I put the first chapter of this story in the July 1999 version of my newsletter. I can't believe it has been that long. I feel old.

What has happened so far: The little town of Ashburn Illinois has been temporarily transported to another time-line, one that has been nicknamed "Bear Country". An equivalent chunk of Bear Country has replaced it in our time-line. A team of biologist, along with some marines and several workers at Summit Foods, the main employer in Ashburn, are in Ashburn trying to cope with the nasty surprises Bear Country can serve up.

Meanwhile, in our time-line, marines and hastily drafted civilians are trying to quarantine the piece of Bear Country that replaced Ashburn. That effort is already in trouble, because representatives of one of the most dangerous of Bear Country's many dangerous animals are already loose in our time-line.

Click here for the full text of Chapter One.

POD members can also look it up in their July 99 issue.

Chapter Two

In the three hour warning time before the Exchange, no one came out from Ashburn to tell the Wickes brothers that they were about to go into Bear Country. People in Ashburn were too busy making their own arrangements, and besides, they had learned over the years that the three acres of scrub trees, mud and stagnant ponds that the Wickes brothers called home was very strictly off-limits, especially for government types.

For the first ten minutes, the Exchange didn't have much impact on Joe Wickes, his brothers Andrew, David, and Russell or on their wives or their eleven children.

Five minutes after the Exchange, Joe swung his small, wiry frame up the wooden steps from the half-buried derelict motor home that he and his brothers and their families lived in and headed toward the latrine. He ducked under the laundry hanging from several lines strung between slightly bent scrub trees, then walked around the little vegetable garden between the trailer and the outhouse. He heard thunder and looked up at the sky. That look probably saved many Wickes' lives a few minutes later. He yelled, and the other eighteen members of the four families came running out of the rust-pocked trailer to look at the odd cloud formation.

They all looked at the circle of clear, cloudless sky directly above them, and the dark, fast-moving clouds all around it. Anthony tossed his long, curly blonde hair out of his eyes, ran his fingers through his sparse, almost invisible beard and said, "It may be a sign."

Joe looked over at his younger, but taller brother and snorted. "Of what?"

"Our purity, threatened by corruption and thieves all around us."

Joe watched the dark clouds around the clear circle rapidly close in. The air smelled and felt like rain. He felt the first few drops. His wife, Nicole, shuffled over to the clothesline and started taking down the still-damp clothes. Joe went over to help. No one else did. She looked at Joe through strands of long uncombed brown hair, and Joe saw the deep lines of too much work, worry, and sun on her face. She still looked good though, and Joe kissed her on the forehead.

Joe glanced up again. The dark clouds had almost overrun the little patch of clear sky. Joe looked at Anthony and laughed. "Well, if that's a sign it seems to be saying that our purity won't last long."

"What's that?"

Joe held up his hand for silence, then listened intently. There was a faint, but deep rumbling sound in the distance--deep enough to be thunder, but too continuous. All five of the mixed breed dogs that hung around them came out of the brush and howled in unison. The rumbling seemed to get closer. The rain started in earnest. Joe looked at his brothers through the drops. "What is that?"

"Tornado?"

Joe shook his head. "I don't think so. The sky's wrong." He felt the ground start to vibrate slightly under his feet. The dogs all ran uphill toward the Pinkston house. Joe watched them, puzzled. "Dogs have good instincts. Why did they do that? Wait a second. Flashflood!"

"In the mid-west?" Anthony shook his head.

"Maybe a dam broke. Come on." He started toward the high ground, wiping the rainwater out of his eyes. The rest of his family hesitated for a couple of seconds, then followed him.

The minute or so of head start was just enough to let them make it out of the way of a seven-foot-tall wall of water and uprooted trees that surged into sight through the scrubby trees and rushed along the low area directly toward their old mobile home. Water hit and smashed the little wooden shack over the latrine. It washed over the young corn in the vegetable garden. Then it hit the old mobile home, smashed it into a tangled mass of metal and wood, and swirled the remnants away. The clothes on the clotheslines were the last of their possessions to be swept away. They came off the lines grudgingly, one garment at a time until the lines themselves were snapped by a piece of passing debris.

Joe watched the last three years of his life disappear. He closed his eyes and tried to feel a sense of loss. It didn't come, at least not very strongly. He tried to put a word to what he was feeling. Relief? A burden lifted? He saw the same lack of sorrow reflected on the faces of all but one of his extended family. The exception was Anthony. Anthony's face reflected a cold fury, which showed in his voice when he spoke a couple of seconds later. "They did this to us. They can't stand to see people be free, be out of their control."

Joe looked out at the wild little river that now ran through what had been their home. "And how do you think 'they' managed this, little brother?"

Anthony shrugged. "Diverted a river or something."

Joe noticed something or someone swimming desperately out in the swirling current. "Something swimming out there. It looks like a kid. Or maybe not. Whatever it is, it needs help."

He looked around then grabbed a long tree branch that had fallen, and tried to hold it out to the swimmer. The branch didn't quite reach. "Help me. Hold onto me so I can lean out further."

