by S D Taylor
Vortex of Evil
A Novel of Adventure by
S. D. Taylor
Vortex of Evil
Copyright © 2010 by S. D. Taylor
All rights reserved. No portion of this work may be reproduced without the prior written permission of the author.
All characters appearing in this work and the events described are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, or any real events is purely coincidental.
Chapter 1
Thick fog surrounded the four people in the inflatable boat like a shroud. It cleared just enough that Doug Cameron could see a man standing on the beach, aiming an assault rifle directly at him. Doug turned the zodiac violently to the left causing his time-shifted “twin brother,” Tom, to lose his balance and go flying into the water. Megan, the woman that Tom had been kissing at that very moment, flew into the water with him. A few waterlogged cries that sounded like curse words followed the small boat as it circled back into the safety of the dense fogbank.
Erin O'Neill strained to see the man on shore as he faded into the fog. "I could swear that was Peter. If his body wasn't lying here in the back of the boat, I would say that he was still alive."
Doug turned towards her. "I guess it could be Peter. If those last two firings of the vortex weapon pulled a version of Peter through from an earlier time."
Erin shook her head. “How many more versions of people are we going to have to deal with? And how are we supposed to tell him we are carrying his dead body around with us?”
Doug smiled. “We tell the truth and hope he believes us. Seeing me and Tom, and you and Megan, should convince him that the vortex weapon has caused the merging of different regions of time and space. If that isn’t convincing enough, we can show him the Viking bodies or the ancient native people in the canoes that paddled by.”
Erin felt a chill run down her spine. “I suppose we haven’t seen the end of surprises have we? We may find that the Vikings weren’t so bad.”
“Now that the weapon has been destroyed, I hope the effects are finished.”
Erin wasn’t so sure. “As long as we are living here, isn’t it possible we could still encounter one of those time and space merger zones? We could end up in a different time. Or we could end up with new neighbors we really don’t like.”
Doug could tell that this line of reasoning was going to give him a headache. With the fog to deal with, the guy pointing a gun at them and the fact that he had just accidently dumped two of their companions into the cold water, he decided that worrying about the range of perils that lay ahead could wait. “We need to rescue Tom and Megan before we worry about the next challenge.”
They could hear Tom yelling for assistance as they continued their circular path. Doug pulled out his pocket binoculars and handed them to Erin. "I'll head slowly back towards the shore so we can pick up Tom and Megan. See if you can get a clear look at who was getting ready to shoot at us. There wasn't any firing, so it just might be Peter or at least someone who was friendly enough not to shoot when they recognized us."
Erin opened the small binoculars and trained them on the shore. It was just a white mist at first, but then forms began to appear. There were three figures, one of whom was holding a rifle, but it was cradled across his chest now. He waved with his right hand. "My God! It’s Peter. He's alive!"
"Great, but could you help us into the boat so we can stay alive too?" Tom was hanging on to the boat with his left hand as he helped push Megan into the boat with his right. She turned and offered him a hand and they were soon sitting in the same place they had been sitting before Doug's wild driving had ejected them. "Next time you are forced to change course, turn towards the side your passengers are sitting on. Then you won't drown them. As a harbor cruise, this leaves a lot to be desired." Tom put his arm around Megan. "Just when we started to dry off . . ."
Megan looked at Doug and asked "What happened? Why the sudden turn?"
"A guy on the beach was aiming a rifle at my head." Doug looked at her with a ‘So what would you have done?’ look. He said simply, "But apparently it's Peter."
Tom and Megan both turned towards the shore at that news. The original Peter was killed in a battle the day before and his body was lying at their feet in the boat, wrapped in a tarp and awaiting burial. “So the time distortions are still happening?” Tom was having the same sinking feeling that hit Erin earlier.
Doug shrugged. “I don’t know what is happening at this point. Each vortex was a temporary event, but we don’t know the impact or what time and space merges may have happened. We need to be ready for anything and keep our eyes open at all times.”
