Happy Birthday to me,” Erin muttered, drying the last dish. Her reflection looked back at her from the metal serving platter, gray eyes unblinking, short brown curls disarrayed, mouth twisted into a self-pitying grimace. She resisted the urge to stick out her tongue and handed the dish off to her brother.
Karl smiled crookedly as he stowed the platter on the top shelf she couldn’t reach. “Gram said you could have your cake tonight.”
Erin shook her head. “I’ll wait for Mom and Dad. It’s just that it’s another year before I can do anything. I should be out with them, or monitoring, like Gram. Anyone can babysit.”
“You’re in charge,” her brother reproved. “That’s important, too.” His eyes were brown, like their father’s, but otherwise it was like looking at her reflection. Her taller, male reflection.
Erin looked over into the dining room where her seven cousins were busy playing a game of charades around the enormous oak table. Carrie was acting out something that had the others laughing uncontrollably, unable to guess any more. Last year she would have joined in. A year ago she hadn’t realized how desperately important the work was, so important that all four of Gram’s children, with their kids and spouses, had relocated to a secret underground bunker on a mountain in the middle of nowhere.
The world had been ending since before she was born. The only difference was that she understood it now.
Erin shook her head at the thoughts and retreated from the others into the false front room, a rustic cabin that could have belonged in nearly any time or place. Karl followed and closed the secret door behind them, cutting off the sound of laughter. The door disappeared into the wall around it, masking the entrance to the bunker from the cabin. Fading winter light from the windows lit the room in shades of purple gray.
Erin knelt by the fireplace with the snoring greyhounds; Sheba opened one eye and thumped her brindle tail, while slate gray Lance whined in his sleep. She scratched Sheba’s head absently, staring at the fire.
“You’ll be sixteen over a year before I am,” Karl pointed out.
Erin nodded glumly. “I know. I wouldn’t mind so much if they didn’t need me, need somebody to help. Without Gram, nobody would even know about the dogs or how to survive a shift outside. We’re doing more research here than the rest of the world combined … and there are only nine people doing it. Ten, in a year, if they actually let me help. Mom said I could start at sixteen, but Dad ….”
Karl nodded. They both knew how protective their father could be.
The greyhounds twitched, lifting their heads from the braided rug. The alarm sounded a heartbeat later, a thrumming that cut through the silence. Beneath it, Erin could feel a vibration in her bones.
“We’re shifting? Now?” Karl started. “Mom and Dad are out there!”
Erin stood and lit candles hurriedly as the world went dark outside the window. There were colors in the blackness, colors that didn’t exist—and shouldn’t. “Gram will get them home. Is there anything high tech out here?”
Karl picked up a book by the fire, a doll by the front door, and disappeared into the back. She heard voices rise to question him, then the door being closed and bolted from inside as he returned.
“Alex will take the little ones below,” he reported. “Carrie will watch the door in case we need her.”
The front room was a convincing log cabin, built against the hillside; candle light turned the walls to gold. It would look normal enough in any world that had developed the ability to work iron. It was their disguise, their way of semi-safely interacting with whatever world they shifted to.
Outside the shifting realities settled to one. The strange colors bled back into darkness, and the darkness paled to a winter afternoon. The worlds had stopped colliding.
Sheba began to growl, then stood and paced to the door. Lance pushed by her, tail wagging. Erin hesitated, then threw on her coat and boots. Plain and handmade, like everything in this part of the house they should pass as normal if they encountered strangers.
“Do you think it’s them?” Karl asked. He grabbed his outdoor clothing and handed her a wool hat and mittens.
“Probably not; Gram will need time to guide them back. But if it’s them, we can help.” Erin snapped leashes onto the dogs’ collars and opened the door; Sheba lunged forward as Karl took Lance’s leash. Karl pulled the front door shut as they headed out into the twilight.
The snow was falling, accumulating in small drifts among the trees.
“Beats chores,” Karl quipped; Erin smiled and walked faster. The mountain was similar to the one they usually lived on, but the trees were different.
Erin let Sheba guide her, trusting the dogs through the fading light. She thought they’d gone a quarter mile, maybe more, when Sheba growled and Lance whined. Through the snow she could see someone huddled against a tree. It was too small to be anyone from her parents’ research team. Erin hesitated, then stepped forward.
In the fading light she saw a boy, Karl’s age, holding a bundle of rags. He was dressed in coarse homespun—either very poor, or this was a primitive world—and even in the darkness she could see his thinness. Erin felt her breath catch as the bundle in his arms moved; it was a baby.
The boy met her eyes. “We need shelter. I’ve a knife, to trade.”
“Erin—” Karl warned, but she ignored her brother, reaching out a hand to help the boy up. His hands were bare, and he shivered as he met her eyes.
