by Jerry Ahern
There was a man, shadowy seeming, but real enough, suddenly grasping Easley by the throat. The man had to be from the party of Lakewood people traveling back to 1900. Easley shoved the fellow away, reached again for the hand and forearm that were disappearing more deeply into the steel of the tank as the tank’s body solidified, completed itself. The shadowy man from the future was more distinct as well; he grabbed Easley by the shoulder, spun him around and thrust a suppressor-fitted pistol toward Easley’s face.
The tank and Jensen occupied the same space, Jensen enveloped within the tank.
Jack had his submachine gun up, the stock folded out, his left forearm flexing back, his right arm bending outward, snapping the weapon into a horizontal buttstroke across the jaw of Easley’s assailant.
Jensen’s hand and forearm were nearly vanished into the tank, and Jack feared that Easley, failing to let go, might be absorbed within the nearly completed armor-plated behemoth as well.
“Let him go, Lieutenant! Let him go!”
“I can’t leave a man behind, Mr. Naile!”
“He’s already ceased to exist,” Jack shouted, summoning as much authority into his voice as he could, given that he was only making an educated guess. “He doesn’t exist here, maybe somewhere else. Not here! Come on, Lieutenant.”
There was no way Easley could have known. But calling out the last name of Naile was a tactical error. Jack knew it the moment Easley uttered it. Lakewood people from 1996 would doubtlessly know that anyone named Naile was a high-value target.
“Get that guy dressed all in black!” The voice was alien to Jack, but he knew the source. “That’s Jack Naile!”
Alan’s voice sounded far away, more so than it should have, as he shouted, “That’s Lester Matthews talking, guys, Lakewood’s chief bad guy!”
Jack and Lieutenant Easley still stood on the Soviet-era tank. Jack shuddered, but not at the realization that Lester Matthews—the big guy he’d missed killing when he’d rescued Alan from murder—was in the time-transfer capsule with them. Jack realized that Easley and he were going in the wrong direction, back to 1900. “It’s the tank, Easley. We’ve gotta get off the tank! Jump for it!”
Jack took a step nearer the fender over the left track, With obvious reluctance, Easley let go of the hand that was still being absorbed into the tank. Where Jensen was, if he was, neither Jack nor any man could know, but that Jensen was gone forever from them was an almost perfect certainty. And if Jensen were somehow still alive, mere contemplation of what the man might be enduring would likely induce both madness and despondency.
The man that flung himself toward Jack from the rear of the tank was not shadowy in appearance, but as real looking as Easley. And the jaw Jack struck with the best left hook he could manage felt solid, fully real. Jack’s hand hurt. Already, the time might have passed to rejoin Ellen and the men of the Seventh on their way to 1996. Jack might be trapped in 1900 along with Easley—and along with Lester Matthews and his Lakewood henchmen.
Jack’s impromptu left—from a shallow angle and closer to a jab than a solid swing—merely deflected their assailant, didn’t stop him. The man’s submachine gun swung upward. Jack didn’t have time to get to his own. Easley shouted, distracting the man for a split second. What Easley’s intentions were—aside from fighting—Jack didn’t know. Jack snatched the long barreled Colt revolver from the gunfighter style holster at his right thigh, his left hand snapping outward, palm open, straight-arming the Lakewood man in the chest. Jack’s revolver cleared leather, and, punching it forward, the hammer cocked, he snapped the trigger.
The Lakewood man’s eyes went wide. There was a sudden smell of burning flesh. Jack shouted, “Jump for it now, Lieutenant.” Jack threw himself from the tank, hitting the floor of the capsule in an awkward roll that made his left elbow and shoulder seize with pain. Easley landed more gracefully. Jack didn’t know what to do, saw no sign of Ellen and the others, just called out to Easley, “Run deeper into the capsule, Lieutenant!” Jack’s elbow and shoulder hurt, but still worked. Somewhere behind them, mere feet only, were armed men who would kill them in the blink of an eye. And it might already be too late to reach 1996.
Jack heard shouts from the tank. One took his full attention. “It looks like they’re disappearing, Matthews!”
