by Dana Fredsti
Amber nodded, unable to speak as tears welled up in her eyes. She knew he was right. At least the toddler hadn’t died in pain and terror, ripped to pieces by monsters. Instead, one last tea time before the end. Still, the sight of the little boy’s hand, tucked inside his father’s, broke something in her heart.
“We should leave,” Blake said. He gave her shoulder a reassuring squeeze and walked over to the door where he’d left the duffle bag. Amber started to follow, then stopped, remembering what Lott Sr. had said to his son about getting married and giving him a grandson. Why would he have said that if—
“Blake, look at this.” She held up the newspaper, hurrying over to him.
He looked over and frowned.
“What is it?”
Amber pointed to the date. He glanced at it.
“It must be a typographical error.”
She shook her head. “I don’t think so.”
“Then someone’s idea of a joke.”
“Look,” Amber said, desperate for him to believe her, “when I was in here two days ago, I met the owner and his son. The dead man looks kind of like the son, but older. And he hadn’t had any kids of his own yet.”
“What’s your point?” Blake stared at her with barely leashed impatience.
“I think the dead man is James Lott, and the little boy is his son. Except when I met them, they were both twenty-three years older. Which is why the paper’s out of date by twenty-three years.”
Blake gave a short, derisive laugh.
“You sound stark raving mad. What you’re saying is utterly impossible.”
“Fine,” Amber snapped, both frightened and angry enough to stand up to him. “You tell me what year it is, then.”
“Oh, good lord,” he muttered with a shake of his head. Then he looked at her, both pity and condescension clear in his expression.
“It’s 1953, of course.”
12
Sally was lost. Not lost as in “got pissed and wandered down the wrong street.” She’d done that before, and while it had been scary, she’d eventually found her way home no worse for the experience other than for the blisters on her feet.
This was so much worse.
She’d been out with her friends at the pub, enjoying a few pints. Sally wanted to go to the new wine bar a few streets over, but had been overruled. Budget over trendiness. She hadn’t minded so much. Not like there wouldn’t be another chance some other evening, even if she went on her own.
Sally had gone to the loo three pints into the evening, anxious to escape from a loud-mouthed wanker who wouldn’t take “no” for an answer. She’d felt a bit of a shake while in there, but hadn’t thought much about it. Earthquakes were rare, but not entirely unheard of. Nothing to worry about, especially when the walls and floor were already starting to spin. She’d slow it down, drink some water. She’d be fine.
Then the sound started—building to a wail so loud that she would have pissed herself if she hadn’t already been sitting on the toilet. When it stopped she’d gathered herself and bolted for the door.
When she came out, however, there wasn’t much left of the pub—just a foot or so of the hallway leading to the bathrooms—and there’d been nothing at all left of her friends, or anyone else who’d been at the Lucky Duck that night. Sally had been left with nothing but the clothes on her back and her handbag.
“Huh.”
She took in her new surroundings.
Outside, instead of the streets of Ilford with the chill crisp of winter, she found herself staring at damp swampland, the air so thick and humid it seemed she could slice it with a knife.
Sally stepped back into the loo and shut the door.
Maybe the wanker had slipped something in one of her drinks. Her last pint, hadn’t it tasted a little off?
Yes. Yes, it had.
This had to be a dream, or some sort of hallucination from a failed roofie attempt. The more she tried to sort it out, the more her head hurt. So she curled up on the tiled floor and went to sleep for an hour or so, figuring when she woke up things would be back to normal.
* * *
They weren’t.
The buildings were still gone, the air still warm and oppressive. Sweat beaded up under Sally’s bra and sweater as she stood at the bathroom door, staring out into a world that made no sense.
She hadn’t napped long enough, however, to sleep off the alcohol still buzzing through her system, so the thought of trying to find her way home through the unfamiliar landscape seemed like a good idea. She stepped down onto the ground, unsteady in her stiff new ankle boots. She’d got them cheap. Faux leather with fringe hanging off the sides. The chunky three-inch heels immediately sank into soggy ground.
“Shit,” she muttered.
Steeling herself, she set out in the direction of her flat, a good two miles down the road. Except there was no road. Just sticky mud and plants that looked like they belonged in the Amazon, not East London.
Strange noises rustled in the foliage around her, and others sounded off in the distance. If she hadn’t been so drunk, Sally thought, she would have been a lot more frightened. As it was, she figured she only had to find her way home and into bed, and things would be back to normal when she woke up in the morning.
Plants gave way to trees.
Something growled off to her left, the sound menacing enough to cut through the alcohol haze.
“What the bloody hell,” she muttered, picking up her pace as best she could and hurrying away from the growling. The ground became even softer. A sucking sound accompanied each step as she pulled her boots out of the hungry mud. She wished she could see, but the only illumination came from the moon and the stars, which had become increasingly obscured by large trees, the branches above blocking out the light.
Suddenly her right foot and leg sunk into water up to her knees.
“Shit!”
Bracing herself to keep from falling, she continued onward, tripping at one point on something under the water and dropping to her knees. She picked herself up, cursing softly as she pulled her handbag out of the bog and kept going. Soon she was submerged up to her waist.
