A BEGINNER'S GUIDE TO TIME TRAVEL
chapter 17
The next morning I went out early to gather fire wood. I didn’t have far to go, but I made certain that I could see the small camp at all times. I didn’t want to take a chance that some predator had picked up our scent. I brought the longbow and my sword with me—one learns not to go unarmed in the Wastelands—but I brought the two water bladders as well, making certain to fill them. I tied them to my belt where they sloshed against my thigh.
When I got back to the campsite, I noticed there were still embers glowing in the fire pit I’d made last night. I took the belt and scabbard off, making sure to lay them down on top of the gun I’d found, then bent down and blew on the embers gently, teasing them awake. It took a while, but eventually there was a small tendril of smoke, and I dropped dried leaves on tops, blowing harder.
A flame leapt out.
I cut up two small willow sprigs with my dagger, and softened them in a small puddle of water I poured out. When the sprigs were soft enough, I used one to scrape the morning off my teeth. I dropped kindling on the fire and sat back enjoying its warmth for a moment. I cut and hacked at the dead branches I brought back, smashing them with the heavy hammer, until Jen finally crawled out from under the tusker hide.
“Did I wake you?” I grinned.
“I was getting up anyway,” she smiled. She looked down and saw that her jacket was partially open, and pulled it tight around herself. “I really have to think about getting myself a new wardrobe,” she said.
“And what’s that?” I asked. “A wardrobe?
“Clothes.”
“We’ll come across something.”
I was wondering when I should tell her about the gun. All I knew about guns was what Zard told me, and that was precious little. But she’d claimed she lived in the past, as well as the future, and if anyone would have an idea about how a gun worked, it would be her.
What’s the point in having something you know is deadly, but don’t know how to use? And what if someone finds it? Or steals it?
Sooner or later, that’s gonna come back and bite me hard.
“I found something yesterday.”
“Oh?”
She was smiling.
I didn’t know if she was being sincere. I felt like she was teasing me, and I was at a loss for words. What is it about women that can make a man feel he’s being toyed with?
“I wanted you to look at it and tell me if it still works.”
“The gun?” she said.
“How? How do you know about the gun?”
“You—I mean, Ricky—told me about it last night. Woke me up out of a dead sleep to tell me about it as a matter of fact.”
“I told you?”
“Not you. Ricky,” she pointed out.
“But how did he know? I thought you said he was dormant when I was awake? Or something like that. He’s a part of me, you said, but he can’t tell me what to do, or control me. And yet…he betrays me?”
“I think he thought it was a danger.”
“To who? You?”
“Probably to you,” she said, and I thought that made sense. “I think he was afraid you’d shoot yourself. I don’t know, but I’m pretty sure that’d be the end of it for both of you if that happened. He said you don’t know how to use it well enough.”
I wanted to believe her; but I wanted to believe that about him even more.
I reached under my scabbard, pulling the gun out. It got tangled up in my belt and took a second effort on my part to finally free it up. It was big, dark, and heavy. There wasn’t any rust on it, but I still couldn’t make it fire for some reason.
She pushed something, or pulled something—I don’t know—and a long thing fell out of the handle. She pulled back on something on the top of it, and the top half of the thing pulled back; something jumped out of it and I caught it in mid-air.
“What’s this?” I asked, holding the thing up.
“That, my friend, is a bullet.”
“Obviously, you know how to use this thing?” I said, tossing it to her.
“Bobby showed me. But I think Ricky was right telling me about it,” she said.
“Oh? Why?”
“The only thing that saved you from killing yourself, was the fact that the safety was on.”
“Why” What’s that supposed to do?”
“It’s supposed prevent you from shooting the gun and killing yourself,” she said as she let the slider go, and aimed it, pulling the trigger. There was a loud click. “Apparently, it did what it’s supposed to do.”
“It works?” I said.
“Oh yeah, it works,” she said. “And I’ll bet it sounds like thunder, too. You shoot this thing off, and you’ll have the whole Slaver army coming down on you in a heart beat.”
“Why do you think that?”
“Because a lot of what you said yesterday made sense. The Slavers probably are the descendants of the people trying to get away from the volcanoes and the earthquakes. I’ll bet they drove as far away from there as fast as they could. Some made it to the safety of the cities, and some didn’t. There had to be millions of them, all the same. There couldn’t possibly have been enough food to feed them all. And then there was that mini Ice Age that followed—”
“What’s that?”
“That’s when the temperatures drop, and keep dropping. The snow and ice probably stayed for years in some places. The crops would’ve failed and people would’ve died. Some of them probably resorted to cannibalism—eating their dead—just to survive. Those numbers—those millions—they would’ve dropped off quickly after that happened. I’ll bet you the millions would’ve dwindled down to thousands by the time the snow finally melted. You can bet they would’ve left the cold behind the first chance they got. And when they finally marched out, what do you think they were looking for?”
“More survivors?”
“Shelter.”
“And where do you think they were gonna they find that?”
“In the old cities, naturally. There’s got to be one around here somewhere—otherwise, where were they going? Not that they knew what the city had to offer, but they knew where it was. It would’ve been woven into their mythology, like El Dorado, or Atlantis—”
“Where’s that?”
“Doesn’t matter,” she said. “I’ll bet there were those among them that knew they could fix it. And they did, didn’t they? Those were strong ones, because they survived. I’ll bet you some of them even hard arms—guns—like this thing,” she said, holding the gun up. She was pushing the bullets out of what she said was the clip, and pushing them back into place one at a time.
