Time Spent (23 page)

The soldiers found him there, huddling and
mumbling to himself, over and over.

"Be brave...be brave...be brave..."

______________________

"What do you mean, abandoned you?" Brandon
shouted. "Get over here and help her, damn it!"

Zachary just stood, leaning against the
wall, arms wrapped around himself.

Brandon stood and got right in Zachary's
face. "Zachary, listen to me. Look at me."

Zachary lifted his eyes.

Brandon took a hold of his shoulders. "I
don't know whether there's a God or not. I don't know whether there
are aliens or not. But somehow we have these powers and I believe
we have them for a reason. You believe that, don't you?"

Zachary nodded sullenly. "To stop the end
times."

"To be heroes," Brandon said. "Right? We're
here to be heroes."

Zachary nodded.

"Heroes don't let each other die, do
they?"

"No, but I can't-"

Brandon cut him off. "HEROES DON'T LET EACH
OTHER DIE."

Zachary shook his head.

"Now get over there."

Zachary slowly nodded. He walked over and
kneeled beside Mia, placing his hands on her. Nothing happened. He
lifted his hands and replaced them, concentrating.

Again, nothing.

"Mia," he said. "It's Zachary. Can you hear
me?"

"I hear..." Mia's voice trailed off.

"You have to do it. I can't. You have to
fight it."

"Can't..." Her head shook violently.
"Energy...feeds it."

Zachary leaned closed and peered at the
circuitry. "No...your energy isn't feeding it. Your energy is
fighting it. That's why when you use your energy for something else
the metal wins. You have to fight it."

"Can't..."

"I know." Zachary leaned very close,
whispering in her ear. "You feel like God has abandoned you. But he
didn't. God gave you your powers so you could fight. He's with you.
He's always with you." He reached down and took Mia's right hand in
his. "Be brave."

A warm glow began to rise in Zachary's
chest. It passed down his arm to his hands, and when it met Mia's
hand, it exploded into a ball of yellow energy, Mia's energy. The
yellow energy flared and spread up her arm and into her chest. As
it spread up her neck and into her face, the circuitry began to
wilt and peel away.

As the energy filled her body, the last of
the metal slivers fell away and dissolved into nothing.

Mia drew in a giant breath as the energy
faded. "Thank you."

"I didn't do anything." Zachary said. "The
Bible says...the Bible..."

He sat back and a wave of sadness and loss
filled him. Tears spilled down his face. He lowered his face into
his hands and wept.

"What's wrong?" asked Mia.

"My Poppa is gone, and I lost my Bible,"
Zachary said. "He gave it to me, and I lost it. I lost my
Bible...and my Poppa is gone."

When the tears had subsided, Brandon helped
Zachary to his feet and took him to where Kevin lay. "Can you help
him?"

"I don't know. I'll try."

He walked over to Kevin, still lying on the
floor, twitching. Zachary sat beside him, and placed his hands on
Kevin's chest.

Instantly, Kevin's eyes opened and he sucked
in air.

"Kevin?" Brandon knelt beside him. "You
okay?"

"Yeah." Kevin sat up. "I'm okay, I think.
Thanks, Zachary."

Zachary raised an eyebrow. "But I didn't do
anything."

"We know," Becca said. "God did it." They
all laughed.

"That's not what I meant."

Brandon helped Kevin to his feet. "Glad
you're back."

"Where is she?" Kevin looked around. "Is she
here?"

"The red woman?" Brandon shook his head. "We
don't even know who she is or what she is."

"She's the Devil," Zachary said.

Kevin shook his head. "She's not the Devil.
But she is dangerous. We need all of us together again."

"Simon tried looking into the future, to see
what she's up to," Brandon said.

Simon growled. "Forget it. The future's too
slippery. What I saw doesn't make much sense."

"The future..." Kevin snapped his fingers.
"I know who we need!"

Brandon shook his head. "Oh no, no, what
does that mean? I hate when you say that!"

