One Helluva Bad Time- The Complete Bad Times Series

by Chuck Dixon

  Many of these volumes, like the former mentioned, were thought to be lost or never to have existed. But Sir Neal’s fortune, combined with his unique mechanism to break the rules of time’s inexorable forward passage, allowed him to send agents into the past to pluck literary treasures from libraries, schools and privates homes with impunity.

  To the horror of any connoisseur of such things, each bound volume was unbound and its pages secured permanently within UV protected Lexan sheets to allow them to be seen from both sides. Ancient papyrus and vellum scrolls were unrolled and sealed within the clear plastic substance. These were carefully cataloged and stored in a zero-humidity environment kept just above freezing temperature and shielded from any direct light. Though they were stolen from history and the eyes of academia, they were preserved for the ages with great care. Uniform sheets containing the handwritten works were in safekeeping within a protected subterranean warehouse carved from limestone rock.

  These sheets were fed from great ordered stacks into a mechanized system that carried them along to banks of scanners where Visvamitra “read” each page of the millions of volumes once every twenty-four-hour period. The sheets would flash by at dizzying speed under the low-light lenses of the search program whose only purpose was to find differences, even the slightest alteration, from the previous scan.

  If changes to the written words were found, the volume would be separated from the rest and an alert sent to Gallant Informational Solutions Ltd in London where copies of the original text and new, altered text would be brought to Sir Neal Harnesh personally. These would be examined by him, and any actions taken based on his appraisal of their significance would be ordered by the man himself.

  It is thus that an unknown widow writing of her relief at her son’s survival and her gratitude for the comfort brought to her by a visiting Canadian was brought to the attention of man nearly two centuries later and deemed significant enough to require swift and bloody action.

  40

  Stone Soup

  Jimbo kept the stretcher team at a steady walk-trot changeup. Walk six paces and trot six. The terrain allowed for it. They were moving through the wooded hills to the west of the Roman road following the low ground. They were taking care not to skyline themselves against the falling sun. When one team would tire, another would take up the burden of Boats.

  Bruce, the Dead Sea surfer dude, assumed leadership of the bearers. After the first few rotations, he took over calling the changes. But he never gave up his own place at the head of one of the poles. The compact dude was tireless, and kept up a constant string of encouragement and directions to the other bearers that Jimbo assumed was rife with profanity.

  The Ranger knew a hardass drill instructor when he heard one. Bruce was Army all the way.

  It was a mile-consuming pace, but they couldn’t keep it up indefinitely. At some point, they’d slow and then need a rest stop. Experience told the Pima that once it got dark, a few of their volunteers would melt away. They were making good enough time to put distance between them and any pursuit by heavy infantry. If the Romans had cavalry, they’d be fucked. Same result if the Romans let loose more of those little archers. Boats was slowing them down. They’d probably need a rearguard action. If they could just get through the night without any unexpected encounters or detours, they had an even chance of slipping away.

  The woods were rich with game. All around them, Jimbo could hear hooves crashing away into the underbrush on their approach. A few times, he spotted tiny deer in the second between their ears perking up and their rumps bounding away into the lattice of tree boles and tanglefoot. He heard the high yipping barks of foxes in the distance. Black squirrels leapt from branches overhead, sending down a silent rain of needles.

  A knot of partridges with orange crests atop their heads exploded out of a copse of scrub before them. Two of the freed slaves they’d picked up brought down a few birds with thrown stones. They grinned as they plucked the birds clean while they walked along. Jimbo was impressed. The two men downed five birds inside of a span of less than two seconds. No one back on the reservation could have done that well, not even Jimbo. And he’d brought home dinner stunned by thrown rocks many times growing up.

  James Smalls was once again filled with the feeling of being truly alive in a place and time not his own. The men running with him were as different from him in culture as it was possible to be, yet he felt an affinity with them. For all the miracles and comforts of the twenty-first century, he could never feel the freedom there that these men felt. Earlier today, they were slaves. Here, only a few hours later, their separate fates were waiting to be discovered. A man could reinvent himself here if he had the nerve and the will.

  Back in The Now, most men were on a path set for them before they were born. He’d left the rez and gone to war and survived. For what? To work a job where some shithead with a gun could take him out during a routine traffic stop? Or live to retire at fifty-five and wait until cancer took him? Even his missions into the past were only brief respites from a life that felt like it was already planned for him. Coming back from prehistoric Nevada and the ancient Aegean had left him with a longing for a world that no longer existed; a world where a man was challenged every day by forces beyond his control. There was no conserving risk in the places he’d seen. You went balls-out every minute and fuck the consequences.

  Maybe he was crazy. Most men would be reduced to PTSD cases by the shit he’d been through since Dwayne asked him to join Team Tauber. Jimbo found that instead, it gave him peace. It made everything seem more real; every breath he took was like an invigorating drug washing his lungs and heart and brain clean. It wasn’t just thrill-junkie euphoria either. That was the kind of thing Lee Hammond lived for. Maybe, he thought, it’s like I belong here in the past. Maybe it was in his blood. He was just a red-skinned savage deep down inside and little more than a century from the last time his people lived the old way. Well, if that was it, then he could get behind that. There might be one of these times he’d just stay behind to make his own history.

