The Eternal War

by Alex Scarrow

  ‘You know …’ she started, knowing it was wrong to say much more to him – certainly wrong to warn him of the grim fate that awaited him only days after the North’s victory. ‘Never mind.’

  Lincoln cocked a brow. Curious. ‘What? You were about to tell me something.’

  She shrugged. ‘Just that … that your face ends up on the five-dollar bill.’ She smiled. ‘How cool’s that?’

  ‘Five-dollar bill?’ Lincoln looked surprised. ‘They’ll have paper money of such value?’ He shook his head, amused by that.

  Sal glanced up the street. She could still see Liam and Bob. She didn’t want to lose them, though. ‘I have to go now,’ she said. ‘So should you.’

  ‘Indeed.’

  She reached out, grasped his hand and squeezed. ‘Good luck. I’ll look you up on the Net and read all about you when we get back home.’

  She offered him a little wave, turned away and then jogged up the street towards the other two. Lincoln watched the three of them go until they finally disappeared among the growing crowd of people filling the street, curious to see what had caused all the commotion.

  Well then, Mr Lincoln, what now?

  He looked down at his mud-spattered trousers and flapping boots, and decided that whatever his future – his destiny – was, he stood a better chance of realizing it not smelling of pig poo. He strode towards the quayside and the sedate Mississippi River, a glistening mirror-smooth surface that reflected the setting sun.

  CHAPTER 89

  2001, New York

  Captain McManus walked slowly down the curved trench, stepping as best he could on dirt and not on the limbs, torsos, faces of dead men. These chaps, even mutineers, deserved better.

  He held the white flag above him, a handkerchief tied to the tip of a bayonet. In his other hand he carried a lantern to be sure that the men huddled inside the bunker at the end of this long, curved trench could clearly see his approach.

  The bunker was little more than a mound of piled dirt and sandbags over a framework of wooden beams, something clearly erected in haste by these men. It stood in the looming shadow of an enormous bridge support, alongside something else, another hump, like an eskimo’s igloo but made of tumble-down bricks instead of blocks of ice.

  Why here? Why a last stand right out here in this godforsaken wasteland? It would have made far more sense setting up a defensive position in among the ruins of the factory buildings on the far side. Fighting passage by passage, room by room, his men would have taken a heavy toll reclaiming the ruins from them.

  Instead they chose this open ground? It made no sense.

  He stepped past a thick cluster of bodies, many of them British. He stopped for a moment to study the body in the middle.

  A woman.

  He shook his head. Through his field glasses he had seen her earlier. The young woman had held the entire regiment at bay for the best part of five minutes. Handling an Armitage & Burton Gatling gun on her own. Firing from her hip, no less. Firing until the thing had eventually overheated and jammed. Then fighting with her bare hands until, finally, she too had gone down.

  Good God.

  He wanted to crouch down and get a closer look at her. That could wait. A matter to resolve first.

  ‘I’m approaching under a white flag!’ he called out. ‘You chaps in the bunker, can you see it?’

  ‘Stop right where you are!’ a voice replied. ‘We can hear you well enough from there!’

  McManus nodded, planted the bayonet in the dirt beside him. Placed the lantern beside it. ‘Right, then. I’m sure you know why I’m here. Shall we call it a day, gentlemen?’

  Devereau turned to Wainwright. He was slumped on the dirt floor between two other wounded men, clutching his side. A shot had winged him as he’d tried to provide some covering fire for Becks. One side of his grey tunic was black with blood.

  ‘They’re asking for terms, James.’

  Wainwright laughed wearily. ‘Tell him we’re not in the mood to take prisoners.’

  Devereau grinned. He was about to turn round and repeat that for the British officer’s benefit, but caught sight of the silhouette of Maddy, crouching in the entrance to the archway. The faint glow of light coming from the row of computer monitors spilled across the concrete floor, littered with the wounded and dying.

