The Travelers 3

by Lee Hunnicutt

  After I leave I want you to travel first class to New York, take in plays and shop for clothes. Go to Cook’s Tours and have them map out a trip to London and the rest of Europe. Travel first class. Stay at the finest hotels in the most expensive suites. Have Cook hire you a driver and have them book a Rolls Royce. Having a car gives you flexibility. You can travel the countryside. Stay in quaint hotels in small villages. Eat at small family owned restaurants where you get real local food. You savor the entire experience, the finest restaurants to the local ones, the finest hotels to small country inns.

  If you don’t want to travel alone, take Sanchez’s daughter with you. She graduates Baylor in about three weeks.

  London has a wonderful theater district. Go to the Louvre in Paris. Take in an opera at La Scala in Milan. Lie in the sun on the Riviera. Take your time. Enjoy yourself. You deserve it.

  I want you to experience life. You have been cooped up on Amanda with just me, Gyro, Mac and Max for too long. You need diversity and a richer, fuller life.”

  “I love being cooped up with you, Gyro, Mac and Max. In fact, I wish Max was here now. I don’t want to go back and I don’t want to see the world. I want to stay here where I know the people but most of all I want to be a rancher. I love being in the saddle and punching cows.”

  “You do whatever you want sweetheart except kill or maim people.”

  Chapter 2

  The Countess

  She landed about 11 PM at Midland International Airport. “International?” she thought. “Why? Because they have a Piper Cub that flies to the next county?” As she grabbed her overnight bag, she thought, “Midland, Texas, because it is in the middle of nowhere!” As one could tell, she was pissed.

  She picked up her rental car and drove to her motel. In the morning, she got dressed and went down for breakfast. Had a couple cups of coffee and some breakfast rolls.

  She went back to her room and stood in front of the mirror. She looked at her six foot frame and auburn hair and checked her makeup to make sure everything looked good from her designer jeans to her 300 dollar blouse, to her 1,200 dollar boots. She looked stunning and she knew it. When she was satisfied, she picked up her bag, checked out and got into her car. She plugged an address into her GPS and took off.

  She’d turned off the main highway an hour ago on to a gravel county road. On either side of the road were oil wells pumping and a few cows trying to find something to graze on. The longer she drove through this God forsaken semiarid bleakness the madder she became and she started to talk, yelling actually, to herself.

  “I’m Victoria Maybury, Countess of Woleshome. My father is the 16th Earl of Woleshome. My ancestors came over with and fought alone side William the Conqueror. They stood against King John at Runnymede and fought with Edward III at Crecy.

  I have my degree in journalism from Oxford and a bloody masters in business from Wharton School of Business and here I am in the middle of lord knows where to interview some dying old fart and then write a fluff piece.”

  She clenched the steering which with all her might and slung her head violently left and right and screamed, “I’m a fuckin countess!”

  If she had thought about it, she would have realized she looked like Miss Piggy throwing a temper tantrum.

  Four days earlier.

  Victoria entered the office of Bob Haskins, managing editor of “The Wall Street Review” the largest, most successful financial daily in the world.

  “Have a seat Vic.” Haskins said.

  She hated being called “Vic.” It was just one of many reasons she questioned about coming to this barbaric country.

  “What do you need Bob?”

  “I got a call from an old friend last night. He called to say good bye. He’s 97 years old and believes he is on his way out.

  I want you to go interview him and write an article about him. This will probably be the last time he will give an interview. Let me give you some background on him.

  He was born into a ranching family in West Texas. He graduated from Texas A&M, which at that time was a college. Upon graduation he was commissioned as a 2nd lieutenant. When the war broke out he had been in the Army for two and a half years. He heard the Army was going to form the very first airborne division. That division was to be the 82nd Airborne Division. At the end of the war he came home a real war hero. He resigned his commission and once again took up ranching. I think he wanted the peace and quiet and the solitude of West Texas.

  Then in 1947 he started writing science fiction novels and in the next twenty years he turned out 10 books. All of them were huge best sellers, at a time when the glitterati looked down on sifi. They have since been translated into dozens of languages and have sold over 200 million books and have been made into very successful movies.

  I met him in Vietnam in 1969. We were both war correspondents. We became good friends. I think he came back to war because he missed the action, the adrenaline rush.

  He’s lived a fascinating, adventure filled life and now he’s dying. I want you to interview him and write his story.”

  “Bob, can’t someone else do this? I’ve been here two months and all I’ve written are fluff pieces. I thought you hired me to write financial business pieces and that is all I want to write.”

  “Your time will come, Vic.” He gave her a folder. “Here are you plane tickets, hotel reservations and car rental. Have a good trip and enjoy west Texas.” He couldn’t help himself at that last piece and choked back laughing.

  She heard it and snatch the folder out of his hand and stormed out. As the door closed behind her she could hear him laugh.

  After she gained her composure she looked at her GPS. The ranch address was less than 20 miles away. She pulled up to a lone, battered mail box. The dirt road leading beside the mail box ran as far as the eye could see as did the fence on either side of the road.

