Beyond the flashback, p.9
Beyond the Flashback, page 9
“Sorry, it’s just that ...” She swiped the tears from her eyes. “That’s the first truly hopeful news we’ve had since—well, since the start of the Flashback.” She jolted abruptly, touching Sammy’s outstretched arms. “I’ve got to tell Erik!”
And then she was gone, hurrying off toward the throng of kids as Sammy watched her go and Williams watched Sammy—who, sensing he was being watched, straightened suddenly and cleared his throat.
“You’ll excuse me, of course. I—I didn’t realize—”
“That she’s spoken for?” Williams chuckled slightly. “Well, that depends on your point of view.”
Sammy nodded as though he understood, his mouth hung slightly open. “So is that a ‘yes’ or a ‘no?’”
Williams moved to speak then paused, an image having come unbidden to his mind: an image of an Asian woman in a traditional Vietnamese dress standing utterly alone on what appeared to be an outdoor stage. No—not alone. He was there, too. Himself, Williams. He was seated on a stool some distance away with a guitar in his hands and a rifle at his feet. And then the crowd began to cheer—for he had begun to pick and to strum—and the woman had turned to face him (smiling broadly, toothily), and the vision was over—having passed as quickly as the boy with the magnifying glass but having affected him thrice fold.
“It’s both,” he said at last, slapping Sammy’s shoulder. “Now why don’t you tell me about that bus ... because believe me when I say, we’re going to need it.”
Morning spread across the prairie warm and clear, as clear as Radio Free Montana, which trotted out some Loretta Lynn as Williams ladled beans onto the kids’ paper plates and Sammy prepared the school bus and Sheila bounced back and forth between the two helping as best she could.
They say to have her hair done Liz flies all the way to France / And Jackie’s seen in a discothèque doin’ a brand-new dance / And the White House social season should be glitterin’ an’ gay ...
And then they were off, the children in the bus and the bus moving at a crawl, while Williams, on foot, took point with his rifle and Sheila followed close behind and Peter and Samantha brought up the rear.
But here in Topeka the rain is a fallin’ / The faucet is a drippin’ and the kids are a bawlin’ / One of ‘ems a toddlin’ and one is a crawlin’ / And / One’s on the way ...
So, too, did they make excellent progress, travelling all the way to Niarada before Williams held up a sweaty hand, indicating the caravan should stop—then just stood there, listening. At last he knelt and touched the ground, even as Sheila crept closer and asked, somewhat tentatively, “What is it?”
He scanned the slopes to their right and seemed to nod gravely. “That’s what I thought,” he said, but didn’t immediately elaborate. He stood and faced the bus. “Sammy! Keep her parked but do not shut it off. Peter, Samantha, one of you mind the front. We’ll be right back.”
And then he and Sheila were scaling the slopes until they crested a hill and saw what Sheila at first took to be a mirage—it couldn’t possibly be anything else. For what they saw was a convoy—a wagon train—which stretched for miles along the highway and seemed to consist of every type of vehicle imaginable: motor homes and travel trailers, semi-trucks, bulldozers, all of them moving at a crawl and belching fumes, heading along Highway 12 which would become 28, heading to Barley only the roundabout way, which would take them through Rollins and Somers and Kalispell; which would cause them to arrive later, perhaps by as much as a day.
“Jesus—is it ...?”
“No,” said Williams. “It’s not ... what do we call them? The enemy?”
“The caravan that took out Billings? I’d say so.”
Williams shook his head. “It’s not big enough, for one. Look, see the lack of military equipment? I mean, there’s some, I can see that, a few armored personnel carriers, but nothing like what the pilot reported.”
“What’s that? There, on the side ...”
He squinted at where she’d indicated, and to his shock and consternation saw what appeared to be a swastika painted on the transport’s armor. “Jesus. But look, see? It’s like they’ve tried to scratch it out.”
“Either way, it doesn’t put me in a mind to amble out and say ‘hi.’”
“Not so much, I agree. Regardless, they’re taking the long way while we’ll be cutting through the wilderness. So we’ll be in Barley and amongst friends when they arrive. I say we hold off on contact until then.”
