Arwyn was dazed. He hadn't done a temporal jump in a very long time. Anne sat him down on a bench underneath a tall palm tree and trotted off to get him a bottle of water. She returned in a snit.
"Can you believe this cost me four United States Twenty First Century Dollars?" She handed it over to him. "Do you need another pill?"
"Maybe, yeah," he replied uneasily.
She pulled out the blister pack and handed him another pill, which he gulped down with a large swig from the bottle of water.
"This tastes horrible," he muttered.
"Yeah," she replied. "It was probably bottled straight out of a tap. Four dollars!"
"Don't we have something else we're supposed to be doing here?" He looked up at her. "I mean...I don't...fuck. Aren't those pills supposed to work? I don't remember."
"You'll be fine." She hauled him to his feet. "It'll take a couple of minutes. I'll jog your memory...we're here to investigate a fissure in the time line. Nobody believes me except for you."
He nodded, his memory slowly filtering back into his conscious.
"Okay, so..."
She looked down at her hand held computer and frowned. "This is weird." she said.
"What?" Arwyn motioned for her to sit down next to him on the bench so he could look. Instead she activated a time field and turned on the holographic projection.
"Well, first of all," She muttered. "John's TTD is off, and that's not allowed."
Arwyn nodded.
"Second of all, it's linked to another inactive TTD."
"So?"
"That isn't mine." She turned and scowled at him. "You're only supposed to be linked with your partner."
"Anne," Arwyn said gently. "You said you were in a time loop for ten years..."
"Eight Month's!" She snapped irritably at him. "Eight Months."
"Fine. Eight Months." He repeated at her insistence. "So, was the force supposed to just wait around for you to come out of it? John probably had to work. I don't know about your time line, but in mine we run short on detectives all the time. It's dangerous work."
She hand waved him away, not wanting to hear it. John may have been a rookie, and he may have been a handful, but he was her partner and she wasn't so keen on being replaced. She looked up the ID on the third TTD.
"Bertram Powers?" She squealed. "What the hell? He's gone through four partners already! All of them requested transfers and he's been taken off field duty. What the fuck is John doing swanning around time with Bertram Powers? Fuck."
"Come on, calm down Anne," Arwyn said. "We'll get to them."
"You don't know John like I do," she said. "I'm sure this is partially down to him doing something monumentally stupid."
"He can't be that bad, Anne," Arwyn said.
Anne shook her head. "John is a handful. I shudder to think what that man would be like as a senior officer, which he would be to Bertram Powers." She heaved a heavy sigh. "I'm afraid we've got our work cut out for us, Arwyn. Feeling better?"
"Much." he nodded. "Thank you."
They stood up and approached the Knott's Berry Farm restaurant and found chaos. Emergency vehicles surrounded the area, and an entire chunk of building was missing. Customers were streaming out of the dining room wailing and screaming. One particularly loud dark haired woman was crying out for someone named Jerry and clutching a young boy to her chest.
"We have to be discrete," se said to Arwyn as they picked their way through the crowd. "I'm tracking the TTDs."
And they found Mary. She was crying, the TTD's set near her feet as she sat on a curb next to some landscaping and a fenced off area that led to a large wooden roller coaster. The park had not been shut down due to the chaos and the delighted screams of the amusement park's patrons could be heard along with the sounds of the victims. It was a strange and disconcerting juxtaposition. Anne did her best to ignore it as she sat down next to Mary and placed a comforting arm around her. She motioned for Arwyn to grab the TTDs, and he did so without hesitation. She smiled a little to herself. That was what she'd needed, a partner that would trust her implicitly.
"There, there," Anne cooed in Mary's ear, hoping she didn't sound completely insincere. "It's okay."
"No!" She wailed. "This is my fault! This man...he came and told me...he said I had to find these people and take them to that room..." she broke down into choked sobs, and it took a few minutes for Anne to calm her down once again.
"Can you tell me what he looked like?"
"Gorgeous!" She seemed to forget her upset and gazed happily up at Anne. "He was, like, the hottest guy I'd ever seen in my life! And he picked me! It was like I had to do what he said. It all sounded so perfect in my mind."
