Into Eden: Pangaea - Book 1 (20 page)

As the days wore on Jesse continued to keep his concerns to himself. By the day after the storm he had confirmed his first fear: Seth agreed that twenty miles a day was the best pace that they could expect. The puzzle of what had become of Castor-Pollex, however, remained. Enoch had started to make short forays to the west searching for signs of the lion. A paw-print. A scent. Perhaps some cat-poop. So far he had found nothing. So the three trudged along, each lost in his thoughts. Jesse was now pre-occupied with the lion. Seth envisioned himself sitting on the veranda of his estate, a cold mug of beer in his hand, looking out over the valley below. Enoch chased imaginary rabbits and thought of what he might say to his son were he ever to return home to the Foothills.

Eleven days after the sandstorm the three spied what appeared to be a set of buildings on the horizon. After an hour or so more of walking they could clearly make out a pair of buildings: a house and a stable. It must be the way-station, thought Jesse. It was late afternoon, and the thought of sleeping in a real bed—even for a night—was enough to get him excited, “If we push hard I think that we can make the way-station soon after dark.”

“Sounds good,” Seth replied.

“Sounds stupid,” Enoch countered.

“How so, my furry friend?” asked Seth.

“I don’t think that it’s wise to approach anything at night that could give cover to Castor-Pollex.”

“Can you detect his scent?” Jesse asked, perturbed that Enoch had answered him so harshly.

The buildings were still over a mile in the distance, so Enoch doubted that he could smell anything, but with a breeze coming from the direction of the structures he stuck his nose in the air and sniffed just the same.

“I smell...death.”

Jesse and Seth immediately brought their spears to a ready position, and began to search the horizon for signs of a lion creeping up on them.

“A dead horse, I think,” Enoch continued, then raised his nose and sniffed again. “And human, I’m sorry to say. There are dead people up there.”

The words gave Jesse a chill. “How many?”

“Impossible to say, but I can smell both a man and a woman. The horse was a mare, if anyone cares about those of us with four feet.”

Neither of them did.

“What about the lion?” Seth asked. “Can you smell him?”

“No. That probably means that he’s still alive—or moved on. I wouldn’t have been able to smell the humans and the horse if they weren’t already past their prime. Now, as I was saying, I recommend that we not approach the buildings until sunup.”

“Agreed!” both Jesse and Seth said in unison.

That night neither Jesse nor Seth got much sleep. During their watches they could hear Enoch snoring soundly, but neither of them could hear another sound, nor did they spot anyone—or anything—approach their campsite. They decided that it would be best if they not start a fire, so they broke open a bag of dried corn that Jesse had been keeping for just such an occasion. When the sun finally did come up neither of them wanted to approach the buildings on the horizon, but it was Enoch that trotted off in that direction, and the two of them followed along.

About halfway there Enoch stopped and sniffed the air, “Yes, Castor-Pollex has been by here recently. I have his scent—but faintly. And there’s another: a dog.”

The two of them slowed their steps to a normal gait, and then approached the buildings slowly, cautiously looking from side-to-side. As they approached, they left their packs and Jesse’s bow and quiver in the way-station’s yard—not wanting anything to slow them down should they need to fight. They were greeted by an emaciated dog which barked feverishly at them, but backed away at their approach.

“Oh, shut up!” Enoch yelled at the other dog.

The dog ran in fright.

“His bark is a lot worse than his bite,” Enoch remarked. “But he is quite hungry. I sensed from him that he hasn’t eaten in several days.”

Jesse and Seth just glanced down at Enoch, and then continued their slow pace across the yard to the main building.

“Oh…and I think that it’s okay to let your guard down a bit. I can smell kitty, but I think that he’s gone. The scent is still quite faint.”

