He willed his heart to stop hurting, to stop beating. He tried to push the faces away, the children from the orphanage, his friends from school, the Raider breathing his last under an impossible blue sky. The Anubis warriors barely old enough to shave. The thousands of undead, now just passively staring at him. He had failed. She was gone. Everything was for nothing.
Jessie wept.
35
Jessie and Jessie
The door slammed open on its hinges and banged against the wall. Without thinking, faster than an eyeblink, Jessie sprang out of bed and had both Glocks aimed at the stranger silhouetted by the flames behind him. His head swam and he felt the sledgehammer blows pounding on it, threatening to smash him to his knees. He fought it and didn’t falter. Didn’t show weakness.
“Sit down before you fall down.” the stranger said, and closed the door behind him.
Jessie stared as the scruffy bearded man with the battered leather jacket and the jagged scar running from lip to eye. He didn’t waver, followed him with his guns as he jammed the door shut with a sturdy chair.
“Your guns are empty. Sit down.” the man said.
“Piss off.” Jessie replied, still holding his aim steady.
The man laughed and dragged an armchair away from the wall and sat in it, facing him.
“Sounds like something I would say.” he chuckled and shook his head.
“You know how I know your guns are empty?” he asked “Because mine were empty in this same room on this same day about a thousand years ago. But I didn’t quit. I didn’t lay down and die like you’re getting ready to do.”
Jessie recognized the piercing blue eyes, the rough scar and the too long blonde hair, now with hints of gray. He saw it every time he looked in a mirror and he knew he was looking at himself. An older version of himself. His head still hammered but his mind was quick. The time machine the kids had found must be real. His knees buckled. He sat, stared for a long moment before finally lowering his guns.
“Your beard looks like shit.” he said.
“So does your head.” the traveler said. “Let me look at it. Don’t stab me.”
He probed gently at Jessies scalp and grimaced at what he found.
“Jeez. Your skull’s busted. That didn’t happen to me. Ricketts get in a lucky shot?” he asked as he sat back down.
“Yeah.” Jessie said. “Got distracted by a noise in the hall, thought more were coming in. He was fast.”
The traveler thought for a second then shook his head.
“Weird.” he said “I think I did that. I heard you two fighting and stumbled over a body, knocked a plinth over. I think I killed you.”
“Thanks, but I’m not dead.” Jessie said. “Just feel like it.”
“You will be soon.” he said. “Your brain is about ready to leak out. You’d never make it back to the car, let alone a few hundred miles to the nearest doctor.”
“Why are you here?” Jessie asked, ignoring the grim diagnosis. “What the hell is going on? Doesn’t meeting yourself cause a rift in the space-time continuum or something? Where’s Scarlet? Did you save her?”
“Yes, but shut up and let me think.” the traveler said and rubbed at his eyes. “We’ve only got a few minutes. If you haven’t noticed, the building is on fire.”
“I grew up to be an asshole.” Jessie said and wavered, swayed a little where he sat and tried to make the room stop tilting.
He tried to keep the contents of his stomach inside of him as his head swam in throbbing waves of pain. Part of him didn’t care who this guy was, the part that was shutting down from concussive trauma. The other part wanted answers. Mostly about Scarlet.
Smoke was curling in under the door and the clock was ticking. Jessie sat on the bed and steadied himself. He knew he was done for. He’d been hurt in the past but never like this. When he touched his head, it was soft and mushy.
“Quit touching it.” the older man said. “You’ll stick a finger in your brain.”
Jessie glared and sat back against the headboard but he stopped poking his skull. He pulled her pillow close and leaned his head against the wall. He had to sleep. Everything was going to be fine. Asshole Jessie said he’d saved her, maybe he’d gone back before any of this happened. Maybe she wasn’t burnt up downstairs.
The man watched his lidded eyes, one of them was already going black, the pupil dilating fully open. He considered for a moment longer before he made up his mind.
“Stay with me.” the man said “And I’ll try to tell you what you need to know. Which isn’t much.”
