Succinct (Extinct Book 5)

by Ike Hamill

  When the girl up the road, Dorothy, had wandered off, Jim and Janelle had been eager to put Clint to work. They borrowed one of Dorothy’s hats and waved it in front of Clint’s nose, trying to give him the scent. Clint had been utterly befuddled. Both of his targets were standing right in front of him, begging him to get going. He looked at Jim, barked, and then barked at Janelle. They both were already located so he had no idea what to do.

  Clint had been trained perfectly to find Jim or Janelle, but had no idea how to use his nose for anything else.

  “That would be perfect right now,” Ashley said. “Do you know how to find Tim?”

  Penny tilted her head, like she was listening.

  “Tim? Can you smell Tim?”

  The dog didn’t do anything besides stare at her.

  “It doesn’t matter, I guess. He would be at the river anyway, unless he had to climb uphill in order to get around those rocks. There was a spot near the falls where the rocks were right down to the water.”

  Ashley put her hands on her hips and considered her options. Lisa would see her eventually, if she went back down to the river’s edge. There was no use doing that until she had food and firewood though. Regardless of what happened, she would need those. Her eyes darted around the likely spots, landing on a patch of mushrooms and then on the oval leaves of a walnut tree. Compared to the jungle, this forest was well stocked. Ashley made a sack out of her shirt and began collecting.

  By the time she was ready to descend again, Penny had become engrossed with something up the hill.

  “Penny!”

  The dog didn’t want to break away from whatever she was focused on.

  “Penny!”

  Ashley gathered her spoils to her chest and started after the dog. As soon as she drew within a few paces, Penny finally obeyed. The two of them found their way back down to the river, and then over to the rock where she had left the triangle of sticks. There was still no sign of Lisa across the way. If worst came to worst, Ashley would have a fire going when the light started to fade. Lisa would be sure to see that.

  Ashley started to clear a spot to work.

  The dog ate what Ashley ate. They had roasted nuts and mushrooms. Penny even ate some of the greens that Ashley had collected. The dog preferred the fern fronds to the fireweed. The mussels that Ashley had pried from the rock were by far the best thing on the menu, even though Ashley had to push them around in the fire until they were pretty much burned.

  Still, she caught no sight of Lisa across the way.

  “I don’t understand,” Ashley said. Penny was sitting next to her on the rock. They both looked at the far bank of the river in the dwindling light. The sun was passing behind the hills for an early sunset even though the sky was still bright.

  Then, when she had nearly given up, Ashley saw a spark of orange across the way. Lisa was there, in the shadows, waving a burning stick over her head.

  “She must have seen our fire,” Ashley said.

  She cupped her hands around her mouth. “Lisa!”

  Waiting for a moment, she heard a distant noise that could have been a shout. The wind shifted and she heard it more clearly the second time.

  “Ash-leeee!” Lisa yelled. She said it in the singsong way like when Ashley had been a kid and Lisa had called her in for dinner. “Ash-leeeee.”

  “We’re stuck!” Ashley yelled. “Bring the raft across.”

  She couldn’t hear the response.

  “Lisa!”

  It was hopeless. The banks of the river were closer together a little upstream, but there the sound of the tumbling water would make conversation impossible. Lisa had never bothered to learn Morse code, so she couldn’t use the fire to signal to her.

  While Ashley pondered the problem, Lisa figured out a way to communicate. Lisa got the end of her stick burning bright and the slowly lowered it behind a little hill while she pointed west. Ashley thought she understood. Lisa was using the stick to symbolize sunset. When she raised the burning stick again, Lisa pointed east and then she pointed to the raft. By the time that Lisa made a paddling motion with her arms, Ashley was sure she understood. Lisa was going to try to paddle over at sunrise. It made sense. Navigating in the dark would be foolish.

  “Okay!” Ashley yelled. She nodded dramatically while she shouted, even though they were too far away for it to make any difference. Lisa’s eyes weren’t all that great.

