Exile to the Stars (The Alarai Chronicles) (11 page)

“Here’s
the intrepid voyager exploring a new planet!” He laughed at himself. “No such thing
as a meat-eating deer. Got to be a mutation or something. Carl will really go
nuts when I tell him about this critter.” He stuck the knife in a tree for
later cleaning and carried a load of venison to the fire. “Just cure the meat
and keep your shit together, boyo.”

While
the venison slow-roasted on a circle of spits, Jeff dragged the carcass a good
distance from camp. On the way back he thought sourly, Some damn bear jumping
on top of me in the middle of the night would really put the finishing touch to
this day.

“Bear?
What manner of creature is this?”

Jeff
spun around. “Who said that?” No one was standing behind him as he half
expected. “Get a grip, Friedrick. Now you’re hearing voices. Man, I think I’ve
had enough for one day!”

Frost
covered the ground when he emerged next morning, but the sun was over the trees
promising warmth. Wrapping the meat in plastic he had brought to cover his
backpack in wet weather, Jeff hiked into the valley gnawing on a piece left
from the prior evening.

“Highway,
here I come!”

Over
following days he worked his way down into more heavily forested land but saw
no smoke, ran across no highways, and encountered none of the offal of
civilization. However, he was packing a good supply of food and shrugged it
off.

“Sooner
or later I’ll hit a highway.”

Sitting
by the fire one night thinking about nothing in general, Jeff noticed the glow
of a moon about to rise. That really seems bright, he thought. Probably a full
moon. He decided to go have a look but checked the Colt before leaving camp.
Whatever made the big paw prints had visited his camp on several more
occasions. Entering the valley, he climbed a hill to get a good view.

“Son
of a gun, those moons are beautiful. And they’re both full. What a night.” Jeff
did an incredulous double take. “Two moons? There can’t be two moons!”

Immobilized
by shock, Jeff watched with jaw agape as the smaller moon rapidly caught up
with the larger. All the discrepancies he had been collecting came together and
out into the open with a mental shout that nearly brought Jeff to his knees.

“This
can’t be Earth! It isn’t Earth!”

Some
time later he glanced at his watch and realized he had been standing there for
well over an hour. Turning every so often to view the moons, Jeff stumbled back
to camp in a daze. He truly was lost.

Badly
needing the moral support of a good blaze, he stirred up the coals and threw on
an armload of wood. Jeff thumped down by the fire and followed both moons as
they moved higher in the sky. The smaller moon was quite bright and seemed to
race by in front of the larger. He was tempted to pinch himself to see if it
was all a dream. Instead, he drew aimless patterns in the dirt with a stick.

A
sci-fi addict in his youth, Jeff recalled a book by Heinlein. Okay, he thought,
viciously attacking the dirt with his stick, so a nuclear blast blew this guy’s
fallout shelter into an alternate future. Welcome to the club. Jeff jabbed the
stick into the dirt and it broke with a dry snap.

“Oh,
bullshit! It’s probably no more than my imagination and just the Mars station.”

The
argument raged back and forth while he fed the fire. Frequent glances at the
smaller moon revealed it was not his imagination, nor could it be the Mars
station. It was far too large. Reason and emotion battled in a no-holds-barred
match that covered the entire mental landscape.

While
there was no escaping the scalpel-sharp persuasion of higher logic honed by
years of academic training, the power of ancient drives proved equal to the
task. Reason concluded he was no longer on Earth. Emotion—fear—rallied anger
and scorned such a conclusion. It was down and dirty. Hours passed without
resolution.

Jeff
jumped to his feet, grabbed a rock, and heaved it at a tree. “This whole thing
is a bunch of crap! Damn it, this is Earth! That goddamed earthquake has
totally fucked me!”

He
threw more rocks and kicked the dirt, but all it did was make him want to cry
from loneliness. The thought that there might not be anyone within thousands of
miles proved so unsettling he sought escape in sleep. It was a restless night
of unsettling dreams and Jeff got up before the sun. He paced and sat, paced
and sat, the knowledge that he could not possibly be on Earth chipping away at
doubt only to retreat in the face of angry denial. Hunger would not be denied
and he spitted a piece of venison on a green stick.

