Forty Leap

by Turner, Ivan

  Today, though, there was no puck to follow. My eyes darted to and fro, searching for some anchor that would help me understand what was going on. Now I realize that Rogers was the puck. He was the center of attention. He drew the action to him.

  I think the fighting lasted several minutes. The man who had dropped out before dropped back in again, which was even more startling than his exit. He was disoriented, despite the short jump, and suffered for it. As more and more of us began to lose our lives and our grips on the time stream, Rogers Clinton’s frustration spiked. With an ear-splitting battle cry, he sprayed his weapon across the entrance. I don’t know how many soldiers he killed and wounded. They wore body armor and so were protected from penetration by the bullets, but they fell back like bowling pins. Those of us who remained rallied around Rogers and, for just a brief moment, they pushed forward into the corridor. Then the big man’s aggression got the better of him and he leaped amid a storm of bullets.

  It took the fight out of them. At first they were stunned by his disappearance. Despite the reality of their affliction, I guess they couldn’t accept that Rogers himself had not mastered it completely. It was the end of the revolution for sure. It was as if a veil of hopelessness settled upon them. Some lost their focus. Others just stopped firing completely. I was dumbstruck by the effect of it.

  Though I could feel the quickening of my muscles, I was not sure that I would leap in time. I felt truly as if my death was imminent.

  Someone tugged on the back of my shirt and I whirled around but no one was there.

  “Up here!”

  I looked up and there, her small frame stuffed into a ventilation shaft, was Natalie. She crawled out, still unnoticed by the soldiers engaged in slaughtering her fellows, then crawled back in again, head first. Feeling ashamed at abandoning those who had futilely protected me for so short a time, I crawled in after her. As I put my back to the conflict, I felt exposed. I expected to be shot at any second.

  “Are you ready to leap?” she called back as we moved through the tiny shaft.

  “I can feel it,” I said.

  “Good.”

  She said nothing else, just crawled on. Every once in a while, she would call back to make sure I was following. We went on that way for close to ten minutes. As we went, I could feel myself calming a bit. My muscles eased up and I wondered if I wouldn’t leap after all. Based on what I had learned, however, once the enzyme had been manufactured and released, there was no way to stop it.

  At last, we came out of the vent into a darkened corridor. It was damp here and I could tell that this was a part of the complex that was not often used. It was quiet, too. I could still hear the battle behind us, but it wasn’t nearly as pervasive. The booming gunshots sounded like crackling bacon in a pan. The cries of the men and women who were killing and dying were drowned out entirely. Travelling through the vents had robbed me of any possibility of keeping track of my position within the complex. Natalie threw her rifle to the ground and began feeling along the dark wall. Suddenly, a panel moved inward revealing a small room. There was barely enough room inside to sit comfortably and no room to stand.

  Natalie handed me a flashlight.

  “They won’t find you in there,” she said. “They can’t find you.”

  “Why? Why are you protecting me?”

  “Because I was wrong about you,” she said. “Rogers gave me what I wanted, gave me a war to fight. But he really had no idea. You know how to help us. Maybe in two hundred years, you’ll be able to pick up the pieces of Rogers’ war and finally save us.”

  I stood and stared at her, half in awe of what she had admitted, half doubting the whole of it. Even if she were attempting to trap me, there was little I could do to stop her.

  “Rupert?”

  She shook her head sadly. Again, I didn’t know what she meant. Was she telling me that she hadn’t seen him or that he was dead. I decided not to ask.

  Despite her words, I could hardly think of myself as a savior, but I went into the little room anyway and let her slide the panel shut behind me. I turned on the flashlight, but there was nothing to see so I turned it off again. Encased in complete darkness, I sat and listened to the now very faint sounds of the battle going on. A tremendous weariness overcame me and I slept.

  Chapter IX

  You might think it funny, falling asleep when I knew that others were fighting and dying. But there was nothing to do in the room. Whenever I let my mind wander, I knew that I courted utter panic. In that case, I would have had to bolt from the room, quite probably to my death. What Natalie had given me was the chance that Bensing had been talking about. Leap out a couple of hundred years and maybe it would be safe.

