Jessie drove the old Mercury up to the roof where the early morning sun illuminated the world and got the coffee brewing. He dumped everything out of the car and inventoried his belongings. It had been so long he forgot what he had. Bob was happy after he emptied out the sleeping area on the concrete. He discovered an old chew bone that he’d hidden away and found a sunny spot to gnaw on it.
There wasn’t much but Jessie didn’t need a lot. He dug out the spare Glocks and spent some time with them, did a few gun katas and his hands remembered the ways of war. He cut away the scraggly beard and looked at himself in the mirror for the first time in a few thousand years. It felt that long, anyway. He touched his scar and tried on a smile. It looked like a grimace. Young Jessie was gonna have his hands full when Maddy got them trained up and they went back to inhabited areas. There was a price on his head. He hoped he destroyed the bracelets and didn’t try to come back and fix things, he’d only make them worse. He’d laid the whole time travel is to dangerous spiel on pretty thick. Maybe he’d stretched the truth to get his point across but he knew Maddy would do the right thing. She knew traveling was a hit or miss proposition even with the coordinates that took him lifetimes to get. She wouldn’t let the boy screw things up.
He really wasn’t that much older, the stress had put the gray in his beard more than age. If he didn’t count time spent in limbo between there and here, he was probably only four or five years older. He was maybe twenty or twenty-one earth years old. He’d done a hell of a lot of living in those years, though.
He considered his next moves and tried to remember exactly where he was in the timeline. The Anubis cult had just been defeated mere hours ago. His dad had finally gotten rid of Casey and his raiders and the world was slowly rebuilding. The war of attrition was still years in the future and the slow mutants hadn’t shown their ugly heads yet.
As he sipped his coffee, he replayed everything he’d done immediately after his other self left here. He wanted the future he remembered, the real one before all the time jumps and knew to keep it, he’d have to do some of the same things he’d done before. In order to avoid some of the futures he’d seen, he would have to take steps now to make sure they never happened. He’d met some good people along the way and had helped a few. He knew where they were and he’d help them again but his biggest concern was the machine. It had to be dismantled. Horowitz’ scientists were already playing with it, running their experiments. That had to stop. Everything he’d accomplished could be wiped out in a nanosecond if they figured it out. Maybe Horowitz had hired some other retrievers to go after the instructions. He’d found them pretty easily using the information Marylin had given him. Others could too.
He repacked his gear, his mind plotting death and destruction for the CEO and any of his goons that tried to protect him. His movements were angry and Bob watched the boy who was no longer a boy with some confusion. He was the same but not the same. He was his master but different.
Jessie reached through the open window, flipped on the radio, grabbed the mic and hailed Lakota. He needed to let them know the Anubis cult had been destroyed. For him it had happened a thousand years ago and again yesterday. It was hard to act excited about it. He felt pissed off and cheated. After all those years, after all that effort he’d finally found her. Her mother was rampaging around hunting the soldiers as she lay dying, her cold blood trickling away, her eyes going dead. He’d hit her with a shot of adrenaline to keep her heart pumping for a few more seconds, snapped the bracelet on her wrist and launched her across time and space to Maddy. He didn’t get a chance to say goodbye, didn’t have time for one last kiss. He should have launched himself after her but he had to find the kid. He knew he had to hunt him down and kill him to end the cycle otherwise it would start all over again with the boy making time jumps. When he found him with his head broken open, he should have left him to die. He should be with her right now. He should be the one, not the boy.
“NO!” he screamed and slammed his head against the door frame.
Bob jumped up and whined. Blood splashed out from the gash across Jessies forehead.
“No.” he said again and slumped to asphalt. “I did the right thing. I did what had to be done.”
Bob came over to him and licked at the bloody tears rolling down his cheeks. Jessie pushed him away and wiped savagely at his weakness but the Shepherd came back, forced himself onto his masters lap and whined softly. Jessie stared skyward and breathed heavily. Bob licked him again and he wrapped his arms around the dog. He laid his head against his only friends’ neck and held him for a long time.
“Say again, hand.” The voice on the CB crackled. “Is that you Jessie?”
He reached up and grabbed the mic, answered the call and let them know the cult was gone.
“Do you need reinforcements for mop up?” Wire Bender asked
“Negative.” Jessie said.
“What
