One Helluva Bad Time- The Complete Bad Times Series

by Chuck Dixon

  He searched for the other Arab. Dwayne found him kneeling by a pool, washing his hands.

  “Why did you kill him?” Dwayne said.

  “He is the one who gave me these,” he said. He jerked a thumb at the raised lash scars that crossed one another on his back.

  “You were his slave?”

  “I was his soldier. This is how he inspired loyalty. By fear.

  With pain.”

  “My name is Dwayne. What are you called?”

  “Wahid.”

  “Why did you kill him?”

  “What matter is it? We will both be dead soon. They will carve your heart from your ribs. I will die right after.”

  “Yes. I read enough history to know that. I am a god now, to be pampered. The fatted calf.”

  “You read this? You do not look a scholar. You look a warrior, Verangi.”

  “Verangi. You called me that before. What does it mean?”

  “Your tribe. The Verangi. How can you not know this?”

  Wahid’s eyes narrowed.

  “Maybe I have another name for my people.”

  “I only know Verangi. The Rus. Men from the north. Men of the hammer.”

  “You mean Vikings?”

  “That word is not known to me.” Wahid shrugged.

  A wail went up from one of the women. They gathered at the back of the hut, whispering at the sight of the corpse lying in the weeds. This attracted the attention of one of the guards, who trotted over with his club in his fist. Dwayne joined them to take the rap.

  “I killed him. He displeased me.” Dwayne hoped that he had that kind of discretion. Were there lines a god couldn’t cross? Chances were better that they would forgive him where they’d punish the other Arab.

  The guard bowed his head to Dwayne before turning to bark commands at the girls. They took the corpse by the ankles and hauled it away out of sight. The guard returned to his post in the shade of an acacia tree. The ants scattered to seek other food. Just another morning in Aztectown.

  Dwayne wondered what his god name was. He knew better than to ask.

  He was allowed free run of the grounds on the island. Guards discouraged him from approaching any of the causeways that crossed Lake Texcoco to the shore. They didn’t go so far as to threaten him, just stepped in his way with heads bowed and eyes lowered. Dwayne decided not to test them. Killing a servant was one thing. Wandering off the reservation another. His first days were spent exploring his new home. There were three pyramids standing side by side. The priests stayed mostly within their chambers in the base of the largest structure during the daylight hours. In the evenings, they would emerge to perform various ceremonies that remained obscure to Dwayne. He watched for Eagle Head, the priest who wore his bracelet. He glimpsed the man a few times, seated in a circle of chanting men. The heavily muscled goons were always nearby, those wicked clubs ready over their shoulders. There was a zoo of caged animals that looked mostly neglected. Tapirs and javelinas, jaguars and pumas in pits covered over with cages of latticed wood. The women who did most of the menial work attended to them, but most of the animals looked poorly fed, and the pits stank of dung and piss.

  Flies swarmed everywhere.

  Every few days, there was a procession that crossed the main causeway from the hovels that covered the hills all around the lake. They brought baskets of corn, peppers, fruit, dried fish, and yams. There were also clay jars of corn beer and jams. Dwayne saw sacks of feathers and bales of straw. Live pigs were herded along into pens. Sleds piled with cut firewood were dragged through the sand by slaves. These were offerings for the hundred or so inhabitants of the sacred island. From the number of empty huts on the island, Dwayne guessed that the city had suffered a population drop over time. There was room for three times the number of priests, servants, and guards that currently called the place home. He thought maybe the same was true across Tenochtitlán. There were a few hundred souls showing up to bring goods to the elite class. Even if they paid this tax on a rotating basis, there should have been a lot more people crossing the causeway on offerings day. He wondered how many of the white-washed homes in the heights that ringed the lake were abandoned.

  He could see a number of them were unroofed.

  The smoke from cookfires was concentrated in the houses closest to the causeway on the other side. That led Dwayne to believe that most of the buildings he could see were unoccupied. Further proof that this was a society in steep decline. Either disease or war or some kind of diaspora had trimmed down the population to a severe degree.

