The Eternal War

by Alex Scarrow

  He passed a large, barrel-sized bucket of rotting garbage and yanked at it. In his wake he heard it fall, spilling a small avalanche of stinking refuse across the cobblestones. He chanced a glance over his shoulder just in time to see the giant man slip in the rotten mush and lose his footing.

  ‘Ha haaaa!’ he yelled triumphantly as his pounding feet now found firm tarmac, and instinctively he turned left on to the busier street, resolving not to allow the bewildering sights of the future tempt him to hesitate and lose the hard-earned lead on his pursuer.

  But even with his sprinter’s legs carrying him fast and away from those mysterious travellers in time, who quite clearly were intent on taking him back to his hopeless, back-breaking and dead-end life in New Orleans, his mind continued to spin like a yarn wheel at the incredible sights and smells and sounds all around him.

  This is the future of America, he told himself … the future, the future, the future … his feet slapping pavement to the rhythm of his mantra. He felt as excited as a dog with two tails.

  This is the future! And, by Jove … I think I like the look of it!

  CHAPTER 16

  2001, New York

  ‘Oh, come on … you’ve gotta be kidding!’ Maddy slammed her hand on the desk, exasperated. ‘You lost him? Both of you? You actually lost him?’

  Becks and Bob stood side by side, both still gasping from the aborted pursuit.

  ‘Abraham Lincoln is very fast,’ said Becks, a hint of shame in her voice.

  ‘Yes, and you – and numb-nuts here – are both meant to be superhumans! You know? Super-strong? Super-fast? That kinda thing?’

  ‘His sudden departure was not something that could be predicted,’ muttered Bob, like a scolded schoolboy. ‘He appeared to be unconscious.’

  ‘Perhaps he was faking it?’ said Sal. ‘Listening to what we were saying?’

  Liam nodded. ‘And didn’t fancy going back home.’

  ‘Well … duh,’ sighed Maddy, removing her glasses and pinching the bridge of her nose. ‘You really think?’

  Liam missed the sarcasm in her voice. ‘Yup, that’s what I think.’

  ‘Oh crud.’ She slumped down in one of the office chairs. ‘So how’re we going to find him now? He could be anywhere in New York.’

  The five of them stood in a silent tableau for a while. In the background several TV stations quietly babbled the evening news to themselves.

  ‘Why are we so completely rubbish?’ Maddy muttered rhetorically. ‘Super-secret time-travel-prevention agency? I’ll tell you what we are … a freakin’ joke. That’s us. Three clueless kids and a couple of trained monkeys.’ She leaned back in her chair, closed her eyes and started massaging away an emerging migraine with the tips of her fingers.

  ‘Well, to look at it this way,’ said Liam presently, ‘he’s a tall mouthy fella, so he is, wearing clothes from the last century. Someone’s going to notice him soon enough.’

  ‘And your point is?’

  Liam shrugged. ‘He might cause a scene and end up on one of ’em news stations?’

  ‘Or get himself arrested,’ added Sal. ‘Weirdo like that.’

  Maddy shook her head irritably. ‘This is New York, Sal. It’s all weirdos.’

  ‘But he’s got a mouth on him, so he has,’ said Liam. ‘I fancy that’ll land him in trouble with a policeman soon enough.’

  An attitude. He has that all right.

  Maddy suddenly opened her eyes. ‘Oh God! And lead the police right here! Right to our door!’

  ‘Information: we can establish an unencrypted and open link to the NYPD incident-report database,’ said Bob.

  ‘We could monitor this and respond to any relevant coms traffic,’ added Becks quickly. The pair of them were like two chastised children, both desperately seeking to redeem themselves.

  Maddy sat forward, the chair creaking with the sudden lurch of movement. ‘OK, yeah, that’s … that’s something we can do.’

  She turned towards the computer monitors and saw computer-Bob was already in the process of establishing a handshake link to the New York Police Department’s computer system.

  ‘Good boy, computer-Bob.’ She turned back to the others. ‘And maybe we’ll find him anyway, right? I mean he’s got no money so he can’t get a cab or a bus or a train. And he isn’t going to get a room anywhere looking the way he does. Thing is … where might he head?’

  ‘Over the bridge,’ said Sal. ‘Towards Manhattan … towards the bright lights.’

