Against Time

by Smith, Dean Wesley

  She took her cell phone and went back to the large featherbed. She put the phone on the nightstand and plugged it in, just in case.

  Then she crawled back in bed, pulled the covers up over her head, and pretended nothing had happened, letting herself just breathe in the soft smell of lilac fabric softener from the sheets.

  She had been strong last night while moving the bodies.

  She didn’t need to be strong today.

  After an hour of feeling sorry for herself and feeling very, very alone, her bladder again forced her into the bathroom. She sure didn’t remember drinking that much before going to bed.

  But she did need to eat. She hadn’t eaten anything before going to bed, but she wasn’t hungry. That didn’t matter. In this situation, not eating wouldn’t help anything.

  And she was going to need to do some inventory. She started to run down some chores as she put on her tennis shoes.

  She needed to get enough wood in to keep the fireplace going for many long months.

  She needed to find oil lamps and as much fuel for them as she could find.

  She needed to do an inventory of the food supplies and when all of it was going to spoil.

  And she needed to see if she could find a few more clothes and some winter clothing as well.

  In other words, she needed to know how long she could hole up here in this lodge before she needed to go down into the valley and then on back to Eugene and the University.

  She hoped that she was going to be able to stay long enough for the smells to mostly pass.

  She headed out into the hallway toward the big front desk. There would be paper there to do lists. She could use the big wooden front desk as a sort of survival command center.

  After all, she was in charge of this place now.

  Then, with a notebook in her hand and a pen behind her ear, she headed downstairs to the kitchen and dining areas.

  She was going to survive this, whatever had happened. And to do that, she had to take care of herself.

  That meant eating regularly.

  Even though she just wasn’t the slightest bit hungry for some reason.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  FISHER COULDN’T BELIEVE what had just happened.

  Callie was gone. Sent back into the death below, and he really had no idea where she was. She had described some lodge in the mountains near a cave.

  But that was all he knew. He didn’t even know what part of the planet that lodge and cave were on.

  He hoped that the people running the transport beams knew where, but how would he even identify her to them?

  He needed to find her, but that was going to take some work and he had a hunch a lot of luck. He was looking for one person among two million survivors on a very large planet.

  And he didn’t want to think about the problems he would face if he did find her. She wouldn’t remember him or anything about this room.

  He stared at the chair where she had been. The task of finding her seemed impossible, but those wonderful eyes and the feel of her just wouldn’t leave his mind.

  He had to try.

  He would never forgive himself if he didn’t at least try.

  He went to a person who seemed to be in charge of the room and asked him what the designation for this room was.

  The older bald guy who had on a white smock and who smelled like death just stared at him. The guy seemed far too tired too care about any stupid questions and he looked at Fisher like he had lost his mind. But then he said, “L-266.”

  “What department or which person could I talk to about what part of the planet the people in this room came from?”

  “Head of transport,” the guy said and turned away.

  Fisher thanked him as the guy walked toward a door.

  Fisher then headed back to where Doc was still talking to a couple of the volunteers.

  Fisher had no idea how to move around in this big ship, or if he and Doc were even allowed to. He even had no idea how to get to The Lady if he wanted to. They had been transported into this room and hadn’t left it yet.

  Talk about feeling helpless.

  And trapped.

  For all he knew, this Benson guy was just going to put them back on their ship, erase their memories as well, and toss them back into orbit.

  “That was one of the main people in their engineering department,” Doc said, smiling and clearly excited. “Nice guy. He said he would work with me on getting our drives up a notch.”

  At that point Benson walked into the room, clearly looking tired, but also smiling.

  “Rescue a success?” Fisher asked him.

  Benson really smiled at that question. “Completely. We managed to rescue over two million people and put them back without losing one person.”

  Fisher just shook his head. “That’s amazing.”

  “It is, isn’t it?” Benson asked. Then he laughed.

  “So, let’s get you two settled so we all can get some rest.”

  Benson indicated that they should follow him and he led them out into a corridor outside the room.

  There was a wide corridor that seemed to go off into the distance with a number of branching corridors. Fisher had no doubt he could get very, very lost in a ship this size.

  Numbers of crew, many in white smocks, were walking slowly along the corridor. And then as Fisher watched, one touched a wall and vanished.

  Benson stopped beside a blank panel on the wall. Fisher could see them spaced evenly on both sides of the wide corridor.

  “I have given you both special crew status,” he said, “so you can stay on board as long as you would like. Talk to anyone you would like, and move freely about. I will be available for questions when you have them.”

  “Thanks,” Doc said, smiling.

  “Yes, thank you,” Fisher said, not really believing what he was hearing. At least not fully.

  Benson pointed at the blank wall screen. “Touch it anywhere.”

  Fisher reached out and touched the screen. It came to life, showing his name and “Special Crew” status beside his name.