  Lisa was yelling something else, but Ashley couldn’t understand. After shouting back and forth unsuccessfully for a minute, they both gave up.

  “Oh!” Ashley said, looking at the dog. “I wonder if she’s looking for you? Can you speak Penny? Speak! Speak!”

  Eventually, Penny barked. Ashley hoped that Lisa had heard. Lisa disappeared deeper up the riverbank. Ashley climbed higher on the rocks until she could see Lisa’s campfire. Ashley hunted around for more wood before she curled up in the light of the fire and drifted off to sleep. Penny found a spot along Ashley’s back and the two of them kept each other warm as they slept.

  When the sun first peeked over the tree line, Ashley had already been awake for hours, hunting around in the woods for a source of clean water while the sky brightened overhead. It was hard to sleep while she waited for Lisa’s crossing. The fire on the other side of the river wasn’t even going again until the sun was up. Then, she realized that she was going to have to wait for Lisa to pack everything up and lash it to the raft again.

  Ashley stared across the river, brushing her teeth with a chewed twig as she watched the tiny shape in the distance moving around. It was incredibly frustrating to watch Lisa without being able to help out, or at least talk to her about it. Lisa wasn’t that good at navigating the raft. Tim and Ashley had mostly done it. The only good thing was that the river was wide here and looked fairly shallow. After the falls, everything had seemed to calm down on the water. If Penny had been able to swim across, there was no reason that Lisa couldn’t make it.

  “I hope,” Ashley told the dog.

  When Lisa finally poled away from the shore, out into the water, Ashley stood up to watch her. The mist that had settled into the valley overnight was burning off and they could see Lisa better every moment. Ashley’s heart thudded in her chest. She wanted to swim out to Lisa.

  Penny barked.

  “She’ll be here soon. Don’t worry,” Ashley whispered.

  Lisa was trying to push herself upstream to counter the current as she navigated across the river.

  “Don’t fight it!” Ashley yelled.

  When Lisa put her pole down again, on the downstream side of the raft, the pole stuck and Lisa couldn’t pull it free before the raft hit it. Ashley shook her head and bit her lip. The raft started to spin.

  “Don’t fight the current!” Ashley yelled.

  This time, Lisa heard her and it was a disaster. Lisa looked up and yelled something that sounded like, “What?”

  When Lisa divided her attention, the pole jerked, nearly pulling her off her feet. For a moment, it looked like Lisa was going to lose the pole and be sent adrift, spinning downstream.

  Ashley’s hands went to her face. She wanted to cover her eyes so she didn’t have to watch, but she couldn’t look away. Penny barked again.

  “It will be okay,” Ashley said. “It will be okay.”

  Lisa managed to get the pole free and she scurried to the other side of the raft. Ashley started to pace down stream, knowing that the current was going to begin to really pull Lisa now that she was moving toward the center of the river.

  Ashley ran into the dog and looked down at her to apologize. Penny wasn’t looking out at the river—she was looking up the hill and her nose was twitching and sniffing.

  “What is it?” Ashley asked. “You smell Tim?”

  As if she had been waiting for this cue, Penny tore off into the grass and sprinted up the hill.

  “Penny!” Ashley screamed. She took three long strides after the dog before she remembered Lisa. Turning back toward the r
iver, she saw that the raft was picking up speed.

  “Shit!” Ashley said, whipping back and forth. “Shit.”

  “Penny!” she screamed again. Her voice echoed in the valley.

  Chapter 56: Tim

  “Hello!” Tim yelled. He heard a bang from the attic. He could picture the owner of the cabin up there, angry that someone had gone through his stores.

  “More likely another wanderer, like me,” Tim mumbled to himself as he limped forward. “Or an animal.”

  The food and supplies had been up there for a long time, undisturbed. What were the odds that someone had returned just after Tim had arrived? Tim had no idea what to think, and there was one good way to find out the truth.

