Written in Time (63 page)

Jack, usually gifted with realizing his own shortcomings, knew that he wasn’t as good at arms as Standing Bear and probably never would be. But as Jack was wont to remind himself at moments such as this one, how many novels, magazine articles and short stories had Standing Bear published? A person would excel in his or her own way; all that was necessary was to excel.
 

The butt of his MP-5 snugged to his shoulder, Jack Naile started to advance, Ellen beside and slightly behind him. Gunfire was general now, the number of heavily armed Lakewood Industries personnel considerably greater than Jack had anticipated.
 

There was no Plan B upon which they could fall back, success with this plan or failing totally the only options open to them. One of the Lakewood personnel, armed with an M-16, charged them, firing, his bullets cutting a swathe in the sandy ground a foot to the left and a yard behind Jack’s feet, missing Ellen by mere inches. Anger welling up inside him—the man had been deliberately aiming for Ellen—Jack fired a series of short bursts. Jack didn’t miss.
 

It wasn’t the first time she’d almost been shot, certainly. But Ellen’s knees felt a little weak as she stooped to untangle the rifle from the man her husband had just shot to death. The fellow had something that looked like a canvas purse slung crossbody to his left hip. A quick glance inside confirmed that she had just acquired four spare magazines in addition to the rifle. She had never fired an M-16, but had fired its civilian counterpart when Jack had owned one years ago.
 

“Put it on semi unless you need it,” Jack advised, Ellen watching intently as he flicked a selector switch on the rifle. Then Jack was moving again. Sensible people would have taken cover, Ellen knew, and perhaps Jack was heading toward cover of some kind, but she realized that caution was less important for their—some would say “piteously”—small force than seizing control of the time-transfer base while some element of surprise still remained. If they lost their lives, but the mission somehow succeeded, that would be counted a victory in the larger scheme of things.
 

A man was coming up on her left, a semi-automatic pistol in his right hand. Ellen brought the rifle she carried to her shoulder. She noticed that the rifle’s buttstock was a little on the long side for her when she lowered her cheek to bring her right eye in line with the sights. The Lakewood man was about to shoot. Ellen shot first, then fired a second shot and a third. The man went down, dead or close to it. Ellen guessed the battle had been going on for well under a minute.
 

Beside and a little behind Jack, Ellen ran toward what seemed the largest of the prefabricated buildings. Out of synch with the feminine stereotype, perhaps, Ellen had never eschewed violence, nor, however, had she sought it out. She remembered the day so well that the envelope had arrived at their post office box with the magazine clipping that had started all of this—Jack Naile General Merchandise. Perhaps, if they had never known, somehow—but of course their destiny had already happened and would continue to happen as long as the time loop existed. Both she and her husband had lived before somehow and died before and would again and again, and she couldn’t understand any part of the how, let alone the why.
 

Ellen shot at two Lakewood personnel, a man and a woman, both armed. She missed the man, hit the woman. The man fired at Jack, and Jack fired back and killed him.
 

What would they do with noncombatant Lakewood personnel? Would things work out—comparatively at least—so morally easy that all enemy personnel would be armed and go down fighting to the death? That was too much like something out of a poorly written book or movie—too convenient, she reasoned, but she could hope.
 

The time-transfer technology had to be kept safe.
 

As she ran, feeling just a little breathless, she suggested to Jack, “Couldn’t we let the ordinary evil-henchmen types go and just make sure the guys that are technically in the know are the ones who have to die?”
 

Jack looked over his shoulder at her as, at last, they took cover against the wall of one of the metal buildings.
 

As if things weren’t pain-in-the-ass enough, a drop of water touched the tip of her nose. As she looked up, she noticed the dark slate-blue clouds closing in from the west. It was starting to rain. “Shit.”
 

“It’s uncanny,” Jack said, grinning at her. “I was just going to say the same thing! And, yeah, maybe we can get away with not killing everybody here—we’ve gotta play that by ear, though.” The rain was subtly, steadily intensifying beyond just the few light drops she’d felt a moment before, and a cool wind was rising. “Stay behind me.”
 

