He made it past the tree line and breathed a sigh of relief. He was alive… for the next five minutes, at least.
‘Hello?’ he whispered as loudly as possible. ‘Captain Reynolds? Sergeant Brown? Is anyone there?’
It was eerie for there to be nobody standing guard, watching the supplies, but not all that unusual. It was a war, after all. Most likely they’d been called to help out elsewhere down the line, for it was a stretch to think any Fritz would take it upon himself to sneak this far west. Still, Preston took his shivering rifle from around his shoulder and kept it at the ready. A couple of Taubes flew by overhead, screaming their chattering roar.
‘Are there any officers here at all?’ he shouted a little louder. He peered into the closest tent but aside from a rat, which scuttled away at the sight of him, it was completely deserted. ‘Anyone?’
He was starting to freak out. It felt wrong to be out by himself, to be alone. He hadn’t been alone for, what? Three weeks now? He was always surrounded by his brothers in arms, day or night, whether standing guard or sleeping. There was a stillness in the air that made his spine curl.
Let’s just grab the stuff and get back, he’d thought to himself, before somebody spots me and takes me for a German thief.
Preston walked over to the supply truck stationed in the middle of the camp. Wooden crates were piled high along its flank and the flap of cloth to the rear of its cargo area had been pulled up and pinned to one side. He approached the driver’s side and rapped his knuckles against the door’s window, in case somebody was taking a cheeky nap. They weren’t. He opened the door just in case, but the keys were missing and it stank of cigarettes. An empty carton of smokes lay discarded on the mud-splattered floor.
They must have been unloading when the call came, Preston thought. Only way to explain why all the crates haven’t been properly registered and put away. Oh well. Their problem when it comes to counting them later.
Preston hopped back down and tried the back. Just as empty, save for all the crates yet to be unloaded. Some of them had been jimmied open, however, which made it all the easier to identify which ones he needed. A box of .303 rounds was right to the left of him, its lid splintered and slumped lazily to the side, though for the life of him he couldn’t see any bullets fit for a handgun. Tough luck for Sammy.
He slung his rifle back over his shoulder and, after hopping out of the truck, picked up the heavy box of ammunition. God, it weighed a tonne. It snagged on his strap, which in turn dug into his neck. A wave of mud and faeces wafted through the air and made the hairs in his nostrils twinge.
Goddammit. This war best be over soon.
He walked back the way he came, and that was when he saw me go tumbling out of the truck’s passenger-side door.
‘Jesus Christ, Pierre,’ I’d said a few seconds earlier, my knee pressing against my teeth, ‘could you not have opened the door to the outside of the bloody truck?’
Pierre tried to rearrange himself. His arm was tucked around the back of his head.
‘There’s only so much I can control, I’ve told you already. Mind the handbrake.’
‘I don’t even know where the bloody handbrake is, you cretin. Something worrying is digging into the small of my back, though. Where on God’s green earth even are we?’
From my position below the steering wheel I could make out a grey and cloudy sky, and the tops of tall and depressing trees. A plane flew overhead, making an awful racket.
‘Just get your foot out of my armpit, will you?’ Pierre replied, trying to twist himself into a sitting position. ‘And if being on the outside of the truck is so important to you, the door handle is just behind your ear.’
I scrambled, blind.
‘No, your other ear.’
I grabbed hold of the handle and suddenly I was falling backwards, somersaulting through an air that smelled remarkably of sewage. Something in one shoulder decided it was a good time to snap, whilst the other slammed into the metal step leading up to the now-open door. The back of my head landed, gratefully enough, in a pile of freshly churned mud, sinking into the brown.
I was just getting to my feet when I noticed the young man standing open-mouthed only a few metres away. Barely a man, in fact, for I wouldn’t have put his age any higher than eighteen. He was wearing a strange, old-fashioned green tunic shirt, with a whole host of belts and buckles and bags strapped around his chest. He wore brown leather boots, and straps of wool were wrapped around his lower legs. In his hands was a large wooden crate, and on top of his head was a round metal helmet.
