Saving Grandpa pt 6- Love

Juan falls, eyes widening as round as the O his lips form. Though nothing more than a breath, his gasp is as loud as a scream in my ears, an accusation piercing my heart. How could I?

His feet hit the platform first, only a story and a half below where they had hung. The wooden boards vibrate with the impact, thudding as he collapses, but they are strong. They hold, and as my end of the rope plops down on the planks, Juan rolls to his feet. With shining tear tracks scrawled down his flushed, tan cheeks, he limps into a cave, and darkness swallows him.

Again, my expression mirrors his—lashes wet, brows low, and mouth open because I can’t breathe. My Juan lives, but he is this world’s villain.

And I just helped him escape.

The horror I feel at that thought reflects as fury in Zinc’s eyes. Juan’s victims remain motionless, gazes empty and dull. Zinc laces another rope around their wrists, trusting his hands to work unsupervised as he glares at me.

Jaw set, I glare back. My face burns as if I face the sun. “I had to do it.”

“You love him.” Three words, all emotion carefully peeled off before being sent out into the world.

I nod. “Not just him.”

He frowns. “You love his vision, believe in his cause?” Zinc gestures at the empty-eyed people around us, little more than breathing mannequins. “You would condemn them to this life?”

“No, of course not. I...” I reach toward the rope he uses to bind them, then think better of it, fingers curling in. “What will you do with them?”

He studies me, nose crinkling to the right. His dark gaze is eerie, pupil barely discernable from iris. It’s like he’s reading something written on my soul.

“What?” I squeak, trying to tuck loose wisps of hair behind my ear. “Are you going to answer me?”

“You’re really from the Outer?”

My arms droop. “Does that matter?”

“Those of the Outer are gifts given to us by the universe.”

My hands capture one another in front of my chest as if they hold my ever-curious heart. “Is the reciprocal also true: Are those sent from the Inner also gifts?”

No longer looking at me, he resumes rounding up the zombies and guides them into a straight line.

“You were supposed to be one of those gifts,” I say quietly.

His gaze flicks back to me, pinched under brows so curved, I’m sure they could do the wave.

Did he ever try that in the other timeline? Was it a cute trick just between us, something to make me giggle when I had a bad day? Did our daughter roll her eyes at it, embarrassed that her father could be so weird?

Right now, Mr. Super-Serious thinks I’m insane, so I straighten my budding smirk.

“Zinc, why were you frozen in that room?”

“As a trap.”

My eyebrows rise, not nearly as flexible as his, but high enough it feels like they might rip off my forehead and take flight. “For whom?”

Did Juan know my grandson and I were coming? No, he was surprised to see me. Was it only a trap for Juan III then? Did it work? My grandson disappeared. Is he captured somewhere?

A hopeful wariness softens the black of Zinc’s gaze, making his eyes seem warmer. He turns away, rope in hand as he leads the zombies back into the hut.

Just when I think the only answer I’ll get is the tamp of feet sounding like a drumroll, he throws a glance back over his shoulder. “There are a few of us that Juan’s chemicals don’t work on the way he expects, and we’ve banded together.”

“The trap was for them? Because they’ll try to rescue you?” I jog to catch up. Zinc might not be tall, but he really covers ground. I squeeze sideways through the prison’s door, too impatient to wait for the zombies to follow him in first. “Are we going back to your rebel base?”

“Yes, I hope not, and no.” He surveys those lying on the ground in here as if he contemplates whether or not he can carry them.

He can’t, so he ventures up the stairs at the back of the room, towing those who can still walk. They trip up the steps, no reaction to the bruises forming on their toes.

My lower lip juts out. “I wish we could get them all to a hospital in the Outer.”

But who would pay for it? With my store clerk paycheck, it’ll take years to pay off my school bills. I can’t afford to take myself to the hospital, let alone send a whole civilization through rehab. Maybe there’s some charity for that?

“Are things really that much better in the Outer?” Zinc is hidden somewhere higher on the staircase, but the footsteps stop.

I bend and pick up my fallen calculator helmet, mouth twisting as I stare into the skull’s dark sockets. “That depends on your definition of better. Are people doped up, mindless husks? For the most part, no. Are things perfect? Also, no.”

Near weightless feet tap behind me, and I turn to face Zinc as he reaches the bottom of the stairs.

“It isn’t a utopia?”

I shake my head, gaze on the ground. “Juan disappeared five years ago. There were a million bad things that could have happened to him, so after a while, even the people who cared about him stopped looking. It was better to accept it and move on than worry about an answer that may never be found.”

“Did you give up on him?”

With a gasp, I look up. Zinc’s dark eyes are hungry quasars. Their gravity tugs at my soul, and shame fills me. I don’t want to tell him that yes, I gave up, too.

“Why are you asking a stranger such personal questions?”

His lips draw a cynical, slanted line. “Why are you answering them?”

“Because I want to trust you. I came here to rescue you, and now that you’re free, I’m not sure what I’m supposed to be doing.”

“What is that?” He gestures at the helmet.

