TimeRiders Page 18

  2001, New York

  ‘Sal will be all right out there, won’t she?’ asked Maddy.

  Foster was scrolling through their history database. ‘She’ll be just fine.’

  They’d found her a plain dark-blue T-shirt and grey jeans. They belonged to a member of the previous team and were large on her, almost swamped her. But she stood out far less than she did wearing her favourite emo clothes.

  ‘No one will notice a little girl,’ he added. ‘She’s just a harmless child.’

  Maddy shuddered. ‘It looks so grim, so grey and ordered out there.’

  She had stepped out with Sal briefly to get a glimpse of this alternate New York. The city looked tidy and drab. The only colour amid the uniformly monotone towers was the stabs of bright red from unfurled banners and pennants that dotted the city skyline.

  Foster nodded. ‘It is grim. But, for an innocent child just walking around, perhaps walking home from school or an errand to a shop, it’s probably a great deal safer right now than it would be otherwise.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  He looked up from the screens. ‘I don’t imagine they have a crime problem, hmm? This is a fascist state. I think it’s a safe bet that muggers don’t get away with a slapped wrist and a behaviour order in this version of New York.’

  Maddy nodded. ‘I guess not.’

  ‘Anyway, back to business,’ he said. ‘I suggest we pick a return window within the vicinity of the White House, not too far away but safely beyond any security perimeter. We need to see whether they have a map of Washington in this new Nazi version. The city may be different, sections rebuilt.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘So that’s the where. We need to now consider the when. I have a suggestion for that. We set it for the last possible time for their mission. Bob’s maximum mission durati–’

  Maddy felt it. Light-headed, as if she was losing her balance.

  The screens went blank and a moment later the fizzing strip light above them winked out, leaving them in pitch black.

  ‘What the –?’

  ‘That was a time shift.’ Foster’s voice emerged from the dark beside her. ‘A big one. I felt it as well.’

  ‘We’ve lost power,’ whispered Maddy. ‘That’s not good, is it?’

  ‘It means that whatever the world is like outside our field bubble, we’re no longer able to tap electricity from it.’ Foster balled his fists with frustration. ‘In fact, the field generator’s down as well. That means there’s no forty-eight-hour flip-back. We’re well and truly stuck in this world’s timeline… whatever it is.’

  ‘I’m not sure I like the sound of that.’

  ‘We should take a look,’ he said quietly.

  She heard his chair scrape on the concrete. ‘Come on.’

  She stood up, her hands spread out in front of her.

  ‘This way.’

  She followed his voice across the floor.

  ‘Keep coming.’

  A moment later her fingers brushed the crumbling brick wall.

  Foster cursed under his breath. ‘I hate winching this wretched thing up.’

  ‘I’ll give you a hand,’ said Maddy. She felt her way along the wall until her fingers brushed the winch box. She found a space on the handle beside Foster’s frail old hand.

  ‘Let’s get to it, then,’ he said quietly.

  They pulled on the handle and it creaked round. The shutter door began to crank up slowly and noisily.

  A faint afternoon light eased into the room, pushing back the absolute darkness behind them.

  ‘Looks like another grey day in Manhattan,’ laughed Maddy skittishly.

  The shutter inched up until it was waist height.

  ‘That’ll do, Madelaine,’ said Foster. ‘Duck down, will you, and take a look?’

  She nodded. ‘Sure.’

  She stooped down and peered outside. The backstreet was littered with rubble and twisted spars of rusted metal that looked like they had tumbled down from the bridge above many, many years ago. A tangle of coarse dry weeds emerged through it all and laid claim to the ground, nature clawing its way back.

  Maddy slid under the shutter and stood up on the other side.

  ‘What do you see?’

  She glanced up at the bridge above them, the one that had majestically crossed the Hudson River only moments ago. It was now little more than a creaking ruined web of rusted metal stretching across the river. In the distance the tall slab-like buildings of the Nazi-Manhattan she’d observed a short while ago as she’d let Sal out now looked like the crumbling stubs of rotten teeth. Bare skeletons of iron sprang from collapsed ruins across the river. The sun hung low and heavy like a bloodshot eye peeking through scudding brown clouds that looked threatening and toxic.

