The Traveler (46 page)

Farbeaux watched as Collins nodded his farewell to Jenks and Charlie as he left the center of the camp.

“In case you have failed to notice, my dear colonel, we're not
in
the United States.”

Jack glanced back just before he stooped over and examined the tracks made by the thieving raptor. “Just think of it as Central Park after midnight, Henri.” Jack looked back at the raptor print and then started out.

With a last look at Jenks and Ellenshaw, Farbeaux followed the crazed colonel.

“You don't suppose all of this is an adverse reactionary hallucination to all of those inoculations they gave us, do you?”

Master Chief Jenks looked at Charlie as if he had truly lost it.

“Exactly how many acid trips did you go on in the sixties, and how many resembled this prehistoric menagerie?”

“Well—”

“Never mind, Doc, your answer would probably scare the hell out of me.”

 

19

Jason and his wayward travelers finally broke out into the open. It looked like they had traveled south, but Ryan knew that was very misleading. In all directions in Antarctica you traveled north. No matter your position, and no matter what directions you thought you were traveling in, you were always headed north, there just simply was no other way to travel. All roads led north. He stopped running as his lungs cried for relief from the purified oxygen of the times. The ash cloud was now so heavy that he was fearful of breathing in some of the volcanic particulate that would eventually lead to his death.

“Get down!” Mendenhall screamed as he pushed Anya, Sarah, and Virginia to the thickly ash-covered ground.

The bird missed Ryan's head by mere inches as it swooped out of the sky. Jason hit the dirt and then saw the shadow of the giant condor as it pumped its twenty-three-foot wingspan to regain altitude. Ryan had felt the tremendous rush of air as the five-hundred-pound bird nearly swept him up.

“Holy crap!” Will said as he hustled the women to their feet.

“Let's take cover over by those rocks,” Ryan yelled, and made sure everyone was on the same thinking track as himself.

Once they were hunkering around the large boulders, they saw the enormous condor swoop low again some distance away. They then heard the sound of rapid gunfire once more, thankfully quite some distance away.

“I guess those Russian assholes have met Tweety bird,” Mendenhall said as he winked at a frightened Virginia.

“The ones that survived Sylvester the Cat, you mean?” Sarah said, not wanting to but smiling nonetheless.

“Exactly,” Will agreed. He looked at a shaken Jason Ryan. “What now, boss?”

“If the colonel and the others were close by, they had to have heard the gunfire. We have a choice here: hide, or go and find them.”

“Speaking for myself, I think I would prefer to stay in the open and not hunker down as you Americans like to say.”

“Yeah, open sounds good to me,” Will agreed.

“I think you're right.”

“Smell that?” Sarah said as she looked around the best that she could through the falling ash cloud. The earth continued to rumble beneath her feet.

“What, the smell of primordial terror?” Mendenhall asked. “Well, I'm afraid to disappoint you, but that's me. I may have had an accident in my drawers.”

Sarah ignored Will's foxhole humor and then stood up and looked to what she assumed was the west.

“No, I'm smelling chlorine in the air. Something else.”

“What—” Jason started to ask.

“Methane and sulfur.” Sarah sniffed the air again. “Mount Erebus and the others are getting ready to blow.”

“Damn Niles and his theory about Erebus setting off a chain reaction in the climate parameters of this time frame.”

“What theory?” Ryan asked, not liking the sound of Virginia's voice.

“That the eruption of Erebus and her sister volcanoes brought on one of the deadliest ice ages in natural history.”

“Okay, that should give us a little time, right?” Ryan asked hopefully, but his hope was dashed as soon as he saw Virginia's face go slack as the earth rumbled and shook.

“Before the ice comes, Jason, it is preceded by fire. Lots and lots of fire, earth shaking, mountains exploding, basically nature saying enough is enough.”

“How long?” Anya asked for the others.

It was Sarah who answered. “Hell, as far as timing goes, we couldn't have picked a worse time or place to go sightseeing.” The earth shook harder. “We're already on borrowed time, and the tax man is at the door.”

