Written in Time (17 page)

The helicopter stopped as suddenly as if it had slammed into a wall of granite. Jack felt himself flung forward, flying, saw a blur of green and gray and blood red, then blackness.
 

Clarence Jones dropped the container of orange juice, spilling the yellow liquid all across his kitchen counter. A paroxysm raced across his spine, and he closed his eyes, a sadness unlike anything he had known since the death of his mother seizing his heart and mind.
 

“Jesus,” he whispered. Somehow, it had happened and they were gone.
 

He left the orange juice and called the emergency number at the movie-production site. “This is the Nailes’ nephew, Clarence Jones. Have you heard from them?”
 

The woman who’d answered the telephone said nothing for a long moment, and then asked if she could put him on hold. After several excruciating minutes, she finally came back to the line. When she did speak, her voice was choked with emotion.
 

CHAPTER
FIVE
 

“You’d be proud of your son, Jack,” Ellen was saying.
 

Jack merely lay there, head cradled in his wife’s lap as she knelt on the ground, hugging him.
 

“I thought you just might be dead despite it all, this time-travel thing. I thought you might be, but told myself you wouldn’t be, and the time-travel thing has nothing to do with it.”
 

Jack’s own voice sounded odd to him. “I thought I was maybe dead, too.”
 

“David couldn’t get the fuselage door open and the cockpit was already in flames. Lizzie and I tried helping him. It was no good. The locking mechanism was jammed. He spotted a case bolted to the fuselage, opened it. It was some sort of survival kit. Anyway, there was an axe and a spare first-aid kit. He handed the first aid kit to Lizzie, told us to stand back, and he split the locking mechanism for the fuselage door with one swing of the axe.
 

 
“He got us out, used the axe to break into the cargo compartment and started getting out our stuff before the whole aircraft went up in flames or exploded. I told him to leave the luggage, that it wasn’t worth the risk. He ignored me, of course, ignored his sister. We couldn’t have tried to stop him physically, because we were already running toward you.”
 

“But David’s okay, right?”
 

“He’s fine, Jack. Rescued the attaché case with the gold and diamonds, got all the luggage, your gun cases, even your cowboy hat.”
 

Jack started to speak, but couldn’t. He felt tears welling up in his eyes and his throat tightening, but not from smoke this time.
 

“David got away from the helicopter about thirty seconds before it blew up. He lit a cigarette as it happened. I told him he was a hero. Lizzie told him he was a hero. All David said was, ‘Dad saved our lives. He’s the hero.’”
 

Jack Naile lost it and wept uncontrollably.
 

Miraculously, it didn’t seem as if Jack had broken anything, not even redislocated his right shoulder, something she had really expected from the position his body had been in when they reached him. Ellen had examined him to the extent of her quite limited medical training and when he seemed willing, encouraged him to try to stand up. The best way to get well was to act well, she’d always believed. And, with the afternoon waning, with no idea where they were except that their present location would have been an unpleasant one if a mountain lion or bear decided to get curious, there was little choice but to get in motion.
 

The weather was much colder than it had been when they’d boarded the helicopter, and the night promised to be colder still. If Jack could handle it, they had to get going somewhere, probably down and away from the mountains. At worst, they needed to find a sheltered area and water. Then David could use the helicopter’s axe to cut firewood, and, if they found water, they could find a way to boil some for drinking purposes and stay by the fire for warmth as well as to scare away any wild animals.
 

When Jack did stand up, aside from being wobbly and visibly quite sore, he seemed to be all right. “You sure you can handle this? We can always wait a while longer if you like.”
 

“I’m sore, but I’m cool,” Jack told her.
 

“I’m going to have such fun counting all the bruises you’ll have, especially if they’re anything like the one on the left side of your forehead. You don’t even have a bump, though. See, this wasn’t any big deal.”
 

“Sure. Everybody should be in a helicopter crash. Good for what ails you, huh?” Jack became more serious. “What about the pilot?”
 