His youngest brother, Russell, grabbed his belt, and the additional reach was just enough for him to get the branch close enough for the swimmer to grasp. A tired arm grabbed the branch, then the swimmer pulled itself up onto the branch.

Russell leaned forward, and almost let him slide into the water. "What is it?"

"A monkey. A green monkey. I think it's from another time-line."

********

Tony Guzman's mind shifted smoothly from the woman to his crumbling business empire even as he embraced her in a very good, very practiced imitation of tenderness. Finally, he gently pulled away. "I'd better go."

She sighed, tightened her grip on his arm subtly and nodded. "Yes, you had better go."

He kissed her, pulled his arm away, then turned and walked out of her neat apartment, past the picture of her and her husband. The husband was scheduled to be gone two more days. Plenty of time.

He grinned. Nearly a decade of experience told him to let her sleep on the physical attraction, and let it grow. That experience also told him that the woman would call soon, probably telling herself that she was trying to break this off before it was too late. Then she'd ask to meet someplace public, but they would end up at Tony's house, and that would be pretty much that.

Tony ducked as he left the apartment. That was reflex. His head would have cleared the doorway by a good four inches. As he left the building, his mind shifted smoothly back from the woman to his business empire. He shook his head and thought, "If something doesn't happen soon the vultures will overcome their fear and start picking my bones."

Tony checked his voice mail from his car phone. The second message made him laugh with a mixture of relief and appreciation of a good irony. "An Exchange in Ashburn, Illinois. How convenient. Get a little money in advance from my southern friends, spread part of it around, and they'll get what they think they want."

He put the top down on his car and drove away. As he drove his mind called up visions of a tropical island eaten bare, with soil eroding away into the ocean under the tropical rains, with hordes of malnourished men, women and children fleeing starvation in makeshift rafts. Tony laughed at the irony of self-proclaimed patriots making their homeland uninhabitable. That irony gave him a small trickle of the flow. He picked up the car phone again and started making arrangements.

****************

Sharon Mack stood at the top of a small hill and looked around her. The landscape of this Bear Country version of Illinois appeared empty of people, and almost untouched by human endeavors. The ruts from the trucks she was tracking made an ugly, jarring exception to that, though the savanna grass seemed to be healing that wound frighteningly fast as blades of grass freed themselves from the mud, and edged upright.

"I shouldn't have stopped." Stopping gave the pain a chance to flow in. The physical pain from the bruise on her jaw and the rope burns on her wrists and ankles was bad enough, but she could push that out her mind, along with the stiffness that came from hours of lying unconscious and tied up on a tile floor. She couldn't push away the pain of knowing that Allysa was with Darrel and with Sister West and her collection of loonies, undoubtedly terrified, undoubtedly crying her seven year-old eyes out.

A sudden motion made Sharon turn quickly and move her hand toward her belt. A green and yellow bat the size of a large grasshopper jumped from a grass stem near her and fluttered away. Sharon laughed nervously. In the distance, hairy, elephant-like Mastodons tested the breeze with their trunks. Small green monkeys scrambled between the bulky forms of the Mastodons. A ground squirrel stood absurdly upright next to its burrow and looked at her through the short grass. The hot June sun of this early afternoon made her squint through her glasses, and she wished again that she had gotten a pair of those glasses that turn dark in the sunlight.

"If you didn't stop and look around something might sneak up on you." The calm but unfamiliar voice came from not more than a yard away. It sent her hand streaking toward her belt, where the pistol had been a few seconds ago. She finished turning toward the sound of the voice, acutely aware of her empty hand and empty belt.

The man was tall, well over six feet, and strongly built, with blonde hair slightly disarranged by the wind, and a dark smooth tan. His dress pants and shirt showed no signs of wrinkles or stains. He appeared cool in spite of the heat of the June day. The man smiled a little sheepishly, showing white, even teeth set in his square jaw. "Rather childish of me to sneak up on you and take your gun. You looked like you were out to kill someone though, and I didn't want it to be me."

"I don't need a comic book hero. I don't need some man to step in and bail me out. I don't need to start hallucinating. I can handle this."

The tall man stepped toward her. "You'll need your gun. My name's Leo, and I'm quite real, but if you need a hero I'm afraid I can't help."

"What are you doing out here?"

Leo smiled. "Yes. What are we doing wandering around in another time-line? Rather risky, isn't it? We could get eaten by a sabertooth tiger, or a lion, or a bear. If none of that happens, we could stay here too long and be stranded. Tomorrow or the next day, or two weeks from now, the Exchange will reverse itself. Ashburn will disappear. It's like getting off on the wrong floor and having the elevator door shut behind you-except that the elevator will never come back. That would leave just you and I in this entire world. Well, not quite. Just you and I, and whoever made the ruts."

"Like Adam and Eve." Sharon intended that to come out sarcastically, but she heard a tinge of wistfulness in her voice and she cringed inside. She hastily added, "The elevator does come back. There have been a couple of hundred Exchanges so far, at least."

