Chapter 14: Closing in
(1916, 1906)
"I want to go home," Mabel moaned. "We're still in a war zone!"
They stood on a street filled with rubble. Flames tore into the sky all around, streaming billows of thick black smoke upward. And they could hear screams . . ..
"This isn't World War I any longer," Dipper said. "I don't think it is. This is closer to home."
They had jumped from New York in the twenties to France in the middle of World War I—Dipper was a hospital orderly again, in a khaki uniform, Mabel a nurse—and too many casualties, wounded men in overwhelming numbers, rolled in from the front.
It was a scene Dipper wished he could unsee. He hauled stretchers until his arms felt leaden. He skidded in pools of spilled blood. Three times the wounded soldier he and another orderly were carrying died right on the stretcher. They rolled the bodies off with little ceremony in the walled courtyard of the shell-pocked chateau that the Army had commandeered as a field hospital.
If anything, Mabel had it worse. She had to hold pads soaked with chloroform to put screaming soldiers under so arms or legs could be amputated. She saw men with shattered faces. One poor soldier—no older than the twins, sixteen, if that—begged her to do something to help ease the pain in his legs. She knew enough French to understand that, but she could offer no comfort or ease.
He no longer had legs.
Dipper found the anomaly on a shelf with bottles of chloroform and Dakin's solution—the smallest bottle, a vial of penicillin, before it had been discovered by Alexander Fleming twelve or thirteen years later—and, both of them exhausted, Mabel and Dipper held the vial between them. The locater device jumped them automatically—it seemed to do that now, as well as dressing them appropriately.
"Why?" Mabel wailed. They had both blistered their hands digging a woman and her baby—both miraculously alive, though bruised and scraped—from under fallen timbers. It was early in the morning of Wednesday, April 18, 1906. On some streets of San Francisco, hardly a recognizable house remained. Worst of all were the screams—screams of pain, of terror, of despair, all around them.
Staggering along with the woman, who held her baby to her shoulder and seemed dazed, Dipper and Mabel tried to make their way out of the city—but they didn't know it all that well even in their own era, and the streets no longer resembled streets. The woman couldn't help them.
And then she began to scream and shake. A group of men, volunteer firefighters, heard her and came to their aid, carrying the woman and her child to safety while she screamed "Where's my husband?" over and over.
Aftershocks made the ground tremble and sent bricks and shingles cascading from tipsy buildings. They reached the Bay—impossible for them to orient themselves, no Golden Gate Bridge for reference—but at last they saw boats ferrying people and joined the straggling, stunned line of ragged, soot-blackened, coughing people fleeing to—to anywhere that wasn't here.
They found a place in an overloaded boat that carried them across choppy water to Oakland. The boat owner, dripping with sweat and gaunt with effort, wearily refused pay, turned the boat, and began to row back to the burning city.
It's a wonder it was ever rebuilt, Dipper thought, staring at the long expanse of flame and smoke, ruin and carnage. San Francisco had been all but obliterated first by the quake and then by the fire.
He and his sister stumbled away from the crowd and finally found refuge in a small park, under a tree. All around them refugees streamed, either in stunned silence or loudly weeping. "Why's Blendin doing this to us?" Mabel moaned. She looked ready to drop.
"I don't know," Dipper said. He bit his lip and thought. "These last two—they're so hard. Not solving a cipher or anything, but—the suffering. I—I think maybe he's discouraging trackers."
"I want to go home," Mabel said again. She hugged him, and he felt tears running down her face. "Oh, Dipper."
He patted her shoulder. "It's OK, Mabel. We're almost there."
She snuffled against his shoulder. "What if—what if the anomaly thing is in—over there? In that?"
"I'll go find it."
Mabel hugged him tighter. "I won't leave you."
A man, his clothes burned and his hair singed, broke off from the group and came over. "You kids all right?"
"We're all right," Dipper said. "Just—you know."
"Your folks safe?"
"They weren't in the city," Dipper said. "We need to get word to them."
"I don't think the telegraph's working yet," the man said. He reached into his pocket for an oversized wallet. "Here, though, I'll write the address of the closest telegraph office on my card. If you need a place to stay, come to the house address. My wife and some other ladies are trying to find shelters."
"You went over to San Francisco—to help?" Mabel asked.
The man nodded, and they could see how red the skin was on his cheek and forehead. He'd been badly burned. "What else can I do? Here you are."
Dipper took the card. He didn't recognize the name on it—Arturo Crimini. The man told them where they might find food and water and then went back to the street, where he swam against the stream, heading down to the waterfront and the ferries.
"What does it say?" Mabel whispered.
Dipper turned the card over and blinked.
This time it wasn't a cipher.
ONE MORE STOP AND THEN THE REAL THING.
IF YOU CAN'T STAND MORE AND WORSE HORROR, TEAR THIS CARD IN HALF.
IF YOU CAN TAKE IT, BURN THE CARD.
Dipper showed it to Mabel. "What do you think?" he asked quietly.
Mabel touched it and read the words aloud. "If we tear the card in half, do we go home?"
"I don't know. I guess. But then the Time Baby will never be rescued and history will just—unravel, I suppose."
"I want to tear the card up," Mabel murmured. "I want to do that so bad."
Dipper gripped it.
"Wait!" she said. " I want to tear it up—but we can't, can we?"
"We can," Dipper said. "I think it's our choice."
"You need a match," she said. She reached into his pocket and produced one—a strike-anywhere match.
"I don't think those have been invented yet," Dipper said. "I might be wrong, though."
"Then it's an anomaly." She sighed heavily. "I'll do it. If I start to break down—help me if you can."
"Always, Sis," Dipper said.
Mabel whimpered. "Hold my hand."
He held her left hand, Mabel struck the match with her right, and he put the corner of the card into the flame.
It flared like a flashbulb, momentarily blinding both of them. Mabel gasped.
When their eyes adjusted, they stood on a broad, flat, featureless plain. A dreary wind moaned above them and buffeted them. No rain yet, but the smell of it on that blustery wind. It was night—very dark, except for frequent flashes of lightning.
Tall grasses all around tossed like waves on a stormy sea. No hills in the distance. No visible roads. The wind howled louder and heavy thunder rolled across the prairie like a juggernaut. Mabel clutched his arm, and he felt her shivering.
A nearby bolt of lightning leaped from the sky to the earth, making the whole world tremble—they heard the electric crackle before the thunder hit them with a physical punch that almost knocked them off their feet. A sullen red flame sprang up where the lightning had blasted into a patch of tall, dry grass. It wasn't that far away.
"Are we in hell?" Mabel whispered.
Before Dipper could answer, something shrieked in the night.