Pushed Back

by S A Ison

  “This is a big damn forest.” Harper said after a stretch of time. He was now leaning back on his elbows, his long body stretched out, one boot propped on the other. He seemed comfortable and I wished I could feel that way. The closest I’d ever gotten to woods, was ten feet away, while watching TV.

  “Yeah, and I’m getting a bad feeling.”

  “What?” he asked cautiously, one dark brow rose high.

  “I’m almost afraid to say Harper, because if I’m right, we are screwed. I mean really fricken screwed.” I said, my voice was shaking now as well as my body. The more I saw of this forest, the more I knew it was wrong. Something was really wrong.

  “Look, one moment we are on the interstate, then we are in a forest, a forest that isn’t normal. These trees are massive. The oak we passed an hour ago, that was nearly a hundred feet tall. Harper, there aren’t any forests in Virginia like that, I don’t think anywhere in the states except for maybe California in their state parks. These are ancient forests Harper.”

  “As in we went back in time to a primeval forest?”

  “Yeah.” I said in a low voice.

  He looked at me for a long moment, his eyes sheened over with unshed tears and his face grew pale as the color left it. My own eyes begin to fill as well. I could feel my tears sliding down my face. I took my arm and wiped across my nose.

  “You think that all that dizzy stuff and earth moving stuff was us falling through time?”

  “Yeah, I think we were pushed back in time, I think maybe at that point, at the mound, it was some kind of temporal fissure or opening, and I think it held the past, present and future.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Remember when I told you I saw the landscape beyond and that it looked like it had been destroyed?” At his nod, I continued. “Maybe that was the future, and maybe when I saw your dad and that lady disappear, maybe they were in the present and when you came to me, we were pushed back to the past.”

  THREE

  “What do you mean pushed back?” He asked.

  “When all that was happening, didn’t you feel like you were being pushed, like something was driving you away from that mound?”

  “Yeah, like I was being shoved between the shoulders. But my brain couldn’t function, there was a loud buzzing in my head and I had vertigo along with that projectile vomiting.” He was now wiping his face on his shirt. I unzipped my backpack and dug around in it for the handkerchief. I handed him the blue flowered one and I took the other, pink with little white roses.

  We both sat in silence for a long time it seemed. Both lost in our own thoughts. My thoughts were trying to deal with how the hell could we get back? How the hell did we get here, how could it have happened? When and where were we? Were we still in Virginia and was this the Virginia of the past? What year was it?

  “What year do you think it is?” I asked.

  “I couldn’t even tell you. If we find native Americans, do you think they will try to kill us?” his face a mask of worry. I imagined, mine reflected the same.

  “Jesus, I don’t know. Do you think you might want to sharpen my stick, so I can use it for protection?”

  “Yeah, give me your stick.” He pulled out his knife and began to whittle away, peels of thin wood curled away quickly. It only took a few minutes, but I had a sturdy spear. He reached over and picked his branch up and began to peel away the wood as well.

  “Later when we make camp for the night, I’ll make a fire and we can burn the tips. That will make them stronger.”

  “I know this is a crappy situation, and we just might be lost in the woods in our own time, but I’m really glad you’re here Harper. I don’t think I could have survived, especially if I’d come across that snake.

  “If you’re right, then our lives are going to get really hard really quick. We only have a limited amount of food and water. We have no weapons, except these spears. We have no way to preserve food, or keep a lot of water. We’re damn fortunate you have the water bottles that you have. We’re lucky, we got the snake. That will feed us for a couple days.”

  “How in the hell can we survive? I have no clue about plants or hunting. Do you?”

  “Well, I do know how to hunt and fish, but we don’t have a gun, so it will be hard. We don’t have fishing gear, but I think I can use the ribs of the snake to make a few hooks, or I can make a gig. We’ll have to find something like string or vine. I think we’ll have to take it one day at a time.”

