Against Time

by Smith, Dean Wesley

  Callie didn’t much like the idea of a second pulse either.

  “That’s right, a weaker but still deadly second pulse will be hitting your planet in just under five hours. We will have everyone off the planet when that happens and a safe distance away.”

  “Then what happens?” someone shouted.

  “Then we bring you back to your home and let you begin the process of rebuilding your world. The trip away and back will take a very short amount of time, so rest, eat, and let our staff help you in any way they can. The crew in this room came a long ways for this moment to help you all survive.”

  “You are actually going to rescue all two million survivors?” someone shouted from the other side of the room before Benson had a chance to turn away from the microphone.

  “Every last person,” Benson said, with an intensity that surprised Callie.

  Then he turned and left the stage and the room.

  Around her the noise exploded as everyone tried to talk at once.

  Mr. Handsome scooted his chair around so he could again face her.

  All she could do was stare into those fantastic green eyes and try, try, try to get one simple thought together.

  Nothing.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CALLIE FINALLY FELT like she was getting some of her brain back.

  “Would you like something more to eat?” the handsome man across from her asked. He didn’t seem to be inclined to leave her and for that she felt very grateful.

  “I would,” she said. “Thank you.”

  He stood and started to turn toward the food when she asked, “What’s your name?”

  “Fisher,” he said, smiling at her. “And yours?”

  “Callie,” she said.

  “Right back with some food. I could use some myself.”

  She sat and watched him walk away. She liked his name and was stunned at how attracted she was to him in these strange circumstances.

  But she was. And she couldn’t stop staring at his butt. Clearly he had the walk of someone who knew how to carry himself. An athlete.

  And he filled out those jeans perfectly.

  And his broad shoulders moved with an ease she had not seen before.

  When he vanished in the crowd, she turned and let herself just stare out at the planet below, not wanting to pay any attention to the others in the room. Interestingly enough, the view of the planet below calmed her.

  She forced herself to take deep breaths and relax some.

  What seemed like only a moment later he brought her back a plastic plate with a sandwich made on white bread, an apple, and five more cookies.

  He had a plate as well that had a matching sandwich and cookies.

  He also had two plastic bottles of what looked to be some sort of juice that looked like what she had before.

  “They tell me this is apple juice again,” he said, handing her a bottle. “And the sandwich is turkey.”

  Callie just looked at her plate, shaking her head. “How is it that alien people from other planets can get this kind of food?”

  “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” he said, shaking his head and taking a bite of the cookie first.

  “Try me,” she said. “At this point I’ll believe darned near anything.”

  He laughed and she loved the sound of his laugh. “I hear you there,” he said. “I can’t believe I’m sitting here either.”

  Then he waved his hand. “Sorry, got way off track with that. Let me try to answer your question, but remember I warned you that you wouldn’t believe me.”

  She laughed and motioned for him to go ahead as she took a bite of the wonderful-tasting turkey sandwich on the soft white bread. It was salted just perfectly and had some sort of light sauce that gave it just the right flavor.

  “Well,” he said, “from what I have seen, and have been told, a race called The Seeders terra-formed every possible planet in the galaxy and planted the exact same plants and humans. So every planet has human civilizations and eat basically the same things.”

  Callie just looked at him. She could tell he was serious.

  She shook her head. “You are right, I don’t believe you.”

  He laughed. “Oh, trust me, unless I had seen all this for myself, I wouldn’t have believed it either. I sometimes still don’t.”

  “So exactly what are you doing here?” she asked.

  He pointed to a tall, thin, nerdy-looking guy standing talking with a group of people near the viewport. “That’s my friend, Doc. We’re both from the same place and we invented a ship that could take us out into interstellar space.”

  “Something like this ship?” she asked.

  He laughed. “Oh, heavens no. Our ship, The Lady, is sitting like a tiny flea in this ship’s docking port. We thought our ship was huge when we built it. Guess not, huh?”

  She nodded, so he went on.

  “We had visited a few hundred planets like yours, almost all with thriving human civilizations at about the same level as yours and mine. Not kidding. We just got to this system about five hours ago and were trying to figure out what had happened when all these big ships suddenly arrived and started pulling off survivors from below.”

  “So they rescued you as well?” she asked.

  “Sort of,” he said. “They tell us our shields on The Lady might have saved us from the second wave. But they wanted the extra help here and we were more than glad enough to help. Seems these people are really into helping other races and sharing information.”

  “Sure seems that way,” Callie said. “Where are they from?”

  “From what I’m told, about fifty planets in a sector of the galaxy that was seeded earlier, so they are more advanced than this area of space, than your people and mine.”

  She just shook her head. “So if we’re all from different planets, how come we can all speak the same language?”

  “Now that’s something that’s been bothering me as well,” he said. “I just haven’t had the chance to ask anyone how that works.”

