Free Emperors of Time by James Wilson Penn Page A

basketball,” said Rose, with a
laugh. 
    “Is it that
obvious?” asked Tim, who thought he was doing a better acting job.
    There wasn’t
time to get any more conversation in without Billy, though, because he rolled a
strike again and came back to sit down. 
    Time passed
pleasantly for awhile.  By the seventh frame, the Sixers were up by five
at halftime, which Billy was optimistic about because according to him, the
Sixers were a second half team anyway, whatever that meant.  Julie bought
a soda for Tim and her to share, while Rose did the same for her and
Billy. 
    It was during
the eighth frame, when Julie was up to bowl and Rose was in the bathroom, that
a dozen red lights along the far wall of the bowling alley began to
flash.  A loud, high pitched beeping rang out.  Tim dropped the coke
on the ground.  Several bowling balls guttered or were thrown wild as
bowlers were startled out of their normal steps.
    It took a second
for Tim to realize what was going on.  The area was under missile
bombardment and the anti-missile device had failed.  If this had been a
bigger building, like the stadium the Sixers were playing in, there would have
been a backup system, but the bowling alley wouldn’t have that. 
    Tim wondered if
there was a bomb shelter.  The school had an underground bunker, but there
were over a thousand people at the school every day.  There weren’t more
than a hundred people at the bowling alley.
    The loudspeaker
clicked on, and a voice could be heard above the worried chatter of the patrons
and the urgent cries of the alarm.  “Everyone stay calm.  Get as far
as you can from the windows.  The tracker says the missiles are
close.  No time to get underground.  Get under a chair if you can.”
    Julie didn’t
need to be told twice.  She abandoned her ball in the gutter and ran back
to the chairs.
    Rose was
standing halfway across the floor.  She must have just gotten out of the
bathroom when the alarm went off. 
    She seemed to
have frozen.  Tim understood.  There were plenty of chairs between
her and Tim, Julie, and Billy, but she looked scared.  Probably she wanted
to be close to her friends.  Unable to decide where to go, she stayed put,
which wasn’t the best decision.
    “You two hide, I
got her,” said Billy with a note of urgency but also a good bit of
confidence. 
    As Billy darted
across the room, first Julie, then Tim, followed his advice.  From his
position under the chair, Tim could see Billy gesticulating madly toward a
clump of chairs near Rose.  She still didn’t move. 
    Billy reached
her as the ground shook with what could only have been a nearby missile
impact.  There was no reason for the Russians to target their small town,
but their strategy within the last couple years seemed to be to spray missiles
far and wide, figuring the defense system would fail sometimes.  They knew
any damage they could do would cause distress within the civilian
population.  On those counts, the Russians were right.
    As Tim felt the
rumble of the missile impact, he saw Billy wrap his arms around Rose and shove
her as quickly and carefully as he could.  When a second impact rocked the
bowling alley, it was accompanied by a shatter and an extended tinkling of
glass.  Pieces of glass shone in the fluorescent lights of the bowling
alley.  It covered the floor and the chairs up to about ten feet from the
windows.  Billy was partially covered, but Tim couldn’t tell whether he
was hurt.
    Two more
explosions rocked the floor within thirty seconds of each other, but no more
damage was done to the building. 
    “You okay?” Tim
shouted to Julie over the alarm. 
    “Yeah!” said Julie. 
“So…  This really happens?”
    “Only the fourth
time I’ve been near a missile…  First time a building I was in got hit.”
    Thirty seconds
passed, and the alarm was silenced.  The intercom came back to life,
“We’re sorry for any inconvenience, but we need to close.  We’ll