A Long Time Until Now Read Free

were visibly damp.
    The need to stand watch and eat did keep them busy. And yes, it was a lot cooler than it had been. From the 90s or 100s, it was down to high 70s or low 80s. Quite comfortable. Wind blew from the west, very, very fresh. When it dropped he could smell the trucks.
    “Police up that trash, Dalton,” he ordered. “We don’t want to leave a calling card.”
    “Yes, sir.” The kid had been about to stuff all his plastic under a rock. That wasn’t a good idea tactically, and this place was so pristine he hated to spoil it.
    Alexander turned and said, “Sir, I was going to get some pictures . . .”
    “Sure. Go ahead.”
    “Yes, sir,” she said. “But I don’t see any landmarks except the mountains.”
    She’d figured it out.
    “Yes, that’s our next problem.”
    She raised her eyebrows. Her lip twitched.
    “Understood, sir,” she said with a slow nod and a cold face. She didn’t look reassured. She grabbed her weapon with one hand, nodded and slowly put the hand back on her camera.
    Ten minutes later, the grapevine had it.
    Dalton asked, “So where the hell are we, sir? If it’s okay to ask. If we know.”
    “I’m pretty sure we’re still on Earth,” he said. He was confident of that. Mostly. The gravity, air and sun seemed right. In fact, yes, there was a quarter moon . . . and . . . it had been near full the night before. He wasn’t going to say anything yet. And what the fuck had happened to the sun? They rolled at 0923. That was an afternoon sun.
    What the fuck had happened?
    Had they been knocked out for days? Because if not, then, no, he wasn’t going to think about that, because . . .
    “Where, then?”
    Everyone had gathered around, and this time they were much closer, not wanting to stray from the safety of the vehicle.
    “Sergeant Spencer and I were discussing that. Everyone knows we’re really lost, right?”
    “Yeah. As in, no signs of any people at all. Like we’re suddenly in the middle of Siberia.”
    He sighed. “Well, at this point, we can’t rule that out.”
    “What did it?”
    Dalton said, “God is testing us.”
    Alexander snapped, “Oh, please fucking spare me . . . argh. Dammit.”
    “No religion, no politics,” he ordered. “We have no idea. Divine power is one idea. So is some kind of space warp to a parallel world. Or we may be back in time. Or somewhere remote like Siberia.” He wasn’t going to mention the familiar skyline to anyone who hadn’t caught it. Slowly on the discovery. And anyway, he didn’t know what happened.
    “Really?” Caswell said. “What is this bullshit?”
    “Do you see any sign of people? Powerlines, roads, villages on the hillsides, cleared areas for agriculture, anything?”
    “No, but lots of this country is vacant.”
    “Not around here. Sparse, but not vacant. And not this green.”
    He was amazed there wasn’t more panic. Though Trinidad was reciting the Lord’s Prayer. Devereaux and Ortiz went to join him, holding hands.
    Dalton asked, “What the fuck do we do?”
    “For right now, we stay right here, where we landed.” He pointed for emphasis. “We have good visibility downslope, some cover from that outcropping, and working vehicles. We bivouac here.”
    “That’s it?” Dalton sounded irritated.
    “What else would you do?”
    “You travel downhill until you find a watercourse, and follow it downstream until you find people.”
    Spencer nodded. “Per the book, that is a guaranteed way to find people. But it assumes there are people to find. Look at that hill,” he said.
    Dalton argued, “And people around here might stick to the valleys.”
    “Do you recognize that hill line, Corporal?”
    And that was it.
    “We’re still here,” Ortiz said.
    “Close enough, yes. Within a few kilometers of where we were when whatever it was happened.”
    “Shit.”
    “So we bivouac,” he said at once. “And gather intel, and then plot a course of action. We have the ammo, food, water and fuel at hand,