The Time Travelling Taxman Series Box Set

by Rachel Ford

  “Oh yes,” she agreed. Like his Italian grandmother’s idea of a pinch of garlic in her cooking, the usual seasoning of sarcasm Nancy sprinkled into her tone had given way to peak, knock-you-out-of-your-seat saturation. “We’re practically the Avengers.”

  He vaguely placed the reference – comic book superheroes, if memory served – and positively scowled at her. “Laugh if you choose-”

  “Oh, I do.”

  “But we’re the thin blue line between order and chaos.”

  She did laugh now. “Damn. I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone who swallowed the Kool-Aid that badly.”

  As metaphors went, that one didn’t make much sense, and he was on the verge of telling her so when she continued.

  “But, really, Alfred, I mean – it’s good to take pride in your work and all. But it’s not like we’re firefighters rescuing kittens from trees or cops chasing down bad guys or whatever. We catch people cheating on their taxes. That’s it.”

  “We keep this nation running,” he contradicted hotly. “We may not be on the streets fighting crime – not every day, anyway.” He felt it prudent to remind her, “Some days, we are. Some days, we’re chased through concrete labyrinths by man-eating dinosaurs in the pursuit of justice. But even when we’re just sitting at a desk, the work we do is as crucial as any other branch of law enforcement.”

  He could see her eyebrows raising again, in a gesture he was coming to despise. “Don’t you think you’re exaggerating a little?”

  He did not. “If no one paid their taxes,” he asked, “who would pay for those firefighters rescuing kittens? Who would pay the salaries for those cops chasing down bad guys? Who would pay for the roads that the firefighters and cops use? Who would pay for our military? Who would pay for –”

  He might have gone through the list of every public service he could think of, and all its implications for the greater good of humankind, had she not interrupted. “Alright, alright,” she said. “I get it. I’m not saying the work isn’t important.”

  This hardly placated him, and he was about to reproach her for her irreverence when she drew up short.

  “Hold on,” she said, “what’s that?”

  Alfred felt his skin prickle, and he gulped. “What’s what?”

  She turned off the beam of light, and he yelped to find himself in sudden darkness.

  “Light!” she said. “There.”

  He couldn’t see where she was pointing because, of course, it was pitch black now that the flashlight was off – a fact of which he was half way through reminding her when his eyes picked up the very thing. Further down the passage, a faint yellowish glow lit the concrete walls. “It’s a light,” he observed unnecessarily, as she’d just said the same thing.

  Nancy switched on her flashlight again, saying, “Come on, let’s go.”

  Chapter Six

  The light emanated from a kind of anteroom adjacent to a large lab. The door to this outer area was open, but the lab beyond was sealed. “What in tarnation is this place?” Alfred mused aloud.

  He was headed toward the lab door when Nancy’s voice arrested his steps. “Oh God!”

  He spun around, casting his eyes high and low. He half expected a predator of some kind to be waiting in ambush – an animal, or perhaps one of the tax cheats holed up here. In his mind’s eye, he envisioned a mad scientist, cut off from humanity and living in his lab.

  There was nothing, though. Nothing living, anyway. The sight that caught Nancy’s eye was not a threat, but rather the reverse: a pile of bones. At first, he was surprised by her reaction.

  They’d run into bones already, back in Futureprise’s prison-like zoo complex. “It’s just…” But he cut off quickly. There was something about these bones. He couldn’t place it at once, but as his eyes traveled up the rib cage to the skull, he felt the hair on the nape of his neck stand on end.

  Staring into empty eye sockets, he understood. “My God,” he gasped. “It’s human.”

  Nancy moved toward the skeleton now. Alfred whimpered at the prospect of following her. Duty demanded that he not let a woman face danger alone; but dead people scared him. “Shouldn’t we…not do that?” he wondered.

  She ignored him and knelt by the old bones. “They’ve been picked clean,” she said. “They’re covered in teeth marks. Look at all the scraping here, and damage there.” She was gesturing to different portions of the remains.

