Chapter 3
The Creek
General Store
April 12, 1005 CE
The next morning, right after sunrise, they drove the tractor and the pickup westward. Michael picked that direction for no better reason than he had a hunch they were still east of the Mississippi River. If so, the closer they got to the huge waterway, the more likely they were to run into tributaries that would provide them with the running water they needed.
They drove very slowly, of course—never more than five miles an hour and often slower than that. The prairie they were crossing was generally flat and unobstructed, but “generally” is an expansive word. On more than one occasion they had to take detours to get around various obstacles.
Michael was worried that his improvised travois would come apart from the rigors of the day’s drive. But it proved to be surprisingly sturdy. It helped a lot, of course, that as slowly as they were going the contraption was never subjected to sharp and violent bumps.
And they either got lucky or Michael’s guess was accurate. The pickup was in the lead, as it had been from the beginning, and Shane was riding in the bed perched atop the wide toolbox. That gave her a very good view of the terrain they were crossing. A bit less than two hours after they began the drive, she pointed to the left and shouted, “There’s a tree line! I see a tree line!”
Slowly and carefully, her mother steered the pickup toward the line of trees in the distance. Alyssa, sitting in the cab alongside her, held Melanie’s rifle in her hands so it would be readily available if needed. The plan was that Melanie would be the shooter unless whatever danger appeared came very suddenly. Then Alyssa would take her chances. She hadn’t been on a firing range in at least five years.
It didn’t take more than twenty minutes to reach the tree line. Michael and the tractor arrived five minutes later. By then, the people in the pickup had all climbed out and were inspecting what they’d found.
Sure enough, it was a creek—and just the sort of creek they’d hoped to find. It varied in width between ten and fifteen feet, was fairly shallow—between one and two feet deep in most places, although there was a pool thirty yards upriver where the creek widened to thirty feet and the depth reached five or six feet. Best of all, the water was quite fast-moving, which was likely to result in a healthier water source than would be provided by a sluggish stream. The water was very clear.
After Michael got out of the tractor and inspected the area, he proposed that they set up their camp a short distance upriver from the pool. They could use the pool for laundry and bathing during most of the year, and set up sanitary facilities forty or fifty yards downriver from the pool. They weren’t sure yet that they would stay here, but it was a good prospect and close enough to the country store for them to make the trip fairly regularly. For now, it was a good campsite, and it might even make a good permanent campsite.
From that vantage point, they were on a crest in the terrain that sloped downward at a shallow angle. In the distance, perhaps half a mile away, they could see a river flowing slowly to the southwest. It was much wider and deeper than the creek they’d parked next to, but nowhere near the size of a river like the Mississippi. They could only see the stretch of the river nearest to them, because another rise in the landscape—you couldn’t really call it a hill—blocked their view further to the north.
“At a guess,” said Melanie, “I think that’s probably the Kaskaskia River—or the version of it in the here and now, anyway.”
“I’m not familiar enough with the geography here to have an opinion,” said Alyssa, “but an alluvial river on a flat plain will move all over given a few centuries. So let’s go with Kaskaskia.”
Michael followed the line of the river to the southwest. “If you’re right, it’ll flow into the Mississippi down there somewhere.” He turned around and pointed north. “And, assuming Alyssa’s right about the time we’re in, Cahokia is up there. Which means we’re right in the middle of the Mound Builders territory.”
“How far away is Cahokia?” asked Melanie.
He shrugged. “Its ruins are just across the Mississippi from Saint Louis, so anywhere from thirty to fifty miles would be my estimate. But I could be way off.”
They began unloading the pickup and the travois. They made no attempt to organize anything—just unload it as fast as possible so they could make another round trip to the wrecked country store before sundown.
“Should anybody stay here to guard the stuff?” asked Melanie.
“From what?” said Michael. “We’ve got all the food that might draw animals in airtight containers or coolers of one kind or another. So the only real risk I can see is that some people might come across the camp before we get back. But we haven’t seen any sign of human inhabitants in the area since we arrived.”
“S’okay with me,” said Alyssa. “I think we should all stick together anyway, at least until we’ve got a better sense for what’s around here.”
* * *
It didn’t take them more than half an hour to unload everything. They were able to drive a bit faster on the way back to the store, partly because the travois was no longer loaded down but mostly because they knew the way now. They could avoid the worst obstacles without having to stumble across them.
