Destroyer

CHAPTER NINE

The gray mist of the journey swirls around me like a cloud. I think I still feel Iffy behind me, but it’s hard to tell. The sensations of touch and pressure within a jump can be misleading.

No more than half a minute passes before the shroud begins to fade and the world takes shape around us. It’s nighttime, so at least Kane’s done that part right. Without seeing the chaser, though, I have no idea of the exact hour. It’s also significantly colder than it was in the warehouse. I feel Kane’s hand slip from my side, and hear him grunting in pain as the price of the time trip is extracted in the form of a headache.

I, too, am feeling it. Even though it’s far from the worst I’ve ever had, it still takes me a moment to realize this is my chance to grab the chaser.

I try to twist around, but Iffy is still clinging to me, her face contorted as she works through her own internal torture.

“Stay here,” I whisper as I pry myself loose. “I’ll be right back.”

By the time I’m free, Kane is weaving and stumbling away from us, and is already a good thirty feet away. I head toward him, intending to run but barely able to manage an ugly jog. We are on an open surface that crunches strangely under my feet. I can’t get a sense of what exactly it is or tell how far it goes on because my eyes are still accustomed to the relative brightness of the building in LA.

I’m only a few feet away when Kane lurches around, his gun slicing through the air like a club. The only way I can keep from being hit is to arch backward as I skid to a stop, the ground crumpling loudly under my feet.

Kane seems to find his balance, and aims the weapon at me.

There’s nowhere for me to hide, so I yell, “You’ll never get back if you kill me!”

I can see him thinking about this for a moment, and then he shakes the end of the gun at me. “Stay there.” He watches me, daring me to defy him.

I hold my ground.

After a few moments, Kane’s gaze moves beyond me, and then he starts scanning the area. “Where are we? Where’s the city? Where’s the damn city?”

Keeping my voice calm and low, I ask, “Which city?”

“Which city? Los Angeles! What do you think?”

He spins around, taking in our surroundings, but as I can see from my position, there are no city lights in that direction, either. In fact, except for the stars above us, there are no lights anywhere.

He focuses on me again. “Where are we? What did you do? Are we even in the right time?”

I have no idea where we are, but I know what’s causing his confusion. Not only have we been traveling disconnected from a companion — a human grounding point that rewinders at the institute used to keep their chasers on course — we have also been affected by the three of us jumping together. Either factor alone would be enough to throw us miles off course. Together, who knows how far we are from his target? As for the date, though, whatever he input is the date we arrived. That is always accurate.

None of this I tell him, however. I simply say, “If you let me see the chaser, I can figure it out.”

He clutches the device against his chest, panicked. “I’m not that stupid.”

Taking a step toward him, I say, “Then just show me the display and I can—”

He points his gun at my chest. “Get back!”

“You won’t hurt me,” I say. “The chaser is useless without me.”

I take another step.

“I said get back!”

A gust of wind suddenly blows past us, making the already chilly air feel like ice. We are all dressed for a warm summer day in Southern California, not for the freezing night we’ve ended up in.

“You tricked me, didn’t you?” he says, his gun hand shaking, from fear or the cold or likely both.

Fighting hard to keep my teeth from chattering, I take another step. “I didn’t trick you. I don’t know where we are. You said Los Angeles. Is that where we were supposed to arrive?

“When is this?” he asks as if he hasn’t heard me. “When?”

Another step takes me to just a couple feet from the outstretched weapon. “When is it supposed to be?”

I’m close enough now that I can see his eyes narrow. “She warned me you couldn’t be trusted.”

I have a terrible feeling that despite the fact that he can’t use the chaser without me, he’s about to shoot me anyway. Knowing I need to act first, I dip down and lunge forward, then slam upward into his wrist. As my shoulder connects, the gun fires into the night sky, the boom of the weapon temporarily destroying the hearing in my right ear. My left isn’t doing much better, and picks up only a muffled yell as Kane screams in anger.

I barrel forward, intending to knock him to the ground, but he twists to the side, and instead of connecting with his chest, I glance off his ribs and stumble past him.

“Denny! Watch out!”

Iffy’s voice is barely discernible above the ringing in my head, but I heed the warning and whirl around. Kane has heard her, too, and has abandoned whatever he was about to do and has started running toward her.

She’s my weakness. I can’t let him get control of Iffy again, so I push off the crumbling earth and thrust myself after him.

Glancing at me over his shoulder, he shouts, “Stop or I’ll kill her!”