  So I slept.

  It was not a deep or restful sleep. I don’t even know how long I was sleeping. Somewhere along the way I had stopped wearing a watch. Imagine. Time had become so abstract a concept that it held almost no importance to me anymore. If I leaped two centuries or ten it would make no difference. I need not worry about who might be alive because everyone I had ever cared about was long dead. And the Leapers that I had met had either been slaughtered or jumped into different parts of the time stream.

  All was quiet. I listened carefully for a long time but I could detect no signs of the battle. Even if it was over, that didn’t mean it was safe. Of course, I couldn’t remain huddled inside that little cubby hole forever. Despite my sleep, I felt exhausted. Both my body and my brain were slow to respond to impulse. I needed to get out of that room and find some food and water.

  Switching on the flashlight, I searched the interior for a catch or a release. It was difficult to move about because of the size of the room. My legs were tucked up underneath me and stinging badly from poor blood flow. It took all of my will power to get them to move over and out of the way. Finally, I found a small grey lever on the floor. I had to pull it while pushing outward with my weakened legs. The hinges were rusty and the door opened with a vicious squeal. I froze instantly, waiting for someone to come rushing around the corner but no one did. I doused my light. For several moments, I stood in the blackened corridor, listening for any sounds of life but found none. Switching the light back on, I began to move.

  Since we had taken the ventilation shafts, I had no idea where I was in the complex. Factoring in the darkness, I became utterly lost. I wasn’t terribly worried. I had seen much of it and knew that eventually I would find my way into a familiar area. At worst, I could always backtrack to my hiding place and use the vents to get back to the Map Room. I was confident that I could at least negotiate them. As I moved through the passages, I began to relax. The battle was certainly over. The place had a feel to it that told me, in no uncertain terms, that I was alone. It smelled musty and I kicked up dust with my feet. It began to dawn on me that the battle wasn’t just over. It was long over.

  The air remained stale as I walked deeper and deeper into the complex. There were no lights so I was pushing energy cells on my flashlight by keeping it on incessantly. Fortunately, it didn’t operate on simple D batteries. Of all of the technological advancements I had glimpsed over my passing through the years, the most notable had been the efficient use of energy.

  Finally I began to recognize some of what I was seeing. Despite the years, and I expected that many decades had passed, the place had changed very little. The paint had flaked and was responsible for some of the dust. The ground felt strange. There were obvious signs of disrepair. The air went from stale to foul. The musty smell I had been inhaling abruptly changed to one of decay. Now I became nervous. Over my travels I had seen my fair share of death. There was a time when I thought that anything that became familiar became tolerable. But this was not the case. My familiarity with death only served to increase my revulsion. The thought that I would once again have to view dead bodies, more to the point dead bodies that smelled like that, welled up such a panic in me. I felt the adrenaline rush into my veins but knew that it would do me no good. Having just l
eaped, I would be unable to do so again for some time.

  I pressed onward.

  Now I was into the complex proper. Natalie’s escape had taken me much further away than I had originally thought. I was passing an alcove that led from an entrance hall to a staircase. The entrance hall was fairly large, larger than the one through which I had first passed. The staircase, behind a door, led to the building’s proper basement. I had never actually climbed that staircase, but Rupert had been good enough to give me a full tour on two occasions. He had stressed the importance of knowing the exits. While I felt that I should explore the rest of the complex, I was desperate to be out of there. There was no way for me to know the dangers of going out into the world. The outcome of the battle had been predetermined, but it was also more than a century old. For all of that time, this place had been left undisturbed, hidden from the world like some ancient Egyptian tomb. I chose to exit.

