A BEGINNER'S GUIDE TO TIME TRAVEL
Chapter 18 of my NaNoWriMo challenge
There’s that smell again, I thought.
“You hit it,” she said, and I nodded. But so did she. It looked shredded; I picked it up and carried it back to where the ligera was laying. I wiped blood on the drone and then dropped it, placing one of the ligera’s large paws on top of it. I made certain that it looked natural.
I took a step back, looking at it where it lay. It wasn’t the most convincing death scene I’d come across in the wild, but it might be enough to confuse any of the other drones coming to investigate. I picked up my longbow.
“Let’s go,” I said, picking up the arrow I used and slipping it into my quiver. We made our way back to the tusker bundle and I picked it up, throwing it over my shoulders and slipping my arms through the loops I’d made. With any luck, we could be well underway before another drone showed up to investigate.
“Spread out and drop the rope down. It’ll pull the grass up a bit and we might be able to buy us some more time. Those things aren’t made to track, so they won’t see what you or I would.”
“And what’s that?”
“That the grass has been disturbed.”
“How much time do you think we’ll have before another one shows up?”
“Hopefully, we’ll be long gone by then. All we can do is try to make it to the tree line. It shouldn’t take us that long.”
“And then what?”
“Find cover and hide for the night.”
We walked through the tall grass, dragging the rope behind us and almost lifting the long, thin, blades back into place. It looked obvious to me that someone had passed through, but the drones weren’t made to reason things out like a Huntsman would, so I didn’t think too much about it. All we could do was hope for the best.
The trees loomed large in the distance, swaying in a gentle breeze. I wondered how long they’d been growing. They didn’t look old and haggard like the trees I climbed in the foothills of the Vandals. Their trunks were tall and slender, the nearest branches high and out of reach. The trees were close together, and as a result the forest was lost in shadows. I wanted to be certain we were far enough under cover before we stopped for the night.
I told her to pick up whatever firewood she could find along the way. I was hoping we might find a natural lean-to we could use to make a proper camp. That way, when I tied the tusker hide into place, the drones would be unable to see us, or detect us.
The sun was low and the shadows long by the time we finally had a small camp made. I started a fire, found a large hare and soon had it roasting on a branch I hoped wouldn’t burn through. It was the first taste of good food we’d both had in days it seemed.
* —RICKY
“I wish I could, but I don’t know what he’s going to do from one moment to the next,” I said. “It’s not like I’m a mind reader.”
“But you’re in his head,” she said.
And to be sure, I am, but that doesn’t mean I can tell him what to do, or think, just as much as he can’t tell me what to do, or think. I can see what he’s doing when he does it. For instance, I watched him taking aim and releasing the arrow at the drone. But it was done as more of a reflex than a conscious reaction. He always has an arrow ready and notched when he walks. He’s never caught unawares. He can smell the scent of animals on the wind. The acrid stench of hide—like a wet dog coming into the room and shaking itself.
“I can’t tell him what to do,” I said again.
“I just want to know what he’s thinking,” she replied.
“Why?”
“What if he doesn’t do what he’s supposed to?” she asked, and I laughed.
“And what exactly is he supposed to do? He wants to rescue his wife—and I suppose her father, who’s really my father, which is an idea I don’t think I’ll ever get used to—but he has his own idea of what needs to be done. And to be honest, I can’t say that he’s wrong.”
“How can you say that?”
“Why? What are you really trying to tell me?”
“We have to get you free of his mind.”
“And to do that we need his wife,” I pointed out. “Remember? Or did you forget that part?”
“I don’t know how to do it,” she said after a moment.
“You don’t know how to do what? Separate us?”
She nodded.
“Because you don’t have the bracelet?” I said.
“Yes. Because I don’t have the bracelet,” she said. I don’t know if she was trying to be ironic, or if it was even supposed to come out that way, but it did.
“What about Jimmy?” I asked.
“I don’t know where he is, and I have no idea how I’m supposed to contact him—or if I even can.”
“And so you want me to figure it out?”
“No. I don’t want you to figure it out,” she said. She sounded angry, or maybe it was frustration? I don’t know. But she didn’t sound happy. I guess everything was wearing her down. She wasn’t sleeping very much because she was talking to me every night. But she insisted sometimes; I didn’t wake her up this time.
