Mists of Dawn (23 page)

Mark
holstered
his
.45
and
fumbled
with
numbed hands
for
his
box
of
matches.
He
opened
it
and
took out
a
match.
With
a
fervent
mental
prayer
he
suddenly struck
a
light
and
held
it
aloft.

Nothing
happened.
The
things
looked
at
the
light without
even
curiosity,
their
faces
swimming
in
the feeble,
flickering
light.

Mark
blew
out
the
match,
quickly.
He
wasn’t
going to
get
out
of
this
by
any
such
simple
trick,
he
realized. And
the
sight
of
their
faces,
even
half-seen
by
match-light,
was
almost
more
than
he
could
stand.
They
were
awful.
Like
men,
and
yet
terribly,
horribly
different.

Mark
walked
on
in
the
midst
of
the
half-men,
a
grim suspicion
growing
in
his
mind.
As
nearly
as
he
could tell
by
the
stars,
they
were
moving
southwest.
Toward the
snow-capped
mountains
Mark
had
noticed
earlier, and
away
from
the
space-time
machine.
Would
he
ever see
it
again?

Onward
they
went,
with
Mark’s
legs
beginning
to ache
with
weariness.
His
hunger
was
an
empty
knot inside
him,
and
the
cold
numbed
his
body.
He
was very
tired
and
his
eyes
burned
with
the
dry
flames
of exhaustion.

The
moon
began
to
swing
up
on
its
arc
through
the night.
It
was
a
half-moon,
a
silver
crescent,
and
its pale
rays
swept
down
on
the
shadowed
world,
lighting the
things
that
walked
beside
him.
Mark
did
not
trust himself
to
look.

It
was
a
nightmare
procession,
touched
with
the fantasy
of
the
forever
unreal.
Under
a
frozen
moon, across
the
plains
of
the
vanished
past
of
earth,
Mark stumbled
forward.
And
around
him,
unbelievable monsters
from
the
fears
and
the
legends
of
forgotten history,
the
half-men
shambled
over
the
mist-kissed grass,
their
red
eyes
gleaming
in
the
black
shadows
of the
night.

How
long
they
traveled
through
the
darkness
under the
moon
Mark
did
not
know.
It
seemed
to
go
on
forever,
the
shuffling
of
the
feet
and
the
harsh
breathing all
around
him.
Finally,
he
noticed
that
they
appeared to
have
left
the
level
plain.
The
ground
was
rising under
him
and
his
feet
occasionally
stumbled
on
sharp rocks.
The
grass
had
played
out
now
and
he
could
see the
black
outlines
of
scrub
pines
along
the
trail.
The rise
in
the
land
became
steeper
and
turned
into
low hills.
Up
they
climbed,
and
Mark
found
himself
gasping
shallowly
for
breath
in
the
cold,
thinning
air.
Sharp pains
lanced
through
his
chest,
and
he
knew
that
he was
close
to
collapse.

The
half-men
set
a
murderous
pace
through
the night.
They
seemed
never
to
tire.
The
world
became
a horror
of
stooped
figures
and
a
merciless
moon
swimming
through
the
stars.
Mark
was
dimly
aware
of splashing
through
a
rapid,
icy
stream,
with
the
moon shimmering
the
rushing
water
with
silver.
Then
they went
on,
with
Mark’s
open
shoes
wet
and
cold
and beginning
to
freeze.