Page 24 of High Stakes

Wishing Maru was with me to teach me how to make a fire, I watched the livestock hungrily. My stomach growled, making one of the sheep look up at me before turning back to the trodden hay. A food source was literally right in front of me, but I had no way to cook it.

Beyond that, I wondered if animals could contract the disease, and if it manifested in them the same way it did in humans. I couldn’t risk eating any meat that might be contaminated, and I couldn’t stay here. This place was abandoned for a reason.

The sun began to sink behind the western hills, casting shadows over the uninhibited land. I walked a few more miles through fields separated by knee-high stone fences before finally, a small cottage with signs of life stood in the distance. Clothes were strung across a line out back, waving stiffly in the cool breeze.

The voices of a man, woman, and small child filtered out of a nearby window as I crept closer. They were playing, the child squealing and giggling in delight as her parents chuckled along with her. Their laughter was almost as warm as the candlelight glowing inside.

It was funny how life worked. Even when they were surrounded by darkness and imminent death, people could always find something to laugh about.

My hand drifted along the damp fabric hanging on the line. There were two pairs of pants and a long-sleeved white shirt, but at the end of the line was a simple gray dress that looked like it would fit me.

I tugged it off the line and shrugged it on, glancing around furtively in case someone saw me. The wool fabric was itchy and still damp, but it covered everything but the neck of my suit. I tore a drying shawl off the line and wrapped it around my neck, then wove a trail around the back of the house and out of sight.

Even though the stolen clothing would help me blend into this time period, it wasn’t the only thing I had to worry about. The need for a revised plan became paramount. Shelter, food, and water were my first priorities, followed quickly by the directive to find Enoch.

I needed to learn his movements and habits and somehow find a way to insert myself into his world. I didn’t understand why Kael and Victor would lie to us about our missions, but in the end, it didn’t matter. They sent me back to this time, which meant Enoch was here somewhere. The where and when may have changed, but not my mission. Enoch was still my target. I could still stake him, and it would be easier for me to kill an unsuspecting Enoch in thirteen forty-eight than in my own time, when he baited Victor to strike at every turn.

Back home, the human population was suffering, and I’d been given this golden opportunity to end their torment. An opportunity I wouldn’t waste.

I paused to rest beside a large pine, bracing my hand against its rough, gray bark, when an uneasy thought trickled through my brain. If Victor and Kael lied about when and where they were sending us, maybe they also lied about the tech bringing us back home. Maybe all the plutonium had been exhausted just to get us this far into the past, and that was why they lied in the first place. I glanced at the back of my hand. Was that why the tech was dead?

Keep moving, I could almost hear Maru say. I pushed off the pine and trudged forward through the darkness cloaking the land. It wasn’t easy to see where I was going, even when I sharpened my vision, but I made my way north until the muscles in my legs were weak and every step felt like I was walking through thick mud.

The soles of my bare feet were scratched and bruised. When they’d finally had enough, I stopped next to a rock wall and leaned my head back on the stones, cursing myself for leaving the leather water container back at the house from which I’d stolen the clothes. My mouth felt as dry and scratchy as the wool wrapped around my neck. I debated the merits of going back to retrieve the water skin and filling it up along the way, remembering a shallow stream I’d passed in one of the valleys, but I wasn’t sure I could retrace my steps in the dark, and I was bone-tired.

Closing my eyes, I started to nod off when a familiar warmth spread over my skin. I eagerly pushed up the dress’s sleeve to see a glorious thing. My tech suit was alive! The once bright-white circuits were dingy and dull, but they glowed and that was all that mattered.

For the first time since landing, I felt like I could breathe. If the suit powered up, so could the tech in my arm. I might be able to get back home, after all. I tried to massage the back of my hand to see if I could coax the hand tech to come back on, but nothing lit up.

However, the knowledge that the suit had re-activated gave me hope that the hand tech eventually would, too.

