It could be said that Justice and Glen held Commandant Trotsky captive. Older, less flexible in his thinking than Alex, who stayed out of the way, he was incredulous when hearing their story. “Look, I won’t tell anyone about the cannibalism, okay guys? It’d just be my word against yours anyway!”
Justice fought down the urge to scream, instead growling then clearing his throat, “For the hundredth time, dude, that was an alternate timeline we didn’t get to live! I fought in the Civil War,” he pointed at Glen, “He was born a bear and my wife came from a spaceship! How is this so hard to understand!?”
“All of it,” said Trotsky, “Pretty much all of it, yeah.”
“Justice, dad, whatever, keep your cool. You sound crazy.” said Glen.
“You’re right. Renna and I didn’t even get married in this universe. That was the version of her that I married after the war.” Justice scratched his beard.
“No, I, oh boy. I’ve really only been talking a few years now. I really can’t be the guy to explain stuff.” Glen rubbed his temples.
“Were you mute so it’d be easier to sneak up on people? To eat ‘em?” Trotsky asked with a straight face.
“Geez, Jimmy. Enough already.” Glen started pacing.
Justice flinched, “Jimmy? What happened to Trotsky?”
“What the fuck, bro? You’re breaking kayfabe!” Trotsky stood up, seemingly more upset at his real name being used than anything. “Look, I ain’t the sharpest knife, but I ain’t goin’ down without a fight to two maneating psychopaths! Now stand back!” He pulled a gun.
“Whoa now, hoss, keep it together,” said Justice.
A light bulb went off over Glen’s head, “No, go ahead. Shoot him.”
“What!? Glen, are you out of your mind!?” Justice shouted.
Glen nodded slightly, shrugging, “I mean, a little. He wasn’t convinced that we’re really what we say we are, but if you shrug off a bullet…”
Trotsky raised his eyebrows, swinging the gunbarrel entirely over to Justice, “Kid, that ain’t a twenty-two like that Chad jackass had. It’s a damned Magnum. I don’t know if I can take that.”
“Why not spaceman? Don’t your super powers work no more? Scared of a little hollow point?” Trotsky sneered, convinced he now had the upper hand. “I should’ve known you were full of shit when you started talkin’ about Bratva. Nobody takes out a whole squad of Russian mob guys and walks away.”
“Hollow point! Justice, didn’t you say that those were easier to take?” beamed Glen, “Because they spread out. They’re, like, blunt.”
“Son of a bitch,” Justice threw his hands up in resignation, “Sure! Have Justice do somethin’ painful. Dammit. Hold on, I don’t want my shirt gettin’ bloody.” Unbuttoning his Hawaiian shirt Justice flung it in a corner, “C’mon, ‘Jimmy’, hit me. Not anywhere tender though. Center of mass.”
“Uh, you serious?” he lowered the gun slightly, “This is a real gun. And hollow points tear the meat out. Normal bullets would punch through you, but this can take an organ.”
“It’ll be fine! Just, y’know, away from the heart, my head, you get it. I took a little bullet to the gut and I was fine, just,” bang.
It went right into Justice’s shoulder, spinning him around and sending him to the floor, “Son of a bitch! That wasn’t center of mass! You dislocated my shoulder!” he cried.
Somewhere, a click was heard, but nobody in the room noticed, “That’s what you’re worried about!? There’s a hole in you, dumbass!” shouted Trotsky, switching his aim to Glen, “You two really are both psychotic, you know that?”
However, Justice, rolling on the floor, saw the newcomer in the room, “Renna! Baby, don’t.” He got into a seated position, working his finger into his bullet wound.
“Renna?” asked Trotsky, who flinched as Justice’s lady leaned out from a corner.
“Don’t!” she shouted as he started to turn his gun towards her, “My gun can make it look like you never existed. What’s yours do?”
“Oh boy, so you’re in on it too huh? What is this? Some conspiracy to make me feel like I”m the crazy one? You people… What is that toy, anyway?” He turned the barrel back towards Glen, seeing him as the only threat in the room.
“It’s fine! Ugh, fuck, it’s all jagged. Cuttin’ me on the way out!” Rising as he pulled, Justice removed the bullet, “Son of a bitch. I had to turn it on the way out. It was like a dull fish hook.”
Turning back towards Justice Trotsky was agape, “Whoa! You on P.C.P.? Holy … say, that … that ain’t much blood.” Watching, edging closer, Trotsky lowered his gun, “Is the hole getting smaller!?”
“Yeah, but my shoulder’s still out. Glen! Bearhug! Fast!” Justice clasped his hands, hoping to help his arm go back into socket.
