"Will!" Chester tried again.
"Anyway, sedimentary rocks are cool — I don't mean cool as in cold, as opposed to hot, not hot like lava, which are the igneous rocks, which are…"
"Will, stop it!" Chester shouted, becoming quite alarmed by his friend's bizarre behavior.
"…called the first great class because they're formed from hot, molten…" Will trailed off in midsentence.
"Get a grip, Will. What the heck are you talking about?" Chester's voice was hoarse with desperation. "What's wrong with you?"
"I don't know," Will replied, shaking his head.
"Well, shut up and concentrate on what we're doing. I don't need a freakin' lecture."
"Right." Will blinked around him as if he'd wandered out of a fog and couldn't quite figure out where he was. He realized the desert rose was still in his hand and he lobbed it away. Then he put his rucksack back on. Chester watched him with concern as he set off again.
They were approaching the high point of the slope, and the floor began leveling off. A ray of light streaked through the air and raked across the ceiling. It looked like a distant spotlight of some sort. As a precaution, Chester turned his lantern down to a mere glimmer and, at his insistence, Will did the same.
They crawled along the last stretch, keeping low, with Chester making sure that Will, in his unpredictable state of mind, stayed tucked in behind him. At the top, they peered over, into a large circular space the size of a stadium. It could have been a moon crater, it looked so barren and dusty.
"Dang, Will, look at this," Chester whispered, waving his friend alongside him and hastily switching off his lantern altogether. "Do you see them? They look exactly like Styx, but they're dressed like soldiers or something."
On the floor of the crater, the boys could make out that there were around ten Styx — although their clothes were unfamiliar, their thin bodies and the way they carried themselves meant they couldn't be anything else — and two of them had stalker dogs. The men were drawn up in a single line, with a further Styx standing slightly forward from them and brandishing a large lantern. Although the base of the crater was illuminated by four large light orbs mounted on tripods, the main Styx's lantern was phenomenally powerful, and he was directing in on something before him.
A tremor went through Chester's body — as he watched the Styx, he felt as though he had stumbled upon a nest of the most evil and poisonous snakes imaginable. "Oh, I hate them," he growled through his clenched teeth.
"Hmmm," Will answered vaguely as he casually examined a pebble with glittering striations that had caught his eye, then flicked it away with his thumb.
It didn't take a clinical psychologist to recognize that something was wrong with him; that his brother's death had knocked a screw loose.
"Hello! Earth to Will! You're acting pretty spacey," Chester said. "Those are Styx down there, murderous, mind-warping Styx."
"Yeah," Will said. "Sure are."
Chester was stunned by his total lack of concern. "Well, they make my skin crawl. Let's just get away from here," he suggested urgently, beginning to edge back.
"See the Coprolites," Will said, pointing carelessly at the scene below.
"What?" Chester grunted as he tried to locate them. "Where?"
"There… opposite the Styx…" Will replied, pushing himself up on his arms to get a better view. "Right there in his light."
"Where exactly?" Chester asked again in a whisper. He glanced at Will beside him and immediately growled, "You numskull, get your head down! They'll see you!"
"Okey-doke," Will replied, ducking lower.
Chester turned back to the scene and, despite the lancing shaft of light from the Styx's lantern, it wasn't until one of them stirred that he located it (or him or her, for that matter — Chester found it hard to think of the lumbering Coprolites as people). The Coprolites' eye-beams were barely noticeable in the well-lit area, and their mushroom-colored suits merged so effectively with the stone of the crater floor that, having found one, Chester still had great difficulty picking out the others. In fact, there were quite a number of them, standing in an uneven row opposite the Styx.
"Just how many are there?" he asked Will.
"Can't say. Twenty or so?"
The main Styx was pacing between the two groups. He would strut up and down and then abruptly wheel to face the Coprolites, thrusting his lantern at them. Although the boys couldn't hear anything he was saying, from the jerking motion of his arms and rapid switching of his head, it was clear he was shouting at the Coprolites. The boys watched for several minutes, until Will became restless and started to fidget.
"I'm hungry. Got that chewing gum?"
"You've got to be kidding — how can you be hungry at a time like this?" Chester asked him.
"I don't know… just give me some, will you?" Will whined.
"Pull yourself together, Will," Chester urged, not moving his eyes from the Styx. "You know where the gum is."
In his befuddled state, it took Will forever to undo the flap on the side pocket of Chester's rucksack. Muttering to himself, he rummaged around until he found the green packet of chewing gum. He put it in front of him as he refastened the flap.
"Want a piece?" he asked Chester.
"No, I do not."
Dropping it several times as though his hands were numb, Will finally tore open the packet and pried out one of the sticks. With his fumbling fingers, he was on the verge of sliding the paper casing off the silver foil when both boys let out simultaneous gasps.
They felt a crushing pressure on their backs as knives were thrust against their throats.
"Don't make a sound." The voice was low and guttural, as if it wasn't accustomed to being used. It came from a point very close behind Will's head.
Chester swallowed loudly.
"And don't move a muscle."
Will let the stick of gum slip from his hand.
"I can smell that stinking stuff already, and you haven't even opened it yet."
Will tried to speak.
"I said shut up." The knife dug even harder into Will's neck. He felt the pressure on his back increase, and a mittened hand reached between him and Chester and began to scoop a hole in the loose gravel.
The boys both watched from the corners of their eyes, not daring to move their heads an inch. It was almost hypnotic, a disembodied hand in a black mitten digging itself a small hole, little by little.
Chester suddenly couldn't stop himself from shaking. Had he and Will been caught by Styx? Or if not Styx, who were they? His mind filled with panic-ridden thoughts about what might happen next. Were these people going to slit their throats and bury them here, in this hole? He couldn't take his eyes off it.
Then the hand very deliberately took the packet of chewing gum between thumb and forefinger, and dropped it into the hole.
"That piece, too," the man's voice ordered. Will did as he was told, throwing the unopened stick in the hole.
Then the hand, in precise movements, scraped the gypsum gravel back into the hole, until the chewing gum was completely buried.
"That'll help, but the smell's still strong," the man's voice came again after the interlude. "If you had opened it, the stalker nearest to us…" The voice trailed off, then resumed again. "You can see it down there… would've picked up the scent in a matter of… what do you think?"
There was a pause during which Will wasn't sure if he was meant to be answering, and then they heard a different and slightly softer voice. This second one came from behind Chester. "They're downwind," it said, "so a couple of seconds at most."