Both Jesse and Seth exhaled. It occurred to both of them at the same time that they had unknowingly been holding their breath, and they enjoyed a brief, nervous laugh. With the immediate threat gone, they lowered their spears and began to survey the way-station. It consisted of only two buildings, a house which doubled as an inn and a stable with a corral off to one side. To the left of the structures was a ravine with a wooden bridge across it—the first sign of the Southern Highway that they had encountered since the sandstorm. The bridge—like the terrain around it—was covered with a thick coat of sand. Along the ravine for a distance of some hundred paces grew a number of mesquite trees—the first trees that they had seen (except for willows along the Elmer) since the day that they left the farmhouse. Lying under one of these trees, the dog that had come to greet them now lay panting.

In front of the way-station was a stone well, the bucket that should have been attached to the crank suspended above it was missing, probably a victim of the recent storm. Between the house and the stable was a hitching post. To the right of the stable was the corral. The corral had two broken fence-rails next to its closed gate. One of the rails was no doubt buried beneath the sand which covered the yard, the other hung at an angle, long claw marks clearly visible. Inside of the corral, half obscured by a sand-drift, was the skeletal remains of a horse. Everywhere there were huge paw-prints. They were all over the yard, in the corral, running up to the barred stable doors and covering the low porch which served to give some shade to the front-side of the house. Even from where the three stood they could see paw-prints in the sand that had drifted through the house’s shattered front door.

First the three went to the stable. Jesse, for one, was purposely putting off what he knew that he could expect to find when they got to the house. He removed the bar and pulled the large stable doors open, the bottom of them making great arcs in the sand. Walking in they could see three stalls. The first two stalls were empty, except for small mounds of hay. The third, however, gave the three their first real encouragement in days, for there—leaning against the far wall—was a rowboat with two oars leaning against it. Above the stalls a ladder lead to a hayloft that was mounded high with summer hay. To either side of them were various tools: a shovel, a pick, a large empty barrel and some tack no doubt belonging to the skeleton-horse outside in the corral. Everywhere there was the smell of hay and horse-dung.

Next they walked to the house. The front door lay shattered on the floor of what served as a small common-room. A few feet beyond lay the skeletal remains of the way-station’s owner. He lay on his back, clothes torn and bloody, and like the horse there was little flesh remaining on him. In the kitchen they found what was left of his wife. She was in the same condition, but frozen in her right hand was a meat-cleaver with dried blood on it. Enoch sniffed the cleaver. It was lion blood, alright. Apparently the mistress of the house had made Castor-Pollex pay in some manner for this latest, bloody attack. They searched the rest of the house, but found no more remains.

“We’ll need to bury them,” said Jesse as they concluded their survey of the house.

“Why don’t we just toss them in the river like the farmer and his daughter?” suggested Enoch.

“Because it wouldn’t be right! They deserve better than that.”

It was agreed that Jesse and Seth would dig graves behind the stable for the unfortunate couple. Both shoveled through the sand and found the earth below nearly hard as a rock. Being the youngest, Jesse took the role of swinging the pick. But with the ground so unyielding and the desert heat of the day so oppressive, the graves turned out to be shallow ones. Both Jesse and Seth were ill-equipped for the physical labor involved in digging graves in the desert. When the chore was complete, however, the three sat down by the river to enjoy some real food from the way-station’s pantry, which they shared with the stray dog which had taken to following them around. When they had finished eating, Enoch spoke up, “I’ve been thinking about that horse in the coral.”

“What about it?” asked Jesse.

“There wasn’t much left of him. Same with the couple in the house.”

“And your point?”

“Not even a lion as big as Castor-Pollex could finish off a horse and two humans in a day or so. Castor-Pollex has been here for some time. My guess is that he’s been here for at least a week, maybe more.”

“That would explain the paw-prints all over the property,” remarked Seth.

“Yes,” Enoch continued, “but it doesn’t explain why.”

“He’s waiting for us,” Jesse concluded.

“You got it, Son,” quipped Enoch. “He’s somewhere out there, waiting for us. He comes back when he needs to feed, and my guess is that if we had waited for another day or so your canine friend here would have been his next snack. Fact is, he could be watching us right now, just waiting for us to go down for the night so that he can saunter in from the desert and have his revenge. He almost certainly did double back. He probably was watching us when we bedded down last night. But to achieve the element of surprise he needs cover. These buildings, the bridge, those trees, the river, all provide excellent cover. If I was Castor-Pollex and I wanted to strike some place between Whitehurst and River Bend, this would be the place.”

