“All Our Yesterdays”

I.

3 September 1917

Peronne, France

#

As he faced the firing squad, Ezra Hawes thought of home. 

The little flat in Croydon. The faded wallpaper on the walls. The gramophone on the dresser, playing Yankee ragtime—Amelia always liked the plinky piano tunes of Joplin, even if Ezra never saw the appeal. The smells of coffee and tea, and don’t forget the cigar smoke wafting up from old Mr. Crowley on the second floor. The patter of tiny feet in the morning as Lucy greeted Ezra after a shift at the factory. 

A wave of melancholy threatened to flatten him. Perhaps it had been wishful thinking, hoping he’d ever see it all again. See them again. He had planned to make it all the way to Amiens, catch a train to Caen, and then sail across the Channel, but first he had needed to get past the British picket patrols. He’d made it no further than the concertina wire at the edge of no man’s land, when a friendly patrol—friendly until they realized he was deserting—picked him up at the point of their bayonets. 

“I’m sorry, Corporal,” said the rangy officer frowning at him through a thick mustache, standing beside the firing squad. A thick Scottish brogue threatened to strangle his words. “Orders are orders. We cannae abide deserters, not now. And nae with a name like Haas.” 

It’s Hawes, Ezra wanted to say, but it would do little good. It didn’t matter that he’d only been to Germany once to visit a great-aunt, or that his father had changed his surname from Haas to Hawes before Ezra had been born. In the eyes of his fellow soldiers, Corporal Ezra Hawes was a Hun in a shiny English wrapper. 

“I’m not a spy, Lieutenant,” he said instead, feeling his heart throbbing in desperation. “I wasn’t trying to reach the German lines. I was just—”

“Tryin’ to get home to yer wee lass,” said the officer. “Aye—Mansfield on the picket patrol told me all about it.” To his credit, the officer seemed genuinely regretful that he was about to give the order to put half a dozen bullets through Ezra’s body. 

“I got the letter yesterday morning, you see,” Ezra said urgently, a final desperate entreaty. “My wife Amelia—the influenza took her. She’s gone. Left my daughter Lucy all alone, and now my girl’s off to an—”

“We all have wives and wee bairns,” said the officer sadly. “If we sent home every man with a sad story, King George would have just a couple of brigades left to fight the vile Hun.” He turned to the enlisted man at his side. “Get it over with, Sergeant.”

“Yes, Lieutenant.” The sergeant rushed to Ezra’s side and offered a cigarette, the last courtesy to the damned. 

Ezra shook his head. The sergeant retreated. 

“Ready…” called the lieutenant.

Ezra looked out past the firing squad—nothing but rising mud walls on either side, the trenches that bounded his world. Beyond that lay the blasted wastes they’d been fighting over. Once it had all been green fields—so they said—but that was before two sides had decided to kill each other over it. 

“Take aim…”

Ezra lowered his head. I’m sorry, Lucy, he thought. The melancholy feeling froze to a cold sense of resignation. He’d failed, and now his daughter would be shipped off to who-knew-where, growing up with who-knew-who to raise her. She’s only a girl. 

He choked back the tears. Ezra Hawes wouldn’t be the man who died sobbing like a child. 

“Fire!”

II.

2 September 1917

Peronne, France

#

Ezra awoke huddled in the trench, his mud-splattered overcoat pulled around him.

He blinked.

What the bloody hell?

He shot up, bumping his head on the wooden support that kept this section of the trench from collapsing around him. He barely noticed the pain. 

What the bloody hell? 

I should be dead, he thought. An entire firing squad just emptied rounds into me. He plucked at his uniform, finding no holes, no blood. He probed beneath the uniform, finding no wounds there.

He gaped around. The familiar walls of the trench rose around him, brown and gray, mud reinforced with wooden planking. Fellow soldiers loitered around him, smoking or gazing at small mementos of home. Just as they had the last few days since his company had retreated back to this forsaken hole in the ground. They’d left their fortifications a mile to the east, pushed back by the Germans’ dogged offensive.

Is this hell? It had surely felt like hell the last few months—the endless waiting, the smells of death and rot that slithered through the trenches, the fruitless pursuit of sleep, the knowledge that few would make it out alive, and then that final German push that had sent them retreating—but he hadn’t guessed this would be his final destination. 

“Up and at ‘em, Hawes!” came a voice, and Ezra turned to see Lance Corporal Peter Boothe hurrying through the trench, bolt-action Lee-Enfield in hand. Boothe wore his usual expression of friendly, arrogant nonchalance. “Lieutenant MacGibbon will have you on latrine duty for a month if he catches you sleeping.”

Ezra blinked. “Boothe?” Something about Boothe’s words seemed damnedly familiar. And not just because they’d served together in the same company for two years now.

They’d had this very conversation yesterday. 

“You deaf, man? I said hurry! We’re on watch.”

“Watch? Watch was yesterday.” It had been while Ezra had been on watch, looking out over the barren hellscape of churned-up earth and twisted concertina wire, that he’d made the decision to run for it. He’d hidden from his own side all night and been captured in the morning.  

Booth gave him a sidelong look. “Yesterday? Bloody hell, Hawes, what are you going on about? Get up.”

Ezra’s mind, already reeling from his unexpected survival and unexplained transplantation back into the trenches, tried feebly to process this new information. How can it be yesterday?

Only then did he notice another oddity, one that paled in comparison to the other mysteries, but that finally demanded his attention.

“Boothe,” said Ezra, “you’ve got yourself a mustache.” The impossibility of repeating the day aside, Boothe hadn’t had any facial hair the last time they’d had this conversation. 

“Of course I have, you bloody fool,” said Boothe. “Now get up.”

Ezra hauled himself to his feet and grabbed his own gun, still studying Boothe. It wasn’t just the mustache. The cut of the uniform was subtly different, the shade a little more green. Even the emblem on the shoulder was different from the one Ezra was intimately familiar with. What in all the bloody blazes is going on?

Boothe looked at him curiously. “Are you quite all right, old chap?” 

Ezra considered. He hadn’t the faintest clue what the devil was going on. But it seemed somehow he’d been given a second chance. Whatever was the blame for the different uniforms, Boothe’s mustache—that mattered less than the fact that he had another opportunity to do what he’d decided to do.

Ezra forced a smile and clapped Boothe on the shoulder. “Right as rain. Had a bit of a moment there, but everything’s spot-on now.” 

Boothe looked a little suspicious, but a moment later he nodded. “It’s this bloody trench,” he murmured. “A few more weeks of this, and we’ll all go mad.”

“Truer words have seldom been spoken,” said Ezra. “I’ll be right behind you. Got to pack up my kit.” He gestured to his bedroll and cooking gear, which were still laid against the wall of the trench. 

Boothe gave him one last appraising look and nodded once more. He shouldered his rifle and turned to go.

Ezra watched Boothe vanish around the bend in the trench. Then he went the other way. He could make the most of his second chance. His heart beat with the thrill of excitement. Hope fluttered like a butterfly within his reach. He knew exactly where the patrols would be this time because—somehow—he’d already been there. 

He could sneak past the picket line. 

He could escape. 

He could rescue Lucy from whatever sad fate awaited her. Could give her the loving home that would be denied her while he was off dying in the trenches.

He could almost smell the coffee-tea-cigar melange of home already.

III.

3 September 1917

Peronne, France

#

“I’m sorry, Corporal,” said Lieutenant MacGibbon, his Scottish brogue just as thick as the last time he had ordered Ezra to his death. “Orders are orders. We cannae abide deserters, not now. And nae with a name like Haas.”

The firing squad was a little different this time; there were only four men instead of six, and they wore the same, minutely different uniforms everyone else seemed to wear. MacGibbon himself bore a few scars Ezra didn’t remember, but it was the same old MacGibbon: dutiful to the last.

“Get it over with, Sergeant,” said MacGibbon to the enlisted man with the cigarettes. “Give him his last—”

“No, thank you,” said Ezra, feeling the coldness of inevitability steal over him. He’d thought himself so clever, using his knowledge of the patrols to evade them. But just like the uniforms and the soldiers around him, the patrol routes had been subtly different this time around—and they’d caught him even earlier than they had last time. He hadn’t even made it to the picket lines.

“Let’s get this bloody on, then,” said Lieutenant MacGibbon. “Ready…” 

Once more, Ezra looked out past the firing squad—the same rising walls of mud on either side, the same trenches. The same blasted wastes hidden just beyond view. As his heart thundered numbly in his chest, he wondered if he’d get a third chance. If somehow he’d relive this morning over, and make the same choice. Over and over again.

He wondered how many times he would fail.

Not that it mattered. He only needed to succeed once. 

“Take aim… Fire!”

And once again, thoughts of his daughter Lucy were the last things to flit through Ezra Hawes’ skull before the bullets tore into him.

IV.

Time and location unknown

#

All was black. 

Emptiness. 

Ezra’s world was an opaque curtain through which he could discern nothing. His body was gone, and without a cage his mind seemed to spill out into that vast oblivion, losing coherence with each passing second. 

Severed from every vestige of mortality, he couldn’t even let loose a dark chuckle. So this was the end, then? 

Nothing awaited the faithful, no welcoming choir of angels or Abraham’s bosom. Never again would he hold his dear Lucy. The thought filled him with a sudden rage, followed instantly by a drowning, helpless sorrow. 

