Allergic To Time Page 5

  He started walking again, catching up to me. He was surprisingly agile in 6 inch platform heels. “What are we hurrying for anyway?”

  “I don’t trust the man who came here with Martin and I this afternoon. The bald one in the black.” I quickened my pace. “I don’t know exactly who he is, but I’m almost sure he does not have good intentions toward you.”

  We finally reached the end of the long corridor and rounded the corner, where the staircase leading to the top levels was located. Standing there above us on the top step, perched menacingly, was the man in black. He grinned at us, cocking his eyebrow slowly.

  “Where the hell are you two going?”

  The bastard once again triggered my previously dormant lying skills. “Robert’s hungry. I’m taking him to the cafeteria to get something to eat.” I tried to smile. “Would you like to join us? I am just dying for a vanilla slice.” I turned around to look at Robert, trying to get him to join in with the scheme, but he was frozen, scared stiff. Jesus Christ, I thought.

  The man in black licked his lips slightly. “I’m disappointed in you Anna. This is not what I expected from you at all. I thought you were going to be a little more...helpful.” He slowly reached into the front pocket of his black jacket. When his hand reappeared it was holding a gun.

  “Oh shit.” I took a step backwards, reaching out behind me to a still-frozen Robert.

  The only thing I could do was run. I grabbed Robert’s hand and pulled him back around the corner, down the corridor in the direction we’d come. We needed to get out into the open, in front of other people. The man in black wouldn’t shoot us in front of anyone, I was fairly sure of that. He wouldn’t be able to risk public exposure. As we ran down the corridor, the familiar blue hospital room flying past us on the left, I thought about the staff that worked there. Even if they were in on the conspiracy — which seemed likely – I doubted they would be a conspiracy to murder. We just had to find another person.

  The man in black chased after us, but he didn’t shoot. I’d started to think that maybe the gun had been purely for show, a fear tactic, when we rounded the corner at the other end of the hall only to be greeted with an even worse sight. Nurse Bianca, standing there, guarding the stairway that led down to the exit, with a semi-automatic rifle hitched over her shoulder.

  “Jesus Christ,” Robert muttered, scrambling backwards.

  I stopped, frozen. “Bianca, come on, you have to let us past…” I said, in disbelief.

  But she didn’t budge. She certainly did not appear remotely sympathetic.

  “I thought you were a nurse!” I couldn’t help exclaiming, even thought it sounded ridiculous as soon as I’d said it. “And now you want to kill people? I’m appalled, to be quite honest.”

  “Anna!” Robert said, tugging my arm. He pointed for me to look in the opposite direction, where the man in black was closing in on us, keeping up a slow, steady, menacing pace. I looked up at Robert’s panda eyes and felt overwhelmingly sorry that it was me who had put him in this predicament, and that I didn’t know how to get him out of it. I was the only person in the entire world he had to trust, and I’d put him in the centre of two crazed gun-totting lunatics.

  I looked back at Bianca. I gave myself a quick harsh talking to.

  Anna, this is your time remain calm, to think clearly.

  I was good at that. Stay scientific, I told myself. Think logically.

  Okay, we were dead either way, I thought. So we may as well go for it.

  I lunged towards Bianca, as hard as I could, and pushed her down the stairs. She looked shocked as she fell down them, her gun tumbling down alongside her. My immediate thought was, ‘Oh crap, I hope I didn’t hurt her’. Meanwhile, Robert was beside me, clapping and cheering.

  There was little time for celebration though. “Come on, RUN!” I shouted, grabbing his hand again, as we ran over the top of Bianca’s splayed body, skidding down the stairs and around the corner as fast as we could with our respective high heels on. We sprinted down the hallway at an inhuman speed, with both our sets of lungs struggling to keep up. There was a door within sight with a green “Exit” sign in neon lights above it. I tugged Robert and pulled him toward it, as he huffed and wheezed along after me. All we needed to do was get into a public space, I reminded myself, as the man in black — still right on our heels — chased us from behind. We just had to make it through the door.

