Vortex of Evil

by S D Taylor

  Inside the door, Dara showed them to a small room with ten white plastic chairs built into the wall. It was obviously a waiting room of some kind and it wasn’t designed for comfort. Erin could see that Jelk continued down the hallway to the left as Dara motioned them to sit down. She turned and prepared to leave. “You will wait here for now. Best wishes. I hope you enjoy your stay in our world.”

  “Why? Where are you going? Will we see you again?” Gaby spoke up as she took her seat.

  “It is unlikely. I have several more trips cleaning up the temporal mess you have caused and by the time I get back it will almost be time for my termination. I doubt you will be here by then. Good bye.”

  Erin took a few steps towards her. She had a feeling of impending doom. “You never said where you are going.”

  “I think you know. Did you want me to give him a message before we terminate him?”

  Even with adrenalin jolts fueled by blind anger, Erin only managed two steps towards Dara before the stunpulse hit her and sent her into unconsciousness. But there was just enough time for her intense hatred for Dara to once again fill her heart. There would be payback she thought just as she blacked out. Somehow. Somewhere. There would be payback.

  Chapter 25

  Tom flipped back the entrance to the tent after announcing his presence. Megan walked across to meet him with a hug and a kiss. “We began to wonder if the pirates came back and took you. Where’s Doug?” She spoke softly in case there was bad news.

  “Nothing to worry about. We climbed up the ridge to take a look around. Doug decided to stay there for a while and keep watch.” Tom said it so everyone could hear.

  Rin was dishing up some oatmeal for everyone’s breakfast. “Didn’t he want something to eat?”

  “We can run something up to him later. He had some snacks to munch on. He is going to camp there awhile and keep watch. If and when they come back, he wants to be ready for them.”

  Rin shook her head. “I doubt there is much you can do to stop them. Unless you can shoot down that saucer they fly around in. When Peter tried to attack one of them on the boat, there was a shock that knocked him unconscious and paralyzed him for a day. It was automatic and tied to some sensor. Make a threatening move and zap. Dara told us it would kill you if you were hit too many times.”

  “Who is Dara, Mom?” Alannah looked up from her oatmeal with a curious look. “Was she the one who took you prisoner?”

  “In a way, yes. She had a guy helping her that actually did the kidnapping, but she was clearly in charge. They were from several hundred years in the future.” Rin thought how glad she was to be back with her girls. She used to be bothered by all the questions they would ask, but now she was happy to answer.

  “Why did they let you go?” Katelyn was the most worried. She was sure that they would be coming back for all of them. “Once they had you, I would have thought they would have kept you or killed you. Isn’t that what they plan for all of us?”

  “Now, Katy, don’t get so down about it. It is always a challenge living here and this is just one more thing we have to deal with. And now we have all these friends and relatives to help us.” Rin glanced at Ying with her pirate uniform. She hoped that they were right to trust her. So far she seemed to be everything she purported to be. Bright, hardworking and not afraid to share responsibilities for the tasks that had to be done to survive. And very bright. She had a professor’s grasp of physics, but knew a great deal about math, history and politics. It was great to have her there for the girls to talk to. They would learn a lot from her and it would come from a much different perspective than she and Doug had provided. An alternative, global perspective that would help the girls better understand the variety of people and opinions they would find in the world. Now if they could just get her something else to wear, it might change her image.

  “Tom, I will save a bowl of oatmeal for Doug. I will run it up to him in a few minutes.” Rin didn’t feel right leaving Doug up there for the day with nothing to eat besides the few snacks he kept in his pocket. She had finely honed the role of mother in this wild and sometimes hostile place. And when it came to nutrition and sensible eating, she felt she had to set the example for the family. Katelyn glanced at Alannah with a knowing look and a wink.

  “I don’t think that would be a good idea, Mom. We don’t want to lose you again. Let somebody else do it.” Katelyn was trying to protect Rin now that they had her back. “Or we could go with you to provide protection.”

  “Listen, of all the people here, I am the most expendable. But if you are so worried, come on along.”

  “We will both go. It’s settled.” Alannah piped up and agreed that it made sense for her and her sister to be the bodyguards for their Mom. “Now that we are together, we want to stay close for a while.”

  “Fine, but don’t think that we are going to be joined at the hip from now on. I want us all to get back to normal as soon as possible. There won’t always be people waiting to kidnap me. Besides, this bunch literally threw me back like a fish they didn’t mean to catch.”

  Tom laughed at that comment. “Maybe this time of year there is a one Erin limit.” He looked around but nobody was laughing with him. He decided jokes that involved fishing limits, kidnapping and torture didn’t play well with this crowd. He and Megan took their food and sat near the entrance. Tom hadn’t realized how hungry he had become during the morning of hiking around the island.

  “This tastes pretty good.” Tom smiled at Megan.

  “You must be really hungry to say that. It is ok, but I would have preferred some bacon and eggs. I guess we will need to get more sophisticated about our approach to subsistence living. It would be good to occasionally have more than plain basic food that is only designed to keep us alive. You know, find natural spices and some variations on the basics we have been eating. Once the supplies from the Rasputin run out we will be on our own.”

