Episode 07 Falls of Death

  Smiley screamed.

  Preston, standing between two nine-foot tall walls of red-hot molten rock, stirred like a man waking from a dream. Ahead of him, the gold-eyed simian was baring his six-inch fangs, shrieking, urging him to run. Behind him, Preston heard the sound of close pursuit. He stole a glance over his shoulder. Dimly he glimpsed through the smoke, flying soot and sparks, and the air distorted with heat shimmers, down the slope of the valley behind him, half a score of the giant, hoofed jackals charging, urged on by their small red-furred riders.

  Preston ran toward Smiley, who had turned tail and was scampering away. The walls of lava stood to either side of Preston, issuing no heat. Then Preston was beyond the stream of lava, and climbing the cinder-covered slope.

  Heat fell across the back of his shoulders and neck like a club. The air was suddenly dry and unbreathable.

  The ground underfoot was a mixture of snow puddles and heaps of ash, some white and dead, some red and smoldering. Smoke was in his eyes, and it was hard to see where to put his feet.

  He risked a glance behind.

  The giant jackals entered in the corridor of cool ground between the two lava walls. Preston was weary from his all-night run, bruised from his crashlanding, cut and bleeding from his battle afterward, burned in one hand. But even had he been in perfect health, a man cannot outrun ten galloping stallions. Nor these mesonychids, who were creatures just as swift.

  But Preston saw a slender hope. The monsters were fearful of the standing walls of lava, and so were pelting down the corridor of cool soil in single file. He might be able to wreak a terrible havoc among them with his double rifle and Mauser pistol before they overwhelmed him, provided he had time to reload before they cleared the mouth of the corridor.

  He halted, turned, and broke his weapon, ejected the spent shells. He fumbled for the massive bullets, inserted two. The Holland & Holland snapped shut with a hefty, satisfying clack of noise. Had he time to find a fresh magazine for his pistol? There was only one left.

  Smiley again vented a yowl of frustrated impatience. Preston looked up.

  What had spooked the animal? Then he saw the danger.

  The plumes of superheated air hanging above cracks and scabs in the black crust of the lava were bowing toward him. He could see them the way the hot air above a sidewalk on a summer's day can be seen, like a shimmer, like a ghost.

  The wind had changed. Red sparks were also flying this direction.

  Approaching lava with the wind in your face was to invite severe burns of skin and lung, anything the superheated air might touch. The breeze was blowing streams of thousand-degree hot air toward him.

  Could he outrun the breeze? He could try.

  Preston broke the rifle open and sprinted, telling himself never to doubt the instincts of a wild creature again. The simian must know the danger of the lava flow, living in this active volcanic region, and his sharp animal senses must have sensed the change of the wind.

  In a trice Preston was up the slope, past the burned trees, columns of soot, piles of red coals, the ash-white ground. Then he was in among green trees and banks of snow.

  The snow was half-melted and slick. His boots went out from under him. He slid and fell. He landed on his rump and slid into a holly bush, which unceremoniously dumped wet snow all over him. Icy water slapped his face and trickled painfully down his neck. But the air, for one breath, was not drying his mouth and choking him.

  He winced. The breech of his rifle closed painfully on his thumb, but he neither dropped the weapon nor lost the large and expensive bullets. Expensive? Irreplaceable.

  Suddenly Preston heard a hideous yowling. He twisted himself to look back the way he had come.

  The ten jackal monsters were screaming. The foremost had not yet cleared the mouth of the corridor. Their fur was smoldering and smoking. The red simian riders clinging to their manes were also on fire. One or two had fallen and were being trampled. There was confusion at the rear of the line, as those who had only just entered the unnatural gap between the high walls of lava now tried to turn and retreat, but the last fellow trying to enter was blocking the way.

  Snarls and shrieks grew shriller and louder. Plumes of superheated air, visible as shivering mirages were passing among them, lighting fur ablaze. The two walls, as if suddenly remembering the natural order of things, now slumped and sluggishly fell inward toward each other, moving as lava should. Segments of the semi-liquid wall belled out. Muddy legs and rippling floes surged before and behind the panicked jackals, and reached into their midst.

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  The red-hot rock sagged and crawled with abominable, sadistic slowness, creeping no faster than molasses.

  Preston watched with sick horror. Animals should die cleanly and swiftly, with a single shot to the head. Not like this.

  Perhaps the swifter of foot, those neared the mouth of the corridor, could have escaped touching the lava as it collapsed slowly inward. But it slew without touching.

  Three of the monsters staggered free of the corridor mouth. One was splashed with a few drops as the lava wall slammed shut behind it. These drops passed cleanly through flesh and bone and any internal organs in the way, leaving smoking holes from spine to belly.

  The other two staggered, smoke rising from their fur. The wind blew the superheated plumes across them. Their hideous screaming stopped once lung tissue was burned away. They ignited like oily rags, reared up on their hind legs, and danced and kicked and died.

