The Shelter

Contributed by Rivka Jacobs on 17/10/11

Pike walked with shuffling steps, picking his way around the weed-filled potholes and kicking through the pieces of crumbled asphalt. His jacket and jeans were grimy and torn. His green canvas backpack was dusty and bulged with his necessities and equipment. He wore a khaki ski-cap pulled over his ears. Strands of silver and black hair straggled down the back of his neck and clung to his shoulders. A matted beard obscured the lower part of his face. He hugged himself, his arms tight in front of his chest. Even though it wasn’t that cold, he felt a damp chill that penetrated to his marrow.

The mountain road continued to curve to the right. Pike paused and made his way to the rusted and dented remains of a guardrail on the shoulder to his left. He inhaled deeply, and surveyed the view. There was a creek winding through the brush below, and on the far side of that were traces of old railroad tracks. The trees and saplings dotting the embankment and slope were mostly oak and other quick-growing species like locust, elm, and maple with leaves turning gold and red. Their trunks were no more than a foot or two across. Ahead of him, overlooking the bend of the road where it disappeared around a cliff, he could see a part of a mountain, its flanks a montage of browns and yellows and burnt umber draped with white clumps of mist.

A grumbling tumble of sound like thunder reverberated in his chest. Pike raised his chin and looked straight up, his mouth partially open. The twilight seemed to thicken as dark stratus-cumulus mounds limned by a dirty-yellow glow gathered into a single mass, and began to drift. He thought he saw the reflection of bright violet flashes directly over his head. He heard a shushing roar, and turned to watch the branches on the higher elevations above him and in the distance, as these caught a gust of wind that made them bow and sway and shake furiously. Dried, crinkling leaves, bits of bright colors and bronze swirled chaotically. Then the blast of cold, musty air reached him, nearly knocking him over, as if it had swooped through the valleys and passes and around the heights just to torment him. It picked up everything around him, including ashes and pieces of debris that had been carried on the upper atmosphere’s currents from far away, and whirled it all into dust-devils that spun at his feet. Pike winced and tugged his cap lower, to cover his eyes.

He waited until the squall abated, then shoved at the cap so he could see. He shrugged his shoulders to adjust his straps but also to clear his head, and resumed walking, returning to the center of the decaying road.

As he negotiated the curve he craned his head to the side, trying to get a glimpse of what he was moving towards. He halted once more and shoved his fists into his jacket pockets. His eyes widened, his chest tightened. The remains of the highway and the mountains around it continued for another thousand meters, and then there was nothing. Nothing except a massive curtain of purplish deep-gray that reverberated with streaks and jigs and cracks of lightning.

Pike gazed skywards once more; every leaden cloud from what he could see of the horizon in all directions, was spiraling inwards to a point beyond the storm wall before him. “Geezus….” he said softly. “It’s a winner.” He crossed himself out of old habit. He grew still except for his breathing, which was deep and rapid. He wiped his dried lips with the back of one hand. He stared for a few minutes more and determined the immense barrier of rain and compressed, roiling thunderheads was stable, stationary. The lightning continued to fork and dart and spit like electric currents of a Tesla coil caught in a containment jar.

Pike had seen a lot in the last twenty years, but he still never felt comfortable when he found another one. It was frightening to move on, but he knew it was the only way, and he couldn’t go back. He bowed his head until his chin touched the notch of his collar bone, and forced himself to stride forward.

Patricia’s face became tense, the fear playing around her blue eyes and rosy mouth as she stood just under the overhang of the bus shelter and scanned the vertical darkness shot by bolts of lightning that hung like a giant curtain along the base of a mountain on the other side of the highway. “I don’t understand,” she said with a lilting, eastern West Virginia accent. She was dressed in a pink and white striped dress with a fitted bodice and full skirt over a petticoat that fell to mid-calf. She wore white gloves and a white round hat. A square white handbag hung from her forearm, and white open-toed low-heeled pumps adorned her feet. Her chestnut hair was cut short and curled around her face. Large, round faux-pearl earrings were clipped to her ears. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

The male half of a couple that rested behind her on the shelter’s metal bench, leaned his forearms on his knees. “I’ve never seen anyone who looks like you before, except in old movies,” he said. He glanced at his girlfriend but she shoved an elbow into his ribs and scowled at him.

Patricia pivoted smartly and tilted her head as she gazed at him, trying to understand his meaning. “Well honey, I’ve never seen a boy with girl’s hair before. And what kind of big ol’ glasses are those? And where’s your tie? And you and your lady-friend are both wearing blue jeans? To go into town? Not even the poorest hillbilly does that.”

