Hunted

Chapter 14: The Long Night

For Haley, there was only pain and rage. He soared about wildly, looking for an outlet for his anger, looking for an answer he knew would not come. There was no method to his flight, no rhyme or reason to the sharp turns and bends. Forgotten was the fact that he fled to save his life. These once new and exciting surroundings were now simply a private universe in which he could start dealing with the agony of losing his wife.

He had not slowed when the blackness started to come again. For a time he welcomed it, beckoned it forward angrily, would have raced toward it if he knew how. His rage was such that he did not fear it at first. It was less a mystery to be feared and more a physical thing that he could grapple with and destroy, a scapegoat for what had happened.

Slowly but steadily his attitude changed as the blackness began to overwhelm him and blot out all else. He was beaten but not dead, and even with Sarah gone and his life seeming to be irreversibly destroyed, he still had a daughter to think about. To him, the blackness meant death, and even as part of him wanted to give in and slip into its cold, comforting grasp, the greater part shouted, "No!"

He soared quickly past hazy objects he knew to be planets and stars, but between the fading anger and the growing fear he had lost all sense of direction. He zoomed in toward a planet and found himself just as swiftly drifting away, as if it had rejected him. On the blackness came.

Star systems approached and receded in the blink of an eye. He tried another world and another, and both turned him aside, casting him adrift like a refugee on a sinking boat.

The blackness started to dim this altered, strange, hazy universe, and as it did so he was surprised to find he had another burst of speed in him. He fixed another world in his sights and zeroed in on it.

The first thing to hit him, again, was the nausea. He controlled himself this time with some effort, and after several deep breaths felt he had sufficiently quelled his rebellious stomach.

He was on all fours and his hands grew cold. Now that his body was regaining some stability, he noticed that they were buried in a quarter meter of snow. It was night, but as on Earth, the blanket of white seemed to gather what light it could and reflect enough that one's immediate surroundings were visible.

At first glance the world seemed quite Earth-like. He was breathing well enough, and that he considered a miracle since he had chosen this planet out of desperation. Trees, gnarled and leafless, but not apparently alien, were thick around him, their dead-looking limbs bending at odd angles and intertwining like a child's scribbles. The snow was heavy and wet, and the few flakes that fell were larger than any had seen before, but a similar landscape might have been seen on a winter night in the northern three-quarters of North America.

But this was not Earth, and if Haley had any fantasies about that, they were soon dispelled by the small creatures that stood just beyond the closest ring of trees. At first they were hidden like shadows in the dark, but after Haley caught his first glimpse of them and began to focus intently around the tree trunks, he began to make out their features-and their numbers.

They were at most a meter tall, and shaped like miniature tyrannosaurs in the body and limbs. But their necks were long and slender, and their heads large and round. Even in the dim, reflected light their eyes were visible, large pale orbs that seemed almost to emit their own glow. Their mouths were small, but he thought fearfully that he caught a flash of white inside, in the shape of sharp teeth. As Haley looked around, he saw that there must have been at least thirty of them surrounding him. For now, they simply stood and watched, but others joined them regularly, as if a pack was gathering for an attack.

Haley slowly pulled his hands from the snow and settled back on his folded legs. Then with a growing sense of panic, he realized what his empty hands meant. Somewhere in the deep snow, he had lost the small travel device.