Tourists of the Apocalypse

by WALLER, C. F.

  “Mini-gun,” I blurt out looking at a giant sized gun like the one Dickey has on the roof of his Mustang.

  “Buh, buh, bingo. It’s five feet long with twelve barrels, auto fire and sonar tracking. She’s wicked dangerous.”

  The barrels are pointed skyward, but it’s articulated like a child’s telescope. It turns in the middle bringing the business end level. On the back are braided metal wire harnesses. A ribbon of long thin ammunition feeds out of the hole in the ground and into one side. Smack dab on the top is a dark sphere with a red light turning around its center like an eyeball. The business end points to the right, and then the left, motor noises mixed with hydraulic lifters seeming loud in the wide open landscape.

  “Oh, oh, okay,” Dickey barks. “Now stay where you are and watch this.”

  Grinning, he walks out in front of the gun which is pointed away from the compound. The eye tracks him, and then the barrels on the gun begin to spin. The Gatling gun end whirrs loudly, the sound of scraping metal like nails on a blackboard. As Dickey walks back and forth it follows him. He pulls out his phone and clicks the button.

  “Guh, guh, go live on number one will ya?”

  “Stop playing around,” the voice echoes.

  “Aw, aw, aw come on,” Dicky whines. “Can a guy get a little live fire on one?”

  The gun suddenly turns sharply in his direction. The barrel’s spin as clicking noises ring out. As he walks the clicks continue. The clicking is the gun firing. It’s shooting at him, but no rounds are coming out. The Goliath tracks him for ten yards then he opens up the phone again.

  “We, we, we’re good.”

  The barrels stop spinning abruptly. It tilts up and then drops back in the hole, the doors shutting slowly on long gas powered shocks. Dickey wanders back to us grinning.

  “Why didn’t it fire?” I ask.

  Thuh, thuh, this,” he announces, pointing at the odd looking Fit Bit. The system won’t go live on anyone or anything wearing a Tab.”

  “And if you’re not wearing one?” Fitz asks timidly.

  “Thuh, thuh, then you’re dog food.”

  “How many,” she ponders aloud, pointing her finger down the way from us.

  “Thuh, thuh, thirty this size,” he reveals. “An, an, another dozen smaller ones like I have on my car. Once activated, nothing that moves can get past this line. Totally cool, huh?”

  “It’s charming,” I sigh. “Where did they get all this stuff?”

  “Suh, suh, some of it they make,” he explains, pointing at the compound. “These babies came on a truck from somewhere else.”

  “And the bullet proof wrap?”

  “Cray, cray, crazy future stuff huh?” he blurts out excitedly. “They make it all up there. They got some wild tech.”

  “Crazy future stuff,” Fitz mutters confused.

  “She doesn’t know,” I divulge to Dickey. “How long have you known?”

  “Luh, luh, let’s see,” he stutters, tapping his forehead with a fist. “Two years probably. The stuff I seen they had to tell me something.”

  “Tell you what?” Fitz shrugs, in my opinion, pretending to look helpless.

  “He can explain it,” I mutter pointing at Dickey. “Is there a bathroom up there?”

  Fitz sticks out her tongue when she climbs in the Jeep. Up at the Hive we get a dorm room down the hall from a common room. Fitz intertwines her fingers in mine and pretends to be embarrassed when requesting a single room for us. She’s playing her part for now at least. A dozen people come and go, including Jerry who seems happy working here. Dickey spends the rest of the night explaining things to Fitz. I listen, but my thoughts drift to Izzy. How long will Fitz try and keep me out here?

  ….

  Two days pass like a prison term, then we ride the Dickey express back to Oakmont Street. A black helicopter sits in the center of the cul-de-sac when we arrive. I hadn’t noticed before, but a red circle with yellow inner rings is painted there. The blades aren’t turning, but Lance is talking to T-Buck and Blister in front of their garage. The Mustang pulls into Dickeys driveway and our trio walks down from there. We don’t get more than a few yards, before Izzy comes out of Lances place sprinting right for us. I start to run, but Fitz snags my arm.

