“You’re actually going to be pretty successful. You’ll own four or five McDonald’s franchises in Kansas City and marry an NFL cheerleader.”
Bobbylicious exhaled, sat behind the turntable and didn’t move.
“Me, I’m going to run a lab for the United States government and will discover a way to traverse time and space, obviously.”
He tried to step around Marty, who moved in front of him again.
“What about me, buddy? What happens to me?” Marty’s drunken happy face had hardened into drunken angry face.
Karl sighed. This game wasn’t fun anymore. He knew he had to leave before another wave hit and took him away from his younger self. He turned to Suzie.
“I’m sorry, Suzie, but after three years of marriage, this jerk cheats on you with your sister Janet.”
Marty’s fist came out of nowhere and connected with Karl’s jaw. Suzie screamed as Karl stumbled backward into the front door, but there’d been no real power behind the punch. Karl flipped Marty the bird and went outside, the shouts from inside louder than the music had been.
4
Brick’s hands moved slowly, easing the rope in a controlled descent, his broad back taking most of Skid’s weight as she dropped farther into the darkness. The explorer’s pack had been a good find in his Other-Dimension parents’ house. Brick had started to put one together in high school and gotten as far as the bedroll, rations, and mess kit—all from the Army/Navy store a few blocks away from his house—before he and Mitch Davees watched It late one Saturday and voted unanimously to put their adventures in the sewers on permanent hold. He didn’t know if Other-Dimension Brick had gone through with it either. His doppelganger had bought the fifty feet of hempen rope off eBay; the receipt was still in the pack.
Brick peered into the darkness but couldn’t see anything other than the top two feet of rope that disappeared into the void. Skid must have turned off the flashlight. He almost called down to her but held back his voice. D&D 101: when exploring a dungeon in known hostile territory, don’t call attention to yourself. Sound could attract orcs, ettins, gelatinous cubes, or giant insects.
He shivered. If he could handle orcs, radioactive dinosaurs and zombies, he knew he could handle an ettin and maybe a gelatinous cube, but bugs were gross.
A click, a single click, echoed down the hall. Brick stopped lowering Skid toward the elevator car at the bottom of the shaft and listened. The sound could be anything. Even Hans Gruber. No. He’d locked the suspicious guy safely away. Brick’s gaze stretched down the hallway as far as it could through the dim light and harsh shadows cast by the sparse emergency lights. Nothing.
“You’re hearing things, Brick,” he said to himself and slid Skid a few feet lower. Then the click came again, louder, closer.
“No,” a voice behind him said. “I heard it, too.”
A scream nearly split Brick’s lips, but he swallowed it when he saw Cord. The healthy Cord from dimensions unknown.
“How long have you been here?”
Cord cocked his head and squinted at Brick in an un-Cordlike way. “How long? I’ve been with you guys the whole time. I suggested Skid go down.” He relaxed some and crossed his arms. “I never could climb that rope in gym class.”
Another click, then a chitter.
Brick’s fists clamped into vices, and Skid stopped again. Something was out there, and it wasn’t Hans or apparently Cord. The thing made that noise again, something like a recording on fast-forward. This is not cool. The sound came from in front of him, past the nearest emergency light, invisible in the darkness. A knot like he’d swallowed a golf ball grew in his throat, and every horror movie he’d ever seen crept closer to him in the darkness. His muscles tensed.
“Hello,” tried to work its way past the golf ball and came out in a squeak.
“What is it?” Cord asked.
A blob moved in the shadows, thick and low to the ground. More clicking, followed by a scuttling as the thing emerged from the darkness like the hallway had given birth. A cockroach the size of a storage trunk stepped into the dim outer haze of the emergency lighting. Brick screamed as the creature shuffled closer, its exoskeleton occasionally clanking against the floor.
A bug. A big. A bug. A big bug. Shit, shit, shit. It broke into a scampering run, and he screamed again.
