Fangboy. Part 20

Mongrel and Kleft's car swerved underneath the mighty stallion.

And then it landed upon the roof.

Nathan could not hear what the men beneath him were screaming, but it seemed to be variants on "There's a horse on the roof of our car!" The horse's hooves had left a very deep dent, which may or may not have been near one of their heads, so it was also possible that they were screaming about that.

As the horse leapt off, the car plummeted off the side of the road.

Mongrel and Kleft were not as villainous as Steamspell, and did not suffer so horrific a fate. Which is not to say that things did not work out badly for them. The car landed at the bottom of the hill, bounced thrice, and came to a stop. Kleft, shaken but mostly unharmed, peered out the window.

"Does that look like quicksand to you?" he asked.

"It does," said Mongrel.

Their slow descent offered plenty of time to share their feelings and discuss where they'd gone wrong in life. It is safe to say that if they'd been rescued, they would have emerged from the quicksand as better people. Instead, their improved personalities were to be forever submerged in the muck.

Nathan, of course, knew none of these things, and a.s.sumed that his enemies were merely unconscious at the bottom of the hill, awaiting arrest.

He was free!

He could return home to Penny and Mary!

He could see Jamison again if he hadn't died yet!

For the first time since being dragged off to jail, Nathan felt as if things might be working out in his favor.

Except that the horse wouldn't stop.

"Whoa, boy," he said. "We should turn around. Home is the other way."

The horse continued to gallop straight ahead.

He tugged on its mane. "Let's turn around. When we get home I'll give you carrots and I'll brush you every day and we'll get you a proper saddle. Such fun we will have!"

The horse continued to gallop straight ahead.

"I don't think you're understanding me. There's nothing for us this way. In the opposite direction, now that's where good things await. I'll bet that Penny and Mary love horses. How can you not love a horse? Please turn around."

The horse continued to gallop straight ahead.

"Argh," said Nathan.

Jumping off the horse seemed like a good way to break a leg, and breaking a leg seemed like a good way to starve to death all alone, so Nathan decided to stay put until the horse got tired. Before too long, the stress of the evening overpowered him, and Nathan wrapped his arms around the horse's neck and went to sleep.

When he woke up, the horse was still running and it was daytime. He wasn't sure if it had run all night, or if he'd slept through its resting period.

"Please turn around," he said, nudging it on the sides with his feet.

The horse continued to gallop straight ahead.

It ran throughout the day, galloping across fields, through two different forests, and through a town where all of the residents thought he was kidding when he shouted "Stop the horse! Stop the horse!"

He fell asleep again.

When he woke up, it was completely dark out and the rotten horse was still running.

"At least let me stop to get something to eat!" he begged.

Again he considered just jumping off, but if he wasted this much time only to end up breaking his leg anyway, he wasn't sure he'd be able to bear it. The horse had to stop eventually. He'd just force himself to stay awake, no matter what.

Night became morning.

He grudgingly admitted that he had to admire the horse's unwavering dedication to running in that particular direction. It was certainly not a wishy-washy creature.

Morning became late morning, which became early afternoon, which became afternoon, which became late afternoon.

He wished he had something with which to club the horse over the head.

Late afternoon became early evening which became evening which became late evening which became night.

Nathan fell asleep.

When he awoke, it was daylight and the horse had stopped running.

TWENTY.

It was very cold.

In fact, Nathan was surrounded by ice and snow. There was nothing but blinding white as far as he could see, except for what appeared to be a seal off in the distance. A brutal wind tore through him like frozen daggers whose tips had been dipped in liquid nitrogen.

He wanted to jump off the horse, but he could barely move. His hands were frozen to the horse's mane. Using every bit of strength he could summon, he leaned to the side until he finally fell off the horse, landing in a patch of snow.

The horse turned around and ran off.

Nathan got to his feet and looked around in a complete circle. Was he at the North Pole? He wasn't even sure which direction he'd come from, since the snow had covered up the horse's tracks.

This felt like exactly the kind of circ.u.mstance that merited a lengthy, primal scream.

He let one out and felt better.

His teeth were chattering and he wasn't sure he'd be able to feel his tongue if he bit it, so he tried to be careful. He wasn't dressed for this kind of weather at all.

Up ahead. Was that a polar bear?

He stared at it closely.

No, it wasn't a polar bear. Just a regular bear covered with snow.

Though Nathan liked to think that he was relatively brave in the face of danger, he really wasn't up to fighting a bear. If nothing else, he was so cold that he thought his fist would snap off if he punched it. He'd simply stand here and hope that the bear didn't notice him.

The bear was looking in his direction, but Nathan wasn't sure if it had noticed him or not.

The bear began to walk toward him. That wasn't solid proof that it had noticed him. It had to walk in some direction if it didn't want to stand around in the snow all day, so why not walk in Nathan's? It wasn't growling, or at least it wasn't growling loud enough to be heard over the wind. The wind was pretty loud, so it was entirely possible that the bear was growling.

Nathan decided to improve his chances of survival. He dropped to the ground and quickly scooped snow over his body until he was completely covered except for his hands. He pulled those underneath the snow and waited.