  New York was utterly dead. An apocalyptic wasteland.

  Something dreadful had happened here. It had happened decades ago from the look of the sparse and withered plant life that emerged here and there among the crumbling ruins.

  ‘My God, Foster… it’s… it’s the end of the world,’ she said, hearing her own voice catch, falter and die in her throat.

  The end of the world.

  CHAPTER 50

  2001, New York

  Sal was afraid. Very afraid.

  She looked up at the dark, silent, blasted structures around her. Tall ruins that creaked and groaned while skeins of dust chased like fleeting ghosts through them.

  Times Square was no longer Times Square – it was a tomb, the crumbling relic of a long-dead civilization. She couldn’t begin to imagine what must have happened. The breeze moaned through open windows, a haunting cry like some tormented spirit warning her to leave now and not delay a moment longer.

  She decided that was probably good advice and turned to head back to the field office, wondering for a moment if the bridge and the archway beneath it, their little backstreet… was actually still there.

  As she turned, she saw something move.

  The faintest flash of something pale flitting from one dark window to another.

  Just a bit of rubbish… that’s all.

  She picked her way quickly across the rubble, kicking stones that clacked and clattered noisily in the silence. Again she thought she spotted another flash of movement from within the darkened bowels of one of the buildings.

  A pale oval… with two dark holes that studied her intently for the briefest moment, then disappeared into the gloomy interior.

  I’m not alone.

  She picked up her pace, not wanting to run in case it encouraged whatever was inside to come out after her in pursuit, but too frightened to just walk.

  She hummed a tune. A stupid over-cheerful plastic Bollywood song from her mum’s childhood. One of those tunes you can never get out of your head once it gets in.

  She clattered her way across Times Square, her humming echoing off dark scorched and blasted walls. She was passing the rusting skeleton of a vehicle, on to what had once been Broadway, when a creature emerged several dozen yards in front of her.

  It stopped and stared at her with deep, dark, soulless eyes set in a pallid ash-grey bald head.

  She stopped humming.

  It reminded her of a creature she’d once seen in an old movie from way back, a movie with elves and dwarves and magical rings. One of the creatures she remembered in particular, though, was called Gollum. The thing standing in front of her reminded her of that. It stared at her, motionless. Its mouth finally opened to reveal bloody gums and one or two ragged teeth.

  And it screamed.

  The scream echoed off the tall ruins and was soon joined by other shrill voices joining in.

  Sal looked desperately around and saw other pale oval faces, each with dark eyes and toothless bleeding mouths, emerging from hundreds of windows, like termites stirring from a disturbed nest.

  And she screamed along with them.

  Foster joined Maddy outside, surveying the broken and blasted city. ‘Complete devastation,�
�� he whispered. ‘Something happened here a long time ago. And if it happened here, I can well imagine it’s happened everywhere.’ He looked at Maddy. ‘Perhaps some sort of a nuclear war?’

  She nodded. ‘Oh God, what is it with mankind? Never happy unless it’s blowing someone up.’

  ‘I’m afraid that’s us as a species.’

  Isn’t it just, she mused. Sometimes she felt disgusted to be human.

  ‘Sal’s out there,’ said Foster quietly.

  She looked at him. ‘She’ll be terrified. And she may have difficulty finding her way back. That’s a very different-looking landscape out there.’

  ‘I’ll just grab some things,’ he said, ducking back under the shutter.

  A few minutes later he emerged from beneath the shutter door with a couple of flashlights, a bottle of water and a shotgun in the crook of his arm.

  Her eyes widened at the sight of it. ‘You think we’re going to need it?’

  ‘Best to be prepared, eh?’

  She swallowed nervously then nodded. ‘OK. Let’s go find her.’

  CHAPTER 51

  2001, New York

  Sal was running as fast as she could amid the rubble and blocks of crumbling masonry, long ago collapsed across forgotten streets. She kept stumbling, losing her footing, barking her shins, scraping and cutting her hands.