“It doesn’t matter,” the girl said. One of her ankles rested on her other knee; the elevated foot in the red Ked was shaking hard. Her hair was puffed and layered in the front, and hung in fluffy flaps on either side of her face like dog-ears. Her oxford-style, blue blouse was unbuttoned down the front and she wore a navy-blue t-shirt underneath. She began to chew on the nail of one of her thumbs. “What is that thing out there?” she asked her boyfriend.

He stood and stretched self-consciously. “It’s just a thunderstorm. They look strange sometimes up in the mountains.” He studied the interior of the bus shelter — it was constructed of solid wood, in a plank and frame style. The interior had once been painted a pale yellow but now was faded and peeling. The metal bench along the rear wall looked like it hadn’t been updated since the 1940s. The whole place was no more than six or seven feet long and as many feet deep.

“That ain’t no normal rainstorm,” a husky, hoarse female voice said.

Patricia stiffened and lowered her purse, dangling it from her fingers. The girl came to her feet and bounded to the threshold with her boyfriend. They stared at the figure of a young woman in a simple shirt-waist dress and sweater. She was hand-combing her wet hair, her purse sliding down one arm as she smiled tightly.

“I was walkin’ down Pond Fork Road, thinkin’ to beat the rain, and suddenly that … cloud … was on me; scared the livin’ daylights outta me. I started to run for the shelter and all of a sudden, I was clear of it….” She approached the others. Her freckled face looked flushed, her long wavy red hair, parted on the side, was stringy but not totally soaked. “I’m Mary, by the way. Please to meet you-all. Don’t usually get company for the bus to Madison.”

Patricia exhaled loudly. She backed away one step. “Why aren’t you soaked through and through?” she asked. “You look familiar; I’ve lived here all my life … do I know you?”

“I don’t know? Do you?”

“I’m Scott Atkins, and this is Chloe,” the young man said. “We’re on our way back to Huntington, to Marshall. Just home visiting…,” he added.

Mary seemed to notice Scott for the first time. She inspected him, moving her eyes up and down repeatedly. “Howdy,” she said absently, her eyes narrowing. She abruptly turned back to Patricia. “What is goin’ on here? Who’re you people? That storm….” she flung her hand behind her. “The rain’s goin’ in circles, it’s goin’ sideways. The electrical were everywhere but didn’t touch me none … there was thunder, but it sounded … funny….” She turned to face the wall cloud again. “It’s all around. It’s all ’round about us, don’t you understand? We’re surrounded by the thing.”

Scott hopped off the one step in front of the shelter and walked a few feet away, then leaned to his side, then trotted out of sight around the rear of the small structure.

“Scottie! Where are you going?” Chloe called, her voice rising. She stayed put under the shelter roof, clinging to the frame of the opening as she tried to follow him with her eyes.

He reappeared from the opposite direction. “Yeah, she’s right. It’s all around us. We’re like in the middle of the eye, like a hurricane.”

“This ain’t no hurricane,” Mary said. She flipped her skirt and smoothed it behind her as she backed up and lowered herself onto the bench with a “hmph.” She crossed, folded on leg over the other. She grasped her purse and unclipped the top, retrieved a compact, flipped it open, and peered into the small mirror as she powdered her face.

“Sweetie,” Patricia said, “you should clean that bench before you sit. It is kinda dirty.”

“What?” Mary paused, powder-puff clutched in the fingers of one hand, and glanced down, at the bench surface to her right. “This is a brand new shelter, Sissy. It’s perfectly shiny an’ clean.” And she found her lipstick — red in a red tube — and began to apply it.

Patricia glanced at Scott as he jumped up under the roof again. “You think this place is new and clean?” she asked.

Before he could answer, they all heard a honking horn.

“It’s the bus,” Patricia exclaimed. Thank goodness!” She skipped down the step and advanced the few feet to the road. She stopped on the swath of grit and grass at the edge. She suddenly moved backwards one pace. “What? That’s not the bus!”

Scott and Chloe joined her; Chloe waved both of her arms in the air. “Yes it is!” she responded, as she watched the shiny blue and silver vehicle with the fishbowl front, the banks of forward-slanting windows, its triple headlights beaming, approach.

Mary slipped her makeup back in her purse and joined them. “What is that? Missy Patricia is right; that’s not our bus,” she said. “I ain’t never seen no bus like that. What kind of windshield is that? Why are them windows so big? What is going on here? Is this a Jap trick? Is this a secret Nazi weapon?”

Scott laughed once but then screwed up his face, shook his head. “What are you talking about? World War Two ended forty years ago.”