  The breath was knocked out of me, I won’t lie. I’ve not gone past more than seven or eight hours without eating. Now, I may well starve to death, because I don’t eat grass or leaves. I wouldn’t know a poisonous plant from an edible one. Had Harper not been there, I am very sure that I would be dead within a few days to a week. That thought shook me to my core. I’d never been faced with anything close to this. I had led a very urban life, everything at my hand and within easy attainment.

  “Look, let’s keep walking. Maybe we are wrong, maybe we are just in some big-ass forest. We can walk a few more hours and if we don’t find anything, we can make camp and cook up this snake. I can also smoke some of the meat. It’s lean, and if I can smoke it, we’ll have some for a few days.”

  “Okay, sounds good.” I said and stood up. I put the plastic baggies back into my pack. We might need everything we have on us. We had a plan at least for the short term and I was really hoping I was wrong. Looking around the forest, I saw large trees, some with bright green new leaves. I wish that I knew what kind they were, but the only trees I knew where oaks trees and pine trees. Maybe even maples. Like I said, I’m not the outdoorsy kind.

  We started walking again, though we couldn’t see the sun, I could tell it was overhead and around noon or so. We were seeing more and more bushes and I could hear water running somewhere. I could smell it as well.

  “I hear water, you want to see if it’s a river or something, maybe it’s near a town or building?” I asked.

  “Hell yeah, we can refill our water bottles, we’ll have to maybe use your socks to filter it and maybe later rig something up to boil it.”

  We moved more rapidly, following the sound, and the undergrowth became lusher and the trees spread out more. The sun was beginning to show above us, the trees becoming more spread out. I shoved the end of my walking stick into the bushes, moving it around. I didn’t want any more run-ins with snakes, poisonous or otherwise.

  I looked at the ground and beneath my feet were dead leaves, twigs, sticks, rocks and dirt. It didn’t look any different from the ground I was used to seeing at home, except no grass. There were taller bushes that we worked our way around until we came to a clearing, thirty feet away from the bank of a river, not a huge one but a river all the same.

  “Do you know what river this is?” I asked, looking up and down the banks. It was a fast-moving river and there were a lot of small boulders and river rock around the water’s edge.

  “From where we stopped our cars, and heading westerly, I’d say this is the Indian River. If we can follow it north, I think that will run right into Norfolk and Portsmouth. I say let’s walk about another hour and then start setting up some kind of camp if we don’t find anything.” He suggested.

  “That sounds good to me. I’m tired as hell and to be honest, hungry as well.”

  “We can gather dried brush as we go, so when we stop, we’ll have enough for a fire. We’ll just follow the river. Let’s drink the water in the bottles as much as we want, then I will fill all the bottles and we can use a sock to drink the river water. It should be okay to drink, but I think for now, we should use some kind of filtering system or boil it.”

  “How can we boil it? We don’t have a pot.”

  “Once we find a place to camp, we’ll build us a fire. If I can find a good size piece of bark, I can wash it out and then we can get river rocks, small round ones and put them in the fire. We put the water in the clean bark and then drop hot rocks into the water, I think we might
be able to get it hot enough to boil.”

  I looked at him, my mouth slightly open. “Who are you? MacGyver in the woods?” I laughed.

  Harper laughed and shook his head, “No, I just like the outdoors. I was also in the Boy Scouts for quite a few years and like I said, me and my dad did a lot of hunting and we camped a lot. He is old school, you know, to have the ability to fend for yourself.”

  “I’m glad you know what you’re doing, and if I’ve not said it yet or before, thank you.”

  He smiled and shook it off. We walked up the side of the riverbank. It was nice to be in the sun and the trees were large around us, but there were more bushes around the river instead of the massive trees. The sound of rushing water mixed with cicadas buzzing around us. There were gnats flying around as well. They were annoying, but they were also familiar.

