Most men can't make it through even five words of what I'm about to tell you (21 page)

"Let's get the fuck outta here!"

We ran.

We pushed through the front doors. When we looked back, we saw screaming children spil out of the fat lady's

classroom. The bugs smelled them and swarmed them under in seconds, the bugs crawling over little faces and hands

and jamming their bodies into tiny mouths.

"Shit!" I said, to no one. "That's fucked up!"

"Shut the door!"

No argument there. We got the door closed but had no means to lock it. I leaned my body against it, felt weight on the

other side trying to force it open. The screams from beyond the door were so constant it became one sound.

John took off and I heard a door shut on his Caddie. He fired up the engine. I turned to see him back into the street, then

turn hard onto the sidewalk and across the lawn. He hit the bottom of the short flight of concrete steps below where I was

standing, and hit the gas. The front tires thudded up the stairs and I stepped aside. He edged the grill of the Caddie

against the wooden doors, bracing them shut.

John climbed out of the car and circled to the trunk. He popped it open. "Guys! Come back here."

We did. He said, "We al know what we gotta do here, right? Each kid in there can hatch thousands of those things, and

each person they infect can hatch thousands more, right? Right?"

I nodded.

"So we know what we gotta do."

John grabbed the long UPS shipping container I had seen in his trunk earlier. He ripped it open, and pul ed out a long

device with a pistol grip.

He handed it to Amy. She said, "What is-"

"-It's a speargun. They use it to shoot whales. You see the trigger there, that thing there is a safety mechanism. There, it's off now. It fires a harpoon four feet long, but you only got one shot. So wait until you've got four or five kids lined up before you fire, see if you can impale them al at once."

John reached into the trunk and pulled out my chainsaw. He pul ed the cord. The engine growled to life. He pulled the

trigger and the teeth spun in a blur.

"Okay," said John, taking a deep breath. "Remember, these are children. Aim low."

"Wait!" Amy said, making an impatient gesture with her hand. "Wait. This... this doesn't seem right."

"In what way?"

"Look... okay, we went through that door and, like, traveled a couple of hours into the future..."

I said, "Right..."

I heard glass break from just behind the door. The sound of desperate fists thumping on the wood grew louder.

"Okay, then why can't we go back? Go back, before this, back far enough so that we can stop him from, giving birth or

whatever. If we lost three hours coming through we should be able to gain it going back."

"There is no evidence that can be done. Going into the future is no big deal, hel , we're doing it right now. But going back, that's another thing..."

"Bullshit!" said John. "Those shadow bastards do it al the time! What have we been talking about?"

"Well, yeah,
they
can do it. But that doesn't mean we-"

"I don't think
we
can, either. But I think
you
can."

A beat of silence, as I stared hard at John, making sure he knew that I knew what he was implying.

"No," I said. "I am
not
going through there and winding up by the mal and that tower thing. I'll get swal owed up."

"Then concentrate on going somewhere else," said Amy, getting exasperated. "David, we have to try this. I'm not going to spend the rest of the day helping you kill children."

Fine. I jogged back toward the Book Mobile. I closed the rear door, left my hand on the latch. I took a deep breath. I

opened the door.

Books.

I closed it again. I heard glass breaking, saw two boys climbing out of a window of the school. Pale little dots spil ed down

the bricks around them. Escaping bugs.

I opened the door. Still books.

I closed it again, breathed again, tried to concentrate on going back, to before al this. And going somewhere safe. Like

my house.

I opened the door.

I saw a small, bright room. And water, running down from above.

I went in.

An odd feeling. Dream-like. The moment I went through that door all sensation changed. Everything I saw had a warped

quality to it, and I realized with a start that I could see in every direction. 360 degrees. Seeing what was going on behind

me wasn't a matter of turning, but simply shifting my attention.

I did just that and I saw... myself. I saw my own body, dressed in filthy clothes, standing with hands on the metal frame of

a truck door, frozen.

I realized, just then, that I had left my body. I understood then, on some level, that going back meant doing it this way. But

what could I accomplish?

I decided to press on. The water rained down in front of me, and when I went fully through I found myself standing in it.

Beyond the water was a plastic curtain, and it was only my general confusion over the situation that kept me from

recognizing it as my own shower. I could feel the water drumming on my head now, but knew I wasn't getting wet from it. I

reached out a hand to pull back the curtain, but saw no hand extend.

I wasn't sure what to do about this, but a moment later a hand appeared from the other side of the curtain and ripped it

back.

It was me. Naked. I looked at myself, and not without some disgust. It was an awkward moment. I wasn't sure if the naked

me could see the out-of-body me, but I did look awfully confused.

I tried to slowly and inconspicuously move out of the shower and leave the room. What day was this? Where had I taken

myself? I passed through my bedroom and entered the living room.

It al seemed very confused and pointless. My view started changing, going lower as if I was crouching. I realized I was

sinking through the floor. I panicked a little and concentrated on trying to stand, to make the floor solid. I found I could do

it, with effort.

I looked at the little table next to me, the one by the door. I tried experimentally to move several objects, difficult since I

couldn't see my hand. I was able to push a coin a few inches, though, much to my surprise. I tried to pick up the phone,

couldn't. I could sense it as a physical object, but it felt impossibly heavy to me.

I tried something lighter, the plastic Wally's name tag I had thrown down next to my keys. I picked it up, with some effort,

and felt proud of myself. What was I doing here again? Oh, yeah.

I heard myself come stomping through the bedroom, and moved to duck behind my coat tree. I felt ridiculous for hiding

from myself. Did I say I ducked behind the coat tree? I actual y ducked
through
it. It was a terrible, itchy sensation. I crouched down, or thought I did, and was fascinated to see that I could look right into the middle of my coats. Thin layers

of insulated lining, wadded-up tissues in the pockets.

