A Catch in Time Page 16

  Catherine thumped her cane on the floor. “That’s not all,” she said sternly. “What happens when we run out of food?”

  “We get more.” Kate glared at her.

  “And when there’s no more to be gotten?”

  “We hunt. Forage.”

  Catherine said very softly, “And what if we’re only able to find inedible animals, and toxic plants?”

  Frustrated, Kate blurted, “Then we’re just fucked, I guess.”

  Catherine nodded gravely. “But we don’t want to be. So we assume the worst now, and plan ahead.”

  Kate glowered. “What are you going to plan for if everything’s gonna be mutated? Hell, even Laura can’t plan on her ba—” She clapped a hand over her mouth, horrified. “Oh, shit. Laura, I didn’t mean that.”

  Laura stared back at her, white-faced.

  “Nonsense.” Catherine barked in the tense silence. “I never said everything was mutating.”

  “Reina’s pups.” Laura was pale. “Two stillborn, one deformed, and the two surviving ones no … good. That’s five out of five.”

  “Laura—” Kate began, uncertain of what to say.

  “Why shouldn’t we suppose that everything will mutate?” asked Laura, fighting back tears.

  “Don’t worry about your baby, Laura,” said Eli. “Everything’ll be okay.”

  “No,” Laura said. “Everything’s not okay. Everything’s really, really wrong.”

  Everyone spoke at once, but Laura stopped them.

  “Listen to me!” she cried. “I know none of you believe what I told you. But it’s all fitting together.

  “What if something broke during the blackout, when the barrier between the physical world and Us came down? What if We can’t get through anymore?

  “If We can’t get through, We aren’t controlling genetic combinations. Things are still reproducing biologically but without guidance.”

  “If that’s true, Laura,” said Josiah, “everything will randomly mutate into extinction.”

  No one could think of anything to say to that. In the silence, they once again became aware of the violent storm. Lightning flared through the window shades and thunder shook the house. The downpour was steady, with occasional sharp gusts lashing rain against the windows.

  Catherine cleared her throat. “I believe I’ll have a sherry.”

  “I’ll get it,” offered Eli. “I think I’ll have some, too. Anyone else?” Kate and Josiah said yes. Laura was drying her tears. “Give me a hand, Laura.” He tugged her off the couch and guided her to the kitchen.

  When they came back with the sherry, Laura smiled her appreciation to Eli, who’d talked ceaselessly while they were in the kitchen to lure her from her dreadful thoughts. But, as she curled herself back into her corner of the couch, she found herself again confronting her latest discovery.

  The way in was gone. Life, as they knew it, was no longer being born.

  What was taking its place?

  CHAPTER 25

  THE STORM RAGED AGAINST THE HOUSE THROUGHOUT the night. By 4:30 a.m., Laura felt she hadn’t slept at all. Snuggled beneath her blankets, she listened to the deluge. No wonder primitive people had personalized the elements; her own heart tried to match the rhythm of the fury lashing through the darkness. Lightning flared as tree branches whipped loudly against the old house. The sudden brightness and wild sounds made her feel vulnerable, cratered a pit of loneliness within her.

  She flung back the covers and dressed quickly in jeans, cotton turtleneck, thick sweater, wool socks, and sheepskin slippers. Quietly, she padded down the stairs of the sleeping house. In the roomy kitchen, she lit the kerosene lamp on the dining table. The table’s rough wood, polished to a sheen with years of use, reflected the glow.

  She stoked the fire in the old cookstove, filtered water into the kettle, and found a cup, spoon, honey, and tea. Shivering, she dragged a worn rocker closer to the stove, then sat with her tea in the stove’s ring of warmth and replayed last night’s thoughts.

  We can’t get through anymore. She was certain. The understanding was visceral.

  She found it difficult to believe she was the only one who remembered the knowledge that had burst upon the world, and yet, she wondered. During the months past, not one person had offered any similar version of her own experience.

  Sipping her tea, she noticed that a curtain was hanging slightly askew, exposing a wedge of dark pane. She stared at the small slice of darkness patterned with silvery raindrops, an intrusion by the wild fury outside. For an instant, the storm and darkness seemed unending, a scene that would remain unchanged as the world died. Quickly, she jumped up and straightened the curtain.

