My brow furrowed. ‘What are you saying?’
He bit his lip for a moment.
‘I think you should go through your portal,’ he said. ‘You and Jenny.’
‘What?’ I said. ‘And leave you here?’
‘Blue.’ His voice was calm. ‘That portal offers you and your friend a golden opportunity to avoid the worst of humanity. No father who had a chance like this would pass it up. If you go through that portal and come out in twenty-two years’ time, the world will have had a chance to settle down and rebuild, like you said Red will do at Rhode Island.’
‘I can’t leave you!’ I said, tears welling in my eyes.
‘Yes, you can, and, yes, you should,’ he said kindly. ‘I probably should have made you go through the portal before the gamma cloud arrived, but I—I don’t know—maybe I was selfish. I think I wanted to be with you during it.’
‘But what will you do?’ I said.
‘I’ll be okay,’ he said. ‘Might find myself a yacht somewhere round here and sail around for a while. I’ll give it a few years and then head on up to Rhode Island and find Red, maybe join his community as a doctor.
‘I won’t tell Red everything I know about your travels—it’s probably best he meets you in the future without any foreknowledge—but if you don’t mind, I might hide somewhere when you turn up at the Newport pier twenty-two years from now. I wouldn’t want to freak you out when you get there. From everything you’ve told me, I imagine you’ll already be in quite a state.’
‘Thanks,’ I said, and in my mind’s eye I recalled Red’s odd looks at Newport, when I’d caught him glancing at the warehouse beside the dock. My spirits lifted. Had this been what was going on? Did it mean my dad made it there?
My dad looked me square in the eye.
‘This isn’t negotiable, Skye,’ he said. It was so odd to hear him use my actual name, but it had the effect he desired. It added serious weight to his argument.
‘Today is March 20,’ he said. ‘Since nothing’s going to be working and survivors are going to be edgy, let’s give ourselves two days to get back to the city from here. Then at, say, 6:00 p.m. on March 22, you and Jenny will step through your portal and emerge from the well in Central Park twenty-two years from now. I’ll keep a close eye on the calendar, and unless something happens to me between now and then, I’ll make sure I’m waiting at that well at 6:00 p.m. on March 22, 2040, when you come out.’
I didn’t know what to say. It was a huge sacrifice for him to make, to spare us twenty-two years of hell.
‘Please, Blue, it’s for the best,’ my dad said. ‘As your father, it’ll make me feel a whole lot better. Please do this.’
I buried my face in his chest and cried while he just held me tightly in his arms.
My dad was right about getting back to Manhattan. It took a while; almost two full days.
The roads and expressways were empty; all the traffic lights were off; trigger-happy survivors were already guarding their homes with shotguns; any car moving on the roads was instantly noticeable.
But we made it back and, two days later, on March the 22nd, just before 6:00 p.m.—carrying backpacks stocked with food, and wearing sturdy hiking boots and stout clothing—Jenny and I arrived at the conservancy garden behind the Met accompanied by my dad.
I said my final teary goodbyes to him there in the garden before I tore myself away and Jenny and I dropped down through the hatch and closed it behind us.
Even though I knew that in the not-too-distant future Griff would park a yellow cab right on top of that hatch, both sealing it and hiding it from the world, I locked the hatch from the inside with Misty’s key anyway.
Minutes later, standing in front of the ancient stone doorway down in the entry cave, I placed the amber gem in the pyramid and the curtain of rippling purple light appeared.
I looked at Jenny. ‘Ready?’
‘As I’ll ever be,’ she said, taking my hand.
And together we stepped through the portal, out of our broken world and into the future.
Ten minutes later, I poked my head up out of the well and saw my father standing there in the bare clearing around it.
Even though only minutes had passed for me, he was twenty-two years older—now in his late sixties—leaner, wirier, more tanned, and he bore some pale scars on his face that hadn’t been there before.
And by his side stood my brother, Red, in his sheriff’s uniform.
And they were smiling.
THE END
AN INTERVIEW WITH MATTHEW REILLY ABOUT
THE SECRET RUNNERS OF NEW YORK
SPOILER WARNING!
This interview contains
spoilers from
The Secret Runners of New York
Well, Matthew, you’ve given us dragons, hovering cars and ancient wonders—and now, finally, time travel! You’re a well-known Back to the Future fan (most of us know about your DeLorean). So what made you want to write a time-travel story?
Since I was a kid, I’ve always loved time-travel stories, especially Back to the Future and The Terminator. I particularly love the idea of planting clues in one time and revealing them in another.
To my mind, Back to the Future did this amazingly well. In that movie, one key gag was the fact that Marty McFly and the viewer knew the futures of all the characters Marty encounters in 1955. That made it very funny. (The DeLorean made it legendary!) With The Secret Runners of New York, I wanted to do something a little different: I wanted to write a story set in the present and also in a very peculiar future, one that is both uncertain and ugly, so that readers will be concerned about what happens to our lead characters.
Over the years, you have written two big series—the Scarecrow books and the Jack West Jr books. What makes you write a standalone novel like this one?
