In Times Like These: eBook Boxed Set: Books 1-3

by Nathan Van Coops

  “No! Francesca, I’m out there!” I say. She’s midway out the door when she freezes.

  “Son of a bitch!” She jumps back into the room. The doorknob slips out of her grip and the door slams shut behind her. She cringes at the noise.

  “What?” Blake says.

  “I just saw you,” Francesca says. She looks to me. “You were looking the other way, but I just saw your back.”

  “I had to have heard that.” I shove the box of shells into the pack. “Come on!” I move toward the green door and crack it open. We hurry out the door and across the hallway into a classroom. I gently close it behind me till there’s just a sliver of space to look through. A moment later I see a door open farther down the hall. The man emerging from the room isn’t me however. I touch the door closed gently.

  “What is it?” Francesca whispers.

  “It’s the young Quickly.”

  “Is he going to come in here?”

  “No. We’re okay. He talks to me in the hall for a few minutes and then goes into a jump room.”

  “What do we do now?” Blake whispers.

  “I think we just need to wait it out. I end up going into Quickly’s office in a few minutes and finding the money. We should be able to sneak out of here and make our way toward the hallway where we run into Stenger.”

  “How do we get rid of him now? Our guns won’t work,” Francesca says. “Are we just going to throw bullets at him and hope he gives up?”

  “Well, we do have the guns. He doesn’t know they aren’t loaded,” I say. “Maybe we can still get him to surrender.”

  “Surrender?” Francesca glares at me. “That’s a terrible plan. We were supposed to shoot him, not keep him as a pet.”

  “If we capture him, we can give him to the police. At least he’ll be locked up, and maybe we can get rid of him later.”

  Francesca is breathing heavier. “I’m not facing a serial killer with an empty gun. I can’t even lie at Balderdash. This isn’t going to work. We should just get out of here and come up with a better plan.”

  “What if he gets away?” I ask. “Robbie said the cops never catch him. Well . . . they catch the wrong one, but they never find the Stenger we’re after. How much of our time are we going to have to waste tracking him down later, when we know where he is right now?”

  “I’ve wasted enough time,” Blake says. “I’ll club him with a fire extinguisher if that’s what it takes to stop him now. I’ve had enough of this place. I want to go home.”

  I hold my index finger to my lips and crack the door open again with my other hand. I can hear myself telling Quickly about the impending fire. We wait for the end of the conversation before cracking the door open slightly farther. I see myself scribbling the word east on the wall.

  “Okay. I’m headed for the stairs, but I’m going to go into Quickly’s office to get the money first. We should be okay to move.”

  “Where are we going?” Francesca asks.

  “We need to find the other staircase and get downstairs,” I reply. “That’s where Stenger will be.”

  “I can get us to the other stairs,” Blake says. “Let’s cut back through the jump rooms.” He swings open the door and moves across the hallway at a half-crouch. We follow him as quietly as we can, crossing a different jump room than the one we arrived in. The hallway on the far side is empty. Blake leads us down the hall till a left turn leads us to the back stairwell. He slowly cracks the door open and listens.

  “Carson should be in the front balconies,” I whisper.

  “Where does Stenger come from?” Francesca asks.

  “I don’t know. I only know it’s the hall near the alley stairs where we get his gun.”

  “Then we need to be really careful,” Blake says. “He could be anywhere.”

  We slink down the stairs as silently as we can and Blake cracks the door open on the first floor. He peers through for a few moments before opening it wider. Francesca is gripping her empty gun. Blake slips through and we creep along the wall till we reach the first doorway. Blake opens it and we enter one of the lab experiment areas. A half-dozen rows of stainless steel workbenches divide the room, while various pieces of lab equipment and a few cages line the walls.

  “You ever wonder why this laboratory is so big for one guy?” I whisper.

  “Apparently more than one version of him uses the place,” Blake says.

  “This room reminds me of Mr. Pellegrini’s biology class,” Francesca says. “Did you have him for Bio?”

