Zeke responded with a laugh, “They’re lion food now, shithead. Which you’ll be in a minute, too, if you don’t shut the fuck up! Now, where’s the dweeb that runs the time machine? Kevin was his name.”
A few people looked at each other in confusion. Finally one student said, “You mean the portal? Kevin’s one of the—”
“Sure, geeky, skinny, glasses, pushes the buttons. Get him. Now!”
The student looked perplexed, then said, “I think he’s in the shed,” and gestured toward the second shed.
“Then you go get him, dweeb. But nobody else moves. And if someone comes out with a gun, boom!” He inclined his head toward Erin to emphasize his point.
Monica and Kevin had missed the first part of the drama out front but caught all the dialogue. Monica peeked around the corner and saw Zeke with his gun at Erin’s head. And she heard the part about Pete and Phil being dead. As this all sunk in, Monica’s teeth gritted and her eyes narrowed to slits. She felt herself sinking into a white-hot rage, as the world narrowed down to one single imperative.
Monica had learned from her brothers at an early age that you gave no quarter and you asked for no quarter; you paid back all insults with interest; and you always maintained a scorched-earth policy.
Now the thugs had killed people she knew and liked, and were holding a gun on her best friend.
This is war, you fat, impotent fucktards. Prepare to be dead.
“Kevin!” she whispered. “You’re going to do exactly what they say. You’re going to cooperate. Don’t do anything to endanger Erin or the other student, but don’t tell them I’m here. And if they ask, we only have one gate here right now, okay? We just have two, and the other one is with the scavenging party. Got it?”
Kevin was already shaking with fear. As Bruno came up to them and opened his mouth to talk, Monica held up her hand to stop him and put her finger to her lips in a shushing motion. She gestured to Kevin to go back with Bruno.
Monica waved over a group of students that had been in the shed when the excitement started. She pointed to one and said to him in a low voice, “Get me an AR-15 and some spare magazines.” She said to a second one, “Make sure there’s an extension cord running to that corner,” and motioned with her head. She indicated a third student and said, “Help me haul some equipment over there.”
Moving quickly, they carried one of the portal generators and a six-foot gate over to the corner. She plugged the portal generator into an extension cord that the second student was holding, and connected the feeds from the portal generator to the gate.
Monica had watched the others operate the gates many times, and had made a point of asking questions. Now she took the tablet and fired up the gate. As the gate faded into being, the first student came and held out an assault rifle.
She took the weapon and checked it. She turned to one of the students and said, “When I’m through, turn it off. If you don’t know how, just pull out the plug. But make sure it’s off. Turn it back on in five minutes and send through some well-armed people.”
With that, she stepped through the gate.
75. Contact
“We’ve found him,” Charlie announced. Everyone crowded around him to look at the tablet. The image showed Bill, lying on a wooden bench in a windowless room. As they watched, he looked up, smiled, and waved. Then he motioned to the camera to come closer.
Charlie lowered the pole-cam by dead reckoning until it hovered two feet in front of Bill’s face. This put it below the bed of the truck, where they were all standing. They looked down through the gate and they could see Bill, live, smiling at them around the camera from another universe.
Richard jumped down from the truck, went over to the small gate, and whispered through it to Bill, “We can get you out. We have a six-foot gate.”
Bill shook his head and said in a low voice, “That’s fine, but I don’t want to just disappear. I think we have a good possibility of getting these guys to join us. And they’ve got civilian refugees that they’re trying to care for. I can give you details on all that later. For now, I think I need to stay.”
“You aren’t worried about being shot as a looter?” Richard asked.
“If they were going to do that, they’d have done it already. Now, I think they’d have to hold a trial of some sort. But rescue the other two guys. We don’t need them here now that they have me.”
“Having those two disappear might set them off.”
“Probably not. These aren’t mindless grunts, Richard. They seem pretty decent, other than the shooting-looters thing. And it’ll help validate my story, I think.”
“Okay. It’s your funeral. Possibly.”
Bob and Kavi looked up at the pole-cam and smiled in unison.
“About time,” Kavi said. “I’m too pretty for prison life.”
“I’m sure you’ll find the frontier lifestyle far more luxurious,” Richard said as he gestured for Charlie to set up the six-foot gate. He turned back to the pole-cam. “We’ll have you out in a moment. Bill is under arrest now, so I guess we have them right where they want us. Or something like that.”
At that moment, the gate powered up. The two got to their feet as Richard gestured for the pole-cam to be deactivated. He looked over just as they stepped through the gate.
“That corporal is going to have a full-on fit,” Bob said. “I hope Bill survives.”
“So do I,” Richard said. “Strangely, so do I.”
76. Interviews
The door opened with a bang.
“All right, asshole. Time for you to do some talking!”
Bill just had time to sit up before two soldiers grabbed him by the arms and dragged him past Corporal Chavez. Her scowl had evolved to a level that could peel paint. Bill tried not to smile as he struggled to get his feet under him. They’d probably discovered Bob and Kavi missing.
Soon he was once again seated in Lieutenant Collins’s office. The lieutenant wasted no time with pleasantries. “We captured two individuals who claimed to be part of your group.”