  Alfred dutifully sidled up beside her but did not look. “Can we go now?”

  “Some kind of big predator got down here,” she was saying. “Big enough to-”

  She cut off sharply, and despite his better sense, Alfred looked now. Then he shivered. He saw nothing unexpected, but the macabre feel of standing near a human being picked clean was a little too overwhelming.

  “What’s this?” she asked.

  “What’s what?”

  “This.”

  She reached for the bones, and Alfred yelped. “Don’t touch it!”

  Nancy ignored him, though, and stuck her hand between the ribs. Alfred felt his first stomach lurch, and he turned away to hurl.

  “Don’t be such a baby,” she called after him. “Look, I’ve found something.”

  The idea of looking at whatever she’d pulled from the dead man’s ribs was too much for Alfred, and now he did lose the contents of his stomach. Mostly, it was well-digested cookies and water. It smelled terrible, and the odor made him feel like throwing up again.

  “Oh God,” Nancy said, wrinkling her nose at him.

  “It’s your fault,” he told her. “If you weren’t poking around in people’s rib cages…” He stopped thinking about that as he felt his stomach tremble again.

  “What a baby you are,” she repeated. “I think this is important. It’s some kind of gadget.”

  “I don’t care what it is. Forensics can look at it when we get back. I’m not touching it.”

  She rolled her eyes and slipped the thing – whatever it was – into her backpack. “Fine. Baby.”

  Now, at last, leaving the skeleton and vomit behind, they moved into the lab. Unlike the rest of the facility, it was fully lit and fully powered. Screens hummed to life as they entered, and an eerie overhead voice declared, “Standby deactivated. Powering up.”

  Alfred jumped at the sound of those computerized tones. He gulped as they resumed, “Authorization verified. Welcome back, Bradley.”

  He exchanged glances with Nancy.

  “Bradley?” she said.

  He shrugged. “Bradley Nash, maybe? He was Head of Research.”

  “But why would they think we’re Nash?”

  He barely heard the question, and didn’t bother to consider it, though. His focus was on the displays. Maps and charts and timelines filled the screens. On one end of the room, a power grid was projected. He squinted at it, at the green and red indicators marking active and inactive routes all over the oasis, and the manual bypass nodes scattered throughout, flashing yellow.

  “It looks like they shut power off deliberately,” he realized in a moment. “Look.”

  She stood beside him, following his gaze. “They were re-routing it here,” she agreed. “The power from the visitor center, from the rest of the lab…it was all being sent here.”

  “Why?” It was an obvious question, but Alfred could see no obvious answer.

  “Whatever they were doing here must have required tremendous energy,” she posited.

  “But what would need that kind of power? And what happened after they finished? Why just leave everything?”

  She shook her head. “No idea.”

  Alfred shook his head too. “It doesn’t make sense. We know – sort of – what happened to Nash. But where is everyone else?”

  The synthetic voice answered his query. “Primary party has arrived at its destination. Missing party members: Nash, Bradley.”

  They exchanged glances again. “Computer,” Nancy asked, “what destination?”

  “Laramidia
, Earth. Mesozoic Era. Cretaceous Period. Approximately sixty-seven million years ago. Coordinates locked into portable STM field generator.”

  “Into what?” Nancy repeated.

  But the computer droned on, “Estimated arrival: six years, three months, four days, two hours and thirteen minutes after primary party. Outcome acceptable?”

  “Acceptable?” she repeated. “What are my alternatives?”

  “Verbal input confirmed: outcome acceptable.”

  “Wait,” Nancy said. “I didn’t-”

  “Are you ready to proceed, Bradley?”

  “This stupid thing thinks I’m Bradley,” Nancy sighed. “What the hell is it talking about, though? Cretaceous period?”

  Alfred was as stumped as she was. “It sounds like it’s saying Bradley’s team – whoever they were – were sent to the Cretaceous period. Like, some kind of time travel. But that’s absurd.”

  “Are you ready to proceed, Bradley?” the voice prodded.

