THE MAN WHO NEVER WAS
By Tommyhawk1@AOL.COM
WWW.TOMMYHAWKSFANTASYWORLD.COM
The Leader's forces were in the process of breaching our inner perimeter. Overhead, a constant barrage of bombs were falling, shaking our bunker from time to time. We had dug deep, but even so...we were running out of time.
The scientists were a pale lot, stumbling and weak with fatigue from lack of sleep. I was there, a lone guard, my turn at the post, is the only reason why I was here. It looked like it would be my last post. If this didn't work....
"Strike team is en route!" came the report. "Ready to launch in five minutes."
Did we have five minutes? Did we have one minute? We were losing, the rebellion was doomed. If the scientists couldn't pull this off...well, nothing else would matter. This rebellion, this small group, was the last chance of Mankind to fend off what would become an eternal tyranny under the iron gaze of Michael Ditkus. At my station was a button that the scientists hopefully didn't know about. If I pushed it, it would blow up this entire installation. We couldn't let the Leader have this technology. If he could travel in time in addition to the powers he already held over the Earth...well, forever would lose all meaning. A fresh load of bombs hailed down on us and shook the bunker harder than it had been shaken before. Some equipment fell off one table, I hoped we didn't need it.
A single man came in the door. His eyes were glazed, his clothes bore fresh grime on it (in addition to the plethora of old grime), a slash on one arm was still bleeding.
"Strike team." he rasped out.
"Where are the rest?" the commander asked.
"Dead." he bit off. "Dead or nearly so. I'm all you got."
The commander was used to tough calls, he ought to be by now. "Jansen."
"Sir!" I said, coming erect. You cling to such protocol in the last hours, they are your sole comfort.
"Prepare for temporal shift with Simmons here." the commander ordered. "The two of you will have to do."
"What about the door?" I asked, foolishly.
"Nobody else is coming through it, son." the commander said gently.
I gulped and went to the plate. Certain death is one thing, but what the time machine could do to you, what I'd seen it do to some of the experimental animals we'd used, well...I'll spare you the nightmare, but just say that there are worse things than dying. Far, far worse.
And I was about to take a ride, part of the first, and last, humans to travel through time.
I got with Simmons onto the plate. Six were to go, we chose two of the plates.
The lead scientist was remonstrating with the commander, saying that the equipment needed to be recalibrated, he could not guarantee that we'd make it to the time and place chosen.
"Will they travel back in time?" the commander cut him off.
"Yes, but we won't be able to predict exactly when or even where...."
"Perkins, in case you haven't noticed, we don't have time for anything else. These two will go where and when we send them."
"But only two...."
"One of those two is Simmons." the commander said. "He's the essential one. Jansen, protect Simmons' life at all costs until you complete your mission."
I nodded sharply (protocol) and the scientists started the machine. I saw with the last glimpse of the Year 2080 that the commander was at my old station, and his thumb was stabbing at the bomb.
I only hoped it actually went off. The last thing Simmons and I needed was some of the Leader's soldiers showing up when we struck.
Though unbriefed on everything about the strike other than a bit of scuttlebutt about the mission, the objective was clear enough. We couldn't defeat the Leader in the Year 2080. He was too powerful, too well entrenched, too loaded with cybernetic devices that would keep him eternally alive and in power, forever and ever.
But the young boy who had been the Leader in 2065 (or so), that young lad would be easy to kill. We just hoped that killing him while he was still too young to have the legions of loyal followers, the masses blinded by his charismatic personality that they would march into the jaws of death in droves for him upon his order, that we ended the power of the Eternalists. It had been a small, inconsequential party until the Leader had come upon them and built them up into a force to be reckoned with, and then beyond that. The same formula that had let Hitler build up the National Socialists had worked again.
I came to after a time. Travel in time has a build up in kinetic energy within the subjects, that turns into heat. I'd been delirious with a fever of nearly 120. It dropped rapidly, the only thing that saved me. Beside me, Simmons was coming to himself. After lying there helpless for a half hour or so, I felt barely strong enough to rise to a sitting position. "Whooh!" I said. "I don't want to travel that way again, ever!"
