Shadows of the Desert, page 16
As Deanna was lifted from the vehicle, Jason was plunged back into the oblivious, black world which he had fallen into before his vision of Deanna’s death. He prayed once again this was death embracing him, that it was all over, and he would have to endure no more and once more his prayer went unanswered. He knew death would be too easy, that he would not be graced with such a merciful end. The vision he had just endured was meant to break him once and for all, to seal the efforts Shadow had put forth over the past few days, it was time for him to end it, himself.
Jason fell back from Shadow at the same moment Shadow dropped back from him. He was sobbing as he hit the ground, in a fresh state of consciousness, just abrupt as its loss. His cries were a sharp contrast to Shadows hearty laughter. Jason rolled to his side and shook convulsively as he wept for his wife. He had known her death was a horrible one, he had not needed to see it, to share in the dread. What he had no way of being prepared for was just how horrible it had been, the amount of pain she had suffered. He had been forced to watch as she gasped, with burning lungs full of poisonous smoke to gather the wind to scream from her injuries. He would never heal from what he had just seen; he had never healed from losing her in the first place, left alone from this added atrocity. Shadow was rising to his feet and was still laughing a long and exaggeratedly hysterical laugh.
“Whew, that was fun wasn’t it? I mean, I don’t know about you but I’m having a ball!” Shadow said.
Jason was sucking air as his sobs began to abate and his grief was being replaced with rage. He had never hated anything or anyone as much as he hated this thing, and that was saying a lot considering he had tried to murder Randy Burg in front of God and everybody. This thing though, made the deadly recklessness of Randy Burg seem like a charity. Jason knew Shadow had tried to break him; he was however becoming galvanized in his resolve to find a way through this. He wished only to kill Shadow, he no longer cared if he survived, just so long as Shadow did not. The memory of his family had been dishonored in perverse manners, from this thing calling itself Lemondrop to the visions he imposed on Jason. One way or another, Jason resolved to avenge not only what had been done to him out but these acts of dishonor as well. The way he saw it, his own life was forfeit anyway. Shadow may very well have been right about him having gone out there to die but now he was infused with homicidal rage; people with nothing have nothing to lose. This drive to kill was stronger than it had ever been before, and Jason’s feelings of aggression were growing to a point strong enough to alarm himself. There was something inside him which seemed to recognize the drive to kill as alien, it had in some manner come from Shadow, he had infused a piece of himself into Jason.
Jason was also feeling stronger than he should, by all rights. Before he had been forced to witness Deanna’s death, he had himself been knocking on hells door. If he had been left alone in his prior condition, he probably would have been dead at some point before morning. Now though, he felt stronger, he felt awake and had energy and he knew this had to have been some residual effect from Shadow or some other outside source. He sat up and forced away his grief while he collected himself. As he sat there, Shadow threw the knife he had crafted in front of Jason, still lightly coated with the blood of a coyote.
“Well, Jason, there you have it. Your whole life has led to this moment. One monumental failure after another and here you are, with me, in the desert, ready to die. Take the weapon and cut your throat now, it will do the job easily. Do it while you have a little strength back in you before you are so horribly wrecked that you don’t have the energy to do it properly. If you fuck up, it might take quite a long, painful while to die.” Shadow instructed.
Jason glared up at Shadows grinning face and his heart began to race as rage once again coursed through him.
“Go fuck yourself, you freak.” Jason said.
Shadows grin dropped and he became serious as he looked down on Jason.
“Let me make one thing perfectly clear to you, Jason. You will not get out of this alive. You are lost and dehydrated in the desert. You have been bitten by a rattlesnake and if you take a moment to notice, there is not much feeling in that right foot of yours, it’s becoming gangrenous. You will die, so why don’t you just make it quick?” Shadow implored.
“If I do it your way, you’ll get something out of it. I do not know what benefit you get out of this, but I plan to rob you of it. Let the desert take me, I don’t care, but you will not get what you want from me.” Jason persisted.
Shadow walked closer to Jason, who came awkwardly to his feet to face him.
“You think because you have some of my juice in you right now that you can handle this somehow? Well you’re wrong, little guy. I will let you wear yourself out again and then I will start in on you. You will beg for the chance to kill yourself. Go ahead and try me you piss ant; I’ll keep you alive for the next five days.” Shadow threatened.
Jason glared defiantly at the thing in front of him and he cracked a grin of his own.
“I’m not afraid of you, now. I have seen what you can dish out and you can do your worst. I will not kill myself for your twisted profit.” Jason said.
Shadow moved quickly on Jason and had him suspended from the ground by his throat. His eyes were once again burning red as he gnashed his teeth, staring at Jason. Jason tried to pull himself up from his grip as he felt his throat being crushed and his spine felt as though it would pull apart at any moment. That rotten breath was in his face again as Shadow leaned in on him. Shadows massive left hand was clamped so tightly on Jason’s throat that he could not make any sound.
