TimeRiders

by Alex Scarrow

  Although, as he said that, he noticed that the distance seemed to be narrowing as some of the more courageous of them edged out several dozen yards ahead of the herd. He wondered if they were ringleaders – pack leaders, individuals with something to prove to their followers.

  The girls picked up their pace, swift strides quickly turning into an untidy jog, kicking up clouds of dust and ash. Foster brought up the rear.

  The gap between them narrowed further as the creatures’ hunched-over scuttling became more of a hunched-over trot. The braver creatures came closer still, now thirty or forty feet from them. Foster turned and glanced at the nearest of them – male by the look of him, tall and painfully thin, a few tufts of pale hair growing in isolated islands on his scalp and rags of clothing dangling from his powder-white body. He could hear the creature’s laboured breath and a keening whimper as it yearned to close the gap between them. Yet, understandably, it feared the dark metal object in Foster’s hand. Perhaps its mind remembered a solitary word from a long-forgotten language.

  Gun.

  And it knew the metal tube could spit death in an instant.

  For what seemed an interminable age, they maintained this moving stand-off: the girls jogging across the dead park, Foster struggling along several yards behind them, his ragged breath growing ever more laboured, and the silent herd of creatures easily keeping pace – but slowly, warily, closing in.

  ‘The other side of the park, look!’ shouted Maddy.

  Across the empty concrete bowl of a duck pond and the corroded A-frames of what had once been swings, he could see a row of stunted black trees and dark metal railings. Beyond that was 5th Avenue, running north to south down the side of the park.

  Fifty yards along, he could see a way out that wouldn’t require them to stop and scale the railings – a gateway. Then, across 5th Avenue, they’d be on to East 72nd Street. Half a dozen blocks of ruined buildings on either side and then they’d hit the river.

  But this is where they may jump us, he decided. As they picked their way over rubble and weaved through abandoned cars, those creatures would finally close the gap and be upon them. He decided now was as good a time as any to demonstrate once more what his gun could do. He turned round, stopped and levelled his gun at the nearest creature.

  He fired, throwing the pitiful thing on its back with a shrill high-pitched scream. It lay on the ground in a growing pool of its own blood, bony legs thrashing the ground wildly. The rest of the herd immediately turned on their heels and fled across the ash-grey park like rabbits startled by a farmer’s gun.

  ‘Just reminding them we’re dangerous.’

  Maddy nodded. ‘Good.’ But then she looked at the weapon. ‘Eleven shots left?’

  Foster racked another round into the shotgun. ‘Yes, eleven.’

  They made their way quickly along East 72nd and ten minutes later emerged on to the broad dual-lane expanse of FDR Drive, heading south, parallel with the Hudson River.

  Ahead of them were the shattered remains of Queensboro Bridge, collapsed in the middle. Beyond that, no more than three quarters of a mile down the Hudson, Foster could see the tall metal support towers of the Williamsburg Bridge, and on the far side of the river, the squat brick and industrial buildings, chimney pots and cranes of Brooklyn’s dockside.

  They rested for a moment on a wooden bench, overlooking the muddy bank of the river below, all three of them catching their breath.

  ‘Just over the bridge… and… then we’re home and dry,’ rasped Foster.

  ‘You OK?’ asked Maddy.

  ‘I’m fine… just a little winded. Let me grab some air.’

  They hung on for a moment, looking back the way they’d come. For the moment it seemed like they’d lost the creatures.

  ‘You girls ready?’

  They both nodded.

  He led them down the wide boulevard, all three of them happy to have the broad river to their left, and four lanes of wide, empty road to their right.

  Another ten minutes and they were hurrying up a narrow brick stairwell to the Williamsburg Bridge’s pedestrian walkway. The sick orange sun was now low in the sky and looking for a place to settle among the broken horizon of ruined buildings. Long violet shadows were spreading across the river, reaching for the building on the far side.

  ‘Nearly home,’ gasped Sal. ‘Looks like we’re going to make it,’ she said, grinning at Maddy.

