Of Reality and Illusion
Part III
Tempus Fugit
Chapter 5
Tears blurred Maureen's eyes as a chilly wind lashed her face.
Folding the inflatable boat back into its crate was painful and difficult in more than one way. Her arms ached. She couldn't feel the extremities of her fingers anymore. A crushing pressure built in her chest.
For a thousandth time in the last ten days, she glanced at the sky above the ridge. Somehow, the storm seemed linked to the alien technology activating. Today, the mystery failed to stimulate her curiosity. The sky was a pure indigo blue. What was taking John so long to bring her kids back to her?
Maureen set her jaw and focused on her task.
She needn't worry for John and her children. Survival was in her husband's genes. Don and she were in a worse predicament. Despite John's earlier precautions, they had two weeks before they'd run out of food, four if they ate every other day. At least, the chariot's battery life wasn't an issue. Which meant they could leave to seek better hunting grounds.
After heaving the crate on the roof with an improvised system of pulleys, Maureen walked back to the shore and picked up a long, flat rock.
She couldn't hold back a sob. It seemed like yesterday that Will, Judy, and Penny had built Inukshuks in Point Mugu's park.
Don's long shadow hovered on her work.
"Stick figure with rocks. Nice! But how will they know in which direction we left?"
"The arm is pointing south."
"So south we go. Ready?"
Maureen took a shaky breath. No, she wasn't ready. She cast a last glance at the lifeless lake. "Yes, I am."
Every two hours they switched drivers, built a cairn, and resumed their way until the last ray of light disappeared and dusk turned the landscape without color into a uniformly grey world. Another cold night came, with the stars and a heavy wind. The tent rattled and Maureen lay, eyes open, in her sleeping bag.
This dull, silent routine resumed the next morning, and the next. They were well into their sixth day when a jolt stirred Maureen out of her half-catatonic state.
She leaned a hand on the upper side of the passenger door and stared outside. The flat, monotonous terrain had been replaced by a rugged, monotonous one and Don maneuvered the chariot at a walking pace.
"How much ground have we covered since the last stop?"
"Er... a little over twenty."
"That's all?"
"The last five miles killed our average-speed."
Maureen bit her lip to keep from cursing out loud. They'd covered a bit over two thousand miles and yet, no end to this desert was in sight. But at this slow a pace, running out of rations before finding better grounds became an ominous possibility. In her head, John's voice reminded her that plans seldom survived contact with the terrain. At least, they hadn't hit a cliff. Her eyes fixed on a distant scree on their left.
She frowned. "We're going downhill."
"Yep."
"This looks like the bed of an ancient glacier," she said, noticing what looked like a moraine two hundred feet in front of them, slightly on their right.
"At least we won't be short of rocks for cairns anytime soon."
Ten minutes later, Don brought the chariot to a stop at the bottom of the fifty-foot high rocky formation. "I need to stretch my legs."
Welcoming the pause in the jolts, Maureen opened her door and jumped out of her seat. Fresh air filled her lungs. Goosebumps covered her arms.
"The light is going down fast. Why don't we call it a day?" she called, rubbing her arms while Don climbed the scree. "I'll set up the tent."
She was searching for a flat spot when a whistle pierced the silence. Maureen looked up and frowned. Don was waving at her. She left everything on the ground and joined him.
"What is it?" she asked between two ragged breaths. The dry, cold air burnt her throat.
Her eyes widened.
"What the hell is that?" she whispered.
At the bottom of the ancient glacier, wreckage of space ships covered every inch of what had once been the glacier floodplain. But what mesmerized Maureen's eyes lay beyond.
A wide, linear trench cut the plain. And past it, a wild forest grew.