The Unintentional Time Traveler (Time Guardians Book 1)

by Everett Maroon

  “Stop, I’m getting up.”

  They led us into a large room that seemed to be the old loading dock. Now I really did vomit, which only pissed off the man who’d been holding me at my elbow.

  “Damn it, girl, them’s my good boots.” He shoved me into a smaller room inside this one, and I saw that there were iron bars all along the perimeter. Jackson stumbled in next, and a gate closed after us, the lock clicking into place.

  “You’re not even going to remove my cuffs?” asked Jackson.

  “Nope,” said the guard, turning on his heel. “May God have mercy on your souls.” Mr. Drama, that guy.

  He closed the tall door, which scraped on the concrete floor.

  “Welcome to the gang,” said a voice from a dark corner, and we looked over to see Lucas, Mr. Van Doren, Darling, and Arnold Dawkins. They all sat in shadows, and all with their hands bound in shackles like ours, a curved piece of metal hinged onto a straight bar.

  “I suppose you brought a key with you?” asked Mr. Dawkins.

  “Not that you’re not happy to see us,” said Jackson, who then spit out another quarter-spot of blood.

  I did my best to keep from running into Lucas’s arms, but halfway through the cell I stopped caring what other people thought and just wanted to feel him. Despite the stench in the air he smelled sweet and clean, and he was as warm as I remembered.

  “I missed you,” I whispered.

  “And I you,” he said. I leaned close to kiss him and then had to calculate if we’d had our first kiss yet. Was this weird for everyone but me? I caught my breath.

  “I’m glad you’re okay,” I said, patting him on the shoulder. And I turned around to face the others. I have to pull myself together.

  “Other than Jackson, is everyone here okay?” I asked.

  Mr. Van Doren spoke for them. “We’re okay, just roughed up.”

  I noticed who was absent. “Did Mother and Lucille get away?” We’d just come from Mother’s house, but had been driving a while before we ran into Traver.

  Mr. Dawkins spoke up. “We don’t know where your mother is, but we think she’s safe.”

  Darling came up to me and had to lift both arms to pat my shoulder, shackled as they were. “If she were dead or captured he would have lorded it over us.”

  “And Lucille?” The mood in the room shifted around me.

  “No one know,” said Mr. Dawkins. “I worry she’s really double-crossing us.”

  “But she told us where the cabin was,” I said. “Why would she do that?”

  “What cabin?” asked Mr. Dawkins.”

  The cabin discovery hasn’t happened yet, idiot. This time travel crap is overrated.

  “Darling, can I talk to you?”

  Darling gave me a nod, and told Jackson to hush.

  “Okay, so how do we get out of this, Guardian?” I asked her quietly, emphasis on “Guardian.”

  “Good afternoon to you, too,” she said. “Traveler.” She looked like she was thinking, so I let her take a moment.

  “The boy who knocked down Daddy’s peanut stand.”

  “Yes. Sorry about that.”

  “Oh, it was good for him to have to be nice to a stranger. But that was then.” She sighed. “I don’t have answers for how to get out of this, Jackie.”

  “I just came back yesterday.”

  “From my house?”

  “Yes.”

  She nodded and took five seconds of thinking time again. If the others thought it was strange that we were huddled in the corner together, they didn’t tell us that.

  “Did Jackson have anything in the car that could help us?”

  “I don’t know what may be in the trunk, but I don’t think so. You mean like guns and stuff?”

  “No honey, Travelers are not supposed to use weapons except in self-defense.”

  “Well, what would you call this? A pre-emptive strike?”

  She chuckled a little.

  “I don’t have magic answers for you, Jacqueline. But I could suggest you rely on the skills you already have.”

  “What does that even mean?” Mr. Van Doren noticed my tone and came over to us.

  “Anything you should share?”

  A light bulb went off over my head.

  “No, we’re okay. Lucas, can I see one of your braces, please?”

  “Sure. Why?”

  Without answering him I turned the brace upside down and popped off the leather strap where it was riveted to the metal. Underneath that I could get at a stiff wire that held the one side of the brace together, and then I started twisting the ends of the wire.