  “Not so fast loverboy,” she whispers. “Whenever you talk to her make sure I am standing next to you.”

  “That sounds cozy,” I grumble, taking her by the hand and walking slowly. “What’s Batman gonna think?”

  “He knows the deal. He likes you and doesn’t want to see you hurt. Give him some credit instead of a bunch of whining.”

  I have to agree with her. I am whining and most of these people are trying to help me. Facts are I have no self-control around Izzy. Would it be love if I did? We converge with the sitting chopper between, our threesome and Lance, although he peeks around the tail several times.

  “How’s the wrist,” Fitz asks, her arm around my waist.

  “Been icing it to get the swelling down,” she reports, narrowed eyes scanning between Fitz and me. “The doctor thinks it’s just a crack. They told me to give it four weeks and they will re-check it.”

  “You look good,” I offer, noticing her dark tee shirt and khaki pants. She’s dressed like all the rest of them again.

  “Thanks, what did you think of the Hive?”

  “Amazing,” Fitz blurts out, nuzzling her lips in my neck then whispering, “Sargent Slaughter at four o’clock.”

  Behind me Lance wanders up holding a clipboard. I get a simple nod, but he stops to turn Izzy away from me to whisper. After a moment he slaps her on the ass as if she was a preschooler and sends her inside.

  “So, how are you guys doing? Don’t think we’ve been properly introduced?”

  “Fitz,” she offers, putting out her hand. “You must be Lance?”

  “My reputation precedes me it seems,” he fains shyness, shaking her hand.

  “Izzy talked about you a lot.”

  “How did you kids meet?” he asks suspiciously, moving a finger between us.

  “Dylan saved my life,” she croons, putting both arms around my neck and dangling there. “If he hadn’t picked me up I don’t know what would have happened.”

  He studies us and just when I think the jig is up he smiles.

  “I’m glad you two made it back,” he remarks in an insincere tone, stepping back toward the chopper. “You’re a trauma surgeon?”

  “In another life. I was working as a nurse in the E.R. when the world ended.”

  “I think we can use someone with your skill set if you’re interested in staying,” he proposes, eyeing me as he does.

  “I am,” she exclaims, letting one hand fall down my stomach. “Anything to stay next to this guy.”

  “I think we can work with that,” Lance nods, turning to get in the chopper.

  The blades start turning and we back up to a safe distance, the wind ruffling my hair. Dickey heads back to his house and we wait for the chopper to take off in hopes of getting Izzy alone. Before this happens, she jogs across the lawn and Lance reaches down to pull her up by her good hand. She turns and I see her face in the window as the wind from the chopper blows me back a bit. I show up and he takes her elsewhere. Fitz wraps her arms around me from behind as the chopper flies off.

  I shrug my shadow off once the chopper is out of sight and head for my own house. My mother is doing laundry downstairs when I get there. I storm up the stairs to my room, but can hear Fitz following me. She confronts me, in my room, slamming the door behind her.

  “Enough,” I whine. “She’s gone, leave me be.”

  “It’s not just Lance you have to fool,” she warns. “Those other guys are watching. I know you’re hurting, but just let me tag along and look pretty. You’re a grenade without a pin anyway. Without me he’d have killed you already.”

  “Why do you care what happens to me?” I whine. “Sounds like Caesar already has a place for you in his Empire.”

  “Y
ou saved my butt,” she answers softly, sitting down on the bed and pulling me down next to her. “Izzy loves you and I promised to keep you from going off the rails. I intend to honor that promise.”

  “Sorry, I know you mean well.”

  “So this is it,” she wonders after a long silent pause. “A double bed and a desk chair?”

  “Yeah, I haven’t lived here since high school.”

  “Izzy said this wouldn’t be a problem,” she remarks, patting her hand on the bed.

  “Not as long as you don’t try and take advantage of me.”

  “That’s a lot to ask,” she snickers, “but I’ll see what I can do.”

