Flamethrower, Interrupted (Ch1)

Chapter 1 of the novel THEDA'S TIME MACHINE, a historical fiction thriller by Alison Bull.

On a Kansas military base in 1918, Theda Evora is visiting her father...and hiding from a group of anarchists who want her dead. It would be the perfect place to lay low, if only young soldiers weren't mysteriously disappearing. Then a stranger appears who knows too much about Theda’s past…and about her future. He's from the 1940s searching for a time traveling doctor with a penchant for disease. Caught between believing in reality and knowing that something is terribly wrong, Theda searches for the truth, even if it means confronting her own father.

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If they find me, they’ll kill me.

Private First-Class Benjamin Conlin shoved his arms through the rigid sleeves of the battered army issue overcoat, frozen fingers finding it near impossible to button up. The heat had conked out with a rattle and hiss on his white 1992 Ford Escort back at the Kansas border. As the unremarkable scenery blurred by and the warmth slowly drained from the car, each item inside had rearranged its molecular structure to exchange soft pliancy for the stiff, starched feel of the shirts his Granny used to iron for his great-grandfather. “That shirt could stand on its own and salute General Patton,” Great-grandpa would say with a chuckle, poking at debris on the porch with his leather-topped cane and sending it flying. He would always follow this with a quiet, “It’s as cold as March in Kansas.”

He never paid any attention to that statement. Why would he? It just seemed like one of those expressions old people used that had meaning when Kennedy was president and the world suddenly could now be viewed through a wavy twelve-inch screen right from the living room, a phrase lost in past vernacular. It wasn’t until recently that he understood its meaning, and now, he was living it. Just as his great-grandfather had over a hundred years ago.

Conlin gripped the door handle. His hands were gloveless, and he barely felt the imitation leather but could feel every thump of his pulse that echoed throughout his body. He watched. I have only two hours. Less than. It won’t be enough.

His large brown eyes stared hard and unblinking at the abandoned building. The full moon limned in silver the boarded-up windows. The building was originally built far away from the others at Fort Riley as it was used to isolate the sick, and over the years no one had the mind to tear it down after more modern complexes were built on the base, nor did they build anything close to it. Conlin wondered if that was deliberate but guessed that as military personnel filtered through and memory waned like the last crescent moon there was no one alive who could have told you why the building was abandoned and untouched over many seasons.

The parked car shifted slightly as a gust of wind kicked up dirt and pinecones and sent both slamming into the door and glass, producing a mix of tinkling and scratching noises. He smelled the marsh of the Republican River and heard rushing water that had been finally released from its winter ice over.

Go. Now. He grabbed a long flashlight, the heavy type found in military supply websites that doubled as a weapon and pushed the door open against another fierce gust that almost slammed it shut again. He grabbed a faded green bag from the passenger seat and flung the strap crossways across his body. The door’s CLUNK! as it shut seemed as loud as a cherry bomb as it cut through the whistle of the wind and the distant rush of the river. Conlin pulled his army cap over his eyebrows, gripped the flashlight and made his way to the backdoor that was invisible from the front road, which was deserted at almost midnight but even if a car drove by, its twin headlights cutting the night, no one would see him.

He had two other items: a loaded Colt M1911 in his green bag, issued at that very base during the First World War, and a pair of rusty bolt cutters. Both had been in Granny’s basement and Great-Grandpa had instructed him to bring both. One of them he had no choice but to use, the other he hoped he never had to use.

Conlin reached the backdoor and touched its splintery surface where years of rain, snow and river air had peeled the once white paint and split the wood in countless places. He didn’t turn on the flashlight yet, even though he felt sure he was alone. He felt for the doorknob and turned. It was surprisingly loose in his hand. He felt the chain around the knob and attached to an anchor on the doorframe.

The chain was broken.

His heart doubled in his chest to the point where he wasn’t sure he could enter. Don’t be an ass. It could’ve been broken for months. Years. Who the hell comes out here anyway?

He moved his booted foot and knocked into something that fell to the ground with a metal clink. He knelt and ran his hand over the gravelly surface until he found it. He held it up in the moonlight.

Another pair of bolt cutters.

Now the fear grew into a low-grade terror he had never remembered experiencing, worse than when he was a kid and tired in the deep end of the town pool and thought he would drown. He placed both pairs of bolt cutters gently against the stone building. He stood, his breath in white plumes. He stashed the flashlight under his left arm and unbuttoned his top buttons, pulling out the Colt with his right hand.

