by Alex Scarrow
Idiots.
The first thing he’d do once he found them was get them to heave the tree back into the water and let it be carried away. He turned round and squinted up the riverbank. Through a hundred yards of jungle he could just about make out crimson slivers of waning sunlight, the trees thinning, the clearing beyond… and their camp.
He’d lost his spear in the river. No matter, he was on the safe side now. He made his way up the shingle and into the narrow apron of jungle. Up ahead through the dangling loops of vine he could see the sun casting long shadows across the leafy hummocks of their shelters and the wooden wall of their small palisade as it began to make a bed on the horizon. But, as yet, he couldn’t make out Lam and the other three kids they’d left behind.
Where are they?
‘Hello-o-o-o!!’ he called out again, his voice ricocheting through the jungle.
A few moments later he was stepping out from beneath the dark canopy of foliage and into the clearing. On the very far side, he could see Becks and the others emerging.
He waved at them. ‘Hey!’
He saw their heads turn his way and their mouths form sudden dark ovals of surprise and relief.
‘I made it! I’m all right!’ he called across to them. ‘I’m fine! Have you seen the others?’
Becks led them across the clearing towards Liam until finally they converged around the smouldering remains of a campfire.
‘The others have not been located,’ said Becks.
Liam noticed their small turbine wasn’t spinning. The cross-bar was split and the school bag was on the ground, its load of round pebbles spilled. ‘The windmill’s broken. What’s happened?’
There were no answers.
‘We should get that running again first,’ he continued. He looked around at the others. ‘Maybe they’re out looking for us?’
Becks strode swiftly towards the contraption to see whether a quick repair could be made. Liam was about to pass on some instructions to the others to split up and search for the others when he noted Jasmine’s gaze, wide-eyed and lost on some detail everyone else seemed to have missed.
‘Jasmine? You all right?’
She pointed at the ground. ‘That,’ she whispered. ‘What’s that?’
Liam followed her gaze down to the ground. Nestled amid a cluster of pebbles, cones and the dry brown decaying leaves of long-dead ferns, he saw a pale slender object that looked to him like an impossibly large maggot. He took a step towards it and noted the ground was stained dark around it, and at one end of it, pointed yellow-white shards poked out like the antennae of a shrimp.
He felt his stomach lurch and flip in a slow, queasy somersault.
It was someone’s index finger. The antennae, shards of bone.
‘What is it?’ asked Whitmore, stooping to get a better look. ‘My God! Is that a finger?’
The conclusion hit Liam like a punch. ‘They’re here.’ He looked up at them. ‘Those pack hunters are here, on the island.’
Whitmore’s mouth flapped open and shut and produced nothing helpful.
‘How?’ asked Howard. ‘It’s impossible. No way those things can swim across!’
‘They don’t need to.’ He looked at the others. ‘They went and copied us… learned from us.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I think they made their own bridge.’
CHAPTER 64
2001, New York
Everything in the archway died, leaving them in pitch black.
‘What’s going on?’ cried Cartwright.
‘Please!’ cried Maddy in the dark. ‘Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot! It’s nothing I did!’
‘Stay right where you are!’ snapped Cartwright. ‘I hear you move or do anything and I’ll fire!’
‘O-OK… we’re not moving, are we, Sal?’
‘Nope. Sitting still. Doing nothing.’
‘Just hang on, Cartwright,’ said Maddy, ‘just a second… the generator should kick in any time now.’
On cue, from the back room, came the rumbling of the generator firing up. A moment later the strip light in the middle of the archway flickered once, twice with a dink, dink, then stayed on.
They all stared silently at each other as the monitors flickered in unison, the computer system rebooting itself.
‘What just happened?’ demanded Cartwright.
‘I dunno yet…’ said Maddy.
‘That was a time wave,’ said Sal.
‘A what?’
‘Time wave,’ she repeated. ‘Something big changed in the past and it’s just now caught up with us.’
Maddy nodded unhappily. ‘Yeah… she’s right. That’s exactly what that was.’
