TimeRiders

by Alex Scarrow

  Maybe. So far at least, the risk had paid off well. The uniforms and the vehicle had ensured they’d only been stopped at one checkpoint, and even then Bob’s fluent German had got them through without a problem as the young soldier eyed the death’s-head insignia on their collars and dutifully waved them on.

  Up ahead, Liam recognized the grand front of the museum. It looked no different from the last time he’d seen it, except, of course, for the fluttering crimson pennants dangling from twin flagpoles above the main entrance. He could see a lot of activity out front: workmen going in and coming out of the building laden with boxes and crates.

  ‘What do you think’s going on there?’

  Bob looked. ‘I do not know.’

  Liam leaned forward, squinting as the Kübelwagen slowly edged up the busy street through several traffic lights. ‘Looks like they’re emptying the place.’

  That seemed to make sense of some of what they’d heard.

  Last night they’d stopped off for food. As Liam enjoyed a plate of grits and bacon and Bob joylessly slurped a dubious-looking mixture of porridge and scrambled egg, they’d listened in on the quiet talk among the diner’s regulars: truck drivers and local workers stopping off on the way home. There were cautious words being exchanged about some resistance leader down in Washington state ‘givin’ them Nazi scum a goddamn hiding’.

  One of the men perched on a stool, wearing a grubby old Yankees baseball cap and threadbare dungarees, piped up. ‘I hear’d say them fighters is led by the ghost of none other than George Washington! Ain’t no harm them Germans can do to him… seeing as how he’s a ghost an’ all. Bullets go right on through.’

  ‘Ain’t no ghost, Jeb. Shee’oot, that’s the dumbest thing I hear’d in a long time,’ said another. ‘What I hear’d is he goes by the name of Captain Fantastic, or somesuch. Folks are sayin’ he’s some sorta… military superhero. Reckon maybe he’s like some secret super weapon the guv’mint was holdin’ back on.’

  ‘Either ways,’ said a third, ‘them Jerries is gettin’ kinda nervous ’bout him, ain’t they?’

  Murmurs of agreement.

  Talk moved on to Kramer’s recent grand announcement that mankind’s history was to be completely wiped clean; all of history’s past hatreds, religious intolerances, racial bigotry was to be put behind them… and erased. And that, more than anything else, seemed to be an issue that enraged the men gathered around the counter.

  ‘They ain’t gonna get away with it!’ snapped one of them. ‘We fought them British for this here country of ours. Then we fought us a civil war too! They cain’t take that kinda history off of us… an’… an’… burn it!’

  ‘I’m hidin’ my books an’ stuff; my encyclopedias what I bought my kids for school. I’m hidin’ that stuff in my attic in case them Krauties come house-searchin’. Sure as heck ain’t burnin’ it like they told us we got to.’

  ‘Ain’t right,’ agreed the waitress behind the counter. ‘Just ain’t right.’

  Now up ahead at the museum, it seemed Kramer’s dictum was already being put into action. As Bob passed over the intersection, swung the vehicle right and parked on the kerb in front of the museum, Liam got a closer look at what was going on.

  ‘Oh boy,’ he uttered.

  On the forecourt in front of the steps leading up to the museum’s grand entrance, he could see what appeared to be a large pile of bric-à-brac, a rubbish tip of twisted wooden things, books and papers, frames and furniture, the tangled limbs of stuffed animals of all sizes. He watched in growing horror as half a dozen museum workers carried out an Egyptian sarcophagus. Faded flakes of blue and gold paint and shards of ancient dry wood crumbled away beneath the fragile object, leaving a trail of debris down the steps.

  And then, under the watchful eye of several soldiers standing guard, they casually tossed it on to the pile, where it split and shattered, revealing the brittle, shrivelled carcass of a mummified pharaoh, snapping into several pieces as it tumbled stiffly down one side of the large pile.

  A dozen yards away several drums of fuel were lined up and a soldier stood beside them waiting for the order to douse the exhibits and set them on fire.

  ‘My God… they’re going to burn it all,’ he whispered.

  ‘It is logical,’ replied Bob. ‘Kramer wishes not to be located by any future agency operatives. No history will mean no reference points.’

