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Snow had fallen, snow on snow.
Snow on snow.
In the bleak mid-winter
Long ago.
“Where are you from?” Theda interrupted the soft Christmas carol running through her mind as pure white blanketed the rushing ground. Cyril gripped the steering wheel, black leather gloves emitting a whiff of chemical odor that smelled like bleach. Like the cellar in the General Building, the voice whispered from the center of her mind. The voice, elusive and always unexpected, presented itself in moments of doubt when the truths she had buried deep needed to be unearthed like blind subterranean creatures.
“Where are you from?” she asked again and leaned hard on where, an unspoken code between them: it didn’t mean where at all. It meant when. Theda spoke to the window of the moving car and shifted her gaze left at the completion of the sentence.
“New York City,” Cyril downshifted, and the car slowed, gripping the frozen ground tighter. He tapped his chest, right where the tattoo was, one tap for each number. “Two-oh-oh-three.”
“Is that your house number?” Violet warbled from the backseat of the black Cadillac Phaeton, her voice trilling, a sign of high nerves. The innocent question was a sharp contrast to the underlining implications of the conversation in the front seat.
“It sure is, missy,” Cyril grinned into the rearview mirror and Theda felt yet another pang of unease. Jackson and Conlin were lost to her now. Her only hope was to find her parents and leave Fort Riley.
“Your father had to hide out,” Cyril went on. “It was blasted all over the base that he was missing to throw off the scent of the army dogs that Whittaker sicced on him. They’d be looking for him, but elsewhere. Only a fool would hide out right under their noses, as far as they’re concerned.”
“Whittaker?”
“Yeah, he’s the big boss. But your father knew what he was doing when he took a hike. He trusted me to go find you girls and the wife. And I did it all, didn’t I?”
“Does he know who you are?” Another cover word. What would have been an appropriate substitute.
Cyril laughed. “No, girl. What he does know if that I’m a loyal soldier who gets things done. And I’m honest. I smelled a rat on that Jackson right away. Cozying up to your father. Looking for something. I could tell right away something was off with him and I was right.”
“You tried to kill Jackson,” Theda said and Violet gasped from the backseat.
“Nope. Not me. That’s your dear Private William Rankin.”
“Billy would never do such a thing!” Violet spat.
“Billy would do worse. You’ll thank me for this someday, girl. Mark my words.”
“Why were you in the General Building?” Theda asked quietly.
“I was trying to keep the bad guys away. Like that Jackson. And your black friend. And I tried to get you away from them, but you thought it fit to knock me out, didn’t you?” He grinned. “But I’m a man of my word. I promised your father. And I’ve forgiven you. Aren’t I a peach?”
As Cyril chattered, an odd shift began to form in Theda, as if the ability to fluently speak a secret language had sparked her mind. She shook her head to clear it, but the feeling persisted, as if a stinging insect had found her interesting and hovered just out of reach. It’s hunger, she blinked, her lids sticking uncomfortably to her corneas. And dehydration. She lifted her left hand to bring it to her forehead that was starting to ache, but Cyril grabbed her wrist.
“No funny stuff,” he squeezed the delicate bones in her wrist not gently. “You leave that gun there, or I take it for good,” he said under his breath.
She pulled her wrist free. “Are we almost there?”
He pointed through the windshield. In the distance, through a veil of white, were two large paddocks and from the height difference of the residents, cows occupied one and pigs the other. On the hill was a long, rectangular building where a straight line of cows waited patiently for their doom. The slaughterhouse.
But Cyril turned the wheel and followed the road that forked away from the stockyards. “Where are you going?” Theda said.
“There.”
In an adjacent field about a half mile from the current stockyards was a two-story building surrounded by broken paddock fencing and downed barbed wire, the remains of the stockyard building from a previous time when an unknown but soon to be famous general named Custer ran Fort Riley.
The feeling inside of her intensified and she was afraid she would faint before they even reached the building. “My father’s there?” she mumbled.
“And your mother. Family reunion time for the Evoras.”
Jackson held onto his wounded side. The pain had faded from the initial sharp horror of the blade slicing above his hip (thankfully far from his kidney; Peterson couldn’t even manage a fatal stab wound) to a dull throb that kept time with his heartbeat.
He didn’t think he was going to pass out, but his head was swimming. He closed his eyes and placed his forehead against the cool window glass.
November, 1946
It’s empty.