“You’ll get no argument from me,” said Sheila.
“All right, then. Let’s go tell the others.” And then they climbed back down the hill.
Ank awakened and yet could not see, could not breathe, could not move. Was he still dreaming? No, of that he was quite certain; his head hurt, for one thing, as though someone had hit him with a great hammer. He reared up suddenly, the dirt cascading down the sides of his snout like sand, and looked around: a dead were-raptor lay nearby, half-buried in rubble, and beyond that, another.
He rose his entire body with a groan and shook himself off, causing a great cloud of dust to dissipate on the wind. There were only two of them—the others were either buried where he couldn’t see or had fled after the collapse of the cliff face. Either way, they were no longer a threat, at least not for now.
And yet ... the world had changed, he could tell. He had changed. Something inside him had awakened, had cleared. It was almost as if the blow to his head had jarred him into a different state of being, a higher level of consciousness. He froze suddenly, unable to process what had just entered his mind ... unable to fully grasp the enormity of it.
For his name was Sebastian—he remembered it with perfect clarity now. And he remembered something else: a place—Paradise, Montana—where everything that had ever been important to him still lay beneath the sun. A place the finding of which was more important than anything—more important than Tanelorn, more important than the army in the east, more important than his best friend.
A place he had to get to right now—to which he would virtually run if he had to. A place from which he never planned to return.
VI
As it turned out, there was a road directly north at where Highway 28 bent east—a dirt road. It even had a couple crude signs, one of which read REDNECK HIGHWAY and the other BARLEY HOT SPRINGS: 22 MILES. Williams couldn’t figure it, even after consulting his maps; for one, there was the Santiago River, which stood between them and Barley and would need a bridge in order for the road to make any sense. But a bridge for a dirt road? It seemed unlikely.
“It does say Redneck Highway,” said Sheila. “Redneck Bridge is probably a plywood ramp propped up with cinderblocks.”
“Someone’s idea of a joke, maybe,” said Sammy, and stood up from where they’d all knelt around the map.
Williams remained crouched, squinting down the lane. “But look at it ... it runs just as straight as an arrow, and for a good distance, too. It’s not even wash-boarded.” He stood and peered down the state highway. “One thing’s for sure ... if we follow 28, it’s going to take us 2 to 3 times longer to get there.”
Peter stepped forward with a quizzical look on his face. “With all due respect, I’m not seeing what the hurry is, frankly. Last we heard the—the enemy, was in Billings. Isn’t that a good distance from here?”
“Yes and no,” said Williams. “But remember, they’re motorized.” He glanced at Sammy. “And something tells me they’re not stuck in first gear. But it’s not just that. We’re running low on supplies, the stuff we picked up in Lonepine notwithstanding. Besides, we’ll need to get to Barley well ahead of the enemy if we’re going to arrive at any sort of battleplan. No,” He stared down the dirt road again. “We’ve come this far on blind faith; we’ll make it the rest the distance the same way.”
“Faith isn’t going to build a bridge if none is there,” said Peter.
“And yet it might, Mr. Romero. It just might,” said Williams.
And then he was again taking point as Peter and Sheila and Sammy and Luna exchanged nervous glances ... before following him at last onto the dusty byway.
Ank ran—his wounds from the terror birds throbbing and protesting, his tourniquet of blankets having long since fallen off. He wanted to get there before nightfall—before the light receded from the sky and his eyes began to fail, before he possibly even changed his mind. He ran as he had never run previously, testing his new body and its limits under duress, pushing it in ways he had never pushed before, tasking it with what seemed an impossible end: crossing a 30-mile stretch of badlands to reach the town of Paradise by the close of a day almost three-quarters over.
And as he ran, he remembered (or thought he did) the details of a life prior—a life which had been full and interesting and robust, in which he had found his work and his love ... but which he had outlived long before he had ever died and awakened in the beast; which he had outlived long before the Flashback.
