He tried to get up, but his hands were bound tightly behind him. And then he realized he wasn’t lying on his back at all. He was standing… tied to a post of some sort. He blinked hard a few more times, and the world coalesced into clarity. The shapes he had seen were indeed faces. Thirty of them, to be exact. Old faces, young faces, puffy faces, gaunt faces—and all wore expressions of hostility.
Apaches.
Albert looked down at his feet, knowing all too well what he would find there. Kindling. They’re going to burn me. Out of the frying pan and into the fire. Literally. Albert had escaped Clinch and his gang by a hairsbreadth, only to wind up cooked like a turkey by a tribe of renegade Apaches. For about the millionth time in his life, Albert had the thought that had become as familiar as a pair of old shoes: God, I fucking hate the West.
Three of the Apache warriors approached him, holding lit torches. Astonishingly, one of them looked familiar. He’d seen drawings of this man, and one time even a photograph. It was the infamous Apache chief Cochise, who had earned a reputation as a force to be reckoned with for his resistance to the expansion of white civilization throughout the territory. Jesus, I’m the last guy you should be killing, thought Albert. I hate white civilization as much as you do.
Cochise raised his torch and spoke in the Apache language, “White man, because your people are such huge assholes, I am going to light you on fire.”
The three Apaches moved toward the pyre and prepared to light the kindling.
Albert spoke suddenly. “Stop!”
The warriors moved back, startled. Not because of the word he’d said but rather because he’d said it in perfect Apache.
Cochise ordered his men to stand down for the moment. They complied but kept their torches at the ready. He then addressed Albert, once again in his native tongue. “How is it that you, an asshole, have the power to speak our language?”
Albert answered with perfect diction. “I am a nerd asshole. Since the other white assholes do not like me, even though I am one of their own, I have always kept to myself. Therefore, I have read many books, know many languages, and am good at math.”
Another Apache spoke up from the group. “Quick, what is 27 times 89?”
“2,403,” said Albert.
Several of the warriors murmured among themselves, aware that the white man had answered correctly.
“Why are you out here?” asked Cochise.
“Please untie me, and I will tell you.”
Cochise turned to the two torch-bearing warriors. “Well, he speaks our language, which means there’s no reason not to trust him.”
Albert breathed a sigh of relief as they lowered their torches and cut him loose.
Some time later, Albert found himself sitting around a campfire with Cochise and about nine or ten of the other Apache warriors. It was a scenario he never would have imagined in a billion years. Nonetheless, they were anxious to hear his story and to know how and why he had wound up all the way out here by himself. He told them everything.
“…And after I escaped on the train, I rode like the wind,” he concluded, “and the next thing I remember is waking up in your camp. And now I have no idea what to do.”
Cochise regarded Albert for what seemed like a very long time, then turned and whispered something to the leathery-skinned Apache elder seated at his right. The elder slowly nodded. Cochise turned back to Albert. “I will show you the way,” he said.
He gave a wordless hand signal to one of the younger warriors. The man rose from the circle and stepped away into the darkness. He returned a few moments later with a cactus bowl containing some sort of viscous liquid. The warrior handed the bowl to Cochise, who took a sip and then passed it over to Albert.
“What is it?” Albert asked uneasily.
Cochise gave him a meaningful stare. “Your path.”
Albert didn’t recognize the fluid in the bowl, but he had a pretty good sense of what it was, having just been through this with Anna and her goddamn cookie. “I’ll freak out, I know it,” he said, giving Cochise a look of severe apprehension.
“You won’t freak out, I swear.”
“You don’t know me. I’m serious, I’m very sensitive to drugs.”
“Nerd.”
The other tribesmen joined in the taunting. “Nerd! Dork! Tool!”
Albert reluctantly submitted to the peer pressure. “Okay, fine!” He downed the rest of the liquid.
Almost instantly, the Apaches’ taunting expressions shifted to shock and alarm. “He drank the whole bowl!”
Albert froze in panic. “What?”
“You drank the whole bowl!”
“Oh, shit! Oh, shit, is that bad?”
“That was for the entire tribe!” said Cochise. “You’re totally gonna freak out and probably die. Good luck.”
Albert’s jaw hung open in terror as the world around him dissolved into a distorted hellscape.…
He tried to move his arms, but they remained locked at his side. Something was holding him in place. He looked down to see that his entire body was sandwiched between two brown, rough-looking sides of the same giant vise. Wait, not a vise… a walnut? Yes, a walnut. He was trapped in the center of an oversized walnut. But where the hell was he?
When he looked up, he saw stars. Countless stars. Never had he seen so many. But what terrified him was what he saw when he looked down: More stars. Thousands. He was floating above the sky, in the heavens, and there was no up or down. He could see, on all sides of him, other walnuts of various sizes circling the sun.
Somewhere off to his left, another light source flared up. Albert turned and was astounded to see a massive cloud of gas and dust expanding from a single point too far away to ascertain. Every color in the known spectrum was engaged in a sort of misty water ballet; there were even a few new colors Albert had never seen before. New colors? How was that possible? But before he could contemplate it further, the gas cloud contracted as quickly as it had expanded. The gorgeous multihued formation was drawn into a rapidly widening vacuum. A gaping hole opened up, like some horrific maw leading back to a dark time before creation that no living man should ever see.
And then everything was sucked inside. The walnuts, the stars, the gas and dust, and Albert. The intensity of the pull flung him free of the nut in which he’d been confined, and he found himself being hurled at blinding speed through a vast tunnel, which that seemed to twist and turn at random like an agitated earthworm being poked with a twig by a sadistic child.
And then all at once he was on solid ground. He hadn’t felt the impact, but nonetheless he was here, lying prostrate on an uneven surface. He lifted his head and spat out a mouthful of sand. He was back in the desert.
But as he struggled to stand, he saw that it was not his desert. Not the Southwest. There was no vegetation here, no rocks, no dirt—just sand. Miles and miles of sand, with dunes stretching all the way to the horizon. It looked more like the North African deserts he’d read about in books.
He was not alone. Something was here with him. A dark shape momentarily blocked out the sun, and Albert heard a piercing SHRIEEEEK. He looked up just in time to see a massive black condor descending toward him from the sky. It was moving as fast as a locomotive and appeared to be nearly half the size of one as well. But that wasn’t the only thing wrong with it. Its eyes glowed bright green, and it had fangs. No bird that Albert had ever seen or heard of had fangs. This was a hellish demon-bird that looked as though it had burst into reality from a mythical tale created by some long-dead and best-forgotten savage civilization.