They’d had a happy victory celebration after Ripman left with Ellen. Exchanging insults, they argued over who should get credit for bungling the sabotage on the motorcycle, since that had saved them from One Eye and now was saving John’s Mom. But as they moved toward the rendezvous point, Cubby fell silent.
Cubby and John could hear the helicopter come back, circling, its thumping sounds reverberating down the valley. But the rendezvous point was in a different direction, so the noise grew fainter as they moved away. An occasional lizard skittered across a log or glided from tree to tree above them. Once a crashing and thumping in the distance sent them running for cover, but the sounds finally moved off.
Finally they reached the dry riverbed Ripman had described. It disappeared around a bend to the southwest and then into the forest. The boys surveyed silently from the bank, scouting the forest on either side for animal signs. Then Cubby tugged on John’s arm and pointed.
A movement caught John’s eye. In the shadow on the far bank were several animals, four-legged with long tails, and long necks, resembling brontosauri, but only a fraction of the size. Occasionally a head would appear towering over the bank, look around, and then dip back down. The animals appeared to be grazing. Cubby and John finally stepped out of the shadow onto the bank, fully exposing themselves. A minute later a head came up, spotting them and grunting. Then three more heads popped up. The dinosaurs and the people stared at one another, then one by one the dinosaurs went back to eating.
Ripman was nowhere to be seen, so Cubby and John found a pile of rocks to settle on. They had no food, but large puddles in the riverbed would provide enough water for now. At least, if Ripman came back.
After a long wait the engine of the motorcycle announced Ripman’s return. First the heads of the dinosaurs all popped up again, and they moved up the riverbed out of sight. Finally, John saw Ripman riding around the bed of the riverbed. Cubby and John cheered, then Cubby put his fingers in his mouth and blew several shrill whistles.
Ripman pulled up in front of them revving the engine loudly. His face was still swollen, he was cut and bruised and covered with dirt, yet he was also proud, even arrogant, and Cubby and John loved it. He finally let the engine die and untied a grocery bag from the back of the bike.
“How’s my mom, Ripman?”
“She’s fine. There’s a bunch of houses over that way,” he said, pointing. “The forest goes right up to their front doors. Some of the houses have been smashed up pretty good. It looks like some of the dinosaurs came to visit. The people who live there have blocked the streets with cars. There’s cops there too, keeping people out, and keeping the dinosaurs in. The police took your mom to the hospital.”
Ripman opened the pack and tossed cans of Coke Classic to Cubby and John, John drank a third of his in three gulps. When the carbonation burned his throat and nose he belched, but Cubby soon belched a belch that put John’s to shame. Ripman kept digging, passing out another can of Coke to each, and then threw his friends a package of Twinkies and a Three Musketeers bar. They tore into the junk food till finally their ravenous gobbling turned to slow savoring.
“Where’d you get the goodies, Ripman?” Cubby asked.
“Hey, there’s civilization out there. After I got John’s mom to the cops, they wouldn’t let me come back. They were going to round up some volunteers—mount a rescue mission. Jeez, you’d think it was some big deal. So I had to find a way around. I ran into a 7-Eleven down the road. It was semiopen, so I picked up some supplies.”
“You pay for these?” Cubby asked suspiciously.
“They gave me a bag, didn’t they?”
“You stole the bag too, didn’t you?” John suggested.
“Hey, you don’t want the stuff, give it back.” Ripman said it good-naturedly.
John and Cubby knew he craved to be thought bad, and they were willing to support him. The sugar quickly replenished their strength and they joked and kidded for a few more minutes. Then Cubby began praying in whispers. When done he turned to the others.
“I’m not leaving. I’m going into Portland. My family is in there somewhere … my church.”
John, uncertain how to respond, sat silent, watching a two-foot lizard slither down the bank and into a puddle. Ripman finally spoke, but gently, looking at Cubby with his good eye.
“Cubby, Portland’s not right. I watched it. It seems to come and go … sometimes it’s there, sometimes it isn’t, and it’s going away. Even if we headed to it, we’d probably go right through it. I think it’s just some sort of mirage.”