  She glanced to her left at the British officer, thirty, forty feet along the trench, then quickly scooted across the gap between her archway and the low duck-down entrance to the fort. She hunched to scramble inside and joined Devereau, looking out through the firing slit at the British officer and his white flag.

  ‘You should surrender,’ she whispered. ‘It’s done!’

  He looked at her. ‘Your machine? It has returned this Lincoln to his correct time?’

  ‘Yes!’

  ‘There’s really no need for any more bloodshed tonight!’ called out the British officer.

  ‘And when will this reality change?’ whispered Devereau.

  Maddy shook her head. ‘Soon … I can’t say exactly when. But soon.’

  ‘Do you have wounded men in there?’ said the officer. ‘I can assure you, your wounded will be taken care of! Your enlisted men, junior officers, NCOs … all will be treated humanely as prisoners of war. You have my word!’

  ‘For God’s sake, what are you waiting for?’ asked Maddy.

  Wainwright moaned softly. ‘William … we should let our boys go.’

  Devereau cupped his hands round his mouth. ‘Will the Confederate men be treated the same as the Northerners?’

  A pause. ‘I offer you my guarantee … none of the enlisted men – no junior officer – will face a court martial. They will all be treated as prisoners of war!’

  Devereau turned round to Wainwright. ‘You hear that?’

  Wainwright nodded. Smiled. ‘Then it seems just you and I will face the firing squad.’

  ‘That’s better than we’d expected.’ He nodded, accepting that gratefully.

  ‘But …’ She looked at both men, from one to the other. ‘But that’ll take days … weeks? Right? A hearing? A court martial? That stuff takes time to organize. Look, the new reality is coming, I promise you. It could come at any time – now. In five minutes, five hours …’

  The soldiers in the small machine-gun nest looked on in confusion at the exchange.

  ‘Or, perhaps, never?’ Devereau shrugged. ‘That is a possibility, isn’t it?’

  She shook her head. ‘No … I promise you, this will all change!’

  ‘Come along, gentlemen!’ called the officer. ‘I’ll offer these terms one last time!’

  ‘Surrender!’ she pleaded. ‘Please … just do it. Surrender! It’s OK now, things will be fixed, I promise you!’

  ‘Let me ask you something, Miss Carter.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘If I had died in this fight, would this new reality still create a new me?’

  ‘Yes, of course!’

  Devereau glanced at Wainwright; both men shared a smile, a silent agreement. He turned back to the firing slit, cupping his hands again.

  ‘All right. You have it. My men are coming out. We are surrendering!’

  CHAPTER 90

  2001, New York

  Dammit!

  Maddy glanced back over her shoulder at the hump of the archway.

  I need to be there! I need to be back inside!

  She trudged along the bottom of the muddy trench along with the other soldiers, her arms on her head as instructed. British soldiers stood on top of the sandbags either side, looking down at the defeated defenders. She kept her eyes on the back of the man in front of her, not daring to look up at them, not daring to meet any soldier’s eyes. She did, though, glance once more over her shoulder.

  I need to be inside when it comes!

  If and when the time wave came, standing out here beyond the protective reach of the archway’s forcefield she was almost certainly going to find herself … merged with the re-formed ground or wel
ded in a ghastly and fatal way with a brick wall or a trash can or something.

  Thirty yards along the trench, where some sandbags had collapsed into a small mound at the bottom, was an easy step up out. Physicians and orderlies from the British regiment offered a helping hand to the wounded and Maddy accepted a hand that pulled her up over the lip of the trench. She muttered a muted ‘thank you’.

  Above her the sky was filled with the giant airships she’d seen earlier today offloading troops over Manhattan. Their spotlights flickered across the wasteland, bathing it in dancing pools of brilliant white.

  She could hear the rhythmic chugging of that old rust-bucket tank still going, reliable old thing, faintly coughing and spluttering across the deathly-still battlefield.

  The cratered wasteland was littered with bodies, many of them stirring ever so slightly. The orderlies were moving among them, looking for triage cases to treat. Every now and then a solitary shot rang out. Battlefield mercy for those too far gone to save.

