Taft Ranch: A Thunder Mountain Novel Read online

  Their only hope of getting out of this was to get to the institute. And making that hike was not going to be easy.

  They needed something to carry water. And they were going to somehow have to figure out how to get more food.

  And he needed something to protect his feet.

  Most of the clothes the couple had in their closets fell apart when touched. But the synthetic fiber clothing that had been kept in the dark away from any elements seemed fine.

  From the size of the guy’s feet and coats, he had been bigger than Lee. But a pair of the guy’s boots seemed to still be holding together pretty well, so he and Joan managed to get a few layers of socks on Lee’s feet and get the boots on tight enough for him to walk.

  It actually felt heavenly having padding and the boots taking a lot of the shock of each step.

  They mostly worked in silence, not talking, just working together as a team as if they had done that for years. Lee was very impressed at how Joan was doing with all this. At times she seemed to be in better shape than he was.

  The woman had been about Joan’s size, so Joan found a light raincoat and a second pair of tennis shoes that seemed like they might hold together for a little while.

  They found two synthetic backpacks tucked in another closet. So by the time they left that house, Lee had boots that would protect his feet until he could find something better, pocketknives, matches that still lit, and glass containers to carry water. And both had raincoats in case they needed those.

  They also each carried a light blanket.

  Lee had grabbed a small crowbar as well and had it hanging on his pack. There was no telling where they might have to break into a place. In fact, he had no idea exactly what lay ahead of them.

  As they set off along the road out of the small town, headed for Boise, Joan turned to him. “We’re going to need to find water.”

  “If I remember correctly,” Lee said, “over the next hill there is a small river or large stream the road crosses.”

  “Are we going to be able to drink it safely?”

  Lee nodded. “Pretty sure we are. If animals were killed at the same time as humans by whatever did this, the streams will be running fairly clean after a hundred years.”

  Joan nodded.

  Lee made himself walk purposefully in the larger boots, making sure he got the heel of each foot down first. It would take a little training to get used to walking in these, but it was a lot better than not having anything but socks on. A thousand times better.

  After about a half mile of walking in silence, Joan glanced at Lee.

  “Help me understand a few things about this traveling in other timelines.”

  Lee glanced at her and smiled. “I’ll try.”

  “Can you go into the future of another timeline?”

  “No,” Lee said. “Timelines, thus more crystals, are being created by every decision in the world. You can only go backwards in an existing crystal timeline.”

  She nodded. “So how did your friends get into the future from your timeline?”

  “Someone from the time in the future came back and got them and moved them forward,” Lee said. “That’s what happened to me. Director Parks of the institute took me forward three jumps of one hundred years each by holding onto me as I held onto you.”

  “I’m confused,” Joan said as they crested a hill. Ahead, in the wide valley, Lee could see the small river, running fairly well under what looked to be a still-standing concrete bridge.

  They would have water shortly.

  “What are you confused about?” Lee asked.

  “Why did he take you three hundred years into your future?”

  Lee nodded. “When you are in another timeline, only two minutes and fifteen seconds pass in the timeline you are in.”

  “No matter how long you stay in the other timeline?” Joan asked.

  “No matter how long,” Lee said. “In your original timeline, you just age a few minutes, even if you lived and died a full life in the other timeline.”

  “That’s why you said that if you had died in the horse accident, you would have been fine.”

  Lee nodded.

  “Still not understanding the reason for moving you into the future,” Joan said.

  “I was taken there to set my time,” he said. “I jumped back one hundred years on my own. Then another hundred, and then another hundred, ending back up in my original time. So if I was killed in my original time, say in 2018, I would end up a hundred years in the future with only two minutes having passed. And I could go back into another timeline and keep living.”

  “Oh,” she said. Then she whispered, “You’re immortal, for all intents and purposes.”

  “I am,” Lee said, feeling a little odd that she had put it that way. “Never think about it like that, but yes. And now you will be as well, if we get out of this.”

  She stopped and just stared at him. He took a few steps before he realized she had stopped. He turned and she was just staring. He couldn’t tell if she was angry or what.

  “You want to explain that?”

  “If we get out of this, it’s going to be through the crystals at the institute.”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “That means we will both be jumping back from this timeline, so both of us will ultimately be based here. And with each hundred-year jump back in time, we will be set in each new timeline.”

  “So that means if we get back and I live a full life and die in old age in my original time, I will end up back here, young again.

  “No, you will end up one hundred years in the future, young again. Every time we jump backwards, that becomes the point we return to with only two minutes having passed. If this really is 2728 and we can get the crystals to work, we will have seven jumps between our time and here.”

  “Immortal,” she said softly.

  “If first we can not die getting to the institute, if the institute is still there, and if we can get the crystals to work,” Lee said. “Three very large ifs.”

  Joan nodded and started walking again.

