Ancient Echoes

CHAPTER 34



MELISSE DIDN'T KNOW what to make of the village men. They treated her and the others well enough, except that Lionel and Ted were forced to sleep in the stable.

The first full day, the villagers taught them to dig up a small round root, a sort of primitive parsnip, and mash them so that they could be dried as meal for the winter. The village men seemed to be planning for them to remain through the winter and needed to increase the amount of food stored. It also meant the village men didn't plan to kill them...at least not all of them, and not right away.

Today, they were separated and all given a variety of chores.

Melisse grew tired of shelling beans and stepped out of the community house and looked around, Thaddeus Kohler, the village “mayor,” chopped wood some distance away. The close-mouthed man aimed to intimidate with his stern, military bearing. She decided to see what she could find out from him.

“Do you think we'll have time to get out of these mountains before the winter snows hit?” she asked when she reached his side.

He stood his ax on end as his gaze raked over her. “Why would you want to try? It could be dangerous.”

“We want to go home.”

“Not a good idea.” He returned to chopping.

“We just need some food, some warm clothes,” Melisse said. “We had bad luck and our things were stolen. Perhaps you can tell us how to get out of here.”

He slammed the ax into the stump of a tree trunk where it stuck. “You aren't going anywhere,” he said brusquely.

“Are we prisoners?” she asked.

His sharply angled face crinkled into a grotesque smile. “You don't have to be. There's nowhere for you to go. The sooner you get used to it, the better off you'll be.” He continued chopping.

She put her hand on his arm. “You're not getting off that easily. What is this place? Why can't we find anything we've known—no towns, no highways?”

“I don't know what you're talking about.”

“Of course you do! Tell me!”

He looked down at her hand with a smirk, as if he found her toughness amusing.

She drew back her hand, and couldn't hide the bleakness in her voice as she added, “We went between two pillars and our world changed.”

His formidable presence bristled, but then his eyes met hers. The temptation struck to turn and run from what she saw there—a deep all-consuming coldness coupled with understanding almost beyond human ken—as if he knew so much about the world and life that he no longer cared.

“So it did,” he muttered. “I must remind myself how frightened all of you must be. How peculiar you must find all this, and find us.”

He fell silent. She struggled to remain and speak to him. “Have you been here long?”

His jaw clenched. He looked at her a long while before he spoke. “Yes, more than thirteen years. My men and I were sent here on a mission and have been unable to go back.”

She sucked in her breath. “Thirteen years?”

He nodded.

“What...what kind of mission?”

He shrugged. “Scouting. Nothing special. I was a major in the Army, retired—”

“The U.S. Army?” she blurted.

“Yes. Why?”

She almost said something about his accent. None of the men here sounded like Americans, although their accents weren’t “foreign-sounding” either. “Just curious. Please continue.”

“I saw this as a way to pick up some easy money. Central Idaho—severe climate, worse topography, grizzlies, maybe even a wolf pack or two—and then home. I could handle it. Or so I thought.”

She nodded.

“You?” he asked, his eyes like gray flint.

She told him about Rempart and the anthropology students and their field trip to find the pillars, “and then home,” she added. He somehow found it within himself to smile as her words echoed his.

“Did you build those cabins?” she asked.

“No. We found everything here. I suspected it's what we were sent to find. I heard rumors of some expedition years ago—around the time of Lewis and Clark—that got lost in this wilderness. They must be the ones who built the cabins and lived here.”

“And then?” she asked.

“I don't know. No graveyard, if that's what you're asking,” he replied. “Maybe that means they got out, that they found a way home. For their sakes, I hope so.”

“That's a nice thought,” she said. “But doubtful. Do you have any proof?”

A strained, fierce look came over him. “Proof? You question me?”

The sudden change in him startled her. “I simply want to know—”

“Enough! What is of more interest to me is the here and now.” He stepped closer to her, at once threatening and something more as his voice turned soft, cold, and deadly. “For example, I know that you and your friends need us far more than we do you. If you died at this moment, it wouldn't affect us one bit. And you could die or disappear in an instant.” He snapped his finger. “Like that.”

Her eyes widened at the sudden implied threat, and he gave his cruel, skeletal smile again. “Also,” he continued, his hand swiftly clasping her jaw and lifting so her eyes met his, “I'm all that stands between you three females and some of my men giving into what I'll call their baser instincts. I suggest you keep that in mind as well.”

He walked away.

His words, his implied threats, worried her. And apparently, the village men had no more idea of how to leave here than she did.

But she knew how to keep warm in a storm, to build snow shelters, and to use her flint to burn combustible materials. Sacks of dried meal were in the storage building. If she stole one or two sacks, she could make it last long enough to get out of the mountains to lower, warmer climates.

If she got away, and somehow, miraculously perhaps, managed to find her way out of this strange land, she could return with help to rescue the others. She felt confident she could do it, and equally sure Lionel and the students could not.

That night, Melisse used the pretext of going to the outhouse as a means to reach the storage hut. She first wrapped thick fur blankets around herself like a hooded robe to keep warm, and then used a smaller blanket to make up a knapsack in which she put a sack of meal plus knives, flints, candles and anything else she could easily carry that might be helpful, and set out.

The village men guarded their guns and rifles well.

She headed east.

She traveled slightly over an hour when she heard something following her.

A beast, tall as a man, but hairy, its fur the color of flesh, appeared in front of her. The nose was flat, the eyes spaced far apart, and the ears small and pointed. Long claws and even longer teeth looked sharp and frightening. When it snarled, its teeth appeared a dark yellow, and dripping with some sort of mucous. The eyes were sharp and eerily intelligent.

She pulled out a long knife. She had been trained in hand-to-hand combat; she could handle it. Another beast appeared behind her.

Then a third, and a fourth, a fifth.

She had expected to encounter one beast, and to fight it off, but not an entire pack.

All were large and misshapen. Some were tall and walked upright; some walked on all fours. Some had six legs, insect-like, yet furry as mammals. Others didn't seem to have fur, but instead a hard shell. Strangely, all had some part of their bodies that glittered like gold.

One snarled and roared hungrily, and soon all the others took up the cry. The forest shook with the sound.

They moved forward, their eyes fixated on her, poised to spring.

She heard a loud thwack! The forward-most beast fell with a long arrow piercing its brain.

The others fled as a volley of arrows flew at them.

Kohler, Durham and Tieg stepped out from the brush, long bows in hand.

Melisse stared at Kohler and the others who had saved her. They must have followed her closely and knew those creatures were out there. “Those beasts,” she said, “they look like mutants of some sort. What are they?” She started towards the one that had fallen.

“Stop!” Kohler hurried toward her. “They're diseased. Keep away, or we may not be able to save you if you become infected.”

Melisse froze. “But…it looks like its claws are made of gold!”

“You would be wise to forget about them,” Kohler warned. He pushed her to walk in front of him toward the village.

They walked in silence back to the community house.

Once there, Kohler's face twisted into an ugly, brutal grin. “I don't blame you for trying to escape,” he said. “If I were somewhere I didn't want to be, I'd be doing the same thing. Unfortunately, my understanding does not equal my forgiveness. You must, of course, be punished for your crime.”

A chill went down Melisse's back, but she said nothing and entered the building alone.