Elizabeth Hand: 12 Monkeys

“ He’s got a gun! ”

Cole raced on, heedless of terrified travelers screaming and diving for cover in his wake, heedless of the small boy standing before the observation window between his parents, watching in pure wonder as a 737 touched down upon the runway.

Another scream. Brow furrowed, the boy turned, and was knocked backward as a ponytailed man bumped into him.

“ Watch it! ” the man yelled.

The boy stared wide-eyed as the man clutched a Chicago Bulls gym bag to his chest, pirouetting gracelessly as he ran. An instant later a second man appeared: blond, wild-eyed, a mustache drooping ridiculously from his lip as he waved a pistol. Behind him lunged a uniformed man with another gun, aiming for the blond man as he angled through the crowded passageway.

“NOOOOOO!”

As in a dream the boy turned, slowly, slowly. Up the hall raced a blond woman, her high heels nearly tripping her as she staggered forward desperately, her mouth thrown open in anguish. There was a crack! — a thousand thunderous echoes in the endless corridor. A few feet in front of the boy the blond man shuddered, staggered forward a few steps and then fell — falling, falling…

“My God! They’ve shot that man!”

His mother’s voice, his mother’s hand tightening on his shoulder. The boy stared, mesmerized, as the blond woman rushed up to the fallen man and knelt beside him. Across the gaudy tropical print crimson petals bloomed, stained the woman’s hands as she leaned over him. So slowly he almost seemed not to move at all, the blond man lifted his hand. Tenderly he grazed the woman’s cheek, touched her tears as she grasped him and shook her head.

“Come on, son.” His father pulled him away, gently but insistently, as airport medics ran up and pushed the woman aside, frantically trying to save the man. “This is no place for us.”

As his father led him away, he looked back. The medics exchanged looks, shrugging helplessly. His father pulled him roughly toward a corner. His mother’s hand nestled in his hair and he could hear her murmuring, more to herself than to him: “It’s okay, don’t worry, it’s all going to be okay…”

But then and always and forever after, he knew that she was lying — nothing was ever going to be okay again. Even then, he knew he had watched a man die.

He slowed, not wanting to turn the corner, and looked back. Beside the dead man the blond woman staggered to her feet, her face streaked with tears. Quickly she turned and began scanning the crowd of onlookers, desperately searching for something. Two men in uniforms approached her, said something. The woman replied, her eyes still scanning the concourse. She looked around, distracted and unresisting, as the detectives handcuffed her. Suddenly, she froze.

And gazed directly at the boy.

He stared at her mutely, overwhelmed by her expression: love, but not what he had ever seen in his parents’ eyes. Instead her eyes held a wild unruly thing that, even as he gazed back at her, he saw tamed, grow calm, even resigned, as though by looking at him she had somehow found some peace she had been frantically looking for.

“Hurry up, son.”

With a last lingering look at her, the boy turned away. His eyes filled with tears and he began to cry, silently, as his mother ruffled his hair and murmured:

“Pretend it was just a bad dream, Jimmy.”

At the entrance to Gate 38, the last few passengers boarded Flight 784 to San Francisco. In the first-class cabin, Dr. Peters swung his Chicago Bulls bag into the overhead luggage rack, then pulled the door shut and with a noisy sigh collapsed into his seat.

“It’s obscene, all this violence, all the lunacy!” the passenger next to him exclaimed. “Shootings at airports now. You might say, we’re the next endangered species!”

Smiling affably, Dr. Peters agreed. “I think you’re right, sir. I think you’ve hit the nail right on the head.”

Beside him, a courtly silver-haired gentleman wearing a business suit and one gold earring offered his hand congenially.

Once, James Cole would have recognized him as the astrophysicist from the future. But that James Cole was dead.

“Jones is my name,” he said. There was a glint of very white teeth as he smiled. “I’m in insurance.”

Moments later in the airport parking lot, a small boy stood and watched as a 747 climbed into the pale blue sky, higher and higher, until it winked like a tear from view.