  Behind her the creatures – there seemed to be dozens now – kept pace with her easily. There was surprising agility in those frail and pallid bodies. They were small like undernourished children, but with faces that were lined with age… or grief. They followed her, keeping a wary distance, not closing, not falling behind… just intensely curious.

  For now.

  She glanced up at the street ahead, little more than an undulating bed of shattered blocks of concrete and protruding spars of rusted metal. The frames of buildings either side were the only visual clue that this had once been a street.

  If this was Broadway… once, then she knew she needed to turn left at some point, left on to East 14th Street. That would take her east towards the river and the Williamsburg Bridge.

  If it’s still standing.

  Another glance over her shoulder and she saw one of them had closed the distance between them and was right behind her, a long pale hand reaching out ahead of it, its bald head cocked to one side, eyes curiously regarding her long black hair.

  ‘Oh God!’ she screamed. ‘Leave me alone!’

  She suddenly stopped dead in her tracks and spun round to face it.

  The creature drew up short of her, the others coming to a halt behind it. They fanned out either side, all of them studying her silently with eyes wide, a burning curiosity written on all of their faces.

  Sal reached down for a length of rusty metal piping. Lifting it up, flakes of rust crumbled away. She wasn’t entirely sure the thing wouldn’t crumble to dust the first time she swung it at something, but all the same it felt good in her hand.

  ‘Stay back!’ she snarled, her voice shrill and high.

  The creature closest to her stayed its distance, standing low, crouching almost like a primate. The silence was filled with her ragged breath and the mournful wind; she had time to look at it more closely.

  A pair of expressive eyes. Clearly a human. But it seemed such a pitiful-looking human. If she wasn’t so terrified, she could almost imagine feeling sorry for it.

  The creature nearest her took a careful, measured step forward, extending one hand towards her.

  ‘No! You stay back!’ she barked, brandishing the crumbling pipe.

  She heard the thing whine, a keening sound, like some pitiful dog behind bars in a rescue compound. The pale skin – stretched across lean arms and legs, stretched across ribs and a pelvic bone that protruded unpleasantly – was so ghostly white it was almost translucent. She could see the faint lines of violet arteries beneath. Its mouth, eyes and nose oozed a bloody mucus.

  The thing wanted desperately to come closer to her. The hand stretching further forward, wanting to make contact.

  ‘No! I’ll hit you!’ she screamed again.

  It cocked its head again. The almost completely toothless mouth opened and closed with a wet snapping sound.

  ‘Oh! Ahhh-iiittttt-oooooo,’ it uttered.

  It was attempting to mimic her.

  ‘You… you… you can speak?’ she managed in response.

  ‘Ooo… ooo… ooo-annng-zbikkkkk?’ it gargled.

  She noticed something in its face. Intelligence. Perhaps a long-faded memory stirring behind those milky boiled-fish eyes. This thing was human, or at least it had once been human, she was sure of that.

  ‘My… my n-name is Sal,’ she said loudly, for the benefit of the others behind it, gesturing at herself. When she had introduced herself for the first time to Bob, he had cocked his head curiously, his lips trying crudely to repeat her name. These creatures, on the other hand, cowered at the sound of her voice. Their dead eyes seemed less curious than Bob’s. They mewled and whined among themselves.

  Is that their language? The whining noise?

  ‘Sal,’ she said again, encouraged that her talking seemed to be holding them at bay for the moment. ‘I’m Sal.’

  ‘Annng-aahhhh.’

  ‘That’s right.’ She smiled. ‘Sal.’

  The hand, still reaching towards her, was now only a few inches away. She wondered whether to swing her pipe at it or let it touch her. There was no way of knowing whether these things wanted to communicate in some way or were just attempting to test how much of a threat she posed to them.

  If I hit it…?

  Then she suspected some kind of pack instinct would take over. They’d be upon her in the blink of an eye.

  Let it touch. Let it make contact.

  She swallowed nervously as the tips of its fingers eagerly stretched out and brushed lightly against her hair.

