Fire Wind (9 page)

“Whoa! Not today buddy!” I said, as my hands
flashed out to grasp the snake that was striking out at the
paralyzed form of Angus holding the lantern nearby.

I threw the snake to the floor and stomped
its head into the ground. It was one of the same brightly banded
snakes that had bit me.

I looked up from the dead snake to Angus.
Looking a little pale he said, “You just saved my life!”

I patted him on the shoulder, “Don’t thank me
yet. I may get us all killed come nightfall.”

Angus shrugged and offered a wan smile, “I
haven’t had this much fun in years. What is this stuff?”

I picked up one of the chunks in the box,
“Calcium carbide. I grew up in the mountains in the East. Coal
miners used this stuff in their headlamps. You combine this with
water and it produces acetylene gas, which is highly flammable but
controlled enough to be used in a headlamp.”

“Well I’ll be!” Edgar breathed out, as he
reached into the box and pulled out a chunk.

“This could work! Do you remember that pool
of water near the mouth of the canyon? If we could dump all this in
the water, but then how do we get the ship to pause in flight in
order to be affected by the gas cloud? I don’t know for sure, but I
would be willing to bet that this won’t work if the ship is under
power and moving. It needs to be hovering.”

Nodding I said, “I have an idea.”

Glancing at the large group of people who had
filed into the warehouse I said, “All right we have a lot of work
to get done before nightfall. I’m not going to lie to you, the plan
I have in mind could get a lot of us, if not all of us dead. On the
other hand I think what I have in mind could work. I need your
help, but it’s your choice to come.”

Nathan shrugged and glancing around asked,
“What do you need done?”

Smiling I said, “Get all the wagons in the
town teamed up. Load the calcium carbide and the dynamite along
with the drill steel over there leaning up against the wall. Make
sure two wagons are sent to the saloon. I need several men to help
me at the saloon. Be careful with the dynamite.” I said, as I
hurried out of the warehouse.

Edgar caught up with me, “What on Earth is of
help to us at the saloon?”

“You’ll see. Hey when there’s a moment I need
to talk with you about something.”

“Sure, but what do you need at the
saloon?”

“Mirrors my good man. Big long bar length
mirrors.”

“What would we need those for?” Edgar
exclaimed.

Slapping him on the shoulder I pushed on into
the vacant saloon and said, “Why a mirror reflection. We’re not
alone in our fight against this advanced enemy. Angels of God have
much the same way of moving about as our foe does.”

“How do you know that?”

“Nevermind.”

“These angels are going to help us?”

“Doubt it, but the enemy doesn’t know that.”
I said good humoredly.

“I don’t understand!”

“You will. Now help me get these mirrors
down. Time is wasting.”

“What makes you think these beings aren’t
going to be onto us doing all this work at the mouth of the
canyon?”

“Two reasons. Most of their activities seems
to occur at night and two I’d say they spend most of their day
mining the left over gold out of that defunct mine of yours.”

“Really? You really think there could still
be gold!”

“Yes, now less talk and more work.”

*****

Work went better than expected with almost
the whole town helping out and the upshot of it was that we now had
some time to kill. The sun wouldn’t set for at least another two
hours.

Both Edgar and I had crept back to where we
had seen the alien vessel hovering in the narrow canyon. It had
still been there and that fact verified we had eased back from the
canyon rim to wait for sundown.

In a low voice I asked, “Edgar when I first
got here there was something about me surviving that snakebite that
troubled you. What was it?”

“Not troubled, intrigued is a better
word.”

I decided to go all in and confessing softly
I said, “I’ve been led to believe recently that my origins lead to
places not from this world. Does that make any sense?”

“It certainly does.” Edgar affirmed.

I glanced at him and he explained, “As I told
you before that snake that bit you exists nowhere else other than
this immediate area. Do you know what an elephant is?”

I nodded and he continued, “Well by my
nearest calculations of the potency of a single bite from that
snake I’d say even an elephant would succumb to a bite.”

“You’re saying I’m not human?”

“Not at all. There are plenty of venoms,
diseases, and you name it that generally always kill their victims,
but there are those few who survive. Those few survivors mate and
share their immunities with the next generation and then you see
immunity in the next generation after that. Given enough time
almost everyone comes to have immunity to something that once
killed almost everyone. Look at Europe for instance. The black
plague virtually wiped the population out, but those who survived
are now for the most part immune to it. My theory about these
snakes, especially now that I see all that’s happened in the past
few days, is that they came from somewhere else. I’m not referring
to somewhere else in the world either. It’s possible that ancestors
of yours came from the same place off world where these snakes
live, and thus had a built up immunity to the venom.”

Shaking my head I said, “I know I was born in
the mountains of East Tennessee. As a boy my great grandfather was
yet alive. We were all born in the mountains, not some other
world.”

“No doubt you were, which would explain
through the length of generations away from the exposure to the
venom of that snake why you almost died from it. The more time that
goes by the less resistance there seems to be to things not exposed
to in a long time.”

I shook my head still finding it all hard to
believe, but the facts were what they were.

“Your name is of great interest and I believe
a clue to the off world past your ancestors experienced.”

Looking at him I asked, “Taran?”

“No, your last name of Collins. Collins and
another name, that of Gibson, along with a half-dozen others form
an Appalachian bloodline of some note. Ever look at yourself in the
mirror Taran?”

“Of course I have!”

“Well then I bet you’ve noticed that while
you’re white enough to be thought of as European your features are
somewhat darker and more exotic than the typical individual of
European descent.”

“It’s said that there was some intermarrying
with people of black skin color early on in our family and I think
my grandmother was part Cherokee.”

“All probably so, but your ancestry is even
more complex than that. Feel at the very back of your head.”