“Justice, honey, I have equipment to make you heal faster!” She reached out as Glen got in position.
“Nope! You ain’t got magic push-bones-back-together shit, hon’. This has always been a muscle thing.”
“Yeah, but it’s not a squeeze to do it!” she shouted as Glen got his arms around his adopted father, “Use the Stimson method. I … but we’ll need a thousand pounds of force or more.”
“I got no idea what I’m lookin’ at here. You guys get that I got a gun, right?” Jimmy ask, eyebrows reaching for the sky.
“Okay, here, let me…” Renna got the two men separated, positioned Glen’s hands so he could pull Justice’s arm straight away from his body while Justice pushed him, all without anyone changing their footing.
“Baby, it feels like somethin’s fillin’ in the joint hole!” Justice said in a panicked tone.
“That’s the best we can hope for. When I say go, Glen, pull! Justice, push! Go!” She pointed for effect.
Both men heaved at the same time, a monstrous crunching noise filling the room, and Justice screamed, shaking the windows. “Shit! Oh, shit. Oh, that hurt so bad…” Trotsky recoiled from the noise.
He started shaking, “What the shit is this?” He dropped his gun, seemingly in shock, “Where’s the bullet hole?” Reaching out to touch Justice as the big man breathed hard, he stopped, because the last sign of redness had faded, “Oh shit. This is real?”
Justice grabbed him up by the lapels, “I said center of mass you dumb sumbitch!”
Dangling off the ground Trotsky just grabbed Justice’s thick wrists, “I didn’t believe you! How could I!? I thought if I shot you in the chest you’d die!”
Justice’s expression softened, “So … you were just trying not to kill me?”
“Yeah, man, you were sellin’ a crazy story, I was scared, I thought you was killers! But I didn’t want to be a killer, y’know? I watched the Lucianos turn into the Genovese when I was a kid. This kid, Vito, he told me some nightmare stories, took all the glamor out of that life. A man ought not to do that kind of shit in front of his kids.” He released his grip as Justice set him down.
“So you believe us?” Justice took a step back.
“Bro, I just saw you pull some comic-book mutant shit. I’m ready to believe anything,” he pointed at Renna, “Hey, sister, that thing you got there; it really gonna make me disappear?”
She relaxed, chuckling, “It can. But not on this setting,” she held up the side, pointing to the stun setting, not that Trotsky could see anything.
“Honey, how’d you find me? I didn’t leave a note or nothin’.” asked Justice.
“Well, the thing is, my datapad has a Multiscan read of your vitals. I wanted to talk to you about dinner, I’m … very hungry, and I was trying to figure out how to explain my knocking. Then I heard shouting and…” Renna searched for her next words.
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“How’d you get in?” asked Trotsky.
“Well, it’s a primitive lock that disengages when it reads a magnetic card. My datapad picked it pretty simply.” Reaching into her purse, Renna showed her Datapad.
To Trotsky this was life-altering. As this strange woman he’d never met withdrew the tube that the display rolled up inside, it extended. The tube had the only physical buttons on the device, used for troubleshooting and the like on the rare occasion that it malfunctioned. The display was transparent but, when it flashed to life, it became opaque, “Whaaat the fuuuck…”
Holding it out, Renna waited for Trotsky to take the futuristic tablet, which he eventually did. “It’s … so light. ‘Spacefleet … standard. Model Arclight:X07’. So this is the seventh one, huh?”
All was silent for a moment until Glen finally spoke up, “So does this mean you believe us?”
“Kid, you wanna tell me you’re the King of Atlantis right now, I’m ready to believe it. Holy shit.” He handed the Datapad back to Renna, “Yeah, I got no idea how this thing works. Also it says ‘no network’ so that’s probably not good.”
“That’s how it’s been since we got here! Now that we got that out of the way, and someone’s been shot, is there any way we could get dinner?” Renna squirreled her future computer away again.
Trotsky beamed, “Sure! How about pizza? I’m buyin’.”
“Gee, thanks Trotsky!” said Glen, smiling.
“Fuck it. Everybody call me Jimmy!” shouted Jimmy, reaching for the room phone.
“Jimmy. Cool.” said Alex.
“Whoa! Alex is still here? Where were you? In the closet?” Jimmy thrust a finger in Alex’ direction, “Jimmy’s just in this room though.” he then said to everyone, “Kayfabe. Hey, Mario’s Pizza? I need … just a bunch of food, bro.”
