SHIAM Conspiracy- Book 1 (28 page)

They came to a stop among several bodies
lying scattered around the yard. Four were Human, an older man and
a woman, and apparently their two teenaged boys. All four had been
brutally hacked and sliced with sharp blades. All had died with
swords in their hands. There were two hunting bows on the ground as
well; one lying partially hidden beneath the old man, the other
next to the eldest teen. Their quivers held only a few arrows, the
others evidently spent in defense of their homestead.

The remaining bodies had obviously been among
those who had attacked the family. They looked evil even in death.
Their lifeless eyes still an angry red as they stared blankly
toward the blue sky. Short stubby horns grew from their heads and
their bodies were covered with scaly hides. Their long snouts
looked more wolf-like than anything, but they wore leather clothing
and appeared to have walked upright.

“What in the demon’s hell are these
creatures?” Mashkkha said, gazing down at one of the limp and
twisted bodies.

“Kaboles.” Zak muttered.

“Kaboles?”

“They are fictional characters,” Zak said,
looking around at the carnage thoughtfully. “They don’t exist.”

“Well, then what are they doing here?”

Zak didn’t answer immediately. He bent down
and picked up one of the swords, balancing it carefully in his
hand. “This is a virtual game!”

“What?” Mashkkha looked over at him in
confusion. “You’re telling me that we have become part of some
computer game? Does that mean that the portal and the thing in it
is part of the game as well?”

“I don’t know.” A sense of urgency pulled at
Zak as he thought of Megan alone in the woods. “Real or not, these
weapons are deadly if the rules of engagement aren’t
functioning!”

The color drained from Mashkkha’s face,
replaced by the same panic Zak had felt. “You mean...”

“Exactly,” Zak said. He carefully scanned the
tree line surrounding the yard, looking for any signs of movement.
“Dead could very well mean dead!”

“Oh...”

Zak quickly collected weapons from the
Humans. Each of the adults had wielded long swords, while the two
teens had been armed with short swords. Upon examining them Zak
found the blades to be of reasonable quality.

“Take these,” he said, offering one of the
long swords and one of the short swords to Mashkkha.

“What am I supposed to do with these?”
Mashkkha asked, gingerly accepting the weapons. “I’m not trained in
sword play!”

“Then use one of the bows,” Zak said. “They
are the only weapons we have. Get back inside. Do what you can for
Harry. But don’t let your guard down. Keep watch for any unwelcome
company. Lock the door and shutters. I’ll be back as soon as I
can.”

Zak was off toward the woods without waiting
for a response. Balancing the blade of the long sword on his right
shoulder and carrying the shorter sword similarly on his left, he
ran across the yard and hopped the fence near where Megan had
entered the forest. His heart was pounding; he was tense with
anticipation, but forced himself to slow down and follow her trail
more carefully. Again his concern for her safety ran deeper than
the normal concern for a colleague. There were emotions involved
that he was not used to dealing with. Fear was the predominant of
those emotions: fear that she would come into trouble she would be
unable to handle, fear that she would be seriously injured or
worse, fear of losing her... As though he had some claim upon her
to begin with. Other emotions orbited that fear. Physical
attraction...desire...affection...

He forced himself to stop there. He had no
time for any of it. He did the best he could to force the unwanted
emotions from his mind and concentrated on reading Megan’s trail.
The pain in his shoulder also served as a distraction, which made
following her even more difficult. She was Elf. Elves had a natural
ability to walk through any landscape leaving next to no trace of
their passing. This was even more the case when they travelled
within a forest, their natural habitat. Megan hadn’t gone far
before turning off the path she had been following. Zak nearly
missed the fact that she had turned, which forced him to go slower
and concentrate more closely on the task at hand.

The forest trees gradually grew less dense,
oak being replaced by Elvish fir, with flat dark green needles in
clusters resembling suction cups. Although the forest became less
populated with the fir, thick underbrush filled in much of the open
areas. Zak couldn’t put a name to the species of plant, a dense
shrubbery with leaves edged in a bright red that gradually changed
to dark purple at the center. It grew twice as tall as a man and
became so thick that Zak had to be extremely careful not to lose
Megan’s trail.

