Time Spike: Chapter Twenty One

    Stephen McQuade dozed off and on as he was carried along the riverbank. Occasionally he would mumble something and the small team that carried him and his stretcher would assure him they were still following the river. They passed the cave where Marie Keehn found him and started the upward climb leading to the pine forest. It wouldn’t be long and they would leave the water’s edge. They would be well inside the forest by nightfall.

    Jeff Edelman would occasionally wander away from the slow moving group of C.O.s and would return, always carrying something new that he’d show the others. The conifers that Jeff found so fascinating did not register much on Andy. They didn’t really seem that much different from the ones he’d known in Illinois. But the six-inch long tooth certainly got his attention. So did the egg the size of an ostrich’s.

    But no one talked much. It was as if they could barely breathe.

    The volcano not too far from the prison had been apparently dormant. But on the second day they came into sight of a volcano in the distance that was sending a thin plume of gray-tinged smoke into the air. That might be a problem some day, but the potential threat was too distant in comparison to the others he faced that Andy decided it wasn’t worth worrying about.

 

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    Around noon the next day, Andy took his share of the cold rations being passed out and sighed. They couldn’t afford the time to build a fire and heat the slabs of meat, so he took a bite of the sandwich and forced himself not to make a face. Gristle and grease on rye. He then took a swig of water, immediately regretting it. The liquid, instead of washing the taste from his mouth, caused the grease to solidify, coating his tongue and teeth.

    Gunshots sounded. And what he was sure were screams.

    Andy dropped his sandwich to the ground and unslung his rifle. The C.O.’s all did the same. The gunfire and shrieks were coming from somewhere up ahead.

    Rod Hulbert was by his side. “That doesn’t sound like people fighting off an animal. It sounds like a war.”

    Andy nodded. That’s exactly what it sounded like. And from the timber of the shrieks, it also sounded like women and children were the ones being attacked.

    Andy motioned for Jerry Bailey to stay with Jenny and her patient, Stephen McQuade. He then motioned for the others to follow him.

    The prison team worked its way through the woods. It didn’t take them long to spot the men doing the killing. They were dressed in armor and wore helmets. A good number of them were on horseback. Several of them were shooting into the center of a village whose houses were made of downed branches and animal hides.

    Eight men of the village came rushing out, naked except for loincloths and wielding nothing more than decorated clubs. They weren’t trying to attack the Spaniards, though. They were just trying to rescue two women and five children who’d been caught in the open, unable to get to the safety of their homes or the woods. The women had draped their bodies over their children in a pathetic attempt at protection.

    Several Spaniards fired, but none of them hit anything. Given the matchlocks they were using, that wasn’t surprising. The Indians were a moving target—moving fast, too—and the range was at least fifty yards. Andy was pretty sure they’d only started shooting to panic their victims. They could have already killed the women and children, if they wanted to, huddled they way they were in the open. If the kids had been on their own, they might very well have been killed by now. But the instinctive protective gesture of the two women had kept them alive. The conquistadores might not want the children, but they’d want the women intact.

    One of the Spaniards on a horse, wearing a fancy-looking blue coat bellowed something and the rest of them lowered their guns. He got off his horse, drew his sword, and the rest started following suit. Two of the Spaniards, it seemed, would be left behind holding the horses while the rest went into the village.

    Clearly, the leader intended to save whatever ammunition they had left. Conquistadores like this, armored and armed with steel swords, would have no trouble butchering natives completely unarmored and with nothing better than clubs. All the more so, since most of the Spaniards would be veterans of Europe’s ferocious wars.

    Andy did a quick count. Fifteen Spaniards. Seventeen, counting the two holding the horses. They were probably the same detachment from De Soto’s forces who’d attacked McQuade and the Indians he had been with.

    He made his decision just as quickly. This wasn’t a prison uprising. This was war. There would be no negotiating and no prisoners taken. He had too many behind bars to take care of as it was. The bastards died. That simple.