Erin continued to look through the binoculars. "There are two other people standing next to him. One is wearing the blue uniform like the pirates wear. They both have long hair and look like women."
Doug could barely see through the mist. He could just make out the three forms on the beach. "Well, here goes nothing. We might as well go meet the neighbors. Keep your pistol handy." He turned up the motor and they were soon speeding along towards the shore. As they got closer, he could see now that it was definitely Peter, who was smiling and uninjured. This Peter must have been from before the battle. Doug reached out and touched Erin on the arm. "Let me tell him about what happened." He pointed to the bloody corpse lying next to them in the boat.
Erin nodded and looked towards the shore. She thought about how she would feel if she had seen Megan dead. "You better just tell him a simple version of events and then fill in the details later. After what we have been through, the concept won't be that much of a shock. Holding back the information will probably make it worse."
"What do we tell him about John? Technically, I killed John. I think they were pretty close." Doug steered the inflatable around two large rocks, beached it gently near where Peter was standing and cut the motor.
Megan turned towards Doug and said quietly "I will tell him what happened with John. I have the wounds to prove it." She pointed to her temple that was still bleeding slightly.
Peter's two female companions remained where they were but Peter walked forward and hugged Erin and then Doug in turn. "It's great to see you. When the two of you disappeared back on the trail and then I found all these bodies, I feared the worst."
"We are happy to see you alive, Peter. You were with us during this battle and, ah, you were killed. We never thought we would see you again." Erin noticed his surprised look. "Come here and look. This may shock you a bit." She turned towards the zodiac.
Peter walked slowly past Doug, leaned over the edge of the small boat and pulled back the tarp. There he saw his own face, pasty white with the pallor of death, but looking peaceful in a way.
"How? How did I, I mean he, die?"
Doug walked over and put his hand on Peter's shoulder. "We attacked the pirate camp after we found them executing their prisoners. We were doing well against them until a guy with an RPG knocked us down and some Vikings showed up and went after Erin. I went to help her and you went to stop the helicopter from getting away with the weapon. You were riding a captured ATV when you were hit in the leg. You managed to blow up their zodiac and you were shooting it out with a bunch of guys and took one in the abdomen. Erin and I were with you when you died."
Peter turned towards Doug. "So we won the battle?" Peter was a soldier to the core.
"Yes. And you died a hero. We couldn't have done it without you." Erin had joined them.
Peter looked at Megan and Tom. "Where is John? Did you see him again?"
Megan stepped forward. "John is dead. He joined up with us after Tom and Arny rescued him from the pirates. But then he tried to kidnap me and steal the Rasputin. He was working for the other side, Peter."
Peter looked stunned by that news. "No. I refuse to believe he would have done that!"
Megan turned her head to the left and showed Peter the bloody spot where John had struck her with the pistol. "It's true Peter. He hit me with a pistol. The four of us working together were barely able to escape."
"How did he die?" Peter looked from face to face in the group standing before him, looking for answers. He struggled to understand how his mentor and fellow soldier, a man he loved like a brother, could have been something other than what he professed to be. He couldn't believe it. He wouldn't believe it.
"I was forced to blow up the Rasputin to destroy the weapon and to stop John before he shot us. He wanted to take the boat, the weapon and Megan, and I couldn't let that happen." Doug looked at him intently but said nothing more. He knew he couldn't argue with Peter's memory of John. Doug stared at Peter and said simply, “I killed him because he left me no choice.”
Peter looked up suddenly and said, “What could have caused him to go to the other side? Nothing he has ever said or done would cause me to believe what you are saying about him.”
Megan answered, feeling her anger beginning to rise. “Can’t you see the side of my head? The blood on my hair and face. John did that. He tried to steal the weapon, the boat and me. But we managed to stop him. He wasn’t doing it as his duty. He was doing it because he changed sides, Peter. John turned into the bad guy. I guess you don’t have to believe us, but do you really think we made up the story? Do you think I hit myself in the head to make it more believable?”
