"I don't want it to sound like I was always depressed or some sort of sad sack after she died. I don't guess I was really morose. I enjoyed some classes at college. I really liked flying airplanes—up until earlier today, anyway. Learning about something new like Eddie is exciting. But, well, when I come down to just me, sleeping alone or sitting alone on some bluff watching the sun set, then I'm back where I was. Then I probably am morose. It's almost like I can literally feel the life going out of Susan again—and my mother. And then I think, maybe, I wish I had gone with them."
"I think I understand, Jason. I'm not just saying that," she added hastily. "I got this job because my family's just like yours, you know."
"Kind of ironic, isn't it? We were two people who feel alone in the world and now we really are."
"You think that?"
He shrugged, "We are as far as we know. From a theological standpoint, I figure the world's only here if there's someone to inhabit it. Bible says heaven and earth will pass away, and that apparently hasn't happened, yet." He tossed another pebble into the bottom of the dry creek and said, "I've been thinking about that. We've got about four and a half hours of fuel left in the '42. I say when we get up in the air tomorrow we take about a three and a half to four hour loop and see the country. See if we can find any signs of life.
"Then, maybe," he hesitated, "If we do find some folks living here and cattle and what-not, we just stay." He finally looked at her, something he hadn't done since sitting down on the bluff, and said, "I don't have anyone or anything I'm really pressing to get back to. I wouldn't mind staying here if—um—if you were here with me."
"OK," was all Bronwyn could manage to say, what with her heart in her throat that way. She reached out and put her hand on his and he didn't pull it away, which she took for a good sign.
Of course, she tried to remind herself as they sat there in the sunset with only the sounds of the crickets keeping them company: maybe he didn't really mean it. Maybe he was just saying it because he was as panicked about all this as she was. Maybe it was the old "I wouldn't go out with you if you were the last woman in the world" line, but here she was the last woman in the world and he was resigning himself to that fact. She didn't think that was the case, but she also wasn't sure of his feelings in the matter.
Well, she thought, he did say I'm his best friend. And maybe that's all he sees me as. She asked herself if she would be satisfied with that if it never went any further. She hadn't had many friends—had always been too busy. To have one really good one, maybe that would be worth a whole lot.
Unless he fell in love with someone else. Then it wouldn't be so great. She shook her head, realizing she was running down a road without any good reason to be on it.
She was more than a little surprised at her own feelings. She had dated some in high school and college—gone to all the military balls at A&M—and while a couple young men had even proposed marriage to her she had never been interested. She was interested in marriage—to the right person—but with one of those guys she knew she wasn't in love and with the other she felt his proposal was based more on his own desire to marry—someone, anyone—than on a desire to marry her. On the other hand, she had never been one of those flighty girls and she had never "set her cap" for anyone and she had never figured she would.
But there was something about this quiet man beside her that affected her differently than any man before. With his short black hair and solid build, he was good-looking but not a movie star. Maybe it was his manner. Maybe it was his intelligence. Maybe it was his flying ability. Maybe it was all these things combined. Maybe it was that the deep wound of his wife's death, which Bronwyn felt like she had sensed from the beginning, was some sort of attraction to her. She wanted to take care of him, to take away that pain. She wasn't sure why exactly she felt this way—for him and no one else, even—and it briefly occurred to her that such feelings might have been looked down on by some of her classmates who saw the battle of the sexes as far more important than the war that had given them their opportunities.
"Catclaw Creek," he said in the midst of the silence.
"Excuse me?" Bronwyn was shaken from her reverie.
"This is Catclaw Creek, I think. Sorriest excuse for a creek you've ever seen most of the year, but during a heavy rain it looks like a real river. Used to take out sections of the town during flood season. Don't know why I remember it. Couldn't tell you the name of any other creek around here."
The sun disappeared not too long after that, leaving a clear sky with more stars than either could ever remember seeing at one time. They were so close, Kerrigan felt like if he had a broom he could knock some of them out of the sky. He looked for, and found, the Big Dipper and Orion the Hunter—the only two formations he had ever been able to find without someone else's help.
They looked the same as he remembered. They were the only things that looked familiar and realizing that fact gave him more comfort than he would have thought possible.
"Who was the quarterback?" Bronwyn asked.
"Huh?"
"The backup quarterback that finished out the season? What happened to him?"
Kerrigan hesitated a moment, then replied, "He got blasted a few thousand years into the future in a science project gone awry."
"Really? That was you?"
"Yeah," he nodded, even though the movement was invisible in the darkness. She felt him shrug, though, as he said, "I was so phenomenally unprepared. I was supposed to be a tight end. Never had any idea of being quarterback. But when Marty went down, the coach shoved me in there because he couldn't think of anyone else.
"It was a lot of fun. Always thought that, with a little practice, I might could've gotten pretty good at it. We won the last three games of the season—even beat Stamford." She could feel his smile as he added, "Susan was there for every game. Even the away games. I remember getting plowed into the turf by this huge guy from Throckmorton for about the umpteenth time in one night and as I was getting up thinking I ought to walk away right then, I happened to look into the stands and she was giving me this look that said, 'You can do it, Jason.'"
