The Transall Saga (2 page)

chapter
3

Mark slumped against the tree. He was still in his underwear and socks, clutching his meager possessions. They included a pair of torn, filthy jeans, a belt, one boot, a broken compass, a watch, a smashed box of splintered matches, a knife and the tattered cloth that had been his shirt.

The bug bites were beginning to itch. He was hungry and miserable. Closing his eyes as tight as he could, he willed this awful place and all the strange things in it to go away.

He opened his eyes. Nothing had changed. Wherever he was, this was reality. He was alone in this bizarre land and if he wanted to stay alive he would have to find ways to feed and take care of himself.

Snatching some of the red grass, he held it up to his nose. It smelled like grass even though it was the wrong color. Hesitantly, he put a little in his mouth. It tasted like grass too. He spat it out.

Mark scraped the mud off his watch. It had stopped working. His stomach told him that if time in this place was anywhere near the same as on Earth, it was just after noon and he’d already missed two meals.

At home his parents were probably eating lunch about now. Thinking about his parents made him feel more alone. They wouldn’t know he was missing for another two and a half days. And then what? Even if his mom called out half the army reserves, they’d never find him. Not here. Not in this primitive world that was accessible only through the strange energy tube.

"Well, hotshot," Mark said, sighing. "You wanted to live by yourself ..."

Resting his chin on his knees, he listened to the jungle noises around him. The trees creaked and the large flat leaves swayed in the breeze. There was an occasional shrieking sound he recognized as birdcalls.

He sighed again, then stood up and warily pulled on his filthy, damp jeans. Not wanting to ruin his socks, he took them off and stuffed them in his remaining boot, along with what was left of his shirt. Then he put his knife, matches and compass in his pocket and started walking.

His plan was to keep going until something better than what he’d already seen presented itself.

It didn’t.

The jungle grew darker, more tangled and more overgrown. Vines hung snakelike from the trees all around him. Grotesque lizards with abnormally large heads darted in and out of the foliage. And there was a new sound. In the tops of the now almost black trees, he could hear animals chattering. They made a clicking noise like stone hitting stone.

Squinting, he scanned the branches overhead. Twice he thought he saw something move but couldn’t quite make out what it was.

Mark wondered if he should go back to the meadow. He considered his position. At least there was water there. Here there was nothing.

A piercing howl cut through the darkness. The clicking stopped.

A shiver ran up Mark’s back. He swallowed and waited. What now? Finally the chattering started again and he moved on.

Normally he was good at walking. It was something he prided himself on. He could walk for hours without resting. But this was different. His bare feet were being cut to ribbons by the coarse underbrush, and more important, he was hungry.

He decided to turn back. The meadow area was safer because he could see what was around him. Maybe he’d missed something there that he could eat. It was worth a try.

Just as he turned, the chattering sound came closer and grew to a deafening roar. Something hit the ground behind him. He spun around and received a crashing blow to the side of the head. A rock the size of his fist knocked him to his knees. Then came more rocks, pelting his body from every direction.

He covered his head and rolled into a ball.

Then, as suddenly as it had begun, the chattering stopped. So did the rocks.

Mark dropped one of his aching arms. He was bruised and sore but nothing felt broken. Above him he saw a flurry of motion. Swinging effortlessly from the branches were small, white, furry animals. He would have called them monkeys but they looked more like miniature teddy bears with long arms and tails.

One of them had stayed behind. With its sharp claws, it was clinging to a tree about halfway down the trunk, watching him.

"Get out of here," Mark yelled, reaching for one of the rocks.

The monkey creature clicked its tongue loudly, rebuking him. It moved up the tree, but only a few feet.

Mark drew his arm back to throw. He stopped. The object in his hand was heavy like a rock and it felt smooth and round. But it had some sort of outer layer. He shook it. The insides sloshed around. He tried to peel it but the skin was too tough.

There’s got to be a way. Mark gathered an armful of the tree rocks and headed out of the darkness. When he reached the edge of the meadow he dropped his find in a pile and examined one of them. They were the color of the bark of the trees and resembled small coconuts.

Mark shook one again. There’s something in there. He reached for his pocketknife. "Oh, please let it be good for food ... ," he whispered.

There was a soft clicking a few feet behind him. Mark looked over his shoulder. The monkey-bear had followed him.