  Opening a door, I saw that the foot of the staircase was littered with debris. It was a bit difficult to negotiate my way through it, but I managed. By that time, I could taste the free and open air. I wanted so badly to be out that I would have clawed my way through a brick wall. Or at least, I would have if I could. About halfway up the stairs, the whole thing was blocked off. The debris down below was the result of someone else trying to do just what I had envisioned. There were chunks taken out of the obstruction. The work may have been very old but the signs of it were still visible. I stood on that staircase, my light aimed forward, just staring blankly for a time. There were nine exits available yet someone had chosen to attempt to clear this one. Did that mean that the other eight were blocked? I began to experience a terrible sense of dread.

  I almost panicked. It was all I could do not to run straight to each of the other exits and see what I already knew to be true. Of course this place remained undisturbed. Our enemies had invaded with two intentions. Kill as many as possible and get the rest to leap. Once the complex was empty of living Forty Leapers, they had sealed every exit and wiped the place from the history books. If I were able to leap right then and there I wondered if it would do any good. How deeply had they buried us?

  Though I considered a plan for ferreting out food stores and beginning an organized campaign to dig my way free I knew rationally that it was no use. Obviously, someone had come through before me and tried, unsuccessfully to get out. For me to clear out half a staircase’s worth of rubble I would need tools and help and expertise. More than likely I would just bury myself more effectively in the process. Still, I would check the food stores just because I would need to eat while I waited for a miracle.

  The kitchens were empty. The taps did not work. There was no food or water to be found. In fact, pinned to one of the overturned tables was a note scrawled in a weak hand.

  No food. No water. No way out.

  It may as well have read, No hope. I went back to the Map Room and it was there that I discovered the first body. Whoever he was, he was badly decomposed and smelling of it. He had set up a cot in there and was laying upon it as if he had died in his sleep. The Map itself had been laid back out on its table again. It was covered in dust but I cleared it away and began to look for changes.

  The first familiar name I found was Joanne Li’s. A leap had been added to her entry. The writing was not in the careful hand of the people I had seen on my first day here, but also not in the same hand as the note I had found. It looked like a woman’s writing, because there is a difference, and I guessed that Joanne herself had made the entry. It was a theory I couldn’t ever prove, but that was hardly important. The last jump recorded was from Thursday November 26th, 2189. That had been the day of the invasion. There was no return date because, of course, there was no way to know the date from down here. There was, however, a big red X after the entry.

  Many of the entries were Xed off now. Some had leaps from the day of the invasion. Others did not. Many different handwritings were in evidence although some writing styles were visible across multiple entries. I looked down at the dead fellow on the cot. Which of these entries was his? Had he marked off his own death? How many others like him were there? Where were they? Quickly, in almost a panic, I scanned the Map for Rupert. I found him, his last jump having landed him in 2178, eleven years before the invasion. There was no red X. Rupert was either alive or no one who had seen the Map had known his fate. My instantaneous relief turned quickly to dismay. What was it worth, anyhow? Should I wish that he had been killed in the invasion or that he had survived to leap into this godforsaken crypt? Rogers, too, was unmarked, as was Natalie. Picking up the pen, I motioned to fill in the jump that I had witnessed, Rogers Clinton’s. Then I thought better of it. Whatever notion had driven leapers to keep up this document, it was misguided. Should it fall into the wrong hands, it would undo all of the anonymous leaps that had been made.

  I put the pen down on the table.

  I spent some more time with the Map, looking for names that I recognized. Otis was dead. Gerry Bensing was dead. Awen Mohammed was also dead. Samantha Radish, who had clung to Awen in 2023, was lost in time. Her last leap predated the invasion. There were some other names, people who had passed into and out of my life in the week I’d spent here. Most were dead. The others were unmarked. Only Myalee Sincere had a confirmed leap in 2189.

  When I had grown bored of the Map, I left the room and began to work my way back toward the barracks and my own room. There were two bodies in the barracks. One looked very old and one looked very new. At least from a distance. I did not approach them for fear of contracting some aggressive illness. It was one thing to die of hunger and thirst. It was quite another to have to be violently ill while doing it. There was also a body in my room so I checked Rogers’ room. Occupied. Rupert’s room was empty, though, so I claimed it as my own.