Ryan looked around and decided on a course. “That way,” he said.

“Why that way?” Mendenhall inquired as he assisted Virginia to her feet.

“Because it's in the opposite direction of that.” He pointed to the sky many miles distant.

At that very moment a hard wind moved the ash particulate away and they all saw it. Erebus's smoke plume was as red as Hades and as thick as any they had ever seen. For emphasis the ground shook again, almost knocking them from their feet.

“Atom bombs, crazed Russians, alien invasions, monsters in the Amazon—when are we going to get a library research gig?” Will asked, turning to see no one.

The others had already started following the commander, and Will cursed and hurried to catch up.

*   *   *

Ryan pulled up when he managed to briefly spy the small rise of rock just ahead through the irritating ashfall. In just an hour the ground had been covered by over a foot of the abrasive particulate.

“There, we'll hold up and rest. I don't know about you people but my system is used to a little more pollutants in the air I guess. This clean stuff is killing me.”

“I agree, we need to collect our bearings before we run into something we can't escape from,” Virginia said as she quickly checked Sarah's scorched arm. She smiled at the diminutive geologist as she studied her worried face. “Don't worry, I think Jack can outsmart any big pussycats.”

Sarah smiled and shook her head. “It's not Jack. I was thinking about all of those lectures in school about the many theories of how the major ice age was brought on. I'm afraid I have to ascribe to the nutcase theories that Erebus was the cause of it all. It just happened to freeze the rest of the world before its own home turf.”

“Fascinating, but can we move to a little higher ground for defense before we discuss further the shortcomings of modern science?” Ryan asked.

“Defense?” Will asked as he followed Anya and the others.

“Yeah, I think we may have to start making some bows and arrows.”

“That's what I like about working with the best organization in the world: we have all of the high-tech gadgets at our disposal.”

*   *   *

The two drones separated just short of the large canopied forest. The round, four-engined drones were capable of ten hours of continuous flight but the limitations imposed on her viewing systems were worrying the master chief. Capable of infrared or night vision, telescopic or laser-designated targeting, the drones were state of the art and had been constructed by the mechanical engineering department at Group.

“I'm going to put number one on hover just west of the black forest there. That damn ashfall is retarding the efficiency of the plastic propellers.”

“I can handle flying that thing, Master Chief,” Charlie said as he spared a look from the radar system of the defense pods.

“You just concentrate on keeping those refugees from Colonel Sanders from getting too close. I'll play flyboy.”

The two remote viewing systems were designed by Niles Compton's special projects division, the very same division Jenks himself was to take over, if and when he survived this ordeal. They came equipped with night vision, three different telephoto lenses, infrared detection, and laser targeting. A little redundant in Jenks's experience, but he had to admit the drones were very nearly self-flyable. Jenks followed the compass heading that was currently giving him erratic readings, forcing him to position the drone by eye, which was growing increasingly difficult because of the thick ashfall.

“Well, the infrared systems work, there's the colonel and Froggy.”

Charlie chanced a wrathful rebuke by Jenks and leaned over and saw the aerial view of Jack and Henri as they made their way slowly across the small savanna toward the area where the explosion was seen. He even saw Henri look up at the passing drone. He smiled when the Frenchman shot them the bird.

“Damn French have no respect,” the master chief mumbled as he ordered the drone forward. The second drone was taking up a preprogrammed station to the opposite side of the large wooded and jungle area.

They watched as the second drone slowly crept in on the smoking site at over three hundred feet. The monitor showed small fires still burning, which ignited a white blur on the camera lenses. Jenks switched to passive viewing. He hovered just inside the woods and over the tree canopy. Once he was over the site he used the telephoto lens to try to penetrate the sparse areas where the giant trees didn't shut off their view.

“Damn it, this is like to trying to catch a glimpse of a hot woman getting dressed through a keyhole.”

Charlie looked from the monitor and at the master chief with concern. He adjusted his wire-rimmed glasses.

