“I’m adding an addendum to that rule,” I say, finally getting the door open. “If you can’t think your way out, or talk your way out, then you have to fight your way out. And if it’s Nazis, you can skip right to that one.”
I pull Piper to the wall where the time gate was mounted, but my heart immediately sinks. The machine gun has done its work here too. Several of the temporal field emitters are dangling by strands of wire, and the power cables to the portable power pack have been nicked and exposed by bullets. One bullet has even struck the power cells themselves. A gaping hole in one cell is leaking a viscous gel.
“Son of a b-”
“That’s another word he says not to say.”
I put my hands to my head.
“Can you fix it?” Piper asks.
“Definitely not.” I spin around and check the compartment for any other options. Think, Ben. Think. Whoever came through here had to have a plan. They wouldn’t have left this gate here and vulnerable if they still needed it. “There’s another way out,” I say.
“There is?”
“Definitely. We just need to find it.” I check the pistol in my hand. It’s a model I’ve seen before, a Luger, but I’ve never fired one. I fiddle with it and try to figure out the cocking mechanism. I manage to eject a bullet by accident. Piper picks it up for me.
She hands it back. “Who are you going to shoot?”
“Hopefully no one, but better to have it and not need it than the other way around. Come on. We need to find the other time travelers here. Someone has a plan and we don’t want to be left behind. Not here.”
Out in the hallway, the man is still prone on the floor. I opt to head the other direction toward the rear of the car. The sliding door to the next car opens easily enough. I try to ignore the smear of blood on the railing where someone must have previously been standing.
The car behind us seems to have gotten much of the same treatment ours has. Someone is shouting, however, and when I walk to the edge of the train and look to the rear, I spot several rifle barrels protruding from windows.
Not going that way.
I locate the safety lever on the Luger and set it before tucking the gun into the waistband of my jeans. “Stay right here for just a second,” I say. “I’m going to have a quick look up top.”
There is a ladder extending from the rear platform to the top of the car, and I gingerly put a foot on it. The rocking of the train gives me pause, but I shove the fear down as I get a grip on the rails. Falling off a train is probably the least of my worries right now.
I take each step slowly but finally reach the top rung. The cold wind whips my hair, and I have to squint as I look around. We’re near the back of the train. There are a few cars behind us, but the last is not a passenger car, it’s armed with what look to be anti-aircraft guns. A few remaining soldiers are struggling to get one aimed, but it seems they have only been designed to hit targets high overhead. The armored walls of the car limit the movement of the barrel. I turn and locate the attack helicopter. It’s wisely staying low to the ground, only having to deal with occasional pistol and rifle fire from a few windows of cars. That is minimal now, as the initial attack seems to have done its job well. The helicopter continues to strafe cars, but as we round a bend in the tracks, I notice one car hasn’t taken any damage.
It’s several cars up from us, midway down the train. There are multiple men in Nazi uniforms atop it and dangling from the sides. But far from being in danger, it seems the helicopter is protecting them. The men are working at speed, attempting to attach some sort of contraption to the frame of the train. They’ve fixed a crate of power cells to the roof and have wires running to all four corners. What the hell are they up to?
I climb back down the ladder to Piper.
“Are we screwed?” Piper asks.
I put a hand on her shoulder. “Not just yet. I think I found the other time travelers. We just need to get up there.” I pull the door of the train car back open.
“Will they be happy to see us?”
“I’m guessing not.”
We work our way back through the hallway. I notice with some concern that the officer I kicked in the face is no longer there.
I pause and remove the Luger from my waistband, then flip off the safety.
Piper glides along behind me. “What if they kick us off the train? Are we going to have to live in Germany?”
“Shhh.” I put my finger to my lips. “Let’s not give them a chance.”
The other officer we met earlier has not moved and won’t be moving again. I block the view of the doorway as best I can as we pass. Piper keeps her eyes forward. There are a few vague noises from some other compartments, but I lack the courage to open them. I’m not excited about anything I would find.
When we reach the forward door, the guard is gone. I peek out the window and scan the car ahead of us. The door to the next car has been left partly open. I gently open ours and admit the rushing noise and wind.
“Stay behind me, okay?” I say.
Piper grabs onto the back of my jacket.
There is a little walkway made for navigating the junction. We teeter across it until we have reached the rear platform of the next car. The half-open doorway reveals broken glass on the floor and a few spent shell casings. Someone in here has a gun.
I push the door open a little farther to squeeze through and take a step inside. My shoe crunches glass. A pop pop pop erupts from the corridor and three bullets strike the wood paneling to my left, showering me with tiny splinters.
“Shit. Back up.” I push Piper back out the door to the platform and fire a couple of shots blindly down the hallway just to let whoever’s firing know that I have a gun too.
I shrink behind the metal wall outside the doorway and block Piper into the corner. Her back is to the wind, and some of her hair has come undone from her braid and is flying around her head.
“Why are they shooting at us?” She yells over the noise of the wheels.
“I think they’re probably shooting at everybody,” I say. “I wouldn’t take it personally.”
