Amphiskios

Chapter III Harvest of Bones

Mary Callahan sat on the river bank at dawn and smiled beatifically as she held her bruised feet in the cold water.

She half turned, then relaxed as Howard Loomis came up and sat beside her. In four days Howard had changed a great deal. He had grown more nervous and his hands shook uncontrollably.

“We need food,” he snapped, “and rather than sitting here, crooning to your feet, you could be fishing. Stacey found more grubs last night.”

“You bore me, Howie,” she said, yawning. She looked ruefully at the insect bites on her bare arms. She had torn off the wine dress at knee level. She wondered if she could make crude sleeves from the extra portion of fabric.

“You don’t seem to care what happens to us,” Howie snapped.

“Kid, you’re losing your sense of humor. I haven’t had a rest like this in four years. I’m enjoying it. Besides, who was it found out those berries were good to eat?”

“They might have killed you.”

She looked at him. “Again?” she asked softly.

Howard shuddered, glanced up at the two silver boxes. At least they went away at nightfall. “I don’t feel dead,” he said.

“Where’s Joe?”

“Puttering around with that fire of his. Trying to burn rocks.”

“And the princess?”

“She’s still sleeping. And since you brought it up, Mary, I think you could be nicer to her.” He waved his hand aimlessly at the surroundings. “She’s delicate. All of this is a shock to her. She can’t stand the environment the way we can.”

Mary smiled without warmth. “The way we men can? Don’t be a sucker, Howie. She’s as tough as nails. She’s just lazy. No work, no eat, I always say.”

Howard snorted in disbelief and wandered away.

By concerted effort, they had three fish by lunch time. They were cleaned with Joe’s pocket knife, spitted on green twigs and cooked over the flames.

And it was at lunch that Joe showed them the arrowheads he had made.

“For vampires,” he said.

When they looked puzzled he said, “Those shiny rocks are silver, I think. Anyway I melted these into a stone mold. I’m cutting a slice off my belt for a bowstring. Find me a dead bird’s feathers and boom — I got something to use so maybe I can kill one of those little antelopes — the ones that hide out in that big grass.”

“You’re okay, Joe,” Mary said.

Stacey sniffed and Howard reached over and patted her shoulder. It was then that he propounded his theory of heading for a low line of hills in the distance. He said he thought he saw sun glint on rock and, if so, there might be some nice dry caves there, out of the rain that came each night to make them miserable. They had found, according to Howard’s watch, that it was only seven hours from dawn to dusk, that the night was not quite six hours long. Thus it might take two or maybe three days to get to the hills.

Stacey cast the only negative vote.

It took five days to reach the hills. And two more days to find the caves.

Four footsore and weary people stood at the base of the cliff and looked up. Joe Gresham had the haunch of a deer, wrapped in bluish leaves, slung over his shoulder.

He carried a sturdy bow and three notched arrows in his hand.

Stacey, using thorns and a patience that had elicited Mary’s first speck of admiration for her, had made a rather neat costume, shorts and a halter, of the hide of the tiny antelope-like beast. Howie had made a crude knapsack from the topcoat and, when Stacey discovered that her new costume was beginning to smell rather high, it was too late.

Mary noticed with amusement that Howard did not stay as close to Stacey as usual.

Joe had begun to develop an almost animal awareness of his surroundings. And thus it was Joe who saw the length of whitened bone protruding from the thorn brush at the base of the cliff.

Stacey refused to look. Mary, Howard and Joe stared down at the skeleton. It had worn a hide garment. An axe with a stone blade lay under the skeletal arm.

Joe bent over, picked it up, hefted it. “This we can use,” he said.

“But don’t you see?” Mary exclaimed. “There are people in this screwy world. Honest-to-God people!”

“You missed something,” Howard said in a flat voice.

She gave him a quick glance. He was pale. She looked back at the body, saw the glint of metal. It was a fifty-cent piece, tarnished. A hole had been bored through it and it was on a greasy thong around what had been a neck.