  “With what?” Nancy asked.

  “Analyzing query. Rephrasing question. Are you ready to follow the team, Bradley?”

  “Computer, do you mean follow them to the Cretaceous period?” Nancy’s eyes were almost bulging out of her head.

  “Affirmative.”

  “This is insane,” Alfred insisted. Dinosaurs had been bad enough, but time travel? “This has got to be some kind of joke.”

  “Are you ready to proceed, Bradley?”

  “God no,” Nancy declared.

  “Yes,” Alfred said at the same time.

  “What the hell are you doing?” she hissed.

  He shrugged. “Come on, Nancy – time travel? I want to see what this thing really does.”

  “Contradictory input,” the system remarked meanwhile. “Analyzing response. Nash, Bradley: unable to determine your intentions from verbal input. Please select from the following options onscreen.”

  All the displays in the room suddenly changed to a black background, with two large buttons. One was green, and read “Proceed.” The other was red, and marked, “Abort.”

  Alfred headed for the nearest screen. If this wasn’t a joke, the final revenge of some mad nerd, it had to be a ruse, some kind of smokescreen to hide whatever in heck was actually going on. Maybe, he thought, there was another section of David Garrity’s secret lair. Maybe this was the way in, like a secret code. He reached for the green button.

  Behind him, Nancy was yelling, “Dammit, Alfred, don’t you dare press that button!”

  Chapter Seven

  He pressed the button. The system’s voice noted its confirmation. Alfred was turning back to Nancy, who had gone pale as a sheet, to tease, “Hold on, we’re about to go back in time a few million years,” when a light blinded him.

  It was just a flash, painless and brief, but it invaded his senses. His ears rang, his eyes flooded, his brain seemed almost to cease thinking.

  Far, far away, he heard Nancy yelp. But then it was gone, and he blinked. “That wasn’t so bad,” he decided. He wasn’t sure what had happened, but it hurt less than a flu shot. It couldn’t be that bad.

  “Where the hell are we?” Nancy demanded. “What in God’s name did you do, Alfred?”

  He squinted into the light – the lab had gotten very bright suddenly, and his eyes were still adjusting – and looked for her.

  It was his turn to yelp as his vision cleared. The lab was gone. The oasis was gone. The screens with their color-coded choices were gone. “What the heck?” he wondered.

  “You moron,” Nancy hissed. “You complete arse. You pushed the button. You pushed the fucking button!”

  Alfred was still struggling to comprehend what had happened, and where he was. Her hysteria really wasn’t helping. “Language,” he chided.

  She stared at him with wide eyes. “Language?” she repeated, mouth agape.

  “Yes. You’re a professional. Try to act like one,” he sniffed. That settled, he turned his mind back to the problem. Was this some kind of simulation? Were they in a training room? The area had a look something like the oasis. Its greenery was similar. Was this some manner of interactive, three-dimensional design room? He could imagine a company like Futureprise developing something along those lines.

  Nancy began to speak again, and he sighed as he realized that, as over it as he was, she apparently was not yet finished with this conversation. “You just sent us back into the Cretaceous period, and you’re worried about my language?”

  “The Cretaceous period?” He frowned at her. “Nancy, don’t be ridiculous. I’m trying to figure out what’s going on here.”

  She was for half a minute too flustered to speak, but when she regained some measure of equilibrium, it was only to unleash a flood of curses and threats. He was, at first, deeply offended, but as the stream continued, he realized that she actually believed they’d traveled through space and time; and the idea amused him so much that, though it only provoked her further ire, he laughed out loud.

  It was only when his attempts to prove how absurd she was being by calling the computer were met with absolute silence that Alfred began to worry. “This is Bradley Nash,” he yelled. “Stop this. Whatever it is. End. Delete. Exit. Restart. Abort. Shut down. Escape.”

  None of his commands proved successful. Nancy, meanwhile, was staring at him with flinty eyes, her arms crossed. “Are you done yet?”

  “You try it,” he said. “It thinks you’re Nash.”