  Two of the little red simians had been riding one. Their bodies were curled up like the bodies of babes in the womb, their skin a black crust the same hue as the lava behind them.

  Of the remaining seven, nothing remained. No incinerator burned as hot as the living magma of this lava stream.

  Preston rose unsteadily to his feet, blinking. The heat beat on his face. Spots danced before his eyes. His head felt light. He sat, and put his head between his knees.

  Preston was in exactly that position when Smiley, scampering back and more frantic than ever, bit him in his rear. Preston yelped and jumped erect. He looked around for some likely stick to club the vicious little animal. But Smiley was already scampering away.

  On the opposite side of the valley, across from the river of lava, above the streamers of smoke and flying ash, Preston saw two dozen or more huge, hoofed and saber-toothed jackals, many bearing little red simian riders, now cresting the rise. Each little simian stood atop the spine or head of the monster carrying him. The crowd of huntsmen peered down toward Preston with golden eyes surrounded by raccoon rings, and this made each expression one of clownish surprise.

  But they raised horns and blew signals, and the party split into two groups, one racing to the right and the other to the left, seeking some path around the obstruction of the lava stream.

  The deeper horns of Gargantuans in the rearguard answered.

  Preston remembered his resolve to trust the instincts of Smiley. In the direction the simian had gone, he fled.

  Fatigue was now gnawing at him with iron teeth. He made his way with a combination of walking, stumbling, jogging. The horns grew louder behind him, and he heard them from the left and right. As he ran, he found his second and final clip of 9x19 mm Parabellum rounds. He had ten shots left.

  Thoughts of deep despair until now held back as if behind a dam flooded into him. After these shots, there was no sporting goods store to get more. All stores were gone. All monetary systems, industries, sciences that he knew were gone. All the people, nations, languages, and animal species he knew.

  Every plant, tree, and root his eye fell upon was unknown to him. Had he been stranded on any continent or land of his day, he would have known what to do to survive. Even that was lost and gone. Men with bloodhounds, he would have known what to do. Mesonychids ridden by trained tracker monkeys, he had merely made it easy for them to close the circle about him.

  Smiley was waiting by the bank of a deep and rushing stream. The ground here was steep and broken, so the stream was falling from brink to brink like a slinky tumbling down as staircase. Pines lining the banks clung precariously. The red-tongued ash cone of the volcano was upstream. The roaring noise of a waterfall was downstream.

  When Preston emerged from between the pine boughs and stepped into the open by the streambank, he heard a trumpet from overhead. He looked up, but did not see the flying disk that had spotted him. He eyed the tumbling white water, jagged rocks, and dark depth of the stream bed.

  "I hope you are not expecting me to ford here, Smiley!" Preston said wearily. At that moment, horns answered the trumpet. They were coming from somewhere in the forest slopes beyond the rushing stream. The hunters were before him and behind him.

  Smiley, as if in answer, loped away downstream. Preston's preference would have led him upslope, where black volcano clouds were hiding the ash cone, but he stuck to his resolve to trust the little red monkey.

  He followed as rapidly as he could, but the ground was very steep and broken. Often he had to turn his back to the direction he was going, and climb down tilted slabs of rock made slippery with coats of ice or fallen pine needles. Spray from the wild water next to him wetted the air. It quelled some of the smell from the fumes and fires. He found it refreshing.

  This stream bed and sides were entwined with rugged black formations of obsidian. In one corner of his mind, he noted two things.

  First, that these black rivulets of rock were solidified remnants of previous lava flows. Obvious in hindsight, but it had never occurred to him before that liquid rock would always flow into any local streambeds, since the water also sought out the lowest ground.

  Second, the black cloud cover from the volcano was getting lower. Dark wisps were just above the tree crowns here.

  The slope grew steeper. Preston found himself at the brink of a steep incline. Some yards below him, it was a vertical drop.

  A strong wind was blowing here. He clung with white knuckles.

  The stream next to him slid down the incline and leaped over the edge into a bearded spray of waterfall. Far below, he saw a grid of tents surrounding a circle of walls, buildings, and a tower. The simian had led Preston in a circle: that was the encampment below.

  A trumpet sounded practically in his ear. Rising up suddenly into view, huger than the full moon, came the flying disk.

  Long necked men in Mohawks wearing spotted coats of yellow and black stood atop the disk. A bugler with spyglass and signal flag was sounding his horn. A squad of Harquebusiers with spline guns were propping their awkward weapons on their forked wands and preparing to fire. A group of gray skinned midgets clung by their feet to the disk's underside, looking on with emotionless eyes.

  Horns sounded from behind. The hunters were closing in. Upstream, the hulking figures of jackals emerged from the forest shadows, and began loping down the rugged, broken slope.

  Preston uttered a curse. Smiley had led him into a trap.

  Smiley jabbered at him, and went over the edge of the cliff, and began scurrying down from rock to rock. The little red form disappeared behind the waterfall.

  The spline guns opened fire. A dozen of the yard-long lengths of razor-sharp glass javelins arched outward from the flying disk.

  Preston fell.