruptly all feline. Calvin merely snorted and continued south.

He had jogged for barely five minutes, when he saw a figure stagger from behind a house-high tangle of river wrack a few hundred paces further on. His heart leapt—then sank a small degree when it proved to be shorter and darker than he had dared hope—but leapt again in gratitude that a third member of their party had survived.

“Brock!” he yelled. “Hey, buddy, up here!”

The boy evidently saw him at the same time, because the next thing Calvin knew the kid was careening toward him.

“Brock!” he yelled again, feeling oddly uneasy about making so much noise in the eerily solemn darkness.

“Calvin!”

“Brock, m' man!”

“Hey, Cal!”

An instant later they embraced soggily; Brock for once having forgotten to maintain attitude. Calvin's ribs twinged, but he ignored them.

“I—I h-heard you c-c-call b-before,” the boy gasped into Calvin's chest. “But I was k-kinda z-zoned an' c-couldn't answer.”

“Well, I'm glad to see you,” Calvin replied inanely. Then: “Sandy: did you see any sign of her?”

The boy shook his head, but when Calvin tried to ease free of his grip, Brock resisted, trembling uncontrollably. “Brock? What's wrong?”

“C-cold,” the boy mumbled. “Kinda…dizzy.” He swayed on his feet, and Calvin had to shift his grip to keep him from falling. “Easy, kid,” he murmured. “Take it easy; you may be on the edge of goin' into shock. But try to hold on just a little bit longer. There's a fire right up the way. We'll get you there, get you warm.”

“W-warm?”

“Yeah, kid, warm.”

Brock did not reply, simply stood shivering as chill after chill wracked his small, soaked body. Calvin studied him for an instant, then scooped him up, grunting when he discovered how surprisingly heavy he was for such a little guy. His ribs hurt abominably. But it was only pain. And pain
he
could endure.

“Keep talkin',” Calvin panted, as he half walked half staggered back toward the fire he could barely see to what he had taken to thinking of as the north.

“'Bout what?”

“Anything. Recite poetry, or something.”

“'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves…”
the boy began.

“…Oh frabjous day!”
he concluded a short while later, when Calvin lowered him down by the fire. Fortunately, it was still blazing, though the panther was nowhere in sight. He glanced about, concerned, but trying not to show it as he helped Brock to a seat on a smaller limb near the flaming one. The boy shuddered again, but seemed to draw strength from the heat. His clothing steamed. “I f-feel better now,” he managed—and sounded it.

Calvin stared at him uncertainly. “You need to get out of those wet clothes. They'll dry faster, and you'll get warm a lot quicker, both.”

Brock blinked dumbly, and Calvin guessed that in spite of his posturing, he was still pretty out of it. “C'mon, kid, shuck 'em. I'll spread 'em out here by mine, and they'll be dry before you know it.”

The boy nodded sullenly and proceeded to strip, though Calvin had to help him with his shoelaces. Brock hesitated, scowling, when he reached his briefs. “Use your good sense,” Calvin told him, trying not to smirk—from sympathy, not ridicule.

Brock grimaced, but turned his back, dropped his drawers, and flung them over his shoulder to Calvin, then squatted by the fire, legs close together, hands draped between.

“I doubt you've got anything to be ashamed of,” Calvin observed wryly. “Now, you just stay there and get warm. I've
gotta
look for Sandy. Oh, and if a panther shows up, don't freak.”

Brock's expression flickered between embarrassment, alarm, confusion, and indignation so quickly Calvin had to bite his lip to keep from laughing. The kid was recovering
very
quickly.

Brock dipped his head in the direction from which Calvin had first come. “Sh-she's thataway, I think. I…felt her break loose from the ties before you did, so I guess that'd make s-sense, anyway.”

“Thanks,” Calvin told him, and jogged off the way the boy indicated.

So had the panther, by the prints left in the dark sand. But he couldn't follow them far, because maybe three hundred yards north of the burning tree, they suddenly veered left, onto a shelf of smooth stone that suffered no trace of passage to remain on it. The shelf rose into a small headland that jutted into the river. Calvin guessed the panther had chosen the straightest path to whatever it sought, thereby cutting off a loop of meander. And if its senses were as sharp as he suspected, there was at least an even chance it might have scented something he couldn't. And if not…well, he wasn't out that much and could take the longer route later if need be.

Increasing his pace to a steady, uphill trot that had him sweating in spite of the chill, he soon reached the crest of the ridge. He was right, too: the height revealed a convolution of river meanders, a large one of which had been circumvented by his shortcut.