23

SAVAGE RIVER, MARYLAND

Everything was happening in slow motion. A man in a gas mask was spraying machine-gun fire in every direction. Bright flashes emanated from the gun’s muzzle as the man swept the weapon back and forth, mowing down everyone in its path. There was screaming and scraping and scuffling all around. And blood. So much blood. Yet the dreamer himself couldn’t move. His feet were fixed to the floor of the laboratory, his eyes focused intently on the shooter. He waited for the man to turn in his direction. He had to see the man’s eyes. He had to know. The shooter turned slowly, as if suspended in time, until his eyes gradually came into view through his visor.

Malachi awoke with a start, breathing heavily and sweating despite the cold. Obviously, he’d drifted off. But for how long? “Damn,” he whispered, surprised that it was already light outside. He quickly scanned his surroundings and was relieved to find nothing of immediate concern. He was still alone in the rustic cabin he’d broken into last night, deep in the Savage River State Forest, about twenty-five miles southwest of Frostburg.

There was no heat or electricity in this cabin, nor furniture for that matter. Malachi had slept in a sitting position on the pine floor, with his back propped against the rough-cut interior wall of the cabin. With great effort, he rose and stretched his stiff and aching limbs. His legs, especially, were painfully sore from yesterday’s fourteen-hour trek through the woods, which he’d accomplished using a series of hiking trails that ran along the Savage River, darting off into the woods whenever he heard an approaching hiker.

After yesterday morning, he’d decided he could not risk hitchhiking or stealing another car. Not around here. Not after seeing a team of policemen rifling through the car he’d stolen the night before. His instincts were telling him that he had to keep running. He needed to find his contacts . . . and avoid getting caught in the process.

Malachi peeked through one of the grimy windows of the cabin and saw an endless forest of spruce trees, awash in the dim gray light of an early morning October sky. Then he quickly looked out the other five windows of the cabin and saw the same terrain in every direction. Now what?

As he pondered that question, he shook a cigarette loose from his pack and pressed it between his lips. He lit it with a flick of his lighter and drew in a deep, satisfying breath. The warm smoke felt good in his lungs and helped clear his mind. He could tell his memory was improving, although very slowly. For instance, he could now specifically remember entering the Thurmond lab on a moonless spring night. He remembered that he was on an important mission, that he had an objective, that there were specific rules he was to follow. He lingered on that last thought for a moment. Rules. Something about time. It was important to check his watch. He tried to hold on to that particular memory, but it quickly evaporated into nothingness.

Frustrated, he reached into his pocket and retrieved the small piece of paper and pen that he’d taken from the Huntsman Motel yesterday morning. Since then, he’d added a few more items to his list—random thoughts that seemed to carry some special significance, and which had popped into his mind during his hike. The paper now had four items scrawled in uneven handwriting:

Jasher

White House

Opal

Ellipse

Malachi added a fifth: “Time.” He had no idea what any of this meant, aside from the obvious fact that the White House was the home of the president, opal was a type of stone, and an ellipse was a geometric shape. He certainly had no idea about “Jasher.” He slowly shook his head, desperately trying to piece it all together. This was maddening.

For a long while, he just stared out the window into the woods, doing his best to push his emotions aside and focus on logic. Concentrate, he told himself. Let logic be your guide. He drew a deep drag from his cigarette and once again began methodically ticking through the things he could deduce based on the facts he knew.

First and foremost, he knew it was no longer 1972. According to the magazines he’d bought the other night, the year was now 2013. Malachi tilted his head back and blew out a long stream of smoke. Jesus. How could he have lost four decades of his life? No doubt, this had something to do with the experiments taking place in Thurmond. Something about time.

Malachi felt the same feelings of confusion and bewilderment that he’d experienced last night starting to well up inside him again. Where had he been all this time? In a coma? Or was he simply crazy? With effort, he pushed these thoughts aside and forced himself, once again, to focus on logic. What else did he know?

He knew that someone had been expecting him in Thurmond. His contacts. A man and a woman. They had left clues for him that only he could solve. And apparently he’d had some type of training or preparation that allowed him to solve those clues. In other words, all of this had been prearranged, and Malachi himself had been a part of it. But why? What was he supposed to have accomplished?

His contacts had certainly not left him much to go on. A cryptic note with instructions to go to the “Third Church.” Meaningless drivel. He had no idea who Elijah was. And where was this “Third Church” he was supposed to go to?

Malachi retrieved the sheet of stationery from his pocket and studied the strange arrangement of symbols in the middle of the page, which appeared to consist of two numbers and two letters arranged around an octagon with a cross in the middle:

What did this mean? He noted that the numbers 17 and 16 were in reverse numerical order. Was this significant? Did this have something to do with going backward? Perhaps time was going backward.

Putting the numbers aside for a moment, Malachi next considered the letters K and I. Unlike the numbers, these letters were not consecutive in the alphabet. The letter J should have been between them, but it was missing. Or, more precisely, the letter J had been replaced with a cross in this puzzle. But why? Or was “KI” an acronym for something? Malachi had already mulled over those two letters endlessly, trying in vain to trigger some meaningful memory. King Isaac? King’s Island? Nothing seemed to fit. Nor did his knowledge of chemistry offer any logical answers. As he knew, K was the chemical symbol for potassium, and I was the symbol for iodine. Two elements on nearly opposite sides of the periodic table. Potassium, far to the left, had a single valence electron that it wanted to get rid of. Iodine, nearly on the far right of the periodic table, had seven valence electrons and desperately wanted one more to complete its valence shell. Therefore, chemically speaking, these two elements were nearly a perfect match to form an ionic compound. Which they often did. Potassium iodide, or KI, was a common, naturally occurring salt, and an important component of iodized table salt, usually sold in supermarkets. But what did potassium iodide have to do with anything?

