Chapter 1: Makot

As soon as I heard the front door close, I sagged back into the couch and rolled my eyes, already knowing what was coming. I could’ve set my watch (if I was wearing one) by when my mom walked by the living room, saw me on the couch with the remote in my hand and the open bag of cheese puffs next to me, and shot me her disapproving stare. “Good to see you hard at work again,” she muttered.

In a sense, I had been hard at work that day. I had been hard at work getting caught up on the last season of Game of Thrones. It was now nearing 5 PM and I was nearly to the finale ... and wouldn’t mom just be ecstatic to hear about that progress. So I just gave her a snippy “I aim to please.”

“I assume you’ve applied to at least a dozen jobs today if you have time to be so immersed in the OnDemand cable that your father and I are paying for,” mom grilled me with, beginning the routine she and I went through on a near daily basis now.

“As if there was any place that wants to hire me,” I said after swallowing a mouthful of cheese puffs, getting annoyed that she was distracting me from my show when we both knew how this conversation was going to go.

“You don’t know that! I’m sure there’s plenty of jobs that you’d be great for if you’d just get off your lazy butt and looked for them!”

I was able to mouth the last several words along with her. That’s how well I knew this routine. “The day I find something on Craigslist that I’m even remotely qualified for, or that gives a hoot about my half-page resume, I’ll let you know. Until then, life goes on.”

Mom sighed and shook her head, and walked away, probably wondering what she did to deserve a freeloading slacker like me for a son. I’m not sure who she was more disappointed with: me for not getting my ass out of the nest when I graduated high school, or herself for being too soft-hearted to just throw me out.

I was going to be 22 in a few months. I’d completed two years at a community college studying mostly history, which I enjoyed, but never really saw myself going anywhere with. I hadn’t found any universities that were particularly interested in me, and I hadn’t had a job since I got fired from the furniture store last year for chronic tardiness. Most of my old friends had gone off to different schools across the country. My last girlfriend had left months ago to enroll at Columbia, pursuing her own future, leaving me behind in the pit that was my parents’ house. Being the softies that my folks were, they continued paying my credit card bills month after month, spotting me what I needed to live, not really doing much to motivate me other than just glare.

It was kind of a relief when I got a phone call from Nick, one of my buddies from school, inviting me to join him and some of the other guys for Buffalo wings a couple hours later. I was definitely grateful for the chance to not spend the evening at home, getting more disapproving stares from my parents while I made myself ramen noodles for dinner, so I accepted.

I arrived at our favorite bar/grill and found Nick along with Carter and Braden sitting around one of the tables watching the basketball game that was showing on the big HD TV, their glasses of beer already half drained. Carter was the first to look up and notice me. “Hey Clay!” he called, raising his arm and beckoning me over. I joined the guys and proceeded to spend the next half hour or so catching up on what was what over wings and ranch and Heineken: who in our circle of contacts was sleeping with whom, the progress of the basketball season, what disappointed us about the latest Michael Bay movie, stuff like that.

Nick was working at a movie theater, living in a cheap apartment with a slightly overweight roommate named Jake whom the rest of us never really saw except when we went over to his place. He was also dating a 19-year-old premed who didn’t want her conservative parents to know about him. Carter was still going to school, studying criminal justice and talking a lot about wanting to become a cop or something, which we all found kind of funny given his particular fondness for weed. Braden was in a situation a bit more like mine, out of school and out of work, spending his days mostly playing guitar and his evenings trolling for booty. He’d been laid off pretty recently, though, and he was probably looking a little harder than I was.

The evening wore on; I don’t remember what we’d been talking about specifically, but at some point Nick put in, “Oh, hey, did I mention I’m getting bumped up to management?”

“Really?” I said.

“Hey, congrats man,” Carter said.

“Well, can’t say I can top that,” Braden said, “but I did get a new job. Startup company. Front guy.”

Okay, I was wrong. He wasn’t looking anymore.

