Time Riders tr-1

by Alex Scarrow

  Foster swallowed anxiously. ‘Yes, get a move on.’

  If they were there, they should step through immediately. Keeping a portal open unnecessarilywasn’t wise; a window on to chaotic dimensions in which anything could lurk… The sooner it was closed the better.

  ‘Come on!’ he uttered impatiently.

  The sphere hovered, shimmered, glowing a soft blue in the flickering dimness of the archway.Foster glanced at the computer screen. The portal had been open ten seconds and a red cautionmessage had already begun flashing on the screen.

  ‘I have to close it,’ said Foster. ‘Any longer and we risk attracting aseeker. They’re not there.’

  ‘No!’ cried Maddy. ‘Let it stay open just a bit — ’

  ‘They’ve failed the rendezvous,’ snapped Foster. He hit the abort button onthe screen and instantly the sphere vanished, the hum of surging powerdiminished and the dimmed flickering ceiling lights grew bright once more.

  ‘Dammit, Foster, they might just have been running a bit late!’

  ‘There’s no running late, Madelaine. You’reeither there or you’re not. The window opens, and either they step through or theydon’t. I’m afraid there’s no leaving it open just to wait andsee.’

  They sat in silence for a moment, staring out across the floor at the chalk circle, as ifhoping both Liam and Bob might still magically appear, Liam with a guilty expression on hisface for their rather late arrival.

  ‘So… OK. It’s not the end of the world, then,’ said Maddy, forcingherself to be businesslike. ‘You mentioned something about sending a message?’

  Foster nodded. ‘That’s right. We need to send them details on a newtime-stamp… and perhaps we need to pick another location. Not too far away from thefirst location, but somewhere more discreet, less busy, I think would be better.’

  Maddy pursed her lips. ‘And how exactly will they get this message?’

  ‘Tachyon transmission,’ he replied. ‘I’ll give you the technicalexplanation later… It’s complicated.’

  She shrugged. ‘I can wait.’

  CHAPTER 48

  1956, command ship above Washington DC

  Kramer dined alone. He wasn’t in the mood to celebrate the victory withReichsmarschall Karl Haas, the senior divisional commanders and their aides. Several dayssince the surrender, and despite a few minor skirmishes as several individual US states in thewest fought on bitterly, America was now a part of the Greater Reich.

  His high command was celebrating right now, no doubt solemnly toasting their absentFuhrer in smart dress uniforms, then sitting down together in the White House’sstate hall to discuss the administrative business of running America. He trusted Karl to keepall those ambitious generals and Gauleiters in line; he suspected they feared him almost asmuch as they did their Fuhrer.

  No, tonight he wanted to be alone. Things were troubling him.

  That body, that damned body… the unsettling questions itraised. Despite what Karl had said, that was no corpse twisted by a mere incendiary grenade.He’d seen what a time portal could do to a human body once before. He’d neverforget the twisted flesh, organs turned inside out and still somehow managing tofunction… for a while.

  ‘Someone from the future’s after us,’ he muttered to himself.

  He could almost feel that someone probing thepast, finding their way slowly towards him, stalking him. At any moment the air could shimmerbeside the table and an assassin appear, a gun raised and ready to execute him. It wassomething Kramer constantly feared. The recurring nightmare had troubled him almost everynight for the last fifteen years — awakening in his bed in the dark stillness of nightto see an assassin leaning over him and announcing his immediate execution for travellingthrough time.

  The body… that body… had made his nightmares athousand-fold worse, and now he spent every waking hour fearing what might be out there. Itwas a struggle to keep this torment from Karl, to keep his composure in front of the man. Hewondered sometimes if there was an easier way out.

  A soft voice whispered quietly in his head.

  There is a way out for you, you know.

  Suicide?

  No, another way.

  He looked out of the window at a dark city punctuated with sporadic smouldering fires andspeared with the sweeping, searching floodlights coming from his command ship.

  Think on it.