When they arrived at the store, it was still short of noon. At least, according to their watches it was. Whether those watches were still synchronized with the time of day according to the nonexistent Royal Observatory in Greenwich, England, was anybody’s guess. But they seemed to be pretty closely in harmony, judging from the sun’s position in the sky.
Michael took a shovel out of the bed of the pickup and headed toward the stand of grass where he’d pitched the remains of George Dawes the day before. “Before I do anything else, I’m going to dig a grave for poor Mr. Dawes. I’ve been feeling guilty about it since yesterday. The rest of you can start looking through what’s still in the store to see what you think we should take with us.”
But he was back in less than a minute. “Honey, get your rifle out of the pickup.” He headed toward the cab of the Peterbilt. “And I’ll holster up the Glock.”
“What’s wrong?” she asked. But she didn’t wait for a reply before heading for the pickup. Melanie had known her husband for years. The man was not an alarmist. If something had him worried, there was a good reason for it.
“Dawes’ body is gone,” he said. “Not a trace of it left beyond a little blood.”
“That’s actually good news, I think,” said Alyssa. “A bear or a pack of wolves would have eaten the corpse where they found it. It’s the big cats who have the habit of hauling a carcass away for later eating. Well, leopards do, anyway. I’m not sure about other cats. But there were never tigers in North America and the American lion went extinct thousands of years ago. So what we’d be dealing with is a cougar.”
“And they don’t hunt in packs and they aren’t all that big anyway,” said Michael. “I think you’re probably right, Alyssa.”
Melanie made a face. “Not that big,” she said, mimicking Michael’s baritone voice. “Hon, I’ve seen a mountain lion in the wild. Damn thing ran across the road right in front of me when I was driving. You want my opinion, it looked plenty big enough to make a snack out of me.”
Alyssa laughed. “I bet it did! They’re a hell of a lot bigger than a house cat, that’s for sure. But they’re still much smaller than a lion or a tiger, Melanie. Even the males rarely weigh more than two hundred pounds.”
“So what?” demanded Melanie. “I weigh one hundred and forty-five pounds—and I got no fangs or claws.” She hefted her Winchester Model 70. “I’m keeping this right next to me. A 150-grain bullet with a muzzle velocity of twenty-seven hundred feet per second is a great equalizer.”
Michael climbed down from the cab with his Glock in a holster. “I’m not making fun of you, dear. I’m carrying this around until we’re out of here. But I don’t really think we’ve got much to worry about. Now, let’s get started.”
“We need something to make walls on the travois,” said Melanie. “There’s not much left in the way of big items, though. You got any ideas?”
“There’s one big item,” said Michael. He nodded toward the store’s restroom, which had survived the passage of the Ring of Fire. “I want to take that toilet back with us.”
“That’s going to be awfully heavy,” said Alyssa doubtfully. “Are you sure we really need it?”
“You ever used an outhouse?”
Alyssa sniffed. “Whatever sharecroppers were in my family tree were a long way back. I grew up in Hyde Park, literally a stone’s throw from the University of Chicago. So, no. The only outhouses in my vicinity would have been in museums, maybe.”
Melanie chuckled. “Now you’re in for it. Michael’s favorite bit of trivia when it comes to the joys of outdoor camping involves the denizens of outhouses.”
Michael grinned. “Spiders love outhouses—especially black widows. So there you are, sitting on moist warm wood, which the critters adore. Up they come . . . ”
“Yuck!” Alyssa threw up her hands. “I retract everything I said! By all means, let’s salvage the toilet.”
Michael headed for the restroom. “I’ll take off the door, too. We need to salvage as much lumber as we can take back with us. That’ll also provide us with the walls we need for the travois.”
Using a couple of crowbars they found in the tool section of the store, Alyssa and Melanie started prying off whatever boards looked to be still usable. There turned out to be quite a few, more than they would have expected. The Ring of Fire’s peculiarly sharp edge—if that was the right term for it—cut wood cleanly rather than smashing it into pieces.
Meanwhile, Shane and Alyssa’s two children roamed about, looking for anything of use they’d overlooked the day before. There was quite a bit, although that was mostly because there was a lot of space on the travois and in the pickup bed—and the operating philosophy was, if in doubt, take it, because you never know what might turn out to be handy.