Jesse leaned back against the river’s bank and thought about what Enoch had said. Enoch was right again, Jesse knew. Once he had thought about it, it seemed so clear. Tonight would be the night that they would face Castor-Pollex. The lion would not wait for them to move on. Tonight they would settle the thing.

“Enoch,” Jesse asked after a while, “if someone were going to cover his scent, how would he do it?”

“You mean conceal it from a lion?”

“Yes.”

“You would have to mask it. Do something like rub pepper over your body. That way your scent would be concealed by the pepper.”

“I didn’t see any pepper in the pantry. Would anything else work?”

Seth turned to listen. Clearly Jesse had a plan.

“It doesn’t have to be pepper. Other things will work. The stable’s got plenty of good scent masking material if you don’t mind rubbing it on yourself.”

Enoch intended for this to be a joke, but Jesse didn’t laugh. He just went on, “What is the law concerning a spirit inhabiting a man?”

“If a spirit inhabits a man as he does an animal, that man is to be taken to a remote place and bound and left to die. That is the Law of Atlantis,” answered Enoch

“Seth,” Jesse continued, ”I have a plan. But if things go wrong I want you to fulfill the Law of Atlantis to the letter. Can you do that? You’re life and your sanity may depend upon it.”

Seth looked at Jesse seriously. No, the boy was not kidding. “Yes, Jesse. I can do what I have to.”

Cats are, by nature, nocturnal. Though cats can sleep up to twenty hours in a day, even domesticated cats share their nocturnal nature with their untamed cousins. Despite the best efforts of their masters to sync their pet’s sleep cycles to their own, cats frequently frustrate them by awaking in the middle of the night to jump on the bed, run around the house or startle their human companions by knocking over some prized piece of expensive knick-knack just to watch it fall and shatter. Fascinating. Their eyes are—after all—designed to hunt at night. Unlike humans they can see in even the dimmest of light, making them keen hunters after the sun goes down.

But Castor-Pollex was no ordinary cat. He was a seven-hundred pound predator, a lion possessed of two unclean spirits, brothers who in life were frustrated by society’s prohibition against wanton killing, but in death had found the perfect killing machines. They had a good thing going. They were taking lives at a rate that would make the most accomplished serial killers envious, and then this boy from Atlantis came along and had to slow them down. By killing Castor’s host he had forced the two of them to share the same lion, but in time that would change. As for now, they were working as a pretty good team sharing the same mind with an animal that knew nothing of a real desire for blood, just how to shed it to survive. Now Castor-Pollex had honed the beast’s primitive instincts to a wonderful ferocity. Yes, tonight he would get to kill again, and the thought of it excited him. He was—after all—the ultimate killer when the sun went down. Castor-Pollex owned the night.

The night before Castor-Pollex had seen the two humans and their spirit-host mutt companion as they bedded-down north of the way-station. From behind a scrub mesquite tree now buried in sand he observed them protected by his down-wind cover. His keen eyes watched them as they went to the way-station and buried the bones of the dead humans. As he thought about killing of the unsuspecting couple he couldn’t help but smile, and he prayed to the gods that he would see the same look of shock and terror on the boy as he did the man in the house when he smashed the door in. Shutting a door on a charging seven-hundred pound carnivore accomplishes nothing. Oh, those arrogant humans thought they were smarter than he. They forgot that he was once a gi-nef. Time had only made him cleverer. He could not only see in the dark, but he could smell in the dark and he would ferret out both of the humans and their miserable mutt companion wherever they tried to hide. Castor-Pollex watched them as they walked to the river to eat and he watched them as they went back to the stable. They were spending way too much time in that stable, but whatever they had planned it would be to no avail. They had been lucky before, but they would not be again. Castor-Pollex stared at the stable for a long time before he was overcome by sleep. But the day was long and hot, and a lion needs to rest.