Paradox Bound

by Peter Clines

  “Zeke, what did they—”

  “Zero!” snapped the tall faceless man. “Stay on mission.”

  Zeke—Zero—clenched his fist one last time.

  He shot Eli.

  Pain thrust into Eli’s aching shoulder and exploded into hot knives.

  Svetlana raised her pistol and fired, squeezing the trigger again and again. A bullet sparked off the Hornet’s door. The tall faceless man jerked once, twice, and then his head snapped to the side.

  “Fifteen!” snarled Zero. His pistol swung around and shot Svetlana. The round plowed through the top of her scalp and sent part of it spraying back into the flames. A river of blood washed down over her eyes as she tumbled back.

  Truss shrieked again.

  Eli wobbled, his shoulder a mass of burning, grinding shards that blotted out the pain in his knee. Harry grabbed him by the waist before he could fall over. She dragged him away from the fire and toward the door. His head lolled back and he locked eyes with Truss through the smoke. The old man scurried after them, then backtracked to go around a pile of burning hay.

  The tall faceless man, Fifteen, straightened up. He rolled his head twice and his neck gave out a loud pop. The thin plastic of his mask was cracked and curled along one cheek. “Archibald Truss,” he said, his voice booming over the fire. “Also known as Reginald Truss, Aristotle Truss and Edward Longcarriage.”

  “Please understand,” said the old man, “I’m no threat to you. I’m not even interested in the dream. Never looked for it once. I just want to conduct my business—”

  Fifteen reached into his coat and slid his own pistol from its hidden holster.

  Harry swung Eli around, and flames replaced his view. The temperature in the barn had to be close to a hundred degrees, and rising fast. The flames crawled across the rafters and inched down the beams. Clouds of smoke billowed near the barn’s ceiling, but crept downward.

  “Pritchard!” shrieked the old man from across the room. “Call in the favor! I’ll give you whatev—”

  Another gunshot echoed behind them. Truss stopped pleading.

  “Eli Teague,” shouted Zero. Whatever other comments he had vanished beneath the sound of his pistol.

  Harry kicked the door open and dragged Eli through.

  The outside hit him like he’d been pushed into a pool of ice water. It seemed ink-black after the eye-squinting brightness of the burning barn. Harry kept pulling on his waist and Eli staggered after her. His feet kicked stones he couldn’t see and stumbled on the uneven ground. The razors of hot pain in his knee and shoulder stabbed at every nerve.

  “Come on,” Harry gasped. “Eleanor’s this way.”

  The cold air gnawed at his face and hands, but sweat drenched his torso inside his shirt. He could feel it dripping down his back and chest. He tried to catch his breath and Harry yanked him forward again.

  Eli blinked once, twice, thrice and the world rose up out of the darkness. He could see a few scraggly bushes and patches of grass. Orange light played off a boulder to his left. Touches of it flickered across the landscape. It stood out against the pale moonlight blanketing everything else.

  His eyes adjusted and the dark-blue blur next to him became Harry. She stepped over a pale log. He tried to follow her, caught his toe, and almost fell. He turned it into a low-hanging stagger and pushed himself back up with his next few steps. It made his knee scream and his shoulder howl.

  A few more steps and a shape in the distance resolved into the familiar lines of Eleanor. Maybe another hundred feet. Eli felt dizzy and cold, but he could make another hundred feet. He wished he still had his coat. He’d have to grab one of the blankets once they were away.

  He blinked again. He could feel the sweat drenching his body and his clothes, but shivers ran through his limbs. His fingers bordered on painfully cold.

  Only one side of his body was sweating.

  He reached up and touched his shoulder. Raw pain cut into his flesh and he yanked his hand back. The warm sweat on his fingers was dark in the moonlight.

  Dark and sticky.

  Harry glanced over at him. “Not far now.” Then the relief on her face shifted to worry. She staggered to a halt. “Eli?”

  He leaned into her, then looked down at his bloodstained shirt. It gleamed wet and dark. “We,” he said, “we should get to the car.”

  Then the world whirled around him and became ink-black again.