Simmons was looking around. "This is the wrong place." He said. "Probably wrong time, even. We have to figure out first what year this is."
I pointed. "If I remember my history books right, that's a newspaper machine right over there."
Holding each other up, we staggered over to the machine. Our actions caused a certain amount of curious stares from the onlookers. We were both wearing military garb from the future. Keklite fibers in overlapping strips, my guess is we looked like a pair of bikers in ripped up black leather clothes. It was all we were wearing, metal didn't travel well through time. When it came time for us to slit the throat of an eight-year-old boy whose only crime was growing up to become a monster, we would have to do it with whatever we could find in this time. It suited me, bringing constalasers through to an earlier period of time didn't strike me as smart. And how much struggle would a young kid give us, anyhow?
We looked at the newspaper inside the machine and I read off the date. "March 24, 2008." I said, as if Simmons couldn't read. "So what do we do, wait around for fifty years or so and off him in his basinet at the hospital?"
Simmons was staring at the newspaper like he was reading off his own death sentence.
"Simmons?"
"2008." he said to me. "No, we don't have to wait for fifty years. I know what we have to do."
"What?"
"Kill his grandmother. She's about twelve years old now." Simmons said. It was like he was in a trance.
"So we kill his grandmother." I said, tasting it. "Sure, why not? I mean, a male parent would be iffy, the Leader could have had a bastard for a mother. God knows he's a bastard himself...."
"Shut up!" Simmons snapped at me.
"Sorry." I said. "But I don't see the difference. So we kill a little girl instead of a little boy. Are you forgetting the hundreds of millions of people who have died thanks to our illustrious Leader? Better one person, however innocent, than five hundred million innocents, isn't it?"
"Yeah." Simmons said.
"So how do we find her?"
I know where she went to school. I know her name, I know her home address. We'll find her, no problem."
"Then let's go." I said. "First, I need a long, long drink. Even if it's only water."
We found the Leader's grandmother's home, a neat little home in a clean suburb. Looking at it choked me up. In my time, that sort of vision was only for the select few. In this time, plenty of people had it.
Armed with shivs we created from some trash, we knocked on the door. A neighbor broke the news to us. They were off on "spring break" whatever the hell that was. She'd been told they would be back next Sunday afternoon some time. We had six days, maybe more, to wait before we could save the human race.
By then, the gnawing in my stomach was getting intense, and I broached with the kindly old lady the question of some food for a couple of hungry but honest guys with a bit of bad luck. It worked; the neighbor turned out to be a major blessing, she not only fed us "as friends of the Martins" (the Leader's mother's mother, no reason for her to have his last name), but got us jobs and a place to live, her son-in-law was a contractor. We worked days at the construction site, and nights, we were allowed to crash in the architect's trailer, it had a bed in one end, and a shower and toilet. The architect himself was out of town himself that week, we had strict instructions not to mess anything up. Two longtime soldiers, we had no problem doing that. We were hard workers, and at the end of the first day, the son-in-law paid us an advance on our wages and volubly hoped we'd stick with him for the rest of our lives.
Given we were on the end of a one-way trip with no way home, I was quick to agree. We'd either be caught by the police killing Little Grandma Martin, or we wouldn't. If we weren't, a job to come home to sounded good.
We worked days and spent our nights watching the television. Paul (Simmons' first name) was troubled by our mission. I didn't understand it, he was committed to the mission, and our arguments for going through with it were certainly inarguable. I asked him if he really wanted to wait fifty years so we could kill the Leader instead, and he had to agree that was dangerous (we could be dead of old age by then). Still, he got more and more agitated as the time approached.
