A BEGINNER'S GUIDE TO TIME TRAVEL
A NaNoWriMo challenge
Part 4
Chapter 15
We crossed the darkness. I don’t know how long it took because there was no way for us to keep track of the days. All I know is that it took another full sleep; I suppose that’d be another day, but I can’t be certain. All the same, I was grateful to have the tiny light Zard gave me. Jen would wind the crank and I’d climb over broken, decaying, pieces of rusted metal and broken plastic. I was pulling up on the bundled tusker hide below me before tying my rope to whatever jagged piece of metal there was.
“You should tie one end around you, in case you slip,” I said.
I helped pull her up as she climbed in total darkness, the light having lost itself to the shadows. She’d try to wind it as I pulled her up, and sometimes there was enough light so that she’d be able to avoid pieces of metal that threatened to slice an arm or a leg.
We hadn’t eaten anything for what felt like three days, but it was probably closer to four. True to my word though, I found the stream of air. It was high up and out of reach and I cursed whatever god there was for placing it out of reach. I wound the tiny crank on the light and shone it up, looking for a way up the wall.
“How come I can’t see anything?” she said.
“Because it’s dark outside.”
“How big is it?”
I was wondering that myself. I thought it had to be large enough for us to get out, but then, if it was large enough that we could squeeze through, predators would’ve been able to pass through, and we hadn’t come across any. That didn’t mean they weren’t there, it meant they were bigger than the hole.
“How do we get up there?” she asked when I didn’t answer.
“We climb,” I said. “Give me some light.”
She cranked the wheel as I measured out a length of rope. I tied one end around my waist and told her to hold the other end.
“Climb? Climb what?”
“The wall, what do you think?”
“Are you mad? Don’t answer that, I think you proved that a long time ago.”
“Can you think of another way?” I said.
I approached the wall and looked at it closely, telling her to shine the light on it. It felt damp, and I thought that might be a good sign. I pulled my dagger out and stuck it in the wall, picking at it. The cement easily crumbled under the dagger’s blade, and I stepped back to think about it for a moment.
“It doesn’t look very stable,” she said, shining the light on the ground and looking at the pieces of cement that fell, rolling to her feet.
“That might not be a bad thing,” I said, driving the dagger into the wall again. It went in deeper this time. It was more difficult pulling it out, but it gave me an idea all the same. I stepped back to think about it as the light died out and the only sound we heard was the sound of her cranking the tiny wheel again.
“There was one of those big things back there,” I said, turning to look at the twisted metal hulks.
“A truck,” she said, nodding.
“We need something long and sharp that I can use to dig into the wall. It’d be nice if I could find two of them, so I don’t have to use the dagger. It’s not too high, just too high for us to reach.”
“And then what?”
“If I drive them into the wall, I might be able to pull myself up high enough to squeeze through the opening. I can pull you up once I get outside. I’d like to get out before it gets light outside.”
“That sounds crazy enough to work,” she said.
She cranked the wheel for the light and I followed her into the darkness. She seemed to know exactly what she was looking for, and climbed up searching something that was long, flat, and twisted. There were small doors hanging on the bottoms of some, and she pulled on them, opening them and pulling out old, rotted lengths of flat rope that crumbled in her hands. Obviously not what she was looking for. In a moment, she came out with a long slender rod as long as my arm. It was tapered so that one end was smaller, and thinner, than the rest of it.
“All of these things have them.”
“What is it?”
“It’s a bar. I don’t know what they’re called, but they used these trailers to transport things—goods, food, meats, that sort of thing—but they had to tie them down so they wouldn’t fall off. They used these to crank them tight,” she said, holding the rod up. “They used straps to hold down whatever they were moving. They all have these. All we have to do is find another trailer, and you’ll have two of them.”
It took us longer than I would’ve liked, but we finally found a second one; we made our way back and I drove the first bar into the wall—driving it hard, the aching kind. I tried pulling myself up slowly, testing it. I drove the second one in a little higher where the cement was softer. It was like hard mud. The bar sunk to my wrist. I pulled up on the first one, pulling myself up again. All of my weight was on both bars.
