The Fall

46

Mid-morning, Christmas Day, 1865

The vehicles formed a line in the snow.

Each a yard from its neighbour, they stood side by side, engines idling, the noses of the cars, bus and van facing forward. It was like the starting line of a cross-country race.

Waiting.

The snow blew in flurries. Sometimes the bottleneck of the pass between river and cliff was clear, the next obliterated in swirling white flakes.

Sam’s hands tightened around the steering wheel. A bitter flavour like aspirin not swallowed quickly enough flooded his mouth.

Behind him sat the two soldiers, rifles at the ready. The engine purred, catlike.

Sam could smell the exhaust fumes.

The Bluebeards were perhaps still a couple of minutes away from the bottleneck. They were undisciplined, little more than a mob of bandits and murderers, but they were smart enough not to exhaust themselves running towards their adversaries yet. They slogged through the snow at a steady pace, their axes, swords, spears at the ready.

They had numerical superiority. But Sam Baker’s people had guns, and motorised vehicles that were fast – and lethal weapons in their own right.

And somewhere behind the line of vehicles the 40 or so cavalrymen were forming up. And behind them were the 90 foot soldiers, already fixing bayonets to rifles, checking grenade fuses.

No-one spoke.

They were waiting for the Bluebeards to become a compact mass of men as they entered the bottleneck.

Sam glanced at his watch. The second hand swept by with agonising slowness.

Waiting.

His jaw muscles ached as he clenched his teeth.

What if that dizzying swirl of the fall through time came at that moment? What if he found himself sitting next to Zita with the rest of the surviving time travellers, watching Jud slip the pin into his collar, with the vehicles just as they had been in the car park?

It could happen at any moment. Surely it was long overdue.

Then the remaining natives of 1865 Casterton would have to fight this battle alone.

Once more Sam thought about his theory – that strange theory, as it had seemed at the time. That perhaps all this was part of a greater plan by some third party. Maybe those scientists of a distant future had deliberately plucked a mixed group of civilians from the amphitheatre of 1999 and transported them back to fight this battle. A desperate act by desperate human beings.

At that moment the snowfall eased off to nothing more than a few individual flakes. And that was the instant the Bluebeards reached the bottleneck some two hundred yards ahead of the line of waiting cars.

Sam sounded the Range Rover’s horn in one long blast. At either side of him the engines revved, exhaust-smoke billowing.

Slowly the steel cavalry of cars, van and bus moved forward.

Slowly, slowly does it.

A unified line of cars. A single unbroken line. Moving slowly across the snow.

All along the line, drivers hit light switches. Headlamps blazed dazzlingly against the snow.

Sam sounded the horn again.

Then he reached across and hit the strips of metal that formed the triggers of the rocket launchers.

With a loud swishing sound the rockets flashed from their pods at either side of the car, engulfing it in smoke.

Sam watched the exhaust flames of the rockets shoot like red sparks towards the enemy line in front of him.

He counted the rockets.

One, two away.

Three, four, five, six.

Not bad, Mr Carswell. Only two duds.

He glanced to his right.

Thunder Child fired the rockets from her remaining ‘wing’. Streaks of smoke drew the trajectory line of the rockets. Somewhere ahead they were exploding in the faces of the barbarians. More blood would be speckling the snow.

To his left, the roof-mounted cannon of the ice-cream van fired its single shot. The sound of the explosion rolled along the cliff wall like thunder.

Sam sounded the horn again in a long blast.

The Bluebeards were perhaps a hundred yards away, a dark raggedy line spiky with spears.

Now Sam accelerated, taking the car up to 40 miles an hour. Beside him the other cars, matching his speed, stayed in formation.

A tight line rushing across the snow to hit the flesh-and-bone mass of Barbarians head on.

Ahead of the group of men and women lay the time-gate. Nicole put her arm round Sue as they rested before entering the world of 1865. It was a gesture of reassurance as well as affection. They’d gone through a lot together over the last few months. Nicole was determined to see her safely back with Lee.

Here there was no snow. It was a cool, damp place, with trees and grass and sluggish streams.

