The Merchant of Death tpa-1 Page 5

  One question kept running through my head. “Where in heck am I?” Good question, but I had no one to ask. So I turned to go back into the safety of the cave to get my act together and figure out some kind of plan. Just before I turned back I saw, scattered several yards away from the mouth of the cave, these yellowish, kind of smooth, pointed rocks about two feet high. They jutted up out of the snow like stalagmites. Or stalactites. I can never remember which is which. They stuck up and came to a sharp point. I had no idea what they could be, but the word “tombstones” kept creeping into my head. I shook that particularly morbid thought out of my brain and trudged through the snow back to the cave.

  That’s when I saw the strangest thing of all. The sun was just rising up over the rocks that formed the cave. But I had just been shielding my eyes against the sun that was shining from the other direction! How could that be? I looked behind me to see that there wasn’t just one sun. There were three! I swear, Mark, there were three suns in opposite corners of the sky! I blinked, thinking my vision was just screwed up or something, but it didn’t help. They were still there. My mind locked up. I didn’t know what to think, but there was one thing I knew for sure-I wasn’t in China.

  I stood there on top of this mountain, all alone, sneakers getting wet in the snow, staring up at three blazing suns. I’m not ashamed to admit this, I wanted my mom. I wanted to be sitting in front of the TV fighting for the remote with Shannon. I wanted to be washing the car with Dad. I wanted to be shooting hoops with you. Suddenly the things I had taken for granted in life felt very far away. I wanted to go home, but all I could do was stand there and cry. I really did. I cried.

  Then the sound came again, from inside the cave-the same jumble of musical notes that had sucked me into the tunnel and dumped me here. Someone else was coming. Uncle Press! It had to be! I ran back into the cave, overjoyed that I wasn’t going to be alone anymore. But then another thought hit me. What if it wasn’t Uncle Press? What if it was that Saint Dane guy? The last time I had the pleasure of hanging with that dude, he was shooting at us. And I gotta tell you, getting shot at isn’t like what you see in the movies, or with Nintendo. It’s real and it’s terrifying. I could still feel the sting on the back of my neck where I got hit by the shattered pieces of tile.

  I didn’t know what to do, so I stopped in the middle of the big cave and waited. Whoever it was would be coming out of the tunnel. Would it be Uncle Press or Saint Dane? Or maybe those freakin’ dogs that wanted to eat me. Wouldn’t that be just perfect? Who was it going to be? Friend or foe?

  “Bobby?”

  It was Uncle Press! He walked out of the tunnel with his long leather coat flapping against his legs. I could have hugged him. In fact, I did. I ran over to him like a little kid. If this were a movie, I’d have been running in slow motion. I threw my arms around him with the feeling of pure joy and gratitude that I wasn’t alone anymore, and that my favorite guy in the world wasn’t shot dead by that Saint Dane guy. He was safe.

  This feeling lasted for about, oh, three seconds. Now that my fear of impending doom was gone, reality came flooding back. And there was only one person responsible for my being here. Uncle Press. Someone I trusted. Someone I loved. Someone who yanked me from home and nearly got me killed about eight times over.

  I pushed away from him with a shove that was hard enough to knock him off his feet, because that’s what I wanted to do. I wanted him to feel how angry I was. But as I saw before, Uncle Press was strong. It was like trying to push over a wall. All I managed to do was knock myself off balance and fall on my butt.

  “What the hell is going on!” I shouted as I scrambled back to my feet, trying not to look like an idiot.

  “Bobby, I know you’re confused about-”

  “Confused? Confused doesn’t begin to cover it!” I stormed over to the mouth of the tunnel and screamed, “Denduron.Denduron! ” I’d sayanything to get out of there. But nothing happened.

  “This is Denduron. We’re already here,” he said as if that were supposed to make sense.

  “Okay then,” I looked into the tunnel and screamed, “Earth! New York! The subway! There’s no place like home!” I ran into the tunnel, hoping the magical notes would pick me up and fly me home. But nothing happened. I came back out and got right in Uncle Press’s face.

