by Dawn Dagger
It was a gun.
“That’s… That’s a gun…” Dierdre said, suddenly over my shoulder, beaming her flashlight down onto the object.
I wanted to make a joke. Something like ‘demon baby?’, but my throat had constricted. Used brass shells lay all across the carpet, and I wondered how I had not noticed them before.
Something had gone very, very wrong in this little town.
“Come on.” I choked past the dryness in my throat, straightening and starting toward the door that led to the garage. “Let’s get into the city and find out what happened here.”
Dierdre stooped down and picked up the gun, cocking and reloading it with terrifying ease. I hadn’t even seen her find new bullets. She stepped behind me and I reached for the door handle, but she gasped suddenly, her eyes wide with fright.
“B-be careful! There’s something in there, Clayton… I can feel it.”
I swallowed down the urge to turn away, and squared my shoulders. “Whatever is in there, it can’t hurt us, remember? I’m a superhero?” She did not respond. She didn’t even smile. She just held the gun tighter.
We had both lost our bravado.
I reached for the doorknob, closing my eyes for a second to steel myself. I thrust open the door and hopped to the side to avoid anything that might lurch out, but nothing happened. Then, after a tense heartbeat, something moved. As if suspended by slow motion, something as tall as Dierdre toppled out of the closet.
The thing hit the ground with a loud thump! and a putrid stench hit my nose. As Dierdre beamed her flashlight down onto the thing, we both screamed.
It was a human.
9
I gagged as the smell crawled down my throat, jerking the collar of the shirt up over my nose and mouth and stumbling backwards. Dierdre just stood there, her flashlight bobbing rapidly as her hand shook.
The corpse was mangled. The flannel it wore was covered in dried blood and pocked with gaping wounds. One of its legs was missing muscle all the way to the bone.
From Dierdre’s throat came a whimper that tore into my chest. I laid a hand on her arm, the other still covering my mouth and nose, and squeezed. “D-Dierdre, come here. C’mon, let’s go.”
She let out a sudden sob, clapping the hand that held the flashlight over her mouth. I stepped between her and the corpse on the ground, not letting go of her arm. “Dierdre, come on…”
I knew I should have been terrified. I should have been cold with shock. I should have been vomiting and shaking and hysterical. But Dierdre’s distress hyper focused me, and I knew I had to take care of her. I could have an emotional breakdown later.
I gently nudged Dierdre, but she stood, fixated in horror at the bloody corpse. I suddenly realized there was a pain in my chest. The smell was too strong, and my lungs had constricted.
I couldn’t breathe.
“Dierdre, I--” I panicked, running out of air. I dashed out of the house, throwing open the door and stumbling down the porch steps. I tripped and fell hard onto my knees. I gagged and gasped for air, but my lungs refused to open. The cool air settled on my skin, but it wouldn’t flow where it needed to. Black wavered at the edges of my vision. I felt as if my chest were being consumed by fire.
Oh, God… Oh, God…
Suddenly, a hand laid itself on my back. The weight was a familiar comfort, and my lungs released, as they always did when someone was there to comfort me. I took a shuddering breath, whispering, “Thank you, Dierdre.”
The hand on my back suddenly dug claws into my skin fiercely, and I shrieked, whipping around. It was not Dierdre, but, instead, a rotting face. I screamed and scrambled backwards as it lurched forward, snapping like a dog at me.
The monster fell onto its hands and knees and I skittered backwards. I kicked my foot out as hard as I could, and my boot was sucked into its skull, cold, wet brownish-pink goo sliding down my leg.
I gagged, my heart thundering. I tried to push myself into a standing position, kicking off the remains of the skull, when I felt teeth snap at the back of my neck. “Dierdre! Help!” I howled as claws dug into my arms. I reached back and grabbed the arms of the monster, flipping it over my head and slamming it into the ground. Its body dissolved as it hit the concrete.
I stumbled away from the mess and mangled corpses, my stomach heaving. Dierdre ran out of the house, her pistol raised. She cocked it and pointed it right at me.
