Chapter 3

I saw to it that all our water bottles and skins were filled up before we started. We ate a couple of energy bars for lunch and then we headed out. It took us all day to work our way down from the cave to the edge of the tree line. The first five hundred yards was so steep that all three of us had to shift one sled, and then return for the other, to get them both down. I had to tie a rope to the sled and anchor it with my weight as Clara and Gabby guided the sled down the slope to where the grade levelled off enough that we could haul the sled through the forest and out into the open. Then we did the same with the second one. By the time we finally reached the tree-line and the open plateau beyond it, we’d drunk half our water supply and were exhausted.

“We’ll camp here, tonight,” I told the two women as we all flopped down on the ground and collapsed. “We should be safe so long as we post a guard.”

“Are you sure we should stop here?” Gabby asked from where she was lying. “Isn’t the drop site just a few miles away from here? What if Quantum punches through to this timeline while we’re here, and they send a drone looking for us. Won’t they find us?”

“Yeah,” I grunted back at her, feeling too tired to try and reassure her, “and if they do, then we’ll have to deal with it when it happens. Unfortunately, I’m bagged and I’m pretty certain both of you are tired, as well. No matter what the risk is, there is no way I can move us from this location to the far side of the plateau before dark. We’ll just have to risk Quantum finding us.”

I got no argument after that.

I lay there and rested for another ten minutes or so, before I forced myself up off the ground. I could feel myself drifting off, and to let that happen would have been really stupid. Getting to my feet with a groan I took a look at both ladies. They were actually already asleep. I just sighed and then went over to them to wake them up. I tapped the good doctor on the foot first, earning myself an annoyed groan in reply and then I went and did the same to Gabby. It took two attempts to get them both up.

“Wakey-wakey, rise and shine ladies,” I called out as they began to stir. “It isn’t time for bed yet, so get up and get to work.”

I got called a bastard for that. Still the two women got up after a little more prodding.

“What do you want us to do?” Clara asked in an irritated voice, glaring at me as she said it.

“Well, you’ve got two options to pick from,” I told her, grinning playfully as I did. “You can stay here and Gabby and you can build a fire ring and get a fire started so we can have some supper; or, if you want, you can take our water bottles and skins and hike southward for a mile or so until you hit that creek we followed yesterday to get some water for us to drink. It’s your choice.”

They chose staying where they were. I knew that they would.

I grabbed my carbine and all the water containers, and headed off sticking close to the tree line as I went. Personally I was happy to be going. I was actually using the trip to spy out the land and to see where the best place was to ford the creek with the least amount of effort. Unfortunately the really narrow part of the stream was further upstream from where we were and that was deep in the forest and there was no way we were going to go back in there with the loads we were trying to shift.

I did eventually find a spot that we could cross with some effort, mostly on my part. Once I’d found it, I marked it so I could find it again tomorrow, and then I went and filled up the water bottles and skins. With that chore done I turned about and headed back towards where I’d left the ladies. It only took me half an hour at a jog to get back to them. To my annoyance I walked in on them, and they were totally unaware of my approach.

“You know you two are going to have to try and stay alert a little more than you are right now,” I growled as I made my presence known to Clara and Gabby. They were both sitting on the ground, leaning up against one of the sleds just resting. Both women literally jumped when they heard my voice. It was funny to see, but I wasn’t laughing. I just kept right on in at them. “If you don’t either a big, bad predator is going to get you, or a band of local men will and we all know what they’ll do to you if they don’t just slit your throats.”

“Damn you,” Clara snapped back at me angrily, as she tried to recover from the start I’d given her. She was on her feet now and glaring at me. “Do you want to give us heart attacks? That wasn’t very nice.”

“It might not be nice,” I told her gruffly as I walked up to where she was standing and I handed her a water bottle, “but it is better than the alternative. Think about it!”

I didn’t harp on it after that. I was too tired. I broke out supper from our packs. Tonight we’d be having beef stroganoff with mashed potatoes. Yum! The coffee I made to go with it tasted better!

The women didn’t say much through the meal. I figured they were still pissed at me. Either that or they were trying to keep the meal down. I didn’t know which, and personally I didn’t care. I did talk to them once I’d finished eating and I was eating my desert; chocolate chip cookies.

“I did a little reconnaissance while I was out getting us water,” I told them in a matter of fact manner. “Regardless of which way we look at it, we’ve got to ford water on our trek across the plateau to the cave system I want to check out. In fact, we’ll probably have to do it more than once before we get where I want to go. I’ve decided that we’ll head south in the morning and cross the creek we walked up yesterday. I found a spot where the banks are close enough together that we should be able to just shove the sled over from one side to the other. It’ll take a little cooperation and a lot off muscle especially from me to keep the sled from dropping, but I think we can do it and most likely we can do it quickly and with relative ease. Once across we can swing towards the southeast and see just how far we can travel in a day pulling those blasted sleds.”