  Laura warmed her hands on her cup as she rocked in the old chair, battling the thought of life severed from its source, the terrible implication to her child. Will its eyes be empty? Her only hope was that her child had been conceived before the barrier had fallen—and been replaced by a barrier against the life force. The slim hope hinged on one question: Did life begin at conception?

  Babies must have been born since the blackout. But babies don’t do much in the first few months. Would anyone notice anything missing if they weren’t looking for it? Would such young eyes reflect that horrible emptiness?

  Motion in the doorway startled her. John Thomas appeared, blond hair tousled, shivering in his pajamas. Reina drooped sheepishly at his side, head down and ears back.

  “Couldn’t you sleep either, John Thomas?”

  John Thomas shook his head. “Too loud. I think the rain’s breaking my window. Can it do that?”

  Laura smiled reassuringly and held her hand out to him. “Come here, John Thomas.”

  To her surprise, he climbed into her lap. She folded her arms around him, flushed with pleasure at his unexpected trust. It was always Kate he chose to snuggle near.

  “Warm enough?” she inquired.

  He nodded and curled himself against her. Reina collapsed to the floor next to them with a soft grunt.

  “It’s a dark and stormy night, all right,” said Laura, with an extra hug, “but I’ve been through lots of storms and I’ve never seen a window break. But if it does, we’ll fix it.”

  “Do we have extra window stuff?”

  “I don’t know, but we could get some.”

  He snuggled tighter. “What if we couldn’t get any more glass?”

  Hearing the tremor in his high voice, Laura realized he was seeking absolutes and would continue questioning every solution until he heard something undeniable. “Well then,” she declared, squeezing him gently, “you see that big pantry door there?”

  He twisted, saw the heavy wooden door, and nodded.

  “We’ll take that door right off its hinges,” she said, “and we’ll put it over the broken window and nail it to the wall with five hundred and forty-seven big, fat nails. How’s that?”

  John Thomas giggled. “That might work.”

  Laura laughed. Resuming her rocking, she hummed an old tune from her childhood, one she’d used to sing to her younger brother, Conrad. As she hummed, cuddling John Thomas, she thought about Conrad. Where was he now? How was he surviving this new world? She knew how ill-equipped Conrad was for anything harsh. He was made for happy times, for laughter and parties, where his easygoing nature caused people to let him coast along.

  Sadness trembled through her humming.

  Kate’s loud yawn preceded her through the doorway. When she appeared, in her too-large plaid robe, its belt loosely tied, Laura silently indicated John Thomas was asleep.

  Kate whispered, “Oops, sorry.”

  “He fell asleep a little while ago,” Laura whispered. “Would you make a place for him on the couch?”

  Kate nodded, and Laura listened to her movements in the living room. Kate was stirring up the banked fire and adding kindling. Laura eased out of the rocking chair. Although John Thomas was small and thin for his age, his limp weight was awkward. She carried him to the now-blanketed couch and co
vered him with the throw Kate handed her.

  At first, Laura and Kate whispered as they added logs to the fire, but it soon became apparent that John Thomas was sleeping soundly.

  “How long have you been up?” Kate asked.

  “Since 4:30. John Thomas came down about an hour later. He was scared the storm might break his window.”

  “It sounds like it might break the walls, too.” Kate rose and stretched, then placed her hands at the small of her back. “Man, what a night!”

  “I was surprised to see him. Usually he goes to you when he’s scared.”

  “Yeah, well.” Kate grinned at her. “He probably found my door locked.”

  “Locked? Why?”

  “Company.” Kate winked. “Josiah dropped by last night. Hey, I don’t suppose you started some coffee?” She disappeared into the kitchen.

  Pain seared Laura’s heart, again and again. It hurt to breathe. Josiah and Kate? How?

  A locked door.

  Thoughts of Kate and Josiah, together, assaulted her; Josiah’s hands on Kate, Josiah’s eyes on Kate, Josiah’s gentle words to Kate. Pain twisted through her stomach into her throat. She pressed her temples to push the visions out of her mind. She couldn’t function with those images inside, but she couldn’t think about anything else.

