Immortal and the Madman (The Immortal Chronicles Book 3) by Gene Doucette Page A

was winter, and there was ale, and a fireplace, and it was probably in the Austro-Germanic region or thereabouts.  I’m pretty sure I was alone, but I’m not positive because around that period I traveled with a vampire named Eloise.  Her reliability when it came to drinking alcohol and frequenting inns wasn’t all that great, though, so she probably wasn’t there.
    Anyway, I was drinking—which is really one of the only two or three good reasons to be in a tavern—and in mid-conversation with someone when my heart rate sped up.  It was sudden enough that I wondered if I was having an actual heart attack.  I looked around the room expecting to find… something.  Anything.  A large cat, a python, a small army of Huns maybe.  But there were only humans in there with me, and none of them looked particularly antagonistic or tribal or mob-like.  And no Huns.
    But it kept happening.  I’d look around and calm down and get my bearings and remind myself I was among my own tribe in a safe enclosure and whatever instincts were telling me to defend myself were invalid, but I just couldn’t stay relaxed. 
    After probably an hour of this I realized what was causing it was a combination of sound and shadows.  A barmaid on the other side of the room had a high laugh, and there was a large man sitting near the fire casting a shadow on the wall to my right, and whenever the man moved and the maiden laughed in something like unison it brought me back to a time some fifty thousand years earlier, when there was a bird that made the same noise.  It flew in from the direction of the sun to attack, and when you saw its shadow and heard its cry you knew to throw yourself onto the ground immediately, as this was the only defense in a time before we had things like arrows.
    The bird no longer exists, so this isn’t any kind of useful survival mechanism, but I’m sort of stuck with it now. 
    That panic attack in the tavern was the first sign I was heading for trouble.  And it got worse.  A couple of nights later I saw a man I mistook for an old friend.  I greeted him as such, and spoke Etruscan to him for about ten minutes before I realized the person I thought I was talking to had been dead for a long time and this stranger was confused and a little terrified.
    That was when I decided to go away for a while.
    *   *   *
    Fleeing for the countryside is my favorite solution.  I mostly mean that literally, as in I would exit civilization and disappear into the nearest forest or mountainous region to hang out alone until I was pretty sure my head was okay enough not to endanger myself or other people.  This was obviously a better solution back when there were forests.  We don’t really have those any more. 
    I know you’re thinking we do, because you can see trees in satellite pictures and all, but you don’t really know what you’re talking about.  When I say forest I mean the point at which the portion of the natural world that is in abeyance due to civilized man stops.  The early American settlers called it Indian country and the Greeks called it the satyr woods, and while both are inaccurate—Indians had a civilization of their own, and so did satyrs after a fashion—it meant the same thing: wilderness.  If you knew how to hunt and forage and build a shelter you could walk into these woods and live off the land for as long as you wanted, as long as you didn’t mind being alone and not bathing very often.  (That’s all civilization—tribal, communal, national—really ever was: the opportunity to rely on someone else to keep you safe and find you food when you needed those things, in exchange for which you had to bathe more often.)  There may be one or two places like that on the planet still, but I’m not sure where, and I am sure I would need a plane or two to get to them.
    There is another version of the countryside , though, and it’s the kind that wealthy people talk about.
    This was always sort of