The bus pulled to a halt, braking with a slight squeak, it’s hydraulics groaning. The front-end lowered close to the ground. Scott and Chloe huddled in front of the entrance as the double doors folded open. Patricia and Mary hung back, not sure what to do. Mary slipped a look at the storm that continued to throb and undulate a few hundred yards away. She reflexively shivered, then flung herself ahead to a position immediately behind Chloe. “Well, I don’t care what kind of bus this is, I’m getting out of here,” she whispered. Patricia also stared across the road at the towering cloud-bank and billowing lines of rain, the flares and sparks of electricity.

A man emerged from the bus doorway, and dropped down.

All four would-be passengers eyed him.

“What the hell is up with that?” the new arrival asked, hands on his hips. He was dressed simply in faded jeans and a colorful short-sleeved shirt over a long-sleeved jersey tee. His hair was short, almost a buzz-cut. He took out a cell phone and flicked it open.

“What the hell is that thing?” Mary demanded. Her face was turning red again.

The bus doors began to close, the front end made a beeping sound and began to rise.

“Hey, hey,” Chloe yelled. “Hey driver, we want on.” She tried to grab the inside of the folding doors.

Scott began pounding on the Plasti-glass. “Wait a minute, let us on!” he shouted.

Patricia took a few steps to the rear; she wagged her head to one side then the other as she tried to keep the entire situation in view.

The man with the cell phone shook the device, then held it up over his head. “No signal, nothing, not a thing,” he said.

“Woah Nellie, what in the blazes are ya’ doin’ there!” Mary cried. “What’s that thing? Are you a Nazi spy?” She too bounded forward and slapped the bus door with her palm. “Driver, wait, we’re goin’ to Madison,” she shouted.

“What?” the man said. “What the hell are you talking about?” He eased away, until he stood next to Patricia. “What’s going on, who are those people?” he asked her.

She flinched, drawing her body together visibly, leaning away from him. “Who are you?” she asked. “Are you from around here? I haven’t seen you before.”

He seemed to notice her clothing and style for the first time, but was distracted by the commotion in front of him alongside the road. “Maybe there’s another one coming,” he yelled as the bus leveled, and began to slowly pull away.

Chloe continued to pound on the metal sides until Scott yanked her back. She was crying. “I couldn’t see the driver,” she said.

Mary turned, staring into the bus as the length of it passed her by. “There’s no one else inside, either. The durn thing is empty!” she shouted.

“What do you mean you couldn’t see the driver?” Scott prodded. He held Chloe in an embrace, her face pressed against his shoulder.

“He was all shadowy, I couldn’t see any details … he ignored me, like he couldn’t hear us….” She pushed away from her boyfriend and straightened, moved around so she could see the man who had disembarked a few minutes before. “Hey, you were on there. What’s up with that driver?” she asked him, her voice insistent and loud between sniffs.

He bent slightly as he watched the bus pick up speed just before the front end hit, then entered the turbulent wall of thunderheads, spinning rain, and lightning discharges that hovered across the highway some quarter mile to their north. Red tail-lights seemed to dissolve and then abruptly disappeared. “What in the freakin’ hell…?” He drew back, then exchanged a hard stare with Patricia before he realized Chloe was talking to him. He focused on the girl’s blotchy and wet face. “It was the usual Greyhound driver from Lewisburg,” he said with a shrug and paused. As they were still staring at him, he added, “Maybe they don’t pick up passengers here any more, I don’t know.” He shook his phone again. “I need to make a call, for my family to come get me,” he said. He held the number pad in both hands as he looked skyward, then across the road at the side of the mountain where the purple-gray clouds twisted and snaked as if trying to escape. “Why isn’t it moving?” he asked without looking at anyone. “Why isn’t the storm moving in any direction? It seemed like a regular downpour when we drove through….”

“What’s that thing you got there?” Mary asked, pointing. She also grabbed a glimpse of the encircling storm wall; she began easing away from the sandy gravel and grass immediately beside the road.

“It’s a phone, a phone, you’ve never seen a phone before?” he answered. “I live just up Route 85 a bit; I might walk….”

“That ain’t no phone…,” Mary said softly as she reached the shelter and climbed up the step. She darted under the roof then spun around. “That ain’t no goddamn phone!” she shouted, thrusting an index-finger in his direction.

“You aren’t from around here,” Patricia said. “What kind of get-up is that for a handsome boy like you?”

