Days of Future Past - Part 1: Past Tense

by John Van Stry

  I nodded and turned and looked down at her, then gave her a hug and a kiss.

  "What was that for?"

  "Because for the first time since I left, I don't mind being here."

  She smiled and kissed me back.

  The next morning we got up about an hour before sunrise, Jack had made us pitch our tents between the wagons the night before, and we'd each taken a turn during the night to stand watch in pairs of two.

  "Hurry up, we need to break camp and get out of here fast," Jack said.

  "What's wrong?" I asked.

  "Storm coming," Sarah said as she and Heather quickly broke down the tent we'd slept in.

  "Feels like a big one too," Dianne said as she and Keri broke down the one they'd both slept in.

  "We can eat trail rations in the saddle, I don't feel like getting caught out here in a storm," Jack said. "Paul, get everyone's horses saddled."

  I nodded and set about doing that, while he and Tim got the four horses that pulled the two wagons into their traces and hooked up.

  We were well on our way before the sun came up, and a few hours after that the leading edge of the storm caught up with us, as it descended from out of the west.

  I put my duster on as flurries started to fall from the sky. My months with the Navajo had conditioned me to the cold, and I still didn't wear a jacket most of the time, but the temperature had dropped and with the wind picking up, I was starting to feel it.

  By the time noon came, the snow was falling heavier, but with the wind blowing it wasn't piling up on the road at all, and we could still see where we were going, if not all that easily. Lisa passed out water and food to everyone when we stopped to rest and water the horses, but even that was done at a walk.

  By the time we made the town the snow was really starting to come down hard and visibility was getting less and less by the minute. Jack led us through the small town and to a barn where we put up all the horses, but the inn next to it was full, and by then it was snowing so hard that no one wanted to risk wandering through Blythe to try and find another one.

  But at least we could eat there, and they let us sleep in the stables with the horses, which was a lot warmer than being outside, as it stopped the wind and it had a heater to keep the horses from freezing. However it wasn't that much better, it was still cold and of course, it stunk of horses and the things that horses did.

  So we set up our tents in the middle of the barn in the aisle between the stalls, bolted the doors from the inside, set up a watch and crawled into our sleeping bags.

  I woke up in the middle of the night, Sarah slept between me and Heather as she liked the heat that we both threw off, and she was carefully getting out of our bed, trying not to wake either of us.

  "Everything okay?" I asked in a whisper.

  "I just want to check something," she said as she climbed over me, then sitting on the ground she pulled on her boots and grabbed the heavy robe she kept in the tent. I grabbed my pants and pulled them on and followed her out of the tent.

  "Are you not cold?" she asked looking at me.

  "It's not that bad in here," I shrugged, "I wore less and it was colder in the mornings when I was with the Navajo."

  "It makes me cold just to look at you," she said and pulled her robe tighter around her.

  "So, what's up?" I asked her.

  "I need to check something," Sarah said, looking around the barn.

  I noticed that Dean was on watch; Jack had only set a single person as we were inside and the barn doors were all barred. The horses were all asleep, and it was rather quiet. I checked the pocket watch I'd bought Havsue, it was a little after three in the morning.

  Sarah walked over to the door that led out towards the inn.

  "Could you open this for me, Paul? I want to check if it is still snowing."

  I nodded and started to unbar the door, as Dean came over to join me.

  "Be careful," he said in a lowered voice, "if the snow is piled up against it, you won't be able to close it again if you open it too far."

  I nodded and put my shoulder against it as I finished unbarring it, then slowly opened it a crack and looked out, as Sarah peeked out under my head.

  It was still snowing out, but not as hard as it had been earlier. The snow looked to be about two feet deep, and it was a lot colder outside than it had been earlier, but at least the wind had stopped blowing.

  "Close it," Sarah said and walked over to the large double doors that we'd come in through and started to chant softly, raising her arms out as she did so. Her robe fell open then and I took the time to appreciate the view, and then glanced at Dean who was also looking. He smiled and shrugged at me, but turned his head away.

  Sarah continued to do that for at least another fifteen minutes, Keri coming out of her tent after five minutes or so, also wrapped in a robe against the cold, to stand next to me and watch.

  "What's she doing?" I whispered to Keri.

  "She's trying to find out what is driving the storm," Keri said.

  I just nodded and waited until she put her arms down and shivering, she drew the robe back around her and came over to us. I wrapped my arms around her as she leaned into me looking tired.

  "It's magical, isn't it?" Keri asked.

  Sarah yawned, covering her mouth, and nodded slowly. "Something drove it through the mountains and down onto the plains here. But whatever was behind it, it is gone now."

  "Well that's weird," Keri said.

  "It means the northern route will be impassible for at least another week, maybe two," Sarah said.

  "Well, I guess we're going south then," I said and hugged her again as she shivered. "Back to bed, the both of you. We can tell Jack in the morning."

  "Yes, Dear," Sarah said with a smile.

  "Make sure to warm her up," Keri teased.

  I grinned as Sarah rolled her eyes and we all went back to our beds.

  "What's up?" Heather asked sleepily as we crawled back between the covers.

