Lightning

by Dean Koontz

Before she could turn to meet the threat, she took several bullets in the back and was thrown forward, facedown on the hard shale.

Ugh nooooooo!

At the programming board, he entered the computer-derived numbers for the last jaunt that he would ever make: to the desert outside of Palm Springs, where Laura and Chris waited for him on the morning of January 25, 1989.

Sigh. You're too late dude.

Even as she fell to the ground, Laura knew that her spinal column had been severed or shattered by one of the bullets, for she felt no pain whatsoever—nor any sensation of any kind in any part of her body below the neck. Destiny struggles to reassert the pattern that was meant to be.

Sigh. This just SUCKS.

He had been able to assure the destruction of the institute and the defeat of Nazi Germany through a series of Machiavellian manipulations of time and people, so surely he and Laura would be able to deal with that single squad of SS gunmen who were somewhere in Palm Springs in 1989.

Ugh why would you assume such a thing?

The submachine gun opened fire on Chris, and for a moment she was sure that the boy was going to weave his way out of range, which was a last desperate fantasy, of course, because he was only a small boy, such a very small boy, with short legs, and he was well within range when the bullets found him, stitching a pattern across the center of his frail back, pitching him into the sand where he lay motionless in spreading blood.

Come on NO!!! ARE YOU KIDDING ME?

“Oh, God, please, please kill me.” Standing over her, the gunman smiled and said, “Well, I must be God’s messenger.” He laughed unpleasantly. “Anyway, I’m answering your prayer.” Lightning flashed and thunder crashed across the desert.

You're too frickin LATE STEFAN !!!!

The gunman reacted to the thunder and lightning. He began to turn in search of Stefan. Stefan pushed the button on his homing belt three times. The air pressure instantly increased; the odor of hot electric wires and ozone filled the day. The SS thug saw him, brought up the submachine gun, and opened fire, wide of him at first, then bringing the muzzle around to bear straight on him. Before the bullets hit, Stefan popped out of 1989 and back to the institute on the night of March 16, 1944.

Oh! Can he go back earlier?

“What’s he up to?” Bracher said. “What’s he doing back there, where’s he been, what’s this all about?” “I don’t know,” Klietmann said irritably. He looked down at the badly wounded woman and said to her, “All I know is that he saw you and your boy’s dead body, and he didn’t even make an attempt to kill me for what I’d done to you. He cut and ran to save his own skin. What do you think of your hero now?”

Oh he has to be going back earlier. It's the only thing that makes sense

“Bracher, get out of the way.” Bracher moved, and Klietmann squeezed off a burst of perhaps ten or twenty rounds, all of which pierced the woman, killing her instantly.

Omg come on Stefan, fix this!

He already had the numbers that would put him in that desert five minutes after he had first left it. He could work backward from those figures and find a new set that would put him in the same place four minutes and fifty-five seconds earlier, only five seconds after he had originally left Laura and Chris.

Why only 5 seconds? Just go back even earlier!! Heck, why didn't you do 5 seconds from the getgo?!

But he stared at the paper and could not think because Laura was dead and Chris was dead. Without them he had nothing. You can get them back, he told himself. Damn it, shape up. You can stop it before it happens.

Then do it!!!

When he had the numbers and doubled-checked them, he entered them in the board. Carrying the submachine gun in one hand and the pistol in the other, he climbed into the gate and passed through the point of transmission— —and returned to the institute. He stood for a moment in the gate, surprised, confused. Then he stepped through the energy field again— —and returned to the institute.

Ugh thats right. Its his past now. Paradox. Damn I forgot all about that. UGH! SO NOW WHAT?

But maybe he could send her something else, something that came from this room, something he had not been carrying with him and that would not, therefore, create a paradox.

Oh yes!! And then he can jump later on well after the fact. Perfect!

He pushed the guns aside, picked up a pencil, and wrote a brief message on a sheet of tablet paper: THE SS WILL KILL YOU AND CHRIS IF YOU STAY AT THE CAR. GET AWAY. HIDE. He paused, thinking. Where could they hide on that flat desert plain? He wrote: MAYBE IN THE ARROYO. He tore the sheet of paper from the tablet. Then as an afterthought he hastily added: THE SECOND CANISTER OF VEXXON. IT’S A WEAPON TOO.

Ohhh yes!! Smart!!

When the bottle with the message did not bounce back to him, Stefan was reasonably confident that it had reached Laura before she had been killed, only seconds after he had first departed for 1944.

I dunno why you didn't just program YOURSELF to return seconds after your original departure from the get-go. Wouldn't that have been easier?

Now he returned to the programmer’s desk and set to work on the calculations that would return him to the desert a few minutes after his previous arrival there. He could make that trip because he would be arriving subsequent to his previous hasty departure, and there would be no possibility of encountering himself, no paradox.

Omg but what if something goes wrong HERE though?? Hurry up!

Which meant that for self-defense she had—what? That canister? It had looked like nothing more than a chemical fire extinguisher.

Omg what if this canister hurts Stefan? Wouldn't his antidote be gone by then from his time in 1944?

In tragedy and despair, when an endless night seems to have fallen, hope can be found in the realization that the companion of night is not another night, that the companion of night is day, that darkness always gives way to light, and that death rules only half of creation, life the other half.

Oh I love that.

The timer on the cylinder clicked. Nerve gas erupted from the nozzle with the rich odor of apricots and the disgusting taste of lemon juice mixed with sour milk.

Yes yes yes!

For the first time in more than twenty years—or for the first time in more than sixty-five years if you wanted to count those over which he had jumped when he had come to live with Laura in her time—Stefan Krieger wept. He was surprised by his own tears, for he thought that his life under the Third Reich had left him incapable of weeping for anyone or anything ever again. More surprising still—these first tears in decades were tears of joy.

Thank God!

He was startled. “I can’t take money from you. I can’t—” “You save me from a wheelchair, repeatedly save my life, and I can’t give you money if I feel like it? Thelma, what’s wrong with him?” “He’s a man,” Thelma said. “I guess that explains it.”

Lol

“Hairy, Neanderthalic,” Thelma said, “perpetually half-crazed from excessive levels of testosterone, plagued by racial memories of the lost glory of mammoth-hunting expeditions—they’re all alike.” “Men,” Laura said. “Men,” Thelma said.

Lol they're a riot

In mid-September, twenty months after he had appeared on her doorstep with a bullet hole in his chest, she asked him into her bed. Three nights later he found the courage to go.

Awww yay!

“Are you happy with him, Shane?” “He’s a melancholy man.” “But lovely.” “He’ll never be Danny.” “But Danny is gone.” Laura nodded. They rocked. “He says I redeemed him,” Laura said. “Like grocery coupons, you mean?” Finally Laura said, “I love him.” “I know,” Thelma said. “I never thought I would... again. I mean, love a man that way. ”

Yes!!

Readers are not sheep. They are wolves, filled with curiosity, adventurous, always hungry for a tasty treat with at least a little substance to it. The readers I know and love, the kind of readers to whom I owe my career, are more likely to say “woof” than “baa,” and not just because I sometimes write stories with dogs in them. Thank God you’re out there.

How lovely of you to say, Dean Koontz!