  “Some key words the computer is trained for specifically,” Benson said. “The main ones are Location, Destination, and Transport. Location tells you where you are at on the ship.”

  He nodded for Fisher to say that to the screen, so Fisher turned and said, “Location.”

  A map of the deck appeared on the screen with a designation as to where exactly they were standing. There were letters with three numbers after every location. The room they had just left was L-266 as the man had told him. The panel they stood at was L-267. The next one down the hallway was L-268 and so on.

  “We are on L-Deck,” Benson said. “There are fifteen major decks. Your ship is on O-Deck. Actually, it is at O-110. So say to the computer the word destination followed by that number. Then say two to accompany you.”

  Fisher turned slightly again to the board. “Destination O-110. Two to accompany.”

  The hallway vanished and they were standing beside a bulkhead. “The Lady” sat looking alone and very small on the big landing deck.

  “Now that’s nifty,” Doc said, smiling.

  “Would you two like to have rooms on the ship or stay on your own ship?” Benson asked.

  “I think we’ll be fine on our ship,” Fisher said. “We’re sort of used to it.”

  Benson nodded. “I figured as much. Feel free to roam around and talk to as many people as you would like starting in about eight hours. It will take me that long to get some sleep and tell everyone that you two are free to come and go. And the computer board will help you find any department you want to visit.”

  “Thank you for your kindness,” Fisher said.

  “Never hurts to have young, fresh ideas around,” Benson said. “So we’ll be glad to help you if you two can help us in return with anything you see that can be improved on.”

  “How long are we staying in orbit over this planet?” Fisher asked, suddenly worried tha
t he was going to end up a very long distance from Callie.

  “I’m afraid we’re going to be here for some time,” Benson said. “We are the ship assigned to stay in orbit and monitor the situation. All the other ships will be heading back to their home worlds over the next few days.”

  “Fine by me,” Doc said, nodding.

  “Perfect,” Fisher said. “And again, thanks.”

  “Thanks for your help today,” he said, and with that he tapped the board, said, “Destination A-19. One to transport.”

  And he was gone.

  Fisher just stared at the spot where he had been standing, then looked at Doc.

  “Can you believe any of this?” Doc asked, shaking his head and laughing.

  “I’m not sure what to believe anymore,” Fisher said as they turned and headed the short distance to their ship.

  But all he could really think about was Callie. He hoped she was doing all right.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CALLIE SPENT an hour downstairs, forcing herself to munch on an apple and a half sandwich and a fruit drink. While she ate she did a partial inventory, but decided that while it was still light and sunny outside, she needed to go look around the lodge and see what she could see.

  Last night, while carrying out the bodies and putting personal effects with them, she had pulled out and kept every key ring from every person. She had a sack of them sitting on the counter in the kitchen, so she took the sack, went back upstairs and got her coat that she hadn’t worn while moving bodies, and went outside, making sure to leave the front door of the lodge open so she could get back in without breaking out a window.

  The day was beautiful, the sun was bright and still an hour from ducking behind a ridgeline. She didn’t need the coat, so she took it off and left it on the porch.

  She walked around the lodge as much as she could, considering that it was built hanging out over a ravine, checking it and making a note to get the canned fruit she had unloaded from the truck inside when she had time in the next few days.

  Then she started up the road past the front of the lodge toward the parking lot.

  There was a long building just up the hill from the lodge that the rangers and some staff lived in. She went up the front steps and pulled open the main door of that building. The smell of death drove her quickly back down the steps and into the fresh mountain air.

  Clearly a number of people were dead in there.

  She blew her nose and stood and took deep breaths of the fresh mountain air to clear what she could.

  That was what the lodge would have smelled like in a very short time if she hadn’t worked quickly yesterday to clear it.

  She went up into the main parking lot.

  There were almost twenty cars there, plus the truck she had parked last night.

  She walked a wide circle out and past the truck with all the bodies, then went to the first car, a modern Dodge van. It took her a while to find the right key ring, but she got it open.

  Except for a couple of suitcases in the back, there wasn’t much. It looked like it was an elderly couple who owned the van, more than likely the two she remembered seeing with the tour group in the opening to the caves. There were a couple of coats she might be able to use, some tools like a shovel and an ax, and some bags of travel snacks between the front seats.

  She started to pull them out, then realized that with twenty cars to get supplies from, she might as well use the van to transport it all down to the lodge.

  She opened the back gate of the van wide, put the tools on one side, the suitcases on the other, the coats in the back seat, and then moved on to the next car.

  The sun was behind the mountain and the air was getting a chill in it before she had gone through every car.

  She now had lots of bags of snacks and crackers and different forms of food that would last for a very long time.

  She also had half-dozen small shovels and other tools, including a dozen small medical kits.

  She had found over twenty winter coats of various sizes and shapes.

  And she had the back of the van piled with seven suitcases with women’s clothing in them.

