by Chuck Dixon
“No sign of Caroline Tauber,” Dwayne said. “But the old witch is keeping the men out of the cave. I take that as a positive sign. What do you think?”
“You asking me that as a pesky redskin? You think I have some aboriginal wisdom to impart?”
“I’m asking for a guess, dickhead.”
“Beats the shit outta me, paleface. Could be the women want to eat her and the men want to fuck her, and the women are in there marinating her right now.”
“Thanks for that sunny prognosis. What’s going on up at the insertion site?”
“The field’s not open,” Jimbo said and sat cross-legged. “But I set up a sign using rocks to point them to our camp.” He worked at splitting the feathers down the center of their quills using the point of his clasp knife.
“No way of knowing how long we have to wait,” Dwayne said and rolled on his belly to return to his vigil.
“Think Hammond will come along?”
“Chaz and a buttload of cash can be pretty persuasive. If Chaz can find him.”
“Yeah,” Jimbo began binding a six-inch length of feather to the shaft of one of the arrows with a length of thread stripped from his shirt. He wound it round and round with infinite patience.
Dwayne raised the binoculars and eyed the white-painted chief. He was easy to pick out from the others even at a distance. The chief sat watching the cave opening from the shade of an outcropping. He was fixated on the cave every bit as much as Dwayne was.
“What if they don’t come?” Jimbo said after a while. “What if something goes wrong on the other end?”
“Wrong like what?”
Jimbo chuckled. One arrow was fletched, and he set it aside and picked up another.
“Anything could go wrong, Dwayne. That reactor breaks down. The coil breaks. Computer failure. The whole damned thing could just blow up. Maybe the feds show up asking questions about why two Iranian illegals are running an unauthorized nuke plant.”
“So, we stay here and make the best of it,” Dwayne said. The chief was up and pacing, walking halfway to the cave mouth, then walking back to his shady spot.
“We don’t even know if a return trip is possible. Ever think of that? Maybe Chaz and Renzi vanished into the universe in a billion pieces.”
“We stay here, Jimbo.”
“The rest of our lives?”
“Yeah. Forever till the day we die. Could you deal with that?”
“Sure. Might make for a hell of a life. Plenty of game. Fresh air and good water. No taxes and nowhere I need to be.”
“Spoken like a true pesky redskin.” Dwayne watched the white-painted chief who laid back in the shade but raised himself up on an elbow to keep watch on the cave.
“Back to my roots. I could even take a squaw.”
Dwayne lowered the binoculars and turned back to Jimbo, working at his arrows.
“Seriously?”
“Sure,” Jimbo said, inspecting the fletching on a second arrow. “Clean one of them up, and they might look pretty good after a month or two.”
“Even with the sharpened teeth?”
“That might be a problem, bro.”
Dwayne snorted and turned back to glass the village. The lime-washed chief wasn’t under the outcropping. He swept left and right. No chief. Where did he go? Did he get into the cave while Dwayne was turned away?
No, there he was, speaking and gesturing to the males busy rendering the bodies. A few stopped their work to listen. Two of the larger males came over and shoved the smaller man away; not buying his rap. These guys were war chiefs or hunting chiefs. Alpha males. Taller and more muscled than the others. Dwayne named them Fred and Barney. They gestured and barked at the others who turned away to continue their grisly labors. The little white-washed man kicked sand at them and stormed off waving his hands above his head. He went back and sat cross-legged in front of the cave in a clear sulk.
So, Whitey wasn’t a chief. The white-painted skinny had to be a shaman or priest, and one without much power to command. Maybe the red-painted bastard Jimbo nailed with a headshot two nights ago was the chief, and now the skinnies were leaderless except for Fred and Barney. Or maybe the old lady in the cave called the shots. Dwayne was still going to keep an eye on the lime-washed guy.
“You know,” Jimbo said as he finished fletching the last arrow. “There is one eligible female here I wouldn’t mind hooking up with.”
Dwayne turned back to regard him with narrowed eyes.
