A BEGINNER' GUIDE TO TIME TRAVEL
A NaNoWriMon Challenge Chapter 19
19
I could feel the wind and grit hitting me, surrounding me and stinging my skin before we finally managed to pull the cover off. My muscles were screaming in protest with the effort. When it finally broke free, Jen scrambled in without hesitating. I followed her, pulling the tusker bundle down and plugging the hole behind me. We were standing on narrow, metal, steps—like the rungs of a ladder—and I could hear the wind whistling above us. I grabbed the two loops of rope I’d made for the bundle, pulling down with all my weight. I wasn’t trying to pull the bundle through the opening, but to pull it down enough so that it’d block the sand from filtering through the hole and filling the opening we were standing in. The tunnel beyond had caved in on itself.
The wind was whistling around the tusker bundle. It didn’t take long before the small leaks and crevices filled up with sand, but I was able to hold my hand against them until the sand stopped flowing. I hoped it didn’t mean that we were being buried under the sand. But I’d rather that, than having the hole we were standing in fill up with sand.
Under normal circumstance, I would’ve been counting my heartbeats. That’s the easiest way to track time, for lack of a better phrase. I suppose her asking me about time, and how we count the seasons, or measure the days, had got me thinking about it. Whatever it was about her, it didn’t matter. I could hear the wind whistling above us. I could feel it pushing against the pack.
In time, it died down and I was able to push the tusker bundle up and out of the hole. The sand seeped in and sifted down around us. I pushed up, and with the bundle above me I was able to use it to clear the way. I climbed out and reached down for her hand, pulling her up and onto the lip of sand surrounding the hole. I looked up at the sky. It was clear, and I could see stars poking out of a darkening night sky.
“Is it done, or is this just a break?” she asked.
“What do you mean, a break?”
“They never used to have these kind of storms in the past.”
“What did they have?”
“Wind—big, twisting cylinders that ripped up everything in their path. And rain, lots of rain. Flash floods from overflowing rivers, and storm surges along the coast. Lots of damage. If this was anything like those were, then the Slaver Army we’re following will have taken a big hit. A lot of them will have died. Those carts will have been scattered.”
“We’ll have to move through the night. We’ll stay on the trail and try to avoid the trees.”
“I don’t think going either way will be easy,” she said.
“We’ll follow the stars,” I said, looking up at the clear sky.
“Whatever you think is best. I don’t think I’m in any position to argue,” she smiled.
It wasn’t easy making our way along the trail. There was a lot of debris scattered along the path, and we were careful as we climbed over it. The shadows created pockets and pools of inky darkness. Some of the debris consisted of old, rusted hulks—old cars and metal roofs—that had been picked up and scattered across the countryside, piling up in large heaps of twisted metal, the flashy chrome pieces winking at us under the light of a glowing full moon. The higher the moon climbed, the more light it gave, and it was easier to which way we had to go.
We came across the first victims of the Slaver Army sometime later. It was one of the carts they used for transporting their prisoners. It wasn’t a cart, Jen explained it to me, but an old fashioned trailer they used to transport dry good across the country. They were long, almost forty or fifty paces in length, with sturdy, metal walls.
The whole thing had been turned over and looked like it may have tumbled across the landscape for quite a distance. There were huge holes and divots in the ground where it had hit. It would’ve been at the end of the long line of transports, I told myself. One of the long metal walls had been ripped open and torn away, the inside exposed; the huge metal rims and wooden fittings inside them used as wheels, had been all but destroyed when the storm hit.
“That wasn’t just sand,” she said, looking at the damage.
“The wind comes across the land and picks up whatever’s laying loose on the ground. Rocks, pebbles, dirt, sand, rusty shards it peels off the dead automobiles. All of it. If you get caught outside, you’re as good as dead. The winds will peel the flesh right off your bones. You’re okay for the first little bit, but once the main force hits you—well, aside from lifting you right off your feet—it’ll tear you to pieces.”
“Do you think anyone inside would’ve survived?” she asked.