  “No. I had Sanderson,” I say.

  “Oh, that guy was perv.” Francesca makes a face.

  I slide my hand along one of the countertops as we walk toward the door at the far side. “I remember I had this one lab partner who tried to stick the pickled frog’s legs into—”

  The sound of the door opening behind us freezes the words in my mouth. I turn to see a black-haired, thirty-something woman in a ragged, off-the-shoulder sweatshirt, staring at us from the doorway. She smiles, revealing yellowed teeth.

  “Well, look what we have here.”

  Her slightly pockmarked face isn’t familiar. Does she know us?

  I’m about to greet her when she raises the gun. We stand like statues. My mind is racing to catch up to what’s happening.

  “Hey Baby!” she yells. “I think I found ’em!” Her eyes gleam as she smiles at us. She takes a step into the room. A moment later, Stenger steps into view from the hallway behind her. He is likewise holding a gun.

  His eyes are cold but as he looks at me, I see a flash of recognition. “You . . .” He raises his gun.

  I come unfrozen and dive behind the nearest workbench, hitting the floor with a thud. One of the guns goes off with a bang and a set of beakers shatters around me. I look up to see Blake pulling Francesca behind the next countertop. I scramble on my hands and knees to get out of the glass shards and move to the other end of the workbench. I poke my head up just slightly to see where Stenger and the woman are. Another shot ricochets off the steel bench. I sprawl backwards onto my rear with my heart pounding. Something crashes off a bench farther down and I catch a glimpse of Francesca’s feet disappearing behind one of the benches two down from mine. Without thinking, I roll to my toes and fingertips and then dive diagonally across the open space between me and the next set of benches. I tuck my feet around behind me as I scramble up against the bench on the other side. Blake is leaning against the cabinet doors of the workbench parallel to me, holding his useless gun. Our eyes meet.

  “Who the fuck is that chick?” he exclaims.

  “I don’t know!” I peek around the corner and instantly jerk my head back. Stenger is still near the door.

  “Come on out now!” he taunts. “You can’t hide in here. There’s nowhere to run.”

  Blake gestures to me and mouths silently, “What do we do?”

  I shake my head. “I don’t know. Can you see Francesca?”

  He points to the benches beyond me toward the door. She’s much closer to the exit than we are. If we distract them, she can probably make it out.

  Slow, deliberate footsteps echo off the wall beyond Blake. Blake pokes his head into the center aisle and then slides across to my side, moving away from the footsteps. We’re close to the stack of cages along the wall now. I peer past the end of the workbench closest to the wall and see no one. I slip around the corner and Blake follows me. We press our backs against the end of the workbench cabinets, trying not to be visible from either aisle. I hear the footsteps stop at the end of our row along the opposite wall. They begin moving in our direction.

  What now?

  Francesca screams. I jolt to my knees and see the black-haired woman pulling Francesca up from behind a workbench near the door, by her hair. She has a gun to her head. Francesca is grimacing in pain. The woman sees me. “They’re by the cages!” she yells.

  The footsteps stomp closer and I duck down with my fists clenched. Blake clamps his hand on my forearm. He slams his
chronometer hand up against the cabinet in front of us. “Push the pin!”

  I press down on his chronometer with the fingers of my free hand. We blink.

  Chapter 21

  “Being a time traveler is not great for your longevity. Ways to perish increase with use, and natural hazards are only a fraction of them. I would love to say that the centuries ahead are full of open minded, generous souls. In reality, many of the citizens of the future will exert great effort to kill you.”

  -Excerpt from the journal of Harold Quickly, 2135

  “How far did you send us?” I whisper.

  “Just a couple minutes,” Blake whispers back, looking at his chronometer settings.

  I poke my head up cautiously above the edge of the countertop. “Forward or backward?”

  “Forward. Are they still here?”

  The room appears to be empty. “I think they left.” I stand slowly, still ready to dive back down. Blake climbs to his feet with assistance from the edge of the bench. “They have Francesca,” I growl.

