Timecaster: Supersymmetry (19 page)

PHIN
I’LL WAIT FOR YOU
FOREVER

I got a little lump in my throat. Phin jogged around the corner, out of sight. I noticed movement, to the left, and saw a fence post was uprooted. The chain link was bowed inward, as if something big had crawled under it. Next to the fence was a roll of balin
g wire.

I approached cautiously. As I got closer, I saw pieces of cloth stuck to the fence at the bottom.

The cloth was stained brown. So was much of the fence, and the grass under my feet.

Dried blood.

Something jangled under my foot, and I bent down and looked.

Bullet casings. Half a dozen, the brass polished and gleaming.

I picked one up, sniffed it. The gunpowder smell was pungent, fresh.

My apprehension kicked up a notch. Something bad happened here. Recently. I squinted, trying to see through the fence into the darkness of the woods beyond.

“Don’t fucking move.”

It was a testament to her stealth that she’d snuck up behind me and I hadn’t noticed. I felt something blunt jab me in the kidney, and could guess what it was.

I could also guess who was holding it.

“Grandma?”

“What did you call me?”

I slowly raised my hands. “You’re Jacqueline Daniels, a former cop with the Chicago police department. You’re also my Grandma.”

There was a long pause, and I wondered if I was wrong and this woman was really going to shoot me. But then she said, “Talon? Is that you?”

I turned around deliberately, with no sudden moves.

Grandma wore a flannel shirt, jeans, and Colorado boots that looked like they were made of real leather. Like Phin, she w
as much younger than I’d expected. In fact, she looked even younger than he did, even though she was ten years older. Her brown hair was tied back, her eyes wide and expressive. She looked so much like my mother it was startling. But her voice—I’d never forget that voice. The voice that used to read to me, and tell me stories about all the bad guys she caught when she was on the force.

“But you died when you were a teenager,” she said. “Ju over, unconscious.

os insteadGmping over a creek on your motorbike.”

I remembered that jump, and how lucky I’d been not to kill myself. In this alternate universe I obviously hadn’t been so lucky.

“You died too, Grandma. On my earth, when I was a kid.”

“Your earth? How did you… what is…”

Then lowered the gun and hugged me. So tight it hurt.

Grandma had some serious muscles.

“It’s so good to see you, Talon,” her voice cracked. “I’ve missed you so much. How is this even possible?”

I hugged her back, feeling her body tremble. “It’s complicated. Do you know anything about the multiverse?”

“Of course. That’s how everything went to hell here.”

“Things aren’t good in my world, either. Do you have guns?”

“Plenty.”

“Bullets?”

“In the shed.”

This was perfect. All we needed to do was load up. After all the shit that had come before, I couldn’t believe how easy this turned out to be.

I held her at arm’s length. “I forgot to tell you something,” I said. “I didn’t come here alone.”

“What do you mean? Who did you bring with you?”

A voice behind her said, “Jack?”

Grandma’s eyes got wide. “Is… is that…?’“

I nodded. Smiled.

“Oh… my. Do I… do I look okay?”

“You look great,” I told her.

She brushed a stray strand of hair behind her ear, took a deep breath, then turned around slowly.

Phin was a few meters away, hands at his sides.

“Remember when I told you nothing would ever keep us apart?” he asked.

I’d never seen my grandfather cry before, but his eyes were brimming over.

“Took you long enough,” Grandma said, barely a whisper.

He smiled. “Some things are worth waiting for.”

They stood there for a moment, staring.

Then they ran to each other.

I knew a thing or two about love. I loved my wife as much one person could love another. But when my grandparents?” Talon’s wife asked.ats speaker-mouth, which p kissed, it had to have been one of the most passionate, most intense, most loving kisses in the history of humankind. And it made sense that it was. They’d conquered time and conquered death and traversed the multiverse for that kiss.

How many marriages could boast that?

“I can’t believe you’re here, Phin.” Grandma said, coming up for air. “I dreamed of this moment so many times.”

“Me too. You look great. Jack. How’d you get younger than me?”

“The wonders of pharmaceuticals. You don’t have reverse aging pills on your earth?”

