Lost Sentinel: Post-Apocalyptic Time Travel Adventure (Earth Survives Series Book 1)

by R. R. Roberts

“Did you know their parents?”

  “No. It was kind of a fluke. A right place at the right time kind of thing.”

  “You love those children.”

  “I’d kill for those children.”

  Wren knew this. Wren knew he already had.

  She slammed her shield in place, not wanting to go there. With Bill, she wanted to be respectful, honest. She’d have to tell him what she was capable of. Not now, but soon. Then, if he wanted to tell what he had done, he could, willingly.

  Rhea appeared beside Bill with a plate of prepared sandwiches. Bill smiled and said, “Thanks sweetheart. They look perfect,” and placed them on the grill.

  Wren waited for Rhea to return to the table before speaking. “I’ve been thinking we should head north rather than south, in case we’re …” she lowered her voice, “followed. I don’t want to lead anyone to Dropout. If we go north, then at dusk cut east and go south on back roads and through bush whenever we can, no one should be able to find us. Whoever sees us leave town–and I gotta say, there are lots of people here.”

  Bill’s eyebrows shot up in surprise, but he said nothing.

  “They’ll assume my place is north, not south.”

  He bobbed his head in agreement and ladled hot soup into four bowls. “Let’s start with soup. The grilled cheese will be another couple of minutes.”

  They sat around the table and shared what Wren pronounced as the best soup and sandwich meal she’d ever tasted.

  “And guess what?’ Bill announced as he gathered up the bowls and plates. “No dishes!”

  The kids nodded and began pulling on outer gear, as if “no dishes” had been code for “bugging out”. They were ready and stationed at the door, each had a backpack strapped over their coats.

  “Wow. I’m impressed,” Wren said, pulling on her own gear. “When you say under an hour, you mean under an hour.”

  The kids stared at her, their eyes big in their faces, telling her this was something they had prepared for often and now that it was here, and really happening, was scary.

  She knelt before them. “I think I might have been wrong before, not telling you about the danger outside.” She glanced up at Bill for his okay before continuing. “There are people out there who will want what we have, and who want to hurt us. We must be strong and follow a plan. I promise I won’t keep things from you that you need to know. For now, you need to know we must get away as quickly and quietly as we can, and once we hit the highway we’re going to head north and find somewhere to hide until it starts to get dark.

  “Then we’ll swing around and head south. How long it’ll take will depend on what we find as we go. We stick together. We stay as quiet as possible. We all watch out for any signs of other people. You see something, anything that looks funny or strange to you, you tell us, right away. Even if it might seem like the silliest thing. You tell us.”

  Bill had the shotgun laid comfortably across his forearm. He nodded to Wyatt, who unlocked and unbolted the door. “You’ll lead the way out of town, Wren.”

  “Okay.”

  Bill stepped outside first, looked around, then ran lightly across the grass to the garage, his actions belying his age. There he unlocked the side door and went inside. After a moment, the overhead garage door began to open, very slowly, inch by inch, making almost no sound. It took forever, but it was silent. As she watched and waited, Wren was aware of the wonderful scent of Suzanne’s lilacs heavy in the warm air. They were Wren’s favorite spring flower. She’d hoped to plant lilacs at her cabin one day. A flower garden seemed miles away now.

  Bill waved them out of the house. The kids ran to him, each jumping into one of the trannies, Wyatt in the driver’s side of one and Rhea in the passenger’s side of the other. Wren ran to the Beast and quickly folded the solar panels and stowed them beside her, on top of the two rice bags.

  Wyatt moved first his trannie, then Bill’s out of the garage before checking Rhea’s seat belt then returning to his trannie. Bill pulled the overhead door back down just as quietly as he had opened it. Wren couldn’t believe what she was seeing. These children were amazing.

  Bill got into his trannie, which was already humming quietly, thanks to Wyatt, strapped down the shotgun, pulled on his seatbelt and nodded to Wren. While this was happening, Wren had stretched her sensors as wide as she was able, searching for any sign of danger, or any knowledge of what they were about to do. There was activity, but it was muted and mostly consisted of petty disputes in small groups in isolated locations, except for two…

  There was that grim face and name again – Curtis. Two different minds, in two different places were projecting this name and face, and with a significant fear. She got nothing from the man himself. It was as if Curtis himself was nowhere in town. So why was he so feared?

