MAN FROM TOMORROW

Martin redirected their course according to where Kevin said the car would be. He was beginning to tire from half-carrying such a massive man and had to begin heaving Kevin with his own body in the general direction of the car in order to continue at all. There weren’t any vehicles that Martin spotted that looked even remotely blue, but he kept looking. Once Anita moved to help Martin support Kevin and help pick up the group’s speed, he devoted a bit more of his strength to search for the car.

Finally, down in the middle of the row of cars, Martin spotted the only vehicle that could be considered blue. It was a hideous thing, but a vehicle was a vehicle, and they needed one to save their lives. They helped Kevin limp toward the car as fast as he could, but it was still a long and slow process. The man in black and his gang of deadly assassins were surely in the lot searching for them by now.

They reached the car, Martin first helped Kevin into the back seat. He left Anita to get herself in, as he was eager to get moving. Who knew how much time they had left? Sitting down in the driver’s seat, he leaned over the passenger side to search the glove box for the keys. There wasn’t much else in there. He grabbed it and started the car without much trouble.

Martin then realized that the car was standard, with manual gears. A bead of sweat dripped from his brow at the thought of driving something that wasn’t automatic, as he hadn’t used anything else in quite some time. Standard definitely wasn’t what he preferred, but at least he knew it well enough to get them out of there.

As soon as the car was on, he shifted into gear, hit the gas, and drove around the other cars within the yard. Martin turned into the main road in the yard and was focusing on not stalling before getting the chance to leave. Anita stared eagerly back at the building they left, seeing the man in black standing there. He had stopped, was watching them, no longer pursuing. He held his hand backwards. Someone from his group passed him a long tube with a tapering end. Anita remembered seeing such a thing in movies. The man in black placed the long tube on his shoulder with the tapering end pointing towards the speeding car.

The gate was at the end of the road when Anita cried- “Shit! Martin! He is firing a rocket at us! “Martin stepped on the gas pedal instinctively and charged toward the gate at full speed. The black man pressed the trigger. The tube spat out a long tongue of smoke. The rocket roared towards the car. Anita looked in horror at the blunt tip of the rocket, fast approaching them. Suddenly the car swerved violently to the left. The car hit the metal wires, which for a moment, resisted the car’s strength. An ear-piercing sound rent the air for a moment when the side of the rocket scraped the back of the car, overshot it, hit the fence and exploded. The shock wave from the blast shook their car. Anita felt a jolt in the small of her back as the whole car got thrown forward. The car knocked free the lower half of the other side of the fence and pushed through, flipping the gate when it moved inside the lower section like a trap door. They bounced inside the car when they landed on the dirt road on the other side, but Martin didn’t slow to see where they were going.

“Bazooka!” Martin said.

“eh? What did you say?” Anita asked. “Bazooka, the rocket fired at us was a Bazooka,” Martin said, looking at the road in front of him.

He drove off into the darkness, his destination now being the nearest paved road.

Martin was focused on driving for some time before he looked in the rear-view mirror to check on the status of Anita and Kevin. He gazed into the filthy, dinky mirror for several moments before deciding it was of little use. He instead everted his eyes from the road and looked over his shoulder. Anita was sitting on the seat, looming over the pale, bleeding man.

“How are you holding up?” He asked, looking back and then to the road. About twenty minutes prior, he’d gotten off the dirt track road and onto the paved road. The car had stopped jittering a hundred times a second. He drove onward, the car quite smooth for the wreck that it was.

“I’m fine. Kevin is…” she paused and looked to the man, leaning in to brush his hair away from his face, affectionately. “He’s asleep now.”

Martin said nothing else, pretending to be focused on the road. There wasn’t much for him to be focused on but the wide expanse of Continental America ahead of them.

He found himself worrying about Kevin- who he still thought of as Joseph. While he was concerned about the mystery regarding the man’s name, he was debating what to do with him. After all, the man had been shot. Martin’s moral standards told him that he should take him to a hospital, but he was conflicted. He needed to turn the man over to the FBI, and he wasn’t sure if that would still be possible if he brought him to receive medical attention. He knew he wasn’t the only one in search of Kevin. Taking this wounded man to a public place was likely far from safe.