  “Hold up your hands please,” I told him, and he thrust his shackled arms at me. It took some tweaking, but then I heard a click inside one handcuff, and it popped open. I did his other wrist, and he was free.

  “Well I’ll be a monkey’s uncle,” said Jackson. Mr. Dawkins let out an exhale. In short order we were all unshackled, and then I started to work on the lock to our cage. This was a lot harder though, because I couldn’t see the lock from behind the bars.

  “What is our plan once we’re out of this prison?” asked Mr. Dawkins. “We don’t have any weapons.”

  “Our plan is to get in the car they brought here and drive away,” I said. Once I check that it will start, that is.

  They didn’t look convinced. I continued to fiddle with the lock.

  Jackson spoke up. “She never has much of a plan. But do any of you have better ideas?”

  “I wonder how long they’ll let us stew down here.” I had no idea how much time I’d need to figure this out.

  “Not long,” said Darling, “They did say we won’t be needing supper.”

  “Well, we won’t bother them about that, then,” I could feel two of the pins in the lock moving. I may have loved mechanical devices, but I was probably out of my league.

  “Oh, the hell with it,” said Jackson, and he ran like a bull at the cage door. It popped open with a screech of old metal.

  Jackson shook his head as we gawked at him. “What? It worked, didn’t it?”

  “It also made significant noise,” said Mr. Van Doren, but he didn’t seem too worried about it.

  I looked at Lucas. “Are you okay on just one brace?”

  “I shall manage,” he said, wiping his bangs out of his eyes. “Thank you for asking.”

  He took my hand, leaning on me to half-hop forward. He made eye contact with me, and I couldn’t look away. “You’re a very impressive woman.”

  “I try,” I said, not knowing what else to say.

  “Would that you and I could share a normal day.”

  “Would that.” I hurt inside from not kissing him.

  Mr. Van Doren rubbed his wrists and crept over to us. “I think we should head out to the loading dock. I suspect that’s where your car is, Jackson.”

  “Is it drivable?” asked Mr. Dawkins.

  “I have to check, but probably,” I said.

  “We need to get moving,” said Jackson. “There’s no telling when they’ll be back.”

  Mr. Van Doren still liked his idea of going to the loading dock.

  “We need to get the car back,” said Darling, caressing her wrists where the cuffs had pinched her. “And our evidence.”

  This was news to me. How many things had changed between this visit and the last one I’d made to 1926? What evidence was she talking about?

  “Uh, what evidence?”

  Mr. Van Doren looked at the stairwell from the doorway of the holding room we were in. “Lucille found letters to and from Dr. Traver about the deaths and cover ups of Mr. Rushman and Earl. We think their bodies are somewhere on Black Mountain on the east end of the state.”

  “Don’t we think Lucille is a double-crosser?”

  “I worry about that,” said Mr. Dawkins. “But the others don’t agree with me.”

  “Why do you think that?”

  “Because I can’t understand how someone would leave incriminating letters
in a church office for the secretary to find. I think they’re a decoy to get us to reveal who is in the Underground.”

  Well, that made sense.

  “We don’t have time to chit chat, let’s get out of here,” said Jackson.

  Quickly Jackson and Mr. Van Doren split us up into two groups. Lucas, Jackson, and Arnold Dawkins would go to the loading dock as a distraction, while I, Mr. Van Doren, and Darling would sneak back to the front to retake the car, where we could rendezvous with the others. The car wasn’t really built to hold six people, but since it had no top and a rumble seat we hoped we could all pile in to escape. And then we would drive to Frankfort to talk to Mr. Dawkins’s old law school classmate, the Attorney General, Frank Daugherty. We certainly couldn’t go home.

  We stood outside the cage, preparing to head off, and Lucas took my hand.

  “Soon we won’t have to engage in this nonsense anymore.”

  I smiled a little. “I’m so tired of running.”

  “Let’s go, you two,” said Jackson. Darling kicked him in the shin.

  “You never were one for sentiment,” she said.

