Gateway Through Time

by David Kernot

  "I never ran away, Grams. I just lost my girl…" he raised his prosthetic limb. "… and my arm."

  "Says who? You young people got things to learn. Last time I looked, Amye was still in love with you, and that arm looks good enough to work on the farm."

  Emerson laughed. "It's not that simple."

  "The farm is still there, waiting for you, you know?"

  Emerson put his cup away. "I know. But she never wrote, not once. Never returned my calls. I'm not an idiot, Grams."

  Grams peered over her saucer and sipped her hot tea. She put it down, but her eyes never left him. "No?"

  "No."

  "You know her mam died?"

  "What?" Emerson. He shook his head, and his throat tightened. "No, I didn't know. When? How is she?"

  "You should ask her yourself. You rushed off quick after that argument. Her mam had a stroke just after you left. All that girl has done since you've been away is look after her poor mam. She's had her hands full running the farm alone and taking care of her own. Amye buried her last month. I went to the funeral. I spoke to her. She said she wrote you and never replied. That true?"

  Tears blurred Emerson's vision, and he nodded. "I got shifted to another area. Nobody could contact us." Damn the army! They had classified the work out on the Horn. Nobody knew of its existence, and they'd been cut off from everything. Even old Grams could have died, and they'd never have told him. He sighed. He was an idiot. What had he done?

  Amye had been all he wanted before the tractor race, before his arm had been severed at the elbow and the army gifted him a cyber-implant. He hadn't seen or heard from her since he left Stirling North, but he had never stopped loving Amye. He'd been away long enough to regret his jealousy about her and Damien. He regretted even more the stupid race against Damien over her affections.

  He wiped his eyes and looked up at Grams. "I will see Amye in the morning."

  "Not now?"

  "I'm dog tired Grams."

  "You look pretty beat, lad." She leaned over and patted his arm. "I'm sure it won't do any harm if you wait a day."

  He stood and frowned. Was Grams trying to tell him something? The truth was exhaustion clawed at him. He needed a good sleep before he fell down.

  ◆◆◆

  Emerson had always planned to take over the farm when he was ready. He'd had an idea that he could move into a different style of farming and move away from the struggle of growing wheat and barley. The climate had changed, and with the lack of rain the crops were too hit and miss. No, he'd an idea that he could create a native produce nursery and grow quandongs, the wild peach, and make jam and Lemon Myrtle tea. Instead of fighting the land, he would work with it. He'd even start a nursery and sell plants to other farms. There were over five thousand different native foods he could choose. So there'd be enough to fill the farm and turn it into a profitable market. He'd always wanted to start up a plant nursery and repopulate the region. He and Amye had talked about it using native quandongs and make jams and chutney. And now he was home, he would check on the family of blue-banded bees out in the far paddock. He could collect some honey if they let him share it and see about building up the swarm. Maybe he could sell honey too.

  Emerson woke to the ground underneath him shaking. He stumbled from the small bunk and raced outside, head swimming, to be greeted by the mid-morning sun. The tremor stopped, and Grams banged on the kitchen window. She waved him in.

  Overhead the corellas circled nervously, and some birds flew over and perched in the furthest gum trees near the edge of town and screeched. Emerson watched them settle and heard Grams fill a kettle. He walked back inside.

  "Loud, wasn't it," said Grams pulling a dressing gown over her withered body.

  He nodded. "Sounded like someone had just ridden a truck over the world."

  "That was nothing. We've been getting them every day or so now."

  "How come?" Australia was supposed to be one of the most stable landmasses in the world.

  "Beats me, Emerson. I heard it was the Chthonian tunnelling under the Earth."

  Emerson drew a sharp breath, and his stomach knotted. "Chthonian? You've seen them? Here?"

  Grams shrugged.

  Emerson frowned. He couldn't believe it. "Do you even know what they are? Who said that?"

  Grams shrugged again. "I'm just telling you what Damien said last time we spoke down by the supermarket, and he was—"

  Emerson stood, and the chair tipped backwards to the floor. "Damien's here?"