Jack shouted again to Easley, “Whatever we’re doing might be working! Keep running in the same direction!” The capsule hadn’t really seemed that deep, but it was impossible to judge distance, the light very poor again, nothing truly distinguishable except up and down, a fog that wasn’t really fog but was impenetrable surrounding them, all but ingesting them.
Jack felt something hard, and he almost lost his balance, wheeled round and started to raise his submachine gun. It was Harek, the Turk. “Allah be praised that you are alive!”
Jack only nodded. “The lieutenant?”
“Here, sir, right beside you.”
Jack could see Easley clearly, standing beside him, Ellen joining them. “Alan says we are there, in 1996. The capsule will open in a second or so.”
Jack Naile took Ellen into his left arm and embraced her, his elbow hurting. “Jensen didn’t make it, kid. Pass the word when you can.” Raising his voice so all could hear him, Jack announced, “Guns up, guys. When the chamber opens, the fight starts! Be ready!” Glancing at his wife again, Jack cautioned, “And you stay right beside me or behind me. Got it?”
This was a day for amazing things. His wonderfully independent, brave-as-they-come wife leaned up, kissed him on the cheek and said, “Yes.”
CHAPTER
TWENTY-THREE
The capsule door began to open.
Returning to the 1990s—Jack wanted to take time, time just to breathe, to see familiar things, do things. He realized that he missed the stupid and the pleasant almost equally—everything from getting caught in an Atlanta traffic jam to junk faxes to the ubiquitous unwanted telephone solicitations to Wendy’s wonderful double cheeseburgers and fries to the latest Jerry Goldsmith movie music. But he had other things to do. Save the world, or at least its history and probably its future.
Jack inhaled, treated himself to that before he would start shooting, and he kissed his wife full on the lips. “I love you, whatever time it is.”
Turning to Easley, he asked, “Are you and your men ready, Lieutenant?”
“Yes, sir. With regrets for what we must do, I am ready. God willing, they’re all combatants.”
Jack nodded, walked toward the nearly fully lowered door, addressing it as if it were a ramp, the angle progressively gentler. Ellen was on his left side, Easley to her left, the five remaining men of the Seventh Cavalry volunteers spread out, flanking them. Somewhere along the way, perhaps while the fight at the tank had been going on, Standing Bear had etched a few streaks of black war paint to his cheeks.
A Lakewood man, dressed in urban-cammie pants, a black T-shirt and white track shoes, just stared into the capsule. “Who the fuck are you guys?” The Lakewood man drew a pistol from a black fabric shoulder holster under his left arm.
“It begins,” Jack almost whispered. The H-K submachine gun was already to Jack’s shoulder. It was merely necessary to fire it. Jack let off three suppressed shots, stitching a ragged line from the man’s sternum into the man’s throat.
Easley whispered, “God forgive us,” then shouted, “Keep the lady safe. Now, follow me!”
Easley vaulted the last few feet from the capsule door into the 1996 time-transfer compound beyond, Standing Bear at his elbow. Despite the danger, Easley stared at the sky and proclaimed, “I am in the future!” In the next instant, Lakewood personnel—armed with M-16 rifles and MP-5 submachine guns—began pouring from the huts and trailers comprising the compound’s structures. A single shot, followed in a split second by a long, ragged burst of assault-rifle fire, hammered against the capsule, ricocheted.
Standing Bear, a submachine gun in each hand, wheeled toward the gunfire’s origin, his weapons firing f
rom the hip. The man was a natural, Jack thought absently. Movies aside, firing a submachine gun from the hip was usually a total waste of ammunition. For Standing Bear, however, such a technique was not an exercise in futility. This man would have been a world-class fighting man in any century.
Jack, usually gifted with realizing his own shortcomings, knew that he wasn’t as good at arms as Standing Bear and probably never would be. But as Jack was wont to remind himself at moments such as this one, how many novels, magazine articles and short stories had Standing Bear published? A person would excel in his or her own way; all that was necessary was to excel.
