Chapter 24
At the earliest light of dawn, Shara woke up Darc; she wanted them to start moving as soon as possible.
(He wanted to stay and watch the football game on ESPN.)
Darc showed no enthusiasm, for they were short on water already, and had no food to speak of.
([Whiny voice] "I'm hungry and I'm thirsty!")
In silence, they crawled out of the cave and into the cool desert sands. This early, the landscape was lined with long shadows.
They walked facing away from the point where the wink of light had appeared during the night. Without a compass and no sea in sight, only the sun gave them some directional aid.
("That way... past the pile of skeletons and the signpost saying 'Danger: Poisoned Well'!")
And they walked toward the nearest set of cliffs...
([Whiny voice] "Are we there yet?")
([Whiny voice] "Are we there yet?")
When the sun had climbed to a point directly above the couple, it felt as if the sun burned right through their skulls. Shara had blisters on her feet; her pale face was getting ruddy with sunburn, despite the hood over her head.
([Whiny voice] "Are we there yet?" *BLAM* - And she shot him. The End.)
They were still far from the high, vertical cliffs, and the few nearby rocks offered very little shadow. Darc was slowly getting dizzier in the sun; he gulped down the last drops in his water bottle, but only felt his thirst increase.
([Hoarsely]"I'd drink anything... I'd even drink light beer!")
Suddenly he spotted a tiny little lizard, resting on a flat rock right next to him. It scuttled away before he could have a chance of catching it.
(Did it leave behind some magic spells...? Oh, you meant lizard!)
"Damn!" he croaked.
("Dhr... dh'rrmn! *COUGH* *COUGH*" - "What're you doing??" - "I'm trying to croak 'Damn'.")
"Look for signs of a waterhole, Shara."
("A drunken Britney Spears! We're saved!")
Her hoarse reply came fast: "How am I supposed to recognize that? My whole life was spent in cities!"
("NYI-HI-H-HHH! NYI-H-H-HH!" - "What're you doing??" - "I'm making a 'horse reply'.")
"Don't know... animals, or more plants, or a pit in the ground... something."
("I'm prepared to lower my waterhole standards! A puddle of mud will do!")
"I could always kill you and drink your blood," she said with tired sarcasm.
([Dracula accent] "I do not drink... wine.")
"Too much iron and salt in it," he retorted, a faint grin on his reddening face. "You'd get sick and die."
("I do not meet FDA standards!")
A dog-like desert animal - a coyote - appeared about fifty meters from their position.
(A group of hooping, hollering Minutemen opened fire on it, but missed.)
It froze abruptly for a moment, watching them with its round black eyes... then it darted into the underbrush and vanished from sight.
"Let's go there!" Darc said, pointing to the spot the coyote had left. "Animals come to the waterhole in the morning. Has to be there!"
("I learned it from Steve Irwin's TV show!")
Shara was too exhausted to reply. She staggered after him.
(As they ran for it, the mirage vanished! The End.)
Darc and Shara lay down over the waterhole and drank joyously - not even bothering to filter it first. Then they splashed their faces and clothes, and carefully filled up their bottles. They sat down, pulled off their worn shoes and shook out sand and pebbles.
("What's this thing stuck in my shoe... hey! I found Saddam's Weapons of Mass Destruction! Who'da thunk they were in my shoe all the time!")
"Shara, maybe we could catch a snake or a lizard to eat -"
([Female voice] No! I will not resort to eating lawyers!")
"Kristos, no!" she gasped.
("He's wrapping the entire St. Louis Arch in canvas and string! It's madness! It's madness!")
Darc turned his head and saw what had upset her. On a clifftop at least a hundred meters away, stood a cloaked and hooded figure facing them. He, or she, was holding a spear with a rag attached to it.
(Maybe they're shooting the sequel to "300".)
As if to confirm that he had seen them, the figure held up his spear and let the rag flutter in the wind.
("THIS! IS! SPARTA!!")
It was a banner, with a red symbol painted on it. Darc immediately recognized the symbol: a stylized DNA segment, a cut-off double-helix.
(And underneath, the slogan "Preserve Western Civilization, Ban Stem-Cell Research.")