  “I don’t care what this is about,” I said with as much authority as I could generate. “I don’t even care where we are. I care about going home and going home now! Take…me…home!”

  Uncle Press just looked at me. He had to know how angry and scared I was, so I think he was trying to choose his next words carefully. Unfortunately no matter how carefully he chose his next words, there was no good way of saying what he then told me.

  “Bobby, you can’t go home. You belong here right now.”

  Boom. Just like that. I backed away from him, stunned. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know what to think. I wanted to cry. I wanted to hit him. I wanted to reason with him. I wanted to wake up and find this was all just a horrible nightmare.

  Uncle Press didn’t say anything. He just watched me and waited for me to get my act together. But with all the confusing information that had been so rudely input into my poor little skull, all I could squeak out was a single, simple question. “Why?”

  “I told you. There are people here on Denduron who need our help,” he said slowly, as if to a little kid, which made me even more angry.

  “But I don’t know these people!” I shouted. “I don’t care about them. I care about me. I care about getting me home. What is it about that, you don’t understand?”

  “I understand perfectly. But that can’t happen,” he said firmly.

  “Why? What’s so important about these people? And where is here anyway? Where is this…Denduron?”

  “That’s hard to explain.”

  “Try,” I said. I was getting fed up with all the mystery.

  Uncle Press sat down on a rock. I took that as a sign that he was ready to start helping me understand things.

  “We are far from Earth, but this isn’t a different planet in the sense you’re thinking. It’s a territory. Like Earth is a territory.”

  “Territory, planet, what’s the difference? It’s just words.”

  “No, it’s not. If we had a spaceship and blasted off from here and went to the place where Earth is, it wouldn’t be there. At least not the way you know it. When you travel through the flumes-”

  “Flumes?” I repeated.

  “That’s how you got here. Through a flume. When you travel to the territories through flumes, you’re not just going from place to place, you’re moving through space and time. I know that’s hard to comprehend, but you’ll get it.”

  I was not so sure I wanted to get it. Maybe it was better to stay ignorant. I looked at Uncle Press and for the first time it hit me that this guy wasn’t the person I thought he was. I always knew he was a mysterious character, but now he was way more ozone-esque than I could ever have imagined.

  “Who are you?” I asked. “Really, you’re not a normal guy.”

  Uncle Press smiled and looked down. Somehow I had the feeling that this wasn’t going to be an easy answer either.

  “I’m your uncle, Bobby. But I’m also a ‘Traveler.’ Just like you are.”

  Another new word. “Traveler.” I didn’t want to be a “Traveler.” I wanted to be Bobby Pendragon, point guard on the Stony Brook basketball team. But that life seemed pretty far away right now.

  “So if we’re not on Earth, why is it like Earth? I mean, I can breathe and there’s snow and normal gravity and all.”

  He answered, “All the territories are pretty much like Earth, but not exactly.”

  “You mean, like the three suns here?”

  “Good example.”

  “And those weird yellow stone things sticking up out of the snow?”

  Suddenly Uncle Press got tense. “Where? Outside? How many are there?”

  “Uhh, I don�
�t know. Ten. Twelve.”

  Uncle Press shot to his feet and started pulling off his coat.

  “We gotta go!” He dumped his coat on the ground and hurried to the far side of the cave where there was a pile of dried branches. He started pulling at them.

  “What’s the matter?” I said, confused and more than a little worried.

  He turned to me and raised a finger to his lips to “shush” me. He continued pulling branches off the pile and spoke quietly, as if not wanting to be heard.

  “Quigs,” he said.

  Uh-oh. Quigs. Not a new word. I hated that word.

  “Those aren’t quigs. Quigs are like dogs, right?” I asked hopefully.

  “Depends on the territory,” he whispered. “On Second Earth they’re like dogs. Not here.”

  “So what are…quigs?” I asked, but I wasn’t really sure I wanted to know.

  “They’re wild animals that are special to each territory,” he explained. “Saint Dane uses them to keep the Travelers away from the flumes.”

