by Alex Scarrow
And grinned. ‘It’s here! I’ve got it!’
She heard both Sal and Foster yelp with excitement.
Pulling the stiff leather cover open, she quickly flipped through the thick pages of thebook. ‘What’s the last possible date that Liam and Bob could have come here, doyou reckon?’ she asked.
‘With Bob terminating six months after mission inception, — that would make it acouple of days after the window we tried opening in Washington. That wouldbe…’
‘Fifth of March 1957,’ said Sal.
Maddy leafed through the pages, noting the dates left by various guests. There were many fromthe previous year. But they quickly dried up in the late summer of 1956.
Perhaps the museum was closed then.
She reached the last page and a last entry from a visitor by the name of JessicaHeffenburger. ‘The museum must close today. The enemy is about totake our city. I could cry.’
She scanned the other entries on the page. They all shared the same sentiment: sadness,bitterness and defeat… a broken people seemingly accepting the inevitable. Paying onelast visit to their beloved museum.
But then, in a fainter ink, she spotted it: written with a different pen in the gap leftbetween one comment and another, scrawled in the untidy hand of a person writingquickly…
Me and Bob would really like to come home now, please.
Lat: 40°42′42.28"N
Long: 73°57′59.75"W
Time: 18.00, 05-03-1957
She crawled across the slats with the book cradled in her handsand looked down at Foster and Sal standing in the aisle below, both of them staring up at herwith expectant expressions.
‘You find anything?’ asked Foster.
She tore the page out of the book, grabbed her torch, swung her legs over the side and jumpeddown on to the floor, creating a small mushroom cloud of dust.
‘He’s right here!’ she said, flourishing the page in front of her face,then her voice caught and she found her shoulders shaking as adrenaline-fuelled laughterfilled the silence of the basement.
‘He freakin’ well did it!’
CHAPTER 78
1957, New York
Bob and Liam took the steps up and found the museum worker, Sam, dutifully standingguard at the top of the stairs, just as they’d asked him to.
‘We’re all done down there,’ said Liam quietly. ‘Thanks for lookingout for us.’
‘Look — ’ the man eyed them both — ‘you said something abouteverything changing to how it should be?’
There really wasn’t time for a full explanation, although Liam would have liked to havegiven the man that for helping them out.
‘Time is going to correct itself.’ Liam smiled. ‘And everything is going tobe all right once more. I promise you.’ He reached out and patted Sam’s arm.‘And guess what?’
‘What?’
‘Sometime in the future, I reckon I’ll be seeing you again, so I will.’
Sam Penney watched them go, scratching his head, dumbfounded, trying to make sense of thenonsensical things the young lad had just said, and beginning to conclude that he must bequite out of his mind, when a guard barked at him to help some of the other workers lift aheavy display case down the hallway to be stacked ready for burning.
Liam and Bob stepped out through the double doors on to the museum’smain entrance floor, busy with workmen in boiler suits toiling under the gaze of stern-facedsoldiers. Bob dutifully returned the clipped salute from the guard standing in the mainentrance with a barked ‘Heil Kramer’.
Outside, the bonfire had already started and tongues of orange flame chased dancing flakes ofash up into the overcast sky. Liam could feel the searing heat on his face as they made theirway down the grand front steps across the forecourt towards the street. Amid theheat-shimmering pile of burning antiquities he spotted the end of the Egyptian sarcophagussticking out of the pile, the dry wood blackening and paint work, four millennia old,smouldering and peeling off the side.
The workers stood in a pitifully sad group watching the exhibits burn. Beyond the forecourt,on the street, citizens were gathering, sombrely witnessing the valuable relics of history andtheir national heritage disappear in a column of acrid smoke.
On the skyline, Liam noticed the pall of other plumes of smoke drifting up into the coldwinter sky, and guessed that across the city books were burning, priceless paintings wereburning, historical documents, journals and records were all burning, pulled from publiclibraries and private galleries. He imagined the very same spectacle being duplicated inAmerica’s other main cities in the next few days. And duplicated across the cities ofKramer’s Reich over the next few weeks. History being wiped clean, purged wholesale fromthe face of the earth.
