The Changlings (The New Earth Chronicles Book 2)

by J. J. Thompson

  Sarah grinned weakly and cleared her throat.

  “Time to get up, sleepy head,” she told him. “We don't want to stay in one place too long.”

  She ran her hands through her hair, hissing as her fingers snagged on knots.

  Bobby staggered to his feet and looked around, blinking slowly.

  “Good morning,” he said as he stretched, yawning loudly. “Sounds like a great day.”

  “Yeah, right. The good news is that it won't be easy for any dragons to see us through the rain, or for the drakes to follow us by scent. So that's encouraging, I suppose.”

  “I guess that's true.”

  There were a couple of steps that led down to the water and Bobby walked down them. He knelt down and splashed water over his face to help him wake up and then drank his fill.

  Sarah watched him and laughed as he pushed back his hair. He looked like a seal as the water trickled down his face, his hair slicked close to his head.

  “There, that's better,” he said as he wiped the water from his eyes. “Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go outside to answer nature's call. Feel free to do the same in here.”

  Bobby smiled at Sarah as he walked past her. He yanked open the narrow door and left the boathouse.

  “Always the gentleman,” she said under her breath.

  Sarah went down the steps, drank some water and then splashed a little bit on her face. Then she did her business as the water flowed past underneath the building and adjusted her clothing before following Bobby outside.

  The rain was coming down heavily, but it was warm and smelled pleasantly earthy. Sarah was soaked to the skin in about ten seconds and then just ignored the rain. There was nothing she could do about it anyway.

  “Are you going to call the others?” Bobby asked her.

  He was standing close to the water, just as waterlogged as she was. Like Sarah, he simply accepted the fact that they would be traveling soaking wet. And even though the sky was heavy with clouds, he had put on his sunglasses again.

  “Not yet,” she replied, blinking water out of her eyes. “Let's do some walking and find another safe place first. I don't know how long we slept, but I'm worried that we're sitting ducks if we stay here.”

  “Ducks is right,” Bobby said with a heavy sigh as he looked up at the dark gray clouds over their heads. “It's coming down so hard that we might end up swimming instead of walking.”

  Sarah laughed at his comment and they set off again.

  Both of them were hungry, but they ignored it for the moment. It was more important to get away from danger, and all of the Changlings were used to the painful pinch of hunger. It was an old, if unwanted, friend of theirs.

  The shore had turned into a slippery combination of mud and small stones and Sarah and Bobby were forced to hike further away from the river, walking through grass and weeds and around low bushes. They were accompanied by the constant chirping of birds and buzz of bugs, both undeterred by the soggy weather.

  Sarah smiled at the sounds, even through her discomfort. Though they were still in danger, her mood brightened at the sound of nature's song, as it always did. The birds in the city sang as well, but there were many more beyond Ottawa's borders and it made her happy to listen to them.

  Bobby slogged along behind her, watching his feet and silently soldiering on through the heavy rain, trusting that Sarah to lead them the right way.

  The rain was so heavy that neither of them could see clearly more than a dozen yards in any direction. The river hissed steadily beneath the downpour and a heavy mist rose from its surface, making it even harder to see. If there were any dragons patrolling in the vicinity, it would be impossible for them to spot the two Changlings. They hoped that the same was true for the drakes.

  About an hour after they had left the boathouse, Sarah and Bobby stopped under a large maple tree just within sight of the river and discussed their options.

  “I don't know exactly where we are,” Sarah said as she pushed her sopping hair out of her eyes. “But we are definitely out of the city. The question now is, do we keep following the river or head off in a more southerly direction?”

  Bobby leaned against the tree trunk and wiped his face with his hands. It didn't help much; water still trickled into his eyes and down to his chin.

  “I'm not sure,” he admitted. “If I remember the maps properly, the river starts to swing more to the north just outside of the city. The question actually should be, do we even have a goal or are we just running away blindly?”

