So You Had to Build a Time Machine

by So You Had to Build a Time Machine (epub)

  Damn it.

  The scuttling began again. Oh, god. There’s more of them. The tarsus of the creature clicked behind him in the void. Dave stood frozen. Come on. Come on, man.

  A hiss, metallic and alien, spat behind him and to his left, pushing him forward. His legs began to move ever so slowly. He’d read somewhere that when confronted by a predator in the wild, a person needs to try and make themselves appear bigger than they are. The animal might not attack if the strategy went off right—especially if the person didn’t run—but these things weren’t mountain lions or wolves. Dave thought he could deal with those. They were mammals, he was a mammal. Solidarity. The roaches might as well have stepped from a spaceship. Every molecule in Dave’s body told him to run.

  I can run. I can run and open the elevator, and this will all be over. I’ll just run. He stuck the stick in the crook of his right arm and felt in his shirt for the card key. The card key he’d given it to Skid.

  “Shit,” he screamed.

  His voice echoed down the hall, and the roaches scattered. One must have tried to go down the stairs and slammed into the metal door. Dave stood, his breathing hard and slow. Keep moving, his mind said, but he didn’t know why. There were offices down this hallway he could hide in, but there was no way out of this hall except through the elevator, and he couldn’t open the door.

  Ten feet, ten yards, ten miles. It didn’t really matter in real terms how far he’d traveled, sliding his feet forward in this dark, suffocating world. The scuttling, and worse, the chittering, from behind him crept closer. The roaches were regrouping. He could almost feel their presence edging into his personal space—the clicking mandibles, the antenna reaching out to feel him, the huge, bulging eyes groping for a sight of him through the darkness, black acidic ichor dripping from their jagged mouths. He tapped his forehead with the palm of one hand to shake out the thoughts, but that never worked like it did in the cartoons. In his mind, the roaches crept at his heels, along the walls and on the ceiling above waiting for the first chitinous monster to pounce. Then they would all feast. On my flesh. I’m going to die right here like the other Dave. Right the hell here.

  He leaned to the right until his fingers brushed the wall, his heart trying to beat itself from his chest. Then his fingers hit it. A door. He gasped, and a hiss split the darkness from only feet away. “Ahhh,” Dave screamed and spun, gripping the broomstick like a baseball bat, swinging at waist level. The wood connected with something hard and snapped in two. A piece flew into the black void and clicked down the hallway. The thing hissed again, but the harsh alien noise was farther away now. Sweat soaked Dave’s shirt, a drop snaking down his butt crack.

  “There’s more where you found that, pal,” he shouted in a shaky voice.

  An electronic chime sounded from somewhere that was now behind him. A crack, tiny at first, slowly grew in the wall and spilled light into the hallway. The skittering resumed, faster this time, as a door slammed against the wall and the sound of the roaches disappeared.

  Dave ran forward and jumped into the elevator.

  3

  “What happened to you?” Skid cut at Cord’s pantleg as Brick knelt and dug through his explorer’s pack. A hiss blew from clenched teeth when she yanked at the material and it didn’t come free.

  “I fell,” he said, waving a hand toward the motel and diner parking lot. “My knee is screwed.”

  Skid cut the rest of the pantleg off, revealing a deep gash. The blood had already begun to clot but still oozed from the ragged, dirt-covered flesh studded with pieces of gravel.

  “Oh, it’s not bad,” she lied.

  “Here,” Brick said, dropping a small leather satchel on the grass at the side of the road. “Found it.”

  “A purse?” Cord wheezed, pinching off a wave of pain.

  The big man ignored him and took out a package bound with a leather strap. His fingers untied the knot with more deftness than digits that large should, and unfolded the package revealing a strip of white linen. He handed the bandage to Skid and pulled a small leather flask from the satchel.

  “What’s that?” she asked.

  “Whisky.”

  Cord grunted as he lay down in the grass, his head shaded by cornstalks. “You’ve been holding out on me. Hand it over.”

  The lid came off with a pop. “Hold his legs,” Brick said, eyes directed at Skid before he dumped the liquor over the wound.