Why were so many people after Kevin? Apart from the FBI, there seemed to be at least two other organizations. One of them consists of Korean men… but he wasn’t so sure what to think of their other encounter. He had the feeling that the remaining group wasn’t with the others. The man in black was unusual… he appeared to be a hitman. Then there was him and the FBI.

Martin was distracted from the case, and pretty much everything relevant to his situation. His thoughts drifted to his soon to be ex-wife, and his entire being seemed to clench with grief. It was a gradual process, but he’d noticed since he first met Anita- she and his wife were shockingly similar. Sometimes it hurts to look at her, other times… Martin’s eyes shifted to the mirror, watching Anita on its spotted surface. She sensed his gaze, looked up and met the reflection of his eyes.

“What’s wrong?” She asked. Martin thought for a moment, he had no intention of telling Anita what was on his mind. Even so, after many moments of silence, the words blurted out.

“You remind me a lot about my soon to be ex-wife,” Martin said. Anita’s gaze returned to watch over Kevin when Martin hesitated, but when he spoke up, she looked up at him, this time not through the mirror.

“I- I hope that isn’t a bad thing,” she looked down, Martin turned to look over his shoulder, her face slightly flushed.

“Not at all.”

The silence resumed, but the inside of the car vibrated with Kevin’s snoring. He hadn’t meant to tell Anita that she reminded him of the only woman he’d ever truly loved. Sure, he’d been thinking it the entire time, but there wasn’t any reason for her to know about it. Kevin’s snores worsened to the point where Martin was about to tell Anita to wake the man up. He found that she too had fallen asleep. The car began to make a puttering sound. He steered the car to the side of the road, where it rolled to an abrupt halt. He turned off the engine and sighed, not bothering to try, and start the vehicle again. He knew it was out of gas.

Anita perked up once the car stopped. “Great. No gas?”

He didn’t need to explain the problem to her. He sighed and popped open his door, hopping out into the warmth of the late evening. The sun was on the horizon, but it was quickly disappearing. He didn’t have a clue how far they were from the nearest city, there weren’t any signs to give him an idea.

Martin walked around the vehicle and opened the door on Kevin’s side. The man lay there, obviously asleep, but with his eyes half open and his pale face glistening with sweat. He watched the man’s labored breaths, knowing that despite the fact that he wasn’t a doctor by any means, he needed to get the bullet out of the wound. Even if they could keep moving, they wouldn’t be able to take him to a hospital to have a professional deal with it. In order to ensure Kevin’s survival, he would have to do something about it now.

Kevin snored laboriously, a death snore, oblivious to what was about to happen, and Martin decided he would get started. He grabbed Kevin’s torso and turned him so his legs were hanging out of the door, both of his pant legs soaked with blood. A plan was forming in his mind when Anita appeared behind him.

“What’re you doing?” She asked. Martin didn’t turn to her when he began pulling off Kevin’s shoes.

“Need to get the bullet out of him,” he said. Anita remained behind him and watched; Martin moved to unzip the man’s pants. Kevin didn’t quite writhe in pain, rather, he vibrated, his muscles tightening and loosening with each of his strained breaths. Kevin seemed to somewhat relax when his jeans were finally eased off of his feet, leaving him half-naked and bleeding on the backseat of the car. Removing his pants had reopened the wound that was partially clogged. Blood was oozing free at a quick rate.

“Bring my briefcase from the front,” Martin said, his voice firm and calm. Without questioning, Anita rushed to the front and grabbed the briefcase, which Martin had thrown beside him while fleeing. Martin worked to temporarily secure the wound with the legging of Kevin’s jeans as a temporary bandage. Anita dropped the briefcase next to him. Martin took his attention off Kevin for a moment, opened the case, searching for the box of latex gloves he had kept somewhere inside. It took him a moment, once he had them, he slipped on the pair of gloves and turned back to Kevin.

“Now for the difficult part.” Martin heaved

Martin carefully unwrapped the jeans from the wound and spread the bullet hole apart with one hand, peeking inside the wound. It wasn’t too deep, but the blood was obstructing his view of the bullet. It wasn’t much help that the little light that was left was quickly draining from the sky.

