Chapter 1: The Desert, The Town And The God That Was James

He awoke on the hard dusty ground. 'This can't be right' he thought. 'I'm dead, not in purgatory'.

But he didn't feel dead. He didn't feel bad at all. All right, he was groggy and the ground was certainly hard but there was no pain.

'Why was there no pain, ' that made no sense. Ever since he snapped his spine in Afghanistan he had never been without pain. But he wasn't in Afghanistan. It didn't feel right, smell right, nor was the sky the right colour. And he had not been in Afghanistan in years. He had been home in Australia, living his life as best as he could, which was to say, badly.

Fifty-one he was, and in appalling medical condition. His spinal column was collapsing. His kidneys had started to fail. His liver function was shot and his blood sugars made no sense even with the most severe diabetes.

The last he remembered was being prepped for surgery, then nothing until this. He must be dreaming. 'Yeah that's it. They say that under generals you can have vivid hallucinations, ' but the sun was beating down on his naked form and the wind was blowing very fine sand across his body. Even on a good day, his dreams were not that realistic.

He moved. No pain but incredible strength under his skin. His muscles that were finely tuned. He felt a little like this when he ran marathons as a young Naval Cadet but not quite this good. Everything was as if it was perfect. Then he looked down. Something was very wrong. He was bigger. His muscles were very pronounced, even his cock was bigger, not that this was exactly what he was concentrating on at the moment. He was trying to fathom what the hell had happened to him.

He stretched and gingerly rose to his feet. It was then that he found that he was also taller. It was clear he stood just that much further from the ground. Before the injuries he had been about 180cm, or 5-11 in the old language but he had lost height with the collapse of vertebrae. Now he felt several inches taller.

It really was hot and the dust was blasting against his skin. Wherever he was, it was dry, that's for sure. He saw scrub here and there but mostly this was dry desert free of even the most tenacious vegetation and certainly of any other life. Funnily enough, he wasn't sweating. That had been a real problem with his injury: the sweats, the fevers, the constant peaks in temperatures. Here though, wherever the hell 'here' was, in direct sunlight, he estimated near midday in a very hot clime there wasn't even the sheen of perspiration.

How long he stood still he knew not. He was content for the moment feeling the sun on his naked form; feeling the very slight breeze that puffed every few minutes; smelling the slight salt and smell of sand, very ancient sand; listening to the minute sounds of sand scuffing off the dunes as the wind picked up slightly on each edge; hearing the cry of a predator high in the very blue sky so distant that the bird should have been but a speck.

He sensed them a very long time before he saw them or even knew what or who they were. He smelt them before he saw them. The stench was overpowering. Camels being led by tribesmen. They had breached a sand dune and were travelling obliquely to where he was standing until one spotted him and the small caravan diverted in his direction. He stood still. The clothes were not familiar. They weren't Afghanis, nor Bedouin, as best as he could tell but they had their faces covered against the sand and were wearing robes wrapped about their body, the cloth looking very rough and very, very dirty. Clearly it wasn't just the camels that he had smelled.

What he couldn't quite understand was that the caravan was at least a mile away from him yet he could make out incredible detail, including the curve and the nicks of the blades carried by the men, the lack of any rifles or anything else even remotely modern for that matter, and the fact that he could smell their approach from such a long distance. Then he realised he could also hear them talk. Pity he understood not a word they were saying. It sounded a little like Arabic but with more of a lilt, almost as if the words were said as part of a song.

He did realise he was thinking in English, so his whole world had not changed. He started thinking and realised he could remember cars, missiles, Presidents, Prime Ministers and a myriad of other facts of modern life that he had lived so he was still James Patterson. Yeah, he got it a lot. No, he was no relation to the writer, although he did read his books, at least the ones he wrote himself without some 'co-author'.

He had no idea what was going on but it was pretty clear he was 'no longer in Kansas', not that he had ever been there anyway. Well he had visited Kansas, Queensland once but he did not think that counted. His physical shape may have been incredible, a body that would not just require hours in a gym but hard physical work. He may have felt more alive and in tune with the world than he even did when he was a very young man but he understood none of it.

