Eric Flint - Time spike

She would know more once the swelling went down. He was bruised all over, even in the groin area. Some of the bruises were raised and hard. Most of them held a little heat. Neither of those were good signs. "Are you sure he isn't a prisoner?" she asked. But, deep down, she already knew the answer. Beneath the injuries, the man's physical appearance wasn't any different from that of any number of prisoners-or guards, for that matter. But he was wearing a necklace that no prisoner would have been allowed to keep in his possession. It was a wide, flat band with intricate carvings that wrapped around his neck much like a snake would wrap itself around the arm of its handler. An expensive-looking piece that appeared to be hand-tooled.

He also wore the strangest silver earrings she had ever seen. They were attached at the top of his ears, rather than the lobes. Marie shook her head. "We're sure. And he's not a C.O., either. He doesn't belong to us." Jenny stopped; her scalpel shook, then steadied. "Not one of ours," she whispered, and went back to work. For the next twenty minutes the room was silent except for an occasional moan from the man on the examination table. Jenny hoped he would live. His injuries were extensive: broken ribs, broken jaw, probable concussion, multiple contusions and bruising with a lot of soft tissue damage. He was going to have to be luckier than he had been or he would be gone by morning. Rod Hulbert moved so he could get a look at the spent bullet Jenny dropped into a small metal pan that sat on the portable tray she used to hold her equipment. "We found him about an eight-hour hike from here. He was by himself curled up inside a small cave. The place was filled with primitive tools and weapons, and looked like quite a few people lived in it, but he was the only one around. And he doesn't speak English. All he would say was something that sounded like Ka-nun-da-cla-ga." Jenny gave a sigh. No English. The word-or words-didn't sound like anything she had dealt with. "We thought at first he was saying who did this to him, but we're not so sure now. He looks half starved, and like he had been through quite a bit even before he was beaten and shot. He might be part Indian, but we're not even sure of that." "Could he be from town?" Jenny asked. "I don't think so. It's a small community, and someone who dressed this outlandishly would be someone you'd notice, and remember. He could be a drifter, or maybe one of the tourists. We get a lot of people through here. They want to walk part of the Trail of Tears. And a lot of them are Indian. Or at least part Indian." Marie held up one of the man's shoes. "This is the weirdest looking footwear I've ever seen.

There's no heel and no instep." She dropped the shoe to the floor and picked up the man's pants. "His pants button; they don't zip. And the material is thick and the weaving looks a little uneven. Look at the seams. These were hand sewn." Jenny had noticed the buttons when she stripped the man. They werereal buttons made out of shells, not plastic. She had also noticed the man wore no underwear. That wasn't unheard of. Even in this day and age, some men would go without them.

But the buttons, that was a new one for her. She took off the hospital gown she was using to protect her clothes and tossed the latex gloves into the sink. They would be washed, and then reused. The rules were simple, one pair of gloves per patient. Later, when the gloves ran out, they would have to reexamine how things were done. She didn't look at the patient; instead, she stared at the three members of the staff who had brought him in. "I guess we've done about all we can.

Now we just have to wait and see if the antibiotics can turn the corner for him." Hulbert was shaking his head slowly. He used a pencil to scoot the bullet around and around in the small metal container.

"This damn thing is weirder than his pants or his shoes. A lot weirder. Huge caliber, for one thing. How did a bullet this big stay in his body? It should have blown right through him, unless…" He shrugged. "Low velocity, I guess." He sat the pan down and pulled his small camera phone from his shirt pocket. "But that's nothing compared to what else we've seen." Andy groaned, then glanced at the clock.

He hadn't been asleep but two hours. "Yeah, give me a second. I'll be there!" he shouted at whoever was pounding on his door. He stumbled around the room trying to get dressed in the dim light filtering through the window. He slept with the curtains opened. The sun was his back-up alarm. But it wasn't up yet. All he had for light was the soft glow of the moon and a few thousand stars. "Who is it?" "Jenny." He opened the door. The two vertical worry lines situated between his eyebrows had deepened. "What's wrong?" "I'm sorry," Jenny said. She glanced down the empty hall toward the stairs that led to the prison's entry area. Andy slept in what had been the human resource office.

"You have to come see this," she whispered. "You really do have to see this now."

Chapter 15 "Okay, Rod." Andy slipped Hulbert's camera phone into his pocket. He would have Edelman take a look at the pictures and then maybe they'd know what they were up against. "We'll deal with Jurassic Park later. For now, let's see if we can figure out what happened to our mystery man. His injuries weren't caused by dinosaurs. Give it to me from the beginning. Don't leave anything out." "We weren't out more than six hours and had taken down two large animals." Rod looked at Jenny and smiled. "Marie got both of them. One buffalo or some sort, and something that's probably a giant sloth. Marie's amazing. The cooks are going to cuss her trying to figure out how to cook the stuff, but she's the best I've ever been out with. She has a real gift. That woman…" He shook his head, never losing his grin. Andy smiled absently. "Good. Then what happened?" "We were on our way back and ran across evidence of a battle, or an animal attack. We went to check it out. While we were gone, Marie found him." He motioned to the wounded man. "He was curled up inside a cave, moaning. Anyway, there he was, too weak to even stand. We got back just in time to stop an attack from some animal related to the cat family. I didn't get any pictures of it before we boned it out. We probably shouldn't have taken the hour a job like that takes, but I couldn't let any of the meat go to waste. Too many of our people could wind up going hungry if we don't have the right priorities. "Anyway, after we took care of the cat, we scoured the area looking for others, but didn't find anyone.

We backtracked about a mile, following what we believe was this guy's trail. There were plenty of footprints-not his-but definitely human.

After wasting what was left of daylight, we bedded down for the night, and then started home first thing this morning. With all the meat we were packing, and with him in such bad shape, the trip back took all day and part of the night. "You get a short distance from the prison and the world changes, Andy. It is nothing like home. And the plants and animals are nothing like home, although you do occasionally spot something familiar. We've got problems. And I don't mean the routine problems of finding enough to eat and ways to keep warm. That world out there is our biggest problem, and we had better get to know it pretty damn fast. We'll either know it, or it'll bite us in the ass.

It'll kill us all." "Can you find the spot you found him in?" Andy asked. Hulbert nodded. "I can also show you where those creatures in the pictures were." "Is there anything else you can tell me?" Hulbert shrugged. "I don't know. There's probably too much for now. Once you get away from the prison, the forest floor in a lot of places is as clear and clean as a mall floor. When there is ground cover, it's usually ferns of one kind or another. There are animals out there with infants the size of an elephant. There are insects the size of toy airplanes. And man, don't even go near the water. I've seen some birds, a lot of reptiles, and a fair number of mammals. But the plants and animals don't seem to mesh. It's like everything has been tossed into a pot together, and the heat's been turned up. It's just sitting there. Simmering. Waiting." "Thanks." Andy Blacklock picked up the two-way sitting on the nurse's desk. It was about two in the morning, but this couldn't wait. Jeff Edelman had to be wakened and Lieutenant Joe Schuler needed to be relieved from duty so he could attend the meeting that was going to take place within the next hour. Andy silently cursed their bad luck. Brian Carmichael had been sent to the kitchen as soon as they arrived at the prison. He had shown up with three exotic animals and without a gag order. That meant the rumor mill would be in full swing by sunup. If they wanted to prevent a panic they needed to know what they were facing. They needed to know what Spielberg's monsters were, and they needed to know what and who their houseguest was. As for the other department heads, they would be told about another meeting, one that would take place about nine, right after breakfast. Andy stood next to the cot and watched the man struggling to get loose from the straps that held him to the table.