“Wow, looks like success is goin’ around tonight,” Carter said, a knowing look on his face.

“Something good happen to you?” Nick asked, eyeing him suspiciously.

Carter bashfully shrugged and said, “Well, I didn’t want to brag, but ... my application went through. I’m going to police academy.”

“Damn!” Nick cheered him.

“Don’t they do drug tests or something?” Braden said.

Carter shrugged again. “We all gotta make some sacrifices, man.”

Braden turned his attention to me. “What about you, Clay? Got any good news to report?”

I looked around, suddenly feeling very surrounded, and very tiny. “No, not today,” I got out in a small voice.

“Hey, no worries,” Nick said. “There’s always more opportunities out there.”

I grimaced, no longer comfortable at this table. Being the good friend that I wanted to be, I raised my beer glass. “Here’s to you guys,” I said. “To the future.”

“The future!” they all chimed in, clinking their glasses with mine.

I did my damnedest to still act friendly, but there was ultimately no getting around the fact that I now felt like about the biggest loser on the planet. Everyone I knew was going somewhere, and the only place I saw myself going any time soon was the store to get more cheese puffs.

I continued putting up that front for as long as I could stand to, but eventually it got to be too depressing to keep pretending like that. “Well, I should probably call it a night,” I finally said, rising from my chair.

“Already?” Nick said. “Night’s still young, y’know.”

My first impulse was to give them the excuse that I had to get up early in the morning, but what the hell would I tell them I had to do? No matter what I came up with, they all would’ve known it was a lie. So after racking my brain for a few moments trying to come up with something, I finally just fed them a pitiful, “I’m just kinda tired, that’s all. I just kinda feel like heading home.”

“Well, okay,” Nick shrugged as I headed for the door. “Catch you later.”

“Later Clay,” Braden waved.

I was frowning rather noticeably when I walked out of the place, got in my car and turned the key. Much of the drive that followed is kind of a blur. I remember pulling out of the parking lot, and then just kind of going on autopilot for a while as I stewed in my thoughts.

I didn’t really consider the fact that I’d probably had a little too much beer to have been driving at that point.

I’m tempted to say that was my first mistake, but honestly, I can’t say with any certainty that would be truthful. I’ve thought back on that night a lot, analyzing every step I made, trying to peg what specifically was the actual catalyst that set everything that’s happened to me since tumbling forward like dominoes. When I really think about it, the moment I accepted Nick’s invitation in the first place was probably what started it all. I’ve often imagined what might have happened if I’d just stayed home that evening; I’d probably still be there, sitting on my parents’ couch, mooching off their TV. But even after that, there’s still probably any number of moments where if I’d done things just slightly differently I still might have ended up back at home.

At some point it started to rain; softly at first, then gradually I got the wipers going faster and faster as it started coming down harder. It kind of fit my mood right then.

As I pulled up to a stop on one of the roads I frequented on the way home, I peered ahead of me through the darkness and the rain. The road ahead of me had been blocked off, with a bright yellow detour sign pointing to the right. I groaned at the inconvenience, and followed the sign, hoping I’d be able to navigate over roads that I was less familiar with to get home.

I don’t really remember if there were more detour signs positioned to get me back on track or not; I was a little distracted. What was so wrong with me that I couldn’t get the motivation to do anything with myself? I definitely liked the idea of pulling in my own income, having my own place to live, and not having to put up with my parents’ constant nagging. And yet, no matter how much I tried to tell myself day after day that today I was going to really commit myself to finding a job, I always just seemed to end up back on the couch with the remote.

The most exciting thing that had happened to me in the past year had been Sung. Remember that girlfriend I mentioned who went off to Columbia U? It was a seven-month relationship that was kind of on borrowed time to begin with. Sung was a girl from Korea who was friends with Nick’s girlfriend. I met her at one of Nick’s parties. And yeah, we enjoyed the time we had, but it soon got to the point where we knew she’d be leaving in a few months, so we couldn’t let ourselves get too serious. Also, the few times we did it were never particularly mind-blowing. We were both pretty inexperienced, her being raised in a conservative, traditional Korean family, and me being ... well, me. So our few times in the sack were pretty awkward and disappointing.

