The Impossible Future: Complete set

by Frank Kennedy

  “I’m as strong as you, Lydia. You’re coming with me.”

  “If you do this, Jamie, you will pay a price beyond all reckoning.”

  Jamie tossed aside her threat, allowed the pure, unvarnished fury at the heart of the universe to envelope his entire essence, and drowned in the Jewel’s stolen equations. Still, Lydia hurled threats and warnings.

  “You have crossed the line beyond anything that is sacred,” she roared. “You will change us both. If you return to that body, you will damn yourself to a pain beyond imagining. You do not understand what you will become. The dark will drown them.”

  At the instant where his fury tapped into the savagery from which the universe was created, Jamie’s soul screamed in agony and was drawn into an empty well. His fury almost betrayed his purpose. His insanity was nearly complete. Yet in that moment, he felt another presence: Warm, sheltering, and infinitely sad. He knew who this was, even if there was no voice, no face – only a touch. He felt the regret and shame of a man now unburdened, of a man who never had the chance to say a proper goodbye.

  Jamie refocused. “Ben.”

  Just as quickly, the other presence disappeared, but Jamie regained direction and tore into the maelstrom with unbridled determination. The maelstrom vanished, replaced with a pulse that diminished to a flicker. He opened his eyes, drew his hand like an invisible blanket around all those he loved, and unleashed the desire to kill the enemy.

  The air throbbed for a split second. Then, with a gentle breath behind it, the energy of the Jewel manifested itself. Jamie hurled a piece of it from his soul, and the Caryllan energy weapon dug into the impregnable shell of the Shock Units, ripping through to the human core, tearing the bodies of the operators into billions of cellular pieces, sweeping the black monsters’ fire into the sky, where it disappeared as puffs of white smoke.

  Jamie saw the equations ravaging every ounce of his bullet-shredded body. Even as he attempted to repair what was lost, Jamie knew he had one more thing to kill. He gathered the equations close to his soul, felt the impending return of flesh, and knew he had to act quickly.

  Jamie tore at the Jewel, breaking the program’s coding, and tried to cast it out upon the Earth with the same force he used to kill the monsters. He decided that it would vanish into the spring sky with barely a whimper.

  Then he heard Lydia’s gentle, mocking laughter. He could not see her face, but he heard her voice. He knew at once what he had done, the mistake he made.

  “Thank you,” the Jewel said from a distance. “You were always a remarkable plaything.”

  A feeling of doom overcame Jamie. He realized Lydia tricked him all along. She distracted him, led him down the path she needed him to follow so she could be reborn upon the Earth in all her fury.

  He beheld the sensation of solid ground beneath his feet, and the Earth trembled. Then, finally, he encountered something he expected before he died. He was bathed in a pool of white light.

  69

  J AMIE ROLLED ONTO his side, the myrtle bush gave way, and he slammed into the hard-packed ground face-first. He grunted and laid there, his head tingling and back aching. His heart beat like a sprinter, but he sensed that it was slowing. His mind was a blank slate, and all he saw around him were shrubby growths and moss on rocks. He heard running water and felt the warm sun on his back.

  He swallowed hard and waited for his heart to return to a normal beat before he sat up. He swiped tangled hair from his face and wiped his soiled hands against his shirt. That’s when he felt wet all over. Jamie gasped as he stared at the shirt steeped in moist blood, some of it having splattered onto his arms and his pants. Gripped in fear, Jamie looked around and saw only nature, a land of green unfamiliar to him.

  Jamie stared again at his shirt and noticed the holes, four of which were in the center of his chest over his heart and lungs. He grabbed at his shirt, fully intending to rip it off. Then he remembered gunshots, felt the bullets shredding his innards. Jamie knew this place: The giant rock, the peaceful valley, and the sparkling stream. He wasn’t supposed to be here.

  He grew angry as the memories struggled to return. Jamie brought the shirt over his head. As he removed it, his hair fell back into his face, the blond strands mottled red.