  His quiet voice. The voice that was always there, had always been with him as long as hecould remember. The voice of… ambition… daring him on, pushing him to do thosethings he wouldn’t normally have the resolve to do. As a child it had helped him achieveacademic success, as a young man driven him to earn a doctorate in quantum physics, to becomea research fellow at the Waldstein Institute. It had given him the confidence to finally puttogether his audacious plan to go back into history and make it his.

  You could destroy this world, couldn’t you, Paul? After all,it’s your world now. All yours to do with as you wish.

  ‘That’s madness,’ he replied, putting down his forksuddenly. It clattered noisily on the plate, filling his large, stately quarters with adiminishing echo.

  Madness, is it?

  Since going through time, convincing Hitler to accept him into his inner circle and finallybecoming the Fuhrer himself, the voice had become quiet, unneeded by him. Like a childbrooding, sulking. But now — since that body, in fact — it seemed to have found anew energy.

  Madness, is it? What would happen if a traveller from the future were toappear right here and put a bullet through your brain?

  Kramer closed his eyes. The thought had him trembling. The answer was obvious. This historyhe had worked so hard to create would change.

  And what if a traveller learned the exact time and place that youentered history? Those woods, 1941? And killed you there? Before you met Hitler?

  ‘The world would be as it was,’ he replied aloud. ‘The future would onceagain be the dark and dying one we left behind.’

  That’s right. A dying world. Choking on toxic fumes. The seaspoisoned. People slowly starving. In a way, it would be kinder to end it now. Would itnot?

  Kinder? Kramer hadn’t thought about the world they’d left behind in a long time.Global warming had become an uncontrollable force. By 2050 the ice-caps had finally vanished.The entire African continent was as sun-blasted and lifeless as the surface of Mars. Andpeople, nine billion of them, crowded into the few tolerable regions of the earth left, mostof them starving migrants living in dust-blown shanty towns outside the few mega-cities. Likealmost every other species on earth, Kramer wondered whether one day mankind would alsoeventually become extinct.

  ‘Kinder,’ he said eventually. ‘Perhaps itwould.’

  Much kinder.

  He had no appetite for his meal now.

  You trust me, Paul, don’t you?

  He’d always trusted his inner voice, his instinct. It had guided him far better in hislife than any tutor or mentor, any father-figure or friend. ‘If you can’t trustyour own instinct,’ someone had once told him, ‘then you’re a lostman.’

  Don’t you see? Someone or something is out there. And it will findyou, whatever you do, however much you decide to erase history and disguise your tracks. Itwill eventually find you. The body was a warning.

  Deep down he knew there was truth in that. Perhaps he’d known that from the moment heand Karl had been presented with that cruelly twisted corpse, but he’d been unable tobring himself to admit it.

  I think you realize now… your run of luck has finally come to anend.

  ‘Fifteen years,’ he said.

  That’s right, fifteen years. Twelve of them as the world’sgreatest ruler. And in that time you’ve achieved so very much. But your time hasfinally run out. Someone has come to get you.

  ‘A time traveller?’

  Possibly. Or worse.

  ‘Worse?’

  You’ve meddled with time. You’ve crossed dimensions.You’ve stepped through chaos itself. There’s no knowing for
sure what seeks youout.

  Kramer felt his guts twist with anxiety, a churning unease eating away inside.

  An agent of the future could take this world from you with anassassin’s bullet. But it could be far worse. Something we can never hope tounderstand could come for you… could be out there in that dark city rightnow…

  He felt his scalp prickle, his skin turn cold.

  But you could prevent that.

  ‘By destroying this world?’

  Yes, Paul… by destroying this world.

  He pushed his chair back. Oddly, there was some growing comfort in that notion. This worldrendered still, silent, lifeless and unchanging. An everlasting monument to the world createdby Paul Kramer. All life ended with a sudden flash, instead of the protracted misery thatwould exist in the future. And there was a way — a doomsday device he’d consideredin his idle moments.

  We both knew this might happen one day. Didn’t we? Perhaps it wasalways going to be your destiny.

  Kramer narrowed his eyes, almost sensing the inevitable subtle shifting of destiny ahead ofhim, future histories adjusting, rewriting, as he felt his decision being firmly made.

