Back to the Future (9 page)

Several hours later, the object struck the barn.

Sherman, curled up in his bed reading the latest issue of
Tales From Space
comics, saw the rapidly moving vehicle first. He knew immediately by the shape and flashing lights that this was no ordinary earth machine. True, he had just finished reading a story entitled “Space Zombies from Pluto,” which dealt with aliens in radiation suits who enslaved human females and traveled around in a modernistic car with gull-wing doors. That may have made him more susceptible than usual, but Sherman was extraterrestrial all the time.

Space was his hobby and now his hobby seemed to be coming true. Grabbing the comic book, he rushed down the stairs.

His mother, father and sister were already at the back door, staring out toward the barn. In the dim light, they could see where the roof had caved in, but that wasn’t the most frightening thing. The stainless steel DeLorean faced them head-on, headlight beams shining through the dust and drifting straw fragments. With its wheels buried in the debris and amber hazard lights blinking, it looked exactly like the flying saucers they had been hearing about for nearly ten years.

“What is it, Pa?” Mrs. Peabody asked.

“Looks like an airplane…without wings,” Peabody said cautiously.

“Airplane?” Sherman whispered. “It’s a flying saucer, Pa. From outer space!”

The four Peabodys looked at each other, awe-stricken. Although it was illogical, they walked slowly toward the object. In Pa Peabody’s hand was a baseball bat, which he had grabbed from the basement closet moments after the vehicle plowed into the barn. Led by him, the rest of the family crossed the lawn and crusher-run driveway to the barn. A closer view provided no new clues as to the identity of their visitor.

Finally Sherman spoke. “In the movies and comics,” he said, “Earth people always try to act peacefully to the aliens. But it doesn’t usually work.”

“Quiet,” Peabody ordered.

His eyes were fixed on the gull-wing door, which had opened a crack and was starting to move upward. The family watched expectantly, uneasily, with expressions of curiosity mixed with fear.

“Something’s coming out,” Martha whispered.

“Don’t panic,” Sherman warned, noticing her feet which were doing a little dance. “Sudden movements may set them off.”

Inside the stalled DeLorean, Marty was unaware that he was being watched. He had his own problems, chief among them being a total disorientation as to his whereabouts. Had he blacked out during the chase? If so, how had he managed to get from the mall parking lot into a bam that was obviously nowhere near Hill Valley? If he had not blacked out, what had happened to the guard rail? Where were the Libyans? Was some weapon pointed at him this very moment, about to finish him off?

He shook his head. Despite the risks, it seemed best to go outside and see where the devil he was.

Reaching for the handle, he finally discovered how to open the strange door and pushed his way out. A light rain of dust fell on the shoulders and hood of his radiation suit as his upper body started to move out of the car.

“It’s an alien,” Sherman Peabody whispered.

Indeed, the emerging figure seemed to be just that. Pa Peabody stared at it, transfixed, the baseball bat still in his hands. Using such a flimsy weapon against an alien was out of the question. Logic and morality both dictated that, but his primary motivation was fear. Poor Pa Peabody’s mind had turned to jelly and all he could think of was self-preservation.

“Run, children!” he yelled. “Run for your lives!”

He then proceeded to show them exactly what he meant, streaking for the safety of the house. He had remembered the shotgun which he kept hidden under the bed in case he discovered a burglar in the middle of the night. This emergency qualified as sufficiently life-threatening for it to be used.

Sherman, seeing his father disappear into the house, realized that as the temporary male leader on the premises, it was up to him to find a way of preventing disaster. Having read up on human behavior when confronted by space creatures, he was not sanguine about being able to deal with the alien, either via force or kindness. In the comics and movies, neither method seemed to pay off very well. He remembered most poignantly the scene in
War of the Worlds
when the clergyman walked gently toward the Martian space vehicle, only to be zapped into nothingness for his troubles.

Nevertheless, a quick evaluation of the situation suggested strongly that the humane approach rather than the belligerent one would be better. He possessed no weapon with which to threaten or attack the alien; fear probably showed in his eyes, if not on his entire face. Thus it seemed preferable to throw himself on the creature’s mercy.

He extended his hand gingerly. “Peace,” he murmured.