Perhaps it was better to let himself simply fade into this emptiness, because the thought of never seeing his daughter again was anathema to life itself.

That was when he heard the whispers.

He had to strain to hear them, but he had little else with which to occupy himself, so he managed to exert the necessary effort, which also had the effect of pulling his dispersing consciousness together.

“… suspicions were correct.”

“Was it… him?”

The first voice was low and powerful, the second higher and reedy, with hint of mirth. Both had a definite otherworldly quality that seemed in harmony with whatever empty place Ezra now occupied. 

“He should have passed beyond.”

“Let us not concern ourselves with what did not happen, friend Uriel. Let us concern ourselves only with what may yet happen.”

Ezra wanted to shout, to remind these strange presences that he could hear them, but he had no voice with which to convey his indignation.

“We work with the tools presented to us,” said the high voice. “Shall we send him back, then? Well, not back, but…”

A pause. The blackness around him remained absolute, impenetrable.

“Very well,” said the low voice. “Send him.”

Ezra reined in his consciousness, imbuing his will with all the force he could muster. Wait! He sent the word out in every direction. Whoever was with him in this strange, empty place spoke with true, audible voices, but Ezra could only speak in his mind. Nevertheless, it seemed they heard him. 

“Ah, he is aware of us,” said the high voice, laughing faintly. “Delightful!”

Ezra poured more of his will into making his disembodied thoughts heard through the ether. What the bloody hell is this? Am I dead? Who are you? 

“I suppose he’s useless to us if he doesn’t know what he is to do,” said the high voice. “What say you, Uriel?”

“Very well,” said the low voice. Uriel? Ezra was certain he had heard that name somewhere. In Sunday School, perhaps?

“We have little time,” said the high voice. “You must listen closely. Most people die, and that’s the end. But you—you didn’t. Well, you did. But not for good.”

You’re not making any sense. Who the devil are you?

For some reason, both voices laughed at that.

“The devil?” chuckled the high voice. “Good one. No, we are not he, though we’re certainly acquainted. As I was saying, you’re dead. But only in your universe.” 

“But not fully dead,” said Uriel, his voice a terse, low rumble.

Not fully dead? My universe? Holding his mind together in this nowhere-place was difficult enough without having to strain to comprehend whatever the blazes the voices were talking about. 

“Are you sitting down?” asked the high voice. “So to speak.” The voice laughed at its own joke. “You may be incorporeal at the moment, but you’d best sit down metaphorically. Because what I’m about to tell you—well, frankly, it’s a lot to take in.”

Try me, said Ezra, feeling as though nothing the voices could tell him would top the already surreal quality of this experience. 

“You’ve been cursed,” said Uriel. 

If Ezra had had a stomach, the bottom would had dropped out. Whatever he’d been expecting to hear, that wasn’t it.

“Ah, yes,” said the other voice. “By a… certain entity. A powerful one. Someone we knew well, once.”

And he … cursed me? What the bloody hell do you mean? Ezra was starting to lose patience with the two voices. 

“He cursed you,” repeated Uriel, as if that explained everything. “Barachiel?”

“He cursed you,” said the other voice, Barachiel, “by changing your flow through time. This being, you see, is trapped in the fourth dimension. He cannot move himself in space, but he exists at all points in time, which makes him uniquely positioned to affect others in a temporal manner.”

I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about.

“I know, I know—that’s difficult to understand when you’re tethered to one plane. But what you need to know is this: until you—well, I hate to use the term break the curse, but there it is—until you break the curse, you’re stuck in a bit of a loop. A time loop, you could call it, though that’s an imprecise term in this case.” 

A time loop?

“See, most people go to the Great Beyond when they die—a rather humorous, if somewhat euphemistic term—but you don’t. Instead, your consciousness slips into the next universe over. Each time a day earlier, as well.”

Ezra’s eyes would have widened in confusion if he’d had eyes. He’d understood perhaps half of what the voice had said, and the other half had sounded utterly mad. The next universe?

“There are infinite universes stacked upon one another,” said Barachiel. “Some similar to yours, some different.” 

Ezra remembered Boothe’s mustache, the strange uniforms, and a coldness settled over him despite his lack of a physical body. I was in another universe?

“Correct. As you progress further from your own world, you will encounter more drastic variations from what you know.”

Ezra’s mind felt blank, empty, even beyond the emptiness that surrounded him. Nothing the voices were saying made any sense. 

Why did your … friend curse me? Who is he?

“Former colleague,” rumbled Uriel. “Not a friend.”

“He fell to Earth long ago,” said Barachiel. “So great was his power that his resting place echoes through every universe. Some version of it exists no matter what universe you visit next. He’s trapped where he fell. We believe he did what he did to you … so you could free him.”

Free him from what?

“His tomb.”

And into Ezra’s disembodied mind came an image. A cold gray monolith, much like the standing stones he’d seen on holiday in Scotland. Sitting atop a green hill. With the image came a sense of its location: a few miles away. 

That’s not far. 

“No,” said Uriel.

I’m guessing you don’t want me to free him. 

“You guess right,” said Uriel.

“We want you to kill him,” said Barachiel matter-of-factly. “Like we said, only a mortal can approach the tomb.”

If he’s in a tomb, isn’t he already dead?

“Not that sort of tomb,” said Uriel. 

If he’s so powerful, how can I kill him?

“He’s trapped in a state of suspended animation, with only his mind active. He cannot defend himself—physically, at least.”

Ezra paused to take a deep, purely hypothetical breath. All right. What do I get from this bargain? He wasn’t sure how much he believed or even understood what the voices were telling him, but he seemed to have no option but to hear them out. 

“Get?” Barachiel chuckled. “You get everything. You will be freed from this curse, returned to your universe, and reunited with your wife and daughter.”

The breath seemed to be sucked from Ezra’s phantom lungs. 

What? How? Amelia is dead.

“So are you, twice over. And yet we’re having this conversation. Is it that much of a stretch to believe your wife could live again as well?” 

Ezra tried to answer, but the words wouldn’t come. The hope that had danced within his grasp when he’d realized he’d had a second chase to rescue Lucy now increased tenfold. No, it can’t be… Yet even as he said it, the hope banished the doubt, for better or for worse. The doubt became a half-buried thing, something he might blindly stumble over later, but for now all he could see was the sunlit path opening up before him. 

A potential obstacle occurred to Ezra. Wait. How could I go back to my universe? I died there. In front of the firing squad. 

“Because you’d be going back before that ever happened,” said Barachiel. “Remember, each time you return, you return a day earlier. Going home will be no exception.”

“Can you do this?” asked Uriel. 

I… Then the truth of it settled into Ezra’s mind. That monolith… it’s behind German lines. I’d have to fight through the Germans to get there. 

“In your universe, yes,” said Uriel. 

“But you won’t be in yours,” Barachiel reminded Ezra. “Your task is to find a universe where the monolith can be reached. And then kill the personage inside.”

And the only way to cross to a new universe is…

“To die,” said Uriel. 

“And then you will emerge one universe over and one day earlier,” said Barachiel. “Just to assure you’re clear on that point. Mortals have difficulty sometimes.”

Ezra swallowed, or at least imagined he did. But to see Amelia and Lucy again... 

Do I have a choice in the matter?

“Of course,” said Barachiel. “From here, from this in-between place, you can sidestep the curse and go on to your eternal reward.”

You mean death? Heaven? Is Amelia there?

“Even we do not know,” said Uriel sadly. 

“None know what lies beyond the final curtain but those who have passed through it,” said Barachiel solemnly. “You can take your chances if you’d like. Or you can choose to go back, complete our mission, return to your universe, and see your wife and daughter again. In the flesh.”

In the flesh. To see them again—not just Lucy but Amelia, too, so recently dead of the flu…

His mind became a stage, performing a memory: a time before the war, when he and Amelia had taken Lucy to London’s Natural History Museum. Lucy had been so thrilled to see the dinosaur skeletons on display. She had begged Ezra to read to her the names of every fossil, even the ones he couldn’t quite pronounce. Afterward, they’d walked over to Kensington Gardens and had a lovely little picnic lunch on the green. Amelia had laid her head in Ezra’s lap, contentedly humming a Joplin tune, while Lucy laughed at a bug she was chasing in the grass.

The memory was captured in near-perfect fidelity, idyll frozen in amber. 

I’ll do it, he said.

V.

1 September 1917

Peronne, France

#

Ezra awoke again in the middle of a battle. 

As the raucous chatter of machine guns echoed in his ears, he instinctively flattened himself against the ground, blinking away whatever residual weariness came from dying and then coming back again. I don’t suppose I’ll ever get used to that.

But he was back. Not back to the trenches, however—he lay in an open field, surrounded by the dead and dying, mud splattering his overcoat. Overhead, the night sky was aglow with signal flares, cloaking the dark in a cruel mantle of red and orange light. The phosphorus glow shone down upon the battlefield—upon the British troops spread across the field, and the dim German figures in the distance. Mortar shells exploded in front and behind, raining earth past Ezra’s supine form, while tracer rounds cut shining dashes through the night. 

“Get up!” called a voice, and Ezra turned to see Peter Boothe reaching out a hand. He still had a mustache. “Are you daft, man! We’re retreating, not lounging!”

Ezra needed no reminding; he wasn’t likely to ever forget this night, the night the British had finally broken and run for the cover of their prior fortifications. 

