by Alex Scarrow
Colonel Devereau was up and out of the trench, attempting to rally the fleeing men. Wainwright was busy firing a carbine down the slope at the advancing British.
Their bunker of sandbags and piled dirt — the fort — their last line of defence right outside the archway, was sitting empty. A mistake.
‘Devereau!’ she yelled. Her voice — she chose a slightly deeper register than a normal human female, almost masculine, though not quite — carried across the noise of battle. Devereau looked her way. She pointed towards the fort and tossed the machine gun out of the trench towards him.
‘You must redeploy this in your final defensive position!’ she bellowed.
Devereau nodded. A last stand from the fort, perhaps that was already his intention with the half a dozen men he’d managed to stop from running away. The heavy machine gun and several yards of belted ammunition lying on the ground would help.
There were a few other men still alive in the trench, gathered around another silent smoking machine gun, trapped between the two leviathans, cowering from the sweeping arc of gore-covered spikes, and the growling, spinning blade of the motorized circular-saw blade.
[Assessment: heavy machine gun — tactical value = HIGH]
Acquiring a second heavy machine gun to fire out from their final position was worth the calculated hazard. She pulled a sabre from the hands of one of the dead. She vaguely recognized the man’s dark face; the grey flecks of coiled hair, the beard. His glazed sightless eyes gave her permission to take it and make good use of it.
Becks pulled herself up out of the trench and began to make her way towards the last two leviathans, skipping along the stacked sandbags like they were stepping stones across a babbling brook. Finally within striking range of the nearest of them, she pulled the sabre back and, using every fibre of muscle in her body to execute a low, sweeping, roundhouse blow, the blade arced round, biting through the coarse hide-like skin, the muscle and bone of the creature’s shin, as thick as a human torso. The bare foot, a yard long with flexing toes as big as cooking apples, flopped into the trench like a side of beef. The genic, missing everything beneath the cut, lost its balance and fell over, the thick plates of iron armour scraping and clanking as if a dumper truck had emptied a full load of salvaged metal on to a scrapheap.
Already exhausted under the burden of its armour, the leviathan struggled like an elephant with a broken spine, desperate to right itself once more.
Becks appeared over its small head, looking down at two beady black eyes, moist, glistening, by the light of the descending flare above them. Its eyes, without whites, looked as expressionless and void as the eyes of some giant insect … and, yet, the glistening moisture around them …
Tears?
She processed that observation in the few nanoseconds of a single computer cycle. Tears of anger, she wondered … or was it relief?
The spider-eyes slowly closed as if knowing, accepting even, what was coming. She thrust the sword down into the soft flesh beneath its feed-pipe and the genic lurched, giant ribbons of muscle all over its body flexing one last time, then it sagged — quite dead.
She turned in time to see the last leviathan collapse, finally weakened from the blood loss of dozens of gunshot wounds.
Again, she eye-snapped an overall appraisal of the battlefield. The British were only a hundred yards downhill. She estimated no more than a couple of dozen men left alive in the horseshoe trench, some of them firing sporadic, opportunistic shots down the slope, most frozen in shock.
And behind them, out of the trench, rushing past the still-chugging tank, fifty, sixty men fleeing, limping, scrambling for the distant safety of the ruins of Brooklyn. Devereau seemed to have gathered a kernel of a dozen men, most looking too badly wounded to make a run for it anyway. They had the heavy machine gun at least.
Wainwright joined her. Nodded at Devereau, herding the men towards the fort.
‘We must buy them enough time to set up the gun in there!’ cried Wainwright.
‘Affirmative.’ She pointed to the few other men along the trench. ‘I will delay the enemy. Order these men to redeploy in the fort and the archway. This must be protected for as long as possible!’
Wainwright nodded. He picked his way along the trench and started tapping the remaining few on their shoulders, gesturing towards the archway.
Becks stepped forward, reached down for the still-smoking heavy machine gun and hefted it up off its tripod with casual strength to rest it on her hip.
She aimed it downhill at the British, now only fifty yards from her, and began to fire.
