Chapter 3

Much to my surprise there was no trip to the space ship for me. I'd expected to be whisked aboard and then have a few days or weeks or at least a few hours being taken back in time to put me where I was going. That wasn't what happened though. I simply appeared on the ground beside my eight by eight by eight container with twenty-four green plastic totes stacked neatly beside it.

Rose had gone over my immediate actions, with as best she could foresee, what would happen right away in mind. We'd planned ahead for one web harness to be ready. It was right at the top of the container and I pulled it out and put it on first.

There was a holstered Glock on each side, a filled canteen hung on one side and a pouch with loaded extra magazines for the Glocks hung on the other. I also had a good long steel-handled hatchet, an eight-inch hunting knife, a compass, and a pair of binoculars hanging from my harness. I reached in again and pulled out my loaded Marlin 336c 35 Remington saddle gun. It had six in the magazine and one up the spout.

Getting armed finished my immediate actions. Rose thought I'd be better off with loaded guns on my person right away, even though Rosco told us there would be no danger for at least an hour and probably not for days, but Rose wanted me to be careful.

Next was my own first move. I pulled out the glasses and scanned as far as I could see. It was pretty boring though, at least as far as life threatening danger. I was on a very large grassy plain and could see animals, but they looked like buffalo to me and nothing live seemed to be within a quarter of a mile.

Along with the buffalo, I could see some type of really large cattle, a herd of at least sixty horses, and several wolves roaming around as if looking for something weak to drag down and eat. There was plenty of game within sight, but the rolling plain was so big none of them were close to me at all.

To tell the truth I was a little let down. The last six weeks had gone by in such a rush, starting with Rosco and the miracle cure, and then the wonderful coincidence of finding Rose and our love affair, which we had to throttle almost from the start, because we knew a permanent separation was coming and there was no way to stop it.

Our loving relationship was like a book never to be finished - almost as if the author made it to chapter seven and just stopped, or died, or something. No more chapters were coming. It was over.

I wasn't over though, I was here, with weeks of preparation for this moment and now nothing was happening. I was standing on a big prehistoric landscape with nothing to do. Nothing was happening.

It was like I had just finished a long cross-country freight run, unloaded the stuff I'd carried, and now what? The freight was here, the truck was gone, and the warehouse had disappeared. What was I supposed to do now? There was no handy voice in my head to tell me the next move. I was alone.

That kind of thinking was going to get me killed. The bad part was I knew I could slip into it. Most of my life had prepared me for taking orders from someone else. I hadn't planned to become a truck driver. It had just kinda happened. I'd turned out to be a good one and I'd made more than a good living at it. That was over too.

Here and now I had to plan my own life and I didn't think I'd be all that good at it. At least I had a few ideas left from Rose. She'd poured over the maps and drawings and planned for my first shelter.

Just a little further north there was a sort of path down into a valley. It had looked like an ideal setup to Rose. About half way to the river's floodplain was a sort of large shelf, a kind of second plain, which wasn't nearly as large as the one I was on now. During the spring floods high water wouldn't reach it and it was more heavily wooded.

The more heavily wooded part wasn't difficult. Trees up on this plain were few and far between. There were small groups of them occasionally, but never many and never very large. I suspected the fairly stiff breeze blowing now might be part of the reason if it was a regular feature.

No matter the cause I had work to do now and it didn't require a lot of thinking. First I removed all the things I could reach from my container. We'd put a sturdy box for me to stand on near the top. Using it I could reach over into the container and unpack loose items.

About an hour later I was ready to make my first trip down the path. I'd dug out my dolly and loaded it. I slung my Marlin over my shoulder, took a look around to make sure nothing was approaching my cache, and then grabbed the dolly's handle and took off.

Rolling the dolly four hundred yards or so down a fairly steep grade brought me to a fork in the path. Not exactly, but there were two ways I could take. It wasn't as enigmatic as the two roads diverging in a yellow wood Robert Frost made so famous though. One way kept descending and the other let me off on what appeared to be another plain.

Rose's study had let me know this was a sort of mezzanine in my outdoor rock hotel. It wasn't quite the ground floor, but it wasn't up in the high-rise section either. Of course I was on my way down from the penthouse. My cave was supposed to be on this level, all I had to do was find it. It wasn't the only thing here though.

To me this was as close to the Garden of Eden as I'd ever get. The ground was mostly level and covered with thick grass and it was a large clear area. I had maybe five acres or so of front yard before a real live hardwood forest started.

Like almost any natural forest encountered from the outer edge, the beginning was a band of saplings which worked itself back into larger trees which were closer together. By the time you made it to the seriously older trees, farther away from the edge, they'd have thinned out again somewhat.