Nor did he run the entire distance alone, for as he re-crossed the Camas Prairie he came upon a most unusual sight: a Union Pacific train, dieseling across the wastelands as though there’d never been an apocalypse or a collapse of civilization as they’d known it. And, as it was moving relatively slow, he veered alongside it and kept pace—but he did more than keep pace, really; rather, he made something of a sport of racing the thing, pouring on the speed so that he drew even with the engine’s cab, where he saw a bearded man in coveralls extend an arm out the window in what seemed a gesture of goodwill.
And then Ank was falling back, back, his armored body growing weary, the calloused pads of his feet aching, so that he was even with the caboose—until it, too, moved on down the tracks without him ... leaving him to pant and thirst in the desert sun.
Exhausted. Dispirited. Alone.
By the time they entered what his map called Shadow Canyon, Williams estimated they had about two hours of light left. As for the Santiago River, they heard it before they saw it (for the world had grown eerily silent since the Flashback), rushing and bubbling, swirling and sluicing, until they rounded a craggy bend and saw it laid out before them—beautiful in its untamed wildness, bursting as though in flood, and, having no bridge, utterly impassable.
“I don’t get it,” said Sheila, exhausted. “Who builds a road and then runs it straight into a raging river?”
Williams peered at the opposite bank, where the dirt road resumed. “If I had to guess I’d say there’s a dam upriver, which would have allowed passage—in, say, a 4x4—whenever it was closed.” He sneered and spat. “It’s a ‘Redneck Highway,’ indeed.”
“Any chance we could ford it using the bus?” asked Samantha. The look on her face as she studied the boulders on both sides of the river suggested she already knew the answer.
“No way,” said Sammy, looking at the same. “We’d be lucky to get a quarter of the way across before a wheel got stuck in the rocks. Then there we’d be ... high and dry and with a boatload of kids.”
“There has to be a way,” said Sheila.
Peter stepped forward, hands on his hips, and examined the river. “Let’s see,” He wetted a finger and pretended to draw an equation in the air. “Nope. There doesn’t appear to be a way.” At last he turned to face Williams. “Any more bright ideas, cowboy?”
All eyes turned toward Williams as the river raged and the sun continued to sink. At length he set down his rifle and eased the backpack from his shoulders. “Just one,” he said, retaking up his weapon. “Something I was planning on doing when we reached Barley, anyway.” He looked at Sheila, knowing that if anyone tried to stop him it would be her. “See, a mistake was made when we left Ank behind—a mistake I’ve been trying to reconcile ever since Lonepine. I don’t know, but it’s like—it’s like I had a lapse in faith ... a lapse in brotherly love, something; one we’re paying for even now.” He paced back and forth with his rifle, trying to figure it out, trying to find the right words. “I read the tea leaves wrong—misinterpreted the entrails—whatever. But the fact is,” He looked at them one by one. “Ank was meant to be with us now. He was meant to ford us across that river. And the only reason he isn’t ... is because I failed our friendship.” He paused as a drop of rain flecked his nose and the clouds rumbled gently overhead. “Surely you can feel it, just as I do. The feeling that ... we’re being tested. That the Flashback was not just an apocalypse in the physical sense. It was an apocalypse in the spiritual sense. That there’s more at play here than dinosaurs and strange lights in the sky—aliens, whatever—that the battle has now been joined by something else entirely. Something, I don’t know–”
“Dear God, he’s going to say it,” protested Peter.
“Yes, yes, I am,” said Williams rapidly, and added: “Something divine. And I guess what I’m trying to tell you all now, especially you, Sheila, and you, Luna, is that ... well, I’m being called to go find Ank.”
A silence settled over the group that was hard to define as the river breathed and the sky continued to darken.
“What a bunch pseudo-spiritual horseshit,” Peter exclaimed.
“He’s right, Will, you can’t be serious,” said Sheila.
“A damn stupid idea, is what it is,” added Sammy. “If someone has to go, let it be me. Anyone can drive that bus. But not anyone can use that rifle the way they say you can.” He cocked his pistol in a move that stunned everyone, but didn’t raise it. “I won’t let you do it, Will. I’m sorry.” He glanced at Sheila as if for confirmation and she nodded intensely. “The way I see it is, I’ve got a responsibility too. And if you won’t hold the group together then I guess I’ll have to.”
