Mists of Dawn by Chad Oliver Read Free Book Online Page B

the chill going through his shirt as if it didn’t exist. A fire. That gave him an idea. He still had the matches in his pocket—could he do anything with them? Mark had read stories in which people had startled savages by unexpectedly striking a match, and thus making good their escape. It was a slim hope, but worth a try.
    Mark holstered his .45 and fumbled with numbed hands for his box of matches. He opened it and took out a match. With a fervent mental prayer he suddenly struck a light and held it aloft.
    Nothing happened. The things looked at the light without even curiosity, their faces swimming in the feeble, flickering light.
    Mark blew out the match, quickly. He wasn’t going to get out of this by any such simple trick, he realized. And the sight of their faces, even half-seen by match-light, was almost more than he could stand. They were awful. Like men, and yet terribly, horribly different.
    Mark walked on in the midst of the half-men, a grim suspicion growing in his mind. As nearly as he could tell by the stars, they were moving southwest. Toward the snow-capped mountains Mark had noticed earlier, and away from the space-time machine. Would he ever see it again?
    Onward they went, with Mark’s legs beginning to ache with weariness. His hunger was an empty knot inside him, and the cold numbed his body. He was very tired and his eyes burned with the dry flames of exhaustion.
    The moon began to swing up on its arc through the night. It was a half-moon, a silver crescent, and its pale rays swept down on the shadowed world, lighting the things that walked beside him. Mark did not trust himself to look.
    It was a nightmare procession, touched with the fantasy of the forever unreal. Under a frozen moon, across the plains of the vanished past of earth, Mark stumbled forward. And around him, unbelievable monsters from the fears and the legends of forgotten history, the half-men shambled over the mist-kissed grass, their red eyes gleaming in the black shadows of the night.
    How long they traveled through the darkness under the moon Mark did not know. It seemed to go on forever, the shuffling of the feet and the harsh breathing all around him. Finally, he noticed that they appeared to have left the level plain. The ground was rising under him and his feet occasionally stumbled on sharp rocks. The grass had played out now and he could see the black outlines of scrub pines along the trail. The rise in the land became steeper and turned into low hills. Up they climbed, and Mark found himself gasping shallowly for breath in the cold, thinning air. Sharp pains lanced through his chest, and he knew that he was close to collapse.
    The half-men set a murderous pace through the night. They seemed never to tire. The world became a horror of stooped figures and a merciless moon swimming through the stars. Mark was dimly aware of splashing through a rapid, icy stream, with the moon shimmering the rushing water with silver. Then they went on, with Mark’s open shoes wet and cold and beginning to freeze.
    Mark’s mind blanked out. He kept walking somehow, but he was not conscious of it. His body went on functioning, his legs kept moving, but his body seemed to be something utterly apart from him. He was somewhere else, numb, floating through colorless emptiness.
    The hills widened into a valley and then into a mountain pass. The hushed light of false dawn was just lighting up the world and Mark sensed, rather than saw, snow-capped mountains all around him. The half-men that he refused to see led him up a tortuous, rocky trail from the valley and then suddenly it was dark again.
    Mark realized dimly that they were in a cave. Ahead of them, orange light danced and flickered on the damp walls. Fires. Sensing warmth, Mark’s body moved forward more rapidly. The shadows played grotesque nightmare games on the cold cave walls.
    Growls and mutterings greeted their appearance and Mark found himself in the light. A faraway corner of his mind