Vortex of Evil (22 page)

Rin and the girls headed toward the door.  She was carrying a shoulder bag with some food for Doug.  “We are heading up to take some food to Doug.  We should be back in two hours.”

Tom stood up as they went by.  “Keep your eyes open.  We don’t know what is lurking around out there.” 

Rin smiled and put her hand on Tom’s shoulder.  “After seventeen years on this island, I think I have that part under control.  But keep an eye on the place for me, would you?  So long Ying, Megan.”

The woman and her daughters headed back to the ridge that she knew well from the first days that she and Doug spent on the island so many years in her past.  When the girls were growing up they often climbed up to the view deck, as they called it, since it offered a majestic view of the island, the mountains in the distance on the mainland and the ocean all around them.  She had fond memories of those first days after they arrived on the island as they got to know each other while dodging bullets and trying to stay alive.  Now after all the years of relative calm, they were back at it.  Back to that same type of life.  Doug even looked exactly the same which made sense since his reality was only a week after that first week they spent together.

“What are you thinking, Mom?  Are you ok?”  Katelyn was always watching out for her after the girls’ father had disappeared.  Several times a day she would ask how it was going and whether she needed anything.  It was hard to know what to tell a daughter about losing the person who was the love of your life.  Someone you had shared everything with for all those years.  It was a hole in your life that you could never hope to fill completely.  In the two years since Doug’s death, she had made very little progress in feeling ok about life without him.  And this new situation wasn’t going to help that. 

It was wonderful to see Doug again, but this Doug was a different person.  A person who was lacking all of her Doug’s memories of their life together.  He didn’t know about their daughters until they met face to face at the point of an assault rifle.  And while she knew it probably made the girls feel better having someone around who had that confidence and competence that their father always had, she wasn’t ready to consider him a replacement in any sense of the word.  For now, though, he was a welcome addition and she would have to decide how she felt about him in the long run.  If there was a long run.

“I am fine.  Just thinking about the times when we took this hike with your father.  And how I am so glad the three of us are back together so we can enjoy this fine morning.”  She tried her best to show some optimism for the girl’s sake.  Even if she wasn’t quite ready to feel it for herself.

They took forty five minutes to hike up the ridge to where Doug was keeping watch.  Rin wished she had a way to contact him so there would not be any surprises.  She didn’t need to worry, as it turned out.  Doug spotted them coming up the trail and was waiting for them as they arrived at his lofty perch.

“Hello, ladies.  Now what are a fine looking bunch of women like you doing walking unescorted through this dangerous forest?”  Doug smiled as he helped them up over the rocks that were just below the view deck.  He thought to himself he would have preferred Tom escort them, but he didn’t say anything.  Rin had been here long enough that she didn’t need him telling her how to take care of herself.

“We brought you some breakfast since you decided not to join us.  And we are more than able to take care of ourselves in this forest, thank you.”  Rin held up her assault rifle and smiled back.

“Would you like some oatmeal, ah, Doug?”  Alannah was still uncomfortable calling him Doug, but as her mother pointed out, he wasn’t her father. 

“Sure.  That sounds good.  I am hungrier than I thought I would be and I didn’t bring anything substantial with me.”  He and Rin sat down in the shade while the girls kept watch from the deck.

“They are very fine girls, Erin.  You and your husband did a great job raising them in difficult circumstances.”  He opened the small container and went after the thickening oatmeal with a plastic spoon.  Given that the oatmeal had nearly an hour to set up during the hike, he was skeptical that the plastic spoon would be able to get through it.  He imagined that Ying could write an equation that would predict when it would turn into an impenetrable solid that would resist even a diamond tipped saw blade.

“Sorry we didn’t bring any milk.  We are a little short of it right now.  Those future people took the cow last week.”

Doug looked up with surprise and then felt foolish that he had been so easily duped by her joke.   He shook his head.  “I had a moment’s thought about where you came up with a cow.  Nicely done.”

“I can’t take too much credit.  You are probably weak in the head with hunger.  Why didn’t you come back with Tom.  I was worried about you.”

Doug paused for a long minute and looked her in the eyes.  “I am worried about me also.  I have a darker anger in me than I have ever had before.  Partly because they took Erin right in front of me.  Twice.  And partly because you and the girls have shown me the life I will now miss out on.  However challenging life has been for you and Doug, you guys seem to have found strength and love in each other.  And you made a life and raised a family here.  I feel even more anger that they seem to have cheated me out of that.”

Erin sighed as she realized how this younger Doug’s emotions and sense of loss must be nearly identical to hers.  She felt strong emotions at the thought of their respective losses and moved closer to Doug and hugged him.  He felt awkward for a second and then dropped his spoon and put his arms around her.  They could feel each other’s emotional pain in that moment of closeness and in one moment seemed to bridge the time between them and fill in the gaps in their very different lives.  He realized that she was just as desperate to get her Doug back and just as angry about this turn of events as he was. 

Erin spoke softly into his ear.  “You only bring positives to our lives, Doug.  Please don’t stay up here because you think you are trying to protect us from confused feelings.  Let us just be happy you are here and safe.  We can work through the confusion later.  Just let them love you as a alternative to their father for now.  And let me love you as a friend.  A dear and trusted friend.  We need you with us and we can’t take a chance you will be taken away.”

Doug released her and leaned back slightly, holding her by the shoulders and holding eye contact with her.  He saw the stream of tears running down her cheek.

“Thank you, Erin.  Or Rin, or whatever I should call you.  Thank you for having the courage to say what I was trying to avoid.  I can’t be him, but if you are ok with me being around, we can figure out what my role can be until we sort all this out.”