“But I have a strong feeling she’s spoken for.” Jimbo looked up with a disarming smile.
THAT NIGHT, THEY ATE rabbit that Jimbo snared for dinner. Big jackrabbits. Everything was bigger here except the people. Throughout the afternoon, they saw evidence of that. Butterflies the size of birds skimmed flowers growing in a clearing. Moose easily ten foot at the shoulder stood munching cattails in the shallows along the shore.
On the hike around the lake to their current position, they crossed a causeway between the sea and a small lake. It wasn’t a natural formation but a dam made of mud packed between logs. Moving under the still water along the causeway, they could see dark shapes rippling the surface; beavers the size of black bears. Jimbo wondered what size bears were in this country and Dwayne said he’d rather not find out.
Jimbo cooked the pair of rabbits in a pit fire.
He coated them with mud he scooped from around a spring they were using for water. They baked inside the mud, buried in the embers of the pit, so there was no open flame and very little smoke. He packed the rabbits with wild onion and asparagus. Dessert was salmonberries.
They wouldn’t starve.
There was no big bonfire in the village that night. That must have been a ceremonial thing for feasting on Dr. Kemp. Instead, there were dozens of smaller cook fires as strips of their neighbors hung from spits over the flames. That left the area in front of the cave in shifting shadow. Dwayne couldn’t be certain of who was going in or out of there in the dark. NOD gear would be a godsend right now. And if Jimbo was right. Those eyes on the skinnies meant they had an advantage in the dark. The bigger the eyes, the more light they let in.
“I don’t want to wait anymore,” Dwayne said. “I want to go down there tonight and get her out.”
“Chaz could be back tomorrow,” Jimbo said. He was making more arrows for his quiver. He had twenty or more now.
“Or next week. Or never. And the situation is not improving down there. That witch doctor or shaman or whatever wants in that cave and the old lady has to sleep sometime.”
“Any idea what he wants?” Jimbo said. “Maybe he’s horny.”
“I don’t think so,” Dwayne said. “If that were true, the rest would be trying to get in, too. I think the little witch doctor lost face or mojo. Eating Kemp might have been a power thing, some kind of blood magic. When we showed up, it all went wrong. The witch doctor looks weak now.”
“You’ve been thinking about this,” Jimbo said.
“All fucking day. It makes sense, right?”
“Well, we tried rushing them, and that went south. Maybe a quarterback sneak. When do we leave?”
Dwayne looked into the sky. There was a sliver of moon showing and a bank of heavy clouds moving in over the sea.
“When the weather moves over the moon we start down,” he said.
“Maybe while we’re down there, we can pick up a date for me.” Jimbo grinned.
12
Standard Time
Dr. Morris Tauber sat at the kitchen table in the living quarters and stared without really seeing anything at the little TV set on the table. The sound was turned down to a whisper. It was a rerun of some kind of cop show. From the 80s, if the haircuts were any indication.
Parviz entered from the outside. He wore a parka and sweater. It got close to freezing here at night, and he’d been checking connections around the tower.
“We are good for going in the morning,” Parviz said. “Structure is sound, and Quebat checked levels on th
e reactor. It will even be especially dry tomorrow. Most optimum of conditions, are they not?”
Tauber made a noise rather than a spoken answer.
“You are sick, Doctor?” Parviz peeled off the parka. His sweater was garish, decorated with reindeer and snowflakes. It usually made Tauber laugh, the juxtapose of cultures. It was hard to picture the Iranian at a ski lodge.
“Do you think the physical laws of the universe are immutable?” Tauber asked and looked up to meet Parviz’s eyes.
“They are the laws,” Parviz answered. “But only as we understand them.”
“Right.” Tauber nodded. He swallowed. “Our understanding is limited.”
“Theoretical,” Parviz added helpfully. “Yes,” Tauber said and turned his gaze back to the TV where a car chase down a dusty LA street was grinding on.
“You are thinking of your sister,” Parviz said and opened the refrigerator. “Of what we found.”
