“That’s an iPhone,” Skid said, her voice almost too soft for Brick to pick up. “This isn’t the 1940s.”
“But what are they? Reenactors? Neo-Nazis? Is somebody shooting a movie?”
The soldier said something else Skid couldn’t understand, and the other soldiers laughed again, quieter this time, their hands over their mouths.
“I don’t think so.” Skid reached behind her and tightened her ponytail. “What are these assholes saying?”
Brick shrugged.
“You don’t speak German?”
“No,” he said. The soldier disconnected the call and pocketed the iPhone. One of his buddies mimed a man in terror as another flicked an imaginary whip. The third ignored them all and lit a cigarette.
She turned toward Brick, her eyes as narrow as Clint Eastwood’s. “So, you speak Klingon, but you can’t speak something useful like German?”
“Hey,” he said, pointing a finger at her. “Ha'DIbaH.”
Her eyes were slits. “I’d better never find out what that means.”
The forest, or what there was of a forest, fell silent. Skid’s head swiveled slowly from Brick back to the wall. One of the soldiers was gone.
Skid’s “Oh, shit” was instantly followed by a gun hammer click from behind them. “Goddamned German soldiers.”
“Wer bist du?” asked a voice, the accent heavy.
Skid instinctively raised her hands above her head because that’s what people always did when someone held a gun behind them. Brick didn’t move at all.
The German soldier’s tone grew more urgent, verging on angry. He took a step toward Skid and yelled.
The men near the wall began to walk toward them. The one with the cigarette took a long drag and dropped it into the grass, crushing it under the toe of his boot. The soldier with the most insignias reached them first, the smiles and laughter gone from his face. “Was ist los?” he asked.
The man with the pistol on Skid brought it level with her forehead.
The man in charge smirked and waved the soldier off. “Nein.” He reached out a finger and tapped Skid’s nose.
Brick hit the man hard enough he flipped before landing on his face, cap flying into the trees. Skid dropped and swept a leg across the ankles of the soldier with the gun. He went down hard on his back.
Before Skid could jump the other soldier with an open palm to the bridge of his nose like she’d planned, a purple storm engulfed them, and the soldiers disappeared.
9
“I think you’re right,” Skid said, walking west as they weaved through a field of enormous mushrooms, some as tall as Brick. The thick gray stalks were topped with sickly yellow caps, the gills beneath gently moving in and out. She wondered, not for the first time, if the things were breathing. This is too much, she thought, then stiffened her shoulders. Keep your shit together, Skid. “The Miller Waves are coming more often, and I don’t know where they’re taking us. I just want another one to show up quick and take us the hell out of here. This place is an H. P. Lovecraft story.”
Brick sidestepped a fat mushroom he swore moved toward him when he got close. Drawing the orc sword from his explorer’s pack, he said, “I preferred facing the Germans. They had less personality, but at least they were supposed to move.”
“I know. Gross.”
They stopped and turned toward a healthy Cord. Carla the waitress wasn’t with him.
“Where have you been?” Skid asked.
“What? I’ve been with you the whole ti—”
“Whatever,” Skid said, and started walking.
The remains of a highway ran under their feet, bits and pieces of the cracked gray asphalt showing under a scant layer of topsoil. A few ruined structures leaned sadly on the horizon. Skid thought they’d once been grain silos.
“What do you think happened here?” she asked. “These mushrooms aren’t normal.”
“Aliens,” Cord said without hesitation. “Totally aliens.”
Skid started to speak, then decided better of it.
“That makes sense,” Brick said. “Space aliens. I mean, we’ve seen everything else, right? Orcs, Klingons, Baby Godzilla, zombies, Nazi soldiers with cell phones. What else is left?”
Skid walked around a mushroom the size of a sedan she was sure hadn’t been that close to her a moment before. “Those talking orangutans Cord mentioned.”