"Could you? I mean, how'd it come out against Throckmorton?"
"Beat us fifty-seven to twelve. Those two touchdowns did come after I saw her in the stands, though."
"How come you didn't play in college?"
"I did, sort of. Played tight end for the freshman team. After I married Susan, though, I just decided to stick with track. I liked it a lot more and since I was a distance runner she could come work out with me. Up until she got too sick, anyway."
They lapsed into another long silence, broken only by the sound of small pebbles being tossed into a dry creek bed.
"You know," she said softly, "If it weren't for the fact that the adrenaline of the day is just now draining from my body, I think I would be scared to death. Now, I'm too tired to be scared."
"No kidding."
She leaned over and put her head against his shoulder. "Do you mind?" she asked, wondering how she could cover the moment if he said he did.
"Not a bit."
They woke up under the Comal 42, still in their flight suits. They had spread the tarpaulin that was standard with the survival gear out on the ground and had been asleep within minutes of saying goodnight. Bronwyn's night had been filled with disturbing dreams but Jason couldn't remember dreaming about anything. In fact, it seem like dawn had come about five minutes after dark.
As they ate from the rations that had been in the survival gear, Bronwyn told him, "I had some weird dreams last night."
"Weird like how?"
"I don't know. It was like I kept trying to get home, but never could. In one of them I was a little girl again and back on the street where I grew up and I kept turning the corner to go home but every time I did I'd still be a block away."
"Think it's a premonition?"
"Of what? That we won't make it back today?"
"Could be."
"C
ome on. Think some happy thoughts," she chided, half seriously.
"It's a beautiful sunrise."
"That it is."
As she picked up her trash and began to fold up the tarp, she offered, "Let's just say that we are in the future. And let's further say we make it back to 1947. Where do we tell people we've been? Do we tell them anything?"
"It'd be hard to tell people where we've been since we don't know for sure ourselves. And, since we're travelling backwards in time we could arrive at the very moment we left in which case we'll have to explain to them why we're not in Albuquerque."
"I'm willing to accept that this spot on the globe used to be Abilene," Brownwyn acceded, "What with the train tracks and McMurry hill and everything. But when do you think we are?"
"I have no idea and very little to base an idea on."
Smiling, she goaded, "But if you had to make a guess. Where—when—would you say this is?"
He was on his haunches, holding the tarp in a tight bundle while she tied the piggin strings. He let out a breath and said, "If I were guessing? And this is a guess, remember? There are so many factors. Did the buildings fall down over time or were they knocked down by bombs—"
"I had already forgotten that we mentioned that possibility," Bronwyn suddenly said, losing her grip on the strings and having to start over. She looked up at him and asked, "Are you thinking that maybe the buildings were leveled by the war? The war we were in?"
"Our war or another one, you mean?" He lifted the tarp and carried it over to the storage compartment on the plane. That was the only thing he had found that he didn't like about the Comal 42: the storage compartment where the survival gear was stowed was on the underside of the plane, rendering it virtually unreachable in the event of a crash landing.
At her questioning glance, he said, "In a way, it may not matter. Mankind's always finding some reason or another to go to war. But I guess it could have happened from our war—'specially if someone turned our nuclear technology into a bomb. But, anyway . . . " He thought a moment before saying, "That pink granite building was built after 1947—we know that for sure—and it's had time to fall over. Castles like that don't go in a hurry unless something's been brought against them—like another war. And I don't think they would have built a castle in the middle of the war—our war. They could have built it like we were saying during some other kind of war—chemical weapons or something. So I'm guessing we have to be at least two thousand years in the future—maybe more. If that castle wasn't hit by a bomb, if it just fell over naturally, we're talking up to three or four times that long."
"Could those bricks last that long?"
"Dry climate, sure. I remember reading stories about archeologists and the stuff they would find buried just six inches under the surface. Read about a guy that found about six axe heads. One of them still had the handle in it but all the rest had just rotted away. They found the sawdust. Who's to say why some survived and others didn't in apparently the same conditions? But like that macadam? That stuff's going to take a while to be completely obliterated like it is around here."
"So you think it's more than two thousand years?"
"How can we tell? In theory, our clocks would be something like four minutes off for every thousand years—you had this in physics, right? But how do we tell that in less than twenty-four hours? For all I know, we could be ten thousand years in the future."
"Jason," she asked hesitantly, "If everything around here was wiped out by war or some sort of biological weapon, and if we make it back to our time, do you think we could change things?"
"I was wondering that myself. Part of it depends on when it happened. Was it during our war or one five hundred years after we're dead? And how do we stop it without sounding like a pair of kooks—going around telling people we've been to the future? And again, I don't know what happened here. What if it was some sort of natural disaster that we can't do anything about? I know, that sounds wishy-washy, but think about it. You're military, same as me. What if we get back and five years from now some new weapon is invented and we speak out against it because we think it's the one that's going to do all this? Maybe that's the weapon that could prevent all of this and the reason it wasn't used and the world got like this is—"
"Because we stopped it," she nodded. "I see what you mean. It's just, it's just that it will be hard knowing that everyone could be gone and maybe there's something we should be doing about it."
