The wind was picking up.
Marty hung onto the pennant rope as Doc flew the DeLorean a safe distance away from Biff - even if the burly teenager was currently covered by manure, neither one of them wanted to take any chances. But the increasing gusts of wind were blowing the rope back and forth in ever bigger and more dangerous arcs. There was no way Marty could call Doc on the walkie-talkie, either - he had to use all his strength just to hang on.
But Doc must have seen Marty’s problem, too, about the time the Lyons Estate billboard came back into sight. He brought the DeLorean down low enough for Marty to jump from the rope - and Marty decided he’d better do just that. The hoverboard helped to break his fall, anyway. Marty put his free foot on the ground and slipped his other foot out of the hoverboard strap. He looked up at the DeLorean as a bolt of lightning streaked across the sky.
That’s right! In all the excitement, Marty had almost forgotten - this was the night of the big lightning storm - the same night Doc had last sent him back to the future!
The wind was nearing gale force. Marty could see the DeLorean rock overhead, buffeted by the turbulence.
He pulled out his walkie-talkie:
‘Yo, Doc! Is everything all right - over?’
He saw Doc slam the car door firmly shut overhead, with the pennant cord still hanging down. There was a burst of static on the radio.
‘Ten-four, Marty,’ Doc answered on the walkie-talkie. ‘But it’s pretty miserable flying weather - much too turbulent to make a landing from this direction. I’ll have to circle around and make a long approach from the south.’
There was another burst of static as lightning streaked the sky.
‘Have you got the book?’ Doc asked.
Marty could still feel the Sports Almanac inside his jacket.
‘Check, Doc!’ he called back.
Another burst of static, then Doc’s response:
‘Burn it!’
Burn it? Wasn’t Doc overreacting a little? Why burn a perfectly good key to the future? But then Marty realised that Doc was right - it was because this book was a perfectly good key to the future that it had to be burned! As long as this book existed where it shouldn’t be, there was always a chance that Biff, or somebody even worse, could get hold of it, and change the future back into something like that terrible version of 1985 they had so recently escaped.
So he had to burn it, but in this wind? Marty decided he’d better go over and use the billboard as protection against the storm. He could feel a match-book in his pocket. He pulled it out and looked at it. It was the same black and white book he’d picked up when he was back in 1985 - the bad 1985.
He looked at the matchbook in his hand, and the bold black letters on white:
BIFF’S PLEASURE PARADISE
So he was going to burn up the sports almanac with a matchbook advertising the business empire that very same almanac had made possible? Marty liked that. There was a certain justice there.
He struck a match, and held the flame under one corner of the sports almanac. The paper caught right away, and a moment later, the book was in flames. Marty let the burning book drop as he glanced at the matchbook in his other hand.
The lettering on the matchbook had changed. It now read:
BIFF’S AUTO DETAILING
Biff’s Auto Detailing? But that was what Biff had done in 1985 - that is, the real 1985, the 1985 Marty had come from when this whole thing started!
Did that mean other things had changed, too?
Marty reached into his back pants pocket, and pulled out the folded piece of newspaper he had ripped out of that bound library volume.
No. The smile left Marty’s face. Maybe it wasn’t as simple as that. There was the headline, still:
GEORGE McFLY MURDERED
But, as Marty stared at the page, the headline changed.
GEORGE McFLY HONOURED