“It’s her,” Tauber said. “She died before she was born. She got that molar crown from our family dentist. There’s no changing that.”
“You cannot know that,” Parviz said and set two bottles of hard lemonade on the table.
“It’s done. It can’t change, Parviz.”
“That is such empirical bullshit, it is. Everything we have done is change. All change. We send your sister and the others back where they should never have been. Just stepping through the field made changes. Sending these men back with their guns changed even more. Tomorrow we send men back again, and even more changes will be made.”
“That was a bullet hole in her skull,” Tauber said and shook his head as Parviz popped a bottle and held it to him. “It came from one of the men I sent back.”
“So, will you not send them tomorrow?” Parviz took a sip from his bottle and licked his lips.
“I have to,” Tauber said. “Or maybe I can’t. I don’t know. I don’t know if anything I do will help or hurt Caroline or if it’s too late for anything and all of this was decided all those years ago.”
“If done is done then you can’t hurt her anymore,” Parviz said. “And this way you will know what happened. In any cases, it is written. We see the changes we made as new and very surprising. But God knows all and has put in place these events long before we became a part of them.”
“You’re going to the Quran on me?” Tauber said. “The same book that condemns you and Quebat to death for being who you are?”
“The word of the Prophet is up to the believer,” Parviz said. “I take what I want from the early verses. It is just like any other faith. I cannot walk away because some men choose different passages to guide them.”
Tauber took the bottle and tipped it back, half emptying the frosted bottle in three gulps.
“And you will know, in any cases, it is the end of the bastards who brought you this pain,” Parviz said.
“Do you mean the aborigines or Roenbach’s men?” Tauber said.
“Does it matter?”
Tauber drained the bottle. “THAT’S FUCKED UP.”
Hammond spat on the floor in front of the Tauber Tube. They were powering it up in prep for the trip tomorrow. The coils were already frosting over.
“It’s all true,” Chaz said. “Fucked up,” Hammond said.
“Have I ever lied to you?” Chaz said. “Bangkok,” Hammond said without turning.
“I told you then I didn’t know that hooker was a dude.”
“Only thing that makes me believe you is that cash you’re handing around. That I believe in.”
“Dr. Tauber explained—”
“Dr. Tauber does not inspire confidence,” Hammond cut him off. “And those two Hadji fruitloops don’t help his case. But you’re no bullshitter, and I already got plans for my pay.”
“There’s another upside,” Chaz said. “We can go do a full recon on the ground. The terrain is the same, except for differences I can point out. But the elevations and approaches to the skinny village are basically just like what we experienced.”
“Let’s go take a look,” Hammond said.
On foot, they followed new 4x4 tracks all the way down off the mesa. Had to be the doc’s Land Rover that made them, and couldn’t be more than a week old. They were able to follow the tracks right to the opening of the cave, where tires marks crisscrossed around piles of freshly excavated earth.
While Hammond surveyed the ground they’d be fighting over, Chaz crouched to enter the cave. The floor level had been scraped lower by ten feet or more. It went back a good fifty feet and ended where some bones had been dug up in a far corner. He couldn’t see much in the gloom. The desert sunlight didn’t penetrate far.
He could pick out ribs and some long bones, and the sight made him shake off a chill. This was someone’s grave. Was this the history of the firefight they’d be walking into tomorrow? Was he looking at all that remained of his own future buried all this time ago in a cave, untouched for thousands of years?
Chaz backed out of the cave. Shit like that could test your head. Or break it. He rejoined Hammond who was walking back to the cave from what was the receding shoreline of the ancient lake. He told himself not to mention the bones to Lee.
“So, we’re good?”
“Yeah, we’re good,” Hammond said. “But I only have one question for the doc.”
“We’ll go ask him right now,” Chaz said. “What’s the question?”
“Can we make two trips through this thing at one go?”
“TWO TRIPS?” SAID TAUBER.
