“It’s a shoulder wound?” the military doctor asked as he knelt before Kimberley. “You’ll survive…looks like a flesh one. We just need to find the bullet right away, clean the wound and stitch it up…” He opened his medical box and brought out a bottle of spirit and some tools. “Hold steady – this will hurt,” and he tore open her uniform at the shoulder…
Moments later, the bullet had been pulled out and the wound cleaned and stitched up. ‘Good,” the doctor began. “You need to rest down at the…”
“No…,” Kimberley cut in, glancing at Rachel before continuing. “We don’t have much time…we’ve got to go.”
“Go where?” the medic asked her.
“Em…never mind, but I don’t think I’m still top priority. You must have others far worse than me, don’t you?” The doctor was confused, but nodded in agreement. “Now, go…my friends can help me down the ladder when I’m ready.” Mike was staring at Kimberley and she didn’t like that. “What?” she asked him.
“You even sacrifice yourself for others,” he whispered. “How did you know we got just one medic? That others need him now that you’re stitched up?”
“Well…he’s the only one I’ve seen,” she replied. “So I figured…you know…and like you said, I’m already stitched up.” Was he thinking of personally recommending the Purple Heart?
“Good job, sergeant,” the outpost’s fortyish-looking commander began as he trudged up to where Kimberley lay. “When they told me you were in town, I knew something big was up. Whose kids? His?”
“Em…yes, sir,” Kimberley replied. Strangely, she knew what the man was talking about. “I couldn’t get him to come with me, but he wants his kids to be safe.”
“And where is he right now?”
“Probably dead, sir. Our enemies think he’s a traitor.”
“Oh well, poor kids,” the commander bemoaned, arms akimbo. “Get them down to the mess hall for some chow and…come to my bunker after you’ve rested yourself, sergeant. You need to hook on to Intelligence ASAP.”
“No,” Rachel refused, frowning.
“What?” The commander was visibly astonished.
Kimberley glared at the little girl. Her stare meant ‘shut up,’ but Rachel had other ideas.
“They’re coming, miss. I can feel it,” she said.
“Will you stop calling me ‘miss’? My name is…”
“What does she mean, sergeant?” the outpost commander demanded. “Who’s coming?” Many officers had turned towards the group. The little girl was good at drawing attention.
“She’s still scared, that’s all, sir,” Kimberley lied, frowning compassionately at her feminine headache. “Console your sister, Rahim,” she told Aiden. At first, he thought he didn’t hear her correctly, then he felt a funny familiarity with the name she’d just given him and quickly moved over to Rachel, who wouldn’t let him touch her.
“Oh well, it’s a war, kid,” the commander explained to the little girl and turned away. “Carry on, people.” He was off to something better than a whining child, and his men followed his lead. The little girl was just excited and anxious like everyone else.
“I need water,” Kimberley croaked and Mike stood up.
“Stay with her, boy,” he ordered Aiden and headed for the ladder. “We’ll move you as soon as I come back.”
“When’re you going to listen to her, Kim?” Aiden whispered as soon as the marine had left.
“When I feel like it,” the female cop said coldly.
“It’s getting cold you know,” the boy tried again.
“It’s getting late. We’re in the middle of winter.”
Rachel was longingly staring at Kimberley’s camouflage pocket in which rested the book. She looked away. “You still don’t believe me, because you’re scared,” she accused.
“The hell I’m not,” Kimberley whispered. “I just don’t believe anything you’ve told us.”
“Huh?” Aiden was dumbfounded. “We’re in Afghanistan, Kim,” he cried. “Which other proof do you need?” He drew back in anger, pointing at Rachel. “You know, I think she’s right, Kim. You’re scared stiff! You’re not in control, ‘cause this investigation just got bigger than Portwood and…and you can’t handle it! You just can’t put a finger on it, can you?”
“Shut the hell up,” Kimberley whispered. “Just shut it for a sec, will you? For all I know, we could be in one of those new reality shows down at Portwood Studios! This could be a damn set.”
