The Eternal War

by Alex Scarrow

  Lincoln nodded. ‘I believe we are.’

  ‘I’m frightened,’ she said.

  ‘Me too.’ Lincoln swallowed. ‘Do you have an idea what these creatures are?’

  She shook her head. If she believed in the things her parents had once believed in – in Shivu, in Brahma and his four heads and Vishnu with all his arms – all that crazy stuff, perhaps she might have allowed herself to think they were something supernatural, something evil.

  ‘Spawn of Hell?’ whispered Lincoln. ‘Demons? Do you think we died? And this is the very first layer of the underworld?’

  She looked at him, incredulous. ‘Why? Do you think that?’

  He winced as he fumbled at the lump on his head. ‘These are not any creatures of Earth I have ever seen.’

  Their whispered conversation had attracted the attention of the ‘child’. It stopped organizing the others and wandered over towards them with an awkward gait that looked like an uncomfortable approximation of a person walking. As if it was making a conscious effort to appear more human.

  Sal and Lincoln instantly stopped speaking and looked up at it from the pile of coals they were lying on. She could see it more easily now, even if it was just by candlelight. It was no more than four feet tall, slender and narrow shouldered. Its head was loaf-shaped like the others, but, in proportion to its meagre body, much larger.

  The creature squatted down, a position that looked more comfortable for it to settle into, and cocked its oversized head curiously at them. Its eyes were bigger than those on the ape-like variety that had carried her and Lincoln. Bigger and more childlike. But it was the mouth that drew her attention. There were no lips, just a jagged, uneven line of scarred, ribbed and bumpy flesh. As if some careless, or perhaps drunk, sculptor had fashioned them as an afterthought from lumpy clay.

  Sal noticed, surprised she hadn’t spotted it before, that the creature had a dark bow-tie tied round its thin neck. It looked almost comical, and reminded her again of children playing dress-up. If she wasn’t so terrified of what these creatures were going to do to her and Lincoln, she might have thought this thing actually looked almost cute.

  ‘I … I’m … Sal,’ she whispered. ‘M-my name … is … S-Sal.’ She pointed at Lincoln. ‘And he is … A-Abraham.’

  It cocked its head again, the eyes – all black like a rodent’s – narrowed, and faint frown lines appeared on its featureless pale skin. The gash of a mouth flexed unpleasantly.

  ‘Shal?’

  ‘Saleena,’ she said again. ‘M-my l-longer name … it’s Saleena.’

  ‘Shaleena?’ it repeated carefully.

  ‘No, it’s Ssss-aleena.’

  ‘Thatsh what I shaid. Shaleena?’

  She realized its malformed mouth was producing a lisp. She nodded. ‘That’s right, then.’

  It looked at Lincoln. ‘Ay-bra-ham?’ it pronounced carefully.

  He nodded.

  The creature looked down at them carefully for a full minute in a thoughtful silence, then finally its lips rippled and flexed.

  ‘My name ish … Shixty-one.’

  My name is Sixty-one?

  ‘That’sh what my name ushed to be.’ The creature’s lips moved in a way that Sal interpreted as a possible smile, although with the twisted jagged lines of its ‘lips’ the twitch of movement could have meant anything.

  ‘I changed my name … It’sh Shamuel, now.’

  She shot a quick glance at Lincoln. Did he just say Samuel?

  She looked at it again. ‘Your name … did you s-say y-your name is Samuel?’

  It nodded. There was a hint of childlike pride in that gesture, she thought. Like a little boy showing his teacher that he can actually tie his own shoelaces now.

  ‘That’sh exshactly right.’ It smiled again. ‘Shamuel’sh the name.’

  CHAPTER 47

  2001, outside Dead City

  Captain Ewan McManus studied the city skyline through field glasses. ‘Marvellous,’ he muttered without any real enthusiasm. He lowered his glasses, his eyes squinting back sunlight beneath the peak of his helmet.

  ‘Are you saying they went in there?’ asked Liam. ‘That’s the Dead City you were talking about last night, right?’

  McManus nodded. ‘The very same.’

  White Bear was beside them. He’d just returned from scouting ahead. ‘Tracks lead into city,’ he said. ‘Many more track, go into city.’