He felt physically sick.
They stepped on to the street, pushing past silent faces filled with hatred as they glared athis and Bob’s black uniforms.
Liam was relieved to see the Kubelwagen still parked up outside and no soldiers standingaround it on the lookout for the culprits who’d stolen it.
Bob climbed in quickly and turned on the engine.
‘Do you think they’ll find our message?’ asked Liam as hesettled into the passenger’s seat and Bob eased the vehicle through the crowd back on tothe street. ‘I mean, we’ve hidden it away pretty good… maybe too good.’
‘We will know this in approximately seventy-nine minutes.’
They proceeded south down an orderly Central Park West, on one side of them the city’spark, all winter-bare trees and drab ochre grass, on the other endless office blocks andtraffic nudging forward between red traffic lights. It started to rain. Joyless greasy dropsspattered against the windscreen and soaked dispirited, plodding pedestrians outside.
Liam truly wouldn’t be sorry to leave this drab brow-beaten world behind.
We’re on our way home now… hopefully.
He wondered what the archway looked like, who might be occupying it here in 1957, if indeedanyone was. More to the point — he wondered what the girls and Foster were up to rightnow.
CHAPTER 79
2001, New York
Foster noticed them as they jogged quickly down the steps outside the frontentrance, not just a couple of dozen of them peering curiously from the dark interiors ofgutted buildings… but a hundred or more of them.
Fresh meat… the word’s spreading.
‘Oh God!’ uttered Sal. ‘There’s so many.’
Maddy grabbed her hand protectively. ‘Foster, fire your gun.’
He shook his head. ‘I don’t think the noise will scare them now.’
‘But maybe these are ones who don’t know your gunkills.’
‘Oh, they know all right… otherwise I’m sure they’d already be onus.’
The street leading south, Central Park West, was thick with them… like some bizarresilent rally. To their left was what was once Central Park, now nothing more than a dust bowldotted with the charcoal skeletons of scorched tree trunks, or the frazzled stumps oflong-dead bushes. If the devil was given a say in how a city park should be landscaped, Fosterimagined he would go with something like this.
It was wide open terrain, though. Nothing for the creatures to hide behind or jump out from.Far better than picking their way along some narrow street strewn with rusted vehicles.
‘We should cut across the park,’ he said. ‘Then we’re on the east side. It’s a short way through to the Hudson River.’ Theycould then follow the river down to the bridge. The riverside boulevard was broad all the waydown to the Williamsburg Bridge and they’d only need to keep an eye out for anythingcoming at them from their right.
‘Let’s go,’ he said, leading the way down the last of the steps, across theforecourt, through twisted and collapsed iron railings over an intersection all but hidden bythe tangle of rusted carcasses of abandoned cars.
The late-afternoon sun poked through dirty brown clouds as they pushed their way through thefossilized remains of a decorative hedgerow and into Central Par
k.
‘They’re following,’ said Sal, her voice trembling.
Foster glanced back over his shoulder to see the creatures moving together as a giant pack,hundreds of them shifting across Central Park West, and climbing railings, squeezing throughdead hedges to enter the park in their wake.
‘OK, they’re following, but at least they’re keeping a distance.’
Although, as he said that, he noticed that the distance seemed to be narrowing as some of themore courageous of them edged out several dozen yards ahead of the herd. He wondered if theywere ringleaders — pack leaders, individuals with something to prove to theirfollowers.
The girls picked up their pace, swift strides quickly turning into an untidy jog, kicking upclouds of dust and ash. Foster brought up the rear.
The gap between them narrowed further as the creatures’ hunched-over scuttling becamemore of a hunched-over trot. The braver creatures came closer still, now thirty or forty feetfrom them. Foster turned and glanced at the nearest of them — male by the look of him,tall and painfully thin, a few tufts of pale hair growing in isolated islands on his scalp andrags of clothing dangling from his powder-white body. He could hear thecreature’s laboured breath and a keening whimper as it yearned to close the gap betweenthem. Yet, understandably, it feared the dark metal object in Foster’s hand. Perhaps itsmind remembered a solitary word from a long-forgotten language.