  She turned onto the road and hoped it went to the ranch. As she passed through the opening in the fence, the car’s tires vibrated over the cattle guard. The noise and the vibration startled her.

  She drove for half an hour and the view never change, a semiarid oilfield with cattle and the landscape as flat as a pool table. In the distance she saw something and as she got closer she could make out a house. The closer she got the more amazed she was. The lawns were green with trees and gardens. The house was a large two story native stone with white framed windows. It was beautiful. The road expanded into a parking area.

  She parked and went to the front door and rang the bell. The door was opened by a very large man dressed all in white with a white lab coat like a doctor’s. She was amazed at his size. He must have been well over seven feet tall and off to his left was a very small woman about four feet 10 inches tall and dressed just like the giant.

  His voice surprised her. It was high pitched almost squeaky. “May I help You?”

  “Yes, I’ve come to see Mr. Bolton.”

  “He’s unavailable. He’s very ill.”

  “I know but he has agreed to see me. If I can’t see him, I will come back with the sheriff.”

  The giant looked as if he didn’t expect this kind of answer and looked to the small woman.

  She looked uncomfortable and said, “Maybe for a short time. Take her upstairs Grak.”

  When they enter Bolton’s room she saw an old man on oxygen with his eyes closed and his mouth opened. She sat down in the chair next to his bed.

  “Just a few moments and try not to stress him” and with that he closed the door.

  As soon as the door closed the old man’s eye popped opened and he said, “Are they gone?”

  It caught her by surprise and he said again, “Are they gone?”

  She stammered out “Yes.”

  “Good, come with me.” And he leapt out of bed and with more strength than she thought he had grabbed her hand with a strong grip and almost dragged her to a door on the far side of the room.

  “We don’t have a moment to spare. Don’t make me
drag you. Come with me!”

  He opened the door and pushed her in. He closed the door. The door had two large dead bolts, one near the top and one near the bottom. He threw both of them.

  They were in the largest clothes closet she had ever seen. There were parallel rows of cabinets and clothes racks.

  “Follow me.”

  He turned right and walked past several of the cabinets and clothes racks, then turned left and at the end of the rack turned left again. She followed close behind.

  She looked over her shoulder and saw the racks began to move. Some moved at right angles to the other racks and some slid sideways. They were rearranging themselves to form a maze.

  As they moved towards the rear wall, she heard a loud banging and then she heard the closet door shatter and a shrill voice yelling, “You let them escape, you overgrown idiot! Find them!”

  The prospect of a Lurch like character coming after them made her blood run cold. She moved close to the old man. When they reached the back wall, the old man pressed his hand on the center of the wall.

  When he pulled his hand away, the wall began to ripple like a stone thrown into a pond. The wall began to vibrate and the room began to shake and rumble and to her amazement the wall disappeared and she was looking at what appeared to be a black void. Tiny colored rings appeared in the center of the void and expanded to fill the hole in the wall. Each ring forming and expanding more rapidly than the previous ring. All of this accompanied by a rhythmic humming sound. To her shock the old man plunged into the void dragging her with him.

  It was if she had been asleep and not knowing how long she had slept. When she realized she wasn’t asleep, she was confused, disoriented.

  She found herself on her hands and knees looking down at a white surface. This confused her even more but that was the least of her worries. She felt ill and began vomiting. When she finished one vomiting episode another would begin. She’d never been so nauseous before.

  When she had a break from being sick she looked up and found she was on some sort of roadway. From the way she was situated she was looking down the road that went as far as see could see. It ran above a dense forest, a jungle. Some of the tree limbs almost reached the side of the road.

  She could hear a booming sound like someone was beating a bass drum and the sound was drawing closer. She began to vomit again and this time when she looked up she was looking at bare legs and male genitalia.

  Startled she jerked back and vomited all over the man’s legs and feet. He spoke to her “We’ve got to go! We’ve got to go now!”

  When she didn’t respond, he reached under her arms and pulled her to her feet, bent over, put his shoulder in her waist, hand between her legs and threw her over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry. When he took the first step he slipped on the barf but didn’t fall. He scooted his feet along the roads surface to clean the vomit off his soles and began to run in the opposite direction she had been facing. It was then she realized a couple of things. The man wasn’t the only one who was naked. In her state of confusion, this didn’t compute. Normally her modesty would have kicked in. She would have been outraged that a strange man had not only seen her naked but was like a caveman. He had thrown her over his shoulder and was carrying her to who knew where.

  The second thing she noticed was that the booming was not only closer but the tempo had picked up. She looked in the direction of the sound and could see the trees swaying and hear the crack of broken limbs and tree trunks in the path of the thing that was moving towards them. Whatever it was let out an ear splitting bugling roar as it rushed towards them.

  Victoria look at where the man was carrying her. What she saw was the road that ran into a solid stone facing on a mountain. It was a dead end.

  The man started hollering “Open the door CAIN! Open the damned door! Open it you miserable son of a bitch! Open it now!