"Mask," Anne muttered at Arwyn. He only stood there observing with a look of rapt fascination on his face. He never thought he would make it out into the field again without becoming violently ill. It was all so new and exciting and he wanted to learn.
"Okay, thank you." Anne stood up and left Mary on her own. She led a befuddled Arwyn away from the scene.
"What was that?" he asked her.
"What was what?"
"You're just going to leave her there? That woman stole a Time Travel Device...two Time Travel Devices! You can't leave her there. You have to take her in."
"She doesn't understand what she did, Arwyn," Anne said as she occupied herself with getting the TTDs back online. "It would never hold up in court, and there's no reason to further risk someone from the past. Taking them into future custody is really not wise unless you have a really good case. She was obviously fooled by a mask."
"What is a mask and what..." He paused, trying to get his mind right and remember his class on crossing time lines. Nothing was coming to him except a certain blank nothingness, he remembered as the zoned out feeling he got when he was listening to the lectures in those classes.
"Look, taking people from before the invention of time travel into custody... It's a tricky thing, okay? So we like to avoid it. She'll be fine. We've got the TTDs back. We'll get everybody back in the right spot at the right time, and all of this goes away like it never happened."
"This is going to do my head in," he mumbled and pressed the back of his hand to his forehead. "How do you manage it?"
"It's what I do." Anne looked up from the TTD's and grinned at him. She turned back to the machines and with a final flourish clicked them on.
She paused then.
"What now?" Arwyn asked.
Anne stared down at the Time Travel Devices.
"Uhh...I don't know," she admitted.
Arwyn looked at her with a worried expression written all over his face. The trail had gone cold.
"Should we call in for back up?" Arwyn asked.
"No!" Anne shook her head. "I already got kicked out of the precinct once for being crazy. If they found out I was using this kind of tech...if they found out you were helping me... No. It wouldn't be good news, Arwyn."
He frowned at her. He wanted to protest, but he knew she was right. They had gone rogue. The only helping they would be getting would be from themselves.
*****
It had been a long and arduous journey down the narrow path of the canyon to the river below. Three Quicklings had fallen into the water and drowned, and everybody was on edge. Bertram had somehow managed to convince Jody to get back up on the horny horse. She had entrusted her crutches to Dale and only agreed if she could ride double with Bertram. So she sat there in front of him, snuggly nestled in his arms, feeling more at peace than she had in a long while. She had come to grips with the fact that they were on an alien planet and she might not ever get back to her own planet or her own time for that matter. She was still frightened for her old mother, but she relaxed knowing there was nothing she could possibly do to fix it. She would let the chips fall where they may and she would adapt.
David had adapted. Bertram had convinced his partner that Phillip didn't need to be under their constant supervision, so David and Phillip rode along side each other, laughing and joking and behaving as they had most of the time since they had met...completely smitten with each other.
Ned and Jason were still riding together as Catherine tried desperately to gain Jason's attentions. She rode along behind him, trying to think of things to say, but she had never been a brave person. Tagging along with the group didn't make her any braver. She was still the same shy girl she had always been.
"You might not want to ride so close," Jerry said to her from his horse a few yards back. She reigned in her steed and pulled up along side him with a sigh. She would have ridden beside Jason, but the path alongside the river was not wide enough to ride three abreast, and he was almost completely oblivious to her presence.
"I know I'm the old fart here," Jerry chuckled at her. "But I'm not that bad. Promise."
"Oh, it's not that," Catherine said dejectedly. "I'm just trying to get Jason to notice me. Silly girl stuff. You know."
"aha," Jerry replied. "Maybe I can help. I've been doling out sage wisdom the past couple of days...maybe that's my great contribution to society that has earned me my place on this little field trip? What do you think?"
Catherine laughed at him then.
"It's no laughing matter," Jerry put on a mock serious tone, inciting more laughter in her. He was happy to clown around and make her feel better. It made him feel useful. He hated feeling useless more than anything else. He was a man who worked with his hands. Intellectual discussion of time travel made little sense to him if he couldn't wrap his own two hands around it.
"Look at that." He pointed to Phillip and David, holding hands as they rode along. "Who was David riding with yesterday?" Jerry arched his eyebrows at her and pointed to himself.