He nodded as he closed the compartment and began to walk around the plane and perform a visual inspection in the early morning light. Bronwyn wanted to say more but couldn't think of what, so she climbed up on the wing and into the cockpit to begin her own pre-flight checklist of Eddie and his components.
"Did you ever," he asked as they flew over the territory that had once contained the towns of Mineral Wells and Albany and Breckenridge but now contained only what looked like virgin land, "Go to some place like Dallas and wish you could see it as the first settlers did? Or, I remember reading once about some of the first white people to go to the Big Bend area—down around Crockett. They said there was two-foot tall prairie grass all over the area."
"You're kidding."
"No. That's what they say. But they overgrazed it and in a generation it was the desert that you and I saw." As he looked out, Jason said, "I feel like that's what I'm seeing: the land the way it was before the white man came along. Except that the pioneers would have seen deer and buffalo and animals like that, I feel like I'm seeing this land just like the pioneers saw it. Under the circumstances this may make me seem kind of gruesome or something, but I find this really fascinating. I wouldn't mind going down there and maybe walking around in some of the gullies and maybe taking a canoe down the Trinity River—if it's still flowing."
Bronwyn gave a motion that was somewhere between a nod and a shrug and told him, "I know what you mean. I still can't help but wonder what happened to all the people though. Everyone's gone. I get the distinct feeling that even if we were to go to Dallas it would be nothing more than another Abilene. More ruins, maybe."
He tapped the fuel gauge and looked at the chronometer and said, "Well, we've got about an hour and a half's fuel left and still no sign of any animal life. No roads or trails or buildings or anything like that, either. Even that big ol' hotel in Mineral Wells is gone now. We can either fly east and see if we can find someone around Dallas, or we can head back and try to make the jump back through time. It's decision time, Bronwyn. What's your vote?"
After a deep breath, she exhaled, "As much as I'd like to see the rest of this world—and find out if anyone still lives here—I think our only hope is to try to go back in time. Who knows? maybe we'll just jump to Albuquerque and have to put down there and see if anyone lives over there. If that's the case, let's try to find some fuel and explore the world."
"And if we can't find any?"
"I always wanted to live in the mountains so we'll try to find something to eat and build us a house up on some peak. So . . . I say let's go back."
"I'm with you."
On the west side of Abilene, flying east, as they flew over what had once been the town of Merkle, Kerrigan said, "Fifteen minutes. Starting the clock on my mark—now."
"We are go," Bronwyn replied. She reached over and patted him on the leg and said, "You being the praying type, you want to lead us in one?"
"Are you, um, not the praying type?"
"Don't know. I grew up going to the Catholic Church now and again back home, but I never really paid attention. Back before I left Crockett, I talked to a few praying people and read a little of the Bible. I'd like to know more about it—and about how to pray—but I don't know much, yet." She smiled, "If we make it back I'm definitely going to say some prayers of thanks, so maybe I know more about it than I think."
"This time I want you to close your eyes at five and open them at one second after go."
"Why close them at all?"
"Because we proved yesterday
that we don't have as much control over this as we thought. If we suddenly jump into the night-time or something . . . just do what I say, Captain."
"Aye-aye, Admiral," Bronwyn replied.
"Five. Four. Three. Two. One. Go."
"There're people down there!" Bronwyn shouted, practically bursting Jason's eardrums.
"And there's McMurry College!" Jason returned, almost as loud. "Still standing!"
She reached across the seat and gave him as much of a quick hug as the confines of their crash webbing would allow.
"Susan One to Kirby," Jason said over the radio on the agreed frequency. "Susan One to Kirby, please respond."
When there was no response, Bronwyn switched the communicator over to her helmet and tried. There was still nothing. As she was about to try another channel, Jason touched her arm to get her attention and pointed out the front of the plane. "What?" she asked, not immediately seeing what he was pointing at.
"No Kirby," he told her.
"What? Maybe you're on the wrong side of town."
"No chance. And look, there's a lake down there where Kirby's supposed to be. You know as well as I do that there's no lake anywhere near the southeast side of town."
"Are you sure this is Abilene?"
"You saw the McMurry chapel as well as I did. I'll buzz the courthouse if you want." Banking the plane, he flew low enough over the train tracks to get the attention of people on the sidewalks in the downtown area.
"That's Abilene, all right. So where's Kirby?" Looking out her side window, she said, "I've got what looks like a runway on the east side of town. Want to put down there?"
"No," he replied quickly. Then, more calmly, he said, "Something about this really feels wrong. And we don't know who those people are down there. I say we put down somewhere off the beaten path and try to find out something about our surroundings before we . . . "
The Legend of Garison Fitch (Book 3): Lost Time Page 18