And yet the relationship had been the high point of my year. I still missed just holding her, lying on my bed and doing nothing but feel her in my arms. I missed the way she used to kiss me; she had such cute, dainty little lips. I missed driving her around, listening to her prattle on about her family while her hand reached across the seat and idly stroked my leg. I missed hearing her singing voice when we got together with our friends to play Rock Band ... yeah, listen to me focusing on the little stuff. We may not have ever gotten really serious, but when she’s the only girl whom you haven’t gotten stuck in the friend zone with in a long time, she tends to become special.

The sudden glare of headlights and the blaring of somebody’s horn brought me back to reality, alerting me to the fact that I had started to drift onto the wrong side of the road. I quickly swerved back to the right and dodged the angry driver coming the other way. When I caught my startled breath again, I took my bearings. By now it was pouring buckets, which I’d obviously noticed however unconsciously, since I’d turned the wipers up to full speed.

I realized something else, too.

I had no idea where I was.

Somehow I’d gotten myself all the way onto the country roads on the outskirts of town. I had no idea how far away from town I’d gotten myself, but at some point I’d have to turn around; never an easy thing to do on these winding roads in the middle of bumfuck nowhere that just went on forever. Somewhere along the way I’d have to find the too-long dirt driveway of some of those folks who opted to live out here in the boonies, away from the city noise. Unfortunately it was hard to see much of anything in this storm at night, even with my high beams on.

Eventually I spotted one, a turnoff on my left that sloped downhill. I turned, pulled up onto the dirt path a few feet, and was just about to start backing up to go the other way when the wet dirt under my left front tire gave way. My car lurched forward with a jerk. I paused and collected myself, then put the car in reverse. I hit the gas and...

... my wheels spun uselessly through the mud. I wasn’t moving anywhere.

“Shit.”

I continued hitting the gas as hard as I could, again and again, trying in vain to back up. I eventually thought it felt like I had moved a few inches, and began holding the pedal down continuously. “Come on, come on,” I muttered through my teeth, looking back over my shoulder.

And then suddenly I did start to move. But in the wrong direction.

My car slipped further forward, and then a little more. I began to really feel gravity trying pull me forward. Downhill. I definitely tried to fight it, hitting the gas harder in my efforts to back up, but I only managed to back up a few inches before a terrible sequence of events began to unfold.

My tires finally lost all traction, and I began rolling uncontrollably downhill. I slammed down on my brakes, but my tires were too wet and muddy to stop on much of anything. If I’d been thinking clearly, and hadn’t just had a couple of beers, I might have reasoned that the road would level off soon and just kept steady. But instead my slightly buzzed brain went into panic mode, yanking the steering wheel around in a desperate bid to regain control, only losing more of it. I couldn’t see any of what was ahead of me until it smacked against my hood or windshield, be it dirt, rocks or tree branches.

My lights finally illuminated the sheer wall of a hill that I was about four seconds away from crashing into. Two seconds later I saw what looked like an opening just to the right, and jerked the wheel hard in that direction. I skidded down, rolling into the mouth of a tunnel, out of the rain and into complete darkness.

Right about then is where words start to fail me. What I remember next consists of a bunch of weird sensations that I’m not quite sure how to describe. I remember some kind of whirlpool of blue and purple lights, and a sort of tingling feeling in my skin. And then a bright flash of light, from which I shielded my eyes.

Then nothing.

I have no idea how long I was out for. I just remember waking up with a bad headache and a noxious taste in my mouth. I slowly became aware of something hard and leathery against my left temple and my hands, which I gradually realized was the steering wheel. I pried my eyes open, and lifted my head, which felt like a ton of bricks. I blinked a few times to clear my vision. My chest was resting against the airbag, and on the wheel where my head had been there was blood. I looked up into the rearview mirror, examining my forehead, finding my head wound that had bled quite a bit already.

