Authors: David Gerrold
Some are big men, some are small men,
some are children.
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They're all kinds of twisted
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shapes.
This is where they were supposed to have found the lost 31st patrol.
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About twenty feet inside
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the tortured rocks.
i suppose they must have wandered around until they ran out of water.
Then they sat down to die.
They say that when a patrol gets lost in the deadlands it's because they tried to cross the tortured rocks. Once they go in, they don't come out.
They get confused
and can't tell which way they came.
They could be twenty feet from the edge of the tortured rocks
and not know it.
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The rocks are closer now.
Shouldn't look at them for too long.
They start to remind you
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of things,
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or people.
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Obscene shapes
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doing obscene things.
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i once saw a rock that looked
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like
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two people embracing.
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A man and a woman?
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Two men?
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Disturbing.
Disturbing because,
reminded me of two men i once knew. They had disappeared in the deadlands.
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tortured
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twisted
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frozen
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petrified
i looked away.
Above,
the sun is a pinpoint of white hate
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no heat
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no warmth
In the deadlands the sun radiates death.
We're closer to the tortured rocks now. i can see why you would lose your way.
They grow right out of the deadlands floor.
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writhing
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scarred with blacks and reds.
You can't see more than ten feet into the tortured rocks.
You can't walk more than ten feet in a straight line into the tortured rocks.
After twenty feet or so, you're lost.
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Funny shapes among those rocks.
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There's one that looks like Pa.
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Could be.
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The deadlands swallowed up his
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grave when it took the house.
In the Deadlands
i guess the deadlands gets to you after a while.
They say that there are sand dunes inside the tortured rocks.
The wind blows the sand into the deadlands,
and it's caught by the tortured rocks.
They say that the rocks have been carved out by the persistent grinding of the wind, and that's what gives them their agonized shapes.
They're about a hundred yards away.
It's the commander's intention to go into the rocks this time.
Dumb.
There is a different set of God in the deadlands.
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We're closer to the rocks now.
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We can see how the potholes
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and pits become deeper and
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more jagged.
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We can see how the rocks grow
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out of the deadlands floor.
All the ruts lead to the tortured rocks.
Nobody knows if the tortured rocks cover only a few acres, or hundreds of miles.
There may even be several areas of tortured rocks.
Nobody knows.
You can't map the deadlands.
One patrol thought that the rocks were only a few acres, or at most a few miles.
They decided to walk around them.
We are still waiting for them to return.
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That was twenty years ago.
We are going into the rocks now.
The commander has a length of cord. Every ten feet there is a knot in it.
He loops one end of it around a rock.
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The rock is grotesque
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hunched over
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deformed
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twisted
The commander loops the cord around it
and we go in.
Clambering over one another,
stumbling through agonized
shapes of stones,
shards of souls,
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shattered,
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frozen
in a writhe
of torment.
Across crevices of fear and
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through corridors of pain
The wind picks up in intensity.
It whistles through the rocks.
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It shrieks.
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The rocks scrape at the entrails of the wind
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and it shrieks.
The sun falls into the night behind us.
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Darkness.
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Only the whistling of the wind,
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the moaning
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of an injured beast,
We sit in a circle.
The light is in the center, a silent beacon
slowly revolving
casting agonized shadows
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of the rocks closest to us
onto the twisted souls of the ones farther back.
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Darkness beyond.
There is little talk.
A few of the men smoke
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cigarettes like tiny eyes in the night.
We are five hundred yards into the tortured rocks.
We could be twenty miles.
Or twenty feet.
It's all the same.
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The wind subsides
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and changes
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and picks up a new note,
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a mournful note,
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a keening,
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a wail of something...
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something
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large
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and watchful,
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waiting,
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biding its time,
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crooning to itself.
The ground is hard and uneven.
Sleep is troubled.
In the Deadlands
We are coming out now.
Thank your own private gods.
According to the cord we are five hundred yards into the tortured rocks.
And now we are coming out.
The commander winds up the cord as he walks.
Every ten feet he winds up another knot. We will wind up a total of one hundred and fifty knots.
We struggle back the way we came, following the twistings and turnings of the aching cord,
clambering over one another,
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sliding and scraping,
pathetic in our eagerness to escape.
The rocks are red and yellow and black.
They arch and twist with painful frenzy.
They reach out with sharp plucking edges
to scratch and claw
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the tender flesh.
The floor
is uneven and gouged.
Ridges protrude
at obscene angles,
and crevices sink away into bottomless abysses.
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and i can feel
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a warm hungry presence.
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an enveloping
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throbbing
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flood of. . .
The commander winds up thirty knots.
We go on
in wordless agony.
The only sound
is the scraping of boots
across rock,
and wordless
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grunts of pain
as rock scrapes across flesh.
The sound is hideous.
Like a giant crab scrabbling across rocks and gasping for breath with deep rasping sighs.
Far off
in the distance,
i can hear him
clicking his mandibles
and tapping at the rocks with his claws
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as he comes clabbering after us.
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A cold taste of lonely. . .
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a sense of longing
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For that hot throbbing
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presence.
The commander winds up sixty knots.
We stumble and staggerâ
the floor catches and grabs
and tries to trip.
The rocks turn and twist.
They scratch
and cut
and slash.
The sun hates with a fury,
The orb has become an eye of sleeting agony.
a white stare of deadly bright.