  A scream that may have started somewhere near Cord’s testicles shot from him. Brick kept a hand on his chest and held him to the ground. The leather flask, capped, hit the grass and Brick used a short, thin blade from the medical kit to pick gravel from the wound.

  “Now Cord,” he said, taking the bandage from Skid. “This may sting a bit.”

  “Sting? A bit? Fuck you, Brick. Fuck you.”

  Two minutes later, Cord’s cleansed wound lay tightly bound in a bandage. Brick tied the ends together and lowered the leg gently onto the ground.

  “There,” he said, leaning back to inspect the dressing. “I’ve just cured you of up to 2d4 of piercing or slashing damage. You’re welcome.”

  Sweat dotted Cord’s forehead and began to show on his shirt. He tried to sit, but let out a strangled scream. Skid held his shoulder to keep him from falling backward.

  “I’ll make sure to give you a review on Yelp.” Cord adjusted himself and leaned back on his hands, a lie of a smile growing on his face. “I’ll be okay. You guys go ahead. I can’t walk much farther than back to the diner motel thingy anyway. You have to finish this.”

  Great. The ponytail that had started to come undone during the attack on Gorgo fluttered behind her as Skid shook her head. “This isn’t some macho war movie ‘go on without me’ garbage, is it?”

  “Pfft. From me? Not on your life. It’s just, I’m as helpful as Bud Light Dave right now,” he said, nodding toward the diner. “Besides, I have a date.”

  Skid stood and watched Carla jog toward them, a cigarette pinched between her lips. She didn’t wait for the waitress to reach them.

  “That’s just great,” Skid said and started the march back toward Peculiar.

  4

  The hand looked soft. It had to be; it hadn’t done much work in its owner’s life. Tommy held it out for Susan to grab. She didn’t.

  “Come on,” he said. “You don’t have much time.”

  Yes, I do. Delbert Sanderson’s screams at Tommy, her leg moving, her foot planting itself in her father’s chest, the push, the expression that sprang onto his face as the man who had stolen her family fell backward and broke his neck on the stairs. Those moments were all tattooed onto her memory. They would be there forever, and she welcomed them.

  “I killed him, Tommy. I have to face that. I want to.”

  “But—”

  Muffit leapt off the bed and stood in front of the door, growling. The people downstairs shouted when a knock came at the front door. Susan stood.

  “The police are here. I’m sorry. I have to go.”

  Muffit jumped at Susan’s legs, yelping as she made it to the door. She patted the dog’s head and gave Tommy a tight hug before pulling the door completely open.

  “Good-bye, Tommy,” she said, then stopped and stared, the other things she wanted to say—I love you, and take care of Mom—stuck in her throat. Then a shimmer rippled through the walls of the house, and a Miller Wave washed over her.

  The next moment, the wallpaper in the hall was the same, but dingier, yellowed. Susan stepped back into her room. Tommy was gone, George Michael and Andrew Ridgeley’s black and white faces were gone. Her bed was gone. A toddler’s plastic kitchen rested against the wall where her headboard had been, and boxes of games lined bookshelves. Mom’s hope chest, lid removed, was in the middle of the room overflowing with toys, some old, some new, all broken in.

  “Oh my god,” Susan said, covering her mouth. Then she realized Muffit
wasn’t there.

  “Who are you people?” came from downstairs, followed by the murmurs of the ghost group, who didn’t know what had happened to them.

  “Mom?” Susan stepped through the door and into the hallway. The body of her dead father no longer lay in a crumpled heap on the floor. Cecilia, wearing a pale blue terrycloth robe, stepped into view and stared up at her through pink cat-eye glasses, her silver hair tied into a bun. I’ve never seen anything so beautiful. “Mom? It’s okay, they’re with me.”

  “What are you doing here, Susan? Dinner’s not until six.” She frowned. “Is everything okay? Who are all these people? They’re not staying for dinner, are they? The roast is just big enough for you, Dan and the kids and Tommy.”

  Susan smiled. She couldn’t help it. She stood in her house talking with her mother, who had never seen a day after 8:50 p.m. on September 19, 1984. She started down the steps, wiping tears from her face with the back of her sleeve.

  “Everyone’s leaving, Mom. I can’t wait for supper. What else are we having?”