  There was that name again. Saint Dane. Somehow I knew he’d factor back into this equation. But how was it possible for a guy to “use” a wild animal to do anything? Before I got the chance to ask, Uncle Press pulled off the last branches to reveal a jumble of fur and leather. Animal pelts. He then started taking off his shirt.

  “We can’t wear Second Earth clothes in this territory. Put these on,” he said as he lifted up a nasty looking piece of skin.

  “You gotta be kidding!” was all I could say.

  “Don’t argue with me Bobby. These will keep you warm.”

  “But-”

  “No buts. Hurry!” He said this in a stage whisper. He really was afraid of the quigs. I figured I should be too, so I started taking off my clothes.

  “Even my underwear?” I asked, horrified at what the answer would be.

  “They don’t wear boxers on Denduron,” he said, which is exactly what I didn’t want to hear. This was going to be uncomfortable. I followed Uncle Press’s instructions and dressed in the leather and fur. There were even leather boots that were kind of soft, which was good because they didn’t wear gold-toe sweat socks on Denduron either. As we took more of the clothing off the pile, something else was slowly revealed. I picked up one last furry pelt, and saw a two-man sled! It looked sort of like the sled you see in Alaska for sled dogs, but there was nothing modern about this thing. The runners were slats of wood, the sides were made of branches, the seats were woven out of some kind of cane, and the steering mechanism up front was fashioned out of huge antlers. Fred Flintstone would have been proud. But there was something else about this sled that made me nervous.

  Lashed to either side were long, deadly-looking spears. The shafts were carved from smooth tree branches. The tips were made of hammered-out metal and looked surgical sharp. The tails had some sort of feathers attached for stability. As crude and low-tech as the whole rig was, these bad boys looked pretty lethal. They hung on either side of the sled like prehistoric sidewinder missiles, ready for launching.

  “What about your gun?” I asked hopefully. “Can’t we use that on the quigs?”

  “There are no guns in this territory,” he answered, then stopped working for a moment and looked me dead in the eye. “We can only use what the territory offers. That’s important. Remember that. Okay?”

  “Yeah, sure, whatever.”

  He then shoved something into my hand. It was a small, carved object that hung from a leather cord. It looked like…

  “It’s a whistle,” he said, reading my thoughts. “Keep it handy.”

  I wanted to ask why, but at this point it didn’t really matter. I just hoped Uncle Press was as good with a spear as he was with a gun, because a little whistle sure as heck wasn’t going to protect us if things got hairy. I followed orders and put it around my neck.

  “You ready?” he asked.

  “No,” was my usual reply. Though honestly, I was. I felt a little like a caveman, but the strange clothes fit me fine. Where they were too big, I tied them tight with leather straps the way Uncle Press showed me. I was actually pretty comfortable. The only bad thing was I really wished I could have kept my underwear. There was going to be some major league rash action going on here and they probably didn’t have talcum powder on Denduron either.

  Uncle Press started dragging the sled toward the light and the entrance of the cave. I helped him pull.

  “When we get the sled in the snow, hop on and sit in back,” he instructed. “I’ll get us going and steer from the front. If we’re lucky we’ll be gone before the quigs wake up.”

  “What if we’re not lucky?” was the obvious next question.

  “We can’t outrun them. Our only hope is to get one of them.”

  “Get? Define ‘get.’”

  He didn’t. We were at the mouth of the cave. Uncle Press looked at me.

  “I’m sorry for this, Bobby, I really am. All I can say is that sometime soon you’ll understand why it had to be this way.”

  He said this with such conviction that I actually believed him. The thing was, I was afraid to believe him. Because if what he had been saying was true, I’d have no choice but to face whatever trouble lay ahead. And based on what had happened so far, it wasn’t going to be fun.

  “I hope you know how to drive this thing,” I said.

  “Hold on tight,” was his answer. Yeah right, like I planned on waving my hands in the air like on a roller coaster. Give me a break.

