by Glenn Kleier
Tossing the receipt and treat to Tia, Ariel floored it, Buick limping away. She saw the truck’s hood ornament in the passenger-side mirror, a chrome bighorn sheep, head lowered in a charge.
“If they follow,” Tia croaked, “head for the police station.”
The station was close, and unlike state troopers, local cops were friendly.
Last Ariel could see as she left the lot, the truck hadn’t moved.
Tia peeked around to keep watch. “So far, so good.”
They neared the town square. A right turn to the police station, left to the farmhouse. Ariel’s mirrors showed all clear, and she began to breathe again.
“What do you think?” she asked.
“I just want to be home.”
That sounded so good. Ariel turned left, proceeding without incident to the next junction. One more left, and it was on to the farm down the winding, two-lane highway…
Tia groaned, and Ariel felt her stomach clench. A shiny orange vehicle rolled into her mirrors with a flash of snarling, silver grill.
“What now?” she cried. To double back meant confronting the monster truck head-on, but she knew no other route to the station.
Tia’s answer came out in a shiver. “Home. Maybe they didn’t recognize us.”
Ariel debated, then inhaling, she slammed the pedal and veered right, instead. The engine hadn’t torque enough to squeal the tires, but Tia made up for it, shrieking.
“You’re going the wrong way.”
“I’m not leading them to the house.”
Tia moaned, keeping vigil as Newton whimpered and the Buick’s valves clattered like a maraca. Then Ariel heard the bottom drop out of Tia’s voice.
“They’re coming.”
“Call 9-1-1!”
Tia emptied her purse in her lap, snatching her cell, dialing.
“Talawanda PD,” Ariel could hear above the whining pistons.
“Help,” Tia panted. “A truck’s chasing us.”
“Where are you?”
“State Route 21, ten miles south of Wayland, heading north.”
The road narrowed, winding between fields of withered cornstalks. Ariel had never been this way, the orange in her mirror growing, silver sneer glowering. It occurred to her why they called these trucks Rams.
The voice said, “Not our jurisdiction, I’ll patch you to state police.”
“No!” Tia begged. A pause, then, “Hello-hello? Christ. No bars!”
“Keep trying. Does Wayland have a police station?”
“No idea.”
At the rate the truck was closing, they’d never make it. Ariel fought her nerves as they hurtled along at twice the speed limit. And each time she hit the brakes to round a curve, losing sight of the truck, it would reappear a little larger in the dust she kicked up. Newton howled with fright. Or from Tia’s grip.
They barreled into another turn, and Ariel saw a yellow road sign dead ahead, black arrow pointing ninety degrees left, 15 MPH. Next to it, a raised billboard, Wayland Life & Casualty.
She approached too fast and swung wide, attempting to hedge the turn, stomping the brakes with both feet. Too late. Tia screamed, and they fishtailed, skidding, careening backward into the field in an explosion of dirt and corn shucks.
They ground to a halt in blinding dust, stunned but unhurt. Then came the roar of the truck, and a moment of eerie quiet followed by a wallop that rocked the earth. Ariel and Tia cowered, and as the cloud dissipated, they could see the billboard with a gaping hole in it, and behind that, a tunnel of sheared cornstalks. No sign of the truck, lost in the maize.
Newton whimpered, and Tia shushed him as they trembled and listened. Nothing but the tick-tick-tick of their car’s stalled engine. The driver of the truck had apparently missed the road sign in the dust of Ariel’s spinout, hitting the bank of the curve full speed, launching and soaring through the billboard headlong into the field.
Tia shook her head clear, sputtering, “What are we waiting for, go-go-go.”
“What if they’re hurt?”
“Hurt? I hope they’re dead.” Meeting Ariel’s eyes, she snorted, “I’ll call it in when I get a signal. Go—before they come to.”
Ariel cranked the engine, it coughed and wheezed back to life, she threw it into drive, and they rattled back onto the road.
“Still no answer,” Stan said, entering the tent with phone to ear, minutes till the first run. He’d been trying to reach the women, each time dumped into voicemail.