  ‘I hope to God they haven’t made a start on the things stored down in the basement.’ Liam cast a sideways glance at Bob. ‘How long have we got left before your brain explodes?’

  Bob’s cool eyes narrowed. ‘Two hours and fifty-three minutes. We have little time to waste.’

  Liam realized he was trembling from head to foot, and cursed the fact that he looked so young. Perhaps the SS uniform he was wearing would be intimidating enough to ensure none of the workers nor any soldiers they might encounter would dare to look too closely at him, dare to question why someone so young should have an officer’s rank.

  ‘We must proceed,’ rumbled Bob.

  ‘You’re right.’ He puffed out nervous breath. ‘Bob, you go tell those soldiers we have come directly on Kramer’s orders to supervise the job.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And tell them we will be inspecting the basement area.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Bob climbed out of the automobile with Liam following in his wake.

  Oh boy… this better work.

  CHAPTER 74

  2001, New York

  They almost didn’t find the museum. It was just another dusty grey shell of a building amid a landscape of them: jagged walls of crumbling masonry and cracked marble.

  ‘That’s it? Are you sure?’

  Foster nodded. ‘As best I can tell… that’s what was once the museum.’ He looked up at the sun, faint and sick, hiding behind scudding clouds. It was high in the sky. ‘We’ve only got an afternoon of daylight left. Come on.’

  As the three of them made their way up the rubble-covered steps and into the museum’s main entrance, Sal spotted a pale face observing them from behind the rusting hulk of a car across the street.

  ‘Look!’ she gasped. ‘They’ve been following us!’

  ‘I never doubted that,’ said Foster.

  ‘But they’re getting braver,’ added Maddy. ‘Fire off a shot to scare them away.’

  Foster racked the shotgun and aimed it at the sky. But then he stopped.

  ‘Actually, no. Probably best I conserve the ammo for when we really need it.’

  The girls looked uncomfortably at each other.

  ‘Come on, let’s get this done,’ he said, leading the way over the rubble and stepping into the gloomy, cavernous interior of the museum.

  Maddy snapped on her torch, Foster another. Their twin beams picked form out of the darkness. Twisted beams of metal, dust-covered masonry, the scorched and charred remains of a grand woodwork staircase across the way.

  ‘Where’s the big dinosaur skeleton?’ asked Sal.

  ‘The museum must have been emptied before their nuclear war.’

  ‘I suppose it makes sense,’ said Maddy, her soft voice echoing around the inside of the entrance hall. ‘If back in ’57 people knew a nuclear exchange was on the horizon, they’d have moved all the valuables to special nuclear bunkers and stuff, right? Do you think they’d have taken everything? Those guest books too?’

  ‘We’ll have to see. Where did that guard say they stored them?’

  ‘I think he said they stored them down in the museum’s basement. Some sort of an archive down there.’

  Foster panned his torch across the floor. There were doorways leading to other wings of the museum, but he knew where the basement doors were; he’d visited this place often enough over the years when not busy saving history.

  ‘Follow me. Up ahead on the right there’s a double door that leads down to the basement.’

  Maddy followed him as he stepped lightly across the dusty marble floor. Sal cast
one last glance over her shoulder at the outline of the front doorway, expecting to see the hunched silhouette of one of the creatures curiously peeking in.

  She turned back to see Maddy and Foster a dozen yards ahead. ‘Hey, wait for me,’ she whispered.

  Foster’s torchlight picked out a faded sign on double doors: TO STORAGE BASEMENT: STAFF ACCESS ONLY. He pushed against them, and with the gritty sound of rubble and debris being pushed across the floor on the far side, they stiffly yielded.

  He poked his head and torch through the gap. There was a stairwell beyond. He pushed against the doors until they were open enough to squeeze through and stepped inside. His torch picked out smooth concrete walls and steps leading down.

  ‘Come on,’ he said.

  Maddy reached out for Sal’s hand and could feel it trembling uncontrollably. ‘Hey, it’s OK, Sal. Just down here, we’ll get what we’re after and be back home again,’ she whispered.

