Gates of Rome

CHAPTER 86

2001, New York

Air was displaced inside the archway as it gusted noisily in from the outside. A sphere of pulsating energy blinked into existence and lit the gloomy archway with a bright Italian sky and a parched, rust-coloured field of baked earth and dry grass.

Dark silhouettes clouded the dancing image then, a moment later, one of them, the biggest by far, stepped into the archway. Bob crouched, legs apart, sword drawn and ready to swing it. His eyes swept quickly round the dim archway, into the dark corners. He ducked down to look under the bunk beds. He crossed the floor and pulled aside the sliding door into the back room. The chugging of the diesel generator spilled out as he checked inside. He returned to the main archway as the wind outside began to become a hurricane-like roar.

Standing beside the shimmering orb of Mediterranean blue, he beckoned the other dark shapes to join him. ‘The archway is clear!’ he roared above the deafening whistling of wind outside, and the thrashing branches of the woodland.

They came through one after the other: Liam, Sal, Dr Rashim Anwar and his lab unit, and finally Maddy.

She emerged into the archway swearing as she almost tripped over SpongeBubba. ‘Goddammit! Out of my way!’

‘Sorr- eee!’ SpongeBubba cried out in his sing-song voice, and waddled a few steps back from her.

‘ Close the portal! ’ she shouted above the scream of wind from outside. The portal collapsed behind her.

‘ What’s going on here? ’ shouted Rashim above the roar of wind outside. ‘ Is this a storm? ’

‘ Time wave! ’ she shouted back.

‘ A what? ’

‘ A TIME WAVE! ’

Liam hurried across to close the shutter and stopped dead in his tracks as he realized the door was ruined. ‘ What happened to our door? ’

His words were lost in the roaring wind.

It went completely dark outside. The tree trunk right there, a yard beyond where their concrete floor became dirt and flora, liquidized… spun into strands of insubstantial matter, like a wispy tendril of sugar in a candyfloss tumbler. Amid the pitch-black it became a swirling maelstrom of fleetingly seen things: another different tree, a rock formation… a tipi… a wooden shack… an Easter Island monolith.

And then, all of a sudden, it was a brick wall covered in graffiti and lined with rubbish along the bottom.

The roaring receded quickly, fading into something else entirely: a commuter train rumbling over the Williamsburg Bridge’s old tracks above their heads; the sound of impatient traffic, bumper to bumper, coming from the intersection at the end of their alleyway. The distant whoop of police sirens. The soft chop of a helicopter swooping across the East River. Somebody somewhere nearby had a thumping sound system in the back of their car.

Noisy… but so much less noisy than it had been a moment ago.

‘We’re back,’ cried Sal, running towards the opening and the alleyway outside. ‘We’re back! We made it!’

Liam nodded. Subdued. ‘We’re back,’ he replied.

Maddy crossed the floor and joined both of them standing in the ruined doorway. She stared out at the brick wall, the rubbish piled against it. She listened to the noises of Brooklyn, the irritable, impatient noises of blissful ignorance. Millions of normal lives being led… all of them content with their little decisions, their little dilemmas, the day-to-day jostle of office politics and the nightly family squabbles.

‘Maddy?’ said Sal. ‘You OK?’

‘What do we do now?’ said Liam.

They were all looking at her. Sal, so much like a little sister, lost without her leading the way. Liam — oh God, poor Liam — was putting a brave face on things, but she knew he was affected badly by what he’d discovered about himself. Bob. Useful, helpful, loyal like a Labrador, but — let’s not fool ourselves here — nothing more than a database on muscular legs.

And now this Dr Anwar and his stupid SpongeBot, the pair of them looking like lost sheep right now.

And I’m everyone’s mom. I’ve got to come up with the ‘what-do-we-do-next’ bit.

Funny thing was that for the first time in a long time she knew exactly what they had to do next.

‘We’ve got to get out of here,’ she said.

‘Huh?’

Maddy stepped back from the ruined shutters. ‘Somebody out there knows exactly where we are, they know exactly when we are… and who we are. And they want us all dead. We’ve got to grab what we can, whatever we think we’re going to need, and we’ve got to get the hell out of here.’

Liam raised his eyebrows. ‘Leave this archway?’

‘Yes.’

‘You mean… like now?’

Maddy nodded. ‘I mean, like, right now.’