Cartwright looked at both the girls, then at Forby, who returned nothing more useful than a calm professional stare. ‘Well?’ said the old man. ‘What does that mean?’
‘It means outside this archway, outside the perimeter of our field-office time shield, things have changed,’ explained Maddy. ‘Changed a lot… if we lost power.’
‘So, what’s out there now?’ he asked.
Maddy splayed her hands. ‘I don’t know! Another version of New York, I guess.’
Cartwright’s eyes widened to rheumy bloodshot pools. ‘Forby, go take a look.’
‘Yes, sir.’ He stepped across the archway and hit the green button. Nothing happened. ‘Won’t open.’
‘The doorway’s not on the generator circuit,’ said Maddy. ‘Just crank it up with the handle. There,’ she said, pointing. Forby saw the small metal handle, nodded and started turning it round.
The computer had finished rebooting and Bob’s dialogue box popped up.
› We are running on auxiliary power. Resume density probing?
Maddy turned in her chair, back towards the monitors. ‘How much more probing have you got to do?’
› Information: 177,931 candidate density soundings made.
She made a face — less than half the total number that Bob had calculated they needed to make.
‘Are there any good suspects?’
› There are 706 soundings so far in which a density fluctuation occurred.
‘Can you narrow that down any?’
› Affirmative: I can analyse the interruption signatures returned and identify those that demonstrate a repeat or an artificial rhythm.
‘Uh… lemme think.’ She bit a ragged edge around her fingernail. ‘But you’re only, like, halfway through doing the probes?’
› Less than halfway.
‘And if you stop now we might miss them,’ she thought out loud.
› Affirmative.
‘But now we’re on generator power, have you got enough power to do all those probes, and open a window too if we find them?’
› I do not have enough data to answer that question, Maddy.
‘Can you guess?’
› I do not have enough data to answer that question, Maddy.
She cursed. ‘All right… so you’re saying it’s possible we’ll run out of juice if you carry on doing the probes, right?’
› Affirmative.
The rattling of the cranking shutter door coming from across the archway suddenly ceased.
‘OK, Bob,’ she sighed, burying her face in her hands with weary frustration. ‘OK… OK. All right, then. Stop with what you’re doing and analyse what we’ve got already. See if we’ve got a hit.’
› Affirmative.
‘What the — !’ That was Forby.
‘JESUS!’ That was Cartwright.
Maddy spun round in her chair and saw the pair of them standing in the middle of the opened shutter doorway, staring out at a canvas of emerald-green jungle.
She sighed. Oh no, not again.
Last time a time wave had arrived like this one, large enough to sever the feed of power into their field office, it had left New York a post-apocalyptic wilderness of tumbledown ruins under a poisoned rust-red sky. She and Sal hurried over towards the open entrance.
�
��Jahulla!’ gasped Sal as they joined the other two.
And Maddy nodded. Jahulla indeed.
This time New York was gone, not just shattered ruins, but gone as in never existed. She looked down at her feet. Their cold and pitted concrete floor simply ended in a straight line where their invisible force field’s effect terminated. The ground beyond was a rich brown soil, carpeted in a mat of tall grass and lush clusters of low-growing ferns and other unidentifiable foliage.
She looked up and saw no Williamsburg Bridge, no horizon of Manhattan skyscrapers, just a broad, sedate river delta of lush rainforest.
‘Uh… how… how did we end up in the middle of a jungle, sir?’ asked Forby.
A slow, understanding smile spread across Cartwright’s face. Finally he nodded. ‘Incredible,’ he whispered, his eyes wide like a child’s, full of wonder. A solitary tear rolled down one of his craggy cheeks. ‘ This is quite… incredible.’
‘Sir?’ Forby turned to him. His calm, professional demeanour had vanished and been replaced with barely contained panic. ‘Sir, where the hell are we?’
‘We haven’t moved anywhere,’ the old man replied. He turned to look at Maddy. ‘Or any when? Have we? We’re exactly when and where we were.’
‘That’s right,’ she replied. ‘But an alternate history has just caught up with us.’