  ‘I… I can’t go underground again… I can’t,’ she hissed in reply.

  Understandable really. The sensation of feeling trapped, cornered – especially after their run-in on the subway. Maddy wasn’t too keen either.

  ‘I’m not going to leave you alone up here. Come on, Sal. We’ll be quick.’

  Sal gritted her teeth.

  ‘O-OK.’

  They made their way slowly down the stairs, finally joining Foster at the bottom. He was playing his torch around the entrance to the large basement floor beyond the stairwell. Unlike above, the floor wasn’t thick with piles of rubble and debris, but instead coated in a silt-like carpet of fine dust. Across the floor and along the walls lined with racks and racks of empty shelves was a thick layer of decades’ worth of dust.

  Foster turned to look at the girls. ‘There’s nothing here. It’s gone. All gone.’

  CHAPTER 75

  1957, New York

  The museum worker led Bob and Liam down the steps.

  ‘So we store them down here,’ he spoke slowly, ‘along with all the other valuable things due to be destroyed,’ he added, his voice barely managing to conceal the bitter hatred he obviously felt towards the pair of them.

  They followed him down the last few steps and into the basement where Liam could see endless crates and boxes stacked tidily across the floor, grouped in orderly categories, silently awaiting their turn to be carried out and tossed on to the bonfire outside.

  Liam studied the man’s face and all of a sudden realized there was something familiar about it. He was good with faces.

  How can I possibly know him?

  ‘So.’ The worker looked up at them with an expression that told him he’d happily stab them to death if he thought he could get away with it. ‘You need me for anything else?’

  Bob dutifully faked not being able to understand him. It was Liam who was going to pretend to speak barely passable English. ‘Ja. Ve are seeking… zerr visitorrs’ guest book.’

  The worker’s eyebrows lifted curiously. ‘You want the guest books?’

  ‘Ja! Das ist corrrect.’

  He shrugged. An odd request. He gestured for them to follow him.

  He led the way along a passageway between shelves that ran from the floor to the ceiling. Twenty yards down, the worker stopped, pulled a short stepladder out of a nook and climbed it to the top.

  ‘They’re all kept up here,’ he said, patting a cardboard box.

  ‘Verry good,’ said Liam with a clipped, emotionless accent.

  ‘You want me to get them down for you?’ the man asked.

  ‘Ja. Get zzzem down.’

  The man pulled out the box, unleashing a small shower of dust motes. ‘All in here, going all the way back to 1869. But…’ he added with contempt, ‘I suppose this’ll be going up in smoke along with everything else, I guess.’

  Liam cocked his head. There was something about the worker’s voice too that was vaguely familiar.

  I’m sure I’ve met this fella before somewhere.

  The young man placed the box on the ground and pulled out the top book, leather-bound with pages of thick cartridge paper, the handwriting of recent visitors scrawled across every page. Recent, that is… up until eight months ago when the invasion of east-coast America had begun.

  ‘The guest book,’ the man said, passing it over to Liam. ‘Every visitor is free to sign it and write a message.’

  Then it came to Liam, right then, where he’d seen the man before.

  The security guard?

  He looked once more at the young face of the worker, more closely this time – the heart-shaped mole emerging from his brow. This man looked to be in his mid-twenties. The security guard who’d spoken to him and Maddy, he must’ve been in his mid to late sixties. The worker standing before him was… related somehow.

  Not related, fool.

  The resemblance was unmistakable.

  It’s the same man.

  Liam felt an irrational urge to reach out and hug him. The man was a connection through time, a link to where they wanted to be. He could almost smell home… almost glimpse the world back in 2001. It felt good.

  ‘Ah, sod it,’ Liam blurted, all of a sudden, ‘I’m no bloody Nazi.’

  Bob cocked his head curiously and looked at him. The worker did likewise.

  ‘Neither of us are. I’m Irish, actually, and he… ’ He pointed at Bob. ‘And he’s… well, he’s not German either.’

  The worker’s expression remained frozen, perhaps suspicious that this was some kind of a devious test.

  ‘Truth is, we’re from the future and we’re here to put history right. Aren’t we, Bob?’