  She took another bite of the sandwich and then opened the juice.

  “I hope I’m not being too personal,” he said, looking worried, “but did you have family down there and how did you survive?”

  “No family,” she said. “And I’m a paleontologist and a professor. I was on a dig in a regional cave.”

  “Your students survive as well?” he asked.

  Suddenly her brain clicked in even more. “They did, at least as long as they were with me. We didn’t come out of the cave until this morning to discover what had happened. They had family and went in search of them.”

  She started to scan the people she could see, looking for the two of them.

  “Well, Benson told me they were taking survivors from the same general areas for each room, so they might be here. Although there are hundreds of rooms on this ship alone and I doubt they will let us go wondering from one to another. You want me to help you look in this room?”

  “In a minute,” she said, working on another cookie. “I think I need to get some more food in me. I was moving bodies out of a lodge near the cave and when I finished I just took a shower and climbed into bed. I flat forgot to eat.”

  “I never seem to have that issue,” he said, laughing. “I love to cook, actually.”

  “Seriously?” she asked.

  She flat couldn’t believe this guy sitting in front of her. More than likely he was married or gay or something. That had been her luck with the very few men she had been attracted to.

  He nodded. “As we’ve been traveling, I’ve collected all kinds of recipes from different worlds. On our ship I have a gourmet kitchen.”

  She smiled because he seemed to be extremely proud of that fact.

  “Family or significant other at home?”

  “Mother and father,” he said. “No one else.”

  Again those green eyes of his bored through her and she just couldn’t look away.

  “So you are an inv
entor?” she asked, finally letting herself think of something besides how incredible this man was.

  “Sort of,” he said. “A couple doctorate degrees in mathematics and physics tends to shove a person in that direction.”

  “I suppose it would,” she said.

  Now she really couldn’t believe this guy. Not only was he fantastic looking, but he was as smart as they came.

  “We’re moving,” he said, pointing at the window.

  The big room slowly went silent as everyone turned to watch as the planet seemed to suddenly get smaller. Then for a brief instant the stars blurred.

  Then without even a sense of movement the stars came back and the planet and sun were completely gone.

  Callie just sort of shook her head, not having a clue as to what had just happened.

  Around them the room burst into noise.

  A few people started crying.

  The skinny guy who Fisher had called Doc came running over all excited.

  “Did you see that?” he asked Fisher. “No sense of movement, instant trans-tunnel jump. Amazing.”

  “I saw it,” Fisher said. “Can you get The Lady to do the same thing?”

  “I’m going to stay here until we can,” he said, laughing like a little kid.

  Then he moved away, going back to talk to some of the crew.

  “My friend gets excited easily about space drives,” Fisher said, again turning and smiling at her.

  “I can see that,” she said, smiling. “Where do you think we are now?”

  Fisher shrugged. “A safe distance away from that second wave. Maybe a light year or so outside your system.”

  Callie just looked at him, stunned to her core. He said that so casually.

  All in one day she had experienced more death than she wanted to ever see again and taken a ride into deep space on an alien space ship.

  And in doing so met a man of her dreams.

  When she woke up finally, she was going to have to write all this down.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  FISHER COULD NOT BELIEVE that he was managing a conversation with this beautiful and very smart woman. More than likely it was because she was in such shock from all the events that she was even paying him the slightest bit of attention.

  Yet she seemed interested.

  He honestly didn’t know when a woman was interested or not in him. He had been blind to relationships for so long, he now found himself completely unprepared when he found someone interesting.

  Yet she had been through so much, he couldn’t imagine how she was dealing with everything. Her basic core beliefs were no doubt being shattered, not counting the fact that billions of people had died on her planet.

  “I think I’m ready to see if I can find my students,” she said to Fisher after finishing her sandwich and all but one of the cookies he had brought her. “Would you mind helping me?”

  “I would love to,” he said, smiling.

  He wanted to help her to her feet, but refrained. She seemed to be fine and had power now in her movements and walk.

  Side-by-side, they stared around the outside of the room. She gave him a quick description of what they looked like, and it took them almost thirty minutes to wind through the groups of people standing and sitting.

  With some survivors, the smell of death was very strong. Other survivors just lay on blankets or sat in chairs with their eyes closed.

  When he and Callie had made it three quarters of the way around the big space, it was clear to him that her students were not there.

  “Ahh, well,” she said. “I hope they are all right.”

  “I’m sure they are,” Fisher said, leading her back over to the two chairs they had left.

  They sat and talked for a while about her teaching and where the cave was in comparison to where she taught and so on. He loved to hear her talk and he could tell that the love for her profession was amazing.

  “So what were you doing clearing out a lodge by yourself?” he asked.

