RUN

DOM#67A

LOSTON, COLORADO

AD 1999

7:00 AM TUESDAY

***ALERT MODE***



Fran held John for long after his story ended, murmuring wordless nothings into his ears, pure sound modulated to provide comfort, caring, and love. She held him as he sobbed upon reaching the point where his father was shot, and kept holding him when he cried out in telling of the moment his father stood up and began walking again. She held him through the entirety of the strange tale that burst forth from him and must have purged him of a lifetime of self-doubt and mystery, while at the same time raising new and perhaps even more deadly questions for them both.

His sobs and cries gradually petered out, and he held her tightly to him, as though afraid she would disappear if he loosed his grip even slightly. But she would not disappear. She would stay for the duration of this nightmare, until they either both woke up or were claimed by death. She would not disappear.

At last, he spoke again, in a voice that was calm and composed, quavering only the slightest bit at the edges. "Time travel," he said.

"What?" she asked, surprised at his sudden speech after long minutes of silence.

"Time travel," he repeated. He gently touched her arm, still wrapped protectively around his chest, and she felt warmth wherever he touched the skin, as though he were somehow branding her. If he was, she discovered that she didn't mind. Whatever this night held, she would not disappear. She was his, if he wanted, and she suspected that he was hers, too. Nothing else could draw two people closer than passing through a nightmare together. Pain and fear were strong ropes, tying them tight to one another with unbreakable cords, and Fran was glad to be in this kind of bondage.

But that realization had to be set aside for a moment. Had to be left for another time, after their mysteries had been resolved and answers had been divined. Survival lay in understanding.

"What about time travel?" she asked.

***

"I saw the Skunk Man the day my dad was killed." John said. "Again in Iraq."

"That's when you said he - Skunk Guy - was killed."

"That's right. But in spite of that fact I saw him again just the other day. The only way that could be possible is through time travel."

"What are you talking about?"

John smiled at the question. He was a computer science teacher. That meant that at heart at least he was something of a nerd. Not in the stereotypical sense, of course. He had no particular penchant for white socks and floodpants, nor did his ensemble include pocket protectors or Scotch-taped glasses. But John felt a deep desire to know how things worked, to understand the ways things were put together and how they could be taken apart. He lived at least part of his life in the virtual world of computers, and that led him to be a dreamer of sorts, a man who could stare out a window one day and see the view, and then the next day he might see only imagination, entire vistas of questions and possibilities that bore little or no relation to what actually lay before him.

Also similar to most nerds - stereotypical or not - John had a tendency to become lost for days at a time in a good science fiction yarn. He had never actually planned on finding himself in one, of course, but the fact was that he had spent countless hours preparing himself for just such an occasion as this. He had studied devoutly at the feet of Professors Asimov and Heinlein, had feverishly pored through texts by Clarke and Card. He had even spent some time with adjunct faculty like Koontz and King, who though not exactly renowned as sci-fi authors, could rightly be counted as such for the alternate realities found in some of their books.

So John knew about time travel. Knew that if it were real, it would allow a man - the Skunk Man, for example - to skip across the ages without showing any sign of aging or wear. "Heck," he told Fran after explaining this to her, "it would also explain how he died and came back. Maybe he lived - or is it lives?" Fran shrugged, showing she, too, was at a loss. Proper grammar fell by the wayside when discussing time travel. John continued, talking as much to himself as to Fran, turning over his hypothesis as he spoke. "So he lives in the future. And on day one he goes back in time to my boyhood for some reason. Then returns to his time. Day two, he goes back in time again, this time showing up in what we think of as the last few days. Then returns again."

"And day three," finished Fran, comprehension dawning on her face, "he goes back in time a third time, to Iraq."

"Which for us happened in between thirty years ago and just last week," acknowledged John with a nod.

"And that's when he gets killed. So to us he died first, but to him it was the last thing."

"Right," said John. "And he could even show up again tomorrow. For all we know he made dozens of trips around time before finally getting killed."

"What if it isn't time travel, though?" asked Fran. "What if it's just triplets or something? Or father and son who look really similar?"