Skid. Oh, my god, Skid. She hung at least halfway down the elevator shaft and Brick knew if he let go, the fall would kill her—or, worse, would leave her too badly injured too evade the cockroach that climbed down to eat her alive. He twisted his left wrist twice, wrapping the rope around his muscular forearm, and held it tightly. He took the rope with his right hand and wound it around Cord’s waist.
“Hey, wait.” Cord pulled at the rope but couldn’t move it.
“If I fall, don’t let Skid drop,” he said, tugging as he held all Skid’s weight in one arm. He couldn’t drop her.
The big orc sword hissed as he pulled it from the explorer’s pack, the monster almost atop him, its hissing and chittering flooding his senses. Cord whimpered beside him.
“Come get some,” he Bruce-Campbelled and brought the sword down. It clanged off the roach’s hard thorax.
The gigantic insect hissed and backpedaled out of Brick’s reach, rubbing its head with its two hairy front legs.
“Don’t like that, huh?” Brick tried to keep his legs solid beneath him. A warmth rushed through his chest, and he momentarily forgot Skid below him, hanging thirty feet above a painful end.
The monster hissed and charged.
“Brraaaaaa,” burst from Brick’s throat, and he met the roach with an overhead swipe of the sword; it glanced off the beast’s back, not leaving a scratch.
“Chchchchchch,” it hissed and lurched backward, its horrid black eyes glaring.
“Come on,” Brick roared.
As it charged again, he swung the sword toward its head.
“Watch out for my fingers, man,” Cord shouted as the sword whizzed by him.
The roach caught the blade in its mandibles, the ring echoed in the empty hall. The beast tugged at the sword, trying to rip it from Brick’s grip.
“Not today, you Kafka-looking son-of-a-bitch,” he growled and threw his weight forward. The sword slid into the ugly creature’s throat. A hiss ripped through the air followed by a hot white liquid splattering Brick’s arm and chest. He twisted the blade, and the cockroach dropped to the floor dead.
Brick tried to slow his breathing, the weight on his left arm forgotten. Adrenaline coursed through his veins.
“That was messed up, Cord,” he said.
“Yeah, sure. Can you untie me now?”
“In a second.” Brick stuck the nicked orc scimitar in Cord’s hands, the blade dripping with what cockroaches had for blood.
“Brick?” Skid’s soft voice came from the empty hole in the wall.
He grabbed the rope with his right hand, relieving the pressure on his left. He leaned over the dark hole. “Are you okay?”
The shaft was silent for almost a second too long. “Yeah. Enough. What happened?”
He turned back toward the far end of the hallway. Other shapes shifted in the shadows but didn’t come closer. “They have a huge cockroach problem here.”
In his mind, he could see the familiar look that was probably on her face. Mock surprise mixed with a dash of you’re an idiot, topped with a little why do I even try?
“Is that a misplaced modifier?” she called upward.
“No,” he said. “The roaches are enormous.” The shadow-shifting grew more urgent; one would attack soon, maybe all of them. “I have to lower you down now, Skid. There are more up here. I’m going to need both hands.”
“Like I have a choice,” came from the darkness.
A pang, an emotional sucker punch, caught Brick. He realized he might not see Skid after this.
“Come on,” he
said. “We gotta make this quick.” And he started lowering her again.
6
Young Karl had almost made it to his apartment building by the time Karl the Dimension King caught up with him. Karl didn’t want to go inside and relive the crappy apartment. Whatever Karl was going to say to himself, it could be done on the street.
“Hey,” he shouted, his jaw starting to ache from Marty’s punch. “Karl Miller, wait up.”
Young Karl stopped at the last streetlight before the apartment door, a yellow glow surrounding him. If he were surprised to see himself, he didn’t show it.
“What do you want?” he asked.
Karl the Dimension King stepped into the yellow light and looked at his younger self. Same shirt, same slacks, same shoes, same hair. I haven’t changed a bit.
“Do you know who I am?” he asked between wheezes.
His younger self nodded. “Yeah. You’re me,” he said like he ran into himself from the future all the time. “I’ve always suspected this might happen. I suppose you have some message for me, or something.”
