Alien

Alien

by

Ralph Bowden

Copyright 2018 Ralph Bowden

SMASHWORDS EDITION, LICENSE NOTES

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DEDICATION

To people who are hounded for being different.

DISCLAIMER

All the places, persons, and events herein are absolute fiction.

Alien

1.

Dogs were his biggest worry. If they started to track him with dogs, he’d be caught for sure. Some things he still remembered, like an old movie where slaves were running away and found a big enough stream to wade through for a long way without stepping on land. It had thrown the dogs off. That would make sense, but he didn’t know about these things. Just how far would he have to wade? Couldn’t the dogs run along both banks until they picked up his scent again? Probably, but it would slow them down, surely. This whole situation was way beyond his knowledge and experience. He’d never had anybody chasing him before . . . well, that wasn’t quite right. Ellen had chased him, but not this way.

Anyway, his first task was to find a stream or river. He had crossed several little trickles coming out of the ground as he hurried along on the side of this hill, mountain, ridge, or whatever it was, but they weren’t big enough to wade in and hide his scent.

He stopped a minute to listen for dogs, and didn’t hear any. There was some very distant barking, but not from where he had come. Would tracking dogs bark? Hunting dogs did. He remembered that from another long ago movie. Surely, tracking dogs would be trained not to bark, so there was no comfort in not hearing them.

He didn’t hear anything else either, no distant sirens or loudspeakers that might have indicated some kind of emergency gathering prompted by the discovery of his absence. The woods he was in were filled with bird twitters and chirps, and the distant scream of a jet, high overhead, above the clouds. All outside sounds had been blanked out inside where he’d been cooped up. Hearing them again after so long was an odd experience. He almost felt like an alien just come back to a planet that he had once visited, briefly, long ago . . .

Water. He must find a big enough creek or river to wade in. A lake would do, too. Down, he reminded himself. That’s where water runs and gathers. The path he was now on went neither up or down consistently. He had followed it or other paths like it ever since he ran into the woods sometime last night. How far had he come since? It seemed like a long way, though his sense of distance had been pretty well destroyed by being cooped up so long without going anywhere. His brain no longer registered distance. Or time either, for that matter. How long had he been cooped up? Dex had told him it had been eleven years, but that meant nothing to him. When everything’s the same, day after day, with no hope of change, why should he bother noting time? So now, when it might matter, he was out of practice. What time of day was it now? It was fully light, but the sky was cloudy and in the woods he couldn’t see where the sun might be to tell how far up it was. Again, he’d lost contact with the sun and the light from it. If you never went outside, it didn’t matter. What season was it? The last time he remembered looking out a window there had been snow on the ground. But that must have been a couple months ago. There was no snow now, and he’d noticed as soon as it was light enough that the trees and shrubs were green everywhere with leaves coming out. Some shrubs had white blossoms.

Will this path eventually go down? Why should I care? Oh yes, water, he muttered. Staying focused was a strain. The pills had pretty well destroyed his concentration ability. Maybe he’d get it back when they wore off.

Didn’t everything eventually trend down because of gravity? A path, though, that was different. Who had made this path? It was narrow and faint, in places, and hard to follow. Whoever made it wasn’t very tall. He’d had to duck down frequently because vines, branches, and little trees–were they called saplings?–hung across it only a few feet up. Children didn’t run through the woods and make paths. Back in caveman times, they might have, but recent children didn’t play or hunt in the woods and make paths. Or shouldn’t be allowed to. Or maybe they should. Would that help them become people? No, children are people, who become adults. Most people become adults, at least, though some don’t. Some, like himself, were never children, and failed as an adult because of it. That’s what one of them told him, years ago, when Ellen insisted he had to deal with his problems.

Oh, of course: Animals! Like dogs? Is this their path? Are they chasing me because I’m on it? No, if they’re chasing me, it’s because I’ve run away.

He stopped again to listen, and again heard nothing that could have been dogs tracking him. A loud squawking somewhere above him was momentarily alarming, but it was probably just a big bird of some kind.