“Orangutans?” Cord asked. Skid ignored him. The whoosh of air in and out of the wide gills of the enormous fungus definitely sounded like breathing. She shivered. The caps, glistening with moisture, undulated like Jell-O. “What you’re saying, Brick, is that we’re playing out a movie script.”
“What I’m saying is the world is a weird place. Why wouldn’t multiple worlds be even weirder?”
Skid rounded the fungus and stopped. A pile of rusted metal stuck half out of the dirt on the other side. “Oh my god.”
Brick stopped next to her, clenching the sword in his fist. “What? It’s junk.”
She bent to brush dirt away from what could have been a kind of tank. She wet a thumb on her tongue and rubbed it over a raised round logo. Bits of green, white and red showed through, the word Laverda barely visible. “It’s our motorcycle from the circus.” She stood and looked out over the remains of the road, but couldn’t see far over the mushrooms. “We’re close.”
“But that can’t be the motorcycle. It doesn’t make any—”
A shadow passed overhead, and Skid screamed, “Holy shit.”
She grabbed Brick’s arm and reached for Cord, but he had already dropped to the ground. Skid followed him, bringing Brick with her, and pointed up at a rectangle, black and big as a Carnival cruise ship, slowly moving through the sky. White lights, bright even in the midday sun, dotted its surface. The thing was silent as a thought.
“Cord was right,” Brick pushed through his teeth. “Space aliens. What are we going to do?”
“You could kill me,” a voice beside them wheezed. “That’d be nice.”
They froze and looked toward the trunk of a gigantic mushroom. A gray human face leered at them, fingers protruding from the fungus where hands would be if—
“It ate you?” Brick’s mouth hung open, but he didn’t know it.
The flying rectangle slowed. Long, spindly arms lowered into the mushroom field, and pincers clamped onto the stems of the darker mushrooms to rock them back and forth gently until each fungus broke from its weak purchase in the thin soil. Then the arms, each gripping a mushroom, retracted into the craft.
“What happened?” Skid asked the face. She turned, scanning the mushroom field around them. Bits and pieces of people, a foot here, a knee there, stuck from every stem, the human body parts covered in a thin fuzzy mold.
“You don’t know?” the face asked. “I was hoping you did. It might be just an accident. The alien guys stopped by for a picnic and stayed.” He stuck out an index finger. “But he—”
Skid turned her head and cringed at a yellowish face half swallowed in a tall mushroom behind her. It winked.
“He thinks it’s that government lab outside town. It called these things, brought them down here. Turns out our planet is great for growing what they eat.” He stopped, out of breath.
“People?” she asked. “They eat people?”
The face considered her, no emotion showing as it sucked in air. “They don’t have people in space, idiot. It’s the fungus. The fungus eats us, and the aliens eat the fungus.” He tried to cock his head, but it was held tightly in the giant stem. “Why are you two free?”
“Two?” Brick asked. He turned toward Cord, who wasn’t there.
Skid elbowed Brick’s arm. “We have to leave. Now. I am not going to be one of these guys.” She turned back toward the gray man in the mushroom. “No offense.”
“None taken,” he said. “I don’t want to be me either. Now, are you goin
g to kill me, or not?”
They didn’t kill the man. They didn’t have it in them.
10
A Miller Wave swept Skid and Brick from the moldering floor of the alien landscape and left them in a field of flowers—Missouri primrose, purple prairie clover, New England aster, button snakeroot, and Columbine. A breeze swept through the natural prairie, tickling the flowers into a dance. A kaleidoscope of butterflies fluttered across the tops of the wild prairie flowers. American ladies, eastern tiger swallowtails, pearl crescents and monarchs landed, only to take back to the air in a flurry of color.
The sky stretched above, clear and peaceful. No clouds, no contrails, no birds, no multi-armed mushroom-picking alien spacecraft.
“This place is nice,” Brick said, lying on his side, staring up at the sky. “I wonder what’s here that wants to kill us.”
Skid pushed herself to her feet and brushed dust from her pants. “It’s pretty, but it’s not home. I want to go home. I just—” She froze. “Are you kidding me?”
