Strangers and Shadows (5 page)

On the streets above, Jack could hear other buildings as they tumbled down, shaking the tunnel walls.  Dust filtered down through unseen cracks.

“Stay here.  I wanna check something out.”  Jack climbed back up the ladder and found the entrance was sealed tightly with debris.  “We’ll have to find another way out.  Do you think you can walk?”

“Yeah, I think so.”

“Alright then, let’s get a move on. Unless having rats for dinner is okay with you.”

“Eckth! Rats?”

Jack smiled in the darkness.  “Well, yeah… unless we find a Dunkin’ Donuts down here.  We’ll have to find a way to the street above.  Any idea how far to the next station?”  

“It’s only a couple a blocks, but me and Bobby never went that far, he was always too scared.  So I don’t know if there’s a way out at the next station.”

“
Great
,” Jack muttered. 

 The boy flinched at the edge in Jack’s voice. 

 “Sorry, Kid… I’m just a little stressed right now.”  He softened his voice, trying to reassure the boy.  “Now, what’s this about not being able to get out at the next station?”  

“They filled in most of the old subway stations, that’s all.  The next one down might be one of the ones they filled in,” Kid said as they plodded along.  Suddenly the boy gasped, clutching his chest.  “My mom and dad… do you… think… are they gonna be okay?”

Jack looked down at the boy in the dim emergency lights of the old subway tunnel, and saw him trying to hold back tears that couldn’t and shouldn’t be held back.  “I don’t know, Kid.  A lot of people died in the riot.”  Jack winced as he realized the words he’d just used.

At first, all the boy heard was that a lot of people died, and he started crying, but when he realized what Jack had said, he instantly turned suspicious.  “What do you mean,
in the riot
?”

Jack could have swallowed his own fist, he was so angry at the slip of his tongue.  He couldn’t think of anything to say.

“Did you know about the construction bots?” the boy pressed, his anger rising rapidly.  He pushed Jack in the chest.  “Are you responsible for it?”

“No!  It’s not my fault.  I forgot the riot was today, that’s all.”  Jack realized he wasn’t helping the situation or making a whole lot of sense.

The boy began wailing on Jack, swinging his fists wildly, occasionally connecting to the chest or stomach.

“Stop it!  Wait, wait!” Jack protested.  “Let me explain.”  He grabbed hold of the boy’s arms and restrained him until he stopped fighting.  “What I was trying to tell you, Kid, is that I’m not exactly,
from around here
.”  He twirled his finger in the air.

Kid took a deep breath, trying to process the conversation.  “Like you’re from Jersey or something?” 

“No, it’s… let me… okay…  This is going to sound ridiculous, but, here goes—I’m… from the future,” Jack said.  He watched the look of disbelief on Kid’s face.

“Yeah, heard that one when I was six!”  Kid raised his fists again to start swinging.

“No, really, Kid, I
am
from the future.  Well,
your
future at least.”

“
My
future?”

This was much harder than Jack thought it was going to be.  The boy was the first person Jack had ever told, and as far as Jack knew,
he
was the only person who had ever time traveled, so he started from the beginning.  “Just before the agency sent me back four years ago, we thought we’d discovered parallel universes.  Do you know what those are?” 

“I saw an old vid about it.  It’s like there’s a whole bunch of different earths with different versions, right?”

“Yeah, well, pretty much… Anyway, our scientists had seen what they thought was the possibility of parallel universes for years, but they could never prove they existed.  Two weeks before I was sent here, a group of scientists said that they had a way to prove it.”

“What does that have to do with my future?” Kid asked.

“Well, your scientists haven’t developed proof or a way to travel to parallel universes, so obviously, I must be from
your
future and
my
present, right?”  Jack was beginning to confuse himself.  “Anyway, it’s not very important why, just that I’m here now.”

“But how far back did they send you?”  

For the moment, the kid seemed to accept the explanation.

“Seven hundred years, give or take… But see, that’s how I knew about today.  I learned it in history class when I was a kid.  Well, we don’t really have classes anymore, but whatever.”

“What did you call it again?”

“The Riot?” Jack asked.  “It was called, or will be called, I guess, The Sky Lane Workers Riot.  Which I always found ironic, because there was only one worker responsible for it.  A man named Albert Koomer… he got pissed off when the city refused to acknowledge him as the chief architect in building the sky lanes.  Koomer reprogrammed the construction bots and they leveled everything in their way until the military hovers arrived and destroyed them.  The death toll was in the hundreds of thousands, only a handful of people in the immediate area of the riot survived.  That’s why we had to get underground, because the few who did survive hid down here in the tunnels, like we’re doing.  It was,
is
, sorry, the greatest loss of human life in a single act, ever.  At least up until I was sent back here.  And hopefully, there never
is
an act that tops it.”

“How could you forget it was today?” the boy asked.  He had a hurt expression on his face, as if Jack should have done something about it, saved his family, he could have at least warned them.

“I’m sorry, Kid, it just slipped my mind.  You know, you get stranded in the past, get a job as a cab driver and a drinking problem, and all of a sudden a few things slip your mind.”  Jack didn’t expect the boy to understand, but his heart still felt for him, and he wished there was something he could do.  It couldn’t have been easy learning that your parents had probably just been killed by a crazy engineer, your home had been destroyed, and to top it all off, you hit your head and can’t remember what your name is.  “Look, Kid, I promise, everything’s gonna be okay.  We’re gonna find our way out of here, get back to the surface, and find out about your family.  And no matter what, life will go on.”