He groped for Boothe’s hand and was hauled to his feet. Not a moment too soon; a mortar exploded just a few feet behind where he had lain, with a force that would have shattered his bones. As it was, it knocked both Booth and Ezra to the hard dirt.

“Get up!” Booth shouted again. “Fortifications are still a mile out! Not bloody sure how any of us are going to…”

“We’ll make it,” Ezra assured him as they rose again, machine gun fire rattling off to their left. A British soldier Ezra didn’t recognize fell screaming. But Ezra felt a confidence the situation didn’t seem to warrant; he knew they would make it, that three-quarters of his company would retreat safely to the trenches, because he’d already seen it happen.

Of course, that had been in his world.

He cast a quick look around as he ran, his boots squelching in sickly mud, taking some minor comfort in the fact that this looked much like his world had. Who was to say, then, that events wouldn’t transpire the way they had for him?

He would make it, and then—

The monolith. He remembered his purpose, remembered the strange tomb and its exact location. It was still east of here. 

Unfortunately, he and his comrades-in-arms were fleeing west.

For a moment, he thought about veering off and running back toward the German lines, but that was madness. Even for a man who had died twice in the last twenty-four hours and had been promised by a pair of disembodied voices that he would see his dead wife and lost daughter again.

“Oh, damn. Damn me to hell and back again.”

Boothe’s curses cut through Ezra’s thoughts. Ezra followed his comrade’s panic-stricken gaze and saw a large, oblong shape cutting across the sky, silhouetted by the flares. The shape was familiar—Ezra had seen German scout dirigibles before—but this one seemed wrong. Too bulky, too long—and were those guns protruding from its hull?

“What is that?” Ezra asked.

Boothe gaped at him. “You’re joking, right? That’s a bloody Götterdämmerung-class battle zeppelin!”

That meant nothing to Ezra, of course, but Boothe’s tone and the menacing silhouette were enough to inject fresh jolts of fear into Ezra’s bloodstream. 

The zeppelin opened fire, sweeping a line of death across the fleeing British forces. Ezra and Boothe dropped to all fours and cowered on the dirt while the spray of machine gun bullets cut down the men to the right and left of them, raising great clouds of dirt and blood.

“Where are our bloody anti-air guns?” Boothe muttered. 

Some sort of apparatus on the zeppelin’s belly disengaged, and a pair of doors clanged open with the accompanying wail of a klaxon. Something huge and gray dropped through the bay doors toward the ground, which trembled at the impact. 

Ezra flinched, expecting a bomb, but nothing happened when the object hit the ground. At least until it rose to its feet—yes, it had feet. Clawed, metallic feet. Ezra watched in horror as the metal monster straightened, reeking of diesel. 

The thing looked vaguely humanoid, though it had no head, just a clear bulb through which Ezra could vaguely see a human form inside. It strode on two stocky legs, though it had no arms but a pair of machine guns.

“What are you gawking for?” Boothe hissed at Ezra, who was paralyzed by the sight of the thing, heart throbbing in fear. 

Boothe grabbed Ezra’s collar just as a second metal monster dropped from the belly of the zeppelin, and a third. One after another, half a dozen of the things landed on the battlefield. The British soldiers, already in full retreat, abandoned any semblance of order and scrambled in panic away from the newcomers.

The line of metal monsters opened fire.

Boothe died with a strangled gasp, spraying Ezra with his blood. Ezra had time for one forlorn look toward the west, where the tomb lay far beyond his reach, before the hot lead cut him down. 

VI.

Time and location unknown

#

Infinite, impenetrable blackness again.

Ezra held his consciousness together in the void, still reeling from his third death. What the hell was that thing?

“Oh, it seems you encountered one of the German Panzerkrieger,” said a familiar voice. Uriel? Or was it Barachiel? “Nasty contraptions, those. Very ingenious.”

That… that never existed in my world, Ezra said stupidly, still too shocked to offer much in the way of intelligent conversation.

“No,” came the agreement in Uriel’s low tones, which mean the first speaker had to be Barachiel. 

“No, such things are unique to Terra-ꞵ36 and adjacent universes,” Barachiel went on. “I see you’re starting to see how things diverge from the familiar the further you get from your world.”  

But it’s not all different, Ezra mused into the emptiness. Somehow the British lines were still in retreat, in the same place, on the same day as in my world. Despite all those new technological horrors.

“An astute observation,” said Barachiel. “Free will causes the universes to separate, going in wildly divergent directions as individuals make different choices in different worlds, but a certain natural force strives to reconcile them. I believe you mortals call this force fate, though it’s no more mystical than gravity.” 

Ezra set that aside; he had little time to ponder the mysteries of the universe. Or perhaps he had all the time in the world; he wasn’t certain. 

“Have you found the tomb yet?” Uriel asked, his disembodied voice tinged with impatience.

Found it? Ezra repeated in disbelief. I had just enough time to arrive in a new universe and get killed again. I didn’t have time to put on a pot of tea, much less find your bloody tomb.

“Give him time,” said Barachiel. “He is properly motivated. He simply needs the opportunity.”

Who’s in this tomb? Ezra wondered. Why do you want to kill him so badly? 

The emptiness was silent, and Ezra had the oddest sensation that, wherever the voices were coming from, they were exchanging a look.

“I suppose it doesn’t hurt,” said Barachiel.

“His name is Luxfero,” said Uriel. 

“A great conqueror of the multiverse, who even made war on the Creator Himself,” said Barachiel. “He was once a man, they say—”

“Or something more like us,” Uriel added.

“His origins are murky,” said Barachiel. “But whatever he was, he traveled the universes, making bargains with dark powers and obtaining abilities beyond mortal ken. Which he then used to conquer vast swaths of a hundred universes.”

A weight settled into the pit of Ezra’s not-stomach. Ah. And I’m supposed to kill him?

“He is dormant and has not troubled any universe for many centuries,” said Barachiel. “He is trapped, unable to escape, as we have said. It should be an easy task, once you can reach the tomb.”

Ezra thought back to the mechanical horror that had dispatched him and so much of his company in that most recent universe. Easier said than done, huh?

“If you wish to see your wife and daughter again,” said Barachiel, “you will not worry further about Luxfero. You have your objective. Unless you no longer wish…”

I wish to see them, Ezra said quickly. Amelia. Lucy. 

“Good,” said Uriel. 

“What is your plan for reaching the tomb, then?” Barachiel wondered.

Plan… Ezra considered. The place where the tomb lies—it used to be British territory. But it hasn’t been for . . . 

He thought back. It was hard to remember, with his consciousness uncaged and spreading throughout the void, but he managed to recall an approximate date. 

We retreated from that area about three months ago, he said. So all I have to do is . . . go back three months? By dying three months’ worth of deaths?

Three months’ worth of deaths. 

“Unless you have a better option,” said Uriel. 

Each day, said Ezra, I’ll try to get as far as I can into German lines. Maybe I won’t have to die ninety times. 

“Then good luck, mortal,” said Barachiel, and Ezra hated the doubt half-hidden in the voice. “We shall see you again soon enough.”

VII.

31 August 1917

Peronne, France

#

Ezra crouched in the mud, rifle laid across his knees. The trench walls rose on either side, reinforced with wood scaffolding. He knew the soldiers crouched around him: there was Derby scrawling in a little notepad; there was Crawford studying a photo of his sweetheart back home. And there was Boothe, a little down the trench, cleaning his rifle. 

He knew this scene: The British were just about to start their retreat. This was how things had been just before the German counterattack that had resulted in the British abandoning this trench. Ezra checked his watch. If things happened the way they had in his world, the Germans would attack in . . . 

About an hour. 

He jumped to his feet, heart pounding. Perhaps if he could warn the officers, the British could be ready this time. 

Ezra hurried down the trench, drawing curious looks and exclamations from his fellow soldiers: 

“Where are you off to, Hawes?”

“Running a footrace, eh, Hawes?”

“Bloody odd, that one…”

Ezra ignored the jibes. Maybe we can hold the line against the Germans, maybe even push the tide backward… and reclaim the territory around the tomb. The thought lifted his heart a little; he wasn’t sure he had the stomach for dying three months’ worth of deaths, going back a day earlier every time. 

He jogged through mud and dirt, passing a handwritten placard that read, REMEMBER! ALL DEAD MUST BE BURNED. Ezra gave it little regard, other than a curious glance, as he reached the dugout that served as the de facto command center. The two MPs stationed to either side of the dugout entrance halted him, but neither raised a weapon. 

“Please,” he said. “I need to see Major Davenport. I have news of a German counterattack. An ambush.”

“Ambush?” one of the MPs repeated. 

“How’d you find out?” the other asked.

“You’re Corporal Haas, right?” The first MP squinted at him. “The fellow from Germany?” An uncertain look entered his eyes. “What, did you get this intel from your Hun friends?” 

“It’s Hawes, not Haas,” said Ezra rigidly. “I was born there, but I haven’t—it doesn’t matter. Please… the major would very much like to hear what I have to say.” 

“I’m sorry—” the second MP started to say, but a deep voice came from within the dugout:

“Let him in, Sergeant.”

With a pair of nods, the MPs parted to admit Ezra into the dugout. Ezra squinted as the harsh light of day was replaced by the feeble light of hastily strung electric bulbs overhead, casting the dugout into perpetual twilight. Officers and their staff huddled over partially folded maps on a central table, giving Ezra a curious look as he entered. 

