by Barry Lyga
“How?”
Kyle thought for a minute. “How about I get your Walkman back?”
Danny suddenly perked up, all thoughts of escaping Bouring forgotten. “You could do that?”
Maybe. “Definitely.”
“Wow!”
“But I’m also going to need some more help from you.”
“If you can get my Walkman back, I’ll do anything you want!”
“I need to find a way to get on the Internet.”
“What’s an Internet?”
Kyle sighed. Not this again. Was the entire town of Bouring stuck in the Stone Age?
“Not ‘an’ Internet — the Internet. It’s a … it’s a big network of computers, all connected together.”
Danny frowned. “Why would anyone connect a bunch of computers together?”
“Mostly for stupid things like Twitter and YouTube, but trust me — there are some good reasons. I need to get to a computer. At this point, any computer will do.”
Danny thought for a moment. “They have a computer at school. I think they use it for attendance.”
“That’ll do.”
“But it’s Saturday. School’s closed.”
Shrugging, Kyle said, “Maybe we’ll get lucky and someone left a door unlocked.” More likely, I’ll have to kick a door in, but that’s okay. It’s for science. “I get back your Walkman and you show me where the computer is.”
Grinning, Danny stuck out his hand. “Deal.”
After a moment, Kyle shook his father’s hand. “Deal.”
Kyle clambered down from the tree house after Danny gave the all clear. His parents were busy inside, not paying attention to the backyard and the time traveler living in the tree house.
“So,” Kyle said, “tell me about the Monroes.” He was still surprised that Sheriff Monroe was such a hellion in this era … and that he had a brother. Kyle had never heard the sheriff refer to a brother, and he’d spent an unfortunate amount of time with the sheriff over the years. (Monroe just didn’t understand the Prankster Manifesto. Or Kyle. Or much of anything, really.)
“Max and Sammy Monroe. They’re bullies. Always playing pranks and practical jokes.”
Playing pranks and practical jokes didn’t always make someone a bully, Kyle wanted to retort. After all, he was a master of such things, but he never did it to hurt people — just to educate them. To make them more aware of themselves:
In any event, it sounded like Sheriff Monroe and his brother weren’t adherents to the Prankster Manifesto. They just sounded like jerks. Which totally made sense, since the sheriff was still a jerk in Kyle’s own time.
“And their father doesn’t do anything to stop them, even though he’s the sheriff,” Danny went on. “He just says, ‘Boys will be boys’ or ‘They don’t mean anything by it.’ Man, I hate that guy!” Danny clenched his fists.
The sheriff’s father was the sheriff? That jibed; Kyle could remember being hauled into Monroe’s office one time. There had been a framed photograph of Sheriff Monroe with an old guy also decked out like a sheriff. That must have been Monroe and his dad.
What would turn a punk like Max Monroe into a cop? And maybe more important — how pathetic was it to do the exact same thing as your dad, in the exact same town? Kyle would die of embarrassment if, as an adult, he ended up still living in Bouring, doing the same job as his own father. Ugh.
“So, why did they steal your stuff?” Kyle asked. “What kind of prank is that?”
“I guess it isn’t a prank; it’s just them messing with me. They know no one will stand up to them because of their father, so they get away with everything.”
“Where do they live?”
“Over on Anavis Street.”
“Then we go to Anavis Street and we get back your Walkingman.”
“It’s just Walkman,” Danny corrected him. “I don’t think they would take it home. They’re not that stupid — that would be bringing evidence into their own house and the sheriff might eventually catch on.”
“Then where?”
“There’s been rumors that they have a hideaway out near where the new school’s being built….”
Kyle thought. That made sense. The first time he’d encountered the Monroe brothers, they’d been running in that direction.
“Okay, I think I know what to do,” Kyle said, “but I’m gonna need to cover my face. Do you have a mask or anything?”
Danny tapped his foot and stared at the clouds for a moment. “Yeah! I have an old ski mask!” he said triumphantly, then ran off to get it.
While Danny was inside, Kyle risked turning on Erasmus for a moment.