  Grams frowned. "Of course. This is his town too, Emerson. He fought in the war like you. This issue between you both… between Amye… is water under the bridge." She glanced at his prosthetic arm and swallowed. "You won her heart fair and square and left."

  "Did I, Grams?" Emerson couldn't stop a frown knotting his forehead. "I'm not sure I won anything." He shook his head. How could everything keep going back to one day in his life when the trouble started? Was that why Damien had brought the Chthonian back? He sighed. The questions wouldn't get answered on their own. "Does she still live on Hawker Drive? Grams?"

  Grams didn't look up, but nodded.

  "Alone?"

  She smiled. "Always, Emerson."

  "I'll see her. And then I'll find Damien and see what he knows about these Chthonian creatures."

  "You're feeling better?"

  He nodded. "I had a good night's sleep."

  She laughed. "Sweet Emerson, you've been asleep for three days."

  He frowned. "Three?"

  "Yes, I tried waking you a day ago, but you pushed me away. You were breathing fine, so I left you."

  He left his mask at home and strode outside, down the road toward Hawker Street. Whatever else Grams thought, this wasn't about a tractor race between him and Damien over Amye's affections. He only won her heart because of the accident, when he'd lost his arm, but Damien had followed him over to the Horn…

  How? He stopped and stared at the rising sun and wondered how Damien seemed to find a way into everything he did. The sun burned at his skin. It was as if he was back there again… out in the hot Somalian day, half protected by a rocky bank…

  Emerson closed his eyes and heard the command. He cocked his weapon. Shapes moved forward.

  "Fire," said someone in authority.

  Emerson returned fire at the approaching insurgents. He watched them dance like puppets on strings until they and their AK-47 rifles fell to the colour of a setting bloody sun. Through his rifle sights, he could see another wave of insurgents approach from his right, this time more cautious. He changed his mag and re-cocked the weapon, training it back on the men and waited for the order to fire.

  A squid-like creature the size of a large man appeared in his sights, and Emerson frowned. The eyeless creature had short tentacles for arms. Emerson blinked away the image. An aberration from the blistering sun. But it was there again when he retrained his sights on the men, dressed in simple Somalian clothes. It seemed to direct the insurgents.

  Emerson had a lot of respect for the proud people of Somalia who were filled with their own tradition and beliefs. Their battles were mainly tribal, born from the pairings of sons and daughters a lifetime ago. They didn't deserve the splinter of insurgents, using their land as a pawn in a bigger world-game, but the squid-like creature could only be described as bizarre. More creatures appeared, short, naked, waddling on eight rubbery legs. A small army.

  Emerson's head felt dizzy, as if he was swimming through a thick, disorientating fog. His rifle fell, but he forced it upright and lined the squid-like creature back into his sights. His finger tightened on the trigger, and he slowly breathed out to fire.

  A man stood in front and blocked his view. He knocked Emerson's rifle off target, and the wild shot skittered into the distance, harmless. He recognized the man kitted out in infantry uniform.

  "What are you doing here, Damien?"

  Damien shrugged. "Had to end up somewhere."

  "But why here?" It was the f
irst time he'd seen Damien since the accident back home. He thought he had been at home chasing Amye, helping her carry buckets of water from the salt water converter back to their homesteads.

  The disorientating fog increased. Emerson clutched the ground as dizziness overwhelmed him. He closed his eyes and fought the wave of nausea. When it passed, he opened his eyes. But Damien, the creatures, and the insurgents had gone.

  The earthquakes had started that day, and that had been his first glimpse at the insurgent leader Shudde-M'ell and his chthonian army…

  Just recalling the event was enough to make Emerson sweat. He sat down in the cool shade of a gum tree in the main street of Stirling North. Perhaps he still had a fever from the flu? Curse them! He stood, and his stomach churned with uncertainty. He hadn't seen Amye since the day he'd enlisted, and he couldn't be sure how she would greet him, not after the way he'd left things between them. He walked the scant distance to her house and stopped in front.