One officer straightened and gave Ezra a once-over. A tall man, he nearly scraped his head on the wood supports that kept the earth from caving in overhead. The Major Davenport of Ezra’s world had possessed a pair of shockingly blue eyes, but this Davenport wore an eyepatch over the left one. Similarly, his left arm ended not long after the shoulder, the rest of the sleeve pinned up. 

“Well?” Davenport barked. “What is it, man? What’s this about an ambush?”

“It’s coming in less than an hour,” said Ezra, hastily saluting. “Sir. The Germans will come at us over the eastern ridge around suppertime. First with tanks, then with machine guns and infantry.”

Davenport’s single eye narrowed. “Interesting. We’ve been sitting here for three bloody months, ever since our last bloody retreat. Why now? And how the devil do you know this?”

Ezra swallowed. “I—I’m sorry, sir. I can’t explain it. Wait an hour, sir, and if I’m wrong, you can shoot me.” Wouldn’t be the first time today. “But if I’m right, you’ll be glad you listened. Sir.”

Davenport frowned. “Tanks, then machine guns, and then infantry, you say? I suppose the necromancers would bring up the rear, then? We’ve done a bloody fine job cleaning up our dead, by Jove, and the only corpses they’d have to work with will be their own.”

Feeling his throat go dry, Ezra tried to not let his confusion show. “Uh, I don’t know, sir. I suppose you’re right, sir.” Davenport’s talk of necromancers made no sense to him. He’d heard the word somewhere, in some pulp novel, but he couldn’t remember what it meant, or what such an asset might mean on the battlefield. The mention of the dead sent every hair on the back of his neck standing at attention, though. What sort of horrors did the Germans have in mind for the fallen British?

“Very well,” said Davenport. “I suppose it won’t hurt to give you the benefit of the doubt, Corporal. Though if you’re right, you and I are going to sit down and you’re going to explain how the bloody hell you knew what the Germans were going to—”

Somewhere in the camp, a siren wailed: a long, ululating cry that froze the blood where it coursed through Ezra’s veins. 

An air raid siren. 

But—as was beginning to be familiar—different, somehow. 

Davenport swore again. “Seems your German friends are early, Corporal. Forgot to mention they’d be attacking by air, did you? Out with you!” He turned back to his officers without another word at Ezra, who was left with nothing to do but flee the dugout as the cries went up all along the trench.  

He stumbled out into the trench as dark shapes plied the skies. More air raid sirens rent the air, German biplanes circling like vultures overhead. Somewhere not far away came the answering thump-thump of British anti-air emplacements. Tracer rounds sprayed the skies with ribbons of light. 

As Ezra watched, at least one of the biplanes fell victim to the British defenses, careening wildly out of sight. A second biplane, its wing trailing great gouts of flame, soared just out of sight and landed with its tail sticking out over the trench, showering those in the trench with earth. 

But despite those small victories, several planes still remained. Too many—for then came the telltale whistle of bombs falling through the air. 

Ezra ducked for cover beneath a scaffold as one of the bombs exploded twenty feet away, sending clouds of rock and dirt everywhere. Soldiers screamed; a few crawled, broken, from the site of the explosion. 

The mood in the trench turned from alarm to fear. Ezra could almost smell it. The soldiers crouching near Ezra shoved rounds into their rifles, aiming them not at the planes overhead but at the bomb craters. 

“What are you…” Ezra hissed to the nearest man—he recognized Derby, a fellow Croydonian. But Derby just shushed him, looking straight ahead toward the bomb crater. 

“Any minute now…” Derby muttered.

Ezra loaded his own weapon and aimed in the same direction, though he had little idea what he was aiming at. He could make out little through the smoke and the haze wafting through trench in the aftermath of the bombing, and even if he could see he wasn’t sure he would know what to look for. Had the German dropped some new weapon in the bombs?

Remembering how the enemy from the last universe had dropped those walking mechanical terrors from zeppelins, Ezra shuddered. Anything was possible. 

Ahead, a shape shifted in the smoke.

The soldiers around Ezra cursed. A few fired into the haze, but they didn’t seem to hit anything. Another shape rose in the smoke, joined by a third. A fourth. The shapes shambled toward Ezra and his fellow soldiers, and as they left the obscuring curtain of smoke, Ezra felt his jaw go slack with terror. Something wet and warm spread down his pant leg, but he hardly noticed. 

No… It can’t be…

The shapes that shambled through the gloom wore British uniforms and carried British rifles. Ezra even thought he recognized a few of them, though they were bloodied and bruised and a few were missing limbs. They looked every bit as one might expect the victims of a bombing to look…

Except they were walking.

And then Ezra Hawes remembered where he’d read about necromancers: some fantasy dime novel about an evil wizard who raised the dead, some forgotten tome he’d discarded in childhood. None of it was real. 

It’s real here, Ezra thought numbly.  

He joined the ranks of soldiers around him firing toward the reanimated British dead. Bullets tore through the staggering revenants, but if a bomb blast wasn’t enough to kill them, Ezra didn’t know what a few bolt-action Lee-Enfields were supposed to do. 

Still the corpses shambled onward. 

The moment the corpses were nearly, within bayonet range, the soldiers around him stopped firing and charged, stabbing with merciless abandon. Bayonets took the dead through the eye sockets, through the throat, or through the heart. Derby knocked a corpse on its back and began sawing through the dead man’s neck, a difficult trick with a bayonet, while his erstwhile comrade hissed and spat at him, reddened eyes wide with bloodlust. 

The whole assault was carried out with a cold, ruthless efficiency that suggested it wasn’t the first time these poor soldiers had had to murder the empty shells of men they’d fought beside hours before. Ezra watched in horror and sickness and fascination, his stomach churning like a putrid stew pot. 

What is there to do? He wondered. What can I do? 

Whatever horrors this world presented, he still had his mission. He still had to get to the tomb and… and kill the thing inside.

So he fled.

He climbed the wall of the trench, the image of the tomb in his mind, even as the dead surged through the ranks of his fellow soldiers. It was desertion, an act to which he was no stranger by now. But his deed didn’t come from a place of cowardice, only necessity. 

Besides, he was likely to face far more dangers on the open fields he was about to flee across.

Ezra ran to the ladder built into the side of the trench and climbed to the top, his hands shaking on the wooden handholds. From below came screams and the dry rasping of the dead, but he didn’t look back. He vaulted the last few rungs and landed in the no-man’s-land ahead, his feet sinking into the sickly reddish mud. 

Immediately, he rolled onto his stomach, staying low as he surveyed the scene ahead of him. 

Once, he’d been told, the field he now stood upon had been a verdant meadow bordered by distant rolling hills. Now it was a scarred expanse of mud and filth, concertina wire twisting in and out of the murk. In Ezra’s world, bodies would have been strewn about, food for the carrion birds, but this world’s no-man’s-land had no such gruesome adornments. The wastes had been stripped of any corpses.

Or else the corpses got up and walked away a long time ago, Ezra thought, his stomach curdling again.

He could see the German lines in the distance, indistinct shapes in the haze beyond a line of concertina wire. A few tall platforms rose from above the trench like spindly fingers: makeshift metal towers with slim windows through which faint light glowed. Ezra was willing to bet that was where the German necromancers were stationed, afforded enough of a view of the battlefield to work their unnatural arts. 

To make it to the tomb, he had to go through those towers.

Ezra swallowed hard. What’s the worst that could happen? A moment later, he answered his own question: Well, I could die and end up in a world where the Germans can control me with their minds, he thought, though he was certain he could think of half a dozen even worse possibilities given a few more moments.

He didn’t give himself those moments. Setting his jaw and checking to see if his rifle was loaded, Ezra sprang to his feet and started to run.

Fire from unseen machine guns instantly burst from the German lines, but Ezra took refuge behind a mound of overturned earth, hearing the bullets splatting into the dirt on the other side of the mound. He eyed another such mound and counted to three, took a deep breath, and sprinted for the next cover.

He made it, German bullets again thumping against the barrier before him. His heart beat a frantic rhythm, his breath coming in ragged, terrified gasps. Have to get to the tomb, he thought. It’s… just over that ridge.

About half a mile behind the German lines.

It was then that he spotted the shapes clambering into the open from the cover of the German trenches ahead. From the moment they appeared, Ezra could see something unnatural about their movements: too jerky, too stiff. 

There were five of them, all lurching toward him at an unhurried rate. Ezra poked his rifle out just far enough to take a potshot at the closest one. He distinctly saw a puff of something that might have been blood as the bullet passed through the figure’s head, but it didn’t slow in the slightest.

Damn corpses.

Ezra had never been a particularly religious man, but the lessons of his youth came back to him with vivid clarity, and suddenly he found himself muttering to himself as he prepared to break cover and run for it once more.

“Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name…”

The undead shambled closer.

“Thy kingdom come, thy will be done…”

The litany continued in Ezra’s head as he burst from cover and started to run. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

The dead carried no rifles; perhaps they lacked the articulation to pull the trigger. In that, at least, he still had the advantage. He could get them before they could get him. 

Theoretically. 

Give us this day our daily bread…

He fired a few shots at the nearest corpse’s kneecap, almost bringing it down, but it regained its footing and kept coming. Another shot shattered the kneecap enough that the corpse stumbled onto the mud, floundering almost comically. 

