CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT - THE FOREST
Beads of light rain saturated the cold air that cackled frostily through the trees either side of the muddy, forest path and Brian shivered as his face grew even number. He had to fight to prevent his teeth from chattering, but it was a battle that he was drastically losing.
The grim weather had set upon the land a few hours before and with each hour that brought them closer to night, it had steadily grown colder and more hostile. The rain had swept in about them, carried upon the whistling wind. Brian slowly wrapped his arms about his chest to try and preserve some of his body warmth that remained as he stared about the dead wood either side of them. Although the autumnal trees were depressing as they wilted dying leaves, they at least offered some protection from the inclement weather. It would be even colder when they exited the grim wood.
“You all right?” Bri asked, his head bowed slightly as the wind ran against their faces.
Brian nodded. “Yeah, just a little cold,” he murmured. The past few hours had mainly been silent with both of them concentrating on their journey. After leaving Josphin’s village they had been forced over a rocky plain where they’d had to be careful where they walked in case they broke an ankle.
Brian raised his head slightly and saw the dark clouds of night that were beginning to stealthily creep over grey sky. Another splash of rain water hit his face and he lowered his head slightly. The rain made him feel even more heavier with melancholy. His feet ached and he felt no nearer to B or Sammy. He had been beginning to lose count of the days since he had seen them. How long had it been? It felt like an eternity but at the same time he could remember the day of B’s kidnapping so clearly. Even now he could still hear B’s desperate scream as he was unwillingly snatched from the house.
He tried not to think about what would be happening to him, but the thought was always lurking in the depths of his mind. B already had one set of vaccination marks scarring his arms and no doubt by the time they rescued him there would be another set to accompany them.
“Do you want to rest for a few minutes?” Bri asked suddenly.
“Huh?” Brian turned to him blankly, his head having been too far sunken in thoughts of B to listen to his counterpart. His brain suddenly deciphered the question and he felt his body sag slightly, wanting to curl up and nurse strained muscles. Suddenly B’s face was watching him from his mind, begging him to hurry. He bit down on his lip and shook his head. “No, let’s wait a while. We’ll have to stop soon anyway.” He felt guilty for wanting rest. Every joint ached and complained with every single step and his back was burning under the weight of his backpack, but he could not allow them to stop yet. B was in even more pain than he was.
Bri’s eyes lingered upon him for a moment and Brian looked away, not wanting the older man to see his weariness.
“You sure you’re okay?” he asked.
“Why so concerned?” Brian shot back sharply, annoyed at the interrogation.
“Because I don’t want you keeling over on me!” Bri replied, mimicking Brian’s snappish voice. “I have to take care of you don’t I?” he added in a softer tone.
Brian rolled his eyes slightly. He gulped slightly to dampen his dry mouth. He remembered the hatred that had burned so ferociously in Bri’s eyes when he had seen B with Brian. “We both know that you’re going to kick me back to my own time the second you have B and Sammy back,” he said. In his head he added a ‘try’ into that sentence. He was not going to return quite so easily, not until he had spent a little time with B and Sammy at least.
Bri’s eyes narrowed. “There’s no need to take that tone!” he replied as he ceased his easy pace. “You’re beginning to sound as old and pessimistic as me!”
“I am not like you!” Brian thundered. “I’m not the one who yells at B all the time!” The words flew from his mouth before his mind had even grasped his line of thought. He fell silent the moment he heard them in his own ears. Bri was suddenly glaring at him harshly.
“You had to bring that up didn’t you? I try to be a good father to him and it’s not easy!” His eyes burned with something cold and desolate. He turned away from Brian and raised his head slightly, his face creasing slightly. “You have no idea what it’s like,” he said bitterly.
Brian felt something lurching in his throat and a sickening wave of loneliness suddenly seemed to hit his soul and slowly begin to flood him with despair. He could feel Bri desperately trying to shut out memories and yet Brian could still hear B and Bri screaming at each other in his mind.
“How do things get like that?” Brian asked pushing away his twin’s thoughts as everything threatened his eyes with tears.
Bri was leaning slightly against a tree, his back still turned to Brian. “If I knew that then I might have been able to stop it,” he whispered wretchedly. He turned back to Brian. “I don’t know, so sorry but I can’t offer you any advice on what to do when you’re me.”
Brian’s eyes closed. He couldn’t see it happening anymore than he could the day he had met Bri and now he was beginning to think of his twin as an entirely different person. It was so strange to believe that the man he was speaking with now was himself. His brain had turned from shocked horror at this revelation to determined ignorance.
