Black (52 page)

“You think you can pass me so easily?” the Shataiki sneered. “Not so easy now, eh?”

Johan jumped forward and put up his fists as if to take the bat on. Tom lifted a hand to the boy without removing his eyes from the Shataiki. “Back off, Johan.”

“Back off, Johan,” the bat mimicked. Its pupil-less red eyes glared. “Are you too weak for me, Johan?” The bat raised one of its talons. “I could cut you open right here! How does that feel? Welcome to our new world.” The Shataiki cackled with delight and bit deeply into a fruit it had withdrawn from behind.

“Want some?” he taunted and then laughed again as though this had been a hilarious assault.

Tom took a step in the direction of the bat. The Shataiki immediately flared his wings and snarled. “Stay!” A flock of Shataiki had now gathered in the sky and circled above them, taunting. “You tell him,” one with a raspy voice taunted.

“You tell him,” another mimicked.

And the first Shataiki did. “You stay put!” it yelled now, even though Tom hadn't moved.

Tom reached into his pocket and squeezed his last fruit so that the juice from the flesh seeped out between his fingers.

He turned calmly around and faced Rachelle and Johan. “Use your fruit,” he whispered. “When I say, run.”

“Face me when I talk to you, you—”

It was as far as the Shataiki got. Tom flung the dripping fruit at the Shataiki. “Run!” he yelled.

The fruit landed squarely in the Shataiki's face. Burning flesh hissed loudly. The beast screamed and swatted at his face. A strong stench of sulfur filled the air as Tom rushed by, followed by Johan then Rachelle.

“It's a green fruit!” a bat cried from among those that circled the scene. “They have the green fruit! They're not dead. Kill them!”

Tom tore through the field. No less than twenty Shataiki dived toward them from behind.

“Use your fruit! Rachelle!”

She spun and hurled her fruit at the swarm. They scattered like flies. Rachelle flew by him. Then Johan. But the bats had reorganized and were coming again. Johan clutched their last fruit between his fingers. They shouldn't have thrown the fruits.

“Wait, Johan! Don't throw it.” They ran into the trees. “Give me your fruit.”

Johan ran on, desperate to reach the white sand.

“Drop it!”

The fruit fell from his fingers. Tom scooped it up and whirled around. A hundred or more of the bats had materialized from nowhere. They saw the fruit in his hand and passed him. Straight for Johan.

“Back!” Tom screamed. He raced for the boy, reached him, and shoved the fruit into the face of the first bat to reach them.

The Shataiki shrieked and fell to the ground.

And then they were through the trees and running on white sand.

“Stay together!” Tom panted. “Stay close.”

They ran a hundred yards before Tom glanced back and then stopped. “Hold up.”

Rachelle and Johan stopped. Doubled over, heaving for breath.

The bats flew in circles over the black forest, screeching their protests. But they weren't following.

They weren't flying into the desert.

Johan jumped into the air and let out a whoop. Tom swung his fist at the circling bats. “Ha!”

“Ha!” Rachelle yelled, flinging sand at the forest. She laughed and stumbled over to Tom. “I knew it!” Her laughter was throaty and full of confidence, and Tom laughed with her.

She straightened and walked up to him wearing a tempting smile. “So,” she said, drawing a finger over his cheek. “You're still my fearless fighter after all.”

“Did you ever doubt?”

She hesitated. He saw that her skin was drying out again.

“For
a moment,” she said. She leaned forward and kissed him on the forehead. “Only for a moment.”

Rachelle turned and left him standing with two thoughts. The first was that she was a beautifully mischievous woman.

The second was that her breath smelled a bit like sulfur.

“Rachelle?”

“Yes, dear warrior?”

He took a big bite out of their last fruit and tossed her the rest. “Have some fruit. Give the rest to Johan.”

She caught it with one hand, winked at him, and bit down hard. “So, which way?”

He pointed into the desert.

The last of their exuberance vacated them at midday, when the sun stood directly overhead.

They navigated by the ball of fire in the sky. Deeper into the desert. East, as Michal had said. But with each step the sand seemed to grow hotter and the sun's descent into the western sky slower. The flats quickly gave way to gentle dunes, which would have been manageable with the right shoes and at least a little water. But these small hills of sand soon led to huge mountains that ran east to west so that they were forced to crawl up one side and stagger down the other. And there was not a drop of water. Not even poisoned water.

By midafternoon, Tom's strength began to fail him. In his cautiousness, he'd had much less fruit since leaving the lake than either of them, and he guessed that it was beginning to show.

“We're walking in circles!” Rachelle said, stopping at the top of a dune. “We're not getting anywhere.”

Tom kept walking. “Don't stop.”

“I will stop! This is madness! We'll never make it!”

“I want to go back,” Johan said.

“To what? To the bats? Keep going.”

“You're marching us to our deaths!” he yelled.

Tom whirled around. “Walk!”

They stared at him, stunned by his outburst.

“We can't stop,” Tom said. “Michal said to walk east.” He pointed at the sun. “Not north, not south, not west. East!”

“Then we should take a break,” Rachelle said.

“We don't have
time
for a break!”

He marched down the hill, knowing they had no choice but to follow. They did follow. But slowly. So as not to be too obvious, he slowed and let them catch up.

The first hallucinations began toying with his mind ten minutes later. He saw trees that he knew weren't trees. He saw pools of water that weren't the least bit wet. He saw rocks where there were no rocks.

He saw Bangkok. And in Bangkok he saw Monique, trapped in a dark dungeon.

Still he plodded on. Their throats were raw, their skin was parched, and their feet were blistering, but they had no choice. Michal had said to walk east, and so they would walk east.

