I gotta warn him. I can stop it. David tried hard to swallow but there wasn’t enough spit in his throat. He grasped wads of Brick’s red flannel shirt in both hands.
“Hey—”
“Watch her, Brick,” David wheezed. “Watch out for Skid. She’s not what she seems.”
Brick didn’t move. David knew the big man could have ripped him off his shirt and tossed him into the corner. He could have punched David back into 1994, but he didn’t. Confusion draped Brick’s face.
“I don’t know you,” Brick said, “but I do know you need a doctor.” He reached toward his pocket for his cell phone. David pulled harder on the man’s shirt.
He doesn’t understand. He has to understand. “Skid’s going to kill us all,” he said, trying to shout, but his voice couldn’t do it anymore.
“Who’s Sk—”
The hallway door slammed into the wall, and the dance music grew louder momentarily. Three drunk girls nearly fell into the hallway laughing before they tripped over each other and stumbled into the bathroom marked “Hookers.”
From the three seconds the door that led to the bar stayed open, he understood it was Slap Happy’s Dance Club. He saw a three-days younger David Collison sitting at the bar laughing with a woman—without a knife wound in his leg, not drenched in hydraulic fluid, still blissfully ignorant of the words Dr. Karl Miller shouted at him in anger—and he had no memory of it. David still wasn’t sure if he was in his universe, or a similar one. He also didn’t think it mattered. Everything seemed connected—somehow. The picture wavered and the air freshener smell flooded the hallway. David closed his eyes and unfolded alone into the darkness.
8
There’s a point during a stunt, any stunt, where something gets broken. Sometimes, like motorcycle daredevil Evel Knievel who suffered 433 bone fractures during the first ten years of his career, it’s obvious. Crashing a motorcycle while attempting to jump 13 buses on national television will do that. And sometimes, like illusionist Harry Houdini silently breaking three bones in his left wrist filming a movie, it’s subtle. Skid’s stunt involving a dancing bear, a motorcycle and a clown car fit somewhere in between.
This stunt only broke a table.
Skid, her hand still locked on Beverly’s hand, came first, appearing to leap from a hole in the air. She and Beverly hit the tabletop in the Sanderson Murder House kitchen just as Cord and his ghost tour came through the hallway. The table legs buckled, and wood snapped, crashing them onto the clean linoleum. People on the tour leaned around each other to click pictures.
“Beverly,” Brick shouted.
He and Dave stood over the women, hands still cuffed behind their backs.
“You didn’t have to jump,” Dave said.
“What happened?” Cord asked. “I mean, that was awesome, but really, what happened?”
Skid pulled herself to her feet, dragging Beverly with her. She frowned at Dave. “Well, Brainiac?”
He ignored her and walked to the refrigerator that was the exact model from Cecelia Sanderson’s kitchen, except for the color. “You traveled in time to September 19, 1984, to witness the actual murders of the Sanderson family.” Dave’s voice was flat, like an amusement park ride operator who followed the same script one hundred times a day for an entire season. He opened the door with his foot and scooted a beer onto the floor. It rolled away from him. “Now we’re back, I think. Somebody want to get that?”
“I’ve got bars,” the My Phone Doesn’t Have Any Bars guy said. “This is great.” He nudged Cord. “How much for the overnight stay?”
“Oh, yeah,” the particularly pretty young woman in the pink blouse said. “I’m not going anywhere.”
Cord nodded to Skid and turned toward what was once the door to the Sanderson’s sunroom. “Anyone who wants to extend their stay, please come into my office.” Everyone on the tour followed.
Except Beverly. She stood near the back door. “I’m sorry guys.” Her voice steadier than it was in 1984. “But my car’s outside. Before it was a Ford Pinto. I, uh, I gotta go.”
“Beverly?” Brick started to move toward her.
Beverly paused, eyes wet, but not from drunkenness. Tears fell slowly down her cheeks. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I like you. I really, really do.” Beverly raised her right hand, thumb next to her ear, pinky by her mouth. Call me, she mouthed and walked into the night.