“I might ask you the same thing, lady,” he answered quickly. “I’ve only been gone for one semester, and I know we have a lot of drunks, druggies, and hell-raisers in Boone County, but at least none of ‘em look like they stepped out of I Love Lucy. My name is Rich, by the way. Rich Atkins.” He watched her angry, stunned reaction for a moment, then returned his attention to his smart-phone. He tried entering a number and dialing. The “No Service” alert popped up. He tried sending a text message; he could hardly get the letters to appear. “Hey, what the fuck….” he said, as he noted the low-battery icon was flashing. “I just charged this before I left school.”

Patricia grasped her purse handles in both gloved fists. “I don’t know what’s going on, but I’m taking the very next ride that comes along….” Her face looked pale as she hung her head and moved back towards the shelter.

“Hitchhiking? Yeah, let’s get a ride….” Chloe began, but Scott cut her off, telling her that hitchhiking was out of the question.

“My family is mixed up in too many local messes,” he said to her. “We could get into a lot of trouble….”

In a few minutes, they were all inside the bus shelter once more, pushing themselves in different corners or spots so they could remain as far away from each other as possible, which wasn’t more than a couple of feet. No one said anything. The only noise was a sizzling, crackling sound from the sky, and an occasional rumble of low growls that weren’t heard as much as felt in the head and the chest.

After a time, Rich checked his watch. “Uh….” he said, shaking his wrist, then tapping the crystal. “I think it’s stopped.”

Pike pushed his cap off his forehead again, and folded down his collar. He inhaled and exhaled slowly, several times. It wasn’t easier with practice. He walked a bit further, looking for the approximate middle of the anomaly. He could determine the exact center with his instruments. Something made him raise his eyes and look to his right. “Oh, crap,” he said. “Oh shit.” He halted and examined each of them, the people in the old bus shelter, who now were lined up nervously observing his approach. “Hi folks,” he called as loudly as he could. “Oh crap,” he whispered. Who would’ve thought so many people would have been taking a Greyhound throughout the years, at the same moment in the same location.

He took firm but friendly strides in their direction. “Hi everyone,” he tried to greet them again.

“Who in the blue blazes are you?” a red-haired women with a gruff voice strained by too many cigarettes and too much alcohol, demanded.

He moved closer, and removed his cap. “Name is Pike, ma’am.” 1945, he thought. Sometime between VE and VJ day.

“We’ve been waiting for a bus, but the last one passed us right on by,” a pretty girl in a pink and white homemade dress, said.

“Sorry ma’am. But there’s been a slight glitch in travel plans in this location,” Pike responded. Some time between 1955 and 1957, he decided.

“What the hell does that mean?” a young man in a multi-colored shirt over long sleeves, asked.

Pike squinted at him. “Are you about 2009?” he asked. “I need you to try and explain to these people….”

“Huh? What?” he said. He and the others pressed backwards as Pike took two more steps towards them.

Pike slouched and sighed with such depth and sincerity that it caught their interest, and reduced the tension. Unexpected, welcome good will, he thought. “Okay folks, I’m going to say this once. The boy there with the Hawaiian shirt will be best able to help you understand.” He let his pack slip off his shoulders but caught it as it slid, lowering it deftly the rest of the way. He noted that they winced in unison and had clustered more closely together. “Don’t be alarmed, I’m not going to hurt anyone. Not my job.” He squatted and drew a thumb across the top of his knapsack; it unsealed with a blue-green glow. “Security zip,” he explained. “Coded to my print and retinal scan; you … what’s your name…?” he nodded at 2009.

“I’m, uh, my name is Rich,” the other answered.

“Okay, Rich,” Pike continued, “you’ll get this better than they will. My tech isn’t too far ahead of you.” He rummaged around until he found his geomagnetic spatial chronostatic cell, and the diamagnetic vortex imager. “Now, don’t be alarmed folks. I’m from a little ways ahead of you-all. Some seventy years or so. There was an accident … well, several … the usual hybris of human beings involved. You know, the usual, we can control the geocentric dipole and the non-dipole magnetic fields, and harness the energies of Einstein’s space-time vortex around the earth, because you know, we discovered there were links between the ‘holes’ in the earth’s non-dipole magnetic field — those big deep-blue spots of negative electromagnetic energy that feed into those places of ultra high magnetic fields in a flux pattern that my parents’ generation discovered was tied to the spiral of earth’s gravity-mass space-time grid. ”

They were all staring at him. One of the girls — 1985 he guessed, then stole a quick peek at the display of his chronostat and smiled; he almost always got it right — she was agitated. She was going into hysterics in a moment. Her apparent boyfriend was stroking her hair, and squeezing one of her hands in his.

“Okay, maybe I’m just a crazy guy, escaped from a hospital, but listen anyway,” he said, trying to find the perfect tone and inflection. He understood why they were scared. People are just animals after-all, he thought; the old dog knows the tech who is talking sweet to him is about to give him the lethal injection.

