Alabama Zack – Chapter XIV

Introduction

"Alabama Zack" is a 40-chapter science fiction serial, published in the Scholar and Scribe community once a week on Wednesdays.

You can start the serial from the beginning by visiting the Curated Collection.

Previously in our story

Alabama Zack, our hero and a war veteran, found himself standing on a train station platform in another time and dimension. At his feet lay a man in a brown suit. The man was dead, and Zack was arrested and jailed for murder.

Zack can not remember how he had arrived on that platform, let alone whether or not he had anything to do with the man's death.

When we left Zack in Chapter XII, Cork McGraw, the doctor, and Cork's maid Matilda had prevented him from being recaptured by the realm and sent back to the inquisitors' prison/cave complex.

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Our hero was recovering in an armchair in Cork McGraw's upstairs study. With one hand, he held an icepack to his forehead; with the other, he gripped the arm of the chair. After nearly getting sucked back to the cave, he was afraid to not hold onto something. He felt like that flying force was lurking above him, waiting for the next opportunity to grab him. But both the doctor and Cork had assured him that the green light above his head was gone. It had disconnected and whisked away when Matilda tackled him to the ground.

Cork's maid is an interesting sort, Zack thought. One minute she matched the violence of any man, and the next her hands were soft and mothering. He shifted the icepack she had brought him and a pang shot through his head. The removal of the prison's tracking light had not been without pain: his entire body ached.

The doctor and Cork had gone looking for the drunk. Zack was glad for the solitude, the hush of the study broken only by Matilda moving pots in the kitchen. From the chair he could look out a floor-to-ceiling window at the sky as it turned to dusk. A couple of birds that looked like sparrows flitted in and out of a nest underneath the eve. They reminded him of his front porch at home, a lean-to with a floor of odd-sized planks. The birds always nested in the open rafters; in fact, it was unwise to sit on the front porch without wearing your hat.

He smiled, and as he did so he felt the room shift and slide almost a foot to his left. He dropped the icepack and grabbed onto the chair, hardly noticing the cold in his lap. The walls bowed out and then contracted. The window waved, widening and narrowing from top to bottom. Suddenly the floor dropped, and just like that he was sitting on the front porch of his parents' house in the Deep South, gripping against death the arms of his favorite rocking chair.

His heart banged trying to force the blood through the grip of his white knuckles, and his entire body clenched. The smile was stuck on his face, but he was scared out of his mind. He looked down at the ice melting quickly in the sudden heat. The porch floor rippled once, as though he were a stone dropped smoothly into a pond. He covered his face with his hands but he couldn't block out the new and familiar sounds around him: crickets and bullfrogs and bugs. Then someone threw a log into the wood stove inside. The door opened on his right.

“Charles?” his mother called for his father in the gathering gloom. “Supper'll be on?”

He looked at her standing there in her second best apron with her greying hair in a bun. Love came to his throat and choked him, she was so real and good standing there. She saw him and her face was blank before it lit up. “Zachary! Oh, Lord hallelujah! Charles! Zachary is home!” She ran to him, but all he could do was stare at her. “Can you stand Zack'ry? Are you maimed?” With her hands on his shoulders she scrutinized his legs.

“No, ma, my legs are fine,” he said. “It ain't my legs that broke.”

Next week in our story

The doctor adjusted his fedora. Just then the sound of metal clanged across the field – Matilda was ringing the triangle on the back step. The two men mounted the bikes and pedaled hard through the rocks; as they pushed through the yard up to the steps, Matilda called out that Zack was gone.

“What do you mean?” Cork asked. “He left?”

“I'm sure I dunno,” she said, twisting her apron. “I searched this place top to bottom and the man simply isn't here. It's like he vanished into thin air.”

Chapter XV (link to come)
Start at the beginning