Thursday, Nov. 12, 2019; 3:11 PM

Camilla spotted a remote in the gutter. Curious, she bent to examine it more closely, wondering if it was broken. It looked something like the remote her uncle had for his expensive Mercedes S550 sedan. Normally, she’d never pick up an object from the gutter. Sure as hell, she regretted ever touching this one.

The shock knocked her flat on her back and senseless. After a moment, she coughed into her hand and groaned, raising one knee, and then the other to plant her feet flat on the ground. She coughed harshly again, feeling like she’d been struck by lightning, or been hit by a train. She ached everywhere, though not particularly in her right fingertips. She managed to focus on them from six inches away. They didn’t appear burned. Then she realized she was naked.

“What-?” she choked. Panic-stricken, she rolled onto her hands and knees and pushed half-erect. Her neighborhood was gone, replaced by a wide field gone to knee-high grass and weeds. Trees bordered the field on three sides; twenty-five yards to her right ran a wire fence, beyond it, another field planted in what she thought was lettuce. Telephone poles ran alongside the road. How the hell did she get here? Why was she naked?

Struggling erect, Camilla clumsily hid her nakedness, turned fully in a circle, looking everywhere at once. Where the fuck was she? Who put her in this field? Had she been raped?

She headed for the road, teeth chattering, her body erupted in goose bumps. Where was her coat? The rest of her clothing and her backpack? Where was Wiltshire Blvd? And Upland Road, where the bus had dropped her off? Where were the two girls twenty steps ahead when she’d spotted the thing the gutter? Where the fuck was she?

She slowed, approaching the fence. She unconsciously hunched lower and scanned the road left and right. The fucking thing was graveled, washboard-ed in that curious way that gravel roads get from being driven on too long between grading, with twin ruts down the middle. When had she last seen a graveled road in Huntington?

Up the road, toward Holderby Road (if this was somehow Wiltshire Blvd., which of course, it wasn’t), a car had missed the turn, running up the embankment and rolling onto its roof. Even at a distance, Camilla saw the car was old, a restored classic from the ‘40s or ‘50s. It looked exactly like the cars she’d seen over the summer at Goldy’s Chrysler-Dodge. Camilla wasn’t into old cars, but her dad was, and she’d accompanied him to both shows at the dealership.

“What the fuck is going on?” she complained wildly.

She experimentally touched the fence. Only the top wire was barbed, and it proved easy enough to separate the two bottom strands and slip through to the other side. Shivering with fear and cold, she carefully descended the embankment to the gravel and stared indecisively at the overturned car. Fields lay in every direction. A steeple and the upper section of a radio tower rose above the trees to her left, almost directly above the wrecked car, meaning town and people. If only she wasn’t naked.

The road proved relatively gravel free alongside the twin ruts, especially the one on the right, so Camilla walked there. Relatively gravel free still resulted in a painful hobble and continual angry cursing as each gingerly-placed step brought her closer to the car. She constantly threw looks back over her shoulder for approaching vehicles and wondered what she’d do if one came along. Where could she go? How would she explain her bare body?

The sideways car blocked the road completely. It wasn’t a restored classic, she noted distractedly; the dull brown paint hadn’t seen water and a sponge in years; the round chrome hubs were dented and dirty. It was somebody’s everyday car, she realized, and no better kept for its age than half the new cars in Huntington. “Where did you come from,” she muttered.

Camilla had never seen this vehicle before, nor heard of it, not that she remembered, anyway. The front end was angled away, the trunk toward her; the symbol, though upside down, she recognized: white lettering on a blue background: Ford.

“What kinda moron has a car this old and treats it like this?” she grumbled. Her dad would be incensed.

A modern vehicle would be considerably more damaged than this. Stanchions between the roof and body had not even bowed; the rear window and windshield were intact, as were both passenger-side windows. Only the driver’s door window had shattered. How crazy was that?

Keeping her distance, Camilla dropped to a knee and peered inside the Ford. “Hello?” she called uncertainly. She found no one inside, and no blood to indicate someone was hurt. Did a car this old have seatbelts, she wondered? Were they required in antique cars? “Anyone in there?” she tried.