“Kyle!” Erasmus sounded both relieved and worried at the same time. “Are we back in the … Oh. No. I guess not.”
“We’re still in 1987,” Kyle told him. “And you’re never going to believe this….” He quickly filled Erasmus in on what had happened in the past day.
“Are you crazy?” Erasmus sounded like he’d blown a circuit. “You can’t hang out with your own father! You could cause all kinds of time paradoxes and —”
“Chill out, Erasmus. Nothing bad is going to happen. I’m just going to help him get his Walkman back.”
“You can’t —”
“And in exchange,” Kyle went on, “he’s going to help us get on the Internet so we can find what we need to fix the chronovessel.”
“Internet? Kyle, there is no Internet in 1987! Not really. It’s more like —”
Kyle heard the door open and switched Erasmus off quickly, slipping him back into his pocket. But not before noticing the battery meter on Erasmus’s screen.
It was close to the one-quarter mark. Kyle would have to —
“Here’s a mask!” Danny shouted as he jogged over from the front door.
“Not so loud!” Kyle complained. He took the mask and tucked it into his back pocket. “All right, let’s go find this hideout of theirs.”
Kyle allowed Danny to lead the way to the school construction zone. By daylight, Bouring appeared even stranger to him — the Bouring Bank and Trust clock was the same as in his own time, but the front of the building was shingled, not clad in flagstone. The Bouring Record building was bigger, cleaner, more impressive than in Kyle’s own time. The comic book store on North Wheeler Street wasn’t there at all; instead there was a grubby little place called MARK’S MOD MUSIK MANIA! that advertised CASSETTES AND RECORDS. OUR INVENTORY IS OK! a sign announced. A smaller sign revealed NOW CARRYING COMPACT DISCS!
And from the west side of town, the constant and ever-present black belch of raw smoke from the coal mine, dirtying the sky.
Kyle thought of these things and he thought of Erasmus, his battery power slowly leeching away. Even when shut down, the battery would drain a little bit; that was just how it worked — a trickle-charge kept Erasmus’s memory from flushing, kept his clock running. If Kyle couldn’t cobble together a charging cable soon, Erasmus would be useless.
Worse than useless … What if losing all power like that somehow damaged Erasmus? Would Kyle ever be able to resurrect him?
“How much farther?” he asked Danny.
“Not far, Dore,” Danny said. They stopped for a moment in front of the sign announcing the construction of the new school. Kyle couldn’t help thinking of his chronovessel, buried not far away. He had to get back to the present.
“Let’s hurry up,” he told his father.
“It’s just over this hill….”
They crested a hill that — in Kyle’s time — had been bulldozed flat and looked down on what would some day be a part of the Bouring Middle School parking lot. There was an indentation in the ground a ways off, as if a giant had kicked with the point of his boot.
Carson Cave! Of course! In his own time, the cave had been closed off. It was originally a smallish sort of hole in the landscape, but the Bouring Coal Mining Co. had gone in there and enlarged it, looking for more coal. When they came up bust, they left it as is and — according to
Kyle’s dad — kids used to run off in there all the time. But then — a few years ago in Kyle’s personal timeline — a kid hiding in there got hurt and couldn’t get out. They found him a few days later, clinging to life, and the parents of Bouring went crazy. Since Bouring Mining had been out of business for years, there was no one to sue. Instead, the town parents held a bake sale to raise the funds to dynamite the cave mouth shut, and it had been that way for most of Kyle’s memory.
But in 1987, it was a perfect hideaway for two teen punks.
At the entrance to the cave, Kyle pulled on the old ski mask. It smelled faintly of mothballs and there was a tear through which a shock of his black hair poked, but it covered his face and that was all that mattered. “You stay out here,” Kyle told Danny. He figured he might need to use his powers at some point and he couldn’t afford to have his father see that. “Keep an eye out in case anyone shows up.”
“What do I do if someone does show up?”
Kyle had been hoping Danny wouldn’t ask that. “Go get the sheriff.”
