9

Doc Brown finally found Little John at dusk. The great bear was sitting at the side of a lake, watching insects dance. A shovel lay at his side.

Doc parked the DeLorean in the grass and hopped out. "Little John, thank goodness! I've been avoiding royal troops all day; the forest is thick with them! We must warn the others!"

"There are no others." Little John did not turn away from the lake. "I buried him, Doc. I wasn't there in time to save him, but at least I showed up in time to…to pick up the body." He lowered his head into his hands and let out a mighty sob.

Doc felt his stomach clench. "Marty?"

"No, your friend is safe in gaol, as far as I know. But everyone else…" John turned his teary face to Doc at last. "Doc, everyone else is dead."

"Great Scott," mumbled Doc. He wandered to the DeLorean and steadied himself against it with hands outstretched, as if blind. Fumbling with his keys, Doc popped open the trunk. He pushed everything out of his brain – grief, panic, guilt – in a single-minded pursuit of one particular object. Wildly he shoved around the flotsam of the trunk: an old Popular Science magazine, Biff Tannen's Nehru jacket (why was that there? Doc fleetingly wondered), a bulging but oddly light duffel bag, a Twinkie, and a coil of copper wiring. At last, he found his flask.

"Tell me, friend Little John," he croaked. "Do you drink…booze?"

"And never again shall we see your face

But be my eyes yet dry

For I know that we will yonder meet

In that alehouse in the sky!"

Doc Brown and Little John finished their dirge and passed the flask back and forth again. They were now inside the car: Doc Brown behind the wheel, John stuffed into the shotgun seat. Both were rather drunk.

"Here's to you, Rob, you crazy son-of-a-gun," said John, tipping the flask and pouring the last few drops of whiskey onto the seat.

"You uncivilized ursus," hiccuped Doc. "This is a DeLorean!" They both chortled: the drunkard's laugh, wherein the laugh itself is both the source of hilarity and the response to it.

"Ah, Rob would've liked this," John said. "He'd want songs and laughter at his funeral. 'Course, I don't think he'd have expected it to be just me attending."

"It's not just you," said Doc solemnly. "I'm sure as word spreads, people all over the country side will be lifting their glasses to Robin Hood! To Robin Hood!" he repeated, trying unsuccessfully to coax more whiskey to fall from his flask.

"Yeah," said John. "To Robin Hood." His laughter had faded and his face fell back into melancholy. "I feel so darn guilty," he mumbled. "There's no reason why I should've survived today when everyone else fell."

"No reason," agreed Doc. "The hand of probability truly is as cold and merciless as zero degrees Kelvin."

"I just…I keep thinking about how they got the drop on us," John continued. "If only we had moved against the castle right away, we would have escaped most of those soldiers, and we knew about Sir Hiss' secret entrance…All wasted." He took off his green hat and blew his nose loudly. "Boy, I just wish we could do today all over again."

Doc Brown looked, even more than usual, like he had been struck by lightning. He gaped at John, then at the dashboard of the car, then back to John.

"Well, fuck me," he said. "What am I, an imbecile? Here I am, sitting in my own damn TIME MACHINE, wishing today had gone better."

Maniacally, he jumped out of the car, snatched a handful of leaves, and stuffed them into the Mr. Fusion power generator. He dove back in the car, twisted the key into the ignition, and stomped on the gas pedal.

"Whoa," said Little John as they accelerated. "You're driving this thing? Are you sure you can–"

"Little John, the thrill of temporal displacement and the pursuit of scholastic discovery are all the sobriety I need. Let me ask you this…what if we actually could do today over?"

"What?"

"As soon as this baby reaches eighty-eight miles per hour, we'll generate a flux field that will take us back to–" (he punched in some numbers) "this morning!"

"What?"

"You see, while I was standing on a toilet, I designed a flux capacitor that could–"

"What?" said Little John.

"Never mind," sighed Doc. "All you need to know is that this is a magic chariot that will take us backwards in time."

"Okay," said Little John.

"We'll get a second chance to save Robin Hood, save the Merry Men, rescue Marty and bring down that scurvy Prince John!"

"Yyyyeah!" said Little John.

Over the grassy hills and dales they drove, swerving to avoid saplings, trying to gain momentum in uncertain terrain. Finally, Doc lost his temper. "Oh, what the hell," he snapped, and he cranked the wheel, taking the DeLorean onto a rocky ramp.

"Doc, you don't want to go down this path," yelled Little John. "There's a huge drop-off!"

"I'm counting on it," said Doc Brown, as they reached the edge of the precipice. The car launched off the cliff and plummeted towards the rocks below. Doc and Little John screamed as the car fell faster and faster.

Ten feet from the bottom, the DeLorean finally reached eighty-eight miles per hour, and disappeared with a flash of lightning.