All around her the women and children they’d released not an hour or so before sat exhaustedly on the ground. They’d have had precious little sleep in the last three days. The women especially.

William stood at Nicole’s side.

From the slot in his jacket Bullwitt looked out with his brown bulging eyes. ‘There it is,’ he said in his nasal voice. ‘The doorway back to 1865.’

‘The way to home and safety,’ William said, pleased. ‘Unless we happen to run into the Bluebeards face to face.’

‘The Bluebeards have embarked on another of their raids.’

‘I know, but what if something makes them turn around and come back bleeding home. Have you thought of that?’

The speedometer needle hovered on 40. Snow spurted from either side of the tyres like the V-shaped spray of a speedboat.

At either side of Sam the vehicles held their line. A near-as-damn-it solid wall of steel rolling along the pass towards the line of barbarians.

Sam gritted his teeth. ‘Hold on,’ he said to the men in the back. ‘We’re going to hit them any second now.’

The windscreen wipers batted away the snow. Headlamps blazed.

The drivers began laying into their horns, sending an automotive battle cry before them – from the high bleating of the Fiat’s horn down to the bull-like bellow of the bus.

Suddenly the blurred dark line ahead resolved itself into sharp focus as the speed annihilated the open ground between the vehicles and the Bluebeards.

Now Sam could see faces.

He could see the whites of their eyes, as the saying went. He stared into the faces of brutalised and brutal men. Their ferocious glares raked the oncoming vehicles.

Then the cars slammed into the oncoming line of warriors.

Sam wasn’t prepared for what happened next.

Bodies crashed over the bonnet and up over the roof.

The sound was incredible.

He could hear the screams and shouting of the Bluebeards above the roar of the engines.

As well as screams of pain there were screams of bloodlust and fury too.

The wipers slashed at the snow on the now-cracked windscreen.

The snow had turned pink.

A face slammed against the glass, leaving a great sunburst of red. The wipers slashed at it, the whispery sound of the blades giving way to a wet slip-slop sound.

Sam hit the screen-wash.

Still the momentum of the car carried them on deeper into the pack of men in front of them.

The ‘wings’ at either side of the car were sheared off the moment they hit the solid bodies.

And still the car moved on.

But now it was slowing.

Thirty.

Twenty-five.

Twenty.

Slowing fast as bodies compacted against the front of the car.

The tyres rolled over more bodies, throwing the car from side to side like a boat on a storm-riven sea.

‘We’re stopping,’ Sam shouted. ‘Get ready to fire!’

Pushing the muzzles through the open windows of the rear doors, the men cocked the rifles.

Ten miles an hour.

The vehicles had pushed the barbarians back like a snowplough heaping snow in front of it. Now the weight was so great it defeated the forward motion of the car. Probably the bus was doing better than him. Its huge bulk would charge on for another hundred yards or so yet.

But as for the lighter cars at either side, they’d probably been stopped dead in their tracks by now, their bonnets and body panels mangled by the impact of so many hard warrior bodies.

‘Fire!’ Sam yelled as the speedo needle kissed zero.

The reports of the rifles crashed against his ears, deafening him.

Now he pushed the gear lever into reverse, then stamped the pedal to the floor.

With a buzz-saw sound the car lurched, tyres spinning, not gripping.

Plumes of blood-drenched snow turned the air red above the mound of bodies.

The car’s tyres at last bit; they began moving back.

A couple of cars weren’t so lucky. They’d either become stuck under the bulldozed mound of bodies or the tyres’ treads simply couldn’t bite deeply enough into the snow, slush and blood.

Instantly a wave of Bluebeards clambered over the bodies of their fallen dead to leap onto the cars, hammering at them with their axes and swords.

He watched in horror as car windows shattered under the blows. Drivers and soldiers were dragged out to be hacked to death in the snow.

A face appeared at the side window. Sam saw for a moment the blue tattoos across the upper lip. The man raised his axe ready to smash it through the open side window of the Range Rover.

A blast of sound smacked him in the side of the head. One of the soldiers in the rear seat had fired a pistol. The barbarian clutched his mouth. With blood squirting between his fingers he fell back onto the tangle of bodies behind him.