    He nodded at Hulbert and made a summoning motion. Rod started heading his way, moving carefully so he wouldn’t be spotted. Fortunately, there wasn’t much chance of that since the Spaniards’ attention was entirely on the village and the prison guards were well off to the side and slightly to their rear.

    Brian Carmichael was right next to him. Andy leaned over and said softly: “Take ten men with you into the woods. Circle the village about two-thirds of the way around. Whatever you do, make sure you don’t wind up directly across from us, where we might get ourselves in an accidental crossfire. After we start firing, if any of those bastards try to get away, kill ‘em. We want just one prisoner, no more.” He glanced at the Spaniards approaching the village. “The one with the fancy blue coat. He’s the only one we leave standing.”

    Brian nodded and took off, tapping a guard here and there as he went. Those he tapped fell in line behind him. Seconds later they were gone from sight.

    By then, Hulbert was next to him. “We’ll aim for the ones with guns first. Pass it along. I’ll give the signal with my first shot. Except for that asshole in the blue coat. I want him for questioning.”

    He gave Rod just enough time to pass the word down and then lifted his rifle. For a moment, he hesitated, wondering if Carmichael was in position yet.

    Andy decided it didn’t matter. He couldn’t wait. The Spaniards were almost into the village. Within seconds, they’d be starting the slaughter.

    He picked out his first target, the Spaniard slightly in the lead. Andy’s marksmanship wasn’t in the same league as Hulbert’s, but it didn’t need to be. Leaving aside the training he’d gotten as a prison guard, he’d been hunting deer since he was thirteen. So had probably every man with him. With modern rifles, at a range of not more than seventy yards, this was going to be every bit as much of an overmatch as the Spaniards against the Indians would have been.

    Andy pulled the trigger and the man went down. Less than a second later, the rest of the guards did the same. Only two of them missed their target, and one of those managed to send a helmet flying. That was enough to stun the man who’d been wearing it and drive him to his knees.

    It took the Spaniards a fatal couple of seconds to realize they were being attacked from the woods. By then, only six of the fifteen were still standing, including the leader. The man whose helmet had been shot off was not one of them. Whoever had sent the helmet flying had sent the owner’s brains after it with his second shot.

    The two men holding the horses had also been shot, and the horses were scattering. The six that remained didn’t even try to get to their mounts. Instead, they bolted for the woods on the other side of the clearing. It did them no good. At Rod’s shouted command, the rest of the guards held their fire and let the marksman take them down. One. Two. Three. Four. Just about as quickly as that. Hulbert really was a fantastic shot. He would have taken down the last of his targets before the man reached the shelter of the trees, but a volley from the side swatted him like a bug.

    The only one left was the leader. Whatever else the man was, he wasn’t a coward. He brandished his sword and rushed directly at the trees from which the volley had come. He was shouting something that might have been “Jesu Maria!”

    Belatedly, Andy realized that he hadn’t considered the fact that he’d ordered Carmichael to capture a man still intact and armed with a sword—and who was obviously willing and able to use it.

    Hulbert solved that problem. One more shot and the blue-coated conquistadore was sent sprawling. There was blood spreading across the left leg of his trousers.

    Gutsy bastard, though. He started rising again, still holding the sword and snarling. But he was moving slowly now, so Hulbert’s marksmanship could really come into play. Another shot knocked the sword out of his hand and left the hand a mangled ruin.

    Carmichael came out of the woods. He trotted up and bashed the Spaniard on the head with his rifle butt. The man still had his helmet on, but Carmichael was strong as an ox. Helmet or no helmet, the blow drove the man down on his belly. Unconsciously by now, probably. Close enough, anyway.

    Andy stood up. His eyes searched the village but couldn’t see any signs of the inhabitants. That wasn’t surprising, of course. Given the savage nature of their rescue, you could hardly blame them for being as afraid of their rescuers as they’d been of the Spaniards. From their viewpoint, it must have been like watching a tyrannosaurus devour a smaller predator who’d been threatening them. Would you come trotting out of hiding, waving and smiling at the tyrannosaur?

    Jeff Edelman and Rod Hulbert came over. “We have to go out there and get the guns,” Jeff said. “Right away.”

