A Man Through Time

After leaving the university, I didn't wait. No hotel, no goodbye dinner, no final debrief with Professor Venderbolt. I walked past the parking lot, across the street, and hailed a rideshare straight to the airport.

Inside the car, I pulled out my phone. The contact list was short. I tapped the name I hadn't used in years.

Yanna Tejada.

It rang three times before she picked up. Her voice was cool and measured, like the edge of a scalpel. "Caine."

"I need you to email me the records," I said without preamble. "Everything you have on unusual viral cases—globally. I want patient data, timeline spikes, any mention of metabolic anomalies or spontaneous recovery. Genetic drift patterns, if you can find them."

A pause.

Then her voice softened, slightly. "Where are you going, Kaelix?"

I looked out the car window as the airport terminal came into view, sunlight blazing off the glass like fire on water.

"Home," I replied. "And Yanna… I hope you've changed."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"It means I'm not your enemy. Not unless you make me one."

"I never tried to be," she said quietly.

"I know. But we've both worked with people who taught us how to lie with a straight face."

The car stopped. I opened the door, stepped out, and turned back just once.

"I don't know what you're after anymore, Yanna. But I hope, in the end, we're neutral—if not allies."

The call ended.

____________________________

I took a red eye to Houston and the moment I landed I planned to head back to the future if I could. Based on Professor Vanderbolt's explanation, it was possible that I wasn't even able to had back to the same time of location. But either way, I was ready and it was better than waiting for the end of the world.

On my way home, I did some reckless things. First I broke into a sports store and took a 90 pound recurve bow and twenty dozen carbon arrows, survival gear, and ready to eat meals. Once home I packed everything and deduced that I could take things with me that I was carrying. The next test was the ravage of time. Everything else was put in containers and buried.

Finally, there was the time jump. I waited and waited in my apartment. The sun rose, the day went on. Meredith and Vanderbolt called many times and no one stormed my house. That was a relief, but Yanna still had time to betray me. 

When the sun fell and the moon rose, I felt it.

Now I knew, without a doubt, there was something special between my house and the meteoric sword in my possession. According to Meredith's map, I wasn't on a Ley line, but what I experienced was undeniable. 

After the force of the world embraced and released me, I found myself back in my future home. I was dressed in my feathered armor, I had a pack on my back, one strapped to my front, sword in hand, and an archery set hanging from me, no more than three dozen arrows in a large quiver.

The first task for me was determining a definite time ratio for the past and future. Relatively speaking it should be one to one. Then again time travel by house and sword isn't exactly relative. Entering the study, I tried the laptop and remember my situation.

After replacing the propane tank, the generator started and I found the date and time on the laptop. I had been gone two days in the past while six months, one hundred and eighty days, had passed in the future. This was good for two reasons. I could prepare myself to survive the world's end. Training for years in a single week. And if I got into any trouble, I could wait it out for a few days as years passed in the future.

Checking the small refrigerators, the meat had finally decayed, indicating that they had shelf life after all. This time, I was determined to make progress and find some answers to fill in the holes I couldn't find in that journal.

I dug up the container outside and found the remaining arrows and the gear I need to expand my scope of exploration. And rightfully so, I didn't plan to make my entry point my home base. Now that two way travel was confirmed, a sight this precious was safer being left unattended and hidden in plain sight. I also didn't want to be dragged away accidently. 

My goal this time around was the airport. I would make it my base and it happened to be the safezone mentioned in the journal. The upside was that the airport was five miles on foot to the east. Gearing up, I set out with night vision goggles to find my way and Rx to mask my scent. I strapped the sword to the side of my pack and held my bow.

 I arrived at the airport in a little under an hour. Standing on the tarmac, I look to the grand airport to see a ruin. Ancient planes, military vehicles and checkpoints swallowed by mother nature. Making my way to a plane, I found the hatch built into the under belly open, ladder down. I climbed into the corpse of the mechanical beast.

It didn't take much to verify the security. That's when I pulled out the drone and dropped it from the plane. Before it hit the ground, the helicopter blades spun with a distinct hum and hoovered. In under a minute, it had cleared the plane and took to the sky.

"Alright, baby. Show me something good." I muttered while controlling the eye in the sky.

Switching visions and scanning for signs of life, I marked three locations identified as heat clusters. After my previous month here, I knew the locations had to be nests. Next, I scanned for any signals. According to the journal, something attacked the satellites, but that didn't mean ground nodes vanished. 

"Oh?" I was pleasantly surprised. I had detected a faint signal, really, a periodic pulse.

I attempted to access the terminal but was blocked by extreme aggression. It was unlike any military encryption I had ever seen. Backing out in haste, I plotted to get hands on the terminal to access it directly. 

I had only managed to scout half of the facility when the sun began peaking over the building and the beasts were waking from their slumber. The critical part was finally beginning. Three nests to destroy, first I had to learn what I was facing.