Kevin vanished.

"Why do you hate it when he says that?"
Becca asked.

"The last time he said that he...ah...never
mind."

Becca slapped him on the back of the head.
"A, I can hear your thoughts. B, fuck you."

A crack formed in the center of the room,
and through it Kevin stepped, tossing a man down to the floor in
front of them, a man with white hair and a tattered white lab
coat.

The man lifted his head and looked around at
them. Every one of them recognized him instantly.

"Hello, children." Carl Macklin ran a hand
through his hair, smoothing it.

Suddenly he gasped, and clapped his hands to
the sides of his head.

"What have you done?" He looked around at
them frantically.

"...WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO THE FUTURE??"

CHAPTER NINE

Carl tried to bite down, but the chunk of
fruitcake he had managed to saw off with his fork was impossible to
chew. He set the small plate down on the lace-covered table beside
him. Lifting his napkin to his mouth, he spit the cake out into it
and balled it up, resting the soggy lump on his plate.

He shifted uncomfortably in his suit. He
hated wearing these things, but his mother had insisted upon it.
The other children at his table were dressed similarly, in suits
and dresses, and chattering on about one banal subject after
another.

Carl stood, and walked through the sitting
room where his mother was being comforted by aunts and uncles and
friends of the family. She was dressed all in black, quietly
weeping on a small sofa, Carl's aunt Sofia sitting next to her, arm
around her shoulders. Carl had no idea where his father was,
probably drinking somewhere, perhaps the garage.

With no desire to return to the kids' table,
and no interest in having any more adults ask him "how he was doing
with all this", he walked upstairs and wandered into his brother's
room. None of the family had made it up here, it seemed, and a
peaceful quiet pervaded the place. His parents hadn't been able to
dispose of any of Terrence's things, so the room was undisturbed. A
fine layer of dust lay over the shelves and night stands. Carl ran
a finger through it absently, leaving a finger trail through the
dust on a low shelf, pausing at a small toy plane with its landing
gear out. He picked up the plane and turned it in his hands,
imagining it firing its guns, perhaps wiping out the platoon of
Viet Cong soldiers that had killed his brother.

Carl tried to wrap his mind around the fact
that his brother was never coming back to this room, and couldn't.
He sat on the edge of the bed, the bed in which his brother would
never again sleep, and stared at the toy plane as if he could
personally pick his brother up in it and fly him back home.

"What are you doing in here?"

His father was standing in the door, a glass
of whisky on the rocks in one hand.

Carl just stared at him.

"You don't belong in here. This isn't your
room. It's his." His father took a long sip from the glass, and
stepped into the room.

Carl's voice was nearly a whisper. "Not any
more."

"What did you say to me?" His father
approached the bed.

"Nothing."

His father sat on the bed next to him. Carl
attempted to stand, but his father placed a hand on his shoulder
and pushed him back down. "Don't you be smart with me, Carl. Not
today."

"Yes, sir."

His father reached over and took the toy
plane from him. Carl felt protests well within him, but he knew
better than to give them voice. His father turned the toy plane
over in his hands, looking at it for a moment, then threw it across
the room, to land in the small waste bin in the corner. Carl saw
one of the landing wheels break off as the plane bounced off the
wall into the bin. The wheel sailed off somewhere into the deep
carpet.

"He was gonna go to college," his father
said, taking another sip of whisky. "He was gonna be an
engineer."

Carl nodded.

"He was gonna be somebody. Not like me,
working in a plant his whole life. That's for nobodies. That's what
you're gonna end up doing too, just like me."

Again, Carl wanted to protest, but
didn't.

"Not your brother, though. He had it all
lined up in front of him. He was gonna be better. He was gonna be
somebody."

Carl folded his hands in his lap and stared
at them.

"He had a future."

______________________

Carl opened his eyes. The scorching heat of
the twin suns pressed down on him like an unfathomably hot, dry
hand, pressing the air out of his lungs. How long he had been
unconscious he did not know, he only knew that he was closer to
death than he had ever been, and part of him was okay with
that.