  "Checking on the storm," Sarah said. "I suspect we will be spending the day here."

  "Oh, okay," Heather yawned and pulled Sarah close, "You're cold. Let me warm you up a bit."

  "Umm, hmm."

  "So, you're sure the storm came out of the west?" Jack asked Sarah as we sat around a table in the inn eating breakfast. The whole town was snowed in, there was over two feet of snow on the ground with drifts up to six feet high in places and the temperature had dropped to well below freezing. With the skies now clear and the sun up, it was positively blinding outside.

  Sarah nodded setting down her fork for a moment, "Yes, I took the time to assess the storm as it was blowing out late last night. We were on the southern and eastern edges of it. I would suspect that it was far worse in the mountains and that the passes west of here are blocked and will remain so for some days to come."

  "So, we head further south on the road, and take the road to New Mexical when we come to it," Jack said between bites of his breakfast.

  "That appears to be our best option," Sarah agreed and took a drink, then picking her fork back up she started to eat again.

  "Dean tells me you said there was magic involved?"

  Sarah nodded, "Yes," she said between bites.

  "Does it involve us?" He asked concerned.

  Sarah shook her head, "No, we just were caught in the edges. A day or two further south of here and I believe we will be out of the snow."

  "Well, its too deep to take the wagons through easily, maybe by tomorrow enough will have blown off for us to continue," Jack said.

  "Can we find someplace better than the barn to stay?" Heather asked.

  "I'll send the boys around after breakfast to see if there are any inns with rooms open, but from what the owner here was telling me, two caravans decided to hole up here yesterday when the weather turned. Be happy we got the barn."

  "Well, I'm going to visit the outhouse, and then go check on our horses," I said standing up and giving Sarah and Heathe
r each a kiss as I passed them.

  Someone had shoveled the path to the outhouses; there were two, one for men and a second for women. While the inn had some indoor plumbing, apparently it didn't have indoor bathrooms. But at least they were heated.

  When I left I decided to tramp through the snow a bit and look around a little before heading back to the barn. I'd never seen so much snow before, I wasn't a skier, so I never went into the mountains in the winter, and of course where I grew up it almost never snowed at all. So the white blanket of snow, and the way it quieted everything down was a new experience for me.

  "Like it?"

  I looked over at the small copse of trees on my left and Coyote was there.

  "It's different, I've never really experienced this much snow before."

  Coyote snickered, "I meant your new arrangement with your girlfriends."

  I looked at him, "You really expect me to believe you had something to do with that?"

  "Weeeell, while I can't actually claim all of the credit, I may have sent a suggestive dream or two to them in their sleep."

  I shook my head, "You are so full of it, aren't you?"

  "It beats your little 'I cared about you both, so I had to let you go,' speech."

  I shrugged, "Hey, I'm helping you, aren't I? That right there should prove I'm prone to doing stupid things."

  "You need to work on your snark more, though with proper training, I'm sure you'll be a master in no time."

  I rolled my eyes, "Why are you here, Coyote?"

  "This storm of course, Sarah is right, it was magical."

  "Did you cause it?" I asked.

  "Heavens no, I have no control over the weather at all."

  "But you know someone who does, don't you?"

  He gave one of those little bark-like laughs and ducked his head down in a nod, "You're learning. But no, I had no hand in this. This was done to delay a party of Navajo who left their homes heading west a few days ago."

  "Riggs?" I asked, concerned.

  Coyote nodded.

  "So, someone knows where he's going, and they don't want him to get there," I said thinking about that. "Will they come after us next?"

  "No one even knows you exist, Paul. Most of the gods have even forgotten you came with him. Those that bothered to see that you didn't perish in the fire believe that you just ran off into the wilderness. Everyone is focused on Riggs and his group."

  "What about the armory? If they know he's heading there, won't they do something there to stop him? How might that affect us?"

  "I wouldn't worry about it," Coyote said. "While they have an idea of where he is, and where he might be heading, they do not know his plans or his destination. Our enemies believe he is after something else, and so are hindering him until they can deal with that."

  I nodded, "Okay, that's all nice to know then. But that still doesn't tell me why you're here."

  "You have to leave tomorrow. You still have a long ways to go, and while the snow in the passes is going to delay Riggs, he doesn't have any wagons, so he can move faster than you can. He does have a larger group however, so he's not moving all that much faster as it takes him longer to make and break camp each night and morning."

  "So where is he now?"

  "He's a few days out of Barstow."

  "So he's not going the same way we are," I nodded, "that's good at least."

  "He's being swayed by sentiment. He lived in Barstow with his first wife. He wanted to see what it looked like."

  That surprised me, from what I'd seen of Riggs, he didn't seem like the kind of man who had any sentiments. Then again, if I wasn't so sure my hometown was under water, I'd want to go check that out as well.

  "What happened here, Coyote? What happened to the world?"

  Coyote shrugged, "I really can't tell you that, Paul."

  "Can't, or won't?" I asked.

  "Can't. I wasn't here, none of us were. We'd all retreated from the earth and from our people long before any of this happened. They didn't really believe in us anymore. So we left them to their fates. Afterwards, when they needed us again, when they called to us, we decided to come back and help them once again."

