Chronicles of Jonathan Tibbs 1: The Never Hero (25 page)

“Help isn’t coming, Son. We’re going to have to help ourselves. Just got to keep moving forward; hope there is a way out on the other side,” he said.

As he did so, he handed the flashlight over to Jonathan.

“Here, why don’t you take this? You lead the way.”

Jonathan took the flashlight in his raw hands. He was scared in the dark, and glad that he wasn’t alone. When Jonathan was young he’d been afraid to be alone at night. He would always ask his mother to leave a light on in the hallway when he went to bed. The thing was, he was fine in the dark as long as his mother or father were there. It was only in their absence that the dark became filled with monsters. Still, giving Jonathan the flashlight made him feel safer. Now he could control what was illuminated in the darkness.

They started to walk away from the cave in. Jonathan kept the light aimed along the guiding lines of the railroad track; trying as best he could to ignore the urge to flash it around, but to keep the light where it needed to be, showing the way forward.

They walked for what seemed a long time. It was hard to tell in the dark just how much time had passed. Sometimes he would take the light off the path and flash it back behind him, looking for the blue uniform of his father following him, and each time he was relieved that the sounds of the footsteps behind him were still his father.

Eventually the small pinhole of light that was the other side of the tunnel came into view. Both were relieved. As they moved closer and closer, the flashlight became unnecessary. Standing in the sunlight at the exit of the tunnel, Jonathan clicked the light off and turned to hand it back to his father.

With some sorrow, he now realized that the man following him was no longer Douglas; it was just Heyer, wearing his father’s uniform, taking the flashlight back. Jonathan nodded his face taking on a sad smirk.

“Yes, of course, it’s you,”
he heard his adult voice say. “
I knew it would be, but the lie felt better.”

He turned away from Heyer to finish the journey, but upon turning he found he was no longer in the tunnel in the woods. He was in the inner city of Seattle, on a street he would never forget.

He was under the viaduct.

It was dark, the only light provided by the streetlamps. The cars speeding by above him sounded more like a river than a freeway. He turned back around quickly. Heyer was gone now, abandoning him. He’d blinked away like he had the other night in the park, no doubt off to run some more important errand.

He looked at his hands. They were no longer bloody or raw; they were his adult hands.

From the corner of his eye, the shadows among the freeway pillars moved. Always at the edge of his vision, it darted from one pillar to the next, just as it had moved among the trees in the woods. His heart began to accelerate, thudding in his ears. No father, no alien; he was alone with it. He couldn’t tell where the beast was, couldn’t sense it in his mind. He’d see a flash of movement, but wasn’t quick enough to know where it stopped. He turned about frantically, desperate to make sure the Ferox wouldn’t get the jump on him.

She was there suddenly. Jonathan caught sight of her as he wheeled around and froze, forgetting the shadow.

She couldn’t walk, not on her broken limbs, so she crawled to him. Her pink coat was saturated with the blood, her body covered in it, and he knew that she must have had to crawl through the puddle that had spread into the street, the puddle at the foot of Sickens the Fever’s pile of bodies. She’d waded through all that to come to him now, and it trailed behind her leaving a red smear on the pavement. She struggled to get closer to him. One of her hands stretched out, reaching for him with little broken fingers.

He crumpled to his knees at the sight of her. He could see the death of a hundred in her white lifeless eyes.

“I’m sorry,” Jonathan said in a whimper, looking down at his hands as he couldn’t meet the child’s white gaze. “I’m so sorry.”

It didn’t seem to matter that in the end he’d saved her. Guilt didn’t work that way, didn’t make allowances for science fiction beyond its comprehension. It didn’t care that this broken girl was banished to a timeline that no longer existed. All guilt knew, was that he’d allowed it to happen.

It was then that the shadow came for him.

Grabbing him by the shoulder and thrusting him against the pillar. The sound of the cement cracking around him, the pain flooding into him through an unforgiving memory, he recalled what it was to cling to consciousness, to struggle against this thing, this Ferox, yet it wasn’t enough to shut off the shame.

You’re barely more than a child!
Sickens the Fever growled, menacing him with the sound of his own inner voice.

He tried to bring his hands up to protect himself, but they wouldn’t move. He looked down to see the rusty chain tightening around him. It wasn’t just his hands, it was holding his feet, wrapping his legs and stomach like a snake slithering around him and constricting. The compression was starting to hurt, and he could feel the chains breaking his skin as the links dug in around him, securing him to the pillar.

The panic was maddening, impossible to think through. He tried to scream, but his lungs had filled. He choked out seawater, trying to expel, but it leached into his sinuses and burned. If the chains pressed in any tighter, his ribcage would crush in on his heart.

He looked up through all of this to see Sickens the Fever’s neck pulsating like it had that night, filling out and turning black. The Ferox’s eyes bulging with bloodlust for the kill, its jaws opening.

Jonathan awoke. He bolted upright; his hands flying up wildly to protect against illusions.

He still felt teeth in his neck, yet his hands found nothing out of place. He realized he was yelling. Panic still welled up in him, making it a struggle to believe the sight of his bedroom in front of him.

In time, he pulled himself out of the sweat soaked sheets. The phantom injuries dissipated; his mind began to accept the dream.