I did when I thought I should tell her about the gun, but that was different. If he accidentally shot himself in the head, I felt pretty sure it’d kill me as well. That would certainly throw a monkey wrench into the plan—not that we had one.
“Look,” I said, and she turned to me, a silent tear running down her cheek. I put my hand up and wiped it away with a finger. “Don’t do that, okay? You’re going to have to trust that he knows what he’s doing.”
“Do you?”
“I don’t have a choice,” I laughed. “I’m just along for the ride.”
“Along for the ride,” she scoffed.
“What were we supposed to do when those guys showed up?” I was angry. “Maybe we should’ve let those guys kill us, like they did Bobby and the boys?” I said. “She was a cop, remember? She’s trained for that sort of thing.”
I didn’t want to remember what happened, because it still hurt to think about Bobby and the boys. And it hurt even more when I realized that I hadn’t had the time to properly grieve for them. Things being what they were and happening so fast, I could barely remember one day from the next. I could still see the boys laying on their gurneys, their faces drawn and pale. It looked like all the life had been sucked out of them.
I told myself not to think about it, and then I got mad at myself for pushing it to the back burner again. When was I suppose to grieve for them, if not now?
“Okay, look,” I said again, not really knowing what I was supposed to say. “I don’t know what’s going on any more than you do. You need Whit more than he needs you. I’m sure you’ve already figured that out and didn’t need me telling you, but there it is.”
“What’s your point?”
“My point? I don’t have one a point, except to say that I can’t help you. I don’t know what he’s thinking. I’m not tapped into his conscience—not that way. But you better hope he doesn’t give up on you because he’ll leave you behind. I have no doubt about that.”
“What about the drones?”
“The drones? Am I supposed to know about drones that have appeared in this present, which is two hundred years into the future of my last present? Which I suppose would be 1986’ish?” I shrugged. “What do you want to know?”
She was silent, until she wasn’t.
“I want to know what to do.”
“You have to trust him,” I said. “This is what he does. He’s a huntsman. He lives in a wilderness known for predators. He hunts for food. He’s a man of this time.”
* —WHIT
I woke up early and reached into the embers, looking at the charred bones on the rocks. I bit in to whatever bone had length and promise. Discarding the little ones. Whatever meat was on the bone was a dry strip I peeled like a ribbon; but the marrow was relatively fresh.
I cracked a bone and looked at Jen sleeping; the jacket open as she slept.
I wiped my hands on my shirt and reached over to pull the jacket tight, when she opened her eyes.
She slapped my hands as she scrambled to sit up.
I smiled.
“What’s the matter with you?"
“With me? I was just going to pull the jacket closed, for modesty,” I added.
“And I’m supposed to believe that?”
“Why would I lie?”
“I’m a woman.”
“And that means what to me?” I said, trying to understand her.
“Obviously nothing, to you,” she said.
“Exactly. I have a woman in my life. That’s why I’m here,” I said. “Or don’t you remember? You’re here for your own reasons. Don’t try to get me mixed up in your time travelling scheme so you can say later that you were following some fucked up idea of which timeline is which. I don’t care. Maybe you are time travellers. I mean, how else can I explain the guy you say is my brother, is really my brother.”
“I don’t know how to explain that.”
“We’ll think about it after we break camp.” I said.
I was watching the sun. The moment it crested the hill I centred in on a branch above me, and looking down at my feet I put a rock on the spot. Close enough, as Zard would say.
“What’s that for?”
“We have however long it takes for the shadow to hit the rock. We’re going to the Dark Side,” I laughed.
“The what?”
“I’m sorry?” I said.
“You said the Dark Side. What do you know about the Dark Side?”
“It’s just something Zard used to say. But then, he used to say a lot of things,” I laughed. “Anyway, we have that much time,” I said, pointing at the rock.
“To do what? We don’t have anything. The tent’s gone. Half of what you had, is gone. All we have are your weapons, and whatever else you found. The rope’s still good. You’ve managed to keep it relatively long. I like that you’ve got everything all tied up into a tight bundle, but I hope you don’t expect me to do that. My knots wouldn’t hold.”
“Then let’s go,” I said.
