by Perrin Briar
“Over here!” a voice shouted. It was muffled by the thick foliage. “He’s over here!”
Elian dropped his berries, drew his pistol, and crouched beside a tree. He peeked around it. A white uniform stepped toward him.
“Now I’ve got you,” the man said.
Elian pulled the hammer on his gun back. His body tensed.
“Come here, you,” the man said.
The constable bent down and picked up a mass of black fur.
“How did you get over here, huh?” the constable said to the lump. “How did you get away?”
The constable carried the puppy away. Elian relaxed and replaced the hammer, pressing the barrel to his temple and expelling a relieved puff of air.
“She was over there,” the constable said.
“No kidding,” another voice said. “How did she get all the way over there?”
“I don’t know. She’s an escape artist, that’s what she is.”
“Put her back with her mother, she must be hungry.”
The constable with the puppy moved to the flatbed of a cart and put the puppy on it. There were four other puppies, all feeding on their mother’s teats. The constable joined a ring of white uniforms. They spoke, but Elian couldn’t make out what they were saying.
Beside the cart were half a dozen horses. Elian’s eyes moved over each one until he came to a big black stallion. It stamped its back leg as if eager to get going. Elian judged the distance between the men and the horses, and then shook his head and let out a sigh. He’d never manage to steal one in time. He turned and headed back the way he had come.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Elian started awake, his hand gripping the handle of his pistol tight. He forced his heavy eyelids open and looked out at the night around him. It was pitch dark and there wasn’t so much as the sound of leaves rustling in the wind. Elian turned to lay back down.
“Somebody! Please!” a voice shouted. “Help us!”
Elian sat up. He slipped on his boots and crept into the forest, taking slow, careful silent steps. He thumbed the sleep out of his eyes.
“Help!” the voice shouted. It was a female voice.
“Will you shut up?” a rasping voice said.
There was a loud slap, and the woman’s cries were silenced. Then a baby started crying, bawling at the top of its lungs.
“Shut that baby up!” the rasping voice said. “Shut it up, or I will.”
The baby’s cries were muffled, like a blanket had been put over its head. There were other sounds too, the sound of things being tossed aside, empty metal objects and soft thump of clothes or blankets.
Elian saw a light. It was the glint of a torch, the flames flickering, causing the shadows of the forest to dance and come alive. Elian stood behind a tree, looking at the scene before him.
In the centre of a clearing, like a stage set at the theatre, a wagon laid tilted to one side. A wheel had snapped in half under its own weight. Cooking utensils, clothes and children’s toys had spilled out the front door. The wagon had been gutted and its innards lay spread over the ground.
A family stood huddled to one side. A woman held a crying baby in one arm. She was perhaps two or three years old. The woman had her other hand clasped to her cheek, which was red and swollen. There was a short heavyset man at her side. He was missing half an ear, one side of his head crusted with blood. A young boy stood stock still, watching the man before them with unblinking eyes.
The man stood with a gun trained on the family, a stick of straw between his teeth. He wore one of those floppy farmer’s hats that curled to the jutting brows above his eyes. The flesh of his cheeks were gaunt shadows, his cheekbones protruding.
“You found anything in there yet, George?” Floppy Hat said.
“There’s nothing here, Lou,” a man inside of the wagon said. “Nothing worth more than a copper bit.”
George poked his head out from the wagon and pulled up his britches, which hung suspended from a single shoulder strap, the other having long since snapped off.
“Keeping looking, then,” Lou said. “There’s bound to be something of value in there.”
“There’s not.”
“If there ain’t then we’re gonna have to get creative and get the value elsewhere,” Lou said, grinning at the woman.
The father of the family stepped forward and addressed Lou. His bloody ear glistened in the moonlight.
“Please, sir,” he said. “You can see we don’t have anything of value. Take whatever you want, but please leave my family alone.”
“We’ll be making that decision, thank you very much.”
George’s head retracted back inside the wagon like a tortoise in its shell. Something smashed, and the wagon rocked side to side as he searched. Lou approached the mother of the family.
“While my friend is searching your wagon,” he said, “maybe I could do a little searching of my own.”
“Please, sir,” the father said. “Leave us be.”
Click.
The mother smiled with relief. Lou turned, distracted for an instant. The father leapt forward and seized his gun. He twisted it, loosening it from Lou’s grip. Lou held up his hands and smiled with a mouth full of brown teeth.
“Hey,” Lou said to Elian, “can’t we all be friends here? There’s plenty to go round.”
“Get on your knees,” Elian said.
“Aren’t you going to buy me a drink first?”
“And put your hands on your head.”
Lou did.
“You’re the boss,” he said. “Listen, I’ve got something in my pocket you might like a taste of. Nothing fills the gap like Gap.”
“No thanks,” Elian said.
“Are you sure? You don’t know what you’re missing.”
“And I’d like to keep it that way.”
Elian looked at the father holding the rifle.
“You know how to use that?” he said.