“I hope you can tell me how not to be a dick when I get older.” Jessie said, his words starting to slur.
The man laughed then swore and started unbuckling a large silver bracelet that looked intricate, simple and complicated at the same time.
“Listen.” he said. “And remember. Don’t come back, do you understand? You can’t come back no matter what you think you can fix. It doesn’t work like that, you’ll only make things worse. God knows I have.”
Jessie’s head pounded but his mind was clear. He heard and understood although he didn’t understand the meaning.
“Every time you cross timelines, you can create a duplicate of yourself. If I went back to where I’m from and came back here a minute ago, there would be three of us. If I did it again, there would be four. You can’t keep doing that, it really screws things up. Time is linear but it isn’t and there is only one timeline but there’s not. There isn’t multiple universes and every time you jump, you mess things up for everyone else. Do you understand?”
“No.” Jessie said. “Why are you telling me this? Didn’t you say I’m going to die?”
“You’ve already died. You’ve lived and had kids. You got fat, went bald and cheated on your wife. You’ve been killed by raiders. You were never born. You’ve died of old age and you died under the bleachers when you were pushing Gary. I remember it all and none of it is true. What is true is what is happening right now. This is the only truth that is real and I’m stopping the cycles. This isn’t perfect but it’s the closest I’ve ever come and I’ve got to end it, I can’t do it anymore. I can’t fix it, I can only make it different.”
Jessie listened and realized he’d gone crazy. It was the only explanation. Time travel had scrambled his brain.
“You’ll be in a coma in a few minutes. Or dead.” the man continued. “Only one of us can go and it’s going to be you this time. I’m sending you back. She’ll be waiting.”
“Who? Scarlet?”
“No, the queen of the Outer Reaches.” he spat. “Of course, Scarlet. She didn’t turn, not fully. I got to her in time.”
He moved in quick, angry jerks as he buckled the strange bracelet around Jessies wrist.
“But she’s infected. It’s spreading…” Jessie started but was cut off sharply.
“You don’t think I know that?” he said, his face contorted in barely controlled anger. “You don’t think I’ve known that for a hundred lifetimes? You don’t think I know what I did?”
He glared at Jessie, holding the rage for a moment before relaxing.
“I’m trying to undo it. There is a doctor waiting where I sent her.” he added, his tone softening. “She is always on standby when I leave because I never know what kind of condition I’ll be in when I go back. She can fix her.”
The room was filling with smoke and they could hear the crackling of flames farther down the hall. He closed his eyes, ran a hand over his face, through his scruffy beard and willfully calmed himself.
He took a deep breath and exhaled slowly.
“Jessie,” he said, and leaned forward in his chair. “Only a few years in real time have passed since I was in this room, since I climbed out of that window and started this whole crazy journey. This is the closest I’ve come to getting back to this moment. I’ve been trying for a thousand years. Literally. Probably longer, I don’t know. Time is funny. I came a long way from now.”
H
e sighed and looked out of the window at the impossible blue sky.
“We’ve only got a few minutes so pay attention. I’ve been trying to save her for eons and I still remember how I used to feel. How you feel about her right now. I’ve been split down to an atomic level so many times and for so long but the love never dies. Everything else does but it doesn’t. It won’t let me stop and I can’t do it anymore. This wasn’t the plan but plans never work out the way you want, do they? I wanted to come back months ago but traveling isn’t an exact science. I wanted to take her away before I gave her the injection but that would have changed everything, too. She wouldn’t have known me. You have no idea how complicated it is. It’s not natural and things aren’t always the same every time you go back. Sometimes you can’t go back at all, it just doesn’t work. Sometimes you get caught in a loop and can’t get out. Sometimes a butterfly flaps its wings and changes the world. Saving her became a mission, a calling impossible to ignore. The only thing that kept me going. The only reason to continue to live. I’ve finally done it, though, even if it didn’t work out the way I wanted. She’s safe and now I should go be with her but I’m not you anymore. I’ve got too many memories in my head and I don’t know which one I’m living half the time. She won’t even know me.”