  The good news was none of the minds she could detect were turning their attention to the roadways around them. Tuck was silent; no surprise there. Denny was eating–ugh–and detailing what he would do to Tuck when he showed his sorry face. It was all good.

  She pulled forward, and cautiously led them from the backyard onto the street and headed straight down to 93rd Ave, searching every house, every yard as they went, both with her eyes and with her sensors. She saw nothing but boarded up houses, empty gutted buildings, burnt out shells of buildings, and lots and lots of ravens, their beady black eyes riveted on her little caravan as it crawled quietly through Rushton. Would she ever see a raven again and not think of death?

  She turned right at 93rd Ave, shot towards 100 Street which was mostly deserted by the looks of the few ruined buildings, then turned again at the Museum. It felt as if she had searched its basement a lifetime ago.

  Reaching the highway, she leaned out past the huge bundle of supplies on the back of the Beast and checked Wyatt behind her and Bill bringing up the rear. They both gave her a sober thumbs-up. She returned it, then turned right and led them north, gunning the Beast to full throttle. The faster they were away, the better.

  9

  DAKOTA FIRE PIT

  Mattea chose a secluded meadow just north of Dawson Creek, well off the highway, to set up camp. The grass was still short, though green with strong new growth and dotted with lively yellow dandelions nodding a warm welcome in the breeze after a long, arduous day. They had skirted Dawson for obvious reasons, but that had meant traveling out in the open along the windfarm ridge for almost half a day. By the time they could return to the relative safety of the forest, everyone’s nerves were frayed to near breaking.

  The pretty little meadow felt like sanctuary after hours out in the open.

  They were now within a day’s ride of Rushton, and Mattea could see Coru was getting anxious. If they hadn’t had the three women and the boy, he knew Coru would continue to Rushton and the mysterious Wren Wood. Instead, he was tending to the animals down by the river with Malcolm, speaking softly to the boy, endlessly patient, with no outward sign of the urgency of his “mission”.

  Mattea had to give Coru credit for thinking of other’s needs before his own. He was one weird guy, but weird in a good way. For one–his expression of awe at some of the places they had passed did make Mattea think he’d just arrived on planet Earth. He was smart and strong, and not afraid of a fight, on the one hand, but then he was like a little kid on the other, like when he’d first touched the horses. A real contradiction. Where had he grown up?

  They had traveled together for five weeks now, and Coru still had no hair on his head. Mattea could personally testify to the fact Coru didn’t shave his head, though like all the men now, he had a full beard. He was as bald as the day Mattea had hauled his ass out of a street fight in Hope. Mattea had had many miles to wonder about this fact, studying Coru’s unusual tattoos, and had come up with one guess. Coru had been a Monk in some distant country, with no contact with regular people, or animals, and North America was a wonderland to him. Yeah, it was a crazy guess, but what else fit?

  Emerging from the forest with a
n armload of gathered firewood, he saw smoke plumes rising from a campfire, new flames licking the cool evening air. Catherine was busy setting up a cook pot. Nicola had come out of herself enough to be kneeling beside it, feeding chunks of wood into the flame.

  “No!” he groaned, dropping his armload of sticks on the path. He pelted across the small meadow, pushed Nicola aside. She gave a squeak of frightened protest and fell away. Frantically, he swept the burning wood apart with his boots, stamping out the flame. Spying a pail of water, he grabbed it up and doused the fire, acrid smoke billowing up. Watching it rise, he murmured, “No. No. No!”

  His gaze shifted to Catherine and Nicola. Catherine watched him steadily, awaiting an explanation. Nicola crouched in the dirt, her arms raised over her head and whimpered. Suddenly, it was all too much to bear – the sickness, the damaged souls, the scramble to survive at any cost, the ruined collective of humanity all around him. His throat burned for whisky. Burned.

