MAN FROM TOMORROW

When the body slumped to the floor, Martin lifted himself to a crouch on the stairs. He looked for more signs of movement, of which there were none. But he could hear something from somewhere within. There was someone else here, and they definitely heard the gunshots. They would be heading this way. But where were they coming from? Though he was certain they’d cleared downstairs, he was hesitant to go back down. He decided to risk it and try something else.

He quickly double-checked the stairs behind them before grabbing Anita and hauling her forward with him, completely prepared to battle against the resistance he expected, but that did not come. Martin stood tall with his gun in one hand and Anita on the other, but the moment they reached the corpse, he pushed her ahead of him and into the nearby bedroom.

Instead of rushing inside, Anita looked at the man lying against the doorframe and then crouched down, grabbing for his wrist. The man didn’t have a pulse.

Meanwhile, Martin quickly scoped the bedroom to be sure they weren’t going to run into any more trouble. Once cleared, he moved back to the hall, where he saw Anita, still hunched over the dead man.

“You killed him,” she said, not turning to look at him. Martin could feel the disappointment and fear in her words, but he didn’t blame her. He looked to the body. The bullet wound in the dead man’s chest bled freely, staining his dark blue shirt crimson.

It wasn’t the first time he’d killed another human, and sometimes, it was just part of the job. That didn’t make him feel much better about it.

Once he double-checked that the man was dead, he crouched beside Anita and had her help him push the corpse from the bedroom doorway. It wasn’t a pleasant job, and the blood from the man’s chest pooled on the white carpet when he turned over. They both then stood and rushed into the bedroom, quietly clicking the door shut and locking it before having a chance to explain to Anita what he thought was happening. He pulled her along with him into the other side of the room and waited, though he was careful to give them more than enough clearance from the door.

The noises that Martin heard before became louder, and they manifested as voices when they reached the body outside the bedroom door.

“Shit,” said a man outside, but Martin could tell that English wasn’t their first language. From the tone of their voice, Martin figured that they hadn’t expected one of their own to be killed; rather, that they would have gotten one themselves. Though he wasn’t capable of deciding what nationality they were from one word, he was curious as to what they were. It would tell him a lot about what he was dealing with. After some shuffling around on the other side of the door- he assumed to move the body- they began to speak in an entirely different language. It was something Asian for sure, he was thinking Korean.

He had no clue what they were saying, but their conversation soon changed to a whisper. When he heard nothing at all, the bedroom’s door handles jiggled. All went silent again, but Martin knew what would happen next, and began to move as fast as he could. He grabbed Anita and bolted toward one of the windows.

Not all the windows in the bedroom were, thankfully, adjacent to the doorway. Martin moved to the ones that were a fair distance from the door and peeled open the drapes just in time to hear the first click. Anita reached him just as the first gunshot went into the door; the intruders were trying to blow the handle off.

Anita let out a low pitch wail, but quiet enough so that only she and Martin would hear it. She looked frantically back and forth between Martin and the door before making the decision to help him shove the window open. It would be their only escape.

Two more bullets broke into the metal of the door handle before they had the window open, but the handle was stronger than any of them anticipated. They still had a few more seconds.

Martin leaned over the window sill in search of a safe way down. There appeared none. The side of the house was relatively flat and there weren’t any ridges on the outside that they could climb to before jumping down. Without any assistance, they were looking at about an eighteen-foot drop; it wasn’t something Martin was looking forward to, but they were running out of time.

Behind them two more bullets went off, shattering a portion of the handle. The men outside rattled it a bit more before heaving their bodies against the wood in an attempt to force it open. They were closer than they thought.

“Anita, I’m going to jump down. There’s no time to hesitate, so the moment I’m on the ground, you jump and I’ll catch you. Our lives depend on this,” he stared into her eyes as he said this to be sure she understood the gravity of the situation.

He only allowed enough time for her to give him a hesitant nod before he began climbing through the window. Seconds later, he pushed himself through. Anita clutched the edge of the sill when he fell and gasped when Martin turned the downward momentum into a smooth somersault to lessen the impact of the fall. She didn’t expect that move from Martin. She heaved a sigh of relief to find Martin had landed safely.