  We finally reached the door after what must have only been a few seconds but felt like a million years, I pushed it open, then pushed Robert through it before me, then ran our after him. We spilled out into the fresh air, into a densely populated back street in Camperdown. Freezing cold icy rain poured down onto us, shocking my face with how cold it was, the force and temperature of the rain making it even more difficult to catch my breathe. Robert was beside me, doubled over, his eyeliner and mascara pouring down his face in the rain.

  I stopped for a second to make sure he was breathing, terrified that we would need to go back into the hospital for his oxygen tank. But after 20 seconds or so of wheezing he seemed to inhale enough air to be able to stand up straight. He grinned at me. I returned the smile and reached and hugged him. We were okay, for now.

  Breaking our embrace, I pulled back from him so that I could get a good look at him. Looking straight into his mascara-stained face I told him, “You’re going to have to stay with me.”

  Chapter Seven.

  There was no break in the rain the following morning. Hopping out of bed, I checked my notifications on my phone: it was full of hopeful messages and emails from students (and some faculty), speculating that classes might be cancelled for the day. There were rumours that perhaps some of the lecture buildings on campus had flooded, and that Parramatta River had spilled out over onto the highway, making it impossible for half the students to get to class.

  I put down my phone and laid back on my bed. It was 6:30am, my usual waking hour, but my bones were usually weary. I couldn’t believe it was only the second day of semester. The previous day had seemed like half a year alone.

  I glanced over to the other side of the room where Robert was sleeping, his lungs rising and falling with what appeared to be some difficulty. My double room was massive, so even though we were on two separate beds there was enough space between us for my desk, table, couch and computer. I had to look an array of cords and table legs just to see him, and he was still the strangest sight I had ever seen.

  But something was bugging me about the messages — or rather, the lack of some of them — on my phone. There were a dozen of them from Connie, asking about what had happened to me after class, why I had bailed on our study session, was I going to be on campus for our 8am study date, etc. And there were a couple of angry messages from my flatmate Jennifer, asking if I had taken her umbrella and claiming I had made her late to a dinner with her boyfriend and then when she had finally turned up she looked like a drowned rat. But there were no messages from Martin. Not that he was really in the habit of messaging students, mind. But considering what had happened the day before! Not even a text to make sure I was okay, or to check in on Robert? Or any word from him at all?

  A thought occurred to me which made me sit upright. Maybe something had happened to him. It was so unusual for him to go so quiet — for crying out loud, he usually sent all his students updated memos on reading lists and homework seven times a day — that someone must have made him quiet. The man in black, or Bianca, or some other member of the Secret Time Traveller Killers Club or whatever it was that they were running, must have gotten to him the night before, and now he was lying dead in a pool of his own blood in his Glebe flat.

  I threw my covers off and ran over to the other side of the room to shake Robert awake — a habit I was getting used to. “Robert,” I shouted, shaking him again, this time more vigorously. “Something terrible has happened. I think.”

  He woke up with a jolt, looking around my bedroom like he was disoriented. “Jesus, where am I now
…”

  “My bedroom remember? Anyway something’s happened to Martin. Or at least I think it has. We have to go and check on him right now.” I stood up and pulled on my black trench coat.

  Robert sat up on his elbows and raised his eyebrows. “We? Man, I’m sleeping.” He laid back down and rolled over, pulling my spare pink doona cover up over his head. I walked over and pulled the donna back off his head. “Oi! I did kind of save your life yesterday, you know. You’re coming with me.”

  He pulled a face. “Alight, alright. But I need a shower first.”

  “Fine.” I walked over to my bedroom door, grabbing a towel on my way, deciding that we could spare time for him to take a 30 second shower before we left. He really did need one.

  “Damn it!” I said, upon opening my door and hearing the sounds of the shower already running. Jennifer must have gotten up super early. I walked down the hall to the bathroom and banged on the door. “Can you hurry up in there!” I heard the shower abruptly stop and a couple of seconds later she swung the door open, wrapped in a towel.

