One Helluva Bad Time- The Complete Bad Times Series

by Chuck Dixon

  “I know. I’ve heard him and Chaz going round and round about it,” he said, levering the stroller gently off a curb. They crossed a broad avenue, the tourist crowd swirling around them at a brisker pace. Dwayne and Caroline moved in their own time.

  When they reached the opposite curb, he tilted the stroller back. Stephen sat up, gripping the wall of the stroller to peek over the side. Caroline broke her grip on Dwayne’s arm to press him back and recover him with the blanket. The infant tore the knit toque from his head and threw it to the damp sidewalk with a laugh. Caroline stooped to retrieve it and brush it on her coat.

  “He’s a terror,” she said, pulling the cap tightly on Stephen’s head and tying it in place under his chin.

  “That’s my boy.” Dwayne grinned.

  “Do you feel cheated? Stephen is eight months old. You missed all that time with him.”

  “I missed his first words. That sucks. But I knew married guys on deployments so long their kid was nothing but a belly bump when they left. By the time they got back, the kid ran to meet them at the airport.”

  “Do you think it matters at this age?”

  “To me? Hell, yeah. To him? Time means nothing.”

  “You can make almost any mistake right if you try hard enough. But you can never make up lost time,” she said.

  “You see that on a t-shirt?” He glanced at her.

  “I heard someone say it. It stuck with me.”

  “Sounds like some gloomy shit, Caroline.”

  “Language,” she said, nodding to the baby.

  “Sorry. Gloomy merde. That better?”

  They turned onto Avenue Bosquet and mid-block, Caroline stopped before Number 33.

  “This is the place you told me about?” Dwayne said.

  The ground floor was a storefront for a mobile phone store now. A second entrance had been added to allow access to apartments or condos on the floors above. A row of mailboxes was visible through the heavy glass of the entry door. A pair of bicycles leaned against a wall of the tiled hallway.

  “It’s not the same,” she said. “Everything changes. That’s the way it should be, I guess.”

  “Unless we have to change it back.” He smiled, but she didn’t see it. Caroline could not turn to him, could not let him see her face. She knew it would betray her thoughts of the last time the two of them stood here; a time Dwayne would not recall as it had not happened to him yet.

  “Excuse me,” a voice addressed them in English. “I hoped to find you here.”

  They both turned. Dwayne stepped forward to place himself between the stroller and the man walking toward them from the shadows of a shuttered bakery.

  Samuel.

  Dwayne knew better than to offer his hand.

  Samuel’s gloved hands hung at his sides.

  “I wanted to thank you for making sure Caroline and the baby got away safe,” Dwayne said.

  “Perhaps it balances the unpleasantness in Judea,” Samuel said and met Caroline’s pleading eyes. “In any case, it matters a great deal that we keep your child safe from Neal Harnesh.”

  “We’re good for now? Or are you here with another warning?” Caroline asked, eyes shifting to the street and behind them.

  “This is a secure place and time. Sir Neal’s agents are impeded for now. They will pick up the threads soon enough.”

  “We didn’t just happen to run into you window shopping,” Dwayne said.

  “No. I am here to ask you and the others for a favor,” Samuel said.

  “I can’t speak for the others, but I’m here for whatever you need, Samuel. I owe you a debt I’ll spend a lifetime repaying. What’s the favor?” Dwayne asked.

  Samuel regarded them both with a grave expression before answering.

  “To go back to Nevada and get my father.”

  Afterword

  A Few Historical Notes

  This is a work of fiction. Thus, I made a lot of this stuff up.

  There were no Twenty-third or Thirtieth Legions in the Roman army. I wanted to spare any legion that did exist the embarrassment of having their ancient asses kicked by four guys and a girl. And to step around any true scholars who would race to point out that any real legion I might have chosen had never been in Judea or had been trudging through Hispania at the time of this novel.

  Everything else about the legions is from all the reading I’ve done over the years. Blame Tacitus if I got something wrong. I think he has a Facebook page.