I tied the rope around her waist, a short length, and made certain the rope was tight around my waist as well. We headed into the forest, the excess rope looped in my hand as she followed behind. The trail was an old game trail that wasn’t being used much anymore. I didn’t like the idea of that. A game trail is seldom abandoned. My guess is that whatever water there was around us, had dried up.
We were about to go under a natural cavity of trees. Maple, elm, beech, birch; their branches swaying and twisting inside each other with a palette of colours. They did the same thing up on the Vandals. But we followed the path until it naturally widened out—only it didn’t seem natural to me. There was a pasture and I stopped, putting the pack down and looking for the far-seer.
The pasture swept downward and I could see the Slaver Army ahead. I was able to make out some of the vehicles. They had automobiles and heavily armoured vehicles. They were far more advanced than I’d imagined. I thought the drones were the peak of their technical prowess; it seems they were just the tip.
We could follow the tree-line down the hill, I told her, and we’d have a steady supply of cover in case the drones came back, and then there was the possibility of game. She asked me what I was planning to do once we caught up to the Slavers and I said I didn’t know yet. We still didn’t know where they were going.
I scanned the horizon again. It was dark, almost foreboding, and I tried focusing on it. I thought for a moment that it was moving, and I dropped the far-seer down to look at it with my own eyes, following the width of the plain. It looked to be a cloud rising up from the horizon to the sky.
“No, no, no, no, no,” I said, shaking my head.
It was a cloud of dust and it was coming across the trail.
“That’s a sandstorm,” I said. “If that hits us, we’re going to be in a lot of trouble. We definitely can’t stay in the trees—not if that wind rips through here. It’s going to cause a lot of damage,” I said, throwing the far-seers back into the tusker bundle and picking it up after tying it closed.
“How far off is it?”
“A few thunderclaps away,” I said, shouldering the bundle.
“What does that mean?”
I looked at her, looked at the horizon, and then the Slaver Army. I wondered if they’d noticed it yet.
“When there’s a thunderstorm, you count between the thunder and the lightning—no wait! If you see a flash, then you count. If you can’t count to thirty, you’d better find shelter.”
“You don’t sound too sure about it,” she pointed out.
“I don’t think it matters at this point, do you?” I said.
I started down the hill at a steady, loping trot, looking over my shoulder every once in a while to make sure that she was keeping up, and then turned my attention to the trail ahead of us. The fact that it had widened told me that it was probably an old road. I didn’t know if it was the type of road that ran through the empty countryside, or one of those roads that bisected the ancient cities. I’d come across both types in my wanderings. If it was a road that ran through the empty countryside, there’d be little hope of finding any protection. If it was the kind that bisected a city, or a town, there’d be gulleys and openings we could use for shelter.
I looked over my shoulder again to see how she was doing.
“I’m not about to lose you now,” she said.
There was a depression in the land once we reached the bottom of the hill and I followed it. I heard a metallic echo and stopped, putting my hands up to stop her from running into me. I looked at the horizon, and then turned to look at her. She was bent over, trying to catch her breath.
“Did you hear that?” I asked.
“Hear what?”
“Four paces behind us. There was a noise. Something not right,” I said.
“What was it?”
“Something metal,” I said.
“Metal?”
I pulled my sword out and started poking the tip into the ground, following my footsteps as much as I could, when I heard it again.
“There. Did you hear that?”
She nodded.
I cut into the soil a hands-width down, pulling the top layer off, and then stabbed my sword into it again. I cut down again, and she fell to her knees and started scooping the dirt out as I sliced at the soft ground.
“I found it!” she said.
“What is it?” I asked, looking up at the horizon again.
The cloud was massive now, the whole width and breadth of it blotting out the sun. I looked at the Slaver Army ahead of us. They’d finally recognized the danger. Some of the vehicles were leaving, scrambling across the countryside in a mad attempt to escape the coming onslaught.
I looked down at the metal lid.
“What is it?”
“It’s exactly what we need. We have to lift it and get inside.”
“Inside of what?”
“It’s part of an old sewer system. It’s a tunnel,” she said, when she realized I didn’t understand what she was talking about.
“Can we get inside?”
“If we can get the cover off,” she said.
“How do we do that?”
“We have to lift it.”
“And you think that’s going to work?”
“Do you have a better idea?”
I looked up at the oncoming storm and shook my head.