“We can only stop aging, not reverse it.”

“Do you have resurrection serum?”

“No.”

“Good. This world is ruined. Take me back to yours.”

“Gladly. But what do you mean this world is ruined?”

And that’s when the zombies came.

“We’re going to die!
We’re all going to die!”

“Shut up, you whiny little bitch boy.”

“He’s right, fool. Stop complaining or we’ll give your bitch ass something to complain about for realz.”

“Have you heard this one? So there’s a knock at the door, and a guy answers, and it’s some chick pushing a stroller. And she says to him, ‘Remember me? We had sex nine months ago. Well, I got pregnant, and the baby is yours!’ And he says, ‘Yeah, I remember. But it couldn’t be me. Because we had anal sex. And you can’t get pregnant having anal sex.’ And she says, ‘Oh yeah? Well take a look!’ And she lifts up the blanket in the stroller, and sure enough, the baby looks like shit.”

No one laughed.

“You need to shut up too, asshole. Ain’t nothing funny about you but your face.”

“I don’t want to die! Someone help me!”

Alter-Sata opened up the bag and scowled. “If you fruits don’t be quiet, I’m going to blend you into a smoothie.”

They were quiet for all of five seconds, then started yapping again.

Alter-Sata dropped the bag in the nearest biorecycle bin, accessed the search engine on his TEV, and deleted
apples that screamed when you ate them
off his Boolean search terms.

Live and learn.

“arthere was

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Chapter 11

At first, I thought
it was a just a man. A pale, wounded man with half his face torn off, an eye missing, and a few ribs poking out of his chest. He crawled under the gap in the fence with a disjointed urgency, eager to get to us but obviously having some motor-skills issues.

Then the smell hit me. Decay. Rot. Putrefaction.

This wasn’t a man. This guy was a corpse. A cadaver. He had shed his mortal coil a while ago, and apparently no one had told him.

Though the dead didn’t walk on my earth, I’d watched enough 4D movies to know a zombie when I saw one.

“Get down!” Grandma yelled, bringing up her gun.

One moment the zombie’s head was there—

— a thunderous
BANG!
later, it was gone, leaving a plume of bloody vapor in its place.

“That was a zombie,” Phin said, much calmer than I was feeling. “You just killed a zombie.”

Jack shrugged. “Technically, it was already dead.”

“More coming,” I said, pointing. “More zombies coming.”

Six more lumbered toward us, just beyond the fence. Two of them—a young girl with pigtails and bluish skin, and an teenager in a hyperfootball uniform with his left foot broken and twisted the wrong way—clawed their way under the chain link.

Grandma shot each in the face. The back of the girl’s head blasted outward, showing the fence with pulpy brains. The helmet deflected the other bullet before it could exit, bouncing around inside the jock’s skull like a rubber ball, scrambling his brains to liquefaction, which sluiced down his neck.

Pretty damn gross.

“I have weapons in the shed!”

Grandma took off in a sprint, Phin and I a few steps behind her. Everywhere I looked, zombies were shaking the fence. Grunts, moans, and even a few monosyllabic words could be heard in all directions, the prominent one being “JAAAACK.”

“They know you?” Phin called to her.

“I’ve killed a few hundred. I guess they hold a grudge.”

We sprinted around the side of the cabin, to the pig pen, hopping the small wooden fence and tromping through the mud to an attached shed. Grandma threw open the door.

“Whoa,” Phin said after peering inside. “That’s my girl.”

The shed was an armory. Weapons and munitions lined the walls. Rifles, shotguns, semi-automatics, re?” Talon’s wife asked.at

My Grandma kicked ass.

“Can you handle a shotgun?” she asked me.

I nodded. I’d never actually fired a real one, just the models that shot carbon nanonets and manstopper gel. But I was a quick learner.

Grandma took a shotgun from the rack and tossed it to me. I caught it with both hands. It was black, with a pistol grip and a padded stock.

“It’s a Mossberg 930 semi-auto twelve gauge. It’s loaded with three inch Magnum shells, six in the magazine tube, one in the spout. Bolt action to cock. Safety is above the handle. Grab some ammo belts on the wall.”