I shook my head. “I doubt it. You don’t want to look around. If anyone’s alive, they’ll call out if they can hear us.”
“And if they can’t?”
“They’ll probably wish they were dead. I told you, the force of it will peel the skin right off you.”
I looked at the empty trail ahead of us. There were pieces of machinery buried in the sand and grit. Some of the trucks were buried up to their doors, those people trapped inside stained against the walls by the force of the wind and debris as it smashed through the windows.
“How could anyone survive something like this?” she said, looking at the desolation.
“Someone always survives,” I said. And then I thought about the predators that’d soon be making their way out of whatever hiding places they’d found. It was the wild dogs that worried me the most. They roamed about in packs that sometimes darkened the hills in numbers too many to count.
The stench of death would bring them soon enough.
“We have to keep moving,” I said.
“We have to search for survivors,” she said.
“There are none.”
“How can you say that? We haven’t even looked.”
“And what are you thinking you’ll do if there are any? We can’t take them with us. Or did you think we’d sit with them and nurse them back to health? This place’ll be alive with all sorts of scavengers looking for survivors. Believe me, if anyone’s survived, you’re not going to find them. They’ll know to get away from here as fast as they can. Don’t you think the Slavers’ll be coming back to round them up, as well? Or did you forget about them?”
“How do you expect to find one person in all of this?”
“Two,” I said. “She’s with her father.”
“You mean Bobby’s father?”
“Hers! It’s her father! I don’t care about this person you say lives inside my head. I care as much for him, as I do for the person you say is in Jaleen’s head. I’m not looking for them. I’m looking for her. And I’m looking for her, for my own reasons.”
“You have more than one?”
“What?” The question caught me off guard.
“You say you’re looking for her for your own reasons. Plural. Most people say something like that, it’s singular. Or are you just going through the motions and pretending?”
“Why would you question me about something like that? Have you never been with someone and wanted nothing else, other than to be with that person?”
“No. I haven’t,” she said.
There was a tone of finality in her voice.
*
I could see a small cloud of dust and a blaze of lights coming toward us in the distance. She saw the lights at the same time, and turned to look at me. I nodded and slowly dropped the tusker bundle.
“What are you doing?” she said.
“We can’t outrun them. They don’t know we’re here, so they won’t expect to find us here. I don’t plan to let them,” I added.
I picked up a long piece of sheet metal I could use as a scoop, and quickly used it to bury the hide as much as I could.
“Get under it,” I said, watching the lights as they bounced across the plain. They were still quite a distance away.
“What are you going to do? Aren’t you going to hide, too?” she asked.
“I will, but I don’t want them to find you either, so I’ll hide somewhere else. This way, they won’t see the hide at all. If I climb under it now, the sand will shift and they might see the hide.”
“And what if they find you?”
“They won’t,” I said. “I promise.”
I dragged a large piece of sheeting from one of the carts and dropped it on top of the hide, burying it and shovelling the sand around it so that it looked natural. I tossed the sheet metal to the side, picked up my longbow, quiver and sword, and climbed up onto one of the giant trucks, crawling through the front window and inside the cab. I looked at the broken body inside. The flesh had been ripped away by the force of the storm, the face nothing now but an ugly mask of exposed bone. I crawled past it as low as I could, pushing the corpse’s feet out of the way to make room for myself.
It didn’t take long before I heard the machine; it spewed a cloud of black smoke out of the two pipes rising up above it. There was a tiny window near the bottom of the door of the truck I was in, and I pressed my face up against it, watching as they approached. There were four men inside the machine, and they stepped out, each of them with rags wrapped around their faces to protect themselves from the dust.
I slowly drew my sword from its scabbard, pushing the dead man’s feet aside so I’d have room to lunge if I had to. I watched the small mound where the tusker hide was hidden. I was wondering why they’d come out this far. I didn’t think they were here looking for survivors, the chances of that were slight. I told myself they had to have come out for a different reason, before realizing they were coming toward the truck I was in.
