Darius stepped outside Grandmother’s cottage and asked himself, “If it was me, and I had never been here before, where would I go?”

Almost immediately, he heard the familiar sound of a baseball hitting the side of the water tank. He had made that sound occur more than a million times himself. The “whump” of it echoed off the box canyon walls around him. He smiled. He knew exactly where they were.

He dropped Badrik’s hand.

“Come on. They’re behind the barn. They found my old auto pitcher.” He jumped off the porch and jogged past the empty horse paddock and around the back of the barn to the water tower.

Brock stood over the piece of soft board that was home plate holding Darius’ old bat, and Nova stood beside the ball thrower. The thrower chute blurred to spit a ball out that Brock met with the bat.

With a “crack,” the ball arched upwards to clang off the water tower.

The ball dropped dead to the ground beside Nova. She plucked it up and dropped it back into the top of the thrower.

“We can load it up. There are more balls in the barn,” Darius said.

“Hey, mate! Figured you’d find us, eventually. Just had to make some noise.”

Ssssi-thrum - the ball thrower coughed, and the ball streaked towards Brock, who met it with another resounding “crack” off the bat. This ball arced and just missed the right side of the tower.

“Badrik said you guys would be around.” He glanced over his shoulder, but the towering man hadn’t followed him.

“Bad who?” Nova asked.

“The tall man from the meeting. In the dark suit. I was sitting beside him. He was just here, behind me. He asked me to find you guys.”

“Well, find us you did, but we have no idea how we got here, or where this is. But I had a feeling that this was your ball equipment.”

“We get in fight in shower room. Mercury ask to make tables straight. Boom, big bomba. Fire frozen. Had meeting. Boom again. Fire come. Now we here. Why this?”

“I don’t know, guys. Badrik was here talking to me. He said he’d explain after I found you.”

Brock pointed the bat above them to the cluster of dents and marks on the side of the water tank.

“Are those yours? I can’t come as close.”

Darius laughed and walked up to join them in the cool shadow of the water tower.

“I’ve knocked balls against that water tower my whole life. It took me a while to get so I could hit them that high.”

“This is where you had you growing? This is you place?” Nova asked. Her heavy Russian accent made the “your” come out as “you.”

“Ya, well, no. This place belongs to the grandmother, actually. Look…” Darius’ voice took on a serious tone. “I just wanted to thank you, guys, for everything you did back at the pool. If it hadn’t been…”

“Don’t mention it, mate. Ol Bucky is a real slagger. You needed our help. We helped. It’s what folks do.”

“Yes. Us type keep together,” Nova said. “We need to.”

Darius nodded. “OK, guys. But really. Thanks.”

“My question to you is, how did we get here? If this is where you spent your childhood, why are we here?”

“I can’t say. Badrik seems to know what is going on. I say we go find him. I think he may be looking for the others.”

They jogged back to Grandmother’s cottage, around the scrabbled-together porch and up the slope towards the cliff face. The steep walls closed at their front as the box canyon began to narrow. The tall stone walls nearly came together and only left a cleft of an opening in the cliff face. Darius led them through it, a space so narrow they could only walk single file for a bit. Brightness from above highlighted the rainbowed sediment layers that formed the curved channel they passed through.

“This is the only way in?” Brock asked.

“Yes. They brought me here when I was really young. It is tribal land. Handed down to each spiritual healer or medicine man back in the day. Only a single horse could fit through here. The canyon was a sacred place. Grandmother said this sacred land is made by the spirits.”

“But house is inside canyon?” Nova asked.

“Ya. Later on, when they had old trucks, ropes, pulleys, and stuff, they just slung things down the canyon walls. The water comes the same way. A water truck comes to the garage here and hooks its hose to a pipe filling up the water tower. Grandmother said when she was little, the water, food, and supplies were walked through here by packhorse.

They walked single file through the narrow pathway and came out to a rickety footbridge. At the far end of the bridge was another scrabbled-together building standing in the scrub brush made of barnboards, plywood, and tin.

“This is strange.”

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“What?” asked Brock.

“This little footbridge. From the path to the garage. It wasn’t here before.”

“You’ve been gone for a while. None of us have been home since last season. Maybe they built it after.”

“Well, maybe,” Darius said in half-hearted agreement. He looked down over the rough wooden rail into a deep shadowed cleft below them. The darkness had no end. He couldn’t see a bottom.

“Really strange.” He mumbled. “I don’t remember this at all.”

“Maybe they had a washout. We get them back home sometimes.”

They followed the path to the front of the garage. The tall double-wide doors were open, and the long black limousine car from the Rec Center sat in the shadows. The hood was up. They could hear the long metal zips of a ratchet being used.

“Hello?” he called.

Doctor Joy peeked her head out from under the hood.

“Ah. There you guys are. Badrik is looking for you,” she said and disappeared back under the hood.

“Ah… do you need help?”

Her voice came back muffled. “No, thank you. I need to get this done as soon as possible. Badrik was looking to get everyone together in…” Her voice went muffled. “Probably in the diner?”

Brock spoke quietly so only Darius and Nova could hear. “OK, now I agree with you. This is too weird. I don’t remember getting in that limo to come here. Do you guys?”

They both just shook their head at him with a definite “no.” “Come with me. Let’s find Badrik.”

“Probably in the diner,” he called back to her. “Ok. Come with me. Let’s find Badrik.”

