The Terminus

by Oliver EADE

  “That robbery, Gary? Did you really…?” his mum began slowly, staring at the motionless pigeons.

  “If those bastards didn’t have Mike and the other time-specs, Mum, I could spend the rest of the day explaining.”

  She handed him the rucksack and smiled at Beetie.

  “He’s telling the truth, Mum,” the girl said. “He always tells the truth.”

  The woman’s face fell. Her lips began to tremble and her eyes moistened.

  “Mum?” she questioned.

  “I… I don’t know what else to call you. Gary calls you ‘Mum’, so I thought…”

  Gary’s mum reached out and stroked Beetie’s cheeks.

  “Mum’s fine! It’s just… well, I never imagined I’d hear a girl call me that again.” A warm smile lit up Beetie’s face. “Oh, how can anyone be so lovely? And you’re right. I don’t think my son’s ever told a lie. Gary, this came for you.” She pulled out an envelope, handing it to Gary. “Someone posted it through the door before we left.”

  Gary took the envelope and tore it open.

  “So you’re in hiding, you and Dad?”

  “Yes... a B & B in Golders Green.”

  “And you’re sure you weren’t being followed? From a distance?”

  He read the letter.

  “As sure as I can be. Why? What’s it say?”

  Gary glanced at Beetie.

  “From Redfor. He says God wants to see you, Mum. Knows they’ve got the time-specs… and knows about Mike. Heavens, I dunno what to think about Redfor! Why would he have saved me from Blinker and Teeth if he was with them? God says he must speak with you soon… before they get to you...” He paused. “And apparently The Agenda know we’re somewhere here on Hampstead Heath.”

  “I’ll give myself up,” Beetie said. “We can’t escape. Don’t know why I tried. I’ll go back to the Chairman. Exchange myself for Mike and let him…”

  “NO YOU BLOODY WON’T!” shouted Gary. The knuckles on his clenched fists turned white. “NEVER!”

  “Gary, if they’ve got Mike I must. The Chairman gets me and you get Mike back. It’s all so easy! You’ve no idea what they’ll do to him and it’ll be my fault. I can’t go on living here knowing what could happen to your friend in the grey block. You must understand!”

  Beetie’s eyes were wet with tears. Gary’s mum’s, too. Redfor’s letter trembled in the boy’s hand. He’d never before felt so utterly helpless.

  “Come back with me, Gary,” his mum said. “If you won’t come, I’m taking Beetie. You’re right. We can’t let the person you talk about get hold of her. I’ve no idea what’s happening, or who this Chairman is, but we’re not exchanging her. Besides, Mike could talk himself out of anything.” Mrs O’Driscoll hugged the sobbing girl. “There, there!” she soothed. “Once Gary’s mind is made up nothing will get in his way. He’s brought you back and decided to look after you here, so he’s never going to let them harm you. Oh Gary, honestly, you two mustn’t run risks by sleeping rough on the Heath tonight. It’s a crazy idea.”

  “Yeah! You’re probably right! No longer safe here. You are certain no one trailed you to your B& B?”

  His mum nodded, whilst Beetie looked frightened and confused.

  “Okay! We’ll take the bus to Golders Green.”

  “Not dressed in those rags, you won’t! A taxi!”

  “A what?” asked Beetie anxiously.

  “Instead of a bus,” explained Gary. “For people with money. Like cars, only they stop for you. Take you anywhere you...”

  “The Hatcheries? The grey building? Please don’t!” the girl begged.

  “Never! Anyway, nothing’s happening in the grey building here in the present.”

  But can I be sure, thought the boy?

  Gary’s mum had her mobile phone out, dialled a number and put it to her ear.

  “The Mini-cab service Dad uses,” she explained. “Never lets us down.”

  Within minutes a bright yellow mini-cab pulled up beside them. The door opened. Mrs O’Driscoll leaned inside and spoke to the driver, half-hidden from view.

  “Not the usual man,” she said, turning to Gary and Beetie. “Never mind! Get in.” She climbed in beside the taxi-driver whilst Gary followed Beetie into the back seat.

  “He’s waiting for you,” the man said.

  Who the heck... and that hairstyle? Gary wondered.

  “My husband? Oh no! He’s gone for a walk,” corrected Mrs O’Driscoll. “This whole business has really put him on edge.”

  “It’ll be all go afterwards. God’s got nothing else to bargain with.”

  Mrs O’Driscoll chuckled.

  “Don’t think God…”

  That pudding-basin hairstyle… and in the windscreen mirror a flash of glossy red where the driver’s black leather jacket gaped open? Gary fumbled for his mag-stunner but wasn’t quick enough. The mini-cab shot forwards and spun round, throwing him on top of Beetie, before heading in the wrong direction towards

  Baker Street.

