Timeshock - I Want My Life Back Read Online Free PDF Page B

them apart when they arrived at the door to the garage.
    He was walking side and side with fat Nigel when he swung the door open and pushed fat Nigel down into the garage with as much force as he could muster.   The plan paid off.   Fat Nigel fell head first down the step and cracked his head on the concrete floor.

    Nigel wasn’t sure if the man was dead or not.   He hadn’t planned to kill him.   He just wanted to escape.   He bent down to check fat Nigel’s pulse when fat Nigel grabbed his hand.   However it seemed more like a reflex action than a concerted attempt to attack him.

    “Let me help you.”   Nigel was startled to hear a voice.   He looked up and saw Marla.   “I know people who can help with this,” she said.
    Nigel made use of her offer and several Russian mafiosi types appeared 15 minutes later and took away the body.   Nigel almost immediately regretted his decision.   It became very clear quite soon that she and the Russians wanted regular money to stay quiet.   She said that she wanted to marry him.

    This was not how it was supposed to turn out, thought Nigel.
    Reluctantly he began to plan his escape - into another reality.   This time he would be less flashy.   Make a fortune but be quiet about it.   Earn proper respect from proper people rather than hang out with groupies. This time he would check out what the Nigel in that world was like first.   If he was mad or dangerous he would leave straight away.

    This time he would take no chances with inconvenient arrivals in hotel rooms or warehouses.   He knew the cottage was empty five years ago, so he would go there.

    He packed the time machine into his other car - a Bentley - and prepared to drive to the cottage when he was interrupted by a curious Marla.  

    “Where are you going?” asked Marla.
    “I am just going to see a friend in the country,” lied Nigel.
    “I will come too” said Marla.   Nigel was not happy.   Then he thought of a ruse to get rid of her.  
    “Great - pack up your stuff and we will go in ten minutes.”   With this Marla went upstairs to get some belongings.   Nigel rushed to the Bentley and sped the car out of the garage and went roaring off to the cottage in the countryside.

    On the way there he realised he was being followed.   He slowed down and saw that it was his Russian friends from the Mafia.   They didn’t seem to be actively chasing him merely seeing where he was going.

    The trouble was that if he stopped at the cottage he couldn’t guarantee they wouldn’t teach him a lesson for his abandonment of Marla.

    He needed a way to get rid of them.   On the backseat he noticed he had placed a bag containing, amongst other things, Raymond’s futuristic weapon - the one which had been used to kill Natalie and Nigel’s children.   Raymond had dropped it at the cottage before he left. Nigel had tried to destroy it but couldn’t find anything that would even dent it.   Whatever it was made of - it was tough.

    Nigel slowed down again, and grabbed the weapon and then floored the accelerator and rushed away, leaving the Russians wrong-footed but still very much in pursuit.   They saw Nigel turn suddenly into a side road and drove their car quickly round the corner, to be faced with Nigel standing holding the weapon.  
    He fired it at the tyres on the left hand side of the car and the dart from the gun dissolved them in a mass of dust.   The Russians’ car collapsed onto the ground and sparks erupted from its broken frame as it slid away towards a nearby canal.  

    Nigel took the chance to get back in his Bentley and speed off.   He was tired of the killing but he didn’t care what happened to the Russians.

    It took Nigel only a little while to get to the cottage.   He got the time machine out and set it to take him five years previously.   Here we go again, he thought.

Chapter 9
    Time reversed and Nigel sped back five years.   The novelty of time travel had long since gone