TimeRiders: The Eternal War

CHAPTER 36. 2001, somewhere in Virginia

Liam was shaken roughly awake. By the slanted stripes of blood-red dusk stealing in through the slatted windows, he could see it was Sal tugging on his arm.

‘What … what?’ he muttered irritably.

‘Some weird midget just ran in and stole Bob’s gun!’

‘What?’ He took a moment to digest that. It sounded like the tail end of some bizarre dream. ‘What did you just say?’

‘Midget … or maybe it was a child.’ It sounded like she wasn’t sure this wasn’t a dream either. ‘It happened so fast. I was talking to Bob … and this thing just ran into the kitchen, grabbed the shotgun and ran out again.’

‘Thing?’ Liam sat up on the creaking sofa. ‘Where’s Bob?’

‘Ran out after him to get it back.’

Good thing too. It was the only weapon they had between them. Apart from Bob himself, that is. He shook away the last tendrils of sleep, stepped through the kitchen where Lincoln’s long frame was sprawled across the table, still fast asleep. The back door was wide open.

‘He went out of the back?’

Sal nodded.

Liam stood in the doorway. He could hear a fast-receding rustle and thrash of movement across the cornfield at the end of the weed-infested garden. In the failing light he could just make out where Bob had entered the field, leaving a wake of broken and flattened cornstalks.

‘He’ll get it back, I’m sure,’ said Liam. ‘He’s fast.’

‘Hope so.’

The setting sun was no more than a golden sliver trembling on the horizon, the clouds combed out across the sky directly above it like cotton candy, a fleshy pink.

‘We’ll make a move as soon as he gets back,’ said Liam. ‘Grab as many tins as we can carry and —’

‘Liam,’ whispered Sal.

‘What?’

‘Do you see that?’

‘See what?’

‘There.’ She pointed down the garden towards the edge of the field. He saw nothing but the dark parting of flattened stalks amid the chest-high wall of gently swaying corn.

‘What? I can’t see any—’ Then all of a sudden he did. Dark shapes, slowly emerging from the field and stepping into the garden.

‘Hey! Who’s that out there?’ Liam challenged.

The shapes moved carefully towards them, low shadows blending in with the tufts of weeds and the darkness of the ground.

Jay-zus.

Liam dragged Sal back inside the kitchen and slammed the door shut. The noise roused Lincoln from his slumber. ‘Curse you! I was sleeping!’ he snarled.

‘What are they?’ whimpered Sal.

‘I don’t know, to be sure … but —’

The door suddenly lurched on its hinges, rattling from an impact. A splintered crack ran down the middle of it.

‘What the devil is going on here?’ roared Lincoln, still bleary-eyed with sleep.

‘Chuddah!’ gasped Sal. ‘The window!’

Liam turned to see hands fumbling at it — no … not hands … not quite … They looked peculiar, but moving, scrabbling, scratching too quickly to identify what it was that looked so odd about them. The grime-covered glass suddenly shattered as something was lobbed through it.

‘Out! Out!’ Liam barked, pushing Sal ahead of him and dragging Lincoln out of his chair. They tumbled together from the kitchen and into the dark hallway beyond.

He slammed the door closed behind him. It would swing into the hall, which meant they could lean things against it to prevent it being opened.

‘Block this! We need to barricade it!’

They looked around themselves desperately and Lincoln gestured to a tall floor-standing grandfather clock. Liam nodded. He and Sal helped him drag it across the dust-covered floor and tilted it back to lean against the kitchen door with a clumsy thud. It chimed noisily in protest at the rough treatment.

They could hear the back door being battered and finally swinging inwards; the bark of wooden chair legs bumped and scraping; the clatter of things knocked, falling, shattering and rolling across the floor.

‘Th-they’re inside!’ whispered Sal.

A moment later the door they and the grandfather clock were pressing their weight against shuddered under a huge impact. As if someone or something on the far side was wielding a mallet.

Lincoln cursed. ‘Who the devil is this?’

‘I don’t know … I don’t know!’

‘Not people,’ hissed Sal. ‘They’re not human!’

To their right along the dark hallway leading to the front of the farmhouse the handle of the front door rattled as something tested it. Liam turned to see a hairline crimson seam of twilight glowing between the bottom of the door and the doorstep. It flickered with movement as God knows how many shapes began to gather outside.

‘GO AWAY!’ Sal screamed.

A crash against the front door and Liam saw a sliver of light in the middle of the door’s oak panel.

That’ll not hold for long.

Stairs. He remembered there was a staircase in this hallway. Up to the first floor.

‘Over there — the stairs, we need to go up!’

‘Are you quite mad, sir?’ snarled Lincoln. ‘We shall be trapped with nowhere to go!’

‘Doesn’t matter — Bob will be back soon. He’ll sort them out.’

‘He is but one man! There sounds like no less than an army of men out there!’

‘They’re not human,’ said Sal again.

The front door shuddered violently under the impact of another heavy blow and a second blood-red line of a crack joined the first. Not a hairline thread this time but a ragged gash.