—
Alex and Jimmy walked back into the hotel room, wheeling in a luggage cart stacked with pizzas, “You’re sure we can use this cart for the pizzas?” asked Alex.
“Yeah, they don’t mind so long as you put the cart back out in the hall when you’re done. Let’s unload and I’ll do that now.” He started stacking boxes on the counter of the kitchenette, “No way I’m doin’ delivery on fifteen pizzas. The fees, that’s how they get cha.”
They sat around in the living room of the suite, stuffing their faces and catching Jimmy up, “So you got it now, right?” asked Alex.
“I think so. You’re all from different … universes?” he said, questioningly, then took a big bite of pepperoni pizza.
“I’m not. I’m not even involved, really. I’m still not sure why Justice involved me.” said Alex.
Justice chuckled, “Because I needed you to make contact with Glen! Jimmy here had my boy holed up away from me.”
“I was told to while he learned Russian. The bear thing makes more sense now, really. It’s a miracle a bear brain can hold one language, let alone two.” he laughed, elbowing the former bear, now giant.
“Hey!” cried Glen.
“I’m just messin’ with ya. And you three, what? You’re lookin’ for a guy that’s gonna make undead monsters? How’s that work?” Jimmy looked at Justice.
“Ah, well, see … I’m really not sure about that. Was it somethin’ the Doc left in the car?” Justice looked at Renna.
“Yes, Justice. How do you forget something like that? And the notes Doctor Phineas Black left in the Chrona Car continued on after his death. We’re calling that phenomenon ‘Chronal Echoes’. I may write a paper on it. Not sure who’d believe me…” She crammed half a slice of black olive pizza in her mouth, “Mmf! I was so hungry! This is all I’ve had today.”
“But yeah, we’re thinkin’ if we take care of this guy, Rockefeller, we can stop it. Maybe settle down here. I mean, shit, money, fame, can’t beat that!” he also crammed tasty pizza pie, speaking with his mouth full, “I wonder if he’s descended from John D. Rockefeller. He was the richest man in the world, y’know. ‘Course his dad was a rapist scumbag, so he’d be descended from that, too…”
“No, Justice, remember?” Renna said, “He’s actually an extradimensional aberration from outside of space and time. You’re the one who named his kind ‘Outsiders’, remember?”
“Oh yeah… Shit, and this is after that giant guy with an octopus for a head tore a hole in reality and broke the starship we lived on.” Renna flinched, “Oh, sorry, baby…”
“Oh my God, I hear it now! We really do sound crazy!” exclaimed Glen. Everyone laughed.
When everyone caught their breath, Jimmy broke the silence, sounding grim, “Actually, it’s funny … that squid guy. Justice, what’d he look like?”
Justice thought hard, eyes rolling back, “Like I said, octopus for a head, man. Uh … I guess he kinda had skin like a lizard; green. Uh…”
“Wings? Did he have wings?” asked Jimmy, grimacing as if alarmed.
“Yeah! Like a bat, man. Crazy shit. Huge, too; big enough to … y’know, do what I said before.” Justice glanced at Renna, who put her slice down, “Uh, oh, and there was this weird race of freaks that looked like him, but they were all tentacles. Octopus on top, then all tentacles. The one I met said somethin’ religious, like he had a creator god that made his race. Figured when I saw the big one … y’know, he was right.”
“Did you ever hear a name? Cthulhu, maybe?” asked Jimmy, staring intently at Justice.
“Yeah … something like that. The alien race was…” Justice set down his own food, trying to recall.
“C’thulate,” said Renna, now staring intently at Jimmy, “Where’d you get Cthulhu? That was awful close.”
“What do you mean?” he asked, incredulously. “Cthulhu is this god thing from the Lovecraft stories. When I was a kid, the magazines? Weird Tales?”
Quiet in the room, broken when Alex, looking back and forth at the other three, broke the silence, “Yeah, Cthulu. I mean, for me, it was an H.P. Lovecraft collection. I checked it out at the school library in High School.”
“Lovecraft?” asked Renna, pulling her Datapad out, entering the name, “In the Spacefleet Database there’s a Howard Phillips Lovecraft. Let’s see… Inherited the Phillips family fortune from his mom’s side… Described as a socialite and a dilettante. Nothing about writing…”
“What? What are you reading?” asked Jimmy, incredulous.
Noticing Alex and Jimmy’s confused expressions, Renna became alarmed, “I have a backup of Terran history on my datapad. I like … history. Why?”
“What happens if you put in ‘Cthulhu’?” asked Alex.
“Let’s see. How do you spell that?” asked Renna.
“Uh, not quite sure … C-T-H-U-L-H-U? Something like that?” said Alex.
