His name was Justice Haymaker and he’d seen better days. Lead filled the air with instant death all around him, supernaturally possessed Mormons were hot on his tail and, though he hated to think that way, it might be his own fault.

Counting himself lucky that the collapsing tower and the red wave of flesh didn’t tumble and spread far enough to reach him Justice still didn’t dare break stride. Grabbing young Matty, a kid that hates him, tossing him on the back of their eight-hundred-pound friend Gentle Glen the Grizzly, the trio rode back to find Doc Black. It wasn’t a happy reunion.

Having broken away they were well ahead of the mob and found the Chrono Car waiting. “Tell me somethin’ good, Doc!” implored Justice as he leapt off of Glen. The bear shrugged Matty painfully onto the dirt before getting behind the strange science fiction carriage himself..

“Okay! Something good. Well, the chrono-magnetic disturbance has just now faded. Not sure what you did but it worked.”

Looking back Justice saw the spire of the tower collapse further as the red wave finished spilling out over the Valley. The damned thing was mobile and very much after them. “Uh, yeah, did a great job.” A giant shaft of red light shot up, piercing the heavens and hitting outer space. “Great…” This was, obviously, some sort of signal and Justice did not want to know who it was for.

“He killed Brigham Young, Doc! The whole town’s after us?” Matty shouted.

“What!?” Looking up from his work, alarmed, the Doc asked: “they’re still hostile? That shouldn’t be!” A bullet zinged by overhead and Matty hit the dirt.

“Didn’t you hear me!? Killed, not exorcised!” shouted the young man from his prone position.

“But that won’t matter, right Doc?” asked Justice, concerned. “We got like 2 minutes on them. Sure we’ll be gone by then.”

“Sure. Sure, Justice. You just hang tight. No way the Mormons will be taking us today.” he said in a tone that wasn’t reassuring. “Not that they’re really Mormons anymore…” Justice held his breath tensely; the Doc was their only way out. If nothing else they could say that the Earth, this version of it, could now recover. Hopefully, eventually, humanity would regain its senses and start to recover.

Seeing the mob draw closer though Justice lost patience. “Doc!? What we doin’ out here, man!?” he shouted above the din of the battle he was told would be done by now. He unholstered his pistol, taking up position to return fire if the enemy got too close. “I done did what you said an’ killed that Devil-possessed Brigham Young! Timeline’s good, ain’t it?”

Doc Black lifted his head from under the front flap of his horseless carriage where he was working frantically, lifted his goggles and looked over. “For the record I never said kill!. You were supposed to use the scroll to get rid of the spirit possessing him!””

“It was strongly implied, Doc! Devil’s gone!” Knowing he was wrong Justice sputtered. “We were out of time, okay!? Soldiers were climbing in from outside and a … a giant meat monster was coming alive! The spirit definitely exited when he died though!”

“I’m sorry, Justice!” he bellowed, hoarsely “I thought for sure that driving the possession out of Young’s body would at least end his followers’ madness but, if anything it made them worse!” Looking up at the oncoming mob Doc Black raised his eyebrows in surprise at the red mass behind them. “Meat monster you say? That is fascinating…”

“Fascinating!?” shouted Justice. “It’s unholy, man! Get a move on!”

Surprisingly, for once, nobody was arguing with Justice. “They’re getting closer, Doc! What are we going to do!?” Matty, the skinny kid that followed the Doc everywhere was squealing in fear. Nobody expected different but at least he wasn’t arguing. He shrieked as a stray bullet blew his hat off.

“Keep yer damned fool head down, idjit!” shouted Justice. “That’s two-hundred damn Mormons back there if there’s a one and they will kill you for what we did.”

“What you did! You crushed their leader’s head with your bare hands! Own up to it!” So much for same page. Matty’s voice cracked as he shouted. “I had the scroll! We just had to finish the reading!”

“We were out of time, kid! I ain’t aimin’ to be dead-alive so soon after chasin’ out my own Devil. It obviously wasn’t workin’ so I did it my way!”

“You’re gonna get us all killed you fucking caveman!” Matty was feeling bold!

“Shut your bazoo, tenderfoot! If it wasn’t for me you’d be a part of the meat monster!” Justice half believed it anyway.

“Even for this primitive era you’re an idiot, Justice!” shouted Matty, finding and recovering his hat.

Abruptly, Glen the bear rose up, sensitive to the conflict and wanting to defend his master. That and Matty had already shot him once. Speaking of getting shot a round of hot lead brushed his fur, leaving a small gash and he started bellowing in fear. The eight-foot monster had been damned useful on this mission but he was starting to lose it now.

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“Glen! No!” Justice crawled out from his cover after his bear, his friend. “Down! You gotta get down!” But the bear was unsteadily edging towards Matty.

“What are you doing!? Your bear’s gonna eat me now!? Is that it!?” Matty pointed an accusatory finger at Justice, but not for long, as his hat flew off, the victim of a Mormon rifle round for a second time. “Dammit!”

“No! He’s just scared on account of you bein’ a bastard to me!” Suddenly a bullet grazed Glen’s forehead and the big beast recoiled. “Fuck! No, Glen!” and Justice dove, tackling his faithful companion to the dirt. C’mon, stupid, get back to the rocks again before the next bullet catches your brainpan!”

As Justice got back into position the Doc piped up. “I have a theory! We just need to get the Chrono-Car up to 95 miles per hour on the same vector we drove originally, jump back to our original destination of July the first, eighteen-sixty-five and it should reset the timeline. If, then, the Civil War was not a three-way conflict ultimately won by the Utah Territory, we’ll have been successful!”

