He loved his crazy White friend Jay-Bone. Jay-Bone was the only person that never looked down on him until he had met Three-Rivers and all of those other great time-travel kind of people. And if it had not been for meeting Jay by chance on a winter day in Baltimore while the crazy bald super-jock chased the bus Eddie was riding in halfway across town, Eddie would have never met Three-Rivers, or his little friend the drug-dealing squirrel, or Eddie’s Neanderthal girlfriend Dawn Star. So, there was an upside to being Jay-Bone’s buddy. But, when it came time to hop on the ‘Naked People Express’ and he held hands with Jay, he paid the price for being best friends with a mass-murdering cannibal, for he shared the fighting man’s darkest dreams—or at least he hoped this was as dark as it got in that bald head—as he hurdled through the void…
He was raping this tall blonde beauty on a blood-smeared concrete floor while four giant armored prison cops stomped and beat him; he was being tortured horrifically by some Hispanic CIA type who screamed questions in his face; he used his little friend as a human shield while he emptied his nine-millimeter into the faces of some rich pirates; he was standing on a pile of dead bodies beating an armored knight to death with the severed head of a horse he had once fed from his own hand—the blood soaking his chest and hips as he snarled and swung; he was being dragged down into a mass grave by the hundreds of zombie hands he had sent there; he was clawing his way through a mile-deep festering pit of corpses, seeking the promised light above; as he burst into the cool clean air of a snowy morning he found himself instead locked in a concrete arctic simulator in the government facility where he was being examined , tested and tortured…a large snarling dog was eating the body of the Chechen POW he had recently killed with his own bare hands—no, with his claws!...he was launching himself furiously at the growling dog who had the gall to feast on his kill…and they rolled over and over in the torn slush that had once been a man as they battled for the last scrap of meat in a dying world…
Good Lord, how does this dude sleep?
He saw the blazing sun in the distance, first a pinhole of light, then a blazing portal of hope, then a roaring furnace into which his hopes for resurrection were cast…
He exploded into being in a world rocked by…explosions?
What? We are coming back to the stone-age.
What explodes in the stone-age?
He was holding hands with Jay and they were both holding a platinum hoop and looking at a cringing Neanderthal elder shaking on his knees while some space-age looking freak was pumping rounds into the poor terrified crying caveman with some wicked looking assault rifle.
Oh Snap! This shit is real bad!
The evil, masked and helmeted future man was now turning his weapon on Eddie—who was the first one in his arc as he turned away from the spastically twitching blood-pumping primitive—“Oh snap yooooooooo…”
He could not stop saying that word, as he was grabbed by the ankles through his slacks by two insane rack-hard hands even as the world around him exploded, boomed, howled, snarled and screamed in incomprehensible words. While he continued to yell he was whipped violently in a circle—and the wind was driven from his lungs as his ribcage crashed into the side of a helmeted head.
Oh snap, I’m Mister Hide’s war club!
He hoped, through the sheet of breathless pain that was now his spinning window on the world that he was done being used as a blunt weapon. After all, he had just heard—through the battle racket—the sickening crunch of the future-freak’s neck snapping. But it was not to be. As the world boomed, screamed and groaned around him he was whipped even faster, in a wider arc. Then, with a savage snarling grunt, Jay let go of his ankles and he became a human boomerang!
Oh, Helllllll no!
The world rotated by in a strange blood-splashed kaleidoscope of battle. He caught a glimpse of an armored future-freak standing on a dead Neanderthal and a half-cooked wolf, wrestling with another Neanderthal who was holding the front of his gun and trying to tear it away.
This is so wrong.
He rotated again, and was then served with a closer glimpse of the future-freak emptying a burst into the now exploding stomach of the heroic primitive, who continued to hold onto the weapon even as his disintegrating back splattered the ground behind him.
I hate seeing brave dudes die like that, without a chance even.
He rotated again, closer still to the futuristic soldier, and saw the helmeted head swivel on the armored body toward him, and begin to traverse the weapon that was now slipping from the still-clutching hands of the dying Neanderthal hero.
This is real wrong!
Then he crashed chest first into a visored helmet and rolled end-over-end over the crest of the grassy half-frozen blood-slick hilltop. An armored body was rolling with him. Then he was rolling alone with a big piece of metal—the gun!
As he came to rest he looked ahead of him and saw the blood-smeared weapon tumble to the ground about three paces away. He could also hear a man cursing in a strange language—that’s some kind of weird English—and beginning to rise behind him.
Son, you need to breathe, and you need to move!
He still could not breathe. But somehow, he managed to crawl, to scamper even—like Three-Rivers’ coked-up pet squirrel!
You got this son!
Even as he heard the booted feet crunching the frosty grass behind him amid the din of battle he crawled, and he got his hands on it. He now had it in his hands and was rolling over onto his back, prepared to level the weapon and pull the trigger—forever!
His eyes came into focus on the armored man above him even as a boot stomped on Eddie’s shoulder, and then another boot kicked the weapon away. The man then drew a pistol with his right hand as he raised his visor with his left hand. It was a Black man, grinning with perfect teeth through strangely silver—is that chrome? —lips as he pointed the muzzle of the wicked looking pistol at Eddie’s face.
This is real, real bad.
He wanted to speak; to plead or curse—something. But he still could not breathe. He did not cry though. He did not feel a tear wet his eyes as he resigned himself to dying in this crazy time-war they had just gotten sucked into.
You fought the good fight, time to checkout Son.
Shoot I’m scared.
Note
The remainder of this chapter gives away too much of a previous book to post online. However, since the last two black dudes I sent back in time were killed immediately, you can expect mercy for Eddie here.
