Trapped In The Badlands

By Rob Smythe

Trapped In The Badlands is the second of the three part series The Badlands Saga, an adventure story for middle grade readers. Laura, 14, and her brother Mike, 12, have chosen to stay 12,000 years in the past to defend a Stone Age family against two evil archaeologists who are trying to retrieve a specimen. The archaeologists force the kids to lead them to the family's cave. When the family's teenage boy is captured, and Mike is taken hostage, Laura must rescue them and make certain that the archaeologists are no longer a threat.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Rob Smythe
• Release date: Apr 26, 2011
• ISBN: 9780986967610

Rob Smythe

Rob is a science teacher in Ontario, Canada. His specialties are physics and astronomy. He has written textbooks for those subjects, as well as for computer science. He has written for magazines, and his short stories have placed favorably in contests hosted by Writer's Digest and the Hawaii Writers Conference.Rob loves music, especially musical theater, and has directed or acted in over a dozen stage productions. He is a private pilot (Cessna 150, 172), a scuba diver, and a fishing enthusiast. He plays hockey, baseball, and curling.Favorite writing spots: winter--his home in Burlington, Ontario; summer--his cottage (cabin) in Haliburton, Ontario.

Book preview

The Badlands Saga

An adventure story for Middle Grade Readers

by

Rob Smythe

Book 1: Lost In The Badlands

Book 2: Trapped In The Badlands

Book 3: Home In The Badlands

Book 2

Trapped In The Badlands

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2011 Rob Smythe

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Chapter 1

Mike opened his eyes a sliver. Whipped by the wind, tendrils of green mist lashed his shoulders, trying to drag him away. Swirling dust, dirt, and twigs stung his cheeks and stuffed his nose and ears. He squeezed his eyes shut once more and huddled his head against the tree trunk.

He could feel his sister shaking. He and Laura were seated on the ground on opposite sides of a tree. Laura had her arms hooked around the tree, with her right clutching the pink plaster cast that enveloped her left arm from shoulder to wrist. Mike's arms were wrapped around the tree and Laura both, with his hands clasped tightly around her back. No way was he going to let go. No way.

The tree trunk whipped back and forth in the storm. With his ear up against the bark, Mike could hear cracks as branches gave in to the gale. If it doesn't come up at the roots, he thought, the two of them would be okay. He wondered how long the time-storm would last.

As fast as it began, the storm stopped. The roar of the wind, the lightning, and the thunder ceased. Mike glanced up at the crown of the tree, which had lost many of its leaves. On the underside of the giant time-cloud, a dark hole inhaled the last wisps debris before closing.

If Mike's theory was correct, the material sucked up by the cloud would end up somewhere near his home at the edge of the Badlands in South Dakota. The debris would have travelled far.

Not in distance, though.

But in time.

In one instant, everything engulfed by the cloud would be spit out twelve thousand years later.

Only a week ago, he and Laura had been walking in the Badlands, the dry, barren canyon that ran behind their house. A monster cloud had enveloped them, lifting them off the ground and depositing them in a wooded valley beside a stream. It had taken them a while to figure out what had happened, but Mike had been able to determine that the cloud had not moved them in location, but in time. They were still in the same valley, before the region's climate had become hot and dry.

It was hard to believe…fantastic, really. But the evidence was indisputable. They were twelve thousand years in the past, when the valley was lush and wet, filled with flowers, trees, birds, and animals.

And people. Cave people.

We've got to get going, Laura said, untangling herself from the tree. We've got to get to Umi and his family before those hunters find them."

Mike pushed himself to his feet and brushed the dirt from his clothes and hair. Now I really need a shower, he said. First all those bird poops and now this dust. He turned and spit a load of grit into the bushes. I don't understand how that time-cloud works. Does it just drop down at certain places? I mean, it didn't keep going down the valley. It just came this far and backed up. It's like something other than the wind moves it around.

I don't know, Laura said. She lowered her head and shook her dangling blond hair. Let's go. You got your pack?

Yup. Mike wriggled his shoulders to get the pack's straps in a comfortable position."

And your Flexi?

Mike slapped his pocket, and his eyes widened. It's not here.

Maybe it's in your pack.

No. I didn't put it there. I used it when … He stopped to think. I must have left it on that little hill when we ran for cover.

Laura rolled her eyes. Way to go, goofball. So a thousand passenger pigeons flew directly over it? It's not going to be the same color anymore.