It was disturbing, his body’s unwillingness to mind him; believe him when he told it what was real. Had he been screaming in his sleep? Yes, he must have been, but for how long? Had his roommates heard him? They hadn’t come to check on him. Maybe they realized what it was. Maybe they understood and were politely ignoring it as to not embarrass him.

He sat at his desk and put his head in his hands, he forced himself to take deep breaths. He was able to get his breathing under control, but his heartbeat was slower to respond. He couldn’t stop the fear from raging through him. He wanted his pills back. He wanted to wake Paige up right then and demand them.

The little girl, Jonathan. No. No, dammit!

He had to learn to cope with things far more dangerous than bad dreams. There couldn’t be weakness, not like that, there couldn’t be anymore hiding. It wasn’t just him on the line.

He remembered how he had hoped that there would be a moment of reprieve from all this awfulness, how he’d sought sleep to escape it, thought fondly of those few moments when he might forget what his life had become. He felt grief for the loss of the peace he wouldn’t get. That grief soon gave way to anger.

There would be no easy escape from this, no timeouts, not even in sleep.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

SATURDAY | JULY 02, 2005 | 9:45 AM

JONATHAN
was headed down the street to the gym again. He hadn’t been able to get back to sleep after the nightmare; or, to be more precise, he’d been afraid to try. So he used the rest of the early morning hours to research weightlifting techniques on the Internet. Unfortunately, the research on his laptop seemed to leave him more confused about how to proceed than the day before. There were a lot of different schools of thought about what worked and almost every source appeared to be selling something along with its advice.

He made a list of common exercises that he’d learned about from his research and took it with him. If he had to, he would watch people who looked like they knew what they were doing until he got a clue. If he got desperate enough, he would ask. He couldn’t let himself fail because he didn’t want to bother a stranger.

When he arrived, Lincoln, the big trainer from the day before was sitting in the employee cubicle area. He looked pissed off again. Jonathan thought he might have been one of those types who scowled all the time without realizing it. Maybe it was the guy’s demeanor. He sort of always looked angry. It didn’t help that he was leaning against the desk, arms folded, surveying the gym patrons like a lifeguard at a pool.

Jonathan didn’t go to the machines. This time he went to the free weights. The gym was pretty empty today; must have been a Saturday morning phenomenon. He took out his list and started trying to figure out what he could lift. He could figure this out even if he had to start from nothing. He didn’t waiver in this; he kept picking up different weights and trying exercises, eventually seeing how many repetitions of each he could lift before he couldn’t do anymore. He was starting to feel pretty good about it until he turned around and saw the large trainer standing behind him.

The guy still looked angry.

“I just wanted to let you know that everything you’re doing…” He paused to make a circular motion with his hands indicating the space Jonathan had been working out in. “Is wrong.”

Lincoln was turning to walk away when Jonathan heard him add, “Frankly, I’m surprised you haven’t hurt yourself yet.”

Jonathan was speechless for a second. It was so direct and, well, rude. He remembered then, that he wasn’t going to let passivity stop him, that this was a chance.

“Like what?” he asked.

Lincoln stopped and turned back to him, like he was wondering if Jonathan really wanted to know or was just being defensive. He seemed to decide the former.

“Your form is terrible. You’ve likely never worked out before, and you’re trying to lift too much too quickly, and the workout you’re doing is all over the place. You aren’t focusing on any set of muscle groups. That’s just for starters,” he said. “Seriously, do you even know what you’re training for?”

Jonathan didn’t know how to respond to most of that. He was just training to be stronger; he hadn’t thought of exactly what kind of ‘stronger’ he was trying to be. He didn’t know that he should focus on a specific muscle group. He wasn’t even sure he could tell what groups he’d just been working on, just that they were common lifts.

Still, it was the other thing the trainer had said, “
I’m surprised you haven’t hurt yourself.”
That gave Jonathan pause. He realized how bad it would be now if he did hurt himself; if he got injured in some way that made it so he couldn’t exercise at all. He’d be in real trouble then. He didn’t have any time to waste on something like an injury. It could mean death.

“Um, sorry, Sir, but could you help me?” Jonathan said. “It’s important that I don’t get hurt.”

Lincoln looked him over again. Jonathan got the distinct impression that the trainer was seriously on the fence about whether he was worth his time. It felt like he was being interrogated; the man was looking for a clue that Jonathan wasn’t just like the thousands who bought a gym membership, only to stop showing up after a week or two. Jonathan, of course, knew that wouldn’t be the case. He didn’t have the option, he had to get stronger and it had to be as soon as possible. Then Jonathan remembered the phone conversation that he had eavesdropped on the day before. Maybe the trainer was trying to tell if he was just another guy who wanted to break into modeling.

Lincoln finally let out a sigh.

“Come over here,” he said.

Lincoln instructed him to put his hands out and try to squat down as far as he could without letting his heel come off the floor. Jonathan tried, but he didn’t make it very far.

“Jeez man, did they have PE wherever you went to school,” he said. “Have you ever stretched in your life?”

Jonathan could spot a rhetorical question and didn’t answer, only shrugged. He had to wonder how this guy kept clients when he was so blatantly annoyed by them. Then again, maybe that was his angle, point out how badly in need of help someone is and he’ll listen more when you try to sell it to him. In another life it might not have worked on Jonathan, but today his desperation was definitely a sales point.

“Do you even know what you want to accomplish here?” the trainer asked.