Hollow World

Chapter Fourteen Time’s Up

Ellis refused to wear a suit. It would take time, but more importantly it would hide who he was. Warren thought nothing of shooting “the baldies,” but he might think twice about shooting him.

For all his bravado, Ellis really didn’t expect to kill Warren. It wouldn’t come to that. If he absolutely had to, Ellis would just wing him, shoot him in the arm or leg and kick his gun away like they did in the westerns he and Warren had grown up watching. He remembered how the digital watch had blinked 12:00 just before he set the time—high noon—the traditional time for a showdown gunfight.

Warren wouldn’t really shoot me, would he?

The Warren Eckard he knew in 2014 wouldn’t, but this was Master Ren. Something fundamental had happened to him in that cabin in the woods. That experience had changed his friend, profoundly. For one, it got him to read the Bible, and Ellis hadn’t imagined anything would ever do that. Somewhere in those pages he had found permission to beat and kill. Warren had developed calluses on more than just his hands.

With the clock reading 00:12:53, Ellis and Pax stepped out into the portway tunnel that crossed the molten Sea of Gehenna. An eerie silence—just a faint hum that came from the stream of portals. Sound didn’t pass through the barrier any more than water, heat, or the vacuum of space. This was good, because they were walking through a bubbling ocean of rock, and he was pretty sure at this distance both of them would have already evaporated.

“Stay behind me,” he told Pax.

The tunnel ran in a straight line, and even in the brilliance of the Sea of Gehenna, Ellis thought he could see two wavering objects in the distance, like cars on the horizon of a sunbaked highway. This was the apocalyptic hellscape he’d been expecting, but he had never thought that he and Warren would be the two road warriors facing off.

Maybe it wasn’t Warren at all. Maybe Pol was there, or Dex, or Hig, but Ellis couldn’t imagine Warren giving his gun to anyone. Still, they might have all left by now. Maybe Delta team had caught Warren just as they were wheeling the bomb through, and, after shooting, they had jumped back through the portal to Firestone Farm. The bomb might just be sitting there ticking. And maybe Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, and the Easter Bunny shared a condo in Tampa—and maybe Isley didn’t kill himself, and Peggy didn’t become an alcoholic because I’m a selfish ass. Maybe was just a convenient shield to hide behind when reality proved to be a bitch.

Reality’s bitchiness didn’t let Ellis down. As they got closer, he could see the white plastic crate; beside it stood Warren. He was alone, dressed in a radiation suit, but the hood and gloves were off and lying on the ground in front of him. He was busy fumbling with something and didn’t notice their approach.

“Goddammit!” Warren cursed at the thing in his hands. “Fucking piece of shit.”

Ellis kept the gun in front of him, cupped for firing just as he’d been taught, but he aimed the barrel at the ground. In his mind, he imagined he looked like one of those dashing detectives rushing up a New York City stairwell. In reality, he felt sick and was sweating so hard he wondered if the heat really was leaking through the tunnel.

“Warren,” Ellis said, his voice a little shaky.

Warren’s head jerked up. As it did, Ellis saw the Port-a-Call in his hands.

Fear flashed on Warren’s face, then confusion, and finally a nod. “Well, if it isn’t Mr. Rogers.”

“I told you I wasn’t going to let you do it. And I found my gun. Move away from the bomb.” Ellis looked for Warren’s rifle, but didn’t see it. “We’ve neutralized the other bombs you placed. All five of them.”

Warren narrowed his eyes, then laughed. “Nice try, but you’re lying. We only ever had the three.”

“Thanks for confirming that,” Ellis said, and watched as it took a second for Warren to scowl. Then Ellis raised the barrel of the gun a bit. “Now back up. I don’t want to shoot you, but I will if I have to.”

“You’d shoot me? You’d fucking shoot me? I’m your best friend, Ellis. I protected you in school. I got you your first real job. I loaned you the money for your first car. I was the best man at your goddamn wedding! And you’re gonna shoot me? No fucking way.”

“To save millions of people—you’re damn right.”

“They aren’t people. You and I are the last real humans, Ellis. All these others”—he pointed at Pax—“are an abomination—test-tube sideshow freaks. This is our one chance to fix it. Don’t you see? That’s why we were sent here. That’s why God chucked us through time. He needed our help in putting His world back together. God needs us to kill off these abominations so that His real children can fulfill the scriptures. You have to be able to see that.”

Ellis shook his head, taking slow steps forward. He wanted to close the distance in case he did have to shoot. He wasn’t a good shot. He’d only fired the gun a few times. He’d managed to hit Hal because he was at point-blank range. Warren probably wouldn’t let him get that close. “I have a problem anytime anyone uses kill and God in the same sentence.”

“That’s because you haven’t read the Bible. God—the real God, not the liberal-bullshit-hippie God—is like a Mafia boss. The God of the Bible ordered killings all the time. Ordered his number one follower—Abraham—to kill his own son. Talk about some messed-up shit. Then He had Moses slaughter all those Egyptians and the others who were on the wrong side when he came down the mountain—they changed that scene for the movie The Ten Commandments, but it happened. And God ordered Joshua to take out Jericho—killed a whole city, every man, woman, and child slaughtered. Why? To make room for His chosen people. And that’s what I’m doing. That’s what God wants us to do.”