I’d obviously been unconscious all night, as it was daylight now. And my car wasn’t going anywhere; not with the way my engine had been warped to hug the tree in front of me. The windshield was cracked to hell too. I gagged on the chemical smell in the air that the airbag had coughed out when it deployed, and fumbled for the door handle. I shoved the door open, and leaned out, breathing in the clean air.

I unbuckled my seatbelt and took one step out, before stumbling to my knees. I’d apparently bled enough to be woozy. I took my jacket off and pressed it to my forehead, wiping away the blood that had run down the side of my face. It was a little too warm and muggy to be wearing a jacket right then anyway ... which was odd, considering it was late November.

I got my feet beneath me and shakily rose onto them, and pulled my cell phone from my pocket, still trying to decide who to call. It turned out not to matter as I illuminated the screen, getting a big “NO SIGNAL” staring me in the face. “Perfect,” I muttered.

When I pulled my jacket away from my head, I found it not quite as bloody as I’d expected; apparently being pressed into the wheel for however many hours I’d been out had stopped most of the bleeding already. So I tied the jacket around my waist and looked around.

All around me was nothing but woodland. I saw no sign of anything resembling civilization. With no way to call anybody, no car to drive home with and nothing close to an idea where I was, my options were slim. And after pondering them for a long while, I started doing the only thing I could come up with: wandering aimlessly and hoping I was lucky enough to find something or someone who could tell me where the hell home was.

You’ve probably guessed already that I was about as adept a frontiersman as a monkey trying to quote Shakespeare. I remembered seeing a couple movies that claimed moss grew heaviest on the north side of a tree. I tried looking at moss, which there was no shortage of, but couldn’t really identify any discernable pattern of thickness. I tried looking for a creek or something that could lead to a river or some other body of water. Most rivers flow south, right? I think... ? Well, I didn’t find any creeks or rivers.

After wandering for at least an hour or two and getting turned around probably a couple dozen times, I finally let myself collapse against a tree once I couldn’t walk another step. My feet were killing me, and my throat was dying for a drink of water. And oh yes, I was lost in the woods, too. Scenes from The Blair Witch Project started coming to mind; not pleasant thoughts. I sincerely hoped that this forest didn’t have anything like that lurking in it waiting to come out and hunt me after nightfall. In fact, the idea of still being here by nightfall was by itself a frightful notion.

Something about these woods had been bugging me for a while, something that seemed wrong and out of place. I’d been a little too distracted trying to find some clues to lead me somewhere to really think about it, but sitting there then, it dawned on me. This was supposed to be Northern California, so the woods should have been made up of mostly redwoods or something. But this place looked like it belonged somewhere closer to the Amazon. The plants all around me looked a lot more tropical than they should have. God, I was so dense for not realizing this to begin with...

Where the hell was I?

Suddenly I heard a weird noise coming from beyond the trees. It sounded like some kind of animal noise, but not like any animal I’d ever heard, in the real world or in the movies. It was like a throaty, guttural hissing sound. And it sounded like it was moving closer.

I rose to my feet, every nerve I had on edge. Slowly I started inching closer to the sound, craning my head to try to see what was making it. And even as my feet continued moving forward, I realized my own stupidity. “Real smart, Clay. Move toward the threatening animal noise.” And yet I didn’t stop.

At least not until the sound stopped. I stood there, frozen, not daring to move, listening for any recurrence of the sound, watching carefully for any sign of what might have made it. I was coiled tight, ready to snap if so much as a squirrel appeared. I waited ... and I waited some more.

Nothing moved that I could see. I gradually started unwinding, thinking whatever made that noise must have moved past me and continued on.

And if I’d said that out loud, I’d say I jinxed it. Because that’s when four large gray-green shapes sprang out of the brush. I stumbled onto my back and scuttled backwards as quickly as I was able, unable to accept the existence of the things that stood hissing at me.

