by R Magnusholm
He pondered that for a while and said, “The bastard will get hungry or thirsty and go away.” Within himself, a hot wave of terror fought against the cold stiffening his limbs. Sure, it’d go away. Just a dumb animal, wasn’t it?
He badly needed a drink. The previous morning, he’d forgotten to pack a bottle of water. He had a tomato, half a cucumber, and two cheese-and-pickles sandwiches in his backpack, but no water. How long could a person last without drinking? Two, three days?
Liz lit up her phone and screamed.
In the eerie blue light, John glimpsed branches parting slowly on the other side of their shelter, a foot beyond Liz’s head. Quick as a flash, he thrust his spear into the opening gap.
“Ra-a-a-a, you fucker!” he roared. “Get the fuck outta here.”
His makeshift weapon’s pointy end connected with something solid. With an outraged snarl, a dark furry mass tried to force its way in, but John stabbed at the intruder repeatedly, as hard as he could. With a yelp of pain, the beast fled. It crashed away through the undergrowth, spitting and hissing.
Sweat broke out on his forehead. His breath sawed in his raw throat, but at least he was no longer cold.
“It almost got me,” Liz cried. “Another second, and . . .”
He squeezed her arm. “I got it good. It won’t come back.”
“Oh, it will.”
“It won’t,” he said, keeping his voice steady.
He rummaged in his box and handed her the cutlery knife. It was probably the dullest blade in the universe, but it’d have to do.
“Liz, you’re the second line of defense now. If it gets past my spear, stab it.”
She ran her finger dubiously over the blunt edge and nodded. Her phone light went off. “Let’s hope it won’t come to that.”
“Yeah.”
He exhaled his pent-up tension. In his mind, he saw himself sharpening his weapon into a proper spear and building a better shelter. They’d pile up holly branches. Or they would settle in a bramble patch. The thorny vines were nature’s barbed wire.
The reassuring rustle of small animals resumed. He wiped the sweat off his forehead and winced. His face felt as if some villain had run a cheese grater over it. His exertions with the spear had warmed him, but already the chill began seeping back in. He wondered what time it was and how many hours remained until dawn.
“Do you think we’re dead?” Liz asked suddenly.
Wide-eyed, he stared into the impenetrable darkness. “No.”
“And this is purgatory or hell?”
“Don’t be daft, Liz. It’s supposed to be hot in hell.”
“Supposed to.” She lit up her phone. “How could it be nighttime? Back in the real world, it’s still six o’clock in the evening. I would be coming home, preparing dinner. My husband is hopeless at cooking, who’s going to feed the kids now?”
John was thinking about his own son and daughter. His stay-at-home wife cooked like a pro, and he had no worries on that front. By now, they’d be expecting him home. But if he and Liz survived the night, they might find a way back. Return to the same clearing and . . .
And then what? Search for a portal to their own dimension? Wait to be rescued? Wait to be eaten, more likely . . .
Liz was reading something on her phone, and for one wild moment his heart leaped with renewed hope.
“Liz, you’ve got reception?”
“Nope, I checked the news on the train to work, and a webpage’s been cached. Listen to this. Chinese scientists were planning to smash two tiny black holes this morning. Something about studying quantum effects of space-time strings.”
“Well, they sure managed to boost two Londoners back to the prehistoric Thames Valley.” A thought occurred to him. “Or were we boosted to China? That explains the difference in time.” He imagined walking out of some Chinese national park and presenting themselves to the local officials. Howdee do, dear sirs. A tourist visa, you say? So sorry, ha, ha . . . We came through a quantum wormhole.
He suddenly remembered the yellowing birch leaves, ripe bramble berries, and puffballs. He and Liz had been kicked from spring to early fall. Perhaps into September. Maybe they were in New Zealand or Chile. It was fall there now. He imagined emerging a week later in some remote village near Punta Arenas or Wellington. He’d be sunburned and bearded. Liz would wear rough moccasins made of bark. They’d give press conferences and sell exclusive interview rights. As a world sensation, they’d appear on talk shows, each time pocketing a cool multi-million fee.