“I need some more light,” he said. Anita burst into action, this time reaching into her coat pocket to claim her phone. She moved alongside Martin and directed the phone inside once she opened a flashlight app, holding the light so Martin could see what he was doing.

With some decent light, Martin took a deep breath and slid his fingers within the wound in search of the bullet. With his fingers inside, even with the light, it was hard to see anything. More blood gushed from the wound each time he moved, and the man’s muscles were so dense he practically had to dig at them to get any deeper. Kevin groaned in pain and occasionally jerked his body in pain, Anita held him down, with one free hand. Kevin clenched his teeth in spite of his morose state. The tip of Martin’s finger touched something that wasn’t pure muscle. It was the bullet.

Martin wriggled his fingers deeper, completely conscious of the blood that now soaked the seat and the sleeves of his coat. He managed to wedge the bullet between two of his fingers and wriggle it free; tugging it from Kevin’s muscles. Martin noticed Kevin’s ridiculous muscles. They were enormous; maybe even two or three times the size of his. No wonder the bullet had only gone far enough to scrape the femoral artery. It hadn’t caused much damage despite the fact that Kevin was bleeding like a horse.

His hands were shaking when he finally tore the bullet free from Kevin’s flesh. Even more blood- if that were possible- squirted everywhere, and Martin, morbidly, thought that the gloves seemed to have served little to no purpose. His arms were soaked in blood, regardless. Anita managed to be spared from the crimson liquid, but not from the trauma of the whole incident. When Martin finished up by wrapping Kevin’s leg in his jeans and tucking him back into the car, he saw Anita pale. It appeared she was the one getting a bullet removed from her leg.

He smiled in an attempt to comfort her but knew it was futile. After carefully placing the bullet into a small baggy from his briefcase, he removed his coat and used it to wipe away what blood he could from his skin and the outside of the vehicle. He ended up with red smears on his arms but looked better than before.

Martin closed the door, quietly, so as not to disturb Kevin and then looked to Anita. She looked at him with tired eyes. He noticed how everything around him had a thick metallic scent. Deeply unpleasant in high concentration. He leaned against the car, breathing in the fresh air, staring off into the distance. He hadn’t noticed it before, but far off in the distance the city glowed like a million fireflies; a rather pleasant sight so much blood. Anita joined him leaning against the car, looking at and appreciating the same view.

“Do you have a plan?”

Martin shrugged. He didn’t have anything, yet.

“We rest for now. Switch off your phone. We may be tracked. We’ll have to think of something when we wake up,” he said.

Anita didn’t bother responding. She remained silent alongside Martin for some time. Neither of them knew or cared how much time had passed before she finally retired into the car. This time she got in the front passenger seat and not the back. Martin followed shortly after.

He was so tired that his eyelids felt like lead. He gazed at the sky. He saw stars. Thousands, nay millions of them out there. They all formed a pattern. Swirling, moving, and undulating. He could see a giant disk in the sky seen along its edge. It was huge. It stretched from one end of the horizon to the other a full one hundred and eighty degrees apart.

The Milky Way! Our Galaxy! Could Man, in his present, delicate form ever fathom the Milky Way? Could there be beings out there superior and more intelligent than our own? Did they know that Mankind existed? Or were they already among us? As Martin watched the sky, a point of light came down from where he was gazing. It hovered over him and landed some distance away. Out came some creatures from what had landed. As they came closer to Martin, he could see that they had glistening mirror-like eyes. They opened their mouth and there were hideous, sharp teeth. One of the creatures gripped Martin’s neck. He couldn’t do anything. The grip grew tighter and Martin found it hard to breathe. Those eyes! Those teeth! Martin Gasped.

Martin woke up. It was a dream. Martin was sweating. Anita was asleep beside him head lying on the headrest. Martin checked Kevin in the back. He watched Kevin’s chest for some time to make sure that he was breathing. He was. But so feebly that Martin doubted whether Kevin would survive the night. Martin wiped the sweat off his forehead and tried to go to sleep. Martin was shaken by the ominous nightmare. He closed his eyes and tried to go back to sleep. Only this time he hoped that it would be dreamless.