“Duck!” she shouted. I threw myself to the ground as the gun exploded in a blinding burst of light. Something heavy toppled onto me and I gasped. I crawled from beneath the fallen pile of bones and muscle. I jumped to my feet and ran over to Dierdre, who stood on the porch, shaking. Tears glassed her eyes.
“Dierdre, what is it? What’s wrong? What happened?” What happened to my world? I felt sick. Something had changed. Something had changed drastically. I didn’t understand. How could this all have changed since I went on my adventure? I thought time had stopped?
“I’m so sorry…” she whispered as the gun went limp in her hand. It clattered onto the porch and she fell to her knees. I tried to catch and support her as the tears flowed down her cheeks. “I’m so, so sorry…” She sobbed as I hugged her, letting her bury her face in my shoulder.
I let her sob, searching for any more monsters, but there were none. “What happened?” I asked softly. “Dierdre, what happened? Why are you sorry?”
Her body shook as she clutched me, but she could do nothing but gasp for a very long time. I held her all the while. No monsters came. The sky stayed as dark as it always had. Shouldn’t it have been dawn by now?
Finally, her shaking ceased and she lay limply in my arms.
“Dierdre.” I eased her chin up. “Dierdre, why are you sorry?”
Fresh tears filled her eyes, and they were filled with hopelessness. I felt my heart ache for her. “We’re…” The words were a breath, as if she couldn’t bear saying the words, “we’re in the wrong timeline…”
“Wrong timeline?” I asked gently, trying to squash the panic in my chest. “How’s that?”
“We thought we were going back to the present; your future, right?” She gripped my hands tightly, her eyes widened with fright. “We went to the wrong timeline. This is 2020, Clayton… but in a minor timeline. Almost everyone is dead… and those who aren’t quite…” She gestured weakly to the mess on the street. “They’re… zombies.”
I swallowed thickly, hoping it would dislodge the hot pain in my throat. “We… can just leave, right? We could jump back to base and jump to my time, right? It doesn’t even matter! We don’t have to stop by the base! We can just, you know, we can just jump! To anywhere but here.”
Dierdre let out a shuddering sigh, closing her eyes tightly. Nothing happened. Her eyes stayed closed for a long moment, then they opened, looking more hollower than even my mother’s. “Clayton…” she whispered hoarsely. “They’ve shut off my ability.”
10
“So, Dierdre, what time period are you from?” I asked as we walked along the road, in hopes of finding a person, or a city, or a vehicle, or… anything really. We didn’t know. After we discovered that we couldn’t teleport, we had packed our pockets with food, found water bottles in the house we had already raided, and left as quickly as possible. We had no plan. Just a desperate need to get out.
Dierdre looked pained. “I’m not even sure,” she sighed. “I don’t remember a lot about my past life, before I was with the MMEA. They won’t tell me, either. They always say they don’t know, but I think…” She faded off.
“They sound like a real piece of work,” I muttered, rubbing my thumb across the smooth side of the jaguar in my pocket. I adjusted my painful khakis again, wishing I had worn my normal pants underneath them, and suddenly remembered the jaguars. Were Nindiri and Valerio okay? Did jaguars live that long?
“They weren’t bad… until now…” Dierdre muttered.
“‘Now’ being until they sent us on a wild goose chase, tried to take what we
literally almost died for, scared us into this apocalyptic oblivion, then prevented you from teleporting. They weren’t bad until they tried to kill us!”
She wouldn’t look at me. I didn’t care. I couldn’t even begin to describe the betrayal I felt from Tiberius. He had acted like he wanted to help us. He pretended to be kind, to listen, to care… then he used all that information against us and tried to kill us. If we ever went back to the base, I was going to use my newfound super strength to rip off his arms!
“What if…” I started, then stopped, a sudden thought occurring.
“You’re right!” she gasped, stopping and turning toward me. “You’re right! If we can figure out where that other artifact is, if it hasn’t been stolen yet, it should still be in this timeline! If we get three of the four, then we might have a chance of getting off this place another way!”
