Ghostcountry's Wrath (39 page)

“That was some trip, if it made a sleeping person's pulse go bonkers,” Calvin observed.

“Nobody'll argue with that!” Okacha agreed edgily. After a moment's peering across Calvin's shoulder, she commenced prowling the area, collecting boots, socks, bits of clothing. “Found the packs,” she called an instant later.

“Good job,” Calvin called back. He took Sandy's hand while she smoothed Don's brow with the other. “So, why here?” she asked finally, her face tight with discomfort.

It was Calvin's turn to shrug. “I dunno—unless… Well, like Brock said: this is probably where Spearfinger first came through, given that I did the ritual near here, and this is the only concentration of rocks ready to hand—which are what she travels through. So I…guess that old woman—whoever she was—just sent us to where the World Walls were thinnest—fortunately.”

“Relatively speaking,” Sandy muttered. “I—”

A cough from Don interrupted her. She leaned forward, intent on his face, her hair coppery in the ruddy light. Calvin mirrored her.

Another cough, then two more. A long shudder wracked the boy. His eyelids fluttered, then stilled again. “Wha' time's it?” he mumbled. And then his eyes popped open, wide with incredulity.
“Jesus!”
he yipped. “Where am I? Who're you?” Then, after a further round of coughs and blinks:
“Calvin?”

“In the flesh—I think,” Calvin replied.

“But…but where'd…you come from? An'…where're my clothes?” He fell back and closed his eyes. “Jesus! I don't
believe
this!” he groaned. “Wha' happened?”

Calvin took him by the arm. “What's the last thing you remember?” he asked carefully. Sandy shot him a warning scowl.

Don's lids slitted open; his brow furrowed with concentration. “I remember lookin' in a mirror an' seein'…Mike, an'— No, it wasn't a mirror, it was water! The creek out by my house. And he reached up to me, an'—”

He closed his eyes again.

“Don?” Calvin snapped urgently. “You okay?” The boy nodded.

“How much of the rest do you recall?”

A pause, then: “A bunch of…of really scary stuff. But Mike was there, an' I told him I was sorry, an' he said it was cool. But then I didn't want to leave him, an' I knew he couldn't go on, an'—” He broke off, stared at Calvin with tear-brightened eyes. “He's gone on now, ain't he? I dreamed that. But everything you dream there's true, ain't it?”

Calvin nodded in turn. “I think so. I certainly hope so.”

Okacha, who had been rummaging among the packs, padded over, still barefoot. “Maybe these'll do,” she said tersely, her face grim and troubled as she thrust a bundle of fabric into Calvin's hands. He sorted through it, determined that it was a mix of Brock's spare skivvies and jeans, with one of his own T-shirts, then passed the wad to the boy, who grabbed it gratefully and proceeded to dress beneath the bearskin, amidst many grunts, groans, and crunchings of leaves. “You'll have to do without shoes, I reckon,” Calvin told him. “Nobody brought extras. Sorry.”

“No big deal,” Don sighed, emerging from the fur to slip on the too-large T-shirt. Then, abruptly: “I've gotta call my
mom
! She's gotta be goin' out of her mind! Uh, what day is it, anyway?”

Calvin checked his watch. “Well, if this thing's not had a breakdown swapping Worlds, never mind time zones, it's Tuesday.”

Don's brow wrinkled as he did rapid computations. “Oh, crap! I've been gone nearly a
week
!”
He shot to his feet, then paled and had to sit again.

“Legs wobbly?” Okacha asked, steadying him.

“You could say that.” Then, abruptly, even as he flinched away: “You're…
her,
ain't you? The panther-woman? You were in my dream.”

“Yes, I was,” Okacha replied matter-of-factly. “Wanta try to get up again?”

Don stared at her uncertainly, then shook his head. “Gimme a minute. Uh, anybody got any food?” he added. “I'm starved.”

