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  Blow Up and Fall Down

  Time of Death: Book #3

  Written by Josh Anderson

  Copyright © 2016 by Abdo Consulting Group, Inc.

  Published by EPIC Press™

  PO Box 398166

  Minneapolis, MN 55439

  All rights reserved.

  Printed in the United States of America.

  International copyrights reserved in all countries.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without

  written permission from the publisher. EPIC Press™ is trademark

  and logo of Abdo Consulting Group, Inc.

  Cover design by Dorothy Toth

  Images for cover art obtained from iStockPhoto.com

  Edited by Ramey Temple

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Anderson, Josh.

  Blow up and fall down / Josh Anderson.

  p. cm. — (Time of death ; #3)

  Summary: Kyle may have his freedom now, but the walls of the juvenile detention were never as suffocating as his life in this new version of the year 2016. When he learns that Ayers, a rogue time weaver, may be causing the time tunnel to shrink, he must choose between a chance at immortality and a chance to learn who he really is.

  ISBN 978-1-68076-066-8 (hardcover)

  1. Time travel—Fiction. 2. Traffic accidents—Fiction. 3. Life change events—Fiction. 4. Interpersonal relations—Fiction. 5. Conduct of life—Fiction. 6. Guilt—Fiction. 7. Self-acceptance—Fiction. 8. Young adult fiction. I. Title.

  [Fic]—dc23

  2015903988

  This digital document has been produced by Nord Compo.

  To Leo,

  You are the light at the end of the road.

  CHAPTER 1

  December 3, 2016

  * * *

  Nine months later

  “You were five minutes late, Kyle,” Brady said.

  He held Kyle’s brown paper time card up in the air like a lawyer presenting condemning evidence.

  “Sorry. The bus took forever,” Kyle said, pulling on a thin blue vest.

  “You’ve got to take help from people when they offer it,” Brady said, running his hand around the billy-goat patch underneath his chin.

  Kyle started backing away, eager for the lecture to be over. “I would’ve had to come in an hour early if I took a ride from you.”

  Brady walked closer to him, his wallet chain swinging back and forth. He put Kyle’s time card down on one of the folding tables where employees ate their bagged lunches. Then he started undoing the pin on the back of the name tag on Kyle’s vest. “But you would’ve been on time,” he said, lowering his voice. “If I get on John or Jane Doe for being late, I’ve got to get on you too. I can’t have them saying, ‘Look at Brady going easy on his buddy.’ Just hang out at Jack in the Box or McDonald’s across the street if you ever need to kill an hour or two.”

  The trick to make sure the cheaply made vest didn’t ride up your torso until it looked like a bikini top was to hang your name tag as low as you could get away with, so it would weigh down the fabric. Brady redid the pin, placing it right up near Kyle’s shoulder, then he winked at him. “See? Now the clients will see it and be able to address you by name.”

  Kyle bit his tongue and turned toward the double doors leading to the sales floor instead of telling Brady where he could shove his name tag.

  “Really need you here on time, buddy,” Brady called after him as Kyle headed out of the break room.

  The only time Rider’s Mega-Market had any character at all was when it was virtually empty like it was now. Starting your shift at ten on a Tuesday—or three minutes after ten—was about as good as it got if your goal was to interact very little with customers and other staff before clocking out at six. Kyle wasn’t due on register until the last two hours of his shift, so he took his post in sporting goods and strolled aimlessly between aisles. He tried to look busy from time to time by straightening a fishing pole in its rack, or lining up the free weights evenly on their shelves. Mostly, though, he did his best not to look as deathly bored as he was.

  Since Kyle lived with Brady, he tried to avoid his manager as much as possible at work. If not for the larger share of the rent Brady paid on their tiny apartment in downtown Flemming, Kyle doubted he would’ve bothered with him at all. In Kyle’s original memory of high school, Brady was a passing acquaintance. Now that he had different versions of his life, each crowding his head and overlapping with each other, all of his memories were cloudier than they would normally be. Somewhere along the line, Kyle and Brady had become high school buddies.