One item the children unanimously agreed could be dispensed with was several bags full of Styrofoam cups. “We already got enough cups and glasses,” said Shane.
But Alyssa overruled them. “No, we should bring them with us.”
Michael had finished with loading the toilet into the pickup and had come back into the store. “I don’t really see the point, Alyssa,” he said. “The kids are right—we’ve already got enough stuff to drink out of to last us for years.”
“You said yourself just yesterday that we have no idea what we’re going to be facing in the way of possible human enemies, didn’t you?” she replied.
“Well, yeah, but—”
Alyssa pointed at the bags full of Styrofoam cups. “We’ve got lots of diesel in that tanker of yours, right?”
“Yeah. Thousands of gallons.”
Alyssa nodded. “With diesel and Styrofoam, I can make napalm. Gasoline will work too, but diesel’s better.” She pointed to a dozen or so big pickle jars that were still on one of the intact shelves. “And we should take whatever glass or ceramic containers we can find to hold the napalm, whether or not we want the contents. We’ll need to figure out a way to make catapults so we can fire them a good distance. Oh, and we should grab however many sponges and rags we can find for fuses.”
Michael and Melanie stared at her, then looked at each other.
“Beware of chemists in dark alleys,” said Michael.
* * *
They got back to the camp with just enough daylight left to unload the travois; after which, Michael removed the travois from the tractor.
“I’ll leave at sunrise tomorrow to get the tanker. You can unload the pickup while I’m gone,” he said. “But leave the toilet for me until I get back. It’s a heavy bastard.”
Camp Peterbilt
April 12, 1005 CE
When Michael got back with the tanker in tow, it was early in the afternoon. The first thing he noticed was that Melanie and Alyssa were both standing in the bed of the pickup peering at something in the distance. Melanie was holding her rifle by the barrel, propped up against the bed of the pickup. He could see the back of Shane’s head inside the cab of the pickup and assumed the other two children were with her.
He pulled up next to them and lowered the window on the driver’s side of the tractor. “What’s up?”
Alyssa pointed toward the rise that blocked their view of the river to the north. “We’ve got company.”
Michael reached into the glove compartment of the tractor and drew out a pair of ten-by-forty-two binoculars in a case. He extracted the field glasses and started scanning through the windshield. The sun was high enough in the sky not to be producing a glare in the windshield, so his view was not significantly obstructed.
It took him only a few seconds to spot what his wife and Alyssa were referring to. Several people—men only, he thought, although he wasn’t sure—were crouched down on the rise that impeded the view of the river to the north. Two of them that he could see held bows, although only one had an arrow nocked.
He wasn’t sure exactly how many people were on the rise, because they were all obviously trying to hide. He was sure there were at least five people over there, and there might be two or three more hidden behind some heavy brush.
He considered climbing into the back of the cab and bringing down his own rifle, but decided to hold off for the moment. The closest people watching them from the rise were at least two hundred and fifty yards away. That was within the maximum range for target practice with a bow that had enough draw weight, but no one he knew ever tried to hunt at that range. Most experienced hunters didn’t try to shoot at prey farther than sixty yards away—and he was quite sure that whoever these people were, they were all very experienced hunters. Much more experienced than any bow hunter in the twenty-first century who hunted for sport. These people hunted to keep themselves and their families alive.
The point being, he’d have plenty of time to get his rifle if it turned out he needed it. Melanie’s .308 caliber rifle had a scope on it and she was a very good shot with very steady nerves. As good as Michael was, in his opinion, and he could bring down targets with his rifle at this range fairly easily. If the people over there decided to attack, Melanie would put them in a world of hurt all on her own.
He was hoping it wouldn’t come to that. He and his wife and Alyssa had spent a fair amount of time discussing how they would handle contact with the indigenous folk if—which was far more likely to be when—they encountered them. They were all in full, even fervent, agreement that their operating philosophy if at all possible should be guided by the slogan give peace a chance.
Which wasn’t the same thing as don’t study war no more—as Alyssa had demonstrated with her cold-blooded willingness to develop weapons using napalm. She had two young children to keep alive, no matter what.