"But never in the same place and rarely close to one another. As to Adam and Eve, I'm sure you have someone back in the home time-line that would be happy to play Adam." Leo handed her back her pistol and walked off along the ruts Sharon had been following. "Of course there have been enough Exchanges that an Adam might not be impossible to find over here. I hear that a prison got Exchanged near here a few years ago and came back with the guards murdered and the prisoners missing."

Sharon hesitated for a second, then followed him. "No Adam back at home. I've trusted the wrong people too often. I'm trying to break that habit. Which reminds me, you still haven't told me what you're doing out here."

"Nor have you told me what you are doing out here. You haven't even given me a name."

"Sharon. Sharon Mack."

"Well, Sharon Mack, I think you are trying to catch up with someone who stole something important from you. Money? Jewelry? A car? What is important enough for you risk your life out here?"

"How do you-"

"Know that? You have a bruise on your jaw, probably from a club of some sort."

"A beer bottle."

"Ah. And you have rope marks on your wrists. Someone clubbed you, tied you up and robbed you of something, but what? Money would be worthless here. Food would be worth its weight in gold here, but it is readily available in Ashburn. They took a person dear to you, a husband or a child."

"My daughter. My seven year-old daughter."

Leo stopped abruptly. "And one of the people who made these ruts took her?"

"My ex-husband, Darrel Mack."

"And why did he do that?"

Sharon turned so that the tall man couldn't see the tears on her cheeks. "He joined a cult."

"A cult? Sister West and her crew?"

Sharon nodded. "I think they plan to stay over here."

Leo nodded. "That wouldn't surprise me. It would be a tough life if you weren't prepared though. What will you do if you catch up with Sister West and company?"

Sharon sighed. "I don't know. If I get a chance I'll grab my daughter and bring her back. If they're guarding her too well, I'll go back and get help. They stationed marines in Ashburn to protect the town during the Exchange."

Leo nodded. "Do the marines know your daughter is missing?"

"Yes."

"Then why aren't you in a jeep with a bunch of marines."

"Because I got the run-around from them. I think Bear Country has them-or at least the guy in charge-spooked for some reason."

Leo looked puzzled, then said, "A lot of their high tech gadgets don't work here. No Global Positioning Satellites. No calling in air strikes."

"And no weather satellites. A storm caught them right after the Exchange and knocked out a bunch of their equipment."

"So you came alone. That's very brave of you. A little girl shouldn't be taken from her mother. Maybe we should have a talk with this Darrel person."

"Oh, I intend to do more than talk."

"And how do you intend to keep from ending up the same way as last time?"

"Next time he won't sucker-punch me with a beer bottle. I almost blocked it. I would have but I didn't expect him to have the guts to try anything. He knows I have a black belt."

Leo stopped and smiled down at her. "A martial artist. How interesting. A tough lady too. Most people would be in a hospital getting checked for a concussion. I suppose you could have taken your gun back any time you wanted to." He turned and started walking a little faster.

Sharon had to hurry to catch up. "That's not something I'd try unless I had to."

Leo scanned the horizons. "I hear something. Sounds like horses."

"Are there any over here?"

"Yeah, the old North American kind that died out at the end of the ice ages in our time-line. They're close. They must be in some kind of little dip that's hiding them from us."

Sharon could hear the hoof-beats too now. A dozen men on horseback abruptly appeared over a low hill in front of them. Sharon looked at the men dressed in tattered remnants of orange prison uniforms, mixed with animal skins, and said, "So much for Adam and Eve. Looks like some of the convicts survived."

Leo looked worried. "I'm sure they'd all be happy to be Adam to your Eve. I'm not sure you'd enjoy the experience."

"They'd come up missing body parts. That part I'd enjoy, at least today."

The convicts rode up, deploying in a semi-circle. One of them said, "What do we have here? A couple of strays from the flock?"

One of them looked at Leo, turned pale under the dirt on his face, and talked quietly to his neighbors. Sharon caught a fragment of the reply, "...don't care who he is. I haven't seen a woman in three years." She reached down and eased her pistol out her belt.

A small, balding convict spurred his horse toward her. The man was apparently armed only with a spear. The others stayed where they were. Sharon raised the pistol. She aimed at the center of the man's chest and thumbed the hammer back. She hesitated, with the sight wavering slightly around her aim point. The man kept coming, with a grin on his face. Sharon fired. The pistol jerked against her hand and the snap of the bullet echoed in the suddenly still landscape.

 

Chapter Three

Several hours later, Aaron came in from helping manhandle the helicopters under cover. His soggy clothes left a trail of water on the office carpet as he went through the office to the men's locker room. Two of the three showers were unoccupied, so he stripped off his wet clothes and walked toward one of them. The third shower curtain opened and a small red-haired woman stepped out into his path. He caught a glimpse of a small, well-proportioned body, then skidded into the woman. He caught his balance and quickly disentangled himself. "Sorry. You must be one of the biologists. I know you don't know the place, but this is the guys locker room."