  I watched dippers swoop down and glide across the water. There were blue jays calling around us and of course the wood peckers banging away in the forest. If I wasn’t scared out of my mind, I would have enjoyed it. As it was, part of my brain was numb with fear, the other was taking in everything around me. Neither of us spoke, we had to watch our footing, since the ground was covered with small rocks and boulders.

  We rounded a bend in the river and stopped in our tracks, almost fifty feet ahead of us was a small herd of some kind of animal.

  “Are those tapirs?” I asked incredulously, my hands above my eyes to shade them. I leaned my body forward, my feet refusing to move from that spot.

  “Oh man, I think they are.” He said, nearly breathless.

  “I don’t think those are native here in Virginia, at least not in 2017. I don’t think we will find Norfolk or Portsmouth ahead.” I said softly.

  “I don’t think we will either. Do you think we could be in South America some place? Maybe transported or some such?”

  “I don’t even know. My brain can’t even wrap around any of this.”

  “You want to just stop for today? I’m really tired all of a sudden.”

  “Yeah, me too. I think I’ve had the hell knocked out of me.” I said, the ugly realization hitting me that I had hoped I was wrong and I wasn’t. I couldn’t even tell you how long we stood there watching those animals. They ignored us, I guess we weren’t a threat.

  We moved back from the river and found a level patch of ground. We dragged dead wood from around the river’s edge. The timber and limbs were dry and there was plenty of them. We built up a huge pile and Harper built a fire. I sat, my legs no longer able to stand and I fed the fire with smaller branches and sticks. I stared into the fire, my mind so confused and I was so afraid that I was numb, and damned near catatonic. Seeing those tapirs, that was the clencher. There is nothing like that in modern Virginia. Maybe in South America, but not up here in Virginia.

  Could we be in South America? Was it as far fetched as being pushed back in time? If we were in South America, then we could actually find a village or a town and get back home. My mind was reeling, and ideas and thoughts were bouncing around and I was unable to grasp any of it.

  I am pretty sure that I’ll never see my girls again. I could feel my heart breaking into thousands of pieces. My beautiful girls will never know what has happened to me. It is all I can do to keep it together. I feel the heat of the fire and it dried the tears that were falling down my face. I know that I need to pull my big girl panties up, and look to the future and survival, but at that moment, I could only wallow in sorrow and fear.

  “Ivy.” Harper hissed in a low voice, that pulled me out of my sad and morose thoughts. I looked up and he was by several large bushes. He was waving me over to him, his face a mixture of fear and awe. I got up and walked over.

  “Come with me and be really quiet, you have to see this.” He said.

  I came up beside him, and then followed him quietly into the forest. I was nervous, and didn’t know what to expect. The breath left my body. Before me, twenty feet away was a huge animal. It was eating the leaves of a tree, its long-hooked claws pulling the branch down to its mouth. It was a giant sloth, a friggen giant sloth. As in the prehistoric sloth, the Paleolithic friggen era. As in we aren’t even in the same millennia or even the nearest ten millennia, we were back maybe fifteen to seventeen thousand years.

  I felt Harper’s arms around me, dragging me back. My mind was so blank and I couldn’t even feel my legs. I felt him lift me, and I think I fainted. I began to come around, I could feel the heat of the fire and he was wiping my face with a damp towel. I sat up and looked at him. His face was pale, I think I scared him.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “You made a small cry and then you started to crumple and then you fainted.”

  “Harper, we went back in time, some seventeen thousand years. Those things died off thousands and thousands of years ago. There aren’t any humans here. At least I don’t’ think there are. Or there aren’t enough to have been recorded. There are no Native Americans.” My voice broke and my hand went up to my beaded necklace, my daughters had given it to me for Mother’s Day. I rubbed and clicked the beads, my heart shattered, the only thing I had left of them.

  He added more wood to the fire, building it up. I felt him looking at me, watching to see if I would fall forward into the fire.

  “I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. This is so ludicrous.” He said.

  “I know. It is just so unbelievable.”

  “I’m going to go find a green branch so I can start the snake meat. I’ll also look for a chunk of bark that maybe we can boil water in.”

