I know I can find him. And when I find him, maybe I can stop him. I also know if I don't try, and he kills again, I'll feel partly to blame.
The endorphins got me close to him, but not close enough. I need to step across that line, step completely into his timespace. What I need is some sort of booster. I borrowed (sorry, honey, I STOLE) some pills from Percy, hoping that they'll give me a boost.
Please don't worry.
Scott
The pills had virtually no taste, but they left him with a greasy feeling in his mouth. He chewed rather than swallowed the pills, reasoning that they would take affect faster that way. His knees and head were still throbbing from his previous falls, but these were only mild irritants. His legs were pumping in a steady, road-eating rhythm, and he was surprised to find that he felt pretty good.
The first two miles took him past his health club. When he reached the corner where he would normally turn back, he took the opposite turn, heading toward the park. There was a long, looping trail that wound through the trees there, and Jean had told him it was about five miles long. That, along with the two from the club and the two back, would be well past his tested limits.
He didn't notice any effect from the pills, nor did he look for any; he just concentrated on passing each level of fatigue, pushing himself that little bit further to kick his metabolism into a higher gear. By the time he reached the park, the sun was well up in the sky, and his skin was coated with a bright sheen of sweat. He grinned, realizing that he wasn't even tired yet.
By the time he'd looped around the park and made it back to the edge of the road, his body was totally on automatic pilot. His thoughts were disjointed, wandering, and his sight was slightly fuzzy from the combination of fatigue and the sweat collecting in the corners of his eyes. He wiped them clear on the sleeve of his t-shirt and pushed onward. Two miles to go, less than that to the roadside where he'd twice witnessed a murder.
He wasn't even certain what he planned to do. At the very least, he was going to make it down far enough into that ditch so he could positively identify the killer. If Percy's "drugs" came through, maybe he could do more. The fact that this made no sense did not sway him.
The pavement disappeared beneath him, entire blocks slipping by without any conscious notice of them, minutes flashing into the past without being acknowledged in the present. The last stretch loomed ahead, shimmering and wavering as the heat rose to confound his eyes. Sweat, now pouring down his face, burned his eyes unmercifully. He squinted, blinked, fought to keep them clear. Everything might depend on how well he could see, how closely he could describe the killer.
It was there! The same Charger, the same man—and the same brunette woman he'd seen on yesterday's run. This had to mean that the killer hadn't struck again since Friday night and Scott was still focused on that murder. No matter. All that really mattered now was to maintain his "high" and get there before it was too late. His legs were moving like pistons, eating the ground hungrily, and he could feel a new energy, a new level of stamina flowing through his bloodstream.
Offering a silent prayer to Percy, his chemicals, and the great god Endorphin, Scott plunged down the last few hundred feet, trying to be more careful than the last time, trying not to kill himself in the process. He moved into the ditch, watching for ruts and stones. He would do no good at all if he slipped and went tumbling again.
Twenty yards ahead of him, the killer raised his knife.
"I'm here!" Scott screamed. "I see you, you son of a bitch!" And he did see him. Carefully, he memorized every line of the killer's face, made mental notes on his size and weight, the tattoo running up the length of his arm, the dirty brown of his hair, the ice blue of his eyes as he looked up at the mad jogger bearing down on him and his victim.
"Shit," the killer muttered, his eyes fully focused on Scott.
The killer could see him! Scott came to a skidding halt, going down as he slipped on the loose gravel. The killer could see him! Scott looked to the victim, hoping to confirm in her eyes that he was indeed occupying the same space and time, but she was scampering through the ditch, taking advantage of her assailant's momentary distraction to scramble away from the bright little blade.
"Bad time to drop in, buddy," the killer hissed and he lunged toward where Scott sat on his rump.
My time, Scott thought desperately, as if this was something he could control, take me back to my time! Nothing happened. The killer took a mad swing with the knife and Scott felt a sting and the warm rush of blood down his forearm. He kicked out clumsily, somehow managing to trip his assailant, and scrambling backward like a crab, he maneuvered out of reach as the killer took another swipe at him from the ground. Then he was up and on his feet and running. Scott heard the killer struggling to his feet behind him, and he risked one quick glance back over his shoulder to confirm that the maniac was indeed chasing him.
When he reached the street he spotted a man walking his dog. Scott screamed for help, but the man appeared to be deaf. When Scott tried to get his attention by grabbing his arm, he passed right through, as if he were a ghost. Only the dog seemed aware of his presence, barking and straining at his leash. Its master merely cursed and pulled harder on the leash, continuing down the road.
The killer swung wide to block Scott's flight down the street, passing right by the dog and owner as if they weren't there.
Because they aren't there, Scott thought as he stumbled back the way he had come, back into the ditch. He was, once again, seeing into another timeline, perhaps his own, the one he'd left to get here. Scott's arm was dripping thick red blood and it had begun to throb painfully. He clamped his left hand over the gash to stem the flow of blood, desperately looking left and right for an avenue of escape. The far side of the ditch was hemmed by a chain-link fence topped with barbed wire. Further down the road, the ditch ended at a culvert that was much too small even for Scott's slight frame. He was trapped.