The longing and sadness on the man’s face was tangible and Jessie understood. It dawned on him what he was saying and why he’d strapped the device to his wrist.
“So, you’re going to stay? I go to wherever you came from and you take over my life here?”
“Maybe I’ll just lie down and die like you were trying to do.” the man said and glanced to the door, at the reddish glow of flames around it. “It would be easier. I’ve seen into the dark, Jessie. I’m tired.”
He turned to stare at the sky, seeing things only he could see and remembering things only he remembered. Jessie watched through dimming eyes as the ancient, ageless man shook himself then grabbed his wrist and started tapping buttons on the strange device.
“How does it work?” Jessie slurred.
“None of your business.” the man said. “I know you. You’ll try to fix things. You’ll try to go back and stop the outbreak or kill Hitler as a child or something else equally stupid. It won’t work, Jessie. Believe me. If you try to use this thing without knowing what you’re doing, you’ll wind up out in deep space when you reappear. The planets are constantly moving and all of them have wobbles. Even if you came back one second from now, you’d be in the next room, probably inside the wall with a two by four sticking out of your ass.”
“How?” Jessie asked. “If I came back here, I’d come back here.”
“No, you wouldn’t. Did you forget everything you learned in science class? The earth is moving at sixty thousand miles an hour through space. It’s spinning on its axis at a thousand miles an hour. If you came back here in five minutes, you’d smack into the moon. Now quit asking dumb questions.”
The bracelet started to hum and a faint glow seemed to be coming from the metal itself.
“Going back to where you started is different, you have a fixed coordinate in time and space, you’re not guessing. Are you listening?”
Jessie nodded and regretted it.
“When I send you back, take this thing off and drop it in the osmitron vat that’s on the table. The blue one. Scarlets too. Don’t push any buttons, don’t try to smash it, don’t save it for future study. Don’t do anything dumb. Drop it in the vat. Do you understand?”
Jessie nodded his head slightly and grimaced at the movement. Everything was blurry, the conversation was getting hard to follow and he was only staying awake by sheer will.
“Tell her I loved her.” the man said as he pushed a final button on the bracelet. “And you might want to get your face fixed. I made some enemies.”
Jessie felt a tugging at his core and the room vanished.
36
The Traveler
He sat back in the chair, rubbed his scruffy beard and wondered at what he’d just done. He coughed from the smoke then stood and looked around the room. Her room. It was ages ago since he’d last been here and it looked the same except for all the blood on the bed. He hadn’t come here to die last time, he’d come to take a memento. He touched the golden amulet hanging on his neck then looked over to the jewelry tree on the desk. It still hung there, a whole lot newer than the battered one he wore. He’d grabbed it on the way out the window, the room ablaze and his leathers smoking from the heat. The fires were much worse last time. Of course, he had spent a lot of time tracking down the Lord of the Underworld back then. The guy had a secret room and a dozen crazy zealots protecting him. This time he knew where to look, it hadn’t taken but a few minutes to eliminate the final threat. He wondered about knocking over the vase, the distraction that let Ricketts deliver the killing blow. If he hadn’t been here, would things have gone exactly like they had last time? In all the times he’d jumped, this was the closest he’d come to things being like the original memories, the ones he’d burned into his brain, repeating them over and over so he’d never forget.
He’d almost come too late. He’d arrived days ago but had been trapped in Ohio for a time. That was the thing about a post-apocalyptic world, you never knew how much time you had. You never knew what day it was. You were lucky to guess the month right. He didn’t know if he made the right decision or not but there was no undoing it. Jessie and Scarlet were on their own and he was too far away to do anything for them.
