The Unintentional Time Traveler (Time Guardians Book 1)

by Everett Maroon

  I don’t remember shouting, but I must have because later I was hoarse, although maybe it was from my neck being so sore after my attack.

  Jackson picked up the thug’s shotgun from the floor of the backseat and fired twice, taking out the tires from Dr. Traver’s car. It ground to a halt and the other car crashed into it and fell over on its side.

  Dr. Traver screamed at the driver who tried in vain to explain that without wheels they weren’t going anywhere.

  Then Dr. Traver shot the driver in the head, and aimed next at us. Holy shit. He’s a lunatic.

  I dropped the car into third gear, then fourth, as we sped back up the driveway to the old factory, and it was only once we were out of sight that anyone said anything at all.

  “Well done,” said Jackson.

  “I wouldn’t go that far,” I said. I wished I had a rear-view mirror to use, because I wanted to see how everyone was doing. Lucas. How was Lucas?

  We were ten miles out and the gas gauge blinked at me. Good glory hell, why is the gas tank so tiny? I pulled onto a wider road, hoping that it led to a populated area. Maybe even one with a doctor who wasn’t a psychopath or the town drunk, or both. Mr. Van Doren seemed to be holding his own. But turning around I saw that Lucas was in terrible shape. Darling and Arthur Dawkins were trying to hold him together.

  “Where is he hit?” I asked. The engine grumbled; I was running out of gas, and there was no town in sight. Just mountains that in any other circumstance I would think were beautiful. Cattle. Green fields and thick woods. Lucas was going to die here. I can’t let Lucas die.

  “One shot through his leg,” said Darling, “that seems to have kept on going into the seat. One bullet in his side, and one in his chest.”

  His chest. Three bullets and no hospital, no trauma team. No oxygen, or blood transfusions. No penicillin to stem infection, for that matter.

  “Just hold on,” said Mr. Dawkins to Lucas. Lucas tried to speak, a trickle of blood making its way from the corner of his mouth.

  “Don’t worry about me,” he said, his voice low. The engine sputtered, the new turbocharger unable to help with no gas.

  “Keep going,” I said to the car. All of my little gadgets and skills and I couldn’t have seen some way out of this disaster? “Keep going!”

  Mr. Van Doren turned around in his seat, wincing as he moved.

  “Lucas?”

  No answer from the back of the car. Darling and Mr. Dawkins shook their heads at each other. At last the engine gave out, having run itself dry, and we lost speed until we were stopped, leaning half-in a ditch on the side of the road. My throat closed up.

  “Lucas,” I called out. “You have to hang on!” For what, hang on? For some country veterinarian to tell me he’s dead?

  “Lucas,” I said, reaching behind me to touch him. I flailed in the air; the rumble seat was too far away for me to reach him.

  I faced forward again, as if there was anything ahead of me that could help us. I jumped out of my seat and ran around to take his hand. His eyes were glassy, nothing in them except a dull reflection of myself. He was gone. I needed to roll back time once more. Or I needed to just stop. Maybe this wasn’t a house fire, but Lucas was gone all the same. Watching him die like this, it was worse somehow. I screamed to nobody in particular.

  “Jacqueline, we still need help for his father,” said Mr. Dawkins in a quiet tone, as if I were liable to explode again. In the front passenger seat sat Lucas’s father, crying silently into one hand. I didn’t begin to know how to comfort him.

  “We’re out of fuel. I don’t know what to do,” I said.

  Darling gently took my hand off of Lucas’s, and she closed his eyes for him. We hadn’t seen a car or wagon the whole time we sat at the edge of the ditch next to the road.

  Jackson climbed out of the vehicle and headed off, in the direction we’d been traveling.

  “Where are you going?” I asked him.

  “I think I know where we are,” he said, not breaking his pace. He walked with his hands in his pockets, which stiffened his gait and made him seem more like an old man. I watched him walk away and searched my mind for what to do next. Eventually he reached the top of the rise in the ground, and then each step drew him more out of my view. First his legs were gone, then his torso, and then his crop of strawberry blond hair.