And forgive us our tresspasses as we forgive those who trespass against us…

The corpses were only twenty feet away now. Ezra shot another one in the kneecap, but he missed. He ducked behind a rocky outcrop as another line of German bullets swept past. 

With every passing moment he could sense his death coming for him, but mortality was quickly becoming an old flame he flirted with, someone he went home with every night before always coming back to his own bed. 

And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. 

Ezra poked his head up and fired again at the approaching dead, but he was forced to duck again as more machine gun rounds strafed the air, sparking off the outcrop he hid behind. Damn it. He checked the chamber of his Lee-Enfield and found it empty. He grappled at his pockets, but he was all out. Damn damn damn. 

Ezra grasped the barrel in both hands, preparing to use the useless thing as a bludgeon. The wind blew over his face, carrying with it the putrid stench of rotting meat. 

For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory.

The dead came from him a moment later, coming around both sides of the outcrop, their eyes soulless despite the incongruous gleam of hunger in their depths. They wore what Ezra finally realized were German uniforms—the Germans had sent their own dead against him—but he had little time for any further observation. He swung the butt of his rifle with all his might, battering the skull of one of his attackers and knocking it to the mud. He swung it again, catching another corpse in the knee and hearing bones break. Three corpses still came at him, one of them grabbing the rifle and another going for his arm. 

Ezra felt teeth graze his arm and the rifle wrenched from his grasp with unnatural strength. A second later, the remaining dead bore down on him, leering with cold eyes set into pale, rotting flesh. 

Amen, he thought to himself with dreadful finality as the corpses tore him apart.

VIII.

Time and date unknown

#

“That death looked rather less pleasant than the others,” Barachiel’s voice observed dryly.

Ezra let out a phantom breath of mixed revulsion and relief. He could still remember the cold touch of the corpses as they dug into his flesh with their fingers bent into claws, their teeth going for his throat. 

It’s over, he told himself. I died. The corpses got me. But it’s over.

“And so it is,” said Uriel. 

“Do you have a better plan than simply charging headlong, alone, through German lines?” Barachiel wondered. “This may grow rather tedious.”

I’m all ears, said Ezra, feeling suddenly irritable. If either of you have any plans to volunteer, feel free to speak up. What are you, anyway? Suddenly that answer seemed to matter more than it had before. Whose orders am I taking? He thought back to his youth in an Anglican Sunday School. He was certain he’d heard the name Uriel, at least. Are you… angels?

There was a pause, and then the darkness replied, “Yes… I suppose you could call us that.” That was Barachiel speaking. “Others have certainly done so. What we are is far more complex than that, but the term suits us well enough.”

You’re truly angels? In light of all that Ezra had experienced, the revelation didn’t pack as much of a punch as it once might have. How does one become an angel, then?

“An angel is simply what one becomes if one lives long enough,” said Barachiel. “Now—”

How long?

Now it was Barachiel’s turn to sound irritable. “At least a millennium of your years, human. At that threshold, by some forgotten heavenly degree, one breaks the chains of mortality and graduates to a higher plane of existence.”

What?

“It’s like you mortals say.” Uriel somehow managed to convey a shrug. “We don’t make the rules.” 

“Paradoxically, one must somehow find a way to evade death to achieve everlasting life,” said Barachiel. “I suppose it’s set up that way for a reason. The Creator didn’t want just anyone achieving angelhood.” Faint pride rang in his voice. “Hence the reason you’ve never met one of us before.”

“Perhaps you might someday become an angel,” Uriel broke in.

How?

“You age each day as a man does,” said Barachiel, “but each time you go back to the previous day, it resets your clock. You could go on forever, you know, living this way.”

Ezra wondered what these angels truly looked like. Were there wings? Or were they merely disembodied spirits? Was he truly destined to become one, if he went about dying over and over again?

And what can an angel do? he asked. 

“Enough,” said Barachiel. “We have kept you here for too long. You must return.”

Wait. I have more questions—

“You will return in five seconds,” said Barachiel. “Please devise a more effective plan for reaching the tomb, if you would. But if you have to die a hundred times until you reach the tomb… well, so be it.”

IX.

6 June-30 August 1917

Peronne, France

#

After a while, Ezra lost track of the number of times he’d died.

Again and again he died trying to reach the tomb, and again and again he returned, each time one day earlier. Late August became mid-August, which became early August and then July. 

Each return to the world of the living brought fresh surprises and horrors. In one universe, black-scaled German dragons and their British counterparts filled the skies with fire. In another, living fog crept through the trenches, turning those unlucky enough to be caught within it to stone. Ezra dodged tripedal German war machines that swept giant death rays down onto no-man’s-land, dueled German soldiers with swords of pure light, and was crushed under the hooves of six-legged German steeds. 

For most of August, before the German advance, the two sides existed in a tense stalemate. That meant Ezra had to continually cross the same ugly stretch of earth to reach his goal. Once, he got less than a quarter mile from the tomb before an enemy sniper plugged him with a bolt of superheated plasma. 

Most of the time, he didn’t get nearly that far.

X.

Date and time unknown

#

By mid-July, whenever Ezra had stopped off in the empty purgatory, or whatever the hell that in-between place was, the two angels had stopped being there to greet him. So he was surprised this time when he heard Uriel’s weary voice speaking out of the darkness:

“Congratulations.”

For what? Ezra wondered.

“This is it, isn’t it?” Barachiel asked. “You’ve died enough times to make it back to early June, when the territory around the tomb was held by your countrymen. Before your first retreat.”

That’s correct, thought Ezra, thinking over his most recent death. He’d just lived the retreat Barachiel spoke of before being gunned down by a German tank that had somehow transformed into a giant metal man. So when I go back this next time…

“Let us hope it is the last,” said Uriel. “With luck, you will have a clear path to the tomb.”

Ezra felt the warming glow of hope. He’d know this day would come, eventually. It was all that had kept him going back again and again. That and the thought of seeing his wife and daughter again were all that compelled him to keep dying. 

Or was it all? Did he even have a choice?

“You always have a choice,” said Barachiel, hearing his thoughts. “From this place, you can always go forward into the unknown realm beyond. But you would forfeit any chance at seeing your wife and daughter again. You know what you must do.”

Kill this Luxfero fellow, said Ezra, feeling a familiar sense of unease at his mission. And once I do, I get to see Lucy and Amelia again?

“Correct,” said Uriel. 

And you have the power to do this? To bring them back? He didn’t want to ask, not after all the times he’d died, because the only acceptable answer was yes. And yet he finally felt the need to ask one more time. 

“We are angels,” said Barachiel simply. “Of course we can. Did our kind not bring Christ back on the third day?”

You can’t even get to a tomb by yourselves. How can you bring back the dead?

“The nature of the tomb,” said Barachiel irritably, “prevents any angelic beings from crossing its threshold. It was made so by beings far more powerful than us to prevent Luxfero’s followers from releasing him. But the matter of your wife and daughter—that is something else entirely. We have the power of the Creator on our side, human.”

A trickle of doubt leaked through Ezra’s resolve, but the desire to see Amelia and Lucy again was too strong, too overpowering to allow for any deviation from his course. He’d come too far, died too many times. He couldn’t believe it was all for nothing. 

Yes, yes, I know, Ezra thought sourly.I know what I have to do. It’s the only way forward. 

“Just so,” said Uriel with finality. 

“I wish you well, human,” said Barachiel. “May you find what we seek. Tell your British friends hello for us, and we shall toast your victory by sundown today.”

XI.

5 June 1917

Peronne, France

#

Dawn’s first pale fingers reached into the trench as Ezra awoke. Around him, fellow soldiers huddled in the gloom, pulling their coats tighter for a few extra minutes of sleep. A few stalked the trenches, half hidden in shadows. 

This time, the trench itself looked unfamiliar. He’d come back to the same series of trench so many times, even with its myriad variations, to know he now stood in one he’d never been in before. 

Was this the one we occupied just before our retreat? It might have been. In any case, the tomb was close, behind friendly lines for once, and it was time to rise, to hurry toward the tomb before any of his fellow Britons noticed his absence—

Footsteps sounded in the mud to his left, and Ezra turned to see a knot of soldiers approaching him.

Ezra’s heart almost stopped when he saw their uniforms: the gray wool with red trim, the flared steel Stahlhelm on their heads. The Mauser rifles clutched in their hands. 

Germans.

In panic, Ezra’s hands went to his rifle. But he stopped when he caught sight of his own uniform, of the gun itself. The gray uniform. The Mauser. 

Holy hell, Ezra thought. I’m a bloody German this time. 

“Was ist falch?” the nearest German demanded, giving Ezra the same curious look he’d received so many times from fellow British soldiers while acclimating to a new universe. “Geht es dir gut?”

Ezra’s head spun as he tried to recall the little German he’d learned from his father. 

When he didn’t reply, the soldier repeated, “Geht es dir gut, Korporal Haas?”

The name sounded similar, but Ezra heard the difference. They were calling him Haas, not Hawes. In this world, his father must have never emigrated from Germany. 

In this world, Ezra Haas was a loyal servant of the Kaiser. 

Inwardly, Ezra shook his head, discarding his shock. Whoever he served—Kaiser Wilhelm, King George, or bloody Harry Houdini for all he cared—it didn’t matter. He had a mission to complete, one that transcended national allegiances. 