Over his shoulder was the strap of a rifle.
‘Hi,’ I said, raising my hands. ‘I’m George.’
The young man dropped the crate with a clattering bang and grabbed hold of his rifle, pointing it straight at my chest. As an Englishman born and raised in Buckinghamshire I’d never been on either end of a gun before, and I’m quite proud to say that I didn’t wet myself. Much.
‘Where the hell did you come from?’ asked the boy, his eyes wide and hands shaking. I didn’t like the way the muzzle of his gun swayed. ‘You Fritz?’
‘No… I’m George, like I said.’
‘I mean, are you German?’ he shouted.
‘Oh right, no. No! I’m from Aylesbury, born and raised.’
The boy lowered the rifle, bit by bit. He nodded, though his eyes didn’t grow any less wide.
‘I’m Preston. Preston Jones. What’s a man dressed like you doing in a place like this?’
I looked down at myself, and groaned inside at how muddy and ruined my best suit had become. No dry cleaners in the world was going to make this mess right.
‘Honestly, I don’t know. And it would take more time to explain than either of us can afford. My friend is coming round the other side of the truck, by the way. Don’t be alarmed - he’s French, or maybe English. And friend is perhaps the wrong term… he’s the concierge at my hotel.’
Pierre stepped out from behind the truck, his hands also in the air.
‘You’re a weird couple of guys, you know that?’ said Preston, debating whether or not to raise his gun again.
‘You’re telling me,’ I said. ‘Say, you got any grenades lying about?’
‘Hand grenades?’ Preston asked, taken aback. ‘Sure we do. Why do you want one? You joining the fight?’
‘Yeah, I guess you could say that. Just not quite sure which one it is I’m joining.’
I shot Pierre a quick glance, and he rolled his eyes.
‘Well, I’m not sure I should be telling you this, but right there’s a crate full of hand grenades.’ Preston looked guilty somehow, shifting from foot to foot as if desperate for the toilet. ‘I guess it doesn’t matter too much - if you’re on our side, that is. Just don’t tell anyone or the administrator will have me court martialled. How many do you need?’
‘Oh, just one or two will do,’ Pierre said, straining to pry open one of the crates. It didn’t want to give.
There was some rattling of gunfire in the distance, a faint boom and pattering of falling dirt.
‘I really should be getting back,’ said Preston hurriedly, bending down to pick up his crate of ammunition. ‘Bamford will have my guts for garters otherwise.’
‘Just a minute,’ I said. ‘We might need that shovel on your back, what with the success Pierre is having.’
Pierre grunted as he tried to lift the crate’s top and then suddenly he yelled out, holding his finger upright. A trickle of red ran down its length.
‘Goddamn it,’ he said, his French accent coming through stronger than I remembered it ever being before. ‘Why don’t you give it a go if you think it’s so easy. Hell, it’s your briefcase we’re doing all this for.’
I beckoned Preston over. He dutifully dropped the crate once more and got out his shovel with as much obedience as if I were his commanding officer. He stuck its edge under the lid and little by little it started to creak open.
‘Briefcase? Must be one hell of a
n important briefcase if you need grenades for it,’ said Preston, applying more pressure. ‘What’ve you got in there, if you don’t mind me asking? Wait… you’re not Intelligence, are you?’
Pierre chuckled as he sucked his bleeding finger. ‘Yeah, George. What’s in the briefcase, anyway? Diamonds? MI6 reports of an impending terrorist attack?’
I almost told them everything, right there and then. What I had locked in the dark leather walls of my briefcase… and why I’d checked into Le Petit Monde in the first place. But in the end I elected a half-truth - one that was honest in all that was said, but said not all of what could have been.
‘Just some photos,’ I admitted. Just talking about them made my throat close up and my palms sweat. ‘Photos of my wife and son. Chloe and Sam. I haven’t got many, and those I do have were in there. They’re… they’re gone.’