Duck-walking to the driver’s window she looked inside. Crumpled on the roof liner above the empty passenger seat sat a thick wool coat with large leather buttons, a man’s coat, woven in a plaid pattern. She frowned, thinking the coat looked as old as the car. Not that she’d be picky about clothing, no-siree. Carefully reaching inside, she snagged the coarse material with her fingertips and dragged it to the window. She lifted it out to avoid contact with glass fragments that might snag the fabric. Pushing erect, she wrapped it about herself and belted tight. Definitely a man’s coat, and definitely ancient, she thought.

Dropping again to a crouch, she peered inside to make certain the interior was actually empty, and then glanced at the upside-down metal dashboard. A thick set of keys dangled from a steel loop. The key in the ignition appeared to be in the on position. Why hadn’t the driver taken the keys with him? Where was he, anyway? Had the bastard dumped her in the damned field? No wonder he ran away, she thought grimly.

Backing carefully, she eyed the trunk, wondering what might be inside. She needed shoes badly; just the short walk to the car had left her soles badly bruised. God knew what a long walk into town would do to them. She glanced around and spotted the license plate face down in the ditch.

The plate holder was much too wide and too narrow to be a West Virginia plate. Working her way carefully to the ditch’s edge, she squatted and lifted the plate holder by a protruding bolt. Turning it over revealed big black letters on a white field. The plate read: WIN HH 102. Between the HH and 102 were two small insignia that she couldn’t read. What language was that, anyway?

“Ist das Dein Auto? Bist du verletzt?”

Camilla yelped, jumped up, and spun around. Standing twenty-foot distant was a somewhat older boy wearing a bright yellow hooded slicker. Beneath the slicker, he wore a black knit sweater, cuffed jeans, and brown boots. He repeated his question, to which Camilla blurted: “What?”

The boy cocked his head. He was cute with dark blond hair, and bright blue eyes. He looked decidedly disheveled, his yellow slicker and jeans grimed with dirt, his face and hands grimy, his hair greasy. He’d been in a fight recently. Someone had split his lower lip and his left cheek and around his eye was puffy. Camilla would swear he’d spoken to her in German.

“Hast du dein Auto kaputt gemacht?” he asked.

Did he just say kaput? she thought.

“I don’t speak German,” she answered slowly. “Are you speaking German? Are you lost, or something?”

The boy cocked his head again, frowning. He looked at once exhausted, distressed, and frustrated. He kept his hands jammed in his coat pockets.

“You’re English,” he said haltingly.

Camilla shook her head. “American. Are you German?”

He gazed at her perplexed, as though it was she out of place, not him.

“Sorry, an American, sure. Do you know what today is? What year?”

The question left Camilla confounded. Had she heard him right? Was he asking the year?

With a start and a jab of fear, she realized the boy had wrecked the car, left it abandoned in a panic, and had probably left her naked in the field, also. She made to wheel and flee down the road when the boy suddenly wavered, staggered half a dozen steps backward, and sat down hard in the road. He moaned and held his head in his hands. Camilla instinctively knew it wasn’t a ruse.

“Are you okay?” she questioned.

The boy shook his head. Anxious, she watched him wrestle a cell phone from his coat pocket and glance at the screen. Whatever he saw there left him frustrated and angry; he muttered something indecipherable and jammed the cell phone back. Camilla glanced at the license plate in her hand. Nothing here made sense.

Cautiously, ready to whirl and run at the slightest provocation, Camilla closed the distance with half-steps, grateful every step of the way that she had found the long wool coat before the boy appeared. Of course, he could have watched her the entire time after he’d wrecked the car.

“I’m Camilla,” she said. “Is that your car?” She indicated the turned-turtle Ford with the license plate. The boy shook his head.

“Not mine, no.” His accent was light, his words clear; not the way Camilla spoke 1st year-Spanish. “Are you okay?”

I’m as far from okay as can be, she thought darkly. “Why did you ask me about the date? Did you hit your head when you wrecked the car?”

He laughed and looked at her as though Camilla had hit her head. “It’s not 1986,” he said unaccountably. “Are you an exchange student here?”

Camilla stared at him blankly. “Do you think it’s 1986?” she asked.

The boy sighed. “You don’t look like you come from 1986, either, American Camilla.”