They had been walking for close to twenty minutes when they heard the sound of explosions coming from above.  The walls of the tunnel shook and dust floated through the air. 
Must be the military taking down the construction bots
, Jack thought.  Thankfully, the boy was quiet as they walked.  Jack didn’t know if he could take anymore questions or silent, staring accusations from the heart-broken boy right now.

The last three stations they had passed were all closed in, sealed over years ago.  Jack was beginning to understand why they hadn’t run into anybody else who might have tried to escape the reprogrammed construction bots.

Jack watched the kid as they walked toward the next station.  The boy didn’t deserve what had happened to him today.  None of the people who had died did.

Even though the tunnels were shut down, the emergency lights were, thankfully, still working, and Jack could see that the back of the boy’s head had stopped bleeding.  The headache that would follow once the adrenaline wore off was not something Jack envied.  

An old red exit sign was lit above a door that seemed to be made entirely out of rust.  The door read
Authorized Personnel Only
.  Jack tried the handle.  It twisted, but when Jack tried the door, it didn’t budge.  He put his shoulder into it and was rewarded with the sound of metal grating on concrete as the door moved inward.

The door only opened a few inches before it stuck, but the gap was wide enough to squeeze through. 

“Wait here.  Let me check it out.”  Jack couldn’t tell if the boy had heard or not, he was lost in some distant gaze.  Jack wondered, not for the first time since being in the tunnels, what he was going to do with the boy when they got out of there.  The boy’s parents were almost certainly dead. 
And for that matter, what am I going to do with myself?
 

He squeezed through the gap in the door and found another ladder, much like the one they had climbed down to escape the madness of the street.  “Okay, come on in here, Kid.  I think we found our way out.”

The boy silently slipped into the room,
still
in the clutches of grief and despair.  He reminded Jack of the old prisoners of war from the vids he’d watched as a kid, just lifeless human shells.  He’d think they were corpses except for the occasional movements they made.

Jack and the boy climbed up the ladder and found the top covered in debris.  Cursing his luck, Jack banged on the debris covering the exit, nearly breaking his hand.  To his surprise, the debris moved, some of it falling back down the ladder, almost hitting the boy on the head again.

“Uh, why don’t you wait back in the other room while I try to dig us out of here?  It’ll be safer.”

Again, the boy wordlessly did what Jack asked of him.  It was painful to see.  All boys were supposed to be smiling and full of life, and even though Jack had only known him for a few hours, he’d taken a liking to him.  More of a liking than Jack cared to admit. 
Must be getting soft in my old age. 
But it was more than that—there was something about the boy that Jack was drawn to.  Some invisible, intangible thing.  Their meeting felt almost like fate to Jack, if he believed in such a thing, that is.

After a few minutes of struggling with large pieces of brick and concrete, Jack had cleared an opening to the street above.  He could taste the fresh air above, or at least it was fresher than the stale air below them in the tunnels.  It was night and the dust from the destruction still hadn’t settled completely yet.  He began climbing out into the night, feeling like he was forgetting something. 
Idiot
, he thought.  “Hey Kid, let’s go!” he yelled down.  “We’re outta here.”

Jack helped the boy climb over the edge of the rubble piled around the top of the ladder, and then took a deep breath, stretching toward the sky.  As he did so, he noticed all of the spotlights that were sweeping the rubble of the city.  News crews were everywhere, with the new prototype hovers providing aerial coverage of the destruction.  “Come on, this way,” he said to the boy, but just as they turned to sneak off, they were hit with a giant spotlight.

“
STAY WHERE YOU ARE
!!!” a giant voice boomed from above.  It must have been a military hover, Jack thought, watching it descend on their position.  The boy already had his hands in the air, just like he’d seen on television. 
God, this is the last thing I need
.  

Jack looked around for an escape, any kind of way out.

He saw none.

Begrudgingly, Jack joined the boy in raising his hands in the air and dropped to his knees.

They were hand-cuffed and loaded into the military hover by a marine.  As the hover took off, heading to some secret location, no doubt, Jack began to wonder just how long this day was going to be.  Kid, at least, had finally had enough.  Whether it was from exhaustion or nerves the boy was sound asleep on the floor of the hover, still sitting upright,  his head resting on his cuffed hands.

Jack decided it would be best to try and do the same.  So he settled in and closed his eyes as the hover took them
off into the night
.

Questions And Shopping Sprees

The door disappeared as soon as Ava and Asher stepped through.  They found themselves once again, in darkness. 

“Hmmm…” Asher’s voice did not carry far.  They were enclosed in a small space.   Asher felt around and his hand soon found the wall.  

The wall was smooth, like sanded wood but it wasn’t wood.  Behind him, Asher heard the sound of rustling clothes.  Ava had brushed against them, trying to gain her bearings. 
We’ve got to get out of here
, Asher thought, feeling the panic beginning to set in. 
No, relax... just breathe, you’re okay
.  Asher had been claustrophobic since he was young.

Some of his friends had thought it would be fun to roll each other up in rugs, and then pull on one end, sending the person inside rolling out.  When it was Asher’s turn to be rolled, he was excited, everyone else was laughing and enjoying the game.  But when he was all rolled up, the air grew stale and he couldn’t move.  Asher had panicked.  He screamed at the top of his lungs, which of course just made his friends laugh all the harder, and they kept him rolled up even longer.  Eventually, a teacher came along and told the kids to let him out.  The first breath that Asher took upon emerging from the rug was the largest breath of air he’d ever taken.  The sunlight out on the hillside where they had been playing had never been as bright before.  He could still see the entire scene in sharp detail in his mind.