  ‘Hair,’ she said.

  The fingers curled through the strands, flicked at them, played with them.

  ‘It’s hair,’ she said again, softening her voice, trying to steal the fear from it.

  The thing’s mouth seemed to widen, stretch, exposing a few snaggled teeth emerging from bloody gums.

  My God… is that a smile?

  A soft sing-song humming vibrated up from the creature’s narrow bony chest into its throat. It became an almost childlike cooing. Like the contented noise of a baby suckling a bottle.

  Sal found her hand stretching out towards it. Copying the gesture, showing the same curiosity seemed like the right thing to do. Her hand brushed against the thing’s forearm. She expected it to be cold and clammy… but it was warm and dry. Just like any human’s skin should be.

  And she returned the smile.

  ‘Pleased… pleased to meet you,’ she said.

  ‘Eeeeee… eeeee-ooo-eeeee-oooo.’

  It was then she heard the clatter of rubble disturbed behind her.

  ‘You should keep very still!’

  It was Maddy’s voice. Not a shout, but a coarse whisper echoing across the stillness.

  ‘No sudden moves. OK?’ That was Foster’s voice. ‘Keep your eyes on that thing, Sal. Do not look away. Do you understand?’

  She nodded.

  ‘All right, Sal, you should take a slow step back now.’

  She wanted to look back over her shoulder. To see where her friends were, how far away they were.

  ‘Don’t!’ hissed Foster. ‘Keep your eyes on it as you back off.’

  ‘W-why?’ she managed to whisper.

  ‘Just do it!’

  She did as instructed, taking one careful step at a time, feeling her way across the uneven ground with her feet, keeping her eyes locked on the thing in front of her.

  The Gollum frowned. The humming quickly became a frustrated growl as it shuffled forward, reaching again for her hair.

  ‘It’s – it’s not going to let me g-go,’ uttered Sal. ‘Ouch! It’s got hold of my hair again!’

  ‘Just keep coming, S
al… Don’t stop,’ said Maddy. She sounded a little bit closer.

  The creature was holding tight to a lock of her hair, winding its claw-like fingers through it to get a better hold. And then she saw something in its face, innocent curiosity vanishing, replaced by some dark instinct. It opened its mouth and let out a cry that almost sounded human, but certainly didn’t resemble anything like a language.

  The other creatures suddenly surged forward.

  ‘Oh no!’ cried Maddy.

  There was the deafening blast of a gunshot. The creature holding her hair was suddenly hurled on its back, spattering dark blood across the rubble.

  ‘Sal, quick!’

  She turned and saw Maddy and Foster ten yards beyond, a blue veil of gunsmoke clearing as Foster pumped another round into the gun. She scrambled on all fours towards them, clattering noisily over a mound of loose bricks and masonry, expecting at any moment to feel claws in her hair again, yanking her off her feet from behind. Instead, a moment later, she was stumbling into Maddy’s open arms.

  ‘Oh God! Sal! Are you all right?’

  She was too frightened to answer.

  ‘Run!’ she whispered. ‘We – w-we should run!’

  Maddy stood her ground, held her tight. ‘It’s OK, Sal… it’s OK. Look.’

  Sal turned to look over her shoulder to find the creatures had gone. Every last one of them except for the twitching corpse in front of her had… simply vanished within the space of a few heartbeats, as if they’d never been anything more than mere wisps of smoke, carried off by a gusting wind.

  ‘The noise of the gun scared them off,’ said Foster.

  Maddy looked anxiously around at the dark husks of ruined buildings on either side of them. ‘They’re hiding in there. We should head back while they’re still spooked.’

  Foster nodded and waved them past. ‘Come on.’

  The girls stepped around him quickly and backed away. Foster followed, his shotgun still shouldered and ready to fire.

  CHAPTER 52

  1956, New Jersey

  Feldwebel Johan Kernst rubbed his hands to warm them as he watched the distant truck approaching the east entrance to the prison camp, Gefangenenlager 63. From this distance it seemed to be approaching them far too quickly.