  “What do they want with us?” Blake says. “That woman said they were looking for us.”

  The clock on the wall says 6:04.

  “How many minutes did you say you jumped us?”

  “Just two.”

  “We can still make it!”

  “For what?”

  “Stenger loses his gun. It happens any minute now. Come on!” I sprint for the door. Blake scrambles to follow. I throw open the door and dash into the next hallway. I spin around, trying to get my bearings.

  “What about that bitch who has Francesca?” Blake says.

  “She’s not going to be there.” I run for the end of the hallway and Blake races to keep up. When I get to the end, I slow down and peek around the corner.

  “But what about . . . Francesca?” Blake pants.

  The hallway is clear. “If we get Stenger, she’ll have to trade her for him!” I rush down the next hallway.

  Rounding the corner, we find him. He’s climbing to his feet, still watching the exit door to the stairs. He turns to see Blake and me running toward him, and a wave of confusion washes over his face. He looks to the exit and back to us, scowling. The Rubik’s Cube lies on the floor just past him.

  It must have fallen out of my pack when we blinked, and he found it . . .

  “You think this is a big joke, huh?” he yells.

  I skid to a stop. Blake steps up next to me, aiming his gun at Stenger’s head. “Where is she?” he snarls.

  Stenger smirks. “If you shoot me, you’re never going to see your friends again.”

  Friends? Who else is he talking about?

  “Shut it!” Blake says. “Put your hands up and turn around.”

  Stenger raises his hands but he smiles. “Really kid? You think you’ve got what it takes to shoot me?”

  Blake takes a step forward. “You want to test me?”

  Stenger’s smile wavers for a moment but then he leans forward and grins. “Your gun better have more in it than your girlfriend’s did.”

  The moment his words register on Blake’s face, he knows we’re bluffing. He turns and sprints away from us. I tear after him, with the contents of my backpack bouncing up and down on my back. I chase him around the corner and into the main study. The star chandelier is reflecting in the wall of windows. Stenger dashes around the back of the big center table and stops to face me. I feint to one side and he moves the other way.

  “You think you can get away?” I say. Blake catches up and moves to my right to cut off Stenger’s escape. We both have a good six inches of height over Stenger and probably twenty pounds. He looks fairly muscular, but not enough to beat two of us.

  “You must think you’re pretty funny,” Stenger says. “Playing with people’s lives.”

  “What are you talking about?” I say.

  “You flit around with your fancy little watches, sending people to the past without so much as a thought. You ruin people’s lives like it’s a big joke. Well, I’m not amused.”

  “You think we sent you back in time?” I say, incredulous.

  “Don’t try to deny it, your little foreign friend told me enough.”

  “Who—” I begin.

  Blake cuts me off. “Listen, asshole. Even if we were the ones who caused this, you were shackled to a van on your way to an eternity in prison. If anything, all this did you a favor!”

  Stenger glares at him across the table. “So I’m supposed to be happy to be left on my ass in the eighties, without a single person who knows my name? Happy to have to shack up with some dumb bitch just to eat? Happy to be scraping by, like a sucker?”

  “You were going to prison,” I say.

  “I was famous!” Stenger screams. “There wasn’t a person in the country who didn’t fear my name! You could see it in their eyes.”

  “God, you’d think you’d be happy to be somewhere where no one knows you. You were free.” I say.

  “Oh, I’m free now. Or I will be. With Judge Waters dead and that fucking bitch prosecutor smeared all over her dorm room, I’m on my way back. When I’m done, my first run will look like play school.”

  “Dude. Why are you such a dick?” I say.

  Stenger reaches around his back and pulls out a large survival knife. He slides his thumb along the back edge and points it at me. “Why don’t you come find out?”

  The knife gives me pause. Shit. I look to Blake. He’s standing ready on the other end of the table.

  “Or maybe you won’t get to.” Stenger smiles. He’s looking up to the back balconies. I spin to look, and see the black-haired woman stepping to the rail of the third-floor balcony. The gun muzzle flashes, and Blake staggers forward as a mist of blood sprays out the front of his collarbone.

