A BEGINNER'S GUIDE TO TIME TRAVEL
CHAPTER 15 (part 2)
The sun cleared the horizon, but by that time our eyes had adjusted to the growing light. There was a mist in the distance, covering the ground and weaving through the broken dreams of all those untold multitudes lost in the past. It was the steam of the morning’s dew rising from the metal and plastic of all the rusting cars and trucks, Jen said. The mist caught the branches of the trees, hanging there as the sun broke through the trees, casting long shadows in the fog like some old viddy picture of years ago.
I kept walking, scanning the distant woods to our right. I was looking for open land, with maybe a small copse of trees raising like an island in that sea of green fields. I was looking for a place the birds would go to roost. I could see the small stream I’d noticed earlier, winking in the rising sun, and told myself to steer clear of any marshy grounds. The idea was to be the hunter, not the hunted.
At last I was satisfied with what I saw, and turned to look at the trees growing up through the dead husks of the cars. I wanted cover, but I also needed something that would allow us to spread the tusker hide out and tie it into place. I found the place I wanted, and even had an old truck wheel we could use as a fire pit. There were several larger vehicles pushed up against each other, and we were able to clear an area large enough for both of us to stretch out.
There was a small case somewhere in a corner I’d kicked loose while crawling through on my hands and knees. I picked it up and dragged it out into the light with me.
“What is it?” she asked.
“I don’t know. A box of some sort,” I said, pulling my dagger out of my scabbard and pressing it against a moss covered seam. It opened easily.
“Far-seers,” I said, picking them up and taking the lens caps off. I looked at the trees across from us, adjusting them until I was able to see.
“You’ve used them before?”
“Zard had them a long time ago,” I said, looking up at the sky.
“What else is in there?”
I put the far-seers down and rummaged through the box. There was a book in the bottom, and I pulled it out. I expected it to dissolve in my hands, but it didn’t. I flipped through the pages.
“Maps,” I said.
“Let me see that,” she said, and I gave it to her. Jarel had been the one to read maps; looking at them did little to open the world up to me.
I sorted through the box, picking up a Finder. I looked at it, holding it in my hands.
“A compass,” she said, nodding.
“Is that what you call it?”
“What do you call it?
“Zard called it a Seeker. At least it still works.”
“You know how to use it?”
“He taught me, yes.”
She closed the book and looked at the pile of twisting metal around us, nodding to herself. She crawled into another pile of broken cars and came out a moment later, dragging an axe, hatchet and large hammer.
“Do all of these things have hidden treasures?”
“Most of them have been picked clean. I suppose the people that survived came back and took what they needed over the years. But they would’ve only taken what the needed from the outside cars. They wouldn’t be able to crawl inside and search things out properly until everything rusted.”
“How long would that take?”
“Not long enough for them to have forgotten,” she said, looking down the endless line of cars.
“Then something happened. There’s no one here. This would’ve been the best place for them to stay. They had shelter here. Where would they go?”
“Your guess is as good as mine,” she said.
“How many years ago did all this happen?”
“Why? What are you thinking?”
“Can you read those maps?”
“Yes. But I can’t read them if I don’t know where we are to begin with.”
“What do you need to tell you where you are?”
“A sign.”
“What sort of a sign? The birds aren’t good enough?”
“Not that kind of a sign,” she said with a smile. “They used to have signs on the side of roads telling you how far it is to this, or that, town. I just need to know the name of a town, and I’ll be able to tell you where we are.”
“I’ve seen lots of those,” I said.
“So have I,” she said. “But what does it matter?”
“I think I know where the survivors went.”
“Where?”
“We’ll know as soon as we find a sign and you tell us where we are.”
“You mean they went to the nearest city?”
“Can you think of a better place to go?”
“But what about the Slavers?”
“They are the Slavers,” I said.
It was dark.
Not as dark as it was back in the tunnel, but dark just the same; and it was muggy. I realized it was the tarp I was under, the one Whit used for cover. It was thick, and as much as it might stop an animal’s teeth from puncturing your body, I was thinking more along the pounds per square inch bite. As much as the tarp would prevent an animal from ripping my loins out, it wouldn’t stop it from breaking every bone in my body with every bite it made.
I could feel her beside me. It was so strange thinking that this was in reality, my sister-in-law in a past life—from which I’ve somehow escaped, only to find myself in this one. A future present. Is that such a thing? I’d been considering it for some time. As much as I was stuck in this man’s mind, I was unable to bring myself from leaving it.
But he lied, I told myself.
It was something I wanted to shout about the moment he took it. Why didn’t he tell her? What’s he hiding?
I stirred and rolled over; her body was tight up against me. A part of me wanted to reach my hand out and grab her tit, and the part that told me it wasn’t the smart thing to do, didn’t speak up. At all. I took that as a sign and reached my arm over and around her, pulling her closer.
It reminded me so much of holding Mandy. I could feel her stirring up against me and I buried my nose into the crook of her shoulder. She shuddered the same way Mandy used to and I found myself kissing her neck. I slid my hand into the open coat, up her smooth ribs. She reached behind her head to hang on to me, her breath coming out as a pant. I squeezed her tit, pinching the nipple—
And she pushed me away, squirming out of my arms and wrapping the coat around herself like it was her own personal cocoon. I never wanted her as much as I wanted her right now, and so I lay down and looked up at a ceiling that was full of tiny holes. I could see the half moon, but it was like looking at it through a cheese grater.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I woke up thinking of Mandy. It was her I was thinking about, not you. Think about it, just last week you were my sister-in-law.”
“Not only am I not her, but you’re not you,” she said, and I found myself nodding my head in the dark.
I’m Whit, I told myself.
Whit, the man who loves his wife to such extremes, he’d cross a continent to find her. And Whit, the man who didn’t tell her about the gun he found in the bottom of the case.