He cast about for something to use as a weapon. There was nothing. The killer's original victim had scrambled up the bank to her car. As Scott looked on, she started the engine and sped off, spewing gravel and dust. Scott had a brief second in which he contemplated this unexpected expression of gratitude, then the knifeman was upon him again.
Scott feinted toward the fence-side of the ditch and dodged to the other as the killer reacted. The slope was steep. Several steps into it, Scott realized his reserves were running out. The long run and his wound were taking their toll. He could hear the killer panting behind him, thought at one point he even heard the hiss of the knife slicing air at his back. Near the top of the bank, his feet slipped in gravel and he went down on his belly for a second. In that instant he was certain the next new sensation for him would be that wickedly curved little blade slicing through his spinal cord, but on hands and knees he kept moving, kicking up nearly as much gravel as the Charger.
He ran head first into her legs, almost bowling her over. Looking dumbly at the ground before him, he suddenly recognized Jean's running shoes as she turned around to look down on him. He didn't stop, but continued to scrabble forward, trying to drag her with him, screaming at her to run even before he looked up at her face. She didn't budge.
"Scott, what's wrong? My God, you're bleeding!"
Trying to calm his nerves, he glanced quickly over his shoulder. There was no one behind him. He looked twice in both directions up and down the ditch. No one.
Jean knelt beside him. "Let me see your arm. I think we'd better get someone to call 9-1-1."
"No, I'm fine," he stammered.
"The hell you are! Look at that gash."
The cut was real. Fresh blood ran in rivulets down his arm, dripping from the tips of his fingers. It had happened. "I must have gotten cut on something when I fell," he lied. He hated lying to her, but there was no way she was going to believe this.
"Stay here," she ordered. "I'm going to run up to the club and get help."
"No," he told her, using her arm to pull
himself to his feet. "I'm going with you. I can walk."
Jean looked doubtful, but at his insistence she let him lean on her arm and accompany her to the club. "When I saw your note, I came looking for you," Jean explained as they walked. He could tell she was talking just to hear her own voice. He'd definitely scared her. He felt bad for having done it, but thought that what he had accomplished more than justified her discomfort. He knew what the killer looked like. Exactly what he looked like.
"I'm really worried about you, Scott," Jean continued. "All this nonsense about Dodge Chargers and murdered women—"
"I'm not crazy," he told her. "You looked at the paper, didn't you?"
She looked more concerned than ever. "Scott, there was nothing in this morning's paper about a murder. I checked the front page, the back page, the whole damn paper."
Nothing? But he had seen the article. . .? And then it hit him. He had changed it. He had stepped back in the past and stopped it from happening. Of course there was nothing in the paper when Jean checked. Because of his interference, it had never happened.
"I want you to see a doctor, Scott."
"Sure," he said, not really listening. He had altered history. Scott Danning, time traveler. Scott Danning, protector of the weak and helpless. He liked the sound of that. The pain in his arm suddenly seemed less. "A few stitches and I'll be as good as new," he told Jean.
"I'm not talking about a doctor for your arm, Scott!"
"Sure, hon, anything you say." If he had done it once, he could do it again. The killer was still out there. Scott could give the police his description, but they'd never believe how he had gotten it. And there remained the first woman he'd seen murdered. Could he go back and save the blonde as well? But once both women were restored, there would actually be no crime for the police to investigate, no charges to be brought against the maniac with the knife. The man would be free to kill again—or for the first time (all over again). The time complications of the whole mess were mind-boggling.
It was a paradox to which he saw only one solution. He, Scott Danning, would have to take care of this. Save the first woman. Kill the maniac with the knife. His pocket still bulged with Percy Simm's nootropic pills. With some careful planning, he could do both those things—perhaps even at the same time. Couldn't he?
"Scott, are you listening to me?"
"Sure, hon. I'm listening."
"Maybe you should quit jogging."
He smiled and kissed her on the cheek. "Not a chance."
VIRTUE'S MASK
By Brian A. Hopkins & David Niall Wilson
If I sin, I glory in sinning
I will not wear virtue's mask.
The world shall know we have met
And are worthy, one of the other.'
Havoc met Tiffany at Fantasy's. Between Dead at Dawn's second and third set, he slipped his microphone into place on its stand and led her to one of the available encounter booths. Once inside, he locked the door and watched her undress behind the filmy shield of Plexiglas. The booth smelled of disinfectant over semen, of sexually-transmitted diseases and lust that lingered and scratched at his paranoia. There was passion, pain, and poison in the air, and he was careful to touch nothing.
Fish-eyed camera lenses hummed to life as customers in the adjoining booths registered their presence. The cameras scanned Havoc quickly, found nothing of interest, and proceeded to Tiffany as she slipped out of her leather skirt. The cameras were directed by foot-pedals, leaving one's hands free. There were corresponding monitors: hi-def windows looking in on the neighboring booths. Voyeurism was part of the fare at Fantasy's and, though the cameras featured on/off switches, it was considered bourgeois to turn one off.