“But…”
“Not another word,” she snapped. “We’re gonna find out what’s going on my way. Period.”
“But…” Rachel began.
“Don’t try me,” Kimberley warned her. Mike was coming back to where she lay.
“Tell him or I’ll sing,” Aiden whispered and Kimberley simply scoffed.
“Says the lily-livered boy,” she jeered.
Aiden’s blood boiled. He made to say something loud enough for Mike to hear, but Rachel stopped him and turned to the injured woman. “So, when’re you gonna believe me?” she asked the sergeant. “When more people die?” She sounded so exasperated. “God, you still don’t get it, do you?”
Kimberley was staring at her. At least her cooler head was prevailing. “I can’t promise any…”
“You’ll be safe, dear,” Mike assured the little girl. “That’s what Linda can promise you.”
He knelt and offered Kimberley a bottle of water, which she quickly opened and drank from. A welcome distraction from the heated environment and Rachel’s reproachful eyes.
“That will give you some strength,” Mike assessed, standing up and leaning towards Kimberley. “Now, we need to…”
“Hey…that dude’s shooting at us.”
“Which one?”
“The one behind the burnt-out truck…there, see him?”
“Yeah.”
A soldier cried out and crashed to the ground, and everyone scampered up to the sandbag defense they’d earlier vacated.
Mike turned to Kimberley and the kids. “Wait here,” he told them and rushed up to where his colleagues were trying to counter the new treat. M16A4 fire resounded as they all directed their fury at the pickup truck’s junk down below. Another soldier yelped and sprawled. “I thought he was killed in the explosion?” Mike wondered aloud when he spotted the insurgent refusing to give up.
“It must be our man,” Kimberley told Aiden some distance from the action, struggling to sit up. “How did he manage it? I saw him get hit.”
“Don’t let him run for the cave!” came to their ears from the men trying to nail the remaining militant. “He’ll disappear if he gets there!”
“Miss Reyna, this is our chance to leave this place,” Rachel urged Kimberley and Aiden agreed vigorously.
“No,” Kimberley repeated, staring at the little girl. At least, the weirdo knew her surname. “No way we’re doing that….”
“They won’t know, Kim,” Aiden pleaded. “They’re preoccupied right now.”
“Not happening,” the injured officer refused grudgingly. “My word is final.”
“Very well then.”
Aiden sighed as he stood up before Kimberley. She wondered what he was up to.
“Like you said,” he began, “we’re already in this war…right?”
“What?”
He suddenly embraced her.
“No, you don’t,” the startled woman said, realizing she was helplessly weak. The weapon she spotted lying next to the first aid kit was out of reach, since the struggling Aiden had been able to keep her arms incarcerated beside her.
They both fell backward in his death hug.
“Hey, what’s going on?” Mike shouted from the defense post.
Rachel hesitated.
“Get the book, you!” Aiden shouted at her.
Kimberley started kicking her legs in the air to dissuade the girl from doing this, but Rachel managed to clasp both hands around one thigh in the heat of the scuffle, boun
cing around with the rhythm of the leg.
Some other soldiers had turned around with Mike and were now hurrying towards the struggling trio. The little girl had pulled out the book from Kimberley’s thigh pocket, but the army sergeant was holding on to her leg, preventing her from completely getting away.
No one realized it was getting very cold pretty fast.
“Stop it, will you?” Mike ordered when he got to Aiden and grabbed the boy’s arms. Kimberley swerved towards Rachel as soon as she was free, but the little girl succeeded in keeping the book out of her reach while being pulled up. “What’s the meaning of this?”
Someone screamed. It was like everything had suddenly gone into slow motion. Lance Corporal Mike let go of Aiden, a.k.a. Rahim, as he turned towards the scream, and the boy went for Kimberley’s waist while she tried to grab the book from Rachel, a.k.a. Rahim’s sister.