How he’d laugh at his old boss, that unimaginative snooty slob. John would sell his semidetached Victorian house of red brick and white stucco in Enfield and move to . . . Well, there’d be time to decide where to. And Liz would be visiting for tea with her family, and their kids would ride ponies, and he’d drink beer with her husband and chat about Arsenal beating Manchester City someday.
But a shadow lurked in the deeper recesses of his mind. A figment of imagination so monstrous that he shied away from even acknowledging it. What if . . . what if the rest of the world had perished, and he and Liz were the sole survivors who, by some quirk of cosmic forces, had been flung into a stable pocket of space-time?
Liz switched off her phone. “Battery’s at sixty-five percent.” She paused. “My hands are so cold, I can’t hold the damn thing anyway.” Leaves crunched as she pulled her feet closer and pressed tighter against him. “Good night.”
“Good night, Liz.”
Incredibly, she snored a couple times before her breathing grew shallow and even. He powered down his phone, too. His teeth began chattering again, and John knew he wouldn’t be able to sleep. Yet sleep he did.
Chapter 4
Wild, Wild Woods
John awoke to shafts of light lancing into their shelter. Before his eyes stretched a stout branch, in the fork of which was snagged a tuft of coarse animal hair. Did the brute laying siege to them last night get in while they were at their most vulnerable?
Oh God, Liz! Why was she so silent? Did the beast hurt her? He jerked upright as if electrocuted. His head rebounded off an overhanging bough, and a sharp twig raked his scalp.
Liz opened her eyes and stared at him, puzzled. “What? Who?”
He blew a sigh of relief. “Good morning.”
“John? What the—” She took in the leafy shelter, then added slowly, “This wasn’t a dream.”
“No.”
He held his hand to his smarting head, then plucked the tuft of animal fur from the branch. Since they were both alive, the beast hadn’t sneaked in while they slept. But perhaps it had been here before. The cozy thicket must have been its home. Well, it was his and Liz’s now.
John untied the ‘door branch’, and they crawled out. Stiff and aching, he tried to stand. A white-hot nail of pain drove through his ankle. For a moment, the world grayed out, and he would have fallen if Liz hadn’t grabbed his elbow.
When he gingerly removed his shoe and pulled off the sock, the foot was swollen, and a purple bruise had spread to his toes.
He exchanged a worried glance with Liz.
“We need to find water, build a better shelter,” he said. “But if I can’t walk . . .”
“It will heal,” Liz said. “My son Josh sprained his ankle last year. It looked similar. All black and blue for a month. The thing to do is wrap a tight bandage around it and rest.”
She wrapped his tie in a crisscross pattern around his foot and helped him to his feet. The pain was reduced to a dull ache, and he hobbled along, using the spear as a walking stick.
Sitting on the springy moss, the fallen pine their table, they shared one sandwich and half of a cucumber. They left the second sandwich and the tomato for later. Without water, it was not a pleasant meal.
Later, they inventoried their joint possessions. One rucksack—sturdy and Swiss-made. One canvas bag with the Marks and Spencer’s logo. One pint-sized Tupperware container. Two stainless steel spoons, a cutlery knife, a fork. A chipped and handle
less mug. Two phones. A phone charger. One plastic bag. Some pens and pencils. A pencil sharpener. Nail clippers. Seven writing pads. Keys. A length of frayed twine. Various souvenirs, such as a crystal paperweight etched with Employee of the Year and a tiny model of an Egyptian reed boat. Loose change, paperclips, and other junk.
Liz used the twine to tie a sheaf of dry grass to her shoeless foot. John opened a note pad and wrote: Day 1. Liz and I woke up in wild woods.
“Let’s pick up the broken plates and glass shards,” he said. He put the writing pads and phones in the plastic bag, placed it in the box, and stashed everything in their shelter. Their lair. “It looks like we’re back to the Stone Age.”
In the clearing where they had arrived yesterday, they searched again for Liz’s lost shoe. Nothing. John hoped a portal might open, and they’d be thrown back to London and normality. No luck.