Even his body didn't seem to be his age. The hairs on his chest were not grey or as thick. His hands had no scaring, nor did the rest of his body and that was one thing that he had had a great deal of, scars.

Having no other choice or really any explanation of what was going on, he stood still and waited for the caravan to approach. He stood impassive under the hot sun. As the caravan finally reached near to James, they slowed and swords were drawn. 'Abja Beduji' was called by a taller thin man not quite at the front of the caravan but whom James sensed immediately to be the leader. Unfortunately, James had no idea what the language was. He had figured it was a bit like Arabic but not quite but his Arabic sucked anyway. Considering his options were not exactly extensive, he stood there and said nothing.

A stockier man approached, sword held menacingly, looking at this light brown man, with no facial growth, short hair, no clothes, and seemingly no fear. The sword was raised as if to strike but James just stood there impassively. After all, this was a dream or a hallucination anyway. If he were to die, a sword that large would be rather quick. And quite aside from attempting combat unclothed on hot sand, he stood weaponless against a man who seemed quite skilled with the rather wicked looking curved blade brandished at him. Any action that precipitated attacked seemed to be senseless.

The taller man approached and when he neared, the stockier man attempted to have James bow. James refused. He bowed to no man. He did not believe in subservience of that type. He may have saluted some officers he detested but that was an acknowledgement of the rank, not the man. This seemed altogether different. With lightning speed, the blade slashed towards James. Normally it would have severed his head but with equally lightning speed James reacted, stepping into the swing, catching the arm of the man as the heavy blade was swung with enormous force and with the slightest nudge with his open hand shattered the man's elbow. James had no idea what he had done or even how he had done it. He just did.

The taller man stood impassively staring at James before raising has hand. As if waiting for a drum roll that never came the man stayed still for a time then simply dropped his arm. Within moments, archers that had moved around to the side of the three men while James had been staring at the two approaching men, loosed short but very accurate arrows from a distance of only 50 yards or so. James realised that he had sensed the archers' presence but had not considered the implications. He did now, reacting just as fast as with the sword, spinning and actually catching with his hand two arrows that flew almost together. But the third was much lower and he did not even attempt to stop it. He did not quite know why. It struck very low in his abdomen with a sickening thud and ... shattered. The bronze tip seemed to be very sharp. A bodkin design James though idly without even realising he knew the names of arrow points in the first place. But it had just bounced off his skin. No mark. No blood. Nothing.

More arrows rained down and James swatted them away for a time but grew a little tired of doing so and turned back towards the man who was now plainly quite fearful, the look of astonishment blended with fear towards this naked man with apparently the powers of a god. The taller man slowly began backing away.

James called out, 'STOP!' and the man did exactly that. James continued, 'Tell your archers to stop shooting those blasted arrows at me or I will start to turn them towards you. I grow tired of this.'

The man looked blankly but still fearfully. James repeated himself louder and angrier but still the man did nothing but stare at James with real terror on his face by this point. James realised that the language was unknown. The blank look that melded with the terror to make an almost comical appearance suggested the language was completely unknown to the man. It should have been obvious but James was in a desert, naked, apparently very fit, immune to arrows, and still hadn't quite worked out what type of dream could be this realistic. So perhaps he could be forgiven for not being all that sharp just at the moment. But having worked out the language difficulties, James portrayed in sign language in no uncertain terms what he wanted. The man immediately called out a series of commands and the archers stopped.

James was thirsty. The day was extremely hot and the very fine dust blowing was parching his throat. Ignoring the man that had ordered the archers or the man on the ground moaning, James reached down, collected the scimitar, the sword that the stocky man had attempted to use, and walked right past the fearful man towards the caravan. The men at the caravan actually cowered behind the camels as James approached. Firstly, James realised that he was much taller than the tallest man there and secondly he was very pale in comparison to their skin colour. He also didn't stink, James thought to himself and chuckled, which seemed to terrify the men even more.