Without reflection, Darc and Shara understood that the cloaked figure was a Leper - and that he was not alone.
("Honey, we don't cast a reflection! Does that make us vampires?")
Shara put her shoes back on, her shifting eyes desperately searching for an escape-route.
(Her eyes popped out of her sockets and ran for the fire exit.)
The figure pointed straight at them with his spear, obviously making a signal to others.
Shara surrendered to her lifelong conditioning - she panicked and ran away from the sight of the Leper. Darc ran after the hysterical woman.
("Elton Hercules John, you come back here right now!")
Having longer legs and pants instead of a long wide skirt, he caught up with her after a short distance.
"Stop running," he gasped. "We must stop and talk to them!"
("Surely the insurgents will agree to calm, civil peace talks!")
Shara ignored him, rambling on through the terrain. After a brief mindless flight, she inevitably had to stumble - a root caught her left foot. She fell with a scream, legs bruised but not broken.
([Old woman] "I've fallen, and I can't get up!")
Darc helped her up, but she struggled to continue her escape. "Run," she droned, "we must run, run -"
([Sings]"- Baby we were born to run!")
"Jesus! Calm down!
("You're screaming like you've never been in a Mel Gibson movie before!")
At least give me a chance to see where we're going -"
("Why? Let's just follow the vision of our political leaders!")
They both stopped dead. A multitude of Leper banners billowed up from behind bushes and rocks. Darc and Shara stood surrounded by a narrowing circle of hooded pursuers.
("Oh no! We stumbled into a Klan meeting!")
The figure on the clifftop was still pointing them out, following their every movement; there was no point in hiding down.
"Let's head for that flat rock," Darc said.
("No wait, that's just Charlie Sheen's head.")
With Shara leaning on him, they stumbled up a nearby slope of rock that jutted up over the sand. From there, no escape was possible - only a last stand.
("THIS! IS!..." - "Stop that!" - "Sorry...")
Darc had no idea of what to do next, but he knew that fighting was out of the question. The upright spears and banners rapidly closed in on them, and more cloaked figures showed themselves among the bushes and cactuses.
("Warner Bros presents 300 Part Two: Electric Boogaloo.")
Shara was paralyzed, like a hunted animal caught in a dead end. Darc saw first dozens of figures, then about a hundred of them - all wearing sand-colored cloaks - an army of Lepers, silently approaching its prey.
(The North American Man-Leper Love Association has protested against the negative portrayal of lepers in this story.)
(Casting rejects from an Albert Pyun movie...)
The leader walked up to the base of the slope - he was leaning slightly to his left, as if something weighed him down - and stopped. The Leper crowd seemed disciplined in his presence, more like an army than a mob.
(Ladies and gentlemen: Noam Chomsky!.)
The leader figure pointed his spear at the trapped fugitives, and shouted: "Look at them, my children!"
("And when I say 'children' I'm speaking figuratively!")
To his surprise, Darc understood the leader's slurry voice rather well - the dialect the man was speaking resembled English even more than that of Castilia.
(He talked Shizzle.)
"See how they tremble - these ugly, evil creatures! It was their sins who made us what we are!" The leader's voice was full of righteous anger, and the Lepers roared their raging support. "Yes, they are ugly!" he confirmed. "Pretty on the outside, but ugly on the inside!"
("Paris and Nicole!")
The Lepers waved their spears, roaring again.
"But we are not like them - are we?" he asked rhetorically.
("Do you mean we are like them, only not, or...?")
"NO!" the cloaked figures shouted as one.
([Lonely voice in crowd]"I am!")
"So let them see how beautiful we are on the inside!" The leader tore off his hood and glared up at Darc and Shara. "See us!"
Shara shrieked, and looked away. Darc couldn't help but gaze at the sight.
("I've never seen a man eat so many chicken wings!")
The leader slurred because some of his front teeth were jutting out of his mouth - but that wasn't all. The entire left side of his face was healthy - but his right eye bulged, bloated and bloodshot, out of its sore socket.
(But despite growing health problems, Vice President Cheney refuses to step down.)