  ‘As I suspected.’ He tucked the field glasses back into a pouch on his belt. ‘This area’s been plagued by runaway eugenics. They raid for food, sometimes just for fun. And that’s where they scurry back to.’

  ‘I also see human track … is small, light, maybe girl,’ said White Bear, looking at Liam. ‘Your sister? She walk. Maybe eugenic need rest awhile, dah?’

  ‘Oh Jay-zus! Thank God … she’s alive!’

  McManus slapped his shoulder. ‘There you are. Some jolly good news.’

  ‘So what now? We’re going in?’

  McManus nodded. ‘Of course we’ll go in. This is the kind of thing my lads are used to doing – house-to-house, urban fighting. Not for the faint-hearted. It’s combat up close and not very pretty, I’m afraid.’

  He shook his head. ‘Of course, if the Confederate army had the gumption to go in and clean this mess up earlier instead of ignoring the problem, we wouldn’t have so many eugenics to deal with now.’ He puffed his lips. ‘Pfft. Ruddy useless lot. Nothing more than poorly trained farmhands, fools and felons.’

  ‘So when?’

  McManus turned to Liam. ‘When are we going in?’

  Liam nodded.

  ‘I shall call in the regimental carrier first. A few things my chaps’re going to need.’ He turned away from Liam towards the rest of the mounted platoon, pulling down the communicator from his helmet.

  ‘Summon Sky God,’ said White Bear, grinning.

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘Big Bird … in sky. It come … make much snow. Dah?’

  ‘Oh, right. You like the snow, do you?’

  The Indian nodded vigorously.

  Liam turned to look at the silent city, once upon a time a city called Baltimore. From this distance it didn’t look dead. Just peaceful. He could see tall buildings towards the middle of it, the chimneys of factories, the steeples of churches further out and the ordered rows of brick houses in the suburbs. A peaceful city slumbering in the midday sun.

  He heard the thud of heavy feet approaching and turned to see Bob.

  ‘Anything?’

  ‘Negative,’ Bob rumbled. He’d gone to climb a nearby water tower in the hope that he had a better chance of sniffing something out. But still no messages from Maddy, not even a partial message, not even a single tachyon particle. Which could only mean one thing: she had her own problems to deal with.

  Same thing, different day. When weren’t they desperately fighting their own separate fires?

  CHAPTER 48

  2001, New York

  ‘I presume you are referring to our divisional communications hub?’ said Wainwright.

  Becks nodded. ‘Colonel Devereau has explained that the hub services communications between this section of your front line and your High Command back in Fredericksburg, Virginia.’

  He cocked an eyebrow at Devereau. ‘It appears you have spies at work over here, Bill.’

  ‘We know where it is. Have done for some time. Just south of what used to be Times Square. We’ve seen the dish and the antennae. If our sky force was worth spit in a barrel, we’d have bombed it to rubble years ago.’

  Wainwright got up and paced towards one wall of his office. A huge map all but covered the entire wall, pin heads protruded, notes were tacked to it and pen marks and scribbles identified troop deployments and defence concentrations all along the east side of Manhattan. In a war with some movement to it, that information would have been critical military intelligence. But for Devereau most of the information on the map was old news. Bunkers, pillboxes and trenches built man
y decades ago when both he and Wainwright were boys in shorts. Devereau knew as much about the deployment of Wainwright’s men as he did his own.

  The Southern colonel tapped the map with a finger. ‘Here … as you say, just below what used to be called Times Square. Not so very far away from here.’

  ‘So?’ said Maddy. ‘Let’s go and get it.’

  ‘Not so far away … but the communications bunker is garrisoned by a detachment of British troops.’ He shrugged. ‘They don’t trust regular Confederate troops with guarding it – just a bunch of dumb ol’ corn-seed hicks … that’s how they see us.’

  He turned to look at the map for a moment, then back to them. ‘That would mean taking it by force, attacking it.’ He let those words ring off the hard walls of the room. Eventually he shook his head and sighed. ‘I’m sorry. That is the only communications equipment we have along this section of the line. Is there no other way to fix your machine?’

  ‘Negative,’ said Becks.

