Time Spent (25 page)

Carl lowered his hand, and one soldier
activated the spotlight. Kevin and Rebecca, caught by surprise,
turned toward it, covering their eyes.

One soldier fired, and Rebecca Miller's head
splattered. Her body hit the ground, blood everywhere.

"STOP!" Becca cried, flinching.

Carl ceased playing back the scene for her,
looking her in the eye. "Kevin proved more difficult to kill. He
escaped, but he left his motorcycle behind. We ran the plate and
got a match." He watched Kevin for a reaction.

"That's how you found me," Kevin said.

"Yes."

"He's telling the truth," Becca said with a
grimace. "Motherfucker."

Carl looked around at each of them, taking
time to look each in the eye. "You all have questions. I suggest we
take turns. You can each ask me a question and I'll answer
truthfully. I won't lie about what I've done."

"Why would you tell us the truth?" Becca
asked.

"Because if you don't trust me, if you
aren't willing to listen to me by the time the red woman
arrives...
we are all going to die
."

Kevin looked at him doubtfully. Carl risked
a glance forward. Again, he saw the red woman slaughtering them
all. And Kevin...
Kevin wasn't trying to stop her.

______________________

Once level with the portal, he knew it was
hopeless. He could see through it, see glimpses of the myriad
worlds he knew lay beyond it, but he could not get to it. The
longer he looked, the more he could see another opening, far beyond
this one, where the kids from the school bus stood on the rooftop,
the scene he had envisioned when first his power had activated
after the crash.

Is this it? thought Carl. Is the world about
to end?

But the worlds continued to turn. None of
them collided, nothing ended. Carl did not know why, but he knew it
afforded him a chance. He climbed still higher. When he reached a
high enough perch above the portal that he calculated at least a
possibility of jumping into it (though a slim probability at best),
Carl jumped.

______________________

As he prepared to ask, Carl's throat
unexpectedly went dry as a desert. He reached for his wine glass,
gulping the Cabernet Sauvignon a bit too eagerly.

"Are you okay?" Ellen asked with a laugh
from across the table.

Carl set down the wine glass, nearly
knocking it over in the process. He looked around the restaurant to
steady himself. Waiters were hustling to and fro, carrying plates
heaped with pasta and sauces, carafes and bottles: everything you'd
expect to see in a restaurant like this.

Ellen was dressed in her nicest dress, a
stunning deep green gown, her neck adorned with her mother's pearl
necklace, which she only took out for "occasions".

Carl was wearing a suit, which he found
dreadfully uncomfortable, but his brother had always worn suits
when taking a lady to a nice restaurant, and had told Carl it was
the way to go. Carl had never forgotten that, although he had
forgotten all his brother's old girlfriends long ago, or whether
any of them had seemed overly impressed. In his mind, his brother
had always been the most dapper and charming man any lady could
have ever wanted. Carl struggled to open the car door without
looking like a clutz.

Ellen was gazing at him with a mixture of
humor and warmth.

Oh, God. This is it.

Carl pushed his chair back, and stood.

"Carl?" Ellen looked around nervously.

Carl removed the ring box from his jacket
pocket, and slipped down to one knee in front of her. She clapped
both hands over her mouth and nose, eliciting a little squeal.

Carl opened the ring box, displaying the
engagement ring he had saved for months to buy.

"Ellen Denise Donovan, will you marry
me?"

She tried to blink the tears from her eyes
as she extended her hand. "Yes, I will."

Carl slid the ring onto her finger, beaming
with pride. Applause erupted from the other diners around them.
Carl stood, leaning over and kissing her on the lips, knowing that
they would be together the rest of their lives, for good or ill,
better or worse.

They'd always be together.

______________________

Something sharp was flying in the dust.

Carl felt them, razor sharp particles of
rock or metal scratching him in the wind, occasionally cutting deep
into the exposed skin of his forehead, cheeks, or hand. He
scrabbled with the calculator, digging the soft earth between two
boulders. If he could cut a kind of warren in the ground, something
he could burrow into, the boulders might shield him from the worst
of it.

