by Drew Brown
“Monsieur Deacon,” Juliette said. “If you fix your time machine, and go back to warn the past, what will become of those of us left here now?”
That was something I hadn’t thought of…
Waiting for Deacon to answer, Budd used his flashlight to examine their surroundings, sweeping the beam all around. Beyond the curb on both sides of the narrow road was dense woodland. The trunks of the tall trees were engulfed in a sea of haphazard plants and entwining bushes; the fog hung between them, blocking the view of the canopy, drifting through the trees like smoke.
“To be honest, I’m not entirely sure. My own theory, and it is the one to which most people within the field subscribe, is that each timeline splinters and continues along its own path. Parallel universes, so to speak.”
“What is the other theory, Monsieur Deacon?”
“That the sending time ceases to exist. With immediate effect.”
“Hurray for science,” Budd said. “Endlessly striving to create a brighter future.”
“As I said, it is my belief that the first scenario is correct. You may not like science, Mister Ashby, but without this technology, as difficult to master as it may be, the human race will be extinct in a little over a decade.”
“In case you hadn’t noticed,” Budd said, raising his left eyebrow high up his forehead, “with your technology, the human race is almost extinct today. I for one would’ve voted for that whole ten-year plan.”
“Yes, perhaps six billion people have been killed,” Deacon said. “But if we can leap back from here, those six billion will be saved. And so will their children, and their children’s children. The human race could last a thousand generations, which makes six billion lives seem like an insignificant wager.”
“You are right, Monsieur Deacon,” Juliette said, interrupting the argument before Budd could reply. “You are right to make such difficult choices.”
All I wanted to say was that the gamble seemed a neat idea, unless you happened to be one of the six billion in the stake pile. But, hey, why should anyone care what I thought? I’ve got five ex-wives who didn’t…
“The intersection isn’t much further,” Patterson said.
A gun blast stopped them in their tracks. There was another a moment later. The fog had stifled both shots, but Budd thought that they’d come from ahead of them, further along the road and maybe a little to the right, somewhere along the route they planned to take.
Evidently, Patterson was of the same opinion; the soldier walked on a few paces, his MP-5 levelled from his shoulder, the torch aimed out into the darkness. He raised his right hand to his earpiece. “Bogey, Sanders, report in.”
Budd’s heart thundered. The fog cheated his eyes. Seconds ticked by. No more gunshots sounded.
“Bogey, Sanders, report in,” the soldier said again. His hand dropped back to his weapon’s trigger. “Still nothing,” he said. “They must be out of range.”
“We should continue,” Deacon said.
Silently, Patterson nodded his agreement. He didn’t take his eyes from the road ahead.
The group set off once again, this time much slower.
Budd felt his hands go slick with perspiration, which made the tubular grip of his flashlight difficult to hold. In his other hand, Juliette’s skin had also gone clammy. He turned to offer her a comforting smile, but she didn’t notice his efforts. She was too intent on shining her light into the woods. Her wide, brown eyes were fixed on the tree line, darting around her globe of light.
Another dog howled.
15
Budd spun on his heels and shone his flashlight back the way they’d come. The other three flashlight beams gathered there as well, the fading circles of light expanding across the road until they caught the woodland’s edge. He realized that he wasn’t alone in thinking the howl had come from their rear, and he flicked his light from left to right while creeping backwards.
A medley of howls struck out of the darkness, overlapping one another. On the extreme rim of the flashlight beam, Budd thought he saw movement, fast and low to the ground, but before the image had fully registered with his brain he’d turned around and tugged Juliette’s arm.
“Run!” Patterson called, putting his eye to his MP-5’s sight.
Budd sprinted up the road with Juliette. Deacon’s footsteps were close behind but Patterson held his ground, spitting bullets from his gun.
Growls, snarls, and yelps accompanied the firearm’s retorts.
Beneath their pounding feet, the road markings changed. They had reached the intersection with the main road; Budd dragged Juliette to the right, tearing off down the new road as fast as his legs would carry him.