Friday was payday, and we got the money for the rest of the week's work. We were to go hunting for a place to live over the weekend. I was looking over the newspaper for possibilities. After all, we couldn't go hunting Little Grandma Martin (my term for her) until she got home. I was beginning to love this new life we had here, and I wanted to make the kill quick and clean and make a quick, clean getaway. I'd sacrifice myself if I had to, but I was hoping to grow old here and now. Freedom is a heady drink.
We were both wearing our military clothes, the Keklite uniforms were the only things we owned to wear besides our brand-new, second-hand construction clothes, and those were going to be washed first thing in the morning before we went looking for places to live. Like I said, I was getting domesticated in a hurry.
"Here's a nice place." I said to Paul. "One bedroom, furnished, couples okay. We'd have to hit the boss up for a raise but...."
"Shut up, Carl!" Paul said. "Just shut up, please, please, shut up."
"Okay." I said, and was silent for about ten seconds. "Paul? What's wrong here? What's really wrong?"
"Nothing." Paul said. And he started shaking.
"We can get this done, easy." I said. "It's only a young girl. She walks to school every morning, we can strike Monday morning and only be a little late for work. It'll be quick and clean for Little Grandma Martin, or I hope it will be. I don't want to make her suffer, we just need her dead."
"Shut up, shut up, shut up!" Paul screamed.
He was frightened as hell. Shell-shock, was my guess. He'd been in a long-term bombstorm like me those last days in the future, sometimes the reaction is delayed. I was dealing with a few nightmares myself in the nights. But the Year 2008 was turning into just the medicine I'd needed. And this treatment was going to go on the rest of my life, soon as we got rid of one inconvenient little girl.
Paul needed me and I sat down next to him quickly and held him, rocked him like a child while he wept. Wailed, is a better term.
"I'm afraid." he said over and over again. "I'm afraid."
"It's all right, it's all right." I said over and over again. "It's okay to be afraid, Paul, it's okay."
"I don't want to die." he mumbled into my chest. "I don't want to die."
When he was finally silent, I said. "You want me to do the job myself, alone?" I offered. "I will. You can stay here and go to work and tell them I'll be along in a while. If I'm late, you don't know where I am, went to look at an apartment for us. If the police come by, you don't know a thing."
"No, no, no, no, no." Paul muttered at my breast.
He hadn't worried about killing the Leader as a little boy. I figured it was because now our target was a little girl instead. "It has to be done." I said. "If you like, when we get settled, we'll adopt children, you and me, and raise them, as many as you want. We'll open a fucking orphanage if you'd like. Good deeds the rest of our lives, to make up for the one bad thing we'd done that we had to do...."
"I know." Paul babbled. "I know. We have to do this, we have to. But I'm afraid."
"I'll do it alone if you'd like."
"No, I need to be there." Paul said. "You need me. But... Just...."
"What?"
"Just hold me." Paul murmured. "Hold me."
"Sure." I said. And he raised his tear-stained face to mine. Looking so much like my nephew I'd held after he'd scraped his knee at the age of five. I did what I'd done then, I placed my lips on his forehead and gave it a gentle kiss. Very fatherly, though I'd been fourteen when I'd done it for my nephew. It had soothed my nephew, and a few more such kisses had ended the tears and even restored a smile.
So I kissed his forehead again. And again.
And his lips raised up to kiss me in return. The kiss wasn't long, though it didn't feel fatherly. "Hold me." he said again. "All night long and don't let go. Please."
"All right." I agreed. "All night long." Monday morning, we'd strike and get it over with, we'd lurk along her route and make it a quick strike. I'd be careful to make the kill myself, and after that, we'd get away and unless we were incredibly unlucky enough to get caught, we'd start a new life. All the bad things would be over.
And Paul reached up and kissed me again and this time his kiss didn't let go of me. His arms reached up to hold me, hold me tight.
You have to understand that I'd spent the last seven years in the rebellion forces. Sex was a case of you taking what you can get when you can. Sex with women when you could, sex with men when you couldn't, sometimes by force, sometimes willingly. And sex with a comrade-at-arms was the best kind of all. You learned not to be fussy.
