"I would be mighty appreciative if somebody could tell me what in the hell just happened?" Sam said.
"I died," Lee stated quietly. "I got bit in the neck." He pulled his glove off and ran one hand over his throat. "I left my body."
"Me too," Holly added. "I don't know what got me."
"Fed shot you in the head," I answered.
"Stupid bastard," she said coldly.
"It was an accident. He was getting eaten."
"Still…"
"All of us died." I slowly stood up, searching for the words to explain what I had seen, what I had done. "I… When I got killed…" I stabbed my thumb to my chest. "I saw the Cursed One. I fought him for control of the artifact. I made a wish…"
"You did this?" Julie asked, stunned. She ran one hand down my filthy face. "How?"
"I just don't know." I was way out of my league on this one.
Harbinger had not said anything yet. He slowly sat down on a stump and scowled, deep in thought.
"You seriously made a wish? Like Aladdin and the magic lamp or whatever? And brought us back from the dead? And made all of those things go away?" Sam said.
"I guess."
"Bullshit," he spat, "just ain't no way."
"He didn't bring us back from the dead," Milo said, still kneeling, his back toward us. "We never died."
"I don't know about you, Milo, but I got my damned brains blown out," Holly said.
Milo stood and faced us. "Not what I mean. Yes, we died, but that was erased. That has not happened yet. It would be happening shortly, but it got reversed. Turned back to right now. What we just went through never happened."
"Sure it did," Sam said. "It just happened."
"When?" Milo held up his watch.
"Uh… in the future?"
"Right. So it has not happened."
Sam thought about it for a moment, head cocked sideways as he stroked his walrus mustache. "Screw it. I need a drink."
Franks drifted into our area, his crack federal agents following slowly behind him. They were not moving swiftly now. Rather, they looked as shell-shocked and confused as we did. None of them even reacted at the sight of the unmasked orcs. Compared to what they had just gone through, what were a couple of tusk-faced humanoids?
"Hey, guys," Milo said cheerfully. "Let me guess, you all got killed by orange monster insect demon things too?"
"Yep," Franks answered.
"Oh good, at least we're all on the same page."
The dark Fed just held up his thick arms, looking down at where they had been pierced and shredded by whistling spines. He made a fist and cracked his knuckles, then slowly lowered them.
Harbinger finally spoke. "See, Franks, I told you we should have stayed put."
Franks shrugged. He keyed his radio. No longer disrupted by the unnatural rift in the area, we made immediate radio contact. Myers' voice sounded shaken.
"What's going on out there?" the radio shrieked.
Franks scowled as his straightforward brain tried to figure out how to explain our situation. Harbinger keyed his mike and interrupted.
"It was a trap. Ray Shackleford set us up. We were ambushed by a horde of trans-dimensional demons. We all got killed. Then time ran backwards. We all woke up alive. And the monsters are gone. Request immediate evac…" He let that hang for a moment. "Over."
"Uh, yeah," Franks concurred.
"Air evac is on the way. What caused the time effect?"
Harbinger looked at me through squinted eyes, but did not betray my secret to the Feds. "Unknown. Suspect it was caused by the Cursed One's artifact. We went back in time approximately five minutes."
"I know," Myers responded. "It wasn't just you. We felt it too. It was 2:39, and then it was 2:34."
"How widespread was the effect?"
"Hold on…" The radio went dead.
Forty quiet Hunters stood packed together in the pounding rain, taking no small amount of comfort from the nearness of other real people. The emotions displayed ran the gamut from confused, to terrified, to shaken, to ecstatic, but mostly to blank thousand-yard stares while our human brains tried to process the impossible. And we were Monster Hunters, either governmental or private, and every one of us was no stranger to the weird or the unexplainable. Shivering from the cold, I put my arm over Julie's shoulder and pulled her close. Slow minutes ticked by. We all waited for Myers' response.
"Sorry… I was told to turn on the news."
"How widespread was the effect?" Harbinger asked again.
The radio crackled.
"Um… Reports are coming in now… the whole world."
"Say again?"
"Earth. Every person on Earth felt it."
We stood in the Monster Control Bureau's giant tent command center, dripping from our showers, stinging from the leech removal process, and aching from the bevy of antibiotic shots given to us to combat the rancid waters of Natchy Bottom. The flat-screen televisions had been changed from satellite imagery to several different cable news channels.
"-continue to drift in. We can now confirm that India, Australia, Bangladesh and Finland also experienced the phenomenon and-"
"Large scale rioting has broken out in Los Angeles, New York, and in several other cities in the continental-"
"Yes, Diane, the President will be addressing us live from Air Force One in a matter of minutes-"
"-the Prime Minister's office has issued a statement for all to remain calm until-"
"-repent sinners! The hour of judgment is at hand! I'm sorry I cheated on my wife, I'm adulterous slime. It's all April the weather girl's fault. Evil slut. Wait… you can't take me off the air… damn you, Harry! Repent, you heathen bastard! It's the end of the world! The end I say-"
Some of the media people were holding it together better than others. The same could be said for us.
"Maybe it wasn't caused by this artifact," Myers contended.
"Yeah, and maybe I'm Elvis," Harbinger shouted back.
"It could have been a coincidence," the senior agent pleaded.
"Sure, a rift in time just happens to occur as we're fighting the minions of something that we were warned was going to try to control time? Give me a break, Myers."
"I'm the one that has to talk to the President, damn it. I need to give him more than conjecture. I need proof! This is the biggest thing that has ever happened."
"Hell, I'll talk to the Prez," Sam added helpfully. "He's a Texan. He'll understand."
Harbinger ignored his teammate. "Myers, there hasn't been an attack of trans-dimensional forces since '95. That's a rare enough occurrence as it is. It has to be connected."
"There was the Vanni Fucci incident in Dothan a while back," Julie offered.
"Isolated case," Harbinger said.
"I know that, and you know that. But I need to explain this all to people who don't know a damn thing about monsters. They were already prepared to go all the way to 'final option' to stop Lord Machado; what are they going to do now? Preemptively nuke the whole state into a sheet of glass?"
"That'll alienate the Southern vote for sure," Milo said.
I started to speak. I could tell them exactly what had happened. Julie kicked me in the shin. She shook her head in the negative.
The news continued to babble:
"-UN General Secretary has just called for a unilateral ban on time travel-"
"-I'm telling you, Ken, space aliens are behind this. I talked about it in my book, The Coming Gray Invasion, this is just phase one of their colonization-"
"-does not appear to be as much widespread panic on the other side of the world, since many people appeared to have slept through the disturbance-"
"-just in, there are reports of… this can't be right… vampire attacks in Alabama and Georgia? Vampires? Uh… eyewitnesses are reporting that the dead are walking? What is this shit?" The screen went blank, and then to a static display that said they were experiencing technical difficulties.