“Come with us,” she said firmly. The boy held the baby in his arms; he staggered, walking, and Erin resisted the urge to help him. The hills were barren as far as she could see, with no hope of shelter for this pair of wanderers … or for her parents, who were likely out in it.
There really was no choice. Erin bit her lip, then turned Sheba towards home. “The baby,” she began.
“My sister,” the boy corrected.
“Your sister,” Erin agreed. “When did she last eat?”
“Yesterday.”
Erin winced. “We’ll find her some milk.”
“Erin!” Karl hissed again, and she turned to glower at him.
“Do you have a better idea? I don’t see a convenient farm, let alone a motel, do you?”
Karl opened his mouth to argue, then they both froze as Sheba stopped, her ears up and listening.
Erin swore under her breath. “Grab hold!” She grasped the boy’s arm with her free hand. Karl held his greyhound, the boy tried to pull away, and then the world moved beneath them.
It was worse, rawer out here. In the gathering dark Erin could see hills and trees altering, and she felt the thrumming in her teeth.
“Close your eyes!” she yelled; her voice sounded alien and harsh, like the shift. Sheba pulled forward, and she followed, still dragging the boy. A dozen feet in shifting realities, a hundred—and then Sheba pulled sharply sideways, and the cabin was in front of them, windows bright.
“Erin, the rules,” Karl hissed.
She shook her head.
“They’ll never get home!” he persisted.
Erin hesitated a moment, then pulled the pair to the doorway. “They’d die,” she replied softly. “I don’t think cultural contamination matters, next to that.”
“Dad is going to freak,” Karl muttered, but she ignored him as she led them inside. In the firelight the boy’s clothing and rough shoes were as primitive as she’d thought, but she was startled just a bit to see that his hair was blond.
“It was a Death Storm,” the boy said, shaking. “Nothing survives a Death Storm.”
“Nothing except Greyhounds,” Karl muttered. Erin kicked him as she pulled the pair in front of the fire. The boy didn’t resist as she pulled off his coat and shoes; his feet were dangerously pale. The infant—likely closer to a toddler, but far too thin—was unresponsive, her neck as cold as the boy’s feet when Erin knelt to touch her.
Erin took a deep breath. “We need to take them into the back.” Karl began to protest, and she cut him off. “If not, he’s going to lose his feet, and we’ll lose the baby altogether. I need hot water, and now—not when the fire can warm it.”
Karl looked at the dirty baby, at the boy staring uncomprehendingly. “I could call Gram on the radio.”
Erin shook her head. “With two shifts in fifteen minutes, she can’t spare a moment. It’s my call.”
She focused on the boy as Karl did what she’d asked. He wouldn’t release the child, so she led them both to the secret door, the false room behind, and the living area beyond. The boy blinked, too dazed to question electric lights, the bathing room, or even the great tub that could hold six of her cousins. Carrie had the water running, as Karl warmed milk for the baby.
She shed her coat and boots beside the tub and led them into it. The water was warm, and the boy flinched slightly. The little one stirred, then began to cry.
“Why are we alive?” the boy asked, cradling the baby in his arms, his eyes almost closing in the warmth. “That was a Death Storm.”
“Greyhounds—the kind of dog we have—can find their way through the storms. It’s something special about them, connected to their blood.” Erin bit her lip, trying to think how to explain the electromagnetic effects of high hemoglobin counts, and then shook her head. “What matters is that you’re safe now.” The boy looked nearly asleep and she turned her attention to the baby, checking her feet for frostbite. As Erin unwrapped the rags from the little girl’s hands, the boy jerked awake, pulling the child away.
“I won’t let you hurt her,” he said, a crude knife suddenly in one hand, blue eyes wide and desperate.
Erin saw Carrie and Karl start forward; she held her hands up soothingly. “Why would we hurt her?” she asked softly.
“Don’t pretend she’ll pass her Naming Day,” he retorted. “They’ll kill her, because of her hands.”
The child stared, unblinking; her small hand held six perfect fingers. Erin’s fists clenched—kill for a harmless mutation? “They won’t kill her,” she promised. “They’ll never find her.”
She looked the boy in the eye, understanding what she was promising. Karl was right, Dad would freak, but that didn’t matter. There were more important things than rules.
“They’ll never find her,” she repeated. “You’re ours now.”
Hope Erica Schultz lives in Central Massachusetts with her spouse, two children, one dog, four cats, and assorted visiting wildlife. She writes SF and fantasy stories and novels that can be considered comedy, adventure, or horror depending on where she chooses to end them. When not writing, reading, or pretending to be someone else, she still works for a living. Find her on Facebook at facebook.com/hope.schultz.14