In Times Like These (24 page)

“We have some friends who were in that building,” Carson says. “How do we find out if they’ve gotten out?”

The police officer considers Carson for a moment. “You can try phoning the department. Information will be made available to family members as necessary.”

“Do you know what time the fire started?” I ask.

The officer seems to consider whether giving that information would do any harm and apparently decides it won’t. “I got the call around seven.”

“Thanks. Come on Carson,” I say, tapping him on the arm. We turn and walk back toward the car. “I have an idea. Do you remember what time we left the lab to get to the hospital?”

“I don’t know. Sun was still up. Five, five-thirty maybe?”

“Right. We were definitely already at the hospital by the time the sun went down. So how about this? We find somewhere safe to make a jump. We go back to just after we left for the hospital, get ahold of Quickly or Mym and get back into the lab, and we can get our stuff. We might even be able to figure out what causes the fire in the first place, and stop it.”

“Would we want to stop it though?” Carson asks. “How would we have ever gotten to this point if the place never burns down?”

“Oh. True. That might make one of those paradoxes Quickly has talked about.”
No way I want to end up lost somewhere
. “We can at least check it out. Wouldn’t hurt to know why the place burned down.”

“I’m game,” Carson says. “I‘ve been wanting to try some more outdoor time jumps. Way more exciting than the lab. Do you think we should tell the others first?”

“As long as we don’t screw it up, we should be back before they ever realize we’re gone. I guess we could leave a note or something just in case.”

We walk back to the car and I rummage through the glove box for a slip of paper to use. Finding nothing, I try the pocket in the door and find a receipt for gas that will work.
I think for a second, then scribble out our message.

“Gone back a couple of hours to get our stuff. Left at
 . . . “I check the clock on the car dashboard, “10:25. Should be back by 11—Ben and Carson.”

I shove the slip of paper under the windshield wiper and shut the door. I see my tortoise shell rock back and forth on the floor in the passenger side where I left it.
Shouldn’t need that. Not losing hope yet.

“So now what?” Carson asks.

“I guess we need a place to blink from.” I look at the neighborhood around us. “Maybe we could try that mailbox?” I point to a nondescript house across from us.

“Couldn’t we just use the car?” Carson asks. “We know where it was a few hours ago.”

“I don’t see why not,” I say. “As long as we don’t get hit by traffic or something.” I assess the car and try to visualize the clearest place to be around it. “I think we should get on top of it.”

“Better not scratch Quickly’s paint job,” Carson says. “He loves this car.”

“Considering his lab just exploded, I don’t imagine a few scratches will fluster him,” I reply.

I’m careful anyway as I climb
onto the back of the trunk. I dangle my feet off the back of the car as Carson positions himself next to me.

“So what are you thinking? Five hours maybe?” Carson asks.

“Yeah, sun has been setting around six these days. Gets dark maybe an hour after? Sun was definitely up when we left so we need to land on the car at least before five-thirty, otherwise we risk ending up on the car at the hospital, or worse, we land on the back of it while we’re driving to the hospital. That would suck.”

“Ha. I hadn’t even thought of that. We should probably shoot for earlier. We can always watch ourselves leave. That would be cool,” Carson says.

“That’s a weird experience,” I say. “All right. Let’s aim for five o’clock.” We both dial in our chronometer settings.
Switch the slider to back. Not going to screw this one up.
I triple check my settings before I’m confident.

“Ready?” Carson asks.

“Ready.”

“Let’s do it.” Carson straightens up briefly, looks straight ahead and disappears.

Wow, that’s still crazy. Here we go again.

I push the pin.

We’re on Ninth Street. Traffic is light, so no one is shocked by our sudden arrival. I look diagonally across the street and realize that we’re in view of the large windows of the lab. “We need to move. Fast.”

We slide off the trunk and head south down the sidewalk
, past the car and away from the lab. The first available means to get out of sight is a walkway between two storefronts. We step around the corner into the walkway and stop near an air conditioning unit.

“So we just need to wait for the other us’s to leave and we should
be good, yeah?” Carson asks.

“Yeah. I think so. I guess we can just wait here. I don’t think we’re going to bother anybody. They might see us when they drive past though.”

“Let’s just head around back when we see them coming out,” Carson says.

I look down the walkway to where it connects to the back pa
rking lot. “Should work.”

“So we get in, grab our stuff, and Blake’
s and Francesca’s,” Carson says. “Are we going to take our practice navigation stuff, or do we need to look for more?”

“A
ll of our stuff should be useful, since we were trying to plan for the real trip anyway,” I say. “I know Quickly never got to review any of it, but hopefully it can get us there. Maybe if Quickly is in there, we can get him to help us check it.”

“Yeah, that’s true. Unless he left too,” Carson adds.

“Let’s hope he got out at some point. That fire looked awful,” I say.

“Hey, how are we going to get into the lab? Does he have a lab key on that set of car keys he gave you?”

I grab at my pocket for the keys but don’t feel them. I check my other pockets. “Shit. I must have left them in the car.” I move toward the car for a moment, then realize it won’t help me.
Damn it. That’s hours from now
. Movement catches my eye beyond the car. Carson’s red hair suddenly stands out, and I see that he and Francesca have just walked out of the side street next to the lab onto the sidewalk.

“No worries, I got this,” t
he Carson next to me says, as he moves the dials on his chronometer and sprints to the front end of the Galaxie, twenty yards ahead of us.

“Wait, Carson, we’re coming!” I call to him, but I can’t tell if he hears me. He slides smoothly up onto the hood of the car and instantly disappears.