You know, every now and then, I just like to branch out creatively.
I get so much enjoyment out of writing the Scarecrow and Jack West Jr novels. I love the characters and inventing new and wild plots for them. And writing a sequel—whether it’s the second book in a series or the fifth like my recent book, The Three Secret Cities—is its own kind of challenge (the key part being: giving readers all the characters and pace they enjoy but with a new and refreshing take).
But then, sometimes, I just have an idea which works for a single story. The Great Zoo of China (dragons in the present day battling tanks and fighter jets) was like this, as was The Tournament (a sweet teacher–student story about how a young girl becomes a great queen, set during a wild chess tournament filled with cheating, poisonings and murders) and Hover Car Racer (a superfast thrill-ride with hovering cars that was ultimately about brothers and families).
And I must say, my fans are very good about this! While they let me know how much they like the ongoing series, they also allow me to try new things. This is great, because by writing Great Zoo, Tournament, Hover Car and now Secret Runners, I become a better writer, which means the next instalment of Jack’s or Scarecrow’s adventures will be better, too. So I thank my fans for that.
In the end, it’s all about creativity.
Do you consider The Secret Runners of New York to be a Young Adult novel?
Hmmm, that’s a tricky one. Because its lead characters are teenagers, some people have called The Secret Runners of New York a Young Adult or ‘YA’ novel. Now, while I know that this sort of labelling is unavoidable, to be honest I don’t really see the novel as a YA title.
In the end, I think Secret Runners is a novel, plain and simple, and that readers of any age can enjoy it.
It’s also very much a ‘Matthew Reilly novel’: it’s fun; it’s big; the lead characters are thrown into wild and frightening scenarios; it’s set during a chaotic present and a frightening future; but most of all, it’s fast! That, to me, is a Matthew Reilly novel, no matter how old
you are.
What do you think is the key to a good time-travel story?
For me, the key to a good time-travel story is establishing the ‘rules’ of time travel in your tale.
In The Secret Runners of New York, for instance, I decided that if Skye was in the future for a day, then she would be away from our present for the same amount of time (unlike, say, in Back to the Future, where Marty can be away from 1985 for a few days but return to the exact moment he left).
The second key is to have cool and intricate twists. I loved the idea of hiding precious objects in hollowed-out books so that they could be rediscovered, untouched, in the future twenty-two years ahead. That gave me many opportunities to hide fun things in those books and to also indulge my love of books.
And yes, I have hollowed out books in real life myself. I’m not sure if that is good karma for an author to do, but, hey, I admit it!
How did you come up with this ‘rule’ for how time travel works in Secret Runners?
Many years ago, I read about time being an upward spiral rather than a straight line. It was so long ago, I’ve forgotten where I read it. I like the idea that dips in that time-spiral would account for déjà vu (that notion that you have seen some place or encounter that you are currently experiencing sometime in the past; I have definitely experienced this myself).
I thought this notion of a time-spiral would be a good explanation for time travel. The rest actually wrote itself: once you accept the notion that time is a spiral, then it’s quite an easy jump to my main rule mentioned above: that the present and the future move along at the same speed, so if Skye is in the future for a day, she is missing from the present for the same amount of time.
This gave me the rather sinister possibility of missing girls actually being stranded in the future by nasty individuals.
Can you give us any more clues about the tunnel—who might have built it, and why?
In my mind, I think the tunnel was found—whether intentionally or not—by members of the Mayan civilisation. Seeing that it worked only for young people of a certain age, they then used it as an initiation rite for young members of their community: a test which, when passed, allowed teens to advance into adulthood.
The idea of sending kids into another time or dimension from which they might not return struck me as pretty scary, and I figure if it scares me, it’ll scare my readers.
The carvings of wolves or dogs chasing the young initiates suggests that perhaps wolves or dogs were sent in after the teens to stop them trying to turn around and force them to go towards the other end.
In other novels, you’ve had some amazing moments where the world has almost ended. But in Secret Runners, you actually show us the end of the world! Can you discuss that a little?
First, let me say this: I didn’t want to end humanity with a virus! I’ve seen that in too many movies and TV shows. For my story, I wanted something that would kill nearly everyone on Earth and also knock out most technology. My solution was the gamma cloud.
As for why I wrote about the end of the world, I actually did this for several reasons.
First, I love the idea of empty cities, cities devoid of human life. I just think they’re visually really interesting and I wanted to set a story in one.
I also honestly wondered how we would all react if a scientist told us the world was going to end in a year or so. My personal answer—which, as you now know, I also put in the book—is that after some initial hysteria, people would just get on with life, at least until ‘doomsday’ came upon them.
What made you decide to set the novel in New York?
If you’re going to set a story in an empty city, New York is the one. Not only is it the most visually interesting metropolis on Earth, importantly for me, it’s also instantly recognisable.
Everybody knows the New York skyline, even if they haven’t been there. From the Empire State Building to the Brooklyn Bridge and Central Park, readers generally know New York’s main features, so they don’t need to be introduced to it. That allowed me to get on with my story at a quick pace.