He had been following a narrow path through
the maze of undergrowth for some time when again the forest became
less dense, the persistent shrubs now reduced to scattered clusters
among the giant boughs. As he continued on, his attention suddenly
focused upon how quiet and still the forest had become. There were
no longer any sounds of birds chirping high above or the bristling
of small forest creatures within the underbrush. The quiet had
become complete.

He stopped dead still, cocked his head and
listened.

Nothing.

He stood there for a long moment and
continued to listen.

And still he heard nothing.

He was about ready to move on again when the
sound of voices reached his ears...coming closer.

There was no time to think. He instinctively
slipped into the nearest cluster of undergrowth. As he slid in
among the vines he was grabbed suddenly from behind, a hand
covering his mouth as he was pulled to the ground. As he wrestled
to get free, a hushed voice spoke near to his ear, warm breath
tickling against his neck.

“Sshhh! It is me,” Megan whispered.

Zak stopped struggling immediately, relief
that he finally found her washing over him. He followed her
instruction and remained silent, his instincts warning him of
impending danger as the voices he’d heard grew louder. Still, he
felt distracted by the close proximity of the Elf woman, her body
pressed against his own. He slowly and quietly turned to face her,
listening to the voices all the while. Her emerald green eyes
sparkled with something like humor as she looked back at him. He
suddenly got the feeling that she could read his inner conflict,
could detect his emotional turmoil concerning her. He was just as
suddenly embarrassed by it. But then the time for such nonsense
ended. He handed her the short sword and she took it without
question. They both hunched down and waited, peeking through the
dense leaves that hid them.

As he looked out into the forest, a group of
creatures blinked into view. From what Zak could see of them, they
looked to be the same ugly mythical creatures he’d seen back at the
cabin. They were fully immersed in an animated discussion, their
language unrecognizable to Zak. He counted eight of the creatures
and they were heading straight for them!

The fictional monsters walked in a
half-hazard line, their weapons slung over their shoulders in a
casual indifference to any possible threat, mumbling and grunting
and laughing in their own harsh language. To Zak’s ears it sounded
as though all eight of them were gagging at the same time. Their
entire language seemed to consist of just three guttural sounds,
“auch”
and
“dok”
and
“arg”.
He could not
understand one word of what they were saying. Their faces seemed
naturally twisted in snarls, their angry red eyes looking out at
the world with hatred and contempt.

As they drew nearer Zak feared they were
going to trample straight through the dense brush where he and
Megan hid. Holding his breath, he clenched the long sword firmly in
his hand, ready to strike if the need should arise.

But the Kaboles did not trample into their
hiding place. Instead they turned wide, leisurely travelling deeper
into the forest. Both Zak and Megan remained still, listening to
the grating dialect gradually fade into the distance. The deep
silence that followed seemed unusually heavy. After a few quiet
moments Zak judged that it was safe. Letting his tension slip away
with a sigh of relief he led the way out of their hiding spot.

“That was a bit too close for comfort,” he
said, looking down the trail in the direction the creatures had
gone.

“Zak, those creatures were Kaboles,” Megan
said.

“You know what they are?”

“Do you think I have never played virtual
games?”

“I didn’t know Elves went in for such
frivolous past times.”

“There are obviously a good many things you
do not know about Elves.”

Megan once again pushed Zak’s annoyance
button. He bit back the argument he wanted to start. This was not
the reunion he’d imagined as he searched for her.

If Megan was able to read his annoyance, she
showed no indication of it. “If this is some sort of game... You
had better come with me. I have something to show you.”

She led him in the direction the Kaboles had
come from. Not far from where they had hid, the trees broke onto an
open road. A bright sun combined with the looming forest to create
a patchwork of light and shade across the hard dirt of what
appeared to be a well-used road judging by the deep wheel ruts.

“Those tracks were not made by modern
vehicles,” Megan stated the obvious. “See how narrow the individual
grooves are? Those were made by a cart of some kind, drawn by
horses. If this is a game of some sort, I would guess it is a sword
and sorcery game.”