The woman looked him up and down. She put a robe on and adjusted it. "I know. The women's locker room was full so a couple of us came over here. We put a sign on the door."

"I didn't see it."

The woman grinned. "No harm done except to my modesty. See you around. Might want to make it a cold shower."

She walked out, carrying a bundle of clothes. Aaron muttered, "Yeah, you wish." He finished his shower, dressed, then looked at his watch. It was only about four in the afternoon. He walked back to his office. A few minutes later, Tom Majors walked in and looked at him. "I hear you ran into one of the biologists."

"Literally. How did you hear that?"

"News travels fast in a small town."

"I hope she doesn't think I'm some kind of a pervert."

"No, actually she seemed kind of impressed with your physique. Either she didn't see quite all of it or she doesn't get out much."

"Thanks a bunch. It must be all the weight-lifting I do."

"You do seem kind of obsessed with that."

Aaron grinned at the older man. "I sit at a computer all day. If I didn't work out religiously I'd gain thirty pounds and have a heart attack."

Tom grinned back. "Speaking of sitting in front of a computer all day, the biologists' computer person broke a leg trying to get the helicopters under cover. She can't go with them on their surveys."

"Why are you telling me this?" Aaron closed his eyes. I'm afraid I know.

"Why not? Computer people need excitement too. The biologists need a computer person. They detected the beacon from a robot surveyor. It can't transmit data for some reason, so they need to go out and download from it."

"Robot surveyor?"

"Yeah. They send out a few every Exchange, then hope another Exchange happens close enough that they can transmit the data back. This one won't send data for some reason, but it's only sixty miles out so we can go get it."

"As long I don't have to fly, I'll do it. I'm afraid of heights."

"You do have to fly, but you'll be on a transport. You'll never have to see how high you are if you don't want to. I'm going, too. Several of their military escort got banged up in the storm, and the dim-bulb major won't loan them any more so they need extra firepower."

"Against the convicts?"

"No, against the animals. The convicts escaped two years ago-before we could have any warning that an Exchange was coming. They probably didn't survive. As soon as they ran out of ammunition the big predators would get them. The big animals aren't afraid of people over here."

"Why you?"

"I'm a hunter. This is a once in a lifetime chance for me. Jeff Bridger can hold things together while I'm gone."

"When would we leave?"

"Now. They want to use every hour of daylight while the Exchange lasts."

I'm not good at saying no, especially not to my boss. That's going to get me killed some day. This time I am going to say no though.

Tom said, "Sam Kittle was one of the convicts. He could be over here. He'd make it if any of them did."

Aaron said, "Our Sam Kittle? OK. Let's go before I change my mind."

Tom laughed. "I thought that would get you out of your office. Raise your right hand and repeat after me, 'I swear to uphold and defend the laws of the state and the nation in my position as temporary Illinois state deputy marshal.'"

"What?"

"Just say it."

Aaron did, and Tom handed him a rifle. "Know how to use this?"

"Yeah, dad used to take me hunting. I don't have a permit anymore though."

"That's why you're now a temporary deputy marshal."

"Is this legal?"

"Yeah. The state set up emergency procedures. I'll do the paperwork when we get back. Just make sure the safety is on and don't point that thing at anyone unless you mean it."

"I know the drill. Dad made sure of that. I can't believe it picked Ashburn, Illinois."

"Why not? After a couple hundred Exchanges they still look random. It could have been Chicago. Try evacuating that in three hours."

Aaron asked, "How many people stayed?"

"Not counting Sister West and the Wickes brothers? Forty from Summit Foods, and around fifty other people in town, including our mayor."

"Aren't we blessed."

Tom quoted the mayor, "If those pissants at Summit are staying, I'm staying."

*****

"I was not praying, at least not out loud."

Linda laughed. "Maybe you should have been. You would have been if we had been flying."

"She flies? That's scary." Bret looked up at the tall blonde woman. "Has anybody ever told you that you drive like a bat out of hell?"

The woman ignored him and got out of the jeep. She pulled out a pair of binoculars and walked the last couple of feet to the top of the tallest hill near Ashburn. "This will be a good place to watch the burning. We can see almost half the circle from here. Just in time too. It's starting."

Linda handed Bret a pair of binoculars and got one out herself. "Do you understand what they're trying to do with the burning?"

Bret shrugged. "Burn out the area from the other time-line I suppose."

"Wrong. That would panic the animals from over there and make them run or fly in every direction. That's exactly what we don't want. The burning is all on our side, to create a belt where nothing can move without us seeing it. It isn't a perfect solution. Some birds from over there are attracted to fire. They swoop down and eat the insects and rodents that get flushed out."

Bret thought about all of the farmhouses and cornfields around Ashburn. He whistled. "This isn't going to make you a lot of friends around here."

"They'll get paid for the damages. It would have been a lot worse if the Exchange line had been right in downtown Ashburn."

"Well Ashburn's downtown is one street, about three blocks long. That would have been quite a coincidence. What would you do if it was downtown Chicago?"

