Authors: Lisa Dawn Wadler
They knew friends fought and could do nothing to aid them. Boomer had begun to wonder if Jeff was mistaken about hearing gunshots. No sign of additional forces, or even scouts, had been seen all day.
It was a shock when Samantha pulled him against the side of the hut. Her lips moved to say, “Three o’clock, incoming.”
Boomer shifted to peer behind the hut and caught sight of nearly twenty men walking through the trees. No battle formation and no alertness in their strides. Even with the quick glance, he caught sight of the tattoos that marked them as warrior-priests.
He caught her eyes and mouthed, “The one in the center.”
She nodded in silent agreement.
The man in the center was clearly the leader. In his hands, he carried a unique weapon. The massive sword was longer than the rest, and the man bore the vicious dragon symbol on his leather tunic and his skin. Boomer eyed the impressive weapon from the covering of the side of the hut.
The sword might make a nice wedding present for Faolan,
he decided.
No words were needed, and they both knew he was the one to be taken down first. The rest of the enemy’s forces had lost cohesion after their squad leader fell. They could only hope the same result would happen here.
Boomer waited until he could hear the sound of their footsteps on the dry ground. With a quick gesture to Samantha, he crouched and prepared to fire around the side of the hut. When Sam was also in the ready, she looked back to see him.
Her lips moved with no sound, “I have your back. On the count of three, we step out and take them down.” Her hand moved: one finger, two fingers, and when three fingers pointed down, Boomer jumped and fired.
The gunfire was deafening in the quiet field, but he heard Samantha command. “We have fleeing warriors approaching from behind.”
Boomer kept his focus on the approaching force, certain she would handle the men fleeing a losing battle at the keep. The only hope was that their ammunition would hold out since they were stuck in the middle.
Chapter 23
Samantha struggled to open her eyes and fought to make her limbs obey the command to move. The effort only resulted in a weak groan from her parched throat.
“Shhh. Don’t move, Sam.” Boomer’s voice floated to her ears from seemingly far away.
“What happened?” Her voice was soft and weak and not at all what she expected to hear.
“You have a fever.”
That’s ridiculous.
She had never been sick and didn’t plan to start in the middle of a battle.
A good soldier doesn’t become ill during a fight. Father would never tolerate such behavior. But a good soldier also doesn’t lie down in the middle of a fight.
She was flat on her back, naked and covered in blankets.
Definitely not appropriate for a fight.
Cool water bathed her head and eased some of the ache. She whispered, “I need my gun.”
“Battle’s over and has been for two days,” Boomer began. His soft deep voice told her of the men who fell from their gunfire; men who fled the battle at the keep as well as those who had been coming to finish it. Two of the warriors had made it through the barrage of bullets. As a pair, they had killed the two, but she had been lightly cut on the right arm. Within hours, a fever had set in, and the cut had become red and inflamed. She winced after touching the bandage on her arm.
“Two days” rang through her mind. “Two days” had meaning even in the fog of the fever. When she remembered why, she prayed clarity had not come too late. “Boomer, we need to move,” Samantha whispered and again struggled to lift her body.
“No way.”
“Jeff and Efraim are coming today.” She gasped for breath. “They’re coming to look for signs of gunfire.”
“I’m afraid to move you, Sam. You’ve been unconscious for almost a day.”
She could hear the worry in his voice and could see the strain of fatigue in his face. She insisted, “We need to hide.”
As if summoned by the conversation, she heard horses in the distance. Consequence and paradox danced in her mind at the thought of her men finding them. It was too soon. Fear coursed through her weakened body at the change it would make to the timeline.
Boomer peered through the gaps in the wooden structure and turned to look down at her and nod. Just as she had feared, Jeff and Efraim were in the meadow.
“I’ll ride the tree line and look for signs of, well, of anything. I want your boots on the ground checking for shell casings. Check that hut while you’re at it.” Jeff’s voice rang through the shelter.
They could hear Efraim’s footfalls as he walked the area outside. A part of her cringed at being found too weak to even sit up much less unable to run. She and Boomer sat still when he pushed open the door to their hiding spot.
Before she could utter a sound, Boomer pulled Efraim inside and closed the door without a sound. Confusion danced in his pale blue eyes.
“You were . . . I saw you . . .” Efraim stuttered.
Boomer smiled. “Yes, you did. We are future us, or something like that. In less than two weeks, Sam and I go back to the lab to capture UNK005. We came back here via the door you came through. Trust me enough to know it’s a long-ass complicated story.”
In a way, she was glad it was Efraim. Based on conversations they had had weeks before, he had a solid, if rudimentary, understanding of physics. He also had the tendency to think before he reacted.