Williams stared at him for what seemed a long time before finally appearing to relent.
“Okay,” he said at last, and shrugged. “We’ll try to build a raft ...”
“Now you’re talking!” said Sammy. He shot a sidelong glance at Sheila. “He’s talking now, am I right?”
Sheila began to nod and smile in a flood of relief.
And then a gunshot rang out and everyone jumped—and when the smoke had cleared Williams was standing with his rifle raised, although he lowered it quickly to prevent further alarm. Sammy, meanwhile, lifted his wildly trembling gun hand and merely looked at it, for Williams had shot the weapon clean from his grasp.
“I’m sorry, too,” said Williams. “Now here’s what I want you to do ...”
He could walk, let alone run, no more, and yet it didn’t matter: He’d made it to the cemetery in Paradise. Now all he could do was to collapse beneath its entry arch and catch his breath—as the crows scattered and the sun continued to sink and the storm clouds gathered in the west. Again, it didn’t matter: he’d crawl the rest of the way if he had to. He knew precisely where they were—by the maple tree, just a sapling on the day of the last funeral—not far from where he lay. And yet, to his amazement, he was able to stand; and thus he used what strength he had left to make his way to their graves.
Nor had anything changed since last he’d been there, including the initial shock he’d always felt when the names upon the markers first jumped out at him: Mary Lynn Crenshaw, Devoted Wife and Mother, 1932–1984; Tamara Ray Crenshaw, Beloved Daughter, 1965–1986, James Roy Crenshaw, Beloved Son, 1968–1991. Actually, that wasn’t true: the tombstones themselves had changed—they’d become weathered and eroded by the elements to the point that the inscriptions were difficult to read. The important thing was, they were still there—they hadn’t been replaced by a stand of cycad trees or otherwise blasphemed by the Flashback. Not yet, anyway, for who knew what turn the anomaly might yet take, nor what the lights in the sky might still have in store, nor even what powers greater than they might yet deign to do with the world.
For there were powers greater than they, of that he had become convinced. But they were powers that would have to unfold their grand design—if design it even was—without him, for he was through; he was finished. He had come back to this place to die. But also, also, to remember: for he had been a man long before he had become a dinosaur—a man named Sebastian Crenshaw, who had wielded the power of the atom bomb in his soft, pink hands and had worked on projects which might have decided the fate of millions. A man who had found his passion and his one, true love—Mary Lynn—who had fathered two bright and beautiful children; and who had lived a life even the gods might envy ... until time had taken it all away.
Not the Flashback, not the lights in the sky, just Time.
The ultimate equalizer. The ultimate enemy.
Mary Lynn, where are you now?
But the grave markers held no answer—nor the darkening sky, nor the wind which had just begun to blow. And it was only then that a tidal wave of memories at last assailed him, memories of her and of them, of holidays and special occasions, of births and deaths and rites of passage, of flying kites on a blustery autumn day.
He froze under the weight of it all, under the weight of his own body, the armored plating, the clubbed tail like an anvil.
... of love and of making love. And what it meant to move through the world as light as a feather; in a body which was as soft as it was agile; a body which had been his and his alone—not shared with the beast, the animal, the monster. Not a prison of thick, sluggish blood and even thicker bone. And it was here that he would have cried had he only possessed the right kind of tear ducts—would have sunk his face in his hands had he only the right kind of mobility.
And thus he did the only thing he could do, which was to lash out at anything and everything— ramming a nearby tombstone with his armored head, knocking a concrete sphere from its pedestal with his clubbed tail, pouncing upon a box marker with all his weight. And as he did so the rain came down in a veritable torrent, the clouds having burst at long last—spattering his armor, running in rivulets between his spikes, so that he at last crumpled at the foot of the graves and curled into a ball, thinking, with his eyes squeezed shut, that he only wanted to die at last and to join them wherever they were; and thinking, too, about Williams and the others, wondering where they presently were and how they’d ford the Santiago River without him ... and communicating, at last, what he intended to be his final message, although he knew it would never reach them. Him. His friend.