“Then we can…”
“Yeah! We can save the world!”
“And my mother!”
We had no idea how to complete the task, but having a purpose really raised our spirits. We continued walking toward a city, in search of a vehicle, I holding the flashlight and she the gun. We sipped our water and went through all of our fruit snacks.
Though it seemed like our walk might not ever end, I felt optimistic. We would eventually get off this world. It was just a really bad nightmare! One thing to end the nightmare, and we would be scot free!
“Where’s the next artifact going to be?” I asked.
“Ah, well, I think we should find the rattlesnake. I have… I have a feeling that it is in an antique shop. I don’t know if I read it somewhere, but I know if I see the name I’ll know the place. It’s in… Georgia. Are we even in the US?”
“Well, we’re supposed to be… aren’t we?”
“We’re also supposed to be in the year 3000, in a completely different timeline, Clayton.”
“Touché.” We were quiet for a long time, before I suddenly realized, “The post office hours were English… and not in military time. It had an American flag. We are in America.”
“That’s true. Good to know!” She closed her eyes tightly. “Nebraska.”
“Gesundheit?”
“No, idiot. The state we’re in. We’re in Nebraska!”
“Cool…” I stared into the darkness, past the flashlight for a moment, then mumbled, “waitaminute…”
“Hm?”
“Guy with the stupid hair… He already had the rattlesnake. What makes you think we can grab it if he already grabbed it?”
“They’re relative in time! So, we are in a different set of timelines, in the past, before Gerard would have stolen it! We may even be able to alter time so that we can steal it right out of his existence!”
“Even though he’s in a time bubble?” Could he do that to our artifacts? Could the jaguar and the owl just vanish into thin air? The thought made my stomach turn, so I didn’t voice it. I wasn’t really sure I understood what she was saying.
She bit her lip for a moment, then nodded. “Yeah, it’ll work.”
“So… how do we get to Georgia? I don’t know if you know, but I can’t drive.”
She narrowed her eyes at me, then looked me over slowly. “Jump,” she commanded, her eyes lighting with a dangerous fire. I obeyed, hopping, still confused. Nothing happened. “No, idiot! Leap! Long jump! Go on.” She gestured to the hills.
“Dierdre, I reall—”
“Just jump!”
I sighed and rolled my eyes, crouching. Unlike the desk, there was no inkling that this would work. I rocked lightly on my heels, then leaped. Wind rushed against my cheeks, then the ground suddenly slammed into my face. I shouted as my body rolled down the hill, banging my head against the rocks hidden in the long grass.
I panted for a panicky breath as I pushed myself to my feet. Something hot and wet trickled down my forehead as I brushed grass and burs off of my clothes. “See, Dierdre?” I said angrily. “I just threw myself off a…” I retrieved my flashlight and flashed it around, confused by the lack of her presence. “Dierdre?”
I heard a very far away, far small noise of excitement. I climbed the hill I had just tumbled down, making sure my jaguar was still in my pocket. Dierdre stood very far away, just barely outlined by the powerful flashlight. She cupped her hands around her mouth and screamed something, but I couldn’t understand it, as it was garbled by distance. I tapped my ear and she shook her head, then gestured for me to return to her.
I prepared myself, then leapt again, keeping my eyes open this time. I crashed hard into the ground beside Dierdre and groaned as my knees started bleeding. Dierdre grabbed my hand and jerked me to my feet, grinning. “You’re really a superhero, Clayton! You really, truly are! Do you know what that means?”
“We can jump to Georgia!”
“You’ll have to carry me, obviously, but, first! You, sir, are going to learn to jump without falling.”
It took longer than I would have liked, landing on my feet. But I did it, eventually, covered in bruises and bleeding from numerous more places.
I tucked the pistol, in safety position, into my back pocket, and Dierdre held the flashlight in the crook of her arms, then hopped in my arms bridal style. With my super strength, she was light.
“Are you ready?” I asked.
“Well, duh!”