The alien was nearly all the way out of the space vehicle now. It was a biped, with arms and general body lines that resembled man’s configurations. Sherman wondered what it looked like under the hood, whether it could utter sounds that were at all comprehensible.

“Hey,” the alien said in perfect English. “Hello. Where am I?”

It took several steps toward them. Sherman, Martha, and his mother slowly retreated before it.

“Excuse me,” the creature said. “Who are you? Where am I? Is this Hill Valley?”

Pa Peabody’s footsteps sounded on the porch steps. Still clad in his red flannel underwear, he raced toward them with the shotgun held at near shoulder height.

Sherman, regarding the creature closely, made an instant decision based on analysis of alien behavior in comic books and movies. “Shoot it, Pa!” he yelled. “It’s already mutated into human form! Shoot it!”

Although nervous and unsteady, Pa raised the weapon to his shoulder and took aim.

Marty, his vision blocked by the hood’s limited field, walked toward the three people directly ahead of him, oblivious to Pa Peabody. As he moved forward, he reached up to take off the hood.

“Look out, Pa!” Sherman shouted. “He’s going for something!”

“Take this, you mutated son of a bitch!” Pa yelled, squeezing the trigger of the shotgun.

A spray of buckshot whizzed past Marty’s ear, cracking into the barn wall behind him.

Undeterred but still quite nervous, Pa squeezed off a second shot. It kicked up dirt in front of the creature, missing clearly, but caused it to turn and race back into the barn.

Comforted by the fact that the alien experienced fear, Pa broke the shotgun and started reloading. Moving cautiously forward, he looked into the barn.

“Careful, Pa,” Sherman warned. “Don’t get too close or he’ll take over your brain.”

“What the hell are you talking about, boy?”

Sherman still had the comic book in his hand, opened to the story about space zombies from Pluto. “It’s all in here, Pa,” he said. “Read it.”

“Who’s got time for reading now?” his father asked, not without logic.

Meanwhile, Marty had raced back to the DeLorean and hurled himself inside.

“Damn crazy farmer!” he gasped, reaching for the starter. The engine roared to life and he kicked the car backward, not bothering to see if anyone was behind him. Straw flew everywhere, but he could see well enough to spin around and head out through the barn door. As he did so, the four people scattered before him like bowling pins. He had too much speed, however, and was unable to swerve and avoid hitting the white picket fence surrounding two newly planted pine trees. The DeLorean tore through one of the pines before Marty guided it onto the dirt access road.

“You space bastard!” Pa Peabody yelled after him. “You killed one of my pines!”

Jerking the shotgun to his shoulder, he squeezed off both barrels at the departing vehicle. The shots went wide, striking the Peabody mailbox and blowing it to shreds.

“Whew!” Marty breathed, looking back at the tiny figures, one of whom was still waving an angry fist.

He had survived but still had no idea where he was. At least the people spoke English…but there was something about their clothes that seemed different. Replaying the scene in his mind, Marty concentrated on their outfits. The women’s dresses looked old-fashioned. Perhaps they were very old hand-me-downs. Then there were the hair styles. Something seemed different about them, too, but Marty couldn’t say exactly what it was. He had seen these people before—or types just like them. They seemed to be out of an old black-and-white movie.

“It’s probably my imagination,” he mused, realizing that he was frightened and disoriented. His brush with the Libyans had upset him more than he cared to admit.

Cruising along the dirt road, he made a conscious effort to regain his composure. “O.K., Marty, get ahold of yourself,” he said aloud. “There’s gotta be an explanation for this. It’s probably all a dream, one very intense dream. It’s all gonna resolve itself…”

As he rounded a corner, his headlights fell on an object that caused his jaw to drop.

“Holy shit!” he whispered.

Bringing the DeLorean to a sharp, almost spinning, halt, he backed up so that the headlights would fall on the house again. Blinking, he studied it, trying to find one aspect that was different, one minor detail that would restore his sanity.

But the house was the same. It was his house…the home presently occupied by the McFly family. It was sitting out in the middle of nowhere and it looked newer than Marty had ever seen it, but it was definitely the identical structure.