The skin around his right eye was stretched by huge lumps on his bald skull and right cheek. The leader held up his left arm to the sun - a hand like an oversized claw. Two of the left hand's fingers were twice as long as the others.
("Are you staring at my hand? You're staring at my hand, aren't you? Huh??")
Darc had never before seen such a misshapen man, neither in this age or his own.
(Of course, he had suppressed the memory of Michael Jackson.)
It took him a few seconds to understand that the leader's deformities were real. He was shaken - yet this sight could not have prepared him for the next shock.
(When Madonna missed her weekly Botox treatment.)
As he watched, unable to move, the other Lepers pulled off their hoods and exposed faces and hands to the sun.
Darc made an involuntary yelp.
([Sings] "YELP! I need somebody, YELP! Now just anybody, YELP! You know I need someone, YEE-ELP!...")
(And that was only the moderate wing of Al-Qaeda.)
Every one of them, including the leader, had the double-helix symbol tattooed onto the forehead - or both foreheads, in one case. Darc was stunned numb, not even able to feel ordinary fear - it was too much at once.
From the mass of faces, he only managed to take in brief glimpses of horror: faces with the ears and noses placed wrong, or drawn out like half-molten wax figures.
(If I have to watch another photo of those inbred European royal families, I'll throw up.)
Faces pockmarked by brown teeth, sticking out of the skin like a barber's nightmare.
(Yeah, but Willie Nelson can still sing.)
A man with empty, black eye-sockets, and absolutely no lower jaw - just a quivering, boneless lip which pulled his tongue down into an everlasting grimace.
(They warned Jacko that his face couldn't take another lift, but did he listen? Nooo...)
An outstretched hand, with a single, blinking eye glaring out of its palm.
An obscene head, with genitals growing on top of its scalp.
(So that's the explanation for Don King's hair!)
Hair growing from a woman's mouth and eyes.
(Rosie O'Donnell, before her morning shave.)
A baby in a woman's pouch, with two fused heads, the two middle eyes fused into a single mass with two pupils.
("The growth hormones and antibiotics in red meat are perfectly harmless!")
There was more - numerous other shapes so subtly yet unnaturally distorted, that Darc feared he was going insane. He bit his lip, and tasted blood. No, it was for real.
(Rosie O'Donnell before her morning shave.)
Shara, still silent, looked up again - and screamed and screamed, until Darc slapped her.
The Lepers leered and laughed at them, pointing their fingers and distorted limbs at the couple.
"Look at the ugly woman!"
"Has the sun burned you up?"
("Do you sometimes feel... not fresh?")
The desert echoed with bubbling, scornful laughter; it was perfectly clear that here Darc and Shara were the freaks, and the Lepers were the norm.
"Look at that hair - all white!"
It seemed like the taunting would never end.
(And the British sailors retreated in tears.)
Darc lowered his gaze, and his face burned with the heat of angry, fearful shame: he remembered a childhood schoolday, when a big, dumb bully teased him for being different, smarter than the bully. And he remembered the first time he talked back to a bigger child.
(And he also remembered his first atomic wedgie.)
The fear in his gut turned inside out, and became anger. Damn it, he wasn't going to die being laughed at! He faced the jeering crowd, amazed himself that he dared.
("This is the last time I'll be on Fear Factor!")
"Shut up!" he yelled at them. "We have done you no wrong!"
("We have only wronged the English language!")
The Lepers fell dead silent. These new victims broke the old pattern - whenever banished city-dwellers or stranded aircraft passengers were found by them, all they did was to scream and escape, or kill themselves.
(This might be the right time to Ask A Ninja.)
Shara was too dazed to do anything; but if she had, her first move would have been to impale herself on the Leper leader's spear. The leader nodded thoughtfully, grinning with his grotesque set of brown-stained gums: this victim was different.
("Hmm... this victim doesn't immediately impale himself on my spear. What am I doing wrong?")
"You," he boomed, the echo rolling back and forth from the cliffs. "You are a strange intruder!" The leader stepped closer and lowered his voice. "What brings you two here? Speak!"
("Or be forever dead silent, heh-heh. A little mutant humor there...")
