Anastasia pulled herself up from the garden wall, and left the scene of many sacrifices as fast as she could run.
II.
Anastasia hiked hard into the desert night towards where she'd hidden the truck. Far down a dusty road, away from the sea, and obscured well enough behind a dune in a stand of tall cacti.
She hadn't wanted to draw attention to herself coming up on the old hotel; that truck was loud, and obnoxious, and who in their right mind would purposely possess such a vehicle? She would be acquiring a less intimidating and ridiculous method of transportation at her earliest convenience. But it would have to do until tomorrow night. She had a two hour window, maximum, before the sun would rise and she'd have to dig herself into the sand to sleep.
The idea of it, encased in a blanket of desert, was unthinkable but necessary. She felt so alive after her many brushes with extinction this night. She was filled with wild blood, and drunk on her own charmed and accomplished existence.
Sleeping under a sand dune seemed a defeated ending to an otherwise honorable and exciting night.
She was barely halfway down the dirt path when she heard the vast engine of the truck crank to life and the enormous tailpipes roar. Someone was not only stealing her ride, but was letting the accelerator alternate from purring to straining.
Surely, Calvin hadn't escaped — she hoped not. Anastasia would have killed him herself for leaving an unloaded shotgun in his backseat. She blamed him, and herself; she should have checked beforehand. Calvin had always been so cautious and seemingly prepared when it came to firearms, yet the only preparation he'd taken with that weapon was leaving the stench of his chicken grease all over it.
“Margot and Uncle Priest have sucked him dry by now.” Anastasia wasn't sure about a lot of things then. She had no idea where she was going, other than out of California, and she didn't know what it was she was supposed to do with her life.
She was, however, sure that Calvin had been reduced to a pile of bloody bone and yards of punctured skin.
And Margot. Was the Priest insane? Apprentice? There was no way that was going to work out. Margot was much too headstrong to take his direction, and there'd be no way that he could control her. She would argue every point, do the opposite of what was commanded of her, and could never follow the most basic responsibilities of what it would mean to be one of the last vampires in existence.
She heard Calvin's stereo begin to blast and the headlights come to life, and the great behemoth began to roll over the dune, taking out half of the cacti with it.
Anastasia shook her head and adjusted her hair, then adjusted her shirt to show a little cleavage and a little more midriff. She'd wait for the truck to roll up to her with her thumb out and give a story, just like she gave Calvin right before she took the first ride in that big truck.
She took in the blood all over her clothing and decided that either it wouldn't turn off one of the locals or she'd add a car crash to the story.
The truck rumbled forward and kicked up a lot of dust into the night. Hopefully there wasn't another hit squad looking to parachute in on her. Her vision was obscured with the bright headlamps of the truck bearing down on her. She could tell there was a man driving, but with all the exhaust and wake she couldn't smell him — she hoped that the cab of the truck no longer smelled like fried chicken.
The vehicle rumbled to a stop as Anastasia stood on the side of the long desert trail.
The smoked black tinted window lowered. The first thing she made out was the crown of the scar that ran across his face.
~10~
“TIME SHALL UNFOLD WHAT PLIGHTED SKATEBOARDERS HIDE.”
(WHAT SHAKESPEARE WOULD' A SAID IF HE'D HAVE KNOWN ANY PLIGHTED SKATEBOARDERS)
BILLY PURGATORY OPENED HIS EYES and found himself in a stainless steel cage. He was sitting with his back to the bars, and when he tried to stand up, he banged his aching head against the roof of his enclosure.
He was in an industrial type storeroom area, with sporadic overhead lights which beamed from compact fluorescent globes. Looking left and then right, he found more cages just like the one he was within on either side of him against the wall of the room — designed for animals and not people, although it was working well to keep him contained. Billy rubbed the back of his neck; it was mostly numb, and the parts of it that weren't numb stung like he'd been cuddling with a scorpion.
He wasn't sure where he was, other than in the past, but it wasn't the past that he remembered. He'd done something wrong, gotten some little something in the preparations he'd made following the instructions in the book he'd stolen from Broom's corpse on the island. The only part of any of this that had worked out right was that this was a time when there was an aspect of himself living who was still a boy — but with the environment that the boy and he were in currently, he couldn't be sure that either of them would have the opportunity to grow into happier lives.
When he'd fallen into this place, struggling with the Time Zombie through some wormhole of the in-between, he'd still had a lot of hope left in him. They had landed together in this world, and come to rest on the stones of the bridge in the woods he had tagged with his last name when he had been a boy.
He had rolled over the stones of the top of the bridge, and the Time Zombie had let loose one of the haunting screams of agony and angst that he was so prone to doing. Then, in a flash, he had vanished.
The stones were cold and the forest quiet. Everything around him was surely spooked by the unwelcome commotion he and a monster had just been engaged in. Billy kept his eyes closed and didn't think about the aches, the cuts, the blood. How dizzy he was. All he could focus on is how there might still be hope.
What if it had actually worked?