He began to mumble incoherently in another half hour. He wasn't sure what he was saying and tried not to say anything at all, but he could hear himself over a hot wind that blew in their faces.

Finally, when he knew that he would collapse with even one more step, he stopped.

“Now we will rest,” he said and collapsed to his seat.

Johan plopped down on his right, and Rachelle eased to her seat on his left.

“Yes, of course, now we have time for a rest,” Rachelle said. “Half an hour ago it would have killed us because Michal said to walk east. But now that you're babbling like a fool, now that our mighty warrior has deemed it perfectly logical, we will take a rest.”

He didn't bother to respond. He was too exhausted to argue. It was a wonder she still had the energy to pick a fight.

They sat in silence on the tall dune for several minutes. Tom finally braved a glance over at Rachelle. She sat hugging her knees, staring at the horizon, jaw firm. The wind whipped her long hair behind her. She refused to look at him.

If he had it in him, he might tell her to stop acting like a child.

Ahead the dunes rose and fell without the slightest hint of change. Michal had told them to come to the desert because he knew the Shataiki wouldn't leave their trees. But why had he insisted they go deeper into the desert? Was it possible that the Roush was sending them to their deaths?

“You're already dead,” he'd said. Maybe not in the way Tom had first assumed. Maybe “dead” as in,
I know you'll follow my direction because you
have no other choice. You'll walk into the desert and die as you deserve to die.
So really, you're already dead
.

Dead man walking.

“You're still dreaming about Monique.”

The hallucinations were back. Monique was calling to him. Kara was telling him—

“I heard you speak her name. At a time like this, she's on your mind?”

No, not Monique. Rachelle. He faced her. “What?”

Her eyes flashed. “I want to know why you're mumbling her name.”

So. He'd mumbled about the woman from his dreams—her name, maybe more—and Rachelle had heard him. She was jealous. This was insane! They were facing their deaths, and Rachelle was drawing strength from a ridiculous jealousy of a woman who didn't even exist!

Tom turned away. “Monique de Raison, my dear Rachelle, doesn't exist. She's a figment of my imagination. My dreams.” Not the best way to put it, actually. He emphasized his first point. “She doesn't exist, and you know it. And arguing about her definitely won't help us survive this blasted desert.”

He stood to his feet and marched down the hill. “Let's move!” he ordered, but he felt sick. He had no right to dismiss her jealousy so flippantly. Just this morning he'd stared at her and Johan fighting over the fruit, horrified by their disregard for each other, yet he was no different, as Michal had pointed out.

Johan was the last to stand. Tom had already reached the next crest when he looked back and saw the boy facing the way they'd come.

“Johan!”

The boy turned slowly, looked back one last time, and headed down the dune after them.

“He wants to go back,” Rachelle said, walking past him. “I'm not sure I blame him.”

They walked another two hours in forlorn silence, taking breaks every ten or fifteen minutes for Rachelle's and Johan's benefit now as much as his own. The wind died down and the heat became oppressive.

Every time Tom felt the onset of hallucinations, he stopped them. He might not be much of a leader any longer, but he was leading the way by default. He had to keep his mind as clear as possible under the circumstances.

They walked with the dread knowledge that they were walking to their deaths. Slowly, painfully now, the mountainous dunes fell behind them, one by one. The only change was the gradual appearance of boulders. But no one even mentioned them. If boulders didn't hold water, they didn't care about boulders.

The valley they were in when the sun dipped below the horizon was maybe a hundred yards wide. A cropping of boulders rose from the valley floor.

“We'll stop here for the night,” Tom said. He nodded at the boulders. “The rocks will block any wind.”

No one argued. Tom collapsed by the rocks and set his head back in the sand as
the setting sun cast a rich red glow across the desert floor. He closed his eyes.

The sky was black when he opened them again. Whether it was complete exhaustion or the unbearable silence that kept him from sleep, he wasn't sure. Johan had rolled into a ball and lay under the rocks. Rachelle lay twenty feet away, staring at the sky. He could see the moonlight's reflection in her glassy eyes.

Awake.

It was an absurd situation. They were as likely going to die out here as live, and the only woman he could ever remember loving was lying twenty feet away either fuming or biting her tongue, or hating him, he didn't know which.

But he did know that he missed her terribly.

He pushed himself to his feet, walked over to her, and lay down beside her.

“Are you awake?” he whispered.

“Yes.”

It was the first word she'd spoken since telling him that Johan wanted to go back, and it was amazing how glad he was to hear it.

“Are you mad at me?”

“No.”

“I'm sorry,” he said. “I shouldn't have yelled at you.”

“I guess it's been a day to yell,” she said.

“I guess.”

They lay quietly. Her hand lay in the sand, and he reached over and touched it. She took his thumb.

“I want you to make me a promise,” she said.

“Okay, anything you want.”

“I want you to promise not to dream about Monique ever again.”

“Please—”

“I don't care what she is or isn't ,” Rachelle said. “Just promise me.”

“Okay.”

“Promise?”

“I promise.”

“Forget the histories; they don't mean a thing anymore anyway. Everything's changed.”

“You're right. Forget dreams about Bangkok. They seem silly now.”

“They are silly,” she said, then she rolled over and pushed herself to one elbow. The moonlight played on her eyes. A beautiful gray.

She leaned over and gently kissed him on the lips. “Dream of me,” she said. She settled on her side and curled up to sleep.

I will,
Tom thought.
I will dream only about Rachelle.
Tom closed his eyes feeling more content than he'd felt since trudging into this terrible desert. He fell asleep and he dreamed.