Shift (ChronoShift Trilogy) (2 page)

Naturally, her hidden wrath fell his way, burning her up with an unvoiced desire to throttle him, even as her hand caressed his back in a strained effort to comfort.

He knew all this.  Understood it even.  But he was too empty to address it.

Their relationship deteriorated quickly.  Neither’s form of grief was conducive to the healing of the other.  The hidden tension was like an industrial corrosive agent slowly eating through the fragile rope that was their marriage.  Without the kids to unite them, it was only a matter of time before it unraveled.

Still, Mark hadn’t realized how weak their bond actually had become until Kelly approached him one night with her plan.

She had timidly introduced the idea of a divorce.  If they divorced, she said, she could sue to have all their possessions placed in her name, and thus they would be protected from the lawsuit.  She said they would still be husband and wife in heart and could remarry later of course.

He rejected the idea outright and chastened her for suggesting it.  That was the last thing they needed.  Plus, he didn’t know much about the legal system, but he doubted such a thing would work.

Regardless, she was out of her mind with grief and not thinking straight, so several months later, she went through with the plan on her own.

At that point, having lost his children and now abandoned by his wife, for the first time in Mark Carpen’s life, he lost the will to fight.  What did he care if he lost the house and everything in it?  Let her have it all.  What good were the wrecked ruins of their material lives without a family to rebuild them?

He made a half-hearted attempt to find a good attorney, but no lawyer with any reputation wanted to risk alienating the governor.  For an attorney who crossed the wrong people, there could be consequences in the courtroom later, and those few who were bold enough to risk it, Mark couldn’t afford.

He retained the best he could find who’d accept the little he could pay, but as predicted, Mark lost.  He now owed the boy who’d killed his children a little over two million bucks.

Hitting bottom served as a wake-up call, kicking him into survival mode, though without the normal, accompanying enthusiasm one needed to get through such a morass.  He jumped back into work at the restaurant, but the lawyers immediately garnished his wages — and heavily.  At least most of his income was cash from tips, so they couldn’t garnish that.  There was a court order, however, for the seizure of his car, the only material possession Kelly had left him.

Without a vehicle, continuing to work would become impossible.  He avoided giving it up for as long as he could, but its seizure was inevitable.

His last chance was to file for bankruptcy.  As much as he hated the thought, it was now his only option.  Once again, the governor’s attorneys filed every motion they could dredge out of the book to delay his relief.  Mark’s own attorney began balking at continuing to work on his behalf when Mark couldn’t afford to pay his rates.

Mark probably would have eventually made it had he fought a little harder to get through the bankruptcy, but the inner spark he needed for inspiration had been extinguished in the accident.

He just didn’t care.  Not anymore.

So, this is how people become homeless,
he thought.
 
There was nothing left to fight for.  If everything he acquired could be seized, why work?  His wages would be garnished for the rest of his life.  His credit was ruined.  His family had been whisked away like chaff on the wind.

Grief racked his soul from every front, yet nothing tore his heart like the loss of his kids.  Nothing mattered without them, without Kelly.

So, Mark went to the library and began studying maps.

“To everything there is a season,

and a time to every purpose under the heaven:

A time to be born, and a time to die;

a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted.”

- Ecclesiastes 3:1-2

“
What in the world...?
”

The weather-beaten shed stood in the clearing like a weary sentinel ready to be discharged from duty.  Normally, such a building wouldn’t have captured Mark’s attention, but this particular shack was in the middle of nowhere.

The shack was old, that much was sure.  Greyed, roughly-hewn slats ran horizontally along its sides.  Supporting its frame was a stacked stone foundation, which gave a hint as to its age.  It was not large enough to be a barn, more like a work shed.

A single, oversized door occupied the center of its front wall.  It was latched, but not locked.  Two small, square windows flanked both sides of the entrance.  Mark tried to peer through their dirty panes, cupping his hands to block the sunlight from obscuring his view, but the effort was futile.  The wood siding smelled musty, old, but not of rot.

Since there were no houses around, he double-checked the clearing for signs of some other previously existing structure.  The shack could have originally belonged to a house that had long since burned down or otherwise been erased by time.  If that were the case, however, then one would think it too would have been re-conquered by nature long ago.

In fact, this shed looked cared for.  While the siding was weathered and bereft of paint, there were no signs of leaning or caving in.  One of the corners sported a fresh, new board, which had probably replaced a rotting one.  The weeds and surrounding undergrowth that normally would have crept up, prying and eating away at the wood with its tendrils, appeared to have been cut back on a regular basis.  The grass in the clearing was also trimmed and neat.

The shed was mysterious for the same reason that Mark was out here by himself:  Nothing — and no one — should be anywhere around.

At a mere thirty-five years of age, Mark was broken, both financially and spiritually.  All that he owned in this world, he carried in the forty pound pack on his back.  He was dirty, tired, and stank of having not bathed for weeks.  Thick beard growth testified as to how long it had been since he’d seen a civilized bathroom.

He’d grown up in a suburb just outside Atlanta, with normal parents and a normal family.  Uncle Sam had subsidized his time at Georgia State University, so after finishing, he’d owed the United States Marines a stint.  He’d liked the Marines so much he’d re-upped several times, serving in Force Recon, which was the Corps’ Special Forces group.  He’d eventually decided he’d had enough and received an honorable discharge.