“Sorry to give you such a pessimistic future,” Bri said grimly. “Believe me, I wish it was more pleasant. I really do.” He stared above him slightly where the moon was beginning to force its glowing bulk through a gap in the clouds.
“B missed you in my time. He wanted to come home, but he was scared,” Brian said after the silence began to gnaw at his chest painfully. Despite being faced with the grimness of his own future, he still felt something warm inside of him. B had missed Bri so much in his time. He had seen it in his eyes everyday and in the tears when he had found that Brian had been secretly talking with Bri.
Bri laughed slightly. “He missed Sammy! That is the only reason he would ever even have returned to this time of his own free will in the first place.”
“That’s not true!” Brian cried. “He missed you! I know he did because he told me! He didn’t tell me exactly who you were but he told me that there was someone who was a father to him who he missed, and he was not talking about Sammy.” He stopped for a moment to draw a breath. “He was talking about you.”
Bri stared at him, his eyes still wearing that same cloak of melancholy that always seemed to haunt them. He shook his head slightly, clearly believing that Brian was lying.
“I’m telling the truth,” Brian said as he drew closer to his twin, determined to make him listen to him. “Do you really think that I was planning to keep B in my own time?” he would love nothing more than to do that, but it would never work. B would miss everything in his own time and he would never be able to live a life with Brian, especially with Brian’s turbulent job. “I loved having him with me and he made me realise that I wouldn’t have to go through life permanently missing him! He saved me from drowning and I was repaying the favour by helping him sort a few things out. He needed space to think. Maybe running away was not the most sensible thing to do, but he was frightened. He would have come back eventually!”
“You heard him that night I came for him!” Bri snapped. “He wanted nothing to do with him! He blames me for the Gerai taking Sammy!” And now a sob seemed to weave it’s ugly way into his desperate voice.
Brian froze slightly. “You think this is all your fault don’t you? You blame yourself for what happened to Sammy? You were in a coma! What could you do? Even if you had been awake you couldn’t have stopped Sammy searching for B! And you might have been captured with him! What use would that have been?” He fought the urge to reach out and seize hold of Bri by the shoulders to shake sense into his muddled mind.
“You don’t know what it is like!” Bri screamed. “I live with the guilt, not you!”
“Bri - ” Brian’s reply was cut off when the screech of laser fire suddenly seemed to split through the air like a sharp knife through paper. He instinctively moved and turned to see a huge, burnt rip upon the trunk of an aged tree. He stared at it, his eyes tracing the ghostly curls of smoke that wriggled from the smouldering wreck. It was several feet away from him, but it was enough to startle him.
“Come on!” Bri screamed as he roughly seized hold of Brian’s arm and dragged him into the foliage to their right.
But ahead of them there was the sound of crunching leaves under somebody else’s feet and Brian realised with a cold and ferocious falling of ice upon his chest that they were walking straight into a trap. The warning shot had been designed to send them hurrying into the forest where the rest of the Gerai seemed to be hidden.
Bri swore and his own grim face seemed to show that he had reached the same conclusion as Brian. “Get down!” he hissed as he yanked Brian down with him to the floor.
Brian hit the ground hard but he forced himself to swallow the cry of surprise. He held a hand over his mouth to try and muffle his heavy breathing and rested the other against his chest as he felt the frantic thudding of his heart.
Around him he could hear the clumsy steps of the Gerai as they floundered about the dark forest, searching for their prey. Below him he could smell the overpowering stench of rotting leaves and decaying fungus. It was never going to work. He could now see the cackling flashlights glimmering about the damp air. It was only a matter of time.
Bri slowly began to crawl along the muddy ground and Brian carefully followed him. Bri elbowed him slightly and gestured to a small gurgling brook that ran through the trees and was covered in floating algae and weeds. Brian’s heart flickered unnaturally as he saw the flashlights burning in the darkness a few steps away from them and he glanced back at the brook, seeing that it seemed to deepen out further along. It might be the only place they could hide and use to escape.
Grimly he followed Bri as they struggled on all fours towards the water, trying to make as little noise as possible. The Gerai had become noisier themselves and now were beginning to shout to one another in gruff voices, trying to decide where the two Brians had gone.
As they reached the water’s edge Brian caught the smell of the acrid water and he wrinkled his nose up slightly, even though he knew he would still have to dive into it. He stared across at Bri, who also appeared grim at the situation. He raised an eyebrow at Brian and he felt the thoughts in his mind.
‘What choice do we have?’
