He brings up the flash gun again, and Ellis doesn’t flinch.
BOOM!
Anderholt stands there for a few moments, watching Ellis’s insides slide down the wall and onto the desk… but only for a few.
He shrugs. “Just wasn’t your time, Ellis.”
Then with a disgusted sigh — both of relief and regret — he turns on his heels and leaves the room, closing the door on his way out.
38 — Payback
Chargin’ Charlie, John, Moses and David rush down the hallways of Blue Lake.
Charlie had managed to scare-up the three to aid him, and when he’d mentioned that the Grays might have a traitor in the base, well… they were all for it. Charlie did a bit of quick explaining — though he wasn’t real sure of everything that was going on himself, only what Bobbie had told him and what he knew of the Trifecta — so he was still explaining things as they ran.
“It’s a tricky little affair,” Charlie calls out as they turn down yet another of the long hallways. “First, Bobbie’s got to get to Blue Lake this morning, before the Dutchman is killed. After that we’ve got to get to the exact time that Aaron comes back from that Gray mothership that Bobbie says Mark and the others saw him on.”
“And how the hell are we gonna do that?” David calls out. Ahead of him, Moses stops dead in his tracks.
“Whoa, what the hell!” Charlie then shouts, but Moses is lost in thought. The words that Stu had told him in the hallway earlier that morning are running through his head.
“Moses, for the love of God, remember that Aaron gets back just after midnight.”
“Het gets back just after midnight,” Moses says, turning around with a smile on his face. “Aaron gets back just after midnight!”
“And how the hell you know that, huh?” David asks.
“Stu told me this morning.”
The men narrow their eyes to that, but say nothing. Strange things are happening, and if Moses knows the time, well… it’s a helluva lot more than the rest of ‘em know.
“If Stu said it then it’s good enough for me,” Charlie replies, then looks at them all. “Let’s get to the time shed.”
Charlie looks down at his watch, then over at Moses. “Just after midnight… now what?”
“Now we wait, what else?” David says before the pilot can answer.
Moses nods to that so Charlie does as well. The other two men just shrug and wait. They’d gotten to the time shed room by running down the hallways of Blue Lake and getting to the basement.
The room is like a storage room, and it looks the part. Boxes are piled nearly up to the ceiling against one wall, while a table pushed up against another wall is also covered with them. The only thing that looks out of place is a large, rectangular box standing at one side of the room. If it wasn’t for all the wires and tubes going into it, the men might have guessed it was some kind of shower stall, though one without a working faucet or shower head. It’s the time shed, looking old and dusty and hardly used. It doesn’t really look like a shed so much as a space pod of some sort, complete with a window on the door and a seat inside where you sat, waiting for it all to happen once you hit the controls. There was another control panel on the outside of the shed, which allowed someone to set the time destination from outside.
After that they’d all gotten into the room Charlie had switched the controls to shoot them to just before midnight that morning, or what was about 7 hours earlier than where (or when) they’d just been.
“I hope the others are doin’ alright,” David says after a few moments of silence have passed.
“They’re set,” Charlie says, turning around to look at the others. “Donlon and Stu will have just gotten Tommy’s body into the morgue — their angle is set. Now, I’ve been thinkin’ about our situation here…” he says, grinning a bit and slapping one of his Colt .45’s down in his hand, “how ‘bout some payback for that traitorous bastard Aaron?”
“Now you’re talkin’!” David nearly shouts while beside him John says, “Not sure one helping’ll be enough — how ‘bout we use the time machines to go back and kill him twice?”
“Oh, we’re not gonna kill him,” Charlie says.
“Wait… what’dya mean?” David says, and several of the others echo the comment.
“I got a better idea, a lot better,” Charlie replies, and then stands there, crossing his arms and enjoying the look of confusion on the men’s faces.
“You wanna fill us in?” John asks.
“Yeah, what’s this all about?”
“Well boys, you remember the Lake Oswego Incident a few years back?”
“Ha!” Moses laughs. “How can we forget?”
“You don’t forget something like that,” David says.
“And I’m sure Aaron hasn’t either,” Charlie says, “it’s just today… he’ll be getting a front row seat to it.”
The men’s eyes go wide at that. If Charlie was going to do what they thought he was, then his reputation as one bad ass motherfucker was cemented in their minds, oh yes indeed!
A few minutes later a shimmering curtain of light appears within the time shed, though that’s not quite right either. If Charlie and the others hiding behind the crates and boxes had to describe it they’d say it was like looking at one of those rain puddles you’d see at a gas station, an oil sheen floating at the top and giving the water a purplish, greenish sort of look.
Then there’s a flash from within the shed, and through the window the men can see movement. It’s Aaron.
Inside the machine Aaron is eager to get out and find General Anderholt so he can tell him about Mark and Bennewitz being on the mothership. He’s about ready to open the door when movement outside the shed’s window catches his eye. Then a person is there at the window, and Aaron knows exactly who it is.
“Charlie!” he says, his mouth twisting into a sneer. It quickly morphs into a smile, however, for he’s already safe — he just has to hit the controls. He reaches forth to do so.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” Charlie says quickly through the glass, nearly yelling to be heard through its thickness.
That stalls Aaron, but only for a moment. His hand continues toward the appropriate buttons to push.
“You ain’t goin’ to that mothership!” Carl then shouts, and that does stop Aaron. The master sergeant looks up, his eyes narrowing in skeptical confusion. Charlie nods toward the controls. “Look at the time.”
Aaron narrows his eyes and stares intently at the control panel that Charlie has just motioned to, and which he himself was just ready to touch. Then he sees the date, and his eyes widen and dart to Charlie.
“No,” he says.
“What?” Charlie replies.
“Not that time, anywhere but there… anywhere!”
“Oh, so you can dish it out but you can’t take it, eh?” Charlie says. “More than 50,000 died at Lake Oswego, and Portland was nearly engulfed. That whole timeline was disrupted, and word is that the Collective deems it worthless now.” Charlie shakes his head, glancing down at the floor before meeting Aaron’s eyes once again. “The Lake Oswego Incident was your doing, Aaron… and now you’ll get a taste of it firsthand.” He looks over to David and nods. “Hit it.”
David nods to that and does indeed hit it, banging his fist against the controls. The machine immediately starts to life, and sparks and mini bolts of lighting begin to crackle about.