STRANGER WORLD Page 19

  Sophia picked her head up at this and gave him a quizzical look. “A Land Rover on Mars?” A nervous chuckle escaped her. “George, what year do you think it is?”

  What an odd question. Why would she want to know what year it was? He was about to tell her when he noticed the crimson stains growing on the bandages on her forearm. “Sophia. Your arm, I think it’s bleeding?”

  The blond doctor stared down at her arm. “Oh my.” She quickly grabbed a dirty dish towel off the counter and dabbed at the stained bandages. She must’ve seen the concerned look on his face for she told him, “I… uh… it was like this when I woke up.”

  George saw the look in Sophia’s eyes and knew she wasn’t telling him everything. She was certainly nice enough, but she was a terrible liar. She picked up on his gaze, opened her mouth as if to say something, but said nothing further. He decided not to press the French scientist for now.

  Rising quickly to his feet George said, “Here, let me help you.” Grabbing her wrist he started to say, “Try keeping your arm elevated over your head like this,” but she jerked her hand away from him violently and clutched it to her chest. Staring at him sheepishly she explained, “Sorry, I guess I don’t like being touched.”

  George nodded. “Sorry. I should’ve asked first.” Turning his head to the side he raised his voice and asked, “Hey, barkeep, do you have a first aid kit around here anywhere?”

  The barkeep with the fake face returned and asked, “What’ll it be, friend?”

  “A first aid kit?” When the barkeep simply tilted his head in non-understanding, George pursed his lips in frustration. Turning back toward Sophia he said, “C’mon, I think I saw an old first kit in the truck. I’m not sure what kind of shape it’s in but it’s probably better than anything they have in here.”

  Sophia hopped down off her own barstool and was about to follow him, when, thinking better of it, she turned and grabbed the last piece of bread on her plate. Stuffing it into her mouth she muffled to him, “Sorry, I feel like I haven’t eaten in ages.”

  George felt himself smiling back at her. “Remember. Keep your arm elevated, like this,” he demonstrated with his own arm. “It will slow down the bleeding a little bit until we can get you fixed up.”

  Still chewing her food she nodded in understanding.

  Barnaby had gone off to relieve himself in the loo, but George was fairly confident the obese accountant could find them where they parked easily enough.

  They reached the oversized safari truck outside. Despite all the garbage he and Barnaby had tossed out earlier, the back was still brimming with junk: ropes, lanterns, cargo netting.

  George snapped his fingers in recollection and pointed to the cab. “There’s a first aid kit bolted to one of the rear passenger doors.” The heavy door opened with a loud complaining creak. George unbolted the first aid kit, unsnapped the lid, and began removing a roll of sterile gauze. “The iodine’s dry as a bone, and there aren’t any alcohol swabs. We need something to sterilize the wound.”

  “One step ahead of you,” Sophia said, holding a bottle of rum from the inn.

  George winced. “That’s gonna burn a bit.”

  Sophia made a pouty face. “Heyyyy… I’m a big girl.”

  As George cut the bandages from her arm using trauma scissors in the kit Sophia asked him, “So, what’s your plan? To find your daughter, I mean.”

  “I’m not staying here, if that’s what you’re asking. As soon as I’m done refueling the truck, I’m turning around and going back the way I came. Coming here was a mistake.” Lifting his eyes momentarily to the manor on the hill of the end of the street he added, “It’s a dead end. The train doesn’t come here anymore. I’ve got to double back and find another way around that gorge. You and Barnaby are welcome to come with me, but I don’t think Barnaby’s ready to leave.”

  George split the end of the gauze into two pieces, wrapped one end around her forearm one more time for good measure, and tied it off with a knot. “There, not perfect, and you probably need a few stitches, but not a bad field dressing.”

  “It’s a little tight,” she complained.

  George nodded. “You want it tight. It will keep the wounds closed so they can start healing.” He was about to put his finger between her bandage and skin but remembered what happened in the inn so he explained, “As long as you can still get a finger beneath the bandage,” he said, pantomiming on his own forearm, “you’re okay. If your arm starts to swell, we’ll loosen them up a bit.”

  Sophia smiled and offered a word of thanks. As George returned the scissors to the first aid kit and started bolting it back to the door she said to him, “George, you know how when you fly on a commercial plane the stewardess tells you that in an event of a crash you are to put your mask on first and then your child’s?”

  “What’s your point?” George asked irritably, pretty certain he knew where she was headed.

  Sophia paused, summoned her courage and continued. “Well… it’s just that…You look like you haven’t slept in days. I mean, you can barely stand.” Gesturing toward the night air, she winced in pain from the effort. “And who knows what other monstrosity is out there.”

  A disembodied voice added, “Plus, you go outside the town at night, this time of year, and the Carrion Wolves are sure to get you.”

  Both of them turned and saw Cheeves nimbly leap down from the overhead frame on the back of the truck and land next to them.

  “Carrion Wolves, what’s a…” George started to ask but the gargoyle butler leapt back up into the back of the truck and exclaimed, “You got mail?” Looking down at him, he asked, “Why didn’t you tell me you got mail?”

  “Mail?” Sophia asked, “What are you talking about, Cheeves?”