  Wainwright looked at them, at the magazines open on the table, at the small glowing screen of the device the girl had called an ‘iPhone’. The evidence of another world was there. He was more than certain the North didn’t have this kind of technology, or the knowledge, the imagination, the ability to produce the images in those magazines. And he was doubly certain they could never have constructed such a device.

  ‘What you’re asking … is for me to carry out an act of treason.’

  ‘Being here, talking to you now, James, I too am guilty of treason,’ said Devereau. ‘We are both already guilty enough to face a firing squad.’

  Wainwright nodded, accepting the point. ‘But this … taking that bunker, exchanging fire with British soldiers –’ he bit his lip – ‘you do understand what that means?’

  ‘An act of mutiny … yes.’

  The words had a sobering effect on both officers.

  Maddy picked up on that. ‘Look … maybe there’s another way.’

  ‘Negative,’ said Becks again. ‘A radio communication transmission dish is the component we require. Modification would have to be made to –’

  Maddy raised her hand to hush her. ‘You guys’ll never face a firing squad, because as soon as we’re done fixing your dish to our technology we can change this world back.’

  Devereau turned to her. ‘But, should this plan fail for whatever reason, then the consequences for our men as well as ourselves would be … dire to say the least.’

  Wainwright sat down at his table. ‘Colonel Devereau and I being guilty of treason is one thing. We would both face our firing squads. But a mutiny …?’ He poured himself the dregs of cooling coffee from the chipped jug between them. ‘Every man of the regiment would be punished whether they took part or not.’

  Devereau nodded slowly.

  ‘I can’t ask my men to do that.’

  ‘We could show them all what we just showed you,’ said Maddy.

  ‘No.’ He shook his head. ‘No. I fear not many of them would fully understand. And, not understanding, they would not dare risk facing charges of mutiny.’

  There was a knock on the door to his room.

  ‘Enter.’

  A young man’s face with a grey forage cap perched on a thatch of ginger-coloured hair looked round the door. ‘Sir?’

  ‘Yes, Corporal.’

  ‘You asked me to warn you when the British were coming … Well, they are, sir.’

  ‘Thank you, Lawrence. Instruct the men to prepare for an inspection.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  The door closed behind him.

  ‘You’ll need to leave immediately,’ said Wainwright. ‘It should take them ten minutes to make their way down here. Best you’re long gone by then.’

  ‘Please!’ said Maddy. ‘Please … think about it!’

  ‘Here, ma’am … you should take your things with you,’ he said, gathering up her magazines.

  Becks grabbed the magazines and the iPhone and placed them in a shoulder bag.

  ‘Well, just think about it. We have to fix this history!’ begged Maddy. ‘You think this war is bad enough? … It could get worse!’

  Wainwright stiffened, ignoring her pleas. ‘Colonel Devereau, will you please take these ladies with you back to your lines?’

  Devereau nodded. ‘Of course.’ He offered Wainwright a salute which the Southern officer returned crisply. He turned on a boot heel, opened the door and stepped into the concrete corridor outside.

  ‘Come on, Miss Carter,’ he said, grasping Maddy’s arm, ‘we have to leave right now.’

  ‘But …’ She gripped the edge of the table to stop him ushering her out. ‘But … he’s our only freakin’ hope! We have to –’

  ‘Sergeant Freeman!’

  Freeman’s head appeared in the doorway.

  ‘A little help here, please!’

  Becks, surprisingly, agreed with the colonel. ‘It is advisable to leave now, Madelaine. We should recalculate our options back at the archway.’

  Five minutes later they were on the launch chugging sluggishly back across the East River. Maddy stared at the slowly approaching rubble-and-ruin landscape of Brooklyn and wondered if their only hope was to try to convince Colonel Devereau and his men to launch their own attack to capture this communications bunker.

  Looking at him, looking at Sergeant Freeman, the other soldiers, old and young alike, sitting in their threadbare uniforms with the same patient look of defeat etched on each face, she realized they weren’t fighting men. They were draftees … men serving whatever period they were required to serve, counting away days until they might one day see their homes again.

  Unless there was some other option, some other course of action, they were well and truly stuck in this mess. Forget helping Liam and Sal. Forget worrying about handwritten warnings from the future … she and Becks were nothing more than two civilians stuck in the ruined and contested wasteland of an eternal war.