  5

  The Miller Wave crashed into Skid and Brick in Atomic Monster Crazyworld as they approached Peculiar, Missouri. The undulating bubble of quantumwhatsit from the nearby lab appeared stronger, angrier than it had before. It rolled upon them, and a Shark Week of thrashing engulfed the ruins of the tiny town, washing over the cornfields, leaving buildings, trees, stoplights and banners over the street welcoming visitors to the 12th Annual Peculiarfest. A bright, shiny Midwest townscape replaced the scorched streets and skeletal buildings in a video wipe that spat out a world with modern cars in driveways and not a radioactive dinosaur in sight. Nope. Not one.

  They weren’t surrounded by cornfields on the outskirts of Peculiar anymore, they stood near the center of town; Peculiar had grown since 1957.

  “I think I need a cigarette after that,” Skid said, hands on her knife belt.

  “I didn’t think you smoked,” Brick said, walking again.

  “I don’t. It’s a figure of speech.” She started after him.

  A bright blue sky was dotted with fluffy, cumulus, “The Simpsons” clouds overhead. Skid listened, but everything in Peculiar seemed strangely quiet.

  “We could ask somebody for a ride, you know,” Skid said, pushing to keep up with Brick’s long strides. “Or maybe Countryville has an Uber, or something. It would be faster.”

  He didn’t stop; he didn’t even look at her. “This is a quest, Skid. We didn’t ask to be on it. We were dropped into it the moment Dave disappeared from Slap Happy’s.”

  “Pffft, because I punched him.” She gripped her knife handles in both hands. “That’s not something I’d normally do. He just hit the wrong button.”

  “Don’t blame yourself. Don’t blame Dave. All of this, the dimensional shifts, the street names, the orcs and radioactive dinosaur, all of it, is the fault of some guy named Karl.” He pulled a sheaf of napkins from Dan’s Daylight Donuts out of his pants pocket. “The button that can shut this all down is in this lab,” he said, scanning the napkin. “Our quest ends at that button.”

  He unfolded the napkins and pulled out the first, a map to the lab. “This is a noble quest. This quest will get me back to my muffin shop. It will give me an honest shot with Beverly. A noble quest doesn’t have shortcuts.”

  “What about when Luke left his Jedi training early to go to Cloud City and rescue everybody from Darth Vader?”

  Skid froze. The voice was Cord’s.

  “Well, yeah, but—” Brick began, then stopped himself and turned around. Cord stood five feet behind them.

  “I thought you had a date?” Skid asked.

  Cord laughed. “Date? That’s funny. We’re tramping through dimensions and you think I have a date.”

  Brick started to speak, but Skid grabbed his thick wrist to silence him. They all started down the empty asphalt street, passing a Sonic Drive-In to their left. The fast food joint stood quiet, no cars under the eaves, no carhops carrying trays, the electricity to the marquis off. The outside clock of the Community Bank of Peculiar across the street read 10:42 a.m./82 degrees, but its parking spots was empty.

  “Hey, Cord,” Skid said, pointing toward the drive-in. “Would you hop over there and see if it’s open. I could use some tots.”

  “Sure,” he said, his face as eager as preschooler. Cord broke into a jog and crossed the street toward the Sonic.

  “What’s going on, Skid?” Brick asked watching Cord run.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “But that’s not Cord.”

  “Yeah. You see his leg? It’s fine.”

  Cord scampered down a ditch and up onto a patch of grass that sat in front of the restaurant before approaching the building and pressing his face against the window.

  Skid slid her right hand onto her belt and wrapped her fingers around the hilt of a throwing knife. “But it is Cord, maybe Cord from a dimension where we didn’t run into old Gorgo.”

  Brick’s muscles tensed. “He’s like Spock with a beard. We should keep an eye on him.”

  They continued on. By the time they reached the Tollbooth Coffee Company, its lights dark, its parking spots empty, Skid didn’t think Cord was the only problem.

  “Something’s wrong,” she said. “There’s nobody here.”

  Small town ranch-style houses with silent wind chimes and black metal silhouettes of a cowboy smoking, pickups in the driveways, stood among the occasional businesses, a café here, another bank there. They stood silently.

