Jigsaw World (15 page)

It was as they were passing a green pasture
that the shadow passed over the vehicle. Looking upwards through
the windshield, they saw a giant dragonfly looking thing, but all
of thirty feet long, and maybe fifty feet in wingspan. As they
watched, it dipped in its flight to the field, grabbed a cow by its
spine, and flew away to the south.

A half a mile further on, they ran into sand
dunes. These were unusual for this sort of topography, and the
rainfall in this area should have prevented their formation. They
stopped at one point where the dunes came right up to the edge of
the road to discuss it. Sidney, who had become estranged from
Charla since her little threesome, volunteered to go investigate,
and Tom and Markus decided that they had better go back him
up.

Markus sidled up to Tom on the way up the near
slope. “Tom, I think that I know what is going on here. Have you
ever heard of doodlebugs?”

Tom admitted that he had heard the term
before, but he really didn’t understand it. Markus told him that
the bug got its name by the sort of random track it left in the
sand as it traveled.

“
The adult form of the doodlebug
is sometimes called an Antlion, sometimes by other names.” Markus
said. “Both the larvae and the adult form eat prey insects. The
adults fly to hunt, and the larval form digs a sand-pit, and waits
at the bottom to ambush whatever falls into it.”

By this time, with Markus and Tom bringing up
the rear, Sidney has reached the top, and started down the other
side. By the time the pair had reached the top, Sidney was in
obvious distress, finding that the sand shifted each time he wanted
to go up. He could only go down. He was already more than halfway
down the slope.

Markus caught Tom’s arm as he was about to go
after him. “It is too late, if you go down there, you will be
trapped too.” He said. “We can’t save him.”

They watched as Sidney finally reached the
bottom. The sand beneath his feet erupted into motion, and a very
ugly bug that had to be all of ten feet long, and at least four or
five feet wide emerged, bit him on the shoulder, and took him under
the sand.

Tom was about to go down to help Sidney
anyway, but Markus grabbed him while he spoke urgently to him. “He
is already dead. The bugs have a neurotoxin in their bite. We have
to go.”

It was a much more chastened group that
prepared to continue the trip a few moments later. Everyone agreed
that there was nothing else to be done here, and it was time to
head out. A few moments later, they were on the Interstate,
continuing on toward the border with Arkansas.

******

Something soft and pliable surrounded his
face, and his hands were clutching the same sort of thing. Tom
still smelled the aroma of Lavender. He opened his eyes, and
looking up slightly, he saw the well proportioned navel in the
black landscape that was Veritasia. His hands gripped her beautiful
ass, and her legs were wrapped comfortably around him. Being
properly positioned, he went in for a quick kiss on the lips that
never speak.

This must have served for waking her up. The
next few moments were taken up by the need to renew and reinforce
some late night memories that they had created last night. Tom had
always considered Halle Berry to be an ideal womanly body of sorts,
but he would not have traded the acrobatics that he and Veritasia
engaged in last night, even for Halle. If there was anything wrong
with Halle’s body, it would be that her boobs were just slightly
too big. Veritasia’s was perfect.

They had pulled into this rest stop for the
night, and everyone had taken advantage of the opportunity to
sleep. Tom had also taken advantage of the opportunity of trying
for touching that irresistibly gleaming dark skin that was
consuming his attention.

To his surprise, she had responded very
positively to his advances. This came as a relief to Tom, as he had
determined to have her, and he really didn’t want to have to clean
up any loose ends afterwards. He also wasn’t sure how many others
of the group would have become loose ends if they saw him dispose
of her. All water under the bridge now. He could have his fun, and
everybody got to live.

He went out to find whatever passed for a
tourism building in this rest stop. He finally found it on the last
path that he looked for it, and found that it had a map showing
that the border of Arkansas was ten miles ahead, and at the border
they would be treated to the great Metropolis of Paw Paw, Arkansas,
population 812.

He returned to the RV, where he found that the
womenfolk had banded together to brew a pot of coffee, cook an egg,
bacon and toast breakfast, and gossip. He got a cup of the coffee
and a plate of the breakfast. He also got a lingering kiss from
Veritasia, fetching immediate glares from Sally and Charla. Tom
wasn’t sure why Charla would be upset, but he decided to file it
away for a rainy day.

Tom had a vague sense that a long time ago,
this sort of situation would have been much more traumatic to him
then than it was now. He had no memory of this, for the period was
probably back more than the twenty year limit on his memories.
Somewhere along the way, he had got the hang of being unconcerned
by other people’s reactions to him or about him. You get more
girls, you get less pain, and it makes disposing of loose ends a
much simpler matter.

“
Our next stop will be the
wonderful Arkansas town of Paw Paw, which is one of the thousands
of towns that has apparently popped up out of thin air.” Tom said
to the group. “It seems to have replaced the city of
Texarkana.”

“
Historical territories of the
Quapaw, the Ouachita, the Caddo and a half dozen other Indian
tribes.” George said. “And all those tribes loved to eat the Paw
paws.”

“
Aren’t you just a fount of
useless knowledge, George?” Tom quipped. “Although I have to agree
with the Indians. Paw paws do taste mucho gute. Everyone batten
down. We are on the road right now.”

In a matter of seconds, Tom had slid into the
driver’s seat, started the engine, and set the wheels to rolling.
The morning sun was warm and bright, and Tom felt the miles
dragging away a small tension that he must have been harboring for
a while. That was good evidence that they were going in the right
direction.

In practically no time at all, the sign
appeared that proclaimed that the indicated road would lead the
pilgrim to the enchanted town of Pawpaw, on the border between
Arkansas and Heaven. Tom dragged the wheel in the proper direction,
and they cruised down the off ramp and into a small hamlet. There
was no telling what strange monsters lurked in the shadows here,
but the land was certainly good.

