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Chapter Sixteen
Jack and Doc flew out of the car and raced
across the tower green.
"Rose!" Jack called. A few faces in
uniform turned around. They were gathered at the front steps of the town hall.
Jack pushed his way through the police and
small crowd. He was about to call her name once again. But he couldn’t speak.
Lying on the stairs drenched in red was a
twisted, tangled body. It was Rose.
Jack maniacally pushed through those holding
him back. And went to Rose. He touched her face and then her neck. There was no
pulse.
"No, Rose. No!" he cried, barely
able to speak. His voiced cracked. This was the girl of his dreams, the woman
he loved, and his friend, the one he was going to have a life with…
Now she was an agonizing, bloody mess. She
barely looked real. She wasn’t even in the right time. The Rose from 1968 was
seventy-three years old and alive. This Rose was barely eighteen, and she was
dead. She had only died moments ago. A few minutes ago she was alive and
healthy. Now she was dead and she took entire generations of their family with
her.
Jack looked up from his girlfriend’s lifeless
body to see Biff being cuffed and loaded into a police car. He uncurled his
hand from her hair and set her head back down. He was burning with rage.
Doc put a hand on his shoulder. He turned
slightly, unable to bear the emotional nor the physical sight of young Rose.
"The DeLorean," Doc whispered, so
that only Jack could hear. "They’ll want to ask us questions. After that,
we’ll get in the DeLorean. This isn’t going to stay as is. Do you understand
me, Jack?"
Jack slowly stood up. In his grief and panic,
he hadn’t seen. He knew that very soon he would be in this exact spot, on this
exact day, at this exact time…and Rose would be fine. She would be perfectly
fine.
The cops wanted to ask them what they knew
and where they last saw her alive and about a billion other questions. They
were there for almost an hour. In the back of his head, Jack knew Rose would be
fine, but until then she was dead. As they stood, she was just a body. Dead and
never coming back. He could barely take it. He wanted to leave so badly he felt
his legs contracting and his stomach twisting. He knew he had access to
something that would save her. But for now, dead was dead.
When they were finally released and told how
sorry everyone was for their loss, Jack and Doc hopped back into Doc’s car and
sped back home.
Christine had returned the time machine
earlier that day after busting through and nearly destroying his garage. Now
Doc climbed into his invention that he hadn’t really invented yet.
History had to be set straight once more. Doc
felt he owed the world a favor, too. He had a letter hidden away in his house;
it was rain-damaged and taped back together. Somewhere in the back of his head
he knew terrorists were going to put a bullet through him on October 26, 1985.
With that knowledge, he knew he could save
his own life. Now it was time to do that for someone else.
"This again." Jack closed the door
of the DeLorean.
"Time to fly," Doc said, as he set
the time for twelve o’clock AM, April 10, 1968. There were a few new settings
from the last time he had seen the time machine, so he left those alone.
"You’ve done this before. You know the drill."
"Drill? We accidentally sat on one the
controls."
"It’s simple." Doc pulled out onto
the empty road and took the DeLorean off the ground.
"What?"
"Hold onto your ass."
*****
"You give me the rest of that
newspaper," he offered. "I'll help you back over."
Rose was hanging on for her life, looking up
at the paper as she kicked and tried to grip the edge with her feet. She had
been gripping it with her sliced hand, and it was dripping red now.
Rose looked at Biff and pulled her hand off
of the bigger black metal hand. She released the newspaper.
But Rose didn’t hear the newspaper flapping
in the wind and plummeting to the ground. She heard a thud. The paper landed
not more than a foot under her.
"What the…" Biff could see. He
dropped his half of the paper. It made a thud as well.
Rose strained to look down. Kicking her feet,
she could feel something under them. She saw gray metal. The DeLorean!
Rose let go of the clock and fell backward
onto the car. She bumped her butt pretty hard, but otherwise she was okay.
She turned around to see Jack and Doc waving.
Jack couldn’t believe it. Minutes ago, she was lying dead on the ground below.
Now she was perfectly fine. Very confused, but alive.
Rose waved the newspaper in front of Doc and
gripped the hood where it met the windshield.
The DeLorean departed, leaving Biff with his
mouth hanging open. It wasn’t the first time crazy Doc Brown and his weird
friends had screwed him over. But it didn’t mean he understood it any better.
Two police cars turned the corner toward the
clock tower. The first one suddenly slammed on its brakes, and the other
followed suit.
One officer got out of the second car.
"Hey, Don. What you do with that?"
He looked up.
"Mac, is that car…flying?" asked
his associate from the first car.
"Uh…yeah, Don. I think that car’s
flying." Another officer stepped out of the second squad car.
"Is that Biff Tannen up there?"
asked the sergeant.
"Most likely," said Mac.
They all shrugged and went to arrest Biff.
After all, this was Hill Valley. Things like this happened all the time.
*****
"How did you know?" Rose asked,
after they landed in Doc’s yard.
"Long story. We’ll tell you in a
minute." Jack put his arm around her, and they went into the garage.
Gary was there with the Fantastic Four and
Spider-Man. He was confused, too. He remembered sitting there with Jack. The
next thing he knew, he and the time machine were gone.
"Did I miss something?" Gary looked
up.