Lost in Time(49)

In the living room, they sat on pillows on the floor at the coffee table, the plastic cartons of Chinese food and half-filled wine glasses between them. Music from Pandora filled the room, a station seeded with Natalie Merchant. “Fade into You” by Mazzy Star was just starting up.

Nora took a sip of wine. “For months after Dave passed, I was in denial about what happened. It was so sudden. It wasn’t real. Not for a long time. And then it was and life hasn’t really been the same since. Not really. People talk about their greatest fears being public speaking or heights or snakes. For me, it’s none of those things. It’s something like Dave’s death happening again.” She tipped the wine glass up again and swallowed hard. “He would be irate if he knew that.”

Sam reached over and took her hand. He had done it to comfort her, but when she turned and looked at him, he knew she was feeling what he had felt earlier. Half of him wanted to hang on to that because he hadn’t felt it in a long time. The other half of him felt guilty. Because of Sarah. Because, like Nora, he was still holding on. It was the guilty half that let go of Nora’s hand. And he knew Sarah, like Dave, would have been irate about that.

Sam knew he was still a wreck. He couldn’t bring Nora into that. At least, that’s what he had told himself that night. That’s how he had rationalized his pulling away.

Back then, he was a lot like the Triassic looked now: battered but still alive, ready for another day.

With the spear in one hand and a burning torch in the other, Sam set out from the ruined camp. At the tree line, he stopped and decided to take one last look at the prisoner who had tried to kill him, just in case he saw something in the light of day that had been shrouded in the darkness of night. The crazy man’s presence here was still a mystery to Sam.

He walked across the rocky ground, weaving through the green pod bushes to where he had left the other prisoner. His body hadn’t been picked clean, but something—perhaps several somethings—had taken bites out of him. Bugs were already making camp around the corpse, digging in.

Sam was about to turn away when a glint of metal caught his eye. He leaned in, the torch held out, sending the bugs scurrying away. Attached to the prisoner’s femur were three small pieces of metal, like toothpicks. Sam didn’t think they were pins that might have supported his weight. They were too small.

Using the spear, Sam pried the metal pins loose. Tiny letters were printed on each, starting with “ASI.” As in Absolom Sciences Inc. Were they some sort of quantum tracking tag? To make sure the prisoner arrived in the right universe? If so, it had seemed to malfunction. Or, if the intention had been to send him here, it had worked perfectly.

Sam scanned the rest of the body but didn’t see any other pins. He slipped the ones he had found in his pocket and trekked into the woods, toward the pond and stream he had seen before.

The going was slower today. The woods were a thick mess of fallen trees and limbs. He really needed a machete. Among other things.

At the stream, he set up a basic camp, with stones in a circle and a fire crackling in the midday sun, which he lit with the torch.

Under the blazing sun, Sam stood in the stream with the spear and jabbed and cursed and came up empty until he remembered a scene from one of his favorite novels, Hatchet. Like Sam, the young protagonist in the book is all alone, trying to survive in the wild. His first attempts at fishing are unsuccessful until he starts accounting for the refraction of light underwater. With that adjustment, the hero from Hatchet, Brian, is able to catch fish and feed himself.

Sam knew he should have accounted for that on the first visit to the stream. But he wasn’t exactly in top shape then. Days of hunger and thirst have a way of dulling in the mind. Even for scientists.

Sam slipped the end of the spear into the water and waited. Soon, he jabbed the stick down and jerked it out of the water, a fish flopping on the end.

Finally, a real meal. With the protein from the fish, he could get back on his feet. Maybe even figure out what was going on here.

Whoever thought books didn’t save lives was so very wrong.

On the riverbank, under the afternoon sun, Sam cleaned the fish and grilled it and ate every last morsel. It was the best meal he had eaten in ages.

The satisfaction brought by the earthworms had been a fullness of necessity, a sort of carnal relief that his life had been extended. The grilled wild-caught fish was absolutely luxurious, the taste and contentment lingering as he used a fishbone to pick the pieces out of his teeth and swallow them down.

Shelter was the next task, but that was as far as Sam got with the thought.

Across the pond, thunder rose, a slow rumbling. But the sky was clear.

Sam took the bone torch from the fire and walked to the stream edge. The treetops swayed. But there was no wind.

What’s happening here?

The river filled with fish. They were swimming to the sea.

The forest burst then, dinosaurs and large reptiles charging forth, a Triassic stampede barreling toward him.

Not toward him—away from something. Whatever it was, Sam couldn’t see it. And he didn’t want to. If they were running from it, that thing could hurt him too.

Sam didn’t bother to pick up his spear. Or extinguish the fire.

He turned and ran.





THIRTY-FOUR


For a few weeks, life fell into a routine for Adeline. She rode with Ryan to school—until he told her he was fine (“really, I’m fine, seriously, quit hovering over me like I’m a hurt animal or something”).