I did so and felt a protrusion of bone off
the back of my skull that formed a sort of round nodule. I’d known
I’d had it, but never really thought twice about it.

“What you’re feeling my friend is referred to
as an Anatolian Bump. The more scientific name for it is Tuberculum
Turcum. Anatolia is the region in the Middle East where the Turks
of the Ottoman Empire came from. Their people group it’s said
migrated there from Central Asia. Now the question you have to ask
yourself Taran is how did a man, who comes from the mountains of
Appalachia, come to possess so many diverse traits from peoples all
over the world, but in all the history of your family I doubt there
have been few who have actually married outside of the mountain
families of the surrounding communities much less left the area as
you have done.”

I had no answer for him. Going on he said,
“Melungeon is the name for the unique bloodline of your family and
of the others I mentioned. The meaning of the word is hard to come
by as it finds elements potentially derived from the languages of
at least five different people groups, which would be West African,
Turkish, European, Asian, and even Jews. It’s a mystery Taran.
What’s even more interesting is that there is old folk lore in the
mountains of Appalachia that there were white men existing in the
mountains before the first colonists came over from Europe. As
colonists kept making their way westward they kept running into
communities in the mountains that they couldn’t place the date of
origin to. There’s little to be conclusively said as it’s all been
poorly documented, but the stories do remain. I’m sure you’ve heard
a few of them.”

I had. I looked toward the edge of the canyon
still hearing the humming of the alien vessel. Looking back to
Edgar I asked, “What do you think happened?”

Edgar shrugged, “Pastor told me about your
vision, well not exactly, I had to beg the story out of him. What
if there are other worlds out there such as you saw? With the kind
of technology back there in the canyon on display I don’t see it as
an impossibility for such vessels to be able to travel between
worlds. We know these creatures from the time before the creation
of man obviously hate us. What if some time in the past they took
slaves of this world to serve them on worlds outside of the
dominion of the authority that God gave to man to possess and rule
over this world? On such foreign worlds with relocated people
gathered from all over the Earth the resulting mating of them
would’ve resulted in blended features the likes of which you
exhibit. For such a blended people to reappear on Earth in an
unlikely spot it would seem to echo of some past strife off-world.
Perhaps your great ancestors escaped and were able to make their
way back at some point. They settled in the mountains and have been
blending in with the rest of humanity ever since. It’s a plausible
theory anyway given all the facts and circumstantial evidence to
support it.”

I nodded. What more was to be said?

Had my ancestors really overcome such
obstacles as these beings in the canyon below us in order to return
to Earth?

It seemed like more than just a plausible
theory to me as I mentally took in the unique looks of my family’s
appearances in comparison to people away from the cloistered
mountain community I had been raised in. My great-grandfather’s
skin had been very dark. Since his time most of my family had
married lighter skinned European women and the tone of our family’s
skin had lightened considerably from what his had been.

More than that were some of the stories I had
been told as a child, stories about fantastical lands and the
monsters that dwelled in them. Stories that didn’t fit into the
reality of Earth, at least not for a very long time.

I remembered my great-grandfather singing
once in the forest in a language I couldn’t understand. It hadn’t
been Cherokee or any European language and certainly not the
backwoods English that we’d spoken almost exclusively. He had been
an intense individual. Most of my family were.

Above all as a family we craved the right to
be free to do as we pleased. That was something I strived to
maintain to this day and it had gotten me into a lot of fights.

I stared upwards into the darkening sky
overhead that stars were already faintly starting to appear in. Did
I have a legacy that had come from up there somewhere in the
distant past?

Did I have a destiny to return?

Glancing at the sun now low on the horizon I
touched Edgar’s sleeve and said, “Let’s go and get this party
started.”

I wasn’t too sure about this plan, but we
were people of limited means faced with desperate circumstances.
Some things were just going to need to be hoped for. I certainly
knew that I was praying that my hopes would not be denied.

Edgar had been for the idea of me riding up
the canyon with a lit stick of dynamite in hand to which I then
threw at the said enemy beings before lighting a shuck the heck
back out of there. Even by my standards that was a bit obvious in
terms of raising suspicions.

Instead I had chosen misdirection of a more
innocent nature. I was deliberately hunched over the saddle as one
might expect of an old man and behind me I led a mule packed down
with all the essentials needed for gold mining.

Where the dynamite ploy might fail to attract
the desired response I was pretty sure that the threat of their
gold discovery being found out by humans was something they wished
to avoid. They’d have no choice but to chase after me and kill me.
Being killed was an all too real possibility in this scenario.

Rounding the last bend in the canyon
separating me from the mine I beheld the hovering vessel and
several of its occupants. They stood taller than me by at two feet
and just as the indian had said they had white hair that fell down
past their shoulders.

I’d never been creeped out more other than
having to witness the body of a woman metamorphosis into a
reptilian form of dark ugliness. With a faked shout of surprise I
let go the leads of the mule and wheeled the Appaloosa back the way
I’d just come. He bucked forward with a will even as two electric
bolts of power zipped by me to blast solid rock into crushed
powder.

The Appaloosa ran hard in our attempt to
escape and I prayed that it would be enough. We turned a corner and
became blessedly out of range of their weapons, if only for a
moment.

I heard the droning hum behind me up the
canyon abruptly go high pitched and I urged the horse faster. I
still had a quarter of a mile before I reached the mouth of the
canyon.

I hung over the horse’s mane doing my best to
aid the animal in its flight from certain death. I glanced back and
gave a start at the sight of the hovercraft closing in fast.

I jerked the reins hard and the horse swerved
to the right. The canyon wall off to our left exploded terrifically
and rock chips slammed into me and the horse.