Catherine looked from David to Jerry and couldn't contain the small gasp that escaped her. "Really?"
"I only told him what everybody with eyes already knew." Jerry shrugged.
"Which is?" Catherine asked, bewildered.
"It's not rocket science. Obviously they like each other," Jerry replied. "And now I'm going to tell you."
"Okay, then, Matchmaker," She grinned. "Make me a match!"
"The key is...just be yourself."
"Oh, please," she scoffed. "That's the biggest cliche in the book, Jerry."
"Maybe," he replied. "But it works. Elaborate plans and schemes..." Jerry swung his arms free and wide, gesturing to the world around them. "Well, those rarely work, do they? I say, the easiest explanation; the simplest solution; it's always the best!"
She couldn't bring herself to use the simplest solution, though, which would have just been to ask Jason out on a date. Instead, she hung around in the periphery of his vision waiting for him to notice her, and if he never did then she would just go back to her life. Business as usual. If she ever got back to her life, that was.
It was a long trip through the Needles that day. The Needles was a vast plane broken up by rock spires that reached far up into the air. Dale had pleasantly explained to the guests of the Rebel Army that they had been left behind after many years of wind erosion. The spires had once been entirely level ground. Dale also had to explain that the army had to be on their toes. There were creatures that lived in the Needles. They were large panther-like beasts that did not hesitate in killing anybody who stepped onto their territory. Luckily they were solitary creatures, and if the group was wary enough then everybody would be fine.
They lost four more Quicklings. Catherine felt fit to ride up to the front of the group and address Dor. Her partner, Jerry followed along behind her, though he was much more timid when it came to addressing the knightly attired leader. When it came to matters of the heart Catherine was still a little girl it seemed, but when she felt her fellow creature was endangered she came at you like a storm. She came down on Dor with the raging fury of a tornado. He wasn't protecting the Quicklings after all, and after what Dale had told her; that they didn't know how to take care of themselves in the wilderness, she couldn't stand by and watch that sort of cruelty. The only Quickling that had stayed relatively safe was Jody's. She had named it Maribelle, and it had moved from following Dale around to following along behind Jody and Bertram, being careful to stay away from the horse's feet.
Dor, in the end, had been forced to acquiesce to her wishes. It was best for the party to avoid the woman's screeching histrionics if they were to stay clear of the Needles Panthers. She rode back to Jerry, more proud of herself than she had ever been, and the Quicklings were rounded up and made to march in the center of the group instead of trailing along at the end, and thus they avoided any further slaughter. They chirped happily, and though the soldier's grumbled about it, Catherine found that it was music to her ears.
"I saved a life, Jerry," She said to her latest partner.
"I'm proud of you, kid," he replied, clapping her on the back.
She turned and grinned brightly at him. Her parents had never said such things to her. They were too preoccupied with their own drama, yet here was a stranger who was more than willing to reach out to her. She had been surrounded by people who had reached out to her in the days since she'd been abducted. It had started all the way back on that fateful morning when Esther Baum had verbally attacked her, and David Rodriguez stood up for her. Family, she realized, was so much more than flesh and blood.
*****
They had made it all the way through the Needles and were halfway through the mud flats.
Phillip stopped his horse. He could tasted the metallic tang and feel the energy building in the air, making the hair on the back of his neck stand up.
"Fuck," he muttered and pulled his horse around to face the opposite direction. David followed suit, much to the chagrin of the people behind them in line.
"Let's get a move on," one of the soldiers shouted at him, but Phillip waved him away and pointed towards the building clouds far off in the distance.
"We have to go back," he said softly at first. Then louder as it became clear that nobody had heard him.
"We have to go back," he shouted forcefully and jumped off his horse. "Look! He's bringing us back. Gerald is bringing us back. We have to go back to the woods!" The small group of soldiers and people from his own group that he had cut off from the main caravan by stopping there in the middle of the mud flats path, formed a small half circle around him and looked off into into the distance. There, a temporal storm like the one that had whisked them away, was brewing.
"Come on!" He shouted excitedly as his surrounding companions glanced at each other instead of him. They were too far away, and everybody seemed to realize it except for Phillip.
