Chapter 34
“Get in with me!” I yell.
She slams her door and runs around to the passenger side of my Blazer. When she’s in I tear up dirt getting turned around. “Who?” I demand as I swing out of my three-point turn.
“Who what?”
“Who is it going to be? I saw the look on your face. You felt it at the same time I did.”
“I only felt it. I don’t know who it is. I didn’t have the visions like. . .”
I glance over and see that her eyes are closed and her mouth is frozen in the forming of her next word. My own insides are rolling and then constricting. It’s close, it’s eminent, I’m looking everywhere now, searching for the threat, expecting a den of sabre-toothed cats to come charging out of the woods.
Suddenly Becky’s eyes fly open. “Stop!”
She screams so loud my foot slams on the brake without a signal from my brain. The vehicle buckles and bounces on the downhill slope across the rocks and dirt. The antilock brakes are snapping as they try to get control. Suddenly Becky is out the door. She falls and then springs right back up like a Jack-in-the-Box and starts running at full gate up the hill, disappearing into the dust. Finally the Blazer stops. I throw it in PARK, lock the emergency break and step out. Dust is swirling in sync with shifting pressure on my insides. Aileen is still standing in front of Tanya’s car. Tanya is outside the car. They are looking up the hill at us. . . at Becky. Matt and Brian are in the middle of the yard looking. Which one will it be? I pray that it is not Tanya. I find myself hoping with some twisted, unforgivable logic that it is Aileen; something to do with already dying once and now being a spirit.
I look up the hill but the dust is still too thick to see where Becky is going. I walk away from the Blazer to better see past the cloud and then understand Becky’s mission. It has begun and she has failed. She had to fail. There is never any stopping it. Our destiny is already written and the duty of Becky and me, and maybe others like us, is to be witnesses.
It still doesn’t stop us from trying. Becky has her hand on the car door, but the car is already rolling, gravity overcoming the aged emergency brake—or did Becky fail to set the brake and gravity is simply overcoming the few stones and rocks that had been holding the car in place? In any case, it is out of Becky’s control as the door handle rips from her hand and she runs after the car, waving her arms and screaming to her mother.
It’s Tanya! I might be able to stop it, or at least redirect it toward a safer area away from the people below. I scramble back into the Blazer, slam it into drive and release the emergency brake, and then shove the accelerator pedal to the floor. But by this time Becky’s car is nearly past me and picking up speed. I turn hard to my right anyway in hopes of catching enough of it to send it off the road and into the trees.
And then, in one very brief second, just as I clip her bumper, I see my terrible error. I’m not taking an action to divert the car from its deadly path as I had thought; I am instead doing my part to ensure the proper culmination of the predicted tragedy. All I’m successfully able to do is drive it sideways to the hill where its momentum throws it into a tumble, directly at Aileen and Tanya.
Aileen dives into the bushes, barely clearing the car as it rolls and then bounces exactly where she was standing. Tanya freezes. I’m screaming as I point the Blazer down the hill and over accelerate in some crazy attempt to right the wrong I’ve done. Suddenly Tanya drops flat to the ground next to her rental, expecting, I’m sure, to be saved as the Taurus takes the brunt. But, it doesn’t take the brunt. It doesn’t even get a scratch as Becky’s car bounces and then goes airborne easily clearing the Taurus, and Tanya.
Brian is directly in line now, standing by the ATV, either poised to spring or frozen in place. I cannot tell for sure which. What I can tell is that I’m going to run into Tanya’s car if I don’t hit the brakes immediately. I lay hard on the brake pedal and briefly wonder if she took the optional insurance on her rental, which I failed to do on mine. As the blazer bounces and skids, my attention is caught by Matt, who before had been safely off to the side. He is now sprinting toward his dad and like a tackle hitting a quarterback he drives his shoulder into Brian’s ribs and propels them both from the two-ton mass of metal hurdling toward them. They sprawl to the ground, safely out of the path of Becky’s car.
