Circles of Displacement Read online

  The light in the bedroom was enough to see how to run a brush through her bright red hair. She wrinkled her nose at the scattering of freckles across her cheeks, tied her hair in twin pigtails and walked out from her room into the hall.

  In plain daylight now, the incongruity struck her immediately. No wonder the birds had sounded so loud. Dozens of them were cheerfully singing and chirping from a growth of vine-entwined brush at the end of the hall, growing at the foot of a yards wide tree trunk. The trunk of the huge tree grew up and up until the hall ceiling obscured it. Where it grew should be the entrance to her parent's bedroom.

  She could not have been more surprised had a dinosaur suddenly decided to take up residence in the hallway. Her hand shot to her mouth. Had a tree fallen into the house overnight? Was she dreaming? From somewhere outside, she became aware of a snuffling noise, like a rooting pig eating acorns. Cautiously, she stepped forward. Her hand came to rest wonderingly on the bark of the tree. It was rough, as real as an algebra test, and just as threatening.

  Shakily, she peeked around the trunk, trying to make sense of what the end of the hall had become. More trees met her vision, and rooting at the base of one was a large furred animal like nothing she had ever seen or heard of. It resembled nothing so much as a huge, slow moving sloth.

  Sloth? Sheila bit her thumb and shook her head. She knew nothing like that inhabited the piney woods of east Texas. Had it escaped from a zoo? No. If that were the case, then a six-foot wide tree trunk had also escaped from somewhere and taken up residence in the hallway. This must be a dream, but if it were, it was a singularly vivid one, complete with sounds, and she noticed now, smells as well. A rich odor of composting vegetation wafted into the hall, and the snuffling sounds took on the aspects of a small idling steam engine, chuffing away as the weird animal nosed closer.

  Sheila turned and ran back into her bedroom, slamming the door behind her. Shakily, she opened the other door of the bedroom, the one that led out into the living room. She peeked through the gap. Everything seemed normal there. She stepped out into the room, then quickly turned back and locked the door to the hall, where she still heard the sounds of the feeding animal. At least it sounded no closer, but what on earth was it?

  She crossed the room and looked out the large picture window. Normal there, too—no, wait! Not normal. From where she stood, she should be able to see almost to the county road, but her vision was blocked by forest, angling in a circle around the familiar farmyard at a distance of a couple hundred yards. As she watched, a shaggy creature ambled into view, blinked in the early morning sunlight, then retreated back into the woods. It was about the size of a bear, but resembled nothing she had ever seen before. She stared blankly at it, her mind numb.

  Blazer, the elderly dog she had grown up with was nowhere in sight, but a chorus of meows told her the cats were waiting to be fed. Moving as if in a dream, she went to the kitchen and pulled a bag of Meow Mix from the cupboard; She took it out onto the porch where she filled the bowl while the two cats and several ten-week-old kittens did their best to get stepped on. As she rose up from the bowl, a thought that had been shimmering in her mind burst into full flower. Her parents! Where were they?

  Without a thought of possible danger, she dropped the bag of cat food where she stood and ran down the three porch steps into the yard, then around to the back of the house. At least she intended to go back there, thinking wildly that by trying a different direction she might find the rest of the house.

  The woods stopped her, and again she heard the snuffling. She backed away and followed the strange new growth with her eyes. It arced around the farm in what appeared to be a perfect circle several hundred feet in diameter; it came back, and ended, she presumed, behind the house, clipping off the master bedroom and bathroom and part of the common hallway. It was too much for her senses to take in all at once. She retreated inside and buried her face in her hands and cried.

  * * * *

  Wanda Smith rubbed a painful kink in her neck where she had slept with her head turned to the side on the reclining front seat of the Cherokee. She came awake slowly, hoping she had been dreaming. It was obviously no dream, she quickly decided. Looking through the back window of the Cherokee, the highway appeared perfectly normal until it ended with the mangled remains of the truck buried in the forest which had sprang up in the night. And that wasn't all: clustered around the cab were several large dogs (wolves?) pulling and tugging at the remains of the driver. She shuddered and turned her eyes away, groping for the pistol by her side.

