Time Storm

11

An hour after sunrise, Marie, Wendy, our equipment, supplies, dogs and all were down on the beach watching me finish off the raft. Watching and helping, as much as they could. It was Marie who brought up the subject of the girl.

“I think,” said Marie, looking over to where the girl sat on a log, stroking Sunday at her feet, “everybody should do their share.”

“She’s not going,” I said.

Marie stared at me.

“She’s not going?” Marie said. There was an odd note in her voice—a note which could have meant anything. I could not interpret it at all. “You don’t mean that?”

“I don’t mean it,” I said. “She does.”

“Oh?” said Marie. She looked over at the girl again. “It’s her idea?”

“That’s right.”

Marie stood for a moment, watching the girl.

“No,” Marie said, finally. “She’ll go.”

I did not say anything more, myself. I concentrated on finishing the raft. When I was done, we launched it and loaded it with the contents of the two bicycle carts and the carts themselves. It floated well, a square of good-sized logs almost ten feet by ten feet in area; and there was plenty of room on it for Wendy—though the little girl was pale as moonlight and clearly frightened to death of riding across the river on the rocking log surface.

While Marie coaxed and soothed the child, I took six of the dog-leash chains I had set aside while I was making the raft. Three of these I put around Sunday’s neck to make a choke-collar for him. I fastened the second three to the first and looped them around a log too big for the leopard to drag. Then I went to the raft and picked up the .22 rifle and its box of shells.

“What are you doing?” Marie interrupted her efforts with Wendy to stare at me. “That’s mine. You gave it to me.”

“I’m taking it back,” I said.

I walked away, not listening to what else she said. The girl had come to stand concernedly over Sunday and examine his chains-Sunday, himself, had hardly blinked when I had put them on him. He lay basking in the sun. I walked up to the girl and shoved both rifle and shells into her hands.

“You can learn to shoot this,” I said. “Keep the shells dry and use them up only when you really need to. Whatever you do, make sure they’re not dirty when you put them in the rifle. And make sure no dirt gets in the barrel of the rifle. If it does, take some string from your pack, and tie a clean patch of cloth on the end of it. Drop the string through the barrel and keep pulling the cloth through the barrel until it looks shiny from end to end, when you hold it up and look at the light through it, the way you’ve seen me do. Have you got that?”

She took the box and gun from me without a word.

“I’m leaving Sunday with you,” I said. “Don’t unchain him until we’ve been gone at least a day and a night. If I’m not around, I think he’ll stick with you; and he’ll be even more protection to you than the gun. Remember, winter’s coming on in a few months. Try to find some place where you can settle in and be protected until it warms up again.”

She looked at me.

“Well,” I said. “Goodby.”

She did not move or speak. I turned and went back to Marie.

Marie had Wendy on the raft and was already stripped down to a yellow one-piece swimsuit. She looked good in it, as I would have expected since the night before last. I had not stopped to think about such niceties myself. Now, out of tribute to her own bathing dress, I left my shorts on—a foolish bit of male modesty which I had not planned on, earlier. But I had spare underclothing in my backpack, and I could hang the wet shorts outside the backpack to dry as I travelled, after we reached the other side.

I looked back once more at the girl and Sunday, and waved. Neither one responded, of course. I got into the cold river water, holding on to the raft along with Marie. The dogs took to the water on their own, after us; and we began the swim across.

As I said, the water was cold, in spite of it being midsummer. The current swept us farther downriver than even I had expected by the time we .made the crossing; and by that time, in spite of considering myself a fairly strong swimmer, I was grateful to have the raft to cling to, and sympathetic to the dogs who had no such thing. One of them, indeed, got the idea at one point to try and climb up on the raft; but a sharp command from Marie made him drop back off it. All in all, though, we must have been in the water more than half an hour by the time we finally struggled ashore on a small sandy spot backed up by a space, about two house-lots in size, of sand and grass reaching back to the edge of a fairly thick woods.

I had gotten out, hauled the raft in close and lifted Wendy ashore, and was beginning to unload the raft when a tense word from Marie made me straighten up and turn around.

Five men had come out of the trees—about half-way out between trees and water. They stood perhaps twenty yards or so from us in a semi-circle, hemming us in against the river’s edge. They were all well-dressed—dressed for the outdoors, that is. Each of them wore thick-soled country-style boots, with high tops disappearing up inside heavy trousers; and above the waist they all wore leather or firm-cloth jackets, with the collars of winter-weight shirts showing at the neck; and all but one of them wore some kind of hat. Every one of them had at least one handgun belted around his waist as well as a rifle in his hands.

The one without a hat stood a little forward of the rest and seemed to be the leader, though he was younger than any of the others, and even looked to be a good half-dozen years younger than I was. But he was as tall as I, and wider of shoulder, in his jacket. His face was heavy-boned; and like mine, it was cleanshaven—all the rest wore beards of varying lengths. He grinned at me as I reached for the rifle on the raft.

“Leave it lay,” he said. I stopped reaching.

“Guard!” snapped Marie. “Point!”

