Richard Matheson - Hunted Past Reason

Hunted past reason, he thought. He winced at the phrase, wondering where it had come from.

He remembered then. Somewhere in King Lear . A perfect description of what he was going through.

He stretched his legs and arms, groaning at the multiple pains and aches he felt. How can I possibly outrun him? he thought.

Just don’t think, he ordered himself. Just… stare up at the blue sky and the white clouds. Just rest awhile and then move on. You have a three-hour head start. If Doug had told the truth, of course. He had to have told the truth. This was a game to him. He’d played games by the rules.

The sky, the clouds, he thought. The sky, the clouds.

He jolted spasmodically and opened his eyes. “Oh, God , no,” he muttered, not even aware of speaking. He jerked up his left arm, wincing at the pain it caused. Oh, Christ, he’d slept more than twenty-five minutes!

“No good, no good,” he said. I can’t afford to do this. God knew how he was going to sleep at night, considering that Doug might well keep going in the darkness, using his flashlight. But he definitely could not afford to nap in the daytime. “Jesus, get up and move,” he told himself.

It was a strain to get to his feet. What if he’d slept for an hour, more than an hour? He’d be dead already. Doug was undoubtedly coursing through the forest like a long-skilled Indian. He’d been here before as well. “Oh, Christ, move on,” he told himself. “And fast.”

Hastily, he put away his ground pad. It was wet on the side that had been on the ground but there was no time to worry about that. Slipping on the pack—at least he could do that efficiently now—he started walking quickly through the forest, mostly pine now, towering above him.

He stopped for a few moments to check the compass, reset himself again, and move on. The forest was too thick for him to see the mountain he’d been using as a landmark. Maybe later. He willed himself into a steady pace, striding as rapidly as he could, teeth gritted as he tried to ignore the constant flares and stabs of pain in his body and legs. I am in pitiful condition, he thought.

So what?! he countered angrily. You still have to move and move fast. Just grin and bear it, Chauncey.

His smile was scarcely one of amusement. I’ll bear it but I damn sure won’t grin, he informed his annoying mind.

He was crossing a sedge-covered meadow, the high growth slapping against his legs. What if I step on a rattlesnake? he thought. He kept staring at the ground, listening hard for the warning buzz of a rattlesnake tail. At least they did that. The “gentleman snake,” he thought. Where had he read that? Or was it something Marian had said? On those rare occasions when they’d seen a rattler on their property, she would never allow him to kill it or phone the fire department for them to come and kill it. “It’ll go away,” she always said, “it’s more afraid of us than we are of it.” Unfailingly, he’d smile and shake his head at her kind regard for all living things, including rattlesnakes and tarantulas. She was frightened terribly by tarantulas but wouldn’t kill them either or allow him to kill them.

Looking up, he saw that he was headed into a canyon bordered by dark pines. He wondered where it led. He hoped that—

“Whoa,” he muttered.

A porcupine was waddling across the ground in front of him. He stared at it, wincing as he thought of what might have happened if he hadn’t caught sight of it in time. Those quills looked awfully sharp. That would be all he needed to enrich the day, a bunch of porcupine quills imbedded in his legs.

He was going to say something to the porcupine like—“the right of way is yours, pal”—then changed his mind. The sound of his voice might alarm it.

After the porcupine had disappeared, he continued on, leaving the meadow and moving into the canyon.

He noticed that the ground on each side of his movement was rising, more and more precipitously as he walked. He thought of turning back and looking for another, more open route, but didn’t dare. He couldn’t afford to backtrack. He had to keep going forward.

Which made the moment all the more dismaying and disheartening to him as he moved into an open area of ground and discovered that he’d been advancing unwittingly along a dead-end pass.

Ahead of him lay a rocky wall, mostly bare with an occasional clump of manzanita or grass clumps growing out of its crevices.

He couldn’t go back. It would be far too time-consuming. He might well run directly into Doug if he was getting close.

He was trapped.

A cold wave of panic swept through him. My God, I’m going to die , he thought.

“Jesus Christ.” His voice was faint and trembling. Doug had won this awful game already.

He stood rooted to the spot, racked by convulsive shudders. He had never felt so helpless in his life. What now? his mind kept asking like a terror-stricken boy. What now? What now?

Then reason set in. Or what passed for reason, it occurred to him.

Was he just going to stand here and let death come visiting? Without resistance of any kind? What about Marian?

He drew in a deep, laboring breath.

“All right,” he said. “All right, goddamn it.”

He’d climb the fucking wall.

What?! his mind screamed. Climb it? Are you out of your goddamn mind?!

“Well, what would you like me to do, you idiot?” he growled at it. “Just stand here until transfixed by goddamn arrows, chopped to pieces by that goddamn golak?”

Okay, okay, his mind submitted. I guess it’s better to die trying than doing nothing.

For a few moments, he thought excitedly that if he could make it to the top and Doug showed up down here, he could roll a boulder from the top, hit Doug, maybe even start a landslide—a goddamn avalanche.

“Well, don’t go overboard,” he told himself. “Just get up the damn wall first.” He felt amused, almost exultant that he’d resolved to try to climb the wall. Doug wasn’t going to paralyze him with fear, goddamn it! He was going to make it up this goddamn wall. “Damn right,” he said. “ Damn right.”

Until he took a closer—more practical—look at the stone wall.

It was exactly that, a wall. Granted there were clefts in it, fissures, indentations, places he could place his feet, grab with his hands. But he had no experience at this kind of thing.

He had to be successful on his very first climb. There was no such thing as a second chance here.

“Shit,” he muttered. If he only had that long rope Doug had—the memory made him wince—tied him up with. That way, he could fasten one end to his pack, climb with only the other end of the rope to worry about, haul up the pack after he’d reached the top.

That was impossible though. Nor could he just leave the pack behind. He couldn’t survive without his food and water, sleeping bag and pad, medical supplies. They had to go with him.

First of all though, he had to examine the wall ahead of him to try to calculate a route to the top. He couldn’t just start up blindly, find himself stranded halfway up.

It wasn’t a smooth face, thank God. There were ridges and indentations, and he could see, on close examination, that it wasn’t totally vertical after all but rose more at an angle. A steep angle, yes, but not a vertical one. And halfway up was a ledge he could rest on. If you reach it, that is, the mocking voice addressed his mind. Oh, just shut up, he answered it.

There were also bushes growing out of the wall that looked secure enough to support his weight if he took hold of them. Nodding to himself, he ran his gaze over the irregularities in the wall, some of them long cracks he could slip his feet into. He visualized a basic route for himself. With luck, he could make it. Never mind luck, he told himself. He had to make it.