He opened his eyes just in time to see the flash above that was too bright and was not a star, yet it was falling towards him. Moving was hard, but he moved just enough. Billy's eyes focused on what had nearly sliced his head from his neck. It was straight up and the front of the deck was jammed into the rocks of the bridge on which he lay.
The skateboard had fallen from the sky. Ice crystals slid from it as they would off the wing of a plane. Frost laced tendril wisps rose lazily from it to join with the forest wind.
Billy knew where he was; he'd tried to skate off that old runoff tunnel bridge a thousand times. He pulled himself up to his knees and tried to focus in on the world. When his eyes suddenly became clear, there she was, standing and cautiously staring.
When he lifted himself the rest of the journey towards standing, he pulled his trusty skateboard from the center of the spider-webbed cracks it had dealt to the rocks.
Little Lissandra, and by little he meant as she'd been when he had been a ten-year-old boy. He smiled at her and laughed and muttered something to her which had certainly sounded insane. Something about how it had worked.
It hadn't worked at all, though. He had coaxed Lissandra into trusting him enough to talk. She said that she did know who Billy Purgatory was, that her Grandmother read the cards for his mother and a creepy Russian. That they had machines which had picked up on bursts of energy, a kind which was not native to our world. This had happened almost a week ago, and Billy knew that the girl couldn't be speaking of the energy he and the Time Zombie had kicked up less than an hour ago.
The Time Zombie had appeared in this new place already, and what he had been doing here, or who he had brought with him, was suddenly of a deep concern to Billy Purgatory. His concern grew more when the little spying girl told him that she had seen the Russian bring a boy back — a boy with a skateboard.
“There'll be men coming, mister. The woods aren't going to be safe for me or you.” Lissandra's eyes scanned, and Billy knew her well enough to know she was already planning her escape route back to Grandma's. “I gotta go.”
“So the woman, with the Russian,” he asked Lissandra. “What's she like?”
“Emelia Purgatory?” The girl crossed her arms and made a face. “She's evil.�
��
He had already known that he would have to be on the move, especially if Broom had some machine which could sense that he had just fallen into this world with the Time Zombie. “How are you so sure she's evil?”
Lissandra backed away from him a few steps, looked out into the trees, and then cautiously back. “Because she's one of the Satanic Five.”
II.
Dr. Luna sat in a chair across from Billy Purgatory's cage. Billy didn't know this guy, but by the out-of-place hair, the smoke smudges on his cheeks, and eyes red as if they still might pour tears, he had surely had better nights. “I look at you, and I know that you are him. It's still hard for me to contemplate.”
“Unlock this cage, maybe a closer look at me will help.”
“You're in there for your own safety. You're not of this reality, and having you wander around freely might have drastic effects on us all.”
“Yeah, what kind of effects?”
“You could change things.”
Billy stretched out his legs and folded his hands behind his head. “Maybe that's just what this place needs.”
“Trust me, Billy.” It was so strange for Luna to call this man by the name of his young friend. “This world has seen plenty of quantum screw-ups already tonight.”
“The redhead?”
Dr. Luna looked away for a moment. “Let's not…”
“Mine was blonde.”
The doctor felt he might better stand and end the conversation now, but he didn't. “Excuse me?”
“Her name was Lucinda. She was blonde.”
“What are you talking about, and what point are you trying to make about Mira?”
“The point is that she was stolen from me and dragged off into some other time and place by a monster. A monster who travels through time and space.”
Dr. Luna leaned forward. “Horrifying.”
“That it was. So, you're not the only one of us who's lost a girlfriend to a quantum mistake. The difference between my situation and yours is that, in my case, the mistake was that a monster was allowed to have such powers in the first place.”
“A monster? What do you mean by monster?”
“I mean a grade-A psychotic, undead creature, who is strapped down with cables and circuits and is able to move at will through time and space.”
“I wasn't aware that animation of the dead was possible — it's most definitely not practical.”
“Yeah well, I know a Russian who'd disagree with you, Luna.”
Dr. Luna considered the words of the grownup version of Billy for a long moment. He again felt, that he should end this conversation before it got any more out of hand.
“Why are you telling me any of this?”
“I'm telling you this because I'm pretty sure that Broom is using you to create the monster that I'm talking about.”
“I don't work for Mr. Broom. I'm employed by your mother — and what sort of person does it make you that you'd believe your own mother capable of creating such a horrible creature?”
“It makes me definitely practical.”
Dr. Luna stood. “This is madness.” He paced left, then realized the door was right and changed course.
“Luna, before you write me off, answer me this: was that big giant time-shotgun that sent your girlfriend off to Neverland your idea or Broom's?”
“His idea was something more compact and integrated to the actual time-naught. Regardless, I will not have any more of this discussion. I'm sorry…”
“Was it a time-vest?”
Dr. Luna stopped in his tracks. “How could you know that?”
“How do you think that I got here?”
“You arrived here because we had an accident with the old prototype — the Time-Mirror machine.”
“Nope, I kidnapped the Time Zombie and came here. You know how a zombie travels through time and space?”
Luna turned, cautiously. “No, I can't say that I do.”