“But the sheriff won’t —”
“Just do it, okay?”
“All right,” Danny said doubtfully. He took up a position near the mouth of Carson Cave as Kyle entered.
It was dark inside, but fortunately, with the sunlight from outside, Kyle could see it was a pretty straight shot for most of the way. As the light dimmed, he stretched out his arms and brushed the sides of the tunnel, following the passage’s gentle slopes and turns.
Just when he despaired of ever seeing or finding anything, a slight glimmer of light ahead ramped up his hopes. He crept along quietly, closing in on the light, and positioned himself behind an outcropping.
There before him, in a wide, open space lit by a couple of camping lanterns, were the Monroe brothers.
From the looks of the space, the Monroes had been using this as a hideaway for a while. There were piles of candy wrappers, a couple of pizza boxes, and several empty bottles scattered around. There were three big cardboard boxes, and the Monroes themselves sat on what looked like old sofa cushions. Sammy wore an old-fashioned pair of headphones attached to a chunky black box on his belt.
Danny’s Walkman!
“Toss me the Billy Joel cassette,” Sammy said in the tone of someone used to being obeyed.
“It’s my turn,” Max said, sounding nothing at all like the sheriff Kyle knew. “You said we each get an hour at a time.”
“Stop being such a girl,” Sammy said. “I just want to listen to one song and then you can have it.”
Max rummaged in one of the boxes and tossed something to Sammy, who opened the Walkman, took out the tape inside, and snapped the new one in.
“What if Camden goes to Dad?” Max asked. “He said if we get in trouble again we’re going to military school this time.”
“God, Maxie! You’re such a baby. Don’t worry about Dad.” He adjusted the headphones and leaned back, eyes closed, tapping one foot in time to the music only he could hear.
“Don’t call me Maxie. I hate that. And you —”
Sammy didn’t even talk — he just held up a hand to silence his brother.
Kyle had seen enough. He made the sure his mask was on straight. He was going to zip over there and grab the Walkman before they could move. Then he’d be out of the cave at top speed. By the time the Monroes realized what had happened, Kyle and Danny would be halfway home.
But just before he stood up, he heard a sound — rocks sliding against each other. Leaning around the other side of the rock outcropping, Kyle saw stones and gravel tumbling down an incline on the other side of the cavern.
And then a pair of hiking boots came into view as a man carefully picked his way down the tricky incline.
There must be another way into Carson Cave!
The Monroes stood up as the man approached them. Kyle didn’t recognize him — he was older, maybe in his forties, with salt-and-pepper hair and a broad, grim face. Thick through the chest and shoulders. A guy you didn’t want to mess with.
Not that Kyle was afraid of him, of course.
“Hey, there,” Sammy said, pulling the headphones down around his neck.
“Save it,” the newcomer snapped. “Do you have it?”
Sammy snorted. “What do you think?”
“I think I paid you a lot of money for —”
“We have it,” Max said quickly, and lifted up one of the cardboard boxes. Kyle couldn’t see what was under it from his vantage point.
“Piece of cake,” Sammy said. “They leave it in Dad’s office with no one guarding it. We’ve been sneaking in there since we were kids.”
“It’s heavy,” Max cautioned. “We had to roll it out on a skateboard.”
“Thanks for your concern,” the man said with absolutely no sincerity. He stooped down, but Sammy rushed over to him.
“Wait a minute, man! You still owe us the second half.”
The man grinned. He reached into his pocket and handed over an envelope. “Go ahead and count it, kid. It’s all there.”
Sammy shoved the envelope at Max. “Count it, Maxie.”
“Don’t call me —”
“Count it!”
For a moment, Sam and the man stared at each other in near silence, the only sound the slight, hushed shuffle of bills. “It’s all here,” Max said after a long moment.
“Great.” Sam stuck out a hand. “Pleasure doin’ business with you, Mr. Lundergaard.”
Lundergaard? Kyle’s head spun. Lundergaard? As in Lundergaard Research, the company he and the Mad Mask had attacked just before Ultitron was activated? The top secret think tank that built superpowerful weapons and stuff for the military? That Lundergaard? Was it the same guy?
