by Orton, D. L.
∞
A bit later, I get up and dip my wrists in cold dishwater. The moisture loosens the cords enough to work my hands free, and after I get the circulation back in my fingers, I change into jeans and a sweater, the bright red burn marks on my wrists a reminder of my stupidity.
I shut Lucky in the bedroom and grab a baseball bat from the hall closet, putting a canister of pepper spray in each pocket and carrying a third, the safety off and my finger on the trigger. I take a deep breath, unlock the front door, and slink out into the fading light.
But despite my trepidation, the man is gone, and it doesn’t take me long to find the spot where I was attacked. A piece of my wedding dress is tangled up in the oaks, and a few feet away, I find the knife. There’s no blood on it, and I let out a sigh of relief. The dog must have gotten the bastard to drop it before he chased him away.
I use the torn fabric to pick up his dull, rusty blade and notice something shiny in the dirt next to it. It’s the sort of round metal disk people used to put on pet collars. I pick it up and turn it over.
It has one word on it, the lettering so scratched that it’s barely legible.
I say the name out loud, forcing back tears. “Thank you, Tolstoy.”
I hear something moving in the brush behind me, and I wheel around, but there’s nothing there. I run back to the cabin and lock the door, and when my heart stops pounding, I make a promise:
I will never be caught defenseless again.
Tomorrow, I will hike down to the makeshift trading post at the burned-out Walmart and do whatever it takes to get a gun.
Chapter 20
Matt: The First Peep
All of us have been working sixteen-hour days for nearly six months, and the stress is showing. A guy on loan from the Air Force Research Laboratory yells at Cassie for deleting a file she’s never touched, and Picasso steps in and tells the whole team to call it a night. We hurry out before Dick gets wind of us skiving off.
On the other side of the lake is a building everyone calls the Y. It’s nothing but a room with a couple of ancient video games, a microwave that ticks ominously, and an old ping-pong table, but there’s beer in the fridge and giant bags of stale popcorn in the closet. Picasso orders our newest conscript to come with us, and Diego mopes along behind us, grumbling to himself.
I think he blames me for bringing him in here, but I didn’t have anything to do with it. At first, he tried to get anyone who would listen to recruit his fiancée, but he seems to have given up on that now and spends most of his time brooding in his room—not at all the guy I used to know.
Given what they did to him, I guess I can’t blame him too much.
Cassie, one of Picasso’s conscripted grad students, tries to get him to join us for ping-pong, but he declines and slumps into a chair. Picasso opens a beer and sets it in front of him, but the guy doesn’t even look at it. “Hey, Nadales. You play ping-pong with us, and I’ll get you some photos of Isabel, prove to you that she’s doing okay.”
Diego glances up, his eyes narrowed, but before he can respond, Picasso tosses a pile of photographs on the table in front of him. “Those were taken two days ago by a drone. I need them back when you’re done.”
Diego picks up a photo, his eyes wide, and we gather around behind him to have a peek. I recognize Isabel immediately: she looks thinner than I remember, but well. There are two or three shots of her sitting on a deck reading—the healed scar on her left leg clearly visible—and a couple of her doing chores around a cabin with a red-headed kid in tow. The last one is of her sitting on some big rocks staring down at the forest floor.
Diego holds it up for a long time and then looks up at Picasso, his eyes pleading.
Our fearless leader nods. “I think that one got mangled in the printer.”
“Thank you.” Diego slips the photo into his shirt.
“I wish I could do more, Nadales. I haven’t given up trying to bring her in, but I don’t hold out much hope. Someone on the inside doesn’t want her involved. I’m sorry.” Picasso reaches out to him. “Come on. Play ping-pong with us. Right now, there’s nothing more you can do for her.”
Diego stands, and Picasso picks up the open bottle from the table. “Are you sure you don’t want this?”
“Yeah. And I suck at ping-pong.”
“No worries, you’re with me.”