I could feel her heart beating against mine as I held her, pressed close to my chest. I took a deep breath, then jumped. I landed softly, far away from our original position, her extra weight proving no burden to me. I grinned excitedly, and she directed me on.
We leapt across the landscape for long enough that we should have encountered a city or the sun should have risen, but neither happened. Everything stayed dark and desolate. We found nothing. I was too busy attempting to breathe while jumping across the landscape to worry too much though.
The landscape began to change. From rolling hills of long grass and wheat to wetter landscapes full of bushy plants and rocks. We had traveled far into the wet, green landscape, when exhaustion suddenly steamrolled through my body.
I landed hard after the jump, and my knees gave out. I dropped Dierdre and fell hard. She yelped as she tumbled into the ground, but I didn’t have enough energy to apologize. It felt as if all my limbs were lead. My body ached so completely I thought maybe I was made of pain. I could feel my heart pounding my ribcage, threatening to crack them. My chest burned.
“Clayton, are you okay?” Dierdre asked, sounding far too loud in my ears. She placed a hand on my forehead. Her palm was cool, but it sent electrical pain from each of her fingertips. I groaned. I was burning up. “Clayton, can you stand? There’s a gas station over here, you can rest there. We’re not safe… Come on…”
I couldn’t move, no matter how hard I tried. My vision swirled into circles, and I groaned on the ground, exhaustion overtaking me, suffocating the need to panic. Dierdre hooked her arms in my armpits and began to drag me across the ground, sending pain flaring through my body like bolts of lightning.
Darkness slowly swallowed me, and the pain washed away.
11
I woke to darkness. It was a stifling, terrifying darkness that too hot and smelled like dirt. Death settled across my body like a second skin, and I felt my heart knot in heart. I gasped for air, lashing out against the blackness that was eating me up.
“Calm down!” a voice called frantically, echoing in the nothingness that surrounded me. “Clayton, you’re safe!” I heaved dryly. Unseen hands, gentle as my mother’s lullaby, laid themselves across my back and shoulders. “Clayton, look at me.”
I can’t! My mind screamed wildly, like a raging animal. But my mouth would not obey, and I could say nothing to the windchimes that called for me. I can’t! Oh, help me!
From my unopened eyes, I could feel what I thought were tears welling up and beginning to trickle down my face, but when they hit my cheeks, they were cold. The smell of metal filled my nose.
I would never see again, as my
eyeballs ran out of their sockets and down my skin.
My eyes flew open, and I gasped. Orange filled my vision, then slowly faded off, hovering to the right of field of view. Darkness wavered all outside the orange ball of light, and I felt panic seize me. I wanted to claw my way towards the light, I wanted to drown in it, to be safe from the darkness… But I couldn’t move.
I wanted to cry, to turn my head towards the light, but my body refused. I could not move. I could not speak. I wanted to scream. Footsteps sounded behind me, and I tensed, my heart beating wildly in my chest.
Long legs stepped around me, then a lithe figure knelt beside me, blocking the hovering light. “Hey, Clayton…” Soft fingers whispered against my cheeks. She asked so like my mother, I might have sobbed. “How are you feeling?” She pressed her cool hand against my burning forehead.
Dierdre gently locked her arms underneath my pits and lifted me, leaning me into a sitting position against the wall. Now the orange filled my vision, outlining her with a glowing line, and boxing out objects in the room.
A water bottle pressed against my lips, and she tipped it gently. Water splashed into my mouth, and it took entirely too long, but I eventually was able to drink the liquid. It soothed my throat, and I greedily drank until I had finished half the bottle.
She screwed the lid back onto the bottle and lifted a blanket, tucking it around my body. “Okay, Clayton,” she murmured sweetly, settling beside me. “I found more food. Once you can move, we’ll try to get you to eat.” She settled down beside me with a soft groan. “I’m not going anywhere, alright? I’m not leaving. I’ll stay right here.”
I managed a grunt in return, wishing desperately to talk. I wanted to thank her. I wanted to thank her for staying. For taking care of me. For not letting me die. I wanted to hold her hand. It always made me feel safe when she squeezed my hand.