  33

  First, he became aware of background noises and voices. They had the tones and echoes of a big room. Then the world behind his eyelids brightened. He felt the crisp sheets on his chest and a spongy, crinkling mattress against his back. The smells of laundry and latex and linen and antiseptic all tickled his nostrils.

  At which point, Eli had to admit he was awake and opened his eyes.

  He blinked at the bright lights set into a white ceiling. He turned to the side, felt a twinge in his shoulder, and tried to focus on the bank of instruments. He saw a trio of bouncing lines and shifting numbers and some smaller numbers and a few other things he didn’t understand.

  He turned the other way, blinked a few more times, and found Harry watching him from her chair. Her face looked pale, and her sleeves and collar glared white in the harsh lights. Her vest hung loose, and her coat draped over the chair behind her. A medical-green curtain stretched around them.

  “It’s small comfort, I’m sure,” she said, “but you’ve convinced me you’re not working for Mr. Truss.”

  Eli coughed out a weak laugh that scraped in his throat. “I hate you so much right now.”

  “That’s the spirit.” She reached out and squeezed his arm. Her hand stayed there, just above his wrist. “I spent two days searching the town for you, and when I remembered the fire at the old barn I circled back to look there.”

  “You…you used your third time in Hourglass?”

  “Sort of,” she said. “I never went to the Last Paradox, so I don’t think it counts.”

  He swallowed and tried to wet his throat. She seemed to understand, reached behind her, and came back with a squared-off bottle of water. She set it in his hands and helped guide it to his mouth. The water was delicious. The plastic felt thready. He glanced at it and frowned.

  “Cellulose bottle,” she said. “They’re all the rage right now.”

  He furrowed his brow. “Where are we? When?”

  Harry leaned in closer. “It’s a public clinic in Reno. 2031.”

  “We’re in the future?”

  She squeezed his arm again, sharper this time. “Keep your voice down. We’ve attracted too much attention as it is. Don’t need anyone hauling you off to the madhouse.”

  He looked around the curtained-off area. The movement tugged at the base of his neck and he felt another dull ache. Bandages wrapped his shoulder in a blinding-white cocoon. His mind pulled out some fuzzy memories and wiped the dust from them. “He shot me?”

  “The faceless man,” she said with a nod. “Shattered your shoulder blade, tore up several muscles, although some of that may have been Truss stringing you up in the air. You lost a lot of blood.” She paused. “A lot of blood. I got us away from Hourglass, plastered you up as best I could, and brought you here.”

  “All the way to Reno?”

  “It wasn’t that far, relatively speaking. Easy to get to, lots of ways to get out. In a big city, a nonlethal shooting doesn’t stand out as much as it would in a small town.”

  He looked at the bandages again. “What did they do?”

  “Cleaned you up. Infused you with several pints of blood. Glued you back together and wrapped your shoulder blade in a protein sheath. Your kneecap, as well. You’re going to have scars, but you should be fine.”

  He tried to raise the water bottle, got it halfway to his mouth. “But…?”

  Harry lifted his arm the rest of the way. “But,” she said, “we still showed up at a public clinic in the middle of the night with a bullet wound. Plus, your driver’s license is over
ten years expired, and I don’t have one, so they’re fairly sure we’re giving false identification.” She glanced over her shoulder again. “I overheard one of the nurses saying the police should be here in half an hour, and that was ten minutes ago. I don’t know that the faceless men have traced us here, but just in case…”

  He nodded. “We should leave.”

  “Yes, we should.”

  Another memory floated up into his consciousness and shook the cobwebs from itself. “Zeke,” he said. “The other faceless man, the one he called Zero. That was Zeke Miller.”

  Harry’s face dropped. “You know him?”

  “Most of my life, yeah. We’re not friends or anything. He’s been a jerk pretty much since I met him in kindergarten. A bully.”

  “Was he the one who hit you with the rock?”

  Eli blinked, frowned, and then a few more memories drifted into view. “Yeah, that was him,” he said. “What did they do to him?”

  She looked away. “They made him into one of them.”

  “Why? Why him?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “It can’t be coincidence, right? I find you and they take him.”