Sam reversed hard now, not waiting to be overrun.

He reversed until he was well clear of the wall of broken bodies, then he spun the car until it faced forward.

A second later he drove away, leaving the mayhem behind him.

What remained of Sam’s fighting force regrouped.

Three of the cars were missing. The remaining ‘wing’ on the bus was a tangled mess being dragged alongside by one of the supporting cables from the king post. A soldier hung dead and bleeding through one of the glassless windows. One of his comrades pulled the body back.

This was going to be no easy victory. Sam knew that now.

And with the Bluebeards still surging strongly towards the exit of the pass that led out to the relative safety of open ground and woodland there was no option but to go back in again.

And just hope the remaining vehicles could knock the fight out of the barbarians. Even so, Sam knew that they couldn’t possibly have killed more than a couple of hundred in the last charge. There would still be more than two thousand of them.

And now those bastards had a score to settle.

Sam swung open the car door. It crunched against the remains of the wooden framework of the wing that held the rocket tubes.

And that framework held more now. There was a severed head, skewered onto one of the timber spars, and elsewhere a couple of bloody hands were trapped in the mess of cables and twisted tubes.

Swallowing, Sam stood on the driver’s seat and leaned out so the cavalry and soldiers could see him. The car itself was awash with blood.

He waved the cavalry and soldiers into the next attack.

They needed every man now.

Sitting down heavily, he slammed the door shut and accelerated once more towards the enemy line.

The other vehicles did their best to keep up with him. But now, with the pass wider and with fewer autos, the line was more widely spaced. Some of the Bluebeards would dodge the oncoming cars and pass through the gaps.

That, Sam hoped, was where the troops following behind would join the fray: picking off the enemy before they made it away from the pass.

He looked from left to right. The bus and the cars, their bodies dented and crumpled, smeared with barbarian blood, raced through the snow.

A group of Bluebeards in front of him parted before the Range Rover could plunge like a torpedo into their bodies.

A series of bangs sounded along the car.

He glanced down. From the door panel, arrow heads and shafts pointed at his leg and hip.

Hell, he thought in amazement, those brutes can fire arrows with such force they pierce steel doors.

Behind him the soldiers fired from the back seats. One of the bowmen slumped onto the snow.

Sam looked ahead to see the dense main pack of Bluebeards emerging from a flurry of snowflakes.

A second later the vehicles once more smacked into them.

The battle had become a dream. Or at least it seemed like that.

In an unearthly way it had actually become quiet. Sam spun the car round, aiming it at individual groups of Bluebeards. Behind him the rifles fired.

He glanced back. One soldier lay back in the seat, head twisted at what would have been an uncomfortable angle if the man had been alive. An arrow jutted from his face just below the cheekbone.

Sam saw cars looking like hedgehogs as arrows bristled from their bodywork.

There, a car had been turned over, the occupants spilled out in a bloody jumble. Flames erupted from the back of the vehicle. Seconds later its store of grenades exploded and a ball of orange rose into the sky like a sunrise.

All around him, bodies looking like crushed strawberries were scattered across the snow.

To his left, the bus moved slowly. Its field guns roared every few seconds or so, blasting explosive shells into the mass of the Bluebeards as they pressed towards the vehicle in a huge tightening noose of men.

Sam realised they were trying to box the bus in so it would eventually become bogged down in the snow.

Arrows cascaded onto it, piercing its flimsy sides of steel sheeting.

Sam looked round. There was precious little in the way of reinforcements. There were perhaps two dozen cavalrymen riding furiously to and fro, killing the enemy with lances and swords.

The bus stopped. Instantly the Bluebeards rushed forward.

Lee flung the bus into reverse, backing it towards the cliff wall as fast as he could, catching and crushing a few of the barbarians in the process. Then the vehicle lumbered forward again, but it was all too slow.

If Lee stopped once more the Bluebeards could probably rush the bus and hold it fast with their own body strength. Once they’d stopped it, even for a moment, they could flood on board and finish off the crew with knives.

Sam edged the car forward, watchful lest any Bluebeards should rush him. But most seemed to be interested in the bus now. Its flanks were so streaked with blood that even its name, Thunder Child, was obliterated.

