paddling until he was around the river bend, safe from the staring, hungry mass, from Skeleton Peters' submarine tactics.
It seemed like hours before Brian finally ran into the cowboy and woman again. In that time, the wide cavern had continually narrowed creating the claustrophobic illusion that, eventually, Brian would be squashed when the walls and ceiling collided at the cavern's end.
The pale pink glow created by the underground comet had turned a rustier red, a color resembling a photographer's development room. The impact point of the comet and its blazing halo still hid behind tall cliffs and mountainous peaks but Brian felt near its warmth. Just around the next bend, he figured; or maybe the next.
The river seemed to be heating also. It jagged like a snake before him then swept to the right around a tall cliff, a cliff that Brian Poletree figured he could easily jump from because he was no chicken.
It was under this cliff that Junior Dalton and the woman with no name sat in their tubes, apparently caught up in a pool of water that could not escape the cliff's intrusion into the forward flow of the river.
"Hey," the cowboy yelled when he saw Brian. "If it ain't the greenhorn from Flagstaff. We felt sure you's a gonner."
Brian paddled into the whirlpool and collided with the woman's tube. Once again, he was caught by her beauty. A tiny grin that touched the left half of her face sent yearning chills through Brian's groin.
"Why didn't you tell me about those things?" Brian said to the cowboy.
"Hey, boy. We tried." Junior turned to the woman. "Didn't we darlin'?" The woman only stared at Brian as if she'd never expected to see him again. "'Sides. Where I come from, the best way of knowin' somethin' is by experience. So how was it, boy? The experience?"
"God awful."
The cowboy roared his approval. "Shee-it!" he yelled and the cavern walls and the cliffs and the rocky peaks returned his call in unison. Junior Dalton seemed to be everywhere.
Shee-it·it·it-it!
Brian grabbed the woman's tube as the swirling water attempted to draw them apart. The woman placed her hand on his; Brian's heart roared with approval. "What are those things?" he asked the woman. He wanted to relish the woman's voice, the silky texture, the caressing harmony that had warned him not to leave the river. But Junior crushed his hopes with a shrieking, two-fingered whistle.
"Hey ya'll," he said. "Ain't got no time for that crap." Then he lowered his voice, craned his neck, and spoke with an open hand to the side of the face as if he were revealing a secret to Brian that he didn't want the woman to hear. "Sides, boy," he whispered. "I already tried, but she just ain't innerstead in that kind of fun. If'n ya knows what I mean." He winked.
Then the woman released Brian's hand as if upset with the cowboy's rudeness, scowled, looked fearfully expectant around the trio, then straight up the cliff's ribbed face. The men looked simultaneously.
Something was falling at them, fast. Brian gazed in horror as Skeleton Peters slammed into Junior Dalton's cowboy hat. Brian tried to paddle in retreat with one hand and pull the woman to safety with the other but the whirlpool was too strong. Junior Dalton's tube propelled straight up then tumbled into the river flow and disappeared around the cliff's edge. Skeleton Peters and Junior Dalton went under the water together. Their struggle was at the woman's feet and she curled them into her tube.
Junior's arm popped up, then the skeleton's pulled it down. Junior managed to break the surface once to gasp for air but was quickly yanked back under. A full minute passed before Junior reappeared at the surface. He floated on his face, drowned. A tear dropped from the woman's eye as she reached for the dead cowboy but quickly withdrew it when Skeleton Peters' bony hand ripped through the muscle of Junior's back. Its evil skull broke the surface.
"What's·s·s up, fat boy," it said. "Take a good look at thees·s·s," The skeletal hand through Junior's back wiggled its bloody fingers. "They'll be the last thing you s·s·see before I rip your head off." Skeleton Peters sunk under the water taking the dead cowboy with it.
Junior Dalton's straw hat bobbed to the surface and Brian grabbed it tentatively, feeling the presence of skeletal hands near the surface of the water. Somewhere he'd heard that only death could separate a cowboy from his hat. Too true. Brian straightened the worn memorial, and placed it on his head. It fit perfectly.
The river continued its downward course toward Hell. The cavern walls and ceiling were a few hundred feet closer, and the woman with no name still remained silent. Brian had tried conversation without response. "Who is that?" he'd asked of Skeleton Peters, "who are they?" referring to the zombies in the cavern, and "what is this place?" But she would only stare, her face twisted into complex emotions, a gaze that seemed to grow deeper with each turn in the river.