“Geht es dir gut?” the soldier asked one more time.

Ezra tried to recall German; apparently, even if the Ezra of this world spoke it, that knowledge hadn’t been retained when he had slipped his consciousness into this body. He knew enough to realize the German was asking him if he was all right, but he dared not offer a broken reply, so he simply nodded, offering a reassuring smile and yawning.

The yawn seemed to convince the others that he was merely tired. The German who’d spoken clapped him on the back. “Ruh dich ein wenig aus. Die Pfeife wird bald läuten.”

Ezra tried to understand the soldier’s words. Something about a whistle? Pfeife? Whistles often sounded to signal an attack. Yes, that had to be it. The Germans would momentarily begin their assault that would force the British to retreat. 

He considered what this new development meant for his mission. The tomb, it seemed, was still behind enemy lines. If he wanted to get to it, he would have to attack his former countrymen with his new ones.

Ezra was surprised at the way the thought filled his mouth with bile. He’d considered himself single-minded enough that only the mission mattered, but he balked at the notion of fighting against Boothe, Derby, and the other men he’d fought alongside in so many worlds. 

I won’t fire at them, he decided. None of them will die at my hand. I just have to get through them. 

He ignored the obvious; that in order to get through the British lines, his fellow Germans would have to cut down his British friends first. 

He waited with the other soldiers in tense readiness. The minutes ticked by. He felt a weight at his hip and was surprised to see a pistol resting there. In his world, only officers carried sidearms, but there it was, a tiny, thin-barreled Walther. Apparently this world had different rules for infantrymen.

He hoped that was the only difference. 

At one point while he waited, Ezra jumped at a shadow that appeared over the lip of the trench, but no one else reacted, so he forced himself to calm down. 

What was that? It had been not quite as tall as a man, moving with reptilian grace, and Ezra wondered what peculiarities this world brought to the battlefield. At least whatever horrors the Germans had cooked up would work in his favor this time. 

Another shape moved above the trench, and this time Ezra caught a glimpse of a single beady eye looking down at him before it retreated. He thought uncomfortably of the dragons he’d seen many days ago on this same battlefield, their fires reducing no-man’s-land to ash. He’d hoped to have seen the last of those foul creatures. 

“Was war das?” he asked a fellow soldier, confident enough in the simplicity of the statement to not betray his unfamiliarity with the language. 

The soldier flicked his head up, battered Stahlhelm bobbing up and down on its leather chin strap. “Dass? Meinst du den Raptor?”

Raptor. He knew that word in English: it meant bird of prey. That hadn’t looked like any bird Ezra had ever seen, however. 

His fellow soldier snorted. “Ich bin froh, wenn ich die stinkenden Dinger nie wieder riechen muss. Sie sind jedoch gut darin, britische Soldaten zu töten.”

This time Ezra missed most of what the man had said, and so he simply nodded again.

Then, in the half-light, a whistle sounded.

Around him, German soldiers rose to their feet and clambered up wooden ladders on the sides of the trench. Ezra followed dutifully, his Mauser in hand. 

The assault had begun.

Despite being the one man on the whole battlefield who knew with reasonable certainty how the events of the day would play out, Ezra found himself frozen at the top of the ladder. The morning light filtered through a low crust of clouds, spilling onto the battlefield and illuminating a sight like Ezra had never seen.

And he’d seen things like nobody else had.

Where so many other worlds had fielded tanks or other mechanized monsters, this world had creatures. 

The nearest creature was as tall as three men, a great armored reptilian thing with foot-long teeth and tiny arms, thick tail snaking behind it. One tree-trunk leg sank down in the mud behind Ezra as it stepped over the trench with ease, the earth shaking at its passage. Ezra looked up from the massive three-toed footprints it left in the murk to see the platform mounted to the creature’s back, on which artillery boomed away at the British. 

Ezra recalled that visit to the Natural History Museum back in London, just before the war, seeing a massive new skeleton on display. The thing had seemed so ancient back then, so dead…

And yet here one was, in the flesh.

Ezra shook himself from his reverie. He’d seen enough that the sight of a living, walking Tyrannosaurus rex used as a weapons platform shouldn’t have been so surprising. 

As Ezra charged across no-man’s-land, dodging machine gun fire from his erstwhile comrades, more creatures weaved through the German ranks—smaller reptiles, only as tall as his shoulder, feathers sticking out from beneath their armored necks. They leaped gleefully into the British trench, clawed toes outstretched, and soon Ezra’s stomach roiled at the sound of death and misery. Those must be the raptors they spoke of earlier. Poor British bastards.

But the British, it seemed, had terrible reptiles of their own. 

The ground, already trembling with each step the tyrannosaur took, rumbled with the passage of something even bigger. From behind a copse of trees on the far side of the British trench came a huge shape, even taller than the tyrannosaur. A snakelike neck rose above the trees, upon which was perched a gentle-looking head—though the gentleness was offset somewhat by the rows of spiked plate armor that covered the giant’s neck. Like the tyrannosaur, this creature had an artillery platform strapped to its back. 

Involuntarily, Ezra fell to his knees in awe at the sight. His mind went blank, but into the void came another memory of his visit to the Natural History Museum, and a name: Diplodocus. 

Something screamed overhead, and then great gouts of earth shot to the sky as the bombs struck. The air filled with smoke, and then Ezra caught a glimpse of the bomber swooping away—not an aircraft, but another lizard-like thing, a leather-winged creature with a long, wicked beak. The beast vanished into the sky, but not before Ezra saw a human pilot seated on its back. 

The world’s gone mad, he thought. Again, he added after a moment, past the point of being truly surprised by anything. 

But it didn’t change his objective. Somehow he still had to make it through enemy lines—British, this time—and reach that damned tomb. 

Around him, German soldiers charged the enemy, so Ezra was just one of thousands running across that barren plain. Through the friendly ranks came another wave of raptors, easily outstripping their human counterparts to reach the British trenches. Again came the sound of screams and terror from the men Ezra had fought alongside so many times in othe worlds. 

Can’t think about that, Ezra told himself as he ran. Can’t think about anything. Have to—reach—the tomb—

Between Ezra and the tomb lay the British trench, and not even another raptor incursion could remove the danger that presented. Not to mention the great, lumbering long-necked creature—the diplodocus—striding over the trench, machine gun spitting away on its back. Bullets swept through the charging Germans, cutting down a swath of them as they ran, but still Ezra and his newfound countrymen advanced. 

The earth shook anew as the diplodocus crashed through the running Germans, trampling more than one beneath its massive feet. Other Germans avoided the path of its titanic stride only to be caught as the creature’s great tail cracked across the battlefield like the whip of a god. Almost too late did Ezra note the concertina wire coiled around the tail: if the force of the tail didn’t turn the unfortunate Germans to pulp, the razor-sharp wire rendered each soul to little more than bloody ribbons. 

Ezra dropped into a crouch as the tail scythed overhead. The soldier next to him wasn’t as fast, and the tail caught him right in the head. Ezra heard a sickening cracking sound, followed by a wet squelch, but he didn’t turn to investigate the extent of the poor man’s injury. He rose again to his feet and resumed his frenzied run.

The diplodocus reared briefly on its hind legs, the whole world seeming to hold its breath as it balanced there, and then it crashed down again, the impact knocking Ezra and every soldier he could see once again to the ground. Ezra landed painfully against an outcrop of stone, tearing open his pant leg, but he wasted little time in rising yet again. 

Just a little closer… 

The trench itself was only a few dozen yards away, but the diplodocus, ensconced in its thick armor, single-handedly beat back most of the German advance. A few raptors lunged to attack its side, but the machine gun mounted on its back swiveled downward to swat away the raptors like gnats. 

German bombers, those curious leather-winged reptiles, swooped in to deter the long-necked behemoth. Mortars exploded near its feet, causing it to cry out in alarm. The machine gun crew on its back responded in kind, swiveling to return fire—Ezra could hear one of the Britons on its back yelling, “Bloody pterosaurs!”—and one of the bombers let out a screech of dismay. The injured flyer struck the armored side of the diplodocus and bounced onto the ground, where a monstrous foot ended its frenzied twitching. 

The diplodocus swung its tail again, so low that Ezra couldn’t hope to dodge—

And then the tyrannosaurus was there, sending the ground into violent spasms. It caught the scything tail with its own armor, barreling into the diplodocus with mouth open wide. The diplodocus let out a foghorn call of agony as the tyrannosaur managed to get a bite under its neck armor. But the diplodocus wasn’t finished; far from it, the creature whipped its tail to crash into the tyrannosaur’s head. The predator’s skull took the full force of the blow and it stumbled back, dazed, as the diplodocus’ machine gun crew swung their weapon to aim at the tyrannosaur’s eyes. 

Ezra didn’t wait to see what happened next. He could hear the bellows and roars as the two titans battled, could smell the tang of blood. He reached the trench, briefly considering vaulting over it to reach the tomb, but he knew the rest of his fellow Germans would stop here, and he wasn’t certain at all he could make it all the way to the tomb on his own. So he lurched to a stop on the lip of the trench.

Some of the British were attempting to climb out, but they were fish in a barrel. A German grenade made quick work of a cluster of them, and Ezra was glad he hadn’t gotten a good look at their faces before they died. Around him, the Germans took up positions and fired into the trench, using the high ground to attack with near impunity. 