  Why had Kate done this to her? She knew how she felt about Josiah. How could she not? A dozen memories: Kate’s knowing winks behind Josiah’s back, Kate teasing her about Josiah, Kate looking sideways, her innuendos …

  Kate bringing her pregnancy to everyone’s attention.

  Had Kate done it deliberately? She’d thought, at the time, that Kate might have been using her pregnancy as an excuse not to leave Reno. Now she wondered if Kate had just wanted Josiah to know.

  If the ugly suspicion were true, it meant a mean-spirited Kate had tried to sabotage any chance of romance she might have with Josiah. She couldn’t fathom such a betrayal.

  She forced herself to acknowledge that she had noticed Kate’s attraction to Josiah, and ignored it. Kate may have done the same thing with her. She’d never told Kate about their night, more than a week ago, or confided her feelings, fearing that Kate would blurt it out. Anger and self-pity welled within her.

  Was Kate the reason Josiah had stopped their relationship from going further? Was Kate the one he’d wanted all along?

  She was almost four months pregnant. Even though Josiah had known before they’d slept together, maybe he’d had second thoughts or feared that he would be expected to act as the baby’s father. But he gave no indication of misunderstanding her that thoroughly. In fact, so many of the little things he said showed her that he truly understood her. Her thoughts twisted and tumbled, her heart ached, and visions of Josiah entwined with Kate blinded her with tears.

  “What are we going to do when we run out of coffee?” Kate complained, coming back into the room with a steaming mug.

  Laura grasped the fireplace poker and busied herself with the fire. She kept her face averted and surreptitiously wiped away her tears as Kate settled herself into an armchair.

  “Think the storm’s gonna last all day?” asked Kate innocently.

  Laura shrugged.

  “Sure seems like it. Great, huh? A whole day of being cooped in with the troops.”

  Laura stiffened.

  Kate noisily sipped her coffee. “Something wrong, kiddo? Don’t you feel good?”

  “I’m all right.”

  Kate set her coffee on the hearth, reached out and gently rubbed Laura’s shoulder. “Honey, I’m sorry about what I said last night. I can be so stupid, saying whatever pops into my head, but I really didn’t mean it. Your baby’s going to be just fine. Really.”

  Laura felt completely abandoned. Suddenly, it was too much; their life force cut off from entering the world, earth repopulated by mutated organisms without souls, the unknown condition of the child in her womb. And her forever-love, Josiah, choosing someone else. Tears spilled from her eyes, and her mouth trembled.

  “Aw, honey.” Kate’s voice wavered and her eyes watered at her friend’s distress. She gathered Laura in her arms. “Don’t cry. It’s okay. Everything will be fine.”

  Laura endured the embrace, listened to meaningless words. There was no comfort in them, none to be found in the forsaken world. Even love had been snatched from her. And not just Josiah. There would be no bonding with a soulless infant. She was alone.

  Conrad was all she had left on the planet. Where was he? Hot tears filled her world.

  CHAPTER 26

  MOHAMMED SAT IN THE COPILOT SEAT AND WATCHED every move Mack made. He watched the dials and gauges in front of him and listened to the changing tones of the engines. If he learned to fly this plane, he could escape. Tension knotted his stomach and fear contracted his throat.

  The thought of flying the plane terrified him, but Mack terrified him more, a terror that never left him. Not since the horror in the bloody kitchen, when he’d finally decided to flee from Mack. But Mack never stopped watching him. Every movement of Mack’s body spoke of a readiness to whirl around and seize Mohammed.

  Tension mounted every day, the feeling of being cornered by something huge, menacing. Deadly.

  Chin to chest, from the corner of his eye he watched Mack’s hands on the yoke. Muscular hands. Long fingers. Wiry tufts of black hair at the base of each finger. Mack was watching him. He slid his glance away from Mack’s hands, down to his own. It was all he could do to keep them from trembling.

  How many days had it been? Days of flying and circling, landing, and refueling. Stealing cars and venturing into towns. Everything they did was at Mack’s direction, and under Mack’s cold scrutiny. The idea of losing himself in a crowd, or of dashing into the countryside, was smothered by Mack’s watchfulness. His neck could be snapped with one quick twist of Mack’s powerful hands. And sometimes he felt Mack was waiting for just that.