  She hugs me and then goes downstairs to talk to my mother, who everyone but me calls Missy. I lay back on the bed, putting my hands behind my head. I wonder where Izzy and Lance went. Before I can dwell on this topic, there is a knock on the door frame.

  “Long time no see kid,” Graham’s gravelly voice washes across the room.

  “Yeah,” I agree without looking over. “Rumor has it you and Lance had a falling out.”

  “He doesn’t like it when people disobey his edicts.”

  “Seems like you handed out a few yourself,” I chuckle, “last time I was here.”

  “That was more worldly advice than chiseled in stone,” he argues, limping into the room and sitting backwards on the desk chair.

  When I prop myself up on my elbows the vison of Graham is eerie. His nose appears broken and both eyes are black and swollen. He’s sitting with one shoulder lower than the other cradling an immobile arm across his chest. The hand on that arm is buried in an ace wrap with only the tip of his thumb sticking out. He tries to smile, but the center of his lower lip is split and the scab makes it difficult.

  “Someone got their ass kicked.”

  “It was worth it,” he coughs, licking something that may be blood off his lips.

  “You mean Violet was worth it.”

  “She is worth it. You’d have done the same.”

  “But I’m not the Fail Safe,” I needle him hoping for some clarity on that issue.

  “Apparently in Lance’s rulebook the leaving thing was a hard rule, not a guideline.”

  “How is Violet?”

  “A white hot mess,” he chuckles. “But she’s alive and safe.”

  “How’d you find her? Did she have a magic phone?” I ask, recalling Dickey found me using Izzy’s.

  “Nope, she was at the flower shop. Two days passed before I couldn’t stand it anymore and went after her. By then, the city was starting to turn ugly. Poor thing was huddled on the floor in the backroom. She was in Zombie mode and wouldn’t speak, clutching a pair of shears they use to cut flowers.”

  “She had it bad?”

  “Not as bad as the two dead guys covered in stab marks lying on either side of her,” he describes. “Poor thing tried to kill me until I got her calmed down.”

  “Sounds horrible.”

  “All prostitutes at one time or another have a rough john. In her case, she spent her teenage years fighting off an overly loving stepfather as well. I think she knew these guys from hooking and when the world turned upside down they came by for a freebie.”

  “She snapped?”

  “She won’t say, but she’s a walking bruise with a broken cheekbone. Whatever happened was rough.”

  “And now?”

  “She’s downstairs talking to Missy pretending it never happened. Another thing about prostitutes is they can compartmentalize like crazy.”

  “I’m glad you brought her here,” I assure him. “I like her. Anything I can do to help her just let me know.”

  “Seems like you got your own stray,” he remarks, raising an eyebrow then wincing. “Looks like the two of you are awful cozy.”

  “Oh, oh, yeah,” I stutter. “She’s great.”

  “That’s a crock,” he shakes his head dismissively. “She’s pretending to keep Lance from killing you. You and Izzy are together aren’t you? The surgeon’s just a beard.”

  “Is it that obvious?”

  “Yeah, and you better start pretending to love the red head quick. You’re going to need to make it look good if you want to survive long enough to figure out the Izzy thing.”

  “You’re not just going to tell me to stay away.”

  “How’d that advice go over the first time I tried it?”

  We both smile. It’s always been clear Graham has no great loyalty to Lance, but now it feels like he’s on my side. There was a time when I thought he had a thing for Izzy and was driving me away for selfish reasons. It’s clear now he’s all-in with Violet. The beating he took can only be explained by love. I wonder when my beating will happen.

  “So I assume Izzy told you?”

  “About what? The baloney about being time-travel tour guides?”

  “Tour guides,” he snorts. “That’s a novel definition.”

  “If that’s not what it is please enlighten me,” I press him, sitting up on the edge of the bed.

  He eyes me suspiciously then the bluster seems to bleed out of him.

  “Five centuries from now things are a lot different. People of means are looking for entertainment. My employers figured out a way to give it to them.”

  “Your employers?”

  “Talus Corporation,” he reveals.

