by Ryder Stacy
“Wow!” said Teddy junior. “I wanna be like that when I grow up!”
If he grows up, thought Rockson grimly. He kicked and battered open the door and motioned impatiently for them to step on it and get out.
Outside the chamber, the guards who had been trying to break in were standing around chatting and smoking as though nothing were wrong. “Hello, Mr. Rockman!” one of them boomed, taking off his helmet and making a sweeping bow. “And Mrs. Rockman and the little ones! Is there anything we can do for you?” Evidently these guards had lost their aggressiveness.
“Yes,” Rock said. “Get us safely out of the grounds and to a car.”
“Right this way,” the guard said, heading off down the hallway. “There should be plenty of cars parked around the square. You can have your pick!” He led them to an elevator, discovered it no longer worked, then ushered them to a stairwell. “It’s a long way down—I’ll carry the little one,” he offered.
The guard took Barbara while Rockson handled Teddy junior. They clumped down the spiral staircase. At ground level, legs aching, the men put the children down and the guard led them out of the compound, taking the shortest path.
Outside the walls, Rockson searched for Barrelman. He had to warn the Runners, talk them into leaving their victory and getting out of town.
But finding Barrelman or any of the Runners wasn’t going to be easy. Salt Lake City was burning.
The fear, panic, and disorientation of the freed citizens had erupted into full-scale pandemonium in sections of the city—particularly in the chessboard blocks that fanned out from the Tower Square. The controls were off, and no one knew how to restore order. The people were like children set free from over-controlling parents to run amok.
Throngs of wild-eyed looters were smashing into store windows, grabbing anything they could get their hands on. They reveled in the sheer joy of being berserk, not wanting what they stole, just taking things and hurling them onto the pavement. Self-appointed fire-starters with homemade torches dashed about the streets, igniting anything flammable that caught their eyes. Flames exploded windows and roared skyward. Fire was everywhere.
Rockson watched briefly as three thought police, desperately trying to stop looters, were backed into a wall by an angry mob that pounced on them and began beating them to death. Nearby, a lone rookie saw what was happening—and saw there was no escape from more angry people who were closing in. He put his gun to his head and fired.
Rockson grimaced and shielded the children as best as he could. The scenes around them were awful, but he was powerless to do anything about them.
Beside him, Kim reacted like a horse in a burning barn, not wanting to move; the children were growing wide-eyed with fear. He pulled on her arm. “Come on!” He herded the three of them across the boulevard and into the park, where he tucked them into the bushes that the Runners had used for cover as they sneaked around the Temple Square. “Stay here—don’t move,” he commanded. “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
“But where are you going?” shrieked Kim.
“I’ve got to find someone—a friend.”
“Don’t leave us!”
“I’ll be back!” Rockson took off at a lope, searching for Barrelman. The stocky revolutionary wouldn’t have left the area, he reasoned; he’d be too busy making sure the Chessman’s headquarters were all entirely neutralized. Rockson stopped several Runners and asked if they’d seen their leader. He also instructed them to go to the spot where he’d left Kim and the children. He had something important to disclose, he said.
At last Rockson found Barrelman, who was rounding up a group of docile guards who were to be held prisoner in the Tower until order was established.
“Rock!” he shouted when he sighted the Doomsday Warrior. “The fires—we’ve got to stop the burning! But there’s no one to man the fire trucks—they’ve all gone berserk!”
“Forget it. And leave them, too.” Rockson jerked a thumb at the guards, who were staring at him and Barrelman with moronic grins.
“What! I can’t leave them. What if one of them picks up a gun—”
“There’s no time to explain. Just do it. Get as many Runners as possible together and come with me.” Rockson was already pushing on the short, squat body, forcing Barrelman to go along with him. He took quick, long strides, and the little man stumbled to keep up with him.
“But, Rock—”
“Shut up.” Rockson’s tone was friendly but firm. “Once I had to trust you without explanation. Now you’ve got to do the same.”
