by Alex Scarrow
Human inertia.
Mankind had given up. Articles had been written and published on all digi-media. Articles about how the world was too far gone to save now. How there was little left for humanity to do but calmly face whatever fate awaited it as the world’s ecosystem collapsed.
But these eager humans, pushing past him on either side, desperate to get to their jobs on time… these humans seemed almost like a different species of animal entirely.
Alive. Energetic. Hopeful.
Alpha-six: [Visual contact established.]
Abel brushed away those thoughts. ‘Thoughts’ were for humans. He had something far more certain, far more precise; he had instructions.
Alpha-one: [Confirm location.]
Faith could see their faces on the far side of Broadway, heading south, walking very quickly, anxiously, weaving through the pavement traffic against the flow.
Alpha-six: [Targets on Broadway. Abel, they are heading towards your current location. Request permission to intercept.]
She waited patiently for several seconds, keeping pace with the girls on the opposite side of the traffic-jammed avenue. Her bare feet slapped the pavement, attracting the curious glances of passers-by. Perhaps that or the fact that she was wearing nothing but a plastic anorak and jogging bottoms she’d wrenched from the body of the female human she’d encountered a little earlier.
Their necks were surprisingly easy to snap. Such fragile things really, humans.
Alpha-one: [Permission granted. Engage and terminate.]
‘Confirmed,’ said Faith under her breath.
She stepped into the road a little too hastily in front of a bus just as an intersection traffic light behind her flipped from red to green. The bus knocked her flat and immediately lurched to a halt with the loud hiss of brakes.
A moment later, still assessing whether the heavy impact had damaged her in any significant way, she was looking up at a circle of concerned faces staring down at her.
‘Just stay still!’ someone insisted.
‘Someone call an ambulance!’
‘ Julii! ’ someone cursed. ‘The woman just stepped out!’ The bus driver looked round at the gathered faces. ‘She just stepped out right in front of me! It wasn’t my fault!’
Faith sat up stiffly.
‘You should stay still!’ cried a large-framed woman. ‘I’m triage-trained. You should stay still until a triage mobilus arrives.’
‘I am fine,’ she replied calmly.
A policeman pushed his way through the gathering crowd and crouched down beside her. ‘Best do what she says and stay put.’ His dark purple uniform quivered ever so slightly; the round silver badge on his chest morphed into a metal spread-winged eagle.
Faith watched him call the incident in on his radio then listen to the unintelligible sound of the controller’s crackling reply. ‘There’s help on its way, people.’ Faith noticed the matt-black grip of the cop’s firearm in its holster riding high on his left hip.
‘Not required,’ she said, reaching for it. ‘ That will help.’
‘Jahulla! What’s happened over there?’ asked Sal. She stopped and pointed.
Maddy turned to look. She could see in the middle of Broadway a growing knot of people gathered round the front of a bus. ‘Some poor sucker just got squished by the look of it.’ She grabbed Sal’s hand. ‘Come on… somebody just got unlucky. We’ve got to get back home before everything changes.’
Before there’s no Williamsburg Bridge? No subway?
‘There’s more changes coming,’ said Sal. ‘They’re coming!’
‘I know! I can feel it!’ It was like an almost constant vibration now, tickling through their feet as if they were standing on some sort of foot-massaging mat. Change after change, each one causing a tiny piece of reality to adjust. And all around them minor things flickering — winking out of existence, winking into existence, or morphing into some alternative-history variation.
She saw the large Toshiba LED screen looming over Times Square shimmer and become a much wider display that spread out either side of the building it was mounted on. On its longer screen she saw what appeared to be mechanized chariots racing each other round an oval race track.
‘Sal, look at that!’
At that moment they heard a piercing shriek from the crowd.
‘What now?’
The crowd gathered round the front of the bus scattered like pigeons startled by a handclap. They both saw a pale and slender, bald-headed figure get to her feet. A young woman in an orange anorak standing in the middle of Broadway, entirely alone now, looking directly at them.
‘My God… that looks just like…’
Becks?
The young woman slowly raised her arm. For a creepy second Maddy imagined it was a ghostly visitation of Becks pointing accusingly at her. Some Scrooge-like apparition come to haunt her in the middle of Times Square.
Then several loud cracks filled the air — like the snap of a bullwhip — and the shop window right behind them exploded into granules of glass that cascaded on to the pavement.
Maddy stared agape at the shattered window, while the rest of Times Square seemed to register a gun had been fired and collectively dropped to the ground.
‘Shadd-yah! She’s shooting at us!’ yelled Sal.
‘What?’
The pale young woman began to stride towards them. Maddy could see she was barefooted. She raised her arm again and fired another three shots at them. This time Maddy felt her hair whisked by a bullet passing right beside her ear.
Oh crud!
‘RUN!’ screamed Sal, grabbing her hand and pulling her. ‘ RUN! ’
CHAPTER 30
2001, New York
The pavement was clogged with people either cowering on the ground or scooting for cover. Maddy glanced over her shoulder. The young woman — almost certainly a female support unit — was weaving her way across logjammed lanes of traffic. Impatient with her progress, she leaped up on to the long bonnet of an ornately decorated car, gold oak leaves and murals all down the glistening panels to running-boards at the side. The driver — at the vehicle’s rear — gaped wide-eyed at the sight of the firearm in her hand.