Peter stared at her in disbelief. Then he turned to Doug who could only nod in confirmation as he was unable to find the words that could ease the pain that he knew Peter must be feeling. John had been a mentor to Peter, alternating between father figure and drinking buddy as the two of them had survived missions around the world for the last four years. Now within the span of a few minutes he finds out that his “real” self had been killed, he was a temporal copy and John had died a traitor. Peter stumbled on the wet rocks and lowered himself down onto the grass where he turned and sat cross-legged, facing the water.
Erin looked at Doug for guidance but he just shrugged. She sat down next to Peter, pulling her feet up under her and wrapping her arms around her legs. “It’s all true, Peter. But please realize that John left us no choice. None of us ever could have imagined what happened. I’m sorry for your loss.”
Erin’s words seemed to have some positive effect on Peter. “Thank you, Erin. I believe you, but I’ll have to grieve in my own way. It will take some time before I can accept that John could have changed sides and done the things that you say he did. I just have to assume he died as a result of tragic circumstances that I don’t understand. Now could we bury that guy over there in the boat?”
Erin turned quickly to look at him but didn’t see any hint of a smile. He stood up and offered his hand to her to help her up. “Did I die well? I always hoped I would be brave and inspiring at the end.” He did smile with that comment.
Erin looked at him and felt tears in her eyes. How could she describe the way the original Peter had died the day before? The battered warrior laying there with his life force draining out as they watched, helpless to do anything. Her expression said it all. Peter realized he must have touched a raw nerve with Erin and after giving her a quick hug, he walked over to Doug. “Can you help me with the body? We should bury him and get started on the rest of the bodies around here. It isn’t safe to let them just lay around.”
Doug looked at him and saw the cold intensity on his face. "I’m very sorry, Peter. There was nothing we could have done differently.”
“I don’t blame you, Doug. Let’s just look forward and try to work together to get out of this mess.”
“Fine. You’re right that we need to bury your body and all the others. We should go over to the camp and see if there are any shovels there." Doug paused. "But before we go, can you introduce us to the two women over there that we have all been ignoring?"
Peter looked up, slightly surprised since he had all but forgotten them with the viewing of his own corpse and hearing the news about John. "Yes, of course. Follow me, please. You should meet the prisoners." Doug looked at him with surprise since he hadn’t realized they were prisoners until that moment. Given their outfits and apparent association with the people they had been fighting, he wasn’t sure why it took him that long to put two and two together. Peter must have captured them.
Doug and Peter walked over to the two women while the rest of the party trailed behind. As they got closer, Doug could see that each of them had their hands tied together with a thin white cord. One of the women was tall and blond, probably in her early thirties and dressed in black pants and a grey sweatshirt with a hood. He assumed she was Russian since in his mind he placed her with the Rasputin crew. She had long, silky blond hair that reached past her shoulders and it appeared to have been washed recently. Doug thought she would be considered attractive if she ever smiled, but for now she had the look of a soldier about to go into combat. The other woman was dressed in the blue camouflage uniform of the pirates whose sub had just recently been destroyed. She was Oriental and had long black hair pulled back in a pony tail. She wore a blue baseball-style cap. She was younger and shorter than the woman next to her but she didn’t look any happier. He walked up to her and extended his hand. “My name is Doug Cameron. What may I call you?”
She looked at him for a moment and then took his hand as best she could with her hands bound and shook it with surprising firmness. “I am Ying Chen. I am a scientist. A physicist is what you would call it in English.” She held Doug’s stare without blinking.
“And I am Gabrielle Schoenmaker,” the tall blond woman said quietly, extending her hands to Doug who was surprised by her firm grip as well. “You met my father, Oskar Schoenmaker, the Captain of the Rasputin. Both versions of him, I assume. And if you are here and the Rasputin is destroyed, I must assume you killed them both as well.” German, thought Doug. Mr. Alpha’s daughter. She smiled slightly and said, “You might remember me from Hamburg ten years ago when I gave you the note outside the U.S. Consulate.”