Being younger and fitter, Juliette pulled ahead. Budd was soon several feet behind, unable to match her speed. He let her hand fall from his own and she glanced back at him, still running, her face flushed.
“Keep going,” Budd yelled, and his free hand went beneath his blue jumper and took the Glock from the waistband of his trousers. He held it forward, next to his flashlight.
Sweat poured from his brow.
Thirty feet ahead, getting clearer with every step, a large object loomed out of the fog. Skewered diagonally off the road’s left-hand side was a school bus. Its back end was on the road while its front had ploughed into the woods, vanishing into the dense undergrowth. A small sign on the inside of the rear window declared ASHTONNE MIDDLE SCHOOL BRASS BAND.
On the right-hand side of the bus, level with the last row of seats, the emergency exit was wide open. Deacon shined his flashlight into the narrow entrance. “We can hide in here,” he said, moving towards it.
Budd hesitated. The gunfire had ended and Patterson was either following behind or had been overrun. “What about the people who were on it?”
Deacon glanced over his shoulder as he reached the bus. “They’ll be long gone,” he called. “Come on, we have to hide.”
With a look at Juliette, who nodded meekly, Budd followed the scientist.
Deacon climbed inside, his light in one hand and the black briefcase in the other. He ventured in a few steps, carefully looking around, but then he jumped back, propelled by a scream of panic. He lost his footing on the narrow walkway between the seats and tripped on something in the gangway. He fell from the coach and landed flat on the road. His scream became a gasp as all the air in his lungs escaped.
A schoolboy appeared in the emergency exit, caught in the beam of Budd’s flashlight. His eyes narrowed in the glare and he issued a guttural challenge. He wore black pants, a black sweater, a white shirt, and a red-and-black striped tie. The schoolboy leapt from the vehicle, his mop of bowl-cut blond hair rising from his head. He landed square on Deacon’s chest. The scientist cried out in shock and pain, but the schoolboy buried his mouth in the soft flesh of Deacon’s exposed neck, his teeth piercing the skin and sinking deeper.
Juliette kicked the schoolboy in his side, the force of the blow knocking him away from Deacon. Without ever stopping, the schoolboy was on his feet, crouched and ready to pounce a second time.
Budd levelled his handgun and squeezed the trigger. The schoolboy shot backwards, blood spraying from his face.
There was a hole in the back of his head.
Behind them, several dogs howled.
“Quick, sweetheart,” Budd said, gesturing up the road.
Juliette didn’t respond to his words, but instead knelt at Deacon’s side.
The scientist was still alive, coughing and spluttering, but blood gushed from his wounded neck. Juliette placed her hands on the jagged gash and the pressure from her contact stemmed the flow. “Help me move him, Monsieur Ashby.”
Now, if you know me as well as I’m sure you do by now, you’ll have guessed that my natural instinct was to run like crazy, distancing myself from the quickly-dying scientist—hoping that his bloody carcass would be enough chow to fill the dogs.
It was a plan with very few downsides—very few for me, that is.
&n
bsp; Juliette, however, was not so callous and wanted to do whatever she could. As I stood there, waving my light from side to side, searching for more danger, I realized that it’d be quicker to help her than to argue with her…
Budd looped his hands under Deacon’s armpits and hauled the scientist to his feet, soliciting a pain-filled moan. The briefcase came up to hang heavily on Deacon’s arm. For the first time, Budd noticed that the scientist had handcuffed the item to his wrist. His flashlight, however, was smashed on the pavement.
“Monsieur Ashby,” Juliette said, her voice trailing away.
Budd looked up and instinctively tightened his grip on his handgun, his index finger flexing on the trigger. At both ends of the bus, lots of children were coming out of the woods. As they appeared from the fog, Budd saw that they were all dressed in the same black-and-white style of uniform. The only discernible difference was that the boys wore black pants and the girls wore pleated black skirts that ended below their knees. Budd counted a dozen of them, with still more movement in the foliage, their feet crumpling fallen leaves as their shapes emerged.
