Cowboy from the Future (4 page)

Deke
gave it a suspicious sniff.  “Could be poison.”  He muttered.  He might be a
sucker for every lost cause that wandered by, but Deke also persisted in being
as negative as possible.

“I
don’t care.  I’m eating it anyway.”

Not
entirely mollified, Deke tasted the tiniest bite imaginable.  A second later,
his eyes jumped back to Cade’s in astonishment.  For once, he didn’t have
anything dour to say.

“You
two like cookies?”  Addy brushed a handful of shiny hair back from her face.  “I
have a whole thing of Oreos in the backpack.  You let me stay here and I’ll
give them
all
to you.  They’re chocolate.”

“Chocolate?”

“You
don’t know what chocolate is?”

“No.”

“You
don’t have chocolate around here?”  She repeated, like she still didn’t believe
it.

“I
don’t think so.”  He looked over at Deke who shrugged.

“Great. 
So, it’s official, then.”  She reached for a bottle of liquor and poured a
haphazard amount into the nearest glass.  “Worst.  Day. 
Ever.
”

Did you
know that Mount Rushmore could well be the most enduring part of our whole civilization?

It’s
true!  The heads of the four United States presidents are sixty feet high and
carved into solid granite.  Cars will rust away.  Buildings will fall.  Oceans
will reclaim great cities.  But mighty Mount Rushmore will survive for hundreds
of thousands of years.

Just
imagine what future inhabitants of the Black Hills will make of such a sight!

Brown’s
Glampling Tours Official Pocket Guide

Worst
days
ever.  Plural.

For
the first five of them, Addy stayed locked in her dingy hotel room.  The whole
place was freezing cold and lit with nothing but a flickering lantern.  The
mattress looked like a breeding ground for bedbugs.  All the wobbly furniture seemed
to have too many corners, not enough corners, or no corners at all, even though
corners
clearly
should have been there.

…But,
everything
outside
the small room was even worse.

Shadow-of-the-Gods
was some kind of Wild West slum.  As far as Addy could tell, the entire town
was one street wide and made up of flat-fronted buildings that couldn’t
possibly
have passed any fire codes.  It looked like the set of a John Ford film, only
dirtier and filled with animals she didn’t recognize.  Buffalo roamed by and
deer and antelope played.  But, what the hell were those big lizard-y things
that wandered down the road?

And
“road” was being generous.  It was basically a mud puddle, traveled by
disreputable guys in bizarre, triangle-shaped cowboy hats.  They all carried
buckets and pick-axes into the hills in the morning and returned with glowing, green
rocks at night.

They
were mining
something
, but damn if she knew what.  Addy certainly wasn’t
going to head out and see for herself what made the stones shine like
kryptonite.  Everything beyond the edges of town was a sea of wilderness.  She
could see
that
and it was enough to keep her inside.  Staring out her
window, she didn’t see a single cellular tower, passing airplane, satellite
dish, or car.

Something
was very, very wrong.

On
day one, Addy was in denial.  This couldn’t be happening to her.  She wasn’t
cut out for roughing it.  Nature and animals and all the rest of it was great…
she just didn’t want to be
near
any of it.  In kindergarten, she’d had a
panic attack about visiting the zoo.  She was the fat kid who sat in the
library during recess and who faked an ankle injury to avoid taking the
stairs.  She was supposed to be safe inside her gated condo complex, with her
collection of designer handbags and reruns of ‘80s TV shows.

This
couldn’t
be happening.  Not to her.  Addy was
normal
, in a
drinking-nice-wines-and-going-to-Saks-after-Sunday-brunch kind of way.  It just
couldn’t. be. happening.  Very, very soon camera people would burst through the
door, laughing about how this was all a reality show prank.  She was sure of
it.

Only
it wasn’t a prank.

On
day two, Addy was angry.  This trip was
nothing
like the brochure
promised.  She was going to write Brown’s Glamping Tours the worst TripAdvisor
review in the history of the internet.  Just as soon as she got home.