  Dwayne spent afternoons swimming in the water and sunning himself on the long embarcadero that ran along the western shore of the island behind the row of pyramids. At the center of the long granite-block pier was an ornate stone carving set in the ground. Thirty feet across, it was divided into equal pie slices that ran from the center image of a snarling cat. Each slice was dense with relief sculptures of animals, plants, and what he assumed were celestial bodies. Three hundred and sixty pie slices in all.

  A calendar.

  At the widest point of each slice, running about the circumference of the circle, was a dimple of an impression. In one of the dimples rested a smooth river stone. It fit perfectly into the impression. It marked that day’s date on the Aztec almanac. Dwayne wondered when it was changed each day. He guessed it was done by the priests. Probably at dawn.

  He also guessed that it marked off the remaining days of his life.

  14

  Feast

  “Swim, you stupid son of a bitch! Swim!” Jimbo shouted as he worked the action to charge the Savage with a fresh round. Bat added her own fire, more out of frustration than any hope of doing real damage.

  Below their position, the little Macedonian was stroking hard for the Zodiac. The sun cut through the blood-slick atop the water. In the gloom below, a dark shape glided under Byrus. It rose into view ahead of him, water streaming from its scales. The same monster that tipped over the water tank. The raft was between them.

  Jimbo rested the forestock of the big rifle in the notch of a stubby pine and sighted on the croc. He held the rifle braced to his shoulder. The target was too close to use the 20X lenses. He sighted instead over the scope to send out a triple tap.

  The slugs raised gouts of blood and tissue along the beast’s spine. The damage was unforgiving but did nothing to slow the croc’s headway. A bow wave of muddy foam spread from its snout, aimed at the tiny figure splashing toward the raft. The distance between them narrowed. Jimbo went for a headshot and missed, only making a hole in the water near the croc’s jawline.

  Byrus stopped himself to grab onto the line that was stretched tight toward the overturned tank raft. He severed the nylon line with a swipe of the razor-sharp gladius. The monster crocodilian brushed the capsized Zodiac aside like a pool toy. It came on in an arrow-straight line for the Macedonian treading water. Byrus vanished in the dark water a half-second before those horrible jaws opened to take him. The raft was set adrift to bump against a wall of reeds growing along the shore.

  Jimbo was up, running along the edge of the raised ground. Bat stood where she was, sighting her rifle. The Pima took snap shots at the croc, but it had submerged. Its tail rose into view as it turned about. The tail raised a splash of froth with one mighty swipe before vanishing beneath the surface once more. Jimbo sighted and pumped one then two rounds toward the rising skein of bubbles before the bolt locked back on an empty mag. The croc was hurt for certain. The cloud of fresh blood was proof of that. But it was a long time dying.

  He hunted for a fresh magazine. There were none. He’d shot through forty or more rounds and could feel the recoil of every one of them in his joints. The Pima snatched up his own M4 and trotted along the ledge, looking over the sights for sign of his friend or the croc. The croc surfaced near the Zodiac snagged in the reeds. Jimbo let fly with controlled three-round bursts that struck along the length of reptile’s body. He wanted to go full auto on the son of a bitch but was u
nsure where Byrus was.

  The little guy burst from the water and scrambled into the raft on the far side. Jimbo opened up on the croc then, sending the rest of the magazine into the body before switching out for a fresh one. He trained again on the croc and saw it lay twitching feebly in a pool of its own guts. The last burst had opened its belly up like an undone seam. Byrus waved from inside the raft. Jimbo gave him a fist pump in reply and turned to the shoreline where a number of the crocs were actively tearing the tank raft to pieces. Their cousin was still hopelessly tangled in the hose and mooring lines. It turned its body over and over, jaws snapping, in a mad effort to free itself. It only managed to snare itself further.

  Bat realized for the first time that voices on his radio were calling for someone, anyone. They sounded urgent. Her ears still rang painfully from the Savage’s roar. She had to turn the gain all the way up and hold the speaker near her ear to hear anything.