Cassie lets out a snort of disdain. “Fucking egomaniac.”
We all walk back to the ping-pong table, Picasso holding the beer in his left hand. He pushes a paddle toward Diego. “Just keep it away from Cass, and you’ll do fine. That woman likes to crush balls.”
Cassie rolls her eyes. Not only is she a mathematical genius, she’s lethal with a ping-pong paddle, and with Picasso trying to play with a bottle in one hand and Diego only swinging half-heartedly, we spank them twice in a row.
Picasso takes a long swig, sets the beer down, and nods at Cassie. “If you coded half as fast as you play ping-pong, you’d be done by now.”
“Oh yeah? If you would tell me what the hell you’re planning to do with the fucking time machine, maybe I could get it to work.”
“Ah, that would take all the fun out of it.”
She throws a handful of popcorn at him. “Bastard.”
He gives her an injured look. “And besides, I convinced Johnson to show us the Peeping Tom. What more do you want?”
“Yeah, because it can’t do anything. And I’ve been telling you for weeks that something isn’t right with the targeting math on the time machine, but no one listens to me.” She screws up her face and says in a good imitation of Dick, “We didn’t hire you to think, Miss Smith, we hired you to code.”
Everyone except Diego laughs.
“Pinhead. Amazing the government has lasted this long with numb-nuts like him in charge. And I hate being called Miss Smith.”
“You let us win this game, and I’ll see what I can do.” Picasso winks at me.
“Fuck you.” Cassie wipes her hands on her jeans and picks up the paddle and ball.
“Maybe when this is all over.” Picasso takes another sip of beer.
“Will you put that goddamn bottle down and just play the game?”
“Don’t get your panties in a wad, woman. My partner is having trouble seeing through that mop of hair he refuses to cut.”
Diego’s hair was already pretty long when he got here, but he refuses to let anyone touch it. Says it reminds him of how long he’s been away from Isabel.
That guy is hurting bad.
Picasso turns back to Cassie. “Do you have a rubber band he can borrow?”
She gives Diego a sympathetic look and then starts digging in her pocket. A moment later, he pulls his hair back into a short ponytail.
It doesn’t look half-bad on him.
Picasso claps him the shoulder. “No more excuses.” He pins his eyes on Cassie. “Now we get serious.”
Agent Dick bursts through the rec room door, Junior trailing behind him like a pull-toy.
We pretend not to notice.
“Speaking of pinheads.” Cassie picks up the ball. “Zero-zero.”
Diego nods, and she serves a rocket at him. He barely manages to get it back in play, and I lean in, ready to smash a winner off his weak return.
“Fault!” Picasso calls out, swinging his beer like a paddle. “It bounced on the wrong side of the center line.”
“Are you goddamn blind?” Cassie stares at him with her mouth open, and I tap the ball weakly across the net.
Dick leans over and grabs it. “I hate to interrupt your playtime, but the Trans-Temporal Viewer Team just located a Type E Target. Update at the Rialto in three minutes.”
Everyone stares at Dick.
Picasso grins. “Holy fucking Barbie. We have a peephole into another universe.”
We drop
the paddles and race out.
Chapter 21
Isabel: Gone to the Dogs
I lift the new Walther P-22 semi-automatic pistol out of my pack and hold it in my hand, still surprised by the deadly weight of it.
That poor dog.
I load five bullets into the magazine clip, check the safety, and place it in the pocket of my coat. Using my water bottle, I clean the vomit off my boots, and then rinse out my mouth and take a drink. The sun disappears behind the heavy snow clouds, and I shiver, anxious to get back to the safety of the cabin.
If I ever see another Walmart, it will be too soon.
I turn onto the old highway and start following it up the canyon, feeling the loaded handgun bump against my thigh with each step. The roadside is dotted with abandoned cars, their windows smashed out and the tires missing, but the world is strangely still and silent.
An ominous feeling slithers up my spine. I stop for a moment and listen, looking for any signs of life.