Pierre’s face fell. ‘Ah, Mr. Webber, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said anything. I… didn’t know. Don’t worry, sir, we’ll get it back for you. In fact, just a couple of those grenades will do it.’
With a hefty push the shovel flung the crate’s lid off, splintering. A couple of nails shot off into the mud. Inside was a pile of grenades, their black heads bulging out from long, sandy sticks, surrounded and buried in a bed of straw and hay. Pierre picked two out, holding them like babies that had just soiled themselves.
‘Did you…’ began Preston, putting the shovel back into its harness amongst his belts and straps. ‘Did you lose them in the war?’
‘Sure,’ I said, looking at this scared and yet eager young man, a kid barely out of school. He hadn’t a clue how bad things would get for him over the next few years. Or maybe he did, and he was making the best of it. ‘Sure, why not.’
Preston popped the button of one of the satchels hanging over his chest and fumbled around inside. He brought out a tiny photograph of his own, not much bigger than the goofy picture of me in my passport.
‘This here’s Lizzy,’ he said, tapping the image of a pretty blonde thing. She was about his age, and smiling. It was starting to crumple and go white in the corners. ‘My sweetheart back home. Well, I guess she is - I haven’t heard from her much of late. But it’s getting harder and harder for letters to make it this far, you know? I’d do anything for her, sir. And I know how important it is to hold on to the little things. Otherwise how else do you remember?’
He tucked the photograph back into his satchel.
‘Now I really had better be getting back,’ he said, turning to head towards the tree-line and the trenches. ‘Otherwise they’ll start thinking I’ve run back to Doncaster.’
I offered a quick wave goodbye and turned back to Pierre, who was fishing through his rings of keys beside the truck’s passenger-side door.
‘You guys really aren’t from around here, are you?’ came Preston’s voice from a little further away. He’d turned around again. ‘’Cause I know that truck was empty when I got here, and seconds later you came spilling out from inside it. I guess the world is getting a hell of a lot bigger, aye?’
‘It seems that way at first,’ I replied, ‘but eventually you’ll see that it’s just getting smaller and smaller. Keep yourself safe, alright?’
‘Chance would be a fine thing. Don’t suppose you happen to know how much longer all this stuff goes on for, do you?’
‘What year is it?’ asked Pierre, not looking up.
‘1915. September 8th, if you’re looking for the date.’
Pierre and I looked at each other.
‘A little while yet,’ I said, as Pierre swung open the truck door.
Preston watched us as we climbed up the step on the outside of the truck, as we stepped through the door and out of his world. He watched as the door closed on an utterly empty cabin. And then, alone once more, he carried his crate back to the hell and noise of the front line.
Chapter Ten
At first I thought we’d stepped into hell, that through some galactic miscalculation Pierre had led us into some pit of eternal, roasting damnation. I suppose with infinite worlds there must be a heaven and a hell - not in the biblical sense of an afterlife, of course, but in the sense that somewhere out there is surely an Earth formed from an endlessly insufferable mound of brimstone.
But no roasting fires consumed my physical body - or my metaphysical one, as far as I was aware - and no giant devil reared over us with an enormous trident. What did rear over us, however, was an enormous timbre beam, toppling down with all the tact of a cyclops’ club.
Pierre pushed me to one side and then rolled towards the other, so that the beam crashed down between us and ripped the office door - the very door we’d just stepped back through - into a great many splintered pieces. He stood up quickly, cradling the two grenades to his chest (but with all the discomfort on his face of a man having to breastfeed offal). I, on the other hand, remained on the floor, wondering what the hell had happened whilst we’d been gone.
Viola’s office was worse than a wreck - it was a wasteland. The desk was riddled with bullet holes; the wine shelf was a jigsaw puzzle of dripping juice and glass; the Gone With The Wind poster was but a charred scrap hanging in a broken frame. Viola was nowhere to be seen, but neither was my briefcase.