Brick stood still, his big chest moving in and out like a bellows. “I’ve lost her three times in the past four days.”
“And you’ll lose her again, big guy. Don’t worry,” Skid said, patting his chest. “Let’s get these cuffs off.”
Dave was easy enough. Skid poured a can of Coke into the sink and, after rummaging through drawers for a pair of scissors, cut a slim rectangle out of the can and bent it into a U.
“What do I do?” Dave asked as she stepped behind him. A click, and the left cuff came loose.
“Nothing,” she said, then released the right.
Brick stood over her, watching. “Should I be worried you know how to do that?”
“Nope. I picked this up from the circus escape artist. She was pretty cool until she married an accountant and left to live in the suburbs. Somewhere in Ohio, I think.” Skid held up the piece of aluminum. “This fits between the locking mechanism and the teeth. Just tighten the cuffs while pushing on this and the teeth have nowhere to lock. The cuffs slide right open.”
“But my cuffs are already as tight as they go,” Brick said.
“Then this is going to hurt.”
9
The Baked Nacho Cheese Doritos weren’t as satisfying as Karl had hoped. They crunched, sure, and the cheese was there, but it was the greasy film Cheetos left on the inside of his mouth he really wanted. He wadded the empty foil bag and threw it on the floor of his office. Karl hated littering—so senseless, so random—but his trash can had already spilled onto the floor, and custodial kept phasing in and out of reality. He figured he didn’t have much choice.
He exhaled in relief. His office was safe, his office smelled like home. It was one of three places in this lab he knew he was safe. He picked up a pen and jotted down a note: Move vending machine from HR to Admin.
The computer on Karl’s desk beeped, drawing his attention from the growing mess on his normally spotless floor. The waves. The Miller Waves. Karl was proud to have named after himself because they were only getting stronger. That much was certain. The computer chimed each time the BAB-C emitted a Miller Wave, and the graph reflected a steady growth. Sure, there were smaller fluctuations, the Collison Effect, he called them, but they were only blips on the chart. They—
His office phone rang. Karl jumped in his space-age Aeron Chair complete with built-in hemorrhoid cushion. The motion sent it rolling back on its wheels. “What the heck?”
Line One on the sleek, black business phone blinked. No name on the soft blue readout to tip him off, and no number. Only one word: UNKNOWN. His phone hadn’t made a sound since 9:32 a.m. Saturday when he’d checked his voicemail. Gillian had called to tell him Collison would be late.
The phone rang again.
He wheeled his chair closer to the desk. The call had to be from outside the facility, and Karl had no idea what things were like on the outside.
Ring.
He moved a hand and gently picked up the receiver, a slight tremor in his arm shook like he’d had too much caffeine, which he hadn’t. Karl Miller loathed coffee and thought tea too stuffy and presumptuous.
Ring.
He timidly reached his other hand toward the phone and hit the button for Line One then slid the receiver to his ear. “Hello.”
Heavy breathing met his ear. Gross.
“Hello,” he said, his voice louder. Karl Miller had little patience. “I can hear you.”
A gurgle rattled through the line. Karl began to move the receiver from his ear to s
lam it onto the phone base, but then someone spoke, voice raspy.
“Karl.”
A feeling crept inside him, a feeling he didn’t like.
“Karl?” the man on the phone said again.
Karl knew that voice and didn’t like the person it belonged to. In a facility full of people under his control, Karl felt nothing toward David Collison but contempt, no matter how sound the guy’s mathematical mind was. That was one of the reasons Karl hired him, the other to repay an old debt. But here he was, on the phone. It’s about time you showed up.
“What do you want, Collison?”
“They’re hss, crack, Karl.”
What? “What did you say?”
The man on the other end inhaled deeply before he spoke again. “I said crack, pop coming.”
“You’re breaking up.” He was. The connection to the International Space Station was better than this. “You’re not at work. Where are you?”