  “MUM!” yelled Gary as he struggled with the depthless pocket of Seamus O’Malley’s once-posh-now-tattered suit. “HE’S ONE OF THEM!”

  Only the lower part of the driver’s face was visible in the mirror, reduced, like the Cheshire Cat, to just a grin.

  “Yeah! It’s all go now!” he repeated.

  Gary found the mag-stunner, pointed the thing at the back of the man’s head and pressed the button.

  “ZING!”

  The man laughed.

  “I mag-stunned myself ten minutes ago. It’ll be another twenty before one of those can have any effect again… by which time she’ll be two hundred years away. I’m afraid things’ll need a little sorting out by God – the old God – because of what your reckless friend’s gone and done…”

  “GRAB THE STEERING WHEEL FROM HIM, MUM!”

  “Gary, I can’t…”

  “DO IT!”

  Mrs O’ Driscoll reached over, but the driver smacked her across the face with the back of his hand.

  “Ouch!” she cried. “You beast!”

  “Gary O’Driscoll, his mum and little Mike, eh?” taunted the cab-driver. “Tell you what. Belinda can watch the Chairman… the real God… prepare you all for the gee-rats’ final feast in the grey building! Their Last Supper! Ha ha ha! You’d understand that wouldn’t you, Catholic boy! But just think… what we get from your collective brains will make it all come true for Belinda.”

  The mini-cab screamed round corners, broke through red lights, swerving to avoid crosswise traffic, careered over to the wrong side of the road to miss a queue of cars and shot off at break-neck speed, dodging oncoming vehicles. Gary’s mum bravely attempted to wrest the steering wheel from the driver but his grip was too strong. Gary tried, in vain, to control the man’s arms from behind, and the car was already racing towards St John’s Wood.

  He spotted a parked police vehicle ahead.

  Thank God! They’ll stop the bastard!

  But as they flashed past the two officers inside remained motionless.

  Mag-stunned? Dead? Oh shit!

  Without warning, Beetie pushed Gary aside, reached forward and dug her knuckles into the back of the driver’s neck at the base of his skull. The man’s head sank forwards, limp, the mini-cab half-turned, skidded sideways and clipped another vehicle, causing it to spin out of control. Mrs O’Driscoll grabbed the freed steering wheel and turned the car in the direction of Golders Green.

  “Sorry!” apologised Beetie. “I thought…”

  “Wow, cool! What did you do?”

  “It suddenly came back to me. Saw Arthry do the same thing once when a guy from The Agenda broke into the Retreat.”

  “Your hair-band, Beetie!”

  The girl removed her blue hair-band and handed it to Gary whilst his mother steered the car from the passenger seat, one hand on the wheel, the other on the accelerator pedal, muttering about the difficulties sons caused compared with daughters. Gary slipped the hair-band
round the neck of the unconscious driver and tugged at the ends.

  “What are you doing?” shrieked Beetie. “You’ll kill him!”

  Gary ignored her, his face distorted like a horror movie poster. The girl clutched at his arm.

  “It’s what the bastard deserves!”

  “Gary! Don’t be like them!”

  The man jerked convulsively, grunting and clawing at hair-band.

  “Gary, stop it!”

  “No one’s gonna hand you back to some prehistoric prick!”

  He pulled more tightly as the barely conscious driver’s hands clawed at his neck.

  “Please don’t! The Gary inside my head wouldn’t do this!”

  Beetie started to hit Gary. The mini-cab swung round a corner at Swiss Cottage, halting sharply when Mrs O’Driscoll punched the brake. Gary was thrown forwards; Beetie’s hair-band fell from the boy’s hands onto the driver’s lap. Gary’s mum reached across and snatched it up to bind the grunting man’s wrists.

  “OUT!” she ordered.

  Gary and Beetie clambered out of the mini-cab. The driver was coming to. He began to bite at the binding round his wrists. Gary opened man’s door, hit him in the face, removed a shoe from his kicking leg and wedged this under the brake pedal. He slipped the gear into neutral.

  “PUSH!” he yelled, slamming the door shut.

  Beetie stood back, in tears, whilst Gary and his mother pushed the mini-cab forwards. It began to roll down the slope, gathering speed.

  Gary had to drag along a reluctant Beetie behind him as they hurried back up the hill to

  Finchley Road. There, they stopped and Beetie pulled her hand free. Mrs O’Driscoll, panting, put her arm across the girl’s shoulders.

  “He just gets overwrought. Oh, if only I’d had two daughters like you instead!” she said. “Ah, thank heaven… there’s another taxi! I’ll…”

  “No more bloody taxis!” interrupted Gary.