  He scanned the low valley that held the town, appalled that most of the trees had died in the time he had been away; the salt-laden water table had seen to that. What the changes hadn't affected, the sun had baked dry. Paint flaked off now, rusty iron corrugated sheets that served as housing. He glanced at Amye's dilapidated home for a moment, hoped that she might come running out, but there was no movement; she'd want him to do it the hard way, come begging her forgiveness. Perhaps Amye's beauty had suffered the same fate out here too?

  Sand had blown in from the nearby desert, and now the streets were lined with it. A blistering wind lifted into his face. He rubbed his eyes and stared out past where the town's boundary once finished, but it was now cluttered with makeshift housing as far as the eye could see.

  He bit his lip. How could so many people now live here? There was not enough food and water to survive on. Why didn't they just move somewhere else? He couldn't figure it out.

  He stared at Amye's house. She hadn't come out to meet him. He took a deep breath, tried to quell the butterflies in his stomach, and he took a step and stumbled.

  Dimples, her pet poodle, lay in the garden in a pool of blood, her throat cut. He closed his eyes and pushed back the disgust that shook him. Bile rose and burned his throat and he coughed it away. He'd help pick Dimples out from a local breeder, and together they'd picked the runt of the litter. A scrawny, one-eyed defect of a poodle. They'd fallen in love with her immediately. He shuddered. It sickened him to know that someone in Stirling North would do this to a defenceless animal.

  He ran to her open front door and knocked hard on the edge of the fly screen.

  "Hello? Amye?"

  There were no sounds inside. He banged on the outside door again. "Amye, are you there? It's Emerson." Again, nobody responded.

  He contemplated going inside and wondered if he was overreacting. Amye could have been out shopping for all he knew. He turned to look back at Dimples. It wasn't time to contact the police, not yet, but he couldn't go until he'd checked inside.

  "Amye, I'm coming in." He pulled open the door and strode inside the dimly lit lounge room and smiled. It smelled like Amye, and her favourite scent of fresh lemon grass. A candle burned on the corner table, heated by the fragrant oils. Judging by the level of it, she couldn't have been gone long, only fifteen or twenty minutes.

  The shutters were all closed against the heat, and pictures adorned the mantelpiece. He walked over and picked up one of them together, taken out by the lead mine, the year before he joined up. He put it down and picked up the next photo of her, a more recent one, and she was alone. She had blossomed and looked more beautiful, but there was something about the photo that was different. She looked lost. The idea twisted in his gut like a knife. It had been a mistake to reject her after the accident and leave.

  He heard a scraping sound in the next room and put the photograph down. He rushed into the kitchen. "Hello? Amye?" But the room was empty. She wasn't there.

  There was dirt across the kitchen floor from the back door. Not red soil from outside, but dark, as if it were from the lead mines. He picked some up and rolled it between his fingers. It felt smooth, as if it had come from the talc tunnels out the back of town, but it was the wrong color. He sniffed it, and it smelled oily, dirty. Like a Chthonian had lain against it.

  He frowned. How would Chthonian soil get here? It made him think of the explosions and Gram's mention of the Chthonian. There was nothing for him at Amye's house, so he stepped outside, back into the morning sun and looked at the dead front lawn. No one deserved to find Dimples like that, especially Amye. He grabbed a shovel from the garden shed and dug a hole in her backyard for the poor dog.

  He switched on his cyber tech implanted arm and stared at the dull orange light. Before any of the screen items came up, he pressed an area on the touch screen and switched on video. He took some images of the site and of Dimple's horrific injuries, and he examined the serrated cuts at her throat and made sure he could use them to find who did it. Then he buried her.

  He shut the display off and strode down the street, but it left him with a lingering thought. Somehow Amye was still there, at home. But if that was the case, what had he missed? He'd visit Amye again soon. He hoped she'd be there; he had a lot he needed to say to her. Part of him wanted to find Damien, but what could he accuse the man of, apart from being a traitor in a war that never happened, and for returning home? The soil on Amye's kitchen floor bothered him. Damien being in town bothered him. The mention of the Chthonian bothered him. He'd talk it through with Myles… perhaps if he played out the scenarios in his head more, Myles could get an extra hour of sleep.

