Back to the Future (20 page)

George McFly stood to one side, transfixed with fear and awe as the scene unfolded. Fortunately, no one was looking at him or they would have seen his eyes mist as if he was about to burst into tears.

Damn, he thought, it’s gone wrong again. Even with help from outer space, I’m a dud.

Marty raced out of the soda shop, hesitated a moment at the corner of 2nd and Main, then turned to his left and started running as fast as his legs would carry him. Biff and his three lieutenants followed. Biff was slow but two of the others were faster than Marty and were rapidly closing the distance between pursued and pursuers.

Damn these new shoes, Marty thought, wincing with nearly every step as the backs chewed into his heels. Whirling to his right, he doubled back toward the town square. The maneuver gained him a step or two but he knew it was only a matter of time before the two fast boys caught him. Passing again in front of the soda shop, he saw that most of the kids had come outside on the sidewalk and were yelling encouragement to him. He would gladly have traded all that moral support for a couple of tough friends, but none seemed in the offing.

He had almost resigned himself to being caught when one of the youngsters on scooters turned off Hill Street in a path that paralleled his.

“Eureka!” Marty shouted.

Grabbing the scooter and literally yanking it out from under the kid, Marty lashed out with his feet, kicking the orange crate loose so that what remained was a crude homemade skateboard.

“Sorry, kid!” he yelled over his shoulder as he hopped onto it. “I’ll make it up to you later.”

He gave himself a kick just as hostile hands grabbed for his neck and missed. A second later, he was free, moving down the sidewalk at twice the speed of his pursuers.

“Wow! Look at him go!” yelled the kid whose scooter had been appropriated and instantly transformed into a lighter, faster vehicle.

“What is that thing?” another kid shouted, watching Marty speed away.

After a half block of falling rapidly behind their prey, Biff’s pals turned and shrugged, looking to Biff for a new tack.

“Get the car!” Biff ordered.

The four hot-footed it over to Biff’s convertible, which was parked nearby. A few seconds later, they roared off after Marty, burning rubber on the town square and disappearing in a cloud of black smoke.

Two blocks away, Marty looked back over his shoulder.

The convertible was closing in on him. Indeed, it was just about to hit him when he suddenly cut a sharp turn directly in front of it and started heading in the opposite direction. “Goddamn!” Biff shouted, hitting the brakes and twisting the car into a U-turn.

“Look at that!” Skinhead yelled.

Behind them, Marty had grabbed on to the back of a passing car and was now moving away from them at better than forty miles an hour. The driver of the car, who didn’t see the crouching Marty, shook his head with puzzlement as he passed the corner soda shop. There, at least twenty kids were standing on the sidewalk, applauding wildly and cheering as he passed.

“You’d think I just won a race or something,” the driver muttered.

Lorraine, who had seen all the action except that at the far end of the street, leaped up and down as Marty zoomed past, the skates sending sparks behind him.

“He’s an absolute dream!” she shouted to her two girlfriends.

Ten seconds later, Biff’s convertible roared past. Most of the kids booed and hissed the four tight-lipped villains who stared ahead with deadly intent.

The chase made a right turn as the driver of the host car headed toward the courthouse. Biff gained ground swiftly on the unwary driver, closing the distance until the bumper of his car was nearly touching Marty’s buttocks. As the host car passed the courthouse near Statler’s Studebaker dealership, Marty released his grip and hung a sharp right. Biff, going too fast, overshot the intersection. Cursing, he jammed on the brakes, backed up, and then roared down the sidewalk in front of the courthouse after Marty. Bewildered and terrified pedestrians spun or dived out of the way, scurrying for the safety of the concrete steps or trying to hide behind the World War I cannons. Oblivious to all objects in his path except Marty, Biff roared forward, bringing terror even to the eyes of his own passengers.

Marty found too late that he had underestimated Biff’s maniacal determination. At the end of the intersection, he had time only to see that Biff was right behind him, do a quick 180 on his board and—

Suddenly, thrown off balance and about to fall, he reached out—and found himself holding on to the front end of Biff’s car.

“Now we got the son of a bitch!” Biff shouted. “If he holds on, he’s dead, and if he lets go, he’s dead!”