A hundred yards farther on I see my friends and myself crossing the street.

No! No
no no. This is not good
.

The group passes out of view behind some vehicles. I hold my breath. I see Blake and me step onto the sidewalk past the parked cars and instinctively jerk my head back behind the corner, but then there’s Carson, back on top of the Galaxie.

He slides off the front of the hood and walks casually toward me, his back to the other versions of us. He smiles and jingles the keys in his hand as he cruises right past me and heads for the back parking lot.

Of course.
He’s good at everything, why wouldn’t he be great at this?

I sneak one more peek around the corner at the earlier versions of us, walking obliviously toward the car, and then turn and follow Carson.

“Nice job, man. That was smooth,” I say, as I join him in the parking lot.

“Thanks. It may have bumped back our return a smidge. I didn’t leave there again till ten-fifty. Took me a few minutes to
double-check my settings for coming back. I’ve never tried to hit such a small window of time before.” He smiles.

“You did great. They never noticed you at all. A few more seconds and who knows what would have happened.”

The dumpster behind the building smells like stale coffee and something dead. We move away from it and exit the parking lot into the alley, taking it back to the street to look for the car.

“It’s gone. We’re in the clear,” Carson says.

I glance up at the shining reflective windows of Quickly’s building and wonder who might be watching us as we dash across the street. We move around the side of the building till we find the door that leads to the lab. Some of the other side doors along the alley are labeled with business names or “No Soliciting” signs. Quickly’s entrance is a steel door, painted a rust red with no markings whatsoever. The two locks on the door appear to have different mechanisms, so I scour the keychain for possible candidates. I find the key to the doorknob lock on my third try. The deadbolt takes me longer, but after going through each of the keys on the ring, the last one fits. The satisfying click of the bolt sliding back heralds our entry.

I wonder if
Quickly has a security system?
I survey the outside wall of the building but don’t see anything that looks like a camera.
Doesn’t mean he doesn’t have one though.
We slip inside and proceed down the short hallway to the stairwell. There are a couple of other doors in the hallway that I’ve not paid much attention to before. Now they are a mystery I will never get a chance to solve.
No time for exploring in a soon to be burning building.

“You have a key to this one?” Carson asks after he tries the handle.
The stairwell door is steel as well, but painted a sky blue. I fumble through the keys again and this time I get it on the second try. The stairwell is dark and I see no switches. We walk a few steps and are soon engulfed in darkness. Ten steps up we hit a landing and I navigate the turn with my hands sliding along the walls. It’s another ten steps till the second landing.

“I think the door is here somewhere,” I say.

“Got it,” Carson says from beside me.

This door isn’t locked. The fluorescent hallway lights illuminate us as Carson opens the door. The hallway is empty. We take it left and then left again out to the study
, and emerge under the second balcony. The study is silent and the orange light of the setting sun is streaming through the window.

“Dr. Quickly?” I call to the upper balconies. Silence answers.

“Maybe they’re in one of the back lab rooms,” Carson says.

“Yeah. Could be. Let’s grab our stuff and then se
e if we can find them.”

“We’re going to need something to carry this stuff in,” Carson says.

“Okay. See if you can consolidate everybody’s things. I’ll look in the back and see what I can find. I think I saw some backpacks in the jumpsuit lockers.”

Carson starts cli
mbing to the upper balconies as I walk back down the hallway toward the kitchen. The hallways in the lab still confuse me. It takes me a few wrong turns before I remember that the lockers were on the next floor up. I locate the stairway and head up to the next floor. The second level of the lab is a combination of jump rooms, lab spaces and some classrooms. I pass the room where I first saw Quickly disappear. Three turns later I find the hallway with the lockers. Scanning the contents of the first locker, I slide the jumpsuits aside and check the floor. I see a pair of Francesca’s flip-flops. I open a few more lockers to see what I can find. I come up with some socks, a couple of blank logbooks, and finally what I’m looking for, four canvas backpacks. I snag the flip-flops and the logbooks and stuff them into a pack. I consider for a moment, then grab the socks and one of the jumpsuits too. It feels a bit like stealing.
The place is going to burn down, Benjamin. If anything, you’re doing Quickly a favor by saving things.

I take the four packs by the straps and carry them like luggage around the corner. I make a couple more turns before I hit a dead end. Without any windows to the outside
, I have a hard time knowing which direction I’m facing.
I just need to find the stairs
. I backtrack to the lockers and am going the other direction, when I hear a door slam.

“Carson?” I call.

Carson is up in the balconies in the study. There aren’t any doors through to here, are there?

I walk back to the lockers and turn down a side hallway of blue jump room doors. It’s quiet. I open one of the doors and see nothing but an empty anchor stand in the center of the room. I walk inside past the anchor stand to the green door on the far side, and as I twist open the doorknob
with my free fingers, I glimpse someone’s backside walking past the door. I swing the door open with my foot and poke my head out into the hallway, spying the figure of a man walking away from me.

“Dr. Quickly?”

The man turns and I see that it is Dr. Quickly, but he looks younger than I’ve ever seen him. There is only a sprinkle of gray on the hair that protrudes from under a baseball cap.

“Hello,” he says with a smile. “I wondered when I might meet some new faces around here. “I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure.” He takes a couple of steps toward me and extends a hand.

“Oh, hi. I’m Benjamin.” I drop two of the packs and shake his hand.

“What’s your last name
, Benjamin?”

“Travers.”