"That's the nightmare scenario-trying to get people out of the area that was going to be Exchanged and making a buffer around the Exchange zone. In Chicago it would cost billions of dollars and tens of thousands of people would die-maybe over a hundred thousand if the Exchange lasted two weeks. You couldn't get people out in three hours and you couldn't get them enough food and water."

Bret watched the flames spread out to circle the area of green where Ashburn had been earlier that morning. He shook his head. "A lot of things don't make sense here. I can see not burning the Exchanged area, but then why try to sterilize it? Killing off all of the plants and insects will just push the birds and the bats out in search of food. And if we're worried about disease spreading from the other time-line, bringing thousands of people right up to the Exchange line doesn't seem very bright."

The tall blonde looked over at Linda and grinned. "Wisdom from the mouths' of babes. Amazing."

She turned and raised her binoculars again. Bret looked at Linda. "What brought that on?"

Linda smiled. "Partly frustration. We don't make the policies. We just try to make them work-troubleshoot them. Actually, you're right. A lot of what goes on around an Exchange is worthless or counter-productive. Just between you and me, a lot of it is to show people that the government has a handle on things. A lot of things happen because the military is involved. They secure a line, then go on the offensive because that's what they've been trained to do. Defense contractors build high tech toys because that's where the money is. Don't even get me started on anti-insect radar and anti-bat ACV's."

"What's an anti-bat ACV?"

The tall blonde looked around. "You did have to get her started on that."

"ACV stands for Autonomous Combat Vehicle. Think robot model helicopter that costs as much as you'll earn in the next five years and kills bats and birds almost as well as a trained falcon. I've..."

The tall blonde interrupted. "You really don't know how to use that rifle?"

Bret shook his head. "I'm sure I could figure it out in a few minutes, but no, I don't do guns."

The blonde looked puzzled. "I know you're going to be useful. I just can't figure out how. Give me the rifle."

She took the weapon, looked at it for a second, then fired off three quick shots at a thick area of brush about twenty-five yards down the hill. Bret heard a noise like a monstrous rattlesnake, and monkeys boiled out of the brush, scattering as they ran down the slope. The blonde woman fired several more times, but Bret didn't see any monkeys fall. He did see motion out of the corner of his eye though, and whipped around in time to see three monkeys dragging the one he had been carrying out of the jeep.

He yelled, and the blonde moved with startling speed, running around the jeep so she could get a clear shot at the monkeys. One of them moved toward her, and she shot it down on the run. The other two dropped their captured companion and ran for cover in their long-legged gait. The blonde got off two more shots, but neither of the monkeys fell.

Bret watched the monkeys disappear into the brush. Linda looked over at him. "Good save."

"Thanks."

The tall blonde walked over and held out her hand. "I'm Anna Morgan. Thanks for spotting those three. I was focused on the ones in front of me. Which might have been the point of the exercise." She shook her head. "We almost got outwitted by a bunch of monkeys."

"That's scary."

Anna walked away. Linda grinned at Bret. "She likes you."

"She's a little overwhelming. Who is she?"

"She used to play college basketball. Now...well I could tell you what she does but then I'd have to shoot you. You can probably figure out the general picture though."

"Yeah. How did the monkeys follow us? We had to have averaged close to fifty miles an hour across broken country."

Linda walked over to the monkey Anna had shot. She poked it hard with a stick a couple of times, looked at the bullet hole, then said, "It's dead. Come take a look."

Bret walked over, and Linda picked up one of the monkey's paws. She said, "These things are built to run fast on the ground. You can tell that by looking at the legs and the fingers."

"I know. The legs are long. The fingers are short and strong. They probably run partway up on their toes to make their legs effectively longer. I know this stuff. I'm a biology teacher."

"Did you know that they can hit bursts of forty-five miles an hour and sustained speeds of forty-miles an hour?"

Bret whistled. "No, I didn't know that. That's faster than most dogs."

"Yeah, and these monkeys still have usable hands."

Bret grinned and asked innocently, "How did monkeys from Africa get over to North America in the other time-line?"

Linda laughed. "If I knew that I'd be collecting my Nobel Prize about now."

"I thought that might just be one of those things the general public isn't allowed to know."

"Nope. We genuinely don't know, at least at my classification level. We also don't know why bats over there got rodent-type teeth and took over most of the rat-and-mouse-type ways of life. And no, we don't secretly know how to predict when and where Exchanges are going to happen."

"What about that Irving guy? He claimed to be able to predict some of them."

"Dr. Irving is a very bright guy, but he likes the spotlight too much and his predictions aren't testable. He gives a percentage chance that some area will be in an Exchange sometime before the Exchanges shut down. How do you disprove that? If he tosses out enough locations he's bound to be right or at least close sometime. He doesn't claim to be able to predict all of them. If one happens where he didn't predict it, he can just shrug and remind you that he didn't claim to be able to predict all of them."

"So why did the government shut him up?"

