“I didn’t need to kill you,” Everett said, aiming at Kyle now. “Dummy.”
Kyle winced, ready for the kill shot. He had the thought for a brief instant that he was about to die for nothing, since Everett would just march past his dead body and murder every kid on the bus to keep with what he believed the universe wanted.
Then, Kyle heard the gravel behind him moving. He looked back and saw Sillow at the wheel of the bus. He’d turned the bus ever so slightly, about to merge into traffic.
Everett no longer had a clear shot into the driver’s seat. He moved closer to the oncoming traffic for a better angle and fired once. As Everett aimed at the bus’s tires, Kyle moved so he was in the way of his shots. He’d have to shoot Kyle to shoot the bus again. Everett aimed at Kyle’s chest and cocked the weapon.
Kyle saw what Everett was too busy to notice. Allaire charged at him like a linebacker in pursuit. She ran into him and sent him off balance. He stumbled to his left and stepped over the white line dividing the shoulder and the right lane of the Thruway. Kyle noticed a look of panic on his face when Everett noticed he was on the asphalt instead of the gravelly shoulder.
Seconds later, Everett was hit hard by a maroon Volvo, the collision sending him flying fifteen feet into the weeds beyond the shoulder.
By the time Kyle could register what had happened, the bus was gone. Kyle could hardly believe that they’d survived the threat from Everett and would soon be heading back toward Flemming. If Sillow could keep them safe during the ride back, it would be after midnight when they arrived home and the kids would have lived to see March 14.
Allaire walked over to Everett’s body in the weeds, and knelt next to him. The look on her face was solemn, but not devastated. Kyle pulled off his ski mask but gave her a few feet of distance. They’d have to get out of here soon so neither of them ended up in police custody here in 2014. Someone would’ve definitely called the police when they saw a man on the side of the Thruway pointing a shotgun at a school bus.
“One thing,” Allaire said, kneeling next to Everett and closing his eyes.
“What?” Kyle asked, stepping a little closer.
“He gave his life to one thing,” she said. “And he failed. We failed.”
Kyle walked around Everett’s body so he could see Allaire’s face. “Allaire, I know you think that this is going to mess up the whole universe—”
“I don’t think it will, Kyle. It will. I do this every, single day. Keeping the timestream safe is my life. You ever hear of President Kardashian?”
“No,” Kyle answered.
“What about the A-Bomb Destruction of Houston, or the Global Small Pox Plague of 1989?” she asked.
Kyle looked at her, confused. “No. Of course not.”
“That’s because we never allowed those things to happen,” she said. “You might not see it today. Or tomorrow. Or even when you go back to 2016. But those kids being alive throws off a very delicate balance. Twelve lives magically reappearing in the universe could throw things into exactly the kind of chaos that Ayers wants.” She put her hand on Everett’s chest and spoke lower now. “He’ll do more things too. Sometimes we win, and sometimes he does. But Ayers will just keep playing with the timestream until it’s the end of us all.”
She stood up and walked closer to Kyle now. Other than the dead bodies, they were alone now on the side of the Thruway, a light breeze kicking up at their feet. She was close enough for him to kiss her. “You know the saying, ‘you’re either part of the solution, or part of the problem’?”
He nodded.
“When you took that pillar, we needed you,” Allaire said. “Seeing that you hadn’t aged means you might be the key to stopping Ayers—the key to mankind’s future—and you bailed. And the worst part is that you did it to save yourself. You make it about the kids, when it’s really all about you.” Kyle didn’t agree with her characterization, but that was a fight for another time.
“Did I fall in love with you fast?” she asked. “Sure. But, I assumed that the Kyle I knew would be there when the shit hit the fan. That you were the kind of person that would step up.”
“I am,” he said. “I want to be.”
She gave him a subtle look that he’d never seen before, but he knew it just the same. Her feelings for him had been to the mountaintop, but they’d fallen, and they weren’t likely to come back. “You’re not, Kyle Cash. I wanted to believe you were. I needed to believe you were the hero that was going to make everything right. But the proof is in that bus. You couldn’t just have faith and do what I asked.” Her words trailed off, as tears fell from her eyes.
“But . . . ”
Allaire turned away from him, and then reached into her pocket. She flipped him the keys to his Sentra. “You should get back. There’s a blot sitting on the passenger seat. If those kids survive another few hours, you’ll be a free man in 2016. Congratulations.”
“What about you?” Kyle asked.
“I’ll be cleaning up the mess,” she said.
“Let me help you,” Kyle said.
“Just go, please,” Allaire answered
“I want to make this right,” Kyle said.
“It’s too late,” Allaire answered. “You can’t! Just go, please. Before the police come. Go back and live your life outside of a jail cell.”
That he’d managed to fall so far in her eyes, so quickly, made Kyle feel a deep and dark sense of regret, completely squashing his excitement over getting the kids of Bus #17 to likely safety. He walked away with his head hanging, got into his Sentra and pulled onto the Thruway.
CHAPTER 20
March 14, 2014
* * *
Just after midnight
As Kyle pressed his ear to the payphone, he listened to it ring three times and assumed it would go to voicemail. But, then, a groggy voice answered. “Heh—Hello??”
“Is your brother at home?” Kyle asked, pressing a finger into his other ear to block out the music blaring through the gas station.
“My brother?” the voice answered. “Do you have any idea what time it is?”
Kyle looked across the street at the digital display on the sign of another gas station. “Yes, Myrna. It’s about a quarter past midnight.”
