The Fall

31

Sam glanced back as he ran across the square of grass. The axe-man was following. For the first time Sam saw the clothes the man was wearing. He’d never seen anything like it before. The man looked like some barbarian warrior from the mountains. What was more, the axe was no domestic implement for cutting firewood. This was a battleaxe with a curving blade; the handle itself was tipped by a sharp iron spike for stabbing or eye-gouging.

As Sam glanced back he saw Ruth standing beside the car.

For some reason she hadn’t found the car horn. Instead she’d managed to switch on the CD player, then turned the powerful sound system on full. Still, it had been enough to distract the axe-man at that crucial moment. Otherwise Sam’s head would have been rolling across that kitchen floor like a football right now.

Meatloaf’s ‘Bat Out of Hell’ still blasted out across the square, echoing from the house fronts.

Only no-one came out to see what was responsible for the sound. No doubt they were going to stay in their air-raid shelters until the enemy bombers had passed.

Sam ran hard across the grass.

By this time the girl’d reached the church and had climbed through the iron bars of the fence into the graveyard.

A bluish light lit the scene again. It flickered like a silent film, rendering every movement into a series of jerky twitches.

Then Sam saw where the light was coming from. Something like a drink can lay in the grass ahead. It burned with an intense bluey light, white smoke drifting up from the surrounding turf.

Incendiary, Sam told himself. As well as high-explosive bombs, the bombers were dropping incendiaries. Not much bigger than beer cans, and filled with inflammable chemicals, they were dropped in their hundreds on towns in the hope they would ignite buildings and simply reduce the whole area to ash and cinders.

Another of the little cylinders gave a popping sound on the road in front of him. It, too, began to blaze with a bluish flame, spitting out sparks that set fire to the grass.

Sam ran on, glimpsing every so often the blue-white of the girl’s nightdress as she dodged around the gravestones.

Whatever happened, Sam couldn’t let that monster with the axe catch her.

This had become something of a divine mission for him now. Nothing else mattered.

If he saved the girl, he would change history. Then there would be a chance after all that they might escape this nightmare carnival ride back through time.

Besides that, something more profound, more fundamental, had kicked in now. He had to protect the little girl. He couldn’t allow her to be slaughtered as her parents had been.

He reached the graveyard fence at the same time as he heard a tremendous thump from the field across the road.

Although he saw nothing, he certainly felt the shockwave from the exploding bomb.

He glanced back.

The man with snakes in his face was still running after him. What in hell’s name can stop that juggernaut? Sam thought grimly. The axe-man was built like a tank.

Even though winded by the bomb blast, Sam made it to the iron fence. It was spiked with imitation spear blades; hoping he wouldn’t slip and impale himself on them, he vaulted over.

Ahead, the girl had tried in her terror to hide behind a gravestone, but she was still clearly visible.

He had to grab her, then run like hell; somehow he had to find a safe hiding place.

Behind him the monster climbed the fence; the blade of the axe glinted blue in the light of the incendiaries.

Sam heard the sound of planes passing overhead.

More Nazi bombers, their rough-sounding engines clattering like badly-tuned motorbikes.

Searchlights probed through the clouds for them; every so often a salvo of anti-aircraft shells would stream skywards.

He’d almost reached the girl when he heard a yell. This was female; angry-sounding.

He looked back to see Ruth standing with her arms held out as if she was trying to stop nothing more than a runaway chicken.

Sam’s eyes widened when he saw she’d blocked the path of the monster with the axe.

‘Keep down,’ he told the girl behind the gravestone. ‘I’ll be right back. Shh…’

He couldn’t allow the slender WAAF to face the creature alone.

Already it had stopped and was looking at her in surprise, head tilted to one side, wondering what possible weapon this tiny woman might have that could stop him.

The whole scene was lit garishly in that blue-white light as yet more incendiaries ignited on the ground around them.

Smoke bit into Sam’s nostrils. Behind him the little girl was sneezing.

The man raised his axe, ready to swipe off Ruth’s head. Sam put down his head and ran, intending to cover that 50 yards or so then simply shoulder-charge the creature. If he could knock it off balance, he might—

He’d taken three paces, no more.

The ground erupted into a column of black in front of him.

He didn’t stop dead so much as get flung back by some invisible force that hit him with the force of a speeding truck.

Even as he fell back, the air forced from his chest, he knew what had happened. A bomb had fallen there, right in front of him, to tear up the turf and gravestones.

Hardly able to breathe, he lumbered to his feet. Ahead, a hole steamed gently.

‘Ruth… Ruth.’

It hurt to shout.

But it didn’t stop him.

‘Ruth!’

There, big enough to comfortably swallow a family car, was a crater. Rimmed with a ridge of loose soil, it steamed.

Moving like he was drunk, Sam staggered around the perimeter of the hole while staring down into its centre.

‘Ruth?’

He looked around the graveyard. The headstones now lay flat against the ground.

Falling from the dark sky above him were stalks of grass that had been ripped high into the air by the blast. Now they floated gently back down to earth.

A green fibrous snow. He plucked a piece off his sleeve and looked at it wonderingly.

It was then he noticed something resembling a piece of silver foil sticking to his chest.

He pulled at it.

The pain slashed through his nerves to his brain in one searing rush.

He pulled at the shiny silver again.

And again the pain.

Understanding nosed its way through his stunned brain.

The silvery metal was shrapnel that had been slammed into his chest by the bomb blast. He looked at his fingers. Blood reddened them.

On the ground lay an object about the size of a Snickers bar. He picked it up. It was a snake head that had been severed from the monster’s head. The forked tongue hung loosely through the jaws.

Sam threw it aside.

‘Ruth?’

His voice sounded woolly in his ears. The explosion must have damaged his hearing. ‘Ruth!’

He looked towards the iron fence.

Slumped across it was a figure.

‘Ruth!’

Running forward, he saw the arched torso and the limbs hanging limply to the ground.

There, lying on his back, as if carefully balancing across the fence, was the man who’d attacked him. His axe lay in the road where the explosion had flung it. The railing spikes had punched completely through the middle of his stomach. Spikes protruded bloodily from the clothing.

Even though Sam could see the chest rising and falling in jerky breaths, the man seemed unconscious.

Certainly he was dying.

‘Ruth!’

Sam turned and walked back towards the crater.

Ahead of him he saw figures in the darkness. He saw the helmets of police, ARP wardens, ambulance men. One of them tenderly held the little girl in his arms.

Even from this distance Sam could see she was unhurt. All their attention was on the little girl. Sam couldn’t hear the reassuring voices but he could imagine them. They were going to give her the best care and love they could. She was one of their own who had been snatched from the jaws of hell.

Already Sam no longer felt part of this world.

Their lives, battles, tragedies would continue. But he would no longer contribute to them. Nor influence them. He was like a football player forced to retire from a game before it was through.

The rest of the team would continue to play without him.

He reached the edge of the crater. There he dropped to his knees. The wound in his chest gushed blood but he didn’t feel it.

The ringing in his ears was growing faint.

The world seemed indistinct. Reality was losing its hard edge.

He looked down at the rim of broken stone and earth. From the debris he picked out a cap.

He didn’t recognise the badge but he knew what it was. ‘Oh, Ruth,’ he whispered. ‘Oh, Ruth… I’m sorry. I made you miss your train.’

His whole body began to shake.

‘I’m sorry, Ruth…’

Then, as his blood dripped onto the torn cap clenched in his two hands, the world seemed to twist violently beneath him.

Then it was no longer there. And he was falling.

Into some other place. Some other time.