“There’s a man out there.” Piper points along the outside of the train. We’re making a bend to the right, making that side of the train more visible ahead. I lean into the wind to see what she’s looking at. She’s noticed the men two cars up rigging the cables to the sides of the train. Blue sparks of electricity have begun flashing from the corners of the car. I now recognize the contraption they are attaching.
“That looks like a portable gravitizer. I think they may be trying to gravitize that entire train car! They must have rigged another time gate somewhere on this track.”
“Like maybe that bridge?” Piper points farther down the track. Perhaps a mile and a half away, an old stone bridge spans the tracks. I can’t make out much from this distance, but when I zoom in with my sunglasses, I spot figures manning the bridge. They appear to be German soldiers, but when I scan beneath the bridge I spot one of the electric dirt bikes stashed in the bushes.
“Shit,” I mutter. “That’s definitely the gate. We need to move.”
The full danger of the situation begins to dawn on me. They are only gravitizing one car. That’s all that’s going to make the transition through the gate. I don’t like imagining what will happen to this train when one of its cars suddenly goes missing while moving. But even if the train doesn’t immediately derail and kill us, if we don’t make it through the gate before they shut it down, we’ll be stuck in Nazi Germany for the duration of the war. Neither option sounds good. But there are two cars of angry Nazis between us and the soon-to-be-gravitized passenger car. And we’re running out of time.
I poke my head toward the doorway of the car in front of me. I toss a piece of broken glass into the corridor. The action is immediately met with frantic gunfire.
“That decides that,” I say. “We’re going to have to go over.”
Piper is watching the bridge drawing nearer. “I don�
�t like this.”
She squeezes close to me as a roaring blast of air passes over. The Apache gunship swoops overhead and races across the fields beyond. It makes a tight, banking turn and comes back around to rain more fire on the rear of the train. The sound of the chain gun makes me cringe.
“Come on! We gotta run for it.” I climb up the ladder a little, then wait for Piper to follow. “Just hold on tightly. Hands on the sides so you never have to let go completely. You can do it.” Part of me feels like I’m encouraging myself. This plan is crazy.
When I reach the roof of the train, I don’t see anyone else on top. The men who had affixed the gravitizer to the train car have climbed down. I scramble onto the roof, then turn around and watch for the gunship. The pilot definitely sees me. The blades dip, and the helicopter races forward from its position at the rear of the train. It banks to the side and slides alongside the train, keeping its gun barrels aimed at the cars.
Shit.
“Keep your head down!” I shout to Piper as she reaches the top of the ladder.
When it reaches my position, the helicopter hovers while keeping pace with the train. I have a clear view of a woman in a flight helmet in the pilot’s seat. She yanks on the collective and climbs, bringing the gun barrel up to the height of the roof. I stand and stare at her. Ignoring my shouts, Piper climbs up next to me and takes my hand.
The woman keeps the chain gun aimed at us for another long second, then the nose lifts and she falls away, banking the aircraft back toward the rear of the train.
“I think we just got very lucky,” I shout to Piper.
She holds a hand up and points past me. “They’re doing it!”
I spin around to find that the train car two ahead of ours is glowing with an electric blue light. The roof crackles with static and electricity arcs along the ladder, even leaping the gaps between rungs and flashing brightly as the energy courses throughout the train car. Beyond the glowing car, the stone bridge is rapidly approaching.
“Come on! We’ve got to hurry!” I grab Piper’s hand, and we race along the top of the train, running as fast as we dare across the curved and rocking rooftop. We reach the first gap and are confronted with the divide between cars. Fortunately the gap is narrow and is easily crossed. I step across the divide but am immediately startled by gunfire. Several holes appear in the roof in front of me, and I stumble backward, falling over and nearly plummeting into the gap between train cars as several more shots pierce the roof. I roll over and leap back to the car I just came from where Piper is cowering in fear.
“Good God!” I collapse to the roof next to her and check my lower body for damage. My heart is hammering but I don’t seem to have been hit.
“We can’t cross that!” Piper yells.
The front of the train is almost to the bridge. We’ve reached the last straight stretch of track and are barreling right for it. The men on the bridge have scrambled to the ground and activated the time gate. The space beneath the span of the bridge lights up with the familiar swirling colors of the temporal field.
Even if the engineer braked completely, the train would never stop in time. Something tells me that whoever was at the controls is either dead or has been otherwise convinced to abandon his post.
“We have to get across. There’s no other way!” I help Piper to her feet. I pull the Luger from my waistband. “I have a few shots left. I’m going to cover you. When I start shooting into the car, you run like hell, okay?”
“What about you?” Piper screams back over the noise of the wind.
“Don’t worry about me. You just run. And don’t look back till you’re through that gate! We have to do it now. Get ready!”
Piper stares into my face with wide eyes, but to her credit, she nods and turns toward the approaching bridge. The front of the train has already passed beneath the span. The cars behind it are plummeting through the light and onward down the tracks.
