by James Somers
Out of Time
The flashes of light that accompanied his arrival were not in any way produced by the portal which had delivered him to his present destination. Fireworks popped in the air above him. Launched from a giant Ferris wheel the likes of which Brody had never seen before.
It was absolutely monumental. Then his eyes roved over the scene around him. Where had he come to? He had been following Anna Parks, pregnant with Adolf’s child, if he was any guess.
But this was not Berlin. It wasn’t even Germany. The river beyond the giant wheel—he recognized that river. The Thames. And nearby was the Clock Tower, more recently called Big Ben. He remembered the days when it had not been so.
He stood there among what appeared to be thousands of people celebrating. Had the war ended while he was confronting Adolf in his Berghof bunker? That didn’t make any sense. Besides, the city didn’t look like it had before.
London had been in ruins. Bombs had scattered across the cityscape over the past few years. London had suffered much from Adolf’s Luftwaffe. Yet, the city was unmarred. Not a building in sight was damaged now. In fact, it appeared very modern in comparison with what he had witnessed recently on rare visits.
Brody felt a headache coming on. He was confused. This wasn’t right. Yet, he could sense that no magic was at work here. This was not an illusion. But there were bright lights, electric images projected here and there. He did not know what they were.
He wasn’t sure why the people were celebrating. Everything was wrong. The clothes on the individuals around him, and, in some cases, the lack of clothing on them bore no resemblance to the fashion of the day when he had last seen London. That had only been a year before.
Everywhere there was the din of celebration, of revelry. The bright lights only added to his dismay. What was happening to him?
Couples embraced one another, singing a song he did not recognize. A man holding the hand of another man. What? They began to—
This world was not the world he knew. Some of the buildings and the Thames were right, but the rest…he couldn’t figure out how all of these changes could take place in so short a time. London had been his home for so many years. He had known her as a refined lady, but this was a harlot in comparison with the splendid city he had come to call home.
He had to get his bearings. Where was the woman? Where had Anna gone? He didn’t see her. There were too many people to find her—the crowd too uproarious to pick her out.
Brody paused. He had to look for the right clue. Both of them had passed through a portal. There would be residual energies, traces of the portal matrix upon them both. She would only have arrived minutes before him. A woman in her condition could not have gotten far, especially not in all of this clamor.
Feeling with senses that mere mortals did not possess, Brody picked at the wispy traces of the portal. He could perceive them now. They matched the same that clung to him still.
A trail began to form, passing through the crowd, heading away from the fireworks, moving away from the massive four-faced clock now chiming midnight nearby. Wisps of power like a trail of smoke led him on and he followed.
He saw another group of lights, these were spinning on top of a vehicle. Red lights on top of some kind of van. He did recognize the red medical cross painted upon the white body of the van. An ambulance. The traces of portal energy were leading in that direction.
Brody teleported nearer. He was now standing within thirty feet of the woman. Anna was holding her stomach as if she was in pain. She didn’t appear to be in labor, though it was hard to tell. By his estimation, she didn’t look far enough along.
The medical personnel tended to her. The array of apparatus inside the vehicle left him dumbfounded. He didn’t recognize the kinds of machines they were using—none of them.
Anna was laid out upon a gurney of some kind. Something, a clear mask, was placed over her face, presumably to help her breathe. They strapped her to the gurney and then loaded her inside the ambulance. Closing the doors behind, the men loaded into the front of the vehicle.
Sirens blared at those who had gathered around to watch the pregnant woman being loaded up. The crowd parted as the ambulance began a steady trek on toward the main road. If things were the same in this strange version of London, then St. Mary’s Hospital was only a few miles away.
Brody teleported after the ambulance, short distances only that left the impression he was a man walking, but that upon closer observation skipped a hundred paces at a time. The vehicle made a slow trip, since traffic was heavy. He didn’t have any trouble keeping up, or remaining inconspicuous.
As he had expected, the hospital was the same that he had remembered. It had been young when he first journeyed across the Atlantic with his father to London. Clearly it was different now—updated—but it was the same basic construction.
He followed nearby as the ambulance made its way around the building to a lower level. Here there were places for the vehicles to park and for patients to disembark into the facility itself. The medics with Anna removed her from the rear of the vehicle and wheeled her inside.
Brody was unsure now what his course of action should be. If he followed her inside, he might well be able to end this now. Obviously, she was in no condition to run. But he couldn’t bring himself to do it. Not yet.
All of this was so strange, his surroundings, the city and its citizens. He walked around the hospital again, trying to think. He passed shops full of things he had never laid eyes on before. Lights were everywhere, bright colors and banners.
Then he spotted something that shook him to his core. Rectangular devices displaying moving pictures in color. He had seen larger versions of these: movies they were called. It wasn’t the technology that troubled him now. It was the images being shown.
There on the small screens behind the plate glass window of the shop, the celebration was on display—the same that he had just witnessed below the great Ferris wheel. The fireworks were still going off. He looked back toward the river. The air was quiet. No fireworks now.
Words came across the screens over the moving pictures. Happy New Year!
Brody gasped. It was impossible. How could this have happened. And yet he knew that it must also be true. This was the puzzle piece to explain all that he was witnessing.
He was really in London, but it wasn’t 1945 any longer. The portal he and Anna Parks had passed through—somehow they had been held within and then released much later. This was the beginning of the next century: January 1st 2000.
RAGE: CRISIS SEQUENCE ONE
Jonathan Parks never expected to see the end of the
world. He never expected to be the cause of it
Coming Spring 2014
Audible Audio Books available from James Somers
Fallen
Descendant
Revenant
Millennium
Aftermath
Realm Shift
Order of Shaddai
Sword of Gideon
Perdition’s Gate: Inferno: Omnibus Edition
Serpent Kings Saga: Omnibus Edition
www.audible.com