Jack started around the building’s near corner, Ellen, her rifle at what she remembered was called high port, right behind him. More shots than she could count tore into the building’s wall behind her, forcing her forward faster, and in front of Jack. Jack turned around, starting to fold her into his arms, to protect her with his own body.
 

Her knees were buckling.
 

It was possibly a different shot than that from the bullet which had struck her a split second ago. She distinctly remembered the old aphorism to the effect that you never heard the shot that killed you. She’d heard shots and plenty of them. Ellen deduced that either the aphorism was incorrect, or, in fact, she was not about to die. Aphorisms be damned; Ellen hoped that she was not about to die, but her eyelids were so heavy and just wouldn’t stay open anymore . . .
 

Eyes locked with those of the man who’d fired the senselessly long burst from a submachine gun, Jack shrieked his rage as Ellen sank to the muddy ground, his arms cushioning her, his hands holding her face. “Fuck you, cocksucker! Fuck you! Fuck you!” The man’s eyes were so dark brown they were black, he had a five o’clock shadow that looked permanent and his mouth was an ugly slash. Jack, his submachine gun hanging from its sling at his side, drew the long-barreled Colt. More personal.
 

Jack punched the revolver toward its target, the shooter’s face. Jack’s first finger pushed against the trigger and the hammer fell and the man was already dead before Jack fired the second shot and cursed him, shouting, “Die, you motherfucker! Die! Die!”
 

What was left of the man’s face after the first chunk of lead had struck it exploded in a spray of red and gray, blood and brain matter, and there was a deep, ragged notch roughly describing where the man’s hair would have been parted had he parted it down the middle and had enough of his head still been intact to tell.
 

Jack, still holding Ellen, emptied the remaining three shots, spit at the dead man and promised himself to urinate on him when it would be safe to let go of Ellen. Tears filled Jack’s eyes. He couldn’t see much of anything except the red stain on Ellen’s back. His head hurt and his chest felt tight and he couldn’t stop weeping . . .
 

Lieutenant Easley said, “It would appear, sir, that someone was watching out not only for your wife, sir, but for you. A lot of blood, very little wound. Mrs. Naile won’t be in fighting trim for a bit, I’d think, but you’ve not lost her.”
 

Jack nodded. The rain fell heavily, relentlessly. The gunfire was ended for the moment, the time base won. Ellen was being treated by the time-transfer base’s medic—the female medic would be spared—everyone was soaking wet, and anyone who wasn’t standing around or sitting around soaking wet was dead. Only one of the Seventh had died—Luciano. Unlike his namesake of the Prohibition Era to come, there would be no reason to nickname the fellow “Lucky.”
 

Jack walked over to the lately dead man who had shot Ellen. Jack could see himself unbuttoning his fly, unlimbering his penis and urinating on what little was left of what had once been a human face. It was a promise needing to be kept, but it would not be; being civilized really sucked sometimes, Jack reflected. Instead of pissing, he merely wished that he had and walked away.
 

Ellen kissed Alan as he folded her into his arms. She let herself sag against him a little, feeling a little weak, a little tired. “I’m sorry you can’t wait around long enough to meet my wife and the kids, Momma Ellen. My grandfather, David’s son, said that when he was little, that was what he called you.”
 

“Since it hasn’t happened yet—to me, anyway—I’ll just have to take your word for it, Alan.”
 

“I love you, Momma Ellen.”
 

Ellen let him hold her a little while longer, even though she just wished that she could sit down. Only one bullet had struck her, grazing her back just past her right shoulder blade and creasing her right tricep. The two wounds hurt like anything, and she’d lost enough blood to make her feel woozy, but she was all right. To assume that she was going to live would, under the circumstances, have been mightily presumptuous, could be considered to border on sophistry. But between this moment and the one when the door to the time-transfer capsule was closed, barring a meteor impacting, heart attack or a major blood vessel rupturing in her brain, her survival was secure. Ellen Naile had learned a long time ago that one should be grateful for what one had; such did not imply acceptance of the status quo, however, merely that dwelling in misery ignoring what happiness was at hand while waiting for what wasn’t was stupid.
 