And
she was
going
to get home.  Surely, they’d noticed she was missing by
now.  Her coworkers would alert Becky-the-glamping-ranger, who was leading the
group.  Becky would call the police or the FBI or the fucking Mounties or
whoever was in charge of saving nice girls from wherever-the-hell Addy was
stranded.  Brave men in uniform would burst through the door, arrest all those
people downstairs who were mean to her, and she’d give a heartfelt interview to
Dateline
about her ordeal.  It was just a matter of time before all of
this was a bad memory.  Very, very soon,
someone
would show up to rescue
her.

Only
no one showed up to rescue her.

On
day three, Addy was worried.  What the hell was going on?  One minute she’d
been trudging through Yellowstone, looking at Strickland Geyser, and thinking
it looked an
awful lot
like a certain part of the male anatomy.  The
next, it was erupting with a huge quake, knocking Addy off her feet.  She hit
the ground, slamming her skull on a rock.  When she opened her eyes, she was in
goddamn
Tombstone
.  Minus a very hot Val Kilmer.

Clearly,
hitting her head had caused this.  Clearly, she’d suffered some kind of brain
damage and this was all a coma-induced dream.  Clearly, she would wake up very,
very soon, and forget she’d ever hallucinated such a nightmarish place.

Only
she didn’t wake up.

On
day four, she was desperate.  Addy spent the whole afternoon crying, praying, and
staring at her iPhone, willing more bars to appear.  Her battery was dying and
she hadn’t had a signal since she fell.  Maybe even before that.  National Parks
didn’t get great reception, so the phone had been going in and out the whole
trip.  Why didn’t she pay for one of those plans that promised reception everywhere? 
Wasn’t it worth fifty extra bucks a month to get reception everywhere?  Maybe
then she wouldn’t be trapped in some icky, dirty, future place.

Not
that this was the future.

No
way.  There was a very logical reason for the people downstairs being dressed
like space cowboys.  And for their bizarre language.  And for the lack of
modern conveniences.  And for why no one had heard of even the most basic
technology.  There was a simple explanation for
all
of it and she was
going to think of one very, very soon.

Only
she couldn’t think of one.

By
day five, Addy was resigned.  She huddled under a threadbare quilt and
listlessly watched Mount Rushmore out the window.  She was possibly in a state
of shock, because every drop of her concentration was now centered on
cataloging the damage to the presidents.  The National Park Service would not
happy.

Washington’s
nose was gone.  Very Sphinx-like, but not an appropriate look for the Father of
the Country.  Part of Jefferson’s cheek had fallen away, providing a rooting
spot for odd red vines.  They obscured most of his features, adding a shocking
splash of color to the white granite.  Lincoln was buried in dirt and snow up
to his beard.  It seemed like the angle of his face was acting like a natural
funnel for debris and it piled up beneath him.  Only Roosevelt was unchanged. 
Good for you, Teddy.  Tucked back farther than the other three presidents, his
toothy grin would probably last for another countless millennia.

Because
centuries had already passed since those stoic faces were carved.

In
her heart, Addy had to admit what she’d suspected from the beginning.  This was
actually happening.  It was
actually happening
.  It wasn’t some
elaborate joke.  No one was coming to rescue her.  She wasn’t going to wake
up.  She wouldn’t think of another explanation.

She
was stuck in the future.

Like
really, really
far
in the future.  Where things had gone to hell and no
one knew what a credit card was.  She was marooned in this crappy, dreary, dystopian
nightmare, wearing her least-favorite bra and waiting for a real-life
Planet
of the Apes
to start up at any minute.

…And
she had no idea how to get home.

Returning
to the spot where everything went wrong seemed like the best idea, but how the
hell was she supposed to get back to that stupid geyser?  She was in South
Dakota.  What was she supposed to do?  Buy a plane ticket down back to Wyoming,
at the travel agent’s hut down the road?

A
particularly frigid wind blew through the boards of the hotel and Addy shivered. 
She was in so much trouble that she didn’t even know how to process it.  There
weren’t any steps she could follow to solve this problem or people she could
call for help.  She didn’t even know what direction to start walking.  There
was nothing but her, and that stupid guidebook, and a million acres of snow.

She
blinked, rousing from her stupor.

Wait
a minute…  Where was that stupid guidebook?