Almost at the town limits, they found the
famous eating place Mama Silvia’s Diner. Not one to pass up a new
culinary adventure, Tom pulled into the graveled parking lot and
parked. Everyone could kick back and enjoy being waited on, even if
nobody actually needed food after that breakfast this
morning.

They all entered the establishment and took a
seat at one of the tables. The place was a display of rustic décor,
with the floors, walls and furniture composed entirely of wood. As
far as Tom could tell, the furniture must have been made locally.
He had noticed as he came in that there were bee hives arranged at
the periphery of the parking lot. This was definitely country, and
one should expect country ways.

A woman with a beehive for a hairdo came over
to take their orders. Tom assumed her to be Silvia. She neither
agreed or disagreed with that conclusion, but she brought some damn
fine coffee, and she didn’t blink when Tom ordered a slice of
blueberry cheesecake for each member of the group. She couldn’t
have had it on hand, but a few moments later, she brought it out.
While she interacted, she flirted with all the guys, and she
treated all the gals like daughters, so she was okay with
Tom.

Everyone ate their cheesecake, and drank their
coffee, and when they were done, Silvia brought out a bowl
containing several vaguely banana shaped, green to brownish fruits,
which she proudly informed the group was the local variety of the
Pawpaw.

Everyone got one and gave them a nibble. No
one could positively place the flavor. It had some similarity to
plum or persimmon, most everyone admitted to tasting a banana like
flavor, and most thought that they had a mango like flavor. No one
could agree on the best description of the taste, but everyone
agreed that they were good.

A middle aged man with long dark hair in a
ponytail came over to the table and introduced himself as Charlie.
He sat down at the table without invitation, and proceeded to greet
each of the travelers by name. When Tom and George demanded to know
why he knew them, he said that he had been expecting them, ever
since he had seen them in a vision.

“
Where is the goofy looking army
type guy?” Charlie asked. “I didn’t think that he would leave you
as long as the pretty piece over there was with you.”

“
He got held up, what with being
digested by a big bug, and all.” Tom said. “We didn’t wait around
to see what came out the other end.” Markus whispered in Tom’s
ear.

“
Never mind that.” Tom repaired.
“My informant here tells me that nothing comes out, so I guess we
would have waited a while.”

“
So who are you, again?” Markus
asked. “I am not so interested in
that
you had a vision
of us, as I am
why
you had the vision. Gotta be a reason,
right?”

“
I have friends that are
interested in seeing that you are successful” Charlie said. “They
couldn’t be here, right now, so they sent me. Most of them are in
other worlds, or other planes.”

“
Sounds like you guys are the
right ones to hook up with for the good drugs.” George joked. “Is
there a reason that you are spectrally stalking us, other than
knowing some other stalkers?”

Charlie went on to tell them several
interesting things. He said that Tyr would meet Tom soon. He said
that each of them would be on a vision quest very soon, and each of
them would be tested by the quest, and that not all of them would
survive it. He said that he was half Cherokee, and his mother was
one of the last of the Caddos. He said that he had studied under
many of the best shamans in the world. When George asked why he
looked like a white guy, Charlie patiently explained that the
Cherokee and the Caddo were both from proto-Caucasian stock, not
the Asian looking stock of the west coast tribes.

He said that when the vision quest started,
they would discover that they had what they needed to complete it
with them, but their fates would be decided by innate qualities,
not by weapons or tools. He said that he would wait for them to
finish their quests, and then he snapped his fingers.

Sally was back in her home in Grande Prairie,
waiting for her parents to return. A lioness had just growled
outside the door, and Sally was hunched down inside the living room
with the only weapon she could find, a kitchen steak knife. There
is something else in her hand. It is a card, and it is blank with
only one word on it:

Victim

She didn’t know why she had the
card. She vaguely remembered being on a road quest with several
other people, and so this all had to be in the past, but it felt
like it was real, and like it was now. Somewhere deep inside, she
knew that her parents and her brother were already dead. She had no
idea how she was expected to survive the rest of the
day.

She remembered that just a couple
of days ago, she had gone out into an ordinary day. The sun was
shining, the road was filled with Fords and Chevys, and the boys
were out on the road drag racing. When they revved the engines, you
could hear the four barrels kicking in. That day, the lions had
been freed to roam the streets, and the cattle started being found
dissected, and many people who wandered off alone disappeared. The
boys started acting like animals themselves, and she barely made it
home that night without being raped or killed.

She knew that she would never
survive alone. The only other place she knew to go was her
Grandmothers, which was only a few houses over. It should be safe.
She pulled on her sweater, and made ready to dash for her grandma's
house.

She opened the door and walked
out. Too late, she saw the lioness that had growled outside
earlier. Before she could turn, or run, the lioness was on her. She
felt the pain, and the terror, and then she felt
nothing.

Tom found himself on the same battlefield that
he had dreamed of just the other day. The comrades in arms that he
had in the dream, the lady that he awaited, and the weapon that he
carried were not around. The moon was in the darkened sky, and fogs
walled in the slight valley of the field. The corpses of the fallen
were still on the field. Tom held the Moonblade in his right hand
and a card in his left with one word upon it:

Fate

He suddenly realizes that he knows
his past in this place, even though he still has no memory of it.
He knows that he is the son of massive abuse and neglect, and the
sense of injustice and outrage that he feels deep within his soul
are the result of his upbringing. He knows that he is able to kill
without hesitation when it is needed, because he has come to terms
with death, both his and others.