  I looked at Mr. Van Doren, not sure what to say to him. He put his good arm around me and drew me in, and we stayed there for many minutes, while Darling and Arthur gingerly lifted Lucas out of the car. I wanted to say something to him. Anything.

  “We can’t leave him to the wolves,” I said, thinking of my own encounters with the animals in the Kentucky woods.

  Darling looked at me sternly. “We would never do that,” she said. “We just need to move him while he’s limber.” Oh, wow. No. No. NO.

  Mr. Van Doren cried out at that, trying unsuccessfully to swallow the noise. A small tree stood nearby so we found a spot under it and sat in silence. As if our thoughts would contaminate the group of us, we didn’t talk to each other. Hours passed and the dark crept in, and it got colder and colder until my bones hurt and my legs went numb. I cried until I was dry.

  The fight had gone out of us, at least until we heard the low-pitched rumble of an engine, coming at us from beyond the hill ahead, two headlights cutting out ahead of it. My pulse pounded. I couldn’t think of what to do before the truck was upon us.

  Jackson sat in the passenger seat, waving us off from attacking them, which we were already not prepared to do, and in the driver’s seat was Mother, hair tied in her usual tight bun, wearing a flowered housedress and the widest smile I’d ever seen on her face. The pickup truck sputtered and coughed as it speeded toward us, but the down slope of the hill gave it some extra momentum.

  Mother did not appear particularly capable of driving, but I presumed she’d insisted on it. Off in the distance I heard a roll of thunder.

  She continued to bounce down the slope, headed straight for us. I waved at her, which in hindsight I suppose amounted to nothing more than stupid hope that she could correctly steer away from us. Hopefully we weren’t about to get steamrolled.

  At the last instant, just as Jackson was reaching over to grab the wheel from her, my mother yanked hard to the side, driving into the field and scattering road dirt all over us. I coughed and took swipes at my head to get the dust out of my hair.

  “You’re too late,” I told them. “He’s . . . Lucas is gone.”

  She got out of the car without putting it in park, leaving Jackson to slam on the brakes from his side of the seat. Then I was enveloped in her arms.

  “I’m so sorry about Lucas,” she said with her head next to mine. Without meaning to I cried into her shoulder. Guess I could find more liquid in me after all.

  “It’s all my fault,” I said.

  “None of this is your fault, child. God will bring justice to Lucas’s killers.” Justice would need to seek me out as well, then. But I didn’t want to argue with her.

  I pulled away. Above us the sky had darkened, waves of thunder continuing to echo from miles away, headed in our general direction. It was hard to tell in the bad light where the edge between the clouds and the nighttime was.

  “I can’t wait for God,” I said. “Every moment that goes by, more people die or disappear. When does it end?”

  Jackson popped out of the vehicle and grabbed something from the truck bed. A can of gas. Arthur pulled off the cap and began filling up my car, and Jackson and Lucas’s father placed his body in the back of the truck, loading him in with kid gloves again, and then covering him with a blanket. I heaved in a couple quarts of air or whatever it takes to fill two lungs.

  “We have to stop them,” I said, sure that nobody was listening to me anymore.

  Darling walked up to me.

  “We will stop them, Jacqueline, but first things first. We need to bury Lucas. How many times have you failed to stop Dr. Traver from his evil work?”
>
  “Twice. Although so far this time fewer people have . . . died.” I swallowed hard.

  She looked at me and I tried to figure out what expression she had. Sadness? Wisdom? Frustration? If she was a Guardian, why didn’t she have answers?

  “Honey, you need to go back earlier then. Find Dr. Traver before he became Dr. Traver. And stop looking to me to be some magical black woman, because I am too tired to be that for you.”

  “I just don’t know what I’m doing.”

  She smiled at that. “I keep telling you, you are more capable than you credit yourself. Now let’s put that sweet boy that you love so much to rest.”

