The Lost Train of Thought by John Hulme

Author:John Hulme [Hulme, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: ebook, book
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Published: 2010-08-17T16:00:00+00:00

23. The first was Stu Ivar, aka “the Accidental Tourist,” but that’s a Story for Another Day.

9The Middle of Nowhere

The Middle of Nowhere

Since the Unthinkable would happen in less than twenty-four hours, the second team didn’t have the luxury of following an old coot and his partner on a painstaking journey from Who Knows Where to the mountains. When that partner turned out to be a bowlegged and cantankerous mule, the Fixers had no choice but to make certain “travel arrangements” to get where they needed to go in a timely fashion.

“How them sneaks, Zeb?”

Zebulon waited for Hopeless to hop out of his saddle, then gave an unimpressed shrug. Too tight.

“Mebbe so, but you ain’t never moved that fast in your life, less’n it was to snatch a bite a’Thought when someone warn’t lookin’.”

The prospector was referring to the twin pair of size 12 Speed Demons that Fixers Blaque and Drane had slipped over the beast of burden’s badly cracking hooves. Several hundred miles of creosote and Nothing had been covered in less than an hour, but now that the travelers had entered the tall crags that lorded over the Middle of Nowhere, it was a slow and steady climb up the one pathway to the top.

“How much farther?” asked the Octogenarian, tilting her hat against the glare.

“Still got a ways to go, ma’am.” Hopeless removed his own hat and wiped the sweat from his wrinkled brow. “These Nowherians is dug in deep.”

Half a dozen yards behind them, a chiseled figure limped up a grassy foothill. “Assuming you actually know where they are.”

“Just keep that there map nice and dry, and ol’ Hopeless’ll take you straight to ’em.”

Jelani Blaque motioned up the mountain, as if to say “after you,” but the retired Fixer was clearly struggling. The leg he’d injured during his last excursion to the Middle was acting up, and the crumbly silt at their feet rendered his walking stick nearly useless. Still, he powered forward without complaint, followed closely by Fixer Hassan, who had barely spoken since the Brainstorm. Wherever his mind was, it wasn’t on this pebble-strewn path as it suddenly reached its end.

“Path picks up again on the other end of this dale!” shouted Hopeless, hopping back in Zebulon’s saddle. “Don’t dilly-dally now, ya hear?”

Toward the back of the line, Becker thought he detected a hint of nervousness in the voice of their guide. The prospector had led them to a valley surrounded by cliffs on all sides, and from the way he gave Zebulon a not-so-gentle knee to the ribs, Hopeless was obviously uncomfortable at being so exposed. But it wasn’t until he emerged through a small glade of eucalyptus that the teenager started to get an inkling of why.

Scattered across the dale were dozens of stone slabs, each about ten feet high and covered with runes and glyphs. Lying naked on top of each, their bones picked clean by vultures and bleached by the Seemsian sun, were the skeletons of the dead.

“They’re called Towers of Silence.

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