  Alien sounds, screams of anger, and visions of walking black terrors filled Jamie. They meant something, all of them, and he wanted to know who he was and why he was here. The person wearing that shirt should be dead. He should be …

  Just before he heard other footsteps and a familiar voice, Jamie found a second’s peace. He remembered his name. He saw the people he once believed to be his mother, father, and brother. The past eight hours flew in on the wings of an imaginary vulture. When he looked to the top of the outcropping, Jamie saw two people who were more than memories.

  He couldn’t smile. Not yet.

  “Jamie?”

  Sammie clasped her hands over her mouth and burst into an ocean of tears. Michael muttered, “No … fucking … way.”

  Jamie didn’t move as his friends made their way down the treacherous slope. He dropped the putrid shirt at his feet and waited there until he saw them up close. When they reached his side, Sammie and Michael touched him as if unsure he was real. They said nothing for a minute, their eyes exchanging disbelief.

  Jamie knew his friends must have been through a war as well. Sammie’s hair was a scrambled mess, she had scratch marks on her left cheek, and blood trickled from behind her right ear. Michael had a busted lip and a torn shirt. Both had a strange gray dusting in their hair and both sweated profusely. Jamie realized this was not an illusion and began to gain focus on what should have been the final minutes of his life.

  Michael stammered. “Dude. I don’t know where to start. How can you …?” He reached down and grabbed Jamie’s blood-soaked shirt. He held it out and paid special attention to the bullet holes. “The Jewel?”

  Jamie remembered Agatha Bidwell, the Shock Units, and Lydia taunting him on the rock. He saw Agatha aim and fire. All of it – the scope of recorded time – flooded his thoughts at once, and Jamie was numb. Words seemed meaningless. The sun was high and the day was warm, but Jamie felt a repressive chill all over.

  “What just happened?” Sammie asked. “How is this possible?”

  Jamie searched his memories. “I don’t know. She shot me.”

  Echoes of words from outside time blended with the realities his mind’s eye barely comprehended. He thought these words – messages stern and violent – were recent, but Jamie saw darkness where the bridge between death and rebirth must have existed.

  “Dude,” Michael said. “Looking at this shirt, the Queen Bee blew you away.” Michael tossed it into the bushes. “But after what I just saw, hell, I’ll believe anything. I’m already sick to my stomach.”

  “What happened?” Jamie asked.

  Sammie started to speak, but Michael grabbed her.

  “You sure we ought to tell him? He don’t seem all there yet.”

  “No,” Jamie insisted. “It’s OK. I think I remember most everything. Yeah. I had to come here because …” His eyes widened. “I couldn’t let the Jewel be reborn. But she lied to me. She wouldn’t let me go.” Jamie swallowed again. “I let Ms. Bidwell shoot me. The rest of it is foggy, like a nightmare you wake up from but you can’t remember.”

  Sammie grabbed his hand, trying to comfort him. “Jamie, I …”

  “What happened? Tell me.”

  Michael sighed. “I reckon you better see for yourself. It’s … I got no words, dude.”

  They scaled the slope together. Just before reaching the top, Michael spoke in a low, measured voice.

  “No matter what, I’m always gonna have your back. You’re the best friend I ever had.”

  Jamie knew he should have drawn warmth from those words, but the tone gave him pause. Sammie wrapped her hand in his as they reached the top of the outcropping and looked out upon the valley on the opposite side. Jamie saw the creek running off into t
he distance, the trees thick and green except for the path of destruction wrought by the Shock Units. The world was the way it should have been. Then he looked east and south.

  He felt sick all over. His body trembled, nearly collapsing upon the rock. Sammie and Michael grabbed hold. Jamie had no words.

  “We thought we were dead,” Sammie said. “Those monsters … the Shock Units … they fired on us. I could feel the heat. And then, all of a sudden, they were gone. They were shredded, just completely destroyed. The fire disappeared, too. Everything was calm, Jamie. I thought you saved us. Somehow. And then … I can’t explain it. Just … fire. A wall of fire.”

  Jamie heard enough to get the general idea. He understood why she couldn’t describe anything more. Who could? The destruction began at a point beyond the outcropping, bordering alongside the creek and radiating outward east and south through valleys and hills farther than he could see.