Sam laid heavily into the horn, attracting the attention of the cavalrymen.

He pointed at the Bluebeards circling the bus, then he let out the clutch. The Range Rover fishtailed as he aimed the car like a missile. ‘Brace yourself!’ he called back at the surviving soldier in the back. ‘I’m going to hit them as hard as I can!’

The slipstream whipping by the window tore at his face, plastered his hair against his forehead, then pulled it away again.

The car had reached 60 when he hit the barbarians at their densest point.

Most wouldn’t even know what killed them: they were pushing towards the bus, their backs to the car.

The concussion was terrific.

Sam threw his arms in front of his face to protect his eyes, But he still saw enough.

Bodies exploded across the bonnet, turning the windscreen crimson, then smashing it.

In front of the car more bodies fell. The first ones went under the front tyres. But then, as the bodies were bulldozed into a mound, the front end of the car lifted.

Sam glimpsed the speedo.

Forty.

The engine still roared.

The falling men formed a ramp of blood and bone, lifting the nose of the car even higher. A split second later it took off and flew.

The car screamed clear above the heads of yet more men. Then, rolling to the right, it fell on its side.

Dazed, hanging by the seatbelt, Sam looked to his right and down. A carpet of dying men, crushed by the car, lay on the other side of the driver’s window.

He felt a hand push at his shoulder.

The surviving soldier was signalling him to get out.

He nodded.

Unbuckling the seatbelt, he wriggled from under the steering wheel that had collapsed into a figure-eight shape.

More bodies were pressed against the windscreen that was now a crazy frost-pattern of cracks.

As far as Sam could tell, the car had come to rest on the driver’s side. That meant he had to climb out of the passenger door.

His whole body ached.

Gritting his teeth, he scrambled over the seats. Deciding not to even try and lift the heavy passenger door up and open, he worked his body out through the shattered window.

The soldier’s rifle barked.

Sam saw that the soldier was standing on the passenger side of the car that now faced the sky.

Sam stood there too, his legs shaking badly.

All around him, Bluebeards pressed towards them, ready to tear the two men limb from limb.

‘Sir, take this.’ The soldier handed him a revolver. He had one of his own. Sam took the gun, cocked it, then aimed at the face of a Bluebeard standing on the ground below. The barbarian was just about to swing a sword at Sam’s legs.

Sam squeezed the trigger.

The gun recoiled in his hand.

And the Bluebeard rolled back onto the snow, arms flung out, blood pumping from a hole in his forehead.

Sam chose another target, fired again.

Then again.

Three rounds left.

When they were gone he’d be dead.

Already a spear jab had punctured the soldier’s leg just above the knee. With one hand holding the wound closed, the man carried on firing.

Then came a sound like the bellow of an angry bull.

Dazed, Sam looked up to see a wonderful sight.

Slowly, foot by foot, the bus was pushing through the crush of barbarians.

Lee was pumping the horn, sending out that bellowing note.

Seconds later the bus was alongside the Range Rover. At this height, standing on the side of the car, the bus windows were almost level with Sam and the soldier.

Straightaway a crop of hands appeared. Sam saw Jud’s and Zita’s anxious faces. Even Rolle and Thomas Hather reached out their hands.

Sam grabbed at them and was pulled on board.

He collapsed into a seated position as the bus powered across the snow to break out of the Bluebeards’ line that Sam had smashed through earlier.

Sam glanced across at the soldier who’d saved his life.

The man had been less lucky. The swipe of a barbarian axe had taken away his hand.

Another soldier bound the wound as the bus bucked and heaved across the snow-covered meadow.

He noticed that Jud’s leg was bandaged at the knee where an arrow had perhaps found a target. Although limping badly, he managed to light the fuses of some grenades and hurl them out at the Bluebeards.

His face dripping with sweat, Sam waved people away so he could stand.

He saw they were heading back to the amphitheatre. ‘No!’ Sam hung onto the wooden king post that ran through the bus like a pin through the thorax of a butterfly. ‘Lee! No, we can’t stop now. Turn back! We’ve got to hit them again!’