Shift (ChronoShift Trilogy) (14 page)

The article was dated April 16, 1934.

“Who was this boy?”

“An unfortunate soul whose flame was snuffed out prematurely.”

“You want me to go back and try to save him?”

Hardy smiled.  It was a friendly smile, and a hard one to resist.

“How do we know he wouldn’t be just like my kids?  I mean, why would we be able to save him if I couldn’t save my own?”

“We have strong reason to believe it wouldn’t turn out that way.”

“I’ll think about it.  How about that?”

Hardy smiled again and handed him the newspaper article.  “When you get back, I’ll be in touch.”

Dang this Hardy Phillips and his smug assuredness.

April 12
^th
, 1934, Chicago, IL

“Herbie, wait up!”

A skinny red-headed kid ran to catch up to the slightly older boy.  Freckles dotted his face and neck heavily.

“Hey, Chuck.  What gives?  I thought you had to work the night shift.”

“Nah, skipped out.”

“Man, the old man’ll have your job
and
your neck for that.”

“Aww, he can shove it.  I’m tired of that ol’ dirt bag anyhow.  All he does is work ya to death for pennies.”

“Ya gotta eat.”

“Yeah, but I got enough fer today.  That’ll do.  I can get me a job somewhere’s else any time.”

“Don’ know 'bout that, jobs are scarcer than hen’s teeth right now.”

“Lay off, will ya, Herbie.  Ya gonna hack my case all night or we gonna go eat.”

Herbie laughed.  “Let’s go.”

Mark eavesdropped on their conversation from across the walkway.  Herbie was Herbert Walker Jr., the boy who would be murdered in a few days.  Earlier today, Mark had asked for and gotten a job at the same factory where Herbie worked.  While Herbie and others his age would work for a mere 30 cents an hour, grown men normally earned closer to 50 to 55 cents.  Mark, however, had walked in off the street and offered to work for only 25 cents an hour.  These were tough times and men were desperate.

The foreman, Rory O’Toole, was hot-tempered and mean.  You could see it just by looking into his squinty eyes.  That he was a drinker was evidenced by his bulbous red nose and blotchy, vein-filled cheeks.  He’d immediately jumped at the opportunity for cheaper labor and hired Mark, firing one of the other men to make room for him.

Mark hadn’t wanted to get anybody fired, but he needed to stay close to Walker so he could learn his habits and be in a position to save the boy later.

He learned over the next few days that Herbie and his friends were more than familiar with hard work.  They arrived at the plant every morning around 6 AM and worked until well into the evening, and it wasn't uncommon for O'Toole to ask one of them to work on through the night shift too.

Much of the time, Mark succeeded in positioning himself near the boy during their shifts.  Anywhere that Herbie went, Mark was sure to go.  He became his clandestine shadow, unseen and unnoticed, yet never more than twenty feet away, listening to conversations, identifying potential threats.

Mark learned a good bit about the boy.  He was alone in Chicago, trying to earn enough money to keep room and board at a nearby shelter.

His parents had heard work was to be had out in California, and in these hard times, any chance of hope, even a mere rumor, was enough to make a family jump.  They had begun a migration of the whole clan from Philadelphia out west, but the expenses of the trip proved to be too much of a burden.  Every mouth to feed was one mouth too many, and Herbie was old enough to make it on his own.  At least, they had desperately wanted to be believe he was.  So, they’d left him to fend for himself in Chicago.

The Depression ripened young men and women into adults long before their time, and that early maturation often led to early rotting as well, though in Herbie's case, the morals his parents had impressed into him seemed to be enduring.

They'd promised to write, but he'd never gotten a letter, not that he didn't keep checking the local post office.  No phone calls either.  Chicago was a big city, Herbie reasoned.  Some day he'd save up enough money to follow them out to California.  Then, they'd be together again.

Young Walker had been working at this factory for several months now, and by all accounts, he was a great employee.  He excelled at whatever he did, and made an effort to go beyond the call of duty, even though he was never rewarded for his efforts.  Instead, he lived under the constant threat of losing his job to someone who would work for less.  Still, the boy plugged on, working toward some unknown goal he kept private inside his head.

***

Today was the 16
^th
and the lunch whistle had just blown.  Tonight was the night Herbie would be attacked and killed.  Mark had already pieced together parts of an overall plan to intervene, but he still had to work out the details.

For now, all the men were pouring out of the factory, so Mark began following Walker and a few others out to the waterfront where they would snarf down their cold sandwiches before the whistle shrieked again, signaling the end of the very short break.

“Hey, Scab!”

Mark glanced up and, much to his dismay, saw the insult had been directed his way.  Its author was a large, rough-looking, bearded man who looked more like a lumberjack than a waterfront worker.

“Yeah, I’m talkin’ to ya!”  The man strode briskly toward Mark, closing the gap between them quickly.

“You’re the reb who stole my job, ain’t ya?”

This nut was the man Mark had displaced when he’d gotten a job at the factory a few days ago. 
Why couldn’t it have been somebody without a temper?

Mark nodded politely, sincerely wishing to mollify him.  “I’m sure you’ll find a better job, sir.”  A fight would draw unneeded attention.

“Maybe in the next life!”

The man was clearly enraged.  It was going to be tough to defuse him.

There was no time for diplomacy.  The man took a swing.  Mark deftly stepped aside.  His military training ensured this fight would not be a fair one.  The brute came at him again.  Mark swiveled and artfully redirected the man’s momentum, causing him to fall flat on his face.  Chuckles murmured through the crowd that had gathered to watch.

Suddenly, stars swam in Mark’s vision as he felt a jarring blow to the back of his neck.  He fell to one knee.  A skinnier man stood behind him, wielding a two by four and grinning like the Cheshire Cat.  Probably one of the brute’s friends.