A Briton appeared just below Ezra’s perch, helmet askew and eyes full of fear. Dread coiled in Ezra’s stomach like a snake; it was Lance Corporal Peter Boothe. While they’d never exactly been friends, Boothe had always been good to him, no matter what universe they met in. 

But there was no recognition in Boothe’s eyes, and in the moment Ezra hesitated, Boothe raised his own rifle to fire.

A bullet took Lance Corporal Peter Boothe in the throat and he staggered, blood spraying against the wall of the trench.

Ezra turned to face the German standing to his right, who was already moving onto shoot the next Briton. He wrestled down the tide of vomit surging at the back of his throat. I’m so sorry, Pete. 

“Worauf wartest du?” the German demanded scornfully. “Zögern wird Sie töten.” 

The hunting cries of another wave of raptors sounded from behind, and Ezra felt the rush of air as more of the creatures launched themselves into the trench. 

Within a few more minutes, the trench was empty but for the dead and the dying.

#

Sunset turned the sky overhead to blood as the Germans established their position, fortifying the captured trench and establishing fresh pickets. The butcher’s bill came for both sides, though cost for the retreating side was greater: the great hulk of the diplodocus lay on the former no-man’s-land, a broken heap of metal and hide. Carrion birds went to work turning it to bones, though they scattered when the victorious tyrannosaur came to claim its prize. The beast sank its teeth into its vanquished foe, tearing out great gouts of flesh and roaring its terrible glee to the sky.

It was dark by the time Ezra finally reached the tomb.

In his broken German, he’d volunteered to scout ahead and get a better look at the retreating British lines, knowing that would put his objective right in his path. 

At last.

At long last.

Never has any man lost as much as I have in pursuit of a single objective, Ezra reflected as his booted feet clomped through the grass surrounding the dark, ugly monolith of stone. The structure was unremarkable, just another standing stone like he’d seen dozens of times on walks through the moors while visiting his mother’s relations in Scotland. 

He paused at its base, listening to the rustle of the grass. In the distance came the faint rattle of machine guns as the Germans cleaned up pockets of stubborn British holdouts. Overhead, the moon was a glowing sickle. 

Ezra’s breath came in rapid bursts, his heart pounding like the hammer of some mighty smithing god. It was all he could do not to rush straight to the thing, his objective for so many days and so many deaths, but somehow he knew the occasion merited some solemnity.

That, and he had no idea what to do next. 

But as he approached, the monolith itself shed some light on his predicament. Ezra thought he heard a wordless whisper on the wind, like a half-forgotten song. He had the oddest sense that whoever, whatever was inside was reaching out to him.

“My name is Ezra Hawes,” he said, feeling silly. “Or Haas, I suppose.” 

For a long moment there was nothing, and then a sliver of light appeared on the side of the stone. It widened, revealing a set of smooth stone steps. When the opening was large enough to admit him, it ceased widening.

All was silent. 

What am I supposed to do next? Ezra wondered, both to himself and to Uriel and Barachiel, his unseen mentors. Do I go inside?

No answer came but for indistinct whispers on the wind. 

The hairs of Ezra’s neck rose, gooseflesh rippling on his arms. He had the sense of something malignant waiting within the tomb, something that—despite its abode—was still very much alive.

Do I go inside? Ezra asked again. Uriel? Barachiel? Do I kill him now? With what weapon?

“Do I go inside?” he asked aloud, feeling just as foolish as when he had spoken his name.

Yes…

The reply came as a rasp on the breeze, so unlike the voices of the angels Ezra had heard so many times, and for an instant Ezra thought he had imagined it. But then it came again:

Enter, Ezra Hawes. You are most welcome here. 

His heart sped up. He stared down at the opening at his feet.

Well? the voice asked. What are you waiting for? Come join me below. 

It’s all come to this, Ezra thought, trying to get a handle on his throbbing heartbeat. Every death, every bullet in my brain, every time I bled out. 

Down he went. 

Stone stairs spiraled downward into oblivion beneath Ezra’s feet. The stairs vanished into darkness ten steps or so in front and behind, but a light with no apparent source seemed to light his way. Perhaps the light came from his own body—he couldn’t rightly tell. Ezra’s breathing and the soft tread of boots on stone seemed the only sounds in the universe. 

I’m nearly there, he thought. Amelia, Lucy—wherever you are, I’m coming. His heart beat still quicker. Uriel, Barachiel—you’d better follow through on your end of the promise, or there will be hell to pay.

Time became a mere cosmic suggestion. Ezra had no idea how long descended into the bowels of the earth. Hours may have passed, even days—or maybe it was mere minutes. Nor could he count the number of stairs he traversed. 

Why didn’t I just wait outside? he wondered. I did what the angels asked. I found the tomb. Why did I venture inside, when I have no idea who or what might be waiting for me?

He offered himself no answer. 

After some indeterminate time, the steps beneath Ezra’s feet flattened out before a simple wooden door. He hesitated before raising his fist to knock.

Before his knuckles could rap against the wood, the door swung inward.

One more time Ezra hesitated. No matter how far he’d come, some part of him still feared that final step. 

I’ve come this far. Might as well see this through. Ezra inhaled sharply and stepped into the room beyond.

His first thought was that tomb was perhaps a misnomer. The chamber had the stone walls and musty air one might expect from a place of the dead, lit by the same sourceless light as the staircase. It even smelled like a tomb, stale and a little putrid; Ezra wrinkled his nose. But for all its tomblike qualities, the chamber lacked the principle criteria for qualification as a tomb —namely, the presence of a dead body.

The body in the center of the room, resting on a bier, was very much alive.

The form lay motionless, but Ezra could easily discern the rise and fall of the figure’s chest. The eyelids fluttered now and again, as though the sleeper was caught in the throes of a vivid dream. It appeared to be a human male of middle age with unremarkable features. 

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow. …

Ezra jumped. It was the same voice as before, sounding within his head, a clear and strident voice suited for command. Creeps in this petty pace from day to day…

“So you’re awake?” Ezra asked the sleeper, who hadn’t stirred. “And you’re quoting Shakespeare at me?”

To the last syllable of recorded time. 

“My name is Ezra. Who are you?” Though of course he knew. This was Luxfero, conqueror of the multiverse, though the figure didn’t look particularly threatening at the moment.  

And all our yesterdays have lighted fools…

“The way to dusty death,” Ezra finished in unison with the voice. “Macbeth?” 

The only Shakespeare play you ever read, said the voice. You performed it at primary school. You played a fine Ghost of Banquo, even if you didn’t get many lines. 

“How did you know that?” Ezra demanded. 

We all meet a dusty death, the voice went on, except for you and I. All our yesterdays have never led to anything but immortality. Have you noticed it yet? The way you don’t seem to age anymore? 

Ezra found his mind replaying Barachiel’s words: You age each day as a man does, but each time you go back to the previous day, it resets your clock. You could go on forever, you know, living this way.

I could become an immortal, Ezra finished to himself. An angel. Or… He gazed at the sleeper. Or something else. 

“Why are you telling me this?” Ezra asked, still studying the figure on the bier. Aside from the rise and fall of his chest, the man still didn’t move. “And why aren’t you speaking with your lips?”

My enemies imprisoned me here, said the voice. I am doomed to slumber, though I’ve long ago transcended the petty cage of my skull. I can speak as I will, mind to mind. 

“Are you expecting me to free you, then?” 

A chuckle reverberated through Ezra’s head. Yes. Only you can do it. 

“Why me?”

Haven’t you guessed yet? Surely you have an inkling. 

Ezra did. He didn’t want to, but damn it all, he did. He felt weak. The ground seemed to shift beneath his feet, and he had to steady himself against the wall. 

He wondered if the angels had known it, or if they’d truly believed there was no link between Ezra Hawes and the dreaded Luxfero. Surely they couldn’t have known. They would never have sent him on this course if they had. 

He drew closer to the sleeper, and now he could see the figure’s features more clearly. Features that, with a sudden intake of breath and a rapid increase in his pulse, Ezra knew with a certainty he’d seen before. 

Features he saw in the mirror every day. 

He’d known it now for some time, even if he’d been too concerned with the mission at home to dwell on the seed of truth sprouting within his mind. The angels had hinted, however ignorantly, at the immortality that awaited him if he pursued this current course. 

I was as you are now, long ago, said the voice. Just a man. But then I lived several millennia of living backward one day at a time, one universe at a time. Sometimes I lived whole lifetimes in one universe before I died and discovered the next one, taking all I’d learned. Over time I grew weary of merely experiencing the universes… and I decided to conquer them instead. By now, I’d attracted the attention of dark powers I’d never known existed, and I gained abilities I had never dreamed of. I became something far more than I once was. As you will, one day.

“No,” Ezra breathed. “This is madness. What about Lucy? What about Amelia?” 

What about them? the voice asked dismissively. 

“This is all because of them,” Ezra said, heat rising in his voice. “I’ve died every death so I can go home to my universe. So I can see my wife and child again.”

The angels lied to you. 

A knot tightened in Ezra’s chest. “What do you mean?”

They told you that if you found the tomb, you’d see Amelia and Lucy again? 

“Yes—you know they did—”

Listen to me, Ezra Hawes. The angels will do anything to destroy me. They don’t care about you. They lied. All of it. They are no masters of life or death. They cannot bring back your loved ones.