  This was a battle he could not fight alone.

  He dropped his head and closed his eyes in resignation. Alone did not work. It never had. Higher power worked.

  Taking a moment to center himself, he raised his palms to the heavens. “Great Spirit, please help us in our hours of need. Please turn our enemy’s eyes from this place. Please keep us safe from their hunger, their fear and greed.”

  He opened his eyes and looked at Nicola, saw his own handprint as a bruise across her face and was sick with regret. If there had been any other way…

  Her arms were down now, and she was silent, watching him intently.

  With his gaze still on her, he went on, “Great Spirit, please welcome young David into your home on the Spirit Plain and protect him.”

  Tears welled in Nicola’s eyes, spilling down her face.

  “Please heal this woman, Nicola, our sister here on earth. Return her spirit light. Show her the way to love this earth once again and not come to you too early by her own hand.”

  Nicola’s eyes widened at his words.

  He nodded slightly, dropped his hands then turned back to the fire. The smoke and steam had dissipated here in the meadow and had not reached up beyond the tops of the trees that surrounded them. “Thank you, Great Spirit, for your protection.”

  To Catherine he said, “This is my fault. I did not teach you. I will teach you now.” His gaze returned to Nicola, inviting her to draw closer, to learn with Catherine.

  He released the hand shovel from his pack. “We start again.”

  He paced away from the blackened scar of their fire and stopped in an open area of meadow grass. “Here is where we will build our fire. What will be different is, our fire will be small and intense, and no one will see our smoke. When we leave this place, no one will know we were here.”

  The two women followed him, drinking in his words.

  “We will build a Dakota Fire Pit.”

  They remained silent, waiting on him to explain, to demonstrate.

  He sank the shovel into the earth. “We will dig two holes, about five inches apart. Each hole is about ten inches in diameter and each hole is about twelve to fourteen inches straight down. At the bottom, we will join these two holes. Imagine you have created the letter ‘U’ in the earth, the two top portions of the ‘U’ being the two openings into the earth. Imagine you can put your hand, your whole arm, into one hole, and reach around into the next hole through the tunnel you dug between the two holes and can see your fingers. That’s your underground ‘U’.

  He worked as he spoke, cutting the sod neatly from the earth with the blade of his shovel first, and carefully laying the two pieces of sod aside. Then he dug down, creating the twin holes, piling the dirt beside the two pieces of sod. On his knees, he chipped away at the dirt separating the bottoms of the two holes until he had broken through and created a tunnel between them. This earth he also piled beside the sod.

  He rose to his feet and faced the two women, grateful to see Nicola’s expression curious for the first time since he’d met her. Her pain would return, he knew, but it was good that for now, she thought of other things, even for a brief time. This was the path to healing her heart.

  “With a Dakota Fire Pit, we need only twigs and sticks to burn. No cutting trees down, chopping wood, no kindling. Let’s go find some twigs and sticks in the forest now.”

  Nicola’s expression transformed into fearful at the mention of the forest. Her reprieve had been a short one, but it was a start. Hoping she would follow him again, he led the way to the edge of the meadow, where fallen branches and dry sticks were plentiful and easily gotten below the thick wall of trees that shielded them from the road and probing eyes. Glancing around the meadow as if checking the sky for signs of weather, he saw that she was still with him, staying close to Catherine. His heart was glad. This was good.

  With three of them gathering, it wasn’t long before they had enough to last the night. When they returned to the Dakota Fire Pit, the rest of their members were waiting: Malcolm, Coru and Annie, who rubbed her belly as he’d noticed was her habit and gazed longingly at the river.

  Coru asked, “What are you building here, Mattea?” He knew very well, of course. Mattea had taught this lesson early in their partnership. Coru glanced at Nicola’s face then to Mattea, his eyes lit with hope.

  “This is a Dakota Fire Pit, something we all need to know how to build. Nicola, could you explain how we dug out our hole for young Malcolm here?”

  Nicola’s expression transformed in to horror, her eyes darting to Malcolm and away.