Instinct took over now.  The situation had just become dangerous.  Mark’s leg shot out, pounding the skinny attacker in the kneecap, hard.  The man yelled painfully and dropped to one knee himself.  Next, Mark threw a double punch, one to the stomach, which knocked the wind out of the man, and a second to the throat.  He made sure not to hit him hard enough to collapse his larynx, but the man would be out of commission for a while.

The burlier man who’d started the fight had recovered and charged at full speed.  Mark tried to dodge again, but the goon’s long arm reeled him back in, and then they were dancing.

The man put a lot of power behind his blows, but Mark knew how to angle his body to deflect most of the force naturally.  Meanwhile, Mark’s strikes were much more measured and strategic.  He had to hand it the guy though.  He was certainly determined.  It took 15 to 20 cycles of this violent dance before the man was disabled enough that he couldn’t continue the fight.

He collapsed onto the street in a fetal position, moaning.

“Aggieeeee!  Oh Aggie, I’m soooorry!”  He rolled back and forth, from side to side, weeping, his agony on display for all to see.

            “His name’s Angus Todd,” came a voice from behind.  The speaker was another worker from the factory.  “Aggie’s his wife.  This job was the first time he’d been able to put real food on his family’s table in months.”

Lord, did everything have to be painful?

***

Fog rolled in from the bay, forming a mystical atmosphere along the wharf like a scene from an old mystery movie set in London.  Herbie and one of his friends walked a ways ahead of Mark, idly chatting and cracking jokes along the way, oblivious to their surroundings.  Mark knew that somewhere just ahead, death awaited one of them.

A single arc lamp made a poor attempt to light the wharf with its weak white light.  A dark alley opened into the lit street about twenty feet in front of the boys.  Its mouth was pitch black.  If someone were going to lie in wait, that would be the ideal spot.

Mark's experiences in past efforts to change historical events had taught him a thing or two about potential problems that could arise, so he’d planned accordingly.  There would be no mistakes this time.  Unless that unseen force froze him in place again.

That alleyway had to be the source of the attack.  As the boys were about to pass in front of it, two men, no more than common thugs, rushed them from the darkness.  The leader drew ahead of his partner.  A ready jackknife in his hand glimmered wickedly under the light like a silvery snake darting back and forth, searching for its next victim.  The other thug held a heavy baseball bat menacingly.

Mark did not recognize either of them from the factory.  They were probably just common thieves.  No inside job, no on-site jealousy, just a plain old mugging, and Walker was at the wrong place at the wrong time.

Mark could see how it was going to go down.  The knife-bearing thug would arrive first, and stab Herbie, probably fatally.

Herbie’s young friend had seen the thieves out of the corner of his eye and was already instinctively turning to run away, which is probably what saved him.

Mark broke into a hard sprint.   He needed to get into the right position, which depended on the exact positions of the other players.

The first thug didn’t give a warning.  He just thrust his knife into Herbie’s abdomen.  The boy let out a surprised cry, a startled and weak call for help.

            Don't worry, Herbie.  Help is on the way.

           
Mark noted the exact moment of the stabbing on his shifter, but he didn’t slow down.  He needed to get as close to the scene as possible.  He was running silently and the thugs hadn’t noticed him yet; they were too focused on the other boy who was getting away.

Mark halted immediately to the left of Herbie’s fallen form.  Startled by his sudden presence, the lead thug jerked around and slung his knife Mark’s way.

The blade arched toward Mark’s abdomen, but he pushed the red button and shifted out of the scene a second before being seriously wounded.

Same street, but now it was empty.  He was 8 hours in the future, and there was a blood stain on the pavement where Herbie had fallen.

Mark had carefully taken note of the exact positions of both Walker and his attacker, and he knew the exact time the knife had struck.  Mark moved forward a couple of steps and shifted back to several seconds before Herbie would be stabbed.

Instantly, he was in the middle of the murder again.  Herbie’s face was fixated on his approaching attacker.  Mark reached out, wrapped his hand tightly around the thug’s wrist, and yanked hard, deflecting the blow.  The hoodlum’s mouth dropped open in shock.

Mark snapped the wrist upward sharply, and the crack of bone confirmed he'd broken it.  The thief hollered in pain and his knife clattered harmlessly to the ground.  Mark scooped it up and shifted out of the scene again.

He calmly walked around the now once again empty pavement to a spot immediately behind where the attacker would be standing hours earlier.  The blood stain marking the concrete where Herbie fell was gone now.  That made him smile.  Mark shifted back into the fight exactly one second after he had left.

The thug was now in front of Mark, grasping his wrist in pain.  Mark plunged the knife into his back between his shoulder blades, felling the hoodlum for good.  Then, he shifted right back out again.

Mark had become all too familiar with killing while in the Marines.  He’d long ago reasoned out his code of ethics regarding it.  Murder would always be murder, but all killing was not murder.  A soldier must learn to kill the enemy wherever he finds them without hesitating or second-guessing.

This was clearly a case of defending the innocent.  True, he could have saved Herbie by simply disabling the thug, but what about the next victim?  A man who would so callously take the life of someone over a few dollars would just do so again another day if given another chance.  No, the thug could no longer be trusted with life.  In fact, it would be irresponsible of Mark to let him live.

He was feeling a little nauseous now, so he took a breather.  He’d shifted too many times in a row.  He waited until the shops along the waterfront opened up.  He ate breakfast at a nice sidewalk café and then strolled around town until he found a sporting goods store, where he bought a baseball bat. 

Feeling rested, Mark returned to the scene of the crime.  Before leaving, he’d marked with chalk the approximate spot where the second attacker would be standing.  Now, he placed himself in a spot he guessed would be behind the guy.  Then, Mark shifted back in.