“Bugger this!”
Something growled again, the sound liquid and dangerous.
Sally gave a frightened sob and kept slogging through the fen. She finally found her way back into shallows, the water only coming up over her knees again.
“Come on, Sally,” she muttered, more for the sound of a human voice than anything else. “You can find your way out of here.” She wished she hadn’t spoken. Her voice sounded hollow and muffled, not comforting at all.
She had to pee again already. Beer always had that effect on her, but she’d be damned before she stopped to do her business in this nightmare landscape. Something hit the water behind her with a loud splash.
Freezing in place, she listened for a good minute or so.
Nothing. Even the rustling stopped.
Sally heaved a sigh of relief.
Then something with horribly sharp teeth latched onto one calf, yanking hard and pulling her under the water.
13
“I don’t get it,” Amber said, trailing behind Blake by several feet. “The world has gone totally insane. Big chunks of it are gone, giant wolves are eating people, and it looks like we’re in the middle of Siberia instead of England. Why is it so hard for you to believe that it’s not 1953 anymore?”
Blake didn’t answer.
Ever since they’d left the remnants of Romford behind, he’d set a pace just short of grueling, always managing to stay a few feet ahead of Amber but close enough to protect her if necessary. It was like traveling with a living, breathing G.I. Joe, only British. It was also the most macho example of passive-aggressive behavior she’d ever encountered. In other circumstances—normal ones—she’d have found it funny. Now, however, it was both infuriating and exhausting.
Every time she tried to bring up the date on the Romford Bee and what it meant, Blake would lengthen hi
s stride just enough to make it impossible for Amber to carry on a conversation without yelling at his back. No telling what predators that would attract, and she wasn’t willing to risk their safety for the sake of an answer. So she would fall into a frustrated silence and follow in her companion’s determined wake.
Her feet and ankles throbbed continuously. The bandages and socks helped, but the damage had already been done and it would take time for the skin to heal. At least the pain was bearable, thanks to Blake’s ministrations. The coat he’d found kept her warm, too, even with the cold wind constantly blowing over and through the grasslands.
She tried to temper her irritation with the certain knowledge that he was the reason she’d survived the night. Even if she hadn’t died in the hotel, without his help she couldn’t honestly say that she would’ve thought to search the cars. Although to be fair, she’d been in a state of shock. Still, she’d have most likely curled up in a fetal ball and died in the luggage closet.
Amber didn’t know why it was so important for her to change his mind. Or why she wasn’t more personally freaked out by the thought that time itself had shifted. That England—possibly the entire world— had been somehow ripped apart and put back together in a hodgepodge of mismatched timescapes, like a patchwork quilt.
A crazy quilt, she thought, put together by inmates at the most fucked-up insane asylum that’s ever existed.
“If we keep up this pace,” Blake said, “we should make Whitehall in good time.”
“How will we know?”
“What’s that?” He sounded distracted.
“How will we be able to tell if we’re there? What if there aren’t any buildings? What if it’s like this?” Amber waved her free hand, taking in the seemingly endless sea of frost-tipped grass around them.
“It won’t be.” His tone was clipped. Final.
“How do you know that?” she insisted. “Look, we have to keep an open mind about this or—”
“Or what?”
Blake stopped so suddenly that she nearly ran into him. He turned, glaring down at her. She recoiled from the ferocity in his eyes. For a brief instant, the only thing there was bleak and utter madness.
Then the moment passed, and while he still looked angry, at least he looked sane.
“Look,” he said, taking a deep breath. “There’s no point talking about this. We can speculate all we want, but right now we’d do better saving our breath for the journey ahead.” He mimicked Amber’s gesture at the landscape around them.
“We don’t know what’s out here with us,” he continued. “Possibly more of those creatures that nearly killed you. Or worse.” He leaned in. “So I need to keep my attention on the possibility of predators. If you still insist on talking, we’ll discuss it after we’re safe at Whitehall.”
With that he turned and resumed his determined stride through the grass.
Amber didn’t see any choice but to follow, thoughts churning furiously in her head. With no one to share them with, she remained silent.
* * *
They stopped two hours later to rest and eat only slightly stale currant scones, taking shelter in a small hollow under the arched remnants of an old stone bridge. The kind that seemed to be scattered willy-nilly all over the UK and Europe, adding that touch of quaintness and history.
The ground under the five-foot expanse of moss-covered curved stone was still damp, water puddling in several places. Amber again thought of Gavin’s fate and shuddered.
Blake glanced her way. “Are you cold?” he asked around a mouthful of scone.
She shook her head. “No. I just—” She stopped, feeling the prickle of tears yet again as she relived those horrible moments.
“What happened?”
Amber took a deep breath, doing her best to steady herself. Crying wouldn’t help, after all, but maybe it would help to tell someone else what had happened. Maybe then she’d stop replaying it in her mind’s eye.