The children advanced towards the coach, although they scurried backwards and sideways as well, darting out of the two torch beams.
“Back away, pancake. But keep your eyes peeled.”
“Give me the gun, Monsieur Ashby,” Juliette replied, her voice a harsh whisper. “You take Monsieur Deacon. I will cover us.”
I doubted that Juliette had used a firearm before, as Europeans are much more uptight ’bout guns than us liberal souls from the good-old United States.
When I was growing up, the women in town were better shots than the men were, which made one week each month a dangerous time to be a jerk.
But while Juliette may not have been a fully-fledged member of the NRA, I’d never been chased by space-mutant infected schoolchildren and a pack of howling hell-dogs before, so I thought, what the heck, let the girl have the gun.
It’s not as if she could do much worse than me as I labored under Deacon’s weight. We’d also move a bit quicker, too, if I didn’t have to attempt both tasks at once while on the verge of messing myself with terror…
Budd offered Juliette the Glock’s grip. She took it and aimed the weapon along the same line as her torch. They backed away as fast as they could. Deacon groaned with every step Budd took. The route to the front of the bus, down the way they needed to go, was cut off by the schoolchildren, who had fanned out into a semicircle, all the time staying at the furthest edge of the dancing flashlight beam.
Budd and Juliette reached the curb. They stepped onto the muddy edge as two Dobermans trotted into view on their left-hand side. There was no sign of Patterson. The two dogs stopped, raised their heads to the obscured sky, and howled.
They were twenty-five feet away.
Budd looked around.
There was nowhere left to go but into the woodland, which was on the wrong side of the road for the airfield. He felt a tree trunk at his back, the initial contact sending a shudder of fright through his body. “On three, we run,” he said.
“Okay,” Juliette said.
“One,” Budd whispered.
“Two,” Juliette continued.
Budd’s eyes darted across the shrinking semicircle of schoolchildren. Their faces were tilting from side to side, animal-like. What he saw terrified him: a hellish mixture of innocent pigtails, bowl-cuts, smart uniforms, and rosy cheeks, coupled with distorted mouths, lurching gaits, and claw-shaped hands.
“Three!”
They turned and ran.
16
Budd stumbled through the woods, picking his route through the thick trunks and damp undergrowth. Deacon groaned with pain. Juliette raced in and out of the trees, nimbler on her feet, all the time looking back with both her flashlight and the Glock at the ready.
Struggling to maintain any real speed while carrying Deacon, Budd let Juliette worry about what was following behind, and put his focus on getting away. Tree trunks, thorn bushes, holes, and branches appeared in the beam of his flashlight, their outlines made vague by the fog. He was forced to duck, shimmy, and hurdle his way around them, all the time weakening under the load of Deacon’s quickly-deteriorating body.
The scientist tried to help, to make his legs take some of his weight from Budd, but the wound on his neck was too severe. More often than not, his feet trailed behind him and his head hung between his shoulders, blood gurgling from his torn flesh.
Juliette fired the handgun.
The noise was deafening within the enclosed woodland. There was a short pause before she fired again and this time the gunshot was followed by a pained yelp. Budd chanced a look over his shoulder and found that one of the Dobermans was close behind them, but it had tumbled over and was crashing through the underbrush. The dog’s front legs were pointed backwards and its head was tucked down as it rolled along the uneven ground.
Further back, the other Doberman continued after them, snarling viciously. On the extreme edge of Juliette’s flashlight beam, Budd caught a glimpse of several of the schoolchildren weaving through the trees, steadily gaining ground. He willed his legs to find more strength and speed.
Hell, I don’t mind admitting it, I was about to dump Deacon and leave him to his fate.
If Juliette and I had then managed to get away, I’d have just told her that he’d died while I was carrying him. It wasn’t going to take much longer, anyway: he had a one-way ticket to Corpseville.