  She got out of the vehicle only once that morning to relieve herself by the open door, and then she quickly she got back in. She drank the remains of a Thermos of coffee, watching and waiting and wondering when the nightmare would end. Eventually, she noticed that the larger trees formed a circle around the isolated stretch of highway, like a distant green wall, completely visible in some directions, half hidden by more familiar growth in others.

  During the morning she spotted several animals, which briefly crossed her vision. She strained to identify them. Memories of her freshman zoology class began tugging at her mind, most notably barely remembered pictures of extinct mammals. It was disconcerting to first spot what appeared to be a perfectly normal black bear ambling lazily across the highway, sniffing curiously at the pavement (there were still a few black bears in the piney woods, she thought), then with the abruptness of changing channels on television, she would see a creature straight out of a textbook. And birds were everywhere, in numbers and varieties to stagger the imagination.

  Shortly after what she judged to be noon, the dog—wolves? Timber wolves in Texas?—had finished their meal and departed. No other human, nor any other sign of what she thought of as civilization, appeared. Her belly rumbled, reminding her that she had not eaten since the previous afternoon, and it appeared that if she intended to eat, she would have to feed herself. There was absolutely nothing edible in the jeep. She had intended to stop somewhere before reaching Houston for a snack. The hunger pains made her think. Maybe the truck driver had been carrying something. Looking all around and seeing nothing immediately threatening, she started the Cherokee, turned it around again and drove to where the highway ended. She chambered a round into the .45 and, holding the pistol in a death grip, approached the mangled cab. Nothing remained of the driver other than spots of blood on the ground and spattered in the cab. In fact, she had trouble climbing into it, but eventually she managed.

  The transom and sleeping area were both crushed too badly for access, but it was easy enough to reach inside. She fumbled, felt something vaguely familiar, and pulled out a purse. Dear God, the driver had been a woman. She hadn't even noticed the night before.

  She opened the purse and found nothing of note other than three tampons. She pocketed them, thinking vaguely and unconsciously of the future. She discarded the purse and reached inside the cab again.

  This time she brought out a small satchel. Inside, she found underwear and two sets of jeans and tops. None of the clothing interested her; she had plenty of her own in the jeep. A final reach provided a windbreaker, but nothing else. She appropriated that and squinted around the inside of the cab, wishing she had brought her flashlight.

  There! A brown paper bag. It contained two Lancer's cheese crackers with peanut butter and a Hershey bar with almonds. She emptied the clothes from the satchel and dropped the food inside, then she started to pry herself out of the demolished cab. Thinking, she stopped and tugged at the glove compartment. The hinges were bent, but a hefty yank popped it open. Sure enough, inside was a small .25 caliber automatic with two spare clips, a working flashlight and a nail file.

  Taking her plunder, she crawled out. Just as she was on the point of leaving to explore the trailer part of the rig, she spotted a toolbox welded to the side of the cab. It was closed with a heavy duty Yale lock, but she was getting the hang of scavenging now. She crawled back inside the cab, retrieved the purse and lifted a jangling key
ring from it.

  The third key fitted. The top compartment contained an assortment of wrenches, screwdrivers and other tools of no immediate value, but there was a small, one-piece knife, not much larger than what she used to peel potatoes, and a larger, one bladed folding variety. She tucked the folding knife into her back pocket and the other into the bag.

  Hunger vied with an urge to explore further. Peering into the woods as far as possible, and looking back along the highway to make certain that nothing threatening had made an appearance, she walked over to the trailer rig. It was cracked open in several spots. Peering inside, she could make out an assortment of boxes and crates, some of them split apart and dripping liquid. She smelled a familiar, grocery store odor. She reached through an open seam into the bowels of one of the crates and pulled out an apple.

