by Sam Herrera
“What. Are. We. Going to do? What is this?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know,” Kyle shrugged.
KYLE
I settled down, after my shower, for some well-earned time out. The kid had worn me out, forever getting up after being knocked down. She was always persistent and stubborn, I’d give her that. But that wouldn’t help her with this. I needed to stop and think here. Obviously a hospital was out of the question. What then? What was this? I had done something at least: I’d bought her a pair of thick, moleskin gloves from the tourist shop before she went home. I sighed as I collapsed on the couch. Of course, that would be the time when the doorbell had to ring. I ignored it for as long as I could, mumbling curses. But it became clear, after more and more fucking ringing, that whoever it was wasn’t going away. Using language that would have made my mother ashamed of me, I got up and answered. Whoa, who the hell’s this? The woman’s appearance was an eye-opener all by itself: her face was split, all down the middle, by three deep scars that looked like claw marks. Her hair looked as though she’d hacked at it with kitchen scissors and she wore a black, hooded leather coat, jeans and sneakers with, weirdest of all, a water flask strapped to her hip.
“Can I help you?” Her bright blue eyes looked into mine as she answered.
“Are you enjoying flying my ship, Kyle?”
*
We met at the entrance to Thompkins Park the next morning. This woman, Chloe, had told me to meet her at the entrance tomorrow, seeing I was tired out, and then just turned on her heel and walked away, leaving me entirely baffled.
“Hello,” she smiled.
“Hi.” I couldn’t think of another thing to say so we started walking into the park, looking for the nearest bench. We sat, side-by-side, and I found I was unable to stop myself following her scars with my eyes. She’d be pretty if it weren’t for them, I thought. She also had two fingers missing from her right hand. The stumps looked burned or something.
“Frostbite,” she explained.
“Ahhhh,” I nodded. Sure.“Why am I here?” I asked.
“You know why.”
“This thing is yours?”
“Look over there. What do you see?” I looked and saw the tops of the trees and the torch hand of the Statue of Liberty in the distance.
“Savor that view of her while you can, Kyle, because soon she will be torn down to make way for the so-called Statue of Victory. I remember it clearly; it will be just as tall but made entirely of gold and have huge emeralds for eyes and on its hand will be carved the three torches of the One World Order: truth,” she scoffed, “unity and justice.”
“What are you talking about?” I squinted at her, wondering if I had got myself saddled with a nut who’d just happened to see the Winter.
“You’ve seen the interior, haven’t you? It was made for war, which should be obvious, especially to an ex-pilot.”
“How the hell do you know all this shit about me?” I squinted.
“In my time, we are friends. You often spoke of me as one of your best students.” Students? I exhaled, deciding to humor her.
“Your time, huh? And when’s that?”
“The time of the Antichrist.”
“Ah, come. On,” I sniggered. “Ya mean Damien Thorne?”
“His name’s Matthew Karden. I know you don’t believe it now. But you will when you see it. Hell, you already have seen it. The Winter’s invisibility, its speed, its many awesome capabilities. That kinda technology doesn’t, yet, exist.”
“You don’t know that,” I argued. “I figure it could be from Tokyo or China. Some sort of military project. Got lost.”
“Then why are the labels written in English? You will believe when you see Karden come to power.”
“Karden? Karden?” I thought for a moment. “Isn’t he the UN guy?”
“The Secretary General of the United Nations was just the start, as was President of the United States. Soon everyone will think he’s God except us.”
“Where are you goin’?” I asked, seeing her get up and start walking.
“I don’t know,” she said, smiling at some joke I didn’t get.
MARA
School, boring school. This was the end of my last week here and I wondered how I was going to break the news to Scout. I rode in the limo with my eyes fixed on my hand. I’d been glued to it all last evening: tapping it against coins, flexing the fingers. In the shower I had reached out of the spray to watch the water running off it in small droplets. Snapping out of it, I put my gloves back on and got out, seeing we were now at the school gates. I was eager for the day to start, happy enough to spend less and less time at “home” and dreading the end.