But then, as though trapped in a nightmare that never ends, the unthinkable, unimaginable happens. As the car spins by and toward Aileen’s front yard, the hood, which had been flopping about like a flag in the breeze, separates from its hinges, ricochets off the ATV and lands flat on top of both Matt and Brian.
My Blazer stops four feet from the Taurus. I scramble out and cross between the two vehicles to check on Tanya. She is already on her feet, looking at where the car went. Becky flies by, sobbing and crying, screaming things I cannot understand. Tanya takes off after her and I right on her heel. Aileen has extracted herself from the bushes and is also sprinting down to where the father and son lie, all but completely hidden beneath the chunk of tired blue metal.
Becky arrives first and starts to lift the hood. “NO!” I scream, knowing that a wrong action could cause them further injury. She backs up and looks at me, her face stricken with anguish, and caked with dirt and tears. Tanya slides in on her knees and then on her belly as she looks underneath. I swing to the other side and say to Tanya, “Let’s pick it straight up together.”
“Okay.” She hooks her hands under the edge.
“1, 2, 3.” We lift and carry it to the side and drop it.
Aileen skids to a stop. Tanya tells her to go call 911, then drops down next to the unconscious men and starts feeling for pulses and injuries. “They’re both alive.” She is in her nurse mode, her voice even and in control. “Pulses are strong.”
Becky is on her knees stroking Matt’s hair. “He’ll be okay, right?” she asks her mother.
Tanya gently moves her hands over Matt’s limbs. “Do you feel anything on his head like blood or bumps?”
“Yes,” Becky says.
Tanya verifies the knob on Matt’s head. “That could also mean a neck injury and possible spinal injuries. I didn’t see it happen. Were they standing? Did the car hit them first?”
“No,” I say and then explain how Matt attempted to save his dad and that they were lying on the ground when the hood, by itself, fell on them.
“Reba, go in and get blankets.” Becky takes off at a sprint. “I can’t feel anything broken but I’m sure Matt will have a concussion.” She examines Brian’s head. “Him too. If that’s all there is, they’ll be counting themselves damn lucky.”
Becky returns with a blanket and a comforter. I take one and we cover them. Then Becky sits down and says, “You saved Mom’s life, Dad.”
We both look at her. “What are you talking about?” Tanya asks.
“This isn’t the way it was going to happen. My car was supposed to smash into you and your car and . . .” She closes her eyes and I see her shutter.
“I changed it when I hit your car?” I have never been able to affect an event before, or is it I have never been in a position where I could, never knowing what was actually going to happen.
“Yes.” Becky nods her head.
This sets me back on my heel. Tragic events can be altered, averted? But at what cost? In this case the injury of two men. An easy trade. But what if it had killed them?
Aileen shows up with a couple of bottles of water. “EMS is on their way. It’ll be a while. How are they?”
Matt begins to stir under the blanket.
What other chain of events have now been changed?
Chapter 35
Shadows are long and the sun is touching the treetops. Matt and Brian are sitting on the porch, still subdued by their ordeal. Three different sheriff's deputies have come and gone—curious as to what happened to their old boss—but not before doing a full report on the accident with Becky’s car. The fact that I struck it with my rental was not menti
oned by anyone. The damage to the Blazer, though slight, will be noticeable at the agency. I’ll deal with that when I turn it in. It saved Tanya’s life so I’ll gladly pay whatever the damages will amount to. The EMS has also come and gone, determining that there was nothing but a couple of bumps on their heads and a sore shoulder. Brian will certainly get a bill.
Aileen has kept herself scarce, appearing only to talk with the deputies about what she saw. I’m sitting on the porch steps watching Tanya and Becky going through Becky’s ex-car. Tanya hasn’t said a word to me since Matt awoke under the blanket. They’re stacking Becky’s personal things on the lawn. When they’re done, Becky sits down next to the pile and starts sorting, organizing, and repacking. She looks at her camera, says something to her mom, and sets it aside. She drags the backpack—her $200 Ergo—into her lap, looks up at the sky, and then opens it. What’s in it that she seems concerned about—maybe her iPod player. No big deal. All her music is backed up on her computer. She drags out the laptop and turns it on.