“Fine then, little guy. We will do it your way. Remember you could have saved yourself a great deal of pain.” Shadow said.
With that, Jason was dropped to the ground and his right leg folded under him as he crumpled to the earth.
“Your leg stinks Jason, so do you. You stink of death and that rotting leg.” Shadow taunted.
With that, he melted into nearby shadow as though he had been an oily, black fluid, slipping down a drain. Jason coughed and gasped as he recovered from the pressure which had been applied to his throat. Shadow had been right about his foot, there was almost no feeling in it now. It also was beginning to stink as Shadow had indicated. He determined not to let himself think about it, as he needed that leg right at the moment. Walking was painful but he would need to do as much of it as he could. He would worry about his foot if he lived long enough for it to be a luxury afforded him. In the meantime, he would start walking and figure out the rest from there; a plan would work its way to him, it had to.
VII
He needed to rest for a little while now, the coyotes and taking over Jason’s mind and body had been taxing. Tapping into the lines of past pain and misery were also a chore which required much of his energy. Shadow would not openly let Jason know that he had been the reason there were so many coyotes and why they were so aggressive. It would be more damaging to Jason to believe everything was aligned against him, not just Shadow. The coyotes were something that he took a special glee in. Wherever he had been, he was able to influence animals and gather them to do his bidding. It took time and energy, but it was always a priceless tool. Coyotes, he had discovered, are particularly angry animals when given the proper stimulation. They spend most of their lives being cowards and running from everything, so when they have the chance and are unnaturally encouraged, they seemed to seek payback. Jason was proving however to be more obstinate than he had anticipated. With the vision of his wife’s death after the coyotes, Shadow had believed it was a closed deal. It made little difference though, as the cards were stacked decidedly in his favor and one way or another, Jason would end up succumbing. This was unavoidable as Jason was not wise enough to gather any means of combating him.
Shadow surmised that once the energy he had passed, second hand, to Jason wore off, so would his resolve. He had done this to other men, and they were always temporarily, physically renewed. There was the other part of that too that Shadow did not fully understand and had never found a way to control; the passing along of his very essence to his prey was a troubling side effect of his most potent taunt. It ultimately made little difference, as there had never been a human to experience this who had survived to exploit whatever benefits were to be gleaned. Also, the benefits gained from the lines of misery and the use of the trance were so obvious and overwhelmingly effective that he had never hesitated to use the trance to break his prey. He was confident that Jason would break, despite his outward display of confident defiance.
Jason started walking in the direction he estimated to be east. He knew the river was in that direction and he did have some rough idea that he was headed the right way. The rising of the sun had given him this estimation and it was the best he had to go on. Whatever the case, he knew he could no longer stay in one place. Shadow had been able to easily stamp out any efforts Jason employed to seek a rescue, thus far. This meant that to stay put and wait for help was most likely a death sentence. He did not know how long or far he would be able to keep up on his right leg or with the host of other physical maladies he suffered. He also wasn’t positive he was headed in a due east direction; it was all just best guess. Navigating at night is a tricky thing when there are no roads, no maps or compasses and a person is unfamiliar with landmarks. The choppy landscape around Picacho doesn’t allow for a clear line of site and that made things even more problematic. If he were headed northeast, for example, the hills and rocks could conceal the river if he paralleled it even by a few hundred yards. Regardless of the hazards, Jason felt he had no choice anymore other than to let Shadow win, and that was no option at all.
As he walked along, he would hit soft sand and his right foot would drag all that much worse. It was not as bad as it had been earlier though, a fact he attributed to his latest encounter with Shadow. He had thought about trying to follow a wash to the river, but he knew that was flawed thinking as there was a network of washes which meshed and crisscrossed out there. He was already lost, there was no need to make it more frustrating by trying to circumnavigate the maze of washes. He further discovered that not only was walking easier, but he was able to think clearer than he had been able to since before he had come out to the desert. His mind kept going back to the wound on Shadows face and how it might have gotten there. His training during his brief period of service in the Navy had been in analyzing intelligence, gathered in the field. Most of the training had been specific to analyzing photographic intelligence. Most of what an Intelligence Specialist does at lower ranks is put together reports and aid senior personnel with inspection of data. Jason had never gotten that far but his training had taught him to interpret what was important in a photograph, as well as finding links between pertinent pieces of intelligence. His mind was reverting to the training of over twenty years past as he perceived on some levels a weakness in Shadow. He remembered Shadow dropping from the sky and staring at him and this was bothering him along with the wound on his cheek. He was bothered not so much by the fact that Shadow had looked at him then but the way he had looked at him. The look on his face was suggestive that he had felt threatened; it had been a cautious look. It occurred to Jason that Shadow had no reason to be threatened by him and was not looking at him at all, he realized even at the time that Shadow had been staring at the bottle of water. Jason stopped walking with his good eye wide open, his left eye having swelled almost shut; and mouth hanging open as he discovered a revelation. He remembered he had spit in Shadows face at one point. He was not sure, but he thought he had seen the wound upon their next encounter. Shadows weakness was water. That was why he had glared on at the bottle Jason had in his hand when he landed just a few feet in front of him. He had been in a prone and committed position when he landed, and Jason could have thrown all the water in his face before he would have had a chance to defend himself. Jason clenched his teeth together and wished he had been able to have seen this before. Not that it would have done him a great deal of good, really. He doubted he would have had enough water to have killed Shadow and injuring him seriously may have proven fatal.
