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A.R.Yngve DARC AGES _________________________ |
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Darc & Shara in the Wastelands |
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Chapter 23
Many hours later, the troop carrier slowed its flight and circled toward the ground. The vessel touched down; Surabot unshackled Darc and Shara. With an iron hold of their wrists, he shoved them out through the rear port of the craft -- and slammed the metal door shut after them. Darc helped Shara onto her feet, and they rushed for cover -- the craft's engines had never stopped, and Surabot lifted off without waiting. Columns of dust blew up around the rising carrier; from outside, the engine whine was deafening. Holding their ears and closing their eyes hard, the two outlaws crouched behind a cliff until the carrier had flown away. The couple rubbed their eyes, coughed up sand, and regarded their surroundings. In Shara's eyes, the landscape offered nothing but miles and miles of rocky desert under a blue, cloud-specked sky. Tall cactuses and bushy patches stuck up among the sand-colored rocks, but no other signs of life were evident -- not even ruins. The wind rustled through dry bushes and blew Shara's black hair into her face. From the shape of the distant vertical cliffs, with their flat peaks, Darc concluded they were in the central parts of North Amreca, or maybe a desert of South Awrica -- or possibly Awstrala. No cities lay in sight. He weighed their water bottles; they would last one day, at the most. "First, we must find water," he explained as he scanned the landscape. "And some firewood. And a cave or a ruin -- the nights are cold in the desert." "You're crazy!" she cried. "Can't you see? We're as good as dead! Just promise me one thing --" She hesitated, but when Darc turned to look at her, she gazed steadily into his eyes. "What?" "Darc... when the Lepers find us... you must kill me first. If I try it myself, I might fail... I can't risk that. Swear, you hear?" Darc shook his head violently, looking away: "No, no, no. Never." "You bastard! After all the misery you've caused me, can't you at least do me that final favor?" She lunged at him, tried to claw out his eyes with her nails; he grabbed her wrists and flung her to the ground. He cursed, almost losing his self-control: "Damn you, Shara! I'm trying to think out a way of keeping us alive! If we meet any Lepers, we'll hide or try to talk to them..." "Ha! The rat talking to the cat!" She spat at his feet. Suddenly, Darc felt like laughing. This situation began to resemble a parody of his endless quarrels with his ex-wife. It could have been Maggie arguing with him in the desert now -- her stubby hair ruffled by the breeze, her voice rising to that searing pitch she knew went on his nerves -- instead of this black-eyed gypsy of a woman, determined to die out of plain superstition... Shara noticed that he was grinning, and stood up. She wrapped her cloak around her; the sun was coming out of a cloud, and the heat was dry and unforgiving. Surly yet defiant, she asked: "All right then, crazy man. Where do we find water?" As a child, Darc had hated his time in the Boy Scouts, and they soon kicked him out for insubordination -- but now, he was grateful for the Boy Scouts having taught him the essentials of wilderness survival. The sun sank, red and bloated, below the distant, vertical cliffs -- and darkness swallowed the desert. From the tiny cave that they had found, Darc and Shara could only see black land and starry sky. Their puny campfire seemed the only thing that prevented the cold night from reaching inside. This, Darc thought to himself, is what the world must've looked like before electricity -- a great darkness lurking in the night. You hear a wolf or a nightly bird... and you imagine all kinds of monsters out there, waiting for you. I should know better. I should. If only I wasn't so damn hungry and cold. Shara sat wrapped up in her thick cloak; Darc's cloak was thinner and failed to keep him warm. He huddled closer to Shara. When he spoke, vapor steamed from between his lips. "Sorry about this mess, but I'm sure there's a way out." Shara sniffed at him, and looked away. If he tried something, she would crack his skull open with the rock she was hiding in her hands. "Could you tell me something, Shara... just to keep my mind off the cold?" Every time he felt cold, Darc remembered the terror of being thawed out of his cryonic sleep... a memory he wanted to blot out as much as possible. He explained, with chattering teeth: "I mean, anything. For instance, who are you? Who are you really?" His request confused her. Nobody had ever wanted to know who she really was; from her childhood, she had survived by