Paul and I hadn't met before that time at the time machine. But we were two men alone in a strange era (the opposite end of the 21st Century, and the change was enough to be dizzying now and then. I'd had fun learning to use a hammer properly, for example), we were going to be here the rest of our lives. We needed each other, and Paul needed me more because of this awkward time he was going through. Having to kill a little girl who'd never done him or anyone else a bit of harm... It didn't bother me given the circumstances, but if it bothered Paul, I understood that.
So when Paul kissed me hard and held me tight, my own lips met him with ardor and my own arms weren't slow about snaking around him in return. We were wearing our uniforms and that felt right, too. I knew how to remove them with a minimum of fuss and bother, the buttons our work clothes held were still baffling my fingers, but the uniform closures were easy and long-known to my fingertips.
So I eased his tunic off with minimal fuss and his magnificent chest was there. Small scars here and there told of the battles he had fought, the cut on his arm he'd taken in those final moments was now a purplish line of scab on one bicep, and his nipples were a pair of brown points begging for my kiss. I was generous, leaning over and taking first one, then the other, in my lips and taunting them with my tongue.
Paul's hand went to my crotch, a blatantly aggressive move, and the sexual dynamic changed. He had my cock out in a flash and he dove for it with the single-minded fury of a quickie in the trench in the half-hour before an assault was to begin.
I lay back on the small couch we were seated on and let Paul have his way. He swallowed my eight inches of hard dong down to the very base and didn't want to let go. When he began to suck me, he only release my length an inch or so before diving back down again. True deep-throat work, I don't see how he was breathing. Not sure he was, but the sucking went on and on.
After nearly three minutes of this, I broke it off myself, panting hard. "Paul, Paul, Paul." I murmured as I disengaged myself from his hungry maw. "We have the weekend here, no matter what. Let's make this last a while."
"No, no, now, please, now." Paul grunted. He was pulling his boots off, they fell with a clump, one then the other. His hands fought his pants, so tight, they clung to him and I aided him, peeling him down to be raw in front of me. He kicked his feet free, one then the other, and lay out like a lithe leopard which had eaten a good meal and was now sunning its stomach in the afternoon sun. Only this leopard had a pole above its abdomen begging for attention. He was not prostrate in lethargy, he was prostrate in desire.
I removed my own clothes as I feasted my eyes upon his body. Paul had been my constant companion since that day we had raced through time together, but I had never seen him so clearly as I had now.
Black hair, sharp and clean, a face taut and square with eyes that shone with blue beauty over skin burnished with the sun and dazzling white where the sun hadn't bitten him, with hair forming patterns of masculine power all over his chest and forearms and legs and that patch, oh, God, that patch about his pillar of manhood, I wanted to bury my face in it and breathe in the strong and raunchy flavor imbedded there.
When I was nude myself, I knelt before him and leaned over, the devout acolyte, and tasted the nectar that bedewed the tip of his glans, the bead of delight dissolved on my tongue and released its ambrosia onto my tastebuds, there to sink into my soul.
I opened my mouth and took his cockhead within myself, and his hands came up and again upped the urgency, drove me down onto his prod and I tried to repay him that incredibly powerful suction he had devoted to me, and lavished my saliva liberally over his dong until it gleamed.
"Up here, get it up here, let me have yours, too." Paul murmured. The couch was crowded for that, but I managed to get straddle of him on it and his lips reclaimed my own prod and we nursed each other to the very edge of ecstasy.
But when Paul heard my moans of pleasure building, he stopped and said, "Now, fuck me, Carl, please, drive it in me, don't be gentle, please, just shove it in me, please, hard, please, please, hard, hard!"
"Let's get on the bed, then." I panted. "The couch is too small."
Paul moaned, but he practically raced to the bed, myself close behind and when he got in the bed, I was right behind him, he got on his back and his legs were quick to clamp about me, his hand quick to grab my cock and guide me in, his ass quick to suck my glans inside it the instant it presented itself by touching the skin of the sphincter.