  Liam nodded. ‘It’s what I would’ve done on me first night. You just want to see all that up close.’

  ‘Yeah …’ Maddy pursed her lips thoughtfully. ‘He really did seem to like the big buildings. OK, then. Right, here’s what we do. We’ll split up and search for him. Bob and Sal, you two head over the bridge and go north up Bowery, Fourth and Broadway towards Times Square. Liam and Becks, you head down towards Wall Street. Those are the two glowiest, shiniest parts of town, right? Hopefully, he’ll make like a big dumb moth and head to one of those two places. If we’re lucky.’

  She fumbled among the detritus and rubbish on the desk and found what she was looking for. She tossed Liam and Sal a mobile phone each. ‘I’ll monitor the police call-ins here. If we get a likely candidate, I’ll dial it in.’

  Liam frowned. ‘Dial it in?’

  ‘Call you! On the phone … the thing in your hand! I’ll call you on that!’

  ‘Ahh.’ He nodded. ‘Right you are.’

  ‘So, is that clear, everyone?’

  Four nodding heads.

  ‘And, Sal, Liam … Bob. Get changed back into your normal clothes. Quick as you can. You look like a convention of Quakers or something.’

  CHAPTER 17

  2001, New York

  Lincoln stood in awe at the confusion of blinking, fizzing, flickering multicoloured lights, the neon signs in Chinese, pedestrian crossings blinking WALK and DON’T WALK, the cars and cabs looking to his eyes like impossible devices that shouldn’t be able to move on their own without the aid of horses in front – and yet they did.

  His ears were filled with a riot of alien sounds, sounds he couldn’t begin to make sense of: a rhythmic pounding that spilled out of the back of a vehicle as it rolled past him, a noise so deep he felt his chest shuddering in synchronicity; the pavements and street filled with people speaking languages from all over the world, so it seemed, every one of them holding slim and shiny pebble-shaped contraptions to their ears and talking into them or alternately looking intently at their tiny glowing surfaces.

  Languages, so many of them, but the most perplexing ones were those he had an inkling were some form of unidentifiable English. He could make sense of fleeting bits and pieces said, phrases shouted out from one side of the street to the other and peppered with words he couldn’t begin to try to decipher.

  It was awe at first, and pride, that almost had him crying. Pride that his nation, his fellow Americans, ambitious and brave men and women, pioneers, adventurers and entrepreneurs, all of them, would one day build something so magnificently, toweringly spectacular and ingenious and colourful as this incredible city of glowing cathedrals.

  ‘Hell’s bells and tarnation!’ he gasped out loud. Even his thunderous voice was lost amid the bustling din of Chinatown. ‘This is a truly remarkable place!’ He shook his head with utter incredulity. ‘Truly remarkable!’

  It was then a short woman standing directly in front of him said something.

  He cupped an ear, realizing she was talking to him. ‘I beg your pardon, ma’am?’

  She looked to him to be Oriental and giggled shyly as she spoke. He bent down low, almost doubling over to hear her better.

  ‘It is very noisy, ma’am. Pray you might speak a little louder.’

  She spoke again. ‘Like yoo hat very much!’

  ‘My hat?’ He self-consciously touched the brim of his battered felt-topper. ‘Why thank you!’

  Then without warning the woman whipped an object out from
her handbag. It glistened gun-metal grey, square like a tinder-box, with one glassy eye that glinted dully at him.

  ‘Ma’am? What may I ask are you –?’

  She pulled the small device up to her face and said, ‘You smile now, please?’

  A blinding flash of light suddenly exploded from it and Lincoln staggered back, screaming in abject terror, quite certain the device was some sort of weapon and that he’d been shot at.

  He collided with someone else and a moment later they were in a tangle of limbs on the ground.

  ‘What you doin’, fool?’

  A young dark-skinned face beneath the peak of a spotlessly white Yankees cap.

  Lincoln grimaced awkwardly, patting himself down to be sure he wasn’t bleeding from the Chinese woman’s ‘gunshot’ wound.

  ‘My apologies, I … I must have … I thought …’

  The young black man angrily pushed Lincoln’s gangly legs off him. He uttered a stream of words Lincoln couldn’t begin to fathom.