“I love you, Grandma.”

“I love you too, Talon. Aim for the head, dear.”

I crisscrossed my shoulders with the belts, bandolier-style. Then I tucked the gun stock into my armpit, and sighted down the barrel.

Phin came up alongside me with a shotgun of his own. He got into firing position.

“Pull in on the grip, but pull out on the stock with your opposite hand. Won’t kick as much. Better accuracy.”

I copied his form. He gave my gun a nudge and it moved.

“Harder,” he said. “Like it’s a snake you don’t want biting you.”

I increased the pressure. Phin gave it another slap, but my weapon stayed steadier.

“Good. You should be deadly at twenty-five yards and closer.”

“Yards?”

Phin shook his head. “I keep forgetting that President Olsen changed us to the metric system. Thanks for that, Ashley.”

“It was Mary-Kate Olsen. Ashley was Secretary of State. Remember? She was the reason we declared war on France.”

“We’re being attacked by zombies, Talon. Focus.”

“Sorry.”

“Figure you’re accurate to twenty-two meters. Anything farther, lead the target a bit.”

“Got it. Grandma, why do you have zombies?”

She slung a rifle over her neck. “After anti-aging pills were invented, a scientist learned how to open wormholes and travel to other earths. He went looking for other, more powerful drugs in the multiverse and brought back reverse-aging pills and digital tabletat

I had an idea who that scientist was. He seemed to cause all sorts of trouble in the multiverse. “If the serum does that, why did people keep using it?”

“Because when you lose someone you love, Talon, emotion gets in the way of common sense. One of our biggest strengths, hope, is also one of our biggest weaknesses. What should have been a boon to the world became a zombie apocalypse. Even in the face of total extinction of the species, you can’t change human nature.”

“You are so sexy when you philosophize,” Phin said.

They kissed again. This time it was less romantic, and more… well, I really didn’t need to see my grandparents grinding on each other like that.

“Behind you!”

Grandma pulled away from the lip-lock long enough to point at the doorway. I lifted the barrel, aimed, squeezed the trigger.
POP!
went the zombie brain piñata.

But when that one went down, five others trampled over its fallen body to get to us.

“JAAACK!” they moaned.

“JAAACK!” they cried.

“JAAACK!” they bellowed.

“JAAACK!” they—well, the point was they said “Jack” a lot.

Hands reaching out, teeth gnashing, drool and worse leaking down rotting faces, the real thing was a lot less cool than how it was portrayed in movies, books, and that long running Disney-Pixar TV series
Shoot The Mutha Fucking Head!
First of all, it smelled a lot worse. Second of all, no catchy musical numbers. Third, being attacked by zombies was really, really scary. At that moment, I would have rather been fighting Rocket again.

The shed lit up like ground zero at a fireworks accident, the gunshots coming so fast that it was an unending wall of light and sound. Bodies piled upon bodies, and more of the undead clawed their way on top of the pile, an ever-encroaching zombie tsunami threatening to topple upon us.

“I’m out!” Phin yelled.

I stepped in front of him as he reloaded. It was a silly thing to do, because I was empty two shots later. The nearest zombie, a dude missing his lower jaw, fell on top of me, his upper teeth bumping into my arm. I pushed him away, and he bumped me again, unable to bite me with only one set of teeth. What was the point? He couldn’t chew without a jaw. Was he just going through the motions? Operating on instinct? Hoping that maybe he’d run into a person who was already pre-chewed?

It was pathetic, really, but I assumed that zombie bites spread the disease and I didn’t want him to break my skin, even though his attempts were just silly. I cracked the shotgun stock hard against his faceering pizzas.”

ed to tempG, and the teeth he had left went flying. Over the cacophony of gunfire I swore I heard him groan, “Aww, come on!”

“Grandma! I’m out!”

Grandma took the lead, emptying one shotgun, then another, then drawing two nickel-plated .45s from a shoulder rig and Swiss-cheesing a zombie reaching for my arm. I backpedaled, trying to reload from my ammo belt, dropping more shells than I could get into the gun.