Well, I guess it was a return ticket, but you get the idea.
Not that it would’ve made a difference if I’d been helping Deacon because he’d sprained his ankle; I’d tried, but I couldn’t carry him and run fast enough to escape.
And I intended to escape…
Ahead, Budd saw that the undergrowth thinned; the tree trunks were spaced wider apart, and the bushes had been cut back to reveal swathes of barren ground. Abruptly, the trees ended and the woods opened into a clearing.
There was a wooden building standing in the center of it.
“Get to the hut,” Budd yelled.
Juliette fired her handgun again, drowning out the sound of his voice.
This time Budd didn’t turn around, he simply pushed his legs as hard as he could, desperate to reach the clearing. Once he had, he found an extra burst of speed as he reached the flatter, grass-covered ground, almost dragging Deacon along.
The hut was actually a single-story log cabin that had a raised porch across its front. A wooden rail marked the edge of the deck, and in the middle of the cabin’s front, the ill-repaired beams gave way to a couple of wooden steps, which led straight to a door. There was a rectangular window on either side of the doorway, midway between the corners of the building and the doorframe. Both of the windows had wooden shutters closed over them.
Budd thundered up the steps, crossed the decking and tried the handle. The door was locked. Juliette reached the veranda and then turned back to the woodland. She fired a couple of shots, swinging the torch beam from side to side.
“No one’s home,” Budd said, but Juliette didn’t respond.
Following her line of sight, he looked to the woodland’s edge, where the schoolchildren were advancing, jerking in and out from behind the thick trunks. He counted nearly two dozen of them. The surviving Doberman was also there, pacing around as though it was caged.
Budd turned his attention back to the cabin door. He was about to suggest searching for another entrance when he looked down and saw a doormat. Moving it aside with his boot, he found a big, old-fashioned key beneath it. He scooped up the single key and thrust it into the lock. The rusty mechanism resisted him for a heartbeat, but then the door swung open to reveal an entirely dark interior. He slipped inside and dropped Deacon onto the wooden floor.
Juliette came backwards through the doorway, firing off another shot. As soon as she was inside, Budd slammed the door shut and re-locked it.
17
“Are you all right?” Budd asked Julie
tte as soon as he’d stepped away from the door. He pointed his light at her feet, catching her face in the reflected light.
“Yes, Monsieur Ashby, I am fine,” she said, panting heavily. She dropped to her knees, placing the Glock on the wooden floor. She took hold of one of Deacon’s hands.
Budd looked down at the injured man’s face; the scientist’s complexion had faded to white, his eyes were sunken and his lips were a pale shade of blue. The only other color was the dark red that bubbled from his neck, soaking his white shirt. He moaned something unintelligible, his eyeballs rolling inside their sockets.
Juliette shuffled along the floor so that she could prop his head up between her knees. She stroked his face and sung quietly in French, her words a mystery to Budd.
Moving the direction of his flashlight’s beam from Deacon’s dying body, Budd cast it around the room. Even if it weren’t for the circumstances they’d come to be there, Budd knew that he’d have found the dusty, unused cabin creepy. Other than its front door, the room had two other doors at either end of the opposite wall. From its relatively large size, about fifteen feet by fifteen feet, and its assortment of old furniture, he guessed that they were in the cabin’s main living area, although it was too sparsely decorated for him to be sure.
There was a threadbare, brown sofa along one wall, big enough to seat three people, and an old rug over the wooden floorboards beneath it. On the wall opposite the sofa was an impressive stone fireplace, loaded with wood, above which hung the head of a stag mounted on a plaque. Its antlers were woven with cobwebs. There were other trophy-heads around the room: a fox, a deer, a badger, and a weasel. Budd felt that their black, fake eyes followed him as he moved. Standing next to the sofa was a flimsy-looking wooden cabinet, which Budd could see was loaded with candles.