  It was all gone. The earth was scorched, devoid of any form of life for miles. The bare earth was orange and dusty, containing no remains of any kind – no tree trunks, no rocks, no fallen debris, no wildlife. Much of it was scooped away, fifty feet deep in places. He squinted, and still he did not see an end to the destruction. Stretching into the clouds and far beyond, Jamie beheld a brown, filthy storm of dirt and debris, with flashes of yellow lightning and echoes of thunder. The cloud seemed to be receding rapidly toward the east and south. The surface had been tossed skyward.

  Michael said a prayer. “It’s like God took a shovel and dug out a piece of Earth for himself.” He held Jamie tight. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but I think you nuked Alabama.”

  The last vestiges of missing memory returned. He heard the echoes of a maelstrom, felt the anger and desperation of the Jewel, and sensed the fury that caused him to hurl the Jewel out upon the Earth to save his friends and, ultimately, all those who might one day become victims of this weapon. It was exactly what the Jewel always wanted, and Jamie unwittingly obliged. He saved the only people who truly mattered to him, but his distraction gave the Jewel a way out – a way to unleash its rebirth.

  The sheer scope of the devastation chilled his blood; however, this did not terrify him as much as another, more horrifying realization. Jamie knew he hadn’t liberated himself from the Jewel, after all. He was a fool for thinking he ever could, for believing that Ben – however well-intentioned – had all the answers.

  Lydia’s final warning echoed through every synapse. You do not understand what you will become. The dark will drown them.

  Jamie didn’t say another word as he surveyed the scorched Earth. Rather, he listened to the weapon that flowed freely through his blood and realized he crossed the line beyond all that was sacred.

  70

  J AMIE LISTENED AS they described the cataclysm, how the land folded up and was swept away in a torrent that couldn’t have lasted 15 seconds. They talked of how the line of fire rushed off into the distance like a tidal wave, the Earth trembling all the while.

  He wanted to understand how he could have done this; his only desire was to destroy the Shock Units. He looked at his hands, which were soiled and bloody. They seemed alien. Through his confusion, Jamie took solace in one positive development: Lydia did not reemerge, and he did not feel her presence in any form. Yet he could be sure of nothing.

  While the teens sat on the giant rock facing away from the devastation, trying to comfort each other and come to terms with the past eight hours, Jamie happened to glance at his watch, the one Ben had synched in the cellar of Walt’s lake house. The digital window was smeared in blood, and the time frozen.

  “9:56,” he said, a bewildered smile trying to form. “It’s stopped. 9:56 plus ten seconds.”

  Michael scanned the surroundings with emboldened eyes, hesitated a few seconds then tapped the rock twice with a fist.

  “Wasn’t that when …?”

  “Yeah,” Jamie said, acknowledging the anti-climax of these past eight hours. “The Jewel was supposed to be reborn.”

  “Huh,” Michael grunted. “Well, on the bright side, that’s done, and you’re still here, dude. You beat this thing. So, you ain’t planning on dying again, are you?”

  Jamie and Sammie offered Michael jaw-dropping stares of astonishment. Michael threw up his hands.

  “What?” He said with a sheepish grin. “Ain’t that a reasonable question? I mean, what else am I supposed to say right now? Look at us sitting here. Look at where we are. I took two slugs in the back, Sammie took one in the gut, and hell, I don’t know how many times the Queen Bee plugged you. We killed people; god only knows how many others are dead. Thousands?” He looked over his shoulder at the scorched earth. “And there’s this deal. So pardon me if I ask whether you’re planning on dying again. I think it’s a pretty sensible question.”

  Jamie couldn’t help himself. Despite everything that happened, the horrors he witnessed, the impossible obstacle he overcame, and the uncertain future crawling inside his skin, Jamie laughed. He was embarrassed as the chuckles crossed his lips, but the absurdity of Michael’s question offered a perverted sense of amusement. A part of him said this was OK, that he should give himself a fleeting moment to be thankful.