  "I thought you were gods, I thought you knew everything?" I said, surprised.

  Coyote shook his head, "There are gods, and then there are gods, Paul. There is much that I know, that we know, but we do not know everything. What happened does not involve us, or concern us, so we do not know of it. It is something you will just have to learn on your own."

  I nodded and turned to walk back to the barn as I considered what we'd discussed. The biggest part of it was that Coyote did not in fact know everything. He'd already made it clear to me that he didn't always know the future, and the card playing had made it apparent that sometimes even minor things could be hidden from him.

  But that last bit about gods was rather curious. So there were gods out there that knew more than the average god. I wondered if they were more powerful than the average god as well?

  A most curious concept.

  - 17 -

  We left early the next morning. Jack wanted to wait another day for the snow to clear off more, but as the expedition's funder, and his boss's boyfriend, I was able to exert enough pressure to get him to do it. He complained and bitched a little, but Sarah took him aside and they had a little talk. It was all good after that.

  As for Sarah, I told her plain and simple that I knew Riggs was on the road, and I didn't want to take any chances of him getting there first. She looked at me a little funny, but didn't press it and just supported me.

  Jack made us ride the horses at a set distance apart and he put all of us in front of the wagons, to help break down the snow. There was a bit of a crust on the top of it today, because the surface had melted yesterday, and then refroze during the night. Thankfully the surface underneath wasn't icy, or we'd have been slipping all over the place.

  The road was still in good shape; Sarah told me that a lot of traders traveled between Yuma and Blythe, either then continuing on to Havsue, or points further east. However the road was not flat, as it traveled through some rather impressive hills. It wasn't too steep a grade, but twenty miles outside of town, the road to Yuma continued to the south, and we had to turn southwest onto the road to the Salt Sea. The road wasn't as nice as the road to Yuma was, but the snow had lessened considerably as we'd headed south. When we made camp later that night the snow had almost completely disappeared and both Jack and Sarah were sure that we'd make Glamis by nightfall of the next day.

  "So, what's the story on Glamis?" I asked Sarah as the three of us cuddled up in our tent that night.

  "It is a fishing town on the edge of the Salt Sea, why?"

  "Is that all they do there, is fish?"

  "Mostly. There are some boats that sail around to the other towns on the sea to trade."

  "Do you think it might have frozen over, with this cold weather we're having?"

  Sarah shook her head, "No, it's as salty as the water in the gulf to the south. Why?"

  "It's going to add at least three days to our trip to go around it, right?"

  "Yes, about that."

  "Why don't we just take a boat across? We could have it land us close to where the road on the west side is. It would save us several days of travel, the sea isn't that wide."

  "That would depend on the boat we needed being in town when we got there," Sarah said. "I also do not know if we could get both of the wagons onto a boat with all of the horses."

  "We only need one to haul everything back. We could afford to lose the other one," I said.

  "I will remind you that we need the food in Lisa's wagon, or we would be in serious trouble. Plus I would not want to be the one to tell her we were leaving her wagon behind."

  Heather laughed, "Yeah, Lisa just might cut your head off for that one. She's rather attached to her cookware and all."

  "I just hate the way they're slowing us down, that's all," I said with a sigh.
/>   Heather pressed up against me from behind; they were on either side of me tonight.

  "Don't worry about it," Heather said. "Right now, they're slowing us down, but once we get into the mountains, we're going to be going slow anyway. There's a lot of things to watch out for up there, and even more as we come down to the coast. The wagons aren't going to be what slows us down then."

  I nodded and thought about that, the maps we had weren't the best as they were rather old and based on people's observations and recollections, rather than any kind of official survey. Once we started down out of the mountains, it would probably be only eighty or so miles to our destination. But it would probably take us a week just to get there.

  At least the trip had been easy so far.

  I awoke suddenly to a loud screeching noise.

  "What the hell...?" I said sitting up in the tent, as both Heather and Sarah sat up as well.

  "ALARM! ALARM!" I heard first one voice yelling, and then a second.

  I didn't hesitate at that point; I grabbed my rifle, which was next to the large sleeping bag we shared, and crawled out of the tent, grabbing my duster from just inside the tent as I did.

  I was about to drop the gun and put on the duster, it was freezing outside! When a large wolf came charging at me with some sort of demented and evil looking little man on its back.

  I dropped the duster instead and grabbing my rifle along the stock I flipped off the safety with my thumb and fired a three round burst from the hip. I missed of course, hitting the ground between me and it, but the next burst got the wolf in the chest and the head as it came closer, and the one after that I got whatever the hell was riding it as they were tossed forward over the wolf's head as the wolf collapsed under him.

  I brought my rifle up to my shoulder and fired on three more who were charging into camp, the sounds of gunfire sounding around me as others did the same.

  I managed to drop another one, but the other two veered wide of me, and I had to be careful not to shoot any of the tents or any of the others in the party, who were all crawling out now as well.

  I started to move forward, towards the direction they were coming from, as I did not want to hit any of the horses on our picket, and I didn't want them attacking the horses either.