She shut her teeth hard, bent over and looked closely at it. Then she straightened up, screamed and fell back against Joe. He steadied her.

Howard looked closely and said, “Joe, it’s a U.S. coin all right. But it has a head on it I don’t recognize. And the date is nineteen hundred seventy-one.”

Joe gave him a puzzled smile. “But nineteen-hundred seventy-one don’t come along, pal, for another — lemme see — twenty-one years.”

“What killed him, Joe?” Mary said.

Joe took a long look. Then he turned and looked up at the cliff. He shook his head. “Thought first he fell. But he’s too far out. No, something give him a bash over the ear, caved his head in.”

They found three more before nightfall. And one wore a shirt of chain mail, badly rusted.

The fire was in the mouth of the big cave. Howard was the spokesman. They sat back inside the cave, on stones that they had found there, arranged in a half circle, as though they had been used before in just that manner.

Howard said, “We’ve got to get our heads together. We’ve been here four days now and we’ve found — how many bodies, Joe?”

“Seventeen. Fourteen old ones and three fresh ones. Fairly fresh ones.”

Mary shivered.

Howard continued. “I’m no historian, folks, but I’ve been looking at the stuff those people had. Clothes, for example. Now they either came fresh out of a costume play or else they landed here right out of their own world. Understand, I’m just thinking out loud. We’ve seen only a little part of this country. At the rate we found bodies here they must be all over the place.

“We don’t know what the score is. We do know that we can feel hunger and cold and pain — and if these bodies are any proof, we can be killed — even if it is for the second time. I want to stay living if only to find out what this is all about. Agreed?”

The other three nodded.

“Now something killed all these people. Joe, you take it.”

“Well, I’d say the most of them got their heads bashed but the fresh ones were carved up a little by something sharp. Not teeth or claws — a little sword, maybe, or a big knife.”

“Thanks, Joe. That means there’s danger here. I don’t think all these people killed each other off. It would have been a help if some of them had written down what was after them.”

“Or written it down so we could read it,” Joe said grumpily.

“What do you mean?” Howard asked sharply.

“Oh, didn’t you see that funny lingo scratched on the wall back there? About twenty feet back into the cave?”

Howard cursed softly, lit a torch and hurried back, Mary and Stacey following him. He found the markings. The flickering flame lighted it.

“Modern French,” Stacey said. “Here goes — ‘I am the one who remains. They came at dawn to hunt us. The shining men. The others, my comrades, have fallen. We killed one. They took away the body, but our dead are… are—’ ” She faltered.

“ ‘Unburied’,” Mary said briskly. “ ‘I do not expect to survive the morrow. It is a strange existence in which one must die twice.’ And signed by a character named Lerault.”

“How do you—?” Stacey said.

“Education isn’t restricted to the upper classes, darling,” Mary said.

“Stop that eternal bickering!” Howard yelled. They went back to the fire.

When the flames died down, Joe replenished the blaze.

Mary said softly, “Shining men. Goid your lerns, boys. Tomorrow the battle.”

“Shut up!” Howard said, a note of hysteria in his voice.

“Don’t let her bother you, darling,” Stacey said softly. She took Howard by the arm and the two of them went back into the cave into the darkness.

Joe spat onto the fire. “I was reading once,” he said, “or maybe it was a movie or maybe TV. I forget. Anyway, they got this place where they stock it with animals and then if you’re a very special guy with a big roll, they let you in there to hunt once in a while.”

“Very sharp, Joe,” Mary said. “We’re thinking alike. Me, I’m going to give them a hell of a time. I know a place where nobody can come up with me plumping rocks down on their heads.”

Joe, his voice softer, said, “I should a met you a long time ago, Mary. You got guts.”

“Listen to the sweet talk.”

Joe stirred restlessly, his voice growing husky. “Kid, on account of maybe this is our last night and—”

“Not so sharp, Joe. Don’t let the princess give you wrong ideas. On account of this might be our last night, I’ll stay up an hour later and we can have a nice talk.”