Max was bent over the table using the shepherd’s staff like a cue stick. He popped one of the test items, a prune, straightening to suggest, “Maybe the check didn’t clear.”
“Wouldn’t they have called us?”
“Coverage is spotty between here and town.”
Stan shook his head. “Something’s wrong. Come on, I’ll drive.”
Max pursed his lips. “We can’t go off and leave the vortex unguarded.”
It wasn’t often they got visitors. Passersby asking directions, neighbor kids selling raffle tickets, the occasional Mormon. Still, if someone wandered into the tent and found the vortex…
Max added, “I can handle this myself, and I’ll video everything.”
Stan paused. He respected Max. All the same. “Swear you won’t go sticking a camera in the hole.”
Max looked insulted, but Stan wouldn’t let him off. “Swear.”
“I swear.”
The dash clock read 10:00 as Ariel and Tia struggled homeward. They were missing the run, but the car shook so badly, Ariel was afraid to push it.
At last, they had cell service, and Tia reported, “Stan’s been calling.” She dialed him back. “Voicemail. I’ll try Max… Same. Damned Trapping Horizon.”
“Call in the accident,” Ariel reminded.
Tia did, giving the police the location but refusing to leave her name, hanging up when pressed. She kept trying the guys, and to Ariel’s relief, Tia finally cried, “Stan. Thank God! Yes-yes, we’re fine, I’ll explain later. How are you getting signal through the Horizon?”
Tia’s face darkened and she said, “You left him alone? Jesus! Go back, we’ll meet you there.” She hung up swearing. “The idiot’s in town looking for us. Max is by himself.”
Ariel had a bad feeling. Checking the clock, however, she calmed. “The run’s over, and the world’s still in one piece.”
“Yeah. But is Max?”
Chapter 44
Tuesday, October 9, 10:20 am, Talawanda
Ariel turned the creaking car into the drive, her pulse outpacing her clunker.
“At least the tent’s still standing,” she noted to Tia.
Pulling in until she could see inside it, Ariel was grateful to spy Max bent over the table puttering, seemingly fine, if oblivious to them. No sign of the vortex.
Stan’s truck barreled in behind them, and Tia got out with Newton, telling Ariel, “Park around back where the car can’t be seen.” And she headed for Stan.
When Ariel returned, Newton was on his chain at the doghouse. Tia and Stan were in the tent with Max, Tia flapping her arms like a bird defending its nest. Ariel could hear her shrill voice pipe across the lawn, unable to tell if Tia was railing at Max or recounting their narrow escape from the protesters. But as Ariel neared, she made out the words “red-bearded bastard.”
Max spotted Ariel and beckoned with a cigar, a ribbon of smoke zigzagging in the air. Ariel ducked inside the tent into his crushing embrace, and he rumbled in her ear, “Last time you go anywhere by yourselves. I hope you broke their goddamn necks.”
She felt safe in his arms, no longer able to hold back tears. When he released her, Stan grabbed on, and Ariel dried her eyes. Nothing in the tent appeared awry. Apparently, Max had followed through with the experiments, table bare of test items, nothing but the camera and a balled-up hankie. Yet, there was an odd flush to his cheeks. Maybe from Tia’s harrowing tale.
Tia asked him, with edge, “So, how’d the run go?”
He paused a beat too long. “Good. Great.”
Met with suspicious stares, he added, “I followed the plan, I tossed in all your samples.” He pointed to the camera. “See for yourself. Zero results. As I predicted.”
There was more, and they stood waiting. He exhaled. “I finished early, and rather than waste the rest of the run…” he directed their attention to the table again. “You’re not gonna believe what I found.”
Stan wailed like a wounded animal. “You gave me your word.”
“I said I wouldn’t stick a camera in the hole, and I didn’t.” Carefully he picked up the hankie.
Ariel saw his hand shaking. She’d never seen him like this.
He turned to them. “Allow me to present the evidence we’ve been searching for.” He opened the cloth like a magician unveiling a rabbit. “Proof of a traversable wormhole.”
