Time Riders

CHAPTER 79

2001, New York

Foster noticed them as they jogged quickly down the steps outside the frontentrance, not just a couple of dozen of them peering curiously from the dark interiors ofgutted buildings… but a hundred or more of them.

Fresh meat… the word’s spreading.

‘Oh God!’ uttered Sal. ‘There’s so many.’

Maddy grabbed her hand protectively. ‘Foster, fire your gun.’

He shook his head. ‘I don’t think the noise will scare them now.’

‘But maybe these are ones who don’t know your gunkills.’

‘Oh, they know all right… otherwise I’m sure they’d already be onus.’

The street leading south, Central Park West, was thick with them… like some bizarresilent rally. To their left was what was once Central Park, now nothing more than a dust bowldotted with the charcoal skeletons of scorched tree trunks, or the frazzled stumps oflong-dead bushes. If the devil was given a say in how a city park should be landscaped, Fosterimagined he would go with something like this.

It was wide open terrain, though. Nothing for the creatures to hide behind or jump out from.Far better than picking their way along some narrow street strewn with rusted vehicles.

‘We should cut across the park,’ he said. ‘Then we’re on the east side. It’s a short way through to the Hudson River.’ Theycould then follow the river down to the bridge. The riverside boulevard was broad all the waydown to the Williamsburg Bridge and they’d only need to keep an eye out for anythingcoming at them from their right.

‘Let’s go,’ he said, leading the way down the last of the steps, across theforecourt, through twisted and collapsed iron railings over an intersection all but hidden bythe tangle of rusted carcasses of abandoned cars.

The late-afternoon sun poked through dirty brown clouds as they pushed their way through thefossilized remains of a decorative hedgerow and into Central Park.

‘They’re following,’ said Sal, her voice trembling.

Foster glanced back over his shoulder to see the creatures moving together as a giant pack,hundreds of them shifting across Central Park West, and climbing railings, squeezing throughdead hedges to enter the park in their wake.

‘OK, they’re following, but at least they’re keeping a distance.’

Although, as he said that, he noticed that the distance seemed to be narrowing as some of themore courageous of them edged out several dozen yards ahead of the herd. He wondered if theywere ringleaders — pack leaders, individuals with something to prove to theirfollowers.

The girls picked up their pace, swift strides quickly turning into an untidy jog, kicking upclouds of dust and ash. Foster brought up the rear.

The gap between them narrowed further as the creatures’ hunched-over scuttling becamemore of a hunched-over trot. The braver creatures came closer still, now thirty or forty feetfrom them. Foster turned and glanced at the nearest of them — male by the look of him,tall and painfully thin, a few tufts of pale hair growing in isolated islands on his scalp andrags of clothing dangling from his powder-white body. He could hear thecreature’s laboured breath and a keening whimper as it yearned to close the gap betweenthem. Yet, understandably, it feared the dark metal object in Foster’s hand. Perhaps itsmind remembered a solitary word from a long-forgotten language.

Gun.

And it knew the metal tube could spit death in an instant.

For what seemed an interminable age, they maintained this moving stand-off: the girls joggingacross the dead park, Foster struggling along several yards behind them, his ragged breathgrowing ever more laboured, and the silent herd of creatures easily keeping pace — butslowly, warily, closing in.

‘The other side of the park, look!’ shouted Maddy.

Across the empty concrete bowl of a duck pond and the corroded A-frames of what had once beenswings, he could see a row of stunted black trees and dark metal railings. Beyond that was 5thAvenue, running north to south down the side of the park.

Fifty yards along, he could see a way out that wouldn’t require them to stop and scalethe railings — a gateway. Then, across 5th Avenue, they’d be on to East 72ndStreet. Half a dozen blocks of ruined buildings on either side and then they’d hit theriver.

But this is where they may jump us, he decided. As they pickedtheir way over rubble and weaved through abandoned cars, those creatures would finally closethe gap and be upon them. He decided now was as good a time as any to demonstrate once morewhat his gun could do. He turned round, stopped and levelled his gun at the nearestcreature.

He fired, throwing the pitiful thing on its back with a shrill high-pitched scream. It lay onthe ground in a growing pool of its own blood, bony legs thrashing the ground wildly. The restof the herd immediately turned on their heels and fled across the ash-greypark like rabbits startled by a farmer’s gun.

‘Just reminding them we’re dangerous.’

Maddy nodded. ‘Good.’ But then she looked at the weapon. ‘Eleven shotsleft?’

Foster racked another round into the shotgun. ‘Yes, eleven.’

They made their way quickly along East 72nd and ten minutes later emerged on to the broaddual-lane expanse of FDR Drive, heading south, parallel with the Hudson River.

Ahead of them were the shattered remains of Queensboro Bridge, collapsed in the middle.Beyond that, no more than three quarters of a mile down the Hudson, Foster could see the tallmetal support towers of the Williamsburg Bridge, and on the far side of the river, the squatbrick and industrial buildings, chimney pots and cranes of Brooklyn’s dockside.

They rested for a moment on a wooden bench, overlooking the muddy bank of the river below,all three of them catching their breath.

‘Just over the bridge… and… then we’re home and dry,’ raspedFoster.

‘You OK?’ asked Maddy.

‘I’m fine… just a little winded. Let me grab some air.’

They hung on for a moment, looking back the way they’d come. For the moment it seemedlike they’d lost the creatures.

‘You girls ready?’

They both nodded.

He led them down the wide boulevard, all three of them happy to have the broad river to theirleft, and four lanes of wide, empty road to their right.

Another ten minutes and they were hurrying up a narrow brick stairwell to the WilliamsburgBridge’s pedestrian walkway. The sick orange sun was now low in the sky and looking fora place to settle among the broken horizon of ruined buildings. Long violetshadows were spreading across the river, reaching for the building on the far side.

‘Nearly home,’ gasped Sal. ‘Looks like we’re going to make it,’she said, grinning at Maddy.

The walkway, just wide enough for three to walk abreast and caged by high sides of basketwire, ran above the traffic lanes over the bridge. As they hurried along, they looked down ontwo lanes of crumbling tarmac filled with the ancient rusting hulks of bumper-to-bumpertraffic. A soft wind moaned through shattered windscreens and across car seats and the bonesof those who’d died at the wheel suddenly, mysteriously, decades ago — a vehiclegraveyard filling the bridge with hushed whispers of torment and pain.

Foster concentrated on the way ahead. Just another three or four minutes across the bridge,down the steps on the far side, a turn into the backstreet at the base of the bridge, thenthey’d be home.

He’d checked that the generator was ticking over when they left. Provided the thing hadmanaged to keep on going while they’d been out and not choke or stall on them, heguessed the displacement machine would be ready to use by now. He hoped.

Liam’s message had given them an exact time. And once they’d entered theco-ordinates into the computer they’d know the exact location. If the lad was thinkingsmart, he knew precisely where that location should be.

Despite all three of them being exhausted and winded, their pace quickened as the far side ofthe lifeless, sluggish, polluted river below loomed. The prospect of safety was just ahead,just minutes away. The prospect of bringing home Liam, of bringing home Bob — a heroictower of muscle who could protect them from virtually anything- urged them on ever faster.

They were nearly there. And Foster had begun to allow himself to think thatthis nightmare might just be nearly over.

There was a scream.

He spun round to see a twisting branch of lean milk-white arms pulling at Sal through a largehole in the basket-wire cage.

‘Oh no!’ screamed Maddy. ‘They’ve got hold of her!’