Before his very eyes, an amazed Mike saw blurry gray shapes blazing through what looked like several of his colleagues suspended in mid-air. One of these bizarre entities knocked his body into the air and he felt like he was dying from inside. His head bounced on the ground when he hit it and through bloodshot eyes he saw Rahim’s sister screaming as these horrible things grappled with her for a…a book? The creature attacking him filled his view with its horrendous face and snarled in a gurgled voice, abruptly fading into ash.
Another scream. It was Kimberley, a.k.a. Linda. Something held on to her wound and caused her pain, but it wasn’t Rahim. The boy had been flung away by one of their attackers and lay in a heap near the hole going down the bunker.
It was all over before anyone could blink.
“WHAT JUST HAPPENED?” Mike exploded, trying to sit up as his vision cleared. “WHAT ATTACKED US?” Apart from him, the female sergeant and the two kids, every other person in view lay motionless on the hard ground. “OH, MY GOD!” Mike ran up to a colleague and checked the soldier’s pulse. The man was dead. “What the hell’s going on?” he wondered aloud, quickly picking up a rifle lying near the first aid kit. “What the hell’s going on?” A whimpering Sergeant Linda had let go of the little girl, holding her painful shoulder and scanning the mayhem caused by their uninvited guests with an incredulous stare. Rahim lay near the bunker’s door rubbing his eyes as well as his bloody left leg.
“This is your fault!” the little girl shouted at Mike’s female colleague, raising more unanswered questions. “I wish I never met you!”
“Wh-What do you mean?” the soldier found himself stammering as he stared around. “Is everyone dead?” He stepped up to the ladder going into the bunker and disappeared down it.
“You caused this,” Rachel said, eyeing Kimberley through slits. “We could have left when we had the chance.”
“Yes,” Aiden grumbled, glaring at Kimberley. “We could have prevented this from happening.”
“How?” Mike asked, emerging from the bunker with a white face. “What is going on, Lin?” he asked Kimberley, who just sat there looking defeated and broken. “Can’t believe everyone’s dead.”
“Everyone’s dead,” the female sergeant repeated in a choked voice. “Everyone’s dead, and it’s my fault.”
“We need to leave this place,” Mike snapped, waking from his trance. “Those things could come back, you know, and…” He caught sight of the book with the little girl and remembered a very puzzling scene in the terror that had quickly unraveled around him a few seconds ago. “What’s with the book?” he asked her. “Why were those things after it?” The kid couldn’t say a word.
“It’s nothing, Mike,” Kimberley lied, but her marine colleague was no fool.
“Strange as it sounds, did you get that book from them, little one?” Mike demanded. “Did you know they will attack us?”
“We all knew about them,” the boy, Rahim, revealed, standing up.
“What?” Lance Corporal Mike couldn’t believe his ears. He turned to his colleague for confirmation, but she simply looked away. “Okay…what was your mission, Lin?”
There was no reply.
“What the hell was your mission, Lin?” Mike repeated, suddenly choking up as he tried to blink back blinding tears. He cocked his M16. “What did you uncover during this mission, Lin?” He pointed the gun at her.
Rahim and his sister rushed behind the female sergeant on seeing this and she looked up. “Go ahead and shoot me, Mike,” she replied dejectedly. “I–I don’t deserve to live anymore.”
“Wh…What was your mission, soldier?” Mike shouted, trying to control his rage. “Tell me before I put a bullet in your…”
The Lance Corporal threw his arms into the air and Kimberley went for his falling rifle. She spun it round and opened fire in one quick motion, forgetting her pain as she crashed to the ground on her side. Carl Bain dodged her shots by going behind a stationary truck, and she ceaselessly pumped more bullets into the vehicle’s body, keeping him where he was.
“Get to the bunker!” she ordered Aiden, and the boy dragged Rachel’s cowering figure from where they’d been taking cover. Kimberley had their enemy pinned down, so it was a matter of scampering down the ladder without looking up. The wounded officer followed them, spewing venom at the army truck as she got to the ladder and started down it. The next instant, she was slamming the armored trapdoor and bolting it shut.