“And now they’re gone?” Bill kept his face deadpan. Trial requirements or not, his usual smug grin might still get him shot.
The lieutenant straightened up. “And how did you know that?”
“I told Richard to do it.”
“After you were captured? So you can talk to your people at will, and free prisoners from inside a military base, whenever you feel like it?”
Bill bobbed his head. “Pretty much.”
The lieutenant sighed and settled back against the edge of his desk. “You said earlier that you’d be willing to talk. Now would be a good time.”
“Not a problem. However, I’m not at my best without coffee.”
Chavez sputtered. “You want us to serve you coffee?” She turned to the lieutenant. “Let me shoot him, sir. Please? Just in the knee.”
“It’s all right, Corporal. Either it will be worthwhile in the end, or it’ll be one more reason for a firing squad. Let’s play along, for now.” He smiled at Bill without any trace of humor and gestured to the soldier. “Get the man a coffee, please, Stevenson.”
Bill took a sip of coffee. “Wow, this is bad.”
“You’re welcome,” Chavez replied.
Bill shrugged. “And thanks. But you can’t tell me you’re drinking this because you like it.”
For the first time since he’d known her, Chavez smiled at him in a way that didn’t hint at mayhem. “No, not with a straight face, anyway. But it’s what we have. We’d have better coffee if you hadn’t cleaned out the Walgreens.”
“And on that subject,” Lieutenant Collins said, “how about that information you promised?”
Bill settled back, took another sip of coffee, shuddered, and began to speak.
“… and that’s how I spent my summer vacation,” Bill finished, having talked for ten minutes without interruption.
Lieutenant Collins and Corporal Chavez stared at him with blank faces, their jaws hanging so far down the
y were in danger of becoming unhinged.
“Of all the—” Chavez sputtered.
“You’ve got to be—” Collins huffed.
“Makes sense to me,” a third voice replied over them.
Collins and Chavez cut off what they’d been saying and turned to Private Stevenson in astonishment.
Stevenson returned their glares with a shrug and waved a hand toward Bill.
“You think about all the tracks that we’ve been seeing that just petered out into thin air, the buildings that had been cleaned out without apparently being opened. What better way than an interdimensional gate? Or a time machine, maybe?” Stevenson looked at Bill.
Bill shook his head. “Sorry, no time machine.” He turned to Collins. “Look, we’d been intending to release this invention and collect our Nobel Prizes eventually, but the eruption caught us by surprise. But it is an actual way out for people. We’ll be happy to turn everything over to the military. You can use it to save a lot more lives than we can.”
“No, we can’t. Not really,” Collins said. “You’ve gotten a lot of info from your satellite TV, and it’s mostly pretty good intel. But it’s nowhere near the complete picture. The military has much better and more-hardened communications. I’m probably not revealing any secrets by telling you that.”
Bill smiled and shook his head.
Lieutenant Collins continued. “I’m not sure that there’s a United States left as such. There have been no official communications for almost ten days. What we’ve been able to piece together is that Washington fell by the end of the first week. The president was unaccounted for, and they took too long to start succession proceedings. There were more attacks, and I don’t know how far down the chain of succession they ended up, but it’s possible that the White House janitor is now nominally president.
“There are up to a dozen local despots who’ve declared independence over shortwave, and what concerns me is that they haven’t been shut down. That means that they are in de facto unsecured territory.
“The situation worldwide is bad and getting worse. There were nukes used in the Middle East, the BBC was right about that. But there were also nukes used in Pakistan, which wasn’t reported because by then the news reporting channels had broken down. Also the Koreas went nuclear. Russia and China have swallowed all their satellite states and are now taking gouges out of each other. It’ll stop when neither has anything left to fight with. What’s telling is that already neither one has anything to nuke the other with. It’s truly in the shitter.
“Meanwhile, we have no more resources than you to build or advertise the existence of this device, and I doubt anyone out there has the wherewithal to do anything with the information even if we did.”
Lieutenant Collins’s face had a haunted look.
“We’ve been continuing to operate as the National Guard because it’s what we swore to do, and because, frankly, no one has any better idea. But there have been questions about whether we should dissolve the platoon. You’ve seen the refugees in the hangar. Those are people we’ve found as we’ve been patrolling, who didn’t have anywhere to go and were slowly starving to death. We’re doing what we can, but we’re pretty limited.
“In terms of local intel, there’s nothing left that you could call a viable community for at least a thousand miles from Yellowstone to the west, and up to two thousand miles to the east and south. Beyond that, what we’ve been able to get indicates that citizens are closing their borders and hunkering down. Refugees have been shot and killed trying to get through barricades. I figure we’d have to go all the way to the East or West Coast to have any chance of finding anywhere that would take us and our refugee group. We could force our way in somewhere, given our firepower, but that doesn’t sit well with me. It wouldn’t do anything but spread the misery. Oddly enough, we’re likely better off right here, as long as the scavenging holds out. Which is why we’re pretty pissed about your group beating us to everything.”