‘Upstairs! Now! It’s our only chance!’

‘OK … yes … come on!’ Sal nodded quickly.

‘Damn you, sir! I will not run like a yard dog. Find me a weapon and I shall —’

‘For cryin’ out loud,’ snapped Liam, ‘what is it with you? Do you want to die?’

Lincoln’s face was thunder. ‘I am no coward, sir! I shall stand and fight!’

‘Well, I am,’ said Sal. ‘So can we go … please?’

They suddenly heard the clatter of falling grit on the floor beside their feet. They turned to look where it had come from to see what appeared to be a jagged red eye on the plaster wall beside the kitchen door.

‘Wuh?’

It blinked. Or, more precisely, it flickered.

‘’Tis a hole,’ said Lincoln.

A small fist punched through the plasterboard and broke off a shard of plaster, which crumbled to the floor with a hiss of cascading powder and grit. Another small dull ‘eye’ of dusk red appeared beside it. And another.

‘Oh Jay-zus wept! They’re breaking up the bleedin’ wall!’

Lincoln pursed his lips. ‘Perhaps then, we should … as you suggested …?’

‘Run? Come on!’

The kitchen door bulged and cracked from a heavy blow and the grandfather clock lurched with a tuneless jangle of chimes. The three of them scrambled down the hall — past the front door, yielding again under yet another hammer blow. A strip of wood clattered to the floor and through the fresh gap Liam thought he caught a glimpse of something that resembled a face, wide and flat, with pinhole-small black eyes, and a hole — was it … a hole? — for a nose.

What are these things? … Demons?

‘Up! UP!’ he screamed at Sal and Lincoln. ‘GO UP!’

The front door was looking horribly fragile now, a spiderweb of cracks and gashes that flickered and widened with each shuddering blow.

Liam followed them up the wooden stairs, stumbling more than once in the darkness. Sal was waiting for him on the landing at the top. ‘Which way, Liam? Which way?’

‘Either! Just go!’

Behind him — down the stairs — he heard a splintering crack, either the kitchen or the front door finally giving way. He could hear Sal still there in front of him, hopping uncertainly from one foot to the other, Lincoln beside her, panting heavily.

‘GO!’ Liam screamed.

Sal fumbled along the dark landing, hands patting and feeling the wall in front of her for a door to open.

Liam heard the grandfather clock collapse on to the floor, filling the house with a jangling chime.

They’re through!

He turned away from the stairs as he heard feet, scratching — claws? — on the wooden floor and a bizarre humming. Almost like human voices, but humming as if the things down there — whatever they were — were somehow gagged.

He turned and started in the dark, patting the damp peeling walls with his hands to feel his way. ‘Sal!’ he hissed.

He realized too late that she and Lincoln had turned right at the top of the stairs, and he’d gone left. The darkness was filled with the sound of feet scrambling up the stairs behind him, scratching and that unsettling humming sound, but more like a gagged snarl now than a humming.

His hands found a recess, a doorframe and finally a handle. He grabbed it with both hands, pushed the door open and was met with the faintest ruddy bloom of light from the very last blush of dusk. It seeped in through a small square dusty attic window.

Liam shut the door behind him, treading on boxes of soft things, perhaps toys, or clothes. The room must have been used for storage; the roof was low, with a thick wooden beam running across. He ran across to the tiny window, ducking under the beam, to fiddle with the latch to open it. Behind him he heard the tap and scrape of feet and claws, muted snarling and laboured breathing, then the crash of a fist on a door, the splintering crack of old dry wood giving way.

And then his blood chilled. He heard Sal scream, muffled by a door further down the landing. He realized as he fumbled with the latch of the small window that their pursuers had chosen to follow Sal and Lincoln and not him.

Crashing and splintering again. The things were ferociously hammering on it, tearing Sal’s door to pieces. Liam hesitated. He’d planned to open the tiny window and squeeze himself through, perhaps to hide outside on the shingle roof. But …

Sal screamed again.

But those things were going to get her.

Liam cursed under his breath. ‘Ahh … Jay-zus …!’

His hands fumbled for something, anything, to use as a weapon, frantically patting the floor around him while he listened to the struggle down the hallway: Lincoln bellowing curses, Sal screaming, horrible mewing sounds from those creatures, things being knocked over, blows being landed, the scrape and thud of feet on boards.

‘Come on! … Come on!’ he hissed. He heard Sal desperately pleading, Lincoln’s baritone voice too … an enraged roar. The sound of a violent struggle. He had to admit it — Lincoln had mettle. That obnoxious loud-mouthed long-limbed idiot sounded like he was putting up a fight with just his bare fists. Going down, fighting with just his bare fists.

Liam’s fingers touched a pole of some sort. He felt his way down it to a thicket of coarse fibres. A brush of some kind.

Ah, stuff it … good enough.

He picked it up and charged across the small attic room towards the doorway. Failing to remember the low beam.

Failing to duck.