Right Place, Right Time
Copyright© 2016 by Colin Keizer
Chapter 2: Exit, Stage Weird
15 June, 1984
“Everybody out of the wagons, please. Join hands now and stay together!”
Mary’s “command” voice instantly had all the kids scrambling, however tired some of them must be. The temple entrance stairs were easy after that. Jerry dropped his bag into a wagon and took the handle from the boy who had been pulling it. He and the other adults simply dragged the mostly empty wagons up, right over the shallow steps. Even one-handed, Jerry could manage that.
“That’s good. Back in the wagons now, kids. Just a little further.” Mary counted heads and made sure she knew where each of the children was.
While they loaded up again at the top, he kept hold of the wagon’s handle and smiled at the very tired little boy who had been pulling it. They walked into the temple together, following Carrie’s wagon.
The temple sanctuary was well lit, and the people inside remarkably well organized—calm, quiet, efficient, purposeful, and unlike the ones outside, armed. Jerry immediately noticed the weapons, and he wasn’t the only one. Each of the blue, unformed group had a very serious-looking military rifle slung over his or her shoulder and full ammunition pouches on their web belts. Wow. This was way more preparation than he’d expected from a church.
Temple.
Wow. Other faces around him registered the same surprise, and other eyes focused on those deadly weapons.
“Keep moving, please.”
One of the women in a blue jumpsuit pointed them straight at a pair of big, steel-framed doors in the back wall of the sanctuary. There was a yellow and black fallout shelter sign on the wall beside the open doors, and a steady flow of people hurrying through. Dozens of people had already gone that way as he watched Carrie step toward the doors, following a young couple leading two kids who easily looked tired enough to be picked up and carried.
Near the doors, a man in another of the blue jumpsuits slowed the main flow of people for a moment, directing them through one doorway and waved the couple through the other, then Carrie with her first wagonload of kids.
“Step carefully in the dark section of the corridor, please. We have a broken light fixture.”
Jerry and the rest of the wagons followed right behind Carrie. There was no time to think or ask questions. More people were already queuing up right behind Sam, Mary, and their wagons. For a brief moment, he was walking, and his wagon rolling across the polished stone tiles of the sanctuary floor toward the fallout shelter doors. Everyone funneled into the concrete-walled and floored corridor that sloped down toward what must be the shelter. Sure enough, there was a darkened section ahead where the overhead lights were out. That section was very dark, nearly a total blackout. He could see a glow along the ceiling that must be from a section with working lights.
Did he feel a tingle when he stepped into the darkest shadow? Was there a darker rectangle inside the shadow? Maybe it was just his imagination? No way could he turn around and find out.
Just one step, and he was suddenly in a huge, brightly lit room.
“Keep moving, please.”
He almost froze in place; the disorientation was so strong. A hand on his shoulder steadied him briefly, then gently pushed him, blinking owlishly, further into the place.
“Is this the shelter?”
Carrie looked stunned, and she wasn’t the only one. Their questions went unanswered, save for smiling, helpful young people with those suddenly ominous military rifles and their repeated admonition: Keep moving, please. Make room for the people behind you.
Jerry forced himself to continue walking like everyone else across the hard, smooth concrete floor of what seemed to be a big, well-illuminated wooden barn or warehouse. Huge timber beams supported a loft or second floor above him. The only concrete he’d seen here was under his feet. The walls were rough-hewn planks and more heavy beams, sturdy but nothing like enough to support a paved parking lot and who knew how many feet of compacted dirt he knew must be above them all. The place smelled of pitch, and he could see it dripping out of knots. This was utterly different than what he’d expected for a bomb shelter, much too different to believe. Where were they?
Glancing quickly back over one shoulder, he saw a double-door-sized velvety black rectangle surrounded by a framework of metal pipes. People accumulated between him and that blackness, one after the other, stepping through it then frowning with that same expression of sudden, stunned disbelief. A torrent of half-remembered fragments of science fiction stories and movies instantly slammed through his brain. That was no normal doorway.
He shivered, and not just because the air in the big room was notably cooler than what he’d left behind in the temple. No, what sent icy sprites racing up his spine was staring at someone appearing between those pipes, stepping out of that black rectangle. It was eerie. A hand appeared, then as the attached arm filled in behind it, a face came through above it and a foot below it. Everything still on the far side of the blackness was unseen. Then, the head, chest, and legs were mostly through, only a trailing foot yet to arrive. Another step, and the next person’s foot was already showing up.
Was it some sort of physics warping portal between places, maybe between worlds? Whatever it was, the people in the blue jumpsuits were very clearly in charge of it. Obviously, all the people entering the temple’s “fallout shelter” had passed through it, and the weirdness factor of his day was climbing exponentially.
“We’re not in Kansas any more,” he whispered to nobody and everyone.
Utterly entranced, Jerry took a blind step forward, still looking back over his shoulder, and nearly tripped. A bomb of agony detonated in his damaged wrist as it automatically twitched forward, snapping his attention back to the harsh reality of how stupid it would be for him to fall on that arm. Sternly keeping his head turned away from that fascinating black doorway and focusing his attention on where to put his feet next, he towed his wagonload of kids through a place nothing like he’d anticipated only seconds earlier. Even the air was unexpectedly different. It wasn’t just the odor of pitch and fresh-cut wood. The stench of automobile fumes and the acrid smells of something burning somewhere were utterly gone. He’d been ready to inhale machine-recycled stale body odor and instead found the air fresher than his last vacation fishing expedition. Gone, too, was the horrible traffic noise, the crashing and banging of civilization slamming to a halt.