The
smell of hot food, the warmth of the sun—both provided a pleasant timeout to
put his head back together. It was also challenging to reheat the meat without
burning it. When the venison was done to a turn, not charred black, Jeff took a
cautious bite but burned his tongue anyway. For the first time he noticed how
flat the meat tasted and sprinkled it with a light dusting of salt.

“Not
much left,” Jeff muttered, hefting the salt container. “Without salt this diet
could really get old, quick.”

That
kicked off a chain of associations. Okay, he thought, let’s accept that at the
very least you’re no longer in the Cascades. I’m here, wherever that is, and
nothing is going to change the fact that I’m lost, but good. Until I can figure
out what the score is or hike out, I’m going to have to conserve everything
that can’t be replaced from what is at hand. I can only use the Colt for
self-defense unless there is no alternative. A cluster of neurons in the memory
cortex fired off.

“Wait
a minute!”

Diving
into the backpack, Jeff pulled out two boxes of ammunition. “I don’t remember
packing these and should not have brought them. More importantly, why didn’t I
notice them days ago?”

He
opened one of the boxes to make sure it wasn’t a dream. Holding a silver
cartridge up to the sunlight, he gazed at an enigma.

“Was
I really that far gone?” Jeff pursed his lips and nodded. “Yep, I was. No other
explanation.” He tossed the cartridge in the air and grinned. “Let’s hear it
for confusion. Loaded for bear, not to mention cheeky deer!”

Having
arrived at a livable compromise, Jeff’s train of thought continued beyond the
deer to include the paw prints. The animal that made them continued to be a
mystery. Bear, mountain lion—there was no way of knowing. At least he had seen
the deer and knew what to expect.

Stowing
the cartridge boxes, he chuckled. “Shoot, maybe it’s no more than a large
coyote on the prowl. I’m probably spooked for nothing.”

The
instant an image of a coyote formed in his mind, Jeff was hit by such a blast
of outrage that it was physically painful. He had been about to take a seat but
sprang upright in alarm.

 
“Now where did that come from? It couldn’t
have come from me, could it? Shit, it feels like something is screwing with my
head! Am I losing my mind?” Growling, “I have to get out of this damn
wilderness before I go entirely over the edge,” he hurried to the task of
breaking camp.

Since
the valley still offered the easiest path, Jeff continued to use it as a
highway. While a part of his mind stubbornly refused to accept that he was no
longer on Earth, he examined his surroundings with new eyes. At the same time,
his thoughts kept drifting back to Seattle. Memories of familiar haunts came to
mind. Mom and Dad, Carl, the fencing club—they all flowed through his thoughts
leaving a deep sadness that threatened to drag him down. He was not going to
run across a highway, catch a ride, and soon be back in Seattle.

Days
passed and acceptance made headway as Jeff cataloged more discrepancies. One
day he stopped to run his hand over the bark of a giant evergreen.

“Sure
looks like a Douglas fir,” he mused, “but the bark’s way too smooth.”

With
the drop in elevation, clumps of aspens had made an appearance. A close
examination revealed that the leaves were far too broad to be aspen. The rabbit
he scared up looked for all the world like a snowshoe hare, its mottled white
and brown spring fur clearly evident as it bounded away. Then he thought about the
deer teeth.

Jeff
decided to stop for the night when he ran across a meadow carpeted with lush
grass and bisected by a wide creek. He pitched tent inside a copse of the
aspen-like trees and scouted the area for wood he could fashion a bow out of.
Two boxes of ammo or not, something told him it was going to be a long hike.

“Well,”
he eventually said, looking down at the gnarled contraption in his hand, “I
don’t know how long this thing will last, but it will have to do until I have
time to cut and cure a better piece of wood.”