He felt a trickle of blood trace its way
into his eye. He tried to wipe it away with the sleeve of his lab
coat, but it was already caked with dust and he only managed to
blind himself even worse. He had pulled up his shirt over his nose
and mouth to try and breathe, but it wasn't doing much good. There
was every chance he might suffocate in the shallow grave he was
making for himself.

Still, he continued to dig. His glances into
the future told him he could survive this storm, if he did the
right things. First, dig his shelter.

______________________

The first question came from Mia, her eyes
crackling with energy. "Why were you keeping me drugged,
experimenting on me? If you just wanted to kill me, why do all
that?"

"I'd like to know that too," Simon
asked.

Carl projected his experiences into Becca's
mind. "In your case, Mia, I should think the answer would be
obvious: we couldn't kill you. The energy inside you reacts to
threats, even when you're not conscious. It protected you from us.
We kept you drugged while we tried to figure out a way to deal with
you. It wasn't easy to do, we had to keep you drugged enough to
stay asleep, too little or too much and the energy inside you would
start burning the drug away, which is eventually what happened. I
thought, based on what I could see, that Rebecca had taken care of
the problem for us, but because of an...anomaly I couldn't see or
detect, you were still alive."

Becca nodded to Mia. "He's telling the
truth. And don't call me Rebecca," she added with a harsh glance
back to Carl.

"And me?" asked Simon.

Carl breathed out a slow stream of air.
"Your case is a little more complex. I analyzed your powers and
knew you could see glimpses of the future. I thought if I could
extract and examine the part of your brain that allowed you to do
that, I might be able to determine how my own abilities might be
detected. I could then more easily prevent that from
happening."

"So you did it to save your own ass,"
Brandon said. "Charming."

Carl raised an eyebrow. "Who here hasn't
hurt someone to save themselves, Brandon? You all attacked this
base without a second thought. Do you think the soldiers you harmed
don't have lives? Families?"

Brandon pointed a finger at him. "They were
trying to kill us, because of you!"

"You're wrong," Carl said. "They were always
going to hunt us down, I was just the first to know about it. The
real Samuel Juergens, the man I replaced, was a scientific advisor
to the government. He would have examined the crash site and
interrogated the survivors, put two and two together, and the hunt
would have begun. He would have killed me first, so he was the
first one I killed."

Brandon crossed his arms, glowering at
him.

"Judge me if you wish, but I did what I had
to do, no more. That's why I ordered you disposed of the way I did,
Simon, once the operation was complete. I thought you were no
longer a threat, and I didn't want to kill anyone who wasn't a
threat."

Simon looked to Becca, who nodded back.

"Who's next?" Carl looked around at those
remaining. Silence. "No? How about you Tyler? Don't you want to
defend me?"

Tyler's jaw dropped. "Defend you? You
poisoned me!"

"But it wasn't exactly unwelcome, was it?
You wanted to die, isn't that right?"

Tyler stammered. "No, I...I had hurt
someone. I killed someone, Marcus...on accident! I only wanted the
power to go away."

"When I led the others to the second lab,
you stayed behind. You were going to sacrifice yourself."

"But I didn't! Max saved me!"

"You couldn't have known that," Carl said.
Inside, he exulted.
Max! I knew it.

Tyler sneered. "Don't try to turn this
around on me. We got there too late, but we saw what you had done
to Zachary. You caved his entire face in! You bludgeoned him to
death!"

Becca nodded. "Not exactly the actions of a
man who didn't want to kill anyone."

Carl remembered it well.
Die this time,
you son of a bitch!
"Yes, I did. I did it with a wrench." He
looked Zachary in the eye. "Zachary drove me crazy."

"I know you," Zachary said. "You were on the
school bus with us."

Carl wanted badly to cover his face with his
hands, but Simon's power held them pinned them to his sides.
"Gahh...see what I mean?"

"He has a point," Becca said.