Bri slowly and quietly slipped into the brook and walked out until it deepened. He took a deep breath and then sunk below the surface of weeds. Brian stared about him, his mouth feeling dry and tasteless as he saw the flickering lights dancing dangerously towards him. In the growing darkness though they would never find them if they stayed in the water. With any luck by the time the Gerai realised the
He shuddered slightly as he saw the scum floating along the surface, but there was no other choice. He took one last breath and then dived down himself. Immediately he was floating weightless in the water and the chaotic sounds of the world were reduced to a glooping gurgle of water. A hand had seized hold of his arm and he found himself being pulled along the brook. He knew it was Bri even though it was too dark to see him. He kicked out with his legs, trying to make as few splashes as possible as he followed Bri through the murky water.
His lungs slowly began to burn and Brian felt his eyes rolling frantically in their sockets as he began to release the breath he had been holding. At once he felt the disgusting water fill his mouth and he half choked as he began to writhe convulsively. He needed to breathe, but Bri was still pulling him along ruthlessly. He wrapped his hand about Bri’s own arm frantically and squeezed it to try and make Bri realise what was happening.
Finally his older twin seemed to notice and he was pushing Brian up towards the surface. Brian gasped as his head rose above the brown water and for a moment he felt the breath refreshing his lungs, even though a foul taste had sunken deep into his mouth. Bri was pushing him down again and he wearily took hold of his breath again as he sunk back beneath the water.
Everything was cold and the water was thick with mud and decaying leaves. He could feel everything sticking to his skin and clothes as the mingling horrors swirled about him. He tried to open his eyes but everything was too dark and murky for him to be able to see anything. He could not even see Bri who was right next to him and the only clue he had that the man was still with him was the hand that clung to him tightly.
Brian’s felt his body beginning to shudder again as everything began to swing dizzyingly and then Bri was rushing them to the water’s surface again. Brian happily gulped at the night air but soon gasped as he felt the frost beginning to build upon his body. He stared about him vaguely as his teeth began to chatter and saw no sign of flashlights. He could still hear voices but they seemed to come from much further away.
“Come on!” Bri cried as he pulled Brian out of the muddy bog that the brook had led to.
Brian dimly noticed that the brook had trickled out and that there was no choice but to leave it and continue on foot. He nodded as he pulled himself to his feet and scrabbled to be free from the tangle of weeds that had clung to his body.
Bri’s face was coated in mud and slime and it made him near invisible in the dim light. The Gerai would have a hard time spotting them now.
Brian wiped the grime from his eyes and checked the straps of his backpack before Bri began to tug him through a gnarled maze of twisted, fierce brambles that ripped and tore into their clothes.
“We’re almost out,” Bri whispered breathlessly. “Hurry! They might start following the stream to find us!”
They staggered up a hill that was covered with twisted tree roots that reached out to snag their ankles and they ducked beneath low hanging foliage that frantically tried to restrain them. Bri kept his hand tightly wrapped around Brian’s arm to make sure that they weren’t separated in the forest. Brian was relieved even though he could feel the fingers bruising the tender skin. He knew he would never find his way out alone now he had been dragged away from the path.
Bri seemed to know exactly where he was going and roughly steered them down a muddy ditch before pushing away the looming leaves of a huge bush.
“Are they following?” Brian gasped eventually. He strained his ears but he could no longer hear the sound of pursuit. All he could hear was the fat plodding of his nervous heart.
Bri stopped and Brian breathed deeply to try and ease the painful stitch that had suddenly settled upon his stomach. He wrapped his arms about his chest while Bri pulled a scanner from his pocket and cautiously raised it to scan the local vicinity.
He stared back the way they had come and took a few more tentative steps towards it. “They’re over there where we came from. Only three of them and they seem to be re-grouping.” He slapped the scanner back into its case and then stared about the small clearing. “We need to continue going this way,” he said as he gestured forwards. “That should lead us out.”
Brian squinted about the trees. If it wasn’t for the trampled ground to his right, he wouldn’t even know where they had come from in the first place. Everything looked so similar. He shivered and rubbed his arms to try and warm himself up.
“You okay?” Bri asked.
Brian nodded. “Cold,” he murmured slightly.
Bri glanced up through the canopy and frowned as he saw that more and more rain clouds were beginning to build up in dark clusters of ominous blackness. “It shouldn’t be that cold tonight but it will probably rain pretty badly. We need to find some shelter.”
Brian nodded as he wiped mud from his face to try and stop himself from tasting it every time he closed his mouth, as his lips were black with sludge from the small brook.
He glanced about the wood. “Which way do we need to go again?” he asked. “I think we need to get moving as soon as possible.” He peered nervously into the trees in case anybody else was waiting in ambush.