  They were just a few yards away from the facing. She looked back and could now see what was chasing them. It looked like a T Rex but much larger. If she wasn’t about to be lunch, she might have thought the creature was beautiful. Its head was a rainbow of blues, reds, greens and yellows and the colors rotated over the face and head almost like a kaleidoscope.

  She looked back at the wall and at the last moment a door that look like the iris of a camera opened up. The man rushed through and pushed forward in a powerful jump sprawling them both on the road.

  When she came to a stop she looked back and to her horror the monster’s head was above the causeway and its mammoth eye was looking in at them. In a blink of an eye the head shifted so its mouth was at the door’s opening. The beasts tongue snaked into what looked like a cavern and wrapped around her leg and started to drag her to its maw.

  She screamed in terror and the door snapped shut severing the tongue. The tongue let go of her leg and began flopping around like it had a life of its own.

  She crab walked backwards on her hands and heels away from the tongue. Only then did she look at where she was.

  They were inside a poorly lit cavern. The causeway now ran through what appeared to be a black lake. The liquid that filled the lake looked viscous and oily. The severed tongue was still flopping around and flopped into the liquid trashing around in the goo. Soon the liquid appeared to boil around the tongue. To Victoria it looked like a video she had seen of piranhas attacking prey. The tongue began to thrash more violently and managed to get some of the end of the tongue back on the causeway and then slip back into the oily lake.

  She was leaning against the shins of the naked man. He said, “We’ve got to go.”

  This time she heard him and believed him. She jumped to her feet. They started running in the opposite direction of the iris door.

  Off to the right something large started moving towards them. It raised a large wake that swept over its top and caused waves to crash over the causeway.

  Once again they were running towards a solid stone wall. The naked man said, “Don’t stop running. Run as if you were going to run right through the wall.”

  The wall was less than 100 yards away. They were running stride for stride abreast. The wall rapidly getting closer. They were within a stride of the wall both running as fast as they could. She did as she was told and ran as if nothing was in front of her. At the last moment a door in the wall slid open. They ran through it and as soon as they cleared the door it slammed shut.

  They stopped. She put her hands on her knees and heaved great gulps of air into her lungs. The man wasn’t even breathing hard.

  She said, “I know” breath “I need to exercise more.” breath.

  Once she had her breath back, she assessed her surroundings. She was in a warm, humid, dimly lit large room. The only light source was a narrow opening in the far wall. When she got her wind back, the man said, “Follow me.”

  They walked toward the narrow opening. “Do as I do. Slid through the crack in the wall face to the right.”

  He slid through first. She followed. As she entered the opening the wall seemed to expand trapping her in place. She couldn’t move. She felt a sharp pain in both buttocks. It wasn’t extreme pain but it radiated out.

  She panicked. She looked over to the man for help but he just stood there, arms at his side. She screamed, “Help me!”

  He didn’t move.

  As quickly as it began, it was over and she was released.

  She stumbled into the room gasping for air. She was hyperventilating.

  She faced him gulping for air in shallow rapid breaths and rubbing her butt. She felt dizzy and almost fainted.

  He caught her before she fell and eased her to the floor. He knelt beside her stroking her shoulder trying to comfort her.

  When the episode passed, they both stood up and she faced him. She balled her fist and swung at his face as hard as she could. He was too quick and she missed. The same happened when she tried with her left. She tried again and again. She tried kneeing him in the groin to no avail. She began flaying at him un
til he grabbed her wrists.

  She was breathing heavily. Her face red with exertion and anger. She tried pulling her hands away but he held her fast. She spit in his face and said, “You knew what was going to happen and you said and did nothing! You sorry bastard, son of a bitch!”

  “Yes, I knew but if I had told you, you might not have gone through. We had to get into this room”

  “How come you weren’t hit in the ass?”

  “I already had been inoculated many, many years ago.”

  “Inoculated? Is that what you call it? What just happened to me?”

  “You were infused with millions of nanobots.”

  “What the hell is a nanobot and why were they infused, as you say, in me?”

  “They are microscopic robots. After they spread through your body and start multiplying, they will make you stronger, faster, quicker, smarter, tougher and better in every way than you were before and as an added benefit you will be able to speak, read, write and understand more than 6,000 languages and dialects in this part of the universe.”

  He let go of her wrists. Her shoulders slumped. She closed her eyes and stood there in silence. She put her face in her hands and began to sob. Her voice was muffled and hard to understand because of the sobbing. “I was sent to the nether lands of hell, Midland, to interview some old fart I wasn’t even interested in. I was snatched up by the old bastard, chased by a giant and a disagreeable tiny woman and dragged into the emptiness, ended up on an elevated road chased by a big lizard who wanted to eat me and then plunged into a scary dark cave surrounded by monsters and then stabbed in my bum with needles that put tiny robots in my body. And now I’m naked, covered in barf and I standing in front a naked strange man.”

  She then began to wail in earnest.

  She stepped forward and put her head in the crook of the man’s neck and sobbed. He put his arms around her, patted her and said softy, “It’s all over. You’re safe now.”

  She stopped crying and realized she was in the arms of a naked man she didn’t know. She pushed away and stepped back. Not knowing what to say, she began to stammer.