They were about the size of grown men, and vaguely shaped like them, but the resemblance stopped there. Their arms were too long, as were their fingers, if you could call them that. They were more like long, spindly talons that looked sharp enough to write someone’s name in a rock, and long enough that they almost scraped the ground with the way the things hunched over. Beyond that, they looked mostly reptilian, with leathery scales for skin, yellow lizard eyes and mouths permanently shaped into a vicious, predatory grin full of razor-sharp teeth. For noses they just had two vertical slits, topped by two slanting rows of little bony spines running up their foreheads, forming a V that framed a sort of natural hood sloping back over their bald heads. Other than that their bodies were shaped with sort of humanoid musculature, with thin clawed toes on their feet, and I was pretty sure I saw what I guess were pieces of male anatomy (don’t even ask me to describe them).

Prone helplessly on my ass, I backed away across the ground as the creatures advanced on me, all hissing loudly. One of them took the lead, moving forward and bending down to study me closely with its hungry eyes. I whimpered in terror as they sized me up, most likely trying to decide if they should kill me first or if I’d taste better still screaming.

That hesitation ended up being a good thing, because in the time they spent studying me, my hand was able to find a pretty decently sized rock. Just as the lead creature raised a clawed hand to take a slice out of me, I swung the rock up and clocked it across the head. It fell to ground, I scrambled to my feet, and I ran.

Oh, god did I run. I ran faster than I knew a human being was capable of running.

And still I could hear those things hissing behind me.

The trees and plants became blurred shapes as I dashed past them, leaping over roots and stones, not daring to let anything be an obstacle. And then I did something I really shouldn’t have: I looked back. Oh, shit, those things were fast! They ran on all fours, making giant strides with their overly long arms and gripping the earth with their claws to cover more ground faster. I don’t know how I’d been lucky enough to stay ahead of them as long as I already had.

And like the moron I obviously was, not only was I now slowing myself down by looking behind me, but I wasn’t watching what was ahead of me. I never saw the tree root until I was already tripping over it.

As soon as I hit the ground, I frantically started looking for another rock or a branch or anything I could use as a weapon. But the things were on me in seconds. As the lead creature stood over me, preparing to claw my throat out while his buddies waited behind him for their turn, all I could do was cover my head and scream.

THUNK.

That didn’t sound like a clawing noise, and it felt like I still had all my parts. Cautiously, I dared to peek my eyes out of cover, finding the lead creature lying dead on the ground next to me with an arrow jutting out of its chest. The other three suddenly seemed both angry and frightened as more arrows whizzed around them. Another arrow struck one of them in the back as it turned to flee. As the remaining two retreated, a bunch of human shapes burst out of the foliage, continuing to launch arrows after them.

With the creatures out of sight, I turned to get a good look at the people who had just saved me—and quickly averted my eyes. “Oh, my,” I said uncomfortably.

Yes, I was definitely grateful to be alive right then.

Regardless, the fact remained that my rescuers were all completely nude.

I kept my gaze off of them for a moment more until one of them came up and started prodding me with his bow. “Oy, makot,” he said.

Cautiously I looked up at him, and held my hand up to obstruct my view of the guy’s schlong (a little late to avoid it completely) and just look at his face. He looked about my age, maybe a little older, with dark hair and thin lines of facial hair around his chin and jaw.

“Akeven?” he said.

“Excuse me?”

“Churudi, akevene?”

“Uh...”

Another one of them, this one a woman, stepped up beside him. She said something else I didn’t understand to him in a gentle voice, and then she bent down and extended a hand to me. Again I tried, more out of courtesy this time, to avoid looking at her hanging tits. I didn’t do so well.

When I didn’t take her hand at first, she shook it once and said something else in that strange language. I didn’t know what it meant, but so far these people didn’t seem hostile. Or crazy, despite what my first instinct might have suggested. And her tone sounded friendly, albeit a little impatient. I cautiously took her hand and let her help me up.