Bri pulled the scanner from his pocket again. “We’ll keep an eye on this.” He glanced at it for a moment and then frowned. “They’re heading this way. Come on, let’s get moving.” Still holding the scanner he began to shove his way through a wall of weeds and ivy that hung from a small tree. “It shouldn’t be long and then we’ll need to get across a meadow and then there’s some caves we normally use as shelter if anybody goes out this far.”
“Won’t the Gerai be able to find us if they’re using scanners as well though?” Brian asked worriedly.
Bri shook his head. “No because we programmed all of our scanning stuff to emit this pulse that disrupts theirs. It stops them from locating us too easily. They’ll know what general direction we’ve gone in, but not the exact location.”
Brian anxiously watched as Bri tore away brambles. All the Gerai had to do was follow the paths they had made through the forest to find them. Bri seemed to read his thoughts, or rather he probably did, because as soon as they had passed he began to rearrange the brambles back into their original positions. “Happy now?” he asked with a wry smile.
Brian rolled his eyes. “I just thought we should be more careful.”
“It’s hard when we’re running for our lives,” Bri replied as he quickly led the way through a group of horse chestnut trees, the hard shells popping beneath their feet.
Brian said nothing, but he was actually thinking about their argument from earlier. Did Bri really blame himself for everything had happened? He snuck a glance at his older twin and tried to form a mental barrier between them to stop him from reading his thoughts again. Hopefully this would still all turn into a happy ending and Brian would be able to prove to his pessimistic, older self that B still cared about him. Maybe Brian’s future would still turn out to be a little more pleasant.
“Bri?” he asked suddenly.
“Yeah?” he replied as he slipped down a ditch full of wet, dying leaves and began to scramble up the other side.
“What happens?”
“What do you mean?” Bri asked, not even slowing down as they reached the top and began heading through the trees which seemed to be thinning out a bit more.
Brian bit his lip slightly, knowing that he was approaching a delicate subject. “What happens to you after everyone thinks you’re… we’re dead.” He still could hardly grasp that everything that was happening to Bri would one day happen to him, but if that was the case then maybe he could stop B from running away and maybe this whole chain would never begin… He was probably being very naïve about time. It seemed to have a mind of its own to lead everybody into chaos time and time again.
Bri froze slightly and said nothing. Brian gulped slightly as the silence stretched. Bri kept his back to him.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I-I just can’t help wandering…”
“How you turn into a pessimistic and grim old bastard like me?” Bri finished bluntly.
Brian wanted to protest at this, but he knew that was the question he wanted to ask. He felt so different and apart from Bri and his way of thought. How could he ever change so much?
Bri sighed and slowly continued to walk again. “It’s a long story,” he said eventually. “I was with the Gera for seventeen years and I’m amazed that I survived. Sometimes I wanted to die in there and most of the time I thought I would. I didn’t think I would ever see B or Sammy again.”
Brian closed his eyes briefly as he reflected on his own despair in his own time when he believed that he had been separated from them forever, especially B whom he thought he’d never see again at all. Sammy was at least present in his own time.
“It must have been awful,” Brian murmured. “From the little experience he’d had with the Gerai he’d come to believe that they were heartless and cold, almost inhuman in many ways.
“They tried to keep us alive as much as they could,” Bri said angrily. “No matter how much people suffered, they kept us alive. They didn’t have enough people to work in their mines and they badly needed others. It was hard for them to find good workers and they always tried for resistance members because they were stronger and knew more about what they were doing.”
“Mines?” Brian gasped. So that was the future that now awaited him: slaving away in the darkness for ruthless monsters.
“I shouldn’t tell you about it,” Bri murmured softly. “Darren told me not to discuss the future too much.”
Brian stopped and glared hard at Bri’s back. “I’ve already seen most of the damn future! Why does everyone insist on holding things back all the time? I know what’s going to happen and I even know when most of it will happen.”
“Well maybe there are some things you don’t want to know,” Bri said coldly and then he carried on walking.
Brian hurried after him. “Bri - ”
“I don’t want to talk about it.” For a moment Bri turned his eyes towards him and Brian saw that they had suddenly filled with something dull and deadening. At the same moment he felt something cold and painful ripping about his chest. He met Bri’s gaze for a moment and then fell silent, understanding that Bri would say no more on the subject.
“We’re out now,” Bri said eventually. “Look.” He pointed to the trees ahead of them and Brian saw that they were not as dense as they had been and beyond them there looked to be a wide expanse of grass.
Bri glanced down at his scanner and nodded satisfactorily. “The Gerai are behind us following the brook but there’s no one in this meadow. We can make it to the caves and they’ll never find us there. They’re hard to find even when you do know where they are.”