Ants crawled all over his smashed sugar jar. John shook them off and wrapped the shards in leaves and stuffed them in the pocket of his backpack. He was thinking of arrowheads and deerskin scrapers.
Liz gathered a handful of bramble berries, but they weren’t fully ripe and did little to alleviate their thirst.
Then they limped south in search of water, keeping the rising sun on their left. Every now and again, John snapped a twig to mark the path. An hour later, they reached marshy ground where remarkably tall and vigorous reeds waved and whispered in the wind. Beyond the beds of rushes, mudflats spread as far as the eye could see.
“It doesn’t look anything like the Thames,” Liz said. Her lips were dry, eyes red-rimmed and feverish in her pale face.
“Might be the prehistoric Rio Plate or the Potomac.”
She gave him an odd look, so he hastened to add something encouraging.
“You know Liz, if I were alone, I’d have thought I overdosed on green tea and was seeing things.”
Her giggle was too brittle for his liking, but some color returned to her cheeks. “Let’s keep calling it the Thames.”
They carried on. He knew he wasn’t hallucinating. The pain in his foot was all too real, and he leaned on his spear with every step.
The ground sloped to the south. Tussock grass and moss underfoot were waterlogged, as if there had been a heavy downpour recently. Soon, they began skirting patches of oozing black mud. Sunlight glinted on stagnant puddles. The prospect of drinking from them made his stomach heave. If only they could find a clear spring.
A short while later, the ground rose again. They climbed a low bank and broke through a palisade of bulrushes that swayed in the breeze, like chocolate-coated ice-cream cones. As a little child, John had thought bulrushes were magical. Even now, seeing them brought a tired smile to his cracked lips.
After another three hundred yards, they came to a wide stretch of swampy water and could go no further. Water lilies grew here, and strange unidentifiable waterfowl swam, dabbled, and dove. They looked like ducks and geese, but not of any species he’d ever seen. The water reeked of marsh and rotting vegetation.
“I am not drinking that,” Liz said resolutely.
“Me neither.”
Sturdy weeping willows trailed their branches in the water. Something had stripped their long flexible twigs nearly leafless. John thought of grazing deer, but the remaining leaves had a shriveled and sickly quality about them that left him vaguely disconcerted. The higher boughs sported strange hanging moss that swung in the steady east wind. There was something about the moss that he didn’t like.
“London has several small streams flowing into the Thames from the north,” he said. “Fleet Street was named after a river. We might find fresh water there.”
They retraced their steps—only to find the path flooded. As they watched, a patch of rushes to the left rippled as if an invisible army marched through it. A shallow rivulet snaked out of the tussock grass, moving deceptively slowly.
“This ground was dry before,” Liz said. “Isn’t the Thames a tidal river?”
Her voice had a shrill undertone that set John’s nerves on edge. His wife had sounded like that when their daughter became briefly lost in Westfield Shopping Center.
A second rivulet emerged from the grass and headed their way. Like a blind worm, it turned this way and that. John took an involuntary step back. His foot splashed into a puddle that a moment ago didn’t exist.
“We better head to high ground,” he said, glancing at the distant forest.
It was at least half a mile to the tree line of what he thought of as Pimlico Woods. And hadn’t they passed through a dip in the landscape which looked suspiciously like a dry riverbed? Sure they had. And how deep was it? Four, five feet? More? Already, he could see water glinting in the sun that way, cutting off their retreat.
“John, how high can the river rise?”
He reached up, well above his head, and pulled down a strand of trailing moss fluttering like a green party streamer tied to a willow branch. On closer inspection, it turned out to be dried pondweed.
Chapter 5
Water, Water Everywhere
Wedged in the crook of a willow tree, John eyed the churning muddy water rising inexorably toward his feet. Liz perched on a bough on the other side of the trunk, slightly higher than him. Gusts of wind whistled from the east, shaking the branches around them.
“Damn,” he swore. “Looks like we have a storm surge on top of the monthly super tide.”
She laughed nervously. “How ironic to come looking for water only to drown.”