I tried pulling the first one out, but struggled. It was my left side. I had to swing myself from side to side, like a weighted bar for cooking, but twisting and turning it as much as I could. It was a matter of timing, I realized when the bar came out. When the bar wouldn’t come out, I had to hold myself and work it out; when it wouldn’t go in deep enough, I had to pound at the hole until I felt it was deep enough. Sometimes it was two swings. Twice it was three.
It was painful, hard, work; my body screamed in protest every time I drove a bar into the wall. It was getting harder and harder; pulling them out was even worse. With sweat running into my eyes, stinging them, I shook my head and looked up.
I could see stars.
I pulled up on the upper bar and got myself chest high; then pulling myself up and standing on the bottom bar, stood up. I didn’t want to think about what I was doing. If we didn’t get through that hole on top of this rotting wall, we were going to die. It didn’t matter which time she meant: hers, mine, or ours.
I reached over, putting my left hand on the wall, slowly pulling the bar out.
In one swift motion I turned, driving the bar in as far as I could. I thought it was another spot of rotting cement. It proved that, and more.
The wall collapsed and I rode it out into the night.
Had it been daylight, I would’ve been blinded. My father told me stories of men trapped in caves for weeks at a time. The night was bright enough with a half moon in the sky. The stars were out, but barely. The dawn was fast approaching and all I could think of were the predators roaming the woods at the end of a four-day fast.
Like myself, I thought.
The first Rule of survival is kill or be killed.
That could mean anything from a low growl in the woods, to an attack by other Wilder bands as afraid of letting you out, as they were of letting you in.
The second Rule is find shelter.
The wall landed on what looked like an endless sea of twisting metal. With the moon as bright as it was, I could see that most of the cars on the bottom of the pile were grown over with twisting tendrils of moss and lichen. There were trees that had grown through a great many others.
“That’s where we’ll find shelter tonight.” I said, winding the rope up.
“Tonight? Don’t you mean now?”
“No. We have to let ourselves adjust to the light gradually. What better way than sunrise? We have to stay up until our eyes tell us it’s okay. As soon as we can see into one of those little cubbyholes, we’ll stop and make camp. I’ll go find us something to eat. You’ll come with me and get firewood. And what’s the one Rule that matters as far as getting firewood goes?”
“Don’t wander out of sight,” she said.
I tossed her an end of the rope.
“Tie this around yourself again. We don’t want to get mixed up in the dark and lose each other.”
“How far do you plan to go tonight? This light isn’t going to do us any good out here.”
“The moon’s bright enough. You just stay attached to me.”
“You can’t hunt with me tied to you.”
“I think you mean, you can’t,” I laughed. It felt good to laugh.
“There’s all sorts of little cubby holes in here. If they haven’t fallen in on themselves by now, they’re not about to fall on us tonight. We’ll want to find someplace where we can be close to the trees in the middle. And we need water. Don’t drink anything you find on the ground. We need running water coming out of the trees. And by that, I mean the trees over there,” I said, pointing across from us.
I wanted to get us far away from where we were. I needed to get my bearings. I’d never been this far South before, and didn’t know where to find game, or water. I was using the stars to guide me, but it was impossible for me to know where I was. I’d lost all the maps Jarel had copied, somewhere in the river. He’d copied them out like someone who valued treasure.
“We’ll have shelter as long as we follow the old trail, but I didn’t think it’ll last for much longer.”
“It goes up into the mountains,” she said. “It was the biggest mass exodus of Mankind when it happened. People were already driving South to get away from the volcano. A lot of people died because of ash. They were breathing it in. And the waves were coming, remember. A three hundred foot tidal wave was travelling faster than anyone could imagine. And two more after it. Smaller, maybe a hundred feet, but just as devastating. You see the best and worst of people at times like that.”
“You sound as if you were there,” I said.
“I was.”