When Boomer had finished his quick explanation of how they were there, he offered a brief summation of their end of the battle and her fever.
“I need you to keep quiet about us. Be grateful the major can’t lecture you on the risks of interfering with the timeline, so don’t say a word.” She should have been insulted at the comment but knew she had a tendency to prattle on when she was excited or adamant about something.
The thought struck her that what they were experiencing was also written in the past. Jeff had claimed Efraim withheld something from him on the day they had inspected the far pastures seeking signs of gunfire. No bodies were found nearby because Boomer had dragged them all quite a distance away, a task that had taken him the better part of the prior day. No traces had been found, but Efraim had been distant from that moment on. She finally knew why.
Boomer grabbed Efraim’s shirt and pulled the man close. “I need you to get me antibiotics for the fever. Ask the women what to apply to an infected wound and get me some of that, too.”
Efraim took in the small, crowded hut and settled his pale-blue gaze on her. She whispered, “I’ll be fine.” Confidence filled her at the certainty in her voice. She knew Efraim would do whatever needed to be done because he was one of the best men she had ever met. She had no doubt that if something had happened to either of them before the appropriate time to come out of hiding and join time, Efraim would have spoken to her. His heart was too great to allow her or Boomer to die before rejoining time.
“She won’t be fine unless you do what I told you to do,” Boomer snarled.
Her eyes closed as Efraim agreed to everything Boomer demanded. The man promised to return later in the day alone and with more food. The rest of the whispered conversation escaped her notice, and she smiled as the case of the missing antibiotics had been solved and let sleep take her away.
Boomer opened the door to the hovel and raised his hand in greeting while Efraim climbed off of the horse. Spying the large bag tied to the beast, he knew that Efraim had come through for them, again.
“Sorry I’m so late. Took me a while to get away unnoticed,” Efraim said, handing the sack to Boomer.
“What was your excuse today?”
“I needed some alone time. I know, totally weak,” he laughed. “Jeff must think I’ve lost it.”
“Tell me he brought lunch,” Samantha called from the door to their temporary home. Despite his protests that she stay in bed, she had dressed in anticipation of Efraim’s arrival.
“Lunch, dinner, plus enough for tomorrow,” Efraim replied. “How are you feeling?”
“Much better thanks to you,” she replied. “Two days of antibiotic injections have made a huge difference. Though that salve you brought for the cut smells like crap.”
Efraim chuckled and wrinkled his nose after their hug. “Yes, it does.”
Boomer shook his head when Samantha smacked Efraim’s arm and proceeded to set out some of the food for a needed meal. Taking care of Samantha the last couple of days had prevented him from sneaking into the keep. Their supplies were running dangerously low.
They all settled on the ground, though Efraim refused to touch their food. “Tell me what’s happening,” Samantha requested. “The fever has left me a bit blurry.”
Boomer nodded as the man detailed the post-battle operations that included removing dead bodies, Miller working his butt off in the infirmary, and life beginning to get back to normal. He had missed all of that time stuck on his back with a wounded leg.
He saw Samantha’s mind process the details and the moment she recognized what needed to be handled. After so many years together, he could read her expressions perfectly.
“Jeff is going to push you about what you saw here, in this field, the day you two came to investigate. Under no circumstance are you to disclose our presence. Do you understand me, soldier?”
“No offense, Major, but I figured that part out on my own,” Efraim retorted with an exaggerated eye roll. “Jeff has already pushed multiple times, and I finally told him he needed to leave it alone because the safety of the future depends on it.” Efraim held up his hands to stop Samantha from yelling at him. “Jeff wouldn’t stop, starting calling me a liar, and the moment threatened to get out of hand. Once I put it like that, he backed off and let it be.”
Samantha glanced at Boomer, and he nodded acceptance of Efraim’s explanation.
Efraim added, “I don’t like that Jeff now thinks he’s lost his mind and believes he most likely hallucinated the sounds of gunfire during the battle. I’m concerned he’ll be self-diagnosing PTSD.”
Boomer laughed but stopped when Samantha glared at him.
“Jeff and I will talk a few days from now, and I’ll tell him to leave you alone, that you must have had a valid reason to make such a bold statement,” Samantha reassured him.
Boomer interjected, “Do you reassure him that he’s not loony?”
“Yes, I do,” Samantha answered with a light laugh. “Soon enough we’ll be able to put the pieces together for him.”
Boomer handed Samantha more of the fresh, early berries and encouraged her to eat. She’d gone too long without a full meal for his peace of mind. He worried for her and for the baby that would someday call him Uncle.