I hold it up and turn the macabre face toward him. “This is how I got here. It’s a calculator that lets you travel between the Inner and the Outer in a controlled way.” Guilt pinches my gut, and I wince. My presence here displaced someone and sent them to some time in my world.

It’s okay, right? If they were a zombie, maybe they’re someplace they can get help now.

Or they could be stuck in the stone age. If they die, what will happen when I go back? Will I displace someone else?

These questions hurt my head.

“It’s a work of art.” Zinc reaches for the helmet, but I don’t let go.

I snort. “You would say that. Our grandson told me you designed it when originally I made it as a necklace to match the translators.” My fingers fondle my heavy earring. Without it, could he even understand me?

My face heats in embarrassment. He doesn’t know me, probably doesn’t want to. We have nothing in common except some grandson who doesn’t exist yet. Who probably will never exist because Juan wasn’t supposed to be an evil tyrant who lost faith in life and basic human rights. Zinc was supposed to love me, to think I was the greatest thing that ever happened to him and not look at me like I’m a lunatic, like he’s looking at me now.

“I should probably go now.” I try to put the helmet on, but Zinc pushes it down.

“You said that before, about our grandson?”

My face is on fire, and I hate it. I’m a tomato. “He’s the one who brought me here.”

“He was from the future, from another timeline, or are you just a lot older than you look?” His eyebrows twist again, and my stomach flutters. Is he teasing me? Complimenting me? Both? Or just confused?

I nod. “In his timeline, you and I were neighbors. You were a gift from the Inner, and we made these”—I hold up the helmet—“and revolutionized travel between our dimensions. I think we were amazing.”

His eyes widen as if something about that is horrifying. “A gift to the universe isn’t supposed to be taken back.”

“What?”

“I was a gift to the universe, and I tried to come back to the Inner. This must be punishment for that.”

My face twists so much, I probably look like I expected candy and bit down on a pickle. “Our choices have consequences, but I don’t believe we’re punished for choices made by different versions of ourselves. The other you and I no longer exist, and that should be punishment enough, whatever they did.”

“You still have that helmet. It still exists.”

“True—”

Zinc yanks the mask out of my hands, and the feathers trail in the breeze as he holds it in front of his face. “Maybe if I go to the Outer, things will be set right.”

“You’d just leave me here?” My heart is a stone, crumbling, not beating.

He pauses.

I grab his wrist, tears boiling along my lashes. “When I said I didn’t just love Juan, I was thinking of our grandson. A mother’s love…a grandmother’s love, that’s incomparable. Now that I’ve met him, I can’t stand the thought of him never existing.”

I can’t look Zinc in the eye. For Juan III to someday exist, at some point I have to have a daughter with the man standing in front of me.

If I was a tomato before, now I’m a fire truck with flashing lights.

“Please don’t cry at the ground like that.” His fingers slide under my chin and attempt to lift it, but I flinch and scramble back. I release my grip on his arm and cover my face.

“Your eyes sing the song of the land,” he repeats, so soft, so gentle, “and when you cry at the ground like that, it looks like the world has lost all hope.” His hand covers mine, pushing it to the side to reveal one eye.

“I don’t think you going to the Outer would solve anything. We have to do things here.”

His expression scrunches. “You already let Juan get away.”

“He has to live,” I say too quickly.

“Why?”

“Because our grandson—”

There’s a thud behind me, and I whirl. The last zombie in line, the child, has collapsed. None of the others even look at him as he spasms on the dusty floor. Foam froths between his lips, sizzling as it drips onto the boards.

I run to the child and try to still him with my embrace.

“Don’t let the foam touch you,” Zinc warns as the boy falls still.

My relief lasts only long enough for half a sigh.

“Tacit!” Zinc kneels, black hole eyes wide. “Tacit, can you hear me?”

As he lifts the boy’s arm, it is as limp as a scarecrow’s. He checks for a pulse, and any smidgen of hope is abolished from his expression.

Pressing the back of Tacit’s hand to his forehead, Zinc falls into a bow, face on the floor. “I’m sorry, Tacit. I didn’t make it fast enough.”

Trying to hold back tears of my own, I say, “You knew him.” That’s painfully obvious, but they are the only words among the million bouncing around in my head that can emerge from my mouth and make any sense at all.

Zinc’s shoulders shake. “He was captured the same time I was. He wanted to be a teacher.”

I want to believe that in Juan III’s timeline, this boy got that wish. I see that future for him, see him as a smiling, middle-aged man in a suit, standing in front of a blackboard scribbled all over with algebraic equations. He asks Juan III to come to the front and solve a few problems, and my grandson grumbles about chalk being so uncool as he works through the math.

“What does Juan do with those whom his drug doesn’t work on?”

Zinc sits up slowly. Wet streaks stain his cheeks, but a fire burns in his dark eyes. “He experiments until something works.”

Or they die, I mentally add, unable to hold back my tears. They drip off my chin onto the pale hair of a boy who did nothing wrong but is dead anyway. Zinc knows the foam is dangerous. He’s seen this happen to his comrades before.

The inferno in Zinc’s eyes ignites in my heart.

“I want to join your rebel army,” I tell him. “I want to save these people.”

Continued in pt 7- Future

Thank you for reading!