The moment Brian was past the trees and into the meadow, the cold wind began to tug ferociously at his wet clothes. He shivered slightly, but it wasn’t as bad as it had been earlier. He glanced up at the black sky which wads covered in clouds. They would have been in serious danger if it had been a cold and frosty night.
Despite being cold and shivery, he felt a weight beginning to disparate from his hunched shoulders. He felt much less enclosed and trapped in the wide meadow and it was a relief to see something more alive than the barren plains and the battlefields that they had spent most of their time walking in.
“This part of the journey is much nicer,” Bri said as they began to walk across the meadow, which turned out to be thick with mud after the rain. He grimaced slightly. “Well, it would be apart from the mud.”
It was still a little more cheerful than the wastelands Brian was used to seeing. Sadly he thought back to what Nick had told him about most of the country being destroyed by nuclear weapons. There was probably little of any countryside left anywhere. “What happened to the other countries in the world?” he asked curiously. “Why didn’t they help us when this happened?”
Bri snorted slightly. “Europe was also hit heavily by the original asteroid shower hat started this whole mess. They had their ,own problems to worry about and the UK was obliterated almost completely. They have their own problem. A few did try and help us, but the Gerai killed them the moment they set foot in the country. As for the Arab places, well a lot of them didn’t like us much in the first place. They’re staying out of it. In a way it’s better I suppose. It meant that the Gerai didn’t bother with them and they didn’t have the resources to help.” He glanced across at Bri. “The world is pretty divided right now I’m afraid. Everyone has their own problems to worry about. The Gerai weren’t the only terrorist group that chose to take advantage of the chaos.”
“Real grim future huh?” Brian said softly, gulping as he thought back to the thriving place he lived in his own time. He doubted if he would ever see a happy family again without cringing as he thought about what would happen to them in the next few years.
“Hard to believe isn’t it?” Bri whispered. He took a deep breath. “But it’s almost over now. After this, we should be all right. For most people the war really did end when we ‘won’ it before. It’s only people like us and a few nearby villages that have been affected by this one base.”
Brian stared at him and frowned slightly. “Do you remember going through what I did?” he asked softly. “Do you remember coming through time?”
Bri hesitated for a moment as he thought the idea over. “I remember the first time. I remember AJ snatching me and sending me to B’s time. I remember meeting him and Sammy and I remember saving their lives. What I don’t remember,” he said looking at Brian, “is coming a second time and helping myself to save them again.”
Brian frowned. He had thought Bri remembered the last time he’d come to this time. Bri had actually helped him out by way of the strange link between them last time, but Brian had not realised exactly what had been happening at the time. He had taken the strange thoughts in his head to be some kind of premonition. This time Bri could offer him no hope for the future. He was as blind as Brian was. It only proved how enigmatic the whirl of time could be.
“So you have no idea how this is going to turn out?”
Bri shook his head. “Not a clue,” he whispered. “But I’m hoping…” he crossed his fingers.
Brian smiled weakly and tilted his head. “There’s still a chance for you to make everything up to B.”
Bri hung his head slightly. “I don’t know… how do I know he won’t hate me for taking so long to reach him?”
“He’ll understand,” Brian replied softly. “He’s not stupid and he will always love you and Sammy no matter what you do. He knows it would take a while to reach him and we must almost be there by now.” They had been travelling for days now and it couldn’t take much longer surely.
Bri nodded. “Tomorrow night we should reach the place. It’s taken longer because we’ve had to take so many diversions because of the Gerai and we’ll still have to be very careful.” He sighed and glanced up at the sky. “Then we just have to wait for Howie and we finally get them out of there.” His voice had grown quieter.
Brian felt the same fear wriggling inside of his own chest. What had happened to B and Sammy in the time they had been with the Gerai? He had tried not to think about it but the thoughts were almost constantly burning into his mind now. Would B even remember them when they got there? How long did it take for the memory loss to take effect? He shuddered as he thought about coming face to face with a ghost of the boy he had known.
He knew that Bri was thinking exactly the same thing but none of them seemed able to voice it. It was too painful to even think about B forgetting his old life. Then there was Sammy who still had a big question mark hanging over his head. They had no idea what he was being used for or why the Gerai had wanted him and Kevin alive.
Bri gulped slightly. “Let’s hurry up. It isn’t far to the caves and we can rest for a few hours and then get moving.”
Brian nodded in agreement as they lengthened their strides but he doubted if his mind would allow him to rest without horrific nightmares of B, Sammy and Kevin. However an active mind would be vital once they reached the base and lack of sleep would not help that.
Brian slowly crossed his fingers as they pressed on through the watery meadow. Soon he would know exactly what had happened to them all and already he was feeling sick with anxiety.