Brick rose and followed Skid’s gaze toward the west. A low, square building sat in a greenish-yellow field in the center of a tall chain-link fence, designed to protect the building from a bomb attack, just as Bud Light Dave had told them over bad coffee in Dan’s Daylight Donut’s. A sign stood well away from the building, a small, glass-lined building next to it.
“We were close in Zombietown. We just couldn’t see it over the corn,” he said, pulling out his sheaf of napkins and holding the first one up so Skid could see. “It fits Bud Light Dave’s drawing.”
Butterflies flitted around them. A common buckeye, with orange, black, and blue spots on brown wings designed to look like eyes, landed on Brick’s shoulder. The thousands of insects in the field didn’t compare to what was flipping around Skid’s stomach. This is it. We’re finally here.
Brick’s sword made a slight shhssh as he slid it back into his pack. Napkins folded and replaced in his pocket, he waved a hand in front of Skid’s wide-eyed face.
“Let’s go before another wave hits and turns us into My Little Ponies.”
He took three steps toward the building when he discovered they were too late.
11
This wave seemed less threatening than the wild, purple, undulating monsters that swallowed the countryside. The white, spinning vortex looked as planned as a toilet flush and just as delicate.
Brick barely uttered a “Wha—” before the world opened and sucked him into darkness, only to reappear seconds later in a cluttered bright room with shadowed corners. Skid stood beside him. Brick threw his arms out and grabbed the wire-wrapped metal ring surrounding them. He instinctively pushed as if he were Samson trying to drop the Philistine temple.
“Hey,” a male voice shouted. “Hey, you. Stop that.”
A man in his mid-forties holding a can of Old Milwaukee stood before a control panel, a workbench filled with electronic components behind him.
“Come on, stop it,” the man said again.
Brick did, relaxing his arms and releasing the ring.
“Where are we?” Skid asked.
“Kansas City,” the man with the Old Milwaukee said.
Skid turned her head, taking in more of the room. She knew this place. She’d been there only three days before. And she knew this man; Brick had punched him unconscious.
“You’re Delbert Sanderson,” she said.
Old Milwaukee Man nodded. “I am,” he said, a touch of suspicion in his voice. “You’re the second person I don’t know who’s said that to me today.”
Second?
“Who’s the first?” Brick asked, not willing to step outside the ring. He didn’t know where he’d end up.
Footsteps thudded down the stairs. Skid’s eyes grew wide, taking in Cordrey Bellamy holding a cup of tea, waitress Carla what’s-her-name beside him. Cord braced himself against the wall as he descended, a new bandage on his leg; Carla helped hold him up, an unfiltered cigarette dangled from the corner of her mouth.
“Him,” Delbert said.
“Cord,” Skid shouted. “What are you doing here?”
An honest, non-car-salesman smile broke across Cord’s face, and he continued his slow downward walk. “Oh my god, Skid, Brick. This is awesome.”
Carla went ahead of Cord and helped him down the last few steps.
“The machine in my basement worked,” Cord said, draping an arm around Carla’s shoulders. “At least, the machine in Delbert’s basement worked. Carla and I were helping Brick fight giant cockroaches when the ground opened up and, boom, here we are.”
Carla sucked in a lungful of smoke and blew it into the room. “It wasn’t cool. I peed a little.”
Skid ignored her. Cockroaches? “Okay, okay. Focus. We need to finish this.” She turned toward Delbert. “Can you send us back where you got us?” she asked. “All of us?”
Delbert started to answer but didn’t get the chance.
“Uh, no,” Cord said.
Skid turned to him. “What do you mean, no?”
The car salesman smile returned. “I’m not going anywhere,” he said. “Carla and I already talked about this.” He held up his cup, a Lipton tea tag hung over the side. “She’s from the past, I’m from the future. January 1984’s right in the middle. It makes things fair.”
“But—”
Cord waved her off. “Just look us up when you get home. I plan on being a rich guy with silver hair and a Porsche.”