Gun.
And it knew the metal tube could spit death in an instant.
For what seemed an interminable age, they maintained this moving stand-off: the girls joggingacross the dead park, Foster struggling along several yards behind them, his ragged breathgrowing ever more laboured, and the silent herd of creatures easily keeping pace — butslowly, warily, closing in.
‘The other side of the park, look!’ shouted Maddy.
Across the empty concrete bowl of a duck pond and the corroded A-frames of what had once beenswings, he could see a row of stunted black trees and dark metal railings. Beyond that was 5thAvenue, running north to south down the side of the park.
Fifty yards along, he could see a way out that wouldn’t require them to stop and scalethe railings — a gateway. Then, across 5th Avenue, they’d be on to East 72ndStreet. Half a dozen blocks of ruined buildings on either side and then they’d hit theriver.
But this is where they may jump us, he decided. As they pickedtheir way over rubble and weaved through abandoned cars, those creatures would finally closethe gap and be upon them. He decided now was as good a time as any to demonstrate once morewhat his gun could do. He turned round, stopped and levelled his gun at the nearestcreature.
He fired, throwing the pitiful thing on its back with a shrill high-pitched scream. It lay onthe ground in a growing pool of its own blood, bony legs thrashing the ground wildly. The restof the herd immediately turned on their heels and fled across the ash-greypark like rabbits startled by a farmer’s gun.
‘Just reminding them we’re dangerous.’
Maddy nodded. ‘Good.’ But then she looked at the weapon. ‘Eleven shotsleft?’
Foster racked another round into the shotgun. ‘Yes, eleven.’
They made their way quickly along East 72nd and ten minutes later emerged on to the broaddual-lane expanse of FDR Drive, heading south, parallel with the Hudson River.
Ahead of them were the shattered remains of Queensboro Bridge, collapsed in the middle.Beyond that, no more than three quarters of a mile down the Hudson, Foster could see the tallmetal support towers of the Williamsburg Bridge, and on the far side of the river, the squatbrick and industrial buildings, chimney pots and cranes of Brooklyn’s dockside.
They rested for a moment on a wooden bench, overlooking the muddy bank of the river below,all three of them catching their breath.
‘Just over the bridge… and… then we’re home and dry,’ raspedFoster.
‘You OK?’ asked Maddy.
‘I’m fine… just a little winded. Let me grab some air.’
They hung on for a moment, looking back the way they’d come. For the moment it seemedlike they’d lost the creatures.
‘You girls ready?’
They both nodded.
He led them down the wide boulevard, all three of them happy to have the broad river to theirleft, and four lanes of wide, empty road to their right.
Another ten minutes and they were hurrying up a narrow brick stairwell to the WilliamsburgBridge’s pedestrian walkway. The sick orange sun was now low in the sky and looking fora place to settle among the broken horizon of ruined buildings. Long violetshadows were spreading across the river, reaching for the building on the far side.
‘Nearly home,’ gasped Sal. ‘Looks like we’re going to make it,’she said, grinning at Maddy.
The walkway, just wide enough for three to walk abreast and caged by high sides of basketwire, ran above the traffic lanes over the bridge. As they hurried along, they looked down ontwo lanes of crumbling tarmac filled with the ancient rusting hulks of bumper-to-bumpertraffic. A soft wind moaned through shattered windscreens and across car seats and the bonesof those who’d died at the wheel suddenly, mysteriously, decades ago — a vehiclegraveyard filling the bridge with hushed whispers of torment and pain.
Foster concentrated on the way ahead. Just another three or four minutes across the bridge,down the steps on the far side, a turn into the backstreet at the base of the bridge, thenthey’d be home.
He’d checked that the generator was ticking over when they left. Provided the thing hadmanaged to keep on going while they’d been out and not choke or stall on them, heguessed the displacement machine would be ready to use by now. He hoped.