  The only time Mack left Mohammed and Conrad alone was in the plane, when they were parked on empty stretches of open tarmac. Mack would disappear into a distant hangar. He sometimes thought that Mack just hid himself and watched to see if Mohammed would run. And then Mack would follow, and snap! That would be that.

  As they approached another landing strip, on the edge of a midsized airport, Mohammed noted the land below. Flat ground stretched, all reds and browns, in every direction, with big rocks, maybe small mountains, scattered in the distance. There were no foothills. The craggy humps rose suddenly from the flat land, as though they’d been randomly set down by a giant at play. Smoky haze clung to the western horizon, tinged orange by the late afternoon sun. An occasional glitter in the haze indicated a city crouched within.

  Mohammed watched as Mack banked the plane into a slow descent toward the isolated airport. His own hands ached to grip the copilot control before him as it moved in concert with Mack’s adjustments. Anticipating the touchdown, he tensed, and then they were swaying along the runway.

  “I’ll never get used to that,” Conrad shouted with relief over the decelerating engine noise. Since the first takeoff, he’d refused to sit up front and instead huddled miserably in the back, enduring each takeoff and landing.

  Mohammed, fixing a smile on his face, twisted around, gestured a thumbs-up to Conrad, and wondered whether this parody of normalcy was fooling Mack.

  Conrad laughed. “Ali, you’re a natural for this flying stuff. I bet you’d go nuts at Disneyland.”

  “Yah, Conrad, sure,” he said, neither knowing, nor caring, what Conrad was talking about. Mohammed could not understand Conrad’s ease with Mack. Did Conrad not see what Mohammed saw in Mack’s cold eyes? Did he not feel the same paralysis of will?

  Mohammed needed to understand Conrad, because he had to decide, soon, if he would take Conrad with him when he fled. That decision rested on Conrad’s worth.

  Had he been in his own country, Conrad would have been a simple problem; he would spit on him rather than try to define him. Once betrayed, shame upo
n you; twice betrayed, shame upon me. He should have nothing more to do with Conrad, but… He might overlook opportunity if he abandoned Conrad. He was in an unknown land, among unknown people. Better a known enemy than an unknown friend.

  As the plane rolled to a halt, the answer came in Conrad’s favor: Conrad was not evil, but weak. Weakness, on a perilous journey, was not quite as dangerous as a malicious nature. It was a lesson of his nomadic youth. “Where are we, Mack?” Conrad asked as Mack cut the engines.

  “Wyoming,” Mack replied, then told him and Mohammed to stay put. Jumping out of the plane, he strode the deserted grounds toward a nearby hangar without looking back.

  Conrad came forward and dropped into Mack’s empty seat. He peered out the windows. “Wyoming? This isn’t how I pictured Wyoming.”

  Meaningless words flowed past Mohammed. He had understood Conrad’s question to Mack, but Mack had answered with a strange word. When Conrad repeated the word, it must have meant he had some sense of where they were in this vast country. The mountains, rivers, forests, and grasslands, the innumerable cities, towns, and roads over which they’d flown—so confusing.

  Glancing at the distant hangar, he wondered how long Mack would be gone this time.

  His heart jumped and he sucked his breath. Now? Was he ready? Could he do it?

  He gauged the distance to the building. Could he start the plane, turn it, get it past the curve on which it now sat, and over to a runway? All before Mack could dash out? His breath was rapid as he looked at the building, the fuel gauge, the starter, Conrad.

  Conrad was in the pilot’s seat.

  For all the duplication of the controls before him, Mohammed hadn’t the faintest idea whether they worked, and he had no intention of finding out. Mack flew the plane from the other seat. So would he.

  Mohammed was frantically aware of the passing seconds. What would Conrad do when he suddenly started the plane? Would he stop him? Ruin his plan? Once Mack knew that he was thinking of taking the plane, he would never leave him another opportunity. He might decide it was time to kill him. Mohammed knew there was no time to guess at Conrad’s reaction, no way to quickly explain. Conrad must be left behind. Another glance at the hangar. Still no sign of Mack.