“Everyone, continue moving, please. We need to keep this room clear for the people behind you.” Another of the armed blue jumpsuit girls with a very loud and authoritative voice smiled reassuringly at everyone and waved them toward another pair of wedged-open double doors, through which Jerry saw a well-lit plank-walled corridor.
Following Carrie’s wagon out into that passageway, Jerry turned and immediately saw an opening that framed twinkling stars in a dark night sky. A final pair of huge, wide-open barn doors was not far ahead of him. Farm odors he had not smelled in more than a decade teased his overwhelmed senses. Distant fields must have been manured recently. Stacked hay or mowed grass must be somewhere nearby. Gasps of surprise and shouted questions from outside assured him he was not dreaming. Then he too stepped outside and it was all stunningly real. Row after row of identical three-level wooden apartment buildings arrayed along crushed gravel streets marched into the night. Beyond them were more rows of big, white canvas tents glowing dimly under a bright crescent moon.
“This is not a bomb shelter. We probably aren’t in Everett, either.” The universe he’d thought he understood an hour ago was suddenly stranger than he could have imagined, and it was all too easy believing Washington state might be very, very far away. If that black, science fiction doorway he saw was real, Jerry had to wonder if they were even still on Earth. A glance up at the starry night sky reassured him on that point. Big and Little Dippers seemed to be where he remembered them. The Milky Way was fantastically bright and clear. What happened?
Looking around, he noticed a two-horse team waiting patiently not far from the barn doors, attached to a covered wagon bearing the unmistakable giant red cross on white canvas of an ambulance, a weirdly not quite archaic ambulance. Electric lanterns attached to the front of the wooden box that the driver’s feet rested on illuminated his four-hoofed “engines” as well as the ground in front of them. Huge and oddly reassuring, the two horses regarded everyone with a silent expectation so palpable that Jerry had to wonder if they’d already carried injured victims to some nearby medical center and returned, ready for more.
Looking beyond the horses, harness, wagon, and apartment buildings, he saw the coarse textures of distant, dark forested hills around them on every side, fading away into the night. He saw farm fields, some filled with stubble, some fallow, and some with crops nodding in the gentle breeze, awaiting harvest. He saw orchards of mostly young trees, loaded with maturing fruits and nuts. He saw gardens like Mom and Dad had described from their childhood during the Great Depression. Despite all the craziness of the last few hours, and especially the most recent few minutes, he found he couldn’t panic. There was something so familiar about this town, so much like coming home.
This was a new town, and a busy one, whatever else it might be. He saw chimneys and smokestacks and a very few telephone or power line poles. There were only a few streetlights, all of them electric. Flashlights and lanterns attracted his attention, mostly the lanterns, bobbing and weaving everywhere he turned. Many of them were gas mantle lanterns, and a few seemed to be kerosene. They painted the scene with a warm, but eerie, anachronistic yellow glow.
A few heads in front of Carrie, there was a break in the confused babble, and from there, a man’s voice firmly addressed the confused crowd.
“Your attention, please, folks. You’re all safe now. No bombs will be dropping here.” He paused, giving them all a moment to embrace that assurance.
“I’m George Eldon. My friends and I will each collect and guide fifty of you to meals, information, and a place to sleep tonight. You folks in front there, yes, you and the wagons also. Ma’am, please follow me to the dining hall. It’s only a few minutes’ walk. I will explain more and answer some questions there while we get some food into each of you.”
The muttering rose again, but the promise of food and answers was enough to get everyone moving again. Carrie and maybe a dozen people ahead of her walked into the night behind the man. The rest of the kids’ wagons and a few people more trailed them, separated from the next group by another friendly but firm guide. Mr. Eldon and the other guides did not wear the otherwise ubiquitous blue jumpsuit. He wore a business suit, as if called away from some sort of office work to help manage the crowd of refugees. He carried a clipboard instead of a rifle and led them toward another big, well-lit wooden building from which came the clatter of pots, the clink of metal utensils on ceramic dishes, and some delicious odors of cooked meat.
He stopped them all a few yards away from the building, still roughly in line, beneath a big sign with the number “11” painted neatly on it. Recently painted, too. Jerry noticed the odor of turpentine or something like it right away. Other groups of fifty people each lined up for their guides, not far away at signs with other numbers.
“We’re going to ask each of you for your name, address, job, and any other information that might help us to connect you to your families and friends. Please be patient for a moment while we work through this with each of you, then you can eat.”
The guides moved quickly from person to person, questioning, listening, and writing on their clipboards. More than once, they had to cut an interview off abruptly as the respondent became loudly insistent, even hysterical, or sobbed incoherently. Two of the latter had to be carried to the ambulance when they broke down completely and collapsed to the ground.
As soon as they finished writing, the guides would tear a ticket off the tablet on their clipboards, loop it onto a string lanyard, give it to the person being interviewed, and point them at the entrance to the building.
At Carrie, Mr. Eldon stopped, looked at all the kids, the women, Jerry, and the wagons, and shook his head.
“I’ll catch up with you ladies in a moment after I finish with these few folks behind you.”
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