The father aimed the barrel an inch from Lou’s head.
“Good enough at this distance,” he said.
“Can I trust you to keep your hat on?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good.”
Elian turned to Lou.
“Call your tubby friend out of the back of the wagon with his hands up,” he said.
“He won’t listen to me,” Lou said.
“You’d better hope he does, or he’ll be coming out in answer to my good friend Mr Pistol here.”
“George,” Lou said. “Come on out here a minute. We got us a shindig.”
“I thought I was supposed to search in here?” George’s voice said, muffled by the wagon’s walls.
“I said come out.”
“Search, don’t search. Search don’t search,” he said. “I wish you’d just hurry up and make up your mind.”
George poked his head out of the wagon again. He froze when he saw the scene. George had long curly ginger hair, beard, and bright blue eyes. His cheeks glowed red with exertion. He looked to his right, at a pistol sitting on a tabletop. Elian got off a shot, which struck the pistol, sending it spinning off the table and onto the ground. George licked his lips and looked at the pistol again.
“Don’t be an idiot, George,” Lou said. “Put your hands up.”
George did, very slowly.
“Step from the wagon,” Elian said as he refilled his pistol with gunpowder and shot. “Nice and slow.”
Elian needn’t have wasted his breath. George was only capable of slow. He lumbered from the wagon which jerked with violence once he stepped off it.
“On your knees,” Elian said.
“It hurts if I go on my knees,” George said.
“On your face, then.”
George got down on his knees and then rolled forward onto his front.
“You too,” Elian said to Lou.
He did as he was bid.
With them both lying on the floor, their faces in the dirt, Elian searched their bodies for any
weapons. He found a knife on each man and a small ladies’ gun on Lou’s ankle. The father kept his gun on them.
“What do you plan on doing with them?” he said.
“I’m torn between turning them into rat food and tying them up somewhere so the Force can find them.”
“Hey, look,” Lou said. “We just wanted to get some money. We weren’t going to hurt anyone.”
“I vote for the latter,” the father said.
“You want to let them go?”
“We ought to forgive those who do not have the intelligence to know what they’re doing.”
“You’re a better man than me,” Elian said. “Do you have any rope?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Go get it.”
The father brought the rope. It was frayed and course.
“Wet it,” Elian said. “It’ll make it stronger.”
The father went to an overturned churn. He dipped the rope in the remaining water and brought it back.
“Can you tie a Palomar knot?” Elian said.
“I can tie any knot you can put a name to. I was a sailor, once upon a time.”
“Tie the strongest knot you know.”
Elian covered the father while he hogtied Lou, who didn’t complain.
“Not too tight for me,” George said. “I get a bit funny if I feel trapped.”
The father looked to Elian.
“Do as you like,” he said. “If you want these fellas to escape and murder you and your family in your sleep, make sure to leave it nice and loose.”
The father tied the knot so tight George’s hands turned white.
“Now,” Elian said. “I assume you have a horse or mule or some such to be able to pull the wagon?”
“Yes, sir,” the father said. “Her name’s Bella. She took off when the wagon went over.”
“Go find her,” Elian said.
“Tommy,” the father said, calling to his son. “Come with me.”
They took off into the woods. Elian approached the mother.
“You can tidy up the things that aren’t broken,” Elian said.
She nodded and put her little girl down. The little girl ran to the men on the floor and started kicking them. The mother reached out to stop her.
“Don’t,” Elian said. “She’s not doing any harm.”
“We don’t tolerate violence,” the mother said. “Jessica. Come here.”
She did. The mother kneeled before her.
“You know you shouldn’t hit people, don’t you?” she said.
Jessica nodded, looking at the ground.
“Even if we’re angry we should let anger overcome us, understand?” the mother said.
Jessica nodded. Elian pulled his boot back and kicked George in the gut, who grunted. Then Elian did the same to Lou. Elian looked up and smiled at Jessica.
“Oh, I’m not angry,” he said. “It makes me feel good.”
The mother frowned. Jessica smiled. Just then the father and Tommy came around the corner with Bella. She was a large draft horse that had seen better days. She was never built for speed, but strength.
They laid Lou and George across Bella’s back. Elian and the father led her out of the clearing. They walked toward a large hill that banked to the right. The trees gave way to flint rock and a steep incline. Built into the side of the cliff face was a cave.
“I saw this as I was walking today,” Elian said.
They pulled the men off the horse, letting them feel the full brunt of the fall, and dragged them into the cave. A thick liquid dribbled down the walls, and there was an earthy damp smell. The father bumped his head.
“Careful,” Elian said.
They laid Lou and George down so they were back to back.
“Now,” Elian said, “I’m going to do you a favour you don’t deserve. There’s water and algae dripping down the walls of this cave. If you lick the walls you could survive here for quite some time, I should say. Stay here long enough till you lose some weight and you’ll be able to slip out of those ropes. And you’ll be off Gap. You can come find me and thank me later.”