  Before he climbed, Tim straightened the ladder. With his hand on one of the rungs, about to put his bad foot up, Tim stumbled backwards at a loud sound from above. He was still scrambling back when the bow of the canoe pushed through the opening and the vessel began to tilt upwards. The person above seemed to have little regard for the canoe as they shoved it through the doorway and let it bang down the rungs.

  “What the hell?” Tim whispered. Spinning toward the lake, he saw the drag marks that the canoe had left on the trip out there. With a blink, they were gone. The path was unmarred. Then, Tim could see both things—the grass was both standing up and flattened down. Whipping back toward the cabin, the canoe was both on the ground and not there. The ladder was equally askew and straight.

  That was it. The last of Tim’s balance was sucked into the vacuum of this incongruity. He felt himself go weightless and realized, too late to do anything about it, that he was falling backwards. He barely got his arm out before he hit the ground.

  Tim’s eyelids fluttered, letting in the light of the bright blue sky above. Pushing up to his elbows, he saw his walking stick on one side of him and the bundle of filleted fish on the other. The ladder was leaning up against the cabin. The door up there was open.

  With one hand he groped up to the back of his head. A knot had risen there and he had sticky blood matting his hair. When Tim shook his head, it felt like there was something loose in his skull, rattling around.

  “That had to have been a hallucination,” he said to himself. The fish was still cool from the lake. At least he hadn’t been out long. He stared at the cabin for a full minute, letting his eyes finally work themselves out. They crossed and uncrossed several times, bringing the world from a blur to focus. Head trauma was frightening. Nobody seemed to know what to do about it. Even back up in Donnelly, Dr. Matthew had little advice for people who were concussed. It wasn’t something he had trained for. Out here, alone in the middle of nowhere, Tim could do nothing but hope that his brain would recover on its own.

  Tim rolled over and pushed up to his knees, pausing until he trusted that he wasn’t going to fall over. Using the stick, he got to his feet and bent for the fish. That was a mistake. Bile rose in his throat and he barely choked back the nausea. To pass the time until he felt stable, Tim focused on his breathing. When he took them flying, some people experienced motion sickness. Tim always said the same thing, “In through the nose, out through the mouth. Let your eyes settle on the horizon.”

  It was good advice, but hard to implement.

  After some time, Tim found himself standing upright, fish in one hand and stick in the other. He limped toward the cabin, eyes locked on the peak of the wall, looking for movement through the open door. The memory of being up in the attic kept coming back to him. There was something troubling about the sequence of events. He could picture clearly when he had moved the ladder through the opening and down to the ground below. The ladder had tipped, nearly toppling over before he grabbed it. Then, he had left it askew, figuring that he would straighten it later when he was in a better position.

  When had he straightened the ladder? It had definitely been straightened before he had slid the canoe out.

  “It doesn’t matter,” he whispered as he climbed the stairs one at a time. He had fish to smoke and then he could put his foot up and unwrap it before the ankle started to throb.

  Tim woke up with a headache. He touched his fingers to the back of his head as he sat up. The swelling had gone down and the wound was nicely scabbed. After a long pull from the water jug, he felt the headache begin to recede a little. It was going to be manageable if he stayed out of the bright sunlight.

  The sun was already streaming through the window. He had slept late.

  Using his walking stick, Tim made it to the porch to survey the clearing. The ladder was on the ground next to the side of the house. The evening before, tired and limping, he had closed the door to the attic and taken the ladder down. He didn’t want anymore surprises from above.

  “Eat. Turn my cane into a crutch, then see what I can do,” he said to himself. There didn’t seem to be any urgency to his list. If he had lost the others, then they were lost. Rushing down to the river’s edge on a bad ankle wasn’t going to bring them back. If he hadn’t lost them, then the odds were better if he let them find him. At least that’s what he told himself as he gathered food for breakfast.