The butt of his MP-5 snugged to his shoulder, Jack Naile started to advance, Ellen beside and slightly behind him. Gunfire was general now, the number of heavily armed Lakewood Industries personnel considerably greater than Jack had anticipated.
There was no Plan B upon which they could fall back, success with this plan or failing totally the only options open to them. One of the Lakewood personnel, armed with an M-16, charged them, firing, his bullets cutting a swathe in the sandy ground a foot to the left and a yard behind Jack’s feet, missing Ellen by mere inches. Anger welling up inside him—the man had been deliberately aiming for Ellen—Jack fired a series of short bursts. Jack didn’t miss.
It wasn’t the first time she’d almost been shot, certainly. But Ellen’s knees felt a little weak as she stooped to untangle the rifle from the man her husband had just shot to death. The fellow had something that looked like a canvas purse slung crossbody to his left hip. A quick glance inside confirmed that she had just acquired four spare magazines in addition to the rifle. She had never fired an M-16, but had fired its civilian counterpart when Jack had owned one years ago.
“Put it on semi unless you need it,” Jack advised, Ellen watching intently as he flicked a selector switch on the rifle. Then Jack was moving again. Sensible people would have taken cover, Ellen knew, and perhaps Jack was heading toward cover of some kind, but she realized that caution was less important for their—some would say “piteously”—small force than seizing control of the time-transfer base while some element of surprise still remained. If they lost their lives, but the mission somehow succeeded, that would be counted a victory in the larger scheme of things.
A man was coming up on her left, a semi-automatic pistol in his right hand. Ellen brought the rifle she carried to her shoulder. She noticed that the rifle’s buttstock was a little on the long side for her when she lowered her cheek to bring her right eye in line with the sights. The Lakewood man was about to shoot. Ellen shot first, then fired a second shot and a third. The man went down, dead or close to it. Ellen guessed the battle had been going on for well under a minute.
Beside and a little behind Jack, Ellen ran toward what seemed the largest of the prefabricated buildings. Out of synch with the feminine stereotype, perhaps, Ellen had never eschewed violence, nor, however, had she sought it out. She remembered the day so well that the envelope had arrived at their post office box with the magazine clipping that had started all of this—Jack Naile General Merchandise. Perhaps, if they had never known, somehow—but of course their destiny had already happened and would continue to happen as long as the time loop existed. Both she and her husband had lived before somehow and died before and would again and again, and she couldn’t understand any part of the how, let alone the why.
Ellen shot at two Lakewood personnel, a man and a woman, both armed. She missed the man, hit the woman. The man fired at Jack, and Jack fired back and killed him.
What would they do with noncombatant Lakewood personnel? Would things work out—comparatively at least—so morally easy that all enemy personnel would be armed and go down fighting to the death? That was too much like something out of a poorly written book or movie—too convenient, she reasoned, but she could hope.
The time-transfer technology had to be kept safe.
As she ran, feeling just a little breathless, she suggested to Jack, “Couldn’t we let the ordinary evil-henchmen types go and just make sure the guys that are technically in the know are the ones who have to die?”
Jack looked over his shoulder at her as, at last, they took cover against the wall of one of the metal buildings.
As if things weren’t pain-in-the-ass enough, a drop of water touched the tip of her nose. As she looked up, she noticed the dark slate-blue clouds closing in from the west. It was starting to rain. “Shit.”
“It’s uncanny,” Jack said, grinning at her. “I was just going to say the same thing! And, yeah, maybe we can get away with not killing everybody here—we’ve gotta play that by ear, though.” The rain was subtly, steadily intensifying beyond just the few light drops she’d felt a moment before, and a cool wind was rising. “Stay behind me.”
Jack started around the building’s near corner, Ellen, her rifle at what she remembered was called high port, right behind him. More shots than she could count tore into the building’s wall behind her, forcing her forward faster, and in front of Jack. Jack turned around, starting to fold her into his arms, to protect her with his own body.
Her knees were buckling.