“There’s too much power build-up,” Delbert said, looking at his digital watch, the other hand now empty of beer and hovering over a big yellow button. “I can’t tell you what’s going to happen when I hit this, but if I don’t, it’s going to electrocute you.” He looked at them through hazy eyes. “You okay with that?”
Brick held up an index finger. “The electrocution part?”
“The button,” Skid shouted. “Hit it.”
Cord reached behind him and pulled something from his back pocket.
“Catch,” he shouted over the humming equipment and tossed a small, dark object toward the ring. Less than a second later, the white toilet flush wiped Skid and Brick from 1984, leaving their friend and the waitress behind.
12
They landed on the spot they’d left, at the entrance of the facility grounds in the field of native flowers and butterflies, in front of a sign that read, “Lemaître Labs: Property of the United States Government. Authorized Personnel Only. Trespassers will be shot.” Not as welcoming as they’d hoped. The paint on the sign looked fresh and well maintained, as did the small building next to it, the empty guard shack clean, as if it had just been built.
The black thing Cord threw went over Skid’s head and thudded in the tall grass behind her.
“What was that?” Brick asked.
“I think it was one of my knives,” she said, her voice drifting.
She dropped into the tall grass. My knife? Skid combed her hands through the prairie flowers and weeds. How did—? Then she knew. Orcland. She’d distracted the orc by throwing a knife at Cord, burying it in the tire inches from his face. She hadn’t seen Cord take the knife from the tire, but he must have. Her hands swiped the ground with more urgency.
“What are you doing?”
It has to be here. It has to be.
“You’re never going to find it,” Brick said.
Come on, come on. She spread her arms wide as she crawled, sweeping the ground; pollen and butterflies launched into the air. Then her fingertips touched something familiar. She lifted the throwing blade so Brick could see it.
“I’m not sure if I should be impressed or terrified,” he said.
Skid headed toward the lab through the grass and butterflies. Brick watched her march across the prairie before hurrying to catch up.
“Why would the lab be in this world?” she asked like he’d been beside her all along. “T
here doesn’t seem to be anything else here but nature.”
“All this hopping around in time and space is caused by that place,” Brick said, “And apparently Delbert Sanderson. Dave said he started experimenting on time travel at home, so maybe, at least while the super collider is on, this place and maybe the Sanderson house, is in every dimension at once.”
Dave was never around when they needed him. Skid stared past the sign toward the depressing gray building.
“Are you ready?” she asked, sliding the knife into the empty sheath below her right hand. “Let’s get ourselves home. I need a long, hot bath.”
The weight of it all, every emotion she’d tried to ignore for the past week began to sweep away. A smile replaced what she almost felt. They’d beaten everything. Screw the universe. What the hell else can it throw at us?
She took a few steps forward into the dull yellow flowers that had been slowly overtaking the prairie on their march west. Brick didn’t follow. She turned and found him kneeling in front of his explorer’s pack, digging near the bottom.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Getting my Fluticasone.” He pulled out a bottle with a green lid which he removed, revealing a nasal sprayer. “I knew there was something wrong here. The lab’s surrounded by ragweed.”
He sprayed the allergy medicine twice up each nostril and replaced it in his bag. “Okay,” he said. “I’m good.”
“What a hero.” Skid started walking toward the lab. “Frodo and Sam never used an antihistamine.”
Brick slung the pack over his shoulders and followed her. “That’s because ragweed doesn’t grow in Mordor, Skid. Don’t you read?”
12
The next wave didn’t so much hit the Bridge as it swallowed it. A purple maelstrom opened in the floor and seemed to stretch the room, 1980s-horror movie style, into a vast pit. Dave held onto his office chair with both hands expecting to roll into the storm, but the wheels never moved. Clean-David casually pulled out a tube of ChapStick—cherry, not real-Dave’s first choice—and applied it to his lips. The floor disappeared beneath Karl, and their boss fell into the ether.
So You Had to Build a Time Machine Page 27