Barrelman looked bewildered. “Okay, Rock.” He whistled at two Runners up ahead, motioning them to come along.
The chaos in the city continued unabated as Rockson gathered his small group near the park benches. The noise was punctuated by sounds of gunfire. Either ammunition was exploding in the flames or some of the wilder citizens were going on shooting sprees. Bullets whined through the air.
Rockson led his group to the safety of a building across the park that proved open but deserted. He pushed them all inside the door, shut it, and turned to face the group. “I’ve got something to tell you,” he began, speaking swiftly. “It’s hard to believe, but you must trust that I know the truth. You all know that I am not really one of you, that I am from another place—and time.
“The Veil that surrounds Salt Lake City is not a natural barrier, though that’s what you all think.” The faces around Rockson looked skeptical, but he went on. “For some reason, Salt Lake City got stuck in time—it’s hard to explain. I really can’t. But today is the day of World War Three. Today is Doomsday. A nuclear war will destroy not only this city, but nearly all the cities of the world. I hope we can escape back to where I come from—the world one hundred years after the bomb-blasts.”
A gasp rose up from his audience. Outside, the noise escalated, and Rockson had to raise his voice. “The death of the Chessman and the end of the muzik has jolted the city out of the time warp. The clock is moving forward, quickly, to zero hour. I’ve been in the Portal several times, and was transported through space, but not time. I believe it will become a time portal at the instant of zero hour. I hope I’m right. If so, some of us might be saved, if we go through.”
Barrelman grabbed his sleeve, gazing up into his face. “Rock! How can this be? Is this really true?”
“I don’t understand the whys myself—I just know what’s going to happen. You’ve got to believe me if you want to live!” There was no sense mentioning it might not work.
“But how can we survive nuclear missiles?”
“By getting out of the city and going through the Portal, like I said. Don’t try to understand, just do it.”
“When is zero hour? How much time do we have?”
“If I remember my history correctly, the missiles will strike at four minutes after six tonight. Time itself is altering; I don’t know how much time we have left to escape—the clocks are moving erratically, but faster and faster.”
“This is preposterous!” someone shouted. “I don’t believe it!” Others joined in the chorus of disbelief.
Rockson shrugged. “That is your decision. I can’t elaborate—you’ll have to take it on faith, those of you who want to believe. I’m leaving, and I’m taking Kim and the kids with me. I hope the rest of you will follow. Get a car, a truck—any vehicle you can find—and head for the dump at the outskirts of town, where the Portal is. Don’t stop to gather possessions, but take as many friends as you can.”
With that, Rockson drew his family toward him and turned to leave. He stopped at Barrelman and stuck out his hand, looking the short man directly in the eye. “Brother,” he said, “thank you. I know you’re a survivor. Now save yourself.”
Barrelman immediately began mobilizing his people, shouting at them to commandeer vehicles and round up as many Runners as could be found.
Rockson spotted an abandoned taxicab a couple of blocks away. He scooped up both children, and he and Kim ran for it. His
Seiko said 5:30—and he could see the minute hand moving!
He shoved the kids in the back seat, and Kim scrambled in beside him onto the front seat. The keys were still in the ignition. The cab, like the Porsche, was similar to vehicles in his world, and Rockson had no trouble revving up the engine and slamming it into gear. The cab screeched off, burning rubber for the entire length of a block.
Rockson gripped the wheel, careening around abandoned cars and debris in the streets. People jumped out of his way. “What’s the fastest way to the dump?” he shouted at Kim.
“That way!” said Kim, stabbing a finger at a boulevard to the right. “Slow down! You’re driving like a maniac!”
Rockson couldn’t help but smile to himself. That was exactly what the real Kim said to him every time he got behind a wheel. He pressed the pedal to the metal, accelerated toward the turn.
“You’re going to get us all killed!” Kim yelled as a man leapt out of the taxi’s path.
“I always drive like this,” Rockson said. “Relax.”