  Cheeves pulled the heavy ornate box out of the truck that Maddie had tossed off Wellington’s floating barge. It landed with a loud THUMP on the cobblestone road. Gesturing toward it with one claw, he scratched his horn thoughtfully with the other. “See, you got mail. Does Cheeves ever get mail? No. I write and write and write. Does anybody ever write poor ole Cheeves back? Nooooo….Who cares about the butler. Am I right? I can tell by your face. I think I’m right.”

  “Cheeves!” George had to yell to get the butler’s attention. “Cheeves, are you telling me you can open this?”

  Cheeves smiled wide, and his eyes grew double in size. He looked George square in the eye. “Open what?”

  Fortunately for Cheeves Sophia explained, “The box, Cheeves, the box!”

  Cheeves claws drum rolled on his vest. “It’s really quite simple. Stand back, stand back.”

  He and Sophia backpedaled a few steps. Humming a tune under his breath, Cheeves began doing a funny dance around the box that entailed sometimes hopping on one foot, and other times knocking one top of the box with a fist, and still other times slapping the sides with the palms of his hands.

  George rolled his eyes and exhaled. “I should have known.”

  Cheeves stopped in mid-dance, looked at him sternly, shushed him with a clawed finger to his lips, and said, “Now I have to start over.”

  “We’re wasting time.”

  Sophia pulled him farther away and backed him up until they were now standing at the front of the truck. “No, give him a second. He might actually be onto something.”

  While Cheeves began his ridiculous dance routine all over again Sophia whispered to him in hushed tones. “George, where do you think you are?”

  George knew Sophia wasn’t simply talking about the Victorian town they were in, or Dino-Land, or even the labyrinth of tunnels below. “I don’t know, maybe on an island somewhere?” Turning toward her, “Why, do you know where we are?”

  She nodded slowly. “Yes, at least I think so. I think we’re in some kind of theme park, or at least a place that started out as one.”

  George felt himself frown. “A theme park?” He shook his head. “No theme park I’ve ever been to has anything as elaborate as all this. It ma
kes no sense.”

  Sophia chose her words carefully, and spoke slowly. “I imagine it wouldn’t. Not to someone from your time.”

  George felt his knees quiver. “My time? Sophia, have you gone completely off your rocker? What are you saying?”

  “I’m saying that in my time, we had several theme parks, where people could immerse themselves in any time period, or any fictional setting the architects could dream up. These included robots, biological creations, entire worlds.”

  “What, you mean like those animatronic things they have down in Orlando? Because that’s not what I saw.” He pointed southwest to Dino-Land, U.S.A. “They had flying ships and dinosaurs.”

  “They don’t have dinosaurs where you come from?”

  George raised his eyebrows and asked sarcastically, “No… do they have dinosaurs where you come from, because the last time I checked dinosaurs died out millions of years ago.”

  Sophia took a step closer to him and gently laid a hand on his forearm. He knew the physical contact must’ve been difficult for her, which only made him appreciate the gesture all the more.

  “George, every zoo in the world has dinosaurs. They have ever since they began creating them from fossilized DNA back in 2017.”

  “2017?” George heard his voice crack, and he hated himself for it. Is this possible? The most logical explanation was that Sophia Davenport was crazy as a loon but then, how would that explain the hovering ships, the bungee chording gatherers, and Cheeves for that matter? And the way Barnaby talked about Nixon and the Vietnam War like it was yesterday, it was like he was some sort of throwback from the sixties.

  Sophia continued. “Where I come from, or rather I should say, when I come from, Mars doesn’t only have a little rover unit running around on it, but several Martian colonies, and even more colonies on Jupiter’s moon, Europa, and the outer rim. Android helpers are commonplace in the household.”

  George hiked a thumb back to the gargoyle butler. “What about Cheeves back there?”

  Sophia swallowed before answering. “I think I built him.” Then more to herself she added, “Or I was working on a design for something like him, but we were decades away from perfecting it and putting it into assembly. It wasn’t enough for the architects to make robots and dinosaurs that looked and acted like the real thing, they had to go and play God, and make new creations, new species.”

  A growing feeling of distrust welled up inside him. George took a step away from her and asked, “What are you saying, Sophia, you used to work here?”

  Sophia’s eyes grew wide in alarm. “No, not here specifically. I’ve never seen, or even heard of anything as expansive or state-of-the-art as this. I think this is years, perhaps even decades beyond even my future. Cloning dinosaurs, holograms, and robot barkeeps, sure, but we were a long away from creating anything as advanced as the hover ships you described, and biological creations like Cheeves? They were barely on the drawing boards.”

  George felt lightheaded. He heard a soft thump behind him and realized it was the sound of him falling against the truck. If what Sophia was saying were really true, he and Maddie had been somehow transported into the future. It fit. Somehow, even down in the tunnels when they first met the robot horse and flying hover drone, he knew. They had been whisked to the future, like that doctor who sojourned through time in a phone booth. Was Barnaby a time traveler too? Did he know? After all this time, he must’ve guessed. Could they get back? And what happened to Tessa? Was she transported here with them? How did they even get here?

  “George!”