Jack embraced his great-great grandson. “You sure that you’ll be okay on your own, son?”
 

“The bad guys are all dead except for the medic and she’ll stay away. I’ve got weapons, cars, food, money we took off their bodies. I’ll get this time-transfer base shut down, and, if my own company’s facility is still operational, that one, too. And I’ll find Bethany Kaminsky’s little ace-in-the-hole. I’ll miss you guys, Grandpa Jack.”
 

“And I’ll miss you, chief.”
 

Ellen was not a crier, but hearing Jack call his greatgreat-grandson by the same pet name he’d always used for their son was—Ellen told herself that it was her sinuses.
 

On the floor of the time-transfer capsule lay a coffin handled Bowie knife with a blade a tad under a foot long. Jack Naile breathed a sigh of relief at the sight of it. Straws had been drawn to see who would go back to 1900 as a scout. The Lakewood senior bad guy Lester Matthews and his men could have had a reception waiting for anyone coming backward in time from 1996.
 

Standing Bear had offered to swap with Goldstein for the short straw, but Goldstein had declined. It was then that Standing Bear offered Goldstein the loan of his fighting knife. Then, also, was an agreement struck as to how it would be known whether or not a trap had been encountered, some sort of ambush. If the knife were returned to the time capsule and left there, it would be obvious that Goldstein had been the one to leave it there.
 

The knife was as fine an example of the knifemaker’s art as Jack had seen in the twentieth or nineteenth centuries. A bad guy victorious in a battle would be hard pressed not to keep such a knife. If a battle were ongoing, the knife would be at Goldstein’s side. The only way the knife could be left in the capsule to be “found” ninety-six years away—or merely a half hour later, depending on how one looked at it—would be if Goldstein intentionally put it there.
 

This patched-together form of time-travel left so many unanswerable—or, at least, unanswered—questions. Why, after being left for ninety-six years in the capsule, was the knife in perfect shape, as if no time had passed at all? Obviously, no time had passed, except for the half hour or so since Goldstein had left 1996 and returned to 1900. Yet there was a ninety-six year difference between 1900 and 1996. Clearly, time was to be reckoned in more than one way, possibly more ways than anyone could count, but certainly in at least these two ways.
 

Ellen, leaning heavily on Jack, looked up at him and inquired, “Are you contemplating the mysteries of the universe again, Jack?”
 

“I had a glimmer of what somebody might someday be able to turn into a string theory concerning the nature of time, that’s all.”
 

“Nothing important, then.”
 

Jack merely nodded and bent over to pick up the knife. He announced to Ellen, Easley, Armitage, Harek and Standing Bear, “The knife was just where it should be. There shouldn’t be a trap waiting for us in 1900. Just in case, at least two subguns worn on-body by each man.”
 

There were a good three dozen submachine guns and as many M-16s, four of these M-16/M-203s, standard M-16 rifles with independently triggerable grenade launchers mounted below the barrel/fore-end assembly of the rifle itself.
 

Jack had one of each principal weapon—one submachine gun, one rifle with grenade launcher—slung to his body. “I feel like a character from an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie,” Jack observed.
 

Ellen smiled. “But you look so much better developed, so much more muscular, Jack.”
 

“You bet,” he grinned.
 

The capsule doorway started to close and Jack and Ellen, standing side by side, shot a wave and smiled a last good-bye to their great-great-grandson . . .
 

David Naile tried ignoring the man in the backseat who was saying, “I’m a gonna be pukin’ heah, suh!”
 

“If my father were driving, I could understand that. I drive very smoothly. Your stomach shouldn’t be bothering you.”
 

“Ya jes’ tell thet a mah belly, suh!”
 

“Aw, shit.”
 

“Ain’t the sitchashun, suh.”
 

Under his breath, David Naile snarled, “Pitiful shit can’t even speak English, and he’s supposed to be a soldier.” For the guy in the back seat to be able to get out, half the guys in the middle seat at least would have to climb out and guns and cans of ammunition and grenades and anything else would have to be unloaded—or, at least, a lot of it.