  CHAPTER 49

  2001, outside Dead City

  Liam gazed out of the forward observation windows of the carrier’s bridge, a long horseshoe array of glass panels that allowed the late summer sun to flood in, and bathed the place with warmth and light. Passing beneath them was a patchwork of fields that had seemed so much larger on the ground, and just ahead the fields gave way to the outskirts of the Dead City. Ordered rows of suburban homes with gardens long ago gone to seed giving way to smaller, more tightly packed homes and those giving way to drab brick-built tenement blocks. Further ahead, the apartment blocks grew taller and shared standing room with factories and warehouses and office blocks. All as dead and still as gravestones in a cemetery.

  ‘We’ll be landing shortly,’ said Captain McManus. He nodded at a thickset man in his forties, with silver-grey hair and mutton-chop sideburns that flared out generously. ‘Colonel Donohue is sending us in with three companies of men and some of our experimentals.’

  ‘Experimentals? Please explain,’ said Bob.

  McManus smiled. ‘You’ll see soon enough.’

  The drone of the carrier’s engines changed in tone and the vessel began a gentle descent. Liam saw tendrils of mist waft up beside the bridge windows and remembered the bizarre sight of a sky suddenly filling with a blizzard.

  ‘What’s with all the snow?’

  ‘The carrier uses lighter-than-air gases and vacuum voids to create lift. But it’s still not quite enough to make a ship this size entirely buoyant. So from the bottom of her hull we vent a cloud of nitrogen, which chills the air, causing it to become more dense … which of course provides us with additional lift. We are in effect creating a bed of thicker air on which we sit … and we just carry that bed along with us.’

  ‘But the snow?’

  ‘Well, if the air’s humid, then the moisture in the air becomes snow, you see?’

  ‘Captain McManus?’ called out the colonel.

  ‘Yes, sir?’

  ‘Best ready your men for disembarking.’

  ‘
Right you are, sir.’ He tapped Liam’s arm. ‘This way.’

  McManus led them out of the bridge on to the quarterdeck outside and down a ladder to the spar deck below. As he descended the steep steps, Liam made the mistake of looking out past the brass handrail at the slowly looming cityscape below.

  ‘Oh Jay-zus,’ he said queasily. ‘I didn’t want to go and do that.’

  ‘Vertigo. Some of my chaps suffer from it,’ said McManus, grinning. ‘Just don’t look down.’

  Liam and Bob joined him on the deck at the bottom, and then, to Liam’s relief, they were led inside again past several soldiers who politely stepped aside for them as they descended another ladder into a large equipment hangar.

  He stopped at the bottom of the steps. ‘My God,’ he whispered.

  The hangar looked to be about fifty to seventy-five feet wide and three or four times that in length, roughly, the size of a small football pitch. The space was filled with three hundred men mustering, forming up, checking each other’s backpacks and webbing, several dozen of the huffaloes corralled in one corner. It was cold, chilled by the artificial arctic mist being generated outside the hull. Plumes of breath lifted from every man.

  Despite the wretched churning concern for Sal’s perilous circumstances – his hope that somewhere in the city below she was still alive – Liam experienced a moment of wonder at the bustling activity before him.

  Across the hangar deck he saw several dozen dog-like animals. But not dogs, not like any dogs he’d ever seen. Larger, almost as big as lions, but lithe and thin like greyhounds. They had oddly human-like heads, baboon-like, in fact, with keen human eyes that seemed to convey intelligence.

  ‘What are those?’

  ‘Hunter-seekers. Eugenics, of course. We used them to great effect in Afghanistan and northern India. They’re very good at sniffing out insurgents, squeezing their way into caves and tunnels and what-have-you, then calling in their position and describing the troop strength.’

  ‘“Calling in”? You mean they can …’

  ‘Talk? Yes, of course. Be ruddy useless to us otherwise.’ He raised an eyebrow and chuckled at Liam’s wide-eyed gawp. ‘Oh, I wouldn’t expect anything too deep and profound to come out of their mouths. You’ll not get Hamlet out of them, I’m afraid. They’re really no smarter than small children.’