  He lifted his head. George was surprised to find himself now sitting on the ground with his back leaning against the truck. He heard a loud ringing in his ears. As the world stopped spinning and he began to regain a tenuous grip on reality he was able to figure out the source. The very definition of auditory exclusion is a form of temporary loss of hearing occurring under highly stressful conditions. Ear ringing was a common side effect.

  “George!” Cheeves said again, as though he had been trying to get his attention for some time now. “You see? I told you I could open it.”

  Sophia helped him climb to his feet. It might as well have been Everest, but he managed it. Seeing this, she asked, “George. Are you okay?”

  He nodded, but he was a long away from being okay--miles, in fact.

  Sophia patted him delicately on the arm. “I’m sure it’s a lot to take in.”

  George slowly panned his face toward her. “Ya think?”

  Meanwhile, Cheeves was bending over the box, and with a small grunt, he lifted something out about the size of a lunchbox, which made him think of Maddie’s Fairy Woods lunchbox back home. Regardless of where, or when, they were in time, finding her and rescuing her was still all that really mattered to him. It was just now, the mission had never seemed more challenging.

  Cheeves held the box to his ear and shook it roughly. “I think it’s broken.”

  George took a hurried step forward and snatched it from him. “Well if it wasn’t before, it probably is now.”

  The small lunchbox was a compass enshrined in a very unusual housing reminiscent of the Jules Verne-looking hover ship they had seen earlier.

  “A compass?” Sophia asked.

  “Yeah, but it doesn’t point North though.” He showed it to her and the needle was pointing due east.

  “How do you know that?” Cheeves asked.

  George pointed to the horizon, “That’s where the sun went down.” Moving it from left to right, he added, “But it’s definitely giving me a heading of due east.” Staring at the additional shiny-gold, steam-powered machinery, “And I’m not sure what all this other stuff is.”

  Maddie wanted him to have this. So that meant it was important. Maybe, in this crazy-kooky-upside down, futuristic world, this was some kind of tracking device.

  Hefting it slightly, he told Sophia, “I think this will lead us back to my daughter.”

  Cheeves, gripping the breast of his coat vest, rocking back and forth on his heels, looking rather pleased with himself, said, “You’re welcome.”

  A single shot rang out inside the inn and George was painfully reminded he wasn’t wearing his gun.

  Chapter 36

  “Barnaby and Lamppost Man”

  “Barnaby, good to see you, old man.”

  Barnaby, still seated at the bar, lifted the shot glass to his lips (the fifth one in as many minutes) and froze. He knew that voice, even after all these years he knew that voice. Without taking a sip he asked, “Aren’t you afraid someone will see you?”

  The inn had quieted down, the musicians had gone home, and most of the patrons had either retired to their rooms upstairs or were talking softly in their booths. George, Sophia, and Cheeves had finished their meal and gone back outside to the truck for some reason.

  Leaning on the bar, and working hard at getting him to meet his gaze, the Lamppost Man patted him on the back and said, “Now Barnaby, is that any way to greet an old friend?” He signaled the barkeep for a drink who already seemed to know his drink of choice.

  “Old friend?” Barnaby repeated, noting his words were now slurring a bit. “You don’t care about me. I gave up my friends for you and you still left me to rot with Lady Wellington.” And with that said he downed his fifth shot of what he was pretty sure was Canadian whisky.

  The Lamppost’s mouth gaped open. “Whaaaat? How can you say that? After all we’ve been through together. Look, I’m not the boss here. I only do what I’m told. And right now Management only wants one thing, and that’s the girl.”

  Barnaby placed the empty shot glass upside down on the bar and signaled the barkeep for another..

  Wait. Did he just say ‘the girl?’ Is he talking about George’s kid? “

  Maddie? What does she have to do with anything?”

  Wait, should I have told him about Maddie?

  The Lamppost Man pounded the bar top with a gloved hand. “You see? There you go. Maddie. That’s a
fine start. Before now, I wasn’t even aware the little brat had a name.”

  Barnaby teetered on his chair for a moment, gripped the edge of the bar with both hands, and steadied himself. Frowning, he turned toward his drinking companion and said, “Maddie’s a good kid. You leave her alone.”

  “Why should you care about some snot-nosed brat? What’s important is Management wants her, and they’re willing to pay. They get what they want, and we get what we want, and you,” he patted Barnaby on the back heartily, “I know exactly what you want.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Barnaby said, but even though he lifted his sixth drink to his lips, he didn’t partake. Not yet anyway.

  “Surrrrreeeeee I do. Yesirreee, Barnaby.” The Lamppost man looked around the room, making sure no one was watching or listening, and then leaning in like he was about to convey some great big giant secret he whispered, “You want to be back home, in that little ramshackle house of yours in Pennsylvania, watching the television each night with that (cough-cough), beautiful wife of yours. Sorry, wrong pipe.” The Lamppost Man pounded his own chest with a fist and quickly gestured for another drink to wash it down. The barkeep quickly placed another drink on the bar which he drank greedily and almost immediately spit back out. “That’s bourbon, you idiot.” He slammed the drink back down on the bar. “I’ve been drinking here for years and you serve me bourbon?”