Entering it in, “Nothing…” Renna recoiled suddenly, the Datapad abruptly flashed britly and snapped shut, “Whoa! Whoa!” Everyone was shouting and backing away as some sort of klaxon played briefly before a quiet beep indicated that the Datapad had reset. Cautiously, Renna picked it back up, and reopened the database. It was where she’d left off. She couldn’t speak.
“Renna? Honey? What is it?” asked Justice, coming around to read what was on the screen.
“We’re … we’re not connected to anything, Justice. This isn’t possible.” She turned the screen for everyone to see. On the screen was a picture of Cthulhu, with a text entry explaining the Great Old Ones.
“Hold on,” said Jimmy, “It says Lovecraft right there.”
Spinning it back around, shocked, Renna tapped the name, “It’s changed! Oh … oh, what does this mean!?”
“I … I don’t know.” Justice took Renna in his arms and she hid her head for a moment.
“And you saw him?” asked Alex. “And this ‘zombie apocalypse’ that’s coming. They’re, like, undead monsters?”
“What?” asked Renna, snapped out of her shock, “You don’t know what a zombie is?”
“Nnno… Why don’t you look it up and show me?” asked Alex.
Pulling away from Justice, she did so, holding it so everyone could see. For a brief moment, the article, explaining the concept of zombies in popular culture, appeared. Then, the datapad crashed again, the klaxon screaming, though no one reacted this time. “Okay, baby. Let’s … let’s see if it changed…”
Opening the Datapad, it was now a completely different article, describing the zombies of folklore in places like Haiti and Brazil. They were called “obscure”, from a religion no longer practiced, thought to be supernatural but the result of substance abuse. “Wow. Sister, if I had any doubts, you just erased ‘em.” said Jimmy.
“‘Everything fictional is factual somewhere’,” said Renna, staring blankly forward.
“What?” asked Justice, taking her face in his hands, “you okay?”
“No, Justice, I’m not. That was a quote from a scientist in the twenty-second century, the first man to find the veil between universes. He believed that he had pierced the veil, recording audio that, later, was reconstructed using A.I.. It sounded like a play, being acted out, much of it describing our own technology, but with different names for Spacefleet, the Galactic Alliance, and others. It sounded like there was an audience and, so, he theorized that ‘everything fictional is factual somewhere’. The audio he captured was called ‘white noise’ and his A.I. was called faulty. He was discredited, institutionalized, and died having been labeled a madman.”
“We knew, though. We knew that the enemy was from outside, remember?” said Justice, gripping her upper arms lightly, trying to give a comforting rub.
She shrugged him off, growling, “You don’t get it! Our worst nightmares! Stuff we can’t even conceive of, it’s out there! Cthulhu is fictional here, real there! My universe! If that first one, the one you killed, was any indication, he might have conquered the Alliance and killed everyone I’ve ever known! Zombies are fictional there, a whole genre of fiction! Here, nobody’s heard of them. Just some … cultists!”
“Okay, so we have some challenges, but it’s not like we have to face down everything that anybody’s ever thought of! Just some jackass makin’ … zombies. Y’know?” Justice chuckled.
Renna jabbed him in the chest, “You’re not listening! The scale of this. What we might face. They’ve been everywhere. If it’s true, if Rockefeller shows up, this would be the third universe! We have to prepare. Somehow…”
Seemingly about to shut down, Renna leaned in, and Justice held her close, “So, uh, hey, we ain’t got to fight no undead guys, right? Me and Alex?”
“Oh shit, I mean, I’m just a kid from Ohio, man.” Both men from the current Earth looked suddenly afraid.
Justice glared, “Shit, man, really? Now? No, you’re kinda … under-equipped. Just keep our secrets, huh? It’s hard not bein’ able to really talk to nobody.”
There was a knock at the door, “No problem, buddy. I got your back,” said Jimmy, moving for the door. Opening it, he found a bellhop, “What?”
“Sir, there have been noise complaints. Considering the insulation in these walls, that’s pretty impressive. Please keep it down for the sake of our other guests.” said the bellhop.
“Yeah, yeah. We were watching a scary movie. My ears ain’t too great. I’ll turn on the captions, it’ll be fine.” said Jimmy.
“Wait,” said the bellhop, “aren’t you–”
“No, I am not! Goodbye.” and Jimmy slammed the door.
“It’s real. All of it.” cried Renna, “What if we’re not safe anywhere?”
Holding on tight, afraid to speak, Justice looked at Glen. There was a silent understanding. Things just got a whole lot more serious.