  “Rin has had many years of cooking here. Maybe she can give us some tips.” Tom took another big scoop of the oatmeal. He figured it would stick to his ribs. It seemed to be sticking to everything else on the way down.

  “She told me about wild onions and how much they helped the flavor of the food. But they wouldn’t do much for oatmeal. It isn’t too bad and I am not being ungrateful, but some honey or sugar would help the flavor a bit. The girls were telling me that they brought some berry plants back from a trip to the mainland and they are trying to get them to grow here. Maybe this year we will have berries to go on our oatmeal.”

  “If it works out, we can plant some down by our cabin we are going to build.” Tom reached out and took her hand. “I hope we can get back to that dream before too much time goes by.”

  “I do to. It kind of got lost in the past day with all the things going on but I haven’t stopped thinking about it. From what Rin has been saying, the future people are out to round up all of us and terminate us. They think that is the only way to save their world. We have to make sure they don’t find us.”

  Tom could see the worried look on her face. He wanted to tell her it was all going to be ok, but he didn’t have anything to offer up to support that statement. First they had to survive one day at a time. “I wonder how they track us. How they knew to come to this place and time. We are in a different time from where we started and yet they could find us. Maybe they can track our quantum signature in some way.”

  “Did you read that in a science fiction novel?”

  Tom laughed. “I think it was a TV show. Can’t remember for sure. But I remember something about everyone being linked to their own reality by their quantum signature. If our quantum signature was out of sync, such as it would be in this reality, it might be something they can track. I can’t imagine what technology it would take to make that possible, but somehow they found us. We can’t take anything for granted. Hiding from them may not be possible. Unless we are in a deep cave that might block their sensors.”

  “Rin said that Dara told h
er we are now in the year 1790. So yes, they must have a way to track us to an exact time. We either need to get hold of that technology, or figure out how to jam it.”

  Rin and the girls headed toward the door. She was carrying a shoulder bag with some food for Doug. “We are heading up to take some food to Doug. We should be back in two hours.”

  Tom stood up as they went by. “Keep your eyes open. We don’t know what is lurking around out there.”

  Rin smiled and put her hand on Tom’s shoulder. “After seventeen years on this island, I think I have that part under control. But keep an eye on the place for me, would you? So long Ying, Megan.”

  The woman and her daughters headed back to the ridge that she knew well from the first days that she and Doug spent on the island so many years in her past. When the girls were growing up they often climbed up to the view deck, as they called it, since it offered a majestic view of the island, the mountains in the distance on the mainland and the ocean all around them. She had fond memories of those first days after they arrived on the island as they got to know each other while dodging bullets and trying to stay alive. Now after all the years of relative calm, they were back at it. Back to that same type of life. Doug even looked exactly the same which made sense since his reality was only a week after that first week they spent together.

  “What are you thinking, Mom? Are you ok?” Katelyn was always watching out for her after the girls’ father had disappeared. Several times a day she would ask how it was going and whether she needed anything. It was hard to know what to tell a daughter about losing the person who was the love of your life. Someone you had shared everything with for all those years. It was a hole in your life that you could never hope to fill completely. In the two years since Doug’s death, she had made very little progress in feeling ok about life without him. And this new situation wasn’t going to help that.

  It was wonderful to see Doug again, but this Doug was a different person. A person who was lacking all of her Doug’s memories of their life together. He didn’t know about their daughters until they met face to face at the point of an assault rifle. And while she knew it probably made the girls feel better having someone around who had that confidence and competence that their father always had, she wasn’t ready to consider him a replacement in any sense of the word. For now, though, he was a welcome addition and she would have to decide how she felt about him in the long run. If there was a long run.

  “I am fine. Just thinking about the times when we took this hike with your father. And how I am so glad the three of us are back together so we can enjoy this fine morning.” She tried her best to show some optimism for the girl’s sake. Even if she wasn’t quite ready to feel it for herself.

  They took forty five minutes to hike up the ridge to where Doug was keeping watch. Rin wished she had a way to contact him so there would not be any surprises. She didn’t need to worry, as it turned out. Doug spotted them coming up the trail and was waiting for them as they arrived at his lofty perch.

  “Hello, ladies. Now what are a fine looking bunch of women like you doing walking unescorted through this dangerous forest?” Doug smiled as he helped them up over the rocks that were just below the view deck. He thought to himself he would have preferred Tom escort them, but he didn’t say anything. Rin had been here long enough that she didn’t need him telling her how to take care of herself.

  “We brought you some breakfast since you decided not to join us. And we are more than able to take care of ourselves in this forest, thank you.” Rin held up her assault rifle and smiled back.

  “Would you like some oatmeal, ah, Doug?” Alannah was still uncomfortable calling him Doug, but as her mother pointed out, he wasn’t her father.

