Nil (2 page)

What are you cooking up now, Nil?
I wondered, stifling a twinge of dread. Looking around, I saw nothing but leaves shifting in the wind.

Nil says wait
, she giggled in the breeze.

Like I had a choice.

CHAPTER

3

CHARLEY

DAY 1, TIME UNKNOWN

A sharp pain in my hip woke me. When I opened my eyes, I saw red.

Literally.

Jagged rocks the color of rust stretched as far as I could see. Boulders as big as buses, small chunks like cars, and a million smaller rocks the size of balls—golf balls, baseballs, volleyballs, you name it. All were uneven, with weird serrated edges, and all were the same exact shade of burnt red. I lay on a raised outcropping, on my side.

And I was
naked
.

Outside, in a creepy rock field I’d never laid eyes on before in my life.

I scrambled to my feet, and brushing off grit, I stumbled toward the edge. Spiky gravel covered the rock like sprinkles on a cupcake.
That explains the pain in my hip
, I thought randomly. I slipped twice but didn’t fall.

My rock, shaped like a mushroom with a fat stem, was mashed against a clump of smaller rocks masquerading as petrified red cauliflower. Using the smaller rocks as stairs, I worked my way down, moving as fast as the prickly rock would allow. At the bottom, I scrunched into the wisp of shade.

Frozen against the rock, I listened.

The only noise came from me. Air whistling in and out of my lungs, blood slamming against the chambers of my heart. The surrounding silence was so vast, so complete, it had a presence all its own: it was eerie, almost otherworldly. And with the desolate red landscape stretching for miles, I felt like I’d woken on an alien planet.

An. Alien. Planet.

I began shaking, violently, with the kind of icy fear I’d felt only once before, when Em and I were T-boned by a drunk driver and I’d seen Em sandwiched behind the wheel, bright red blood running down her forehead into her closed eyes. She’d turned out to be fine. I couldn’t say the same for myself right now. Stark naked, goodness knows where, wherever
here
was. My last memory was of scalding heat, burning cold, and pain.

Jerking my head down, I expected my skin to be fried, but it looked fine. All of it, which I could see, because I was
naked
.

Slowly, I pressed my head back against the rock. The red rock landscape stayed silent, and still. At least the sky was blue. Brilliant, clear blue.

Maybe I’m dead.

I thought I’d passed out, but maybe I had actually
passed
. Did that awful heat mark the entrance into death? Absorbing my God-forsaken surroundings, I abruptly thought,
Hell
. Hell was a red rock desert, where you woke up naked and alone. I’d always thought Hell was an underground cavern teeming with the moaning damned, but maybe we all got our own personal Hell, crafted just for us, because mine sure looked a lot like this: no clothes, no people, and definitely no clue.

But it didn’t feel like Hell. And even though I’d skipped church lately, I was a pretty good kid. Sneaking out at night to drink beer on the local golf course with Em was the worst thing I’d ever done, and that really wasn’t so bad. Not bad enough to wind up in Hell anyway. My gut told me I was alive, then my gut told me I should be afraid. Very afraid.

My Em-bleeding-behind-the-wheel fear was back. Was the air thinner here? I couldn’t seem to get enough air.

Around me, nothing moved.

I swept the area, looking for something to tell me where I was, or wasn’t, but all I saw was rock. It coated the ground, hunkered in clumps, and giant piles of it blocked my line of sight. If I wanted to see anything, I’d have to climb. But I knew if I could see past the rock hills, then anything lurking out there could also see me.

Trapped
, I thought humorlessly,
between a rock and a hard place
. Revealing myself seemed like a really bad idea. On the other hand, I couldn’t stay plastered against this rock forever.

Hunching over, I crept toward the largest pile and started up. Scaling the rocks was like walking barefoot over spiky balls from our giant sweetgum tree—uncomfortable, but doable, as long as I watched my step. Near the top, I peeked over the edge. All I could see was more rock. I hesitated, hearing my volleyball coach’s voice in my head.
Use your height, Charley. Make it work for you.
Okay, well, on the court in a uniform is one thing, outside stark naked was another.

I took a deep breath—and then I climbed. On the summit, I stood, but I couldn’t help covering my chest with one arm and my privates with the other. Feeling like an idiot, I surveyed the broken landscape.