“So let’s go already, Doc! Get a move on!” Usually cocky, the big cowboy’s voice cracked, revealing his desperation.

“Oh, Justice.” The Doc lifted his head, looking Justice full in the eye, clear guilt plastered across his face. “I’m afraid you can’t come with us. You’ll be in the timeline twice, a paradox, if you come while Matty and I will, hypothetically, never have come to that particular location in the timeline.”

This threw Justice off-balance. “But … hold on now. I done saved your life and killed your enemies only to be left here, gone-goslin, to be exfluncticated by a bunch of damn Mormons?” He was still having trouble separating the possessed from their possessors.

But the Doc was back at work now; detached. “I’m sorry, Justice, but if it’s any consolation this version of you will also never have existed. Your first, early interactions with the possessed Mormons, your own possession and the untimely death of Brigham Young, none of it would have happened.”

“But it did happen! You’re tellin’ me you crack the whip on your steel horse, magic bullshit happens and everything’s fixed? Just not for me!? That dog won’t hunt, Doc!”

Slamming the front of the carriage shut, the Doc hustled to get in, Matty jumping in through the window on the other side. “Fuck your shit, you stinky hobo!” called Matty, ever the picture of class and dignity. “Maybe if you’d kept your powder dry once in awhile you wouldn’t have wound up a sacrifice to a time-spawned cult!”

And the Chrono-Car started to whine, its “Flex Dynamo”, as the Doc called it, coming to life in sound and light. He’d seen it a few times during flight but it was still magic to Justice, especially now that it enveloped the whole carriage. Inside, as they departed, all he could see was teenage knuckles as little Matty shot him a double bird.

“Oh, fuck no. Glen! Up and at ‘em, man!” That carriage was already moving, getting up to speed fast, but Justice was a rare sort of man and the bear was a bear, so they managed to quickly close with the rear of the vehicle.

Inside, the occupants of the Chrono-Car felt a hard jostle. The furious face of young Matty turned back to look at Justice. “Let go you idiots! Doc, they’re climbing on the back!”

“Let them, Matty.” bullets bounced off the Car, the windows bulletproof in what seemed like a miracle to Justice. “We’re exposed here! Either we make the jump now, before these possessed people can take us, or we die and our timeline with us!”

Justice’s boots dug into the sandy Utah soil as he slid along, struggling to get up on top. Nearly losing his grip, he cast about for anything that could help. As it turned out Glen’s claws did much better than meaty man mitts, so he climbed over the old bear and on top of the vehicle. “C’mon, man! No time to be gentle, Glen! Get up here!” and, with a mighty pull, the bear came up right as the Car bottomed out in a depression, flattening Justice into the roof, right before the world went white and disappeared.

—--

The next moment stretched on endlessly, what they sensed defying definition, Justice and Glen were outside of any shielding and because of this they experienced infinity. Justice saw a world made of a starchy, spicy soup, which first wriggled aimlessly before climbing to the edge of the bowl and onto the infinite table. These chunks had lungs for the first time and they started eating, first becoming little things and spreading across the surface of an ever more green planet. Then they became big things; lizards, birds, mammals and other, stranger creatures.

As the world went from primordial the big man saw his own birth, a childhood happier than he remembered, serving under a General Grant who didn’t die on the field in Ohio, helping to build the military railroad after the war, raising children with a pretty wife, growing old as the century turned before ultimately dying peacefully, surrounded by his loved ones, his legacy, in a world filled with horseless carriages that didn’t tinker with time and space.

Glen saw the first stuff too but it didn’t make one lick of sense to his exceptional, but still bestial, big bear brain. After that he was born; berries, meat, a cave, saw himself eating some people (he’d been told that was a bad thing) on a loop of 25 winters before he died of natural causes too (mauled by a pack of wolves) after siring many litters of cubs with many females. He smiled a very bear smile; lots of sharp teeth, before both he and his human partner came back to their senses in another time.

“Wha–” Justice started, because it was unexpectedly cold. Moreover, as he opened his mouth, a horrendous pull ripped at his lungs. Frost formed, every bit of moisture on his skin, hair and Glen’s fur froze instantly. They floated in the driest, blackest, coldest lake never fished by any man. Both Justice and Glen were struggling, squinting against ice crystals forming in their eyes. There was the Chrono Car, mere feet away, floating in this dry water. Water with pinholes of light, a distant sun to the left, a larger blue-green sphere on the right.

It was at this moment, as he felt a great weariness grip him, that things started to fall into place for Justice. The Chrono Car pulled away, its wheels turned downward and glowing oddly, throwing sparks like the fuse in a stick of dynamite. Water was always wet, contained no sun, no stars and certainly not that big sphere on the right, whatever it was. He didn’t remember much of his book learning but the school marm sure as shootin’ talked about space lookin’ a whole lot like this. In space Earth was a blue-green ball and the night sky was everywhere.

As the Chrono Car disappeared from reality with a bright burst of blue light two things were clear to Justice; the Doc was a son of a bitch and they were fucked. Glen wrapped tightly around him and he nestled into that fur, stealing as much warmth as possible before the pair of them ultimately succumbed to the law of entropy; a concept that Justice never heard of, though he had heard the word once.

Abruptly a new light struck them. To Justice it looked kind of like the Chrono Car yet again, but more silver and no wheels. Assuming this vision was some sort of angel of death, Justice’ lips moved noiselessly, the last of his air escaping with a silent “well ain’t that some shit…”