“Holy fucking hell!” blurted Kim as the momentum of the turn threw her into Rockson. She clapped a hand to her mouth. She had never uttered an obscenity in her life. It was an indication that the tranquilizers were wearing off. She suddenly felt liberated.
In the back seat, Barbara stared to wail. Within moments, Teddy junior also lost control and began crying. Kim tried to quiet them, to no avail.
Rockson tore through the streets. Fires raged in many of the buildings throughout the chessboard sectors, and people dashed about the streets carrying their booty. Some were trying to put out the fires. Frantic men and women tried to flag him down; if he was escaping this madness, they wanted to hitch along. He steeled his heart against them and sped by.
Scattered gunfire came from the sidewalks. Rockson ducked as a man ran out into the street firing a pistol at them. A bullet cracked a corner of the windshield into a spiderweb. “Get the kids down!” he ordered Kim.
Sobbing, she crawled over the seat and pushed the screaming children to the floor, covering them with her body. She raised her head to peek over the seat. “Turn left up there,” she said. “That will take you to the highway.”
Rockson downshifted and careened left, shifting up and accelerating as he executed the turn. Another car turned into the street from an opposite corner, and sped up until it was even with Rockson’s taxi. He glanced to his left. The car was jammed with Runners, driven by a grinning Barrelman. He gave the thumbs-up sign and hit the gas pedal, pulling ahead.
Other vehicles joined in the escape—cars, trucks, taxis, even motorcycles. Soon a ragtag parade was screaming toward the highway out of town. Some contained Runners; others contained desperate citizens who followed in the hopes that the drivers of the fleeing cars knew something they didn’t and were heading for safety.
Not everyone made it, even to the highway. A few drivers lost control at their high speeds, ending in fiery crashes. One car smashed head-on into a telephone pole, pushing the front end into a vee that reached the back seat. A pickup truck took a turn too fast and overturned, crushing the cab in a shower of sparks.
Rockson, at the lead, kept a watch in his rear-view and side mirrors. It pained him greatly to see the wrecks, but there was nothing he could do. He kept his foot on the accelerator.
They reached the highway, an open, empty ribbon of asphalt that stretched away into the shimmering horizon. Rockson pushed the taxi for all it was worth—which wasn’t much, in his estimation, even considering the primitive nature of the car. A hundred miles an hour wasn’t fast enough. At such high speed, the car vibrated so badly Rockson thought it would shake apart.
He kept an eye on Barrelman’s taxi behind him. The leader of the Runners was keeping the second lead position. Behind him stretched the train of racing vehicles that shifted and jockeyed for position.
Barrelman fell further and further behind Rockson—his car simply couldn’t keep up the speed. Then Rock heard an explosion and saw the car weave and bounce all over the road, out of control. Two cars coming up fast from behind nearly crashed into it; the drivers did some fancy swerving to avoid a collision.
“Oh, my God,” said Kim, looking out the rear window. “A blowout!”
Barrelman’s taxi continued to fishtail, then dove off the highway in a cloud of dust, turning over on the sunbaked ground. Somehow it remained intact.
Rockson slowed and yanked the wheel, turning the car off the highway in a wide arc. The tires struck the dirt and the taxi bounced fiercely as Rockson headed back in the opposite direction.
“What are you doing?” Kim yelled.
“Going back for a friend,” Rockson said between gritted teeth. Other vehicles shot by on the highway like bullets, sunlight glinting off the metal.
Rockson screeched to a halt by Barrelman’s crippled car, which sat lopsided, steam billowing from the radiator. Barrelman and the seven other Runners who were jammed into the car were disentangling themselves and crawling out.
“Shit!” screamed Barrelman, jumping up and down. He kicked the car.
Rock rolled down the window. “Leave it and get in!”
“There’s not enough room,” said Barrelman, peering into the windows. “Go! Get your family to the Portal!”
“We’ll make room.” Rockson put the taxi in neutral and pulled the emergency brake. He climbed out and opened the back door. “Double up back here, as many as possible. Put the kids on your laps.” He strode to the rear of the car and opened the trunk. “Someone can get in here. We’re almost at the dump—there should be enough air. I can take two up front.”