Smiling sadistically, he pushed Marty down Hill Street, past Gaynor’s Hideaway, where customers had come outside, some still holding their drinks, to view the action. Dead ahead was the T of the intersection and Main Street, with the display window of Hal’s Bike Shop directly in their path. Biff decided to drive Marty right through the glass rather than fool with him any longer. If worse came to worst, he would simply tell the judge that his brakes had failed.

Looking back through the windshield at the malevolent Biff, Marty could only gulp. Their speed was such that he couldn’t veer to one side without being hit by Biff’s fender as he did so. Weaving back and forth on his skateboard, Marty maintained his grip while searching for a way out. Usually there was at least one cop car hanging around Town Square but as luck would have it, this was the day when the men in blue were totally absent. A quick vision of his tombstone flashed before his eyes as Biff drove him inexorably backward. It read:
MARTIN MCFLY—BORN 1968—DIED 1955
.

Now, as they were about to pass a large manure truck in the same traffic lane, new devilment was added. Match had picked up a beer bottle and was about to throw it at Marty’s head.

“Got to get outa here!” he cried.

With that, he leaped up, sending the skateboard forward, under the car, and landed on Biff’s hood. With no loss of motion, he bounded over the heads of the four open-mouthed boys, onto the rear deck and off the car, just in time to catch the skateboard as it passed underneath.

“Holy—” Biff wheezed.

So stunned were the four pursuers that all turned in their seats to stare at Marty.

A split second later, they felt a crash and were hurled upward as the car roared into the back of the manure truck. Hanging in the air a moment, the convertible tilted forward, pitching Biff and his cohorts head first into the icky brown mass.

Across the square, from the corner soda shop, cheers and applause could be heard. To the rear also, from the newly involved customers from Gaynor’s, shouts and handclapping added to the furor. Like a Fourth of July demonstration, the chase had brought all activity in beautiful downtown Hill Valley to an utter standstill.

“He’s wonderful!” Lorraine shouted hysterically. “Isn’t he just the most terrific thing you ever laid eyes on?” Her friends, impressed, nodded agreement.

George McFly, also watching, viewed the proceedings with mixed emotions. He was glad to see Biff and his pals end up in the manure pile, but he’d have given ten years of his life to have engineered the trick himself.

Marty, smiling in acknowledgment of the victory, looked around for the youngster whose scooter he had used.

“Thanks a lot, kid,” he said, returning the skateboard with a flourish. “I’m sorry I messed it up for you.”

“Are you kidding?” the youngster laughed. “Thanks a lot!”

He immediately hopped on his new vehicle and began trying it out. As the crowd slowly started to disperse, it could be seen that the other youngster was in the process of removing the orange crate from his scooter so that he could have a skateboard like that of his friend.

Lorraine, her eyes fixed on Marty as he walked down Main Street away from the scene of the accident, had made up her mind.

If he won’t ask me, she thought, then I’ll just have to ask him.

Turning to Babs, she said: “Can I borrow your car?”

Babs hesitated. “You know it’s not mine,” she replied. “It belongs to my sister.”

“Well, it doesn’t matter. I’ll be careful.”

“What do you want it for?”

“Promise not to tell?”

Babs nodded.

“I want to trail Marty and see where he lives. He’s so secretive about himself.”

Babs giggled. Here was a mission she could understand. “I’ll drive you,” she said.

“All right. Let’s go before he gets out of sight.”

The two girls were headed for Babs’ car when Lorraine suddenly found herself face to face with George McFly once again.

“Hi,” he muttered.

The chocolate mustache was still there. Looking away, Lorraine said brusquely: “Hi. Sorry I have to go now, but I’m really busy.”

He fell in step beside her. “This’ll only take a second,” he began. “I was wondering if you’d like to go to the dance with me Saturday night.”

“The dance? Oh, yes—”

“Yes, you’ll go?” George leaped in.

“No. What I meant to say was…yes, that’s right, the dance is this Saturday. Time sure flies, doesn’t it?”

“Yeah…Well?”

“I’m sorry. I sort of made a prior commitment but I haven’t found out about it yet.”

“How can you do that?” George asked.

“It’s very complicated. But if I didn’t have this thing that may be coming up, maybe I’d go with you.”

George took her reply as a positive one, despite the network of disclaimers.

“Maybe if I…that is, we waited a day or two—”

“Oh, no,” Lorraine smiled. “That wouldn’t be fair to you.”