What the fuck does that mean? Where does it look like I come from, she wondered?

“Do you need a hand up, or do you want to sit for a while?”

Ignoring her outstretched hand, he struggled to his feet. “My name is Jonas. I’m glad to meet you, Camilla.”

She accepted his hand, shook it quickly, and let go. “Do you need to call somebody?” she asked. “You know, you look like you’ve been in an earthquake, Jonas.”

Jonas laughed appreciatively. “How is it you happen to be in Widen and speak no German at all, Camilla?”

Caught off guard, she responded: “I don’t know any Winden, Jonas, and why the fuck would I speak German?”

For a long moment, he gazed at her questioningly. “Where do you think you are, Camilla?”

Camilla rolled her eyes.

“You’re not in America, anymore.”

Camilla thought to spin and hi-tail it toward town, gravel be damned, when a droning she’d listened to unconsciously for the last several moments became the strengthening roar of aircraft engines. She instinctively ducked as a 50’s era twin-engine airplane appeared over the trees beyond the field where she’d awoken and roared past overhead. The wheels were up and the aircraft too low to the ground for a safe landing in any case. She screamed as the aircraft smashed into the trees beyond the adjacent field and shredded itself in a huge yellow and orange fireball of exploding aviation fuel. Jonas threw her to the road, himself atop her.

“Hey!” she cried, struggling beneath him. An instant later a jagged shard of the fuselage with the liner aflame smashed down two feet from her head, burying into the hard earth. Other pieces of flaming wreckage rained down all around them. She cried out in terror.

“Hold still!” he cried gruffly. “It is almost over!”

In a moment it was; a final few smoldering pieces pock-marking the nearby ground. In the ditch, a section of landing gear had buried itself up the hubs. Only a shred of rubber remained on the large tandem wheels. “Fuck! Fuck-fuck-fuck!” she gasped.

Jonas glanced around, taking in the column of roiling black smoke in the woods. He glanced down at Camilla questioningly, and then pushed off, rolling onto his hands and knees. Camilla hurriedly bundled the coat about her bare legs. She’d displayed an unacceptable amount of flesh for a moment, but Jonas had pretended not to notice.

“That didn’t just happen! Please tell me that didn’t just happen!” she cried.

Jonas helped her sit and then make her feet. “We are not in 1986,” he reiterated.

Camilla stared at him bewildered. “What are you talking about? That was just an old airplane!”

“Like that’s an old car,” he replied, indicating the Ford with a flick of his hand. “What I wonder, is where are all the fucking people?”

Camilla swung her eyes from the wrecked Ford to Jonas’s grim face, to the blazing stand of trees. “What are you talking about?”

Jonas regarded her calmly. “I stood in a bunker when a window appeared in the air. A boy stood on the other side of the window. As it grew, I raised my hand, and he did the same. Our fingers touched.” He shook his head. “Why are you barefoot, Camilla?”

Camilla blinked in confusion. “What bunker? Where?”

Jonas indicated behind him with his head. “The nuclear plant isn’t there, and neither are the buildings that should be here.” He indicated the fields. “This is north Winden. If that’s St. Christopher’s Church in the distance-” Camilla glanced over her shoulder at the church spire. “-then the nursing home should be right there.” He paused to watch her confused reaction. “Do I speak English good enough? Do you understand me, Camilla?”

Camilla shook her head wildly. “This is not Germany, Jonas! This is fucking America, fucking West Virginia! You are nuts if you think otherwise!”

She wrenched her arm free of his hand and peddled backward. “You kidnapped me and left me in that field, didn’t you?” She thrust out her right hand as he raised his to object. “Stay away from me, Jonas! I’ll scream!”

Jonas backed a step. “I did nothing to you, Camilla. I never saw you before 10 minutes ago, I swear. This is Winden, Germany. Well, West Germany,” he corrected, glancing at the old Ford.

“Bullshit!” she hollered. “This is November 12, 2019, and we are outside Huntington, West Virginia!”

He gazed at her with his hands in his coat pockets. Finally, he said: “Your feet are badly bruised.” He made as though to remove a backpack, swore softly, and shrugged. “You can wear my shoes. My socks will protect my feet until we get to my house and I can replace them.” He grimaced, realizing he’d made a mistake. “Replace them somewhere, anyway.”