  Lucas squeezed my hand, and gave me a peck on my cheek. I wanted so much more, and at the same time I couldn’t believe I could think about getting to second base with him in the midst of all this trouble. I let him go, watching him hurry away with Jackson and Arnold. He was slower without support on both sides, leaning on Arnold Dawkins, but he was Mr. Capability, and he was only a half-step off his usual speed.

  Darling, Mr. Van Doren, and I huddled over at the door that was the entrance to the stairwell. Across the wide room our groups looked at each other and nodded. And then we made our jump into the unknown.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  MR. VAN DOREN PUSHED THE DOOR open a few inches, and then we waited for all hell to break loose. Instead there was only silence from the stairwell. No voices, nobody running toward us, no sound of shock that we’d escaped. We crept up the first flight, pausing on the landing where Jackson had fallen earlier. Mr. Van Doren went first, looking up toward the next floor for any activity.

  We hunkered down inside the doorframe at the top of the stairs, peeking out into the hall. They had gathered in a room to our right, halfway down the hall. Across from their room was the front door, which Mr. Van Doren pointed to, as if Darling and I needed his help to see the total freaking obvious. I held up my crude lock pick, praying it could work in reverse to set the lock and perhaps slow them down until we could reach the car, which we saw was sitting in the broad parking lot, now unhooked from the tow. At least we don’t have to manage that. He nodded at me. One by one we crawled down the hallway, hugging the wall next to the stairs, and then we bolted for the front door, some twenty feet away.

  We had nearly reached the front door before Traver’s gang noticed, but then they leapt into action. All I had was one thought: Crap. Damn shitknuckles.

  Darling was first to the car. She moved faster than lightning. A single man sat in the driver’s seat, possibly trying to get the engine to start or figure out what the line of dashboard gadgets did.

  “Hallelujah, look at me!”

  She was yelling and running straight at him, waving her arms like she was capable of blocking a shot on a basketball court, despite her five-foot frame.

  “I’m talking to you! Yes you!”

  Sitting there slack-jawed, he was completely unprepared for what happened next. She punched him on the side of his head, right in the eye socket.

  I might have screamed a little.

  For his part, he collapsed onto the seat. Mr. Van Doren looked shocked, too. At least it’s not just me.

  I shut the door as fast as I could, fumbling to get the lock pick in the keyhole. I had wedged my foot against the bottom of the door when the first thump fell from the other side. With one hand I held the pick and with my other, I guided it to the hole. I wouldn’t be able to hold this door for more than two seconds unless I could break the pins inside. From a window to the side of the front door, I saw Dr. Traver leering at me, his anger at me plain and intense. He pounded on the glass. They were like zombies, ready for some good ole human brains.

  The pick slipped in, and I twisted it hard, feeling the works inside go crunch.

  I turned and ran as hard as my legs could manage. Mr. Van Doren and Darling had thrown the would-be driver onto the parking lot surface, where he still looked completely confused about what had just happened to him.

  “Open the hood,” I shouted. Mr. Van Doren looked confused for one second and then folded it back.

  I ran up to the engine and saw that as predicted, the manifold had come off and was hanging by one line. I shoved wires in place as fast as I could, hearing the pounding on the door behind me. I was in mid-air, jumping in over the door into the driver’s seat, when the first shot rang out. They’d shot their way out of the building. Terrific.

  “All this hard work and they just shoot it up,” I said, fumbling with the starter. Darling and Mr. Van Doren tumbled into the car, which rumbled but resisted firing. My heart pounded as the engine cranked. The men ran toward us. Fifty yards away.

  “Come on, come on,” I said to the car.

  “It’s a good time to get going,” said Darling.

  “What a hilarious lady you are,” I said.

  Mr. Van Doren put his body in front of Darling and mentioned that we should move.

  Crank, crank, crank. Crap, something else must be wrong. Ten yards, one of them got down on one knee and aimed his shotgun at us.

  “Please,” I said, as if that would make any difference to the engine inside. An image of a faraway Catholic school in Ohio, one that wouldn’t be built for another twenty years, sprang into my mind, reminding me of the easy life I’d once lived.

  Ha. Nothing was simple now.

  “Saint Catherine of Alexandria,” I shouted.