  “Excuse me?” she asked, indignant.

  “Look, I’m sorry, I just really need to use the shower. Well, I don’t — my friend does. We’re in a rush.”

  “Your friend?” Jennifer looked towards my bedroom. “The same one as last week?” She asked disapprovingly.

  “A different one,” I replied, ignoring her tone. “So can we please-“

  “Did you steal my umbrella yesterday?”

  “Well, I don’t think ‘steal’ is the right word. I borrowed it for a minute.”

  “Yeah, so where is it now?” She crossed her arms, water still dripping from her body onto the floor.

  “I may have lost it…”

  “God Anna,” she said, pushing past me to head towards her room. “I told you not to take my things!”

  I was bout to apologise, but she turned around and interrupted me before I could get the first word out. “By the way you still owe me for last week’s rent.”

  Preferring not to be drawn into that discussion, I pulled open the bathroom door and stepped inside, checking that the shower was in a suitable state for visitors to use. It was a share house, after all. I’d been in there for less than a second when there was a scream of surprise came from the other side of the door.

  I assumed Jennifer had run into Robert, then.

  ***

  As we headed out into the empty early morning street I pulled my black beret down over my head, as the lack of any available umbrella meant I’d been reduced to relying on hats to preserve my hair. I craned my neck down the street, trying to spot a cab through the heavy rainfall.

  I looked at Robert, still dressed in his ridiculous purple jumpsuit, which now had my fur-trimmed denim coat over the top of it. He had made a rough attempt at removing his makeup but his eyes still had a bruised look thanks to the leftover charcoal. “Thanks for coming with me,” I said, leaning into the street, attempting to hail a white cab which failed to slow down. “I may need back up.”

  “Yeah, well I couldn’t really stay here without you,” he said, shooting his eyes back towards the two story brick townhouse we’d just come out of. “Do you have a smoke?” he asked.

  I shook my head.

  “God, I am freaking dying for one.”

  “Well, we can stop at the shops later.” I finally got a taxi to stop and we climbed inside. “Can we go to Glebe please?” I asked the driver. It was only a five minuter trip: I would usually have walked but the weather and my escalating concern over Martin’s safety meant that wasn’t an option. I checked my phone as I settled in the back seat: still no texts or email messages from him.

  The driver nodded and pulled out onto City Rd, heading towards the intersection of Broadway and Glebe Point Rd. In all honestly, I shouldn’t have even known where Martin Anderson’s home address was. It wasn’t as though I’d ever been formally invited around. There were some teachers on campus who encouraged that kind of over-friendly relationship with students, inviting them around for formal diners and poetry readings and the like. But Martin never got too touchy-feely with his students, and he had certainly never rounded us up for a cosy get together in his home. But I knew where he lived because Connie had pointed it out to me once, when we’d been walking past. At the time I hadn’t questioned how she herself had that knowledge: I’d just simply stared at the strange blue and white cottage that he apparently called home.

  It was a distinctive house, so when we reached it I recognised the exact building and asked the driver to pull over. He told me the fare was $17, which almost caused Robert to have a heart attack in the back seat. I personally thought that taxi-fare inflation should be the least of his concerns at that point, as I glanced at him to see how he was handling this strange new and — to him — modern world.

  Surprisingly well, I thought. Too well? I was briefly suspicious. Of course, we were in one of the oldest parts of the city. Glebe probably hadn’t changed all that much since the mid 70s.

  “This is his house,” I said as we climbed out of the cab, nodding towards the blue and white monstrosity on St John’s Rd.

  “Trippy,” Robert murmured, admiring the flower garden out front.

  “I’ve never actually been here,” I admitted, feeling nervous. “Do you think it’s strange for me to just turn up here, at 7am on a Tuesday morning?”

  Robert shrugged. “This whole thing is pretty freaking strange.”