“Not today.” Ellis took a step forward. “Now back up—I mean it, Warren.”

“Shoot him,” Pax said.

Ellis was shocked. Pax’s tone was dead serious. More than serious—earnest. Remembering how Pax had reacted to the last shooting, he couldn’t understand. “What?”

“He has a pistol,” Pax spoke quickly. “Tucked in the belt of his pants behind his back. It’s his little Sig P245, the one he never told you about because he bought it when he decided to rob Olson’s Liquor over on Fenkle. Ford was on strike, and Kelly was whining about money. He hid the gun for years. Only now he’s going to pull it out and shoot you with it.”

“Warren?” Ellis stared across the length of the golden tunnel at his friend.

“He thinks you can’t be trusted anymore,” Pax went on. “He thinks you’ve been brainwashed by us—by me especially. He’s thinking I’m controlling you right now like a puppet master. Maybe we did something to you when we operated on your heart and lungs—put something in your brain, a chip perhaps. Yeah—that has to be it. The fuckers put a goddamn chip in Ellis’s brain, and now they control the poor bastard. He’s a zombie for them now. Holy fuck! How is that freak—that fucker is reading my goddamn mind! Saying out loud everything I’m thinking as I fucking think it! Oh shit! Oh shit! Sorry, Ellis—Jesus, man! I really hate to do this, but if there is any of you left in there, you know I have to. Goodbye, buddy.”

Warren twisted, reaching around behind him.

“Shoot him! Shoot him now!” Pax yelled.

Ellis flipped off the safety. He could do this. He took aim at Warren’s left thigh and pulled the trigger. He was rushed, frightened, and the instant he pulled that trigger, he knew he’d missed.

Squeeze the trigger. Don’t pull it!

That’s what the instructor had said at the gun range; that’s what the instruction manual had indicated too. Take a deep breath, let a little out, hold it, and very slowly, gently, squeeze the trigger.

Maybe that worked on a gun range where they had nice earmuffs and nonthreatening targets with concentric circles. Things were a tad different when you were standing near a ticking H-bomb in a transparent corridor over a lake of lava, and your best friend was about to blow your head off because he thought you were a zombie.

The gun shoved Ellis back, his arms popping up like they had last time. He needed to bring the gun down, take better aim, and shoot again before—

Ellis hadn’t missed. He could tell because Warren jerked.

There was a hole in the center of Warren’s radiation suit. Not in his thigh, but in his chest. If Warren had been one of those silhouette targets at the range, Ellis would have scored a perfect bull’s eye. His oldest friend glared at him, shocked. He tried to speak, the mumbled gasp drowned mostly by the echo of the gunshot. Knees buckled, and Warren crumpled face-forward to the floor of the tunnel.

Ellis didn’t understand.

What just happened?

He stood frozen, looking at Warren, confused.

I didn’t kill him. I couldn’t have killed him.

Ellis expected Warren to get up even though he knew he wasn’t going to.

Warren can’t be dead. I aimed for his leg! I aimed for his leg!

Pax had the Port-a-Call out and jogged forward.

A portal leading to a star field of open space appeared inside the corridor. The conflicting energy of the portal in a portal created a rainbow of colors that sparked like a Tesla coil. From the wide eyes of Pax, Ellis could tell the light show was unexpected. Still, Pax had the presence of mind to shout back at Ellis, “Hurry! We need to roll this through.”

He looked at his watch. The glowing blue numbers read: 00:3:48.

Ellis ran forward and helped Pax push. The portal was only three feet away and right in front of the warhead, but even on wheels the bomb was hard to move. The thing felt like it weighed the same as a Volkswagen, and the portway gave little traction. Ellis’s feet were slipping and sliding. Then the case began to move, rolling slowly at first but then picking up speed.

“Don’t follow it through,” Pax warned, grabbing him. “Let it roll.”

The bomb continued to coast without their help, but when it reached the portal, it slammed to a stop.

“Storm it all!” Pax shouted.

It was obvious what had happened. The opening Pax made was an inch too high, and the wheels caught the lip. Objects needed to fully pass into a portal. Another safety feature, Ellis guessed, to stop people or things from being sheared off. Unless they could lift it and heave it through, the portal would need to be lowered.

Ellis looked at his watch: 00:2:38.

Pax pulled out the Port-a-Call again, and a second later the light show ended as the portal to space disappeared.

Ellis glanced down at Warren. There was a hole in the back of the suit. A much bigger one. Blood bubbled up like a tiny artesian well and drained down his sides onto the floor of the portway, where it made a growing puddle, spilling out bright red that was being illuminated from below by the lava. Warren wasn’t moving—wasn’t breathing.

“Stupid, stupid!” Pax was shouting even while manipulating the tiny control. Another portal appeared, this one at the same level, but a foot to the left. “Wrong bleezing coords, Pax!”

“Two-minute warning,” Ellis said.

The portal winked out.