"Why isn't anybody moving?! This is the way back! It's our chance to get home! He's sending us back, just like I said he would!" He wailed as he twirled around and came face to face with expressions of pity everywhere he looked. He finally settled on one face he could take comfort in.
"David?" he said the name weakly.
David dismounted and cautiously approached Phillip. He looked lost and unsettled and repeated David's name again, even more softly than he had before.
David hugged Phillip and pulled him close, but the man went limp in his arms, and they both sank to a heap on the ground.
"It's gonna be okay," David cooed in his hear and stroked his hair.
"How can you say that?" Phillip sobbed. "We're too far away. We should have just stayed where we were. I told you. I told... I..."
"Shhhh," David whispered. "We couldn't have stayed there this long."
On the sidelines John Arker moved as if he were about to order the two boys back on their horses and back on the trail. Moving forward was the only thing to do at that point, but Detective Powers lay a hand on his partner's shoulder and shook his head harshly.
"You're gonna give them a couple minutes, John."
"But..."
Bertram's glare was enough to silence John then, and they returned to their mounts
"Can't you give them a break?" Bertram asked.
"Why should I?" John asked. "I don't necessarily trust that Phillip guy."
"I think he's proven that he's as much a victim here as we are, John. He's been more than willing to help us out when we should have just stayed put like he told us to in the first place."
John could think of nothing to say to that so he stayed silent.
"When we get settled in at the Rebel City...you're gonna let them have a night. You got that?"
John bristled at being ordered by Bertram. Whether or not his partner had a point was not the point.
"We're not supposed to sleep with someone from another time Bertram, and if you think you're going to get your way with Jody because they...."
"Stop bringing her into this!" Bertram snapped. He looked over at her where she was chatting idly with Dale and Catherine after she had tumbled from Bertram's horse in all the excitement Phillip's ranting had caused. She had looked up at him with a silly grin on her face and a bruised bottom, but her ankle was okay. It was feeling good enough to walk on without crutches, but she wasn't going to admit that and give up her seat on Bertram's horse.
"Why don't you just pretend to have a heart for two seconds?" he muttered at John, then urged his horse away and towards Jody. The sooner they arrived at the Rebel City, the better.
"Can you believe this cost me four United States Twenty First Century Dollars?" She handed it over to him. "Do you need another pill?"
"Maybe, yeah," he replied uneasily.
She pulled out the blister pack and handed him another pill, which he gulped down with a large swig from the bottle of water.
"This tastes horrible," he muttered.
"Yeah," she replied. "It was probably bottled straight out of a tap. Four dollars!"
"Don't we have something else we're supposed to be doing here?" He looked up at her. "I mean...I don't...fuck. Aren't those pills supposed to work? I don't remember."
"You'll be fine." She hauled him to his feet. "It'll take a couple of minutes. I'll jog your memory...we're here to investigate a fissure in the time line. Nobody believes me except for you."
He nodded, his memory slowly filtering back into his conscious.
"Okay, so..."
She looked down at her hand held computer and frowned. "This is weird." she said.
"What?" Arwyn motioned for her to sit down next to him on the bench so he could look. Instead she activated a time field and turned on the holographic projection.
"Well, first of all," She muttered. "John's TTD is off, and that's not allowed."
Arwyn nodded.
"Second of all, it's linked to another inactive TTD."
"So?"
"That isn't mine." She turned and scowled at him. "You're only supposed to be linked with your partner."
"Anne," Arwyn said gently. "You said you were in a time loop for ten years..."
"Eight Month's!" She snapped irritably at him. "Eight Months."
"Fine. Eight Months." He repeated at her insistence. "So, was the force supposed to just wait around for you to come out of it? John probably had to work. I don't know about your time line, but in mine we run short on detectives all the time. It's dangerous work."
She hand waved him away, not wanting to hear it. John may have been a rookie, and he may have been a handful, but he was her partner and she wasn't so keen on being replaced. She looked up the ID on the third TTD.
"Bertram Powers?" She squealed. "What the hell? He's gone through four partners already! All of them requested transfers and he's been taken off field duty. What the fuck is John doing swanning around time with Bertram Powers? Fuck."