* * *

At dawn, the lightening sky woke me. I peeked under the shawl, pulling out the neckline of the dress to verify that my suit was still on. I was pleased to see my hand tech glowing, so I stretched my fingers out wide. I had no idea how it had rebooted, but decided I didn’t care. Brightly lit, blue-green circuits branched out from the containment cell that could take me the hell out of here.

Pushing myself up, I looked out over the land to see I was situated on the top of a knoll. A cool fog shrouded the valleys surrounding me, but couldn’t conceal the distant hilltops popping up in the distance in every direction. A doe grunted just inside the fog. It stepped carefully, eating as it walked. A crow cawed from the top and only remaining branch of a dead tree.

But there was another noise… I sharpened my hearing until I made out the sound of a woman humming. I made my way toward her voice, down into the low-lying cloud, thankful for the gray-white cover.

When the land evened out, the scent of wood smoke filled the air. A small waddle and daub house appeared in front of me, its windows lit with flickering candlelight from within. I peeked in one of the windows to see a woman bustling around the kitchen, humming as she kneaded a mound of sweet-smelling dough.

She pinched off fist-sized pieces, rolled the dough into balls between the palms of her hands, and filled a pan with them before setting them over the hearth fire to bake. I crouched down and watched hungrily as the flame’s heat made the bread rise and plump. A short time later, when the tops of the rolls were golden brown, she set it on a thick, wooden table to cool. The woman walked over to a window directly across from the one I peeked into. She plucked a pot from the sill and brought it to the bread, drizzling the tops with a sticky, golden liquid.

The nourishment of that bread was exactly what I needed. I felt well enough, but could only go so long without food and drink. This was my chance. I closed my eyes and focused, willing my body to relax. When I opened them and waved my hand in front of my face, I was pleased to find I was invisible. Kael had upgraded me, thinking I would be a chameleon, able to blend in with my surroundings. He didn’t expect me to disappear altogether, but was pleased when it happened.

As an amplifier, my suit could disappear with me, but the clothes covering it couldn’t. I tugged them off and hung them over a branch far enough from the house that they wouldn’t be seen.

Stepping lightly across the yard and to the front door, I eased it open just enough to slide inside. I slipped quietly through the room, grabbing one of the rolls the moment she turned her back to put the honey pot back on her shelf. Treading gingerly back through the door, I remained invisible until the fog swallowed me again, then shrugged on the dress and shawl and took off into the woods, tearing off eager bites of the honeyed bread and licking my sticky fingers.

I followed a small game trail until I reached a muddy road, rutted from the wheels of wagons. Once again, I noted the empty fields and abandoned farmland. Desolate homes littered the sides of the road as a small town emerged from the countryside. The stench of raw sewage was so foul, I had to cover my nose. But as I got closer to the edge of an even denser mass of homes, the smell of something even worse filled the air. The smell of death.

A large mill sat on the banks of a wide, muddy river over which a bridge that was in dire need of repair stretched. The planks creaked under my weight as I began to walk across the bridge that led to the small town. The boards were splintered, rotten, and gray, and some had bowed to the point of breaking in the middle. It wouldn’t take much for someone’s foot or a cart wheel to punch right through.

I peered over the rail to see bodies, bloated and gray, floating in the river below, their hair and extremities bobbing with the current. Some were face down, while others stared sightlessly into the cloud-filled sky into eternity. Black papules crawled up the neck of the woman directly beneath me, her mouth hanging open as if screaming for help that wouldn’t arrive.

Covering my nose and mouth with the shawl, I quickly crossed the bridge, trying fruitlessly to get the image of her out of my mind.

The houses on the other side of the river all looked the same – single story and deeper than they were wide. Their thatched roofs sagged, caked with years of built-up moss and lichen. The doors of some of the homes gaped open, rocking on their hinges when a gust of wind blew through. Darkness was the only thing I could see from outside. There were no sounds. No carts or horses. No children playing. Just the foul odor that permeated everything in this place.

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