How will I know if there’s radioactive fallout?
I was hoping to get a little news when I bartered for the Walther, but after watching the dog massacre, I was too rattled to hang around and chat.
Still, I wonder what happened to all those nukes—and if more have been detonated.
I guess it doesn’t really matter. If there’s radiation in the air, we’re all dead.
Twenty minutes later, I hike up to the burned-out Seven-Eleven—my signal to take the shortcut Seamus told me about—and see a basset hound and a golden retriever cowering in the shadows, both of them matted with dirt and looking emaciated.
“Are you guys friends with Tolstoy?”
The basset hound struggles to his feet—one of his legs not working right—and wags his tail. They’re both still wearing collars, and I can see a gash on the golden’s shoulder.
Poor things.
I remember the bags of jerky in my pack and take one out, tossing each dog a large strip—and hoping it really is venison. A moment later, a couple of mutts slink out from the charred remains of the neighboring Starbucks, and I pitch some jerky to them too. Not surprisingly, none of the dogs will let me get close, but they are quick to gulp down the free food.
Five minutes after I stop hiking, Lucky comes trotting out of the forest. She skitters around the dogs and jumps into my lap, meowing up a storm.
“Kitty girl! What are you doing this far from the cabin?” I’m sitting on a tipped-over mailbox, and I offer her a piece of jerky, but she turns up her nose. “Not keen on eating someone else’s kill? Can’t say I blame you. God only knows what kind of meat it is.”
I stay for another half hour, petting Lucky, chucking out tidbits to the injured dogs, and waiting to see if Tolstoy appears.
I’m caught off-guard when it starts to snow. Huge flakes the same slate gray as the clouds float down and settle silently on the frozen earth. I’ve been so busy observing the dogs that I forgot about the weather. I put on my pack, stuff Lucky inside my jacket, leaving her head sticking out beneath my chin, and call out my goodbyes to the bedraggled pets.
“Don’t worry, boys and girls, I’ll be back!”
Kitty girl meows, worried about the gathering storm or the abandoned dogs, I don’t know which, but her plaintive cry sets my nerves on edge, and I quicken my pace, taking the shortcut directly uphill. It doesn’t take long for the ground to be covered in fluffy gray, and fear creeps in for the first time.
It’s only been twenty minutes, but the snow is already piling up.
For a while, I can hear the dog pack trailing behind us through the woods, but the flakes are falling so thick and heavy that I can barely see the trees in front of me, and after a while, we are alone in the cold, dark forest.
I keep tripping on branches and slipping in the dirty snow, the unwieldy handgun bumping against my thigh every time I lose my balance. I’m afraid it’ll go off accidentally, and finally, I pull it out and put it back into the pack, wishing I had let Diego teach me how to shoot. The moment I zip the pack shut an ominous chill creeps up my spine.
What if my would-be rapist is still around, waiting for his chance to attack me?
I shudder and gaze up into the dark, snowy forest, wondering what happened to him—and also Tolstoy, the dog that saved my life. I haven’t seen any footprints, human or otherwise, so I force down my trepidation and tell myself that no one would be out in this weather if they had any other choice. And then I start hiking again, hoping I’m right.
After thirty minutes of uphill trekking, my injured thigh is burning with the exertion, so I stop to rest and get my bearings. The clouds are so low and thick I can’t find the sun. I’m guessing it’s only two in the afternoon, although it feels much later due to the gloomy weather. This time of year, it gets dark at four, so I have an hour or two of light left.
I haven’t been able to find the ravine I followed on the way down, and I’m not sure how far I’ve come. By now, I should be able to see the dead tree stump up on the ridge or the outcropping of rocks near the cabin. But with the clouds so low, all the usual landmarks are hidden. I unclip Diego’s compass from my pack and find north. The arrow seems to point in the direction I expect, but I’m not sure which way the cabin is from here.