  She shook her head. “We’re fortunate. He must still be getting used to seeing the world the way they do.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  She shrugged. “Because they don’t miss, and he hit you in the shoulder instead of in the head.”

  Eli snorted and tried to sit up. Harry stood up and helped pull him forward. “That probably wasn’t an accident,” he said. “Zeke’s pretty much a sadistic bastard. Not really a surprise he’d go for hurting someone over killing them.”

  “It’s doubtful there’s very much of him left.”

  He swung his feet over the side of the bed and paused to gather his strength. His head felt empty. Wobbly. Harry ducked down and pulled his shoes from beneath the hospital bed just as he realized he only had socks on. She forced the left shoe over his toes, pulled it onto his heel, and tied a fast knot in the laces.

  Eli looked at his arm and bare chest, at the wires and tubes running off them. A little thing like a plastic clothespin surrounded one fingertip. He reached to pull one of the pads off his chest, but Harry held out a hand to stop him. “They’ll see if the readings stop,” she explained. “Wait until we’re ready to go.” She picked up the other shoe.

  He peeled off the tape holding his IV in place. In the movies, people yanked tubes from their arms without hesitation, but he felt pretty sure there’d be blood everywhere if he tried it. He pinched the needle between his thumb and forefinger, pulled, and watched the sliver of white plastic slide out of his arm.

  Harry got his second shoe on and helped him to his feet. The wires connecting him to the machines pulled tight, so he turned to create some slack. “Shirt?”

  “Cut off you when we arrived, and too bloody to wear, regardless. Arms back.”

  He flicked the clip off his finger, obeyed Harry, and watched the three bouncing lines on one screen go flat. She worked something over his hands and wrists. He shrugged the sleeves up his arms and marveled at how little his shoulder and knee hurt. The future had some fantastic painkillers.

  The sleeves tightened on his arms as the jacket came up over his shoulders. Harry’s frock coat. It couldn’t close in the front.

  “Not perfect,” she said, stepping to his side, “but it’ll have to do.” She reached up and pulled the wires loose from his chest. “Let’s go.”

  She put one arm around his waist and used the other to pull the green curtains open. A dozen other curtains made semicircles around the room, small tents to give the low-budget illusion of privacy. Harry guided Eli past them all to a wide door. Her hand reached out and snatched something off a cart—a white paper bag, folded over and stapled shut. “Hey,” someone called out. An older woman’s voice. Harry ignored it.

  They pushed the door open. She held the bag in front of them, flipping it around so she held it up from underneath. A lean man in scrubs glanced at them, then went back to typing on a keypad.

  Eli’s head and neck felt very light and loose. His knees wobbled. Harry swung his good arm over her shoulder. “There we go,” she said in her loud and bright voice.

  The orderly didn’t look up again.

  Another set of doors led them into a waiting room. Bright-orange chairs stood in back-to-back rows. Dozens of men, women, and children sat and waited. Some had visible cuts or bruises, others just looked bored. A television up near the ceiling showed two women in waitress uniforms while a laugh track blared from a crackling speaker.

  Across the room, a pair of policemen wandered in through the main door. One of them looked young-trying-to-appear-tough, the other had the gray brows of a tired veteran. They scanned the room in a practiced way. The older one’s gaze settled on Harry and Eli.

  Harry didn’t break stride. She pulled Eli past the chairs and right up to the older officer. “Excuse me,” she said, her voice just a hair too sharp. “I’m trying to get him outside before he throws up again.” She waved the bag at the officer, trusting the medication would make her point.

  Eli tried to mime a heaving stomach, but set off another bout of lightheadedness. His head swung forward. He reached out to find something to steady himself, and his fingertips brushed the older man.

  “Jesus,” muttered the officer, even as he stepped aside. “I hate coming over here.”

  Harry gave a half bow of her head and guided Eli to the door. “Come on,” she said, “I’m not cleaning up after you again.”

  He managed to look apologetic and ashamed before Harry dragged him outside.