“Okay!” I aim the pistol at the area where the bullets exited the roof and squeeze off the first round. “Go!” I fire four more rounds in quick succession as Piper sprints forward. She’s quickly past the point where the bullets had come from and is now running the length of the car at full speed. I leap across the gap myself and continue shooting through the floor as I go. The gun goes silent with a sickening click as I empty the last of the magazine. Bullets rip through the roof behind me as I run. I toss the Luger aside and pump my arms as I sprint along the top of the train car. The front of the next train car has already reached the bridge. It’s being swallowed by the light. Piper is already across, waving her arms from the center of the car. Then she vanishes. I stretch my legs as far as they’ll go as I run. There are perhaps fifteen feet of gravitized car left on this side of the bridge.
Ten.
Five.
I shout as I reach the end of my car and leap.
Zero.
13
“I’ve failed to time travel far more times than I’ve succeeded. That’s the paradox of invention. Our greatest achievements are birthed like a phoenix from the ashes of disappointment.” -Journal of Doctor Harold Quickly, 1996.
The colors dazzle my eyes in a blinding swirl of brilliance, then I’m falling.
I hit the roof of the train car off balance, then tumble, rolling to a stop with arms splayed to arrest my momentum. The train car is braking too. The rails squeal and complain as the wheels slide along them, objecting to this sudden hulk of metal from another time.
We’ve made the jump.
Piper is on her hands and knees a few yards farther along the roof of the car. She’s looking around at our new environment.
Only it isn’t new at all. We’re back in the 1830s. The train car is braking along the solitary stretch of track we left behind in the pre-gold-rush time. Jorge and his band of Native American youths are waiting alongside the tracks. Some are on the dirt bikes, some are on foot, but all of them are armed. Jorge stares up at me as we roll by, then he grins.
We haven’t escaped after all.
I walk the few yards to Piper and help her to her feet. She’s searching my face. “What do we do now?”
“I don’t know. Let’s not make any rash decisions till we see what we’re up against here.”
A thundering rumble erupts from behind us as the Apache attack helicopter roars through the time gate. The gate has been widened for our arrival, but it’s still a tight squeeze. The nose of the aircraft is almost scraping the ground. The pilot manages to clear the tracks and then soars overhead, but the end of the tail rotor catches the frame of the time gate, sending a shower of sparks into the air. The young men in the clearing duck and cower for a moment, then several of them cheer as the helicopter circles the field. The pilot puts the aircraft into a hover and settles into a corner of the clearing.
Our train car finally comes to a stop several hundred yards from the time gate. The men on motorbikes zip along the ground to circle it as more men climb off the car. It seems several people have been clinging to the side of the train and now drop into the grass.
“Hot damn!” a man below me shouts. “Now that was some fun.” He immediately starts stripping out of his Nazi uniform and flings the jacket to the ground. He rips off his shirt to reveal he’s wearing a Hawaiian shirt underneath. He greets Jorge with a handshake that becomes a hug. They clap each other on the back.
The time gate is toast. A couple of men are observing the damage from the helicopter. The tail rotor has severed the conduit bridging the emitters. There’s no going back that way now.
“You got my gold for me yet, Ramirez?” One of the other men from the train heist walks over to Jorge for a handshake. He’s heavily tattooed on both forearms.
“All in the works, güey.” Jorge reaches into his pocket and tosses a rock to him.
The man turns the gold ore over in his hands. “Oh hell yeah.”
I guide Piper to the back of the train car and begin climbing down the ladder. Two native men with guns rush to t
he back of the train to cover me with their weapons. I recognize one of them as the guy I knocked off the motorbike. Once I reach the ground, I hold up my hands. “Good to see you again too.”
Piper hesitates at the top of the ladder as Jorge and his two companions walk over.
“Took yourself a little detour, eh, guero?”
“He got away?” the man in the Hawaiian shirt asks.
“Not far enough,” I reply.
“That’s okay,” Jorge says. “You saved me a week of feeding your ass while you were gone.” He pushes me against the train car, then glances up the ladder. “You come on down, chiquita. Daddy here needs to learn a lesson.”
“You’re not going to touch her,” I say.
“You think you’re giving the orders now?” His fist flies forward and strikes me in the gut. I groan from the impact and double over.
He keeps his fist raised and is about to hit me again when Piper shouts, “Leave him alone!”
Jorge looks up to find Piper at the top of the car peering down. He reaches behind his back and pulls out his long knife. “Get down now, little girl. Unless you want Daddy losing pieces.” He takes a few steps back so he can watch her. I can’t see Piper’s reaction, but a few seconds later her red Converse sneakers appear on the rungs of the ladder. She carefully makes her way down, casting occasional looks behind her and then to me.
I straighten up and try to look reassuring.
When she reaches the ground, Piper turns and backs up against me.
Jorge steps forward to reach for her, but I grab her first and shove her behind me, blocking his path. “No way.”
“You want to get cut, guero? ’Cause that’s how this is going to go.”
My blood is boiling.
“You’re pretty tough when you have an advantage,” I say. “If I had a chronometer right now you’d be in a world of hurt.”
“A chronometer?” Jorge cocks his head. “What, like one of these?” He reaches into his pocket, then holds up a stainless steel chronometer that looks vaguely familiar. “You go right ahead, bro.” He tosses it to me and I catch it. “You think that will save you?”
In Times Like These Boxed Set Page 171