  Kyle learned about nine months ago that he actually could stop the bus crash he’d originally caused in 2014, which killed twelve middle school kids and their driver. The price for stopping the crash, though, and gaining his own freedom from prison, was that one of the students who was saved went on to kill three hundred forty people a year later. She leveled Silverman High School with fifty pounds of C-4 explosives, killing nearly half the people inside. Kyle knew now that undoing the tragedy altogether was not possible. He’d seen thirteen dead in one timestream turn to three hundred forty in the next—the latest evidence that, as Allaire had promised, going back to change the past only made things worse.

  Later in the day, just after Kyle finished his silent, mental celebration that his work day was half over—the four hours passing as slowly as forty hours did outside of work—he was up front by housewares when he spotted his mother pushing her cart toward him. Kyle had to stifle his initial instinct to walk in her direction and instead turned sharply and headed back toward Sporting Goods.

  Of all the things that Kyle hated about this new version of 2016—the worse-than-prison boredom, the three hundred forty deaths on his conscience, living and working with a power-hungry mole like Brady—Kyle’s relationship with his mom was the worst casualty of all. In the original chain of events, his mother committed suicide about a year after Kyle was sentenced. In this timestream, she was still alive, but their relationship was very different than it had been originally.

  He walked with a purpose to the bike aisle and straightened a few helmets on the shelf closest to eye level. When he turned around, he saw his mother standing there with her shopping cart.

  “I didn’t know if you still worked here,” she said, going through the charade of checking out a hand pump on the shelf to her left.

  “Gotta pay rent,” Kyle said. He had trouble being around her. He wanted to tell her that there was a version of the universe out there where they were close, or where they had been close before the bus crash, and her suicide. In that timestream, she’d never have considered kicking him out of the house. Kyle didn’t know if the old timestreams in which he’d lived existed anymore, somewhere in the unreachable ether, or if the loose strands of time evaporated once he entered his silk blot.

  In Kyle’s original timestream, he’d gotten lucky enough to evade getting in trouble with his mother, especially since his grades were always good. In this timestream, though, Kyle hadn’t gotten away with nearly as much as he had the first time around, and it took a toll on their relationship.

  She pushed her cart closer to him, and Kyle edged himself toward the shelf to make room in the middle of the aisle. “You need money?”

  “I’m o—” Kyle started.

  “I can’t imagine they’re paying you much in this place,” she said. Almost as sad to Kyle as not having much of a relationship with her these days, was that she looked better off for it.

  Kyle remembered the way his mom looked on the day of his sentencing—her reddish hair streaked with more white than he’d ever noticed. The bags under her eyes were huge and purple.
Now, there was no evidence of the same kind of stress. “I’m fine, Mom. How are you?”

  “Oh, I’m okay,” she said. “Your aunt has kidney stones, and I got a promotion at work. That’s about all.”

  “Congratulations,” Kyle said, standing there awkwardly.

  The day Kyle returned from 2014 and learned about the tragedy at the high school, he’d walked to his mother’s house in a stunned daze. He couldn’t explain everything to her, but he’d been counting on her to welcome him into the house he grew up in. He needed somewhere to catch his breath.

  Like overlapping memories tended to do, little glimpses of his new reality started to appear to him just as he was standing in his mother’s doorway. At first, he wondered why his mother was treating him so coldly. It didn’t take long to remember, though, that in this new timestream, she’d kicked him out of the house the year before, hoping he’d get his act together, right after he was picked up by the Flemming Police Department for smoking a joint in Daneleo Park.

  Standing there, devastated after learning about the tragedy at the high school, he could’ve asked if he could stay with her for a few days at least. But, the memories of being kicked out assaulted him all at once, and before he could make sense of them, he turned around and went to the grassy field where Silverman High used to be.