I looked at the body in the truck. It was obvious the driver of the truck had to be one of the Slavers, and I wondered what he could have had that the others wanted. I looked around the inside of the cab, and then saw it. There was a tiny green light flashing near the big wheel inside. I could see numbers on it. I didn’t know what it was, but something told me that’s what they were looking for. One of the men reached into the machine they’d been driving and suddenly I could hear a loud screech of noise. I jumped at the suddenness of the noise, and then looked out of the tiny window again.
One of the men was coming toward the truck. If he kept walking in the same direction, he’d trip over the tusker hide. It was too late for me to do anything. I straightened myself out as much as I could, reaching for my longbow.
Another one of the men followed, carrying a tool of some sort, while the third man did whatever it was he’d done before and the noise screeched out again. The first man pointed at the truck.
He took three more steps and tripped over Jen. I could hear her scream out. All of the men ran to where they’d hear the noise, and I quickly rose up out of my tight hiding place, pulling the longbow up with me and notching an arrow. I pulled three more out of my quiver and drove them into the soft seat under me.
The first man found the edge of the tusker hide and began pulling at it. The other three men were laughing, probably excited at the idea of having a little sport to help kill the monotony of their boring day. The second man helped to pull the hide back, and they all stood silent, looking down at Jen curled up and trying to crawl away.
The first man reached down, grabbing a fistful of her short hair and pulling her to her feet. The second man grabbed her by the arm and dragged her forward, throwing her to the ground as the third man kneeled down, ripping the fur jacket off of her, and tossing it to the side.
I stood up slowly, pulling the longbow back as far as I could before releasing the arrow. It struck the first man in the throat because he bent down just as I let the arrow fly. It passed through him and lodged into the second man, through his ribs, under his left arm. He screamed as the other man gurgled on the blood foaming out of the hole where his throat once was. Before the third man could react, my second arrow passed through his torso, lodging into the vehicle behind him. The fourth man was ten paces away by the time my third arrow caught him in the square of his back, and he fell to the ground writhing.
I climbed down from the truck and began gathering my arrows, while Jen, on the ground, sobbing and splattered with blood, looked up at me. She had her arms wrapped around herself. I picked up the jacket, tossing it to her.
“Do you know what that thing is?” I asked, turning my head and looking at the machine as she hastily pulled the jacket on. “You might be able to change your wardrobe,” I went on. “There’s sure to be something they left behind.”
“I doubt I’d want to wear anything of theirs,” she said, getting to her feet. She was wiping her tears, smearing the blood that was on her face.
“How about food? You’re not going to say you won’t eat any food they might have in there, are you?”
“What kind of food?”
“Probably in cans, if we’re lucky,” I said, putting the arrows back in my quiver after wiping them clean. I began walking to the machine.
“What is this thing?” I asked.
She walked around it, looking at it carefully.
“It used to be a car.”
“A car? You mean like those things in the tunnel, and on the trail? It doesn’t look anything like those.”
“That’s because they’ve added to it. I don’t know what they use for fuel. And they obviously don’t have rubber for tires, so they made treads on them.”
“Treads?”
“Tracks,” she said. “You can’t steer it like you can, say, that big rig there,” she said, pointing to the truck I was hiding in. “That has a steering wheel. This is different,” she added, looking inside. “See? It has two levers. You move them back and forth to go forward, or to back up. You push one and pull the other, and it goes left, or right. It’s really quite simple.”
“And you know how to do that?”
“Back in the other life I used to live,” she said. “We lived on what they called a farm. It had a machine like this, only it was smaller. It worked the same way. I used to drive it all the time.”
“They were looking for something.”
“Survivors,” she said.
“No. Something else.”
There was a loud voice calling out, and I jumped back at the suddenness of it. She laughed. I looked inside and saw the same green light that was on a small box inside the truck cab.
“What is it?”
“It’s a way they can talk to each other over long distances.”
“So where’s it coming from?”
She pointed South. "That’s where they were coming from,” she said. “I say we get in this thing and drive over there if you want to know.”
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