His body was so numb that if the bear did start chewing on him, he probably wouldn't even feel it.

He was tired. Exhausted. He could barely keep his eyes open, but was it bad to fall asleep when you were stuck out in the snow? He thought he'd heard something about that once. It was either really good or either bad. Either you died or hibernated. He knew for sure that he didn't want to die, and hibernating didn't sound so great, so he just needed to force himself to stay awake until he was sure that the bear had wandered someplace else. Think conscious thoughts. Think about people with their eyes wide open who'd had a full night's sleep and felt no need to yawn. Realize that if he fell asleep, he'd have awful dreams where he stood in his underwear and people pointed and laughed, or he'd forgotten to study for an important test, or he'd grown a dachshund on his chest.

Was the bear gone yet? He didn't hear any footsteps. Usually approaching bears were accompanied by footsteps.

So very sleepy.

If he did get eaten by a bear, perhaps it would be better to be asleep when it happened.

So tired. So cold.

He'd just sleep for a while. Only a little bit. A few minutes, if that. He deserved to get some rest. It had been a challenging week. An Eskimo would probably kill the bear anyway. He was in no danger.

Precious sleep. Sweet sleep. The world's greatest gift.

Nathan let himself drift away...

Yukon Filly was not a great explorer. He knew this because of his astute sense of self-awareness, and also because everybody kept telling him. He didn't care. Though he had failed to discover the tomb of the Egyptian Pharaoh, and the skeleton of Jack the Ripper, and the Lost River of the Amazon (he did find the river, but it turned out to be fairly well known in that area, with a thriving fis.h.i.+ng community) he refused to give up his lifelong quest to find something great. Proof of ghosts, proof of aliens, the Fountain of Youth...it didn't matter which of them he found.

Securing investors for his journeys was becoming more difficult as the failures continued to pile up. He was a very charismatic man and not above making certain sacrifices (such as changing his name) in order to continue his explorations. Nor was he above using a small amount of deception. For example, though he was up in the Frozen North seeking the Abominable Snowman, his investors and the other members of his party thought they were looking for gold.

"There's no gold around here!" said Tyrone, his second-in-command, gesturing to all of the snow and ice.

"Watch your tongue!" Yukon warned. "I won't have your unpleasant att.i.tude spoiling this expedition for the rest of us!"

"But you don't find gold in glaciers! We've been telling you that for the past six days!"

"Is that so? Tell me, Tyrone, have you ever found gold in a glacier?"

"No!"

"Then you've proven my point."

"No, you've proven my point."

"I'm sorry, but I have better things to do than engage in childish bickering over the owners.h.i.+p of points. We will find gold, lots of it, more gold than we can fit on the sleds! So much gold that we will be forever resentful about the enormous amount that we had to leave behind. You'll wake up in the middle of the night wallowing in self pity about how you could have billions of coins instead of merely millions because we abandoned so much of the wealth."

"You're a drunkard."

"I plan to melt down most of my gold into a statue, but it will be a statue of an insignificant historical figure. That way, people will say 'My word, if he can afford to make a solid-gold statue depicting somebody who barely deserves a stone one, he must have more riches than an Egyptian Pharoah!'"

"Not that you'd know, because you've never found-"

"Enough. You look over there, and I'll look over here. Everybody split up and start looking."

The other five members of the expedition walked around on the ice, searching.

Where was the Abominable Snowman? Yukon hadn't expected to just walk out onto a patch of ice and find it waiting there, but they'd been out here almost a week and they hadn't even found the gnawed bones of its prey.

"Sir! We've found something odd!"

Yukon hurried over to where his fifth-in-command man knelt, digging through the snow. "When I walked over here, I had this strange feeling like I was stepping on somebody's nose. And look!"

He brushed away some more snow, exposing the face of a young boy, enclosed in a block of ice. All of the men gasped.

"We've done it, gentlemen!" Yukon declared. "We've found the Abominable Snowman!"

"He's not a yeti," said Tyrone. "He's a little boy."

"He's a prep.u.b.escent shaved yeti," Yukon corrected. "What a find! We'll be rich! We'll be famous!"

"Don't you mean we'll be rich and famous?" Tyrone asked.

"Isn't that what I said?"

"You said you'll be rich and famous."

"No, I didn't. I clearly remember the three instances in my life where I tried to steal credit or money, and this was not one of them. The fame and wealth will be equally divided amongst us."

"Oh. Sorry, I misheard. We a.s.sumed that you'd noticed the loophole in the contract that allows you to claim full owners.h.i.+p of all non-gold discoveries."

"Well, I knew about that, of course, but had no plans to enforce it. We're all in this together."

The men continued to brush away the snow until Nathan's body had been fully exposed. He was completely enclosed in a block of ice.

"Incredible," said one of the men. "Do you think we've found a specimen of prehistoric man?"

Yukon shook his head. "His contemporary clothing would indicate otherwise."

"That's not contemporary," said Tyrone, running his index finger along the ice. "A s.h.i.+rt like that hasn't been fas.h.i.+onable in nearly...it stuns me to even say it...eleven years."

"Eleven years? Are you sure?"