Ellen’s face grew somber then she shook her head. She checked her husband’s vision to see if his eyes could follow a moving object, inquired about blurriness, nausea. The bruise on his head spelled the possibility of concussion, if nothing worse. But he’d displayed none of the obvious signs of which she was aware. When they reached some resting place, if either of the microfiche readers had survived without being shattered—there was an unsettling rattle from the case housing the video camera—she would probe more deeply into the symptoms of concussion.
 

“There’s something I’ve got to do,” Jack said. He leaned over and kissed Lizzie’s forehead, then tilted her face up toward his and kissed her lightly on the lips. Lizzie hugged her father, and then Ellen put her arm around her daughter’s shoulders. Slowly, a little unsteadily, Jack walked toward where David sat beside the cases and luggage.
 

Jack lit a cigarette. He offered one to David, who merely shook his head.
 

Ellen could hear David as he said, “‘Jack Naile and his family were on their way to California, but there was an accident with their wagon.’”
 

Ellen watched as Jack leaned over and kissed David’s forehead. David didn’t pull away, but didn’t help, either.
 

Ellen closed her eyes. Not a single aircraft had passed overhead. There had been not the slightest sound that could have been a truck engine or a chain saw. But the absence of such phenomena was unnecessary. As David had chosen to put into words, Ellen knew deep inside herself, no words necessary.
 

They weren’t in the twentieth century anymore . . .
 

Despite his soreness, Jack Naile announced, “We’ve got to take the most direct route that we can to get out of these mountains. The highway—or the stage road along the ridgeline—whatever or whenever it is—should be easy enough to find. If we find—when we find—the road, all we have to do is follow it away from the mountains and we’re bound to find a ranch or farm. Worst case, we’ll reach Atlas in a day or so, whatever century it is. David?”
 

“Dad?”
 

They stood about one hundred yards downslope from the gutted helicopter.
 

“I need you to take that axe and mark some of the trees as we go along, so we can backtrack to this spot without much difficulty. We’ve got too much stuff to carry. So, before that, take the Winchester 94 and load it up, then look around the immediate area for a safe place to stash what we can’t carry for maybe as long as a week or ten days. Use the axe to mark a path from the helicopter to where we leave the stuff. Lizzie?”
 

“Daddy?”
 

“Help your mom with organizing what we can’t travel without and what we’ll leave behind. The guns won’t be in the cases, so we can use the rifle and pistol case for additional storage of anything that might be easily damaged when left behind.”
 

“If we’re not in the nineteenth century, Jack, being visibly armed won’t be a good idea,” Ellen supplied.
 

“Agreed. It might not be such a good idea even if we are, coming up on some little ranch house or something. David and I’ll each carry a rifle. It’s not going to look odd with two guys carrying lever action rifles. Each of you ladies carries one of the little guns in a pocket or something—the Seecamp and the derringer. Everything else gets thrown into a suitcase. And, remember, when you guys pack and separate, we can’t carry too much ammo because it’s too heavy, but we’ll want just about fifty rounds of .45 Colt and twenty rounds of .45-70, plus what’ll be in the guns.”
 

“You want to bury the stuff or just cover it from view?” David asked, picking up the axe.
 

***

Their trek toward some outpost of civilization wasn’t anywhere near as long a one as she had supposed that it might be. And Elizabeth couldn’t deny that the scenery was gorgeous. The farther down the mountain they went, the more abundant and luxurious were the trees, pine trees of astounding height, many as tall as or taller than those in their neighbor’s back lot in Georgia, and those were taller than three-or four-story buildings. She recognized spruce trees, but that was the limit of her knowledge of evergreens (except for magnolias, which, unlike in the climate outside her bedroom window back home, would not grow here.)
 

The conifers, on the other hand, were either suffering some sort of blight or it was not only the year that had changed (if it had), but also the season. Leaves were everywhere, except in the trees.
 