  “Yeah. Go for Bat.”

  “Babe! Motherfuck!” Lee’s voice. He was out of breath, running.

  “Where are you?”

  “Heading to you! We’re out of here! Get the boats ready now!”

  “Negative. Problem with the Zodiac. Problem with the boats.”

  “Say again!”

  “The boats are a no go! They’re fucked, Lee!”

  “Then un-fuck them! We’re sixty seconds out your position!” The transmission died.

  Bat tossed the radio aside. Down in the water, the crocs were crawling over their dead cousins to slide into the water for the floating island of steaming gore from the last monster Jimbo took out. Twenty yards beyond it, Byrus clung to the raft, bobbing in the chop created by all the fresh movement in the water. All the little guy had was a sword and a pair of balls the size of grapefruits.

  And a case of grenades.

  “There’s a case of grenades in the raft, right?” Bat said.

  With his hands cupped to his mouth, Jimbo called down to the raft.

  “Bruce! Grenades! By your feet!”

  As the Macedonian searched the deck of the raft, Jimbo and Bat sent down a stream of rounds into the crocs that had reached the gutted carcass. They were feeding on ropey lengths of innards and organs. Even the custom Beowulf rounds were only tickling them.

  In the raft, Byrus found the hardened plastic case of M-67 frags. He pulled a pair from their padded sleeves and held them up for Jimbo to see.

  “Throw them!” Jimbo mimed tossing the grenades.

  One following the other, Byrus overhand tossed the baseball-shaped grenades. One landed with a plunk on the bloody water. The other caromed along the back of a croc. Good throws. On the money. In the ten ring.

  “He didn’t pull the pins,” Bat shouted.

  “Shit! Bruce! The rings! You have to pull the rings!” He made an exaggerated charade of yanking the pull from an imaginary grenade.

  One of the crocs broke from the feeding frenzy, noticing for the first time the shiny black shape wobbling on the water in the reeds, a tiny figure dancing inside and shrieking.

  The Pima’s mime act sparked Byrus’ memory. He’d seen the Rangers deploy grenades before but had never done so himself. He plucked a new grenade from the case and yanked the ring and cotter wire loose. The spoon went flying as he flung the ball toward the croc closing on him, water rushing down its flanks in a gurgling wake.

  The frag sank in the water next to the croc. It went off with a muffled whump. A dome of spray flecked with red flew upward. The croc convulsed, snapping madly at the rent in its side that had appeared with such suddenness. Byrus threw a second grenade which bounced off its scales and detonated in the air, nearly cutting the animal in half in a scything arc of wire shrapnel.

  Finally getting the hang of it, the Macedonian pitched frag after frag into the mass of thrashing crocs still feeding. Rushes of mud, blood, and gore rose into the air as the five remaining frags turned the last of the sarcosuchuses into stew meat. A sustained shower of white-hot shrapnel whistled into the air. Bat and Jimbo hugged the ground.

  The last ambulatory croc was the one still snarled in the hose line and lashings of the larger Zodiac. The raft was a dead loss. The struggles of the giant animal had smashed the hull and flattened the ridged flotation nacelles. Though fatally wounded and enmeshed to near immobility, it still presented a danger to their exfiltration. Jimbo climbed down through the cycads from the hummock, firing at the jerking form as he moved. Bat slid in the mud, catching her boot sole against a palm trunk to stop herself from dropping into the water. She sat in the muck, adding to Jimbo’s fire, blasting at the still-stirring monster through a veil of fronds.

  Their fire was joined by a second source. Boats ran at a trot from the shelter of some ferns, firing controlled bursts as he moved. The croc twisted and swung its tail in deadly arcs under the storm of lead. To Jimbo’s astonishment, the crazy SEAL actually waded into the bloody water to get closer. Boats fired a long burst from near point-blank range into the softer flesh under the croc’s jaw. With a shower of blood from between its teeth, the animal settled back into the water as though falling asleep. Its webbed claws kept flexing as the signals from its brain finally died away.