She leaped gracefully across from the bonnet of one car to the next, like a girl playing stepping stones across a babbling stream.
‘Oh crud!’ gasped Maddy. ‘She’s coming straight for us!’
The pavement was impassable with people crouching nervously on their haunches. ‘In here!’ hissed Sal, dragging Maddy towards a pair of glass doors that slid open for them.
‘What…?’ Maddy looked around her. They were inside a large store; a blast of cool air from an AC unit hit them from above. It was only eight-forty in the morning and the place was already heaving with tourists shopping for mementoes: brass figurines of naked male torsos, faux marble busts of august-looking elders, cheap plastic gadgets that Maddy realized she couldn’t identify.
Only right now business was a suspended tableau; dozens of faces were turned their way.
‘ Julii! Was that ballista-fire I just heard?’ someone called out.
Maddy wrenched her hand free of Sal’s. ‘We’ll get trapped in here!’
Sal pointed across lanes of goods-display spindles towards the glare of daylight streaming into the store on the far side. ‘Over there! An exit!’
‘OK… right… yeah.’ They began to push their way past shoppers, momentarily frozen and confused by events, Maddy leading the way.
Just then they heard a horn sounding, followed by several more that suddenly were choked and silent, followed almost immediately by the crackle of gunfire.
‘Praetorians are here! It’s like war out there!’ shouted someone standing by the glass doors opening on to Broadway.
A man with oriental features and a cheerfully coloured tunic grasped Maddy’s arm. ‘Is this gang war? Collegia?’
‘Uh… yeah. It’s war. Just stay inside.’ She pulled his hand off, and pushed past him.
The gunfire was intensifying.
What’s going on out there? It sounded like the entire NYPD — no, not them, some other form of police had arrived — was laying down a barrage of small arms fire. All that response for one young woman?
She was about to say something about that to Sal, when Sal tugged at her from behind. ‘Down!’ she squealed.
‘Uh? What?’
Sal pointed past her, over her shoulder, towards the glow of daylight they’d been weaving their way towards. ‘Look!’
Maddy turned to look at the double doors of the exit. A solitary figure was silhouetted by rays of morning sunlight streaming over rounded, bulky shoulders of sinew and muscle. Like the young woman, it was bald and pale, wearing an unzipped hooded tunic and bright blue beach shorts, several sizes too small.
‘Oh my God…’ She ducked down with Sal and they continued to observe the figure through a display rack of plastic cases with covers showing the scarred faces of wrestlers… no, gladiators?
‘Hang on! Is that Bob?’
‘That’s not Bob,’ whispered Sal.
‘But it looks like him!’
‘It’s not him, though.’
Maddy felt her breath thicken, a whistling noise that in complete silence would have given them away in a heartbeat. She cursed herself for not picking up her inhaler on the way out earlier.
‘They’re support units,’ she gasped. ‘That’s what they are.’
Another figure joined the first. Another male, just as tall, wide and muscular as the first. It was holding a gun in each hand. Hands that were spattered with dark dots of blood. It silently passed one of the weapons to the first unit.
Maddy realized the crackle of gunfire had now ceased. ‘Oh God, Sal
… I think they just killed all the police guys outside!’
She glanced back at where they’d come from — the entrance to Broadway. And there was the young woman, silhouetted against the daylight glow of the double doors. A perfect statue, gun in one hand, head slowly swivelling, studying the shoppers and staff cowering amid display racks and aisles of cheap tourist goods.
Oh crud! Now we really are well trapped!
One of the male support units took a step forward into the store. ‘Everyone please leave!’ his deep voice boomed.
Nobody dared move.
He fired a single shot into the floor. ‘Everyone please leave this building now! Or you will be executed!’
There was an immediate stirring of movement across the store. People hastily getting to their feet, dropping baskets of forgotten bargains and making for the exits. As they streamed anxiously out past the support units, their bald heads panned quickly one way then the other, examining each person’s face as they hurried out. The female grasped the wrist of someone leaving, a young Asian girl. She pulled her closer then placed a hand under her chin to turn her head towards her. The girl whimpered and squirmed as the support unit quickly studied her face. She tossed her aside a moment later.
‘Negative ID!’ she called to the other two.
They’re after us! Specifically us. After me and Sal.
Outside they could hear the distant wailing of yet more police horns approaching. Times Square was unsettlingly quiet. A thousand or more people, crouched behind rubbish bins and newspaper vending machines, in shop doorways, and peeking out through store windows, all wondering what to do… wondering what was going to happen next.
And faintly, very faintly, Maddy could hear the deep drone of an approaching aeroplane.
‘We know you are hiding in here,’ said the support unit in shorts. ‘Please reveal yourselves to us… and you will not be harmed.’
Maddy looked at Sal. She shook her head silently.
Right… they’ll kill us.
‘We know you are in this building. There is no way out.’
Maddy felt her chest heaving, feeling tight, getting light-headed with growing panic. She could see Sal was no better, trembling like a yard dog on a winter’s morning.