Rin smiled as she fought to hold her emotions in check.  “Whatever sorting out we manage, it will be a lot easier if we work together.”  She dabbed her eyes with the back of her hand until Doug reached across and wiped away a tear from her cheek with his thumb.  She grabbed his hand and squeezed it tightly.  Then she stood up.  “Eat your oatmeal.  We need to get going.”

“Yes, ma’am.  I’ll get right on it.  But I may need to use my knife.”

Chapter 26

Alannah scanned the horizon with the binoculars.  She was fishing with Tom and Megan on the west coast of the island.  It was a regular activity any time the weather was good.  Fall brought increased winds to the island and the storms of the winter season would make it difficult to get close to the water on the west coast of the island.  It was important to store food for later use in case the weather kept them from fishing for a period of time.  The Vikings had shown them how to prepare the salmon for drying and they had a good stock put away for the winter. 

Tom and Megan were trying to learn all they could from Rin and the girls so they would have the skills to live independently as soon as possible.  If rescue or return to their time wasn’t possible, they wanted to start their new life and build their cabin as soon as practical.  They assumed that the spring would be the best time to start that project.  But with the crowded living conditions at Rin’s camp due to the new arrivals, they decided they might have to go sooner.

It had been two weeks since they had seen the future people’s boat disappear with Erin, Peter and Gaby.  Not a day went by without Doug sending out scouts to various locations to scan the horizon with their binoculars.  He spent a lot of time on the view deck or higher on the spine of the ridge, hoping to see something out of place.  Even if they showed up and captured him, at least it would be better than waiting and wondering.  He craved action and for now the only action was trudging up and down the steep ridge to the view deck with whatever partner he had roped into going with him.  Rin was happy to go some of the time, but she also felt a little strange spending too much time alone with this younger version of Doug.  Her confused feelings made for long silences as they both tried to decide what was appropriate to share.  And she worried she would eventually cross some emotional line that neither of them would want her to cross.  At least for now.

Ying stayed close to camp most days.  She felt the most disconnected from the group since it seemed that most of them were related to each other or had established relationships.  But she was associated with the pirates and no matter what she did, it was hard to erase the perception that she was a wolf among the sheep.  Someone who might suddenly turn on the others.  She got that feeling from everyone except the girls who had not experienced the battles with the pirates and had no negative frame of reference to refer to.  Katelyn seemed to understand Ying’s plight and she went out of her way to be helpful and friendly to the Chinese scientist who was just a well-educated, and somewhat scared girl in a strange place at this point.  She even gave her a new set of clothes to wear that were British commando camouflage green.  They burned the uniform of the pirates that Ying had been wearing all along.

The two of them sat guarding the camp while everyone else was either fishing or on the lookout.  Their days in camp had reached a steady state and it would almost seem boring if it hadn’t been for the constant feeling that they could be attacked by the remaining pirates.  Or some local native group they didn’t yet know about.  Or the future people who were highly capable of wiping them out.

“How did you like growing up here, Katelyn?  Did you long to be around more people?”  Ying thought of her childhood in crowded urban settings in China and how many times she had wanted to find a place where she could be alone to enjoy the beauty of nature.  Now that she had found that place, she was asking Katelyn what it was like to have the opposite experience of her own.

“We never really longed for lots of people around us since the idea of a crowded city was a pretty abstract concept to us.  My folks talked about the cities of the world that they had visited.  Mom told lots of stories about Boston, but my curiosity about going there was to see the buildings, the stores, and the restaurants, not the people.  I supposed the reality would involve a lot more people than my abstract view of it.  Did you have a lot of people around you growing up?”

Ying laughed out loud at that, noting Katelyn’s look of surprise.  “Oh, my.  What a question.  China’s cities are very crowded places, so I suspect that I had a much different experience than you did.  My family was very large, with aunts, uncles and cousins all living in the apartment complex where I lived until I was fourteen.”

“Where did you live after that?”  She wondered if Ying had run away from home due to the crowding.

“I went to the university and lived there permanently.  I scored high on a scientific aptitude test and they selected me for a special development program.  I had no idea what the project goals were since the work was fragmented and distributed to specific cells of students and later graduate scientists.  If I had known I was part of this high tech weapons project, I would have found a way to do something else with my career.

“Were you scared when all the pirate stuff took place?  Did you get involved in the fighting?”

“No.  No fighting.  I am not a soldier by any means.  They only brought me along so I could help with the science and try to figure out how to use the weapon once we captured it.  But it turns out the weapon we captured was just a fake.  I never got to see the real thing.  It was on that boat that blew up.  The one your mom and dad blew up before they captured me.”

“Were you afraid they would shoot you?”  Katelyn was trying to picture herself in that situation.  How she would react if really confronted with a life or death battle where people were injured or killed.

“I was sure they would shoot me.  The pirate guys who brought me here had captured Gaby and the other people from her boat and they were executing them as fast as they caught them.  They never wanted to take a chance on someone rescuing their captives.  Pirates are usually pretty heartless that way.”

Katelyn realized she had been shielded from some of the reality of her parent’s past, but the nature of the pirates, and the way people looked after being hit with a Viking axe were two memorable items that she had put together on her own from the many stories she had heard.  The Viking’s had filled in a few of the details as well since they enjoyed a lusty tale with lots of blood and gore.

“Well, I hope we can avoid having to shoot at anyone, or being shot at ourselves.”  She absentmindedly checked the safety on her AK-47 as she said that.

“I agree to that.  Could you pass me . . .” She stopped in mid-sentence as she saw movement far down the trail they were watching.  Ying held her finger to her lips as Katelyn looked up at her when she suddenly stopped talking.   Ying got to a crouching position, holding her machine pistol in front of her, ready for action.  She pointed down the trail and moved slowly to the right and behind a large tree trunk.