“Okay,” Clara murmured thoughtfully, “that sounds good to me.”

“It sounds good to me as well,” Gabby stated, adding her two cents to the conversation. “So we should go to bed and get some sleep, right? It’s going to be a long day tomorrow as well.”

“It will be,” I agreed readily, though I sighed as I said it. “Unfortunately we need to post a guard tonight. Have either of you done that before?’

“No, I haven’t stood guard in my life,” Clara responded first in a tone tinged with a hint of privilege that I’d rarely heard her use before. “I was a doctor. Other people stood guard.”

“Well, tonight you’ll be learning a new skill,” I told her firmly, “and you don’t really have much choice in the matter. We’ll all be standing watch, from now until we have a safe place to live.”

That didn’t please the good doctor. I could read it in her face as she bit back whatever she had wanted to say in reply to me telling her she really had no choice. It showed character that she could do it. I had to give her that. Fortunately, Gabby spoke up at that moment to let me know that she’d stood guard before, and she was willing to stand one now. In a way it defused the anger that the good doctor was fighting to keep in. For whatever reason, Clara couldn’t stay pissed off at me if Gabby was okay with what I was suggesting.

I made the command decision that Clara would stand the first watch. I figured it would be better than having to wake her up in the night, and for her to keep awake. I would pull the midnight to three in the morning shift, since I was the one more experienced at dealing with broken sleep during the night. That gave Gabby the three to six in the morning duty. It would allow her to recoup most of her strength for the hard day of work a head. The same was true for Clara. She’d also end up getting six straight hours of sleep. Once the schedule was agreed upon, I took Clara aside, and gave her basic instructions as to how to stand guard in the middle of nowhere. I wanted to make certain she understood what she needed to do to keep us safe, and to keep herself awake.

We were fortunate in that amongst all the stuff Kim had packed into our packs, she’d included watches for everyone. That meant that we had time pieces to keep track of time. Once I was done talking with Clara, I had a talk with Gabby. Once that was done, I pulled out my air mattress and sleeping bag and I went to sleep.

Clara woke me on time. She had nothing to report, except that she was tired. I sent her off to bed and pulled my watch. It was a quiet night with very little nocturnal activity where we were camped out. When my watch was over, I woke up Gabby. She got up without a problem, and I went back to bed.

The next morning it was a quick breakfast, and then we were trekking towards the creek. The sleds worked better out on the open terrain than they had in the woods. They still took a lot of muscle power to shift, but it was more of a continuous effort in comparison to what we’d gone through the day before. In an hour’s time we made the creek. Half hour later we had both sleds across and on the other side. We took a fifteen minute break to recoup our strength and energy, and then we were off once again. We walked until sunset and made camp. The next five days were all the same. We got up, walked eight to nine hours covering anywhere from a dozen to fifteen miles a day, and then we camped.

For the most part we didn’t see much. Once heading southeast we found that the terrain was broad, open, and uninteresting to look at. Occasionally we spotted a small herd of something or other, but that was it. We definitely didn’t run into any locals and more fortuitously, we didn’t run into any predators.

The weather held which was a good thing. I don’t think anyone would have been pleased if it had pissed down on us. It made crossing the few streams and creeks we came to relatively easy, as well.

By the morning of the seventh day since arrival in the past, we had reached the south-eastern foothills. When we reached them, we swung our course southward towards the plateau that lay nestled in the open hook of the mountain range. As we trudged on, we noticed that the ground was taking on an upward incline. It slowed us down a bit, but it didn’t stop us. We just gritted our teeth and pressed on. Two day’s later we reached the mouth of the valley I was looking for.

“So this is it,” Clara huffed dismissively as she plopped herself down on the contents of the sled that she and Gabby were pulling. “It’s about time! How much further do we have to go?”

In response I pulled out the map that Kim had given me. Opening it up and spreading it out on the ground between us, I put a couple of small stones down on the surface of it.

“That’s us,” I declared taking on the tone of the lecturer. “By my calculations we’ve got at least another day or maybe two to walk, before we get to the caves I want to check out. It all depends on the terrain in there. The valley is quite long as you can see looking at the map and the caves are about halfway up its length on the other side of the valley. Before we can get over there, we’re going to have to find someway to ford the river.”