  Mattea continued as if he hadn’t seen her reaction. “Young Malcolm needs to know how to survive on his own and he needs to know how to contribute to the group. We can’t leave him unprotected out here, now can we, Nicola?”

  Her frightened eyes returned reluctantly to the young boy and she began to shake.

  Okay. Too soon. Mattea moved on, “We dug this hole here—twin holes joined under the earth. We’ll place some dry leaves and twigs into one hole…” He did as he described and lit the dried kindling with his flint. They took quickly. “Now, we add the twigs and sticks. Snap them off to a length that is the same as the depth of your hole. They should not stick out of the ground. They should just be level with the ground. See how they are fit into the hole vertically, standing straight up and down, like a box of straws you’d buy at the store for your smoothies.”

  Malcolm grinned, seizing up a branch and snapping it to length as Mattea had shown him.

  Mattea returned his grin. “Stuff the hole to packed. Watch your fingers. It will burn hot and hard, because of the twin holes and tunnel drafting fresh air below the wood, giving it life, and producing almost no smoke. It’s a natural draft. No smoke is important out here, Malcolm.”

  Malcolm’s eyebrows bunched in puzzlement.

  “Your enemies can’t find you, Malcolm. To keep your camp secret.” This from Nicola, her voice flat, strangled.

  Joy filled Mattea’s chest and he bit back a mile-wide smile. Yes, Nicola, yes! Talk to us, be part of us, come back to us.

  Mattea rolled a few nearby rocks around the burning pit. Catherine stepped forward with their grate and the cook pot, retrieved from their first attempt at a campfire, placing both over this new flame that flickered in the earth. Mattea looked around at the faces encircling him. “Dinner will be hot quickly, then hot tea and stories, in the old ways. When we leave here tomorrow, we’ll fill up the holes with the earth we removed and saved, then cover the scar with the two patches of sod and tamp them down with our boots. No one following will know we were here. That’s no smoke to draw strangers to us, and no evidence for those who may be hunting us and stumble on this meadow. This is one way we all stay safe.”

  “Safe,” Nicola repeated and turned away, sinking to the ground and covering her face with her hands. Again, she’d been present and spoken to the subject at hand. It was a huge step. No one spoke. What words were there to bring Nicola back to them? There was no “talking” a person out o
f their grief. Time and care was what she needed.

  Breaking the silence, Catherine said, “Mattea’s right. We’ll eat soon.” She emptied 6 quart jars of their precious canned elk stew into the pot. The farm’s pantry had been a huge blessing to them, eliminating the need to hunt while on the move. This way they traveled quickly, with less chance of being discovered. “There’s water and soap over there.” She pointed at a bucket beside a fallen log draped with a towel, topped with a bar of soap. “Wash up and get in line.”

  It was later, and dinner had been consumed in dazzling silence, everyone scooping the rich stew quickly, filling their endlessly empty stomachs. The dishes were cleaned—by Catherine and Malcolm, bedrolls laid out and tents erected—by Mattea and Coru, soiled clothing washed and hung to dry—by Nicola and Annie. By dust, all tasks were done and mugs of sweet hot tea were passed into grateful hands.

  Mattea looked around the circle, seeing the features of the people he was charged with protecting, both hidden and revealed in the flickering firelight. He knew them and did not. They were strangers to him and they were family.

  Malcolm spoke up. “You said there would be stories.”

  Mattea smiled. “I did, didn’t I?”

  “Not stories about… about us? About how we got here,” Annie pleaded. “I-I don’t want to remember that part.”

  Malcolm said, “What about a legend. A real Native legend. I bet they’re cool.”

  “I could do that. But I’ll warn you, Native stories carry a message, always. A lesson for the listeners to learn. Native stories aren’t for sissies.”

  Malcolm giggled, leaning against his mother. The expression of gratitude on Catherine’s face for her son’s laughter wounded Mattea’s heart. No mother should be so grateful for a simple laugh. Mother’s should hear their children laugh every day, an ordinary event, much repeated, an accepted and expected constant. Yet, today Catherine was grateful and so was Mattea. The boy’s laughter gladdened his heart, softened his body, taking with it a small part of the tension that was now always with him.