He decided he’d seen enough and slung the eyeglasses over his neck. Then he did go into the back of the cab and take down his rifle. After making sure it was fully loaded, he shoved two boxes of ammunition into a shoulder satchel—one box for his gun, and one for his wife’s—and climbed down from the cab of the tractor and into the bed of the pickup.
“Here,” he said to Alyssa, handing her the binoculars. He set the satchel with the ammunition down on the floor of the pickup’s bed—taking advantage of the motion to peer through the rear window to see how the three children were doing.
They were all avidly watching everything on the rise opposite them. Shane was sitting at the wheel, with the keys in the ignition and herself obviously ready and willing to charge the foe. She was a pretty good driver for a twelve-year-old, although her experience was only on gravel roads and a few infrequently traveled county roads. Michael had never let her drive the Peterbilt, but that was just because she was still too small to be able to handle all the controls involved. Once she’d grown enough, he would teach her.
In big parking lots to begin with, of course. For the time being, her grandparents were always willing to let her practice with their car. Well, her grandmother was a bit dubious, but her grandfather had no qualms about it. He’d learned to drive motor vehicles on a farm when he was younger than she was, and he’d taught Michael at the same tender age.
But what Michael found most amusing was the attitude of Alyssa’s two children. Both of them were standing on the passenger seat and propping their weight in front of them on the dashboard. It was crystal clear from their stances that neither one of them was infused with the spirit of give peace a chance.
No, no. In the case of the four-and-a-half-year-old boy and the six-year-old girl, the spirit was along the lines of Go ahead, suckers! Try something!
When Michael rose back up, he smiled at Alyssa and said, “I don’t think your kids are devotees of Mahatma Gandhi.”
She gave him an exasperated look. “And you were, at their age? Gimme a break. Little kids are all a bunch of Goths and Vandals. It takes a while to civilize them. More or less.”
About half an hour later, the people on the rise began leaving. They were clearly skilled outdoorsmen, because most of them vanished without their departure being noticed until later, when the Americans realized there was no one still watching them from the rise. Didn’t seem to be, anyway.
“D’you think they’ll be back tonight?” asked Alyssa.
“Yes,” said Melanie. “And they’ll come a lot closer. The moon still isn’t showing more than a slight crescent, so it’ll be dark.”
“Do we have any flashlights?” asked Alyssa.
Michael grinned. “We’ve got something one hell of a lot better than flashlights.”
“Well, yeah, the truck headlights. But we can’t really illuminate anything with them except whatever is straight ahead.”
Melanie was looking a bit startled. “Are you thinking of Eddie’s spotlights? I’d forgotten all about them. Do you think they still work?”
“Easy to find out, but I don’t see why they wouldn’t. They’ve just been sitting in the back of that compartment for . . . what’s it been? Four years?”
“At least.”
Michael hopped out of the bed of the pickup and headed toward the Peterbilt. Melanie now had a wry smile on her face. “It just goes to show you never know when something oddball might prove handy,” she said to Alyssa. “We had a friend named Eddie Kettering—another trucker—who retired a few years ago. He had a pair of spotlights he insisted on giving to us. ‘To make sure you don’t get taken by surprise by anybody,’ he said.”
She shook her head. “He was always a bit paranoid. Anyway, we accepted them, just to avoid hurting his feelings.” She pointed to Michael, who was at the side of the truck rummaging around in an exterior compartment. He emerged holding up a pair of spotlights, both of which had long extension cords attached to them.
“How do you attach them?” asked Alyssa.
“They have suction mounts. I’m not sure how well they’d hold up if you tried driving a long stretch with them, but we’ll be stationary so they should work fine. You want a hand, hon?” she asked Michael when he reached the cab of the Peterbilt.
“Yeah. Each of you stand on either side of the truck so I can hand down the extension cords to you.”
It didn’t take very long to set up the spotlights. Michael attached the suction mounts to the roof of the cab, one on either side, and they ran the extension cords through slightly opened cab windows. Once those were plugged into outlets inside the cab, Michael climbed up into the driver’s seat and handed one of the two remote controls to Melanie, who was sitting in the passenger seat. Alyssa moved a few yards to the front of the truck to report on how well the gadgets worked.