His words might be tough, but the fear in his eyes tells me his threats are just bluster.

I cover the last few feet in an angled leap that crashes me into his side. Down we go, hard to the ground, but in a direction that keeps him from landing on the chaser. Any hope that the fall stunned him quickly dissolves as he scrambles out from under me and tries to get back up.

I reach out to grab him, but only manage to snag the strap of my satchel. I expect to see the muzzle of his gun at any second, but while Kane stills hold the chaser to his chest with one hand, the other is now empty. At least the fall has done some good and jarred the weapon loose.

He grabs the strap a few inches above my hand and pulls at the bag, trying to break loose my grip. I see something peeking out around the edge of the small flap that covers the side pocket and then remember the knife.

I rip it out and flick the blade open. As soon as Kane sees it, he jerks back as if expecting me to stab him. I lunge a few inches forward like that’s exactly what I’m going to do, but instead yank the knife back and slice through the satchel’s strap.

Kane tries to pull the bag with him as he scrambles to his feet, but I’ve got too good a hold on it. He kicks out, hitting my knife hand, but ultimately the satchel slips from his grasp. Apparently unwilling to fight for it any longer, he starts to run.

I push myself to my feet to chase after him but immediately fall back down from unexpected pain radiating up from my right thigh. I think at first I pulled a muscle when we fell, but when I touch the spot, it’s sticky and wet.

The cut is not much more than a quarter inch deep, but it is long and painful. I was so focused on Kane that I didn’t feel the knife slice through my skin after he’d kicked it.

I look in the direction he’s gone and can barely make him out in the distance. In my current condition, there’s no way I can catch him.

Iffy stumbles over, still wincing. “Did you get the chaser?”

I shake my head and try to keep the pain from my face, but fail.

“What’s wrong?” she asks, suddenly concerned. When she spots the gash in my jeans, she kneels and leans in for a closer look. “We need to get you to a hospital. You need stitches.”

“No hospitals,” I say. I don’t know where we are in time — in fact, there may not be any hospitals here — but whether there are or not, minimizing the chances of being remembered by the locals is basic training, so automatic for me. “You’ll have to do it.”

She looks at me as if I’ve gone insane. “You mean the stitches?”

“Yes.”

“I, I can’t do that.”

“Sure you can.”

It would be easier to just cut through my pants, but it’s the only pair I have with me, so with Iffy’s help, I pull them down to my knees, gritting away as much of the hurt as I can. I then remove the med-kit from my satchel. Once I clean out the wound with a packet of disinfectant, I give Iffy the suture kit.

Looking dubious, she says, “I’m not even good at putting a button on a shirt.

“You have to do it and fast. If you don’t, Kane gets away, and we’re stuck here forever.”

The potential of being abandoned in time turns out to be just the motivation she needs. I clench my teeth and try to think about anything else — a task at which I’m only partially successful — as she sews up my wound. When she’s done, she coats her handiwork with more disinfectant and then covers everything with a couple of gauze bandages and tape.

After she puts away the med-kit, I hold out my hand. “Help me up.”

Iffy is considerably smaller than I am, and it’s a bit of a circus act getting me back on my feet. Keeping most of my weight on my left leg, I tie together the cut ends of my satchel’s strap and then swing it over my head, draping it so that it falls on my left hip instead of my usual right.

“Maybe you should rest a little first,” Iffy suggests.

“He’s already got ten minutes on us. We can’t waste any more.”

I point in the direction Kane had been headed, and take the first step. The pain from my newly stitched wound is so acute I nearly stumble back to the ground, but I force myself to stay upright, and with each successive step the discomfort eases a little.

“Where are we?” Iffy asks.

“I have no idea.”

“Do you at least know when?”

I shake my head.

After a while the ground under our feet stops crunching and becomes packed dirt. My eyes have adjusted enough that I can see the dark shapes of vegetation not too far ahead, but there is still nothing but the flat surface in the area we’re passing through.

Another breeze blows by, and Iffy presses herself against me, shivering. I put my arm around her and rub my hand over the exposed skin below the sleeve of her T-shirt. We need to find someplace out of the cold, but given how empty the area seems to be, the chances of that aren’t great.

By the time we reach the brush, I’m walking almost normally. I’ll pay for this later, I’m sure, but I can’t worry about pain yet to come.

“This is sagebrush,” Iffy says, touching one of the plants. “We’re either in a desert or close to one.” She looks back the way we’ve come. “I think we were on a dry lake.”