‘I may have gotten the timing slightly off,’ whimpered Pierre.
‘You think?’ I said, climbing to my feet. The ground was starting to feel warm, which I suspected might have had something to do with the fires spreading throughout the waiting room and across the ceiling. ‘Couldn’t you have brought us back to, say, five minutes after we left?’
‘I thought I did!’ shouted Pierre over the noise of crackling embers and collapsing supports. ‘How easy do you think all this is? I don’t see you organising much inter-dimensional transportation from over on your high horse.’
‘Whatever. Let’s just find Viola, get my briefcase and then go home, preferably before we both get crushed under the weight of the factory, okay?’
We hopped over the shredded remains of the door and into what remained of the waiting room. Our two chairs were still there, though one was on fire and both had been kicked into opposite corners. They had been kept company by a couple of bodies - one I recognised as the thug who had brought my briefcase up from the interrogation room elsewhere in the factory. He had a hole where his eye should have been. The other I hadn’t seen before, but the insignia of a rat he’d had tattooed on his upper arm gave me a pretty clear idea as to who had been responsible for all the carnage.
‘The Diamond Rats,’ I said. Pierre nodded. ‘Do you think Viola is alright? Do you think the Rats have my briefcase?’
‘Okay,’ Pierre said, trying to calm me down. ‘First of all, Viola can survive a lot worse than this. For all we know this is her doing - she’s not exactly what one might describe as restrained and she did sent us off to get her grenades, after all. And two, what on Earth would they want your briefcase for? You have an absurdly skewed opinion on how popular your luggage is, you really do.’
‘Well somebody already stole it without giving any reason why, it isn’t much of a leap to suspect somebody else might do it! Think! Where might Viola have gone?’
Pierre snapped his fingers together. ‘The safe room. It’s where your thief is being held - where she kept me captive when she thought I was a spy. The door is three inches of solid iron; if there’s anywhere she’d hole herself up, it would be there. But we’ve no way of knowing for sure.’
‘Yes we do,’ I said, and ran back into the burning office. Pierre shouted after me but stopped once he realised what I had in mind. I was quite chuffed with myself, I must admit.
I made my way over the puddles of embers towards the cabinet Viola kept in the corner. It wasn’t on fire quite yet, though the handles were too hot to touch and I had to pry open its doors using their wooden corners. The television stared back out, blank and with a giant crack running through the middle of its eye.
Covering my hand with my shirt sleeve, I twisted th
e television’s knobs, praying that it still held some life deep in its tubes. With a crackle and a worryingly savage pop a grainy image crept onto the screen, wobbled in static waves, then settled on a picture one might choose to loosely describe as clear.
Viola was pacing up and down the length of her concrete torture chamber, looking more than a little frustrated. She was waving a pistol and gesticulating wildly. The thief was still in his chair, but by the look of his slumped, bruised head had been knocked out pretty soon after Viola had commandeered the room. He certainly wasn’t listening to her.
‘I know where they are,’ said Pierre, his words stumbling over one another in their rush to get out of his mouth. ‘Now let’s move before the ceiling comes down on us!’
We sprinted back out the office and up the stairs, ducking under some exposed piping that bellowed a cloud of boiling steam across our path. As we reached the top the hanging gas lantern exploded behind us, showering the steps with oil and glass.
If anything the factory floor was worse. Fire ran rampant through the aisles of machinery, which were either melting, glowing an intense red, or ablaze themselves. Great tongues of fire ran along the drive belts and they spun in the wheels above like the whips of a demon, lacerating anything - or anyone - that crossed their paths. Some of the steel girders had collapsed from the roof and walls, and most of the windows had been blown out. It seemed that The Diamond Rats had access to explosives of their own. It looked little better than whatever horror Preston had been destined to return to; bodies burned like rags on a fire; others lay slumped against walls, riddled with holes. Families of rats scuttled and scampered their way out from their nests in droves. A crow seemed content in the chaos, pecking at the eyes of a child lying in the gutter outside.
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