He sifted through the shredded remains of Wikipedia in his mind, picking up a few stray bits here and there. Lundergaard Research had been founded by Walter Lundergaard in the 1980s. It started as a small research firm but quickly catapulted to the top ranks of think tanks and laboratories in the country — the world — thanks to some amazing, unprecedented innovations by its founder. That was all Kyle had at the moment. But Erasmus still had Wikipedia memorized; he would know more, once Kyle switched him back on.
Was this man Walter Lundergaard? And what was he doing hanging out in Carson Cave with the Monroe brothers? And what was he buying from them —
Just then, Lundergaard leaned down, grunted, then stood up. He had something balanced on his shoulder.
It took a moment for Kyle to recognize it.
It was a time capsule.
Mairi’s breath whooshed out of her as she plummeted to what would be a messy death, splattered all over the alley next door to the furniture store. She closed her eyes tight, praying that she actually had heard his voice, that she hadn’t been imagining things, that it hadn’t just been her terrified brain giving her ears something to cling to as she stared her own death in the face.
How long would it take to hit the ground? She’d already been falling for a couple of seconds now and if Mighty Mike was flying by, he should have caught her by —
THUMP!
Mairi’s eyes flew open at the sudden impact. She recognized immediately the slim, strong arms around her and reflexively settled against Mighty Mike’s chest so that he wouldn’t drop her.
“Are you KO’d?”
“I’m okay,” she told him, though she had been pretty close to being KO’d, too.
“We have to hurry,” Mike said, a note of panic in his voice.
Mairi opened her eyes. Mike wasn’t flying — he was only five or six feet above the ground, hovering there. Above, the zombies were clustered at the parapet, gazing down, moaning and groaning. Below, a new cluster of them formed.
“What’s going on?” she asked. “What are they doing?”
“I don’t know.” He shifted her. “I can’t carry you much longer, though.”
What? Mike was superstrong. He had lifted Ultitron, and that robot had been ten stories tall! Carryin
g Mairi was nothing to him.
Before she could say anything, Mike took off … running. Instead of flying away or soaring higher, he actually ran on the air, running at a decent clip, but not nearly as fast as he usually flew.
“What are you doing? Fly away!” She peered over his shoulder and down. “They’re following us. Some of them are actually keeping up!”
“Going as fast as I can.” Mike huffed and puffed with exertion as he ran, shifting Mairi’s weight to make it a little easier.
“What’s wrong with you? What’s going on?”
“I don’t know,” Mike said in a tone of voice that told her to please be quiet because he was having trouble talking while running. Mairi shut up and let him run, her eyes peeled for the zombies, who now — whew! — were starting to fall behind.
Mike put on a burst of speed and managed to put more distance between them and the zombies. But Mairi noticed that he was beginning to lose altitude, sinking closer to the ground.
Just then, something caught her attention out of the corner of her eye — a flashing light, a yellow burst that erupted from seemingly nowhere and then faded away. She craned her neck, but it was gone in an instant….
And then it was back, this time lasting longer.
It was …
It faded again. Then two more quick bursts of light followed, from the place she knew so well.
“The lighthouse!” she cried, pointing. “Can you make it?”
Mike groaned but nodded, angling so that they headed toward the lighthouse, which was more than a mile away. More irregular flashes of light emanated from the top of the lighthouse. Some were long, some short, but they kept coming. Was someone up there? Someone signaling? And were they signaling so they could help … or that they needed help?
Either way, it didn’t matter. The Lantern Room at the top of the lighthouse, Mairi knew, had a heavy trapdoor and a good lock. Her mother had often admonished her against going up into the Lantern Room alone because the trapdoor had a tendency to swing shut and stick.
As best she could tell, Sheriff Monroe had been wrong: The lighthouse was the safest place in Bouring right now.
They gained the lighthouse and craned their necks to look up the endless expanse of white brick. The lighthouse had never seemed taller.