"Shoo. Go away." Mark tossed one of the tree rocks at it. Like lightning, the little creature’s long arm shot up and caught it.

"Hey, that’s pretty good." Mark turned back to what he’d been doing. He tried peeling the rock but only bits of the heavy skin would come off.

Something hit him in the shoulder. It was the tree rock. The monkey-bear had tossed it back.

"Cut that out. Can’t you see I’m starving here?" He jabbed the knife into the top of the rock. Only the tip went in and he was afraid to push harder because he might damage the knife.

"I know there’s got to be a way," he muttered. He took the rock to a nearby tree and pounded it against the trunk. Nothing. Disgusted, he threw it on the ground.

The monkey-bear waddled over, picked up the rock, inserted one of its razor-sharp claws in the middle and easily broke it open. A thick brown liquid spilled out. The little animal greedily slurped it up from both halves and then scooped out the dark meaty parts with its claws and shoved them in its mouth.

Mark raced to his pile of rocks. He felt for a soft spot in the center of one and jabbed his knife in. Gradually he worked the two sides apart. He lifted one of the halves to his lips and guzzled down the brown juice.

It had a pleasant taste—like milk, only sweeter. He drank the other half and then used his knife to dig out the meat. This part wasn’t so great. It reminded him of bean sprouts and he thought about spitting it out. Instead he forced himself to swallow. It might be his only food source for a while.

He went through eleven of the rocks before he was satisfied. The meal made him feel better. Now maybe he could concentrate on something besides his stomach.

The light in the meadow was growing dim. Apparently this place had a night. He would have to choose a place to camp for the dark period. The thought of waking up to a buffalo creature—or whatever that howling thing was— worried him. He definitely didn’t want to sleep here in the open.

The dark part of the jungle didn’t appeal to him much, either. In the end he compromised and decided to look for a spot just beyond the edge of the meadow.

He found a nice grassy place just inside the shadows and well hidden by the brush. He watched the monkey-bear waddle to a tree and shimmy up to a wide, flat branch the size of a small table. The animal stopped and looked at him expectantly.

Mark rubbed the back of his neck. "I don’t know. I really hadn’t thought about spending the night in a tree."

The monkey-bear clicked its tongue and jumped up and down.

"Oh, all right. I’ll give it a try. I guess it would be a little harder for the bad ones to get to me up there—that is if I don’t fall out and break my neck."

Getting to the lower branches was easy. He’d done that when the buffalo creature was after him. The middle part was a lot harder because the branches were farther apart. Mark tried a couple of times and gave up. The monkey-bear scurried up to the top limbs and waited.

Mark shook his head. "No thanks. This is high enough for me. You go on ahead." He wedged his boot, which still held his few possessions, in between the trunk and the branch and then stretched out on his stomach on the wide limb.

If I’m lucky, I’ll wake up in the morning and this whole thing will all have been a dream. A bad dream, he thought as he dozed off.

chapter
4

The warm night was long. Mark dozed fit
fully and woke every few hours to the strange noises of the jungle. Twice he fell off his perch. Finally he discovered that if he locked his legs around the limb he was less likely to take a spill.

The blue light haunted his dreams. Half awake, he recalled a similar energy force he’d read about once in science class. It was a theory some scientist had about what would happen if matter and antimatter ever actually met. Bits of information came back to him, something about the massive amount of power that would be produced and the way it could affect life.

He didn’t care about any of that, only that it had affected his life and he wanted out of this place. Then, just as the meadow began to fill with the hazy yellow light of a new day, he jerked awake.

The tube of light. Of course—he had to find it again. It was his way back to Earth and home. He grabbed his boot and dropped to the ground.

Immediately fierce hunger pains shot through him. Eat. He had to eat, and the only place he knew where there was any food was in the dark jungle. The blue light would have to wait.

Mark tied his boot to his belt loop with the lace and started walking. The monkey-bear crawled down a vine and landed softly beside him.

"Where do you little guys keep your tree rocks, Willie?" The name just came. He seemed like a Willie. "You know what I’m talking about, like the ones your buddies tried to kill me with yesterday. There wouldn’t happen to be a great big stash just lying around somewhere easy?"

Willie cocked his head and clicked his tongue.