Cartwright’s ragged features seemed to look ten years younger. The face of a child catching a glimpse of the tooth fairy, or a glint of Santa’s sleigh disappearing into a distant moonlit cloud bank.
‘Sir? The other men? Where are they?’
‘Gone, Forby,’ he replied in a distracted whisper. ‘Gone.’
‘They’re dead?’
‘Nope. They were just never born,’ said Sal.
‘I want to see more,’ uttered Cartwright, stepping off the concrete on to the soft ground beyond. He grinned. ‘My God! This is real? Isn’t it?’
Maddy shrugged. ‘It’s another reality. How New York might have ended up if… if…’
‘If what?’ asked Forby.
‘That’s just it,’ she replied. ‘We don’t know yet. My guess is it’s some change caused by our colleague in the past. I’m sure it wasn’t intentional.’
Forby shook his head. ‘You’re telling me one person can actually change a whole… world?’
Cartwright sighed, clearly frustrated by the narrow-minded thinking of his subordinate. ‘Of course, Forby. Think about it, man. If… if a certain Jewish carpenter hadn’t made his mark two thousand years ago, it wouldn’t be In God We Trust on a dollar note, but Gods.’
Forby frowned. A patriot. No one dissed the mighty dollar. Not on his watch.
‘And our friend’s much much further back in time than Jesus,’ added Sal.
‘Small changes in the past,’ quoted Maddy, remembering the first time Foster had spoken to them, bringing them that tray of coffees and doughnuts, a simple and strangely reassuring gesture in that surreal moment of awakening. ‘Small changes in the past can make enormous changes in the present.’
Cartwright glanced towards the nearby riverbank. ‘We should go and explore a little — ’ He stopped dead in his tracks.
‘Look!’
Maddy followed his wavering finger, pointing across the broad river to the low hump of island that was once Manhattan. She squinted painfully, her eyes not so great without glasses. She managed to detect the slightest sense of movement. ‘What is it?’
‘People?’ uttered Sal. ‘Yes… it’s people!’
‘A settlement of some kind,’ added Cartwright.
She thought she could make out a cluster of circular dwellings down by the waterside and several pale thin plumes of smoke rising up into the sky.
‘Look,’ said Forby, ‘there’s a boat.’
Halfway across the river, calm and subdued, barely a ripple upon its glass-smooth surface, was the long dark outline of some canoe. Aboard they could see half a dozen figures paddling the vessel across the river towards them.
‘They look odd,’ said Sal, shading her eyes from the sun. ‘They’re
… they’re moving all funny.’
Cartwright seemed eager to rush down to the riverside and greet them. ‘We should go and make contact.’
‘No,’ said Maddy. ‘Really, I don’t think we should.’
‘Why not?’ he asked. ‘The things we could learn from each other! The knowledge of another — ’
‘Maybe the girl’s right,’ said Forby. ‘They could be hostile, sir.’
He shook his head, his face an expression of bemusement. ‘This is an incredible moment of history!’
‘But that’s just it… this isn’t history. This isn’t meant to happen,’ said Maddy. ‘Those people shouldn’t exist. This is a what if reality… this is a never shoulda happened reality, Cartwright. Do you get it? The last thing we need to do is go and make friends with it.’
‘I’m not so sure they’re people, anyway,’ said Sal, quietly watching the canoe approach the nearby riverbank. A hundred and fifty yards away, the long canoe rode up gracefully on to the silt. The figures aboard the boat put down their paddles in the bottom and began, one by one, to jump off the front and on to the mud.
Even Maddy could now make out that they weren’t human.
‘My God, look at their legs,’ whispered Forby. ‘Like… just like goat’s legs, dog’s legs.’
‘Dinosaur legs,’ added Cartwright. ‘In fact, therapod legs. A bit like velociraptors.’
‘Forget their legs,’ said Sal, ‘check out their heads!’
Maddy squinted, wondering whether her eyes were playing tricks on her. ‘They look like bananas?’