Calvin shook his head in turn. “'Fraid not, unless—Sandy, you didn't happen to pick up any, did you?” She likewise shook her head.

“I've got that jug of water the Thunder Boys gave us,” Brock volunteered, scrambling toward the packs. When he returned with it a moment later, he also held Calvin's atasi. “Thought you might want this close by,” he said solemnly. “You know, just in case.”

“Thanks,” Calvin grunted. He sniffed the jug, noted nothing suspicious, then took a tentative sip. The water was cool, sweet, and preposterously refreshing. He passed it on to Don, with an admonition to drink slowly. “Okay,” he continued, as the others slaked their thirsts, “we know where we are. The next thing we've gotta figure out is where we go from here, and who needs what.”

“A telephone would be good,” Sandy said instantly. “I know some folks near here who'd probably let us use theirs,” Calvin told her.

“This is…close to Athens?” Okacha asked.

Again Calvin nodded. “Maybe eight miles north. I—”

“Athens?” Brock broke in excitedly. “You mean like in R.E.M. and the B-52's and the 40 Watt Club?”

“More like in Dave Sullivan, Alec McLean, and an ulunsuti,” Calvin shot back. “I figure we'll call Dave first, and get him to come retrieve us. Once we get ourselves straightened out down there, we can work out the rest—obviously we've gotta get hold of Don's mom pronto, and—”

“Anytime,” Okacha gritted, looking even tenser than before. “I don't like this place.” She shuddered.

“Me neither,” Calvin agreed. “So what say we collect our gear and boogie? We can work out details walkin' as easy as sittin' still.” He paused, looked at Don. “You up for it?”

Don smiled wanly. “I'm cool.”

“You're also barefoot,” Calvin noted dryly. “I can carry you if you need me to. The closest road's dirt.”

“We'll see.”

“Fine,” Calvin replied, rising. “Everybody ready?”

“Gotcha!” From Brock.

“First thing,” Sandy told Calvin, as they trudged up the hill behind the boys, “we need to get hold of Don's mom as soon as we can, and get him home as soon after that as possible, not only for his sake and hers, but because the police already think something weird's going on, and if they find out you're mixed up in it, they'll really go ballistic. So we have to either be very circumspect or very up-and-up.”

“Okay,” Calvin panted. “Go on.”

“Number two,” she went on, with a grin. “I've gotta retrieve my truck, if it's not already been found—and thereby hangs another possibly disastrous tale. On the other hand, given that I have to go south to get it anyway, I might as well take Don with me and save his mom a trip.”

Calvin didn't reply immediately. Then: “We'll have to work out the details on that when we see which way the land lays. Meanwhile…Brock, how 'bout you?”

“What about me?”

“You cool? About magic, I mean? Or do you think I still owe you?”

Brock grinned fiendishly. “Let's just say we'll talk about that when
I
see which way the land lays.”

Calvin could only sigh. “That leaves the big 'un, doesn't it, Okacha?”

Okacha nodded darkly. “We did make a bargain,” she said. “I've fulfilled my part—I think. But now that I've seen what I have…I'm not sure I oughta insist you fulfill yours.”

Calvin started to reply, but Sandy shushed him. “Bullshit,” she snapped. “A bargain's a bargain. I'm not sure I enjoyed what we just went through. But I
am
a physics teacher, and I've seen enough warped physics the last few days to keep me thinking for a lifetime—and that's just the selfish part. Never mind that Cal'll fret himself crazy about you if we don't get you somewhere Snakeeyes can't get at you.”

Calvin stared at her, grinning crookedly. “Which is the next
big
problem. I mean, we
know
how to get help—shoot, we can hitch if we have to. And there's a half dozen ways to get Don back home, and the same for the Bronco. But neither of 'em carries a threat—not like Okacha's from Snakeeyes.”

“Who'll also be a threat to you,” Okacha pointed out. “He knows you've got the scale. He knows you know things. Shoot, he probably knows you've got a friend with an ulunsuti.”