Pax glared at the Port-a-Call with a fierce intensity that reminded Ellis of Isley playing with his Game Boy. Epic boss mob, Dad! he had shouted when Ellis had told him to empty the kitchen’s garbage. I’m down to my last life!

Another portal appeared, kicking out a new lightning-storm light show that caused it to flicker. This portal dipped down below the surface of the tunnel about a foot, and at the intersection the two wormholes fought each other. The whole portway flickered briefly, threatening to cut out.

Don’t worry. We haven’t had a tunnel failure yet. Everything down at this level runs off the Big D, and nothing’s going to interrupt her. Ellis hoped Geo-12 was right.

The new portal was also three feet back. Pax wisely realized they would need a runway to get the bomb rolling again.

Without a word, the two began pushing, only to find that Warren’s blood had spread out across the floor of the tunnel and partly around the bomb. It was like trying to push a car on ice.

Ellis pulled off his sweater and threw it on the ground, giving them something to get traction on.

00:01:31.

Leaning in, they threw their weight into it. Ellis was feeling the sweater about to give, when the bomb began to roll. The whole case inched forward at a snail’s pace, and once it was beyond the sweater, they couldn’t help it anymore, even though Pax continued to try until slipping and falling in the thin sheen of blood.

00:01:15.

Ellis raised his wrist so he could watch the clock and the warhead at the same time. The bomb inched forward at an agonizingly slow pace.

“One minute,” Ellis called just as the bomb reached the portal and then—

Pop!

The sparking hit a high note, and Pax’s portal lost its battle with the portway and vanished.

“No!” they both cried as the bomb rolled a few more feet and then stopped.

Pax took up the Port-a-Call again. “It’s not working! It’s not working!” That last word came out as a scream.

“Warren’s—get Warren’s!”

Together they rolled Warren over.

He’s dead. The thought was there knocking to get in, but Ellis didn’t have the time. He found the little device with its touch-sensitive screen, but the whole thing was covered in blood.

“I can’t get it to work,” Pax cried, wiping the screen on the thigh of the Amish pants. “It’s not the blood—it just won’t work! It’s broken like the other one.”

Ellis looked at his watch. 00:00:34.

He stepped forward, reached out, and took Pax in his arms. “My God, how I wish you were a woman.”

Pax settled against his chest and squeezed. “What difference does it make? I’m me.”

“Yes, you are.” He’d spent almost thirty-five years married to Peggy, but he’d never felt this close to her—to anyone. What happens if your soul mate is in the wrong body?

He felt Pax smile.

“And you’re telepathic.”

“Uh-huh.” Ellis felt Pax’s head rub up and down against him. “I hear the thoughts of those near me—feel their emotions as if they’re mine.”

00:00:20.

“Why couldn’t you tell me?”

“I couldn’t tell anyone. If anyone had known—if the ISP had discovered—they could have used me to make the Hive Project a reality. I like my bowler hat. I didn’t want everyone’s uniqueness taken away—I couldn’t stand for it to all be my fault.”

“That’s why you tried to kill yourself. To deny them the secret.”

Again he felt Pax nod.

00:00:10.

“I wanted to explain, but I was afraid people would reject me, hate me. Still I knew if anyone would be able to understand, be able to forgive me—it would be you.”

“Even though you know what I did to my son, Isley?”

“Yes.”

“He told me he was in love.” Ellis felt tears fill his eyes. “Only it was with another man. I told him he had to get over it. That what he was feeling wasn’t love. It couldn’t be, because love like that was only between men and women. I told him he had to choose between his family and this queer of his, because my son wasn’t gay.”

“I know,” Pax said. Ellis looked down and saw that Pax was crying too. “And I know, afterward, you would have done anything to take it back.”

“I don’t even know why I said it.” Ellis was sobbing. They both were, as they stood hugging each other over the dead body of Warren Eckard in the molten Sea of Gehenna and waiting for…

Pax was the first to say it. “Shouldn’t we be dead by now?”

Ellis wiped his eyes and looked at his watch.

It blinked 00:00:00.

“The timer.” Ellis looked at the bomb sitting in its little chariot, a black silhouette against the blast furnace. “Warren said they were having trouble with the timer.”

Pax looked at the bomb too. “Does that mean it won’t go off at all, or do we just have more time?”

“Does it matter?” Ellis took the Port-a-Call from Pax and began scrubbing it with his shirttail. “Spit on your hands, wash them clean.”

“It won’t work. I told you, it’s not the blood.”

When Ellis had cleaned the device, he carefully handed it back. “Try it again anyway.”

Pax struggled. “No. It still won’t work. It’s frozen. I think the interaction with the other tunnel broke both of—oh, wait.” Pax looked puzzled. “The lock is on this one. No one puts the lock on.” Pax slid a finger across the surface of the device. “There.”

Another portal appeared. The warhead was out of the blood pool, and the two shoved again until the bomb was rolling forward at a good pace. They watched as if it were a caisson carrying a casket.

“Go! Go! Go!” they both began to yell as it neared the opening to space.

They watched it pass through the field and continue drifting at the same snail’s pace, but now through a field of stars. With a popping crack! the portal, just like its predecessor, collapsed.

Ellis looked over at Pax. “We’re alive.”