He made little circles in the air with his claw-like hand as he spoke. "Before we kill you..." - murmurs of disappointment came from his ranks, quickly silenced - "...tell us how you ended up here, why they dropped you off so far from the cities! If it's a good story," he slurred casually, "we might let you live..." and added loudly: "...long enough to tell it!"
The Lepers roared with laughter. They seemed confident that it would soon be over. Darc understood that he had to speak up, or die for sure... what the hell was he supposed to say? The seconds passed all too quickly.
Those mutants, or whatever they were, seemed as impatient as they were ugly. The leader's healthy eye measured Darc up, and his bloated, red eye glared at Shara's beautiful but sun-scorched, grimy face.
("What's this woman doing at our fundraiser dinner?")
The leader's hatred of city-dwellers told him what ought to be done to her - besides, if the chief didn't, someone else in the tribe would. But his own wives, deformed as they were, would become dangerously jealous. Decisions, decisions...
"Well?" he barked in his loud, slurring voice. "Your time is running out!"
(It sounded more like this: "Wuhll? Yuh'r th'm uh's thrunn'ung uhhth!")
Darc concentrated, let his fear recede behind his natural curiosity. These Lepers had to be human at heart. Their leader had to have a shred of reason in his misshapen head. He looked past the leader's facial deformities, saw his healthy eye - and, with an effort, focused on it.
The leader blinked uncertainly - and then Darc knew.
(How to blink certainly!)
Inspiration came. Darc drank some of his water, and cleared his throat. He touched his chest, and spoke.
"I am a Leper."
("Honestly! Please don't laugh!")
The deformed men and women around him understood Darc's statement fairly well - only its meaning confused them. Was he some kind of Leper? Was that why his hair and eyebrows were all white?
Darc pointed at the trembling figure of Shara, who were kneeling at his feet, and added emphatically: "She is a Leper." With a sweeping gesture at the crowd, he declared: "You are Lepers." Before the startled Lepers could react, Darc exclaimed gravely: "All humans are Lepers! All the people in the cities - all of them! - are Lepers! They think they are not, but they are wrong! I can prove it!"
("All humans are Creationists... it's in the Bible!!")
He paused for a breath, gathering courage so that his voice wouldn't quiver. It might be a dream, not real life he was living; and the more he felt it, the more fearless he grew.
(A rare peek into a President's mind.)
An angry voice from the Leper tribe shouted back: "Liar! You are not like us - you are different!"
Darc grabbed the word "different" in his mind, and hurled it back at the crowd.
(*BONK* "Ow! Stop throwing adjectives!")
"Yes - I am different! All humans are different from one another! That's why all humans are Lepers!"
The leader was seized by a new, unfamiliar sensation - he could not name it, which made him afraid.
He pointed his claw-like hand menacingly at the white-haired stranger, and boomed: "Who do you think you are, to talk like that?"
("Why, I think I'm some kind of superstar!")
Darc grinned at him, surprising even himself with his boldness: "Who are you, my good man?"
"I am Claw, chief of the Southern Eksako tribe. Who are you? Where do you come from?"
"I am David Archibald, also called Darc. I am from England, from another time. I have come from the past, from 900 years before this time!"
(This is what that American Daylight Savings Time scheme will eventually lead to.)
Claw shook his head; surely this outcast had spent too many hours in the sun.
"You are crazy, that's what! You cannot prove anything you say!"
("Would you like to be our next President?")
"Yes I can! I can show you how little difference there is between you... and the people of the cities!"
("You eat with plates and forks and knives, just like New Yorkers...")
"How?" a voice in the crowd asked.
Darc hesitated, almost too long - a hesitation that might have ruined everything - and blurted out: "I am a witchdoctor from the Golden Age, and I can cure you from the Plague!"
("Just click your heels together and repeat: 'There's no place like home.'")
Gasps of astonishment came from the Leper tribe.
("Egad!" - "Blimey!" - "I say!")
They had expected desperate pleas for mercy, offerings of ransom they would have taken anyway - but never, ever the promise of salvation.
(They thought they'd stay hostages in Iran forever.)
They stared at the white-haired stranger, then at each other, then at their leader. They did not know what to do.