As soon as he stood up, she began copying the movements he made to pull his body inside the frame. She sat on the edge for a moment, her gaze fixed on Martin awaiting her below. It was difficult to push away her fears completely, but by the time she was prepared, she heard the door burst open behind her. She flicked her head back in a panic, seeing the men enter the room with their guns pointing straight at her. Martin had told her it would be life or death, and she believed him. Turning forward, she jumped off.

She hadn’t experienced the sensation of falling so far down, before. When she was falling down, everything else went up: Namely, her spirit and her awareness. In the two short seconds she was in the air it felt she was alive and free, for the first time. It felt the entire world was a lie.

She fell into Martin’s arms and she heard two more bullets fired through the window after her. Everything returned to how it had been just before she jumped. Her spirit came down, fear overtook her limbs. She was a shaking mess when Martin placed her on the ground next to him, grabbed her arm, and dragged her around the house alongside him.

Anita had enough time to turn her head and look back before they trampled through her garden. It was only for a brief moment, but she saw what appeared to be a young, Asian man leaning out the window, aiming his gun at them. They turned the corner of the house a second later, but the man didn’t bother to fire.

Martin was on autopilot by the time they reached his car on the other side of the street. In his fully defensive mode, he got them both to escape unscathed, and now hopefully, with enough time to drive off before the intruders came out of the house to chase after them. He shoved Anita’s shaking form into the passenger seat the moment he reached the car, but he hardly recalled moving around the vehicle and putting it into drive.

He came to his own self moments after he drove off, what triggered it was him catching sight of a man running from Anita’s yard. The man remained standing on the sidewalk with his gun in hand. He hesitated before firing once; he missed. He stood there and watched them drive off.

Anita echoed Martin’s thoughts. “What just happened?”

His head instinctively tilted in her direction, and for a moment, he was distracted from the road. What could he tell her? There was more- much more - going on than Anita could imagine. Every day something strange happened, and he was running out of ways to explain it.

“I don’t know,” he said. It was true.

There was a bit of traffic heading into the next intersection, and while idling and waiting to move, he gazed into his rear-view mirror in search of someone- anyone- that seemed suspicious. Martin didn’t think that they would get away so easily, but there didn’t seem to be anyone following them now.

Martin took a deep breath. They weren’t off the hook yet, but they would be safer, the further they traveled from Anita’s house. He calmed and thought over Anita’s question, wondering to himself, what really happened?

When he had arrived at her house half an hour ago, he suspected that the break-in had something to do with his case. But things escalated much further than he expected. Had Joseph somehow learned that he was going after him and sent his terrorist buddies to hunt him and Anita down? After a moment he thought it was unlikely to be Joseph at all, yet he still believed that it was related to his case. How exactly, he was still determined to find out.

These were his thoughts when he pulled into the same parking spot across from Joseph’s auto shop that he’d been investigating. The only difference was that when Martin looked out his window and into the lot, it wasn’t empty as it had been before. Sitting in the parking lot was an old, red car that Martin knew wasn’t there only an hour ago, when he was here earlier. Was it Joseph, or someone else? It was time to find out.

“Martin, where are we?” Anita asked. She hadn’t spoken since her question to him, just as they drove off from her place. He looked at her again, seeing that like him, she was in a much calmer state. But still, he wasn’t sure how to answer her question. He looked back to the building on the other side of the street. Martin hadn’t planned to come back to ‘Clark’s Auto’ until the next day, but it appeared that his subconscious had other designs.

His eyes lingered on the vehicle sitting in the lot. Was it even safe to be here? After all, if the men in Anita’s house were hired by Joseph, they might only be a block behind them. On the other hand, Martin also thought that if they were underlings, they might not be so eager to let the big boss know they’d failed to kill the people investigating him. For all he knew, Joseph might suspect that they were dead. He tapped his fingers on the steering wheel in frustration. There was too much that he had to figure out, and it was beginning to get in the way of what currently, was most important: protecting Anita.

“Since we last met, I’ve been doing a lot of investigating in order to locate Joseph Cooper, the man you claimed to have saved you. I narrowed it down to this address, but- ” before Martin could even finish, she was already out of the car with the passenger door slammed shut behind her.