John considered the idea. Then shook his head. "No, it has to be time travel. In addition to the fact that Skunk Man changed zero - and even twins change over the years, to some extent - the guy who killed my dad was wearing some kind of glow suit. I don't know what fabric it was, but it wasn't polyester, and that was about as far as we had gotten when I was a kid. What he wore was weird. It had lights all over it, but not like a Christmas tree. It was more like one of those fiber-optic flashlights you can buy at party shops. Like the fabric was cut from a skein of photons instead of fabric." He shook his head again. "No, it's time travel. That's the only way to explain the Skunk Man."

"So you think that he came - comes, will come, or whatever - from the future?"

"Yeah."

She mulled over the idea. He could see she didn't like it, for it clearly turned her idea of right and wrong in the world upside down and shook it like an Etch-A-Sketch, erasing reality and leaving the slate clean for some new creation. But he could also tell she was accepting it. "Okay, so that explains the Skunk Dude. What about Malachi? What about the crazies who came for Nathan and especially what about people getting killed and then standing up and going for a walk to a friend's house for tea and cakes?"

John pursed his lips. "I'm guessing that the men who killed Nathan and the man who killed my dad are connected with Malachi. He doesn't have the cross shaved in his head like they did, but their m.o. sure seems similar: bust in a door and start shooting with high-caliber weapons. I'm guessing that we represent a threat of some kind to them."

"Sure," she said. "We're caught in a rotten replay of The Terminator. Do you want to be Arnold or Linda Hamilton?"

"Fran –" he started, sensing the anger and fear that were welling up beneath the flippant words.

She cut him off. "No, seriously. For myself, I'm gonna be Robert Patrick. That way I can both have long metal arms and hang out with Scully in X-Files. Good times for all." Her tone was rising as she spoke, the tone growing higher and more strained as panic gripped her. He reached out a hand, intending to comfort and steady her, but she swatted it away, the shakiness of her hands revealing the depth of her terror. "Don't you understand what you're saying? If these people are from the future, then we can never stop running."

John could only respond with silence.

***

Fran could feel the fright bubbling up from a deep well bored through her soul. It was black and alive, curling through her bones and heart like oily black worms, eating her out from the inside. None of this night should be happening, but it was. None of it could be happening, but it was. She wanted to go home and curl up into a ball on her bed and go to sleep until she woke up from this nightmare she had somehow been sucked into. But she knew that she couldn't do that, because the likelihood was that someone would be waiting there: waiting to kill her like they had already tried to do once before, on the night Nathan died.

She wanted this to be over; wanted it to stop. But it wasn't over and it wouldn't stop. She knew that, and knew even more that what John was saying made sense. That it was likely that the goons after them were from the future. But that fact brought with it even more fear.

"If they're from the future," she said, "then they will know where we go, they can read the newspapers or watch a tricorder or whatever future thing they do to locate people and show up with guns at our door any time." Her voice was quavering in a way she did not like to hear. She was a person who preferred optimism. She reveled in it. So hearing this fountain of worst-case scenarios flowing from her lips was disturbing both because the scenarios seemed likely and for the fact that she was unable to think of a silver lining. For the first time in her life, she was scaling a cliff edge that hung out over a deep pit of true despair, and she found she did not like the view at all.

"If they can find us anywhere, anytime," she continued, fighting to keep her voice from breaking, "then we're never going to be able to go home, or get money from our bank, or even write to friends or families for fear that they might use that information to track us down and kill us."

John sighed, then nodded. "Maybe," he said quietly, and Fran felt some of her fear leave her as he spoke, felt that strange tightening in her bosom that she had only felt with Nathan: that sense of true trust and faith in another person. "But maybe not. You asked about the people who stand up and walk after being killed...."

Fran nodded, too worn out by all of the dire possibilities that snarled and howled at her door to be able to vocalize anything further. She hoped what John was about to say would supply her with a needed lifeline of hope, something long enough and strong enough to scale this cliff she found herself perched on and so get away from the despair-filled void below her.

"Well, near as I can tell they've only done that when the goons are doing the shooting."