  She had also found six iPods with a lot of different forms of music already loaded on them and two car chargers that she could use to charge the iPods up when she needed.

  When she found the first one she had suddenly realized that the silence around her was weighing on her.

  She needed music. She often worked in her office with music going.

  She needed to set music up in the lodge, make the place feel more alive.

  She liked all sorts of music, so it didn’t much matter.

  Then it dawned on her that she might want to see if she could get any radio news.

  She went back to the van, stared it up and sat, working her way through the dial. There seemed to be two stations still working playing automated play lists. Not one bit of news or emergency broadcast information.

  Even though she came up blank, she was annoyed at herself that she hadn’t thought of that last night. She clearly was still in shock and not thinking at times. She needed to be very careful.

  She was about to close up the van and drive it down to the lodge when she noticed another building with more cars in front of it up the hill to one side of the public parking lot.

  More Forest Service buildings, she had a hunch. And maybe employee parking.

  She took a Snickers candy bar from one of the snack bags and headed up the hill toward the cars.

  About halfway up there, it just seemed to be getting too dark, so she decided she would save those for another sunny day and turned around. She wanted to get the lodge ready for the power to go out.

  And she didn’t want to do that after dark just in case the power went out tonight.

  Ten minutes later she had the van parked outside the kitchen exit and was unloading the supplies of food from the front seat.

  Then she headed upstairs to turn on lights and get some music going in the main lobby.

  And maybe she would start a fire in the fireplace.

  She was going to survive this. She didn’t know for what. But survival now was all that mattered.

  To do that she had to stay focused.

  And be careful.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  FISHER’S DREAMS were of Callie. Her smile, her being lost on a planet covered in death.

  He woke up with his sheets wrapped around his legs.

  He glanced at the clock and realized that he had been asleep for almost nine hours. When they had gotten back in the ship last night, he had taken a shower and then just fell into bed.

  Now suddenly, he felt wide awake and not really believing that yesterday had happened.

  One minute he and Doc were visiting a new planet, the next minute they were helping rescue people and he was falling in love with a woman he lost a few hours later.

  He wondered if anyone on the ship had recorded what had happened in the big meeting room with all the survivors. If so, he might be able to get a picture of Callie to hold onto, and maybe with a picture of the two of them together help convince her that he had met here when he found her again.

  If he found her.

  He was honestly more worried about her not believing him or talking to him than finding her, but even that might turn out to be almost impossible, depending on the records the people on this big ship kept of the transports of the survivors.

  He took a shower and then dressed in casual jeans and a short-sleeved blue dress shirt, he headed for the kitchen.

  Doc was there, sitting at the big table sipping an orange juice and working on something on a pad.

  “Up long?” Fisher asked and Doc shook his head.

  “So damned tired, I passed out.”

  “That makes two of us. Let me fix us some breakfast and we can do some exploring of our host’s big ship.”

  “Sounds perfect,” Doc said, his voice clearly excited. “I feel like I got a ton to learn. Like I
’m starting school all over again. What about you?”

  “I’ve got a woman to find first,” Fisher said.

  “The survivor you were sitting with?” Doc asked, for the first time looking up from his pad. He looked almost surprised.

  “Yeah, she was amazing,” Fisher said, smiling at his best friend, then turning to start some breakfast.

  Over the next thirty minutes he fixed a light breakfast of eggs, toast, and some cooked ham for both of them while telling Doc about Callie. It felt great talking about her and by the time he was done, he knew for certain he had to find her and fast. Doc offered to help as much as he could.

  Then they headed out of The Lady, across the small deck, and to the board on the wall.

  “Transportation Department location?” Doc asked.

  Fisher smiled. It was nice to have his friend helping him. At least to start. He had no doubt that Doc would get distracted quickly and head off into some sort of space-warp mechanics, but it was great he was willing to help out to start.

  The computer showed them the deck and number.

  “Security department location,” Fisher asked.

  The board showed him C-226.

  “Wondering if they were recording the room?” Doc asked.

  “Exactly,” Fisher said. “That way transportation will know exactly where in the room she was.”

  “Perfect,” Doc said. “Let me have a shot at this.”

  Then Doc turned to the board. “Two to transport to C-226.”

  A moment later Fisher found himself and Doc looking at a large room of people sitting at what seemed to be large u-shaped consoles. There had to be fifty people in the room, all seemingly focused and busy.

  “Wow,” Doc said. “That actually worked.

  Fisher felt the same way, just staring at the board and then back at the room.

  “You must be our new guests on board that Benson informed us about a few hours ago.”

  The voice came from behind them, so Fisher and Doc both turned to face a man in a blue jacket with some sort of insignia on it. He was smiling and extending his hand.

  He couldn’t have been more than five foot tall and looked like he had a gut on him that left any room far before he did. He also had white hair that seemed to ring a bald spot like someone had dropped hair removal drops right in the middle of his head.