Martin sighed, stretched his neck, and moved to join her on the street. When he finally got out of the car, she was moving around it to cross the road. Before she could do so, Martin caught her arm and pulled her back toward the car; pushing her against the steel frame, despite her resistance. Finally, her angered expression fell into that of defeat and she quit struggling, allowing Martin to speak.

“Anita, it’s too dangerous for you to just run off like that. I understand that you’re capable of taking care of yourself, but until we know what’s going on and how to combat the problems that have arisen, you’re my responsibility,” he said. Anita frowned but shook Martin off of her. He backed away willingly, and she crossed her arms. Understandably, she was upset. “So please, don’t make my job harder.”

Anita sighed, and Martin knew he’d won. “I’m not staying in the car.”

“Of course not, but… it’d be best not to stay out here too long, either,” he said.

“Is that…?” She asked. Martin’s expression twisted in confusion, but he turned from her to see what it was that she spotted. On the other side of the street, at the entrance to the auto shop, a muscular man wearing a simple T-shirt and jeans appeared to be leaving the establishment. There was no doubt in Martin’s mind as to who the man was.

Before Martin could manage a word, Anita already bolted past him and toward the man on the other side. Whether Martin liked it or not, she was headed straight for her second encounter with Joseph Cooper. All he could do at this point was making sure that Anita didn’t get hurt, and that he got his man. Then it would all be over.

“Joseph!” Anita called to him once she was a lot closer. The man hadn’t seemed to be paying much attention to them, but when Anita spoke, he turned to look at her. His expression showed a mixture of confusion, yet also recognition. While he stopped to acknowledge her, he said nothing until she stopped in front of them. Behind her, Martin was taking his time to cross the street.

“It’s you.” It was a simple statement, but it held a lot of weight for both of them. For Joseph because in a way, he knew he was seeing the mysterious woman he saved on the street once again; for Anita because she never expected to have the opportunity to thank her savior. “How did you find me…?” He asked, his words trailing off when he spotted Martin coming up from behind, unsure what to think of the man who was with her.

“I’ve been trying to find you since- “Anita was interrupted by Martin.

“It’s not hard to find someone when you have the appropriate resources,” Martin said.

“And you are…?” Joseph asked.

“An acquaintance of the lovely Anita here; Martin Phillips at your service,” he said and reached out a hand to shake his, and Joseph only reluctantly reached out with his to meet Martin’s. “You must be Joseph Cooper.”

Joseph’s face told Martin, however, that that wasn’t quite the case. “Sorry, I’m not sure where you got that name from, but my name is Kevin Campbell, not Joseph Cooper.”

Martin and Anita looked at each other, both of them confused. The folder he’d received from his Director stated that this man’s name was Joseph Cooper. Even if the man had perhaps changed his name, Martin would have at least seen some kind of recognition from the man. But there was nothing. Anita was confused because Martin had said that the man’s name was George Wilson. She stared at Martin in anger. Then turned to Kevin.

“Well, Kevin then… Sorry for the confusion,” Anita broke the silence. “I’ve been looking for you since that day… I just wanted to thank you for saving my life.” Kevin didn’t seem to know how to take it.

Anita gazed up at the large man, who had a good foot on Martin in height.

“Well… uh… no problem. I didn’t expect you to go out of your way to thank me, though,” he said.

At that point, Martin retracted himself from the conversation. It didn’t involve him, and something else seemed amiss. Was Joseph… or, Kevin, going to do something? He had a pair of handcuffs in his briefcase, which he had brought with him from the car.

Martin turned away from Kevin and Anita. His gaze was cast out on the deserted street and the property beyond. Something black speeding down the road toward them caught his eye. It came closer without losing speed. Martin realized it was a black BMW, and the driver’s window was quickly rolling down from view. There was something about that vehicle that sent Martin’s body into a panic. The car’s headlights were not on. It was like the black BMW were an extension of the night itself. Unseen, stealthy. It was being driven without headlights. And that only meant that the driver didn’t want his victims to see the car coming.