“Oh, sorry,” I said as I bumped into some woman once I’d walked out of the limo, towards the gate.
“‘S okay” she smiled, bending down to pick up my dropped schoolbag. She handed it back and as she did so our fingers brushed…
*
What. The. Hell? I whipped my head all around. Where were we? It was a jungle. A maze of trees and bushes everywhere I looked.
“Shit,” the woman sighed. She shrugged and started walking off.
“Hey, wait! Where are we?” I called, running after her.
“I don’t know,” she said in a fancy English accent.
“What did you do?” I demanded, grabbing her by the shoulder. I swallowed hard backing off. Whoa! She was short, about my height, and thin with blue eyes and chin-length brown hair that looked as though she’d hacked at it with kitchen scissors. But I noticed all this afterwards. What made me recoil was her face. She had horrible, ugly scars all over it.
“Nothing,” she snapped, brushing me off. She continued on her way.
“Where are you going?”
“I’ve no idea.”Grrrreat! I raced to catch up with her as she vanished among the trees.
When I found her, she was gazing up at a tree that looked more like a mountain. It was so wide its roots came up to my head and so tall its top branches were distant specks in the sky.
“The kapok tree. I know where we are,” she grinned.
“Where?”
“Borneo.”
“Wwwwwhat?!” I squinted.“Borneo?” We watched as two large parrots flew by overhead, cawing for all they were worth.
“Yep,” she smiled. God! I followed her as she began walking among the trees, trying to find a way to voice the million or so questions in my head. We walked on and on. It was beautiful here, I had to admit; the trees were emerald-green, thick and bushy. Finally we came to a large inland river, flanked by grassy banks with ferns and palm fronds overhanging the water. The sun shone down on them, turning them from bright green to golden-yellow. I watched her as she stepped onto a rock leaning out over the river and lying on her stomach, filled her flask. She then, stepping back, put a bunch of sticks together and surrounded them with stones. When she took her coat off, and made a pillow out of it, I saw she had impressive, sinewy bands of muscle around her arms. She looked as though she’d been working hard all her life.
“You do owe me some answers,” I told her, scowling. Night was drawing in. Already, the humid, tropical heat that had made my school shirt cling to my back and caused me to throw my jacket away was cooling. I missed it, though I’d hated it at first; I was shivering like a leaf.
“I don’t owe you anything,” she told me flatly, not even looking at me as she carried on rubbing two sticks together. I scowled. I felt like punching her in her ugly face. Seconds later, though, I felt like hugging her as sparks ignited the bonfire. I sat before the flames and warmed myself.
“What’s your name?” I asked. It’s a start.
“Chloe.”
“I’m Mara.” She nodded as she too held her hands over the fire. In its light she was quite pretty, despite the scars; the glow brought out some bright yel
low in her brown hair and showed up the freckles along the bridge of her nose. “What are we supposed to eat?” I asked, feeling the pinch for the first time. I hadn’t eaten since breakfast.
“We could order,” she grinned as she held the sharp end of a long, thick stick over the fire, watching it char. “I’ll hunt for us in the morning. Meanwhile,” she added as she tested the tip, nodded and curled up on her makeshift pillow with the spear beside her, “get some sleep.”Yeah, right. I was jumpy, scared and started at every little hoot and snap of a twig. I looked enviously at… Chloe as she slept like a baby, immune, apparently, to all of it. “I’ll hunt for us in the morning”?She’d said it as though she was telling the time. Was she some kind of expert? She seemed pretty able and confident; she’d built a fire from scratch in minutes. What’s your story, Chloe? I fell asleep with this question on my mind.
*
When I woke, I took a moment to admire the bright sun, filtering in through the bright green leaves, the cloudless, blue sky and to listen to the distant cawing of macaws and the drawn-out wails of howler monkeys that I, of course, had never heard before in my life. A soft noise to my left made me turn my head.