Karl the Dimension King rested his hands on his hips as he tried to slow his breathing; he’d moved faster than he usually moved, and he wasn’t Young Karl anymore. He was Cheetos Karl. He held up a finger while he caught his breath. Was I always this cocky? “I’m here to warn you about—”
The next Miller Wave slammed into him from behind. A second later he stood in a black, empty hallway; Young Karl stayed in the past.
“Dang it.”
7
The rope dropped quickly.
“I’m almost to the end,” Brick yelled from above. He sounded so far away.
The feeling in the pit of Skid’s stomach was tightened. It was fear, and fear was stupid. She tried to swallow it away.
“Okay,” she managed, although her voice wavered. For some reason, she hoped Brick hadn’t heard the tremor in her voice. She liked being strong Skid, reliable Skid. When the tears came, she liked to keep them to herself.
The light clicked on under her thumb, glass pointed too close to her face. Skid almost dropped the flashlight in the darkness. Get your shit together, she scolded, and pointed the light downward. She’d gone farther than she thought. The top of the elevator car was only about ten feet below her.
Brick lowered her another few feet and the rope stopped.
“I’m here,” she said, but the words stuck hard. She coughed and tried again. “I’m here.”
Silence greeted her and the fear began to turn into panic. Come on, Brick. Come on. I can’t do this without you. I—
“Good,” came from above. “All you have to do is pull on the end of the rope, and the hitch will come free. It’ll be fast, so be ready.”
Ready? “Ready for what? I think gravity has it from here.”
“The landing,” Brick said. “Tuck and roll.”
The top of the car lay below, a block of metal lined with support beams and a pulley for the thick metal cable that moved it.
“I’m not a gymnast.”
Silence again.
“What’s going on up there?”
“The roaches are gathering, and Cord has my scimitar. I don’t think he knows what end to use.” Brick’s voice was low and flat. “You have to go now.”
Skid pointed the Maglite onto the car below her. The spot directly beneath her was clear but lined by support beams.
“You can do this,” she told herself, and pulled the rope. She dropped into nothingness.
8
When Karl reappeared, that big idiot still stood in the hallway, looming over the body of an HR employee. I hope that wasn’t Janet. Janet Parman always made chewy snickerdoodle cookies for Christmas. Karl squinted down the dimly lighted hall, which didn’t help him see better. What is that man holding? A sword? Where did he get a sword? This isn’t Florida.
But the lumberjack’s sword wasn’t his concern. The roaches from HR would take care of him. Karl’s concern was himself about thirty years ago. “When you’re the project manager at a big government lab, don’t hire an asshole named David Collison, no matter who his relatives are,” he’d wanted to tell Young Karl before the wave snapped him back to the present.
Karl slowly, carefully pulled out the chair wedged under the doorknob to the conference room, slipped Gillian’s key card from around his neck and swiped it over the security sensor. When the light turned green, he pushed the door open and went inside.
This was it. The time for the dimension-traveling soldiers to return ticked closer, and he would be there to see them home, them and their pet monster warriors. He thought he’d get a promotion at the least. Karl once thought a cabinet position was out of his reach, but not now. He’d conquered space and time for his country. He didn’t think he was just eligible for a cabinet position; he deserved one.
The hatch, in the short hall that led to the bathroom, came off easily. It took Karl a few minutes to find it, as seamlessly as it fit into the wall, but with a push of his fingertips in the center of the panel, part of the wall moved outward on pneumatic hinges. His fingers fit into the holds and the panel lifted off, revealing a heavy metal door with a touch pad underneath. It took a code to open this door, a code only Karl knew because this secret tunnel led to the BAB-C. He had designed this feature himself, in case an emergency shut down the lab. Karl poked the keypad and the mechanism clicked, sliding open to reveal a downward tunnel with a ladder that seemed to have no end.
As he swung his leg over the ledge and felt for a ladder rung with his shoe, he hoped the lights at the bottom still worked.