  “There’s no computer here, dammit! We’re millions of years before the first computer was invented.”

  He scowled at her. “Just try it.”

  So, she did; and as with his attempts, she accomplished nothing. “Satisfied?” she demanded at length.

  He was not. With every failed attempt, his panic had been rising. Now, he was almost frantic. “But – that’s not possible,” he said. “Time travel is absurd. It can’t be. No, there’s a mistake.”

  “The mistake,” Nancy growled, “was to ever agree to go anywhere with you. The mistake was not leaving you for the Tyrannosaurus to eat, and radioing in for the helicopter.”

  He blinked. That was harsh. If she was right – and he wasn’t entirely sure that she was – they were already in a pickle. Turning on each other wouldn’t help anyone. He told her as much. And he could practically see the smoke rising from her ears as he did so.

  “I told you not to press the button!”

  “Yeah, but…I didn’t think it would actually work,” he protested.

  “You stranded us both in the past,” she raged, “because you never – never – listen to anyone else. You’re the most egotistical, self-centered, inconsiderate, reckless person I’ve ever met.”

  He was torn, now, between the nagging panic that was eating away at his thoughts, and the desire to clarify. “I do listen to other people,” he said, the latter winning out, “when I think they’re right.”

  Her eyes blazed. “Well congratulations, genius. Relying on that big brain of yours has stranded us sixty-some million years in the past.”

  That was a bitter pill for Alfred to swallow. He wasn’t convinced that he deserved the entirety of the blame. Surely, Nancy could and should have tried a little harder to get his attention before he pressed the button. He wasn’t certain that it was a situation that merited blame, either. Who could be faulted for thinking a computer talking about time travel was just spouting nonsense?

  Ms. Abbot did not share any of these sentiments, though. Ms. Abbot was firmly convinced that he and he alone was to blame. For half an hour or so, they argued the point. It wasn’t until a sharp wind kicked up that they took proper stock of their situation.

  They were on Earth, but it was an earth unlike anything they knew. The plants and trees were strange, the creatures – which, fortunately, they had not yet encountered – would be terrifying, and the air warm and humid.

  “Where did the computer say we were headed?” Alfred asked.

  “Laramidia,” Nancy answered.

>   He frowned. He might have heard the name once upon a time, but it conjured no memories at the moment. “Where’s that?”

  She frowned in thought. “I think it was – is – a landmass. On what’s now – that is, in our time – the North American continent.”

  He wasn’t entirely sure he understood. “You mean, like a lost continent?”

  “Yeah. It was after Pangaea split up. There was a sea – I don’t remember the name of it – that divided North America into two island continents. There was Laramidia on the west coast, and Appalachia on the east.”

  “Oh.” If Alfred had ever learned that in school, it had been a long, long time ago; he didn’t remember any of it. “So, we’re on the west coast?”

  “I would guess so, yes. We might still even be in the Mojave.”

  Alfred groaned. “So we’re in the right place. Just millions of years out of time.”

  She turned reproachful eyes to him, but said nothing.

  “What are we going to do?” he wondered. Right now, he needed to focus on solving the problem. He thought he might go mad if he contemplated the hows and whys of their situation too much longer.

  Nancy pulled her backpack off and sifted through its contents. “Well,” she said, “I’ve got three more bottles of water. There’s still some jerky – about half a bag. So, eight ounces of that left. And some trail mix. A sandwich baggie full.” Again, she turned a recriminatory gaze his way. “So unless we find a source of food and water soon, we’re going to starve to death. Or dehydrate.”

  He frowned at her. “What else do you have?” She’d packed half a household. With any luck, she’d have something that would increase their odds of survival.

  “A camping pad. A blanket. My flashlight. A book.”

  “A book?” he scowled. “No matches? No knife, or tools?”

  She stared at him, a mix of stupefaction and anger spreading across her features. “I at least have food and water. What the hell did you bring?”

  “I wasn’t planning on winding up in prehistoric times,” he protested.

  “And I was?”