Time Riders

CHAPTER 83

1957, New York

Liam fiddled with the stiff starchy collar around his neck, irritated by thestitching of the oak leaves and the death’s-head insignia. He undid the top button.

‘How much longer now?’

Bob was standing in the middle of the floor, surrounded by laundry lines draped with linensheets. His eyes blinked.

‘Scheduled window imminent. Precisely fifty-seven seconds from now.’

Liam realized his stomach was churning with nervous anticipation. In less than a minute theywere going to know whether Maddy had remembered the museum’s guest book. In less than aminute Liam would know whether he was going to be stuck in the past forever.

‘You see anything?’

‘Negative. No sign of density probing yet.’ And, of course, if the window didn’t arrive, then Bob was due to self-terminate shortly,leaving Liam all alone. He wasn’t sure he was going to be able to cope with that,wondering when the men in dark uniforms were going to round him up and put him back in one ofthose camps. Or, worse, execute him by firing squad for killing their soldiers, stealing thecar, stealing the uniforms.

‘Ten seconds,’ said Bob.

Come on, Maddy… please remember the museum guest book.

He stood up, ducking under a laundry line to join Bob in the middle of thefloor.

‘So this is it, Bob… cross your fingers.’

‘Why?’

‘It’s meant to be lucky.’

‘Why?’

‘It just is… It’s… oh, forget it.’

‘Window due in six seconds… five… four…’

Liam clenched his chattering teeth, his fingers crossed tightly round each other for goodluck, knuckles bulging beneath his pale skin. ‘Come on… come on,’ hewhispered.

‘… three… two…’

Here we go.

‘… one…’

Nothing.

Liam looked around them, snatching the linen sheets to one side in case they hid theshimmering outline of the displacement window. ‘Where is it?’

Bob looked at him. ‘There is no window.’

‘What? You sure?’

‘I would detect tachyon particles in the vicinity if there was one.’

The nervous energy that had Liam trembling moments ago drained out of him like water from anemptying bath tub. His legs felt wobbly and he found a wooden stool to slump down on to.

So that’s it, then.

He looked up at the support unit, standing motionless, looking back down at him with a calmexpressionless face.

‘So how much time do you have left before you have to terminate?’

Bob’s brow flickered for a moment. Liam thought he almost detectedsadness in that expression… almost. ‘I have fifty-six minutes left on my missionclock.’

Fifty-six minutes left to live. Liam wondered what a person could do with fifty-six minutes.Not a lot. Time for a cup of tea and some cakes. A bath and a shave maybe.

‘I’m really sorry, Bob,’ he said quietly. ‘I think I was getting toquite like you, you know.’

Bob’s stern face seemed to shift, soften. Liam was certain that behind the flesh andbone, at some level, the unit was experiencing something beyond simple binary numbers andlogical functions.

‘I am…’ His deep voice searched for unfamiliar words. ‘I… amsorry too… Liam O’Connor.’

‘We made a good team, didn’t we?’

Bob tried one of Sal’s smiles. It worked pretty well this time. Still ugly as sin,though.

‘Yes. We made a — ’ Bob froze mid-sentence. His eyes focused beyond Liam,then he was blinking rapidly.

Is he getting something?

‘Information: I am registering tachyon particles in the vicinity,’ said Bob allof a sudden.

‘Is it another message?’

‘Negative.’

‘One of them density probes?’

‘Negative.’

Liam got to his feet, ducking under a laundry line. ‘A window?’

Bob turned round, reached out for a laundry line and yanked it aside. The line snapped, crispand clean sheets and shirts fluttered to the ground and there, in the middle of the archway,he could see it — the heat shimmer of a time window, flexing and distorting like a poolof water. It was a much smaller sphere than the one they’d stepped into returning fromthe assassination of John F. Kennedy. But bigger than Washington’saborted attempt, big enough to carefully step through this time.

‘Why’s it still so small?’

‘They must have limited power. Or this window has been projected by machinery that isnot fully charged.’

Liam stepped eagerly towards it.

‘Caution: you must be entirely within the sphere. Any partof you not within will be left behind when it closes.’

Liam carefully ducked down low and eased himself within the shimmering envelope of energy.Once he was in, crouching because the sphere was low, Bob joined him, stepping in andhunkering down, wrapping his thick arms around Liam to prevent him wobbling out of theenvelope.

‘Remain completely still,’ said Bob.

Then all of a sudden it felt like the ground beneath their feet had been whipped away fromthem and they were tumbling through air.

2001, New York

His feet hit hard, cold concrete. Familiar concrete. Oil-stained concrete. Thefirst thing he noticed was that the arch was pretty dark. The second thing he noticed wasMaddy screaming and then the deafening, echoing boom of a shotgun fired just a few feetaway.

He looked up to see Maddy cowering on the floor with the smoking gun in her hands andsomething he thought was a skeleton at first fly back like a rag doll against the wall. Therewere plenty more of them: skeletons in tattered clothes, pushing through the sliding door fromthe back room, long claw-like hands stretching out to grab her. Across the room Foster wasstaggering from the computer terminals to join her.

Bob’s reactions were much quicker. He was already on his feet andsprinting with the speed of a bird of prey towards Maddy. His huge muscled arms thrashedviolently at the nearest of the skeletal things, shattering bones and tearing muscletissue.

He grabbed another and twisted its head with a flick of his wrist. The creature flopped tothe ground like a rag doll.

The shotgun fired again, sending another one of them sprawling against a wall.

Liam realized he was doing nothing and then remembered he had a gun. He fumbled at theholster on his hip, pulled out the pistol and tried his best to aim at the confusing tangle ofpale limbs picked out by a dancing beam of torchlight.

He fired a shot into the confusing scrum, producing an exploding puff of crimson onBob’s left shoulder. The support unit glanced back at him and growled.

‘Oh Jay-zus, I’m sorry!’

Bob turned back to the task at hand and tore the limb off another one of them and proceededto swing the flopping thing like a club at the others. Their high-pitched screams made themsound like startled children and they began to scramble back to the door through whichthey’d entered.

As Bob pursued them into the back room, the sound of crashing, a heavy perspex tube rollingacross the floor and further shrill screams of terror echoed out through the doorway. Liamjoined Foster and Maddy.

‘What’s happening?’

Foster looked at him. ‘Bad things, Liam. Bad things.’

He reached down to Maddy, wide eyed and in shock on the floor.

‘You OK, Maddy? You all right?’

Her eyes drifted from the contorted pale bodies either side of the doorwayand on to Liam’s face. For a moment she seemed confused, looking at him as if he was astranger.

‘It’s me! Liam!’

Recognition flickered into her squinting eyes. Recognition… followed by graduallyrealized relief. Her mouth opened and closed. Opened and closed. ‘Oh God,’ shefinally managed to whisper. ‘Oh God… I thought I was going to… thought thosethings were… were — ’

Foster reached out and held her. ‘Shhh. It’s OK now. They made it back. Both ofthem. We’re safe now.’

The sound of struggling in the back room had ceased. Bob appeared in the doorway, his facespattered with dark droplets of blood, his SS uniform ripped and soaked with even moreblood.

‘Information: the field office is now clear,’ he said matter-of-factly.

It was then Liam registered that they were missing someone.

‘Where’s Sal?’