Mark frowned. "I don’t think we’re doing too well in the communication department." He led the way into the shadowy jungle.

On this trip he paid more attention to the things he saw. The lizards were still there, and there were large flowering plants mixed in with the underbrush. He noticed that the trees in the dark jungle were different from the shorter ones closer to the meadow. Some were so tall he couldn’t see the tops. This kind had smooth trunks with no low branches, and they usually had dozens of vines hanging from them.

A few yards inside the dark jungle he heard the clicking noise start. It didn’t worry him this time. He was even prepared for the monkey-bears to bombard him with tree rocks. It would save him from going after them.

They didn’t. Mark figured it had something to do with Willie, who clicked nonstop and stayed right with him.

It was getting almost too dark to see. Mark searched the tops of the trees above him.

They’ve got to be up there somewhere. I guess I’ll have to climb. He yanked on one of the vines to see if it would hold his weight. It seemed sturdy enough. He jumped and tried to haul himself up but his arms were too weak and he slid back down.

I should have paid more attention to rope climbing in gym class. He moved to another vine. This one was hanging closer to the trunk. He braced his bare feet against the smooth bark, and using the vine for leverage, he slowly walked up the tree at an angle.

Halfway up he glanced down and nearly lost his balance. He guessed it was more than a thirty-foot drop to the ground. A dizzy feeling washed over him and his palms began to sweat. He closed his eyes until the feeling passed; then he climbed again.

At the first limb he came to, he stopped. He sat for a long time just clinging to the vine and trying not to look down.

Willie had climbed past him and was clicking at him from the top branches. Mark looked up and saw him swinging back and forth from one limb to another. Above Willie, Mark spotted a cluster of tree rocks dangling from the end of a long branch and half hidden under the wide leaves.

He tied the vine around his waist and worked his way up to the next limb. Once he made it to the end of the long narrow branch, the tree rocks were easy to pick. He pulled off every one he could reach and let them fall to the ground.

With no warning there was a crack and Mark felt himself falling. He grabbed at air, swung backward and jolted to a stop midway to the ground.

The vine he’d tied around his waist held. He fastened his arms around the closest limb and clung to it.

Willie crawled down to see what was going on.

"I think," Mark said, taking a deep breath, "that’s probably enough shopping for one morning."

chapter
5

"It could be anywhere." Mark threw up his hands. He had managed to find the clearing where he’d first awakened in the tall red grass. But the blue light didn’t show itself.

His stomach made a loud rumbling sound. He was hungry all the time now. The tree rocks were good but they were mostly liquid and only took the edge off his appetite. He wanted something solid. Pizza. Pizza would be good. Thick crust smothered in three different kinds of melted cheese. He would kill for a pizza.

"Stupid." Hearing the word aloud caught him off guard. He said it again, slower. "Stupid. Daydreaming isn’t going to get you anywhere. Think. Think about all the tons of stuff you read in those how-to-stay-alive books. Use it."

Mark concentrated. The problem was all those books were for Earth. He was sure he had come to another planet—Earth
_—
like, perhaps, but so strange. Still, some things would work. The handbooks all said to check out the surroundings. Food was usually not too far away. Bugs were always handy. He made a face. The fire bugs deserved to be food but how would you eat them without ripping your tongue out? Okay, what else? The screaming birds. No, too difficult. Maybe later, after he had more time to think and plan and get some kind of weapon. The fat-head lizards. They were slow and would be easy to catch. But then what? He’d have to figure out a way to cook them. And what if they were poisonous? What if anything was poisonous? No, he’d stick with convenience foods for now. Stuff he knew hadn’t killed other animals. Life here seemed similar to Earth life. Food might work the same. Whatever other animals could eat, he could eat. Maybe.

What else had he read? There was the usual stuff on keeping warm. He rubbed his bare arms. Unless the weather changed he wouldn’t have to worry about that. Shelter. He really didn’t need a house but he didn’t want to sleep on that stupid limb forever, either.

He opened a tree rock as he walked back toward the big meadow. His spirits were higher and the ideas kept coming. Until he located the light, he would live next to the dark jungle, because that was where the tree rocks were, and the buffalo creatures didn’t seem to go there. And, of course, there was Willie. It was nice to have company.

In the meantime, he would make circles, wider and wider every day, hoping to find the mysterious blue light.