"Come on, calm down Anne," Arwyn said. "We'll get to them."
"You don't know John like I do," she said. "I'm sure this is partially down to him doing something monumentally stupid."
"He can't be that bad, Anne," Arwyn said.
Anne shook her head. "John is a handful. I shudder to think what that man would be like as a senior officer, which he would be to Bertram Powers." She heaved a heavy sigh. "I'm afraid we've got our work cut out for us, Arwyn. Feeling better?"
"Much." he nodded. "Thank you."
They stood up and approached the Knott's Berry Farm restaurant and found chaos. Emergency vehicles surrounded the area, and an entire chunk of building was missing. Customers were streaming out of the dining room wailing and screaming. One particularly loud dark haired woman was crying out for someone named Jerry and clutching a young boy to her chest.
"We have to be discrete," se said to Arwyn as they picked their way through the crowd. "I'm tracking the TTDs."
And they found Mary. She was crying, the TTD's set near her feet as she sat on a curb next to some landscaping and a fenced off area that led to a large wooden roller coaster. The park had not been shut down due to the chaos and the delighted screams of the amusement park's patrons could be heard along with the sounds of the victims. It was a strange and disconcerting juxtaposition. Anne did her best to ignore it as she sat down next to Mary and placed a comforting arm around her. She motioned for Arwyn to grab the TTDs, and he did so without hesitation. She smiled a little to herself. That was what she'd needed, a partner that would trust her implicitly.
"There, there," Anne cooed in Mary's ear, hoping she didn't sound completely insincere. "It's okay."
"No!" She wailed. "This is my fault! This man...he came and told me...he said I had to find these people and take them to that room..." she broke down into choked sobs, and it took a few minutes for Anne to calm her down once again.
"Can you tell me what he looked like?"
"Gorgeous!" She seemed to forget her upset and gazed happily up at Anne. "He was, like, the hottest guy I'd ever seen in my life! And he picked me! It was like I had to do what he said. It all sounded so perfect in my mind."
"Mask," Anne muttered at Arwyn. He only stood there observing with a look of rapt fascination on his face. He never thought he would make it out into the field again without becoming violently ill. It was all so new and exciting and he wanted to learn.
"Okay, thank you." Anne stood up and left Mary on her own. She led a befuddled Arwyn away from the scene.
"What was that?" he asked her.
"What was what?"
"You're just going to leave her there? That woman stole a Time Travel Device...two Time Travel Devices! You can't leave her there. You have to take her in."
"She doesn't understand what she did, Arwyn," Anne said as she occupied herself with getting the TTDs back online. "It would never hold up in court, and there's no reason to further risk someone from the past. Taking them into future custody is really not wise unless you have a really good case. She was obviously fooled by a mask."
"What is a mask and what..." He paused, trying to get his mind right and remember his class on crossing time lines. Nothing was coming to him except a certain blank nothingness, he remembered as the zoned out feeling he got when he was listening to the lectures in those classes.
"Look, taking people from before the invention of time travel into custody... It's a tricky thing, okay? So we like to avoid it. She'll be fine. We've got the TTDs back. We'll get everybody back in the right spot at the right time, and all of this goes away like it never happened."
"This is going to do my head in," he mumbled and pressed the back of his hand to his forehead. "How do you manage it?"
"It's what I do." Anne looked up from the TTD's and grinned at him. She turned back to the machines and with a final flourish clicked them on.
She paused then.
"What now?" Arwyn asked.
Anne stared down at the Time Travel Devices.
"Uhh...I don't know," she admitted.
Arwyn looked at her with a worried expression written all over his face. The trail had gone cold.
"Should we call in for back up?" Arwyn asked.
"No!" Anne shook her head. "I already got kicked out of the precinct once for being crazy. If they found out I was using this kind of tech...if they found out you were helping me... No. It wouldn't be good news, Arwyn."
He frowned at her. He wanted to protest, but he knew she was right. They had gone rogue. The only helping they would be getting would be from themselves.