  “The point is,” Sammie said, “we’re alive.” She lifted herself up from her perch and stared out upon the creek, rifle slung over her shoulder. “It’s over, and we’re still alive. So many people didn’t …” She choked back her tears. “We saved each other. Nothing else matters, Coop. We’re here.”

  Jamie’s eyes latched upon the creek.

  “I’m thirsty,” he said. “I’m so damn thirsty.”

  They realized they had something else in common and made their way down the rock face to the edge of the clear water, which glistened in the sun, untouched by the blast. Jamie cupped his hands and drank. He felt the exhaustion of the past eight hours rising to bring him down. When they got their fill, they sat by the water’s edge until Michael asked the obvious question.

  “What do we do now?”

  “We have to move soon,” Sammie said. “The military will have this area cordoned off before long. I’m sure of it. They’ll use satellites to figure out where the blast began.”

  She and Michael debated the possibilities. They assumed the government would blame the disaster on terrorists and connect it with what happened at the police station. If the three of them returned, Sammie concluded, the police and the military would be out for blood. Michael decided that meant one thing: They were screwed six ways to Sunday.

  “Are we?” Sammie asked. “Think about it, guys. There’s a good chance they found Daddy’s GPS and were tracking us. They had to know we were in this general area. But the explosion happened fifteen minutes ago, and we haven’t heard a single helicopter or plane. I don’t think they’re too concerned about us anymore.”

  Michael nodded. “They think we’re dead.”

  “Just like all the others,” Jamie said.

  “Not many folks in these parts. If it didn’t stretch too far …”

  He fell silent as they studied the distant edge of the cloud.

  Sammie said they could use this as cover to slip away, but Jamie wasn’t listening. Their entire conversation seemed like a distant echo. Rather, his eyes focused on the sparkling sunlight dancing upon the creek. He reached in and scooped water, which dribbled through his fingers.

  The water became like a mirror upon which Jamie saw all his memories battling for space against his overwhelming and newfound knowledge of time itself. He heard the words of those who ever tried to protect him and felt the bile of those turned against him. He heard the cries of people not far away who lost loved ones in the past few hours and of those who now bore witness to the horror of a chunk of Earth having been tossed into the heavens. He felt the defiance and commitment of billions of people in another universe who demanded change and threatened armed rebellion against overwhelming odds.

  The cascade of images and sounds would have remained an impossibl
e jigsaw if not for Jamie’s ability to focus upon the desperation he saw in the eyes of three beaten humans: Ben Sheridan, Walt Huggins, and Agatha Bidwell. They staked their lives on Jamie’s destiny, and he was the last person any of them saw. He never imagined having a life of such value, where men and women who should have been of much greater worth sacrificed themselves over the likes of an angry, confused kid in a town hardly anyone knew existed.

  He was not that boy anymore.

  Jamie returned inside the skin of the last person he encountered, pushed his way past Agatha Bidwell’s dogged obsession, and saw the truth. He saw it in a way that Walt’s arrogance only hinted at and which Lydia’s smug superiority confirmed. And then, Jamie listened to the words of two adults whose voices echoed across the universes and without whom none of this would have been possible.

  He saw the truth, and it saw him.

  Jamie jumped to his feet, interrupting Sammie and Michael’s debate. He stretched his hand toward Sammie.

  “We can’t stay here,” he said with calm precision. “And we can’t ever go back. There’s nothing we can say they’ll believe. When they got nobody else to blame, they’ll come after us.”

  When Michael reached his feet, he said, “Uh, yeah. OK. They’re gonna pepper us about that police station business, but we ain’t terrorists.”

  “Doesn’t matter, Coop. I can …” Jamie hesitated, not sure how to explain his sudden revelation. “I can feel what’s happening. Everybody else we knew is dead, and they’ll need somebody to blame. Coop, I’m sorry. I wanted more than anything to get you back home safely. But I’m not gonna see you shut up in prison the rest of your days.”

  Michael swallowed. “I’m down with that. Where can we be safe?”

  Jamie wrapped an arm around Sammie. He knew they were bonded in a way neither of them ever predicted.

  “No place close,” he told Michael. “Where I’ve got to go.”