Efraim stood and paced the area in front of the hut. Boomer read the questions in his eyes and asked, “What is it?”
“Somehow I don’t think you can answer this one, my friend.” Efraim stopped in front of Samantha and crouched before her. “Is this time safe?”
Boomer held up a hand to prevent her from answering. After a day of medicine, she’d been back to theorizing and driving him crazy. “Most likely, though, she’ll need her laptop to confirm stability. Both UNK005s are buried here and will return with us to the keep in less than two weeks. We get to join life again after the other set of us leaves to go back to the lab.” His forehead crinkled at the complexity of their situation. “Damn, even though I understand it, I still don’t get it.”
Wiping the fruit juice from her lips, Samantha agreed, “What he said.”
“What about future me, you know, when I’m born. Does that still happen?” Efraim asked, and Boomer tensed at the topic. Fatigue still showed around Samantha’s eyes, and he didn’t want her wearing herself out more than necessary.
“Your questions can wait until she’s healed. Or better yet, until Miller has given her a thorough exam and declares her better,” Boomer declared.
“Relax, Boom,” Samantha chided him. “We can talk. I’m good, promise.”
“I don’t want to push you,” Efraim explained. “Just curious.”
“It’s more than that, isn’t it?” Samantha questioned. “I remember you talking about your fiancée from before the war. You want to know if you two still have the potential for a future. Or more correctly, does another version of you.”
When Efraim nodded, Boomer sat back and waited to see how Samantha would handle things. The fact that the man who had saved them with medicine and food wanted a happy ending seemed perfectly reasonable. He hoped she had one to offer him. Efraim deserved it.
Samantha patted the ground in front of her, and Efraim sat. “The world we know now exists in a new timeline, one that doesn’t end with the destruction we knew. I believe this. Though I do need my laptop to confirm it. While I will never be able to answer your question completely, I would like to think that in the future you will be born, you will meet her, and that you will have a lifetime to share.”
The Samantha he had known had never been much of a romantic. The world hadn’t allowed for that type of dream for her. Boomer loved hearing her poetic thoughts on another version of Efraim having his dream, and when the man smiled broadly, satisfaction filled his heart.
Boomer wrapped the remnants of lunch and stowed the food in the hut for later meals while Efraim and Samantha continued their theoretical conversation. He’d had enough physics to last him a lifetime or two.
Joining the pair outside, he suggested, “We need our plan settled for the day we go back to the keep. Is it cool to fill Efraim in on the details? We’re going to need his help.”
“While I would normally say that informing him of future actions could contaminate the timeline, we probably should. There is no telling how many more times he’ll make it here, given the activity going on post-battle. In fact, he probably shouldn’t come back as someone could follow him out of curiosity. Now that I’m out of danger, you can certainly make trips to the keep for food.”
She began with the description of the day they left and what happened in the lab and ended with her plan to show up at the field moments after the quantum door closed. When Samantha began to demand Efraim arrive at the hut with horses the minute the other version of her leaves the keep to return to the lab, Boomer cut her off. “No way,” he said. “You go nowhere until Miller gives the thumbs up.”
“I’ll have well over a week to recover. My goal is to be in that field when the quantum door closes.” A visible shudder wracked her frame. “I can still hear Faolan’s scream. I won’t let that happen again.”
“Miller can check you, and then we ride,” Boomer countered. “Ten minutes won’t be the end of the world.” Finding his sense of humor, he added, “We already stopped that crap.”
Efraim chuckled at the joke, but Samantha only glared at both of them. “I ride for the fields,” she snarled.
Pregnancy makes her crabby.
He could feel their argument about to explode when Efraim interjected.
“I could bring Miller here, and then you can go follow yourself and be there the minute you disappear. That whole sentence was a mess. Time travel makes for complicated reality.”
“So true,” Boomer agreed. Gauging Samantha’s reaction, he said, “Our friend has a good idea. Let Miller come here, give you a quick check, and then we get you to Faolan. I promise to ride fast and not take any potty breaks.”
Boomer could tell she wanted to argue but couldn’t because she was trying not to laugh. “Knew I’d get you with the potty humor,” he added to keep the levity. “Do we have a deal?”
“Fine,” Samantha agreed, though he could hear her reluctance. He didn’t blame her; she was nearly crazed with missing Faolan, and he was nearly crazed hearing about it.
“Great. Then you go rest, and I’ll send Efraim on his merry way back home.”
Surprisingly, Samantha rose, gave Efraim a quick hug, and headed into the hut. He knew she was still exhausted, but not that much.