8 Gone is the Witch (26 page)

“Should I let go?”
asked Ursula.

“No!” I
yelled. “Don’t let go.”

“She can’t hold him there forever
,” said Carlos.

Tony said, “She won’t have to.
Looks like it’s climbing back up.”

The saurocedus
, it turned out, was an excellent climber. Using the wooden sleepers as ladder rungs, it managed to climb halfway up the steep incline in a matter of minutes.

“Do something!” Carlos shouted.

Tony turned to me. “Zip ball?”

“Yeah!”

We spun up a couple of quick ones and pitched them over the edge, hitting ol` super sourpuss right in the face.

Now
then, in my day, I’ve seen zip balls do some amazing things. I’ve seen them blow holes in walls (always a hoot at parties), seen them fry sensitive high-tech electrical components that the government claimed were non-intrusive observation equipment (yeah right), and I even saw one cause a Northeast regional blackout once. Although in my defense, 1965 was a wild time for witches and mortals alike. There was plenty of blame to go around for that one.

Still, in my wildest dreams, I’ve never imagined a
zip ball could cause a biological entity to grow twice its size after getting hit in the face with one. Yet that’s what happened. The son of a bitch fell back a few rungs, shook the sting from its eyes, and then swelled up like a puffer fish. It didn’t appear to be in any pain. Just pissed. I didn’t think that was a good thing.

I backhanded Tony on the
chest. “Any other bright ideas?”

We looked back into the chasm
. The saurocedus had begun climbing again; hand over fist, clearing six to eight rungs at a time. We edged back instinctively, all except Ursula, of course. She couldn’t move. We left the poor dear holding the proverbial bag, so to speak.

I was just about to suggest we all start running, when Tony
pulled his bayonet and began hacking through the ropes, starting with the left handrail.

Carlos saw what he was doing, pulled his bolo and began hacking away on the right. Meanwhile,
the saurocedus was making quick time of its climb and was already a mere twenty feet below us.

Jerome
and I collected the biggest rocks we could find and started pitching them down at the beast. They did little to slow its advance, until one of them hit it in the eye. It stopped and let out a baritone roar that shook the ground beneath our feet.

“That’s it!” I
told Jerome. “Forget the rocks. Throw dirt.”

The s
aurocedus had unusually large eyes, probably better to see with in the dark caves. Unfortunately for it, they made for easy targets. We set up on either side of the bridge and began shoveling fistfuls of dirt down in its face.

Meanwhile,
Carlos and Tony were making good time slashing away at the ropes. They had cut through the top pieces and started working on the sleeper lines.

Ursula, now holding
just the cut ends of the handrails, needed only to remain standing on the first sleeper to keep the bridge from snapping back.

Though
Jerome and I continued throwing dirt, we couldn’t stop the damn thing entirely. It still managed its way to the top of the ladder. It slashed blindly at the sleeper where only Ursula’s tiptoes now rested. Its screams and intimidating roar had us all wanting to abandon our positions, though none of us did.

To drive
it back, Carlos and Tony alternated jabs with their knives; two at the creature’s flailing arms for every one they took at the ropes. Each time they cut into the saurocedus’ flesh, the beast would pull back and drop a rung. Yet, each time it dropped, it seemed more determined to come back quicker and meaner.

“Got it!”
Carlos yelled as he cut through the last of the ropes. The bridge immediately twisted ninety degrees, swinging down and away from his side of the anchor plate.

T
he damn thing still managed to hold on. It made one last attempt to grab at something solid on land, and when it felt Ursula’s ankle, it latched on tightly. She screamed and Carlos immediately brought his bolo down on the claw, severing it.

Tony
let out a primal grunt as he finished slicing through the last of the lines and then dropped to the ground in exhaustion.

I heard the whiplash of ropes pulling away, the clatter of sleepers stacking against one another in a domino effect, and then
finally... nothing.

I
t was over.

The
end of the bridge fell into the gorge. We never heard anything after that. No roar, no ear-piercing screech. Not even a whimper.

We stood and gazed across the chasm
in silence. We could see the bridge still tethered to the other side. Following its long vertical lines down the face of rocky wall, we could also see that the saurocedus had not held on.

I put my arm around Ursula’s shoulder and pull
ed her in close. “You all right?”

She
leaned her head against my chest and nodded.

I looked up at the others.
“Everyone else all right?”

Carlos and Tony nodded.

“Jerome?”

He
smiled up at me, his gyro studded eyes unblinking through the swirl of dust we had stirred up in the commotion. “Jerome hungry.”

“
You are?”

He bent
down, picked up the saurocedus’ severed claw and presented it to me. “Good eats.”

I patted
him on the head and smiled back. “Emm, yum. Knock yourself out, fella. You’ve earned it.”

Chapter Fourteen

After resting
awhile to catch our breaths, we picked up and headed out again. We followed a well-established path paralleling the chasm, something I’d rather not have done, but the fact it was well established indicated it was the only common sense choice.

The trail
seemed ancient in the way the ground had worn down so smoothly, the rut of a billion footsteps so precisely carved to conveyer belt width and dressed in a gemstone finish. It made me wonder who traveled the path before us and why. Was it blazed by some lost civilization, or simply a migration route for prehistoric creatures like the saurocedus?