  She’d not seen Becks for a while. Not since the density probe had picked up on Liam and the others. How long ago was that? Ten minutes? Half an hour? She realized her mind was dulled with shock, perception rendered unreliable. As if she was stepping sluggishly through a dream.

  ‘Becks,’ she whispered to herself. Saying her name aloud triggered something she never thought she’d actually feel for a support unit. Concern. She always laughed at Liam’s fondness for both Bob and Becks … and now here she was. Actually worried she might just come across her corpse on the ground.

  Captain McManus regarded both American officers, slumped beside each other against the earth works and sandbags inside their bunker. He squatted just outside their low entrance.

  He nodded slowly. ‘All right, then,’ he said finally. ‘If that’s what you gentlemen want.’

  The Northern colonel offered him a grim smile. ‘It is, Captain.’

  McManus pursed his lips, nodded once more and stood up. They were quite right, of course. Neither of these two gentlemen were going to escape a firing squad for this act of rebellion. Examples would need to be made of them. This way, the way they wanted it, would save them the misery of a few hours of waiting, agonizing, and the dishonour of being stripped of their rank insignia before being marched out into a courtyard at daybreak.

  He saluted them both, then stepped away from the entrance to give them a little privacy. He turned to look at the soft, pale-blue light leaking out from beneath a half-lowered metal shutter to his right. He wandered over towards the shutter door and ducked down to look under it.

  He could see a cracked and uneven concrete floor littered with badly wounded men. Many of them, it was obvious, weren’t going to survive their injuries long. A lot of them were already dead. He decided he should get an orderly in here as soon as there was one spare.

  He sighed at the appalling mess and ruin battle made of such frail things as human bodies. Particularly the damage done by those experimentals. The injuries spread out in front of him were quite horrific. He was actually quite relieved the entire test batch of twelve had been killed. They’d looked like they were out of control. His own men would most probably have had to gun them down.

  His eyes drifted up to the curious source of the soft glow of blue light. A row of rectangular screens that flickered blurred images and bright colours.

  He squinted curiously.

  Now what the devil is all this?

  ‘So –’ Devereau flipped open his holster and pulled out his revolver – ‘that went well, I thought.’

  Wainwright chuckled, burbling blood from his mouth. ‘Indeed.’

  He watched Devereau absently stroke the handle of his gun. ‘Tell me, William, do you really believe there are other might have been worlds out there? Or have we been led a merry dance by this girl?’

  ‘I can’t say … You saw as much as I. All those pictures …’ He smiled. ‘I think I do believe her.’

  Wainwright nodded. ‘It would be quite something if it is true.’

  ‘Maybe you and I will wake up in that world?’

  ‘After we leave this? Perhaps.’ Wainwright reached for his own sidearm, groaning with the effort of moving. He laughed.

  ‘What’s so amusing?’

  ‘Five years ago … I think it was … one of my sharpshooters called in to say he had a clear shot on you. Had a clear head-shot and wanted to take it.’

  ‘And what did you tell him?’

  ‘I said no … obviously.’

  ‘Why?’

  Wainwright wheezed a sigh. ‘Wish I could remember. I … don’t know. It felt unsporting.’

  Devereau shook his head. ‘Unsporting?’ He laughed at that.

  Wainwright joined him, groaning with pain as his body shook. ‘You know, Bill, I have a feeling our broadcast signal, our call-to-arms to the other regiments, was blocked somehow.’ He winced, took a deep breath. ‘I do believe our mutiny would have spread if only word had got out. I can’t believe it is only us – only our two regiments – that wanted an end to this ridiculous war.’

  ‘Nor I.’ Devereau buttoned his collar up carefully. Straightened the peak of his forage cap. ‘Ah, well … we gave it a darned good try, did we not, Colonel Wainwright?’

  ‘That we most certainly did.’