  The next morning, Brady found him inhaling a Sausage McMuffin across the street from the Mega-Market and offered him a job and a place to stay. The nine months since then were filled with nearly identical days for Kyle, who took as many shifts as possible for the extra cash.

  His mom stood in the bicycle aisle looking him deep in the eyes, as if she were still trying to figure him out. If only he could tell her everything in a way she’d believe.

  Brady peeked his head around the endcap and stepped into the aisle when he saw Kyle. “I need you to come cover floral with me for fifteen. Liz and Dennis have both been here since eight and haven’t taken lunches yet.”

  “See ya later, Mom,” Kyle said, walking past her toward Brady. “You know I can’t do flowers, right?” Kyle asked, letting Brady lead the way across the store.

  “Don’t ever say ‘can’t’,” Brady said. His habit of talking to Kyle like he had some sort of wisdom to impart was infuriating.

  Kyle shrugged. “I mean, no one ever trained me.”

  Brady stopped, taking way more offense than Kyle could imagine a reasonable person could. “Do you have any freakin’ clue how many moving parts I’m dealing with? Monique’s getting married, so she can’t work Saturday or Sunday. Ben can only work register after his ankle heals. And, then you’ve got a ‘can’t do’ attitude when it comes to freakin’ flowers. You know what I need?”

  Kyle started walking more quickly, hoping the lecture would end if they could just get to the floral department.

  “I need soldiers here, Kyle,” Brady continued. “I need soldiers who don’t ask ‘why?’ Soldiers don’t need to see the big picture just to know that what I’m asking them is important.”

  “Got it,” Kyle said. “No problem.”

  Brady leaned closer as they walked through the maze-like corridors of the store. He lowered his voice, “You’re my boy and all. I just have to make sure, at work, that you and me both have an understanding of the boundaries.”

  “I get it,” Kyle said.

  “Three minutes late is still late,” Brady said as they reached the floral department. “Here. I’ve got a whole bunch of new succulents for you to put out right there behind the counter.”

  Kyle took a deep breath, intent on hiding his ever diminishing good humor toward his boss and roommate. He grabbed a potted cactus in each hand. “No problem.”

  Brady’s wink was the cheesiest thing Kyle had ever seen. “Thanks, soldier.”

  CHAPTER 2

  December 4, 2016

  * * *

  The next evening

  Kyle put a pillow over his head when he felt the room begin wobbling. This small quake was only a few seconds long and not too powerful, much like all of the others recently. Each time, Kyle was sure that this would be the one that built, and swayed into a major trembler.

  There were numerous theories about why upstate New York had become an area of so much seismic activity during 2016, but since the quakes were often light enough to sleep through, and there hadn’t been any major damage, the public’s curiosity had begun to fade already. Kyle knew, of course, that time weaving—not just by him, but by Allaire and Ayers as well—was the likely reason, but he took some comfort in the fact that the quakes had gotten smaller and less frequent of late. He wondered if this meant that the universe had adjusted to all of the new timestreams he’d created.

  The early morning quake had jarred Kyle enough to wake him from some sort of pleasant dream which he couldn’t put his finger on. These days, he dreamt more about the future than he did about the past or present. Kyle hadn’t recognized the significance when he was in the silo with Allaire and Everett, but seeing himself on that monitor, living his life in 2060—not having aged a day—sparked questions in him he couldn’t shake off. Does that world still exist? he wondered. Or was it gone forever, like the bus crash is now, and replaced with something worse?

  It was questions like this that he planned to ask Allaire if he ever found her. Of course, it was more than answers he wanted from her.

  He hadn’t seen her since they’d parted ways on the side of the road in 2014, Everett’s dead body at her feet. If Everett had had his way, the children of Bus #17 would’ve never gotten away, and Kyle likely would’ve been collateral damage. Allaire hadn’t necessarily tried to save the kids on the bus, but she’d certainly stopped Everett from killing Kyle.