“Oh, don't give me that look, it's not like you never tried to peek at a good-lookin' lady through a keyhole.”

“I most certainly have not. Why, I would—”

“Whoa, someone screwed the pooch,” Jenks said, cutting Charlie's indignant response short.

Ellenshaw looked at the monitor and saw the small opening through the canopy and the three mangled bodies on the ash-covered ground. The red blood soaked through the ash, giving them a clear idea of their condition.

“Looks like whoever they are they ran into something that didn't like them being there.”

“Stop joking, we know who has the only access to the doorway back home. Those can only be our people down there,” Charlie said as he raised the radio and called Jack. He informed them of what they saw and were ordered to cover them as they entered the forest.

“Look, Doc, since you're not a military man you don't understand the humor of scared men.”

Charlie realized what the master chief was saying and then slowly nodded. “Sorry for biting your head off.”

Jenks laughed as he adjusted the hover mode on the second drone. “Is that what you call biting my head off, Doc? Looks like I'm going to have to give CPO training on how to talk to people. No one can chew ass like a chief petty officer.”

“Yeah,” Ellenshaw said, still leery about the master chief.

Suddenly the static picture on the monitor went wild. The view skewed from a still shot of the tree canopy to a wildly spinning shot of the ash-colored sky, and then the ground and the sky again. Jenks fought with the toggle in an attempt to control the spinning drone.

“Doc, get the other drone up higher in altitude so I can see what the hell's wrong with this damn thing.”

Ellenshaw quickly turned the control knob on the hovering first drone and the view on the second monitor rose with the plastic craft. He didn't have to adjust anything else as the machine rose to three hundred feet.

“This is ridiculous!” Jenks said loudly as he spit his cigar stub from his mouth.

On the screen both men watched as a giant condor with a wingspan of a Cessna dove once more for the drone. The bird missed on the second pass as Jenks moved the drone out of the giant's path. On the second monitor it showed the wings nearly miss the flying craft. The vortex shook the drone and almost knocked it from the sky.

“Damn chickens have an air force, too?” Jenks said as he dipped the rounded nose of the drone over and dove for the tree canopy below. He would try to get her close, too close for the large bird to follow. “Hit return on that panel. We don't need to lose both drones out there.”

Charlie did as he was told and then he watched the view of the first drone move away and then start back toward the camp. Meanwhile Jenks was watching for the return of the great bird.

“Do you mind telling me what in the hell that was?”

“It looked like an exact duplicate of the species of California condor that is close to extinction in our time. Only much, much larger.”

“Well, they look pretty damn healthy to me in this one.”

On the monitor the giant flew close over the drone and then vanished high into the falling ash overhead.

“Inform the colonel he not only has to watch for chickens, he's now got something real freakin' big in the air large enough to carry both him and Froggy away.”

The earth shook far more violently than ever before as Charlie made the radio call.

*   *   *

Jason had managed to wedge everyone into a crevice on the rock face of a small hill. The area was covered by giant trees and had good ground cover. He and Will had cut up small branches and made a small stockade area that covered them from the ashfall, which had blanketed them all until they were a sickly white. Once they were all inside the makeshift fort, Ryan sat hard on the grass and ash-covered ground. He shook his head and the ash flew from his dark hair. He took a deep breath, not really wanting to go into how desperate their situation was.

As he looked around at not only the people he was responsible for, but who were also his very close friends, he knew they could all handle the situation without losing their composure. Will, Virginia, and Sarah had actually been in worse situations, and Anya was a trouper who faced death every day in the Middle East. No, he was worried about how he was projecting his command. Thus far he had managed to get everyone out of harm's way for the moment, but as for a plan, he was at a loss. Maybe the colonel was right, maybe he was destined to always be an Indian and not a chief. That thought used to give him comfort, but since being around Jack, Carl, and Will, he had become someone he never used to be—a responsible officer. He wanted the chance to prove that those good men had rubbed off on him.