  Once he carved into it, he found that the interior of the cheese was actually still edible. He also ate dandelion greens and smoked fish. Fresh energy washed through him after the meal. His headache receded to the far corners of his brain. He was halfway to the lake, making good time with his cane, before he realized that he had no idea why he was going that direction.

  “More fish, I guess,” he mumbled. The canoe and poles were still down at the lake where he had left them. In no time at all, Tim was out on the water, paddling gently over to the shade.

  “Tomorrow, I should get out here right at dawn. That’s when they’ll be at the surface.”

  It didn’t seem to matter. He used his cork bobber, let the line sink near the bottom, and managed to get a strike pretty quickly. Tim reeled in the fish, pulled the hook, and almost let the thing go.

  “What am I doing?” he asked himself while he put the fish on his string. Nothing about the day seemed right. The lake was beautiful, the shade and the light breeze were both lovely, and the fish were striking. Still, there was something terribly wrong and he couldn’t put his finger on it.

  He cast his line again. Something tugged at the hook, but he didn’t manage to set it.

  “What am I doing?” he whispered. Even the question felt wrong.

  It took him a couple of hours to reel in some decent fish—enough to clean and take back to the cabin. Pressure bubbled up from his guts as he worked his way down the path. Until he saw the ladder leaning up against the side of the cabin, he couldn’t put his finger on it. This was all wrong. He wasn’t supposed to be hanging around, passing the time. He was supposed to be trying to get back down to the river so he could look for signs of Penny, Lisa, and Ashley. Yet here he was, and there was someone up in the attic of the cabin again. He saw the flash of a pant leg as the intruder scooted back away from the open door.

  Tim dropped his cane and the fish so he could go straighten the ladder. A moment later, the falling canoe chased him back and he was falling once more. Just before the world faded and his eyes shut, Tim wondered what would be worse—the first concussion or the second.

  Tim blinked and looked at the wheel of cheese. It was almost finished. He had dug through it and consumed everything that was still edible. The crusty rind wasn’t even worth chewing on. He was down to the last of his smoked fish as well.

  He closed his eyes and took a deep breath.

  When he looked again, the cheese wheel was whole again. The fish was barely touched. If he crossed his eyes, he could almost see both possibilities at the same time.

  “That’s it. I have to go.”

  The things that he had planned to take with him were still scattered around the cabin. He had intended to make a bindle of the best tools and supplies and hang it off the end of the fishing pole so he could carry everything on his shoulder. He had intended to make a crutch out of the wa
lking stick.

  His swollen ankle throbbed against the tight wrap he had made to brace it.

  Grabbing for his walking stick, he squinted his eyes and saw it both ways—it was a simple stick and it was also a makeshift crutch. Maybe he had done everything he had intended to do.

  There was no way to be sure.

  “Is this the churn?” Tim asked himself. It didn’t feel the same, but there was no denying that it was somewhat familiar. He was seeing two different versions of reality at the same time. It had been decades since the incident with The Origin, so his memories were a little foggy.

  Tim made up his mind. Maybe it was the churn, maybe it was a concussion, or maybe it was something completely new. Regardless, he wasn’t going to live with the uncertainty any longer. He was slipping into a weird routine where he was ignoring his real priorities and just surviving from day to day. That was no way to live—not when there were other people in the world who might be looking for him, or who might need his help.

  Tim gathered everything as fast as he could. He threw the supplies and possessions out onto the porch and ignored his eyes when they told him that he hadn’t moved anything at all.

  He stood out there until he could see everything he had thrown—the food, the piece of cloth, the crutch, and the fishing pole. He sat down on the stair and tied everything up in the cloth and then fixed that to the pole. Before he put it on his shoulder and took the crutch under his armpit, he did one more thing—he lit one of the strange matches that he had found up in the attic. The little wood stick was capped with a strange blob of gold powder. They would strike anywhere. This one, he snapped under his thumbnail and then tossed at the pile of kindling he had gathered in the doorway.