“Well, you’re the only girl I want to take,” he said, hating himself all the while for wearing his heart on his sleeve.

“Thank you,” Lorraine said. “Maybe next time.”

“The next dance isn’t until spring.”

“Well, if winter comes, can spring be far behind?” Lorraine cooed, having just learned the line in English class.

“Yeah, but it’s not even winter yet,” George protested weakly.

“Thanks very much for asking,” Lorraine said, leaping into Babs’ car. “I’ll see you later.”

“Yeah…”

“And wipe off your mouth.”

She drove off, leaving him standing on the sidewalk, his fingers exploring his upper lip.

The candles masquerading as lamp posts were the nicest touch, Doc Brown thought, moving several steps backwards to admire his work.

“Very good,” he murmured, smiling. “Maybe I’ll keep it up until Christmas and use it as a garden.”

He had spent most of the afternoon planning and constructing his own replica of Hill Valley’s Town Square. Set up on a large piece of plywood, it consisted primarily of a piece of wood with a watch strapped around it (the clock tower of the courthouse) with a “lightning rod” (a nail) attached to the top. A wire ran from the lightning rod down across the square and between two lamp posts across the street. Near the lamp posts sat a windup toy car with a small wire sticking straight up from the back. To the wire was attached a hook.

Consulting his worksheet which contained lines of statistics and computations, Doc Brown nodded. He was sure it would work.

“Good,” he said as Marty entered. “Now I can explain this to you. How did you make out with the continuing saga of George and Lorraine?”

Marty sighed. “We got closer. That’s all I can say. Except that I had a little run-in with Biff Tannen and four of his goons. I came within an inch or two of being squashed to death.”

“Is that all?” Doc smiled. “So what was the final outcome of the run-in?”

“The four guys ended up in a pile of shit. I have to admit, I handled myself and them pretty well.”

“Of course, you have thirty years of advanced technology to draw from,” Doc Brown rejoined.

Marty snorted.

“Just pulling your leg,” Doc smiled. “Step over here and take a look at this.”

“Sure. What the hell is it?”

“It’s my own clever-as-hell method of getting you back to 1985.”

“Good. Tell me about it.”

Doc Brown explained the nomenclature of the setup and then launched into a description of how it was supposed to work. “You see, we put a lightning rod on the courthouse clock tower,” he said. ‘Then we run some industrial strength electrical cable from the lightning rod, across the street…Meanwhile, we’ve outfitted your car with a big hook directly connected with the flux capacitor…”

He took the toy car and wound it up.

“You’ll be in this,” he said. “Now, on a signal, you’ll take off down the street toward the cable, accelerating until you hit eighty-eight miles an hour…”

He released the toy car from one end of the model. It raced toward the strung wire. Picking up a stripped wire that was plugged into an AC outlet, he brought it toward the “lightning rod” nail.

“Then,” he continued, “lightning strikes, electrifying the cable, just in time to…”

With that, he touched the live wire to the nail. As the toy car’s antenna snagged the cable, sparks flew, the car caught fire and sailed off the table top. Striking the drapes nearby, it rolled down them, spreading flames as it went. In a split second, the cheap curtains were a mass of fire and smoke.

Doc Brown rushed to the far end of the room, grabbed a fire extinguisher and had the blaze under control in less than a minute.

“Well,” Marty said when it was all over, “I’m glad to know you figured it all out. Why don’t we just set fire to me now instead of going to all that trouble?”

“This is theoretical,” Doc Brown shrugged. “It’ll be different with a car you can control and a flux capacitor that directs the lightning into energy instead of letting it go loose, as this did. At least I hope that’s the way it turns out.”

“You’re instilling me with a lot of confidence, Doc,” Marty smiled grimly.

“Believe me, it should work.”

“The operative word there is ‘should.’”

“Well, how can I guarantee you this
will
work? It’s a scientific experiment, my boy—something that’s being tried for the first time. Nothing is one hundred percent foolproof. Take the simplest part of the plan here—your driving eighty-eight miles an hour through Town Square at just the right moment. Even that’s not guaranteed. Suppose an old lady steps off the curb at the wrong moment? Suppose there’s a cop car that decides to cut you off? Suppose that beautifully engineered car breaks down during the run? Suppose you miss the hook or the lightning strikes early or late? Suppose the newspapers got the time wrong? Suppose—”