Watching Tiffany, Havoc could also see the two monitors on her side of the booth. The first showed a pock-marked blonde with her heavy breasts flattened against the glass, while her partner, a sallow, emaciated man, licked the unthinkable from his side of the encounter shield. Neurally incompetent, Havoc labeled the wasted specimen, automatically slipping into the jargon of the younger crowd that nightly barricaded itself in Fantasy's Funhouse. The man was mad. Nothing short of insanity could overlook the ten thousand diseases stalking the booths. The second monitor featured a lone masturbator stroking away while he watched the blonde, or Tiffany, or both. A careful man, this masturbator. He was wearing plastic gloves, protected not only from the decaying world around him, but from himself as well. There was no telling what you could pick up on your hands these days. The latest figure was 83.5 percent and they were forecasting at least a two percent increase in carriers before Christmas. Who could you trust?
What was the other phrase the kids were using? Accelerated entropy. Yeah, that was it.
Tiffany's panties were crotchless, a beguiling opening spilling an unruly burst of red-highlighted curls. As Havoc had suspected when watching her move on the dance floor, she wore nothing under her silk blouse. She'd tinted her nipples lavender to match her panties. The fine hair that began just below her navel glittered with some other cosmetic enticement, a scintillating trail that his eyes could follow, but his hands never would.
"Aren't you going to undress?" Tiffany's voice lost its huskiness when conveyed by the booth's tiny speaker. Havoc found her somehow less attractive this way, less desirable. Was he watching the woman he'd craved throughout an entire forty-five minute set—or was he watching a holo-vid recording of her? There were booths in other clubs that allowed one the option of inserting a personal HV disk. It was considered proper form to decline an unwanted encounter by offering the use of one's disk for a few minutes. Given a good hi-def, plasma-prism screen embedded in the encounter shield—which all the better clubs featured—and it would seem just like a real partner was on the other side. Then again, he mused cynically, what was the difference?
"Are you okay?"
"Have you ever wondered," Havoc asked, "what it's like to actually fuck?"
She paused, one hand at her crotch, a finger lost in the cleft of her panties, the other hand clenched about her left breast, lavender nipple pressed between thumb and index finger. She cocked one eyebrow. "Have you ever wondered," she countered, "what it's like to fucking die?"
One camera lens swung in his direction, as if the masturbator, the blonde, or the licker wanted to hear how he would answer.
Havoc said nothing.
"Forget it," Tiffany muttered, reaching for her clothes. She slipped the silk blouse over her satin-smooth shoulders, drew the skirt up over her flawless thighs. Too late, he found himself becoming aroused, the erotic attraction of watching a woman put on her clothing altogether new and exciting.
"Look," she said, turning as she was about to slide out of the booth, "I meant what I said earlier about your music. You guys are good. Too good for this dump." She kissed the tip of one carefully manicured finger and pressed it to the Plexiglas. "Look me up when you lose the attitude, okay?"
In the self-adjusting lounger fronting his computer terminal, Havoc let himself ride the waves of music flowing out and around him from his stereo. He'd called up the archive file of an oldie he remembered from his father's collection. Alice Cooper. "Poison."
I want to touch you, but I want it too much,
I want to kiss you, but your lips are covered with poison,
Running through your veins, you're poison—driving me insane.
Yeah, right. That guy had been talking metaphorically. There was no telling how many women he'd slept with, how many times he'd actually run his hands, his tongue, or whatever bit of flesh he wanted, over soft, female flesh. The song had obviously been a fucking prophecy. Havoc wondered briefly what this man named Alice would have thought of sex in plastic booths, personal video encounters, and virtual groping? Not much, was the first guess that came to mind. Not much at all.
There were a thousand new encounters awaiting Havoc at the touch of a keyboard. He could log on-line, slip the head-piece and visor in place, and be lost in the passions of endless—and meanin
gless—relationships in seconds. It was a virtual smorgasbord of electronic delight. It was also not what he had in mind. Not by a long shot. It was one thing to have your nerves electronically stimulated, another to really touch something.
"Shit," he muttered, spinning away from the console. There was nothing he could do about it except become more depressed than he already was. They'd killed sex the generation before. His was a generation of abstinence. A generation of careful self-stimulation and coveted monogamy. To think there was a time when sleeping with one partner your entire life was a joke. Havoc would give a lot for such a partner. Someone clean. Someone faithful. Someone on whose flesh he could jettison the prurient rush in his veins. Curse it all. God damn everyone who'd gone before, every self-indulgent bastard who'd slipped his cock one too many times where it shouldn't have been and screwed it all over for Henry James Havochek, a.k.a. Havoc.
He turned to the computer. There was work to do. The new disc would be coming out soon—the one that was supposed to rocket Dead at Dawn to new pinnacles of fame and fortune—and there were still three songs to be written. Nikki and Devon and Ron were counting on him. They could play—God how they could play!—but they were counting on him to write the words and at least the first cut at the music.
The chorus of the Alice Cooper song came around again, insinuating its message between the thoughts he was trying to organize. He would have liked to have put his frustration into the music, but that was no way to the top. People didn't want to hear that their world was fucked up, that they should be touching and caring for one another. They wanted instant gratification, and they wanted to be reassured that everything was just fucking fine, thank you—better than fine. A fantasy.
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