Jason came to the realization that if this was the only weakness he could find in the fiend, then he might just be doomed anyway; and that was assuming he was correct in the first place. He considered the simple and more likely alternative that he was drawing empty connections in his desperation. With nothing else to run on or work with, he decided to grasp the optimist outlook and find a way to kill his enemy. He came upon the next, obvious dilemma; the desert lacks significant caches of water. He decided to consider water akin to acid in relation to Shadow. How much acid would be needed to kill a grown man? What would be a lethal quantity for a man of monstrous dimensions and otherworldly capabilities? He did not have these answers, but he was certain he would not readily find the proper equation wondering around the bone-dry landscape of the Sonoran Desert. What got Jason’s step back in gear was the river. He would have to get to the river and fashion a trap for Shadow, a diabolical creature from beyond his understanding who could fly and disappear at will. It was thin but it was all he had and the whole, damn shooting match was something out of a comic book, anyway.
He wondered if Shadow could be lured near to the water if, indeed, he did have a strong allergy to the stuff. Whatever the case, it was all moot and Jason would die unless he could get to the river. He had something to reach for and, in that alone, he would hold on to the point of dropping. He found himself at that moment hoping that there was a God and that He would see Jason’s need and tend to it. Though Jason had not known it, he had begun drifting southeast shortly after he had left his camp, two days prior. He was now just under eight miles from the river at a due east course. His life hung on his internal compass guiding him true.
The Wade’s arrived at Taylor Lake at about eight a.m. in the morning. They wasted little time in setting camp at one of the rudimentary sites on the lake. Their priority was to get out on the water and start fishing as early as possible. They quickly brought the canoe off the top of their Pathfinder and got their gear ready for fishing. Once on the lake, they were able to bask in the serenity of the morning desert. There was no sound of screeching dirt bikes and quads in the area, nor was there the powerful growling of V-8 jet boat motors. It was quiet and still out on the lake and they were alone, just a hundred feet from its modest shore. They did not say much to each other as that would take away from what had attracted them there in the first place.
There was a time for the excitement and buzz of Glamis and other off-road parks. There was also a place for water skiing and jet skiing in their lives, but this was not it. Fishing on a secluded lake thirty miles from any real roads or civilization was entirely about relaxation. Laura sat up from her reclined position as she thought she had gotten a nibble on her line. When she leaned back into place after the false alarm, Lowell grunted in satisfaction that she did not beat him to the punch. She grinned and looked at him sidelong.
“Just you wait, mister.” She mumbled.
He awoke and immediately began to reach out with his senses to find Jason. He was farther away than anticipated. He would need to look further, and this caused him some alarm. Jason had not been as far from help and the roads as he had led him to believe. When he had wondered out into the desert on his own, his path had zigzagged enough to keep him walking for a long time without knowing how far he had gone. If, however, Jason had lucked out and found a truer path on his return trip, Shadow may have lost his quarry. He growled and cursed himself for underestimating a man who had repeatedly surprised him. He would have to climb now and let the scent come to him. There would be little time before he would find Jason again. He darted into the air and flew upwards of two hundred feet before stopping and allowing his mind and senses to reach out in search of Jason. He could feel the wounded coyotes and nearby vultures. He could feel the spiders, scorpions and snakes he commanded but he could not feel Jason. He deepened his concentration, as Jason could not have gotten too far. Morning had arrived and the temperatures were on the rise, he would collapse soon, and Shadow would be able to work on him incessantly. Shadows rest had been long and fulfilling, he was renewed and set on torturing Jason for days to come. He was beginning to lose his patience as he was having trouble finding Jason. It never took this long to find someone, even if they were a hundred miles away.
There were people in the camp sites about ten miles away and there were people on the river, though they were few and far between. There were also people on one of the lakes that shot inland, from the river. His mind stuck there, and he could feel something else present. He dwelled on this for almost a solid minute before realizing he was feeling Jason. He had found the road; he was close to those people and the lake. Shadow cried out in rage as he felt a change in Jason, something was wrong. He was still moving about, and he was going to find those people and the lake. Shadow dove toward the earth and flew low to the ground, toward Jason at nearly one hundred miles an hour. He would be upon Jason in a matter of minutes, his rage building as he closed the distance. He perceived another human moving toward the lake, a Ranger. He picked up speed and realized there was something more aiding Jason now. The energy that he had been infused with when Shadow had put him in the trance would not have taken him this far; there was something else, he felt a hint of that old cosmic wind again.