He slowly pushed the door open and stepped inside. The scents of years-long abandonment assaulted him: mildew and dust, stagnant air and animal droppings. The beam showed an old-fashioned kitchen, the type with an enormous white porcelain sink and glass cabinets.

The door’s at the left. Look to the left. And it was there. The door to the basement, only it was not closed like it should have been but open. Conlin stopped and listened, all of his instinct screaming at him to back up, get into his little car without the heat and not lay off the gas until he was safe across the George Washington Bridge and back in New York City.

But he had promised. He had promised a dying man whom he had loved dearly, and he wasn’t a man to break his word. To the men in his family a broken word was worse than death.

To his growing horror, he noticed that the doorway to the basement wasn’t as dark as the rest of the room and the slanting moonlight didn’t reach the doorframe.

There was a light on in the basement.

He reached into his bag and drew the pistol. He cocked it, stepping on the first stair that squeaked like a hundred mice. The pool of light at the bottom shifted and a shadow splashed then retreated. He swallowed air, his teeth gritting against the chemical fear that he could almost smell off himself. They shoot me as soon as I step off the last stair. Who’s gonna find me down here? The rats?

“Come down the stairs, please,” a woman’s voice called from the eerie light of the cellar, and Benjamin Conlin stifled a yelp at that purring voice cutting the silence like thunder. “This will go much faster if you do.”

The flashlight’s beam trembled in his path. A beautiful voice…the voice of a siren…will I finally drown in the basement? He descended. At the end, he peered to the source of the light.

A tall woman wearing a long black coat stood with her back to Conlin, facing the wall on the opposite end of the basement. Her arms were crossed and she intently watched a mid-size doorway, the kind found behind furniture in old houses that hide secret stashes of housewife cash and letters from dead relatives. The woman turned her head, still not looking straight at him. She was a white woman with long, dark hair pulled back in a loose ponytail. He dropped the flashlight, beam dancing around the dank cellar which was filled with falling apart bedframes and decaying mattresses. He raised the pistol and pointed it. “Who are you?” He meant it to sound menacing, but it came out tinged with astonishment.

She heard the difference, and one side of her mouth lifted in a smile. “I watched you earlier from the wooded area. When you first arrived, during the daylight. I must say you’re not cut out for this work. I’d wager that your car could be seen from the street, judging by where you parked it. And if your hand shakes any more, you may put a bullet right through this door rather than through me, which would be my desired result, as it were.”

Conlin lowered the gun. She squinted her eyes looking him over up and down, then her eyes rested on the faint stamp of his last name on the green bag. “Oh,” she said quietly, and her eyes softened. “Well, isn’t this a fine how-do-you-do. Who are you to him?”

“I’m his great-grandson.”

“’Great?’ How extraordinary. And he lived long enough into your life to tell you about it?”

A small smile played across his lips. “Everyone used to say he looked so young he could have been brothers with my grandfather.” He lowered the gun all the way and walked toward her. Up close, it was impossible to tell how old she was. Like most young men in their twenties, he was never good at guessing age.

“Is he…?”

Conlin nodded. “He’s gone now.”

He was surprised to see her close her eyes, her expression compressed. “Ah, Patrick, why didn’t you wait for me? He was the best friend I ever had,” she said softly, eyes still closed. Best friend. At once he knew exactly who she was, and he was grateful.

“Do you know why I’m here?”

She opened her eyes and they shone wet. “Yes. Same reason why I’m here.”

“Something is happening. Is it what he thought it might be?”

“I cannot tell that yet. I suppose until it breaks, no one will be able to tell that. Or, no one who we know, at any rate. But they are out there. We best hurry. You never know when one of them will show.”

“Is the solution,” he gestured to the little door. “In there?”

“I cannot tell that, either. Not until we open it.”

“He told me to go to the beginning,” Conlin began.

“The beginning,” she said, as if the common word had a double meaning. “There are no true beginnings, only sign posts. Only incidents, fumbling in the void. Droppings of life across too vast a plane.” She turned back around and studied the lock, which he could now see had a large, rusted padlock. “We’re going to break this lock and see if what remains of 1918 is still here. Then, no matter what we find, we’re going to get as far away from this place as possible.” Her eyes fell on the twisted wreck of an iron bedframe. It was one of at least three that lined the wall. “Never thought I’d see this place again,” she murmured.

“My car…”

“You won’t need it. There’s a shock front on the horizon, and we’re the only ones who can outrun it. When you come with me, you’ll see.”

READ CHAPTER 2 HERE:

Philadelphia, March 1918