  ‘Then it has to be so.’

  His voice, his instinct, seemed appeased by that.

  A fitting end to things, Paul. Mankind was always destined to destroyitself. It’s in our nature to destroy all that we create. And you will be the one whodoes it.

  Isn’t that just a little bit like being God?

  CHAPTER 49

  2001, New York

  ‘Sal will be all right out there, won’t she?’ asked Maddy.

  Foster was scrolling through their history database. ‘She’ll be justfine.’

  They’d found her a plain dark-blue T-shirt and grey jeans. They belonged to a member ofthe previous team and were large on her, almost swamped her. But she stood out far less thanshe did wearing her favourite emo clothes.

  ‘No one will notice a little girl,’ he added. ‘She’s just a harmlesschild.’

  Maddy shuddered. ‘It looks so grim, so grey and ordered outthere.’

  She had stepped out with Sal briefly to get a glimpse of this alternate New York. The citylooked tidy and drab. The only colour amid the uniformly monotone towers was the stabs ofbright red from unfurled banners and pennants that dotted the city skyline.

  Foster nodded. ‘It is grim. But, for an innocent child just walking around, perhapswalking home from school or an errand to a shop, it’s probably a great deal safer rightnow than it would be otherwise.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  He looked up from the screens. ‘I don’t imagine they have a crime problem, hmm?This is a fascist state. I think it’s a safe bet that muggersdon’t get away with a slapped wrist and a behaviour order in this version of NewYork.’

  Maddy nodded. ‘I guess not.’

  ‘Anyway, back to business,’ he said. ‘I suggest we pick a return windowwithin the vicinity of the White House, not too far away but safely beyond any securityperimeter. We need to see whether they have a map of Washington in this new Nazi version. Thecity may be different, sections rebuilt.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘So that’s the where. We need to now consider thewhen. I have a suggestion for that. We set it for the lastpossible time for their mission. Bob’s maximum mission durati-’

  Maddy felt it. Light-headed, as if she was losing her balance.

  The screens went blank and a moment later the fizzing strip light above them winked out,leaving them in pitch black.

  ‘What the — ?’

  ‘That was a time shift.’ Foster’s voice emerged from the dark beside her.‘A big one. I felt it as well.’

  ‘We’ve lost power,’ whispered Maddy. ‘That’s not good, isit?’

  ‘It means that whatever the world is like outside our fieldbubble, we’re no longer able to tap electricity from it.’ Foster balledhis fists with frustration. ‘In fact, the field generator’s down as well. Thatmeans there’s no forty-eight-hour flip-back. We’re well and truly stuck in this world’s timeline… whatever it is.’

  ‘I’m not sure I like the sound of that.’

  ‘We should take a look,’ he said quietly.

  She heard his chair scrape on the concrete. ‘Come on.’

  She stood up, her hands spread out in front of her.

  ‘This way.’

  She followed his voice across the floor.

  ‘Keep coming.’

  A moment later her fingers brushed the crumbling brick wall.

  Foster cursed under his breath. ‘I hate winching this wretched thing up.’

  ‘I’ll give you a hand,’ said Maddy. She felt her way along the wall untilher fingers brushed the winch box. She found a space on the handle beside Foster’s frailold hand.

  ‘Let’s get to it, then,’ he said quietly.

  They pulled on the handle and it creaked round. The shutter door began to crank up slowly andnoisily.

  A faint afternoon light eased into the room, pushing back the absolute darkness behindthem.

  ‘Looks like another grey day in Manhattan,’ laughed Maddy skittishly.

  The shutter inched up until it was waist height.

  ‘That’ll do, Madelaine,’ said Foster. ‘Duck down, will you, and takea look?’

  She nodded. ‘Sure.’

  She stooped down and peered outside. The backstreet was littered with rubble and twistedspars of rusted metal that looked like they had tumbled down from the bridge above many, manyyears ago. A tangle of coarse dry weeds emerged through it all and laid claim to the ground,nature clawing its way back.