He waved the smoke out of his face and walked out on the balcony. Flames were licking up the side of the building, the bottom floors were already completely engulfed. He pulled his guns, the Mark Seven blasters that had been his favorites for a long, long time, and tossed them onto her bed. If he was going to live here, he couldn’t impact anything. Couldn’t change anything if he could avoid it. All he had left was knowledge of the future but even that wasn’t guaranteed. Nothing was. Time wasn’t a straight line and he’d just changed it a little. Bent it from its course. Who knew what butterfly effect he’d set in motion? He’d removed one body and sent it away but Scarlet shouldn’t make any difference. She always died no matter what he did. She had never lived past this date before.
He’d replaced one Jessie for another and that was going to change things up because he wouldn’t do the things he did before. He knew better. Maybe the world would grow to be a better place now. Or maybe he’d just destroyed it. Probably not. It wasn’t that fragile.
He hung from the railing, dropped to the balcony below then repeated the move again to get to the ground. He remembered the Mercury was in a parking garage and looked around to get his bearings. The Casino burned brightly in the afternoon sky and if nothing changed, if the wind didn’t shift because the moon wobbled a little last month or a tree fell into the flames, it would burn itself out and the rest of the city would remain. He’d seen the ruins so it was one possibility that had already happened.
A thing so simple as a bug being squashed under someone’s shoe on a sidewalk can change the world. He knew that now. If that bug would have survived, maybe it was the one that found a home in the bark of a mighty pine. Maybe it had tens of thousands of offspring over the years and maybe they ate away at the tree. Maybe they were the reason it fell with its top touching the flames. Maybe that is how the fire would spread to burn down most of the city. But that one bug died years ago and the city was spared.
Jessie couldn’t keep thinking like that. He was no longer responsible for the future and if he agonized over every little thing he did, he would be frozen in place, afraid to move. The bracelets were gone and he was free. He had finally made it to the right time and in time to get Scarlet out. The plan for a thousand years had been to go with her and he still wasn’t sure why he’d done what he’d done. He wasn’t sure if they would be able to survive where he sent them but everything they needed to know was in the database, they would figure it out. Those two were on their own and he couldn’t keep trying to fix thi
ngs. He couldn’t keep resetting the world hoping for a better outcome, it was as good as it was going to get.
He found the garage and started up the ramp, trying to remember which level he’d parked. He heard Bob’s warning growl and was surprised. He’d forgotten all about the dog, it had been so long since he’d seen him. He clicked his tongue and crouched down, held out his hand.
“It’s me, boy.” he said and patted his leg. “C’mere. That’s a good boy.”
Bob approached sniffing the air, ears cocked. Something wasn’t right but something was. It was his master but it wasn’t. He trusted his nose and ears more than his eyes and finally came forward, hesitantly at first. Jessie ruffled his fur and smiled. He couldn’t believe he’d forgotten about the dog, they had been so close. It took a moment but he accepted him as Jessie because after all, he was.
Nefertiti hissed when he approached and wouldn’t let him touch her. Scarlet said cats can see the supernatural and he wondered what she saw in him. She hopped off the car and stared into the shadows, looking for her mistress.
“She’s not coming.” Jessie said.
The cat that was more than a cat held his eyes for a long moment then turned and walked off, her tail held high. He sighed and opened the door. She wouldn’t be coming back. She only tolerated them because of Scarlet. He leaned back in the seat and turned on the radio. Her playlist started. He closed his eyes, listened and remembered.
Epilogue
Jessie woke up slowly, easily and without pain. He was warm, feeling floaty and it was almost like he was still dreaming. The world was filled with a quiet, thick sound that really wasn’t there unless he thought about it. He opened his eyes and everything was fuzzy. The air felt thick and it tasted a little bit sweet. Far away he heard a beeping sound then saw Scarlet look down at him. She saw he was awake and did something he couldn’t see off to the side. He tried to reach for her but his hand hit something solid and he turned to see what was stopping him. He was floating in a glass box in something thick but clear and he realized he was submerged. He should be drowning but he wasn’t. He couldn’t work up the effort to be alarmed about it so he closed his eyes and drifted back to sleep.
Zombie Road VI: Highway to Heartache Page 29