A blue haze rose in the distance, speckled with green.
Mountains
, I thought, feeling a spark of hope. Green meant life, and more importantly, water.
Are there mountains on Mars?
I wondered. Then I wanted to slap myself. I didn’t—because that would mean flashing more of my already overexposed self—but I wanted to, because mountains or not, there was no oxygen on Mars, and I was definitely breathing oxygen-filled air. This wasn’t Mars.

But that didn’t mean it was Earth.

The sun—only one, thank heavens—hung high in the cloudless sky. Feeling heat on my bare shoulders, I knew I needed to find cover. Even with my olive skin, eventually I’d burn, especially certain parts that had never seen the sun.

I looked left. West, perhaps. The ground sloped gently away. No mountains, but I sensed that direction was safer.
Follow the lead
, my dad would joke as he tapped his nose, his golden-brown eyes twinkling. Along with his looks, I often thought I’d inherited his lead. Heading west
felt
right.

I turned and my breath caught. Twenty yards out, the red ground was shimmering. The air lay still. And if it was quiet with the wind, without it, this place was dead calm.

The shimmer lifted into the air, and then it moved—straight toward me.

I scrambled right, aiming not to outrun it but skirt
around
it, likening it to a tornado; we’d had one in Georgia once. Running over the crumbly rocks and leaping to hit flat spots, I missed. Pain slashed across my heel, making me stumble, and when I looked back up, the shimmer hovered fifteen feet away and closing. Not speeding up, not slowing. Just drifting … toward me.

Kicking into high gear, I sprinted across the rocks, leaving a trail of red on red. A flat portion of rock caught my eye; behind it was a small cave—more like a scoop carved out of the rock face, just big enough for me. I darted toward the opening. Folding like an accordion, I tucked inside the shallow hole.

Shade dropped like a curtain. I pressed my back against the cool rock, letting my eyes adjust.

The shimmer approached, silent and sinister.

Seconds later, the wall of wavering air drifted so close I could reach out and touch it, not that I did. But I couldn’t look away. Glistening like water under glass, a million pinpricks of translucent light winked at me. Every color was there, rippling and moving, filled with an unnatural iridescence.

Then the shimmer’s edge hung directly in front of me. A razor-thin streak of silver back-lined in black onyx, the air in front and behind was clear and as blue as the sky above. I sat completely still, afraid to move, afraid to breathe, terrified the shimmer would suck me in and take me goodness-knows-where.

The shimmer kept moving, drifting out of sight.

A second ticked by, then two.

Outside my hole, the wind was back. It blew fine dust across the landing near my toes, miniature funnels of red.

I stared at the funnels, thinking of tornadoes and shimmers. Tornadoes were definitely bad. I didn’t know whether the shimmers were good or bad, but I felt I should avoid them. One had obviously brought me here, which was bad, or at least not good. It was like some twisted Wizard of Oz experience, minus the red sparkly shoes to take me home.

I uncurled myself in time to see a second shimmer form off to my right, in virtually the same place that the first one had appeared.

Without hesitation, I ducked back into my cave. The dust lay flat. This shimmer drifted farther out than the first, and when it passed, its edge lurked yards away, not inches. Like the first one, the second shimmer passed without stopping.

Tucked into a silent ball, I watched the dust, waiting.

The wind stalled; the dust funnels collapsed. A third shimmer swept across the red field in my line of sight, this one farther out than its predecessors, much farther. It, too, disappeared off to my left, shrinking into itself in the time it takes to blink, and then was gone. The shimmers looked less ominous in the distance, less sentient. Most important, they didn’t seem intent on finding me, but they were still as freaky as Dorothy’s tornado.

And that’s when I thought,
If one shimmer brought me here, maybe one will take me back
. So when a fourth shimmer appeared, I ran for it. I loped toward the wall of wavering air, ignoring the pain in my heel, feeling ridiculous in my galloping nakedness but hell-bent on catching the shimmer anyway. It moved slowly across the red rock, hovering inches from the ground and stretching ten feet high and half as wide.

As I gained on the shimmer, I wondered exactly what would happen when I hit the roiling air
. Will it burn? Feel like ice?
In ten feet, I was about to find out.