There’s more new territory for you in this book—high school drama! What inspired you to centre the novel around teenagers, in particular Skye Rogers?
I find high school fascinating. We’ve all been there. We all have our memories. Many of us didn’t enjoy the experience, many did.
I find high school in 2018 even more fascinating. I just wonder how teenagers handle it: with camera phones, Instagram, Facebook and all that.
And most fascinating of all: high schools in 2018 for wealthy kids.
I think that we in the developed West are living in an incredibly delicate time: a time when the rich are really, really rich. Unfathomably rich. Maybe too rich. French Revolution rich.
Don’t get me wrong: I have nothing against rich people. I’m just saying—sincerely; objectively—that we are living in a time of enormous wealth inequality. Society can handle some of its members acquiring wealth and status. But if the top 1% acquire too much money and it is not spread enough to the regular folk who work for them, you end up with Marie Antoinette saying ‘Let them eat cake’ and suddenly you have guillotines in the middle of Paris.
For a few years now, I’ve wanted to do a novel about this topic, and when I was thinking about the idea of The Secret Runners of New York, it occurred to me that a good way to tackle it was through two lenses: (1) amid the tumult of the world ending and (2) through the eyes of ultra-rich teenagers, kids who have known nothing else but obscene wealth.
For I honestly think that when people see the end of the world come into view, they will not respect walls or fences or mansions. And they may settle old scores (as Hattie discovers in one of the scenes I like most in the novel).
How did you find writing Skye compared to other younger characters you’ve written, such as Jason Chaser, and female protagonists, such as CJ Cameron and Princess Bess?
You know what the answer to that is: I love writing, I really do, and every now and then, I like to try my hand at a new narrator’s perspective.
My big Scarecrow and Jack West Jr novels are written from what’s called a third person omniscient observer’s perspective, which is necessary for those kinds of novels, because it allows me to bounce around the world to check up on different characters in different countries.
The Tournament and The Secret Runners of New York are told exclusively from a first person perspective, which is entirely different.
When I write a book from a single character’s perspective in the first person, it’s actually a bit like acting. I try to become Skye, to see the world through her eyes, to use her language.
This is what I did with Princess Bess when she narrated The Tournament. It was the same for those parts in Temple that were written by Alberto Santiago, the runaway Spanish priest in that book.
To be able to write convincingly from Skye’s point of view meant doing research and two great sources for me were a couple of young ladies I met who had attended elite private schools on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. I got fashion tips, language tips and even tips for the names of kids in that world.
And it’s nice to see that my list of female protagonists is growing: CJ Cameron, Princess Bess and now Skye Rogers.
What element of this story was the most fun to write?
The mind-bending stuff. Especially the parts where characters like Griff or Red—during and just after the chaos of the gamma cloud’s arrival—leave messages for Skye to read twenty-two years in the future; or where Oz leaves the kangaroo in the tunnel in the future for Skye to see in the present. I love all of that kind of stuff!
Hiding the gems in books was also fun—including inside a Hillary Clinton book. And if you know your Stephen King, then of course, you saw that twist right away! (I love Stephen King: not just for his books, but just for being him. I think he should win
the Nobel Prize for Literature for his body of work and his contribution to reading. But I don’t know if literary types are brave enough or open-minded enough to do that. The man is a legend!)
We have to know, what’s your next book about?
I have to take Jack through to the end. The Two Something Somethings is up next.
And how is LA?
Things are great here. I’ve been writing up a storm, both books and screenplays. There are possible TV shows in the works and feature films as well—as many of my fans know, I’ve had several projects fall through for all kinds of silly Hollywood reasons (director got fired, senior executive left the studio, Writers Guild went on strike).
Some very interesting news is that there is a chance that I could direct an original screenplay of mine—something I have long wanted to do—but I don’t want to get ahead of myself (I’m writing this at the end of 2018; I’ll know more when this book is released in late March 2019, and as I well know, in the movie business, anything can happen by then).
As always, more than anything, I just hope The Secret Runners of New York took you away from the world for a few hours or days. I hope you liked it because, hey, you never know, Skye may return . . .
Matthew Reilly
Los Angeles
November 2018
About Matthew Reilly
Born in Sydney in 1974, Matthew Reilly was not always a big fan of reading. It was only after he read To Kill A Mockingbird and Lord of the Flies in Year 10 that he realised reading could transport you to another world. Following this revelation, Matthew soon began creating stories of his own and set about writing his first novel, Contest, at the age of 19 while at university studying law.
Following rejections from all the major publishers, Matthew self-published Contest in 1996, printing 1,000 copies. Those original self-published editions of Contest have now become much sought-after collectors’ items.
Matthew is now the internationally bestselling author of the Scarecrow series, the Jack West series and numerous standalone novels. His books are published in over 20 languages with worldwide sales of over 7 million copies. He has optioned the film rights to many of his novels to various major movie studios including Disney, Paramount, Sony and Fox.
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