I wasn't as rough as I'd been with some (a captured enemy soldier in loyal thrall to the Leader didn't deserve kindness), but I tried to make Paul feel my entrance into his body, let him thrill to the thickness of my dong as it drove into him, and when I buried myself inside him, his only response was a moan as his face flushed and turned red nearly immediately.
I was on the verge myself from that incredible suction he'd laid upon me, my cock was throbbing as it drenched itself with Paul's bowel fluids, the heat of that soaked into my shaft and I moaned, and began to hunch as rapidly as I could.
Paul only groaned loudly as I fucked him, holding me tight, his face flushing harder. "Carl, I'm coming, Carl, uh, uh, uh, HNNNHH, HNNNH, HNNNH, HUH-HNNNNNNNNNGH!" and my stomach was splattered with the heat of his seed.
His intensity was both infectious and intoxicating, when I felt his virility spending itself on my abdomen, I felt orgasm slash my brain with multiple razors of desire and I let out a roar so loud I couldn't believe myself I'd made it, and I burst into Paul's innards with a fury that wracked my body and left me shuddering in Paul's embrace.
Dazzled, drunken with climax, I fell onto Paul's body and held him feebly while my lungs clawed for air to fill it, my brain to reorganize itself after the shattering of its processes by orgasm, and my kisses were weak though ardent as Paul's arms stroked me tenderly.
"We should have done that days ago." I breathed. "But we have the weekend. We can tell the boss we looked and couldn't find a place, he loves our work and he'll let us stay here a bit longer even if we have to clean things out each morning for the architect...."
"Carl." Paul said to me gently. The word wasn't loud, but it cut me off.
"What is it?"
"Let's not talk about the future just now." he said. "Just now, let's only talk about now."
"All right." I agreed. "What shall we talk about...now?"
"Let's talk about what we're going to do next." Paul said and his arms tightened about me.
Over and over again that weekend, we made love. Paul was insatiable, and I was young enough to indulge this rather frenetic orgy of delight he was wrenching from me. He steadfastly refused to discuss what would happen after Monday morning, when we would strike. That weekend lasted a long, long time.
But it did end. We arose early and picked out our spot just as the sun was rising. We weren't that close to the Martin home, but Paul said that he wouldn't have any problem picking out our target. When I pressed him on this, he said, "Don't worry, Carl. If we get the wrong girl, I'll know."
I had to settle for that. He touched my arm quietly when the girl came up and I slipped out of the bush and drove my knife deep into her ribs, piercing her heart. She gasped and slumped easily down to the sidewalk, expiring, and I'm not sure she even felt Death until it had stolen over her. Quick and painless. This little girl deserved that much.
"Was this the right one, though?" I said nervously. She had been alone on the street, I don't think anyone had seen us.
"She was the right one." Paul said to me and his voice was...quavering.
I turned to look at him, and I saw him...fading. What was happening? "Is time yanking us back to 2080?" I asked. Looked at myself, I was solid as ever.
"No, Carl." Paul said, and the smile on his face was easy. "Not you. Just me."
"But what's happening to you?"
"You just killed my great-grandmother." Paul said. "The Leader was my uncle, you see. I'm his nephew."
"You're...his nephew."
"I was." Paul was nearly gone now. "But no more. Remember me, Carl. Remember me...."
And he was gone.
Paul, nephew of the Leader, Michael Ditkus. By killing his ancestress, I had killed Paul as well. Wiped out him and his entire family. I wondered if my own memory would fade as well, given that Paul had...now...never been born.
But I remembered. I got away clean, never connected with the horrible murder of that little girl, called senseless and insane by the newspapers. I can't manage, even now, to feel any regret about that. So many lives depended upon her dying, innocent child though she was.
But Paul's death...Paul's non-life...that bothers me still. When a man is a hero, someone ought to remember him. Even when the hero is a man who was never born.
THE END
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