Malachi took a last puff of his cigarette and dropped it on the floor, grinding it out with his shoe. He glanced at his own notes again, which seemed to be pointing him toward Washington, D.C. But to do what? Knock on the door of the White House and announce his presence? Actually, he entertained that idea for quite some time before finally dismissing it. No, he decided. There had to be a better plan.

He felt his stomach growl and was reminded once again of how terribly hungry he was. He hadn’t eaten in more than thirty hours, and his body was desperately craving food. This was why he did not trust his senses at first when he began to smell something delicious in the air. When you’re starving, everything starts to look and smell like food. After a couple of minutes, though, he simply could not ignore the unmistakable aroma of . . . bacon. It seemed to be seeping through the cracks in the cabin.

Malachi slowly unlatched the front door and eased it open a few inches. As he did, the tantalizing smell of sizzling bacon suddenly wafted inside. Someone was cooking breakfast nearby.

He immediately drew his pistol and ventured out the front door and into the woods. He stopped for a moment and took note of the light breeze that was blowing from the southwest. He turned in that direction and began making his way stealthily through the dense forest. The smell of frying bacon grew steadily stronger until, finally, he saw its source—a neighboring cabin in the woods, about seventy yards away. A thin stream of smoke was twirling out of the cabin’s river-stone chimney.

Malachi continued creeping toward the back of the neighboring cabin with his pistol drawn, until he was close enough to see through one of the windows. For a while, he saw nothing at all. Then, suddenly, he saw movement. A man in a red flannel shirt and boxer shorts, then an attractive woman in a pink robe. She was cradling a coffee cup, and the man seemed to be carrying something . . . a spatula. Now they were kissing and smiling.

Malachi moved quickly around the side of the cabin toward the front door, ducking low to avoid being seen through the windows. As he rounded the corner to the front, he saw a forest-green Land Rover parked in the dirt driveway that led away from the cabin and disappeared into the woods. Perfect. He quickly approached the front door, clicked off the safety of his pistol, and prepared to enter.

Five seconds later, Malachi pounded open the front door with a rapid series of powerful kicks. The door splintered on the third kick and flew wide open, into the cabin. He burst in with his weapon drawn and shouted, “On the floor!”

The woman in the pink robe dropped her coffee and shrieked in terror. She backed away quickly and shrank to the floor until she was huddled in a tight ball against the wall.

The man in the red flannel shirt, however, proved much more brazen than Malachi had expected. He was a brutish man with a square jaw and a massive chest. He stood his ground in the middle of the cabin with a large cast-iron skillet held in both hands above his head like a baseball bat. He appeared poised to charge at Malachi.

Malachi leveled his pistol directly at the man’s chest. “It’ll be the last thing you do,” he warned.

The man stood motionless, seething and breathing heavily for several seconds. Then, slowly, he returned the skillet to the hearth with a loud clank.

“On the floor,” Malachi ordered, motioning with his pistol for the man to join the woman in the pink robe, who was now whimpering uncontrollably near the back wall.

The man in flannel reluctantly obeyed. “What do you want?” he asked gruffly as he sat down next to the woman.

“Car keys,” said Malachi.

“Shit,” the man huffed. “Are you serious?”

“Where are they?” Malachi demanded.

The man shook his head and let out an incredulous laugh. “In my jeans pocket. Over there.” He pointed toward a pile of clothes next to a rustic pine bed on the far side of the cabin.

Malachi slowly backed away from the couple, keeping his weapon trained on them at all times.

“You’re making a big fucking mistake, buddy,” said the man in flannel.

The woman next to him piped up, her voice squeaky with fear. “Dave, please . . . just . . . just shut up. Please . . .”

“Good advice,” said Malachi, still inching his way toward the pile of clothes on the floor. When he got there, he bent down and retrieved a set of keys from the front pocket of a pair of faded jeans on the floor. He glanced down and saw that the leather key chain was embossed with the words RANGE ROVER.

“Take it,” said the woman in a shaky voice. “Please . . . just go.”

Malachi felt genuinely sorry for this woman, who was obviously terrified. He was about to say “Sorry” when her male companion decided to add one last macho comment.

“You’re going to regret this, asshole.”

Malachi had had enough of this guy’s mouth. He took three quick steps toward him and trained his pistol directly between his eyes. He turned to the woman in the pink robe and said, “Your boyfriend’s not very smart.”

The woman broke down in sobs. “Oh God, please don’t do this. Please . . . don’t.” She closed her eyes tightly, apparently waiting for Malachi to pull the trigger.

As for the man in flannel, he had suddenly lost his voice. He was now staring silently at the gun, mouth agape, eyes wide open. His face seemed to be getting paler by the second.

Malachi maintained his firing stance for several seconds, then he began backing away slowly. When he reached the front door, he turned and quickly made his way to the vehicle.

Twenty seconds later, the Range Rover roared to life and tore away from the cabin at high speed.

A single question now occupied Malachi’s mind. How do I get to Washington, D.C., from here?