“I was out on a picnic,” she said, speaking quietly. “I guess you’d call it a date. We were on the river in a boat—a punt, I guess—when whatever happened, well, happened. Gavin, my date, he—” She broke off, trying to think of a way to describe what happened and make it palatable. The horror of that moment was still too fresh. “It was like back at the parking garage. The building itself and those cars. Part of him was just… gone.”
She swallowed, then continued.
“Most of the punt was gone too, and the river…” She shook her head. “It was as if someone had pulled the plug and all the water in the river just ran out down the drain. One minute it was there, and the next—”
She took a sip of some sickly-sweet orange soda to steady herself.
Blake gestured toward her bare legs.
“What on earth were you doing on a boat in those clothes?”
Amber didn’t know if he really cared or was just trying to distract her. Either way, she was grateful for the change of subject.
“Gavin and I were both attending a cosplay convention at the hotel,” Amber replied.
“Cosplay. That’s like a costume party then?”
“Sort of, I guess. People recreate costumes from their favorite TV show or movie or comic book.”
Blake snorted. “Bloody waste of time.”
Amber ignored his dismissive comment and continued with her story.
“The weather was so beautiful, it seemed silly to change. It was hot out. Not like this, and I didn’t think I’d be walking any farther than from the dock back to the hotel.” She heaved a sigh and took another sip of soda before asking, “What about you? Where were you when it happened?”
Even as the words left her mouth, Amber flashed back on 9/11. Every year on the anniversary of that horrible day, Facebook and other social media filled with stories of where people had been when the twin towers had fallen. She wondered if, years from now, whoever survived this event would do the same thing. Except if the electricity never came back, they’d be telling the stories while huddled around campfires. Not on Facebook or Twitter.
She shoved that thought back into the recesses of her brain. She didn’t want to think about the possibility of a world without electricity. A world without the Internet. Maybe Blake was right, and when they got to Whitehall they’d find people in charge. People who knew what had happened, and how to fix it.
Meanwhile she waited for her companion to answer her question. He stared down at the muddy ground for a few beats, then looked at her.
“I was at home, making dinner,” Blake said. “I’d made plans for that evening, but when I opened the front door and saw what lay outside my house, I knew my plans had changed.”
“Do you always dress like that for dinner?”
He gave a small humorless laugh.
“Don’t be daft. I changed soon as I realized things were different. The rules of peacetime don’t apply anymore.”
“You’re in the military.” It was not a question.
He gave a brief nod. “I was in 8 Commando, and then the SAS.”
One of Amber’s uncles on her dad’s side had been an Army Ranger. She was familiar with just enough military history to realize Blake was a genuine badass, if he was telling the truth—and she had no reason to believe he was lying. Why would he?
He didn’t seem inclined to elaborate, though, so Amber didn’t pry any further. Besides, their voices seemed inordinately loud, bouncing off the underside of the bridge. They finished the rest of their meal in silence, each taking a turn dealing with the call of nature while the other kept watch. When it was her turn to play lookout, Amber stared nervously off across the grasslands. The constant wind made it impossible to tell if anything was moving out there, perhaps stalking them, so every ripple on its surface made her heart race double-time.
She wondered if she’d ever feel safe again.
Packing up, they started off once more and walked steadily for another hour, passing a few oddities along the way that stood out—not necessarily in and
of themselves, but because they had no place in the grasslands.
A child’s tricycle, lying on its side in a small rectangle of bisected concrete—a patch of sidewalk, perhaps.
A bed of rose bushes several yards long, abruptly ending where the grass took over, pink and red blooms withered and dropping in the frigid wind.
The front end of a double-decker bus lying on its side on a swath of cobblestones. The seats and walls were splashed with drying blood, but there were no signs of any survivors. No bodies. Blake stayed by Amber’s side after that, slowing his pace so she could keep up with him.
Trees appeared in the distance, incongruous somehow. Suddenly the grasslands ended, replaced by ominous-looking swampland, as if one film set had given way to another. Patches of muddy ground connected pools of ominously dark, stagnant water. Large, ancient trees cut out most of the light. What little filtered through cast twisted shadows over the water.
The new terrain appeared to stretch in either direction as far as they could see. As Blake and Amber stood at the edge of the bog, a bubble rose in the pool nearest them, bursting at the top. It smelled of rotting vegetation, the odor thick and foul.
“Do we have to go through here?” Amber asked in a whisper.
“No help for it,” Blake replied. “We don’t know how far it stretches on either side, or how far out of our way it would take us to go around. We don’t want to be caught out in the open after dark.”
She couldn’t argue with that.
Still… the thought of venturing into something that looked like a creepy version of the bayou in Disneyland’s Pirates of the Caribbean ride made the hair on the back of her neck stand up in skin-crawling apprehension. Something buzzed through the air in between the trees, its movement too quick for Amber to catch more than a brief glimpse. It was the size of a blue jay, but with nothing else birdlike about it.
“Stay on dry land, and keep close,” Blake said.
“Like Velcro,” Amber replied.
He gave her a blank look.
“Glue,” she amended. “Like glue. Very sticky glue.”
That earned her a very small but genuine smile.