The Runners complied, and when everyone was stuffed into the taxi, Rockson got behind the wheel and screamed back onto the highway. The other vehicles were long gone. Within seconds, he was in high gear and pushing the taxi back to top speed. The big engine sounded like a marimba band gone crazy.
Soon the horizon changed. The air had been shimmering but clear; now it shimmered but was increasingly opaque. They were approaching the Veil that surrounded Salt Lake City. And there was the Portal. It had grown larger; it was now the size of a building, and still growing. The spiraling mass of ocher and violet shimmered and danced over the dump.
It looked like the eye of the Devil himself.
The distance to the city dump was deceiving; the mountain of refuse took precious minutes to reach, and then it seemed to burst upon them. Rockson decelerated down the ramp, pulling alongside the cars that had already arrived. The other refugees were standing around or wandering without direction, not knowing what to do next. No one had ever gone through the Portal except for a few of the drunks among them.
Rockson and the others extricated themselves from the car. Those who had never before been to the dump murmured in awe at what they saw. The multicolored swirling Portal struck them silent. It sat directly on mountains of refuse three times as high as a human being. The air around the dump was thick and oppressive, almost palpable; it smelled of ozone as well as of refuse, and crackled with electricity. The world seemed to stop at the dump; nothing was visible through the silver-gray curtain. The Portal beckoned. Mesmeric.
Rockson glanced at the watch on his wrist. Six P.M. Four minutes to zero hour. Four minutes to get into the Portal—and hopefully the time-tunnel that had brought Rockson to this mad place.
He saw a change in the Time-Portal’s “Bloody Eye” appearance at the end of the dump. “There’s a clear spot in the Portal—it must be the time-tunnel opening up.” He grabbed the kids, one in each arm, and took off on a run through the middle of the dump, slipping and sliding over loose heaps of garbage. Behind him clattered Kim, Barrelman, and the mob of refugees. They were convinced now, thank God.
The kids, who had simmered down in the taxi, opened up their lungs again, screaming for Mommy. Everyone was crying and gasping, going down in the greasy rubble and struggling up again. As they came upon the Portal, several Runners lost their courage and turned away, choosing fear of the k
nown rather than fear of the unknown.
Barrelman stopped and screamed at them, begging them to keep going. “Come on! You can’t quit now! You’ll be killed!”
Rockson twisted and shouted at Barrelman. “Hurry! We’ve only got seconds!”
With a look of anguish, Barrelman turned and scurried toward Rockson.
A set of long streaks—white vapor trails—appeared high in the darkening sky above, to the north. At first, Rockson thought it was the electricity in the Portal—perhaps the movement of time itself. Then another thought struck him dead in the heart: maybe it was the trails of nuke missiles, launched thousands of miles away and coming down on their targets.
“Faster!” he shouted behind him. “Move it!”
Nineteen
Rockson didn’t know what would happen when they entered the Portal. He worried that they’d just be pushed back by the invisible force. But maybe this time—as the city disappeared in the flash of atomic hellfire—the Portal would take them to 2092 A.D. It was a theory, a hope, a chance. A chance they had to take.
With a sharp intake of air and a tight grip on Kim’s hand, Rock plunged forward. There was a sickening wrench. A blurry nothingness, red, like looking at the sun through closed eyelids—and then howling wind. Cold. Dark.
Kim and the kids were still with Rockson. So were scattered groups of the Runners—but where was he? There was no ground, no sky. Rockson was slowly rotating, floating in a blue-black darkness punctuated by flashes of brilliant color—as if he were hurtling among strobe lights. No gravity.
Rockson’s hand had been wrenched away from Kim, but she was tumbling nearby. He could see her in the flickering colored lights, and he shouted to her:
Kim, I’m here.
He felt his vocal cords move, but heard nothing. No sound. The brilliant flashes moved away, behind him, giving the appearance that he was moving at great velocity upward—though, of course, it must be an illusion.