GSU was where he'd met Kelly, who’d been an education major at the time.  They had separated while he was in the Marines, but after his discharge, they’d reconnected and gotten married just a year later.  Two years of nominal matrimonial bliss and then Daniel had arrived.  Two more years after that, beautiful little Brittany had bounced into their world.

Time is a funny thing.

One minute, you’re cruising through life, satisfied, content.  The next, all is destroyed, reduced to wrecked ruins smoldering by the roadside.  The crucial difference can be just a second.  One single, destructive second.

It wasn’t that long ago Mark had been a successful computer systems analyst.   Now, he was a homeless hermit living in the North Georgia mountains, wandering from campsite to campsite.

After losing everything in the lawsuit, he’d made an unconventional decision.  He’d driven to the remotest area he could find on a map, an area devoid of towns, buildings, or people and with plenty of empty, unused land and national forests.  An area full of promise for a life in retreat.

He would disappear into the woods forever, he’d decided, and forget about society once and for all.  He’d live off the land, alone with his grief and bitterness.  It was radical — but oh, was it needed.

His car, his last tie to his former life, he’d abandoned on a mountainous highway with the doors unlocked and the keys in the ignition. 
Hope it gets stolen,
he’d muttered as he walked away, thinking a photo of a popular obscene gesture left on the driver’s seat would have made a nice greeting card for the lawyers.

The moment he’d turned his back on that beat up piece of junk was a moment of sublime satisfaction.  Satisfaction which he hadn’t felt for quite a while.  He was finally taking control of his life again.

He’d been out here for a little over two months so far.  Not that he was keeping track of the days very well.  Time in the Marines and Force Recon had more than equipped him for long term survival on his own.  The only possessions he would ever need were in his backpack and around his waist, and he didn’t plan on going back any time soon.

He was alone.  Blissfully alone.  Solitude in nature had finally begun to bring the healing he’d so desperately needed for so long but could never quite seem to secure back home.

Yet today, he found himself in the middle of nowhere staring at this strange shed, its square frame rudely piercing his fantasy of a lonely oblivion.

The ambient clicking of southern cicadas seemed to mute as silence descended upon his mind like a thick blanket.  The outbuilding drew his attention, focusing it like a laser.

There was no way to see inside.  If curiosity was to be assuaged, the door would have to be opened.  It felt like a violation of the primitive, peaceful state in which he’d been living to enter a civilized structure again.

The latch lifted easily enough — no lock to block him.  He’d expected the hinges to squeal but was surprised to see they were well-oiled.

Inside, the aroma of new lumber floated lightly upon the still air.  The floor had been swept recently, and no dust marred the window sills.  Naturally stained wooden slats lined three walls and the floor.  A matching wood-topped island occupied the center of the room, and cabinets covered the entire back wall.  A deep window seat ran along the right hand side.  It had a hinged lid, indicating it doubled as a storage chest.

On top of the lid, directly under the window, lay a pewter-colored wristwatch, which sat atop a single piece of paper.  Being the only apparent items in the room, he crossed the small space and examined both more closely.

The device did indeed seem to be a watch of some kind, though it didn’t have any of the decorative trappings one would normally expect in a watch.  No brand name, no stylish flourishes.  Its bland, smooth face was interrupted by two rectangular digital displays instead of one.  Underneath the displays was a single large red button.  A stopwatch, perhaps?

Both of the small screens displayed more numbers than normal.  A lot more.

Several tiny buttons lined both sides of the face, but the oddest part by far was the wrist band, which appeared to be completely integral to the watch.  The band was made of the same smooth gray metal as the watch’s face, but there were no links, no breaks, and no crevices in it, not even where it met the watch head.  The band and face appeared to be one single, continuous piece of metal with no way to unlatch or otherwise separate it from the watch.

The piece of paper was a brief set of instructions.  They appeared to have been typed on an old-fashioned typewriter, and the paper felt like the bond paper they used in the old days, yet the sheet was crisp and fresh, not aged at all.  The instructions bore no title, but simply read:

            1.  Insert wrist into band.

            2. Using the three buttons on right side of face, set the bottom display to:

010000P-09071890

            3.  Press the red button.

That was it.  Simple enough, but what was this thing, anyway?  Surely, it wasn’t a watch after all.  Not with that many numbers.  Maybe a GPS locator?

Mark glanced nervously back through the door.  He’d been foolish to trespass like this.  In spite of its remote location, somebody obviously still owned this shack and had been here recently.  The last thing he needed was more trouble.

He briefly considered that it might be some kind of taser, or other electric shock device...but why would a person have something like that laying in their shed?  There didn’t appear to be any electrodes on its underside, so probably not.

Regardless, he wasn’t about to stick his wrist through the band and push that big red button until he knew exactly what it was.  He avoided getting on a first-name basis with Stupid whenever he could help it. 

Curiosity already had him by the tail though.  With some trial and error, he managed to use the smaller buttons on the side to change one of the digital displays to match the numbers on the piece of paper.  Then,
without
slipping his wrist through the band, he pushed the red button.

The watch vanished from his grasp.

At first, he thought it had fallen.  He scoured the floor and even got down on his hands and knees, but it wasn’t anywhere to be found.  Standing back up, he scratched his head, his heart racing a little. 
What had just happened?