“But Lucy—”

Is already dead. As dead as her mother.

Ezra’s head, which had been bowed to study the sleeper, snapped up. “What?”

A German zeppelin bombed the girls’ home in London where she was staying, months before you got the letter about Amelia. None survived.

The knot turned to ice. “No,” Ezra barked at the sleeper. “That can’t be true. After all I’ve done—It can’t be! Lucy, at least, has to be alive!”

She’s alive in … some worlds.

“But those Lucys aren’t my Lucy,” Ezra insisted. “They’re like her, but they’re strangers. My Lucy—”

Is dead. Or—what day is it?—she will be in a few days. And since you have no way of getting back to the universe you came from without killing me, there’s little you can do to save her. 

Ezra’s heart plunged like a falling star. “How do I know you’re telling the truth?”

Why would I lie to myself?

And there it was. The truth, laid bare. Ezra flinched away from that truth, unable to turn his face toward it, but he could not deny it. 

“So you are me.” He knew it, but he needed to hear it out loud. 

Several thousand years’ worth of existence in your future, yes. Trapped now for several more millennia in this tomb. I was great once. A conqueror of the multiverse. Until the people you work for trapped me. Now they have decided that it is no longer enough for me to slumber beneath the earth. They wish me dead. But they cannot touch me themselves; it is part of what made this tomb impregnable: no mortal or angel can approach it… save the one it was meant to contain. 

“But Lucy—”

She’s dead, came the snarled reply. I told you. The zeppelin bombed the girls’ home. Next time you see your angelic friends, ask them. Tell them you’ve seen through their lies. They claim to fight for the side of good, and they’re no rubbish at deception, no matter how hard they try.  

“I will,” Ezra resolved, but he could do nothing about the razor-sharp intuition that he couldn’t shake, the intuition that confirmed this future Ezra’s words. 

Lucy couldn’t be dead. 

He forcibly changed the subject back to what the future Ezra clearly wanted to discuss. “No one can approach this tomb, you say. But there’s a loophole, isn’t there? They didn’t count on a future version of you—or a past version, whatever—”

Yes. 

“You said I was to free you. How?”

I made you what you are. I reached forward into the future and altered your temporal foothold, so to speak. With my power, it was no great feat, even trapped as I am, because you are me. You die and come back each day because of me. Because I empowered you to save me.

Ezra’s head was spinning, his mind tangling itself in knots.

Freeing me—it takes just a single touch from you. The system is not built to handle the same signature coming from two sources, and it will overload. I will be freed from suspended animation.

That sentence may have been German for all Ezra understood it, but he got the gist. “And then you’ll go your way, conquering? And me…?”

You will be free to go. And die again sometime. And again. Eventually, you will become as I am. You will be a conqueror, and someday you will live this conversation again, but from the perspective of the sleeper. 

Ezra considered that. He’d seen so much over the last few months—worlds beyond description, things he could never have imagined before the first time he’d died. He thought of all the possibilities he’d yet to see, all the wonders. All his for the taking.

He couldn’t deny the appeal. He imagined thousands—millions—flocking to his banner. Ezra Hawes wouldn’t be some mere infantryman. He would be great. A champion. A warrior.

A conqueror. 

And more importantly, this future Ezra had mentioned deals with dark beings. Perhaps the angels didn’t have the power over life and death, but perhaps others did. I gained abilities I had never dreamed of. Perhaps, if he went down this road, Ezra Hawes could get Amelia back. And Lucy, if she was truly dead…

Ezra’s hand went to the pistol at his hip, the tiny Walther. 

What will it be? Kill me or free me?

“If I free you, I’ll someday become all that you are. But if I kill you, I’ll be free of this … time-loop curse? I can go back to my world?” 

He didn’t expect Luxfero to tell him the truth, so he was surprised when the sleeper replied, Yes. My power will no longer hold you in this time loop. But that’s not what you wish, is it? You could go home, perhaps save Lucy from the zeppelin bombing, but then you would be forever bereft of dear Amelia. And you would die again, someday, a nobody. Or perhaps you’ll die in the trenches, another corpse left for the buzzards on nameless field in France. Infinite wasted potential.

Ezra’s fingers closed around the pistol’s grip.

Well? snapped the voice of his future self. This is the moment that defines you. This is the moment where you become me. I stood where you stood eons ago and made the choice you’re about to make. The right choice. Kill me, and you kill your future. Free me, Ezra Hawes, and you free yourself. 

Ezra thought of the little flat in Croydon again. Of Amelia’s ragtime. Of Lucy, pointing out the difference between Diplodocus and Apatosaurus in her library book. He thought of kisses, of lazy Sunday afternoon walks in the park with his two greatest loves. He thought of the touch of Amelia’s hand and the feeling of Lucy’s arms around his neck.

“What about Lucy and Amelia?” Ezra asked again. “In your past, did you just… move on?”

They don’t matter, said the voice. They never truly mattered. There are far greater things awaiting you, Ezra Hawes. Let me free, and you will live to bed the most beautiful women in the multiverse, father a hundred children. What do one woman and one child matter? It was never about them.

“It was always about them,” Ezra said. 

He drew his pistol and pressed it to his own head. 

Not the sleeper’s head—his head. His present self. 

What are you doing, you fool? future Ezra demanded. You’ll just come back again, yesterday. We’ll have this same conversation again. 

“Not if I don’t come back,” said Ezra. “You’ll never exist, will you?”

How? You always come back.

“We’ll see,” said Ezra, and he pulled the trigger. 

XII.

Time and date unknown

#

You lied to me.

He was back in that in-between place he’d visited so many times, confronted by the same endless darkness. And yet he knew the angels would be there waiting. They would want to hear what he had to say. 

“Did you kill him?” Uriel asked.

No, said Ezra. 

From the void there came only an expectant silence. 

But I didn’t free him. I know who he is. What he is. I won’t become him. Now he’ll never exist, will he? 

Unseen, cautious triumph crackled through the emptiness. 

That’s what you wanted me to do all along, isn’t it? You never needed me to kill him. You just wanted me to see him for who he truly was, then choose a different path. He’s my future—but not the one I chose. After I chose in my present not to become him, Luxfero the conqueror will never exist. 

“That will do the trick,” said Barachiel, sounding smug. “Your future, the world’s past—it will change forever.”

Why tell me to go back and kill him, then? Why not just tell me what I would become and let me change the course of my life?

“Because you might have been tempted to follow through with that course. To become what Luxfero became. We couldn’t have that, of course. We chose a safer directive, something you could do without knowing who he truly was: to have you kill him.

So you weren’t going to tell me who he was?

Another silence, and Ezra imagined the angels shrugging.

“To ensure you followed through, we needed to provide adequate motivation,” said Barachiel. “Your family was the strongest motivation there was. Though in hindsight, it seems that was unnecessary. You made the right choice on your own.”

But you lied. About Amelia and Lucy. You couldn’t bring back my wife. And my daughter…

“Oh—yes, that—” Barachiel said awkwardly. “Well, you must know—”

“We didn’t want to lie,” said Uriel. “But you understand—”

You had to, Ezra said sourly. So Lucy… she’s truly dead?

The ensuing pause filled the endless void. 

Ezra had no physical form, but still the grief threatened to crush all that he was, soul and mind and whatever remained of his body. 

“You understand we did what we had to, don’t you?” asked Barachiel. “One lie is a small price to pay to secure a hundred universes.”  

“You achieved what we wanted,” said Uriel. “What’s best for us all.”

Ezra felt cold all over. But after a few moments the cold grief crystallized. It was still there, an ache he could never escape, but now it hardened into firm resolution. He gathered his consciousness together again, feeling his mind slipping into the oblivion that surrounded him. I suppose this is goodbye, then. We won’t meet again.

“We expect not.”

So now what? Because I choose not to become him, he will never be, and I shed the ability to come back every time I die, right? I’ll be free?

“Correct. Go home. This time, with him dead and his power over you gone, the tether to your own world has been restored. You will return home, months before you would have been executed. You have a chance to make other choices.”

In the vast, silent void, Ezra considered that. He thought of the world he’d left behind, the world where Amelia and Lucy were dead. 

Can I ask you a question? Ezra asked. Not that I expect you to tell the truth.

“Of course,” said Barachiel. 

You said you don’t know what’s beyond this place. Were you lying about that, too? Is there a true afterlife? Or is there nothing?

“We do not know,” said Uriel.

“We have yet to pass beyond those gates,” said Barachiel.

You said I would always have a choice. To go back, or to pass beyond. I know what I have to do. 

“You have a life waiting for you,” said Barachiel, sounding somehow annoyed. “Did you not hear me? With the future version of yourself dead, you will return to your own world. Long before you were ever executed. You’ll have a life to live.”

Is it truly a life, Ezra asked, if they’re not with me? I don’t know what lies ahead of me, but I know what lies behind, and it’s hardly a life at all. I choose the unknown. 

“So be it,” said Uriel, and that was the last either angel ever said to him. 

This time, when oblivion tugged on his consciousness, Ezra let it take him. As the fibers of his consciousness unraveled, he felt a final satisfaction drifting through whatever was left of him. He chose the only one place where Amelia and Lucy might still exist. 

I’m coming. 

And then Ezra Hawes was no more.