  They turned toward the river ahead of them.

  Now he was even more impressed by her. He understood the math, understood timelines, and he had still been shocked to his core when he realized he would be immortal, able to live as many lifetimes as he wanted to live.

  His problem now was that he wasn’t sure that if he died here, he would end up back in any timeline. He was in the future, ahead of any point he was set.

  Joan hadn’t gone into a crystal. He was pretty sure that if she died, she would be forever dead. This was just the future of her normal timeline.

  And he wasn’t going to let her die if he had anything to say about it.

  SIXTEEN

  September 7th, 2728

  Old Highway 45, Southern Idaho

  JOAN AND LEE got the glass bottles they were carrying for water washed out completely and then filled.

  They both took long drinks of the crystal clear and cold water and sat in the shade of a nearby tree while they ate a decent number of pine nuts. It was amazing how filling the pine nuts were when combined with water.

  By the time they finished their lunch, it was almost one in the afternoon and she felt refreshed and ready to go.

  Since Joan and Steph usually had lunch together, this was the first time since all this happened that Joan wondered how Steph was doing. It must have been horrid for her to see her best friend just vanish.

  Joan missed Steph and Joan wanted more than anything else to have the chance to just go back with Steph and curl up and tell her all about this nightmare over drinks.

  Maybe that might happen.

  Looking around at the dead world, Joan doubted it.

  She looked at the handsome man sitting beside her. If there was any hope of them surviving and her getting to tell Steph everything, it would be up to Lee. Joan would help where she could, but he was the one who really understood all this.

  They set off
again, first climbing out of the small valley and then after a few more miles seeming to hit slightly rolling farmland.

  Farmhouses sat back off the road and all looked completely abandoned. A couple had already fallen into piles of rubble.

  After their talk about timelines, she had tried to push that out of her mind and just focus on the task at hand, and that was making it to Boise and the institute there alive.

  They had enough pine nuts for a decent dinner and then maybe some tomorrow morning, but after that they would be going hungry again if they didn’t find some sort of food.

  She was just about to ask Lee if he had any ideas about that when they crested over a hill and he pointed out ahead. “That’s the south side of Nampa.”

  Nampa was a decent-sized town close to Boise and now she was back where she knew the area.

  Or actually, she had known the area seven hundred years in the past. At least she knew the name of the town, and that made her feel a little better.

  Now as they worked their way along the crumbling highway, they started passing small subdivisions. Some of the homes were very futuristic modern-looking and all were slowly being reclaimed by nature.

  “I wonder if malls still existed before all this happened,” Lee said.

  “I got a hunch we’re going to find out shortly,” she said. “Why?”

  He pointed to his feet. One of the boots was starting to come apart at a seam.

  “I could use finding a shoe store.”

  She stopped him and took another strip of cloth from the bottom of her now much-shorter smock and wrapped it tightly around the boot to give it support.

  “Thanks,” he said. “That should get me the next few miles and into Nampa just fine.”

  It did, but barely. They had to stop twice more to give the boots more support. Clearly anything leather or cloth wasn’t going to have much lifespan. They needed to find shoes that were all synthetic and rubber to have any chance of wear. And she wasn’t so sure about the rubber parts. Over one hundred years was a very long time.

  It was after five in the evening when they finally reached what she remembered to be a large mall area on the Boise side of Nampa. Nothing looked the same, including the overhead monorail tracks, the modern sweeping roads, or the buildings, some of which climbed a dozen stories into the air.

  In her time Nampa was a farming and bedroom town. She doubted it had had any building over a few stories tall back then.

  And it was just outside of Nampa that they had found their first stopped car. Or at least Joan thought it was a car. More like a sleek-lined mini-bus. It had a mummified skeleton in the back seat dressed in what looked like a dark suit and no steering wheel or driver.

  The car must have had some feature that had caused it to stop right in the middle of the road. A tree was growing up against it now.

  “Driverless cars were a norm in 2318,” Lee said. “Never seen anything like this one before, but clearly driverless.”

  She looked at Lee, feeling stunned again. “Driverless cars? How?”

  He glanced at her, then laughed. “You think that’s something, wait until I show you a phone just from my time. He moved over to the car and looked at the mummified body inside. “See the thin band on his wrist?”

  She looked at what he was pointing to. It seemed like nothing more than a thin rubber band.

  “More than likely his phone, computer, and connection to the car,” Lee said. “And who knows what else. My guess is that when everyone was killed, this society was very advanced. More than either one of us can even imagine.”

  “So we’re looking at things and thinking they are something similar to something from our own time,” Joan said. “Like this car or whatever it is.”

  “Chances are people of this time didn’t even have personal transportation and just had public vehicles that took them where they needed to go if it was outside a normal mass-transit area.”

  “Was that the way it was headed in 2318?” Joan asked.