He walked through the door behind Conlin and Andersen. His eyes adjusted to the yellowed bulbs that lined the vast tunnel that yawned before them, much larger than he ever would have imagined anything could be behind that small door. He had expected to see…well..a machine. Technology that only a few people in the world had ever seen. He thought the walls would be covered with blinking lights and dials and there would be a secret hoard of people at the controls operating equipment like radios and radars and tracking. But there was nothing of the sort. For a split second, he thought he was a dead man, that Andersen had lured him there to dispose of him. He was a spy, after all. He knew things that were beyond classified, whispered orders that never landed on paper. The possibility that he could be eliminated for these deeds had never been lost on him.
But Andersen was watching him, his expression both soft and eager.
He stepped in further. Parked along the tunnel were cars, about ten of them that he could see. He recognized a 1946 DeSoto Suburban and a 1935 green Ford Tutor. Another car, a stange, long thing painted a metallic gold, was parked next to the Ford.
But the car that stood out was a yellow old-fashioned sedan that his father would have known the name of.
“What the hell is this?” Conlin spoke Jackson’s thoughts. “An underground used-car lot?”
Andersen laughed. “If you’re going to travel through time, it’s best to have the type of car that fits the year. Only these cars are a little different. Their engines have been, let’s just say, enhanced a little.” He chuckled.
“Is it the car?” Conlin asked.
“There is no machine, Patrick. There are two aspects that make Travel possible. The first is all up here.” Andersen slowly raised his hand and tapped his forehead in the middle. “I’ve already explained why we know you’re capable of Travel. You’ve slipped into time without knowing that you could do it. That is the first key. What you can do, what your minds can do, is glimpse into other times, other dimensions. But what you can’t do on your own is actually walk through the veil and come out into another time. For that, you need a portal.”
“Portal?”
“There’re spots in the earth that are naturally occurring. We don’t know exactly why yet, but we think it’s because there are currants that circle the earth, currants that run through certain types of stone, like a quartz, but we’re still studying it. But this is for another day.” He walked toward the tunnel and then turned. “It’s this way. What we’re going to do is, we’re going to clear our minds. Clear them of all thought. Then, we’re going to think of the time we want to see. In our case, it’s an hour into the past. When our minds are set, we will walk into this tunnel and on the other side will be the an hour earlier. You can feel it, can’t you? You feel the pull of the portal. The pull of time beckoning you to experience what it means to travel in places where only a few humans have gone before.”
The pull. Andersen was right about that. But what he was suggesting had to be impossible. Foolish. But best to play at the game. The sooner he got out of the tunnel and back up to the surface, the better. Then he could leave this little farce behind for good.
“Are you ready?” Andersen said to them.
There was only a moment of real hesitation. Then both men answered yes at once.
“Good. Let’s begin.”
“You think you can stand?” Conlin asked.
“I don’t know. Are you turning around soon?”
“Jack, we just left! You think they’re not looking for us? They’re combing the base!”
Jackson grunted and tried to sit up straight, but bit back a yell and slumped down on his right side. “We have to get back. Now.”
Two of the police cars that weren’t smashed when Jackson rammed the Packard truck into them pursued the Wasp for a little while, but their 1918 engines were no match for the Wasp’s that could reach a speed of close to one-hundred and twenty miles per hour. If Jackson hadn’t been in so much pain, he would have loved to have seen the faces of the men behind them when Conlin left them in the dust.
“By now they’ve sent word to everyone on the base to watch out for this car. We go back, we’re goners.”
“Patrick,” Jackson maneuvered enough to see Conlin’s profile. He got ready to do something he had little experience with. Plead. “You let me off there if you want, but I’m getting her. Please.”
Conlin cursed under his breath. “Shit.”
Jackson was about to ask again, but he allowed Conlin a silent moment to think. Overplaying his hand wasn’t in his nature.
“Alright, this is how it’s going down. We’re gonna get back to those stockyards you’re saying they’re at. We find them. Fast. Then we get them and go. If we don’t find them fast, then we’re outta here. We go to jail, that’s if for us. You know what Andersen said.”
“I remember.”
“You got it, Jack? I’m the driver here.”
“I know you are. And you’re a good one.” Jackson sighed and held the waded-up jacket onto his wound. He understood Conlin more than Conlin would have suspected.
“It’s a deal. Just help me find her. Please. I can’t leave without her.”
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You sure know how to keep us on the hook, Alison! Nicely done.
Alison, what a great story you have going here. It flows so well. Enjoying this so much. - Jim