  Sarah smiled wanly at him. Trust Bobby to get to the heart of the matter so directly. But he was right. Were they going some place specifically or were they just on the run?

  “I wish we had thought to bring one of those maps,” she said regretfully.

  “If we'd had enough time for that, we'd be better equipped, wouldn't we?” Bobby joked. “I'd kill for a raincoat or an umbrella right about now.”

  They both laughed at the idea of walking through the rain holding umbrellas. Neither of them had seen one of the things for many years.

  From the direction that they had come, a sudden savage howl abruptly cut off their laughter and filled them with fear. It sounded far off but it was still terrifying.

  “Drakes,” Bobby hissed, his eyes wide.

  “Damn it, I thought that we'd given them the slip,” Sarah said as she stared at the thick curtain of rain falling beyond the shelter of the tree. “How are they even tracking us? It can't be through sight or scent. Not in this.”

  “Magic?” Bobby wondered. “Can they use magic to track their prey?”

  “God, who knows? Come on, we have to keep moving.”

  “And go where?”

  Sarah moved off in the opposite direction from the hunting call.

  “Anywhere but here,” she replied. “Let's go.”

  And so they ran as best they could. The ground was slick with water, whether it was grass or soil under their feet, and both of them quickly became exhausted.

  “Slow down,” Bobby panted after a few minutes. “If we...collapse because we're trying to run in this rain, the drakes will catch us easily.”

  “I...know,” Sarah gasped.

  She stopped running and began walking quickly instead. It was at least easier to stay on her feet at that pace.

  “Better. Okay, now which way do we go? We can't just keep ahead of the monsters. We'll have to hole up somewhere.”

  Bobby scowled at the ground as he wracked his brain, trying to think of what to do.

  “Let's head more to the south, away from the river,” he finally replied.

  “Why?”

  “Because, if we can find a main road or a highway, we might be able to get our bearings. I think that I remember the map of the area, at least a little bit. If I could see a road name or a highway number, maybe I'd be able to tell where we are. And then we can figure out where to go next.”

  “Okay, that's as good a plan as any, I suppose. I certainly don't know where to go. Damn, I wish I'd memorized the local countryside more, back when we took geography in class.”

  She led the way again and they left the river behind them. The ground began to rise and a small cottage suddenly came into view through the veil of rain.

  “Hey, let's take a quick look inside,” Bobby said with a nod at the building.

  “Hoping for an umbrella?” Sarah asked with a grin.

  He chuckled.

  “Hoping for anything, really. Food, supplies, a map. Anything.”

  Sarah hesitated. They hadn't heard the drakes since that one cry down at river and there was no way to know how close they were, or if they were still behind them at all. Did they have the time to search the cottage?

  “Okay, let's take a quick peek. But really quick, all right? We have no idea if those monsters are close or not.”

  “Got it. It won't take long. The place is pretty small.”

  Chapter 13

  The cottage was basically one big room, w
ith a small bathroom off to the side. There were a couple of broken windows that had let in leaves and debris over the years, but the front door had remained closed and the place was still in remarkably good condition.

  “I'm surprised that no raccoons or squirrels have moved in,” Sarah observed after Bobby pushed the door open with his shoulder and they had slipped inside.

  “Me too. Maybe they didn't like the décor?”

  She giggled at his comment.

  “Yeah, maybe. I certainly don't like that.”

  She pointed across the room and Bobby looked over in that direction.

  There was a fireplace on one wall with a mounted deer's head hanging above it. The trophy was covered with cobwebs, but even in the dim light of Sarah's glowing stone, the marble eyes still seemed to stare at them mournfully.

  “Ugh. Me neither. Poor thing.”

  “Poor us if we don't get a move on,” Sarah said practically. “Come on, let's look around, fast.”

  They split up and started searching through the cottage. Sarah opened all of the cupboards in the dusty, old kitchen while Bobby searched through the tables and shelves scattered throughout the rest of the place.