Chaz and Hammond stood before the coil in full gear the following morning. Dark forest camo BDUs, ballcaps, tactical gloves, body armor, ammo packs, rifle, frags, HE grenades, sidearms, and combat knives. Hammond had a Benelli combat shotgun strapped to his pack with Velcro strips and an ammo belt with its loops packed with fat buckshot and flechette rounds. The Tube was near maximum. It was giving off vapor. Clumps of frost dripped from it to make a puddle on the floor.
“We got that big ass fifty-cal to hump through,” Hammond gestured to the massive heavy machine gun resting on a tripod next to piles of steel ammo boxes and equipment totes. “And all the extra ammo and gear.”
“I suppose there’s no reason,” Tauber eyed the pile of ordnance with misgiving. “But the physical effects of multiple transfers might be unpleasant.”
“Yeah.” Chaz nodded. “The first trip through kicks your ass.”
“Can’t be helped. We need the Ma Deuce.”
“May I ask why?” Tauber said.
“That’s our back door,” Hammond gestured to the Tube. “We need to cover it as we fall back.”
“You’ll bring everything back with you?” Tauber said. “And everyone?”
“We’ll do our best, Doc,” Chaz said.
“And if we can’t pack the gear back, we know where it is, right?” Hammond said. “We just go out and dig up what’s left of it, and no one’s the wiser.”
“Yes,” Tauber said in a low voice. “Theoretically, anyway.”
13
One Night In Bedrock
A thick drifting funk lay over the skinnies’ village. Smoke from smoldering fires left untended was heavy on the ground. There was a greasy tang to it, like ribs left too long on the grill.
The skinnies slept where they fell, sated and logy after a feast on the flesh of their own villagers. Even the dogs were passed out, gorged on tripe. A fresh stack of bones lay by the makeshift abattoir. There were long strips of meat strung up out of reach of the dogs. Jerky for later. Skins were stretched on lines. The victims were expertly flayed. The translucent leather of their hides looked like kites made of parchment. The forms of humans grotesquely defined. The cut-out eyes and mouths frozen in an eternal expression of woe. Fat still dripped from the skins that were left to be scraped the following morning.
Heavy cloud cover hid the sliver of the moon from view. The only available light was a bluish glow of fires through the suffocating haze that clung around the huts.
Dwayne moved out of the deeper shadows of the trees with a spear in his fists. He’d hardened the point by searing it in the embers of Jimbo’s cookfire. Twenty paces behind, Jimbo covered the drag with an arrow ready in his bow and a quiver filled with twenty more shafts slung from his belt. They’d painted their hands and faces and any other exposed skin black with ash from their fire.
They used the rubbish piles of bones and the tanning racks for cover to move closer to the cave mouth. The last couple hundred feet or so was wide open with no cover. Only luck would carry them over that ground without being seen by a skinny or one of their mutts.
Dwayne crouched by a bone pile. It was swarming with ants and beetles. He looked down to see the skull of what looked like a five-year-old child, its face still in place on the front of the white bone shell and staring from eyeless sockets. The kids were just as murderous as their parents, and he recalled the storm of stones flung at them with punishing accuracy by little bastards just like this one. But still; it was a child, one of their own. And they’d skinned and fed on it.
Lying low and motionless and feeling insects crawling over his open flesh, Dwayne peered around the pile. The white-painted witch doctor was nowhere to be seen. Maybe he’d given up his stakeout of the cave. He might be in the village sleeping it off, his belly jammed with meat. Or he could just as well be keeping a vigil from concealment.
A bright, flickering glow came from within the cave. It would throw Dwayne into silhouette as he moved closer and throw his shadow down the incline and over the huts.
He turned back to where he knew Jimbo was kneeling, unseen, in the dark behind him.
“Fuck it,” he hissed. “Goin’ in.”
“All the way,” came a hushed reply from the dark.
CAROLINE TAUBER WAS ACHING over every inch of her body. She shifted to find a comfortable position, but only found new agonies. Her fingers were numb and her legs tingly where they were bound to the heavy timber. Her ass ached from hours of pressing on the hard cave floor, and her skin itched fiercely from the lime drying on every inch of her body in the stifling cave.