  “Sure. That sounds good. I am hungrier than I thought I would be and I didn’t bring anything substantial with me.” He and Rin sat down in the shade while the girls kept watch from the deck.

  “They are very fine girls, Erin. You and your husband did a great job raising them in difficult circumstances.” He opened the small container and went after the thickening oatmeal with a plastic spoon. Given that the oatmeal had nearly an hour to set up during the hike, he was skeptical that the plastic spoon would be able to get through it. He imagined that Ying could write an equation that would predict when it would turn into an impenetrable solid that would resist even a diamond tipped saw blade.

  “Sorry we didn’t bring any milk. We are a little short of it right now. Those future people took the cow last week.”

  Doug looked up with surprise and then felt foolish that he had been so easily duped by her joke. He shook his head. “I had a moment’s thought about where you came up with a cow. Nicely done.”

  “I can’t take too much credit. You are probably weak in the head with hunger. Why didn’t you come back with Tom. I was worried about you.”

  Doug paused for a long minute and looked her in the eyes. “I am worried about me also. I have a darker anger in me than I have ever had before. Partly because they took Erin right in front of me. Twice. And partly because you and the girls have shown me the life I will now miss out on. However challenging life has been for you and Doug, you guys seem to have found strength and love in each other. And you made a life and raised a family here. I feel even more anger that they seem to have cheated me out of that.”

  Erin sighed as she realized how this younger Doug’s emotions and sense of loss must be nearly identical to hers. She felt strong emotions at the thought of their respective losses and moved closer to Doug and hugged him. He felt awkward for a second and then dropped his spoon and put his arms around her. They could feel each other’s emotional pain in that moment of closeness and in one moment seemed to bridge the time between them and fill in the gaps in their very different lives. He realized that she was just as desperate to get her Doug back and just as angry about this turn of events as he was.

  Erin spoke softly into his ear. “You only bring positives to our lives, Doug. Please don’t stay up here because you think you are trying to protect us from confused feelings. Let us just be happy you are here and safe. We can work through the confusion later. Just let them love you as a alternative to their father for now. And let me love you as a friend. A dear and trusted friend. We need you with us and we can’t take a chance you will be taken away.”

  Doug released her and leaned back slightly, holding her by the shoulders and holding eye contact with her. He saw the stream of tears running down her cheek.

  “Thank you, Erin. Or Rin, or whatever I should call you. Thank you for having the courage to say what I was trying to avoid. I can’t be him, but if you are ok with me being around, we can figure out what my role can be until we sort all this out.”

  Rin smiled as she fought to hold her emotions in check. “Whatever sorting out we manage, it will be a lot easier if we work together.” She dabbed her eyes with the back of her hand until Doug reached across and wiped away a tear from her cheek with his thumb. She grabbed his hand and squeezed it tightly. Then she stood up. “Eat your oatmeal. We need to get going.”

  “Yes, ma’am. I’ll get right on it. But I may need to use my knife.”

  Chapter 26

  Alannah scanned the horizon with the binoculars. She was fishing with Tom and Megan on the west coast of the island. It was a regular activity any time the weather was good. Fall brought increased winds to the island and the storms of the winter season would make it difficult to get close to the water on the west coast of the island. It was important to store food for later use in case the weather kept them from fishing for a period of time. The Vikings had shown them how to prepare the salmon for drying and they had a good stock put away for the winter.

  Tom and Megan were trying to learn all they could from Rin and the girls so they would have the skills to live independently as soon as possible. If rescue or return to their time wasn’t possible, they wanted to start their new life and build their cabin as soon as practical. They assumed that the spring would
be the best time to start that project. But with the crowded living conditions at Rin’s camp due to the new arrivals, they decided they might have to go sooner.

  It had been two weeks since they had seen the future people’s boat disappear with Erin, Peter and Gaby. Not a day went by without Doug sending out scouts to various locations to scan the horizon with their binoculars. He spent a lot of time on the view deck or higher on the spine of the ridge, hoping to see something out of place. Even if they showed up and captured him, at least it would be better than waiting and wondering. He craved action and for now the only action was trudging up and down the steep ridge to the view deck with whatever partner he had roped into going with him. Rin was happy to go some of the time, but she also felt a little strange spending too much time alone with this younger version of Doug. Her confused feelings made for long silences as they both tried to decide what was appropriate to share. And she worried she would eventually cross some emotional line that neither of them would want her to cross. At least for now.

  Ying stayed close to camp most days. She felt the most disconnected from the group since it seemed that most of them were related to each other or had established relationships. But she was associated with the pirates and no matter what she did, it was hard to erase the perception that she was a wolf among the sheep. Someone who might suddenly turn on the others. She got that feeling from everyone except the girls who had not experienced the battles with the pirates and had no negative frame of reference to refer to. Katelyn seemed to understand Ying’s plight and she went out of her way to be helpful and friendly to the Chinese scientist who was just a well-educated, and somewhat scared girl in a strange place at this point. She even gave her a new set of clothes to wear that were British commando camouflage green. They burned the uniform of the pirates that Ying had been wearing all along.