Camilla said nothing. Her heart pounded and it was difficult to breathe. She glanced at the column of smoke, and then back at the wrecked Ford. Finally, she croaked: “Did anyone survive, you think? Should we go look?

Jonas shook his head. “Nobody could survive a crash like that. Even if anyone was aboard, which I doubt. And I have no interest in seeing tiny little pieces of people scattered about if there were.” He smiled grimly. “Hear any sirens in the distance, Camilla?”

“God!” she exclaimed. “You are so cold-hearted! Why wouldn’t there be people aboard, anyway? How could there not be, Jonas?”

He cocked an ear in answer. She had to admit a total lack of reaction from the nearby town, whatever it was. Despite her protestations otherwise, she suspected her whereabouts was not West Virginia.

“This is not the first abandoned vehicle I came across since leaving the bunker,” he said.

Camilla glanced at the Ford. “What do you mean?”

He gazed down the road from the direction he’d come. “Everything is related to the window that opened in the bunker today. This trauma started 8 days ago, for me, and I’m more confused every day that goes by.” He halted, jaws clenched as he glanced away. “It would be nice if you spoke German, Camilla.”

Camilla blurted out angrily: “Well I don’t! And you didn’t answer my question! What other cars? And this BS about it not being 2019? You’re saying we time-traveled to some earlier time, Jonas?”

Jonas continued to look away. “1953, I believe. I don’t know how it affected you, or why. America is so far away.” He bent and untied his shoelaces. “You can’t stay bare-foot any longer, Camilla. Put these on.”

Camilla watched him remove the boots and unwillingly reached out for them after a moment. She didn’t care to make someone else suffer at her expense. Even if he was bat-shit crazy. “We are not in 1953,” she insisted.

The boots were warm but half a dozen sizes too big. In half an hour’s time, she’d get blisters on her heels. She guessed it couldn’t be helped. She felt sorry for Jonas in his stocking feet.

Straightening and taking a few test steps in place, she cautiously asked: “Not that I believe it’s 1953, but what year do you think it should be, Jonas?”

He went to adjust the missing backpack and gave her a weary smile. Camilla had a suspicion that he had cried very recently, a lot, and was not that far from crying now. She suspected the depth of Jonas’s trauma far exceeded hers.

“You said today’s date was November 12, 2019. It’s the 12th for me too.” He gave her a lopsided grin. “November 12, 2019: We have that in common, least at.”

“But you come from here?”

His sad grin widened. “Not West Virginia.”

Camilla blew out a breath. “We’ll agree to disagree on that for now. Why did you ask if it was 1986, then?”

He ushered her ahead, saying as she grudgingly fell in beside him. “Below us are caves that extend miles in every direction. Not famous caves, but well known in the district. Winden Caves.” He gestured behind them with his right hand. “The entrance is to the north, a mile from the bridge over the old railroad tracks, just beyond the nuclear power plant.”

Blinking, Camilla glanced over her shoulder again. She remembered him mentioning the power plant before, but hadn’t really paid attention. Her step unconsciously quickened now.

“A nuclear power plant? Here?”

“Not in 1953,” he allowed, grinning.

Camilla again looked at the crash site. Did the plant have something to do with the crash? Nothing Jonas said (or could say), eased her mind about not rushing to the possible aid of any survivors. Airplanes didn’t just take to the skies without a crew on board, regardless of passengers. And an airplane that old had a foot in the proverbial grave, to begin with. What had she seen on TV recently: Only a handful of aircraft from World War II even existed anymore, much less were able to fly. A famous bomber had crashed in early October, in Connecticut, she thought. Still, it didn’t explain the lack of emergency response. Everyone in miles would have seen and heard the crash.

“Is the plant safe?” she demanded. “When was it built?”

Jonas considered a moment. “It opened in 1969, I think. Construction started in 1960, although I passed signs on the way here that that said preparations have already begun at the site. It’s scheduled to close in 2020. The license was only for 50 years, and Germany is going totally non-nuclear after Fukushima.” He threw her a sideways glance. “You have no reason to fear irradiation from Winden for another 16 years, at least. Not from the plant, anyway.”