  “Yeah! Fuck you, gator! Fuck yo mama too!” The SEAL spat on the monster as he slapped a new magazine in place.

  “Where are the others?” Jimbo called down to him. “The hell should I know?” Boats shrugged.

  Just then, Lee burst from the tree line with Chaz and Shan on his heels. All three were running full-out.

  “Get to the boat! Now!” Bat called to them.

  Behind them, something moved in the trees. A massive form took shape in the shadows between the redwoods.

  15

  Night Trips

  Dwayne might have been a god, but he was still an outsider. After their initial curiosity, the inhabitants of the sacred island lost interest in him. Food, water, and flowers were left for him each day. Other than that, he had almost no interaction with any of the locals. He was glad for the total absence of children on the island. Kids were always more attentive to change and actually had longer attention spans than adults. He was always wary of juveniles when he was in-country. You had to keep an eye on kids because they damned sure kept an eye on you, acting as watchdogs and alarms.

  He took to sleeping through most of the day. The days were hot, and the hut provided shade. The cooler nights allowed him free range to explore the island. Most of the guards dozed off in the small hours.

  The lake provided access to the section of the stone embarcadero that ran behind the grand pyramid. He took evening swims in the tepid water, strokes taking him far from the shore. Few of the Aztecs ever entered the water. Those that did only waded. He suspected that few, if any, of them could actually swim. The first time he swam away from the shore, a crowd gathered along the pier to watch him. At first, he thought they might be waiting to watch him get eaten by an alligator. But he thought he recalled that gators were only found in the lower, tropical regions of Mexico. In any case, nothing came out to take a bite.

  On his third night of nocturnal wandering, Dwayne swam across the lake all the way to the far shore. He waded through reeds to where the land rose into wooded hills. He could run into the trees and be twenty miles away by morning. As he slept in most days, they might not miss him until late in the afternoon. He knew how to escape and evade. He’d done SERE school as part of his Ranger training. He was a goddamned expert.

  He fought down the temptation. He could run. But run to what? Without the bracelet, he’d be trapped in a world where he would never have a place. More than that, he’d have to resign himself to never seeing Caroline and his son ever again. He’d have no way to return, and they would have no way to find him.

  Wherever that bracelet took him would remove him from the situation he was in now. Even if it didn’t return him to a place he should be. Even that was problematic. With his limited grasp of how the bracelet functioned, he might return to his own reality but a milli
on years in the past or future. He’d be just as lost as he was now.

  More disturbing would be to return to a time close to when he left but not close enough. He might show up thirty years after he left to find Caroline a senior citizen and his son a stranger to him. Or come out when Caroline was a child or before she was born.

  Deeper questions troubled him. He could very well manifest into a world and time that seemed like his own but was different in significant ways. If his long talks on the subject with Caroline and her brother taught him anything, it was of the endless variables in question with time travel. If the theory of an infinite number of parallel universes, existing side-by-side with the one he knew, was true, then the odds against getting back to the “right” one were insurmountable. Fellow Ranger James Smalls was no scientist but had a view of the whole idea of mirror worlds that Dwayne took some comfort in.

  “I think this whole clusterfuck was created by Harnesh fooling with the plan,” the Pima told him shortly after their last trip back to prehistoric Nevada. They’d been sitting in deck chairs on the stern deck of the Ocean Raj, watching the creamy wake churn behind. They shared a bottle of Jim Beam as they shot the shit.

  “What plan?” Dwayne said.

  “God’s plan. Harnesh screwed with the way things are supposed to be. The results are a cosmic fuck-up. There’s consequences when you mess with God’s plan.”

  “You have to believe in parallel universes. We’ve seen them.”

  “Man-made anomalies.”

  “But science believes that there’s always been multiple universes, an endless series of realities. Sir Neal only added a few more wrinkles.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “You’re a soldier, Jimmy.”

  “And I know bullshit. I know what feels right.”