  Warm air rushed over him and took away the hospital’s antiseptic chill. They stepped around a time-dulled black-and-white police car Eli recognized as a Dodge. Old muscle cars and beaters filled the parking lot outside the clinic, dotted with an occasional gleaming vehicle made of plastic and primary colors. Eleanor didn’t look that out of place, all things considered. Eli almost laughed at the thought that the hospital lot didn’t look that different from the parking area outside Hourglass.

  Harry helped him into the passenger seat and tossed the paper bag in his lap. “Might be something useful,” she said as she jogged around the car to the driver’s side.

  “Like what?”

  “It’s an emergency clinic,” she said as the Model A started up. “I’d guess the vast majority of what they hand out is antibiotics or painkillers. Either’d be good for you right now.”

  Eleanor backed up, around, and lunged forward. Harry rushed them through the parking lot and out onto the main street. Brakes screeched and horns honked behind them as she took the first corner, then the second in the opposite direction. She went another two blocks before she slowed down.

  The cars around them made very little noise. Half of them were almost silent. Snippets of music and phone conversations leaked from open windows.

  Eli tore open the paper bag. It took him a few moments to read the label, partly because of the car’s constant vibrations, partly because he couldn’t get his eyes to focus quite right. The pills had a long, multipart name, so he looked at the instructions “Take one for pain every twelve hours,” he said. “May cause drowsiness.”

  Harry nodded. “You need the rest.” She reached one hand over the bench and pulled her tricorne out from between the back of the seat and her duffel bag. Then she dropped the hat on her lap and grabbed the wheel with both hands as an oversized pickup truck swerved to cut them off.

  “Where are we headed?” Eli wrestled with the bottle’s cap and shook one of the pills into his hand.

  “East. Across town.” She pushed the tricorne onto her head. “If they do end up searching for us, they’ll assume we’ll take the shortest route out of town and go the other way. It should buy us some time.”

  He dry-swallowed the pill. It caught in his throat for a moment before dropping into his stomach. “And then?”

  She glanced at him. “We’ll
get you a new shirt and coat somewhere. Probably a rest stop in the ’90s will have something simple we can afford.” She gestured into the back with her elbow. “Your derby’s there.”

  He reached back and his clumsy fingers slapped her shoulder. “Sorry.”

  “All’s forgiven.”

  Eli felt around until his fingers found the dome of his hat. They slid down to the brim and lifted it up, around, and set it on his head. The familiarity of the hatband pressing against his scalp soothed him. “What I meant,” he said, “is where are we headed in the bigger sense?”

  “Keep heading east, I suppose, for the moment. At some point we need to figure out how we’re going to get to Hawkins again.”

  She steered them around a white, rounded car that hummed like a spaceship. Eli stared at it as they went by and realized the man at the wheel was reading a newspaper while the car drove itself. The man glanced up, noticed the Model A, and gave them a small smile.

  “Why does someone do that to themselves?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “The faceless men. How can they do that to themselves?”

  “I believe it’s done to them.” She sighed. “I have to believe that.”

  Eli forced his eyelids up. Either the drug took effect very fast or their rapid exit from the clinic had exhausted him. “It’s him, isn’t it?”

  Harry kept her eyes on the road. “Beg your pardon?”

  “Him. The big one who calls himself Fifteen.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Eli yawned. “That’s why Truss wanted the favor so bad. And you too, right? You’re both hoping he’ll still honor it.”

  She said nothing.

  He forced his eyes open again. “It’s Abraham Porter.”

  Harry’s face fell. She stared at the road.

  “He’s the one I met back at the bank. The one who’s been chasing you. Chasing us. He’s Fifteen.”

  34

  “We’re in Utah,” Harry told him when he woke up. “Perhaps half an hour from the Colorado border and Artesia.”

  Eli pawed his way out of the blanket, stretched, and adjusted his butt on the rumble seat. Eleanor trembled beneath him. He looked at the scruffy plants stretching out from the highway, and the distant hills. Not what he’d expected from Utah. He’d pictured it as the kind of red-orange landscape coyotes might chase roadrunners across. “Artesia? Don’t think I’ve heard of it.”