  A produce truck. Why couldn't it have been carrying canned goods? Well, apples were better than nothing. She spent several minutes fishing out as many as she thought she could carry, and then returned to the Cherokee. Safely inside once more, she ate one package of the crackers, the Hershey bar, two apples, then watched and waited some more.

  As the evening wore on, small animals began to emerge from the woods, attracted by the odor of the produce. She observed them closely until a large, cat-like animal flashed across her view. It disappeared into the woods, one of the little creatures clutched in its jaws.

  Wanda had no desire at all to attract the attention of carnivores. Once more, she backed and turned the Cherokee, and retreated to the other end of the highway. She sat and thought and fiddled with the gadgets on the knife she had appropriated, beginning to realize consciously now that an incomprehensible change had come into her life, like nothing she had ever imagined or thought possible.

  By day's end, it was obvious that she would have to leave. Twice she saw what appeared for all the world to be an oversized panther take a small animal, and toward evening another bear appeared, sniffing at breaks in the trailer. By this time, she had lost all hope of rescue. The circumstances were too strange to think that the cavalry would suddenly appear over the ridge and bear her off to civilization. She ate another apple to quench her thirst and made plans in her mind to leave this place the next morning. To where, she had no idea.

  * * * *

  Michael Wronsen was having the time of his life. The previous night, he had been scared to death, unable to see what had happened, but in the full daylight of morning, it was plain to see (if he wasn't dreaming, which he suspected from time to time that he might be) that he had been transported intact with his old Explorer into another time, or world, certainly into a quite different environment than what he was used to seeing on the drive from College Station to Houston.

  As a physicist, his mind kept turning to the possible mechanics of the transformation, but his train of thought was constantly interrupted by the sight of creatures, which he knew, without a shadow of doubt, belonged not to the twentieth century, but to an era of the late Pleistocene.

  The huge ground sloth, at least, left no doubt. Clutching his pistol for protection (not stopping to think of how useless it would be against a dire wolf, for instance), he wandered in circles from his vehicle, skirting the edges of the two hundred yard circle of virgin forest, poking and prying into the underbrush at every sound, trying to get a glimpse of the animals making the noises. It was fascinating, mind-boggling and as intellectually stimulating as the discovery of a black hole in his backyard would have been.

  Wronsen was blessed, or cursed (depending on how it struck him at the time) with the elephant child's curiosity. His habit of reading, even at the table, had been a major cause of dissent in his marriage, and he remembered much of what he read. As a physics teacher, his fellows had thought it strange that he was also interested in history, politics, biology and anthropology. He didn't find it strange at all.

  The endless variety of twentieth and twenty-first century culture and learning was for him simply another stage in the history of the species; the omnivorous, omnipotent ape which had conquered the earth. He wondered if the displacement had been near enough in time so that humans were now inhabiting the North American continent (if that was where he was), and if so, whether there were any in the immediate area.

  It wasn't until early afternoon that it finally struck him that he was alone, isolated, perhaps the only modern day human on the face of the earth. In that, he was not by himself. Like Sheila Holloway and Wanda Smith, others were wondering the same thing and by this time, all were despairing of help.

  * * * *

  Ten-year-old Melanie Woods crouched high in a tree where she had taken refuge when her house disappeared while she was out catching lightning bugs for show and tell the next day. She shivered and cried and prayed for her parents to come rescue her. They would never appear.

  * * * *

  West of Huntsville, in dryer country, one foolish cowboy died trying to protect his horse from a pair of saber tooth tigers. His partner had more sense. He departed his pony with haste that would have done credit to a rodeo wrangler leaving a bucking bronco, and took refuge in a pile of naked boulders. Later that day, he hitched up his jeans and began hiking east, unarmed and wary. He had no idea what had happened to the familiar world, but his sensibilities were close to the earth. He knew he hadn't gone crazy. He also knew he was in one hell of a fix and hadn't the slightest idea how to get out of it. His only thought was to keep walking and see what developed.