  I just nodded. I guess he was dealing with this news in his own way, keeping busy as he processed it. Me, all I could do was sit and stare into the fire. My body refused to work. If I’d have caught fire, I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have been able to put myself out.

  One thing about this time in our planet’s history, is that during this time, winter was long and harsh. Long and harsh. Did I not tell you, long and goddamn harsh? This means that come this winter, if we don’t have a place to sit out all the snow and starvation, we’ll be dead. That is, if we don’t get eaten by huge bears, saber-toothed cats and massive wolves. I felt like fainting again and put my head down between my legs. I was trying hard not to hyperventilate.

  I watched as Harper worked at our camp sight and I saw him put baseball size rocks into the hot coals of the fire. I felt horrible for not helping, but I couldn’t make myself move. When I heard splashing, I finally looked up and saw him washing a three-foot piece of bark. I dragged myself up and staggered to the water’s edge. He looked up and smiled kindly at me.

  “Can I help?” I asked, though I really didn’t want to.

  “Sure, I’ve washed this out, if you can put sand from the river in it, then take a bigger rock and scour it around, to make it smooth, that will help with boiling the water.”

  I took the bark and scooped a handful of sand from the river and put it into the hallow bark. I found a good-sized rock that fit nicely into my hand and began to rub the sand around the bottom. After about ten minutes of that, I rinsed and ran my hand inside. It was smooth. I filled it with water, about a gallon’s worth, some sloshing out as I took it over to the fire.

  The snake was actually smelling really good and my stomach growled loudly. He had skinned it and cleaned it out by the river. I envied Harper, he seemed comfortable out here like this. I’d never been camping, the closest I’ve ever come was staying in a crappy hotel. I could see he was trying hard to keep me calm too and I felt bad I was putting my own minutia on him. Trying to pull up my big girl panties was harder than I thought.

  “I want to apologize for falling apart like that.” I started, but he kindly held up a hand.

  “Don’t, don’t be sorry for anything. Ivy, we are only one day into this. You have so much on your mind with the worry about your daughters. I can’t even imagine. And if I have a bad day or a bad moment, I hope you will let it slide. Besides, this is beyond the realm of crazy.” He grinned.
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  “You seem so comfortable and not afraid. I’m so terrified. I don’t even know what or how we will survive. We are in a goddamn prehistoric land. I mean, there aren’t any other humans here, at least I don’t think there are. We are now the Native Americans here.” I laughed, and struggled not to cry. I felt my face wobble alarmingly toward another breakdown.

  “I’m only comfortable as far as the hunting goes and being outdoors. But I’ll tell ya Ivy, I’m scared shitless. If what you say is true and I believe it after seeing the big friggen sloth, then we are also faced with predators of equal size. We are soooooo at the bottom of the food chain now.”

  “I know, it’s like input overload, so much is coming at me. What should we do? Should we try to go back and look for the opening? You know, where we fell into this mess?” I asked, biting my bottom lip. My hand snaked its way to the necklace and I started rubbing and clicking the beads.

  “I’d say yes, but the thing is, we have no clue that what ever opening that we came through is still there, wherever that place is. I honestly don’t know if I could find it. And if we did by some miracle, actually find the place, what happens if it isn’t open?”

  “We’d have wasted a whole day trying and food and water.” I said.

  “The thing is, I think that, last night when we tried to get up, and we couldn’t, I think that passage was still open at that point. This morning, we were normal again, I think then, it was closed. I’ve never heard of anything like it, but I’ve heard of people disappearing, without a trace. No bodies ever found. What if that was what happened to them. This is a billion to one chance and we got lucky or unlucky and we got pushed back in time.”

  “Oh my God, you are right about last night. I wonder if we had gotten up and pushed our way back, if we could have gotten back to the future, our present?”

  “Maybe, or we could have gone to that future you saw. Or some other place in time, maybe farther back, who knows.”