This was the exact opposite of what had really happened, since the older trees came first and worked their way out from the center. The details didn't really make any significant difference to me though.

Looking around the woodline and the outer edge of the clearing I spotted the cave. Or I spotted the entrance anyway. It appeared to lead back in under the plain I'd just come down from. Of course the plain was a few hundred feet above me now and my soon-to-be roof seemed very substantial.

I pulled the dolly over near the entrance, parked it, and fished out one of my flashlights. The entrance was maybe six or so feet wide and about eight tall. It wasn't neat and regular or anything, but wasn't so far from that. Luckily the floor of the cave was fairly level. Living on a dirt floor was going to take some getting used to.

I kept digging around in my first load and found the special flashlight to attach to the Marlin's barrel. A hand held flashlight is great, but if I had to evict any current occupants I'd need to put light on the subject while I was aiming.

My new home was immense. Much larger than either Rose or I had thought. Even though we'd had plenty of maps and photos there had been no inner details of caves in the area. Rose had suggested trying this one first because of its excellent location.

The only hint about its size had been a notation on the map, which said large cave. Large was right on the money too. My best guess was over ten thousand square feet of floor space. Easily enough room for me and a few dozen of my friends. Gathering friends would come later.

After half an hour of roaming around inside I decided there were no current occupants and headed back to my dolly. I unloaded it about ten feet inside the entrance and went back for another load.

Now I was back to trucking again. Hand trucking. It was my least favorite type. It was also a lengthy proposition. Most of it was easy since all I had to do was stack three totes onto the dolly and roll it down into the cave.

The trips weren't short though, about seven or eight hundred yards each way, and if I hadn't been put back to perfect health I would have died of my heart attack for sure before I was even half way done. As it was it took nearly six hours, and damned if the last item, my chair, wasn't the worst.

I'm sure it had been a fine and tricky idea that let me end up with twenty-four handy large caster-wheels. Jim had followed my directions to the letter too. It took me a hammer and half an hour to knock off the forty-eight tacked on smaller casters he'd installed as part of my more wheels swindle. They had already been put into a tote and taken down.

My chair's roll around base and its twenty-four eight-inch casters were still a problem. It looked ridiculous of course, what with the base being three times as large as it needed to be and giant caster-wheels so thick they couldn't steer themselves properly for bumping into each other. At least they were bolted on.

Still, it took me an hour to remove all but four of them and to disassemble the large portion of the base that had been bolted on merely to mount wheels it didn't really need.

Hopefully one day I'd look back and be glad of my clever trickery. Right now I cursed with every turn of the wrenches I had to use getting this shit out of the way so I could roll the chair.

Of course the chair was the last item to come into my new home. I rolled it inside and sat in it on my ass to rest. Next thing was a small fire to warm up something to eat, but I had to catch my breath first.

Twenty minutes later I was out in the edge of my mezzanine woods looking for squaw wood. While at it I idly wondered if it could be called squaw wood here and now since I wasn't sure squaws were around yet. At any rate I knew there were no squaws here. If there had been they could be gathering their wood.

Still I did know there were women, and men. According to Rosco there should be Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons and neither more than twenty-miles away.

He wouldn't give us any pictures even though he claimed to also have movie clips. I think he was just being an ass after Rose threatened to have him mounted to put above her fireplace like a trophy from deep sea fishing.

Thinking about Rose and Rosco and the big M1-T20 battle made me go take one of the custom rifles out of its case. I snapped a thirty-round banana clip in place and leaned it in a handy spot near the door.

My firearms procurement adventures hadn't been without incident. The Barrett 82A1s and the Barrett REC7s were no doubt wonderful weapons and their accuracy and firepower were unquestioned. They had been a wild hair in my ass though. Even the custom M1s were big time over kill for here and now. They'd sounded good at the time.

Now I was convinced the Marlin 336c in 35 Remington was going to be my mainstay. I know the 35 Remington cartridge is not a tack driver accuracy wise and I know around two hundred yards is about the extent of its useful range, especially over iron sights, but it was easily plenty for me.

I wasn't going to need to do any thousand yard sniping with the 82A1 and I wouldn't be involved in any firefights against insurgents where the REC7 would be just the ticket. Hell, I'd need to shoot deer and I'd probably have to get pretty close to do it.

What the hell, I had the weapons now and I could stand off plenty of angry cave men alone, if I could get the rifles out of their cases and loaded fast enough. So much for stocking up on the ultimate weapon. By now I was just glad I hadn't gone for M4s with M-203 grenade launchers attached.