    “What?” Hulbert blinked.

    “We have to get the guns and the ammunition. They saw what the guns could do, so they’ll take them. Some of them will die, trying to figure out how to use them.”

    Andy saw his point. “Besides that,” he added, “until we know more about these people, I’d just as soon they didn’t have firearms. Just because they were somebody else’s intended victims doesn’t make them sweethearts. If I remember right, the Mounds people could get pretty bloody-minded themselves. Some of them might get killed learning how to use the guns, but they’ll learn soon enough. I remember that much from Mr. Carter’s history classes. If there was one piece of European technology that everybody who ran across it learned to use right quick, it was guns. Stone age or not.”

    Jeff nodded. “Yeah, that’s true.”

    “What about the rest?” Rod asked. “I hate leaving them with nothing. These bastards we shot weren’t the only men De Soto has with him.”

    Andy thought about it, for a second or two. “I don’t see any reason we can’t leave the rest with them. The swords, whatever other weapons there were. They’ll strip the clothing, too.”

    “What about the horses?” asked Jeff. “We could use those ourselves.”

    Andy looked to see where the horses had gotten to. They’d bolted away just about as rapidly as their masters had. Former masters. He could only still see one of them, and that one was at least fifty yards off.

    “Yeah, we could. But how many of us are good enough riders to know how to sweet-talk a scared horse into settling down, in the first place?”

    Carmichael had arrived, just in time to hear that.

    “I am,” he said.

    The three white officers stared at him. Carmichael clucked his tongue and grinned. “Stereotypes, stereotypes. Just ‘cause I grew up a ghetto boy in East St. Louis doesn’t mean I didn’t have cowboy daydreams. Except in my case, I kept them long enough to learn how to ride a horse. I’m pretty damn good at it, if I say so myself.”

    “I’m a good horseman too,” said Hulbert. That wasn’t surprising. Hulbert was good at anything that involved survival in the wilderness. He probably knew which type of cactus provided water and which snakes and insects you could eat. There were times Andy thought the man was just a little bit nuts.

    Edelman weighed in. “We should at least try, Andy. For one thing, if we don’t, the horses don’t have much chance of survival. That’d be true even if they were wild horses. There’s nothing in their evolution that’ll have prepared them for being hunted by dinosaurs.”

    Carmichael scowled a little, at that. Andy knew he belonged to one of the fundamentalist churches that thought evolution was nonsense, at best. But he didn’t say anything. The immediate truth of what Jeff was saying about these horses was obvious, regardless of whatever explained it.

    Andy hated to take the time to round up the horses. They had other pressing matters to attend to. Still, there was no question that horses would be very useful. In fact, without roads and with a very chancy fuel supply for the motor vehicles, horses could make the difference between survival and failure.

    He looked back at the village, wondering if…

    But he dismissed that idea almost at once. Whoever these Indians were, Mounds people or not, they clearly dated from some time before horses had been brought to America. They wouldn’t know how to keep the horses alive. In fact, they’d probably try to hunt them and eat them.

    “Okay. Rod, you and Brian—and take whatever men you can find who have the skills—see what you can do with the horses. I’ll see if I can get the villagers to talk to us, in the meantime.”

    “What about him?” asked Carmichael, jerking a thumb at the one still-living Spaniard. The conquistadore was still lying on the ground. Two of the guards were watching him, with rifles ready at hand.

    “He’ll keep. I doubt if he’s even conscious yet, as hard as you belted him.”

    Brian grinned again. “Hey, boss, you see what it’s like some time, having a wild man charging at you and waving a sword. Damn thing looked ten feet long. I wasn’t taking no chances.”

    “I wasn’t criticizing. Just making an observation. And you’d better get going, unless you figure on tracking those horses for a week.”

 

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    Hulbert and Carmichael left. Andy turned to Edelman.

    “I’ll go into the village alone. And I’ll leave the rifle behind.” He patted the pistol holstered to his hip. “I’m thinking they probably won’t recognize this as a weapon. Or, if they do, they’ll think it’s just a tiny little club.”