  “There’s no sound here. There aren’t even birds,” Brick said. “There should be machinery, dogs barking, somebody mowing their lawn.”

  “Somebody running us down for walking in the middle of the town’s main drag.” The Twilight Zone vibe of this town gave Skid the jitters. “Or cops arresting us for vagrancy. We must look homeless.” Her eyes ran up and down Brick. “Especially you with that stained shirt. That crappy backpack doesn’t help.”

  “It’s an explorer’s pack,” he said, hitching it higher up on his shoulders, the hilt of the orc sword stuck from the flap. “And I noticed that, too. It’ll be lunchtime in a little while. Even if we just caught everyone at the wrong time, the streets should be busy. This is odd. It’s really, really—”

  “Don’t you dare say it.”

  “—peculiar.”

  “What do you think, Cord?” Skid said, turning around to an empty street. “Cord’s gone again.”

  “It’s for the best.” Brick glanced at Dave’s map to Lemaître Labs and pointed toward a convenience store down the street before carefully folding the napkins and sliding them back into his pocket.

  “We take North Street to Peculiar Drive then west on the YY. We’ll be to the lab by early afternoon.” He rested a hand on Skid’s shoulder. “Our quest is almost at an end.”

  She walked from under his hand. “That’s great, Lancelot.”

  A black pickup sat at a gas pump in front of the brown brick Casey’s General Store. The store signage read, “Donuts. Sandwiches. Pizza.” A poster of two slices of pepperoni pizza and a large Coke for “$3.75 Limited Time” looked at them from behind a sheet of Plexiglas. The food Skid left on her plate at the Highway 71 Diner in 1957 came back to taunt her.

  “I really wanted those tots. Pizza wouldn’t be bad either,” she said. Brick didn’t answer. She turned; he had stopped in the street a few feet behind her. “What are you—”

  His arm lifted into a pointed finger and she followed it. The driver’s side door of the pickup, a black Ford F-150, swung open and a man in a sweat-stained blue and gold NAPA Auto Parts cap and mirrored sunglasses pulled himself out. Although they couldn’t see his eyes, Skid felt him staring. The man waved as he lifted the nozzle from the pump, an aw-shucks smile on his face.

  “You folks look lost.”

  6

  The elevator at Lemaître Labs didn’t play its usual mus
ic, and Dave didn’t mind at all. Everyone’s musical tastes sucked because no one listened to Oingo Boingo anymore.

  The scientist sat on the floor of the elevator in his dirty slacks and someone else’s shoes; his beard growth had started to itch. The broken broom handle was still gripped in his fist, the splintered end resting against the door close button. The bell rang and he pushed the broken stick against the button again. The door started to open, revealing the Bridge, the control room to the supercollider, but it swiftly slid shut again, protecting Dave inside a six-and-a-half by six-foot box which he was more than happy to stay in. There weren’t any monsters in the elevator. He wondered if there were any in the Bridge, but it didn’t matter, he had to go there. He also had to use the bathroom.

  Get up. Get out of here. The red button was out there, behind the door to the Bridge. A terrible thought crept into his mind. It would be easier to get to the supercollider itself without his card key than it would be to get inside the control room. He could stop the madness from there; he could shut off the machine manually, stopping the experiment, stopping the Miller Waves and setting everything back to normal. Probably. It would also shred every atom that made up Dave Collison, shooting the electrons, protons and neutrons into an uncountable number of directions to float forever in space, but he could do it.

  There’s gotta be an easier way.

  The bell dinged again, and the doors slid open. Dave’s muscles tensed to push the button again, but he let out a stifled scream instead. Karl Miller stood in front of the elevator. Dave’s boss pressed his right hand against the butt of the retractable door until it moved to close, struck his hand, and remained open. Dave jabbed the button again and again. It didn’t budge. Then his eyes noticed the Army-issued pistol tucked in the front of Karl Miller’s pants.

  “Glad you could join me, Collison,” Karl said, his face blanketed in oddly sharp shadows.

  “A gun, Karl?” Dave said in his best Bud Light Dave voice. “Could you be any more cliché?”