"It didn't. His lawyers did. He got sued by a bunch of property owners in areas where he predicted an Exchange. Their property values went through the floor and the areas got flooded with nutcases who wanted to go over in an Exchange."

Bret shrugged. "He was right at least once."

Anna walked over and looked at Bret. "Twice counting Ashburn. It was on a list he did for us that we kept under wraps-or at least tried to. Speaking of which, do you know anything about a Sister West?"

"Oh yeah. She leads a very strange church."

"A cult?"

"That depends on who you ask."

"Have they been in the area long?"

"About two years." Bret looked at Anna for a second. "Let me guess. Her people went over in the Exchange. You think they may have tapped into Irving's secret list somehow and moved to Ashburn so they could go to the other time-line and stay."

"If they tried that, they hit the jackpot. They'll be sorry they did, though." Anna paused and seemed to think for a couple of seconds. Finally, "Do you know anyone locally who has connections in the West Indies?"

Bret thought about that. "Not off the top of my head. Why?"

Anna drummed her fingers on the jeep's roof. "I'm going to trust you a little more than I probably should. There is an island down in the West Indies that has been run by a dictator for 30-40 years. A big group of exiles lives in the US. Rumors have been seeping out that a splinter group of one of the exile organizations wants to get their hands on other time-line seed-eating bats. Now some of their special operations people are headed this way, including a very ruthless little man called Mr. Alvarado."

"Why bats?"

"You're the biology teacher. Figure it out."

Bret thought for a minute. "They're going to turn them loose on the island. That'll cause some problems, maybe even a famine, but nothing that a ruthless enough regime couldn't handle."

"Oh? These bats can run on the ground almost as fast as a ground animal. They can burrow. They can fly. They reach sexual maturity in forty-five days. They have litters of five to ten pups in their burrows every thirty days. Some species are as adaptable as rats or cockroaches. And what is going to eat these things on a West Indies island?"

Bret thought about that. "There are almost no native predators on any of those islands. What would happen?"

Anna shrugged. "Back in the 1400's, Portugal settled some uninhabited islands in the Atlantic. They let rabbits get loose on one of them. There were no natural enemies, so the rabbits kept breeding and eating until there was nothing left on the island to eat. The settlers had to abandon the island. These bats make rabbits look like poster children for birth control."

Bret shook his head. "And once they get established on the island they'll eventually spread north."

"Not on their own. They're not distance flyers."

"Why didn't bats go that direction in this time-line?"

"A couple of species sort of did in New Zealand. They run around in trees and on the ground, and they burrow. Of course they're almost extinct now-couldn't handle rats and imported predators."

"Odd. Okay, but why would anyone deliberately let these bats loose over here?"

"These people have been hating for the last forty years-and they probably don't understand the full implications of what they're doing. Those bats would be bad enough on a continent. On an island, either you stop them before they start breeding or you start getting ready to evacuate the place."

Bret looked down at the burning fields and thought about the hard work that had gone into tilling and planting them. He watched through the binoculars as the flames approached, then engulfed a well-kept old white farmhouse. "Did they let people get their things out?"

Linda said, "They didn't give people a lot of time, but yeah, they let people take what they could get out in a hurry."

Bret said, "I'm glad I live over in Rockport. It's a pain driving over here in the winter, but at least they aren't burning my apartment building. I suppose Ashburn high school went over in the Exchange."

Linda nodded.

Anna put down her binoculars. "Looks like they've got the complete circle burning. Keep thinking about a West Indies connection. Meanwhile, hop in. We're going back to our hotel just outside of Rockport. I have to do some research on this Sister West."

***********

Joe Wickes started to feel a little less miserable as the sun dried his rain soaked clothes. The rescued monkey seemed to be feeling better too. It came out of the hunched over posture that had kept most of the rain off of it's face, and started looking around at them with wary but intelligent-looking eyes. It showed no sign of wanting to leave. One of the dogs ran up close to the monkey and started barking at it. The monkey looked at it calmly for a couple of seconds, then made a complex, high-pitched series of noises. The dog kept barking. It made a tentative lunge at the monkey. Joe didn't see any contact but the dog abruptly started yipping and ran off with its tail between its legs.

Joe looked over at Anthony. "So it wasn't a conspiracy brother. We just happened to live in an old piece of the riverbed. It hadn't switched over to the new course in the other time-line. Just pure luck."

Joe's mood dropped back to miserable as Anthony got up and walked toward him. Joe knew that look.

Anthony grinned, looked around at his brothers and their families, and said in his deep orator's voice, "I told you the clouds were a sign. They were a sign that the old sinful world was closing in on us, that it wouldn't leave us alone, that it would push in on us until there was nothing left of our freedom, until we were forced to become sheep like everybody else. At the same time it gave us a way out, a way to escape that world and make our own. All we need is courage, brothers. If we really are in an Exchange, we can start over, make our own world."

Joe shook his head. "I've followed your signs a long ways, little brother. I think this is about the end of the line for me though. Do you realize what the other time-line is?"