Doug felt a chill go down his spine. Of course, Mr. Alpha must have asked his daughter to pose as a college student and pass Doug the note on that afternoon in September, 2001. He would not have recognized her, but with a careful look he could see that it was indeed the girl he met ten years earlier. The struggle and tension of those years had slightly dimming the bright eyes of the girl he remembered from that day. “Of course, I recognize you now.”
Doug looked from one woman to the other and back twice. “It is a pleasure to meet you, Ying and a pleasure to see you again, Gabrielle. I hope that all of us can work together to survive this adventure and find our way home, wherever that may be. Gabrielle, I am sorry about your father. I never knew his name.” Doug was searching for the right words to say to someone who was clearly his enemy. But somehow, looking at her standing there with her hands tied and the sad look on her face, he had a hard time feeling any animosity. He had just killed her father. And even though it was completely justified, Doug felt a sense of guilt for his actions, knowing that she would not have considered Mr. Alpha as some evil part of a terrorist organization. To her, he was just her father. And now his bullet riddled body was floating offshore, drifting with the tide and sparking the interest of any number of ocean creatures who would treat it as a meal of opportunity.
Her face showed no emotion, but she nodded. “Thank you for your concern, but it is unnecessary. We are at war and I don’t expect comfort from my enemy. And you and your friends may call me Gaby as long as we are here together, pretending to be civil to each other.”
Chapter 2
Tom looked around the area of the camp where the battle had taken place. “There are more trees on the island than there were yesterday. I am sure of it. And I have never seen so many salmon as I saw this morning when I was fishing.” Tom, Doug and Peter were
finishing the unpleasant task of burying the dead who remained at the camp and littered the area around it where the fighting had taken place. It was clear to them that they had shifted in time during the firing of the pulse vortex weapon when they used it to destroy the pirate submarine. It was close enough to the island that the time fracture surrounded all of them and apparently merged them with some other time. Tom was just stating the obvious.
“We saw two native canoes go by the Rasputin and they appeared to be from at least a hundred years ago. Nothing modern about them and it didn’t look like a recreational costume outing. Their chief stared us down and gave all the impression of being a man to be reckoned with.” Doug patted the dirt on the final grave. Peter had located several shovels left by the crew of the Rasputin after their construction work to set up the fake vortex weapon behind the camp.
Peter tried to summarize what Doug and Tom had told him. “So it appears we are in an earlier time on the island. There are more trees and more wildlife, and we saw some ancient residents from the area go by. I guess we could have assumed the salmon and the trees were the result of conservation, but the people from the past seem to seal the deal.”
Doug laughed at the conservation comment. “Even if there was conservation, I doubt the trees we see here could have grown that tall in less than a few hundred years. If this is a new, improved greener future, we must have jumped ahead a long time from where we started.”
Doug thought to himself that it didn’t much matter where they were. Without the pulse vortex and the weapon’s ability to fracture time, it was unlikely that any of them would ever be going anywhere you couldn’t reach by boat. And since there was limited amount of gas for the outboard motors, they would have to row the boat at that. While the firings of the weapon produced the strange time effects, Doug kept hoping that the people that were reality shifting would be coming from elsewhere or elsewhen to join his and Erin’s reality. He tried to stay away from the implications of all of them ending up in Viking times. Or worse. And to complete the picture, he was worried about their collective ability to survive in a world where you caught your own fish, made your own clothes and had to fight with swords once your ammo ran out. It would be important for them to determine a game plan that would focus on security, shelter, water and food. Once they had “staying alive” covered, they could consider what else they would like to try. There were limited options, but Doug guessed that this group that fate had assembled would be able to have a lively discussion on the topic.