  Little is known of Valerius Gratus, the Roman prefect of Judea at the time of Christ’s youth. I’m sure he wasn’t a heroin addict, and have no proof he was a pedophile. But every good story needs a hero, a villain, and a wretch. Poor Gratus fills that last role. I’m pretty certain he wasn’t a nice guy. Nice guys didn’t get sent to Palestine back then.

  And I have Pilate taking over for him a few years earlier than that actually happened.

  The life of Jesus between his birth and his early adulthood are a tabula rasa. Other than ancillary legends (like the ones the nuns taught us) created long after the fact, we have no knowledge of his life. And we certainly have no idea of what he looked like. I have a sneaking suspicion he looked nothing like Jeffrey Hunter. I specifically avoided directly portraying Christ, as it was not dramatically necessary to my story, and I’m not out to offend anyone.

  As for the siege of Paris in 1871, I took some liberties there. The events I portray did happen. The barrage, the horrific counterattack attempted by the citizens of Paris, the crowning of Kaiser Wilhelm I at Versailles are all real events. All I did was to telescope them into a shorter period of time. Things moved swiftly from siege to surrender, but not as swiftly as I present here. And, moving beyond the events of the novel, the Prussians did eventually occupy part of the city, as agreed upon in the very civilized surrender terms between the two armies. It was a brief occupation, and France eventually agreed to pay an enormous amount of money to get the Germans to go home. Otto von Bismarck got what he wanted out of the war—a united German state. Things would not go so easily the next time these nations clashed.

  And unlike Lee Hammond, I did not read Bill O’Reilly’s book.

  Chuck Dixon

  Helldorado

  Bad Times Book Four

  1

  The Runaway

  She would not be owned. Rather, she would run.

  The slope was covered in berry bushes and vines that choked off every trail but those traveled by the smallest game. The earth was soft with the passage of so many hooves and paws, and so she avoided the trails. Instead, she followed the path of a dry stream upward, stepping from stone to stone. She’d leave no sign for the hunters to follow. And there would be hunters.

  The night was cool at the start of the season of planting. A bower of branches sheltered her from a cold wind falling off the ridgeline. She wore only a loincloth tied at the waist with a leather belt. She would have risked discovery taking her cloak of thick bison hide. There was only time to gather a few things that might not be missed at first: a knife, a waterskin, a small sack of dried fruit and meat. The knife was a skinning tool with a long thin blade of hammered metal fitted into a handle of horn. It was a sorry weapon but would have to serve.

  Her long black hair was gathered at the back of her head, held in place by her most prized possession: a wooden clasp cleverly carved by her father and gifted to her when she was a small girl.

  She gripped the knife in her fist as she climbed, holding it before her against whatever the dark might hold. She kept the lake behind her until she reached the ridgeline. Even on this high ground, the roof of thick brush blocked out the sky. Shafts of silver light came down through the screen of new leaves. They served to deepen the dark around them. There was no way down on the lee side, so she followed the narrow ridgeline until she found an open space where the wind had scoured a high spot clean of vegetation. A broad table of rock lay naked under the light of the moon and stars. She stood for a moment, looking down from her windy perch
. The air was wet and chilled, and she hunched with her arms across her breasts to look at the world that lay ahead of her. This marked the farthest N’itha had ever been from the people, and the most she had ever seen at one time of the land that surrounded their home. Before her, she saw that the land fell away toward more water, either another lake or a branch somehow connected to the water she left behind.

  The water shone white in the moonlight, rimmed all around by tall trees.

  She looked back but could not see the home of the people over the thick cover of brush. Trails of smoke rose above the tall trees from the sentry fires. They looked like wispy threads at this distance. She had traveled far and traveled well since slipping from the home of the Earth Mother when the moon first began to fall toward the far hills. They might pursue her, but they would never find her. She would keep on through the night and through the day leaving as little trail as she could behind her. They would not catch her, and even if they did, she would never return alive to the home of the people. N’itha would plunge the skinning knife into her own throat before she would be taken back to Koto and be wed to him.