Camilla felt as though her brain had been removed and reinstalled upside down and backward. She couldn’t maintain a logical train of thought to save her life since the shock. Everything Jonas said only confused her more. She couldn’t get a straight answer about anything.

“Stop!” She faced him and crisscrossed her hands in frustration. “Tell me about the abandoned cars, Jonas!”

Jonas nodded as he refocused his thoughts. “I passed four vehicles before I found you. One was a school bus. It had crashed head-on into a telephone pole and smashed the radiator. It was empty inside, with the doors closed, including the emergency door in the back. The door opposite the driver was jammed shut from the wreck, and wouldn’t open at all. Not a single window was open, which is how you’d get out if the doors wouldn’t open for some reason, right?

“What I couldn’t understand was the emergency door had a seal on the handle which would have broken when the door was opened. It was intact; the door had never been opened.” He shook his head in dismay. “I don’t understand why the bus was there in the first place!” He clenched his teeth and balled his fists at his sides.

“I checked my phone just before the window opened in the bunker. I had no signal at the time, but the display said it was just before midnight. When I left the bunker, it was daylight, but my phone insisted it was only half an hour later, which means I lay for about twenty minutes after the shock. The bunker was completely different, empty, and abandoned. The bunker I’d been locked in was decorated like a kid’s fucking bedroom.” He shook his hand in an “I’ll explain later,” gesture.

“The thing is, Camilla, it shouldn’t be daylight now!” He pulled out his cell phone and activated the screen. The display claimed it was November 13, 2019, at 2:28 AM. “Can you explain that to me, please?”

Camilla could explain nothing at all.

“You’ve been here for two and a half hours?”

“Yes.” He frowned. “What about you?”

She glanced back at the field. “I don’t know, exactly, because the shock knocked me out too. Not so long, though, because I didn’t wake up freezing cold. Maybe forty-five minutes, altogether.”

His expression told her that didn’t make sense to him. Nothing made sense to her.

“It was different, this time, time-traveling?”

“Completely!” he exploded. “I traveled to 1986 twice, and always arrived at the same time I left, just 33 years earlier.” He waved his hand accusingly at the countryside. “Both times I found people right away.” His expression radiated exasperated chagrin. “This time, I found empty school buses and cars, and a lost girl from America in a man’s overcoat. Why are you here, Camilla?”

Camilla recoiled from the ferocity of his outburst and Jonas raised his hands placating-ly, and apologized. “I don’t mean to blame this on you. I know how frustrated you must be too, finding yourself in a foreign country, not to mention time.”

Not to mention naked, either, she thought distractedly. “Time is out of sync for you. It seems right to me...” She gazed around, checking the afternoon light and position of the sun in the sky. “The bus had just dropped me off and I was walking home when-shit!” She told him about the remote in the gutter. “Do you think that’s connected?” she questioned anxiously.

Jonas looked confused. “It looked like a regular remote to you?”

Camilla was embarrassed to admit she’d thought it the same brand as her rich uncle’s. She blinked suddenly and asked: “You don’t think the time will suddenly change on us, again, do you?”

They gazed at the sky this time, their shared anxiety almost comical. Jonas finally shrugged. “Come on,” he said, continuing toward town. “It’ll get dark before we know it, and I don’t want to be wandering in the dark in this fucking absolute weirdness.”

Camilla walked alongside. “What makes you think it’s 1953 specifically, rather than 1952 or 1954? Is that a magical time-travel prerequisite, 33 years at a time?”

Jonas laughed. “Something like that.” He gazed back to his right again. “I was saying about the caves-”

Camilla interrupted: “Sorry, I just need to ask this before I forget: How come you speak such good English? Is that a Germany thing? Or do you take it in school as a language credit?”

He stopped to look at her, grinning. “A Germany thing?”

Camilla colored. “Well, I know a lot of foreign countries speak English because of American tourists, you know?”

Jonas laughed. “Countries speak English? If I kick the ground-” He did. “-the ground curses at me in English: “Hey, you fucking German asshole! Who do you think you’re kicking?”

Camilla colored defensively and blurted: “You know what I mean! Don’t be a fucking smart-ass!” She swung at him and purposely missed.

Laughing, Jonas responded: “Not a German smart-ass?”