Dogs might be more likely to run in the woods and make paths than children, but only wild dogs. Were there wild dogs in these woods? Could be. What else? Foxes? Wolves? He remembered seeing stuffed examples in some museum when he was small, one of the few times his father had come home from touring determined to be a responsible parent for a few days and spend time with his son. And there was another kind of doglike creature in the exhibit . . . a coyote? But they were only out west, weren’t they? There was really so much he didn’t know–never learned or forgotten–about what’s out in the woods–or outside anywhere, for that matter. It was disgraceful, really, that he never had a proper outside education. They called him exceptional, and put him in special programs that maximized his potential, they said, and let everything else go, all the kinds of things supposedly normal children pick up along the way, like what’s out there in the woods. Or in the desert, or the mountains, or oceans, or any place but inside, in the studio or concert hall.

Were there bears in these woods? Could they have made the paths? Again, he seemed to remember that bears are mostly out west or in Alaska. Of course, he wasn’t entirely sure where he was now. It certainly wasn’t New York City, the only place he knew well. He thought he remembered the coopers saying Tennessee, but he was so fuzzy about geography that didn’t mean much to him.

Pay attention! Colin growled at himself. It doesn’t matter where I am or who made this path or why. It’s not heading down, which is where I need to go to find water so I can lose the dogs that may be tracking me.

He turned off the path and headed down the slope, which was steep, and littered with huge boulders. No animal paths went this way, and the going was slow. He had to hang on to trees as he tried to skirt the boulders. Some of them were dead and broke off. He fell several times and scraped his hands and knees once, though not enough to tear his pants or draw blood. At least there weren’t many vines and bushes growing here on this steep hillside, and the trees were small. Maybe that meant the dirt was too poor. He learned not to reach for the kind of trees that had lots of prickly branches and were sometimes sticky. He supposed that kind of tree had a name. Probably all of them did, for that matter, though he didn’t know any of those names. He’d call these sticky-pricky trees. At least he was going down, and maybe there would be water at the bottom of the hillside.

He could use a drink, too. The day was warming up. When he first left in the night, he’d been cold. The green, pajama-like clothes he wore in the coop weren’t warm enough. He hadn’t thought that it might be cold outside. Like distance, time, and outside light, temperature wasn’t something he’d been aware of since they’d put him away. He’d almost forgotten what it felt like to be cold or hot. Or thirsty or hungry, for that matter. So many things he hadn’t needed to think about in the coop that his brain had forgotten them and generally shut down. What it needed was more things to think about, not fewer. The coopers only provided stupid games, puzzles, checkers, cards, and television, instead of healthy brain food. Maybe with some stimulation his head would work better and they might let him stop taking the pills. At least, they could have provided him with a piano or keyboard of some kind. Had he forgotten the Scarlatti sonatas, the Brahms intermezzi, the Rachmaninoff etudes? He could still hear the music in his head, but that wasn’t the same as producing it. Ellen had told his coopers he needed a piano, and at first they promised, but it never happened. And then she and Josie stopped visiting. The last time he saw them it was Josie’s 13th birthday, though she was crying. Ellen said they probably wouldn’t be coming back because she was very sick. Maybe she’d died. If so, nobody ever told him. By now, Ellen and Josie were distant memories, except for the few scenes with them that still stuck in his head. Forgetting them otherwise was probably a good thing, on balance. His agent and recording label, too. They had hired Sol somebody, supposedly the best lawyer in the city, and had brought in all kinds of expert witnesses to keep Colin free. But when it hadn’t worked and Colin was sent to the coop, they all dropped him. None of them ever came to visit.

What was this? A road? Colin was startled and backed up into the woods again. He’d slipped and slid and swung down the hillside and suddenly came out on a semi-cleared strip through the woods that crossed where he was heading. It wasn’t really a road, but it looked as if it might have been once. No pavement, and bushes and little trees–yes, they were saplings, he was sure of that word now–were growing up in it between ruts that cars or more likely trucks or other things with wheels had made. Maybe wagons. The ruts had plants growing in them too, except in a few places where water had collected and green stuff was growing on it. Boulders like those he’d been climbing down over had been pushed out of the way. There was a line of them piled on top of each other on the down side of the road, which looked as if it had been dug out of the hillside a bit on the upside.

He came out on the road again–he’d call it that for the time being since he knew no other words that might apply–gingerly, and looked both ways, as his mother had taught him so many years ago back in the city. It wasn’t straight enough to see very far, and he couldn’t have seen too well even if the road had been straight and clear because he didn’t have his glasses–they hadn’t replaced them after the frame had cracked and one lens had fallen out.