Jeez!

And that's if it didn't get blown away by the wind.

Mike took off at a run. He left the trees that lined the ridge above the valley and jogged onto the flat grassland toward the mound where he had last used the computer.

This is great, just great, Mike said, as he gained the crest of the hill only to find it empty. The grasses were trampled down. Umi had been prancing about, throwing his spear up into the thousands of birds. Mike looked over at the tree where the boy had left the carcasses. He'd run off in such a hurry, trying to beat some hunters back to his family's cave, that he'd left them in the crook of a tree.

Laura caught up to him.

It's not here, he said.

She stood, with her right hand on her hip, turning in a circle. Stop and think, she said. We ran to those trees over there, then worked our way down to where we hid from those men.

Maybe Umi has it.

No, he brought those dead birds over to us and stuck them in the tree. He was holding the spear and the birds. Nothing else.

If the wind took it… Mike began.

It could be anywhere, Laura finished. The wind was going in all sorts of different directions.

Mike sighed. We'll just have to start looking.

We don't have time!

"I know, but we can't lose the Flexi. Mom'll kill me.

We have to warn Umi's family. We can come back to look for it later.

Are you kidding? We're a couple of hours from the cave. What if it rains?

Laura gestured to the open sky. Doesn't look like it. The only cloud is over there, the time-cloud.

Mike spun about, and his heart skipped a beat. In the distance, well up at the north end of the Badlands, the billowing white cloud with the grey-green bottom floated peacefully above the trees. The cloud was their portal between his time and the past, the doorway to home.

And the cloud provided the communication between the present and the past. Aiming the Flexi at the cloud gave him internet, GPS, and email.

But he had no communication without the computer.

Just give me a minute to look. You go down that side. I'll try over here.

He began to walk, bent over at the waist, pushing the knee-high grasses apart with his fingers. He tried to remember if he'd folded it up. If so, it could be down in the grass, hidden, and he'd walk right past it. If he left it open, well, jeez, the wind could have blown it miles away.

I don't see it anywhere, Laura called from the other side of the hill.

Me neither, he shouted back. He straightened, groaning, as his lower back muscles signaled their irritation. The backpack was heavy enough, but bending over for so long was too much.

Laura approached, her face anxious. If those men beat us to the cave, they might shoot somebody.

We're not going to get there before Umi.

Of course not. He knows the shortcuts. But what if he didn't understand just how dangerous shotguns were?

Unable to speak the boy's language, Mike and his sister had performed some skits, trying to show Umi that guns can kill from a distance.

Hey you! You kids!

They spun around. A booming voice came from the south, down near the line of trees along the edge of the valley.

Laura pointed. There, near the gap in the trees where that stream drops into the valley. The two men.

Mike followed her finger. A couple of football fields away a tall man in a blue jacket and a shorter, stocky man in black stood under the trees. The short man was waving.

Behind them is the path we came up from the valley, Mike said. Turning to Laura, he saw her wave back. What are you doing? he asked, horrified.

We have to lure them away, Laura said. Come on. She pushed past him up the hill. At the top, she turned and waved again, before disappearing down the other side.

Mike stood for a moment, and glanced back at the men. The stocky guy was the one with the gun. Mike remembered how he had fired straight up into a huge flock of passenger pigeons, dropping a half-dozen birds with one blast. A few minutes earlier, a couple of shots even came close to where he, his sister, and Umi had been standing under the trees. Possibly they had mistaken Umi, dressed in his animal-hide cape, for a deer.

From his hiding spot in the bushes, Mike had listened to the men as they passed. They'd said something about finding the ancient man. After seeing the skull that Steve, Mike's mom's boyfriend archaeologist, had found, they had apparently followed Mike and Laura through the cloud's time portal. It was too bad Mike had used his computer to send a message through the cloud to Steve, and a picture of Umi. How was he to know that some creeps would want to capture his friend?

Laura's sharp, shrill whistle sounded from behind. Mike blinked, snapping out of his daydream. The men were coming toward him. He turned, and jogged over the hill out of sight.

Laura was ahead, pushing through the grass. Her right arm was swinging vigorously and her satchel bounced against her left hip. With her broken arm bent in front of her, she had a slightly tipped profile, but was motoring right along. Mike had to jog to catch up to her.

They're coming, he said, panting, as he came up behind her. Where are we going?

"I don't