  Before they parted ways, Allaire told Kyle how much he’d let her down by leaving 2060 and making a third attempt to stop the bus crash. Her words haunted him: “I wanted to believe you were . . . I needed to believe you were the hero that was going to make everything right. But the proof is in that bus. You couldn’t just have faith and do what I asked.”

  He wanted badly to tell Allaire that he knew now she had been right and that he was finally ready to help. He wanted to join the cause that motivated her to jump back and forth through time. He wanted to help her find Ayers, the person she said was threatening the future of the universe by messing with events in the past. He hadn’t had the self-confidence to believe it then, but she believed he might serve some larger purpose, and more than ever now, he wanted that to be true. He had learned too many astounding secrets to live with a version of his destiny where he wasted away at the Mega-Market.

  Although they were small tremblers, it wasn’t unusual for an earthquake to wake Kyle up in the middle of the night like this and leave him as awake as if it were the middle of the day. Between the memories of visiting the silo in 2060, and the knowledge of the three hundred forty dead students and teachers, he could rarely find the peace to fall back to sleep. Two binders lived under Kyle’s bed, each with printouts and articles on the people killed when Lisa Cartigliani blew up Silverman High. In his darkest moments, he’d spend hours flipping through those two volumes. By now, he could recite the entire roster of the names of the dead in his head—a game he frequently played with himself while trudging through endless shifts at the store.

  He got out of bed and opened the door to his room—the smaller of the two bedrooms—and peeked down the short hallway. The rest of the apartment was dark and Brady’s door was closed.

  Kyle went back inside his room and locked the door. He flipped open the laptop on the tiny old table he’d found lying out by the dumpsters, which he used as a desk. He tapped his fingers in frustration as the PC took a few seconds to boot. While he waited, Kyle stood up and began to remove the push pins from the two Star Wars posters hung up above the table. He let the posters curl back into cylindrical shapes and gently tossed each one onto his bed.

  Looking at the map of the United States hidden underneath, he tried to make sense of the placement of the f
ive yellow pins he had inserted, dotting the East coast, all within a few hours of New York City. “Is that you?” he wondered out loud.

  He sat back down in the wooden chair, which was kept part-time in his room and part-time at the tiny kitchen table. He opened his browser and clicked over to SecuCam.net. It was one of those sites in the deep web, the bowels of the Internet that Kyle never would’ve had any idea existed back when he lived in his original timestream. Even though the site was run by a group of criminals who’d found a way to hack into nearly half of the outdoor security cameras located in North America, the site operated under a fundamentally fair-minded set of rules.

  Each user who paid nine ninety-five a month for a SecuCam password operated in an online environment where tokens were used as currency to buy access to specific security cameras for thirty-minute increments of time. Users couldn’t pay for tokens, though—they would earn them for tips given to other users on the SecuCam message boards. Kyle spent most of his time on the site watching footage from a security camera pointed at the front entrance of the building where he and Allaire been picked up by the pillar in 2060, and where he’d met Yalé in 2014. He desperately hoped that he’d spot Allaire on another visit there. At times, though, he’d get pings through his “searchreq” on the SecuCam message board in which he described “The Blade Phenomenon,” a woman wearing a black jacket and jeans, blonde, mid-thirties, carrying a knife in a holster. He’d place a pin in his map for all of the responses from other users in the Eastern United States, and then watch camera footage of the ones that sounded like they could be her.

  The site amounted, essentially, to crowd-sourced stalking and it became such a competitive environment that there were a few hundred users who frequented the boards just to help locate other people’s searchreqs.

  For all he knew, Allaire hadn’t ever come back to 2016 since he’d stopped the bus crash and managed to make things even worse than they’d originally turned out. He knew how mad she was when they parted ways, and Kyle wished now that he could have just five minutes with her. He’d tell her that, now, he knew she was right—you can’t fix the past. He’d also ask her whether he was really special. And he’d ask if what they saw on that monitor—that he hadn’t aged at all by the year 2060—had some bigger meaning.