“What the hell are you doing?!” I growled, wide-eyed, through my teeth, flipping over onto my other side, my heart racing from the shock of a lifetime! Chloe had been standing over me, dripping wet, wearing a big broad grin…and absolutely nothing else.
“Getting you breakfast,” she retorted. “Like you’ve never seen a pair of tits before.” I rolled my eyes. She’d just strolled up in her all-together, her arms by her sides and everything. Breakfast?
“What do you mean breakf—? Oh. My. God!” I recoiled in disgust, staring up at the dead and skinned monkey-thing, hanging by its tail from a branch just on the fringe of our site. “That… is breakfast?”
“Yes. Has it been properly drained?”
“Drained?”
“There’s blood everywhere, correct?” I looked, swallowing hard. There was. It covered the ground in pools and the tree in long dark streaks. What’s wrong with you? “Excellent.” She stepped over me, still utterly bare-assed, and began walking up to the tree.
“Will you please get dressed?” I begged, turning on my other side.
“No. Those are the only clothes I have and I’d just as soon keep them as clean and dry as I can for as long as possible,” she told me as she started climbing. She was climbing the tree next to it, I noticed. When I took a few steps closer, I saw this tree, the monkey tree, had small spines covering every inch of it. No one could climb that without getting their hands and feet cut to pieces. When Chloe reached a branch that stretched over, bridging the gap between the two, she climbed along it, hand over hand, and grabbed her catch, taking it off the spiky branch. I saw what she’d meant when she climbed back down with the body: the blood covering the tree was now covering her as well. She grimaced as she looked down at herself. The blood coated her right breast and ran down her stomach and sides, seeming to shimmer in the sun. I watched as she swam for a while in the nearby river. Getting out, dripping and shivering, she picked up her pants, took out a huge, serrated knife from the waistband and began to cut up the corpse and scout around for twigs for a new fire. When she’d finally dressed and we had a merry blaze going, we sat and enjoyed monkey shish kebabs. They weren’t bad actually, no different than any other skewered meat I’d ever had. I could grow to like the jungle. Who knew? I could even grow to like Ms. Survival over here. She was very much like a nature guide; she had all the equipment: sturdy walking boots, green jacket, knives, water flask and all the know-how she needed to fashion spears and hunt animals.
“I’m kinda new to this,” I remarked. Chloe nodded but made no comment. “I can tell you’re not. I mean, how’d you nail a monkey?”
“I climbed up that tree, seeing something moving, and stabbed at it. I’d hoped it was a lemur or something, instead I got lucky.” I watched with interest as she dipped her flask into the lake. Once it was full we set off.
“I’m from America.”
“Yes, I gathered that by your accent. Here,” she offered the flask and I drank greedily. God, I was thirsty.
“So, where are you from?”
“Sandbanks, the rich part of England.”
“How does a rich girl become a hardcore survivor and teleporter?”
“A rich girl learns to survive. As for teleporting… well,” she smiled, “it’s just something that happens to me. I can’t control it.”
“You can’t control it?”
“No.” Unless I was mistaken, she suddenly appeared sad. “I can’t control where I end up… or when.”
“When?” I frowned. “You can travel through time?” I asked, the corners of my mouth tugging upwards.
“Yes. I. Can,” she insisted. “Is it really so hard to believe?” She indicated the forest around us. She had a point; we were clearly not in America anymore. “I’m sorry for ya, kid,” she added.
“Why are you sorry for me?”
“Like I said, I can’t control where I end up or when. I could vanish at any moment.” I froze, my eyes bugging and terror gripping me as her meaning sunk in. I leapt up, grabbed her by the lapels and yanked her forward so our noses were almost touching.