I look back, too, and can see that the area we’ve just left is lighter than that which surrounds it, much like the lake bed where we saw the space shuttle land. I wonder for a moment if we’ve somehow ended up back there, but the silhouettes of the tall mountains both ahead and behind us are definitely different. We’re in a valley, not the edge of the desert plain where Edwards Air Force Base is located.

Before we start walking again, I listen for Kane’s footsteps, but the only noise comes from the breeze tickling the tops of the sagebrush.

I look up at the stars and pick out Polaris. I should have done this upon arrival, but Kane has stolen my focus. I now know that we are heading basically west and that the valley we are in runs north and south.

As I tilt my head back down, I catch a glint out of the corner of my right eye, like another star, only at ground level. Though at first glance it looks like a single light, it’s really two. After a few moments, it disappears, only to reappear again seconds later, incrementally closer to us.

“Is that a car?” Iffy asks when she looks to see what’s captured my attention.

“I think so.”

This at least gives me some idea of when we are. Motor vehicles started showing up in the early 1900s, but I don’t think that’s how far back we are. At the rate the headlights appear to be traveling, I’m thinking anywhere from the 1920s to the 1960s.

The vehicle is several miles to the north and heading in our general direction. While it’s possible the road it’s on will turn toward the east or west before it reaches us, if the route continues south, the car is likely to pass within a mile or two of our current position. Though my default is to limit our interaction with the people of this era, we need help getting some place warm and back to civilization.

“Run,” I say, and start loping due west as best as my injured leg will allow me. If the road is two miles away, there’s no chance we’ll reach it in time, but if it’s one, maybe.

Iffy matches my hindered pace, but I know she could go faster.

“Just run,” I tell her. “Don’t wait for me.”

She looks unsure.

“Go! I’ll be right behind you.”

“You better be,” she says and then sprints ahead.

I try to follow the same path she takes, but soon she disappears into the night, leaving me to pick out my own way. Looking to my right, I see the lights are much closer now. If Iffy doesn’t reach the road in the next two minutes, we’re going to miss our chance.

The terrain has steadily inclined since we reached the brush, so it’s with some surprise I see that it suddenly dips down into a narrow wash. It’s only because I throw out my arms to maintain my balance that I don’t fall as I come over the top. Once I’m up the other side, I search ahead for Iffy and spot a shadow moving quickly toward the road much farther away than I thought she would be.

I push myself as hard as I can, but there’s only so much my leg will give me. The headlights are less than a minute from being directly in front of me. I’ll never make it on time, but I now think there is a good chance Iffy will.

Once more the terrain dips through a wash. When I crest the far side, I can pick out the dark line of the road. The vehicle is all but in front of me now, and I can tell it’s not a car but a truck. I search for Iffy and spot her about a hundred feet shy of the blacktop. As I adjust my route to take me directly to her, I notice another shadow, this one only about a few hundred yards ahead of me.

I curse under my breath as I realize the error I’ve made. The person nearing the road is not my girlfriend. It’s Kane.

He reaches the highway twenty seconds ahead of the truck and moves into the middle, waving his arms. I can hear the vehicle’s engine roar as the driver uses it to stop. Kane runs up to the door. It’s too far for me to hear anything, but then I see him race around the front of the truck to the other side.

“Hey!” I yell as loud as I can. “Hey! Don’t leave!”

Ahead of me, I can hear Iffy doing the same, but when the motor revs up again and the truck starts to move, it’s clear our shouts have gone unheard.

It’s at least a half hour before we see another set of headlights. Iffy and I have spent the intervening time huddled together among the bushes on the side of the road, trying not to freeze to death. Iffy jumps to her feet to flag down the vehicle, but I’m slow to follow, my wounded thigh stiff and unforgiving from the prolonged crouch.

Unfortunately the vehicle is headed north, opposite the direction Kane has gone, but we can’t afford to be picky at the moment. When I finally join her, Iffy stands in front of me so that she’s blocking the view of my ripped pants as we wave our arms and shout.

The car that rolls to a stop beside us is a sedan. It’s rounder and larger than most of the cars in Iffy’s world, so it’s a safe guess it’s from several decades earlier than 2015.

The window rolls down, and a man old enough to be my grandfather looks out. “Car trouble?”

It’s as good a cover as any, so I nod. “Any chance you could give us a ride to the nearest town?”

“I could do that, or I could also take a look at your engine and see if we can get it started.”

“We, um…” I pause, trying to think of something that won’t make him too curious, but it’s Iffy who comes up with a good response.