Getting to my feet, I allowed myself to take stock of my rescuers. There were five of them, one man and four women. The two in front of me had bows with quivers of arrows strapped to their backs, while the other three women carried spears. They also each wore a leather belt with a knife and a few pouches on them. They had some kind of tribal markings painted on them: on their faces they each had two white lines on each cheek slanting down away from their noses, and a dark green crescent over the corner of each eye. On their bodies were more tribal patterns painted in white, each one bearing their own unique patterns.

I had a hard time trying to place their ethnicity. They looked like some exotic mix of Asian, Pacific Islander and Hispanic. They all had dark hair in varying shades of black and brown, well-tanned skin and almond-shaped eyes. Also none of them looked like they were much older than I was; some of them might have been younger in fact.

The girl with the bow in front of me examined me curiously, and began pulling with two fingers at my shirt. I pulled away from her. “Stop that.” She looked confused, particularly by my clothes, as if she’d never seen anything like them before. And judging by the nudity of my present company, she might not have.

One of the spear women, who had jet-black hair and a fierce set of eyes, as well as a necklace of some kind of animal claws, stepped forward and barked, something that sounded like an order. The guy in front of me asked her something, gesturing to me. She gave a terse reply before turning to proceed into the woods. The others followed her, with the guy before me gesturing for me to do the same. The bow girl tugged at my sleeve, also apparently intended as a gesture for me to follow.

I wasn’t sure what had just been decided, but for the moment I didn’t see that I had a lot of alternatives. These people didn’t strike me as headhunters or cannibals, so I decided I might as well go with them.

I had time now to chew on the impossibility of my situation. How exactly had I gotten from Northern California to this place that looked like a South American forest inhabited by man-eating lizard things and these tribal natives who hunted with bows and spears in the nude? What exactly had happened to me after I steered my car into that tunnel, aside from that tree that I didn’t even remember crashing into? Maybe I’d blacked out some of it from hitting my head. But even then ... none of this made any sense.

I stopped wondering about things the moment my escorts led me to a wide running stream. As soon as I saw the water I dashed for it, dropping to my knees and scooping up mouthful after mouthful. It was enough of a relief to my parched throat that I ignored it the first time the lead spear woman came up and tapped me with the butt of her spear. When I kept drinking, she tapped me harder, impatiently.

I looked up at her stern face. “Fulalas!” she ordered.

“I don’t understand,” I meekly replied.

“Fulalas!” she repeated, hitting me again with the butt of her spear. I rolled over onto my butt and held a hand up defensively, worried that she was about to hit me again and not knowing what she wanted me to do to avoid it.

The bow girl stepped up beside her and pulled gently on the spear woman’s arm. She said something that sounded like a suggestion, which the spear woman seemed to listen to. The spear woman backed off, while the bow girl crouched down next to me. She gave me a gentle look and said in the kindest voice something I desperately wished I could understand. I got the intense feeling that if I knew what she was saying it would have been a great comfort.

In exasperation I sighed. “When are you people going to realize I don’t understand what you’re saying?”

She looked confused, and then she looked concerned. She looked down at the water I’d been drinking, and then back up at me, and raised her eyebrows in what seemed a question. Apparently she had given up trying to communicate verbally and was now trying to find another way. She scooped up another handful of water and offered it to me. I gratefully drank out of her hands, not taking my eyes off her face. Having finished that, she took hold of my wrist, pulling gently, and I rose to my feet with her.

And then she smiled at me.

I was starting to like the bow girl. She seemed genuinely concerned with my well-being, at least more so than the others. I allowed myself to get a more thorough look at her than I had until now; after all, the girl was naked and clearly didn’t have a problem letting herself be seen. It dawned on me that she looked like the youngest one of this hunting party; she couldn’t be more than 17 or 18. She had hair that was a light shade of black and seemed to be built in layers that thinned out the further down its length you got, tapering to a narrow point at the end. Her eyes were a sort of shining bronze.