“Get down!” Martin shouted, jumping at Anita, throwing them both to the Kerb just as a bullet shot out in their direction. Seconds after the shot sounded, Kevin screamed in pain. Martin rolled off of Anita, only to see Kevin crumple to the floor. Before moving to check the state of the man, he saw that the BMW stopped in the middle of the street, and the car doors were opening its occupants hopping out.

While Anita was picking herself up, distressed and confused, Martin moved to grab Kevin by the arms so he could begin to drag him toward the shop. Once Anita realized what he was doing and that Kevin had been shot, she scrambled to help. Hooded strangers were walking towards them dressed in black.

She whipped the garage door open before rushing back to help Martin pull Kevin into the shop. His weight was more than either of them could handle alone, and together, they barely made it inside before a masked man approached; his strides slow and measured as the door slammed shut in front of him. He seemed sure he would get his mark without even needing to try. Anita used every locking mechanism available, but what she heard next sent shivers up her spine.

Something pressed against the door. “You can’t keep me out with simple locks,” a cold voice sounded from the other side. Anita stepped away when there was a clank against the metal frame. Then the horrendous sound of metal gnawing at metal vibrated from the door, and she ran. They weren’t going to be safe for long.

She moved through the shop, following the trail of blood that Kevin left in his wake as he half-walked and half dragged by Martin, also holding his briefcase in one hand. She closed all the doors behind her and locked those that she could as she went. While she was unsure how long it would take the man in black to break through the door, she wasn’t about to make it easy for him.

“Martin!” She shouted, having lost them in her attempt to slow down the man pursuing them. The building was a lot larger than she expected. Moments after she called to him, she heard his response and rushed in that direction.

The first thing Anita spotted after catching sight of Martin and Kevin was the door that they already had cracked open, looking out into the shop’s yard outback. Martin knelt beside Kevin. It took her a moment to figure out what was going on. Kevin sat on a crate while Martin was beside him, his hands busy wrapping a make-do bandage of a towel around Kevin’s leg, where he’d been shot. At first, it was a bit of a relief to know that the man hadn’t been shot in the chest, but there was a big puddle of red, pooling around the crate. So much that she began to wonder how in the world he was still alive. The blood broke Anita from her daze.

“We have to go,” she said, her voice urgent. “I think he’s cutting open the door- “she stopped herself when Martin stood up, his hands red from wrapping Kevin’s leg.

“He was shot near the femoral artery in the thigh. If I hadn’t stopped it, he would have bled to death before we left this place,” Martin explained, moving to lift Kevin to a stand. The man was ghostly pale and blood darkened both legs of his jeans. He was able to support himself enough to move a bit quicker. “Even with this, we’ve only bought ourselves only a little time.”

The silence in the shop was broken. On the other side of the building, there was the sound of the front door being busted open. The three of them looked at each other and without a word, began to funnel outback. All their thoughts were the same: they needed to escape. There were no other options.

The yard was filled with a mixture of broken-down cars and some that looked like they were in the process of being repaired. Martin figured that their position could have been much worse. At least in Kevin’s garage, assuming any of them were working, they’d have a solid getaway vehicle and could ditch their pursuer without much of a problem, perhaps.

“Do any of them work?” Martin asked. He was already forcing Kevin to walk with him, as they had no time to waste conversing over the status of the vehicles. Whether they were going to be of use, Martin intended to escape. And unless they kept moving, the men behind them would catch up. Martin wasn’t sure he could protect them both with one already injured.

On second thought, there was something about the one pursuing them that had Martin on the edge. The way he seemed so relaxed to come from his vehicle after shooting Kevin, and how he moved through the building, he wasn’t in a hurry. Seemed strange to Martin. He had the feeling that the only reason they hadn’t been caught already was that their pursuer was playing with them; he didn’t intend to apprehend them, but kill them.

“The blue car two rows down is one which works. It’s not in t-the best shape, but it’ll get us out of here,” Kevin stuttered, his pain evident in his voice. “The keys will be in the glove box.” Martin didn’t have time to offer Kevin any sympathy, but he was still awed by the strength that remained in him. If Martin were in his position, he’d likely be unconscious or dead.