Wayfarer

“Oh my God,” she said, pressing a hand against her mouth.

She’d been right. This was a third, alternate timeline—it hadn’t reverted back to Ironwood’s timeline like he must have intended with the assassination. He’d grasped burning, dangerous threads of history and knotted them into something far more sinister. Something unrecognizable.

There’s nothing left.

She lowered herself to her knees, suddenly unable to support her own weight.

“What could cause this?” Julian asked. “Shelling? Aerial bombings?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t know—we need to—we need to go—”

If it was something worse, like a nuclear weapon, then they’d already exposed themselves to harmful radiation. The thought pushed Etta back off the ground, dried the tears that were beginning to form in her eyes.

But when she turned to tell Julian, something else caught her eye—the sweep of headlights cutting through the thick smoke, brushing over them.

“Survivors, call out,” a voice crackled over a speaker, broken up by either emotion or the technology. “Help is on the way. Survivors… call out if you can….”

“Come on,” Etta said, turning back to the passage. “We need to go!”

Julian shook his head. “No—Nan—I’m going to find her—”

Etta’s words caught in her throat. If she’d been in the city, there was very likely nothing left to find. But before they could protest, the headlights found them again, and an engine revved as it raced toward them. Before the vehicle had fully stopped, a man in a full black jumpsuit and gas mask—something that closely resembled what Etta knew as a hazmat suit—leaped out of the back of a Jeep and rushed toward them.

“My God! My God, what are you doing here?” The man’s voice was muffled by his oxygen mask. “How did you survive?”

“That, chap,” Julian managed to get out, “is an excellent question.”

ETTA KNEW THAT SHE SHOULD have steered them back through the passage, but some part of her wanted to know—wanted to see for herself—what had become of her city.

She should have considered what that would do to her heart. After a while, she stopped looking out at the devastation as the military-issue Jeep bounced through the smoldering wreckage, and cupped her hands over her eyes.

This isn’t right, his isn’t right….None of this was right. This timeline…

A medic riding with them had given them both oxygen masks, which cleared her head somewhat. Etta winced as he swiped antiseptic over the cut on her arm again, and then turned to the slash across her forehead.

“Say…” Julian said, his voice trembling slightly as he leaned forward to speak to the driver. “They figure out who to pin this on yet? We’ve been a bit, uh, out of it. Trapped in that basement, you know?”

Julian Ironwood: worthless at paddling a boat, but quick with a lie.

“I’ll say,” the driver called back. “The Central Powers proudly took credit for their handiwork. Made sure to hit Los Angeles and Washington, too, just to drive the message home.”

Etta had to close her eyes and breathe deeply, just to keep from vomiting.

“Never seen anything like the flash when this hit. Millions, just—” The man trailed off.

Gone, Etta’s mind finished.

It was light enough outside that once they approached the Hudson, heading toward what the men had described as a medical camp and survivor meeting point in New Jersey, Etta could see the dark outline of a bicycle and a man against one of the last standing walls. Almost as if they had disappeared and left their shadows behind.

“Paris and London are still standing, but it’s only a matter of time,” the medic said bitterly. “This was to warn us off joining them in their fight, I bet. They knew Roosevelt was thinking about sending aid or troops over to the Brits—that they’ve been gearing up for a fight. So the Central Powers declared war on us.”

“This isn’t war,” the driver said. “This is hell. They knew we’d jump in first chance we got, and so they crippled us. They showed us who’s boss.”

Etta didn’t ask about the government, about the other cities. And she didn’t ask Julian about how they would get back to that passage, or what other ones they could reach in this year. Exhaustion swept over her. It stole whatever spark of fight she had left. She closed her eyes on her ruined city.

“Almost done, honey,” the medic said. Under any other circumstances she would have hated the endearment, but she was feeling battered, and the man had a grandfatherly quality that reminded her of Oskar, Alice’s husband. “You’ll need to find a doctor to stitch up your arm when we get there, you hear me?”

Etta couldn’t muster the strength to nod.

Where would she even start? How could anyone fix this?

Anywhere, she thought, and with everything I have.

THE MEDICAL CAMP WAS SET UP IN ELIZABETH, NEW JERSEY. Far enough from the blast site in the center of Manhattan to be out of immediate danger, but still close enough to be shrouded in toxic clouds of fumes and dust. To get there, they’d had to drive by cleared fields where the bodies of victims had been brought, some covered with tarps, others not. Etta’s breath was harsh in her ears, and she couldn’t seem to let go of the image of their twisted shapes, the way the charring had left them looking almost hollow. As much as she felt like she had to be a witness to these atrocities, that she owed it to them to form a memory of their wasted lives, Etta didn’t protest when the medic leaned over and covered her eyes.