“And the others? Those who were weak? They became the rabble. Those are the ones that made up the Slavers Army. But the others? The ones who thrived in the city? The ones who fixed it, got it all back up and running? Those are the ones who ended up being in control. They know that to keep the hungry rabble satisfied, they had to give them something. So they give them the Games. It’s an old game in its own way, really. You give the people entertainment, and food, and they’ll give you loyalty.”
“We have to break camp,” I said.
She dug around the campsite like she was looking for buried treasure. She pulled up clumps of sod, and moss covered branches, finding old bits of rotted clothing crawling with worms; books and magazines that were impossible to open, or separate. There were plastic containers she opened and just as quickly discarded. And then she found a box of bullets in a sealed container buried under a clump of moss and roots. There were ten other boxes of bullets that were still sealed. The boxes that were broken were useless, she said, but that didn’t stop her from collecting old bullets and putting them into one of the plastic containers she’d found.
“Didn’t you just say they were useless?” I said.
“The powder’s probably still be good.”
“What powder?”
“The gun powder? The stuff that makes it go boom,” she smiled.
Boom.
Is that the noise they make? I’d never heard a gun being shot before. Zard told me it was like putting your head inside a metal drum and hitting the outside of it with a stick as hard as you could.
Only louder.
Much louder.
I told myself if I could learn how to use the gun, I’d never go hungry again. I could take down bigger prey, and defend myself against predators—the two-legged kind as well as the four-legged kind. I’d be someone to be reckoned with. But was that a future I wanted for myself?
I was still sitting in front of the fire, enjoying the heat while she cleaned her teeth and saw to her own needs. I told her not to go out of sight—under any circumstances—not after what happened with those underground dwellers. I couldn’t protect her if I didn’t know where she was. She agreed, but said she needed water to wash herself. I pointed to the two bladders sitting near the fire.
“They should be warm enough by now. There should be enough in the two of them to wash yourself. It’ll be better than using the water in the stream. I doubt if you’re used to it being so cold. Oh, and mind the poultice.”
“The poultice? That fell off a long time ago, back in the tunnel,” she said with a laugh.
“Good!” I said quickly. “That’s what it was supposed to do,” I added. “It must’ve it worked.”
She walked to a small bush a dozen paces away and I watched her, nodding. She took off the furs and splashed the water over her body as best she could, crouching out of sight for the sake of her own modesty. I didn’t think to look. I had other things on my mind.
I was thinking how having a gun, and using it, were two different things for me to consider. If I had control of a gun, would that make me a stronger man, or a man to be feared? Would I be more of a threat? And if I was a threat, who was I a threat to? I could hear her saying it already. The ones who control the cities, of course.
And was that because there had to be more than just one city? It’s possible there may have been only the one Slavers Army, but I was almost certain there was more than one city. I wasn’t about to set off in search of them. That was just asking for trouble. But it wouldn’t be such a bad idea to know where they were so I could avoid them.
That was also the moment I decided having the gun would be the worst thing I could do for myself. Having the gun would put me above others, sure, but at the same time, it would make me a target. Zard certainly wouldn’t have approved. Putting yourself above others doesn’t make you their better, he’d say, it just makes them bitter.
“I want you to keep the gun,” I said, pushing myself to my feet.
“Why?”
“I have my reasons.”
“I don’t want it.”
“Fair enough,” I said.
“Then why did you keep it? Why did you hang on to it? I mean, you went out of your way to hide it from me.”
“I did,” I said, crawling into the little enclosure and untying the ropes holding the tusker hide down.
“So? Why?”
I sat on the ground and looked at her for a moment, trying to think of what I could say that would help convince her to keep the gun. She knew how to take care of it; she also knew how it worked. I knew nothing about it. Her holding the gun was her having the power though, and was I willing to give all of that away? But who was I to think that I had any power to begin with?
“That gun could be the answer to a lot of things in a place like this,” I said. “We could kill bigger prey. The meat we get from it could be dried out and cured. We wouldn’t starve when the cold and snows come. But I don’t know how to use it. You do. I can find animals for us to eat, but I can only bring down smaller animals with my bow. With you along, I’m pretty sure we could take down a bison.”
“I could show you how to shoot,” she said.
“No. For me to have a gun would only lead to trouble. Someone would always be trying to take it away from me. I’d be no better than those people living in the cities and controlling the Slavers.”
“And what makes you think they wouldn’t try to take it away from me?”
“Nothing. But I’d rather you kept it than me.”
“That makes no sense at all.”
“It’s too much of a temptation. Zard used to say something to me. He said his father used to say it to him. I guess it was something that was just handed down over the years. ‘In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.’ It’s the same thing. If I’m the only man with a gun, who’s going to stand up against me? No one, until he does. And then what? Then I have to fight for the right to keep the gun. No one’s going to challenge you, because they won’t be looking at you as a threat. It will have a certain mystique about it, because only you know how to use it.”
“I still don’t like it.”
“Do you want to leave it here then? We don’t have to take it with us.”
She was silent for a moment. She bent over, picking the gun up from where she’d left it in pieces earlier. She put it back together, pulling the slider back on the top and looking at me as she tucked it into her pants.
“I’ll keep it with me.”