Elian reached into Lou’s back pocket and came out with two small packets of purple powder. Then he searched George’s pockets and came out with another two packets. Elian tucked three of them into his own pockets and put the remaining packet on a rock.
“No!” Lou said. “No! Leave me tied up in here, but don’t take my stuff!”
“For the Force,” Elian said. “Should they turn up.”
“You can’t leave us in here!” George said. “There might be bears!”
“There aren’t any bears,” Elian said.
“But I’m afraid of the dark…” George said.
Elian and the father emerged from the cave. The sun was just beginning to crest the forest foliage and light up the sky. The temperature dropped, signalling the beginning of a new day.
“I wouldn’t have thought you’d take that stuff,” the father said, nodding to the packets of Gap.
“I don’t,” Elian said. “But it’s as good as cash in some places.”
“Thank you for all your help,” the father said. “If you hadn’t turned up things might have gotten pretty ugly.”
Elian shrugged.
“I did what anyone would have done,” he said.
“But not quite so efficiently,” the father said. “Look, we don’t have a lot of money, but we have food and drink…”
“I don’t want your money, but I’ll take the food. And I need a lift, if it’s not too much trouble. I’ll pay my way by hunting till we get to wherever it is you’re going, and then I’ll go my own way.”
“Sounds good,” the father said. “But we’re not going anywhere till we get the wagon wheel fixed.”
“We’d best get back and fix it, then,” Elian said. “By the way, I never got your name.”
“Blessed,” the father said. “My name’s Blessed.”
Elian looked at him to see if he was joking. Apparently he wasn’t.
“You certainly are,” he said.
Chapter Thirty-Three
“The moment the first skip happened we packed up our things and headed on out,” Blessed said. “It’s the first sign of the apocalypse. ‘Time will cease, and one time with merge with another.’ It’s written in our holy scriptures.”
Elian kept his eyes ahead, watching the dirt road wind its way through the country. They’d been moving since morning and the last straggling trees of the forest had given way to rolling green hills an hour ago.
The road was not large, but there were other travellers, most of them heading in the opposite direction. Blessed gave a nod to each carriage driver they passed, as if they were part of an exclusive club.
“We’ve been travelling ever since that day,” Blessed said. “It’s taken almost a month, and it’ll probably take another at this rate, but we will get to safety. We’re headed to the Salvation temple in the mountains.”
Elian blinked.
“Wait,” he said. “Sorry, how long did you say?”
“About a month. It’s slow going in a carriage but we can’t afford more horses and we wanted to take all our things with us. We thought they might be useful to the temple folk.”
“It’s been a month since the first time skip?” Elian said.
“A little over that now, I think. But thereabouts. Let me check.”
Blessed turned to look at his wife, who sat on the roof of the carriage with their kids playing a card game.
“Marie,” Blessed said. “How long have we been on the road now?”
“Just over a month,” she said.
The father turned back to Elian.
“There you are,” he said. “There’s been some strange goings-on, all right. All this hopping forward and back, it’s not natural. We’re going to hole up in the mountains until this whole thing blows over.”
“Why there?”
“We figure there’s nothing much that changes up there, so if
there is another one of these ‘skip’ things, we can largely avoid it because every day will be the same as the day before. We likely won’t even notice.”
“It’s an idea,” Elian said, though he didn’t agree with the theory.
“Listen, I’m not a man to pry into another man’s business, but what were you doing out in the middle of the forest alone back there?”
“I was just passing through,” Elian said. “I always wanted to see the world. A few far-flung places, you know.”
“I can understand that. See a few things before it’s all gone.”
Tommy tossed down his cards and threw his legs over the side of the moving carriage.
“I’m going to go discovering, Pa,” he said.
“All right,” Blessed said. “Don’t run too far. I don’t want to have to come looking for you.”
“No, Pa.”
Tommy hopped off the carriage and took off into the woods.
“Cute kid,” Elian said.
“He takes after his mother,” Blessed said. “She’s always been on the adventurous side.”
“She’s happy going to the temple in the mountains?”
“It was her idea. I was a bit sceptical at first, but she soon knocked that out of me. ‘If you don’t go,’” he said, mimicking his wife’s voice, “‘you’ll be living here till the end of days by yourself.’”
“I couldn’t face the idea of being on my own at the end, so I agreed to drive us all there.”
Tommy came running back with a giant doc leaf full of purple wild berries.
“Here momma,” he said, handing them over.
“Excellent,” she said, “I’ll make a pie with them tonight.”
Tommy beamed and took off into the woods again.
“You don’t honestly believe it’s the end of the world though, do you?” Elian said.
“Have you taken a look around at what’s been going on lately?” Blessed said. “There are people addicted to that compound Gap and time skipping all the time, and the police not being able to do a thing about it. It’s just what scripture says about the end of the world. The world will come to a stop, and ye shall be judged.”
“Blessed,” Marie said with a scowl and a nod to their daughter, who was engrossed in her cards.
