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She turned away from the crashing stretch of earthquake-ravaged breakers and swore softly. Then, tears stinging her eyes, she dug into the pouch at her waist. The reassuring glow of the LED display startled her for a moment. She'd half forgotten modern niceties during the past few days. Sibyl paused briefly. Was that all it had been? A little less than a week, subjectively? She shook her head. A week in the life of a time traveler... .
She wasn't entirely certain of the wisdom of activating the recall button this close to town, but a sense of extreme urgency had crept across her. That urgency prevented her from seeking a quieter spot outside town. The hole in time was undoubtedly going to be spectacular, if what she'd seen on a back road in Florida were anything to judge by. There were still far too many people up and about for her to feel comfortable about opening the portal here. But when the column of ash and gas belching out of Vesuvius began to collapse, it would race down the slopes as a fiery avalanche and separate into two equally lethal phases.
Not as though there would be witnesses to the second phase. No one living in Herculaneum would need to worry about the slow-moving pyroclastic flow of molten pumice and mud which would eventually engulf the city and bury it beneath sixty feet of solid rock. They'd be long dead from the fiery surge of two-hundred-degree gas, ash, and pumice which would rip through the city at speeds of anywhere from one hundred sixty to four hundred eighty miles per hour.
Even at its slowest speed, the surge that killed Herculaneum would reach them in a fraction more than four minutes after it blasted its way clear of Vesuvius' crater.
And I need fifteen minutes... .
Sibyl stepped out of her shelter and waded cautiously into the wild breakers. She cast a final look at the virulent red glow of Vesuvius' eye—
The shape of the eruption cloud had changed. Its color shifted wildly, shot through with whitish-yellow masses, punctuated by tornado shapes and flaring sheets of withering orange and red.
"Forgive me, Charlie."
She mashed the recall button.
Nothing happened.
Not that she was certain what to expect.
The glow from the LED display remained unchanged. Uneasily she looked again toward Vesuvius, then back at the display screen. Then blinked. And held her breath.
The numbers were changing.
Sibyl watched, transfixed. What, exactly, did those numbers mean? Absently, she rubbed the hairs on her arm, then paused to frown. Every hair stood erect, like winter-dry fur on a cat, shedding static electric sparks every time it's petted.
The air smelled like lightning.
Deeply uneasy, Sibyl backed farther into the arched boat chamber. From that refuge she watched in silent awe as a time storm brewed above the narrow beach at Herculaneum. Seemingly nothing more untoward than an extension of the black hell boiling out of the volcano, thick black clouds formed out of nowhere and clustered low above the furious sea. Lightning flashed from cloud to cloud.
The lightning was pink.
Despite possible dangers, Sibyl felt herself drawn out into the open to watch the display. She stood her ground against the sea and stared. Massive, cloud-splitting bolts stabbed from the time storm into the roaring volcanic eruption. The air began to tremble as violently as the ground.
A cracking bolt blasted into wave-churned sand not five feet from Sibyl. She jumped backwards even before she screamed. Slowly, through the numbing aftershock of thunder, it occurred to Sibyl that in order to get through the time doorway, she would have to run a gauntlet of that lightning. Sibyl slid to her haunches in the boat shelter. Oh, God, I have to go through that... .
Lingering terror of thunderstorms, of lightning and murderous wind, held her immobile inside the boat chamber. She hunched her shoulders and watched, shell-shocked, as the night grew wilder. Memory—traitorous and cruel—returned her to the black night of her childhood when the tornado had ripped through their house, spewing lightning and death in its path.
Screams from very close by roused her from near-stupor. Vesuvius... New terror, more shockingly immediate, drove her to her feet. Sibyl stumbled out onto the beach, cringing from the lightning which now crashed all around.
Vesuvius had gone mad.
Fire crawled down its slopes. Great, surging waves of flame blasted upward and outward, not in a ground-hugging lava flow, but in a boiling, seething mass a half-mile high. She was unable to tear her gaze from it. It split into distinct waves as lighter elements separated from heavier components, gas from ash, ash from pumice, pumice from the ground-hugging pyroclastic flow...
All of it spilled down the mountainside. The first rolling wave blasted halfway down. Then the leading edge dissipated on the wind. But the weight and mass of the next surge was right behind it. Sibyl caught her breath in a sob that hurt her whole body. The second wave roared closer still, headed on a crash course for Herculaneum.
First surge at midnight, fourth an hour after that—it'll kill Pompeii—fifth surge 7:00 a.m., last surge 8:30, and it'll blast all the way to Misenum... .
Sibyl wouldn't have to worry about surges two through seven. Number one was going to kill her. Terror-stricken people fled right at her. The first refugees to reach her were the members of a wealthy family. They carried lanterns which swung insanely as they ran. The woman screamed, demanded to be taken away. Children cried or—worse—clung to their parents' hands and clothes, wrapped in terror too deep for expression. More refugees arrived. Some led hard-to-manage horses. People spread out along the seawall, sobbing frantically for boats.
Someone actually managed to launch one. A riot ensued as people swamped it, trying to get aboard.
Four minutes. How much time's gone? How much is left? WHERE'S THE DAMNED TIME PORTAL?
A heavy man slammed into, then past her. Sibyl stumbled badly. Curses scalded her ears. No boat in the chamber. More people crowded onto the beach. Lightning blazed. White faces lit with a hellish pink glow. The panicked crowd shoved into the boat chamber. Sibyl was pressed toward the rear by a throng that would soon be too thick to push past.
Oh, shit... .
Sibyl kicked and shoved. When people refused to give ground and let her past, she stabbed blindly with her dirk. Cries of pain sickened her. "Let me out! Let me through!"
Sibyl shoved until she stumbled onto open beach again. The sea sucked back from the seawall, crashed forward. She staggered into the wall, half dazed by the weight of water. How many minutes had passed? She glanced up at the mountain—and froze.
The surge was enormous. It was halfway to the city already. She whirled around to stare wildly, but the blinding white doorway in time was nowhere to be seen. For one agonizing moment, Sibyl was paralyzed by fear more intense than anything she had ever felt.
Then, surrounded by mad lightning and screaming people, an eerie calm settled over her. Panic-stricken cries, crashing thunder, the roar of the volcanic surge... All of it faded into near silence. It was hopeless. The blast alone would knock her off her feet, scour the skin from her body with blistering heat. But it was all she could do. And it beat ru
Sibyl began to hyperventilate.
Who knew? Maybe she could hold her breath long enough to crawl through and spend a year or so in a burn unit somewhere, growing new skin... .
Then, shockingly, hands closed around her throat. She moved blindly, slashed out at her attacker. Too tall for a Roman... Lightning blazed. She found herself staring into Tony Bartlett's mad eyes. His face was waxy white, his features contorted. He was shouting at her, but she couldn't hear him. Sibyl broke his hold and windmilled backwards. She sucked down air. He lunged again. Sibyl stumbled away and was knocked down by a crashing wave.