  ‘Like I say, I am sorry. I thought I had been shot by a … a small woman with a … well, with some curious weapon.’

  The young man looked at him as he got up, dusting himself down. He shook his head in half irritation, half bemusement. ‘You wanna jus’ watch out, a’ight?’

  Lincoln looked at the young black man. Noticed a ragged tear along the knee of his pale denim trousers.

  ‘Good Lord! I appear to have ripped your clothes! I beg your pardon.’

  ‘Uh? What? No, hey … that’s jus’ meant to be like –’

  Lincoln shook his head, looking the young man up and down. ‘I have some small coin on me. You must allow me to at least recompense –’

  ‘No, hey … that’s fine,’ waved the young man. ‘Jus’ watch out next time, a’ight?’

  ‘No, I insist,’ said Lincoln, digging into his own threadbare trousers. ‘Where’s your master? I’ll give the money to hi–’

  ‘Hey! What did you just say?’

  Lincoln froze, cocked an eyebrow. ‘Ahh! I see! My mistake, young man. You must be a freed negro, then?’

  Both police officers heard the call on the squad car’s radio.

  ‘We got a disturbance, corner of Mott Street and Canal Street. Caller said we got a pair of guys tangling like a pair of fighting cockerels.’

  Bill picked up the mic. ‘OK, we got it; we’re just round the corner.’ He stubbed his cigarette out, placed his cap on and straightened the peak in the car’s wing mirror. ‘Damn. Fun’s startin’ early tonight.’

  ‘Ain’t that right,’ Jim replied, tossing the uneaten half of his salt-beef bagel back in its paper bag and stuffing it into the car door’s side pocket. The beef was going to be cold by the time he got back to it and the mustard all soaked up into the bread.

  Great.

  He slapped on the siren and took the next left. ‘And sheesh … it’s only Monday fer cryin’ out loud.’

  Bill chuckled in his seat as the squad car sped down the busy street, the siren clearing a gap between both lanes of sluggish traffic.

  CHAPTER 18

  2001, New York

  ‘See anything?’

  Becks shook her head. ‘I see no one who matches his identity or similar.’

  Liam shucked his shoulders. ‘To be honest, I can’t imagine us spotting anyone similar. He’s an odd-looking fella, so he is.’

  Although he seemed to Liam to be an utterly peculiar individual – one moment manic and excitable as a child, the next curmudgeonly and as bad-tempered as a mule – there was something about him he found vaguely likeable. Perhaps it was because he seemed so honest. His over-the-top mannerisms, his loud voice, his thoroughly expressive face, seemed utterly incapable of masking whatever happened to be going through his mind. Lincoln appeared to be one of those people completely incapable of deceit.

  Or, as Liam’s Auntie Dot used to say, the poor fella wears his heart on his sleeve.

  He recalled one of the other lads on the Titanic being a bit like that, one of the junior stewards. Liam remembered thinking the lad wasn’t going to last long on the ship. Too ready with a muttered curse if he failed to get tipped. The chief steward said the lad was a bad penny. Trouble. Certainly not the kind of young man they wanted wearing a White Star uniform.

  Liam gazed at the winking lights of traffic backed up at an intersection and wondered if that lad was one of the lucky few who’d made it off the ship alive to be picked up later by the SS Carpathia.

  > Maddy?

  ‘Yes?’ she groaned. Her cold had chosen the last half an hour to get worse. Her head was pounding, her throat was rough, her arms felt like she’d been bench-pressing hundred-pound weights and her legs like they’d run a marathon.

  > There has just been an incident logged on the New York Police Department’s internal intranet system that I calculate as having a high relevancy factor.

  She pulled her chair along the table to face the webcam. ‘Whadya got?’

  > ‘19:31 hours. Disturbance on corner of Mott and Canal Street. One male, Caucasian, approximate age 22. Possibly a vagrant. Booked in using probable alias – Abraham Lincoln.’

  ‘Oh boy … We got him! What’s he gone and done now?’

  > Data entry originates from Precinct 5 police station.

  ‘Any idea where that is?’

  > Just a moment … searching.

  She snatched her inhaler off the desk and took a wheezy gasp from it; asthma and a cold – no, strike that, flu – oh, and a whole pile of unwelcome stress on top of that. She wondered how much punishment her frail body was supposed to be able to take.