I asked
Jerome. He didn’t know, but he assured us we wouldn’t run into anything resembling the saurocedus again. I didn’t find much comfort in that. A creature didn’t have to resemble a saurocedus in order to be a big fat pain in our butts. Nonetheless, the others found solace in his words, proving the age-old adage that ignorance is bliss.

We
continued single file along the narrow path; Jerome, Carlos, me, Ursula and Tony, respectively. The chasm lay to our right. To our left, a sheer granite cliff face seemingly as high as the chasm was deep. My instincts told me we were traversing a gradual downward slope, but my legs told me we were going up. That seemed especially so when I kicked a pebble and its reluctance to roll appeared to confirm its odds with gravity.

Carlos seemed
to agree, at least in the way he shuffled. Gone was that confident, purposeful step he had when we first entered the ES. Clearly, the journey had taken its toll on him. I feared for Carlos. I feared also that he and the rest of us were not getting enough food and water. Had we made a mistake by entering the ES so woefully unprepared?

Aside from the physical
change I saw in Carlos, I also saw a mental change, and certainly an attitude change, as well. Especially his attitude towards Jerome. I believed his recent ordeal at the rope bridge had softened his opinion of the pint-sized piñata pup. He didn’t so much say it, but I could tell by the way the two talked afterward. They stayed close to each other, and even walked side-by-side when the passage allowed.

I know it wasn’t polite, but I picked up the pace to catch up
to them and listened in when I thought I heard one of them mention my name. I think it was Jerome, because Carlos was the one that laughed.

“No,” he said. “Witches don’t live forever. It just seems that way sometimes.”

They both laughed. Funny how Jerome’s laugh sounded like monkey chatter. Disturbing really.

“Carlos make
zip ball?” Jerome asked.

“No. I don’t make
zip balls.”

“Tony make
zip ball.”

“Yes. Tony makes
zip balls.”

“Tony witch?”

“Yes. Tony is a witch.”

“Ursula witch?”

“Yes, Ursula is a witch, too.”

“Carlos no witch.”

He shook his head. “No. I’m sorry I lied to you earlier. I’m not a witch.”

Jerome
threw back his shoulders and puffed out his chest. “Jerome no witch.”

“Yes, I know.”

“Carlos no witch. Jerome no witch.”

I heard Carlos make a t
isk sound through his teeth. “That’s right, J-man. You got it.”

“Carlos friend?”

They continued walking. Carlos didn’t answer that one. I was about to drop back again, thinking that was it, when finally he said, “Back there at the rope bridge when I fell down, you came to help me.”

Jerome
nodded.

“
That beast was coming, but you came anyway. You risked your life for me.”

“Saurocedus bad
.”

“
Yeah, bad motherfucker.”

“
Bad muthafucka.”

Carlos laughed at that, probably proud of himself for teaching an alien
a swear word. “You know, Jerome. I might have been wrong about you. I think you’re all right.”

“
Jerome all right.”

“
Yeah, me and you...” He made sure Jerome was looking at him when he did the finger point back and forth between them. “Me and you are all right together. You know that?”

“Carlos friend?”

Carlos put his hand on Jerome’s shoulder. “Yeah, buddy. Carlos friend.”

A short time later, Tony called out from the rear of the line,
asking us to stop. I turned around to see what he wanted.

“Don’t you smell it?”

“Smell what?” I asked.

“Fresh air.”

“Yes,” said Carlos. “I smell it.” He rocked his head back and inhaled deeply, turning his nose toward a small break in the cliff wall. “There’s fresh air leaching from the cracks in this wall.”

“
See if you can find a weak spot somewhere. Maybe we can break through.”

The boys
took out their knives and began probing the rock face, wedging their blades deep into cracks and crevices and prying out loose bits of granite, quartz and mica. It didn’t take long before Tony struck pay dirt.

“Hey,
I got something here. Look. This is all loose. It’s all coming out.”

He began popping
chunks of stone out of the wall the size of melons and kicking them into the gorge behind him. It seemed the more he removed, the easier it became and the faster the hole opened up. Soon, he had excavated a virtual doorway four feet tall and two feet wide.

On the other side,
there lay another world.

I volunteered to
step through the passage first. Actually, I insisted, but no one argued with me.

I found the air on the other side amazingly clean and fresh
. I hadn’t realized how stale and stagnant the cave air had been. It was no wonder we were all so tired and fatigued. Oxygen deprivation will do that to a body. I waved the others through and stepped aside, allowing them room to stretch, breathe and enjoy the view of the wide-open flatland.

“Unbelievable,”
said Tony.

“I know
, right? It’s like another world out here. Glorious, isn’t it?”

“No, I mean
that
is unbelievable.” He gave a nod for us to turn around. We did, and none of us could believe what we saw.

The passageway
behind us was gone. The rock face was gone. What should have been a towering granite cliff was nothing more than a lumpy boulder the size of a Buick.

Carlos asked, “What happened to the cave?”

“It’s gone,” I said. “We must have gone through a portal of sorts.”

“No, wait
.” Tony crouched down low and studied the rock. “I don’t think so.” He started toward the boulder, approaching it slowly, as if unsure of his instincts. When close enough to touch it, he dropped to his hands and knees.

“Tony?” I came up behind him and
tapped him on the shoulder. “Are you all right?”

He lowered his head nearly to the ground, brought his face to within an inch of the stone and
whispered, “I don’t believe it.”