James approached a camel and lifted a bladder from the saddle arm, unstoppered it and sniffed. It wasn't water. It was wine. 'Any port in a storm' James thought and wondered why he managed to dream up wine in this amazing hallucination. He didn't mind the hallucination so much except the fine dust pounding him was a little annoying and he wondered why he had to dream up the stench to go with the rest. James took a large swig and choked. The stuff was nothing like the wine he was used to. This was bitter and very alcoholic. Almost like drinking vinegar fortified.

Ignoring the discomfort of the men with the caravan, James expertly wrapped the rough woven cloth presented to him by very shaky hands around himself to create a cloak and joined the caravan, climbing onto a camel. The men gathered around their leader and the discussion went on for a long time before the caravan gathered itself together and started moving again. The stocky man that had attempted to cut James down had been left where he lay. The caravan moved off.

When the caravan camped James realised that there were three women in the group, one appeared to be young and very attractive but was covered virtually head to foot. James stayed with the caravan of forty odd camels and perhaps fifty men for almost three weeks. He was polite to anyone that came close to him, said, "Thank you' when he was offered drink, but otherwise kept somewhat to himself, watching and listening. At first, the words were gibberish but over only a few days James started to understand the language. The first thing he discovered is just how terrified the men were of him and just how many times it was raised that some attempt should be made on his life, to have it dismissed repeatedly by the tall man that was obviously in charge. Two of the women were treated poorly as if they were servants or even slaves but the young one was not touched by anyone nor required to do anything. James also noticed no one spoke to her.

Eventually James could see in the far horizon, buildings. Without conscious thought or effort, James' eyes zoomed in and he could make out significant details. This phenomena was still was causing James problems. Getting used to such abilities as hearing the scuttling of a scorpion hundreds of feet away or being able to stare directly into the eye of a bird of prey circling many hundreds of feet above the caravan took some considerable doing. While James was offered food, which he took, it did not seem important that he have more than a minimal amount of sustenance or even liquid. He could go all day without drinking. But then again he didn't sweat at all and urinated so infrequently he wondered why he even bothered. Since it was his hallucination why not just not do it. He tried but found that this did not work. Discomfort took a very long time but it did come on and then built up. So hallucination or not, James urinated.

By the time the buildings had come into view, James was convinced that he had either died on the operating table and this was just his brain shutting down or he had lapsed into a coma and this reality was what he had devised to keep himself entertained. He leaned towards the brain shutting down theory. He had been a big fan of 'Ashes to Ashes' and the DI in that story had created a fantasy world that went for months in the time between when she was shot and the time of getting to hospital with a bullet in the front of her brain. He knew the brain took seven minutes to shut down and during that time significant brain activity had been recorded in some patients.

What James had not even considered is perhaps he was actually travelling on a caravan somewhere in North Africa probably not even in modern times. That was just too ridiculous to contemplate. Far more likely that he was in a coma and going through a vivid dream.

By the time they reached the town, James now understood the language quite well. He had learned that the caravan were slave traders returning from delivering a group of slaves to a mine in what sounded like the edge of hell. He now well understood that the girl was 12 and was a gift to be presented to the owner of the caravan, a wealthy man that was currently staying in the town they were coming to but who normally lived in Rome. He had found out that the galleys that crossed the Mediterranean were dangerous and many lives were lost during violent storms. He also discovered that life was cheap for those in the caravan. They cared little that the man had been left to die from his injury when he had attempted to detached James' head and not a wit for the slaves that it seemed would be worked in the mine until unable to keep going because the workers were constantly getting sick.

The girl, Rebekkah, was the daughter of slaves but her exceptional beauty was such that she had been spared the hard physical labour that was the lot of other slaves and was groomed to be a concubine or plaything of a wealthy man. It just happened that the owner of the caravan had been in the position to help the overseer of the mine and, in repayment he decided Rebekkah was a gift appropriate to the assistance provided.