Liam’s message had given them an exact time. And once they’d entered theco-ordinates into the computer they’d know the exact location. If the lad was thinkingsmart, he knew precisely where that location should be.
Despite all three of them being exhausted and winded, their pace quickened as the far side ofthe lifeless, sluggish, polluted river below loomed. The prospect of safety was just ahead,just minutes away. The prospect of bringing home Liam, of bringing home Bob — a heroictower of muscle who could protect them from virtually anything- urged them on ever faster.
They were nearly there. And Foster had begun to allow himself to think thatthis nightmare might just be nearly over.
There was a scream.
He spun round to see a twisting branch of lean milk-white arms pulling at Sal through a largehole in the basket-wire cage.
‘Oh no!’ screamed Maddy. ‘They’ve got hold of her!’
CHAPTER 80
2001, New York
Sal’s arms and legs thrashed manically in their grasp. ‘Oh God no!He-e-elp me! Help me!’
Foster shouldered his shotgun but realized he couldn’t fire for fear of hitting Sal.Maddy rushed forward and began kicking, punching and scratching the arms pulling at Sal.Through the cross-hatch of rusting wire, he could see a pack of half a dozen of the creaturesfighting each other to get a grip on her. They were standing on the roof of a truck’scab; the large hole in the rusting wire, he guessed, had been made recently, perhaps only inthe last half an hour.
It was a trap.
He realized some of the creatures must have rushed ahead, must have known they were headingthis way, must have known they crossed the bridge using the raised pedestrian walkway.They’d found a place they could reach up to, they’d made a hole in the wire…and waited.
More of the creatures scrambled up over the truck and on to the cab’s roof. Theyslammed against the wire noisily with their fists, snarling at them through the gaps.
Sal’s legs were being pulled out from beneath her, and through the gaping hole in thewire. ‘He-e-elp me!’
Maddy desperately tried to peel off the long, pale fingers wrapped tightly round her ankles,her legs, her waist. But then found them snatching at her hair, roughlypulling the glasses from her face, attempting to find a firm hold to pull her through aswell.
Sal was al
l but through the hole now, nothing left but her hands wrapped tightly round thesharp ends of wire. The creatures’ clawed fingers snatched and twisted at hers, tryingto wrench them free as she screamed and screamed and screamed.
Foster aimed the shotgun at the pack of creatures, no longer concerned that Sal might catchsome of the blast. The cross-hatched wire would deflect some of the shotgun’s blast, butmost of it would certainly fly through and inflict damage on their tightly packed bodies.
He fired.
One of the creatures was thrown off the roof of the cab. Others screamed angrily as thescattered pellets from the shotgun cartridge painfully lashed their bare bodies. But theycontinued their eager work, their long claws twisting Sal’s fingers off the wire, one byone, as Maddy desperately punched and scratched and screamed at them.
The last of Sal’s fingers were suddenly wrenched free.
Foster’s eyes met the girl’s for one frozen moment in time. Wide, confused,terrified — her mouth an elongated ‘O’ from which a shrill high-pitched‘No-o-o-o-o-o-o!’ erupted like the whistle of asteam train.
The creatures carried her away between them with alarming speed, down over the truck’sshattered windscreen, over the engine hood down on to the road, holding her body aloft betweenthem like some squirming trophy.
She disappeared from view, her thin, desperate, screaming voice fading as they carried herdown the bridge, weaving through the vehicle graveyard back towards Manhattan.
Maddy turned to look at Foster, her pale face frozen with shock and dawning realization ofwhat had just happened.
‘Foster?’ she managed to whisper.
‘We… we have to — ’
‘Foster,’ she said again, unable to say anything else.
‘She’s gone, Madelaine. She’s gone,’ he replied. He tried desperatelyto blank out of his mind the fate that awaited her.
‘We… we h-have to go after her,’ gasped Maddy, already beginning to squirmher way through the hole in the wire.
Foster took a step forward and grabbed her wrist. ‘No! Maddy. No!’