‘Elongated,’ said Forby, shaking his own head. ‘Weirdest damned thing I ever seen. They look sort of extra-terrestrial.’ He turned to the others, his voice lowered. ‘My God! Do you think that’s what they are? A species of alien that’s arrived and colonized our world?’
Cartwright dismissed the man. ‘The legs suggest some possible ancestral link to dinosaurs. The heads? Damned if I know where that shape has come from.’
They watched the creatures spread out along the silt, holding spears in their hands and probing the mud with them.
‘What are they doing, do you think?’ asked Maddy.
As if in answer to her question, some unrecognizable pig-sized creature emerged from a hole in the mud and scurried across the silt towards another hole. The nearest of the banana-heads quickly raised his spear and threw it with practised efficiency. It skewered the small creature, and left it struggling and squealing on its side.
‘Hunting!’ said Forby a little too loudly.
One of the creatures suddenly turned to glance their way. The four of them instinctively hunkered down behind the gently waving fronds of a large fern.
‘Think he saw us?’ hissed Forby through gritted teeth.
Maddy looked up at the ragged outline of red brickwork around the corrugated shutter door, the portion of the bridge support that existed within the archway’s field. Luckily most of it was shielded by a giant species of tree she didn’t recognize; drooping waxy leaves the size of umbrellas hung low over them. A perfect camouflage.
‘I think we’re hidden,’ she whispered.
They watched through gaps in the swaying leaves as the creature, still curious, slowly paced up the silty bank towards them, cocking its long head curiously on to one side. Closer now, they could see a lean hairless body covered with an olive skin, an expressionless face of bone and cartilage and a lipless mouth full of razor-sharp teeth.
‘It’s really ugly,’ offered Sal in a whisper. ‘I really don’t want to go make friends with it.’
Maddy noticed Forby raising his gun warily, a finger slipping across the trigger. She nudged him gently and shook her head.
Don’t.
He nodded.
‘It’s beautiful,’ whispered Cartwright. ‘What a magnificent creature! Look at it!’
For a moment it lingered there, scannin
g the rainforest in front of it, not seeming to spot them or the squat brick shape of their archway. Then, finally, it seemed to shrug, turn away and head back towards the others, calling something out with a mewling whine and a clack of its sharp teeth.
‘I’ve seen enough. We should go back inside,’ said Maddy. ‘There’s work to be done.’
‘Don’t you want to learn more?’ asked Cartwright.
She shrugged. ‘Why? If we’ve managed to get lucky and locate Liam
… then none of this will ever have happened.’ She looked at Forby, who seemed relieved at the idea of heading back. ‘Be pointless learning anything about these things really… if you think about it. They soon will belong to the world of Never Were.’
Cartwright made a face, a mixture of disappointment and frustration. ‘All right,’ he conceded. ‘Let’s get on with it.’
CHAPTER 65
65 million years BC, jungle
‘Did you hear that?’ said Laura, her eyes round with fear.
They’d heard it all right. Although the jungle was soon due to stir with its concert of nocturnal cries and calls, the sun had only just slipped from the sky, leaving behind thin combed cirrus clouds stained a coral pink from its waning light. The jungle was on the turn, the stillness between those that lived in the day and those that prowled the night.
But there it was again. A desperate female cry for help. It was one of the four they’d left behind, either Keisha Jackson or Sophia Yip.
‘… Please… help me…’
‘It’s Keisha!’ said Jasmine. She turned to the others. ‘It is! It’s Keisha!’
‘Which direction did it come from?’ asked Liam. It wasn’t far off, somewhere within the apron of jungle around their clearing. Could be coming from any direction, the mischievous way voices seemed to bounce around.
‘… Help… it hurts…’
‘We have to go help her!’ said Edward.
‘Negative,’ said Becks. ‘The hominids could still be on the island.’
Laura’s eyes darted back to the finger on the ground. The light was getting dim enough for it to be almost, mercifully, easy to overlook. ‘ Could be? ’ she exclaimed. ‘They’re h-here, all right.’