  It was all I could do not to run screaming through the hallways, scrabbling at the blocked exits in the vain hope that either I could find a weak point or someone would hear me. After checking each of the other exits for a way out (because I had to at least check), I returned tired to Rupert’s room. There was no longer anything for me to do. As the hours passed, I grew more and more restless. My mind worked on ways I might find some hope of escape. But I am not an engineer and haven’t the ingenuity to invent a means to an end. Surely there was somewhere that led through to the surface because I could breathe. The air was foul and smelled of rot, but I was not suffocating. But whatever shaft brought that air to me, it must have been too small for even a mouse. To ease my tension, I thought to spend time filling up my journal with what I guessed would be my last thoughts. But even those pages remained mostly empty. I couldn’t focus. Much of what I wrote was incomprehensible babble.

  So I slept again.

  But I slept in fits. The passage of time was murky. How long does it take for a man to die of hunger and thirst? My throat became more and more dry. My belly constricted against itself. I grew nauseous.

  I awoke to the sound of moaning. Surely it was an illusion. I had thoroughly searched the complex while checking the exits and found no one. Yet I could distinctly hear this faint sound floating across the stale air. Weak, struggling to keep control of my very mind, I rolled out of my bed, the flashlight in my hand, and staggered into the corridor.

  The moaning was louder out there, but my muddled senses couldn’t pinpoint the direction from which it came. I went first one way and then back the other. Only when I detected the faintest hint of words embedded in the sound was I able to clearly choose a path.

  …help…

  …please…

  Some poor soul was in trouble. Whoever it was needed me. Or maybe I just needed whoever it was. I struggled my way through the passages, looking for the source of this moaning. Sometimes it grew in volume and sometimes it dropped away. Once or twice it faded from my range of hearing altogether. I began to grow frantic. Someone was here with me. Someone was in the complex with me and that someone was in trouble, in pain. Frenzy turned to frustratio
n and I found myself throwing things, calling out.

  “Where are you?!”

  The way the sounds came, it was almost as if they were floating through my own head just to torment me.

  …help…

  …please…

  “Help,” I said. “Please.”

  Was I the soul in trouble? Had I been chasing the ghost of myself through the halls of my burial place. All manner of urgency dropped from my senses. A diversion though the chase had been, it had certainly not been a pleasant one. It signaled an end to coherency. With my body deprived of moisture and nourishment, my brain was starting to revolt. Perhaps it needed a good leader, like Rogers Clinton.

  Somehow, I was able to get my bearings and begin the walk back to Rupert’s room. At that moment, I was finished. Like the others I had seen, it was time for me to go to a room, lay down in a bunk, and die. I was too weak and tired to be frightened anymore. I was too weak and tired to be angry. This was the cold end of a Forty Leaper.

  And then I saw him. He was sitting, propped up against the wall, his head down, his eyes closed. His left hand was pressed over his belly and I could see the blood leaking from in between his fingers. A couple of feet away, connected to him by a trail of blood, rested his rifle.

  “Help,” he muttered in a very small voice. “Please.”

  I rushed to his side and lifted his face to mine. I didn’t recognize him but I knew what he was. Gently, I moved his hand away from his wound and saw the nasty tearing of flesh caused by the bullets of the twenty second century. His eyes focused on mine and there was some recognition there.

  “Mathew Cristian,” he muttered through a flickering smile. “Then I’m saved.”

  I began to cry.

  With a surge of adrenaline, I found my strength again. I lifted the man in my arms, supporting his back and his legs. He was heavy but I was determined. His head lolled back, him not having the energy to keep it up. Staggering, I walked forward step by step. I didn’t think about my destination or how far it was. It took a long while but I had plenty of time. When I reached Rupert’s room, I lay the man on the bed and checked his breathing. He was still alive, poor devil. There was nothing I could do for him. He needed someone to clean and dress his wound. He needed blood to replace all that he had lost. He needed water.