I wish I had paid more attention when he showed me how to use it.
I continue hiking uphill, slipping and falling to my knees in the deep snow. I keep looking for something I recognize, but I can barely see my shoes, let alone any huge boulders. After climbing a particularly steep incline, I stop to rest my legs and catch my breath again.
Lucky shifts inside my jacket and meows.
I stroke her head with the back of my mitten. “I don’t know for sure, kitty girl, but we’ve got to be getting close.”
I take a drink of water from my pack. The snow is still falling, and I estimate that I’ve been hiking for more than an hour. That would usually put me close to home, assuming I’ve been heading in the right direction. I have warm clothes, food and water, and a space blanket—thank goodness Diego insisted I keep it in the pack—but with night coming on, that doesn’t sound too comforting. Still, the temperature shouldn’t drop much if the cloud-cover holds, and I have kitty girl to help keep me warm.
I stroke her head, happy to have her company. She squeezes out of my jacket and jumps down into the snow. A seed of hope forms.
Maybe she knows the way home?
The white stuff is up to her chest, and her futile attempts to shake off the fluffy powder would be comical under other circumstances. She gives up and digs half-heartedly in the gray snow and relieves herself in the small clearing. When she’s done, she meows and stretches her front paws up on my legs. I lift her up and pet her while I evaluate my options.
I can continue on, hoping that my sense of direction is good and that I can find the cabin before nightfall, both of which are iffy at this point. Or, I can look for a sheltered place to stack some tree boughs and hunker down for the night and hope that the temperature doesn’t drop too much.
“What do you vote, kitty girl? Keep going or build a shelter?”
She shakes the snow off her head, settles down inside my jacket, and starts purring.
“Easy for you to say, I’m doing all the hard work here.” I gaze up into the falling snow, trying to gauge if it’s getting any lighter.
I think it is. “Uh oh. It could get very cold if the clouds lift.” I shift the backpack. “We should keep going for another hour and hope it clears enough to find the cabin.”
I trudge on into the gathering darkness.
Thirty minutes later, I pause for another drink of water. The snow has stopped, and the temperature is dropping fast. Unfortunately, the clouds haven’t lifted enough to recognize any landmarks, and soon it will be too dark to see. I shiver and stamp the snow off my boots. The wind has picked up, and if the snow starts again, I
’ll be stuck in a blizzard.
The chances of surviving that are grim.
My stomach growls, but that’s the least of my worries right now. In fifteen minutes, there won’t be enough light to see the cabin, even if it’s right in front of me. It’s shaping up to be another sub-zero night, and we may have to survive it out here in the blowing snow.
What would Diego do?
Build some sort of windbreak while there’s still daylight.
Lucky peeks out of my jacket and gives a plaintive whine.
“Sorry, kitty girl, it looks like we might be spending—” She tenses, the fur on her neck standing up.
I stop talking and listen.
With the wind swirling around us, it’s difficult to tell which way the sound came from, but I definitely heard something too.
Lucky meows again and leaps down into the snow.
“Whoa, there, ma’am. It’s too cold to go wandering off by yourself!”
She glances at me and then stares off into the dark, forbidding forest.
And then I see him, the black and white dog standing ten feet away from us. “Tolstoy!” He appears to be a mix between a border collie and some larger breed, maybe a wolfhound.
He wags his tail, his amber eyes glowing in the last of the light. He barks, and Lucky bounds toward him, disappearing into the deep snow.
“Wait! Kitty girl! Don’t leave me!”
He barks again, watching me, and then he turns and starts back the way he came.
I shiver, missing Lucky’s warmth, and trudge through the snow to where his tracks are. My toes are numb, and I’m losing the feeling in my fingers. I look around for Lucky, but don’t see her. The wind is sandblasting ice crystals against the exposed skin of my face and neck, and it burns like fire. I struggle to zip up my coat and then stumble forward, following the dog’s footprints into the unknown.