  Bat, trotting behind him, said something. Jimmy Smalls came out of his own thoughts. “Yeah?” he said, stopping.

  “We need to think about resting these guys,” Bat said again.

  “Past time we took a look at Boats’ condition, too,” he said.

  The sun had sunk low over the hills now. They’d moved out of the tree line to a lower elevation of a broken country of ridgelines marching in descending order to the coastal plain. Jimbo waved the stretcher bearers to halt and lower their passenger. The other tagalongs stopped as well.

  “I’m going to run ahead to Lee and let him know,” Jimbo said and pointed up a slope to a grassy peak atop a hillock. “How about you move the unit up to where we can keep watch on our six from that high ground?” Bat nodded and spoke to the few men she knew understood Hebrew.

  They made camp on the slope of the hillside below the peak. Hammond took a prone position at the crest to watch the ground around them. It was a nasty badlands that terraced away down to the coast three days hard march from their current position. The land here was riven with shallow gullies that could hide an army in its shadows. These furrows could also hide their unit from sight so long as they found ones they could follow westerly. They’d take a short break and move on to increase their lead on any pursuing force.

  Bat and Chaz tended to Boats. The SEAL’s skin was hot to the touch. The wound area was inflated and looking angry. Boats was in and out of consciousness. Bat managed to get some water into him while Chaz strapped a Mylar blanket over him. They shot him up with a new infusion of antibiotics and antipyretics close to the wound site. Now it was up to time, the power of prayer and the sailor’s dogged will to live.

  Jimmy Smalls was handing out protein bars after showing the tagalongs how to peel off the wrappers. He rationed out water from their shrinking supply. He shot a half-second stream from his CamelBak into the open mouths of the men around him. They’d nee
d to find water soon. He’d take over point from Hammond when they resumed their march and sniff out a tank or an open spring.

  The little militia began gathering kindling for a fire until Jimbo waved them off. He kicked the pile of sticks aside. The two men with the game birds protested. They held up the stripped and gutted birds and shook them in Jimbo’s face until he held up a hand to them. Bruce interceded and grumbled something that made the men stand down. The Pima undid his pack and pulled out a chemical heat stick. He unfolded a PVC half-gallon camp pot and filled it with three inches of water from his reservoir system. He gestured to the hunters to hand him a game bird.

  Jimbo tore the legs and wings from it and dropped it in the water. He split the breast and added that as well, followed by a liberal splash from his trusty Tabasco bottle and a dash of salt. The gang of men gathered around and watched in rapt fascination. Jimbo activated the heat stick and inserted it in the folding pot. Within thirty seconds, there was steam rising from the pot. Bruce clapped his hands on his thighs and babbled to the others, who simply stared at this everyday wonder in dumb amazement.

  Jimbo left them watching the pot. Bat was sitting by Boats, dribbling water on his lips from the straw of her CamelBak.

  “Can you make sure they give that bird at least thirty minutes?” he asked.

  “Sure. Where are you heading?” she said.

  “I’m going to go back aways the way we came. I want to make sure no one’s closing the gap on us.”

  “You know those guys think you’re a miracle worker.” Bat nodded toward the ring of men staring at the steaming pot with mouths open.

  “That’s how rumors get started,” Jimbo said and slung his Winchester over his shoulder.

  Bruce rose to follow, but Jimbo waved him back down with a smile. He descended the slope after a high sign to Lee Hammond, who was lying invisible in the dark at the top of the hill.

  Bat turned back to Boats and used her fingers to moisten his dry, cracked lips. In addition to the wound to his leg, he had a lump to the back of his head that was swollen with fluid. One of his eyes was puffed shut, and a dark purple bruise was spreading from his jaw to his right ear. The man had taken an epic beating but was still hanging in. She took a thumb and pulled up one of his eyelids, and was startled when he spoke to her.

  “We in the clear?” His voice was a wet rasping sound.

  “Not yet, Boats,” she said, keeping her voice level and calm.

  “What’s the situation?”

  “We’re making good time. We’re three days, maybe four from extract.”

  “I’m holding you up.”

  “We’re managing. It’s good.”

  “No bullshit.” He locked hot, red-rimmed eyes on hers.

  “No bullshit, sailor,” she said levelly.

  Then he was gone again.

  Jimbo was downslope and nearing the tree line they’d left at twilight. The temps were dropping. His sweat-soaked tank top felt chilly against his skin under the armor. The woods were quiet but for the distant sounds of a high, truncated yelping. Bat Jaffe had told him it was jackals that made those sounds. She said they were a common sight outside the kibbutz she’d lived on when she was younger.

  He stopped dead on the slope and scanned the trees. He raised the rifle to his shoulder and scanned the shadows through the scope, the night vision on and wide open for maximum contrast. The eidetic memory that he honed as part of his tracking skills was telling him to look closer.

  Something was wrong. Something was different.

  Something was here that had not been here when they passed earlier.

  A fluttering shape at the edge of the wood, moving in the breeze.