The laptop!
Why in the devil does she keep her computer in her backpack? That fifteen hundred dollar piece of equipment should have been in its hard case, not in a flimsy backpack. Does she always carry it when she hikes? I’m still mentally calculating the cost of replacing it before she starts college when the familiar operating system logo appears. I walk over and sit down next to her. “Sorry about your camera.”
“Yeah, well, it was already broken.”
“Broken? How?”
She’s opening and closing programs while she talks. “When we saw the first sabre-toothed cat, Matt knocked me down and then fell on me. The camera kind of rattled after that.”
“Oh.” She scrimped and saved to buy that camera herself. Twelve mega pixels.
She laughs. “Now it seems kind of funny. There I was with a face full of deer scat, and a sabre-toothed cat drooling at me and what do you know but my camera was broken.”
“Deer scat?”
“Deer shit, Dad!”
“I know what deer scat is.”
“That’s what I fell into. Matt shoved my face into it.”
Matt is sitting on the porch more intent on nursing his sore head than listening to our conversation. Becky must sense some fatherly emotion on my part. “It was an accident, Dad. You don’t need to go beat him up. He didn’t mean to knock me down. It just happened.”
“I wasn’t thinking about beating him up. Did you carry your computer with you hiking?”
“Why not? I like to write in it like you. You know. . . keep a journal.”
There’s a purposeful edge to her last three words, as though it’s an unspeakable family secret that we shouldn’t let out of the closet. She shuts down the computer and then turns a shoulder to me. Tanya I understand. Becky perplexes me. When I return to my seat on the porch, Aileen is standing in the doorway. She wiggles her finger at me to come in. My better judgment says not to, but my curiosity overcomes. I glance back at my wife and daughter. They’re busy at their task. Brian and Matt don’t appear to notice. I follow Aileen past the foyer and down the stairway. We stop below the photo of her with the young sabre-toothed cat.
“It appears you’re in the doghouse,” she says.
“I’ve been there before.”
“I remember. This time though, I’m in no way responsible.”
I don’t make a comment; not even a smile.
“I want to talk to you about what you saw out there. I imagine you’re curious.”
“An understatement.”
She looks past me, to the stairs leading out of the room. I look to see what has caught her attention. There is no one. When I turn back she’s pulling her turtleneck sweater off over her head. Suddenly she is standing in front of me in a skimpy, black lace bra. “Wait a minute,” I start to say but she tells me to shut up and look. She’s pointing to her neck, upper chest and shoulders. I drag my eyes up, and then step closer for a better look. The scars aren’t as bad as I would have imagined, but they’re there.
She puts the turtleneck back on. “I have no clue how, or why they didn’t kill me. After Tanya went into hysterics that night and drove as all into the bushes, I managed to break away and roll to my feet. Tanya did the same thing in the other direction, still screaming at shadows in the blizzard, shadows which without a doubt were sabre-toothed cats. You were face down in the snow, screaming as well.”
“I still have nightmares about it.”
“It was only a few seconds before you stopped screaming. Even in Tanya’s panic she understood what had to be done and scrambled around to me so we could link up again, back-to-back. And then she started crying at the fact that you weren’t moving. I began to realize that something terrible had happened to you. We stood there for a long time, watching the snow cover you up, and watching for cats. I wanted to go back to the building and admit our defeat. In my opinion we were all dead if we stayed, that maybe the two of us could be saved if we went. But Tanya refused to leave you. Every time I blinked, it seemed, her personality changed. She started taking charge, insisting that there was a way out. She decided that we could pick you up and drag you out, keep you facing behind us. I told her she was crazy. I’m not proud of what I felt, but I was ready to give you up for dead. I just wanted to save myself. I must have convinced her of the stupidity of the idea because she settled down again and we sat there in silence.”
