Time Riders

CHAPTER 59

1957, Prison Camp 79, New Jersey

Liam was exhausted. Barely an hour into the morning shift digging the ditchalongside the camp’s wire perimeter and he felt drained, barely able to lift his spade.Nearly six months of poor food, little more than a starvation diet, had left him feeling weakand unable to sustain any sort of physical exertion for long.

He leaned on the spade, trying to catch his breath, giving his aching muscles a moment torecover. Sweat rolled down the small of his back, soaking his shirt. Clouds of his hot breathpuffed out into the crisp winter air in front of him.

‘You better not let Kohl see you,’ whispered Wallace in the ditch beside him.

Kohl was one of the more ruthless guards. Last week he’d pulled a man from thedefensive ditches being dug around the camp and beaten him repeatedly with the butt of hispulse carbine for stopping and taking a rest. News was the man had died later on from hisinjuries.

It was from one of the guards that Liam had learned why they weredigging these defensive ditches around the wire-fence perimeter. There’d been someraids, successful raids, by a small band of resistance fighters. Several camps had beenoverrun, the prisoners freed and most of the soldiers who’d been guarding them killed.There was a rumour spreading among the guards that these fighters were being led by somedemonic entity. There were varying descriptions of this thing; some of theguards who’d survived described a giant, eight or nine feet tall, with the horns of adevil protruding from its head. Another eye-witness described this demon as being made ofiron, yet able to move at a terrifying speed with the agility of a tiger.

They even had a nickname for this thing.

Der Eisenmann. The Iron Man.

One of the guards further down the line spotted Liam resting on his spade and barked a shrillorder at him.

‘Weiterarbeiten, Du Amerikanischer Haufen Schei?e!’

He started digging again, relieved that it hadn’t been Kohl.

‘O’Connor, you’re going to get yourself killed if they see you slackinglike that again,’ hissed Wallace.

He’s right.

The rumours of Der Eisenmann had put these soldiers on edge. Liamcould see fear in their eyes as they scanned the distant treeline, unhappy with being outsidethe wire fence of the camp.

The Iron Man.

So much time had passed in here that Liam had almost begun tobelieve his short time as a TimeRider had just been a figment of his imagination. That timetravel was just a fairytale… perhaps his life even, his childhood in Ireland, hisworking a passage on the Titanic; all those things had been somedream. And in fact this dreary camp, his fellow starving prisoners in their grey rags, thelong low wooden huts — that was his real world. His real life.

But then he’d heard those rumours about Der Eisenmann. Adesperate hope had surfaced, a long-discarded possibility, that Bob was behind this Iron Manstory somehow. He hated himself for allowing that hope to momentarily flicker to life. Commonsense tried telling him that this Iron Man nonsense was nothing more than the superstitiousprattle of spooked soldiers completely unused to being on the losing side ofany kind of a fight.

You’re here for good, Liam. Now, just you bloody well get used toit.

It was hard, though. Hard not to hope that one day, totally without warning, a shimmeringsphere might suddenly pop up beside him, and Foster and Bob and the girls would appear andtake him back.

Stop it! No one’s coming for you now. It’s been nearly sixmonths. No one is coming.

Five months and three weeks. A hundred and seventy-five days. He knew exactly how longnow… One of the prisoners worked as a cleaner in the kommandant’s office and hadspotted a calendar on his desk. The prisoners kept track of time — marked the endless,identical days passed inside here — through him.

‘You all right there?’ whispered Wallace. ‘You mustn’t give up hope,kid. You give up… you die.’

He was right. It was the thin sliver of hope that came in the form of whispered rumours,overheard conversations between guards, that was keeping them going. Keeping them alive.

Liam turned to Wallace and gave him a thin, weary smile. ‘I’m allright.’

‘You know, lad… things will get better,’ hereplied quietly. His thick, dark beard parted with a smile. ‘The American peoplewon’t stand for this. They’ll fight back. I know they will.’

Liam wondered about that. From what he’d heard, the camps were filled with those peoplewho might have organized or led some sort of a resistance movement: army officers, civicleaders, congressmen, lawyers, teachers, college professors, newspaper editors. Therest… those who’d been spared imprisonment and left to continue their lives solong as they posed no threat to their new masters, were never going to risk their lives, theirfamily’s lives, as long as some semblance of normal life remained for them.

Liam could see this Fuhrer’s plan with stark clarity — lock up all the potential trouble-makers and either starve them or work them to death. Eitherway they were never going to see the outside world again. Meanwhile, the rest of thepopulation would get used to the new regime, get used to obeying their new masters, untilfinally they’d forgotten what it was like to be free. Just as long as their new ruler- their Fuhrer — continued to ensure there was food and water andelectricity. What was it he heard someone muttering last night in their dormitory hut?

‘… Long as them Krauties keep the trams runnin’, theshops well stocked, the cinemas playing those cowboy movies, the Major League baseballplay-offs on schedule and you can still get yer long-boy hot dog covered in mustardan’ ketchup from the vendors ’tween innings, people’ll be content enoughto let things go on as they are. They’ll forget all about us inhere…’

Those on the outside might resent being lorded-over, but as long as things were kept tickingover, kept comfortable enough, they were never going to rise up.

We’re stuck in here… forever.

WHUMP!

A geyser of muddy soil erupted from the ground a couple of yards away and sprayed down onhim.

‘Uh?’