  Maddy slid under the shutter and stood up on the other side.

  ‘What do you see?’

  She glanced up at the bridge above them, the one that had majestically crossed the HudsonRiver only moments ago. It was now little more than a creaking ruined web of rusted metalstretching across the river. In the distance the tall slab-like buildings ofthe Nazi-Manhattan she’d observed a short while ago as she’d let Sal out nowlooked like the crumbling stubs of rotten teeth. Bare skeletons of iron sprang from collapsedruins across the river. The sun hung low and heavy like a bloodshot eye peeking throughscudding brown clouds that looked threatening and toxic.

  New York was utterly dead. An apocalyptic wasteland.

  Something dreadful had happened here. It had happened decades ago from the look of the sparseand withered plant life that emerged here and there among the crumbling ruins.

  ‘My God, Foster… it’s… it’s the end of the world,’ shesaid, hearing her own voice catch, falter and die in her throat.

  The end of the world.

  CHAPTER 50

  2001, New York

  Sal was afraid. Very afraid.

  She looked up at the dark, silent, blasted structures around her. Tall ruins that creaked andgroaned while skeins of dust chased like fleeting ghosts through them.

  Times Square was no longer Times Square — it was a tomb, the crumbling relic of along-dead civilization. She couldn’t begin to imagine what must have happened. Thebreeze moaned through open windows, a haunting cry like some tormented spirit warning her toleave now and not delay a moment longer.

  She decided that was probably good advice and turned to head back to the field office,wondering for a moment if the bridge and the archway beneath it, their littlebackstreet… was actually still there.

  As she turned, she saw something move.

  The faintest flash of something pale flitting from one dark window to another.

  Just a bit of rubbish… that’s all.

  She picked her way quickly across the rubble, kicking stones that clacked and clatterednoisily in the silence. Again she thought she spotted another flash of movement from withinthe darkened bowels of one of the buildings.

  A pale oval… with two dark holes that studied her intently for the briefest moment,then disappeared into the gloomy interior.

  I’m not alone.

  She picked up her pace,
not wanting to run in case it encouraged whatever was inside to comeout after her in pursuit, but too frightened to just walk.

  She hummed a tune. A stupid over-cheerful plastic Bollywood song from her mum’schildhood. One of those tunes you can never get out of your head once it gets in.

  She clattered her way across Times Square, her humming echoing off dark scorched and blastedwalls. She was passing the rusting skeleton of a vehicle, on to what had once been Broadway,when a creature emerged several dozen yards in front of her.

  It stopped and stared at her with deep, dark, soulless eyes set in a pallid ash-grey baldhead.

  She stopped humming.

  It reminded her of a creature she’d once seen in an old movie from way back, a moviewith elves and dwarves and magical rings. One of the creatures she remembered in particular,though, was called Gollum. The thing standing in front of herreminded her of that. It stared at her, motionless. Its mouth finally opened to reveal bloodygums and one or two ragged teeth.

  And it screamed.

  The scream echoed off the tall ruins and was soon joined by other shrill voices joiningin.

  Sal looked desperately around and saw other pale oval faces, each with dark eyes andtoothless bleeding mouths, emerging from hundreds of windows, like termites stirring from adisturbed nest.

  And she screamed along with them.

  Foster joined Maddy outside, surveying the broken and blasted city.‘Complete devastation,’ he whispered. ‘Something happened here a long timeago. And if it happened here, I can well imagine it’s happenedeverywhere.’ He looked at Maddy. ‘Perhaps some sort of a nuclear war?’

  She nodded. ‘Oh God, what is it with mankind? Never happy unless it’s blowingsomeone up.’

  ‘I’m afraid that’s us as a species.’

  Isn’t it just, she mused. Sometimes she felt disgusted tobe human.

  ‘Sal’s out there,’ said Foster quietly.

  She looked at him. ‘She’ll be terrified. And she may have difficulty finding herway back. That’s a very different-looking landscape out there.’

  ‘I’ll just grab some things,’ he said, ducking back under the shutter.