Extremely well, as it turned out, once they changed the batteries on the remotes. Both spotlights were still completely functional, even after years of sitting idle. The remote controls allowed anyone in the cab to direct the beams through very wide angles, vertically as well as horizontally.
“I can’t tell how bright they’ll be at night,” Alyssa said, returning to the truck. She pointed toward the sun, which was still high in the sky, which had almost no clouds in it. “The sun pretty well washes out the beams.”
“At night, they should be plenty bright,” said Michael. “We’ll find out in a few hours.”
“You really think they’ll come back?”
“They’d be crazy not to. It’ll be almost pitch dark so they can get much closer to us than they could in the daytime. And I’ll bet dollars to donuts we won’t be able to hear them moving out there. We’re talking James Fenimore Cooper woodsmanship.”
Alyssa smiled. “Actually, Cooper always had skulkers in the woods stepping on twigs and making noise,” she said. “Mark Twain made fun of him for it. But I get your point.” She looked over to the rise where the visitors had appeared earlier.
“Do you think they’ll attack us, Michael?”
He shrugged. “They might, but I doubt it. Not, at least, until they have a much better sense of what they’re facing. Try to imagine what this tractor and trailer look like to people still in the Stone Age. Especially ones who don’t have draft animals and probably don’t even use wheels except for maybe toys.”
Alyssa looked at the decor painted on the Peterbilt. “So that’s why you plastered this garish fire-breathing dragon all over your tractor? To scare off indigenous warriors in the event of a time travel escapade.”
Michael grinned. “Think ahead, I always say.”
Melanie sniffed. “I tried to talk him out of it.” By now, Shane and Alyssa’s two kids had gathered around the tractor. “But my daughter stabbed me in the back and sided with her father.”
“Hey, I think it’s cool!” protested Shane.
Melanie sniffed again. “It’s just like you said, Alyssa. Buncha Goths and Vandals.”
* * *
The strangers were all women and children, but their gear and, especially, the strange house had the young men of the tribe more than a bit nervous. Also, the hunting party had visited this place only a week ago and there was no one here. How had they gotten all this stuff here in so short a time, especially if they were alone?
It was all just too strange. So they were approaching the women in the strange shiny house cautiously. Then, coming around a clump of trees, came a monster. It was like some giant lizard made of fire. Or like a carving. But it moved. It was as big as a house, and it moved.
Suddenly the strange little house that the women had been in got a whole lot stranger. It was like the giant lizard demon, but smaller. Could it move too?
The big demon moved up next to the smaller one without once lifting one of its feet. And one of its ears opened and a giant climbed out, then went back in, got some things and came out again.
They didn’t know what it was, but considering it had been sitting in the head of a demon, it was probably magic. For that matter, so was the giant.
To the hunters of Jabir, the village a bit over a mile away on the other side of a hill, the word “demon” didn’t mean what it would mean to a twenty-first-century Christian. The word they used could mean demon, angel, god, spirit, or basically anything supernatural and powerful. They didn’t make a distinction between good demon, i.e. god or angel, and bad demon, i.e. devil or imp. They were all chancy to deal with.
What was clear here was that whatever these people had or whatever had these people, it, and presumably they, had great power and were chancy to deal with.
So they continued to watch for a while, then they backed away. It was clear that this was work for the shamans.
Jabir
April 12, 1005 CE
It didn’t take the hunting party long to get back to Jabir after they got behind the hillock. Jabir was a village of the Kadlo clan of the River People, and it was home. Achanu, the leader of this hunting party, told the tribal elders about the strange moving houses and the people who lived in them.
Priyak flatly disbelieved them. He was the senior shaman of Jabir, an old man dedicated to the priesthood in Hocha and generally disrespectful of the chiefs and the women’s council. Gada, the younger shaman, was less dismissive, but far from convinced. For that matter, Achanu’s uncle Hamadi, the senior chief, wasn’t convinced either.
“I don’t blame you, uncle. I wouldn’t believe it either if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes. All I can say is come and see.”
* * *
Hamadi did just that. It took him only an hour. He never got close and didn’t stay long, just long enough to confirm that his nephew and the others hadn’t been smoking mushrooms.
* * *
Even before he sent the hunters back to get a good look, Hamadi sent a message to Roshan in Hocha, telling the clan chief what he’d seen.