Camilla pretended to fume and stomped away. Chuckling, which she was glad to hear, he caught up to her and said: “You’re right, actually. German’s have the highest percentage of English fluency in Europe. Something like fifty-six percent. Most places in Germany you can do your touristy thing without speaking a word of German.”

“Not here,” she presumed.

“Not in Winden, no.”

They had reached a turn in the road and ahead sat another abandoned vehicle, this one run off the road through a shallow ditch into a fallow field. Cocking her ear, Camilla listened for the sound of an idling engine but heard nothing. The rutted earth had brought the old vehicle to a stop twenty feet in. Though older looking, it appeared much more expensive and better maintained than the Ford.

Jonas took off at a trot toward the charcoal-colored Mercedes. Bewildered, Camilla lurched off after him. It had taken less than half an hour for her heels to blister. “Where are you going?” she complained.

“What if it runs?” he called back over his shoulder.

“What if it does?” she yelled before the dime dropped. “Oh! OK. Sure.” She reached the big sedan just as Jonas twisted the key in the ignition and started the engine. It roared to life amid a spall of grey smoke from the exhaust pipe. That gave her pause.

“It’s just from being stalled,” Jonas assured her. “The carburetor has to adjust.” It did, and the exhaust from the tailpipe cleared as he revved the engine. He patted the bench seat beside him. “Get in.”

Camilla hesitated. “Is it okay?”

“See anyone around to object, Camilla?” He reached over and opened the door. The old vehicle was so wide that Jonas had to stretch out nearly parallel to the seat. Placing her hand on it getting in, Camilla realized the material was fine leather, soft as a leather glove. The dashboard was finely appointed in chrome and lacquered wood, with outsized, extravagant instrument panels. The powerful engine purred.

“Check that,” Jonas said. A brown leather briefcase sat against the hump on her side. Engraved on the polished brass lock-plate were the initials BRD. Jonas nodded when shown and indicated to open the briefcase. Pressing the catch, Camilla raised the flap and looked inside. Notebooks, a large journal, legal tablets, bound sheaves of papers, and other accouterments of a businessman. One item, in particular, caught her eye. “Look,” she said, pulling it out.

“Scheisse!” Jonas grabbed the leaflet. Depicted were a man, woman, and child, all gazing upward at something unseen in exuberant expectation. Words printed in German were angled across the man’s chest, and also below the picture in caption form. Camilla fathomed the word Atomkraft’s meaning if nothing else.

“Does that... ?”

“I saw a sign exactly like this at the construction site,” he said excitedly. “BRD. That could be Bernd Doppler, for Christ’s sake. He was-” He laughed harshly. “Bernd Doppler headed the consortium that built Winden Power Plant. He retired in 1986 when Claudia Tiedemann took over. She disappeared six months later and old Bernd got himself murdered a couple of months after that!” He laughed, again. “1987 wasn’t a good year for power plant people.”

Camilla took the leaflet back. “You’re English is too good for Winden; you said that yourself. So what gives?”

Jonas laughed. “You are a broken record, girl. I wanted to be an airline pilot when I was a kid; I started taking English in fifth grade. I skipped two years and started again in eighth grade. By then I gave up wanting to be a pilot, but knowing English is the ticket out of Winden. I applied to schools in England and the US in the exchange program. That ended...” His face darkened, and he looked away, gripping the big wooden wheel with both hands.

Camilla knew not to press. “It sounded like you hadn’t spoken it in a while,” she said.

Jonas pushed in the clutch and shifted the gears. “Now I sound like a born New Yorker, right?”

Camilla laughed. “No one sounds like a New Yorker but a fucking New Yorker, Jonas. I have a West Virginia accent. Can you tell?”

Jonas grinned as he experimentally let out the clutch. The Mercedes lurched forward and immediately stalled. “Not first gear,” he confirmed, re-shifting the column-mounted gear lever. “Let’s try that again.

The second attempt proved successful. Jonas twisted the wheel and guided the big vehicle slowly back toward the road, avoiding, or trying to avoid, the worst of the deep furrows. Camilla wished the Mercedes came fitted with seat belts; she couldn’t believe that it didn’t. Was Bernd Doppler alone in the car when it went off the road, she wondered?