Elizabeth had been hoping against hope for some sign of late-twentieth-century civilization, and her heart raced then sank with her first glimpse of the small house, lean-tos and two horse corrals still perhaps four city blocks distant. She had a case with a pair of her father’s binoculars slung from her shoulder. She took out the binoculars, raised them to her eyes and adjusted the focus as she studied the landscape below. Beneath the shelter of one of the lean-tos was a wagon, what her father called a “buckboard” whenever he referenced one on those occasions when she could not escape watching a western movie. It looked not quite new, but not like an antique, either.
 

“If no one mentions hearing an explosion or seeing a fire, remember, don’t mention it, either. Okay?” Elizabeth’s mother told them.
 

“Gotchya,” David agreed.
 

“And if somebody does mention it, let your father do the talking, and all of us will back him up. He’s the wordsmith, remember, so he tells lies for a living.”
 

David laughed.
 

Elizabeth’s father murmured, “Thanks a lot.” Then he looked over his shoulder at David. “Hold that rifle with your hand over the receiver and keep the muzzle pointed toward the ground. That’s the least threatening way.”
 

“Right.”
 

Elizabeth couldn’t take her eyes off the ranch ahead.
 

Maybe half again the distance beyond the ranch house from where they were there were a few cattle, just grazing, with no fences that Elizabeth could see. A dozen or so chickens wandered aimlessly in the front yard, pecking at the ground. There was a windmill—she didn’t know why she hadn’t noticed that earlier—and it was mounted high on something that looked like a wooden version of one of the big metal-framed utility poles that connected one town’s power grid to another. From what she had read of the period, knowing this time transfer was going to happen, Elizabeth imagined that the windmill’s sole purpose had nothing to do with running electrical conveniences but was for pumping water instead. No wires of any type led into the house. There was no satellite dish.
 

They would be meeting people from the past for the first time, people who were dead before she had ever been born. Meeting people meant making first impressions. Elizabeth put away the binoculars and instinctively took stock of her clothes. The bib-front overalls that she wore were a little dirty and a lot wrinkled. Her jacket—”Daddy!”
 

“What is it, sweetheart?”
 

“We all have zippers on our jackets, and they didn’t have zippers in the old days, did they?”
 

“Whitcomb L. Judson displayed a primitive zipper at the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893, and the modern zipper was in use by World War I. Zippers weren’t in general circulation until the 1930s.”
 

David was laughing. “Aren’t you glad you asked, Liz?”
 

“Point is,” Elizabeth’s father continued, “if the zippers get noticed, all we say is something like, ‘Yeah, this guy named Judson invented them. They’re really popular where we come from.’ And we leave it at that, which isn’t telling a lie at all.”
 

“What about my deck shoes?” David asked, as if daring his father.
 

“It’s like an Indian moccasin, but with a harder sole.”
 

“Lizzie and I are wearing pants and bras,” Elizabeth’s mother threw in.
 

“Women were more physically modest—at least openly—in these days than in the time we come from. So nobody’ll see your underwear. As for pants, after the accident with the wagon, with God only knew how long a walk over rugged terrain ahead of us, wearing pants like a man seemed like the only sensible choice for you guys. Try me on another one,” her father dared.
 

“Ohh, ohh!” Elizabeth’s mother exclaimed in an artificial sounding high voice. “How do men just ever stand wearing these terrible trousers?”
 

“That was a good one, Mom,” Elizabeth proclaimed.
 

“Thank you, Lizzie.”
 

“Okay, Dad,” David volunteered, shifting his burdens and removing his wristwatch. “These things didn’t come around until World War I, either.”
 

“Good point, David. Make sure to keep your sleeves down so the paler skin where the watchband covers isn’t visible.” As he spoke, Elizabeth’s father opened the bracelet of his Rolex and hid the watch in a pocket of his bomber jacket.
 

“I’m Tom, and this here’s my wife, Mary. We’re the Bledsoe’s.” The man was holding a rifle, but had a pleasant enough look about him.