    Edelman looked dubious.

    “Jeff, they’ll be scared to death. And all they’ve got in the way of weapons are those decorated clubs. Probably ceremonial weapons.”

    “Like hell they are! Andy, I hate to break the news to you, but those ‘decorations’ you’re talking about are actually inlaid pieces of obsidian or some other sharpened rock. Don’t kid yourself. Those are real no-fooling weapons. And your recollections about the Mounds Indians are on the money. ‘Bloody-minded,’ for sure. They found one mound with over two hundred skeletons in it, a lot of them missing their heads and hands. The Mounds Indians don’t seem to have been as purely murderous as the Aztecs, I grant you, but nobody in their right mind is going to confuse them with the mythical Noble Savage.”

    Andy shrugged. “So our new world is not risk-free. What a shocker. I’m still doing it.” He glanced at the village, estimating the distances involved. “Look, we’ll compromise. You and the rest can move up within thirty yards, with your rifles ready. If the people in that village were watching the fight at all, they’ll know the guns can kill them at that distance if they try anything.”

    He handed Edelman his rifle and started walking toward the open center of the village. He moved more slowly than he normally walked, to give the villagers time to realize what he was doing.

    Once he reached the center, he looked around. Up close, he could see many pairs of eyes staring at him through gaps in the hut walls.

    He tried talking for a while, in the hopes that one of them would come out. After a minute or so, realizing that an endless repetition of “I mean you no harm” was pointless as well as boring, he started reciting what he could remember of The Ballad of Eskimo Nell. When he ran out of verses he remembered, he went on with a recital of The Night Before Christmas. He’d committed that to memory when he was eight years old and, for whatever odd reason, had never forgotten a single line.

    “…heard him exclaim, ere he drove out of sight,

    "Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good-night!"

    Nothing.

    So much for slavering Aztec warriors. Andy had heard the theories that the Mounds Indians practiced ritual sacrifice. But, even if the theories were true, that was probably something done by their kings or chiefs or high priests. Whatever they had in the way of rulers. This was just a local village. The inhabitants were no more likely to be prone to ritual bloodshed than the residents of a small town in southern Illinois were likely to stage a New Orleans-style Mardi Gras parade.

    “Screw it,” he muttered. “Deeds speak louder than words, and all that.”

    He turned and hollered at Edelman and the others, watching him.

    “They won’t come out! Gather up all the swords, all the armor, all the helmets—anything loose you can find in the way of weapons or tools or coins—and we’ll pile them up here. Then we’ll be on our way.”

    That didn’t take but a few minutes. The guards were thorough, too. By the time they were done stripping the corpses, all that was left on them was their clothing. The resulting pile in the center of the village was pretty impressive. All except the two silver coins they found. Andy decided to highlight those by balancing them on top of a helmet at the center of the pile.

    “Okay, let’s go.” He gave the villagers peeking at him one last slow look, turning almost completely around. Then, gave them a snappy salute and led the way out.

    “What’ll they do, do you think?” asked Jeff.

    Andy shrugged. “I have no idea. But I figure the one skill they’re bound to have is that they’ll be way better trackers than any of us are. If they decide they want to find us, they’ll manage it.”

 

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    “What do you mean these aren’t the same guys who attacked you? They have to be!” Jenny, usually so self-controlled, now seemed on the verge of tears. Her voice was shaking a little. She reached out and took Andy’s hand.

    Stephen McQuade shook his head. “They are the same sort of men. But from what you described, I do not think they are the same men.”

    He nodded toward the one Spaniard they’d kept alive. Jenny had attended to his wounds, as best she could. The man was conscious now, sitting upright and glaring at them. Andy hadn’t seen any need to tie his hands or feet. The gunshot wounds Rod had inflicted on him served that purpose just fine.

    “I am certain this one was not among them,” McQuade said. “I would not have forgotten his face. Certainly not the blue coat.”