Swiftly, the dogs fanned out around us, each facing one or more of the men, which in most cases meant that there were a couple of dogs on each; and each canine form went into its own version of a tense on-the-mark position, like a trained bird dog pointing quail. The rifles of the men came up.

“Hold it!” said the young man. “Keep your dogs there if you don’t want them shot!”

Marie said nothing, but the dogs stood still. The young man dropped the butt of his rifle to the ground and leaned on the gun in friendly fashion—though I noticed the rest of them kept their weapons ready to use. He smiled at us again.

“Well,” he said. “What’s it like on the other side of the river?”

“There’s nothing much there,” I said. I was freezing to death, standing mid-thigh deep in the water, but I did not want to move out of arm’s reach of the rifle on the raft. “What’s it like on this side?”

“Nothing much on this side, either,” the young man said. “Couple of empty towns....”

He was answering me, but he was watching Marie. They were all watching Marie. It was that yellow swimsuit. I had not been unaware that she had put it on with at least part of her mind on what it would do to me. Now, it was doing the same thing to these men; only with them it was, I thought, turning out to be a bit too much of a good thing. But yet, instead of doing something sensible, like taking a jacket or blanket from the raft to cover herself, and in spite of the fact that, like me, she had to be both wet and cold, she continued to stand where she was, deliberately inviting their stares. Not only that, but now she had to start talking, to draw that much more attention on herself.

“What do you think you’re doing?” she cried, pulling Wendy to her. “As if my child wasn’t frightened enough, you have to come charging out of the woods like this with guns—”

She had begun to rub the little girl down with the towel Wendy had worn around her neck, as a seal to keep water spray from getting under the blanket in which she had been wrapped during the raft voyage. The activity may have been purely motherly, but it was almost as effective as if Marie had begun to do the dance of the seven veils in front of our visitors. A couple of them were grinning slightly.

“Well now, I’m sorry,” said the young leader. “Awfully sorry.” His men grinned a little more widely.

“You ought to be!” said Marie, towelling away. “Just because something’s happened to the world doesn’t mean the people can’t be decent! Anybody with any brains would offer to help, instead of bursting out like that, like thugs—”

“We’ll be glad to help,” said the young man. “You don’t understand us, that’s why we came over, to help you—”

“I should think so!” snapped Marie. “That’s more like it. Here, when there’s hardly any people left in the world, those that are left need to stick together. Well, maybe I shouldn’t jump down your throat like that—” She was still continuing to towel Wendy vigorously in her almost-dance, in spite of the fact that Wendy now, plainly, wanted only to be released. “But if you’d just had to swim an icy river like that, you’d be a little upset too, when a bunch of men with guns—”

“Mommy, I’m dry now!” Wendy was protesting, squirming in Marie’s grasp.

“Hold still, dear!” said Marie. “As I was saying, a bunch of men with guns—”

I caught it then, out of the corner of my eye; just a flicker of movement. Suddenly, I saw what was happening, and why Marie had been standing there, chattering and bouncing about to hold their attention.

While she had been putting on her little show, the dogs had been about their own business. Apparently she had trained them well. As long as the eyes of the man it watched were upon it, the dog guarding him stood tensely still, at point. But the moment that attention moved elsewhere for even a fraction of a second, the dog stole forward—one step, two steps, even half a step, as if it was stalking a rabbit lying still and hidden in a cornfield. To begin with, the dogs had been almost as far away from the men as Marie and I were. Now, they had halved the distance between them and our welcoming committee.

Now, it was no longer a case of the men being able to kill all the dogs before the dogs could reach them. They might kill a good half of the dogs, but the other half stood an almost equal chance of reaching them while they were doing that.

In the same moment that I saw the flicker of movement, the man with the gun, at which the movement had been directed, saw it too. Evidently the dog had gotten too far inside our fields of vision to move without being noticed.

“Tek—” shouted the man. “The dogs! Look!” The young leader jerked his eyes from Marie and swept them around the semicircle of half-crouching canines. At the same time the others started to jerk their guns up. But I had already taken advantage of the fact that their attention was off me to sweep up the rifle off the raft into my own hands.

“Hold it!” I shouted.

I had the rifle to my shoulder, aimed at Tek’s belt. The dogs were ready.

“Hold it—just like he says!” barked Tek—if that was the young leader’s full name. He himself stood perfectly still.

His men froze.

“That’s better,” he said, in a calmer voice. He looked once more at Marie and me and smiled; but I could see a little shininess of sweat on his face. A 30.06 slug through the intestines is not a happy prospect; and I was close enough so that even if I was a poor shot, I shouldn’t miss. “That’s much better. You don’t want to waste any of these good dogs, now do you, ma’am? We’ll just back out of here and let you folks go your own way, since that’s what you seem to want. If we can’t be friends”—and he was smiling at Marie alone, now—“then that’s just how it’ll have to be. Sorry, though. It’d have been nice to know you. Now, we’ll just start backing up....”

And he did start backing up. His men imitated him. The dogs immediately followed, step for step, as if invisible threads connected each of them to the man on which the dog focused.

“Hold!” said Marie. The dogs stopped; and the men kept backing, each holding his rifle now in one hand, down by his side and out of the way. I kept my own rifle steady at my shoulder.