“He wears a time-vest, Luna. Now, do you think you can pull your head out of your Bunsen long enough to really listen?”
“What you're speaking of is not possible. You were pulled here when the boy tampered with the mirror.”
“He ever actually say that he tampered with the mirror?”
“No.”
“Yeah, because that kid's a great liar and an even greater avoider. I should know better than anybody.”
“Even if this is all true…”
“You ever meet your boss's kid before Broom brought him back?”
“I had not. I don't leave the stables much.”
“And the kid with the skateboard never left that house?”
“I knew she had a son, and I just assumed.”
“Since munchkin-Billy has been back, has a day gone by when he hasn't been down here bugging you?”
“He likes root beer.”
“Climb off your fluffy cloud, Luna. That woman didn't give birth to either one of us. He's from the same place that I am, just a different time.”
Luna began walking down the hallway, the wheels in his head moving a lot faster than his loafers. “So the vest works?”
“Better than you know. Tell me you've already made one.”
“I've made two, actually — neither one is fully operational.”
Dr. Luna stood at the cage and regarded heavily the ring of keys in his hands as Billy kept questioning. “What does ‘fully operational’ mean?”
“Well, the power core on one is unstable — it might be good for one test. I don't fully trust the logic circuitry on the other — it lends a sense of randomness to areas of science which beg for precision.”
“Sounds a lot like me. Now, for the love of all things right — let me out of this cage.”
Dr. Luna slipped the key into the lock and turned. He offered a hand to hoist Billy Purgatory out of his prison.
Billy and Dr. Luna remained in a handshake for a moment. Billy nodded to the scientist before he broke their grip and began to stride down the hallway. Luna looked over the man that his innocent and slightly daft young friend would one day grow into. Dressed in military garb, and possessing a body which seemed to have had no choice but to grow strong, the man's form was a collection of scratches, knots, and scars. Whatever lay ahead for the boy who was Dr. Luna's only friend, it would certainly be a journey of sacrifice and pain.
“Billy.” Luna spoke as he followed Billy out of the storage room. “The blonde, Lucinda. She's lost to you with no hope of ever recovering her?”
“She's gone, Luna. Never coming back.”
“With what you've seen about life, time, reality? How can you be so sure?”
“It's not being sure — it's a prayer.”
“You'd never want to see her again?”
“Not how she'd come back.”
Dr. Luna had already shed far too many tears for Mira that night, but the pain in his heart flared up again. He feared that Billy might be right, but what if he wasn't? What if he could help this strange man from another place to rig the time-vests to work so that they might both be able to search for things they had lost?
“Luna, that's not saying that my story is your story. It's not saying that you'll never see the redhead again.”
III.
“It could drop you anywhere. When the energy overtakes you both, it will, in theory, recognize that you do not belong here and send you back to the right reality. I can't promise geographically where that might occur — or if it would even be on Earth.”
Dr. Luna and Billy were pushing open the big vault door that the scientist had just typed in the key code for. “I mean, we'll set the controls to their limited capacity to correspond with this location. They aren't precise, though, and they haven't been tested. It could dump you both into the middle of an ocean, or straight into a volcano.”
Billy grunted; the door was heavy as a school bus. “We're gonna have to take our chances. I need to get the kid back, hopefully to his own time, and then I'll make sure he's ta
ken care of.”
Dr. Luna stopped and wheezed before speaking. “Oh, you won't be together. You weren't planning on being together, were you?”
“What do you mean, we won't be together?” Luna had stopped pushing so Billy did too; he figured the door must be cracked open enough.
“If you do end up back in that place you came from, the universe should right itself. Recognizing that you don't belong at the same point in time together, it should deposit you back to the point of origin from which you left.”
“So, this whole trip was one huge mistake and waste of time?”
“Well, if you look at it from that perspective, then yes, quite literally.”
Billy made that face that he made when he was annoyed with the universe — which is pretty much the face he wore at all times, just more animated. He and Dr. Luna stared into the vault at the two mannequin torsos which stood from one of the metal work tables. Each wore a vest that was all too familiar to Billy — the heavy buckles and straps which held the control orbs onto the front. The heavy cables and junctions of circuits.
As Billy walked into the room and took a stroll around the table, he looked at the metal cylinder which ran up the spine of the vest — one on each. Billy considered that he'd never really had the luxury of being behind the Time Zombie to notice them before — it was always coming at him with mouth snapping and claws swiping.
“What's this tube up the back, Luna?”
“That's where the power rod is placed. I have an experimental core to place into one of them, the limits of which I've never tested.”
“You sure it'll work?”
“Again, I haven't tested it and I didn't create it.”
“Who did?”
“It was given to me by your friend, the Russian.”
Billy sneered; he hated that dick. The most uncool part of this whole world — and there were tons of uncool parts about it — was that he wasn't dead over here.
Dr. Luna decided to move the conversation along. “The vest we're going to outfit for you is a much more conventional nuclear power supply.”
“Oh joy.”
“I can't promise its continued reliability. In fact, I can almost assure that it will only be good for one trip.”
Billy Purgatory and the Curse of the Satanic Five Page 15