learning to pretend and deceive. Eventually, the word "truth" become an empty joke to her -- better than most city-dwellers, she knew the hypocrisy and falseness of adulterous husbands and their spendthrift sons. Only her intelligence and stubborn self-preservation had saved her from becoming a prostitute and drunkard. If some complete stranger was asking her to reveal the bleak truth, she was certainly not prepared to oblige... but her curiosity had been tempted by Darc's oddness. "You tell me first," she asked after a while. "Who the King's ass are you?" Darc chuckled -- a funny sound, because he shuddered as he did so. "Truth is stranger than fiction," he said. "Once I was a rich man, nine hundred years ago. I fell sick, they froze me down before I died. Lord Damon found me, and they brought me back to life. After that, it's just one mess after another... maybe this is all just a bad dream." Shara smiled at him; she was fond of confidence games, but rarely got the chance to play them with others. "Oh yeah? Then where do I fit into your nightmare?" "If all this is just a dream... then I guess you're a dream image of my last wife. You have her temper, but you're more beautiful than she ever was." Looking away, she replied: "If I was dreaming this, you would be... a witchdoctor or a holy fool... No, I just don't know." "Nonsense," he muttered. And yet -- to most people in this world, that was exactly who he was. It annoyed him, especially because it came from her. A silent determination filled him, to show this world just what he was capable of. A wink of light from outside caught their attention. Shara's reaction was swift and determined: she tore off her cloak and quenched the campfire with it. The cave went pitch dark and cold. "What are you doing?" "Quiet!" Shara whispered. "They mustn't find us!" They watched the dark outside, but saw nothing more -- the tiny light had just flared up for a moment, far away, then vanished. "We must move," Shara said. "In daylight, they will find us. We must flee now." Mindlessly, she stood up and stumbled toward the cave opening. Darc got to his feet and grabbed her from behind. They wrestled in the dark, and fell into the hot ashes of the campfire. Shara screamed, and tumbled away from the ashes. Darc held on to her, though she kept fighting. "Listen, Shara! It's in the middle of the night, you can't see a thing, and there are snakes in the desert --" "King's shit!" she protested. "I'd rather be bitten by snakes than taken by Lepers!" A scraping noise suddenly came from outside the cave –- and they both froze still. Something was sniffing at the cave entrance, scraping its nails -- or claws -- against the rocks. Darc and Shara had no knives. From the gravel, Darc dug up a heavy stone for a weapon. A few moments later, a black shape appeared in the cave opening. It could be anything -- to Darc, its ragged outline indicated a rat, the size of a lion. The creature poked its dark head into the opening. Darc stood up, trembling, and hurled the rock at the intruder. It hit the creature in the eye with a heavy, wet thud -- it screeched horribly, and darted away with a rustling of bushes and rocks. Shara whispered a prayer, her first sincere one in a long, long time: "Kristos, save me..." Darc used his head: they couldn't light a fire, but they needed to shut out the "things", so he had to block the cave opening. He took a stick from the campfire ashes, and felt his way through the narrow cave. Shara listened as she heard him carry and push minor boulders and rocks to the opening. In a while, he had built a crude barricade covering almost half of the entrance. It also kept some of the cold outside. "There," he gasped, "that ought to be enough. Now I have to ask you to share bed with me." "No! Don't you touch me!" "That's not what I meant -- never on an empty stomach. I just want to keep from freezing my ass off. Right?" Shara consented; they wrapped themselves together in her cloak, and Darc folded his into a pillow -- carefully, for he didn't want to damage the hidden things inside. Even fully clothed, Shara's curvy body felt soft and warm against his lanky, tall one. She was tense at first, prepared for an assault; but as the minutes passed, she relaxed somewhat in his arms. "Did you ever spend a night like this with your last wife?" she asked. They couldn't even see each other -- only feel each other's breath, smell each other's stale sweat. "No. She often wanted to drag me into the wilderness, and I always refused. I wanted to study nature in safety... not be out in it, where it would try to eat me." Shara giggled, forgetting her anxiety for a moment. She stroked his cheek, and said softly: "Please be quiet now. I'm so tired." They slept. |
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