  The walkway, just wide enough for three to walk abreast and caged by high sides of basket wire, ran above the traffic lanes over the bridge. As they hurried along, they looked down on two lanes of crumbling tarmac filled with the ancient rusting hulks of bumper-to-bumper traffic. A soft wind moaned through shattered windscreens and across car seats and the bones of those who’d died at the wheel suddenly, mysteriously, decades ago – a vehicle graveyard filling the bridge with hushed whispers of torment and pain.

  Foster concentrated on the way ahead. Just another three or four minutes across the bridge, down the steps on the far side, a turn into the backstreet at the base of the bridge, then they’d be home.

  He’d checked that the generator was ticking over when they left. Provided the thing had managed to keep on going while they’d been out and not choke or stall on them, he guessed the displacement machine would be ready to use by now. He hoped.

  Liam’s message had given them an exact time. And once they’d entered the co-ordinates into the computer they’d know the exact location. If the lad was thinking smart, he knew precisely where that location should be.

  Despite all three of them being exhausted and winded, their pace quickened as the far side of the lifeless, sluggish, polluted river below loomed. The prospect of safety was just ahead, just minutes away. The prospect of bringing home Liam, of bringing home Bob – a heroic tower of muscle who could protect them from virtually anything – urged them on ever faster.

  They were nearly there. And Foster had begun to allow himself to think that this nightmare might just be nearly over.

  There was a scream.

  He spun round to see a twisting branch of lean milk-white arms pulling at Sal through a large hole in the basket-wire cage.

  ‘Oh no!’ screamed Maddy. ‘They’ve got hold of her!’

  CHAPTER 80

  2001, New York

  Sal’s arms and legs thrashed manically in their grasp. ‘Oh God no! He-e-elp me! Help me!’

  Foster shouldered his shotgun but realized he couldn’t fire for fear of hitting Sal. Maddy rushed forward and began kicking, punching and scratching the arms pulling at Sal. Through the cross-hatch of rusting wire, he could see a pack of half a dozen of the creatures fighting each other to get a grip on her. They were standing on the roof of a truck’s cab; the large hole in the rusting wire, he guessed, had been made recently, perhaps only in the last half an hour.

  It was a trap.

  He realized some of the creatures must have rushed ahead, must have known they were heading this way, must have known they crossed the bridge using the raised pedestrian walkway. They’d found a place they could reach up to, they’d made a hole in the wire… and waited.

  More of the creatures scrambled up over the truck and on to the cab’s roof. They slammed against the wire noisily with their fists, snarling at them through the gaps.

  Sal’s legs were being pulled out from beneath her, and through the gaping hole in the wire. ‘He-e-elp me!’

  Maddy desperately tried to peel off the long, pale fingers wrapped tightly round her ankles, her legs, her waist. But then found them snatching at her hair, roughly pulling the glasses from her face, attempting to find a firm hold to pull her through as well.

  Sal was all but through the hole now, nothing left but her hands wrapped tightly round the sharp ends of wire. The creatures’ clawed fingers snatched and twisted at hers, trying to wrench them free as she screamed and screamed and screamed.

  Foster aimed the shotgun at the pack of creatures, no longer concerned that Sal might catch som
e of the blast. The cross-hatched wire would deflect some of the shotgun’s blast, but most of it would certainly fly through and inflict damage on their tightly packed bodies.

  He fired.

  One of the creatures was thrown off the roof of the cab. Others screamed angrily as the scattered pellets from the shotgun cartridge painfully lashed their bare bodies. But they continued their eager work, their long claws twisting Sal’s fingers off the wire, one by one, as Maddy desperately punched and scratched and screamed at them.

  The last of Sal’s fingers were suddenly wrenched free.

  Foster’s eyes met the girl’s for one frozen moment in time. Wide, confused, terrified – her mouth an elongated ‘O’ from which a shrill high-pitched ‘No-o-o-o-o-o-o!’ erupted like the whistle of a steam train.

  The creatures carried her away between them with alarming speed, down over the truck’s shattered windscreen, over the engine hood down on to the road, holding her body aloft between them like some squirming trophy.