  “Hey, I found a backpack,” he said as he opened the drawers in a bureau. “It's kind of small, but it's made of canvas. Seems pretty tough.”

  Sarah looked over at Bobby and saw that he was hunched down next to the small bed in one corner of the room. He held up the brown backpack and she gave him a quick thumbs-up.

  “Cool. At least we have something to carry stuff in. All we need now is the stuff.”

  Bobby laughed and went back to searching, while Sarah kept opening cupboards in the kitchen. In the end, she found a couple of cans of beans, and a can opener. There were also spoons and knives, a box of wooden matches and a dented metal canteen. Last but not least, she found a half-dozen long candles tied together with string. It was like finding treasure, but Bobby might have made the most important discovery of all.

  “Hey, look what I found!” he exclaimed.

  He'd looked through every drawer in the place and had been searching a small bookshelf crammed with books, discolored magazines and a bunch of random papers. When Sarah looked over, he excitedly held up a colorful sheaf of papers.

  “What is it?” she asked as she put the beans and her other discoveries in the backpack that he'd found.

  “A map! Looks like the kind that you used to be able to buy at gas stations.”

  He opened it carefully, as the panels of the map had become stiff and brittle over time, and laid it out on the dusty wooden floor. The windows let in some light, but Sarah hurried over with her stone so that they could see the illustrations more easily.

  “See? It marks out all of the major highways and hotels across the province,” Bobby said as he pointed at the many heavy lines crisscrossing the map.

  “I don't care about highways,” Sarah told him. “I want to know where we are, so that we can figure out which way to go.”

  “That's easy. Look, whoever used to live here marked it on the map.”

  He tapped a star that had been drawn in black ink. It was sitting just next to the twisting, blue line that marked the course of the Ottawa River.

  Sarah sighed in relief.

  “So that's where we are,” she said as she touched the map with her forefinger.

  She traced their route back along the river to the city.

  “Wow, look how far we've managed to come from Ottawa! Not bad for a couple of water-logged waifs.”

  “Waifs? What's a waif?”

  She grinned at him across the map.

  “We are. Thin, homeless and way too pale for our own good. Waifs.”

  “Huh. I'm a waif. Who knew?”

  Bobby chuckled as Sarah stuck out her tongue at him.

  “Anyway, let's decide where we're going,” she said more soberly. “Those drakes are still out there, maybe even closer than we think.”

  “Right. Okay, where can we go that'll keep us safe, at least for now?”

  They huddled over the map and searched the area around the marked location of the cottage.

  “Wait a second,” Bobby said after a moment. “Do you see what I see?”

  “What?”

  He tapped a spot on the map.

  “There. Recognize it? The old homestead.”

  “The Diefenbunker! Whoa, I hadn't realized how close we were.”

  On the map, the bunker was situated in a southwesterly direction from the cottage and Sarah traced the route with her finger.

  “How far away is it, do you think?”

  “Hard to say.” Bobby frowned down at the map. “If I'm reading this right, somewhere between five and ten miles or so. Maybe an hour or two, in good weather. In this rain? Who knows. Why, do you actually want to go there?”

  She sat back on her heels and looked at him earnestly.

  “Do you have a better idea? I remember the main door of the bunker and not even drakes could force their way through it. Heck, I'd bet against a dragon ramming through it. We'd be safe in there for a while, even if we couldn't stay because there's no food. I'd be able to call the others and we could coordinate what our next moves will be.”

  “Okay, fine. I'm convinced.”

  Sarah grinned at him.

  “That was easy.”

  Bobby shrugged, his expression suddenly serious.

  “When your choices are as limited as ours are, yeah, it's an easy decision to make. Now let's go. We've been in one place too long.”

  “Agreed.”

  Bobby refolded the map and slipped it into the backpack. Then he swung it over his shoulder and followed Sarah as she opened the door and they left the cottage.

