Banished To Earth Book Two, Ravaged Earth (34)

     Chapter 63

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    Earlier, Tucker had discovered it was shockingly easy to look outside the barrier.However, the thought of just poking their head through to get a look see, was akin to laying face up beneath a guillotine blade to see how sharp it was.

     No one, not even Silhouette, was that reckless.

  One day Tucker noticed Nikki playing with an empty toilet paper roll. Inventive as she was, she had taken plastic wrap from the kitchen, fastened a piece of it around one end of the roll with a rubber band she found in Trudy’s junk drawer and made her own little diving mask.

    Of course, she thought it would be fun to ‘deep sea dive’ in the toilet, the toilet being the most accessible ‘sea’ she could find.

    Beth fussed, Tucker admired, then experimented. Sure enough, all he had to do was push the roll through the barrier to create a perfectly clear window to the outside world. He didn’t even need the clear plastic barrier.

     Unfortunately, he immediately discovered everything they feared and figured concerning Earth’s fate was plain to see. Splintered and uprooted trees, crushed cars, all manner of debris; brick and plywood, twisted metal, ragged chunks of asphalt, everything but human bodies littered the landscape. Nothing but ruin, stretched all the way to the distant smoke crowned horizon. The Earth was now defined by one word; devastation…

   Tucker soon traded his paper tube, for one of Tom’s old but powerful binoculars. It only put a fine point on the heartbreaking apocalyptic panorama of death and loss.

    He did come away with a better understanding of where they were; outside of time. Their barrier bubble was a temporal eddy; a pocket universe, plucked out of the mainstream time flow and maintained by the great oak's energy.

   The ramifications of crossing that barrier, he could only guess.

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     Of course, by now, they all, saving Nikkie, knew just how different and terrible everything was outside. None were surprised, just deeply distressed.

     Still their duty to whatever remnant of mankind might still be struggling to hang on compelled them to simply do what was right. 

    They gave themselves a day to prepare, of course their being Hunters, made that more an excuse than a valid reason, to delay.

    Knowing Pry’s presence on the Ravaged Earth, which was what they came to call their old home world, would instantly alert the Urgis ship, was a problem Davin must solve, before venturing out. That was the real preparation. Fortunately, Davin had already devised a solution. Unfortunately, he knew Pry would probably hate it…

   During his time inside Chase, he learned just how sensitive and vigilant they were, concerning him and Pry. They must have been searching for Chase, monitoring the entire planet for him. But why? He was a Hunter, their special Hunter, but they could not reach out to him.

      His change to Hunter, had been automatic, and had robbed them of their Chase just after his conception. He must have just blinked out, then instantly replaced by this new Chase. They had had no clue what happened.

    They must have assumed their effort failed and killed the unborn Hunter, but clung to the possibility he might still be out there, disconnected from them, lost and waiting to be found.

     Had Pry not urged him to reunite mother and son, they might never have known what became of their experiment, their Master Hunter.

  A noble motive, certainly, but the worst thing she could have done. 

    The moment Chase Mabel and Davin had united on the barrier, a breach must have  formed. It was not large or long-lasting, despite that, it was enough. Mabel’s momentary awareness of Pry was all it took to alert them of Chase’s existence, free Mabel and Chase and retrieve them.

     She had always known the Chase she conceived was not the Chase she gave birth to, though she could not bring herself to believe it until it was too late. Of course, the Urgis had Chase’s identifying markers, DNA and such stored away just waiting to find its match. That night it did. That night Davin died.

    One thing Davin knew. Pry could not show her face. So, He would give her a new one…