"What?" she asked, relieved to feel a modicum of calm in her voice.

"The people we've seen get up again are my dad, Gabe, and the sheriff. And all of them were killed by the goons: by Malachi or people like him."

Fran nodded, seeing where he was going. "So you think that maybe that's some kind of response; something meant to help us?"

John nodded as well. "Sure. If Malachi and his people are from the future, maybe there are other people there, too. People trying to help us. Maybe they have some way of reanimating people so that they can protect us from the goons. So in comes Malachi, blows away the sheriff, and is about to kill me, too. But Tal resurrects somehow, and that gives me the time I need to get away. The same thing happened when my dad was killed. He saved me."

"How come Nathan didn't resurrect?" asked Fran, her voice small. The question was not one for which she wanted an answer, not really. She much preferred to leave her husband at peace, and discussing his death in this manner seemed akin to digging up his grave so she could jostle his remains around a bit and wake him up.

"Maybe he did," answered John. "You were in the bathroom, remember? And besides, you said the police came within a minute. Maybe those weren't police. Maybe those were the good guys –"

"The anti-goons," Fran said, and was pleased that she could make such an attempt at levity, weak though it might be.

"Sure," said John with a smile. "Maybe the anti-goons were able to send their own people in as police, to help you out, so Nathan didn't even need to be reanimated."

Fran felt relief sweep through her. She didn't know if this particular bit of speculation was true or not, but it comforted her to think that her Nathan was at peace. That he was not stuck in a mahogany box, hideously resurrected from the grave like some ghoulish Lazarus, but unable to escape the coffin in which he had been lain to rest. He's asleep, she told herself. Asleep, and angels are watching his dreams and making sure he only has good ones.

The raw edge of her panic had been soothed by the hope John's theory offered. She felt her body unclench, and nodded. "Sure. So it's not just the bad guys. Not just the goons. There are anti-goons, too. Maybe helping us out."

"Right. And even if there aren't –"

Fran looked up at John sharply, suddenly afraid he was going to snip the line of hope he had been letting down to her, dropping her into that awful chasm of grief and fear. He must have understood the look she gave him, for he shook his head.

"Relax," he said. "I was going to tell you that even if we did have to go on the run forever, well..."

His voice petered off, and Fran got the strong impression that he wanted to tell her something, but was worried she might take it badly. Strangely curious at what might cause such boyish reticence, she put a hand on his. "What?" she gently asked.

The move seemed to have the opposite effect she was hoping for. John's face grew flushed and his mouth opened and closed like that of a fish trying to work a hook out of its lip. Fran couldn't help but laugh a bit. He was so sweet, so obviously concerned about her comfort, and so darn cute when he was embarrassed. She laughed again, and it felt good to laugh. Laughter was another rope to climb away from despair, and so she laughed even harder, climbing that psychic cable to safety. Despair dwindled below her, growing ever smaller, and when John joined in her laughter, a full-throated belly laugh that shook his frame like a mirthful earthquake, the despair disappeared entirely.

She leaned forward and, still laughing, touched her lips to John's. He blushed again, she could feel his cheeks radiating warmth, but kissed her back. The contact was quick and light, not a kiss of lovers but one of friends, greeting one another after a long absence. It was fondness and friendship and hope. Fran smiled at him, and he smiled back.

Still blushing, he said, "If we do have to run, well...there are ways to hide and stay hidden forever. And I know them all."

Sobered, she said, "Well, that takes care of you, but I don't know any of them."

His face grew completely serious, all traces of laughter flown. "I would take care of you." He hesitated, and his mouth did the fish move again. Fran smiled, waiting for whatever was coming. "I..."

"Yes?"

His jaw stopped pumping. He took a deep breath as though to draw in strength from the dusty air around them, then simply said, "I love you."

She felt her smile deepen, and said in return, "Good. Because I love you, too."

This time he kissed her, and again it was sweet. But more lingering this time. Still friendship and hope, but also love and passion was in this kiss, as though both of them knew that the world was ending and this was all that remained and all that really mattered.

And perhaps it was.





Michaelbrent Collings's books