“Tanya never told me any of this.” I thought that Aileen had been taken during the panic, and that Tanya stayed only because she would have been alone to face the cats otherwise, and that the only reason she pulled me out of the snow and propped me up was so that the cats had another face to see, even if it was a frozen, bloody mess without one eye, and with a sharp stick protruding from its mouth. I probably would have scared Sasquatch if he happened to show up.
“I have no idea how she got you two out of there, anymore than why the cats didn’t kill me. Remembering her personality changes and understanding the impossible feat she pulled off that night, and then seeing her here now and the look on her face when I stepped in front of her car . . . frankly, I don’t want to be in the same room alone with her.”
I feel the same way and I have nothing to feel guilty about. “I understand. What happened? How did the cats get you?”
She sits down. “After we settled down and we stopped shaking, Tanya went to check on you. I was intent on the shapes in the snow when suddenly she screamed. I turned around expecting to be facing a cat. Instead I faced your bloody and mangled face. I started retching and then something huge picked me up. I think I screamed until my mind shut down all my pain sensors. In addition to the scars you just looked at, I received a broken ankle and a busted kneecap; probably from banging against trees as I hung from the cat’s jaws. I know what it feels like to be the mouse in a cat’s world. I was certain that I was only seconds from death. The last thing I remember is wishing that he would kill me just to get it over with.”
She closes her eyes. I wait for her to get to the part about how she survived. And then my mind starts playing with Brian’s spirit story. I don’t want to pretend like I know a whole lot about spirits, or even if I believe in them; however, they are portrayed as being not of flesh and blood and bone. If you saw one and tried to touch her, your hand would pass right though, right? When I laid on top of Aileen after she rolled the Rhino, no part of me passed through any part of her. She was most definitely of flesh.
“When I woke up, it was daylight and I was a bloody mess. By all rights I should have been dead, but there I was. I figured they had plenty to eat already and decided to keep me alive and fresh. I could move my legs but the shattered ankle and knee hurt like hell. I couldn’t move my arms or rotate my head. I did have enough awareness to know that I was in the triplet’s garden, the place to where they would herd one of the pigs if they wanted to keep him alive for a while.”
“I remember.” I recall when we sent the two pigs into the garden; two of the young sab
re-toothed cats killed one while the other two herded the second pig to their holding area.
“I was to live until they got hungry again. At some point I was spotted on the closed circuit monitors. I recall only the sense that I was being picked up by men. My next recollection was waking up at Victor’s facility in Northern California. He and his doctors nursed me back to health. He told me that you and Tanya had been killed by the cats, and that Merwin Boggs and Doctor Zitnik had gone crazy and burned Sans Sanssabre to the ground, losing their own lives in the process.”
“That’s not true,” I say. “As you can see, we’re not dead. Tanya and I were rescued by Victor’s people, but not before she managed to get me walking and then broke her back falling from the fence.”
“I did learn that later.”
“Victor also nursed me back to health and then held Tanya for ransom in a Salt Lake City hospital, thinking he could get me to do anything he wanted. It was during this time that he moved his entire operation down to California, probably where you were. By the time I had recovered enough that I was able to make my own escape, the only people that were still there were Victor, Henri, Merwin, one or two security people, and the helicopter pilot. I’m sure Zitnik was already gone. He took his secrets and tried to disappear.”
“Secrets?”
“Yeah. His process that successfully recreated the sabre-toothed cat, and thus the baby factory, and the formula for the healing cream.”
“Healing cream?”
“You don’t know about that? Didn’t they use something on you that helped you heal?”
“Oh!” She considers that for a few seconds. “Is that how I recovered so fast? I always wondered why my scars are so light.”
“It was most effective on the frostbite. Tanya and I both should have lost fingers or toes. Neither of us suffered any long lasting effects from the cold that night. I don’t have any scars at all. I’m surprised you have any.”
Sabre-Toothed Cat Trilogy Page 58