The pieces of the puzzle slowly formed themselves into a cohesive picture. In front of his house was a sign that read
MODEL HOME
…pennants flapped limply in the soft night breeze…and next to the building was a large sign with an artist’s rendering of an idyllic home nestled between magnificent oak trees with a typical American family of four standing next to a Cadillac…A very old shiny Cadillac…Below the picture, in huge block letters, was the promise of a dream fulfilled:
LIVE IN THE HOME OF TOMORROW…TODAY! LYON ESTATES. SCHEDULED COMPLETION, THIS WINTER
.

“It’s my house, only brand new,” Marty whispered.

Sitting in the middle of the dark countryside, he slowly glanced down at the dashboard of the DeLorean.

The
DESTINATION TIME
read 11-5-1955.

The
PRESENT TIME
read 11-5-1955.

“Nineteen fifty-five!” he shouted. “I can’t believe it!”

But the evidence was all around him in addition to being on the dashboard. This was how the neighborhood must have looked while it was under construction. The roll of the land was the same and in the background were several familiar objects. Somehow he had entered a world that would not hear of him for another thirteen years.

“What a trip…” he murmured.

His eyes fell on the dashboard readouts once again. One in particular caught his eye. It was located directly below the Plutonium Chamber, a flashing light that blinked
EMPTY
over and over.

Shifting into gear and moving ahead, Marty realized that did not mean he was unable to move. It simply meant—

“Good God!” he said. “What
does
that mean? That I won’t be able to go back?”

Having nowhere else to go, he backed into the driveway of his new home and sat, thinking, for quite some time. Idly, out of habit, he turned on the radio. Although it was nearly morning, there were still a few stations on the air, but they were all playing absolutely terrible music. One featured someone named Eddie Fisher singing the songs of Jerome Kern, another played numbers by Mitch Miller’s orchestra and a bland singer named Guy Mitchell, and the announcers were all so tired-sounding.

“Is this what it was like?” Marty, aced, turning the dial.

He stopped at a newscast. “President Eisenhower predicted that 1955 would see an increase in housing starts,” the man intoned.

“Eisenhower?” Marty repeated. “Yeah, sure. We studied him in history. A nice enough guy who didn’t do much except give Nixon his chance.”

The news continued, much of it sounding exactly like news of 1985. “Big Four envoys gave up on disarmament talks,” the announcer said. “The Russians rejected a United States plan that would have banned nuclear weapons…Officials at the First Smog Conference in Los Angeles said that smog may keep industry away from cities affected by this form of air pollution…Census watchers, meanwhile, predict that Los Angeles will be the second largest metropolitan area in the United States in a few years, passing Chicago…In the troubled Middle East, the United States laid down new rules to Egypt and Israel…”

As the newscast continued, there were many strange-sounding items and some that were slightly familiar. “In college football, quarterback John Brodie of Stanford continued to lead…” (The same middle-aged gentleman who occasionally turns up as color man on football broadcasts?) “U.C.L.A.’s ace placekicker Jim Decker…” (Jim Who?) “Texas Christian’s sensational quarterback Jim Swink…” (Swink? Is he kidding?)

Marty turned up the radio, leaned back against the DeLorean’s plush interior. He rather enjoyed this trip through his own personal time tunnel. Now the announcer was reading a few items dealing with gossip and entertainment. “Actress Joan Crawford and new husband, soft-drink executive Alfred Steele, celebrated their first half-year of marriage…Jack Webb and actress-wife Dorothy Towne are reportedly having marital troubles…Back after this word from Northwest Ford…”

A different announcer launched into a sales pitch that Marty found not only irresistible but humorous. “You can get a new Ford pickup truck for just $1454,” he said. “That’s right—$1454 for a 1956 Ford. That’s because we deal in volume…”

Recognizing the outline of a police cruiser, Marty quickly killed the lights and turned off the radio. It would not do, of course, for him to be picked up by the police. Even forgetting the fact that he had just arrived from a different time period, he would have enormous difficulty explaining the DeLorean, plus he did not have the necessary registration papers for it or a 1955 driver’s license. He wondered what the officers would say if he showed them his 1985 license!

“Low profile,” he murmured. “That’s the best thing to keep for right now.”