The car shifted, and Martin’s eyes opened when he heard one of the vehicle’s doors slam shut. He squinted in the sunlight but lifted his head to search for the disturbance that woke him. For a moment his eyes rested on Anita, who still slept soundly in the passenger seat. He turned to look into the back. Kevin was no longer there. Sitting up and craning his neck, he looked for the large man, but he wasn’t in view. Martin felt the car shake again, this time because the trunk was being closed.

He lifted himself and got out, immediately seeing Kevin standing behind the car. He had put on a fresh pair of shorts. Martin thought it was odd to have a change of clothes in the back of some random, beat-down car. But before that moment, he hadn’t considered the car being anything else. It might have been one of Kevin’s spare cars, ready for running away. Kevin looked up scraping some dried blood from his arm, spotted Martin standing outside of the car.

“You sure you’re in good enough shape to be moving around so much?” Martin asked.

“I feel perfectly fine, “he shrugged; the fact that he was shot yesterday evening meant nothing to him.

“What did you do?”

“I removed the bullet. The wound was still pretty bad when I was done, though. Have you taken a look at it yet?” Martin asked.

“It’s started scabbing. Doesn’t even look like I was shot- just a scratch,” he said. Martin lifted an eyebrow. He didn’t believe that Kevin was really that far along with healing in less than ten hours.

“Really, now?” Martin asked, baffled.

Kevin seemed to pick up on the disbelief in his voice and responded accordingly.

“I’ve healed fast ever since I remember. Get a broken arm, good as new in a few days, crash and burn on my bike, a bloodied mess for a day and not even a scar three days later. This type of wound doesn’t seem to be any different,” he paused. He turned away from Martin and leaned against the door of the car. “Thanks for removing the bullet. I’m not sure how my body would have handled healing with the bullet still in there.”

Martin said nothing at first. He was baffled, especially because the man didn’t seem to acknowledge how unusual a trait that was. Was it magic, or something more than that? Martin figured that, with more time, he would find out. Martin latched on to the thought that this might be the reason so many people were behind Kevin. He made a mental note of the fact for later contemplation. Martin even surprised himself by believing that Kevin was being genuine- it just didn’t seem like a lie.

“You’re telling the truth, aren’t you?” He mused. For a moment he felt bad for the man, for having to doubt him over something like that, but then Martin remembered who he was. Kevin was supposed to be a terrorist named Joseph Cooper, someone he was charged with capturing and handing over to the FBI, dead or alive. But after talking to the man, saving his life, and learning more about the strange quirks that revolved around him, he again began to feel that something was wrong. Was Kevin really a terrorist? Had someone, somewhere made a mistake? Martin thought that it was unlikely, even though he didn’t look or feel the part; there were too many people after this single man.

“I have no reason to lie,” Kevin said, walking around the car toward Martin, where he lifted his shorts just past the scab for Martin to see.

“No one who hasn’t seen me heal that fast firsthand has believed me.”

Martin had no choice but to believe. He had worked on the wound the previous night, had left it a bloodied, torn mess, and here it was in front of him- already scabbing as though two weeks of healing had passed.

“That’s… fascinating.” Martin paused. “You’re still sure you feel good though?”

Kevin hesitated. “Well... From last night I’m fine, but in general, I guess not. For the last few weeks my chest felt awful; stuffy and a stiff feeling and it’s been getting worse by the day,” he shrugged. “Regardless, it’s manageable, but in the meantime, we should get out of here. Do you know who shot me? They’ll be back.”

“Anita and I haven’t dealt with them for long, but yes, we have reason to believe they’ll be back, but we’re out of gas,” Martin muttered.

“Oh. That’s not a problem,” Kevin smiled and returned to the trunk of the car, which he opened with force. He spent several moments shuffling through the contents in the back before he pulled something out and closed the trunk.

Martin didn’t recognize the item at first, but when Kevin lifted it for him to see with a bright smile on his face, he figured what the man was about to do. Martin whirled around, checking out the road.