The river I was speaking about ran down the centre of the valley, and then out onto the plateau. From where we were standing I could tell that the river banks were a good distance apart. It would take finding a reasonably good ford to cross, before we could easily get to the other side. At the very worst we would have to unpack everything and carry each item across one at a time and then reload the sleds on the other side. I was hoping that wouldn’t have to happen.

“So are we going to camp here tonight,” Gabby asked tiredly, “or are we going to press on.”

“I’d like to press on for a mile or so,” I stated knowing full well I wasn’t making friends in doing so. “I can see that there is a finger of land up ahead with trees growing on it, jutting out into the valley. I’d like to spend the night there. We’ll be more sheltered, and we’ll most likely find some fire wood.”

That had been a bone of contention during our trek across the open and up the slope onto the plateau. There had been little to no fuel for our campfire most nights. Occasionally we’d find a stick lying in the grass or more commonly some dried animal dung, but it was never enough to get a fire started to heat up our MRE’s. The women were getting sick and tired of eating them cold. So was I, but then I’d done it before so I knew how to grin and bear it. They didn’t. When I mentioned the possibility of a real campfire, they stopped their complaining.

The little finger of land was bigger than I thought. It was also densely covered with a wide assortment of coniferous and deciduous trees. Once we got there, I pulled us around the tip of the finger and into the lee of it. It turned out that there was a nice clear area behind it that looked like a decent place to pitch a campsite. It helped that there was a creek running down out of the trees, and towards the river that ran the length of the valley. It meant access to water, which was something we hadn’t had for a couple of days. Personally, I really needed a bath.

“This is it,” I declared once I’d taken a quick look about. “We’ll camp here, tonight.”

The women dropped to the ground with a sigh of relief. I let them have five minutes while I took a quick look around. The first thing I did was to wander about in the tree line. I looked for signs of animal activity, and I found plenty of it. Most of it looked like rabbit or deer, but I did spot sign that suggested that there was a wolf in the area. Once I was done walking near the trees, I strolled over to the creek. What I saw there was even more telling. There was a clear and distinguishable ford. The bank on both sides of the waterway had been broken down at some time or another. There was a slew of tracks there all jumbled up. From the look of it we were about to pitch camp along a major trail. To me, that just wouldn’t do. Still, I wasn’t ready to rouse the ladies without giving them a game plan that they could readily accept. With that thought in mind, I took another look around. That was when I spotted the rock outcropping on top of the hill. It looked like a place we could get to without too much effort. I decided to check it out.

The outcropping stood on the edge of the finger of land that jutted into the valley, right where the finger joined the climbing foothills that led up towards the distant mountain range. It took me five minutes to climb up to it. It turned out to be well sheltered. The rock outcropping was composed of a number of large boulders that formed sort of a wall overlooking the little woods and the creek that ran through it. Behind the boulders were an open spot, and then a cluster of evergreens. I found sign there that the spot had been used before by someone else. The sign was old, but still intact. Someone had left a fire ring in place for others to use. It was like an engraved invitation to move in and set up camp for the night. I decided it was time to tell the women. Stepping to the edge of the outcropping I looked over it so that I could holler down to the women. That’s when I spotted movement in the trees.

The movement was a doe. It was deep in the trees, and was headed along a track towards the creek and the ford that crossed it. It was moving slowly, and it hadn’t smelled or heard either the women or myself. The doe was no more than two hundred yards away, and from where I was standing, I knew instinctively that I could easily drop it. Without hesitation, that is exactly what I did. I put a round into the back of the animal’s head.

An M4 carbine doesn’t make much noise, comparatively, when it is put up against some of the bigger toys that soldiers play with on the modern battlefield. Still, when it is the only weapon that makes noise on an entire planet; when you fire it, it wakes up the neighbourhood. Birds took to the air, I heard other animals crashing about in the woods, and both Clara and Gabby jumped up off the ground. They pulled their pistols not knowing what I was shooting at. I just had to laugh.

“Everything is fine,” I called down to them when I noticed that they were looking up in my direction. “I just shot supper. I’ll be down in a moment and explain.”

To put it plainly, neither woman were willing to forgive me for scaring the crap out of them when I’d taken the shot. Yes, I’d bagged a doe and we’d be having venison tonight instead of spaghetti in a boil-a-bag; but that just wasn’t enough for them, especially when I told them that we’d have to move camp. That just pissed the women off some more. All I could do is sigh aloud, give them the eye, and press on.

I grabbed a few items off my sled, and then I headed off into the bush in search of the doe. Clara and Gabby decided to follow after me. It didn’t take us long to find the animal. My burst of fire had been dead on. I’d taken the back of the doe’s head off. It had dropped where I’d shot it.