He’d realized that he could enter the silk blot sitting in his car from anywhere. For every ‘rule’ of time weaving Kyle learned, it seemed like he learned an exception too. Before going back to 2016, Kyle needed to know that the kids had made it back, so he’d killed some time waiting around a Thruway gas station.
“Who is this?” Myrna asked, sounding panicked. “Were you involved with what happened today?” If everything turned out differently, there’d never be a need for Myrna and Kyle to know each other. “Mom! Pick up the phone. I think it’s the guy who kidnapped Etan today.”
“Please,” Kyle said. “Just tell me if he made it home.”
Kyle heard the click of another phone picking up. “Is it really you?” the voice of a young kid answered. “Suck it, you cock knocker! Your gun was the saddest looking piece of shit I’ve ever seen, you poor mutherfucker.” Kyle smiled knowing that Etan was home, safe and sound.
He hung up the phone, and headed back to his car, ready to head into a silk blot one last time.
CHAPTER 21
February 25, 2016
* * *
Two years later
Kyle headed down Main Street in Flemming. He couldn’t wait to see his mother alive later when she got home from work. He couldn’t wait to sleep in his bed. To decide what he’d do for once, instead of being told.
He knew he’d probably never see Allaire again and that his life as a time weaver would soon be a distant memory. He’d let her down, but in the end, he was right. He’d stopped the crash, and the world seemed just fine.
So fine that, when Kyle passed the Starbucks on Main Street, he ducked inside for a celebratory drink. The idea of a vanilla bean frappuccino made his mouth water. He couldn’t remember the
last time he’d done something just for the enjoyment of it. He checked his back pocket, found a couple of twenty dollar bills and headed inside.
A little while later, he strolled toward his house drinking his frappuccino. It was four in the afternoon, so he still had another hour until his mom would be home. She’d think it’d been only hours since they’d seen each other.
As he walked, Kyle felt intoxicated by his newfound freedom. Those kids would get to live normal, unabbreviated lives now, and he had a chance to pick up where he left off. Still, Allaire managed to creep into his thoughts too.
She’d told him she thought he might be the one who could help them make everything right. But, what was more right than giving life to the kids from the bus? Kyle wondered. She’d wanted Kyle to be a hero, but by going against what she asked of him, he felt like one. It was hard for Kyle to believe, at the moment, that there was anything wrong with the world at all, much less that he’d need to keep time weaving to help fix it.
It was a beautiful day, so Kyle decided to meander until his mom got home. He walked down Nairn Boulevard toward the high school sucking on his frappuccino. Perhaps he could steal a nap in the same grassy field where he and Allaire had spent the night together all the way back in 1998. Life is good, Kyle thought. The universe is fine just as it is.
When he came within about a half block of Silverman High, though, he noticed that something looked different. The building wasn’t where it was supposed to be. He hadn’t been in prison so long that he’d forgotten where the school was. What was going on? he wondered to himself.
Kyle ran down the block now and stood across the street from where the school had been. He waited for the cars to pass as he scanned the area in front of him. The grass was still there, but it was more expansive now. There was no school building anywhere in sight. It looked just like a park. He felt a strange sensation in his stomach, like someone had just punched him. His brain was flooded with memories, but there were too many hitting him at once to make any sense of them.
Kyle ran through the grass and felt disoriented. What used to be a school, surrounded by a large field of grass was now just a field. No signs. Nothing. “What the hell?” He wondered aloud.
He ran in to the convenience store across the street and walked up to the counter where an older man in a white t-shirt sat on a stool with a cigar hanging out of his mouth. Kyle was out of breath, puffing and huffing as he spoke.
“Where’s the high school?” Kyle asked, pointing across the street. “The school! It used to be, I mean, it was right here.”
“What?” the man asked, scrunching up his face.
“The school! Silverman High!” Kyle said tersely. “Where’d it go?”
“I don’t like your tone, kid,” the guy said, standing up from his stool. He put his cigar in an ashtray, and Kyle was afraid he was going to come out from behind the counter.
Kyle put his hands in front of him to try to calm the guy down. “Listen, I’m sorry. I just . . . I just really don’t know . . . where the school went. I’m not from around here.”
“No shit, you’re not,” the guy said, “You’ve gotta be from Mars or somethin’ not to know what happened,” the store clerk said, shaking his head in disbelief. “It was over a year ago. This little girl. She wired the whole school with C4. Poof. Took out over three hundred kids and about forty teachers. They tore down the little bit that was left a few months ago. You ask me, those kids deserve more of a memorial than a damn field.”
Kyle’s knees started to shake as his legs felt weaker and weaker every second.
The store clerk turned around and unpinned an article from the wall behind him. “You ever read a newspaper before? Here. Knock yourself out. Read all about it.” The clerk placed the article on the counter.
Kyle picked up the clipping. His hands felt shaky as he scanned the article. He couldn’t help his gag reflex when he read the name of the bomber. He threw up right on the tile floor in front of the counter.
“What the hell are you doing?” the clerk asked.
Kyle stumbled out of the store and looked across the street to the former site of the school. In a million years he wouldn’t have guessed Lisa Cartigliani could be capable of something like this. The world felt to him like it was spinning too fast and Kyle couldn’t keep his balance.
He fell to his knees. More than three hundred children dead. Forty teachers. All because he’d gone back and saved twelve lives. Allaire had been right after all.
Kyle buried his face in his hands and screamed.
TO BE CONTINUED . . .
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