  “It must have been a real homey place, once upon a time,” she said wistfully as they walked away from the building and then paused a moment to look back.

  “Yeah. Probably had kids playing down at the river, barbecues, all that stuff,” Bobby told her. “Must have been nice.”

  They stood still, water streaming down into their eyes, and he took a quick look at Sarah's face. It was impossible to tell for sure, but he thought that tears might be mingling with the rain water on her cheeks.

  “Come on,” he said gently. “We have to go.”

  “Yeah. Right.”

  Sarah shook her head as if to clear it of old memories.

  “Okay then, southwest is...that way, right?”

  “More or less. After you,” Bobby told her, with a nod in that direction. “And let's try to hurry a bit. I have this horrible feeling that we're being watched.”

  They moved off into the downpour, water sloshing under their soaked shoes, and left the lonely old cottage behind them.

  To their relief, the rain finally let up about an hour later. The sky remained heavy with clouds, but the day was quite warm and the ground dried out quickly, as did Sarah and Bobby.

  They crossed several main roads and made sure to search for street signs to help them find their way to the Diefenbunker. Many of the signs had fallen down or were covered with vines or other vegetation and it took time to find them.

  Bobby pulled out the road map each time and traced their route carefully. It would be very easy to get lost; nature had begun to rapidly reclaim the countryside and young trees, tall grasses and heavy brush had transformed what used to be fairly open land into a new forest. It was very confusing and, without a map, the pair would probably have lost their way.

  Even so, they retraced their steps a few times, turning what might have only been a hike of an hour or two into an exhausting journey that lasted most of the day.

  The sun was actually dipping toward the western horizon by the time Sarah and Bobby found the cracked and rubble-strewn road that led to the bunker. Fortunately for them, there had been no further sign of pursuit from the drakes and they hoped that meant that the monsters had lost their scent.

  Several times during their hike, the pair had spotted a winged creature in the
distance, menacing against the heavy clouds. But it remained far behind them, over the city, and they assumed that the dragon was still hunting for Changlings back in Ottawa.

  Sarah was incredibly anxious to contact their friends, but she couldn't take the time to try until she and Bobby were in a relatively secure spot. She could only hope that the bunker was still sealed the way that they had left it years before. It was quite possible that someone had broken in to loot the place, not knowing that the Changlings had left nothing of any value behind when they had deserted it. Well, they would soon find out.

  Bobby slipped the canteen out of his backpack and offered it to Sarah before drinking his fill. They had filled it twice from small, fast-moving streams that they'd crossed during the journey. Neither had wasted the time it would have taken to open and consume the cans of beans that they'd found in the cottage and Bobby was looking forward to getting indoors and eating. His stomach was growling constantly now and he was doing his best to ignore it.

  Just as they spotted the outline of the building that led into the Diefenbunker, it began raining again. The falling gloom suited their mood as they stared at the place. It was covered in thick vines, and a half dozen trees had taken root around it and grown higher than the flat roof of the building.

  Sarah and Bobby slowed down and approached it cautiously, and a little fearfully. They had been away for ten years, after all, and both remembered their reluctant departure from the bunker when they'd run out of food. It had been their home for over a year and leaving it had been traumatic for the young Changlings.

  “Home sweet home,” Bobby said over the sound of his footsteps splashing through puddles. “I almost don't recognize it.”

  “Yeah, me too,” Sarah replied, her eyes locked on the building. “I wonder if it's still sealed?”

  “We'll soon find out. I hope so. I'm really sick of this damned rain.”

  When they reached the door of the building, they found it wide open, and they stared at it suspiciously.

  “Did we leave this open?” Sarah asked as she tried to see inside the dark interior beyond the doorway.

  “I can't remember. Maybe. We closed the blast door, I know that. Well, Zack did. But there was no way to lock it from the outside, so maybe they just left this door open, since it didn't matter anymore.”