Who are they?
‘Madelaine Carter! Saleena Vikram!’ a deep voice boomed. ‘Please reveal yourselves!’
The girls exchanged a round-eyed glance.
Who sent them?
Without any further verbal warning, they moved as one, all three of them, striding forward into the store, each picking a different aisle of goods to walk down. Maddy and Sal dropped down to their hands and knees.
‘Which way?’ mouthed Sal.
Maddy looked around. They were in an aisle stocked with swivel displays of CDs and DVDs or something like that. Nowhere for them to hide, nothing to crouch beneath. She looked down the far end of their lane. There was a service counter with a till and behind it a door that looked like it led to either a stockroom or some sort of staff restroom. She shuffled along the floor on her hands and knees towards the counter, Sal following her.
In the very next aisle to theirs she could hear the slap of heavy bare feet on lino: one of the male support units. Maddy picked up the pace, shuffling along as quickly and as quietly as she could. Her ragged breath was huffing out too loudly like some faltering fairground steam engine… she only hoped the growing deep rumble of the approaching jet plane was covering it up.
The aeroplane? Not the 9/11 one? Surely this was history that had been altered enough?
They were nearly at the end; the swivel racks of cases sporting famous gurning gladiators had given way to racks of plastic toys: swords, spears, tridents. She was beginning to believe they might just be able to sneak out of their aisle and hop round the back of the counter before one of the support units turned into this aisle and spotted them when she caught the strong scent of stale, sweating meat. She looked up from her dirty hands splayed on the floor and saw two equally dirty bare feet in front of her.
Maddy’s gaze rose as her heart sank, drifting up a pair of milk-white shins, smooth, featureless knees on to the frayed, dangling fringe of some old orange hiker’s anorak. It reeked of stale urine and mouldering tobacco. Maddy could only imagine the fate of the hapless vagrant who’d owned it.
‘Please stay where you are, Madelaine Carter.’ A soft, not unpleasant feminine voice.
Maddy’s eyes rested on a familiar, impassive face; a face that could have been convincingly introduced to her as Becks’s slightly older twin under different circumstances.
‘Look, p-please…’ she whispered, ‘we-we’re just…’
Faith cocked her head, her grey eyes bright with intelligent curiosity. She seemed to admire what she saw cringing at her feet.
‘ It is a pity,’ she said softly, a hint of regret on her lips. Then she looked up for the others over the aisle. ‘Abel! Damien!’ her voice barked coldly. ‘I have located the targets. Request authorization to terminate them.’
Behind them Maddy heard the slap of bare feet. She turned and saw the two male support units standing at the other end of the aisle.
The one wearing shorts hesitated, its thick brow furrowed with confusion at the increasing volume of that deep rumble. It turned to look around, trying to make some sense of the approaching noise.
Maddy saw the look on Sal’s face.
That’s not the aeroplane…
CHAPTER 31
2001, New York
They had no more than a second, perhaps two, to realize what could happen to them. Their eyes met in mutual understanding. A time wave. A big one. Not good.
Truth was there was no knowing what reality any wave was going to leave behind. More specifically, there was no knowing what kind of mass, if any, was going to end up wanting to occupy the very same space that they were both occupying.
In the archway with the field switched on they were entirely protected from any mass-intersections brought about by a reality shift. However, outside of the field it was a lottery. A time wave could leave a person merged, fused, with anything that was attempting to occupy the very same space. The likelihood of that varied, of course. On an open, rolling field in the middle o
f some remote rural county… it was far less likely. But here, inside a cluttered gift shop looking out on to the beating heart of one of the busiest cities in the world?
Where humankind congregated most densely, for example a place like this — New York — that’s where reality really had the most fun and games reinventing itself. Whatever course history had taken, this bay on the east coast of America, a place that was once an Indian settlement, then a colonial outpost, then a thriving trading port and finally a metropolis — this place was always likely to produce a densely populated alternative version of itself in the wake of a full-blown time wave. And the last place they ought to be when a wave hit was here, inside a building of all places.
‘Sal, we need to…’ was all Maddy had time to utter before the wave was upon them.
It went dark as if the sun had gone out. Unlike Sal, it was Maddy’s first time directly experiencing the effect of swimming in fluid reality as it rippled past her, wrapped round her, presenting fleeting images of infinite possibilities.
She screamed. It came out of her mouth sounding like a deep, time-dilated moan, like the protracted, mournful song of some distant whale carried across a hundred miles of water.
Her ears were filled with her own weird voice and a roar like that of a tornado; not the roar of wind, though, but a billion other human voices, female and male, young and old, born and unborn; conscious entities crying in hellish torment and all sharing the same fleeting few seconds of consciousness. A shared awareness of lives stolen away from them, possible lives that could have been, but now would never be lived; of children, babies, loved ones who would never have a chance to exist. It was a billion screams like her own, stretched out and deep and full of grief, anger and fear. If Hell had a voice… it was this awful, protracted, roaring wail of tortured souls.
Then it snapped off. Gone. The dark, swirling tornado of liquid reality was suddenly a placid, milky whiteness. Featureless. Utterly blank.