    Andy wasn’t happy at the news, certainly, but he didn’t share Jenny’s distress, either. In retrospect, it was not surprising that De Soto would have several parties of soldiers foraging the area. The more parties he sent out, the greater the likelihood they’d find something useful. And given the disparity in military power between the conquistadores and the scattered groups of Indians, there wasn’t any real danger involved.

    Or wouldn’t have been, if a twenty-first century prison with guards armed to the teeth hadn’t gotten caught in the mix. But there was no way De Soto could have foreseen that.

    The questions that were now raised were:

    How many men did De Soto have, all told? Where was his main force? How many other parties did he have scouring the area?

    Andy was sure they were looking at a war. He’d do his best to negotiate with De Soto, but he didn’t have any real hopes anything would come of it. From what he could remember of his history classes and what Jeff said, the conquistadores rarely negotiated—and when they did, they were being duplicitous.

    “Okay,” Andy said, “so these goons weren’t the ones who attacked you. Were the villagers part of the same people who befriended you?”

    Stephen shrugged. “The description sounds the same. But I was only with them for less than a day, and never learned more than—I think—four or five words of their language.”

    His English was perfectly fluent; even idiomatic, all the way down to the swear words. But the accent kept throwing Andy off a little. It was a weird combination of a heavy sorta-hillbilly accent with a cadence and occasional use of terms that reminded Andy, more than anything else, of a couple of Shakespeare plays he’d seen. He remembered reading somewhere that there was a theory that Appalachian dialects were actually the closest to Renaissance English. Apparently, the theory was right.

    Edelman hissed. “How many people got caught in that damn Quiver, anyway?”

    Andy rubbed his head, then shrugged. “There’s no way of knowing that. All we know for sure is the prison, the Cherokee, the Spaniards and the Mound People are here.”

    Edelman shook his head. “I don’t think these are really Mounds people. In its heyday, the Mounds people were an advanced civilization for their time, and even for villagers these people seem too primitive. I think they’re more in the way of pre-cursors. Call them early Mississippian, the culture that eventually produced the Mounds people.”

    “Okay, what else can you tell me about this area? I don’t care when you’re talking about. If they were within fifty miles or a hundred miles of the prison, sometime in the past, I need to know about them.”

    “Not a lot.” Edelman looked at the volcano on the skyline. “Most of what I know is from working the local tourist traps as a teen-ager. Cahokia appeared sometime after 800 A.D., then disappeared around 1200 A.D. No one knows why. At their peak, they had over twenty thousand people.

    “After they left, what would one day be called Illinois became part of a huge, empty corridor no one lived in. The area was still empty when de Soto came through three hundred years later.”

    “Just our luck,” Rod muttered.

    “Actually, I think we’re better off without them.” Jeff made a face. “They were farmers, hunters, builders and artists, yeah, so they’d have had more in the way of resources we could maybe trade for. But they were a people living in harsh times. They were capable of mass violence. They were also like a great many primitive cultures when it came time for a funeral. If an important person died, they would bury quite a few people with the dead. And you can bet your ass the people were not dead before the funeral rites. There has also been some evidence the Cahokia might have practiced a little cannibalism and some form of human sacrifice. That’s never been proven, but I wouldn’t want to have to find out the hard way.”

 

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    Later, Andy lay under a wool, state-issued blanket, listening to the sounds of the night and watching the stars. Exhausted, he’d thought he would fall asleep before his head hit his makeshift pillow. But he hadn’t. Instead, he lay there and thought about the last few days. Things, gone crazy the day of the Quiver, seemed to have escalated out of control. There were too many pieces to the puzzle and he had a feeling he still didn’t know who all was inside the woods.

    He rolled over so he could look at Jenny. She was less than a yard away, wrapped in one of the flannel blankets used inside the infirmary. She was using her medical bag for a pillow. Her back was to him. In the dim light of the moon and stars he could see the rise and fall of breathing. He could also see the way her shoulders seemed to shake. She wasn’t asleep. She was crying.

    He slid next to her and dropped his arm around her waist. Now he was close enough he could hear the small sobs. He didn’t say anything, and neither did she. Instead, she nestled against him. After a while, they were both asleep.