“It’s the gas tank,” she says. “We were driving down a dirt road a little ways back. We think a rock punched a hole in it.”

His eyes narrow slightly. “What were you doing off the highway at this time of the morning?”

Iffy slips her hand in mine and says, “My husband wanted to show me a place his dad used to take him camping when he was a kid.” She smiles. “Took us a while to walk back to the highway.”

The moment she says “my husband,” I notice a change in the man’s demeanor. His suspicion has disappeared, leaving in its place a sense of sympathetic understanding.

“Hop on in,” he says, pointing at the backseat.

Neither of us can resist sighing in relief as the warmth of the interior wraps around us.

The moment we settle in, the man presses down the accelerator. “I’m heading all the way up to Bishop, but I can drop you in Lone Pine. It’s only about fifteen miles ahead.”

Iffy squeezes my hand, and from the look on her face, I know she’s familiar with the names. At least we are no longer completely lost.

“Thank you,” I say. “That’ll be great. We appreciate it, Mr.…”

“Graves,” he says. “And you are?”

“Denny Younger, and this is Iffy.”

“Iffy? What kind of name is that?”

“My… Christian name is Pamela,” she says. “Iffy’s just a nickname.”

This seems to satisfy him.

After a brief pause, I ask, “You wouldn’t happen to know what time it is, would you?”

He looks at me through his rearview mirror, a bit of the previous suspicion creeping back into his eyes. “No watch?”

“It, um, broke when I was looking under the car.”

Again, the simple answer seems to do the trick. He looks at his own watch. “Just a little after five.”

That would be 5:00 a.m. given his previous comment about morning.

The rest of the trip is spent mostly in silence, with just the occasional question thrown our way. Thankfully, all are easy enough to answer. A little more than twenty minutes after he picked us up, we arrive in the town of Lone Pine.

From the amount of lights we see as we drive in, I can tell it’s not very large. The highway we’re on seems to do double duty as the main street of town. Scattered businesses line both sides, separated by stretches of empty lots and here and there homes. An illuminated sign ahead catches my eye.

The Dow Motel.

I lean over the seat and point at it. “Can you drop us there?”

“Is that where you’re staying?” Mr. Graves asks.

“Where we were supposed to stay if we hadn’t broken down,” Iffy answers quickly.

He pulls to the curb in front of the motel and looks back at me. “How much cash do you have, son?”

He must want some money for gas, I realize. “I–I—I’m sorry. I don’t have anything I can give you. We really appreciate the ride, though.”

“That’s not what I mean.” He fumbles with something out of sight and then hands me two one-dollar bills. “Won’t get you a room, but should get both of you fed.”

The look on his face tells me he was acting before and hasn’t believed a word of our story. How he thinks we ended up stranded in the middle of nowhere without the proper clothing, I don’t know. “Thank you,” I say.

“You need to get yourself some warm clothes, too. I’d give you some more, but I didn’t bring much money with me on this trip.”

“No, that’s fine. This is more than generous.”

“If you give us your address,” Iffy says, “we’ll pay you back.”

He studies us for a moment and then smiles. “I believe you just might. Now go on. I’ve gotta get back on the road.”

As much as I hate stealing, my ripped and bloodstained pants will draw far too much attention once the sun comes up. I need to find another pair. A jacket for Iffy would be nice, too.

Lone Pine’s residents seem to live on the few blocks that spread out to either side of the highway, behind the businesses. Fences encircle a few of the homes, but most just have open yards. We walk quietly through the dark streets, scanning each property.

“Laundry machine,” I whisper, pointing at a round tub sitting on four legs outside the back door of a house. The machine bears a striking resemblance to those the people in my caste still used in modern times.

I sneak over and carefully open the lid covering the tub, but it’s empty.

Several more houses have machines, while others simply have big metal buckets and washboards. Nearly all, though, have lines strung out to hang wet clothes on.

I check every machine, approaching each house as quietly as my limp allows. Finally, I come up lucky, and discover a pile of clothes lying on a wood palette next to a tub. The pants I find are denim like mine and just about the right size, too, though a little short. Dried mud cakes each cuff, but I don’t care about the dirt. It’s certainly a lot better than the blood on mine.

I change as fast as I can so I won’t freeze to death, and dump my pants in a barrel that looks like it’s used to burn trash, three houses away. We then continue the search, hoping to find a jacket, but soon realize that’s just wishful thinking.

