Exile to the Stars (The Alarai Chronicles) by Dale B. Mattheis Page A

going to change the fact that I’m lost, but good. Until I can figure
out what the score is or hike out, I’m going to have to conserve everything
that can’t be replaced from what is at hand. I can only use the Colt for
self-defense unless there is no alternative. A cluster of neurons in the memory
cortex fired off.
    “Wait
a minute!”
    Diving
into the backpack, Jeff pulled out two boxes of ammunition. “I don’t remember
packing these and should not have brought them. More importantly, why didn’t I
notice them days ago?”
    He
opened one of the boxes to make sure it wasn’t a dream. Holding a silver
cartridge up to the sunlight, he gazed at an enigma.
    “Was
I really that far gone?” Jeff pursed his lips and nodded. “Yep, I was. No other
explanation.” He tossed the cartridge in the air and grinned. “Let’s hear it
for confusion. Loaded for bear, not to mention cheeky deer!”
    Having
arrived at a livable compromise, Jeff’s train of thought continued beyond the
deer to include the paw prints. The animal that made them continued to be a
mystery. Bear, mountain lion—there was no way of knowing. At least he had seen
the deer and knew what to expect.
    Stowing
the cartridge boxes, he chuckled. “Shoot, maybe it’s no more than a large
coyote on the prowl. I’m probably spooked for nothing.”
    The
instant an image of a coyote formed in his mind, Jeff was hit by such a blast
of outrage that it was physically painful. He had been about to take a seat but
sprang upright in alarm.
      “Now where did that come from? It couldn’t
have come from me, could it? Shit, it feels like something is screwing with my
head! Am I losing my mind?” Growling, “I have to get out of this damn
wilderness before I go entirely over the edge,” he hurried to the task of
breaking camp.
    Since
the valley still offered the easiest path, Jeff continued to use it as a
highway. While a part of his mind stubbornly refused to accept that he was no
longer on Earth, he examined his surroundings with new eyes. At the same time,
his thoughts kept drifting back to Seattle. Memories of familiar haunts came to
mind. Mom and Dad, Carl, the fencing club—they all flowed through his thoughts
leaving a deep sadness that threatened to drag him down. He was not going to
run across a highway, catch a ride, and soon be back in Seattle.
    Days
passed and acceptance made headway as Jeff cataloged more discrepancies. One
day he stopped to run his hand over the bark of a giant evergreen.
    “Sure
looks like a Douglas fir,” he mused, “but the bark’s way too smooth.”
    With
the drop in elevation, clumps of aspens had made an appearance. A close
examination revealed that the leaves were far too broad to be aspen. The rabbit
he scared up looked for all the world like a snowshoe hare, its mottled white
and brown spring fur clearly evident as it bounded away. Then he thought about the
deer teeth.
    Jeff
decided to stop for the night when he ran across a meadow carpeted with lush
grass and bisected by a wide creek. He pitched tent inside a copse of the
aspen-like trees and scouted the area for wood he could fashion a bow out of.
Two boxes of ammo or not, something told him it was going to be a long hike.
    “Well,”
he eventually said, looking down at the gnarled contraption in his hand, “I
don’t know how long this thing will last, but it will have to do until I have
time to cut and cure a better piece of wood.”
    Arrows,
likewise, were makeshift. He would have to learn how to knapp arrowheads from
flint or obsidian. Laying the arrows aside near dusk, Jeff decided he could
afford to shoot another deer. He sneaked down near the creek and lay quietly
until a large buck came to drink. Watching the deer graze, Jeff felt immense
relief. At least they aren’t pure carnivores, he thought. Or at least this one
isn’t.
    One
shot did the trick. The pull back to camp was hard going, and he decided to
dress out the deer after only a few steps. Just as he