In the handkerchief rested a small, ragged scrap of what looked to be green foliage, no bigger than a postage stamp. Ariel leaned in as Max manipulated it with a toothpick, one side waxy, the other matte. He gripped his cigar in the same hand as the toothpick, smoke trailing into Ariel’s face.
She pulled back. Like no cigar she’d ever smelled. And then she noticed, not a cigar, a smoldering stub of wood.
Tia squinted at the cloth. “That came from the hole?” Her tone sharpened. “How?”
“Like I said, I finished the tests no wiser, plenty time on the clock. So, I started tossing in anything expendable I could find. I got a little careless, and my fingers broke the plane.”
The others gasped, but Max held up a hand to show, “Not a blister. Didn’t feel a thing. A fortunate accident.” Not that Ariel believed it an accident. “At that point, I figured no harm in a little probing, and the shepherd’s staff was handy.”
Tia swore, and Max hastened to add, “I was cautious. A blind man with a cane. I used the butt end, and instantly I hit obstacles. Some flexible, some rigid. No idea what. And when I pulled the staff out, that green matter was snagged on a splinter.”
Ariel and Stan were upset, but Tia was fuming. As Stan examined the material in the handkerchief, however his frown dissolved. “If it’s cellulose,” he said, peering at it intently, “we should be able to identify its phylum—assuming it’s not alien to our world.”
Tia snarled at Max, “What about contamination?”
“It’s a clean handkerchief,” Max said.
“No, you idiot, that green stuff contaminating us.”
Everyone edged back from the hanky. Stan found some plastic baggies, Max deposited the foreign matter into one, hanky in another, and Stan sealed them.
“And the shepherd’s staff?” Tia demanded.
Max shifted his weight. “Already disposed of.”
Facing stares again, he explained, “After I found that specimen, I was hoping for a bigger sample, so I flipped the staff to the hook end. But it hung up in the hole, and trying to free it, uh, it brushed against the rim.”
He held up his “cigar”—the burnt brunt end of the staff.
Ariel felt her eyes bug. “That could’ve been your hand!”
“Better for us it were,” Tia said, incensed. “That stump he’s holding was inside the vortex. He’s contaminated himself, us, everything he’s touched.”
Recalling Max’s hug, Ariel cringed. He’d also exposed the other side to infection from them, his cowboy bluster elbowing aside his science sense.
All eyes were on the charred remnant in his hand.
Stan produced another baggy to ask, “What now?”
Chapter 45
Tuesday, October 9, 1:40 pm, Talawanda
After lunch, anger still smoldering, Ariel and Tia left the house for the tent. The men were already there, prepping for the next run, and what promised to be their most exciting experiment yet. If all went to plan, they’d soon know what lay on the other side of the vortex.
Max, by hook and crook, had proven that contact with the event horizon was harmless, and that there was, indeed, something of substance on the other side. No doubt the vortex was a window to somewhere, the evidence for a traversable wormhole, now overwhelming.
In advance of the run, the men had created a device to peer across the divide. An HD video camera mounted to one end of a sawed-off rake handle. While bulkier than a cell phone, the HD camera avoided the problem of recording blindly. By running a coaxial cable down the shaft and into a laptop on the table, the team could view what was happening live, on screen, using remote controls to adjust the picture and help avoid obstacles on the other side.
If, that is, the signal could bypass interference from the vortex.
Ariel crossed her fingers. Hopefully, they were about to verify something the world had never seen. Physical teleportation. The makings for a historic press conference to salvage their careers, rescue TPC, and halt the anti-science tide sweeping the country.
She entered the tent with Tia to see Stan at the table, glasses off, squinting into a microscope.
He looked up, beaming. “As we suspected, that green spec from inside the hole is cellulose. Plant material. Now to determine if it’s a flora known to science.” And he resumed his work.
Max sat opposite testing laptop controls for the polecam, and the women donned surgeon’s gloves, their job to disinfect the polecam with antiseptics and a sterilizing lamp. Though the contamination barrier had already been breached, they hoped not to make it worse.
They’d hardly begun when Ariel heard the crunching of gravel and Newton’s “intruder” bark. Out the tent window, a car was pulling into the drive.