Back on the highway, we find a diner that will open at 6:30 a.m., and huddle in the doorway as we try to keep warm until then. Fifteen minutes before the place is scheduled to open, a waitress inside spots us and unlocks the door.

“Dear Lord, where are your coats?” she asks. Her name tag identifies her as Winnie.

“Long story,” I tell her.

She opens the door wider. “Well, come on inside. I can’t have you dying out here. That’s not the way I’d like to start my day.”

Once we step inside, she hands us a couple of menus. “Take a seat. Any table’s fine. I’ll come take your order as soon as we’re ready.”

We choose the booth farthest from the door, next to the window, and sit pressed against each other. Even then it takes a few minutes before we thaw out enough to do more than just sit there and shiver.

“Are you okay?” I ask Iffy.

“I’ll be fine. How are you?” She touches my leg.

“Sore. But I’ll be fine, too.” Because of the cold or the presence of Mr. Graves, there has been no opportunity for us to talk about more than what was absolutely necessary. “How did Kane grab you?”

She shrugs. “He was waiting outside the bathroom at the café after I finished. He flashed me the gun and said that if I didn’t go with him, he’d kill all of us. I wanted to run, but… he seems a little, I don’t know, off. I couldn’t tell if he was lying or not. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. You did the right thing.”

“What are we going to do now?”

“We’re going to find him and get my chaser back.”

“How? We don’t even know when we are.”

Something ticks at the back of my mind, but before I can examine the thought, our waitress approaches.

“Warmed up?” she asks.

“Getting there,” Iffy said.

“Thanks again for letting us in,” I say.

“You’re welcome. Now, how about some breakfast?”

I grab a menu and quickly scan it. Turns out Mr. Graves was being generous.

“The country farm special sounds good.” Fried egg, hash browns, two strips of bacon, toast, and coffee, all for forty-five cents.

“All right, and you, young lady?”

“That sounds fine for me, too,” Iffy said.

“I’ll be right back with your coffee.”

“You wouldn’t happen to have today’s paper, would you?” I ask.

“The Inyo Register only comes out once a week. There might be a copy of last week’s lying around. Would that do you?”

“Sure.”

“Be right back.”

As Winnie walks away, I look out the window. Beyond the businesses on the other side of the road is a line of majestic, snow-covered peaks. Though I know it’s a beautiful sight, I can’t really appreciate it. All I can think is, how are we going to find Kane?

Iffy, clearly having the same concern, says, “I don’t know how big LA is at this point in time, but it’s going to be a lot larger than this town. We could search for a year and never find him.”

If he wants to be lost, we could actually search a lifetime, I think but don’t say. “He can’t go anywhere without us,” I tell her, hoping to ease her mind a little. “If we don’t find him, he’ll find—”

I stop. The thought I had earlier pokes at me again. It’s sitting there just an atom’s width out of reach. I close my eyes and concentrate.

“Denny?” Iffy asks.

I hold up my hand, letting her know I need a moment as I continue to try to bring the thought forward. It’s elusive, though, and as close as I am to it, I can’t seem to grab on.

“Here you go.”

Winnie’s voice breaks my concentration, and I open my eyes as she’s setting down two cups of coffee.

She then pulls out some folded newspapers from under her arm and says, “You’re in luck. Not only do I have last week’s Register, but a customer left a copy of the Los Angeles Examiner from two days ago. You want that, too?”

“That would be great. Thanks.”

She sets the papers on the table.

“Your food’ll be ready in just a bit.”

The moment she leaves again, I snatch up the top paper, the Examiner.

“October 7, 1952,” Iffy says, finding the date first. “Two days ago makes today the ninth.”

I glance around. “Does it look like 1952 to you?”

“I guess. I only know the fifties from TV and movies. This is even before my mom was born. Feels about right, though.”

I look back at the paper, and note stories about a forgery case moving through the courts, that day’s still-to-be-played World Series game 7 between the New York Yankees and the Brooklyn Dodgers, and a missing boy in San Gabriel. But it’s as I’m setting it back down that my eyes drift once more to the year.

1952.

I had seen a two in the date field of the chaser before we’d left 2015. There was something else I had seen, too — the last four digits of the location number. They had seemed familiar, but since I was trying to not get us killed and had no idea where in the world we might be headed, it hadn’t connected with me.

This is the thought that had been nagging me: 3928. I have recently input those same numbers myself in that very order.

Which city? Kane had said. Los Angeles! What do you think?

“What is it?” Iffy asks me.

I run it all through my mind one more time before saying, “I know where he’s headed.”