9
Bees buzzed in Oscar’s head. Not bumblebees, not honeybees, not carpenter bees, but Africanized killer bees. Somewhere buried deep in what was left of Dr. Oscar Montouez, his theoretical physicist’s brain calmly assured him there were no bees in there. But the anger that surged and bounced around his thick, hairy skull was just as real as bees.
His beady red eyes glared through the murky glass of a thick, dented metal door. Dave, his friend, stood in the room beyond, and Oscar wondered why he didn’t let him inside. Maybe his friend was confused because there were two of him.
This was all Miller’s fault. Oscar had come in late for work. He was hungover after drinking beer alone at a local bar. His usual friend had stormed away from work angry. At Miller. He was mad at Miller. Then the world went wonky, and he’d forgotten the name of his job. He’d forgotten a lot more since then. Ten minutes at work, and a surging purple cloud burst through the floor and swallowed him. When it spat him back out, Oscar wasn’t Oscar anymore. He was something else. Bigger and stronger, certainly, but he could no longer remember what all the machines were for.
Dana saw Oscar first, but it was Marcus who screamed and flung himself through the door from the engineering department and out into the hallway, looking back at the pleading face of Dana as he left her behind. Oscar remembered the terror in her eyes. Don’t hurt me, she’d said. Please, don’t hurt me. Oscar didn’t. He’d never hurt Dana. He stood still, breathing great breaths through a chest the size of a beer keg, and watched as Dana slowly backed toward the door and followed Marcus into the hallway before turning and running as fast as she could in heels.
His first instinct was to chase her, to catch her and rip her throat out with—my teeth? No. NO. What are you? An animal? The urge gnawed at him like a sudden, intolerable hunger, the need to chase what ran, but he caught himself before he’d taken a step. I am a man. He would not chase Dana. The one person he would sink his teeth into was the one who had caused all this.
“Mirroo.”
10
When Brick turned back to Cord, the man’s knee was a mess, and Carla stood next to him looking pissed off. Maybe she was out of cigarettes.
More shapes moved in the darkness. Brick stood solid as a wall, slowly lowering Skid into the elevator shaft, ears alert, eyes trying to penetrate the b
lackness of the hallway. The white beam of the emergency lights helped, but didn’t quite create the same dungeon ambience of his torch. Stupid fire-suppression system. A black lump on the ceiling maneuvered onto a wall and slowly made its way down to the floor.
“Keep your eyes on those things, will you?” Brick nodded at Cord, who had slipped out of the rope and now gripped the sword with both hands.
“Are those cockroaches?” Carla asked.
“Yeah,” Brick said, keeping the rope moving steadily.
“Reminds me of home.”
He slid more rope down the shaft. It grew taut around him. Skid had reached the end.
“Good luck,” he started to shout into the black hole, but the rope suddenly became slack. Skid had gone. Brick couldn’t help her anymore.
One of the roaches scrambled from the darkness and rushed Brick. He let the rope fall flat, a smile pulling across his face as he took the orc sword from Cord.
“Oh, yeah,” he said, his voice soft, in control. “Come to papa.”
The cockroach hissed as it sprang. Brick sidestepped its attack and slammed the gruesome sword between the monster’s head and thorax. The head snapped off with a squish, spraying his arms with white goo. The still-scuttling body slammed into the wall. A scream bit through the darkness, probably Cord.
Brick laughed. “I’m getting good at this.” He waved at figures crawling over each other in the darkness. “Come on. I don’t have all day.”
None moved closer. The hot, berserk rage he’d felt in Orcland bubbled inside him. Never in his two decades of playing Dungeons and Dragons had he set foot in a real dungeon. His smile threatened to hurt his face.
“Today,” he said toward the darkness, “is a good day for you to die.”
Brick stepped over the rope and rushed into the black hole of the deep hallway.
“Uh, Brick,” Cord said, too softly for the big man to hear over the blood thundering in his ears.
“Come at me,” he screamed and rushed toward the shuffling bodies, his vision red. “Raaaarrrrrr.”
So You Had to Build a Time Machine Page 31