  She disappeared from view, her thin, desperate, screaming voice fading as they carried her down the bridge, weaving through the vehicle graveyard back towards Manhattan.

  Maddy turned to look at Foster, her pale face frozen with shock and dawning realization of what had just happened.

  ‘Foster?’ she managed to whisper.

  ‘We… we have to –’

  ‘Foster,’ she said again, unable to say anything else.

  ‘She’s gone, Madelaine. She’s gone,’ he replied. He tried desperately to blank out of his mind the fate that awaited her.

  ‘We… we h-have to go after her,’ gasped Maddy, already beginning to squirm her way through the hole in the wire.

  Foster took a step forward and grabbed her wrist. ‘No! Maddy. No!’

  She struggled to pull herself free. ‘We can’t leave her!’ she screamed, tears rolling down her scratched and dirt-smudged cheeks.

  A part of him wanted to follow her through, to give chase down the road. If not to rescue Sal, then at least to get close enough to take aim and attempt to give the poor child a quick and painless death.

  But that would be foolish.

  It was obvious to him now. Obvious that those creatures had been biding their time, waiting until the three of them were boxed in on the bridge, had dropped their guard and were certain they were home and dry. They were clever enough to set a trap. What’s more, they must have known all along where they’d been holed up.

  ‘Madelaine!’ he snapped as she squirmed in his grasp. ‘They set this up! This was a trap!’

  She continued to struggle. In the distance, echoing down the bridge, they heard Sal’s faint cry, pleading for help once more.

  She shuddered, her shoulders shaking convulsively as she sobbed. ‘I’m coming, Sal… I’m coming!’

  Foster struggled to pull her back. ‘We have to go, Maddy… There’s nothing we can do for her.’

  ‘I’m not leaving her behind!’

  Foster grabbed Maddy’s jaw and turned her face to look at him.

  ‘Come on!’ he snapped. ‘If they get a hold of us too… then it’s all over! Do you understand? It’s all over… for everyone!’

  CHAPTER 81

  1957, New York

  Bob parked the Kübelwagen down the backstreet as Liam looked out of the windscreen at the row of brick arches running underneath the Williamsburg Bridge.

  ‘We’re home,’ said Liam.

  ‘Incorrect,’ replied Bob. ‘We are back where. We are not yet back when.’

  Liam shrugged. It felt like they were almost home, sitting outside on the kerb looking at the familiar old brickwork. In place of the sliding corrugated door were two large wooden doors. Across them both was painted the sign DANG LI POH LAUNDRY. Plumes of steam spouted from a pipe beside the wooden doors out into the cool late-afternoon air.

  Bob consulted his internal clock. ‘We have seventeen minutes until the time we specified for them to open the window.’

  Liam leaned forward to look up at the sky. There were more hoverjets circling the skyline above Manhattan, patrolling in pairs. He wondered if anyone was looking for them yet.

  ‘You’re right, no time to waste.’

  He opened the door and climbed out, adjusting the black uniform and putting the cap on his head, tugging the peak low to shadow as much of his boyish face as possible.

  Bob joined him on the cobbled pavement strewn with rubbish from a kicked-over garbage pail.

  Liam rapped his knuckles on the wooden door. He waited anxiously for a minute before rapping again on the wood. A moment later a small service hatch in the left-hand door slid open and a ruddy-faced oriental man in a white apron peered out.

  ‘Yeah?’ he snapped irritably before registering the death’s-head insignia and pitch-black uniforms.

  Liam cleared his throat. ‘You will let us in immediately,’ he said, affecting a clipped officious tone.

  ‘Whuh?… Er… What – what wrong?’

  ‘We have reason to believe these premises are harbouring a criminal.’

  The man’s eyes widened. ‘We not have bad man here!’

  ‘You will let us enter NOW or I shall have you all arrested.’

  The man’s eyes widened still further. ‘I let you in. One moment.’

  He slid the hatch closed and then a few seconds later they heard bolts slide and the wooden door creaked open. The man waved them in.

  ‘You come in… see. No criminal here.’

  Liam and Bob stepped inside and almost immediately felt a fug of warm moist air against their faces. The arch was dimly lit by several bulbs dangling from the arched ceiling.