As strange as it seemed, Brian thought he was falling in love with this two hundred year old mute. In times of confusion and desperation, the heart had a funny way of grabbing what little bit of sanity the crazy world had left in it. The heart filtered this sanity and created hope. For Brian, the woman was all the hope he had. If dream, spirit or reality, this place—this adventure—needed her. If he did not protect her from whatever lay in wait, Brian felt sure that his fate at the end of the river would not be favorable.
Again, the river slowed. The cavern's rusty red dulled to a yellow that brightened as Brian and the woman neared the last river bend that would reveal the impact point a thousand yards ahead.
Electric fingers massaged his scalp. A voice tiptoed across his brain. Brian, it said. He turned to the woman, caught her staring straight through him.
Brian.
Her jaw clenched producing smooth curves that rounded her cheeks and strengthened her chin. Yes, the voice said, it is me.
"You," Brian said, his eyes bugging. "But your mouth didn't...how can you...I—I—"
It is a gift that I have; the ability to talk with my mind. The woman's voice spoke quickly, urgently, as if there were no time for this unimportant conversation.
"You mean you're telepathic. Wow, this dream is something else."
This is NOT! a dream. The woman's exclamation blew through Brian's head. Listen to me. The Circle of Judgment draws near. Whatever happens, you must get to that circle.
"What circle? What do you mean, whatever happens?"
The bend in the river drew closer, less than five hundred yards ahead. The woman inhaled deeply. An explanation may threaten your proper destiny, but I see that it has become necessary. Junior was correct. Her face soured with sadness but only for a moment. This is the river Styx, but this is not the Styx the Old Books spoke of. We will not necessarily end up in Hell. That is what the Circle of Judgment will determine.
"Determine?"
It will determine your degree of good or evil. Contrary to belief, the river Styx does not separate the land of the living from Hell, it is a pathway in the spiritual world to the portal of Hell. The woman saw confusion in Brian's eyes.
When the material body no longer functions, the soul will be drawn to one of two places: outside of Heaven or outside of Hell. It is very rare that a soul will be admitted directly to either place without first judgment. It is documented that judgment into Heaven is made on the tops of clouds in front of the Divine Gates. Scholars throughout the centuries have understood this. But none wrote or spoke of this place, perhaps because judgment has never returned a soul to the living world. When you end up here, it is because your bad has out-weighed your good.
Now, Brian was sure that someone had made a mistake. He did not deserve to be here. If anywhere, he should be standing outside the Gates waiting for some angel to realize that he was right, that someone had made a big mistake, that he should be returned immediately to his body lying at the bottom of an Arizona cliff. He was not a bad person. He was good. HE WAS GOOD, DAMMIT! Why was he meant to suffer so: tormented by a living skeleton, made immobile by his broken leg and the flesh-hungry zombies.
They are not zombies, Brian.
Brian gasped at her abil
ity to read his mind. Had she known that he loved her?
Zombies are fiction; they are the walking dead. The malformed bodies you saw are living souls judged to suffer for an eternity or to be eaten by their own kind. All that is beyond the banks of the river is their domain, the Deadlands. In their judgment, they have been forbidden the touch or taste of water, to roam the Deadlands forever thirsty, always searching for a foolish unjudged soul.
"Me, right?" Brian said.
Almost.
"And what of the skeleton. He talks just like Jimmy Peters. This thing doesn't seem to be affected by water at all. He killed Junior but he left the two of us. If he wanted blood, he could have had ours easily."
Two hundred yards from the final left turn that would lead to the Circle of Judgment, the woman whimpered. The impact of feeling her in his mind rather than hearing her aloud thrust Brian's emotions into sudden sadness and fear. For a moment, he was in her body, feeling the rippling of her spine, the damp chill across her naked breasts, the foreboding of what lay in wait. Skeleton Peters.
Her mouth trembled as she spoke with her mind. The skeleton represents all that is evil. Jimmy Peters, as you have called him, did not need judgment. His death in the living world sent his soul straight to the kingdom of the Prince himself. There would be no eternal damnation for his soul. He would not be let into the domain of the Deadlands.