Claw, a bright man hardened by a brutal life, felt a sting of pain in his heart. Deep inside, he wished to be healthy as much as any man, woman, or child of his tribe.
([Barytone sings] "I want to be Up There...")
All his life, his sore eye and deformed teeth had given him constant pains, ruined his sleep and given him the look and sound of a mean-spirited, glaring brute.
(The most despised member of the British royal family.)
He had lost many deformed children, and some wives, to the Plague - lost more than he wanted to remember.
Instinctively, Claw hated Darc for torturing him with false hopes. Who had ever heard of a cure for the Plague? His people had always been born deformed, and would always be. It was the punishment of the Goddess, for betraying her and the Singing King.
(The Curse of Colonel Parker.)
Stirred by feelings of guilt and hope, Claw slurred ominously: "You say you are from the Golden Age, stranger. If you lie, you will be infected with the Plague, and truly become a Leper. But if you convince me of who you are, I shall let you live. So speak. Tell us all about the Golden Age, and how you got here. We have all the time in the world!"
("Until 24 is on.")
On Claw's command, his people sat down; this group appeared to have healthy legs, at least. A few protests came from the younger warriors. The man with no eyes or lower jaw gibbered confusedly, asking what was going on. The eye in a man's palm blinked repeatedly at Darc and Shara, as if suspicious of them.
(Or maybe it was just a mutant facial tic.)
Claw's favorite wife leaned close to the chieftain and said softly in his ear: "That man is a fool, just another madman. Let him go, but do not listen to his crazy talk. It would only serve to make us unhappy."
("Ignore Robin Williams and let him get through rehab.")
He met her hard gaze with his healthy eye. She had an undistorted, adult face - almost painfully beautiful compared to the other women's features - but she also had a second face on her back, which used to mutter while she slept.
("Mumble, mutter, mumble, mutter...")
This woman's name was Double-Mouth, and sometimes the mutterings of her second face frightened Claw.
"I gave him my word," he replied.
("He took it and ran, and I never saw him again.")
Claw turned away from Double-Mouth and sat on a rock, facing Darc again. He gestured impatiently at the stranger to begin. Darc scratched his head. Here we go again, he thought.
(Just another day in Detroit.)
Better take it nice and slow, and repeat myself often so they get the words right. All the way from the beginning. These are simple people. Ought to have music too. Like the old Greek storytellers...
("THIS!! IS!! SPARTA!!")
He sat down and clutched the shivering Shara, who clung to him like a wide-eyed baby.
Looking at his frightening but curiously attentive audience, Darc spoke: "I said I am from the past, and that is the truth. I am Darc, and this is the true story of who I am, where I came from, and how I got here. Think back in time, nine hundred long years... before the wars... before the Eternal Ice.
("Way back when Michael Jackson was black...")
Think of the Golden Age, the first time of the Goddess and the Singing King. I was born then, and I heard the King's songs from when I was a child.
"I can still recall many of his songs, as I heard them..."
("One of'em went like, uh, you know, real loud and with guitars, and, uh...")
DARC AGES (c)A.R.Yngve 1995, 2000, 2004. All rights reserved. May not be copied without permission.
______________
A.R.Yngve
The MSTing Of
DARC AGES
Book 2 1/2: The Smell Of Fear
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("Wash your hands before we shake!")
The two outlaws trudged onward through the parched, rocky desert. Gravel and sand gathered in Shara's shoes. Darc's shoes were too soft for the rough terrain, and were starting to crack up at the seams. And they went on, as the sun climbed higher and burned hotter. Darc began to feel the first itching of sunburn on his face.
And, just as Darc had guessed, a waterhole did appear fifty meters farther away. At the bottom of a crevice, a little pool of brownish water glittered in the shadow of some tall rocks.
Within minutes, the cloaked Lepers had the slope tightly surrounded. Among them, one tall figure wore armor pieces on his chest and shoulders, decorated with the double-helix symbol; he appeared to be the leader, and carried a laser rifle on his back.
A line-up of deformed men and women glowered at him, eyes full of unforgiving reproach; a hate that nearly matched their hideousness, eyes saying: We hate you as you must hate us!
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