  “No!” I scream.

  Blake crashes into the armchair ahead of him and it tumbles over, sending him sprawling to the floor. I look back to the balcony and the woman is aiming the gun at me. I lunge toward the back of the lab as the bullet misses somewhere behind me. A second shot hits the floor just as I make it under the overhang of the first floor balcony. I turn to see Stenger in pursuit with his knife. I only have time for a quick glance to the chair where Blake was lying. There’s a smear of blood on the cushion but I don’t see him. I turn and sprint down the south hallway.

  Even with the pack on my back, my long legs rapidly outdistance Stenger by the end of the hall. I glance back as I turn the corner to see him midway down the hallway, still running with the knife. Shit. I missed the door to the stairs. I sprint down the corridor to the kitchen and turn right. Gotta get away and find a weapon somehow. I see a phone hanging on the wall in the kitchen. I can call the cops, but they’re going to be here soon anyway. This place is going to burn.

  I hear Stenger’s footsteps and keep running. I cut through some storage rooms and pause briefly at some brooms and mops piled in the corner. Plastic pieces of crap. I crash through the next doorway and stagger into the hall. I’ve reached a corner of Quickly’s lab where it butts up against the office next door. I’m trapping myself.

  I run down the hall toward the front of the building. I make it a dozen steps when I reach a door on my right. I recognize its proximity to the kitchen and slip inside. I’m back in the room where I last saw Quickly. The trick glass mirror still shows a view of the interior of the office next door. I keep the light off and move toward the window. An exit sign beckons from the distant wall.

  It’s a way out. My hands grip the desk chair. I could throw it through. No. The fire. I have to find Francesca and Blake before this place burns. If Blake is still alive he might be able to blink his way out. Francesca won’t have that option. If I don’t find her . . . I block the thought from my mind.

  That woman was up on the third floor when she shot at us. Francesca is probably up there too. I look through the office window. Could I get through and get upstairs through the office? There’s no guarantee there would be any more of these double mirrors to get back into
the lab. Stenger might hear me breaking the glass, too. I release my grip on the chair and return to the hallway door. I crack it open and peer through. It’s quiet. Slipping into the hall, I walk as silently as I can into the kitchen. I gently open a couple of drawers, flinching at every rattle of the contents. Finally, I find a butcher’s knife. I check the edge on it with my thumb. Better than nothing.

  I move toward the far door with the knife poised to defend myself. The swinging doors at the far wall squeak a little as I squeeze myself and my backpack through. I reach the stairwell in the next hallway without any sign of Stenger. If he’s searching for me, he must be on a different floor.

  I climb the stairs with my eyes on the floors above. When I reach the third floor, I approach the wooden doors cautiously. I’ve never been in this part of the lab before. I open the door slowly and find myself in a living room. With the exception of a small square of linoleum near the door, the floor is carpeted. A couch and a pair of recliners face a television and some bookshelves. There’s no sign of the occupants.

  As I tiptoe through the room, I pass a low table of photographs. The faces of Dr. Quickly and Mym beam at the camera from exotic locations. I see pyramids and jungles; one photo shows Quickly in front of the Golden Gate Bridge that is still under construction. Quickly must live up here.

  I creep past a hallway bathroom and glimpse the kitchen, when I hear a thump from a little farther down the hall. I raise my knife. The apartment is silent again. I inch forward. A hallway just past the kitchen leads left toward a door to the main study balcony. That must be how the snaggle-toothed bitch got out there. Francesca has to be up here somewhere.

  There are three more closed doors at the end of the hallway. I reach the first one on the right and lean my head close to the doorframe. From beyond the door, I hear another thump and a muffled grunt. There’s someone in there.

  I square myself with the door and hold my knife ready. My heartbeat is thudding in my eardrums as I reach for the doorknob. I take a deep breath, and as I exhale, I shove the door open.