To his left, the road headed more or less down. Good. He’d go that way. It would be much easier than trying to climb over the boulder pile on the down side of the road and scrambling down the side of the hill as he’d been doing. He wasn’t really any more exposed on the road than he’d been on the rocky slope anyway, though he might be easier to track.

A slight breeze came up, and for a moment the woods lightened enough for trees and boulders to cast shadows. The clouds must have let the sun out. No, the sun hadn’t been cooped up like him. The clouds didn’t fence it in. If anything, they fenced it out. Sunlight filled all the space above the clouds. They must have started to break up and let the sunlight through. A subtle difference, perhaps. That he could think about it showed that his mind was still capable of some degree of making sense–no thanks to the coopers and their damn pills.

He padded along the road in his standard issue socks and slip-on sneakers. They were fine for rooms and hallways, but not for hiking. His feet had been complaining, especially since he’d left the animal path higher up in this wilderness. Wilderness. Now that was a good word that he hadn’t ever needed to use much–or ever, for that matter. It would certainly seem to apply to these woods–except that he was walking on a road that had sometime been cut through by humans. Would that disqualify the area from being called wilderness? Maybe, since the road was very old, these woods had healed back into wilderness status.

The road kept heading down. A few more dribbles crossed it from water seeping out above on the hillside. One of them was rather bigger, and had washed a gully across the road. No wagon or truck could have passed here recently. He had to jump across the gap, another activity that felt strange and unused. He could still do it, though, even at his age. That was satisfying to discover. The exercise classes they tried to get him to participate in hadn’t included jumping across gullies, maybe because they didn’t want to equip escapees like himself with the skills they might need. The classes didn’t include exercises that might have helped climbing fences either. Good thing he hadn’t needed to do that.

Finally, he could see a changed light ahead through the trees, a kind of glare that could be sunlight on water, or at least a major opening in the woods. It could be a parking lot, too, but if it had been, he would probably have heard car and people noises, and he didn’t. He couldn’t hear running water either, but that was all right. A lake, or even a swamp, would probably do. He slowed his pace and moved cautiously as he closed in on whatever it was until he could confirm the best of possible finds: a small river, maybe three room lengths across, shallow, with water sliding gently over rocks. The road he was on turned and went right through and across it. A ‘ford,’ maybe? Long dormant vocabulary seemed to be coming back.

This was an ideal place to lose tracking dogs. All he had to do was wade into the middle and go either up or downstream, rather than going straight across and continuing on the road.

At the edge of the stream, he knelt and put his hand in the water. It was very cold. Wading in it for any distance would freeze his feet. A small fish, and then another, darted by. How could they survive in such cold water? Wouldn’t they freeze?

His hand in the water triggered other things. First, he needed to pee. He stepped back away from the creek, unbuttoned, and emptied his bladder. Second, he needed a drink. Was this water safe to drink? It looked entirely clear, but there were those fish in it. They would poop, some, wouldn’t they? And where did the water come from? Rather than risk it, he stepped back along the road to the closest little drainage from a seep on the hillside. It took some looking, and he had to climb up over boulders, but he found a small catch puddle and bent down to suck water directly from it. When he’d had enough, he sat up again, and this time noticed some black bugs swimming in the water and a snail or two around the edge.

Oh well, he told himself. I’m sure old people drank worse water. If I die, worms or bugs will find me and have a meal. Better than going back to where I’m no use to any creature, least of all myself.

At the stream again, he looked up. The hillside across the creek was even steeper than on his side. Way up above it, cotton-ball clouds drifted from left to right. As he watched, one of them pulled its shadow across the creek. Black birds soared and circled, very high, almost as high as the clouds, it looked like. They only flapped their wings when they tried to go from right to left, against the clouds. Wind up there must be coming out of the left. But what direction was that? North? East? West? He felt he should know how to tell, but for the moment didn’t. There were so many dusty, un-used physical abstractions that he’d heard of, but never become fluent with when young. He’d have to reconstruct, refigure them out now, as an old man and a fugitive. It would be a challenge.

For the moment, the challenge was to wade out into the icy water and try to put some distance between himself and this crossing. Which way? The water, like the clouds, was flowing from left to right. If he turned left, upstream, he felt as if he would be putting more distance between himself and his pursuers, if there were any yet. Downstream, on the other hand, would feel as if he was doubling back towards the coop. Why did he feel