“You. Are. Not. Leaving. Me. Here!” I yelled in her face. There was a sudden blur of movement. The whole world tilted and then I was on my back with her knee on my chest, just below the neck, and her left hand around my wrist, pinning me to the floor. Her right hand angled her blade so its point was hovering just over my left eye. I struggled, but it was useless; she was too strong for me. My hand, my metal hand, was throbbing steady pulses like electric shocks. But I barely noticed at the time.
“Can I let you go?” I nodded, genuinely scared. Her voice was still soft and calm, but there was steel in it and the direct blue of her eyes had become clouded and emotionless. It was like looking into the lights of a machine. She let me up and sheathed the knife.
“Don’t do that again,” she warned me. I nodded, deciding, then and there, to stay on her good side. Once she’d let me up there was no further mention of it. I suspected she wasn’t the sort to give lectures and could see she’d scared the shit out of me. She took a step back and let me adjust. “So, you’re a time traveler?”
“Yes, like I said. I can, and frequently have, traveled all over the world in a split second. I have been to fifties Paris, eighties America, the Bronze Age, you name it.”
“Aw, c’mon.”
“It’s true,” she frowned. I took another look around, just to confirm, then helped her stamp out the fire and followed her through the dense jungle. Every so often she would thwack some weeds out of our way and move on. We stayed close to the stream, stopping now and then to refill the flask when we emptied it.
“Sorry,” I called after her.
“What for? Ah, don’t worry about it. Many have been afraid of being left behind. It’s only natural.” And how many have been left behind?
“Where are we going anyway?”
“I don’t know, like I said.”
“What’s for lunch?” I wondered aloud, breakfast starting to ebb away.
“That depends.”
“On?”
“On whether or not you are willing to hunt. Right now, we’re tracking. See?” I followed her pointing finger to a set of prints in the mud.
“What is it?”
“I dunno, but I’m sure it will provide food for us.” Unless we provide food for it. We carried on our hunt, but my hand hadn’t stopped throbbing. Weird. It was giving me small shocks that jolted all the way up my arm, getting worse as we pressed on. The forest always had another surprise waiting around the corner. I looked up, watching as a snake seemed to fly by overhead, gliding like an eagle from one tree to another.
“Chloe look, a flying snake.”
“Ah, yeah, some of them can do that.”
“What are you doing?” I asked, seeing her squat beside a termite trail. “Eww,” I recoiled seeing her take a small stick and, letting some of them crawl on it, run her tongue along the wood, chewing happily.
“Want some?”
“No thanks.”
“It’s food, protein. It’s good for you and I’m not having you faint on the way. Eat,” she ordered. I swallowed hard as I crouched beside her, looking at the writhing insect with the huge pincers between her finger and thumb.
“Today, Mara.” Hardly able to believe I was doing it, I took the thing carefully and, closing my eyes, swallowed it. It was like a hunk of chicken that fought all the way down.
“Wasn’t so bad, was it? More,” she told me offering a stickfull. I widened my eyes. Hey, ho.
“More?” she asked again after a few other stickfulls.
“I’m good, thanks.Did you just fart?” I asked, wrinkling my nose at a truly horrible smell.
“No, it’s that.”
“What?”
“That.” She pointed to a large flower-shaped… something. I started to walk over to it then stopped dead, recoiling in horror, gagging, my hand over my face. The smell was so bad I wanted to hurl.
“The corpse flower,” she told me. I studied it from a safe distance. Its petals looked like slices of salami. Its yellow center had a large hole in it and it was covered, unsurprisingly, by hordes of flies.
“Disgusting, isn’t it?”
“Yes. Is it called the corpse flower because of the smell?”
“Yeah.” I gratefully moved on, with Chloe following me this time. We finally stopped at some small brook to refill the flask.
“We have a problem.” She pointed to a patch of dirt beside my left foot. I stepped back to get a better look. In the sandy soil was a set of pawprints different to those we’d been following. They looked like those of a large cat.
“Jaguar,” she said, her face grim. “If we meet it, let’s not piss it off.” We walked forward more cautiously.