Time Riders

CHAPTER 76

2001, New York

‘There’s nothing left,’ whispered Maddy, panning her torch aroundthe basement. Her voice was a weak, defeated croak. ‘I thought maybe… just maybe-’

‘There are a lot of shelves down here,’ said Foster. ‘We should spread outand check them all.’

‘They’re all empty, Foster! Don’t you see? Ifthat guest book was stored down here along with all the rest of the museum’s paperwork,then it was probably looted long ago, along with everything else. Maybe used as fuel for acampfire by the survivors, or those things outside.’

Foster’s face tensed as he looked around. ‘Liam’s a clever lad. He wouldhave made sure it was somewhere hidden, somewhere safe.’

‘Yeah? Where exactly? And how’re we going to find out where?’

‘A sign,’ whispered Sal.

The others turned to look at her standing outside in the stairwell on the bottom step.‘A sign,’ she said again.

‘You see a sign?’

‘No, I don’t see one, but that’s what he wouldhave done. If he came down here, he would have left us some sort of a sign.’ Her facelooked hopeful. ‘Wouldn’t he?’

Foster nodded. ‘She’s right. Some marker that would have survived this amount of time. Something permanent.’ He walked back into the stairwelland panned his torch around. ‘And right here somewhere, that’s where I’dleave a sign. Come on,’ he said, ‘everyone look.’

They did as he instructed, their torch beams snaking along the rough breeze-blocks of thestairwell walls, looking for something etched into the concrete, something scratched on thepiping running down the side, something carved into the wooden double doors leading on to thebasement floor. Something that might last forty-four years and never be completely erased.

‘Come on, Liam,’ whispered Foster, ‘if you’ve been down here, let usknow.’

They searched in silence for a few minutes, carefully sweeping their torches across thewalls, the stair handrail, heating pipes running up the side of the doorway, an electricaljunction box… even a fire extinguisher, still sitting on its wall mount, but…finding absolutely nothing.

Maddy sighed. ‘Maybe he left a sign but it was scrubbed off, or plastered over, or wornaway. It’s been a long time.’ She shook her head, frustrated. ‘Or maybe hedidn’t come back this way. And he and Bob stayed in theWashington area. Or…’ The words hung in the silence between them, unsaid.

Or maybe they just died back then.

Sal’s head dropped, her dark fringe flopping down over her eyes. ‘It was a wasteof time,’ she muttered. ‘We’re never going to find them.’

‘Maybe Sal’s right.’ Foster nodded. ‘We should probably think aboutheading back whilst it’s still light outside.’

Her dark eyebrows were locked with a frown as she gazed down at her feet.

‘We could always try again tomorrow morning as soon as the sun comesup,’ continued Foster. ‘We’ll have eight or nine hours of sunlight to lookaround down here. Actually, Liam may well have left us a clue upstairs in the main hall, for all we know. We’ll have more timetomorrow.’

Maddy reached out and patted Sal’s shoulder. ‘Hey, Sal, Foster’s right. Wecan try again tomorrow. Don’t cry, it was just a — ’

‘I’m not crying,’ she replied, shrugging off her hand and squatting quicklydown to the ground. She reached for the floor, her fingers splayed out in the dust, probing afaint groove in the concrete floor.

‘Sal?’

‘Give me your torch,’ she said to Maddy.

‘What is it?’

‘Just give me the torch!’ she snapped.

Maddy passed it to her and watched curiously as the young girl leaned closer to the ground,blowing the dry plaster dust away from the floor. She shone the torch at the small grooveetched into the concrete.

‘What is it?’

‘I think it’s letters… letters scratched into the floor.’ Peeringclosely, she tilted the torch’s beam so that it played obliquely across the faint, worngrooves, throwing them into much sharper relief.

Foster squatted down beside her. ‘What is it, Sal?’

‘An I and an H, it looks like.And I think it’s an… an arrow.’

Maddy dropped down beside them and studied the letters. Then she gasped. ‘That I is an L… see? The foot of theletter’s faint, but it’s there. Can you see it?’

‘My God, yes,’ said Foster.

Sal traced the second letter with her finger. ‘And that H,’ she said, ‘that could be…?’

Maddy grinned. ‘Yes, a B…I’ll be damned. It IS a B. L and B. Liam and Bob.’

‘That’s it!’ said Foster. He pulled himself tiredly to his feet, wincingwith the effort, but grinning like a schoolboy. ‘He’s been here! That means-’

‘He has left a message for us. Oh God, Liam!’ yelpedMaddy with joy. ‘You’re a star!’

Sal jumped to her feet, her face lit up like a jack-o-lantern. ‘They’re cominghome!’ she squealed with delight.

Foster nodded. ‘OK, then,’ he said, hushing them with his hand, ‘thearrow… He’s telling us to go in and we make a left turn.’

They stepped into the basement, turning left and seeing ahead of them a wall of rusting metalbrackets and empty shelves.

‘But there’s nothing on the shelves,’ said Maddy.

‘There’ll be another message somewhere,’ said Foster. ‘Check thefloor.’

Both girls on hands and knees swept aside the light silt on the floor around the entrance tothe basement, probing the ground with their fingers for any more distinct grooves. Fostermeanwhile ran his torch slowly up the breeze-block wall to the left of the double doors. Longago painted a joyless mint green, it was now flaking off in patches where a creeping damp hadseeped down from the museum above. His beam picked out a litany of scratches and gouges,endless decades of careless knocks by careless porters wheeling the museum’s heavyexhibits in and out of storage.

Come on, Liam. Talk to us.

The paint covered over some older acts of clumsiness, and was gouged away by newer ones. Butnone of these marks, Foster guessed, had happened in recent decades. Certainly not since theworld ended sometime in the past.

His finger ran over a faint curved groove, an indistinct and incompletecurve that might once have been part of a letter or a number. He traced the curve, dislodginga fine shower of dust, exposing more of it.

C.

Lightly blowing on the wall, more dust curled away in a light cloud, revealing a string ofwhat looked like…

Numbers.

‘I think I’ve got something!’

The girls clambered to their feet and a moment later were standing beside him, peeringclosely at the faint string of figures scratched into the concrete wall.

‘It looks like… a code of some sort.’

‘C… S… P, then a dash,’ said Sal. ‘Five, three, seven…then another dash… nine, eight, one, zero… then another dash and then five, seven,nine. What does it mean?’

Foster shook his head. ‘I don’t know.’

‘We need to know,’ insisted Maddy. She stepped back from the wall, panning hertorch around. ‘If that’s Liam again, it’s got to mean something. Theanswer’s got to be something we can see as we’re standing here, right?’

‘That would make sense,’ replied Foster.

She walked a few yards along the wall, sweeping her torch along the empty shelves. ‘Butthere’s nothing here,’ she whispered under her breath, frustrated.‘Nothing.’

Her torch beam lanced up and down the rusting vertical support struts. And then came to reston a small square tag.

‘Wait a sec.’

She stepped forward, examining it more closely. A small metal frame, attached to the bracketwith screws that were now little more than flaking nubs of rust. Contained within the frame, ayellowed strip of damp-stained card, numbers, almost too faint to read, printed on it.

She flicked the torch along to the next vertical strut. Nothing. But theone after had another tag like this. She hurried over to it and found another curled vanillastrip of card with a fading sequence of numbers printed on it.

‘It’s their filing system!’ she called out. ‘Three letters, threenumbers, four numbers then three numbers.’

‘That’s right,’ said Foster, shining his torch on the wall.

Foster smiled. He’s telling us which shelf to find.