“Maybe, Ripman, but I’ve got to know. I’ve got to know!”
“It’s not the second coming, Cubby.”
“I know, but God’s hand is in this.”
“Maybe.”
That “maybe,” John realized, was the only concession to the possibility of God’s existence Ripman had ever made. Ripman, the militant atheist, wouldn’t have made this concession a few days ago.
“Let me run John out on the bike, then we’ll go looking for Portland.”
“You don’t need to come, Ripman. Take John out, come back for me, I’ll take you out, then I’ll take the bike in toward Portland.”
As Cubby and Ripman continued to argue, the helicopter sounded in the distance, somewhere out of sight. John, looking for it, ignored the argument. He didn’t like what his friends were saying anyway. Cubby and Ripman were assuming he needed taking care of, and only after that would they see to their own needs. No one realized that he, John, had outwitted the dinosaur that chased them. He had given One Eye its name. He had helped disable the motorcycles, and he even shot— killed—Carl. His heart sank at that thought. After all that, his friends could not think of him as an equal. If the last three days hadn’t changed their thinking, nothing would.
“Hey,” he cut in, “nobody has to take me anywhere. You two take the bike and go find Portland. I’m walking out.”
John swigged down the rest of his Coke, picked up his rifle, and started walking down the riverbed, following the bike’s tire marks.
“Where are you going, man?” Ripman called. “Hey, wait up.”
“Come on back, John, what are you so mad about?” Cubby added.
John stopped and turned back.
“I’m not mad. I’m just trying to save you the trouble of looking out for me. You two head on into Portland, have a good time. If I don’t see you sooner, I’ll see you later … maybe at the beach house.” John turned to walk off and then stopped.
“I hope you find your folks, Cubby. Hey, Ripman, thanks for the food. See ya guys.”
John walked off, deliberately splashing noisily in the puddles to keep him from hearing what they were saying. As soon as he was out of sight around a bend, he gripped the gun tighter, as feelings of loneliness replaced his bravado. The motorcycle came to life behind him, then he heard the put-put of someone riding it. He thought about hiding, making it easy for them to leave him, but that would be cowardly.
To John’s surprise, Cubby was driving, and Ripman was hanging on behind. They rode up next to him, and Ripman climbed off to face John.
“We decided, John. We’re all going home.”
“It was great wasn’t it, Johnny my boy? Let’s do it again sometime,” Cubby said, then released the clutch and rode the bike in a slow circle and disappeared around the bend. “He’s crazy. Ripman, couldn’t you talk him out of it?”
“He’s a fanatic. I never could talk sense to him.” They started walking again, this time side by side.
Terry stood by the helicopter rubbing his eyes. His head ached from the refueling vapors and from staring through the tops of trees trying to spot his wife. He realized finding her that way was unlikely, but he wasn’t ready to give it up—he had no other choice.
Bill returned. Even Bill’s size and official manner had failed to get free fuel from the crusty operator of the airfield. But he’d taken a Visa card—obviously, he didn’t understand what had happened.
<
br /> When Bill climbed back in and lifted off, Terry tried to find a way to sit comfortably on what was left of his seat. It was late afternoon and there was little daylight left to search with. This would be their last trip. After this, he didn’t know what to do or where to go.
The house was a two-story Colonial, with a bay window and a dinosaur forest for a front yard. The windows were broken, but otherwise the house was intact.
“Through there,” Ripman said pointing, “is another house and on the other side of that a cul-de-sac. Go up the cul-de-sac and over the fence of the blue house at the end. There’s a highway on the other side. Follow it north and you’ll find that roadblock. The cops will take you to your mom.”
“Aren’t you coming too?”
“Like I said, we’re all going home. Your home is with your parents. Me, I don’t have anyone. My dad’s gone wherever Cubby’s folks are, and he never gave a damn anyway,” Ripman said with both sadness and bitterness in his voice. “Besides, I like it here. It’s the best home I had,”
“You can’t stay here! Sooner or later those dinos will have you for lunch. Come with me. My mom asked you. We’d have a great time.”