As he stared upward, part of him
contemplating death, another part of his mind calculated the angles
of the twin suns, their distance from this strange world on which
he found himself, and he found he actually did know how long he had
been out: twenty minutes. Not long, in the grand scheme of things,
he supposed, but when every minute carried you closer to your
death, twenty minutes could be an eternity.

It had taken him hours to pick his way down
the mountain, every hand and foothold chosen with slow, deliberate
precision. When the suns sank below the horizon, the world had gone
pitch dark and bitterly cold. Still, he pressed on. By carefully
examining the timelines in front of him every time he reached out a
hand or foot, he was able to keep on through the night, choosing
the placement that led him successfully down the mountain. Carl had
lost track of the number of times he had seen himself tumble
downward, breaking every bone in his body against the rocks. He
didn't want to think about the number of futures he had seen in
which he lay at the base of the mountain forever.

Gritting his teeth against the cold,
steeling his fear against the night, he had kept moving, one hand
after another, one foot after another, making his way down the
mountain until he had finally collapsed in exhaustion as the rock
gave way to a gentler slope.

When day came, Carl had looked out on the
alien landscape and, for the first time, had known real despair. At
the base of the slope, dry, cracked soil stretched away in all
directions. Twin suns beamed down from overhead, cooking him in
their constant heat as surely as if he were in an oven. Carl had
removed his lab coat and put it over his head, trying to keep
himself shaded as best he could, but looking out over the land
before him, he saw no good outcome. He had begun walking, but
unlike his climb down the mountain, every possible destination
seemed the same.

Now, lying on the desert floor, he knew he
had reached his end.

The paths in front of him played out in his
mind, hundreds of scenarios unfolding at once, and every one of
them ended the same. He saw this place, right where he lay,
stretching out into forever. Carl had gradually begun to understand
that he was unable to see past his own death, that every time he
saw something like this, a single place unchanging forever, it
meant he had died there. He understood now what the visions were
telling him when he had tried to foresee the future for Kevin.

I can't...It's just...it's just this place.
Endless barren rock....everywhere...forever...

Carl closed his eyes again.

"I'm going to die here," his voice croaked
from between his cracked lips.

Then, he heard a very different voice. His
father's voice.
You don't have a future.

Carl opened his eyes. He pressed his palms
against the hot, baked desert floor and lifted himself up. His lab
coat lay next to him, dusty and torn. He picked it up and placed it
over his head, crawling to his feet with Herculean effort.

"No." He cast his eyes to the horizon,
searching, concentrating. "I'm going to win. There's a way out and
I'm going to find it."

He wiped the grit from his eyes and focused
all his will on searching timelines.

A sound drifted to him then, a rumbling,
grumbling constant noise, followed by the feeling of something
rushing over his legs. Carl looked down, and saw only his dusty
shoes and the sun-baked soil.

"What is this?"

The sound rose, and now a vision joined it:
Carl saw water rushing over the valley floor, flowing to his right,
the south, away from the mountain and into the distance. Looking
back upstream, he saw a world very different from the one on which
he stood. He was in the midst of a river, which originated from
somewhere near the north face of the mountain. Across the river
were fertile lands, filled with green trees.

Carl was baffled for a moment, but his mind
began to supply him with an explanation. He was able to detect,
break down and analyze differences in the atmosphere around him
from the world of his vision, telling him how many millions of
years ago those trees had stood. He wasn't seeing the future at
all.

"It's the past," he croaked. "I'm seeing the
past."

Rather than probable futures, his mind was
rolling back the timeline of the valley, giving him a glimpse of
how it had existed several million years before, when this had been
a fertile river basin.

And in that past, Carl knew, was the key to
his future. If water had once flowed here, there might still be
water in the underground aquifers from whence it had once sprung.
Carl turned his gaze north, following the reverse flow of the
river, and examined the future timelines again.