  “Izzy told me they pay by lifting your relatives out of poverty?”

  “Yes in some cases,” he nods. “In my case, it was my wife, but everyone has a unique story.”

  “I’ve been thinking about the money since she told me. How can you know if they keep their end of the bargain?”

  “Cynical much,” he rolls his eyes and then pauses. “I’ve been with this program from the early days. They pay as promised.”

  “So you just said goodbye to your wife and bailed for the past?”

  “We hadn’t been together in a long time. I wanted something better for my kids, so I volunteered.”

  “What’s the deal with this Fail Safe designation? Why are you any different from the others?”

  “That my friend will depend on how much she told you.”

  “Izzy said when someone comes back it forms a new time line. No one can return and no one can come here. You can’t affect the timeline you came from and you still have a decent idea about what’s going to happen next. A cheat sheet so to speak.”

  “That pretty much covers it. The process is like dialing a phone number. This point in time has its own numerical location. The kicker is that once you dial it, the number changes. Using the phrase new timeline makes it easy to understand, but it’s more about what quantum physics dictates. All we do is create a huge pulse of energy and the Universe does the rest.”

  “The Inversion Reactor?”

  “Wow, you must have spent more time taking notes than getting naked,” he chuckles.

  “Plenty of both, but you were talking about the Fail Safe.”

  “Right, well eight of us came back. A client who pays the bills.”

  “Mr. Dibble,” I interrupt.

  “Yes, plus five support people and a team leader.”

  “Lance, Izzy, Blister, Cain and Able,” I list off. “But if that’s the case, who are you?”

  “I’m the corporate insurance policy,” he spells out. “If the deal goes sour back here, I return to the future and tell them what went wrong. Then when they, and by that I mean me, gets sent back here they already know what to avoid.”

  “But you can’t go back,” I point out. “You both said there are no return trips.”

  “Technically that’s true, but I carry some additional equipment,” he goes on. “Inside my belly is a power supply and an encryption device. When I came through it strung a tether back to the original timeline.”

  “So there is a way back?”

  “No Dylan, pay closer attention. Everyone comes through what is basically a hole that opens up. They fall through and the hole slams shut behind them. My gut pack is code
d to the machine back home. The hole opens, I fall through, but I’m hanging by a string. It’s like when you put a fishing line on a quarter and pull it in and out of a vending machine to get free stuff. If my power unit gets switched off, I get sucked back.”

  “Gut pack?”

  He struggles to his feet and pulls up the left side of his shirt. There’s a huge red scar shaped like a J-hook. Next to it is a tattoo that looks like a bar code.

  “It’s not too big,” he explains, running a finger down the scar. “They slip it in between the muscle here. There’s a wire that runs up my chest and monitors my pulse. If my heart stops before the pack runs out of juice I go back automatically.”

  “What’s the point of going back dead? You can’t tell them anything if you’re a corpse.”

  “Well if I am full of bullet holes for instance, they can check the counter on my unit and know when things went sideways,” he explains. “Or I can sever the connection manually, causing me to get pulled back deliberately.”

  “And you can survive the bungie jump?”

  “Sort of,” he sighs. “On the way here we are in a shielded capsule. This protects us from a barrage of cosmic waves and enough radiation to turn you into a glow stick. One the way back, you’re basically a human bullet. No protection from any of that.”

  “Sounds like a grim end.”

  “Medicine is better on that end, but yeah, it sucks. I witnessed a guy landing in the Catch Room once,” he winces. Hair scorched off, skin burned and heart stopped cold.”

  “Heart stopped?”

  “When you cross over you pass through the Bridge.”

  “The what?”

  “Einstein-Rosen-Bridge,” he repeats slowly. “It’s basically a wormhole. If you come here or go there you arrive dead.”

  “But you’re all here now,” I point out. “And you’re all breathing.”

  “They put a portable defibrillator inside us. It’s hardened like a military radio. When we hit this side it goes off and brings everyone back. They only work that one time and we remove them later.”

  “And you have one for the ride back?”