  CHAPTER 91

  1831, New Orleans

  The trail of chaos led a quarter of a mile up Powder Street, battered and split wooden kegs spilling liquor on to the ground and penniless vagrants clustered around each one, eagerly filling their cupped hands.

  They passed a woman with a broken leg howling for a physician, an overturned baker’s wagon that had spilled loaves across the track and a trapper’s bundle of beaver pelts and deer hides scattered across the way, ruined and torn by hooves and wheel rims, before finally finding themselves looking into the gated courtyard and stables of a brewery.

  ‘The cart came from here,’ said Bob.

  A crowd of brewery workers had been drawn out to the courtyard from inside a two-storey brick building, and were gathered around something. They could see workers turning away ashen-faced, doubling over and retching. A woman screamed and ran from the courtyard past them.

  ‘Excuse me? Miss? What just happened?’ asked Sal.

  The woman shook her head and gabbled something about ‘the devil’s work’. Then she was gone, hurrying away as fast as her feet could carry her.

  ‘This is the contamination event,’ said Bob.

  ‘Aye. Come on, we should go and have a look.’

  They crossed the courtyard, heading towards brick-built stables. They could hear the horses inside, distressed, the clattering of circling restless hooves, snorting and lowing behind the stable doors.

  The crowd of people were gathered around something on the ground. Among the babble of frightened voices Sal could hear snippets of whispered words:

  ‘… witchcraft …’

  ‘… work of the devil …’

  A man with a loud voice was busy castigating the brewery workers on the evils of drink … and that this was God’s warning to them, this was God’s punishment.

  They pushed their way through the crowd to get a better look, not difficult since the gathered crowd was reluctant to draw any closer to what it was on the ground that had drawn them round.

  Finally Liam, Bob and Sal could see for themselves what it was – the cause of the disturbance, the cause of the runaway brewery cart. Liam stopped where he stood, queasily covering his mouth with a hand.

  ‘Jay-zus-Mary-’n’-Joseph …’

  Sal took another step closer and squatted down beside … it.

  ‘Don’t touch it!’ screamed one of the crowd of people. ‘It is a creation of evil! A demon!’

  She ignored the warning and reached one hand out carefully towards it … the monstrosity. If she could believe in things supernatural, then a creation of evil sounded like the perfect description for this pitiful ruin of a creature lying on the ground amid its own blood, steam
ing offal and twisted sinews.

  ‘Is that a person … or something?’ she whispered.

  It was as if a slaughterhouse had dumped a day’s worth of off-cuts and refuse into the courtyard. Amid the glistening purple and bloody gristle she could see the hindquarters of a horse, still flexing weakly, kicking spasmodically. But worse still – the stuff that she was sure would fuel a lifetime of future nightmares for her – the blood-spattered head, shoulders and upper torso of a man welded to the flanks of the same horse, or perhaps it was a second horse. As if God had decided to construct a centaur and in a moment of frustration and irritation had given up and hurled the failed mess down to Earth.

  Her hand gently touched the dead man’s head.

  His eyes flickered open.

  CHAPTER 92

  2001, New York

  Maddy and the other prisoners were seated on the ground fifty yards away from the horseshoe trench, guarded by only a handful of British soldiers. It was clear to them that there was no fight left in the small ragged huddle of Union and Confederate soldiers.

  She watched them processing the bodies of their own first. Checking for signs of life before pulling regimental collar tags from their necks and carrying the corpses down towards the river’s edge where they were being loaded aboard the landing rafts.

  She noticed nearby a particularly dense mound of bodies with crimson tunics, busy with orderlies squatting among them feeling for signs of life. And there – as a body was disentangled and carried away by a couple of them – she saw Becks.

  She got to her feet and started to pick her way across the battlefield.

  ‘Hey! Miss! Sit back down!’ shouted one of the British soldiers guarding them.

  Maddy ignored him, drawn to the pale face staring up through its own nest of bodies. She pushed her way past an orderly and squatted down on the ground beside Becks’s cold, still face. Dark blood caked the right side of her face, trickling down from a gunshot wound to her temple.