"Zachary doesn't remember things like we
do," Tyler said. "But most of us don't want to beat him to death
for it."

"He's one of the bad people," said
Zachary.

"Maybe I am, but there are worse people out
there, Zachary, trust me." Carl tried to turn to Kevin but couldn't
face him, Kevin had moved behind him. "Do you remember what I said
to you, before you abandoned me on that mountain? That Zachary was
the catalyst for the end of the world?"

He couldn't see him, but Carl was sure Kevin
nodded when he replied. "Yeah, so what?"

Carl's mind raced. He looked back to Becca
and Tyler. "No matter who I killed, Zachary brought them back. I
tried to kill
him,
but he
kept coming back.
No matter
what I did, the end of the world was still there, waiting for us
all."

Something's very wrong,
he sent to
Becca.
You have to listen to me, before it's too late.

II DON'T THINK SO, ASSHOLE,
she sent
back with a grin, her green eyes filling his vision,
I THINK I
HAVE A BETTER IDEAA

"Zachary," she said. "You tried before to
give him your message from God."

"God gave me a message for the bad people,"
Zachary confirmed unnecessarily.

"Last time we stopped you from doing it. I
think it's time we fixed that."

______________________

He found himself lost between worlds,
tumbling past them head over heels with no way to direct his
motion. Carl didn't understand. He had been able to drive the
school bus as if it were on a road between realities, but now there
was no road, no path for him to run, just a void between universes
where no one was meant to tread.

On he tumbled, falling past ebony fields and
vibrant sights. He saw the apes ascend their wooden towers, the
alien sky-ships in perpetual invasion, the intelligent yellow
energy infusing all life, the mind-speaking telepathic race. Again
the secrets of the universe poured into Carl's mind as he saw them,
all their histories, their potential futures. Carl's mind reeled,
it was too much, too much to grasp at once. "Stop, please.
STOP!"

A hand grasped his, holding him steady,
stopping his fall.

Carl looked up, grateful to whoever had
saved him. Red, glowing eyes looked back.

______________________

"No, son, you're moving too fast, now calm
down." Davis took the pneumatic tool away from him. "Like this,
look." With precision, he placed it over each nut and bolt on the
chassis, pulling the trigger and tightening each one, then moving
on to the next. "There, there, there, one, then two, then three,
like that." He moved all the way around the vehicle, tightening
each bolt one at a time, until the entire chassis was finished.
"You find a rhythm, see."

Carl nodded. "It's just hard, because the
other cars are piling up."

Davis looked him in the eye. "Yep, that's
bad, you don't want that. But you can't think about it or you gon'
make mistakes, you hear? You gon' make a lot of 'em. You worry
about you. You just worry about you, that's all."

Carl took back the tool, which was connected
by hoses to a post behind him. "Okay."

He pressed the green button, rolling the
completed vehicle to the next station. When a new vehicle was in
place, he pressed the red button, stopping the line.

Carl walked around the vehicle, tightening
the first few bolts. But cars behind him were still piling up, and
other workers were giving him impatient looks. Carl sped up,
running to the next spot.

"Naw, Carl, you doin' it again!" Davis moved
to stop him as he was coming back around the front of the vehicle.
Carl's foot caught something and he tumbled forward, knocking Davis
off his feet. The tool left his hands and swung loose, striking the
green button.

"AAAAGHH!" Davis screamed. He had caught
himself to stop his fall by placing his hand on the line, and now
the vehicle had rolled forward, crushing it. Carl hit the alarm
button, stopping the line and bringing men running from every
direction.

"You can't blame yourself, son," said the
General Manager, later, in his office. "Accidents happen. You can't
know how things are going to happen, things just happen. But you
can't blame yourself. The important thing is Mr. Davis is going to
be fine, they think he'll be back right as rain in a few weeks. I
want you to take the rest of the day off and we'll see where you
fit on the line tomorrow."

"Yes, sir."

The GM opened the door, and Carl saw his
father waiting for him outside.

Carl stared down at his feet as his father
put his arm around him.