  * * * *

  In the little town of Goodpasture, south of Livingston, three teenage boys, two white and one black, all with their girlfriends, roamed the confines of the downtown area which had been displaced. They were frightened but wouldn't admit it to their girlfriends—or each other. They gazed in awe at the surrounding forest and tried to come up with an explanation of what had happened. Nothing they had learned in their high school courses, nor anything in their limited small town experience, helped in making sense of their situation.

  During the course of the day, a deputy sheriff by the name of Dustin Breedlove, who had been asleep in his patrol car behind the court house, made an appearance, along with the elderly proprietor of the donut shop who slept on the premises, two middle-aged widows who shared a home just at the edge of the displacement circle and several middle-aged couples living within the confines of the displacement area. There were no children. By evening, they were all clustered together in a group, leaderless as yet, but they were certainly not hungry. The Goodpasture grocery store, the feed store and a fishing/hunting center had come along with them.

  * * * *

  Dawson Reeves struggled eastward through unfamiliar brush and woods—though he had no idea of which direction he was traveling. He was very lucky. He made better than twenty miles through heavy woods that day, chased by the ghost of that awful lethal syringe waiting should he fail to make good his escape. Purely by chance, he failed to strike another area of displacement. With considerable difficulty, considering his broken arm, he took refuge in a tree that night, alternately cursing the environment then thanking whatever powers had been responsible for freeing him from certain death. He intended to make more miles the next day, just as fast as he could travel, even if he didn't have a clue as to where he was.

  * * * *

  In that portion of Huntsville that had made the change, Burley Simpson was in complete control. The downtown portion of Huntsville northeast of the Walls contained a variety of stores and businesses that were in the displacement circle. Burley already had a team of convicts out looting them and rounding up what few civilians had been living or working in the area that night and had failed to flee when the convicts gained control of the prison.

  He was amazed and still not quite sure that he was really free. He expected any moment to hear sirens and helicopters or see National Guard troops deploying to recapture them, even though he could look around and see the perfect circle of short scrubby oak and mesquite, which had unaccountably replaced the rest of Huntsville.
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  Burley's second in command was a man he cared not too much about, an intellectual by the name of Jason Deeson. One of the reasons he didn't care much for Jason was that for all the time he had known him, Deeson had quietly proclaimed his innocence.

  Jason had gone down on a charge of sexual abuse of his stepdaughter, which would ordinarily have placed him on the lower rung of prison society, but his calm protestation of innocence (not unique, by any means, but from him, it was convincing), along with his considerable intelligence and size (he topped six four) had made him a place in the upper strata of the prison hierarchy.

  Jason was a bitter man. He had long since given up hope of proving his innocence, and he still had almost five years to go on his sentence. His ex-wife, he knew, was the real culprit. She had coached her daughter into convincing lies, and then appropriated most of his estate in the divorce settlement.

  When the sudden change of events overtook the prison, Jason participated willingly in the uprising. At least one guard that he knew of had died by his hand, and he wasn't the least bit sorry. The guard had been a cruel and vicious man who constantly abused his authority. His death was well deserved, and then some.

  He was reluctant to take part in what Simpson was proposing now, although he didn't let it show. Simpson had too many followers, was too well armed and they were all drunk with power. Jason kept his hand close to the pistol strapped at his side. The first chance I get, I'm leaving, he thought. But to where? Other than the Walls, and a few shops, there's nothing here but forest. What happened? Well, I won't worry about it now. There are more immediate concerns.

  “Those fucking black monkeys need to be weeded out,” Simpson said, peering with cruel eyes out into the small, still enclosed exercise yard. Approximately twenty black men milled in confusion there, weaponless and helpless, which was just how Burley wanted them. He looked out over the scrub trees, which had replaced most of Huntsville. Whatever the cause, it left little fear of retribution for what he intended to do.