______________________________________

"Fuck" I hissed, cutting my self on a metal shard.

A week had passed and I was putting up the final touch to secure the plane shelter. I was only able to move at night and early morning. The beast in the airport roamed the day and slept at night. When the moon was up, I transported all my things from the apartment to the plane. I took down my fortifications and once again the apartment looked like an abandoned ruin.

I bandaged my finger, finished nailing sheet metal and rigging the final trap. After a quick meal, I made my way to the terminal as the moon began to rise. 

The wind howled through the broken glass of Terminal D, kicking up dust and grit that had settled over everything like a thin, grey shroud. The airport was dead. Not quiet—dead. Every sound I made echoed like a whisper in a tomb.

Skeletons lay slumped in rows of torn airline seats, seatbelts still buckled as if they'd died waiting for a flight that never came. Abandoned luggage was piled like driftwood along the hallways, busted open by time, rot, or desperate hands. The air carried a dry, metallic scent—old blood, oxidized metal, the ghost of jet fuel.

I moved slowly, each footfall deliberate. My boots made soft crunching sounds against cracked tile and shattered glass. The strap of my bow creaked across my back, and the sword at my hip hummed faintly, as if it, too, sensed the unease in the air.

I passed security checkpoints that had been turned inside out—metal detectors torn open, conveyor belts melted or blown apart. Burned-out luggage scanners sat like dead beasts, their bellies hollowed. Firearms lay abandoned behind makeshift barriers—old military issue M4s, sidearms, and broken helmets. All of it useless. All of it relics from the initial collapse.

A body lay draped across a counter near a former coffee shop, the military patch on the sleeve still barely legible: 67th Field Unit. The corpse had long since dried out, but the uniform told me what I needed to know. This terminal had been occupied. Used. Fortified.

I rifled through the gear, careful not to disturb the bones. Found a cracked tablet with a dead screen. Dog tags. A crumpled photo of a woman and a child. A flare gun with one round. I took the flare, then slid deeper into the terminal.

Shops that once sold overpriced perfume and electronics had been repurposed. Stacks of supply crates and water jugs. Bullet casings. Bloodstains long turned to rust. I followed the remnants of soldiers' paths—boots worn into the linoleum, ration packs and medical kits still half-filled.

In the back of a former bookstore-turned-command center, I found it.

Pinned to the wall beneath a cracked screen: a laminated map.

Strike zones. Evac corridors. Quarantine camps. Safe zones, outlined in blue and then crossed out in red. What had once been designated safe hadn't stayed that way. There were handwritten updates scrawled in marker across the surface.

"Zero growth exceeds model projections."

"Dallas overrun. Houston compromised. San Antonio holds."

"No contact from central command in 19 days."

I rolled the map and tucked it into my satchel.

Then I heard it.

A soft, dragging noise. Wet and slow.

I froze.

The sound came again—from the far end of the terminal. Past the broken escalators and ruined check-in kiosks. Something moved behind the wall of an old currency exchange booth.

I crouched low, easing my bow from my shoulder. Drew an arrow, notched it, and crept forward.

It stepped into view with a broken gait, like a marionette on failing strings. Pale, mottled skin hung from bones like wet leather. Its mouth was slack, jaw broken, teeth missing. Its eyes—milky, lidless—met mine without recognition.

My first sighting of a Zero.

It moved slowly. Strangely. Its steps dragged, and it made no sound beyond the wet shuffling of its limbs. I drew back the bowstring and released.

The arrow hit the creature dead in the head.

It staggered. Took a step back. Then kept coming.

I drew another arrow, aimed lower, and fired. This one struck the chest, just left of center. The Zero paused, trembled—then resumed its slow advance.

"Not head, not heart," I muttered, slipping the bow back and drawing my sword.

The blade hissed as it came free of the sheath. Its edge shimmered faintly, catching the last light from the terminal skylight.

I advanced. The Zero reached for me with one twisted arm.

I slashed across its shoulder. Nothing. I stabbed deep into its gut—no response. Finally, I stepped in, twisted around its lunge, and drove the sword straight into its solar plexus.

Something cracked.

Not bone. Not tissue. It was as if glass had fractured beneath my blade.

The Zero twitched once, spasmed, and fell to the floor, limbs stiffening like a puppet with cut strings.

I crouched beside the body, wary of movement, then used the tip of the blade to cut it open. The flesh peeled back like paper.

There, nestled beneath what was once the solar plexus, sat a core—a fist-sized crystal, faintly pulsing with violet light. It looked alien. Artificial. Completely out of place inside the rotting human shell.

I reached down with gloved hands and pulled it free. It was cold. Heavier than it looked.

As I stared at it, the light began to dim.

The Zero was dead.

I stood slowly, wiping the blade clean on a strip of cloth.

"So that's how you die," I whispered.

Then I heard more of them.

Not close—but coming. Drawn by movement, sound, or maybe just the scent of something living.

I took the core. Took the map. And ran.