Thela of Palan (Patreon)

Jacob Stone pushed his goggles up onto his helmet and wiped the sweat off his face. He loved biking, he really did, but he always hated it in the middle of one of these forty-mile mountain rides. He took his water bottle from the holder and used a gulp to rinse road dust out of his mouth before sipping more slowly to relieve his thirst.

Below him, the angle of the Antelope Valley showed the green of springtime, and the scent of sage and wildflowers reached him on a breeze. It was still chilly for Southern California on a March morning. He glanced at his watch, 8:33 a.m. and he’d traveled 16.4 miles and his heart rate was back down to 70.

Time to get moving again. He stowed the bottle, took the slight downslope before the next hill and began pumping.

Stone heard the noise long before he saw the vehicle coming down the track from the peak. He steered off into a wide place and got off his bike. Avoiding interruptions like this was the main reason he chose isolated seldom-travelled mountain trails but more and more of the wilderness he loved suffered from the invasion of SUVs and ATVs and other acronym-labelled plagues. “This too shall pass,” Jacob said aloud.

The two young people in the all-terrain vehicle never saw him. The driver added danger and excitement to his driving by not staying on the track, swerving this way and that and yelling at the top of his lungs.

The next thing Jacob knew was he and his bike were sliding down a rocky, scrubby defile, apparently pushed off the mountain trail by a collision with the ATV. His neon-yellow bike shorts and orange jacket did not save him from impact but they did protect his arms, chest and thighs from abrasion. Helmet, gloves and shoes did their part but his knees and lower legs suffered lacerations, contusions and abrasions as he slid down the nearly 70 degree slope.

A steeper drop of about four feet at the end deposited him on a stable shelf. His bike landed on top of him, the left handlebar digging in under his right ribs, the rear wheel spun freely for a long moment while he tried to get his breath back. “Sonsabitches!” he moaned.

It wasn’t the first time he had been hit by traffic, but he’d never been knocked off a mountain in an accident before. He eased himself out from under the bike, careful to not let it go until he was sure it wouldn’t continue down the mountain without him.

A lizard of an unfamiliar species gave him a pop-eyed stare from a nearby boulder. Two red-winged crow-sized birds quarreled in a pine tree almost directly above his head. He felt blood trickle down his ankle from a gash in his leg. The dust from his slide settled slowly, much of it seemingly inside his mouth.

He sat up carefully, noting that the sun had climbed a little higher than he expected. Had he been knocked out for a moment? He turned his head from side to side gingerly, then wagged it experimentally, this way, that, back then forth. No twinges from head or neck.

His cellphone had survived the fall, safe in its zippered jacket pocket, but he had no bars when he checked. That seemed curious, he’d always had good reception on this part of the mountain. He put the phone back in his pocket to check again later.

He lifted both arms above his head then held them out to the side. All seemed well there, though he noted a tear in the back of his right hand glove with the glisten of blood in the depth of it. He swiveled left and right from the waist, his back and hips seemed fine and he could feel his toes moving inside his bike shoes.

His lower legs were a mess, though. An abrasion that burned like fire started just above his right knee and continued for nine inches or so down his leg, encrusted with leaves, dirt and pebbles. A serious wound in his left calf looked as if some branch or root had poked a hole then torn a furrow. Blood leaked slowly from it so either it had not hit an artery or the debris embedded in it was slowing any bleeding.

His bike looked fine. “Sure, you’re okay, Henry,” he told it, “you rode me!” Henry was his name for the bike when he was alone and needed to talk to someone.

His mood slightly improved by silliness, Stone pulled the water bottle out of its holder, grateful that it had survived the descent. He took a sip to swish and spit out dust then a bigger gulp to cut through the gunk that had gone down his throat. Putting the bottle back, he took out his first aid kit and started work. The gash in his leg needed stitches but he would have to make do with cleaning it and suturing it closed with tape for the moment.

It wasn’t until he began stowing the nylon pack back in its wire carrier that Jacob realized something.

He didn’t hear anything but wind and animals.

Not only had there been no more traffic on the track he assumed still lay above him, he heard no distant human noises, either. No nearly subliminal hum from the high tension lines he thought must be just out of sight to his north. No buzzing of small planes or muted roar from larger ones at the two airports, one commercial, one military in the valley below.

Were they in the valley below? He hadn’t actually looked since he landed on the ledge, stopping his plunge down the mountain at a relatively flat place. Pushing the bike ahead of him, he took three steps to look past the edge of shelf—and saw a wide green valley stretching out in front of him and many miles to either side. It looked less like the semi-desert Antelope Valley, California and more like some eastern valley amid less rugged mountains, the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia, perhaps. The slope immediately before him was not a precipitous descent into a rocky canyon but a gentle hillside along a creek bed.

He sat down suddenly, stunned, the bike toppling on top of him again. “What?” he asked, pushing the machine off him. He tried to rise but his legs were just not working. “What?” he asked again, his voice rising.

Not only was the Antelope Valley gone but also the cities of Lancaster and Palmdale, as well as Edwards Air Force Base and the dry lake bed where the Space Shuttles used to land.

Staring out at the too green valley, he undid his chin strap and took off his helmet. His short, thinning, sandy red hair stood up in sweaty spikes. He dropped the helmet in his lap and used both hands to feel of his head, searching for a wound, a bump or a dent. Nothing. Not even a tender spot.

He dropped his hands into his lap again and just stared for a long minute. Then he said, “Honest, occifer, I’m not haloonisating. That damned river came out of nowhere….” He looked up the hill, to where the road he had been on should have been. The green hillside continued much too far, the gully he had slid down could not have been part of the mountain he had been riding up.

He looked at his bike again. “We’re not in Kansas, Henry, but I’m not sure where we are.”

At last, Jacob stood. Sighing, he put his helmet back on, picked up his bike and gingerly rolled it off the flat place where he had landed. He looked out again on the wide green valley. He didn’t see the slightest sign of human habitation. Had he been knocked out and come to days or weeks later in some remote part of … where? Alaska? Canada?

There. Just on the edge of the blue trace of a river he could make out what might be the smoke from a campfire. He stood for a while longer, picking out landmarks he could steer by to get him closer to the only company it seemed he was going to find.

“Going to be a hell of a story to tell someone, Henry,” he said to the bike. Mounting up, grateful for the wide tires he’d selected because of sandy stretches on the L.A. County roads, he pedaled down the hill, picking his route carefully. Though the fire, if it was a fire, might be less than two miles away, he thought it would probably take him half an hour to reach it.

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