  “Honestly don’t know,” Lee said, shrugging as they kept walking. “I was more interested in spending time in the past on my ranch in central Idaho studying time itself rather than figuring out what humans were doing with all the time.”

  “Didn’t much like people, huh?”

  “Not much,” he said. “Present company excepted.”

  “Thank you,” she said, smiling at him.

  He smiled as well and they just kept on walking.

  She was really enjoying spending time with this handsome and very smart man. She just hoped they could survive this and continue to spend time together.

  Even if it was only walking in silence.

  SEVENTEEN

  September 7th, 2728

  Outside Nampa, Idaho

  LEE WAS HAPPY when they managed to get through the dead city of Nampa and to the Boise side. In front of them was clearly a massive center full of stores. So malls had survived, at least in one form or another. He had a hunch they might, since gathering places for people to shop and exchange things had been part of society for thousands of years ahead of his time. It would make sense that gathering places would continue forward.

  As they had worked their way through the town, they had seen human remains everywhere, sometimes in vehicles, sometimes slumped in restaurants beside the streets.

  Whatever had killed everyone had been sudden, of that there was no doubt. No one looked to have been running to get away from anything. They all just died instantly.

  And along the edges of the streets were thousands of small white bones. It was Joan who figured out they were bird bones.

  The sun was low on the horizon and Lee had no doubt they needed to find a place to stay for the night. And he was going to need to find some sort of shoes for the twenty-mile hike into Boise from where they were. The boots he had borrowed were just about finished. Right now only parts of Joan’s lab coat were even holding one of them together at all.

  The huge mall they had found was like walking into a massive sports stadium. There were maybe six or seven levels of stores and what looked like restaurants as far as they could see.

  A couple areas looked to be filled with entertainment of some sort. He couldn’t make any sense of it, so he didn’t try.

  “This place could hold thousands of people and not seem crowded,” Joan said, her voice hushed.

  Lee just stared in awe of the modern lines of the sweeping architecture and how everything seemed welcoming and pleasing, even after sitting dead for more than a hundred years.

  Wide sidewalks that looked like they had once moved weaved through the place. Massive trees had grown up in the center and surprisingly, the roof and much of the structure still looked solid.

  Even the layer of dust that seemed to cover everything manmade wasn’t as bad in here.

  There were only a few human remains that they could see, and they had on a form of green uniform. Either security or janitorial staff, from the looks of them.

  As he and Joan stepped into the large area, looking around in the gloom, lights came on.

  Many of the lights weren’t working, but enough were to make the place much nicer than the gloom of evening.

  “How is that possible?” Joan asked, looking around.

  “Solar power, entire building not on a power grid,” Lee said. “Duster had the institute set up off the grid as well. So this is encouraging for having the institute power work.”

  “That normal in the future?” she asked.

  “I think it would be,” he said. “Different forms of energy were common even in my time.”

  She nodded, then pointed at a store on the second level. “First things first, we get you shoes.”

  “That sounds like a wonderful idea and my feet and legs will thank you,” he said.

  The shoe store she had seen was huge and as they entered, lights came up and a soft background music he didn’t recognize started to play.

  “Now that’s creepy,” she said, looking around.<
br />
  And it was creepy.

  But it didn’t stop him from finding some synthetic tennis shoes, or at least they looked like a tennis or jogging shoe. They felt wonderful on his feet and they didn’t seem to want to come apart any time soon.

  He found a second pair and put them in his backpack.

  Joan found a second pair as well and replaced the woman’s shoes she had found with a new pair.

  “Now we need camping supplies,” he said as they left the store.

  A woman’s voice came out of the air around them. “Camping supplies for various outdoor activities can be found in two locations.”

  The voice went on to give them directions to both stores and a holographic image of their path through the mall to the stores appeared in front of them.

  Joan said simply, “Thank you.”

  “You are more than welcome,” the voice said.

  She looked at him with wide eyes and he just laughed. It was great to see Joan, the woman who had seemed like a rock so far, shocked by a computer voice out of the past.

  It made her even more attractive to him.

  More human.

  EIGHTEEN

  September 7th, 2728

  Outside Nampa, Idaho

  JOAN FELT ALMOST comfortable in the huge, empty futuristic mall. They had found the camping equipment store thanks to some woman’s voice that Lee called a computer voice. In the camping store, Lee wanted things to filter water and take bacteria out of water. They both put pills and small water filters in their packs.

  Then Lee went over to what had been the camping food area. Aisle after aisle of packages and containers.

  Joan was surprised that he was even thinking of that after a hundred years, but as he started looking through the packages, he started laughing.

  “Good until 2820,” he said, handing her a freeze-dried packet of beef stew.

  “Still good for almost another hundred years,” she said, shaking her head in amazement. “But you actually think they would be safe to eat?”