CHAPTER 88
1831, New Orleans
Abraham Lincoln stared at the street in front of him. Early evening. It was busy with dock workers finishing for the day, trappers and traders stowing bales of beaver pelts and Indian-friendly trade goods aboard their flatboats. Raucous voices exchanged greetings and farewells in pidgin English and French, the street clattering with the sound of metal-rimmed cartwheels and shoed horses.
Across the rutted dirt thoroughfare was the inn, the very same inn he’d squandered the last of his money drowning his woes in the bottom of a tankard. It seemed to him to be more than a lifetime ago that he’d staggered out on to that porch.
‘I am where you first found me,’ he said.
Sal nodded. ‘And this is where you have to be.’
‘New Orleans,’ he smiled. ‘It seems to me to be a much smaller place now.’
‘I guess so.’ She looked up at him. ‘After all that you and me have seen I suppose it must do.’
He laughed. ‘And what incredible things. I shall, I’m sure, be the victim of sleepless nights until my dying day.’
‘It must remain secret. All of it,’ she said. ‘You know you can’t tell anyone about any of those things that happened?’
‘If I am to one day be a president, young lady, I would be a fool talking of flying ships and animals that speak and machines that transport a person through time. I would never stand a chance of being elected. The people in this new country would not tolerate a deranged lunatic for a leader.’
Sal shrugged. ‘Well …’
Lincoln scratched at his dark beard. ‘But I shall caution any man who will listen to me that this country will not prosper unless it is a united one.’ He looked at her. ‘That at least is something I am permitted to say?’
She looked at Liam. He was talking quietly with Bob a few yards away. She turned back to Lincoln and shrugged. ‘I think you were always destined to say something like that anyway. At least now you know why America can’t go splitting itself up into pieces, right?’
They watched a portly businessman and his wife cross the street, followed by several slaves carrying their baggage between them. A small black boy tagged along in their wake, barefooted and wearing little more than threads of clothing — the last item in a procession of one man’s property.
She found herself thinking of Samuel. Looked up at Lincoln’s dark, hooded eyes and suspected he was thinking the same.
‘I believe there is much in this time to put right,’ muttered Lincoln, ‘before we can be the nation our forefathers dreamed of.’
It was right then they heard the first sound of thundering hooves approaching. Cries of warning from further up the street, the crash of barrels of whisky and ale rolling off the back of the runaway cart and thudding on to the hard dirt strip, the spray of yeast-excited foam through split kegs.
Liam and Bob joined them, standing back from the thoroughfare as the cart approached. Six wild-eyed horses careened in a manic zigzag towards them. They roared past, shedding more barrels from the back of the cart in their wake. They watched the horses and cart weave uncontrolled through the congestion ahead until, finally, the cart rocked over and shed the last of its load. One of the cartwheels collapsed under the burden. Splinters of wood and shattered spokes arced into the sky; a twisted metal wheel rim spun off on its own tangent. They watched the cart still dragged along on its axl
e by the panicking horses until it was lost from sight.
‘The cart that killed you,’ said Liam. He cheerfully patted Lincoln’s back. ‘Well, not this time, anyway, Mr Lincoln.’
Bob nudged Liam. ‘Remember the secondary objective,’ his voice rumbled quietly.
Liam nodded. He offered Lincoln his hand. ‘Been a pleasure to meet a future president, so it has.’
Lincoln nodded and grasped his hand firmly. ‘I shall … endeavour to do my best, Mr O’Connor. Good Lord willing.’
‘You’ll do your country proud,’ he smiled. ‘I know you will.’
Bob leaned forward. ‘Secondary objective?’
‘Right … right.’ He looked at Sal. ‘We have to go. Something else we need to take a look at.’ He shook Lincoln’s hand and smiled. ‘Look after yourself, Mr Lincoln.’
‘I will that, sir.’
‘Sal — ’ Liam gestured up the street — ‘we need to check that out, right now.’
She nodded. ‘I’ll catch up.’
A final farewell from Liam and a terse nod from Bob and they were striding swiftly up Powder Street following the trail of chaos to find its cause.
Sal and Lincoln looked at each other. ‘It’s been a funny old week, hasn’t it?’ she said.
The tall young man’s laugh sounded like a growl. ‘To say the very least, ma’am.’
‘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 amp; 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!’
‘Surren
der!’ 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 welded 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.