Five.

Two.

I was inches away when the shimmer crumpled into a black dot. Then the dot vanished. The wind instantly returned, whipping my hair with a vengeance.

The shimmer was gone.

I stood naked on a strange rocky plateau, feeling a sense of failure for something I didn’t even understand. I’d missed it, whatever it was. And with the distance between the shimmers widening, I knew I couldn’t run fast enough to catch the next one.

But unable to help myself, I waited, my eyes scouring the ground for movement.

No new shimmers appeared.

Did the shimmers come in sets like waves? How often did they come?
I’d no idea. And I had no clue what they really were.

Without warning, I was totally aware of my vulnerability without clothes or cover.
Get out!
my gut screamed.
Out of this field, out of the sun, and out of sight
. Something told me this field was a dead end, and to
move
.

I spun, took a step, and buckled in pain. Glancing at my heel, I winced. It was shredded, bathed in blood, and there was nothing I could do—except keep moving.

The going was slow, and painful. I fell into a pattern of taking several steps, then pausing to get my bearings, not that I really had any. I took two awkward steps to my left, then hopped forward, aiming for a flat spot and feeling like I was playing Stephen King’s version of naked Twister. I was so intent on my footing that I almost missed seeing it: a flash of cream among the red.

Hobbling over, I found two sandals and some cloth. No,
clothes
.

Beside a deep crevasse, a pair of shorts and a bandana lay in a heap. Both were a strange off-white. Giddy with hope, I snatched up the shorts, and something bright went flying; it whistled past my ear, disappeared into the crevasse, and landed with a muffled
crack
. I wondered what it was, but I wasn’t about to peer into the dark hole to see what fell. At the rate I was going, I’d probably fall in myself. Whatever it was, it was gone.

I held up the shorts. The fabric was soft and worn. Straight cut with rough stitching and a jagged lace-up fly, they looked like primitive boys’ Bermudas. One side was torn, but they were definitely wearable.

“Sweet,” I said.

The word rolled through the open air like a shout. I stopped, instantly freaked out, realizing these clothes belonged to someone.

Someone who might be watching.

A fresh jolt of panic made me shake. Clutching the shorts like a thief caught red-handed, I scanned the rocks, every muscle taut as I waited for someone to leap out shouting, “Those are mine!”

No one did. The land stayed silent.

This morning I would’ve never picked up random clothes off of the ground and put them on, but then again, this morning I was not stranded buck-naked in a creepy red rock desert.
Beggars can’t be choosers
, I thought, slipping on the shorts. Then I laughed, because in some weird twist of fate, they actually fit.

I’d always been skinny, built like a boy, with a boy’s name to match. When all the girls grew curves, I’d just stretched, growing like crazy until I hit six feet. Recently my chest had made a small effort to catch up—the key word there was
small
—but I still had no hips. The boyish Bermudas were perfect.

I wrapped the bandana around my chest like a contestant on
Survivor
.
Where the heck’s my tribe?
I joked. Glancing around the silent rocks, I realized that if there was a tribe here, I might not want to meet them. They might not be friendly.

No longer naked, I felt a million times better.

The sandals were big but better than nothing, and with protection for my feet, I moved quickly through the sea of red. Some rocks slid, others held firm. Soon the back of my right sandal looked like I’d dipped it in red paint.
Lookin’ good
, I thought wryly, watching my step. These rocks seemed made for snakes. But nothing moved, except me.

Working my way around another deep crack, I slipped. Shards of red skittered away, like they were running, too. One looked like a dagger. I picked it up, hefted it once to gauge its weight, then whacked it against a boulder to test the dagger’s strength. It held; if anything, the dagger scraped the boulder.
Like rock, paper, scissors
, I thought.
Dagger beats boulder
.

I tucked the shard into my waistband, thinking it might come in handy.
Dagger beats snake—or worse
. Then, the idea of me engaging in hand-to-hand combat, armed with a piddly rock dagger, was so absolutely ridiculous that I laughed, which was better than crying, but both emotions were so raw, so powerful, like two sides of the same coin, I feared too much laughing might flip me into tears and if I started, I wouldn’t be able to stop. I stopped laughing, took a deep breath, and trekked on.