  She took a small bite of the last cookie on her plate. “This lodge and cave is a long ways up in the mountains. My students left, going in search of family. When they called me from about fifty miles away to tell me the death was everywhere and they were continuing on, I knew I was going to have to take care of myself for some time to come. So with no other place to go, I figured the lodge would do fine since it had heat and food to last me for some time.”

  He nodded. “So you had to clear out bodies to make the lodge livable? How many?”

  “Nineteen,” she said softly.

  “Oh, my, how did you do that?” He couldn’t believe she had managed that. He doubted he would have been able to.

  She shrugged.

  “You don’t look big enough to manhandle human bodies.”

  “A big food cart,” she said. “And protective clothing. I did what I had to do. But when I was finished, I locked up the lodge and took a shower and crawled into bed. Completely forgot to eat.”

  “You think you can survive in that lodge for some time?”

  “Maybe a half year or more,” she said. “At least through the coming fall and winter.”

  Then she looked at Fisher and her wonderful brown eyes were wide and she looked like she was about to panic.

  “They are going to put us back, aren’t they?”

  Fisher nodded. He didn’t know what else to say.

  “And we’re not going to remember any of this, are we?”

  “They tell me no,” he said.

  She actually shuddered.

  He reached over and put his hand on her hand.

  Her skin felt wonderful, but her hand was shaking.

  “Tell you what? Let me ask if you can stay with Doc and me. We have a lot of extra room on The Lady, entire suites, actually, and maybe we can find a way from up here to help out your planet even more.”

  “You would do that for me?” she asked.

  He squeezed her hand and let go, even though he didn’t want to. “Of course.”

  “Let me go get it cleared so you don’t have to worry about it.” He stood and smiled at her, the most beautiful woman he had ever met.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  “My pleasure,” he said. “I’ll be right back.”

  He was halfway across the room when he noticed the stars outside had blurred and suddenly the planet was back below the ship.

  His stomach twisted as he quickly searched for someone who seemed to be in charge, without luck.

  Then, as he was about to turn back to Callie, every survivor in the room vanished at once, leaving only the staff.

  Across the room Doc shrugged.

  Fisher just stood there, staring at the empty chair where Callie had been.

  The woman of his dreams was gone.

  And now she would never remember him.

  Yet he would always remember her.

  PART TWO

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  THE LIGHT STREAMING IN the window woke Callie.

  She had had the worst dream, about dead bodies and having to move them and put them in a truck.

  She rolled over and yawned and stretched, then opened her eyes.

  And instantly she was in full panic mode.

  She was in the lodge.

  It hadn’t been a dream.

  She was alone and everyone was dead.

  She sat up in the bed and looked at the sweatshirt and sweatpants she had on.

  They were a dead woman’s clothes.

  She lay back, pulled the covers up to her chin, and tried to force herself to just breathe.

  “No panic,” she said out loud to the large suite.

  Her voice echoed and sounded strange to her ears.

  “No panic.”

  Deep breath.

  “No panic.”

  Deep breath.

  That helped some.

  She opened her eyes and forced herself to look around, focusing on every detail of the room to make herself calm down.
>
  The room had high ceilings, with polished logs as beams. The walls were painted an off white and were decorated in old photos of the early days of the lodge.

  There was a living room just off the bedroom to her left with large overstuffed furniture including a couch with soft cloth that looked big enough to sleep two end-to-end.

  The floors were old polished wood and had area rugs on both sides of the bed and in the living room under the furniture.

  A bathroom with tile floors and old-style sinks was to her right.

  The sunlight streaming in the windows meant it was the middle of the day because this time of the year the sun was only over the valley directly for three hours. The rest of the times the tall peaks on three sides of the lodge blocked the sun.

  The two main rooms of the suite were lit with wooden chandeliers hanging from wood beams and there were a number of table lamps in various places.

  She had left the overhead lights on last night, she remembered that.

  If she was going to stay here, she was going to need to replace those table lamps with oil lamps pretty soon.

  Unless she could keep the generator working and there was enough fuel for it.

  She climbed out of bed and in her socks went into the bathroom. Then she pulled on some slippers the hotel furnished that were in one closet and went in search of her cell phone.

  It was on a wooden table in the main living room area.

  No calls, so she tried to call Jim.

  His phone rang, and then after a moment he picked up.

  “They are dead,” he said, his voice soft. “Everyone in the city is dead. My baby is dead.”

  “I am so sorry,” Callie said.

  There was a soft sobbing sound on the other end of the call and then the phone went dead.

  She looked at the phone, trying to figure out if there was anyone else she could call while the power and cell phones still worked.

  There wasn’t one damn person outside of Oregon she could think of.

  And if Bill had found everyone in Eugene dead as well, then this death had spread far, far wider than she could imagine.

  She was alone.

  At least for any foreseeable future.