  The thought of that bloated, greasy swine’s hands on her sickened her. His eyes, filled with cold lust, his tongue sliding over fat lips each time he looked at her. To be consigned to his loathsome custody and, she imagined, loathsome desires was unthinkable. Whatever other fate awaited her in the unknown land below her, it would be preferable to being the bride of the Earth Mother’s son. She might starve or be eaten by a great cat or bear, or wander until she went mad, or fall prey to the flesh-hunters. Any end she could imagine would be better than lying with Koto until the next planting season. It was enough to be free at this moment in the dark night.

  She found a game trail below the shelf of rock and followed it to the base of the slope. The thick bramble hedges gave way to a forest of old trees. N’itha moved more cautiously. The cold made the night silent. There was no wavering thrum of insects and toads, no calls of birds, to cover the noise of her passage. Nor was there the sheltering cover of the brush to hide her movement. This was the hunting ground of the bear and the cat. The grunt of the bear she knew well. She strained her ears to listen for it. The cat moved quietly until the final rush. N’itha could feel the yellow eyes filled with malevolent hunger watching her from the dark. She gripped the bark of a tree, willing herself to join its shadow, and shivered with fear more than the chilled air.

  Anger welled within her. Anger at her father for meekly surrendering her to the Earth Mother. Anger at the Earth Mother for choosing her to wed her son. Anger at the Sky Mother and her demands that the price of a good harvest was the life of a girl who had once loved her so.

  Most of all, N’itha burned with anger at herself. She had accepted that she might suffer for her choice, and now she cowered like a child in the woods. She might sit here, shrunk small and terrified of imagined predators until the hunters found her and dragged her back to Koto. Better to give herself to the great cats. Better to be torn to bloody shreds and her guts scattered over the forest floor. Her suffering would last only moments rather than the endless nights as a plaything to the Earth witch’s disgusting progeny.

  She pushed away from the tree to trot down the hillside into the gloom between the trees. The gloom turned to mist as the sun rose over the peak behind her. The land leveled out at the floor of the lake valley. N’itha came to the edge of a marsh and was forced to change her course to her left to follow the dry ground. With the warming rays of the sun, the sounds of the forest returned. Birds cawed and twittered. Squirrels thrashed in the branches overhead. From somewhere beyond the marshes, the trumpeted calls of an elephant reached her. She crouched in the shelter of a deadfall while a line of moose, moving with remarkable quiet, marched across her path.

  Her feet were sore, and eyelids heavy as the sky lightened more and more. Her belly snarled. She needed food and rest and began searching for a hiding place to lie awhile and close her eyes.

  N’itha stopped at a trilling sound she’d not heard before. Somewhere behind her the crunch of a step on brittle leaves. A grunt followed. A hoot sounded off to her right. Another answered it to the left. She turned her head to see a shadow streak between tree boles.

  Only one animal hunted like that.

  Man.

  She thought at first it was hunters sent by the Earth Mother. But they would not move so cautiously. They would boldly stalk her and run her down. These were men unknown to her, and that sent a thrill of fear through her that washed away her weariness in a single stroke.

  N’itha sprinted forward, followed by rising calls of hoots and barks. They grew more frequent to either side of her. She could see black shadows racing through the trees to be lost from her sight each time she turned her head. Her hand ached with the grip she kept on the knife handle. Her breath came in gasps. Her legs burned with the fire of exertion. Still, the voices closed in all around her from the curtain of sun-dappled green.

  Her path led to the edge of the marsh. To turn to avoid it would bring her into the arms of her pursuers. To go forward would slow her progress until they caught her.

  N’itha stood in the ankle-deep muck and turned her back to the reeds with the knife blade held before her in both hands. She would die here and draw the blood of the strangers as she did so. A calm came over her as she stood crouched and ready for what manner of man might come out of the surrounding forest.