  In the back of Mother’s truck, they’d piled a few spades and shovels. We moved them to the side and gently lowered Lucas into the bed.

  I looked at him again, like he was just sleeping, and the rain fell down on us.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  MR. VAN DOREN TOLD US he knew where Lucas would have wanted to be buried. I didn’t have any image in my head of where that could be until the familiar line of trees cropped up on the horizon, and then I understood: these were the woods where we’d met. I couldn’t imagine holding sacred a place where I’d sustained a life-threatening injury, but Lucas’s dad was allowed his preference.

  The rain tapered off, then strengthened again, but we were determined not to let it slow us down. We’d drawn a thick canvas over the top of the car, and as the storm dragged on it sagged under the weight of the water. Why these cars didn’t include roofs, I didn’t know. All this effort over insignificant horse power increases, and nobody thought, “Put in a freaking roof”?

  Arthur and Jackson finished digging a hole that seemed too small for Lucas. I realized that the whole moment lacked any sense of ritual. In Catholic school I learned there was always a ritual, and a garment, and frankincense. I wish Pie was here. I wanted to ride as far as her muscles could take me. If only I could just disappear again and forget. Maybe this was part of being a Traveler.

  Arthur and Jackson lowered Lucas into the ground, which was saturated from the pouring rain. Lucas’s father stood over his son, unable to help with his wounded arm. There was no way to cover Lucas gently. My eyes lost focus as they shoveled black dirt over him, making his skin messy and then hiding him. It was close to dawn by the time we finished. I walked away from the group, but I only made it to the next shade tree over. I’d thought I had so much time, time to spend with Lucas once we exposed Dr. Traver and instead he was gone from me. If all of my efforts ended in disaster, what was the point?

  Darling walked up after me after they were done filling in the earth.

  “There will be a day, a long time from now, when you will notice you feel a little better,” she said, her arm around my shoulders.

  “No, Darling, I won’t ever feel any better.”

  “As a Traveler, you will have more grief to handle than most. And sometimes you will grieve a loss that later will never have occurred. You need to become as strong as the forest here.”

  “Strong for what? Lucas is dead, his father is shot, and still Traver has all these people in his grip. What are we supposed to do now?”

  “All of this force from the man, it means he’s losing.”

  “Losing? Lucas is gone! I want him back! I . . . I need him.” I was so weak.

  “You have not made contact with your Guardian in your own time. You’ve been on your own. But you’re not alone. You remember what I said earlier, on the road?” She looked worried for me.

  I nodded, biting my lip.

  “You find out why this man turned to such evil. I think that is the key.”

  “I am so tired of fighting, Darling. If I’m not all alone, why is it all up to me to stop him? And I think he knows about Guardians and Travelers somehow.”

  “That’s possible.”

  “Possible? How can you not know?”

  She frowned at me, her wire-rimmed glasses slipping down her nose a little.

  “Child, you mind your elders and don’t speak to me that way. I already told you I don’t know everything, I provide guidance and some protection.”

  “Protection for me or from me?”

  “Both,” she said. I didn’t like her answer. Lucas was gone and now I was being lectured?

  I wrenched out of her hold and fought my way through thick brambles to reach the next tree, a long oak. The flash of white light that took over my vision didn’t even register as lightning at first. I had a fraction of a second to realize I’d been struck dead on, the current running the length of my body, down through my left heel, sucked into the ground.

  In an instant, I was gone.

  ***

  I blinked, adjusting to the dark, and was met with a glop of black oil on my face, which I half-inhaled. Coughing and sputtering, I pushed out from under the car, two other grime-covered people laughing at me. I knew this mechanic’s shop. I went to rub my eyes because the car on the lift was wild-looking to me, but I stopped before I smeared any more slime on myself. This was going to be the worst post-nasal drip ever.