“Which is why we've gotta get you someplace safe pronto,” Calvin shot back. “Someplace he can't draw on your power, while I figure out how to defuse him.”

“It's not your fight,” Okacha replied. “I thought I was selfish enough to let you do it on your own, but I'm not so certain now. I—”

“Cool!” Brock interrupted from the head of the line. “Hey, guys! Check this out!”

Calvin jogged the few feet to the boy's side—which also brought him to the edge of a wide meadow he recognized, in spite of its margin having been logged off in the last week or two. The ground was scarred, muddy in places where grass had not reclaimed it. And tree trunks—mostly pines, he was relieved to note—lay scattered here and there like matchsticks. But that was not what had now claimed both boys' attention.

He heard it before he turned to follow their incredulous stares: a beating in the air, a collective concussion that was almost audible. And along with it came a rustling of feathers that
could
be heard, punctuated by harsh, strident cries.

It was birds: a vast flock of dark shapes winging their way into view above the treetops to the east. Grackles, he thought, or starlings. Crows, even—maybe. All those had figured in reports he'd seen on TV of vast flocks of black birds troubling middle Georgia. Athens, David had told him, had been in quite a quandary, what with animal rights folks at odds with the downtown merchants on how to evict the feathered pests from the ginkgo trees there. No satisfactory solution had been devised, but the birds had moved out on their own.

Evidently, in large part, to here.

And gee, but there were a lot of 'em! These woods were flanked by a series of pastures and fields, the closest not a half-mile away across Bloody Creek. But if
this
many birds had sheltered there, little could be left for man or beast to feast on. It really was neat, though; the way they were fanning out across the sky in a patch so wide and dense it looked like a cloud. Calvin didn't think he'd ever seen that many birds at one time, and found himself wondering if this was how the passenger pigeons had looked when they'd passed this way a century back.

Only…

“Shit!” Okacha snarled from farther into the meadow. Then, “I don't like this! Not at all!”

Calvin tore his eyes away from the birds to stare at her. “Is there…something you're not tellin' us?”

She started to shake her head, then to nod, then tensed, and simply shrugged. “Maybe…I don't know. I mean, it could be natural, but…”

“Look out!” Sandy yelled. “Christ, here they come!”

Calvin whipped back around to peer at the sky once more. But just in the brief instant since he'd last looked, the cloud had thickened—and was now heading their way in an arrow-shaped formation that was far too regular for comfort. Already the shadow of the vanguard was darkening the eastern edge of the meadow. And even as Calvin looked, birds broke off from the bottom and dived into the trees they had just vacated. They disappeared for a moment, lost within the lush foliage, then reappeared below the canopy, still flying straight at him and his companions—too low to either be natural or to avoid.

“Run!”
Sandy shrieked. “Try for those trees yonder!” She was already sprinting across the field.

“Don't let yourself be trapped in the open,” Okacha added. She paused for a ragged instant, then dived toward the nearest fringe of forest—and was instantly driven back by at least fifteen black shapes—grackles—that shot straight for her face, beaks gleaming wickedly.

Calvin simply ran after Sandy, since Brock and Don were likewise charging that way through the shin-high grass. But the brief delay while he watched Okacha had been too long. And even as he reached the middle of the meadow—bare yards behind Sandy—he knew he wasn't going to make it.

None of them were.

“Out of the frying pan…” Okacha growled behind him. Then: “Oh, Christ, no…
no
!”

Calvin skidded to a halt and turned to stare at her. She was frozen in place, clutching her temples, the tendons taut in her neck and wrists and brow. “W-ward,” she managed. “Ward!”

Calvin snapped his pack off, fumbled frantically inside—and found, blessedly, a few small sprigs of cedar. He waved them under Okacha's nose, saw her sniff, then stuffed them in her hand.

“We're surrounded,” came Sandy's despairing voice.