"Yeah. It's empty. No people. No government to tell you how you can or can't raise your kids. No bloodsuckers to live off of our sweat." Anthony looked around at the little group of people huddled near the bank of the new river. "This can't be a coincidence. It chose us to go over there and make a new life."

Joe snorted. "Yeah, right. It chose us the same way a tornado chooses a trailer park. Exchanges are a natural phenomenon. There have been dozens of them so far, maybe hundreds. It's a coincidence, little brother. Deal with it."

"God chose us. He destroyed our old life and opened up the gates so we can walk out into a new one. Adam and Eve, and family. That can be us."

Joe stood up. "Adam and Eve? Didn't they have a couple of sons called Cain and Abel?"

"So?"

"So you're going to get the bunch of us killed with your signs and new worlds." Joe said. "We lost everything except the clothes on our back, and what we're carrying in our pockets. I've got a pocket knife. That's about all though. They call the other time-line Bear Country for a reason. There are sabertooth tigers over there-actually a mile or two away from here. They never died off. There are bears and lions over there too, not to mention half a dozen other things I wouldn't want to fight with a pocket knife. There are all kinds of demented diseases. People can't live over there, at least not without a lot of stuff that we don't have. We don't have guns. We don't have food. We don't have medicine. Everything we stored got washed away."

Anthony shook his head. "We can have anything we want. We can have rifles. We can have trucks. We can have food. There were around two-thousand people in Ashburn. Most of them probably got out of town when they heard the Exchange was coming. All we have to do is walk into those empty houses and take what we need."

"You mean turn into thieves."

"They owe us. They could have warned us and they didn't."

Joe shrugged. "If you want to be that kind of role-model for your kids, then go ahead. I'll have no part of it. Wrong is wrong, no matter what fancy words you dress it up in."

Anthony looked around at the others. "Older brother here wants to give up our chance at finally being truly free because it hurts his little conscience to take what we need to get started. What do you want to do? Give up? Go back into town and ask the sheep in there to feed us and give us clothes? To protect us? Do you want to give up what little freedom we had? I'm going to go out and take what we need. Is anyone with me?"

David Wickes stood up. "Yeah, I'm in."

Russell looked at Joe and then at Anthony. "What do we do when the food and ammunition runs out?"

"By that time we'll know how to live off of the land. This is just a little boost to get us started." Anthony grinned at Joe. "Older brother here always used to brag that he could live off the land, make his own fires and arrowheads and all that stuff. I've never seen him do it. Joe, if you don't want to get your hands dirty why don't you show us if there's fire underneath all of that smoke you used to blow. The rest of us will go do what has to be done."

Joe watched his three brothers walk away, then shook his head and sat down. None of the women or children met his eye, not even his own wife, Nicole. "That tongue of his is going to get us all killed."

No one responded. He sighed, got up and prowled around for a few minutes looking for suitable rocks to chip. He found a couple of good-sized pieces of flint near the river and started trying to chip them into something useful. It was harder than he remembered from his childhood games, and within a short time his hands were cramping and bruised from the effort. He became aware that the monkey was watching him intently. He held the pieces of rock up. "Don't you wish you could do this? This is what separates us from you."

The monkey walked over and picked up a couple of the larger chips that he had flaked off. It chipped at one of them for a couple of minutes with quick, practiced motions, then moved back, carrying the resulting rock in an odd grip between its thumb and the top of the next finger over. Joe stared at the monkey for a couple of seconds, then said in a subdued voice, "Well, that's one of the things that separates us from you."

He was still chipping away when his brothers came back. Anthony and David each carried a couple of rifles. Russell carried a large tent. Anthony took one of the rifles and extended it butt-first to Joe. Joe shook his head. "I'm not a thief."

His younger brother shrugged and looked at the sky. "Well then, chances are that you're going to get really wet in about five minutes. There are some mean clouds rolling in again. Will you please at least help us with the tent?"

"I'll help. Actually, I'll go further than that. That's one nasty looking sky. I'd say we're looking at a cloudburst, a lot of wind, and maybe some hail. Are the Pinkstons' home?"

"No."

"Okay. I don't like this, but under the circumstances I don't think they'd mind if we used their house until the storm passes."

Anthony grinned. "What happened to 'wrong is wrong', older brother?"

Joe shrugged. "It's wrong to let a little girl or boy die of exposure just to make a point. We won't damage anything we don't have to and we won't take anything. Agreed?"

That turned out to be easier said than done. They walked up to the house with the monkey trailing a short distance behind them. Anthony tried the back door, then broke a pane of glass in the door to get the door open. The monkey jumped back at the sound of breaking glass, then moved toward the shards, seemingly fascinated.

Joe said, "Careful, it's sharp. Not that you understand a word I'm saying."

The monkey carefully picked up one of the glass shards and examined it, then tested the edge against a hair on its arm. Joe held the door open and looked at it. "Are you coming in or staying out?"

The monkey looked at the sky, then at the doorway of the house. It hesitated, then came inside. Joe noticed that it was still carrying the shard of glass.