It occurred to me that I still had the nametag and the other me might spot it floating near the coat tree. I pul ed it in and

after several attempts was able to cram it into the inside pocket of the black leather jacket hanging next to me.

I watched myself wander by, looking paranoid and crazy and fat. It was slowly coming to me that I remembered this day,

back before all this. The three hours I had been trying to get back by going through the door turned out to be closer to

three months.

I watched the physical me go out the front door, off to a bad day at work. I made my way toward the bathroom again.

Molly padded by and I wished I could take her back with me, for Amy's sake. Even if it were possible, it'd probably disrupt

some kind of time continuum.

I faced the shower stall. There was no door for me to go through this time, but that was okay, I thought. I think this would

be a one-way thing for something in a body, like the trucker who had arrived here presumably from the shitter at the

construction site. But I, in my present state, should be able to pass through. A wall was no impediment at this point.

I concentrated, tried to aim for a time closer to when I had left. Just a little before, enough time to affect a change. I went

through...

I landed back in my body with a jolt, a feeling like you sometimes get just as you're falling asleep and twitch yourself

awake. I found myself running toward the front door of the school, pants caked with mud. John's Caddie wasn't at the

door.

I stopped, said, "Wait! Wait!"

Damn. I had only gone back about twenty minutes, to the moment when we first came back from the construction site. So,

should I try again? Fuck it.

I said, "Franky's already hatched. The bug things are crawling all over that basement. We open the door and they'll come

flying out."

John said, "How do you-"

"-It doesn't matter. We go charging in there, everything's gonna fall apart. They'll get the guard on us, and it doesn't matter because we're too late to move Franky anyway. No. No, we got to get the kids outta there, that's the big thing now."

"Okay," said John. "Good idea. Hey, why don't we call in a bomb threat?"

"From my cell phone? I'd still like to stay out of jail, if possible."

Amy piped up. "We can just pul the fire alarm."

"Good!" I said. "We stil gotta get inside the building, though. And we look like shit."

"Amy's not bad. No blood at least. They wouldn't stop her, would they?"

"Oh!" I said, digging in my inside pocket. "Check this shit."

I pul ed out my Wal y's manager name tag, still in the spot where I had put it months/seconds ago. It was just a plastic tag

painted to look like brass, with "D. WONG" etched on it in black. I held it up.

"D. Wong. Could stand for anything. You stick this bad boy on her shirt and ain't nobody gonna stop her."

"Even better," John said, walking back to his trunk. He opened it and pul ed out a cardboard box, about a foot on each side. He pulled back one flap to reveal it was full of smaller boxes of ink pens.

"I brought these home from work. Carry this, that guard asks you what it is and you can say, 'I got your fuckin' ink pens.

I'm supposed to put them in the cafeteria.' Cafeteria's al the way on the other side of the building so he'll let you go."

I said, "They've got those red levers for the alarm by every entrance. I say go down and turn right in that first hal . Out toward the side door. Pull it and get the hell outta there."

"But I need those pens back," John said. "So don't drop them."

Amy picked up the box. "So... what do we do once all the kids are out?"

"We set a fire, obviously." I pinned the name tag on her shirt. "Burn those little bug bastards before they can get out."

"Okay."

"All right," said John. "I can't think of anything that can go wrong with this plan."

We sent Amy inside, with her box. John and I went to the Caddie and drove away.

Actual y, we just pulled away and parked it in the lot of the closed muffler shop next to the school. We didn't want it to be

remembered near the school if there should be an arson investigation later. We got out and walked around the side of the

school, staying across the lawn and out near the street.

I scanned a series of small windows at the base of the building and said, "There. Third one from the left. I think that's it, I remember from the dream. See how part of it's painted over? I think I remember that."

We waited. I looked at the furgun, wondered if it had a limited number of shots.

Fire
, I thought.
Just think about fire and squeeze the trigger. Fire. Fire. Fire-

I heard a sharp ringing from inside the building.

The first person out was Amy, jogging toward us from the metal door on the side of the building. She didn't have the box.

John said, "Where's my pens?"

"The guard has them! He insisted on carrying the box for me! I think he liked me. He took them to the cafeteria and I told

him I had to use the bathroom. I just pulled the thing and ran out."

We crossed the street and walked inconspicuously around the sidewalk, near a closed muffler shop. We watched as the

teachers herded the kids out onto the lawn. Kind of deliberate about it, I thought, but then again they probably thought it

was just a drill or something.

After the last person left the school, we waited ten minutes, looking for any stragglers.

I walked, alone, across the lawn and toward the window I was pretty sure lead to the boiler room.

I glanced around for witnesses. There were about two hundred.

About twenty feet away, I pointed the furgun, thinking
fire, fire, fire...

I squeezed the trigger.

Nothing. It made the sound, but that was it.

Someone was heading toward me, a lady, a teacher I guess. Probably tel ing me to get away from the building.

I backed off, held up a hand to tell her I understood. I walked back toward John and Amy, when I heard a whistling sound

from above.

Above me I saw a yellow streak of light, followed by a thin trail of smoke.

A meteor.

I ran. I heard screams and gasps.

With a howl of rushing, burning air, the meteor impacted the school right at the base, a dead shot at the window.

There was a thunderous crunch of smashed bricks and exploded boards. A hunk of flying brick smacked me in the back

and almost knocked me over.

I kept running. Then, maybe three seconds after impact, there was a heavier explosion as the boiler ruptured. A bal of fire

and black smoke spilled out of a hole big enough to drive a van through. A group of children cheered and clapped behind

me.

John and Amy were already running toward his car. I walked, not wanting to look conspicuous. As if somebody could