He led the others out of the garage and past the old-fashioned gas pumps, tall chrome sentinels with glass clamshell tops. A low corner of windows swooped out from the far side of the garage. Above them was perched a faded red and white sign that read Slinger’s grill.

The three kids stood in the dirt and looked up at the sign, hands on hips.

“Who is ‘Slinger’?” Brock asked.

“People figure whoever built the place. Some said he was actually an old gunslinger from the wild west times.” He could see figures through the windows. “Come on,” he said. “It looks like they are inside.”

He pushed the door open, and above his head, the familiar sound of the bell tinkling softly made him feel at home.

The long peach-coloured countertop stood in front of them with the light blue cash register and the peekaboo window behind the counter. Nothing had changed since he had last been here. Beside the register was the giant jar of pickled eggs and the little fake wood box stuffed with beef jerky strips sealed in clear plastic. Wireframe racks flanked the entrance, holding dusty postcards, word finds, and magic marker puzzle books. A smaller wireframe stood on the countertop, draped with jewelry and sunglasses. Nova spun it slowly.

“There were people just in here. I saw them.”

“Maybe they went to the kitchen?”

The long window gave a view of the flat, arid landscape that rolled away to the distant horizon. In front of it sat a few small round tables amongst clusters of tough metal chairs.

“Where are we?” Nova asked, flipping through one of the puzzle books. “America?”

“Arizona. Close to Devil’s Chasm. Sometimes tourists would come in here often by accident. It’s not a touristy place. They would be out of gas, overheated, or have flat tires. They would get help here at the diner or the garage and then turn around and go home.”

Brock went down the counter into the rows of metal shelving. They held the usual things found in a remote gas bar: Oil, bulbs, batteries, jumper cables, gas cans, flashlights, a few small camp stoves and can openers stood opposite to bread, buns, chips, canned vegetables, toiletries, aspirin, Band-Aids, burn ointment, lotion, sunscreen, and bottled water.

Nova made her way to the back of the diner, where an old cooler stood. Beside it was an ancient lozenge-shaped fridge that Darius knew would contain cartons of eggs with cream, milk, and cheese on the left. On the right would be lunch meat, bacon, hot dogs, and ham.

To Nova’s left was the closed door that would open onto a compact short-order kitchen, a galley kitchen Grandmother had called it, and on the right, the short hall to the washrooms and the back door.

The bell on the door tinkled, and they all looked to see Badrik enter.

“You found them. Good,” he said.

“We saw others here, inside, when we were outside,” Nova said.

“Yes. They are here,” the big man replied. “Did you notice anything while you were searching?” he asked Darius.

“Doctor Joy was in the garage. She told us to keep looking for you.”

“Of course, she would be there. The car would be there, wouldn’t it? I’m sure she is also a little lost, but she is the hands-on person of our group. The garage would call to her.”

The doctor was still under the hood of the limo and was now completely marked up with oil and grease.

“We took a good deal of damage from that blast, but I can repair it with the tools and parts here,” she said. “As for Juro and the master, they must be here somewhere.”

“But where are all the people? All the other people?” Darius asked.

Doctor Joy put the wrench down onto the fender.

“The radiation will be extreme. We were lucky to get out when we did.”

“How we get out, exactly?” Nova asked.

Doctor Joy wiped her forehead with the back of her arm and said, “I really don’t know. All I can guess is the limousine saved us.”

“This thing. Really?” Brock said, thumping a black dusty fender.

“This car was built with the highest level of protection systems possible. We were in the moment of a single event. The bomb severed all other future avenues,” Badrik said.

“I don’t understand,” Darius said. “And I don’t understand what happened on the pool deck, with the thing that Bucky… became… changed into. What was that?”

“Ah…” Badrik raised his hands as the doctor interjected.

“I don’t understand it, either. Some shocking events may have happened that we could be blocking out. This could be unhealthy.”

“And we’ve all got it? Like some type of large group mental block?” Brock said doubtfully.

Darius had his vision blank out for a split second. The sunlight was suddenly blinding him again. For one moment, Badrik was standing in a shaft of intense sunlight, the same glare of light when Darius had first met him in the grandmother’s house. The brightness made him squint, and simultaneously, he found the headache was returning.

“Hey, buddy, you ok?” He felt Brock’s hand on his shoulder.

“Ya. I think so. Did it just get really bright in here?”

“Darius?” It was Badrik’s voice. The big man was in front of him, kneeling. “Darius?” he said.

“I think something is wrong,” Brock said somewhere from beside Darius.

“Darius. Do you remember the note your grandmother left you? You put it in your pocket. I’d like you to show your grandmother’s note to the others if that is ok. Everyone here is a little uncertain of what is happening right now, and I know if you show them the note, it will make everyone feel better. Can you do that for me? Can we see the note?”

“Yes,” he replied. The sunlight flashed even more brilliantly.

“The note is in your pocket.”

“Yes.” Darius felt for the note, found the crisp paper, and brought it out for the others to see. “Here.” He looked at the grandmother’s neatly joined fancy writing. The glare of sunlight dimmed, and he could see. Another dark cloud, thankfully.

“Thank you, Darius. The masters have tea on. They were going to meet us in the diner. You must be able to smell the tea brewing. It may be the same your grandmother makes.”

Darius could smell it.

“Let’s all join them, shall we?” Badrik asked. “Juro loves to cook, make tea, and such. I’m sure they must have found their way into the kitchen. Juro is an excellent cook. He and the master are most likely enjoying tea and playing dominos. Shall we join them now?”

“Yes,” Darius said.