**********

Sharon thumbed the hammer back again. A red stain blossomed on the man's shirt, just over his stomach, then the convict fell off the horse. The horse ran off, dragging him. Sharon saw the man's head bounce as it hit a large rock. She shuddered, the anger draining out of her. The other convicts were occupied for several seconds as their horses bucked and reached back to try to bite their riders. One convict fell off his horse, which promptly kicked him in the chest with both hind feet, then ran off. The convict didn't get up.

The remaining convicts got their horses under control. One of them looked at Leo. "Don't imagine you'd think about selling the girl."

"No."

Sharon looked at her tall companion. She surprised a strange, intent look in his eyes. It faded away as she watched.

"Okay. Let us get what's left of Joe, and collect the horse that ran off, and we'll be on our way."

"Fair enough."

The convicts rode off with the injured or dying men slung over their saddles. Sharon watched them go. "What just happened?"

"Maybe you scared them off. You've obviously practiced with that thing a bit. Only three of them had guns and they may have been out of ammunition."

"I don't think that was it."

Leo smiled. "Then what do you think did happen?"

"I don't know. Who are you?"

"Leo."

"That's not enough."

"No, it probably isn't. By the way, you just shot a man. You may have killed him. How does that make you feel?"

Leo looked down at her intently. Sharon shook her head. "I haven't had a chance to think about it yet. I had to see him as just another target, so I did." She turned away, then abruptly was nauseous. Leo gently pushed her head down between her knees with strong, callused hands. After a couple of moments she felt good enough to stand up again. She automatically replaced the spent cartridge in the pistol. "I'm sorry. I've got to stay strong."

"That's fine. That's a healthy response. Taking a life is not a trivial thing. It shouldn't be done and then just walked away from."

"Darrel--"

"You won't kill him. It won't come to that. Come with me. I think our luck's about to improve."

Leo walked off at a right angle from the ruts they had been following. Sharon watched him for a couple of seconds, then asked, "Where are you going?"

"Looks to me like one of Sister West's trucks broke down and they pushed it this way to try to hide it. I'm a pretty good mechanic. I may be able to get it going."

Sharon looked at the ground. "I don't see anything."

Leo nodded. "They tried to hide the trail. I almost missed it myself."

They walked several hundred yards, then Sharon spotted the truck. It was in a small valley, with branches piled over it. Leo went over, opened the hood and looked around, then did something with a couple of wires. The truck started. He looked up at Sharon. "Battery wire worked loose with all of the jarring from going cross-country." He wiped his hands on some grass, then opened the passenger side door and bowed. "Your carriage awaits you."

Sharon looked at him for a couple of seconds, then shook her head and climbed in. Leo closed the door after her, then drove back to the ruts they had been following, and swung onto the trail. Sharon scanned the horizon in front of her, then relaxed a little, pushed the pain to the back of her mind, and watched the little dramas of life around her. A tiny brown bat landed on the rear view mirror. It looked at its reflection in the mirror, raised its wings and hissed a tiny hiss, then flew away. A bird swooped down at the little bat. Sharon didn't see whether or not the bat got away. Half a dozen birds were flying near the truck, swooping down and snapping up insects and small bats disturbed by its passage.

Sharon sniffed. "I smell gas or exhaust."

Leo grinned. "Nothing out of the ordinary. You just spent a couple of hours without smelling any kind of man-made pollution. It reset your sensitivity. I bet the engine sounds louder too. You haven't been hearing man-made noises lately either."

They drove on quietly for nearly an hour, then the truck crested a hill, and nearly ran down a large cat-like animal as it fed on a buffalo calf. The animal backed off, showing fangs as long as hunting knives. The sabertooth cat made an impressive-looking charge toward the truck, but stopped before it quite made contact. Leo slowed down, but kept edging forward. The sabertooth backed off, then circled around once they were past its prey. It stood growling at them for a couple of minutes, then went back to feeding.

Sharon looked over at Leo. "Thanks for the carriage ride. I wouldn't have wanted to meet that thing on foot."

He grinned. "I'm quite happy to be of service." The grin didn't fade at all when Sharon pulled out her pistol.

"Too bad it has to end now, before you drive me right into Sister West's compound and deliver me to them."

Leo chuckled. "I didn't think I could quite pull that off. I knew the truck bit was a little too obvious, but I didn't want to spend the night walking out here. I took the precaution of switching guns with you while you were climbing into the truck. The one you have now has a little flag that comes out and says 'bang'. Go ahead and pull the trigger. It's really kind of a neat toy."

Sharon shifted her aim point to a couple of inches away from his left ear and pulled the trigger. A spring-loaded flag popped out with the promised 'BANG' printed on it. Sharon looked at the flag, then at Leo. All of the anger, frustration, and pain of the day was in her voice. "I don't care if you're six-foot-four, outweigh me two to one and have my gun. If the mind-games don't stop right now, I'm going to come over, tear off one of your arms and start beating you with it. Who are you?"

The tall man nodded. "Okay, I deserved that. My name's Leo. Leo West."