“Naw, I’m too elemental for you Yuppie types, but I’ll trade you the pistol for the rifle. A bow won’t cut it in here.”
John traded, then handed back the pistol. “You’re gonna need both, Ripman. If you change your mind, man, we’ll be at the beach house.”
“I know.”
John walked through the trees a short distance, then turned and looked back. Ripman was still there watching him. John wanted to tell Ripman he’d miss him, that he would think about him, that he loved him. But none of that was elemental, at least not in Ripman’s way of thinking. So instead John simply nodded his head. Ripman nodded back.
“See ya, Ripman.”
“Later, John.”
Cubby followed the riverbed, the noise of the bike chasing dinosaurs from his path. When the river angled off away from Portland, Cubby cut into the trees. Occasionally he came to clearings, some small, some larger, but as he looked into the distance no skyscrapers appeared.
He rode on, the sun setting on his left. It would he behind the hills soon, leaving the valley in shadow, and still the city could not be seen. He passed a section of collapsed forest, ran into an impassable rock slide, and headed uphill to skirt it. At the crest, he skidded to a stop. The view was unobstructed, and to his dismay he saw Mount Saint Helens in the distance. There was no city. Tears blurred his vision, and he wiped his eyes. Then he realized Mount Saint Helens had disappeared into a haze, and shimmering before him the city appeared. Skyscrapers towered above the trees as he looked around. He was in a city that wasn’t there.
From this close Portland wasn’t transparent. It was back, but Cubby didn’t know for how long. If God had opened this door for him, he wasn’t going to let it close. You don’t need certainty when you have your faith, his father always said. Cubby sucked down his doubts, revved up the engine, and released the clutch. “Time to go home,” he said to himself, and angled the bike down the hill toward the city.
* * *
Now Terry rubbed his aching eyes with both fists. He admitted defeat to himself and was ready to convince Bill.
“Bill, this is useless. We don’t even know if Angie and Ellen are in there.”
“Yeah, I know. I just don’t know what else to do. Where do we start looking if we don’t look here?”
“Will this thing make it to the beach … say about ninety miles? We can check our summer house.”
When Bill didn’t answer right away, Terry rubbed his eyes again, and opened them to see the return of the phantom city.
“Bill, it’s back.”
Bill straightened the helicopter, and hovered facing the city.
“We can try flying into it again. What do you think?” Terry suggested.
“Mmmm—I don’t think—”
Something zoomed past the helicopter on the left, banked to the right on stubby wings, and flew directly toward the city, taking Terry by surprise. Bill spun the helicopter around and throttled up the engine until the rotors screamed.
“What’s going on, Bill?”
“It’s a cruise missile. We’re in big trouble.”
Terry looked around, trying to follow the flight of the cruise missile, and when he did he spotted another missile in the distance, then suddenly he realized the sky was full of them. Terry was trying to make sense of what was happening when the sky went white, as if a giant strobe light had just flashed. At the same time there was a burst of static over the earphones, followed by the acrid smell of ozone. The helicopter’s engine sputtered and then died. Terry’s stomach made him think they were suddenly in an elevator going down. The rotors continued to spin but without any power, making more of a whistle than a thump. The churning of his stomach increased and the helicopter’s nose dipped, giving Terry a good view of the onrush-ing forest.
When John stepped out from beyond the last tree and onto the front lawn of the Colonial house, he felt tension being swept out of his body. His legs went weak with relief and began to shake. He hadn’t realized how much fear and adrenalin had powered him, and he now felt every ache and pain, and he was exhausted.
He thought of his mom in a hospital, his dad in Washington, D.C., or somewhere, maybe with his sister. That meant John should be with his mom.