The men reached the edge of the trees and slipped back into their shadow, all but Tek, who stopped briefly.

“Keep going,” said Marie.

“Sure. See you sometime,” called Tek.

“Only if we don’t see you first!” answered Marie, grimly.

Tek waved. He paused for a second and looked directly at me. He made a little gesture like tipping a non-existent hat.

“You’re a lucky man!” he called to me. “Don’t anyone ever tell you you’re not!”

There was no sneer in his voice. There did not have to be. His message was clear enough. I was negligible—it was Marie and her dogs who were driving him off. For a second I flared into a rage— and for a second I almost charged out of the water after him, to call him a liar to his face—then that answer-seeking reflex in the back of my mind pounced on his clear intent like Sunday pouncing on a scuttling fieldmouse. He was trying to get me to charge after him in just that fashion. The dogs were not dangerous from a distance without my rifle covering them from behind. If I got out in front they could shoot me, then kill the dogs safely from a distance they had now regained between themselves and the canines.

So I did not rush out, after all. Instead, I laughed. I laughed loudly, hoping he would hear me—but he was already gone into the shadows of the trees, and I could not tell if he was still within earshot or not.

I came out of the water then, but slowly, and handed the rifle to Marie.

“Watch the woods,” I said.

I turned back to haul the raft, safely, far enough out of the water so that the river current could not pull it away until we had unloaded it. Then I took the rifle back from Marie while she rubbed some life back into my body and toweled herself dry. Meanwhile, there had been no further sign of Tek and his men. Marie posted a couple of dogs at the very edge of the woods, on watch; and we turned to unloading the raft.

Once we were unloaded, I built a fire to warm us up. It was only after the fire was going well and Marie had some soup heating on its flames, that I thought to look back across the river to see if the girl and Sunday had witnessed our encounter with Tek and his men. But a glance showed me that we had drifted so far down river in our crossing, that the beach where I had left girl and leopard was now around the bend of the further shoreline, out of sight.

I turned back to the soup, grateful for its filling heat, but feeling a little empty inside all the same.

After I dressed, I scouted with Marie and a few of the dogs to see if the neighborhood was really clear of Tek and his companeros. We found that the woods into which they had gone was actually only a narrow fringe of trees, perhaps a couple of hundred yards in width, paralleling the river. The woods were clear of human life and beyond them rose a small slope to a sort of shallow river bluff, from which we could see over a fairly wide, open, grassy area. There was no sign of Tek and company there, either, and no sign of mistwalls, or anything else, moving. We went back and made camp by the river, where we had landed. Marie and I both figured we deserved a little holiday.

The next day we pushed on east, with me scouting well ahead. A few of the dogs were beginning to take to me, finally—perhaps the water had washed off enough of Sunday’s smell to make me socially acceptable to them—and there were a couple I could trust to obey a few simple commands. Marie drilled them with me; and they responded well. One was a bitch—a sort of large cocker spaniel mix and the more intelligent of the two. The other was a lean, nervous, German shepherd type, male and looking half-starved. The bitch was called Merry and the German shepherd was Cox. They would heel, stand, guard and scout for me in a circle, at a sweep of my arm—and that was pretty good, considering our limited acquaintance.

So, they and I got along pretty well, moving perhaps four hundred yards or so in front of Marie, Wendy and the rest. I was off by myself, as I liked it; but travelling with two dogs was not like travelling with Sunday. They would obey commands; Sunday almost never had—except by accident. They travelled at my pace; I had been used to travelling more or less at Sunday’s. They were deadly weapons I could control. Sunday had been almost uncontrollable and absolutely unpredictable.

But there was one great point of difference that outweighed all their virtues. The crazy cat had loved me—loved me for myself alone. It was a love induced by accident and the time change effect, but nonetheless it was there. And I—I had gotten used to it. Merry and Cox could have been as cheerfully working for Tek at this moment, if Marie had drilled them into obeying him instead of me.

So I put thoughts of Sunday out of my mind—I had not dared to think of the girl from the first. Now I allowed myself the thought that it was lucky she was on the far side of the river, and Tek with his men, on this. Hopefully she would run into some decent people on her side. People being naturally spread out over the spectrum of human character as they were, she had as good a chance of finding good people as she had of finding bad ones. I put her out of my mind, too. No man—and no girl—could have the world just the way they wanted it, always.

By noon of the second day after we had crossed the river, we moved out of the relatively open area beyond the river bluff on this side and began to come on rolling country covered by what was obviously farmland, scattered with deserted-looking farmhouses. The change was gradual enough so that it was impossible for us to tell whether the change from open country to cultivated earth was natural or the result of a time change. But in any case, the appearance of the area did not jibe exactly with Tek’s words about only a “couple of empty towns” on this side of the river. We passed by the deserted-looking farmhouses at a healthy distance; and at no time did the dogs give any kind of alarm.

So three days of travel went by quietly with no sign of Tek and his group, or any other humans, and no sign of trouble. Then, on the morning of the fourth day we spotted a mistwall standing off to our right, and I changed our line of march to angle toward it.