  “Who opens the oil pan while he’s in the way?” said one man, a squat fellow with hair as black as the waste I’d just snorted. All of us wore blue jump suits with our names sewn on the front. I looked down and saw “Jack” on mine. His read “Armand,” and the other fellow, who moved lizard-slow, even as he was laughing, had a tag with “Frank” on it. These were the guys who’d worked in my Dad’s auto body shop.

  “It’s dark down there,” I said, trying not to show that I was startled by my deep voice. “Can someone grab me a light?”

  “Sure, here you go,” said Frank, pulling a lamp down from the ceiling. It was attached to a pulley and could be set at any height. “You feeling okay?”

  “I’m fine.” I thought I should duck back under the car so I could collect my thoughts in semi-privacy, but apparently these two were used to chit-chat.

  “He used to get the shakes as a kid,” Armand said to Frank, as if I weren’t even in the room. “Remember that, Jack?”

  “Yup.” Already I didn’t much care for Armand.

  “You didn’t have one of them there fits down there, did you?”

  I leveled my stare at him. “Seizures, Armand. They’re not fits or shakes, they’re seizures. And no, I didn’t have one just now.”

  “Geez, someone’s a little pissy today.”

  Really?

  “I had a rough night. Go easy on me today, okay?”

  “No problem, Jack. Whatever you say.” He shook his head a little, presumably writing me off. “Rough night, I bet,” he said under his breath. I needed to find Jeannine and Sanjay. They’d know what was going on.

  Some kind of electronic synthesizer started beeping, and Frank moved like a glacier to the desk in the corner. Turns out it was a phone. Like, without a bell. Ugh, whatever. I need to find out about Lucas and find my Guardian.

  Armand was on the plastic phone.

  “Yes, ma’am, you can bring your car in later this week. Let’s see, it’s March—”

  I glanced at the calendar on the wall next to the desk, where he pointed as he spoke. My eyes read the numbers in the year.

  1992.

  It was 1992. It had been nine years since I jumped back the last time. I did the math in my head. I was twenty-six years old.

  “Look guys, I’m not feeling well. Do you mind if I head out for the rest of the day?”

  Armand and Frank exchanged glances. Armand answered me, being quicker to speak.

  “Sure, sure. You want us to just lock up at five?”

  “That would be fantastic.”

  I’d presumed one or the other of these guys was my boss. I walked out of the car bay and looked at the shop from the outside. A bold neon sign ran the width of the garage: Inman & Son Auto Service

  I started walking, not sure where I was in town, or even if I was in the same town as a decade ago.

  “Uh,” Frank began, “don’t you want to take your car?” He
pointed, raising his finger at a black Mustang with silver racing stripes. We must be doing well for ourselves.

  “I sure do,” I said, feeling for keys in my pockets. Armand snatched up a key ring from the desk and tossed them over to me.

  “Thanks,” I said. “Catch you guys tomorrow.”

  “Feel better, man,” said Armand. Frank nodded slowly.

  I drove off, hoping I’d picked a direction that made sense.

  Ten blocks or so away, I came to an intersection I remembered. I flicked the turn signal, and made a right, and then I was back to my development, which had not aged well in the last decade. Yellowed lawns and faded siding gave the street a washed-out, tired look. All of the cars had turned over from what used to be parked here when I was in high school, so I couldn’t determine if the same families or new ones lived in these homes now. I drove to the middle of the block, noting that concrete sidewalks were crumbling away. I knocked on the door to my old house, presuming I couldn’t just walk inside. There was a deadbolt installed in the front door that hadn’t been there before. No answer. I tried the doorbell, but it didn’t work. Maybe I should leave a note. I considered looking in through the window to the side of the front door, but didn’t want any of the neighbors to think I was an intruder.

  From inside the house, I heard movement, and then someone fumbling with the locks. An older woman greeted me.

  “Can I help you, young man?”

  “I was wondering, did you know the Inmans who lived here?” I asked.

  “The Inmans? Oh, the family from this house. No, I didn’t know them. They were the sellers, though.” She waited for me to ask another question or bid her good day.

  “Thank you. Do you by any chance know where they moved?”