  We pulled the sled out of the cave and onto the snow. It took a few seconds for my eyes to adjust to the light again, but when I did, the first thing I saw were the ominous looking yellow pointed rocks sticking up out of the snow. In spite of Uncle Press’s fear, I didn’t see how these things could be dangerous. Uncle Press motioned silently for me to get in. He then went to the back and started pushing. For a clunky prehistoric bobsled, it moved pretty smoothly. In front of us was the field of yellow stones. I counted twelve of them, spread out over several yards. We glided closer to them with almost no sound. I looked to Uncle Press. He winked at me and put a finger to his lips as a reminder to be quiet. After a few more yards, we were right in the middle of them. Uncle Press maneuvered the sled carefully so as not to disturb anything. That’s when we started to pick up speed. The slope was growing steeper. I looked ahead and suddenly I wasn’t worried about the quigs anymore. We were about to set sail down a steep, craggy, boulder-strewn, snow-covered mountain on a rickety piece of wood that was held together by leather straps. Compared to that, how horrible could some two-foot-tall animals be?

  I was about to find out.

  We were nearly out of the field of yellow stones, when right in front of us the snow started to shake. There was only one stone left, but one was enough. Suddenly, right in front of us, the snow cracked and the yellow, pointed stone started to rise up. But it wasn’t a pointed stone at all. This was a spike made of bone that stuck out of the back of the most hideous beast I had ever seen. The quig rose up out of the snow until its entire body was free. It looked like a huge, dirty-gray grizzly bear. But its head was giant, with fangs like a wild boar. Upper and lower. Spiky sharp. Its paws were oversized too, with claws the size of piano keys. Sharp piano keys. And its eyes looked like the eyes of the dogs in the subway. They were yellow, and angry, and focused on us.

  Uncle Press maneuvered the sled around the quig and ran while he pushed, trying to get more speed.

  “Get the spear!” he shouted.

  I couldn’t take my eyes off the beast. It reared up on its hind legs and let out a horrifying bellow that I thought would wake the dead. Or at least wake the other quigs. And that’s exactly what happened. Behind us, the snow around the other yellow spikes started to boil. The rest of the quigs were waking up.

  “Bobby move!”

  Uncle Press jumped onto the sled and I snapped to my senses. I dove forward to grab one of the spears. We were moving faster now, bouncing over the snow. It was tough to keep m
y balance. I stayed low and leaned over the side to try and untie one of the two spears.

  “Hurry please,” came from the back. He was calm, but insistent. I turned to look and saw that there were now a dozen quigs behind us, shaking off the snow.

  I shouldn’t have looked. The trouble was I had almost finished untying the spear and just as I looked back, the sled hit a bump. Before I realized what was happening, the spear worked itself loose and fell off! I tried to grab it, but it was too late. It clattered to the snow, just out of my reach. Gone.

  “The other one! Now!” shouted Uncle Press.

  I dove across the sled to get the other spear. I grabbed it and held it tight with one hand while fumbling to untie it with the other. There was no way I was going to let this one get away. Finally I worked off the strap and the spear was loose.

  “Got it!” I shouted. I fell back, holding it up for Uncle Press to grab. Once he had it I got to my knees and looked behind us. To my horror, I saw that the quigs were now charging. It was like a stampede of snarling, vicious bears that had us in their sights. I had no idea what one little spear could do against this deadly onslaught.

  “Steer!” shouted Uncle Press. “Keep it steady.”

  I scrambled to the front of the sled and grabbed hold of the antlers. The sled responded perfectly. Whoever built this thing knew what they were doing. Still, Uncle Press was right. We weren’t going fast enough to lose the quigs. They were getting closer.

  The first quig was far ahead of the others, and it was getting dangerously close. I kept glancing back over my shoulder to see what was happening. Uncle Press was amazing. He stood on the sled, backward, with spear in hand. I was getting used to seeing Uncle Press pull off stunts like this. Nothing surprised me anymore. Like Captain Ahab hunting Moby Dick, Uncle Press waited for the quig.

  “Come on. Come on. Little closer,” he growled, taunting it.

  The quig obliged. It was nearly on us. It charged forward with a bloodlust, ready to snap its jaws shut on Uncle Press.

  “The whistle!” Uncle Press shouted back. “Blow it! Now!”