He found the cul-de-sac and the blue house Ripman had described. Two other houses at the end of the cul-de-sac were surrounded by fences six feet high, making the end of the street look like Fort Apache. The owners of the blue house had settled for a four-foot fence. John jumped up and straddled it. Balanced on the top he looked back down the cul-de-sac toward the forest. Ripman and Cubby were in there somewhere, and that meant he was leaving a part of himself there too. He knew the closeness they had shared was too good to last a lifetime, but he never expected it to end so abruptly. It wasn’t the way childhood friendships should end. They should end slowly, day by day, month by month; each of them taking different paths that would lead them farther and farther apart. The forest had replaced the slow march to separate lives with a race to adulthood, and to loneliness.
John stared at the forest one last time, knowing there was no going back. As he turned to look for a soft landing spot beneath him, a blinding flash of light knocked him off the fence into the azalea bushes on the other side.
The New World
69. Beach House
The New World
North Oregon coast
Cable TV was out, since the Portland feed was gone. At their beach house, Ellen and John could still pick up the Eugene and Salem stations, although the reception without the cable boost was terrible. It didn’t matter though. The stations weren’t carrying anything but disaster coverage, and John was sick of it. He wanted escapism, some mindless sex or violence to distract him.
The network news people were dominating the coverage, sitting in anchor booths and telling the camera what other people were telling them. John could only pick up two of the networks, but neither had its regular anchor. Apparently the New York problem had taken some of the network people; the second string was now anchoring from Chicago.
The news might have been fresh at one time but was now a series of recycled reports, including oft-repeated interviews with the President’s chief of staff, Elizabeth Hawthorne. “The President is devoting himself to dealing with the crisis, but will meet with the press when the time is right,” Ms. Hawthorne was shown saying over and over again. John watched Ms. Hawthorne deny rumors that the President was ill, take questions about relief efforts, and defer questions requiring an explanation of what had happened to the President’s science advisor.
Dr. Paulson was interviewed repeatedly by the networks. He labeled what happened as time quilting, and described it as a natural result of the interaction of strings of dense matter created by nuclear detonations. When asked if it was true that only the former U.S.S.R. had detonated d
evices of sufficient size to create the effect, he deferred to Natalie Matsuda, the secretary of defense, who proceeded to blame it on the U.S.S.R. and single out the Russian Republic in particular to inherit the blame. She also claimed credit for preventing a worse disaster with the action taken in the Portland area. John noticed they never referred to it as a nuclear attack, calling it instead an “action.”
There was quite a bit of debate over what had happened at Portland. Some experts claimed the explosions destroyed Portland, others claimed the blast more likely took place somewhere between the two space/times involved. John thought of Cubby during these discussions. Had he been incinerated in a nuclear holocaust, or was he where he so badly wanted to be, with his family and church?
The networks interviewed a Dr. Gomez of the Fermi Institute about the effect itself, but her explanation made little sense to John. She talked of explosions in the sixties and the time quilting, as if they were concurrent events. She referred vaguely to possible future events. Apparently the first computer models had correctly predicted the focal point and the time quilting but had not projected the events into the future. More sophisticated models were being tested and some of these projected additional events. She also said something about effects on the moon, but being unable to confirm them until the space program could be reestablished. That point was then lost in questions about identifying where the displaced people had gone. John realized there was cold comfort in knowing that friends and relatives could be alive in some other time period.
Dinosaur horror stories filled the rest of the news. Of course the media concentrated on made-in-America stories. Attacks by tyrannosaurs were the most popular. Occasionally a story sympathetic to dinosaurs would surface. The story of an old woman in New York with a pet dinosaur got a lot of play, and John was particularly touched by the story of the mother apatosaurus and her baby that saved a shipwrecked family, despite a killer whale attack. There were also stories of organized protests of animal rights activists who were fighting for dinosaur rights. There were many stories of food shortages, fuel shortages, and medical supply shortages. These were invariably followed by predictions of more shortages, and how the poor were disproportionately affected. The only silver lining in these reports was that the human losses were out of proportion to the crop losses. In other words, they lost more people than crops to feed them.
Footprints of Thunder Page 52