  > 19 Elizabeth Street.

  Sal and Bob were probably closer. She dialled her number.

  ‘Sal?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘We’ve got ourselves a winner. He’s only gone and got himself arrested already!’

  ‘Surprise, surprise.’

  ‘He’s being held at the precinct station over on Elizabeth Street. No more than five minutes from you, I think.’

  ‘You want Bob to go in and break him out or something?’

  ‘God no! That’ll kick up a mess we can do without. No, just go in and ask about him. Doesn’t sound like he’s done anything too serious. Say he’s your eccentric cousin or something and you’re there to take him home and give him a frikkin’ good talking to.’ She shrugged. ‘We might get lucky and they release him into your care.’

  ‘OK … I’ll give it a try.’

  Maddy hung up, settled back in her chair and groaned into a hankie before dialling Liam. It took him about two dozen rings before he finally answered.

  ‘Ah, so you managed to figure out how to answer it, then, Liam?’

  ‘Aye. Them silly little buttons on the front all look the same to me, so they do.’

  Her patient, long-suffering sigh rustled down the phone line before she proceeded to explain as quickly as she could where Lincoln was and that they’d best come home to the arch. She figured Sal wasn’t going to have much luck talking the police into releasing Lincoln. Chances were they’d probably let him out first thing tomorrow morning with a verbal warning if he hadn’t done anything too bad … on bail, if he had.

  She hung up and aimed a hang-dog look at the webcam. ‘Can I go get some bunk-time now, do you think, Bob?’

  > Recommendation: minimum four hours’ sleep. You are not functioning to your full ability. You look like total chudyah.

  Maddy smiled, surprised … and not a little impressed with computer-Bob. ‘Sal’s been teaching you more naughty words, hasn’t she?’

  > Affirmative.

  CHAPTER 19

  2001, New York

  ‘What’re you doing, Jim?’

  His friend looked up from the computer terminal and rolled his eyes. He’d undone the top button of his NYPD uniform tunic and rolled his sleeves up. Jim looked like a man who’d already clocked off shift and gone home. Only, of course, he hadn’t.

  ‘That fruitcake we picked up earlier in
Chinatown just went and generated a bunch of paperwork for me.’

  Bill slumped down in his chair, facing him over their paired-up back-to-back desks. ‘What’s he gone and done now? I thought we were holding him overnight with a caution?’

  Jim scratched his nose with a pen, then ran a hand through his buzzcut blond hair. ‘Stupid idiot went and said some crazy stuff about the Twin Towers comin’ down. Said they was goin’ to explode an’ all.’ He sighed. ‘Which means with the FBI’s Threat Alert system on Amber, fer crissakes –’ he shrugged – ‘I gotta go log it all in.’

  ‘Mind you …’ Bill shook his head. ‘He said a whole bunch of other crazy stuff too … What was it?’

  Jim chuckled. ‘Oh, you mean that he’s gonna be the president one day, that he’s been transported through time from 1830-whatever by a bunch of time-travellin’ kids … or somethin’?’

  Bill nodded. ‘And that name? Like something out of the Bible. Abraham Landon?’ He checked the screen in front of him. ‘Lincoln … Abraham no-middle-name Lincoln.’

  They looked at each other for a moment before Jim finally spoke. ‘Stupid goddarn name, uh? You see us ever havin’ a president with a dumb-soundin’ name like that?’

  Bill shook his head. ‘Not with that funny way he talks. Like a southern gentleman … like a pastor, a firebrand preacher or somethin’. Know what I mean? Tell you what, though, man, I can almost believe the crazy son-of-a-gun just stepped out of the Wild West.’

  Jim looked up at him. ‘What? You trying to say he isn’t a crazy loon needs lockin’ up in a room with no hard edges?’

  Bill snorted. ‘Nope, I’m sayin’ he could make a nice buck doin’ Crazy Preacher-o-grams.’

  ‘Yeah, right… Like that’s the first thing you gonna order for your pal’s bachelor night, uh?’

  ‘Come on, man, finish up … let some FBI pencil-neck go figure it out.’

  Jim nodded, pecking out a few more words on the keyboard before finally slapping a heavy hand on the desk. ‘Done!’