  A squat figure holding a spear was the first to emerge into the light. It was furred over every surface with sloping shoulders descending to either side from a thick neck topped with a broad head from which deep-set eyes studied her over the point of a stone-tipped spear. A wide mouth opened to reveal ranks of yellowed teeth filed to razor points. The creature, hardly a man, barked a single basso sound to bring more of its kind out from the trees.

  They were flesh-hunters. The near-men who were so often the subject of stories the hunters would tell around the fires at night. N’itha knew them only as figures of nightmares. They were smaller than in the pictures she made in her dreams but more fearsome than she’d imagined. Their number grew until they approached in a half-ring to jabber at her and to one another. N’itha retreated into the reeds up to her calves in muddy water. They poked their spears in her direction and hooted, daring one another forward into the clinging muck.

  A new voice sounded from the tree line at their back. The near-men stopped advancing on her and turned to watch a man join them on the bank of the marsh.

  A man, an actual man, standing upright. He had hair on his chest and arms only. Atop his head jet, black hair was pulled back into a long tail. His face was clean-shaven. He moved with a limp, favoring one leg. He wore a strange skin of mottled green about his waist and legs. His feet were shod to above the ankles in black moccasins of a design N’itha had never seen before. In his hands, he held a weapon of black iron. It was too short to be a spear and had no edge or point. The man shooed away the flesh-hunters with an angry growl and then stood as though transfixed by the sight of N’itha. He spoke in words that clearly meant something but held no meaning for her.

  “Holy shit. Where’d you drop from, honey?”

  2

  Uncle Mo

  “Come see the baby,” Caroline Tauber said.

  “I’m wrapping up a few trials, and I can get away in a week. Maybe two,” Morris Tauber said.

  “You’re leaving tomorrow, Mo.”

  Morris was anxious to meet his newborn nephew for the first time but was dismayed that his sister insisted he come ashore to do so.

  After all, he tried to explain to Caroline, the Tauber Tube was his own baby and required constant attention.

  “The Tube is our baby, big brother,” she reminded him over the sat phone connection. “Parviz and Quebat can look after it along with the reactor. You need some time away from your work, and you need to start acting like an uncle.” Parviz and Quebat were the pair of Iranian ex-patriates who looked after the stolen mini-nuclea
r reactor they maintained aboard the leased container ship, Ocean Raj. The two were under a fatwa from the mullahs in Tehran both for fleeing Iran’s advancing nuclear weapons program and for remaining outrageously and defiantly gay. Though, as they reminded anyone incautious enough to make the mistake,they were not “a couple.”

  “And how does an uncle act, Sis?” Morris asked.

  “Well, he doesn’t hide out below decks in a rusting container ship. He’s more fun than that. He brings gifts and acts…avuncular.”

  “Very helpful.”

  “I’m going to make this simple for you, Mo. Arrangements have been made. Pack a bag and the passport under the name Kenneth Armbruster of Halifax, Nova Scotia. A seaplane is coming to pick you up tomorrow morning to take you to Rimini where Dwayne and I have rented the most secluded little villa.”

  “I can’t make it tomorrow. I’m in the middle of calculations that—”

  “You’re just going to have to recalculate them anyway after what I have to show you.” Her tone was the same as when they were kids, and she found out what he was getting for Christmas.

  “What are you talking about, Sis?”

  “Samuel gave me some research materials on chronal manifestation fields that you’re going to want to see.”

  “Research from where?”

  “The future, stupid. Don’t you want to see how our work was refined and applied by minds other than our own?”

  After a pause, he said, “What time is the seaplane coming?” He could see her smug smile on the other end of the phone as clearly as if he were there.

  “Eight your time.” She hung up, cutting off her own laugh of delight.

  The next morning, he landed in the harbor at Rimini. A cab was waiting for him at the end of the pier of the seaplane dock. It carried him over the Tiberius Bridge and along a road that followed the Fiume Marecchia before turning off onto a road lined with orchards of olive trees to a crushed stone turn-around before a white-washed country house of Neapolitan design.