I nodded, not knowing what to say.
The sky was getting lighter. I could still see a few stars, but they weren’t as bright as they were a moment ago. The land was full of birdsong. I could see old, abandoned bridges above me; most of them broken, leaving huge gaps in the dawn, yawning across the dried out gulleys we were following.
I paused to pull my longbow out of the tusker hide, and she watched me do it, not saying anything else. I also pulled out my sword, scabbard, and quiver. I rummaged through the bag to see if there was anything else I might need. There were still a couple of pieces of dried meat. I took a bite and gave the rest to her.
“Just when I think your normal,” I said, and we set off on our march.
I notched an arrow, picked up the bundle and swung it up onto my shoulder. I looked at her briefly and started walking. She picked up the rope and looped it as she slowly caught me up, walking a few paces behind me.
“You said you’ve never been this far South before, is it unusual for people to travel such great distances?”
“I’ve never met anyone who travelled this far South before. Not even Zard has been here.”
“How do you know that?”
“Don’t you think he would’ve told me?”
“Not if he was in the Slaver Army. Isn’t that what you said he did before he left them?”
“Why would that stop him from telling me?”
“Maybe he was embarrassed?”
“By what?”
“He was a Slaver,” she said, as if that was enough. “Maybe he didn’t want you to know what they were really like. Obviously, you’ve never come across them before. He did everything he could to keep you away from them.”
“Why do you think that?”
“You lived in the foothills of the Vandals, you said.”
“So.”
“So? The Slavers never went there, did they? I mean, they didn’t,” she added.
“Until they did?” I said, and she nodded.
“What do you think that means?” she asked.
“What makes you think it means anything?”
“They came up here to get more slaves. Why?”
“Isn’t that what you do when you have a large army? You conquer the surrounding tribes.”
“And you think it’s as simple as that?” she said.
“You don’t?”
“Usually, when an army moves to expand, it’s because of one person—a king, a chief, a president—it doesn’t matter what title he uses. It’s the army he controls; with an army under someone’s control, people obey. It’s always been that way.”
“I wouldn’t know anything about that.”
“No, I suppose you wouldn’t, never having been this far South before.”
“Never having lived like that before,” I said.
“Were you really that free? Was there no Overlord you and Zard answered to?”
“It was called the Wastelands for a reason,” I pointed out.
“How did you treat travellers?”
“Depends.”
“On what? Let’s say if I was to go in there stumbling blind, unarmed, starving, lost. Would you help me?”
I shook my head.
“You have nothing to offer. You have no food, so I will have to give you mine. You have no weapons, so I will have to protect you. You are lost, so I will have to lead you out. Better just to drop you with an arrow than have to deal with all of that.”
“Even if I was no threat?”
‘That just means you’re weak. This world has no need for weakness. Can you hunt? Can you dress a rabbit? Tan a hide? Build a fire? Make a shelter? You have nothing to offer. You’d be better off dead. Do you think the Slavers are any different? That they’re better? Or worse? They kill the weak and the infirm; they enslave the strong because at least they have something to offer.”
“What?”
“Those who are strong enough to survive the ordeal of capture will be sold in the cities they control. They’ll work the mines and fields, fish the seas, tend to their masters as domestics, or educators, or entertain them with their arena games.”
“For someone who doesn’t know the Slavers, you know a lot about them,” she said.
“Zard,” I said, as if that should explain it.
The sun came up from behind the hills. The light had been so gradual we hadn’t even noticed. Our shadows stretched out far behind us, and I shielded my eyes as I looked at the twisted trail of broken life. It stretched as far as the horizon.
I could see the sun playing along a ribbon of water in the distance.
“That’s where we want to go,” I said.
“Why?”
“That’s water. If there’s water, there’ll be food.”
“What about the Slaver army? We haven’t seen any sign of them.”
“They’re still there.”
“You say that without even seeing them?”
“You only have to look at the sky to know they’re still there. Scavengers always follow an army,” I said, looking up at the sky.