  The Pima crept down the hill, the rifle traversing back and forth. The eyes looking for movement in the shadows.

  He approached and took the shape in his hand.

  A bit of tattered red cloth tied with a knot to the end of a scrub branch.

  Jimbo turned and ran full-out back to the camp.

  Bruce’s name was actually Byrus.

  Bat learned this by questioning him through one of their Jewish tagalongs who also spoke Greek. Byrus was a Macedonian. He’d been a slave as long as he could remember. “Born in chains,” as he colorfully put it. He spent years as a pit fighter before being sold by his owner into the quarry. How many seasons ago, he was not sure.

  She asked what he would do now that he was free. The man only shrugged and returned to watching the mystically boiling pot.

  “Some of us will return home,” Iyov, the translator told her. “Many, like Byrus, have no home. They have always been slaves. Or they would not be welcome there.”

  “How will you survive then?” she asked.

  “Become thieves or bandits. Maybe join the rebels. There’s little difference in the end. If we are caught, we’ll wind up on a cross.”

  “Then we have done you no favor by freeing you.”

  “You have not freed us. We are still slaves. A dog unleashed is still a dog.”

  “I am sorry. We had to do what we did,” she said. “None of us is free, are we? Not for long, anyway.”

  Iyov made a spitting noise.

  Byrus said something in his basso voice that sounded like he had once gargled razor blades.

  “He asks why you used your power to release us from the quarry. What makes you kill Romans with such zeal?” Iyov said.

  Bat wasn’t sure how to answer that. “There was one among you of great renown,” she said after a moment’s thought.

  “A man important to your people?” Iyov asked after relaying her answer to the Macedonian.

  Bat was considering how to answer that thorny question when Iyov fell forward, gagging on the iron tip of the spear blade that suddenly appeared from his throat.

  41

  The Intruders

  It was night once again in Paris, and the few newspapers that saw print were filled with rumors of peace.

  Artillery fire had become more sporadic throughout the day until finally abating altogether as the low winter sun sank behind clouds of smoke from fires still raging in Clichy.

  The streets were empty. The populace was spent. They retreated to their homes and their churches in exhaustion. They were past celebration or shame or resentment. Tomorrow they would mourn. Tomorrow they would think again of the future. Tomorrow they would face the terms of surrender.

  The House of Villeneuve had taken to bed mostly. Only Claude wandered the lower floors making certain that the candles they’d lit were damped for the night. The sound of voices from the street caused him to halt on the stairs. He turned to step to the foyer and listen closer. Men were directly before the house and coming closer. They were in a hushed argument, not wishing to be heard. The empty streets echoed their utterances in the cold night air, amplifying them so that Claude could catch the tone if not the words. One voice rose above the others and, after a moment of silence, something hard struck the door of the outer portico.

  A crash of splintering wood and glass informed him that, whoever this was, they were through the street door and into the entryway of the house. Claude moved to the stout front entrance door and made certain all the bolts were shot. Seconds later, the hammering began on the other side. From the noise of them, two heavy iron mallets were striking the door in tandem like lumbermen felling a tree.

  Claude was confident that the door would hold against such an assault. The street-facing windows of the house were heavily barred and entry through them near impossible. Even so, he reached into a stand by the door and retrieved, from among the umbrellas, a heavy cavalry saber that had rested there unnoticed by visitors for decades. He unsheathed the curving blade with no difficulty. One of his self-assigned duties was to keep this relic of his days in the Hussars cleaned and oiled in its scabbard. Now that ritual chore rewarded him with a ready weapon to face these intruders.

  He glanced up to see fresh orbs of reflected light upon the ceiling at the top of the stairs. The cacophony had
awakened the house.

  “Remain upstairs, mesdames!” he called.

  A new sound, deeper in the house, reached him. Metal upon metal rang. Glass tinkled musically. The kitchen and pantry at the alley rear.

  “Merde,” he hissed to himself, then shouted, “Anatole! Get out here!”

  A flutter of women’s voices from above. Claude raced down the back hall for the kitchen. Anatole appeared before him in a nightshirt, sputtering questions.

  “The front door, you fool!” Claude thundered as he raced past the man. “Get the girls and shove furniture before the door! Quickly, man!”

  Claude was in the kitchen and through the pantry to find men in dark clothing outside the rear portico and prying the wrought iron bars free from the gate there. He backed toward the doorway to the house to secure the copper-clad service door. The men tore away the ladder of bars to shoulder through the alley gate for him. They were armed with the tools of tradesmen: hammers, adzes, and knives. There were five that he could see.

  And one more man with them, who stood at the back with hands in the pockets of a fine woolen coat in starkest contrast to the rest of the grubby crew clothed in layers of ragged garb. The man had skin of mahogany, made all the darker by the fringe of snow-white hair visible beneath his tall silk topper. The man snapped orders to the others. These were no common looters, and this was no random assault.

  The big footman lunged and speared the most eager attacker through the guts. Claude twisted the blade and pulled it free. The man shrieked. Blood jetted from between fingers laced over the wound. The others hesitated. The dark man growled a fresh order in high-mannered French and the gang pressed forward over the kicking body of their comrade.