No shit, Sherlock, he thought. He gazed downstream to where the House of Parliament had once stood. Or someday would stand. Or whatever. Indeed, honorable ladies and gentlemen of the House, Lords and Peers of the realm. Please observe those two idiots in a tree.
He imagined the elected representatives making barnyard noises and jeering at them in braying voices: John and Liz sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G. John and Liz sitting in a tree, F-U-C—
He clenched his teeth and closed his eyes. Perhaps it was a dream. A nightmare. He ate too much red meat before sleep. He pinched his leg as hard as he could, wincing. Cautiously, he opened his eyes. The river still churned below. Gun-metal clouds still scudded overhead. If only they had paid heed to the signs. The warnings were as plain as a cow pie in your face. Puddles. Pondweed in branches. No deer or rabbits grazing in the lush grass of floodplains.
The animals knew.
At least the day was passably warm. But if they roosted here for any length of time, they’d eventually stiffen and fall off like acorns. Already his hands were going numb in the wind. He stuffed them in his pockets and leaned his cheek against the rough bark.
“Liz, how long do the tides last?”
“No idea.” She tittered. “I’m a born and bred Londoner, not some swivel-headed tourist.”
“It’s gotta be hours, can’t be days,” he muttered hopefully. The roiling water spread all the way to the tree line half a mile away. Devil knew what wild currents churned there. Even a champion swimmer wouldn’t make it.
How high could the river rise? The trailing moss was level with his feet. Presently, the reed beds were nearly submerged. He supposed the tide did not flood them regularly, or they’d have died off and the whole valley would be one huge stinking mudflat.
“John, look.”
A couple of small animals with bushy tails leaped from branch to branch and ran along the spreading boughs, cavorting above their heads. Squirrels. He took a closer look and stared at them agog. The animals sported glossy green coats speckled with black and brown as if they were not squirrels at all but miniature arboreal commandos. An optical illusion, surely. He blinked furiously to clear his vision.
The commandos still wore camouflage.
“They’re green,” Liz said in a small voice. “This isn’t England.”
He suppressed a bray of hysterical laughter. Well, if Liz saw them too, he hadn’t gone mad and hallucinated the entire thing. “Maybe we’re in New Zealand.”
“More li
kely in Gondwana or Pangea.”
At the sound of her voice, the animals froze and gazed down with their big shiny eyes at John and Liz. Apparently finding the strange bipedal beasts no threat, they resumed playing.
A shiver ran up his spine. He never imagined that cuddly critters could scare him so much. First, a tidal river that reminded him of the prehistoric Thames Valley he’d seen in the Museum of London. Then ducks that didn’t look like the bog-standard British mallards. And now exotic squirrels. And let’s not forget the hissing brute besieging them last night.
Reassuringly, here was his spear, jammed in the willow branches. The sharp end of the weapon still sported a speck of blood on its tip and a couple of coarse hairs.
Liz said, “If this were the past, I’d have expected red European squirrels. If this were the future, they’d be American grays. But they’re green.” She peered at the water below. “Not that it matters one way or another. Either way, we’re screwed.”
“Hmm, we’re still alive . . .”
He gazed about. Twigs, branches, uprooted reeds, and whole trees floated west. Upstream. But that was all wrong. Rivers were supposed to flow to the sea.
His parched throat burned. He tried to work up some spit. Couldn’t. So much water and nothing to drink. Jump down and gorge—suck it up like a dry sponge. Drink, drink, drink. He tore his gaze from the water and looked up, away, anywhere else.
The squirrels. He imagined getting hold of one, sinking his teeth into its furry body, and sucking in the life-giving red liquid. So salty-sweet and cloying. His stomach heaved.
As if reading his mind, the fluffy animals scooted higher in the branches, chittering at him reproachfully.
John dropped his gaze. The water now rushed less than an inch from his foot. As he watched, the river rose higher, and his heel began plowing a V-shaped groove in the dirty yellow-brown surface. The river still flowed upstream.
He pulled up his feet but found nothing to rest them on, just air. Time to stand. Climbing to his feet in the tree fork, he leaned on a branch, but in no time, his injured foot started to throb.