This time, he walked to the women and said, “It’s pitch black. Will you build a fire while I gather material for a torch?”
Senta-eh and Lanta-eh searched the area for dry wood and kindling, then set to making a fire. By the time it was going, Alex had returned with a dead branch and handfuls of dry grass. The three of them sat and wove the grass together and then around the branch.
“You don’t have to go in there,” Senta-eh said.
“I know.”
“You’re really doing this for yourself, not me.”
“I know.”
Senta-eh glanced at Lanta-eh, but said no more.
Alex took the torch, dipped it into the fire, and once again started his ascent to the shadowy hole. When he reached it, he stuck the torch inside, and peered after it.
Alex did a double-take at what he saw.
The flickering light revealed a picnic table set for a meal. There was a red-and-white checked cloth, with four place settings. An oil lamp sat on the table. Alex waved the torch around, expanding its feeble light. To the side of the table was a series of wooden boxes and an old-fashioned two-wheel cart that might have been used for hauling goods.
A human skeleton slumped over one end of the picnic table. The light of Alex’s torch glinted off the steel of a bone-handle hunting knife. There was a dark rectangle next to the knife. Alex leaned further into the hole, trying to see what that might be.
The rocks he leaned against gave way and he tumbled the eight feet down to the dusty floor inside the cave. He dropped the torch, but it didn’t go out, it just bounced and illuminated the small cave. Then the hole that he had started enlarged itself. A massive shadow formed above him. Monda-ak.
The dog didn’t even slow to see what he was leaping into. He hit the ground with a woof, and jumped to Alex’s side, growling and ready to take on all comers.
“It’s all right,” Alex said, laying a hand on Monda-ak’s neck.
The torch fizzled and went out, but it wasn’t necessary anymore. Monda-ak had widened the hole enough that daylight streamed into the cave.
Alex examined himself for injuries. He found more scrapes and bruises, but nothing else.
Senta-eh was next to the hole. She peered inside, a worried expression writ large across her face.
“I’m fine,” Alex said. “I’ve fallen harder than that.”
“I remember,” Senta-eh said and at that moment, they both recalled his plunge into the river and smiled. This was just another adventure in a long line they had shared.
“Do you see what you are after?” Senta-eh asked.
“What I am after is a miracle, so no, I do not see that. Lanta-eh said she thought these people were from my time. I was hoping they might have some of the medical cures we had then.” He shook his head. “I know I’m grasping at straws.”
Alex poked around the entirety of the cave. In one corner, he found a stack of what appeared to be more human bones. Stray hanks of blonde hair were still attached to the three skulls. Everything else had been picked clean by predators or simply been lost to time.
Alex poked through the boxes, but they were all empty. In the corner of the cave opposite the skeletons were empty cans. There was still writing imprinted on the cans, though it had faded.
Dr. Klinghoffer’s Canned Peaches. Brisbane Baked Beans. Tofer’s Vienna Sausages.
How can these exist here? If they were left behind in my time, they would have oxidized and been turned to dust long ago. And cans with advertising say it is from sometime close to my own era, but I don’t recognize any of the brands. And how on Earth do three people end up locked inside a cave after a cave in?
“This place stinks of death,” Senta-eh said, sticking her head farther in. She meant figuratively, not literally, as there was no smell in the cave aside from dust and dirt.
Senta-eh climbed down from the hole much more sensibly than Alex and Monda-ak had. She laid her hand on Alex’s shoulder. “Lanta-eh has told you. I do not need to be saved. I am on exactly the path I need to be on. Our child will be healthy and beautiful. She will play an important role in the future of Winten-ah and all of Kragdon-ah. If I lived to be as old as Drana-eh, I couldn’t ask for a better life than that.”
Alex laid his head against her and finally recognized the truth of what she said.
“I don’t like it here. There’s nothing that will benefit us.” He paused at that and remembered the glint of actual steel from the blade of the knife. “Wait. Maybe there is.” Alex stepped across to the picnic table—one of many anachronisms in the dusty cave—and reached around the corpse for the knife. When he did, he saw the small rectangle he had noticed from above. He first picked up the knife, appreciating the balance and the heft of the thing. He slipped it into his belt and saw that the other object was a book.
He opened the cover and saw it was not really a book, but a diary.
Written in English, the first line read, The Diary and Final Thoughts of Zachary Moorcock.
Alex closed the cover, then noticed there was an arc of dark stains across it. He rubbed a finger across the stain, but he already knew what it was.
Blood.
Alex tucked it into his belt as well, then turned back to Senta-eh and said, “There’s nothing else here for us. I’m sorry.”
“Why be sorry? We had a wonderful ride across endless miles of scenery that looked exactly alike. We found water that smells like Monda-ak’s farts. What’s to be sorry about?”
Chapter Twenty-SevenThe Diary of Zachary Moorcock
The trip home seemed even longer than the trip to the cave had been. Alex felt deflated, as his last best