Addy
grabbed the backpack full of wilderness essentials that Becky-the-glamping-ranger
had given her and dug out her copy of
Brown’s Pocket Guide
.  Every guest
of the company got an “officially trademarked
Glamp-pack™” and a spiral-bound
tour book to help answer all their glamping questions.  The guide was filled
with suggested activities, dining tips, “wish you were here” photos of
breathtaking vistas… And maps.  Maps of the entire region, including Rushmore
and Yellowstone.

Oh
God, she had a map!

If
she could figure out how to read the thing, she was on her way home.

Addy
frowned at the foldout, her purple manicured fingernail tracking along the fairly
straight route.  According to the helpful scale, it was a seven hour drive from
Mount Rushmore to Yellowstone.  Four hundred and thirty-five miles.  Her mind
raced.  Traveling that distance on foot sounded impossible, but so did
everything else that was happening.  She was looking at the ruins of Mount
Rushmore, for Christ’s sake!  Nothing else even came
close
to that level
of crazy.  What if she just started walking and didn’t worry about what was
possible?

Could
she make it?

A
knock sounded and Addy jumped, startled her from her contemplations.  She
turned to look at the door, her heart hammering.  It was
him
.  She knew
it.  The massive guy, with the unnerving lavender eyes and the thick ebony
hair.  Cade said she could stay two nights and she’d already stayed four. 
Unless she somehow produced more Oreos, he was probably going to evict her.

“Yes?” 
Addy called, trying to sound calm and in control.

“You
need to come out, before you starve.  A dead girl in my saloon won’t be good
for business.”

Addy
winced, hunching deeper under her quilt.  Now that he mentioned it, she
was
starving.  All she’d had to eat for days were granola bars and the gloopy stew
someone left outside her door in the evenings.  She assumed that “someone” was
Cade, but she wasn’t taking any chances.

“Um…
I’m kinda busy.”  She said, not moving from her chair.

“
Now
.”

Shit. 
“Uh, why don’t you come back in…
Hey!
”  Her stalling tactics ended in a
yelp as Cade opened the door himself and stepped inside.

He
was dressed in a strange double-breasted shirt and suede pants that did
wonderful things for the length of his legs.  Damn it, why did he have to be so
big?  Was it some evolution thing, where future people were unnaturally large? 
Probably not, since no one else in town was quite so Delta Force huge.  Cade’s
shoulders barely fit through the door.  He seriously looked like he could lift
a lizard-monster over his head.

“You
can’t just unlock my door without permission!”  She snapped, refusing to be
intimidated by the guy.

“Sure
I can.  I have a key.”  He held it up so she could see.  Good-looking men were
always the biggest assholes.

Addy
pushed a stray curl behind her ear and glowered over at him.  His brothers shared
some of his features, but Cade’s were arranged to achieve a way more
wow!
result.  With his chiseled cheekbones, blue-black hair, and golden skin, she
imagined there was some Native American DNA in his background.  Probably
Lakota, given they were in the Black Hills.  She wondered if he knew about his
ancestors or if their heritage had faded along with everything else in the
future.

“We
need to talk, Adeline Mulhaney.”  He told her in an ominous tone.  Cade was one
of those guys who looked hot when he was pissed.  Which was lucky, since it
seemed to be his only mood.

Addy
decided to brazen it out.  “Talk about what?”  It was the same voice she used
when she was trying to return a slightly used lipstick to the Channel counter. 
As if she was completely in the right and the reluctant sales clerk was being
totally
unreasonable.

Cade
regarded her silently, taking in her wary expression and the way she was
huddled under the blanket.  “No one is coming for you, are they?”

The
flat words struck her like bullets.  Tears burned her eyes and Addy shook her
head.  “No.”  She whispered, her defensives crumbling.  “No one’s coming for me.”

Cade
glowered ferociously at that news.  “I
knew
you were going to say
that.”  He muttered.  It was
so
unfair that a man would have lashes that
long.  Not as unfair as Addy being stuck in
The Road
, but close.  For
some reason, his eyes flicked to the area just above her head and he gave a
strange sigh.  “You are going to cause me no end of trouble, lady.”

His
grouchiness made her feel suddenly hopeful.  This guy was going to tell her
exactly
what he thought, no matter how grim.  She didn’t have to worry about him lying
to her, even if it was just to make her feel better.  It was actually a
relief.  Social niceties were not going to get her out of this mess.