“It’s beside the point,” Thomas said. “How old was he when he was elected? Forty? Forty-five?”
Jim nodded that the figure was close enough and after a pause while he digested what Thomas was getting at, realized his point. Somewhere out there, in Maine, if he remembered correctly, the man who would in the future history of the world, be elected president was now eighteen years old.
“Strange times,” said Thomas as he saw the realization spread over Jim’s face. “Strange times indeed.”
It had been a strange day that had now moved into a surreal night. Eventually, exhaustion and fatigue flowed over Jim’s body like a wave, and he excused himself.
“Goodnight James,” said Thomas, as Jessica hugged him and whispered in his ear, “In case all of this is gone in the morning.”
Nineteen
Rebecca was not surprised when her parents had explained to her in tones so hushed they were almost a whisper, that her nightmare had not been a dream. Just thinking about it, made her want to vomit, and it was all she could do to keep the urge under control.
Her mother and father sat across the breakfast table from her in the cramped kitchen of their doublewide trailer, an almost beatific look of wonder on both their faces. Rebecca’s mother must have realized her thoughts had strayed back to that moment again because she reached out and quickly took her daughter’s hand in her own, toppling the bottle of maple syrup they had just used with their pancake breakfast.
“Are you okay, Becky?” she asked, concern stitched across her face, ignoring the bottle and the pool of sticky syrup that had begun to leak onto the table top.
Rebecca swallowed hard and managed a weak smile. I probably look like a corpse grinning, she thought to herself. She forced the images of the glinting knife out of her head and asked her question again, “Please Dad, tell me what happened. I need to know.”
It had been three days since Becky had found herself so suddenly back in her childhood bedroom: three days of utter confusion, not only for her but also for the entire world. No one really seemed to know what had happened, what had caused billions of people to suddenly find themselves thrown so violently into the past. Even though the provisional government would have liked everybody to believe they had some idea, it had become patently obvious that they were as perplexed as the rest of the world.
At least there was something resembling television coverage, now. On the first day after the event, other than the occasional news station that had managed to overcome the initial shock of return and put out some kind of a broadcast — albeit only a mishmash of confused mixed messages and conjecture — there had been virtually no definitive information on what had happened. But now the networks were getting their acts together, and most of the channels which had been nothing but static or automated emergency broadcasts were now transmitting coverage of the event.
The news was not good. Telecasts and news reports from around the world showed humanity in utter chaos. Death, destruction, confusion, horror, and disbelief blanketed every nation.
It was odd to contrast the images beaming into the Lacey home to the peaceful almost tranquil oasis of small town Water Rock, Nevada. A little less than sixty miles west of Las Vegas, this hardscrabble town of forty-thousand souls was isolated on all sides by mountain ranges and desert.
There was no airport to speak of, just a private strip that saw the occasional light aircraft flying in or out. There was a hospital that, according to Dr. Weaver who lived a few doors down from Becky and her family, had seen only a few cases on the day of the event; a couple of heart attacks (one of those turned out to be just a mild case of angina) and a car wreck or two. Amazingly, there were no fatalities and certainly nothing to compare to the devastation they had seen in the large metropolitan areas of the U.S. Becky had also learned from Doc Weaver that she wasn’t the only resurectee in town. There were others who had “passed away”, as the gentle doctor had put it, only to find themselves alive again, but they had all been older residents. He wasn’t aware of anyone else who had returned after suffering through, what the good doctor referred to as Rebecca’s “unique set of circumstances.” The news that there were other cases of the dead returning to life was comforting, even though there was no mention on any resurectees who had died in as violent a manner as she, apparently had.
Looking south through the kitchen window of her parents doublewide, past the backyard towards Mount Charleston she could still see the cloud of smoke that had gathered in the sky over Las Vegas.
The city of sin had been hit hard on the day of the event. McCarran International airport had been devastated, and most of the hotels that lined the strip close alongside the airport had been destroyed when an incoming jet had cartwheeled through the terminal-one and into the nearest casino. The local TV news had shown images of the resulting firestorm that had swept through the town, devouring most of the classic landmarks and reducing them to little more than ashes and skeletal corpses. The fire had been so voracious it had quickly overwhelmed the few confused L.V. Fire Department members who had managed to respond.
Rebecca’s parents had avoided answering her pressing questions for most of the three-days after she had miraculously reappeared back at their home. And that had been okay, at first. Her mind had been so confused, so off-track, that her questions had been limited to trying to understand where she was and why she had no recollection of getting home. But now, her mind felt clear, anchored in this reality. And she wanted answers to her questions.
“Mom. Dad. Please? I need to know what happened,” she repeated, almost pleading. Her parents regarded each other across the breakfast table. They were not complicated people, and she knew she could not expect a definitive explanation of why the last thing she remembered before waking up in her bedroom had been of a man with a knife to her throat, but they could at least fill in the blank spaces for her. Help her illuminate the dark spaces that seemed to fill her mind; that was all she wanted.
Finally, after a long moment of speechless communication, a pale Kimberly Lacey nodded faintly to her husband and he began to explain what had happened to his daughter.
As her father recounted the missing events, Rebecca confirmed most of what the cops had managed to piece together by themselves during their investigation: the night out with friends, the club where she and her friends met for the evening, talking and laughing. And when the night was over, Rebecca had hailed a cab outside the bar and taken it home to her modest apartment. Her last memory before she found herself immersed in her nightmare had been pushing the key into the lock that would open the security gate that kept out unwanted visitors from the grounds of the apartment building. Everything after that moment was a confused mess of images and thoughts.
The very last thing she remembered with any clarity was laying on her kitchen table… and the man. And the knife. She remembered the knife.
Her Father filled in the blanks while her mother sat stone-faced, tears trickling over cheeks.
“The police think he followed you home,” her father said choking back a sob before continuing. “From the autopsy report they think he hit you with something while you were trying to get through the security gate. They found some of your blood on the ground near the gate and you had a blunt-force trauma to the back of your head.” He reached up and tapped the corresponding spot on the back of his own head.
“The officer said whoever had done this to you had carried you to your apartment. They thought he had probably been watching you for weeks. That it might even be somebody you knew… know.”