  Finally, the engine caught, and I popped the transmission into gear, squealing off across the parking lot around the corner of the building. The gunman tried to follow us with his barrel but missed us by quite a bit. Amateurs!

  “Who is that?” asked Darling.

  “Patron saint of car mechanics,” I said, aiming for the loading dock. Their shots whizzed past us, but Mr. Van Doren groaned.

  “I’ve been hit.” He held onto his right shoulder, dark red blood streaming down his arm, squeezing out from between his clenched fingers. Darling, from the back seat, put pressure on his wound and apologized for causing him any more pain.

  “Go,” said Lucas’s father, but I was already speeding off, skittering around the corner of the building, where a hundred yards away we could see Jackson, Lucas, and Mr. Dawkins, hunkered down behind a stack of moldering wooden crates, as four of Dr. Traver’s guards sprayed bullets at them.

  “Hold on,” I told my passengers. Mr. Van Doren was putting up a good fight, but the color was draining out of his face.

  “We’ll be shot to pieces,” said Darling, leaning over Mr. Van Doren, like his bodyguard.

  I could barely get my sentence out before we were directly in the field of fire.

  “I have a plan.” Always with the stupid plans.

  I drove straight toward the men and their guns, calling for my passengers to slide down in their seats, which they did mostly on their own anyway. This totally stupid strategy surprised the shooters, who needed a little bit of time to adjust, and decide if they should hold their ground and fire at their new target, or run.

  Two of them hurried back to the building. Peeking her head up a little Darling watched them, and said to me, “Like rats fleeing a fire.” One of them tried to take shots at us, but his magazine jammed and with his gun useless, he launched himself to the side so he wouldn’t get run over by me. But the last man dropped his weapon and jumped into the car, right up over the hood, landing in the back seat, next to Darling.

  He lunged at me from behind, clawing at my throat. Pain pierced my voice box and I felt faint. No, no, no, I thought, I can’t
jump now, there’s too much at stake. Then the pressure disappeared, all in a moment. It took me a long second to realize I was still driving the car, and I hadn’t left. I turned at the last instant before we hit the old tannery building, and I took a glance at the back seat, where Darling had him in a vice grip, some kind of turnabout in which his neck was trapped in the tiny crook of her elbow. Do not mess with the Guardians, apparently.

  I spun around, seeing that the two men in the doorway were readying their guns again. I flipped a switch and toggled a lever on the dash, the guard doing his best to distract me by thrashing, and Mr. Van Doren holding a blood-stained handkerchief to his wound. I didn’t know what such a small square of cloth was supposed to do for him, but it did seem that the flow had subsided a little.

  Before he could ask me what I was preparing, two canisters shot out from the front fender of the car and rolled over to them, which they looked at with heads tilted, like curious dogs. Small pops from each of them and thick smoke billowed out, and I headed right for the crates where our friends were stationed.

  The guards at the building coughed and shouted to each other as the white cloud filled the air in front of them. I positioned the car behind the crates, where Mr. Dawkins and Jackson hauled the interloper out, dumping him on the ground and climbing in.

  “I could have used you in the trenches,” said Jackson from the seat behind me.

  “You served in the Navy,” said Darling.

  “So I did.”

  Just then Dr. Traver and his other henchmen came bounding around the side of the building in two cars.

  “Get in,” I said to Lucas, who was having trouble scrambling to his feet from where he had crouched. He saw the waxy complexion on his father’s face and the broad stain on his shoulder.

  “Father!”

  Mr. Van Doren told him in a scratchy voice that he was fine, and then the next series of events happened almost at once—Lucas grabbed on to the rumble seat at the back, his legs dragging on the ground behind us because I just couldn’t wait any longer, as Dr. Traver was almost upon us. I peeled out, leaving the hot stench of rubber in our nostrils. Lucas held on to the car, managing to climb into the rumble seat. Many more pops from the thugs’ guns echoed off the building walls, making it difficult to count how many bullets were heading our way. Lucas made a gurgling sound and slumped over in the seat far enough that I worried he’d fall to the ground. Jackson reached back to grab his shoulder and held him in the car.