It was possibly a different shot than that from the bullet which had struck her a split second ago. She distinctly remembered the old aphorism to the effect that you never heard the shot that killed you. She’d heard shots and plenty of them. Ellen deduced that either the aphorism was incorrect, or, in fact, she was not about to die. Aphorisms be damned; Ellen hoped that she was not about to die, but her eyelids were so heavy and just wouldn’t stay open anymore . . .
Eyes locked with those of the man who’d fired the senselessly long burst from a submachine gun, Jack shrieked his rage as Ellen sank to the muddy ground, his arms cushioning her, his hands holding her face. “Fuck you, cocksucker! Fuck you! Fuck you!” The man’s eyes were so dark brown they were black, he had a five o’clock shadow that looked permanent and his mouth was an ugly slash. Jack, his submachine gun hanging from its sling at his side, drew the long-barreled Colt. More personal.
Jack punched the revolver toward its target, the shooter’s face. Jack’s first finger pushed against the trigger and the hammer fell and the man was already dead before Jack fired the second shot and cursed him, shouting, “Die, you motherfucker! Die! Die!”
What was left of the man’s face after the first chunk of lead had struck it exploded in a spray of red and gray, blood and brain matter, and there was a deep, ragged notch roughly describing where the man’s hair would have been parted had he parted it down the middle and had enough of his head still been intact to tell.
Jack, still holding Ellen, emptied the remaining three shots, spit at the dead man and promised himself to urinate on him when it would be safe to let go of Ellen. Tears filled Jack’s eyes. He couldn’t see much of anything except the red stain on Ellen’s back. His head hurt and his chest felt tight and he couldn’t stop weeping . . .
Lieutenant Easley said, “It would appear, sir, that someone was watching out not only for your wife, sir, but for you. A lot of blood, very little wound. Mrs. Naile won’t be in fighting trim for a bit, I’d think, but you’ve not lost her.”
Jack nodded. The rain fell heavily, relentlessly. The gunfire was ended for the moment, the time base won. Ellen was being treated by the time-transfer base’s medic—the female medic would be spared—everyone was soaking wet, and anyone who wasn’t standing around or sitting around soaking wet was dead. Only one of the Seventh had died—Luciano. Unlike his namesake of the Prohibition Era to come, there would be no reason to nickname the fellow “Lucky.”
Jack walked over to the lately dead man who had shot Ellen. Jack could see himself unbuttoning his fly, unlimbering his penis and urinating on what little was left of what had once been a human face. It was a promise needing to be kept, but it would not be; being civilized really sucked sometimes, Jack reflected. Instead of pissing, he merely wished that he had and walked away.
Ellen kissed Alan as he folded her into his ar
ms. She let herself sag against him a little, feeling a little weak, a little tired. “I’m sorry you can’t wait around long enough to meet my wife and the kids, Momma Ellen. My grandfather, David’s son, said that when he was little, that was what he called you.”
“Since it hasn’t happened yet—to me, anyway—I’ll just have to take your word for it, Alan.”
“I love you, Momma Ellen.”
Ellen let him hold her a little while longer, even though she just wished that she could sit down. Only one bullet had struck her, grazing her back just past her right shoulder blade and creasing her right tricep. The two wounds hurt like anything, and she’d lost enough blood to make her feel woozy, but she was all right. To assume that she was going to live would, under the circumstances, have been mightily presumptuous, could be considered to border on sophistry. But between this moment and the one when the door to the time-transfer capsule was closed, barring a meteor impacting, heart attack or a major blood vessel rupturing in her brain, her survival was secure. Ellen Naile had learned a long time ago that one should be grateful for what one had; such did not imply acceptance of the status quo, however, merely that dwelling in misery ignoring what happiness was at hand while waiting for what wasn’t was stupid.
Jack embraced his great-great grandson. “You sure that you’ll be okay on your own, son?”
“The bad guys are all dead except for the medic and she’ll stay away. I’ve got weapons, cars, food, money we took off their bodies. I’ll get this time-transfer base shut down, and, if my own company’s facility is still operational, that one, too. And I’ll find Bethany Kaminsky’s little ace-in-the-hole. I’ll miss you guys, Grandpa Jack.”