  I nodded, and continued to justify the situation out loud. “Yes, exactly. Plus, I’m very worried about his safety. You know, given what almost happened to us yesterday.”

  Robert smiled at me slightly. “I’m sure you are.”

  I cleared my throat and headed towards Martin’s front door. I wasn’t sure which situation I was more worried about confronting: finding him dead in a pool of blood, or him opening the door alive, but in shocked horror to see me standing there. But as I raised my hand to press the buzzer, and the fear hit my stomach, I realised I was much more afraid of the first option. I could deal with embarrassment. I couldn’t deal with a dead body.

  The doorbell rang out throughout the house. There was no movement, no response. The worst scenario started to form in my mind. They’d probably blamed Martin for bringing me to the hospital the day before, for getting me involved, and for the fact that I’d kidnapped Robert before they had a chance to kill him. I suddenly understood why Martin had been warning me to keep out of it, for my apparent “own good.” Well, I hadn’t realised they were time traveller killers, had I. I thought they were just investigating time travel, so that they could cover it up. Quietly, without murder. And now they had gotten to Martin, and he was probably lying dead in his living room with a bullet in the middle of his chest. It would be up to me now to continue his good work; I would have to be brave and carry on his legacy…

  There were footsteps behind the door and the lock on the other side turned. The door was yanked back, and Martin was standing there, angry, wearing a brown dressing gown.

  “Oh, hello,” I said. “You’re not dead.”

  “What the hell are you doing here!” He stopped yelling at me for a second to take in the sight of Robert standing behind me, in full regalia. “What. The. Hell. Is he doing here?” He seemed shocked at the very sight of Robert. Hadn’t he been informed about my heroic rescue mission?

  I guess that the reason he hadn’t sent me a text or email was that he didn’t realise anything usual had taken place the day before. Well, apart from a time traveller turning up, but apparently that was all par for the course in the life of Martin Anderson.

  Robert lifted his hand up in a half-hearted wave, but didn’t say anything in the way of a greeting. He seemed to resent being there.

  I felt like I should explain the situation to Martin. “I had to rescue him from the hospital, you see-”

  “Why the hell did you have to do that?” Martin adjusted the tie on his dressing gown to make sure it was properly done
up. It was still raining and Robert and I were barely sheltered on the balcony.

  “Can we come inside?” I asked.

  Martin’s eyes popped wide open. “I’m not sure that’s entirely appropriate…”

  “Come on man, it’s freezing out here,” Robert pipped up.

  Martin shook his head but reluctantly stepped back to let us through the door. We walked into his living room and I almost stopped dead at the decor. It was decorated head to toe in historical artefacts and memorabilia, most of it war-themed. There were antique guns displayed on all the walls, alongside helmets, medals, and numerous photos of tropes of soldiers.

  And the furniture. Was Martin 39 or 79? It was all brown leather couches and ornate rugs. I walked over to one of the uncomfortable looking couches and took a seat. It felt as bad as it looked. Robert took an uneasy seat beside me, also eyeing the decor with suspicion. I looked at him and realised, from the look of him at least, that he was probably a hippy. But that was the strange thing you see: because I’d always thought Martin was the most left wing person I knew. So the guns, and the war memorabilia…I didn’t know what to make of it all. I supposed it could all be for purely aesthetic purposes. But Jesus: it was shockingly jarring.

  He still seemed entirely unsure about my presence in his house, but Martin at least ventured to take a seat across from us. He repeated his earlier question. “Why the hell did you have to escape from the hospital?”

  “Do you have any cigarettes?” Robert asked. “I am dying here man.”

  “No,” he snapped. Then, taking a second thought, he looked at Robert and added, “And you shouldn’t be smoking anyway, given your asthma.”

  Robert’s eyes shot up. “Asthma? I don’t have asthma. I travelled through time,” he said, emphasising Martin’s least favourite phrase. “I’m, like, allergic to this time or something. It’s not bloody asthma that’s causing my problem.”