  ‘You see… no bad man here!’ snapped the Chinese man.

  Liam looked around the gloomy interior. There were about a dozen men and women standing over tubs of steaming water, stirring clothes with ladles, scrubbing them with bars of soap. Strung across the archway were laundry lines from which clothing and bed linen hung to dry.

  ‘We laundry. Make super-clean for customer,’ the man explained.

  ‘You will tell your people to leave the building immediately,’ ordered Liam.

  The Chinese man’s eyes narrowed. ‘Why you want us leave?’

  Hmm. He hadn’t actually thought that far ahead. Liam hesitated a moment too long as he struggled to conjure up an answer.

  The Chinese man squinted suspiciously. ‘You just boy… not real soldier pig. You steal uniform an’ try rob my laundry!’

  Liam stared at him helplessly. ‘Er…’ was all he could manage.

  The man continued to glare at him. ‘This is trick. You leave now!’

  Bob stepped in to help Liam out. He reached for the gun in his holster, wrenched it out and aimed it at the man’s forehead in one fast and fluid motion.

  ‘This is not a trick.’

  The man’s suspicious expression was instantly wiped away and replaced with wide-eyed fear as he stared down the barrel of the pistol.

  ‘You will instruct the personnel here to leave these premises immediately or you will be terminated!’ Bob’s deep voice thundered.

  The man swallowed nervously, then, eyes still anxiously locked on the hand gun, he shouted out in Cantonese over his shoulder at the others. Through the gaps in the hanging laundry Liam could see fear on their faces as they spotted the gun levelled squarely at their boss. Quickly they dropped their bars of soap and their stirring ladles, and filed out, ducking under the laundry lines and heading for the open door.

  They disappeared outside and a moment later the wooden door swung shut, leaving Liam and Bob in the faint, familiar gloom of their arch.

  Bob once more consulted his internal clock. ‘Seven minutes and twenty-nine seconds until our specified window.’

  ‘And how long have we got until your brain explodes?’

  Eyes fluttered. ‘Sixty-four minutes and three seconds.’

  Liam pushed his way past a damp bed sheet and found a stool on which to sit down. ‘So if this fails, if there
’s no window, you and I will have less than an hour left together?’

  ‘Affirmative.’

  ‘I guess that’s enough time to say our goodbyes.’

  Bob cocked his head, curious. ‘You will be sad?’

  ‘Sad? That you’re going to be left a vegetable? Of course I flippin’ will! I mean… after all this time you’ve just about worked out how to appear less like a complete idiot, and more like a human. It’d be a waste, to be sure.’ He sighed and shook his head. ‘Hang on. What am I saying? I guess maybe it’s the humans that are the idiots.’

  Bob shrugged, not entirely understanding what Liam was muttering on about.

  Liam laughed at that. Such a human gesture.

  ‘Six minutes.’

  CHAPTER 82

  2001, New York

  The generator was still chugging when they got back. Foster slapped the vibrating and warm cylinder head, relieved. He’d been half expecting to find it still and silent on their return, having either become clogged up and choked to death on dodgy diesel, or the fuel tank having run dry.

  He emerged from the back room to check the time machine’s charge display. They were nearly there. Two LEDs were still red. He guessed the machine had to be powered-up enough to try opening a window in about twenty minutes.

  He booted up the computer system, waiting for it to finish its start-up routine properly before opening the geo-positioning interface software and tapping in the co-ordinates that were scribbled in faded ink on the yellowed page before him. He whispered a prayer that Liam had written down the numbers correctly.

  The screen zeroed in on a portion of a map of New York.

  ‘Oh… good lad!’ he gasped over the noisy chug coming through the open door of the back room. ‘There’s a smart lad!’

  Maddy looked up, slumped in one of the armchairs around the communal table. Her voice sounded tired and small and defeated. ‘What… what is it, Foster?’

  ‘Right here!’ said Foster. ‘They’re right here! Right inside the archway! The co-ordinates… they’re saving us as much power as they can. Opening the window right here – that might just conserve enough power for us to bring them both back!’