“Well, that fits in with the farm we found.
And the Kaboles.”

“There is more,” Megan said. She led him
further down the road until they reached a place where the road
forked. Without saying a word, Megan simply pointed.

An old and weathered sign hung from a cracked
wooden post that sat crookedly in the ground where the two paths
separated. The sign was in the shape of an arrow pointing down the
left fork.

Zak stared at the faded words of the sign and
realization suddenly hit.

Tahmore Ferry
.

The voice of the SHIAM guard, Jonas, suddenly
echoed in his mind.

...and there’s a dock with a sign that says
Tahmore Ferry...

Jonas had spoken these words to him just two
days ago. At the time Zak had impatiently disregarded the android’s
questions concerning the virtual game. Now those questions suddenly
took on a whole new meaning.

“Oh crap, this...Tahmore Ferry. This is the
link to Grimrok Corporation!”

“
W
arriors and Wizards
...I think
that was the name of the game.” Zak said, recounting his
conversation with the SHIAM security guard on his first day at
Grimrok. “The android was going on about how he was the only player
that could access a game segment containing a boat landing called
Tahmore Ferry. According to him, none of the other on-line players
he was in contact with had any reference to it.”

“So the thieves used sorcery
and
a
virtual game?” Megan questioned, a puzzled look shaping her
face.

“Of course, this may not have anything to do
with the theft,” Zak said, pushing away the thought of how cute
Megan’s expression was as she looked over at him. “I mean, it’s
common for kids to break into these old deserted buildings and hack
into Comm Net. Some junior nerd could be responsible for hacking
the game module.”

“And these kids just happened to break into
the same warehouse where the thieves opened a portal to some
unknown place and murdered five Elves? I don’t think so!”

“Yeah well, maybe not.” Zak had to admit that
it sounded pretty far-fetched. The problem was that the theory that
the thieves somehow used magic, some sort of worm hole and a
virtual game in order to steel a SHIAM unit from a high security
building sounded even more ludicrous. “We seem to keep running up
more questions than answers.”

“The answers are sure to come eventually,”
Megan said. “We just have to keep looking.”

Zak didn’t feel quite so confident about that
at this point. He took one last look around and said, “We better
get back to Mashkkha and Harry.”

They backtracked toward the cottage following
the same path Zak had followed to find Megan, winding their way
through the giant old trees and thick undergrowth. The forest life
now seemed to have returned to normal, colorful birds calling out
to one another, black squirrels chattering as they jumped from tree
branch to tree branch, as small ground animals crept through the
underbrush. The sounds and smells made it a rather pleasant walk,
now that Zak was relaxed enough to take notice of it, although it
was only a virtual forest. Or perhaps the pleasure he got from it
was because he was now certain it
was
a virtual forest and
not some bizarre blend of virtuality and reality. But it had also
become another piece of the puzzle he was working on, as well. A
puzzle that Zak was far from solving.

They had been travelling for some time when
Megan suddenly bent down to examine the forest floor, interrupting
Zak’s thoughts. She searched the ground carefully, gently working
her fingertips over the leaves that covered the area.

Zak cursed as he looked over her shoulder. He
could read the signs as well as Megan. A group of Kaboles had come
upon the path and were now some distance ahead of them, making
their way toward the cottage where Mashkkha and Harry Mathers
waited for them.

“Let’s get going,” he said.

Megan looked up at him and nodded without
saying a word and then they were off, sprinting down the trail as
fast as they could travel.

Zak admonished himself as they went. He had
allowed himself to become distracted, too wrapped up in the mystery
of all that was going on to have noticed the telltale signs that
the mythical creatures had joined the path. The forest had regained
the same eerie silence as before. He was unable to tell if these
were the same Kaboles they’d seen earlier, but the tracks clearly
indicated that if it was the same group, they had met more of their
kind before coming to the trail. And that was extremely troublesome
considering that Zak had no idea if the rules of engagement were in
place.