*****
It had been a long and arduous journey down the narrow path of the canyon to the river below. Three Quicklings had fallen into the water and drowned, and everybody was on edge. Bertram had somehow managed to convince Jody to get back up on the horny horse. She had entrusted her crutches to Dale and only agreed if she could ride double with Bertram. So she sat there in front of him, snuggly nestled in his arms, feeling more at peace than she had in a long while. She had come to grips with the fact that they were on an alien planet and she might not ever get back to her own planet or her own time for that matter. She was still frightened for her old mother, but she relaxed knowing there was nothing she could possibly do to fix it. She would let the chips fall where they may and she would adapt.
David had adapted. Bertram had convinced his partner that Phillip didn't need to be under their constant supervision, so David and Phillip rode along side each other, laughing and joking and behaving as they had most of the time since they had met...completely smitten with each other.
Ned and Jason were still riding together as Catherine tried desperately to gain Jason's attentions. She rode along behind him, trying to think of things to say, but she had never been a brave person. Tagging along with the group didn't make her any braver. She was still the same shy girl she had always been.
"You might not want to ride so close," Jerry said to her from his horse a few yards back. She reigned in her steed and pulled up along side him with a sigh. She would have ridden beside Jason, but the path alongside the river was not wide enough to ride three abreast, and he was almost completely oblivious to her presence.
"I know I'm the old fart here," Jerry chuckled at her. "But I'm not that bad. Promise."
"Oh, it's not that," Catherine said dejectedly. "I'm just trying to get Jason to notice me. Silly girl stuff. You know."
"aha," Jerry replied. "Maybe I can help. I've been doling out sage wisdom the past couple of days...maybe that's my great contribution to society that has earned me my place on this little field trip? What do you think?"
Catherine laughed at him then.
"It's no laughing matter," Jerry put on a mock serious tone, inciting more laughter in her. He was happy to clown around and make her feel better. It made him feel useful. He hated feeling useless more than anything else. He was a man who worked with his hands. Intellectual discussion of time travel made little sense to him if he couldn't wrap his own two hands around it.
"Look at that." He pointed to Phillip and David, holding hands as they rode along. "Who was David riding with yesterday?" Jerry arched his eyebrows at her and pointed to himself.
Catherine looked from David to Jerry and couldn't contain the small gasp that escaped her. "Really?"
"I only told him what everybody with eyes already knew." Jerry shrugged.
"Which is?" Catherine asked, bewildered.
"It's not rocket science. Obviously they like each other," Jerry replied. "And now I'm going to tell you."
"Okay, then, Matchmaker," She grinned. "Make me a match!"
"The key is...just be yourself."
"Oh, please," she scoffed. "That's the biggest cliche in the book, Jerry."
"Maybe," he replied. "But it works. Elaborate plans and schemes..." Jerry swung his arms free and wide, gesturing to the world around them. "Well, those rarely work, do they? I say, the easiest explanation; the simplest solution; it's always the best!"
She couldn't bring herself to use the simplest solution, though, which would have just been to ask Jason out on a date. Instead, she hung around in the periphery of his vision waiting for him to notice her, and if he never did then she would just go back to her life. Business as usual. If she ever got back to her life, that was.
It was a long trip through the Needles that day. The Needles was a vast plane broken up by rock spires that reached far up into the air. Dale had pleasantly explained to the guests of the Rebel Army that they had been left behind after many years of wind erosion. The spires had once been entirely level ground. Dale also had to explain that the army had to be on their toes. There were creatures that lived in the Needles. They were large panther-like beasts that did not hesitate in killing anybody who stepped onto their territory. Luckily they were solitary creatures, and if the group was wary enough then everybody would be fine.
They lost four more Quicklings. Catherine felt fit to ride up to the front of the group and address Dor. Her partner, Jerry followed along behind her, though he was much more timid when it came to addressing the knightly attired leader. When it came to matters of the heart Catherine was still a little girl it seemed, but when she felt her fellow creature was endangered she came at you like a storm. She came down on Dor with the raging fury of a tornado. He wasn't protecting the Quicklings after all, and after what Dale had told her; that they didn't know how to take care of themselves in the wilderness, she couldn't stand by and watch that sort of cruelty. The only Quickling that had stayed relatively safe was Jody's. She had named it Maribelle, and it had moved from following Dale around to following along behind Jody and Bertram, being careful to stay away from the horse's feet.