  Bob shrugged. ‘That is correct.’

  Liam grinned. ‘I’ve actually met you in the year 2001. Guess what? You’re still working here. You’re a security guard, guarding these very books, so it happens.’

  The worker’s eyes narrowed. ‘I… I don’t understand.’

  ‘You don’t have to understand. I just wanted you to know that.’ Liam reached out and grasped the man’s arm. ‘I want you to know that we’re going to make things right again. It’s all going to change and when it does it’ll be like this invasion never happened.’

  The young man’s expression changed. ‘Hang on, are you fellas resistance fighters?’

  Resistance fighters. It would make explaining things a lot easier than trying to convince him they were time travellers. Liam nodded. ‘Yes… as it happens, that’s exactly what we are.’

  ‘Well, why the heck didn’t you say? The name’s Sam Penney!’

  Liam held out a hand. ‘My name’s Liam.’

  ‘So what… uh… what were you sayin’ about meeting me before?’

  ‘Sorry, forget that… I was thinking of someone else. Now listen, can you help us?’

  ‘Sure! Sure… anything I can do, anything at all I can –’

  ‘Could you keep a watch on the stairs for me? Let me know if anyone’s coming down?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘We’ll be just a few minutes here, Sam Penney. Then we’ll be gone again. Can you keep this a secret? Not tell anyone?’

  ‘Sure.’ The young man looked from Liam to Bob. ‘So what’re you fellas gonna do?’ His expression changed. ‘You’re not putting a bomb or anything like that down here, are you?’

  ‘No. Nothing like that. None of these precious things will be damaged. All right? You have my word, so you do.’

  ‘Oh… OK. So what are you –?’

  ‘I can’t tell you that, Sam. All I can say is… that it’s part of the fight back, all right? You have to trust me on this.’

  Penney gave it a scant moment’s thought, then nodded. ‘Guess that’s good enough for me.’

  ‘So you keep watch at the top of the stairwell, all right? Give us a few minutes.’

  ‘You got it.’

  Liam watched the man walk back up the stairs, then he looked down at the open visitor’s book in his hands. He turned to Bob. ‘So what do I write?’

  ‘They will
need to know an exact geographical location. I will give you the co-ordinates down to a yard in accuracy. Also they will require a time-stamp: year, month, day, hour and minute.’

  ‘Right. And the other thing… How do we make sure they’re going to be able to find this book in over four decades’ time, you know, when everything’s about to be torched?’

  Bob stared at him blankly. ‘I have no suggestions.’

  CHAPTER 76

  2001, New York

  ‘There’s nothing left,’ whispered Maddy, panning her torch around the basement. Her voice was a weak, defeated croak. ‘I thought maybe… just maybe –’

  ‘There are a lot of shelves down here,’ said Foster. ‘We should spread out and check them all.’

  ‘They’re all empty, Foster! Don’t you see? If that guest book was stored down here along with all the rest of the museum’s paperwork, then it was probably looted long ago, along with everything else. Maybe used as fuel for a campfire by the survivors, or those things outside.’

  Foster’s face tensed as he looked around. ‘Liam’s a clever lad. He would have made sure it was somewhere hidden, somewhere safe.’

  ‘Yeah? Where exactly? And how’re we going to find out where?’

  ‘A sign,’ whispered Sal.

  The others turned to look at her standing outside in the stairwell on the bottom step. ‘A sign,’ she said again.

  ‘You see a sign?’

  ‘No, I don’t see one, but that’s what he would have done. If he came down here, he would have left us some sort of a sign.’ Her face looked hopeful. ‘Wouldn’t he?’

  Foster nodded. ‘She’s right. Some marker that would have survived this amount of time. Something permanent.’ He walked back into the stairwell and panned his torch around. ‘And right here somewhere, that’s where I’d leave a sign. Come on,’ he said, ‘everyone look.’

  They did as he instructed, their torch beams snaking along the rough breeze-blocks of the stairwell walls, looking for something etched into the concrete, something scratched on the piping running down the side, something carved into the wooden double doors leading on to the basement floor. Something that might last forty-four years and never be completely erased.