  ◆◆◆

  Emerson walked out of town on aching legs. He felt years older than he was thanks to the flu, but he was keen to enjoy the morning sun: it was refreshingly mild compared to what he'd experienced. He wanted to go to his corner paddock and see how his small colony of Blue Banded Bees were going. Perhaps he could bring old Gram some native honey. It was a delicacy, sweet and tangy.

  Amye and he had discussed building a rammed earth house in the bottom paddock and having babies and growing old together. Amye had fallen in love with the gentle native bees too.

  He sat near the female's shallow mud-brick burrows and watched the glittering blue striped male bees hang from plant stems nearby. A few flew over and hovered by him, but he let them have their moment of curiosity and he didn't stir them up. They were beautiful, placid creatures. Mind you, their sting was ferocious and they could sting many times and cause an allergic reaction. He loved them all the same.

  He had to admit that he didn't know what to do about Amye when he met her again, what to do about Damien or anything that involved Stirling North. Nothing was as he'd envisaged his return home. Emerson left his Blue Banded Bee colony and strode back into town.

  ◆◆◆

  "Didn't think I'd see you around these parts again, Emerson."

  Emerson recognized Damien's voice. He spun around and scowled. "What are you up to, Damien?" After his involvement with the Chthonian, Emerson trusted nothing Damien did.

  Damien laughed. "Oh, I thought I'd call in on Amye, and—"

  "I was just there. She's not home."

  "For you maybe, she's always home for me."

  Emerson frowned. He stepped closer. "Were you there earlier today?"

  "Might have been." He smiled. "Who could say…?"

  It wasn't an answer. "Did you see her or Dimples today?"

  "That's none of your business, is it, Emerson? You left her, remember?"

  "If you hurt her, or I find you had anything to do with Dimples, you'll pay."

  Damien smirked and leaned forward, close enough for Emerson to see all Damien's rotten teeth. The man smelled like he hadn't showered for a month. "What are you going to do? Slit my throat?"

  Emerson glared at Damien, unsure how to respond.

  "Go back to the army, Emerson, there is nothing here for you now." And with that he shoved past Emerson, sending him onto the dir
ty ground.

  Emerson sat on the ground and coughed until his chest ached. He picked himself up and dusted the red soil from his clothes. Damien hadn't caught the flu, unlike everyone else, but if he had, Emerson might have stood a fairer chance. He watched Damien swagger away and vowed he'd make him pay if he had anything to do with Dimples.

  ◆◆◆

  Emerson knocked on Myles bedroom window and waited for him to stir. Myles didn't enjoy waking before 11 am and it was almost that.

  Myles pulled back the curtain. "Hang on."

  A few moments later, Myles opened his front door. Emerson smiled at Myles as he rubbed his eyes. He was still dressed in pajamas. "Where have you been, Emerson?"

  "Sleeping."

  Myles nodded slowly and stared at Emerson. "You look better for it, but something's eating you. What is it?"

  Emerson shrugged. "Can I come in?"

  "Sure." Myles stepped away from the door. "Just watch the cables," he said.

  "Hacking?"

  "Nobody who doesn't deserve it," said Myles. "I think we have a right to know the truth about what the governments of the world are up to."

  Emerson wasn't sure how to respond to that comment. "Can you get me an anonymous connection?"

  "Sure thing, my friend, who you going to hook up with?"

  "The NSA."

  "The fricking US National Security Agency? Shit Emerson. Why?"

  Emerson waved his prosthetic arm in the air. "I've got an account."

  Myles eyes widened. "Holy crap. What were you doing over in Afghanistan?"

  "I wasn't in Afghanistan, Myles. I was chasing a major terrorist group somewhere else."

  "La-la-la-la-laaa…" Myles covered his ears with both hands. "Don't tell me anything—"

  Emerson swiped one of Myles' hands away. "Myles! They're here, or at least I think they are."

  "In Stirling North?"

  "Yes. I need your help."

  Myles exhaled and sat on his sofa in front of what looked like an exploded laptop computer—the cover had been removed and cables ran from it across the floor—and he typed in a series of commands. He looked up at Emerson. "Can you connect via wireless?"