Chapter Five
THE AFTERNOON HAD become unseasonably hot.
Carol Wren had sweat her way through the afternoon gym classes, thankful at least that she didn't have to be reminded of Kenneth Yardrow for the rest of the day.
As she changed out of her sweaty, sticky workout clothes in the faculty restroom, she felt a twinge in her knee.
She held her shirt above her head, stopping to consider what that might mean. Other than her morning run, she hadn't exerted herself too strenuously. Her day had consisted of walking around to make sure each student was able to play badminton or volleyball without injuring themselves.
Now, of all times, when she finally had a moment to herself, her knee had twinged.
That meant something, but she did not know what.
She heard from a distance a sound she wouldn't have expected to hear in a middle school.
A great roaring noise erupted from somewhere.
She had time enough to think that someone had torn a hole in the universe, except that idea surely had to be the product of a feverished, overworked mind that had seen too many science fiction movies.
She slid her t-shirt over her torso and bolted out of the restroom, heedless of the duffel bag she left beside the toilet.
Behind the roaring, she heard a crunching noise.
It sounded as though someone had taken a sledgehammer to a classroom floor.
She brushed shoulders with Iris Oulette, the eighth-grade science teacher, hardly noticing the other woman's astonished expression, nor her insistent pleas to do something for God's sake.
Carol herself didn't know what to do other than push open the door of Leonard Dunkelson's homeroom class.
She was suddenly in the presence of a figure in a heavy metallic suit walking forward towards a gaping, black nothingness.
The figure carried two children under each arm.
Upon seeing both children Carol's knee gave such a painful complaint that she wondered if the injury had finally come back with all its unrelenting ferocity.
She struggled to step forward.
Taking the first step wasn't as easy as she expected. She moved as though mired in molasses while reaching her hand to the girl dangling like a rag doll underneath a powerful silver arm.
If he even noticed Carol at all, the silver-clad phantom paid her no mind. Each step he took left a four-inch-deep indentation in the floor, pulverizing blue and white patterned tiles.
He stepped into the black space.
Harold Dunkelson slumped over sideways, crashing to the ground.
The figure passed through the portal just the black space closed in upon itself.
Carol toppled forward just as she had been about to reach it.
Her knee had given out on her.
At that moment, her brain spinning and her stomach churning up bile, she didn't feel that pain that would haunt her for weeks to come.
She didn't even feel her head strike the floor, or see the blood that was leaking out from somewhere.
She blinked her eyes once, twice, three times.
She knew enough to say she was awake and alive, but more than that, she could not have explained anything that had just happened.
Journey Through Time (A Time Travel Adventure Collection Part 1) Page 5