The speaker in the receiver screeched and Karl yanked it from his ear. When he put it back, Collison was already talking. “—in a truck. I time hsss —aveled hssss, crack. —most eaten crack, hsss coyotes.”
Karl’s world suddenly looked better. Collison was on the outside, which meant he was inside the experiment. If Karl was right, his experiment wasn’t just doing anything—it was doing everything. He hoped the soldiers he’d sent through the Miller Ring were doing well.
“I’m sorry, Collison,” Karl said, mashing the receiver to his ear. “Did you just say you traveled through time?”
“Yes hsss.”
“And were almost eaten by coyotes?”
“Crack—es.”
Suddenly, all his anxieties washed away. The employees in HR, the serious lack of Cheetos in the facility, his ex-wife, Oscar, everything. I’m still in control. I never lost it. “That’s marvelous.”
The phone squealed again. When Karl put it back to his ear, the line had cleared.
“Where are you, Collison?”
The phone fell silent. Oh, no. I lost him.
“I don’t know. Click, crack. I had to break into somebody’s house to find a phone.” Collison’s voice trailed off. “I called 9-1-1,” he said, the gurgling in his voice louder. “I’m hurt bad. I think my leg’s infected, and I probably have internal bleeding from when the truck disappeared. I need an ambulance.”
No, no, no. “Collison. I need you to keep it together. No ambulance. No authorities. This experiment is classified. You signed a contract. If you go under some kind of drug, you may talk and mess up this whole thing. No—”
“You told me not to shut off the BAB-C,” Collison said.
It was Karl’s turn to fall silent. “I never told you that.”
Sirens began to creep through the phone lines. The police, and Collison’s ambulance, were getting closer. “Well,” Collison said heavily, “whenever I show up, make sure you do.”
Chapter Seven
September 5
1
Skid woke in her own bed, yesterday as foggy as dusk in a summer camp slasher movie. We have to turn off the BAB-C, Dave had told them as they sat around the ruins of the murder house kitchen table while someone from the ghost tour screamed upstairs. “Although this is an amazingly simplistic answer, once the power’s cut, the machine stops producing Miller Waves. Once the Miller Waves are gone, the universes stop colliding and—”
“And everything goes back to normal?” Brick asked.
“I don’t know, maybe. It’s the best shot we have to fix things.”
Cord stood behind them with arms crossed. “Officially, I’m totally against this plan. It’s going to seriously damage my income stream.”
“So, when are we going?” Brick asked, his low voice pulled tight. “This is the closest I’ve ever come to an adventure.”
Cord snorted. “A what? Listen to me. We can’t do this. No, wait. I don’t care what you do. I can’t do this.”
Brick flexed and looked down at the haunted house owner. “We’re going on an adventure. An honest-to-Eru Bilbo Baggins adventure.” His smile looked like a mad grimace. “I’m ready to slay some orcs.”
Skid, ignoring Brick and Cord, did something she had never envisioned herself doing. She wrote her address on the back of Dave’s hand with a Sharpie from a notepad on Cord’s fridge and told him to come get her in the morning. She needed a good night’s sleep before saving the world. Skid handed the Sharpie to Brick, who swung it like a sword making “clang-clang” noises as she walked out the back door.
That was last night. This morning, well—?
It must be early, she thought, her brain still heavy with Melatonin. Mee Noi and Sirikit hadn’t started yelling at each other as they prepped the Dumpling King for the early lunch crowd. Skid yawned and stretched. Maybe the WABAC or whatever stupid acronym these highly educated 14-year-old boys named the supercollider, had been shut off by someone with more sense than the idiot who turned it on. She could use more sleep.
But the poster on the wall above her bed bothered her. A kitten hung from a branch, the words Hang In There across the bottom. Skid liked kittens, and always felt sorry for this one, but she didn’t have that poster in her bedroom. She had one wall decoration, a photo of Audrey Hepburn from Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Anything more seemed too permanent.
“Damn it,” she said aloud and hoped the sunlight that forced its way through the slits in the blinds were from her sun.
She rolled over and fell back to sleep.