Lieutenant Collins straightened up and turned to face Bill squarely. “Look, Bill, you tell a good story. I’m having a little trouble with it. I’d like to believe you, but you may simply be a good talker trying to work his way out of being shot. I’ll have to discuss this with my staff.”
The lieutenant looked at his watch, then turned to Chavez and Stevenson. “Take Mr. Rustad back to his room and make him comfortable. But make sure he stays put.”
77. Retribution
Zeke was in his glory. He had complete control of the situation. He had one of the two bitches in his power. The dweeb that controlled the time machines stood in front of him, terrified. Looks like he’s about to piss his pants. Zeke smirked in satisfaction.
“The portal’s in the shed,” Kevin said, pointing.
“Go get it. Bring them all.”
“We only have two, and the scavenging party has the other one.”
“Good. Get it.”
“I can’t move it on my own!”
“Oh, fuck me … You, and you—” Zeke pointed to two somewhat more muscular men. “Help him move it out here.”
It took only a few minutes, and the portal generator and gate were set up in the area in front of the thugs and their hostages. Kevin looked at Zeke, and at his nod turned on the portal. The gate faded into focus, showing the parking lot outside the warehouse, covered in damp packed-down ash.
“The fuck?” Zeke snarled. “You messing with me, pansy boy?”
“You’ve been away for a while,” Kevin said. “Yellowstone erupted. That’s why we’re here.”
Carl looked at the ash on the other side and turned to Zeke. “Yeah. I remember back in Portland after Mount Saint Helens. Same shit.”
Zeke shrugged. He would take Carl’s word for it, and it made little difference in the end. They were going home. A little ash for a few months wasn’t going to be a big deal.
Looking at Erin, he said, “Now here’s how it’s going to work. You’re going to walk through there, and if you or the dweeb give either of us any trouble, you’ll both die right away. And then we’ll take out as many of your friends as we can.” Zeke leered at her, his nastiest smile. “And later on, I’m going to teach you a lesson about manners, bitch!”
He and Carl marched their hostages to the open gate. They stepped through, then Carl pushed his hostage to her knees, aimed at the portal generator through the open gate, and fired. There was a flash of sparks and the gate closed.
Zeke and Carl paused to make sure that the gate stayed closed on their side. Then they looked around at the gray-brown landscape.
“Looks a little different now,” Zeke said. “Still, good to be back.”
He turned to Erin. “Now, bitch, time to set the rules.” He grabbed her breast, put his face a few inches away from her, and snarled, “If you even think about trying anything, I’ll fix it so you never walk again. Got me?”
Carl watched all of this with interest, still towering over his hostage and holding her by the back of her collar. Suddenly there was a gunshot, and his head disintegrated in a spray of blood and brains.
“The fuck?” Zeke yelled and spun around, attempting to drag Erin with him to act as a human shield. Instead, Erin went limp. Zeke was a large man, but he wasn’t ready to support a hundred and forty-odd pounds with one arm. Erin dropped from his grasp. As she hit the ash-covered ground, there was another gunshot, and Zeke staggered backward.
Erin made spitting sounds and scrambled to get out of the way. There was another shot. Zeke felt the impact of the bullet. He felt no pain, but the shock drove him backward a few steps. There was a flicker of motion, and his gaze fixed on a short, curvy brunette with an assault rifle bearing down on him, her face glowing with rage. With an almost physical shock, he recognized her as the other bitch from the warehouse, the one that had nutted him.
In an unintentional parody of the last encounter, he growled, “Fucking bitch!” and raised his gun. There was another muzzle flash, and he felt another impact. This one drove him
back, and he staggered and sat down. Somehow he still managed to hold on to his gun, and he tried to bring it up again.
The angel of death snarled at him, “Burn in hell, motherfucker!” and squeezed off another shot.
Erin watched in amazement as Monica advanced on Zeke, methodically firing away. Finally Monica yelled something at the thug, shot him again, and he went over on his back. She walked up, looked down at his jerking body, and put three more quick shots into him.
Erin and the other girl got up and wiped themselves off. The other hostage was looking at Monica as if she was eight feet tall and green. Monica asked her if she was okay, and the girl wordlessly nodded. Monica came over to Erin and put her arms around her.
It was like a floodgate opening. Erin started to sob, and before she knew it she was shaking and crying. Monica held her and said something that Erin couldn’t make out.
78. In the News
This is BBC World Service.
Today we present a global scorecard. The regions that have stopped broadcasting and with whom there are no dependable communications include:
The United States of America
Eastern Canada
Mexico, Central America, and the northern part of South America
Africa, except South Africa
The Middle East, except Iran and Iraq
China
Parts of southern Europe
Southeast Asia
And this just in … We have credible reports that North and South Korea have executed a nuclear exchange. MI6 says it has confirmed the events via satellite surveillance. No word on the amount of damage or casualties.
79. Negotiations
Richard peered through the pole-cam gate at Bill’s reclining form.
“You’re way too relaxed for a captured looter.”
Bill grinned back. “I don’t feel a firing squad in my immediate future. What’s up?”
“Remember the thugs from the warehouse? Turns out they’ve survived in Outland. They just grabbed hostages and gated through to Earthside.”
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