“Why should we?” the red-headed woman practically spit at him. “All we wanna do is catch our bus and get to Madison.”

“Ma’am,” Pike said as gently as he could, “I wish that were possible. I wish it were that simple. Do you-all see that?” He pointed at the immense storm wall beyond the other side of the road, that rose hissing and coiling into the heavens and even now had not moved.

“Yeah, we noticed,” Rich said. “What the fuck is that? It’s all around us.”

“That is an anomaly. It’s not exactly your anomaly, although this point along the New York-Alabama lineament, this section of Boone, Logan, and Mingo Counties in the old state of West Virginia, has been a non-dipole electromagnetic cold spot — or feeder spot — for several million years. This location is one of those crisis nodes where the ancient plate of Africa collided with North America when the last super continent was formed….”

They appeared to be getting defensive, stressed, their cholinergic nervous systems pumping into high gear. Rich roused himself and attempted an explanation, saying, “It’s part of the drifting continents theory. This part of West Virginia is special because of gravity and the earth’s magnetic field.”

“But God made the earth, and placed the continents where he wanted them,” the lady in the striped dress, white gloves, and hat interrupted.

“Okay,” Pike said. He stretched his mouth grimly, then moved and knelt and set the two instruments on the step in front of them. “Don’t be alarmed. This is to lock you down, to stabilize you so that another team can find you and help you.” He returned to a position several paces away. “It would be best to remain in the bus shelter.”

“Are you some kind of government agent?” 1985 young man asked. “Is this some kind of government operation?”

“Hmm,” Pike said, pursing his lips. “You might call it that. It wasn’t really the government directly that fucked up, however. Anyway, you-all are in the middle of an anomaly, a vortex. These things started popping up more and more frequently in the last twenty-five or thirty years. Have you ever heard of the ‘Bermuda Triangle,’” he asked, hoping to connect with them on some level.

“That’s where aliens have a base,” the girl with the red shoes said. “What does that have to do with us?”

“No, no,” Pike said. “It’s one of the vortexes, one of the places that expel the energies space-time and geomagnetic ‘lows’ draw in. Under normal circumstances, earth has always had its mystery places. We just kind of, took it to a whole new level.” He paused while he looked at his dusty, stained boots. He rubbed his beard. “Anyway, I’m one of the people whose job it is to track the rogue anomalies down; we don’t have any office and we don’t have any roots because the more successful we are, the more and more we are removed from our own contexts, our own families, friends, and environments. I keep in touch with my agency, though.”

“So, you going to fix that thing? So we can go home?” 1945 asked, her purse forgotten, her hands balling into fists so tight her knuckles were white.

“Sorry ma’am, I’m just a tracker. I pinpoint and identify and get control of the situation on the ground. I let my people know, and then the right teams will arrive to … fix … things….” He liked her. He liked all of them. He understood the rules; that victims caught in one of these anomalies were contaminated, and had to be removed. “Okay,” he said. “I’m going to set up the rest of my equipment. You-all … wait here….” He didn’t know why he even said it like that. “I’m just going to go to the center of this thing … it’s about ten meters over there….” He indicated a place off the road, somewhat down-slope to the west. “And I’m going to be busy, so, you-all just wait in the shelter until the special group comes to take care of you.” He smiled at them.

They didn’t smile back. Strangely, from the expression on her face, it seemed Miss 1956 was beginning to catch on first.

“Mr. Pike,” she called to him, “does it hurt to walk into that thing?”

“Why no, ma’am, it isn’t harmful when you pass through a small barrier like this one. I’ve seen some — especially over the tropical oceans — that were so huge they caused shipwrecks and tidal waves. But one of these little guys … nah. The important thing is to keep your head down, hold on to yourself and others if you’ve got company, keep your eyes closed, and move forward. Problem is of course,” he said as he hefted his pack by one strap and began to turn, “trouble is, without my instruments to anchor me, I’d never know where I might end up. Hell, if I didn’t have my bonded circuitry and tracking chips and chrono-hooks, as we call them, I’d have been all over the continuum by now.”

She nodded, her white hat bobbing enthusiastically.

Miss 1945 looked at her, and at Pike, and at the others. “Yeah, yeah…,” she muttered, nodding as well.

Pike turned his back on them and ambled towards his estimated heart of the vortex. He could sense that their powerful “fight or flight” responses were being channeled into a much more productive direction. He’d have just enough space himself, to get back on the road. There was no telling who the bosses and personnel of the next team, the next time, would be.