Arrows,
likewise, were makeshift. He would have to learn how to knapp arrowheads from
flint or obsidian. Laying the arrows aside near dusk, Jeff decided he could
afford to shoot another deer. He sneaked down near the creek and lay quietly
until a large buck came to drink. Watching the deer graze, Jeff felt immense
relief. At least they aren’t pure carnivores, he thought. Or at least this one
isn’t.

One
shot did the trick. The pull back to camp was hard going, and he decided to
dress out the deer after only a few steps. Just as he dropped the antlers, Jeff
caught movement out of the corner of his eye. He was startled then alarmed when
he saw gray, ghostlike shadows gliding through the woods at the border of the
meadow.

“If
those mothers are coyotes, I’m a dwarf!”

That
comparison did nothing for his peace of mind. He grabbed the antlers, back
peddled with all his might and brought the deer skidding along. The glow of the
campfire seemed the most cheerful thing he had ever seen. Frequently peering
into the circle of darkness, Jeff butchered the deer as fast as he could. His
imagination did the rest.

“I
can’t leave the carcass here, but those things were big! Oh, shit!”

He
set an armload of venison on a handy boulder and took hold of the antlers.
While the deer was much lighter to pull, it still seemed like an anchor.
Although he had never been afraid of the dark, Jeff discovered foot by foot
that he wasn’t too old to learn. He had not gone far when he couldn’t stand it
and dropped the carcass.

“I’m
outta here!”

Jogging
back with pistol in hand, he fully expected something to take a crack at him.
When he trotted into camp, Jeff already heard sounds of a commotion in the
direction of the carcass. While it wasn’t loud like lions quarreling over
position at a kill, Jeff knew without doubt that the deer carcass was being
torn to shreds.

Hurrying
to gather extra firewood, he muttered, “Polite carnivores?” The idea was
absurd. The commotion eventually settled down to an occasional loud pop that sounded
like bones snapping. “No sleep tonight, that’s for sure.”

Dropping
a final armload of wood on the pile, Jeff occupied his time touching up the
edge of his saber. The sword and pistol were very reassuring. Eventually all he
heard was the creaking of insects. The recorder filled more time, but his heart
wasn’t in it. He knew that something was out there. Jeff threw more wood on the
fire and imagined a big thermos of coffee. It didn’t help. Found out by the
day’s stress, his head slowly drooped and he nodded off.

A
snapping in the fire awakened Jeff with a start. Horrified that he had fallen
asleep and allowed the fire to burn down to coals, he grabbed a piece of
firewood. Something moved on the other side of the fire, and he froze.

“Oh
my God! They’re here!”

A
number of inkblot shadows were grouped on the opposite side of the coals.
Glowing orbs of green and red seemed to hang suspended in the shadows, giving
the impression of monstrosity. Jeff tossed the piece of wood on the fire and
moved back against the tent. It was a big piece of wood and a vortex of sparks
shot into the air. Fighting a nearly irresistible urge to take off running, he
yanked the saber free.

Illuminated
by the slowly growing firelight, six creatures that looked as big as Shetland ponies
took shape. Sitting motionless, they stared at him with unblinking intensity.
Another minute and they still had not moved. Jeff relaxed a fraction.

“Okay,
they haven’t jumped you yet. Maybe their bellies are full and they’re only
curious. Let us hope!” The piece of wood was full of pitch and flared up. “Shit
they’re big,” Jeff breathed. “They look like wolves, but I’ll bet they run at
least 250 pounds and stand four feet.”

Jeff
figured his prospects in a free-for-all and knew he wouldn’t have a chance,
pistol or no pistol. He tossed more wood on the fire, the wolves turning their
heads as if linked together to follow his every move. Several let tongues loll
out of partially open jaws that looked big enough to swallow a rabbit whole.
That and they way they were looking at him really irritated Jeff.

“Those
bastards are enjoying this!”

Easing
tense muscles and grimly clamping his jaw, Jeff focused on the biggest of the
lot. “All right, bucko, this seems to be your game. What’s it going to be?” He
shifted the saber to his left hand and unsnapped the holster.