State troopers.
“Shit,” Max spit.
Ariel tensed, and Tia asked, “Unpaid traffic tickets?”
None anyone was aware of.
The car parked behind Stan’s truck, and two block-shouldered officers in brown uniforms and flat-brimmed hats got out. One headed for the house, the other took down Stan’s license plate number, calling to his partner, “TPC parking permit,” and he continued to the backyard.
“They can’t come in here without a warrant,” Stan said. “Zip the tent till the run’s over.”
“That won’t keep them out of the Trapping Horizon,” Max said. “If they hear the noises, they’ll have probable cause to enter.”
The clock read 1:49, and Tia urged, “Get rid of them. Fast.”
Max rose, but she stepped in front of him. “No, I‘ll handle it.”
Good move, knowing Max’s history with state troopers.
Tia rushed out of the tent, and the others crept to the door to peek. One cop headed for the porch, and spotting Tia, changed direction. She broke into a trot and reached him before he crossed the horizon line, trying to usher him to the house. But he held his ground, eyeing the tent.
“Someone reported an accident this morning,” he told Tia. “State Route 21 south of Wayland. We traced the call to a cell phone here, registered to Tia Diego.”
“That would be me,” Tia said. “I called it in.”
“You witnessed the accident?”
“Yes.”
The second cop rounded the house to join them, reporting to his partner, “Car in back fits the description of the second vehicle. Cornstalks in the bumpers.” He referred to his cell phone, adding, “Ohio plates—owner is a ‘Ariel Silva.’”
Ariel swallowed.
“My, my roommate,” Tia said.
“Silva was driving?” the first cop asked. “You were with her? Anyone else?”
“Uh, yes. Uh, no. I mean, just us.”
“We want to speak to her, too,” the second cop said. “She here?”
Tia turned for the house, but the first cop grabbed her arm, and Ariel clenched to see his partner pat Tia down. Tia was furious.
“What’s this?” the partner asked, holding up a canister of mace.
“Protection from groping men,” Tia snarled.
The man pocketed the mace and took Tia’s arm again, turning her toward the tent to say, “You
girls wouldn’t be up to something funny out here, now would you?”
Ariel watched in horror as the cops undid the thumb snaps of their sidearms.
Max growled, “They think we’re cooking meth.”
He motioned Stan and Ariel to their chairs, and scrambled to join them, their backs to the door. Stan bent over his laptop, Ariel hoisted the polecam in quaking hands, and Max aimed a sterilizing lamp at it. The clock read 1:53.
Outside the tent, footsteps came to a stop, and Ariel heard the cop say, “Far enough.” Then louder, into the door. “You in there, freeze—hands on your heads.”
Ariel’s hands flew to her head, heart threatening to pound through her chest.
Max snapped, “Which is it? ‘Freeze,’ or ‘hands on our heads?’”
“Hands on your head, wise ass,” the cop barked, entering with Tia and his partner.
Max complied, but added, “If we were up to something illegal, you think we’d be dumb enough to do it in a tent in the front yard?”
The man thrust Tia into the empty chair and began patting down Max and Stan. The second cop sorted through the equipment on the floor, then came around the table to inspect the laptops, the first cop joining him. Ariel noticed little gold crosses on the lapels of their uniforms. They found nothing on the computers but images of plants, and moved on to the polecam.
Max snapped, “Don’t—it’s sterile.”
They hesitated, frowning at it. Then the second cop picked it up.
“What the hell’s this?” he asked.
“A glutes detector,” Max said. “Careful, you’ll set it off.”
The man handled it gingerly, returned it to the table, and told his partner, “I don’t know what they’re up to, but it ain’t drugs.”
“Drop your hands,” the cop told everyone. “Keep ‘em on the table where we can see.”
He backed toward the center of the tent—exactly where the vortex was about to materialize. His partner went to stand beside him, and they faced the team. The clock read 1:57. Ariel traded anxious glances with the others.
The first cop said, “No more bullshit. Tell us what you’re doing out here.”
Max replied earnestly, “Waiting for the Rapture.” He’d seen the crosses, too.