2
The competition for what woke her was fierce. The speaker next to her front door buzzed to the tune of “Don’t Stop Believin’” while down in the restaurant someone shouted. Usually it was Sirikit’s high-pitched “You are a shitty cook” in Thai that reached all the way through the floor, but this morning’s scream was different, guttural.
Skid’s muscles didn’t fight as she left the warm, clean sheets, her morning-after-crashing-into-a-table body not as sore as she’d feared.
“Beep-beep, Be-beee-beep.”
“I’m coming,” she mumbled and slid her bare feet across the clean, wood floors. The Hang in There poster was now a map of Middle-Earth stuck in place with masking tape. At least one Miller Wave had hit during the night. Skid wondered what else had happened.
She reached the living room. She now had different plants. A fern and peace lily instead of her dracaena and spider plant, a hanging tomato vine with three not-quite-ripe tomatoes instead of arugula, and what appeared to be a miniature rubber tree. The window curtains had been laid wide for maximum sunlight. She was concerned alternate-dimension Skid also had issues with stress.
“Beep-beep, Be-beee—”
She walked past the wall where her belt of throwing knives still hung and hit the speaker button. “What. The. Hell.”
“We’re here.” The voice belonged to Dave.
“Who else is ‘we’?”
“Me,” Brick said.
“What about Cord?”
“Beeeeeep.”
“Hey.” Skid pounded on the speaker.
“Sorry.”
“I told you it was the other button,” Dave said in the background.
“Shut up,” Brick said away from the microphone, then he must have turned toward it because the volume increased. “Cord still had people at his house. He said they’d be gone by noon.”
Noon? She looked at the microwave oven; the time read 10:42. We should have left hours ago.
“All right, all right, all right.” She flicked one of the tomatoes with a finger; it swung a few times then stopped. “We’re late, but I’m going to take a shower. Go in the Thai place and get some dumplings. They may not be open. Tell them Skid sent you. I’ll be down in a minute.”
She pulled the knife belt from the wall as she walked toward the bathroom. She felt it might come in handy.
3
When Skid stepp
ed outside, her knife belt obscured by a light jacket tied around her waist, Brick and Dave stood by her door like slackers in a Kevin Smith movie. Dave now wore shoes. A heavy backpack hung from Brick’s shoulders, but Skid didn’t care about that. She cared more that their hands were empty.
“Where are the dumplings? I’m starving.”
“Uh,” Dave started, but Brick cut him off.
“What kind of restaurant did you say that was?” He shoved a thumb at the building.
She frowned. “Thai. It’s run by Mee Noi and Sirikit. They’re a nice couple. Sort of.”
“The place is full of Klingons,” Dave shouted, then slapped a hand over his mouth.
Skid glanced in his direction, but the sign over the restaurant doors caught her eyes; the name ‘The Dumpling King’ had been replaced with ‘Gagh wItlhutlhbej 'ej Qe'.’ “What is that?”
“It’s Klingonese.” Brick stuck one hand in his jeans pocket, the other he waved around like he was delivering a lecture. “It means Gagh and Bloodwine Restaurant.”
“What’s gagh?” Skid asked.
“You don’t want to know.”
“You’re awfully calm about this,” Dave said, his voice ratcheted high.
Skid leaned on her left hip to look even calmer, but she wasn’t. Not at all.
“So?”
“So?” Dave started pacing and Skid got a better look at his shoes, old tennis shoes someone used for yardwork.
“So,” he continued. “There are Klingons in that restaurant. Not cosplay Klingons, actual Klingons. We walked in to ask for dumplings, and you know what they said? They said, ‘DeKH delv gobeh quack naDEV oh,’ then laughed. You ever hear a Klingon laugh? It’s terrifying.”
She stepped closer to Brick as Dave stomped around the sidewalk, never getting near the restaurant door.
“DeKH del what? What does that mean?”
“My Klingon’s a little rusty, but I’m pretty sure they told us Federation credits are no good here.”
So You Had to Build a Time Machine Page 13