Carl Bain stepped out once she stopped shooting and unleashed his rage on the cursed door, shouting at the top of his voice. His bullets soon ran out and he spat at the structure preventing him from getting his enemies. “I’ll keep coming after you until you give me what is mine, damn it!” he growled.
But down below, nobody heard him, because Rachel had already performed a simple ritual with her mysterious time portal.
Chapter 5: Sierra Leone
THEY walked as fast as their legs could carry them.
“Where’re we going?” Aiden asked.
“Can we just stop?” Rachel cried. “We don’t even know where we are.”
Kimberley said nothing. She wore a white overall, like a doctor’s coat, and she wasn’t with an M16A4 rifle anymore, which was a bigger headache at the moment. “Still got the book?” she asked Rachel and the girl nodded, trying to keep up with her long strides. The boy struggled as well.
“Can we just stop?” Rachel repeated, trying to catch her breath. “Where are we?”
“Africa,” Kimberley said.
“How did you know?” Aiden began. “This could be Haiti or…or Jamaica.”
Kimberley shrugged. She’d forgotten he was a brilliant student. How he left school was another story. “That old sign by the road,” she simply said, pointing at a signpost beside their path.
They were really in Africa. Apart from the guidepost, some dark-skinned children were playing nearby as the sun mercilessly beat down on them. Oddly, Kimberley thought the kids were risking their lives by playing together. Whatever made her think that?
“Freetown, Sierra Leone, fifteen miles?” Aiden read out.
“That helps, really,” Rachel groaned as she trudged on.
“Why don’t they attack us now?” Kimberley wondered aloud.
“What?” Rachel asked her.
“Why don’t they attack us now?” Kimberley repeated, turning to the little girl as she walked.
“They take a longer route?” Aiden began.
“I don’t believe that,” Kimberley said, glaring at Rachel.
“The–The book is still cold,” the younger female replied. “But it won’t be for long, so we have to…”
“Figured as much,” the sergeant muttered. She’d known about the bizarre occurrence for some time now. Everything going chilly before going crazy. It happened at the station back home…and at the outpost in Afghanistan. And it came from the book? “This–This cold actually wards them off?” she asked Rachel.
“Yes,” the girl said. “Since I’ve been traveling with the book, I have…I’ve always known that the cold air it emanates when the Gray Ones are near protects me.
Looks like it only defends the…Bookbearer and his or her fellow travelers against the Gray Ones when…they attack. Every other living thing around at the time always…dies.”
“Interesting,” Aiden said.
“Very funny,” Kimberley said.
“We must hurry,” Rachel said. “They will definitely appear anytime soon.” She quickened her pace, looking around furtively.
“You wanted us to stop moments ago, now you’re pushing us to move faster?” Aiden grumbled.
“We have no choice now if we want to live,” Rachel said. “The Gray Ones...”
“They haven’t killed us yet, have they?” Aiden quipped.
“Yes, but...”
“If they want to attack us, the right time is now,” Kimberley said. “We’re sitting ducks here.” She pushed her hands into her laboratory coat’s side pockets and felt something hard and cold in the left one. Carl Baine’s cuboidal property. “That’s weird,” she muttered.
“What’s weird?” Aiden demanded.
Before she could respond, Kimberley heard a car coming up behind them, on a bend down the dusty road. Looking the other way, she saw the minivan. “Let’s ask for directions, shall we?” she told the kids.
Aiden sighed. “If only we knew what we should be doing here,” he said.
“We will meet Ezra here,” Rachel revealed.
“Who?” Kimberley demanded.
“Ezra. My father’s friend back at the Mine.”
“How did you know that?”
“I wrote down his name and touched it to bring us here,” Rachel said. “We’ll just have to find him before...”
“And that’s how you’ve been going around?” Aiden interrupted her. “By writing down and touching people’s names?”
“People I know,” the little girl clarified.
“So you mean to tell us that you write down these names and you touch anyone and you go to the place in time this person currently resides?” Kimberley was holding her forehead.
The White Book Page 5