Dor, in the end, had been forced to acquiesce to her wishes. It was best for the party to avoid the woman's screeching histrionics if they were to stay clear of the Needles Panthers. She rode back to Jerry, more proud of herself than she had ever been, and the Quicklings were rounded up and made to march in the center of the group instead of trailing along at the end, and thus they avoided any further slaughter. They chirped happily, and though the soldier's grumbled about it, Catherine found that it was music to her ears.
"I saved a life, Jerry," She said to her latest partner.
"I'm proud of you, kid," he replied, clapping her on the back.
She turned and grinned brightly at him. Her parents had never said such things to her. They were too preoccupied with their own drama, yet here was a stranger who was more than willing to reach out to her. She had been surrounded by people who had reached out to her in the days since she'd been abducted. It had started all the way back on that fateful morning when Esther Baum had verbally attacked her, and David Rodriguez stood up for her. Family, she realized, was so much more than flesh and blood.
*****
They had made it all the way through the Needles and were halfway through the mud flats.
Phillip stopped his horse. He could tasted the metallic tang and feel the energy building in the air, making the hair on the back of his neck stand up.
"Fuck," he muttered and pulled his horse around to face the opposite direction. David followed suit, much to the chagrin of the people behind them in line.
"Let's get a move on," one of the soldiers shouted at him, but Phillip waved him away and pointed towards the building clouds far off in the distance.
"We have to go back," he said softly at first. Then louder as it became clear that nobody had heard him.
"We have to go back," he shouted forcefully and jumped off his horse. "Look! He's bringing us back. Gerald is bringing us back. We have to go back to the woods!" The small group of soldiers and people from his own group that he had cut off from the main caravan by stopping there in the middle of the mud flats path, formed a small half circle around him and looked off into into the distance. There, a temporal storm like the one that had whisked them away, was brewing.
"Come on!" He shouted excitedly as his surrounding companions glanced at each other instead of him. They were too far away, and everybody seemed to realize it except for Phillip.
"Why isn't anybody moving?! This is the way back! It's our chance to get home! He's sending us back, just like I said he would!" He wailed as he twirled around and came face to face with expressions of pity everywhere he looked. He finally settled on one face he could take comfort in.
"David?" he said the name weakly.
David dismounted and cautiously approached Phillip. He looked lost and unsettled and repeated David's name again, even more softly than he had before.
David hugged Phillip and pulled him close, but the man went limp in his arms, and they both sank to a heap on the ground.
"It's gonna be okay," David cooed in his hear and stroked his hair.
"How can you say that?" Phillip sobbed. "We're too far away. We should have just stayed where we were. I told you. I told... I..."
"Shhhh," David whispered. "We couldn't have stayed there this long."
On the sidelines John Arker moved as if he were about to order the two boys back on their horses and back on the trail. Moving forward was the only thing to do at that point, but Detective Powers lay a hand on his partner's shoulder and shook his head harshly.
"You're gonna give them a couple minutes, John."
"But..."
Bertram's glare was enough to silence John then, and they returned to their mounts
"Can't you give them a break?" Bertram asked.
"Why should I?" John asked. "I don't necessarily trust that Phillip guy."
"I think he's proven that he's as much a victim here as we are, John. He's been more than willing to help us out when we should have just stayed put like he told us to in the first place."
John could think of nothing to say to that so he stayed silent.
"When we get settled in at the Rebel City...you're gonna let them have a night. You got that?"
John bristled at being ordered by Bertram. Whether or not his partner had a point was not the point.
"We're not supposed to sleep with someone from another time Bertram, and if you think you're going to get your way with Jody because they...."
"Stop bringing her into this!" Bertram snapped. He looked over at her where she was chatting idly with Dale and Catherine after she had tumbled from Bertram's horse in all the excitement Phillip's ranting had caused. She had looked up at him with a silly grin on her face and a bruised bottom, but her ankle was okay. It was feeling good enough to walk on without crutches, but she wasn't going to admit that and give up her seat on Bertram's horse.
"Why don't you just pretend to have a heart for two seconds?" he muttered at John, then urged his horse away and towards Jody. The sooner they arrived at the Rebel City, the better.