  He was furious… not with Beetie but because of her. Never with her! It was his damned fault if his temper had gone and ruined things for good. “We’ll take the bus,” he added quietly.

  They walked on to the number 82 bus-stop in silence. Gary tried to take Beetie’s hand again but she resisted. She wouldn’t look at him, wouldn’t say a word.

  “Beetie, I was only trying to stop him from taking you back to the Hatcheries. Don’t you understand?” The girl stared sullenly ahead, her moist eyes avoiding Gary’s gaze. “Like when I threw a machete at that Hatcheries guy who was about to mag-stun you. Remember?”

  A solitary tear trailed down her cheek. Gary’s anger swelled… against The Agenda for trying to steal her back and himself for not understanding why she was acting like this. He felt angry for being unable to fathom her. At the bus stop Mrs O’Driscoll comforted Beetie, now crying against her chest, whilst Gary stood a few feet away feeling stupid and hurt. On the bus to Golders Green, he sat behind his mother and the girl who meant so much to him and who had shut him out. He listened to his mum tell her about his little sister and the joy of having a daughter before the fatal accident a year back, and about himself and her pride in his achievements at school.

  “‘He’s quite remarkable,’ the maths teacher said, and the physics teacher told me they’d never had a student as bright as Gary. Said he’d be surprised if my son didn’t get the Nobel Prize one day.”

  Beetie remained silent, as if nothing good about him could undo the harm caused by his moment of rage in the mini-cab. He knew he had a temper. Everyone did. Mike most of all, and yet Mike would simply wait till things blew over. Besides, Gary still thought he’d done right in trying to strangle the driver who’d been sent to return Beetie to the Hatcheries.

  “He cares about you, Beetie. He really does!”

  Gary felt his own eyes dampen as he heard his mother speak up for him.

  ‘Care about Beetie’? What a bloody understatement!

  His heart ached for her all the time. She was all he could think about… and protecting her from The Agenda, keeping her away from the clutches of Mr Homo atlanticus.

  Chairman? I’ll give him bloody ‘chairman’!

  The boy couldn’t understand why his feelings for Beetie were so strong, or make sense of the changes that had happened over a mere few hours of twenty-first century time. In the morning, when he met Mike at Regent’s Park for football practice, he was a typical schoolboy, wondering whether he’d ever get a chance to see a little more of Emma Pearson than would be allowed at school. Now he’d twice kissed a girl a thousand times prettier, had risked his life for her, as she had for him, had already killed a man to save her, yet it was all falling apart. She was rejecting him, and this seemed like the worst thing that could ever happen; worse than having a giant gee-rat chew him alive limb by limb. Sure, other things were going on – Mike, the Hatcheries and the Terminus – but all of this now seemed so distant, almost of trivial importance, compared with what was happening between him and Beetie. Besides, as his Mum had said, Mike could get himself out of any scrape. The boy was a verbal Houdini.

  Mrs O’Driscoll and Beetie got off at Golders Green and Gary followed sheepishly, racking his brains for something to say to the girl… anything that might make her speak to him again and perhaps ‘like’ him a little. He’d be more than willing to forget the ‘love’ business for now!

  Maybe the stinking suit of Seamus O’Malley was beginning to put her off. ‘To be sure now, dat must be it!’ he tried to reassure himself. After an industrial wash and scrub at the B & B, he’d get down on his knees in front of her and beg forgiveness.

  But why the heck should I? For trying to save to her, sod it? I’m no killer! Rescuer, yeah, but no murderer.

  They turned into a street off the

  Golders Green Road and his mum led Beetie up the front drive of a three storey house with a peeling sign: ‘Golders Guest House… No Vacancies’. A chubby, grey-haired woman opened the door.

  “You’re back, Mrs O’Driscoll! Oh, what a pretty wee thing! But… oh, who’s that?”

  Engulfed by the lingering smell of Seamus O’Malley, she took a step backwards. Gary sensed an almost tangible revulsion as she stared at him in disgust.

  “My son,” Mrs O’Driscoll said proudly.

  “And your daughter?”

  The woman’s eyes darted between Gary and Beetie as if following a ball at Wimbledon.

  “She’s… erm...”

  “Yes!” interrupted Beetie. “I like being Mum’s daughter!”

  Beetie, who had stopped crying, entered. Mrs O’Driscoll turned to Gary, her eyebrows raised.

  “I think she’s still in state of shock,” she whispered as they followed the girl into the house.

  “They’re all in the sitting room,” announced the proprietress. “‘I can hardly wait to see her,’ the man said.”

  Gary gripped his mum’s arm.

  “It’s them! Stop her, Mum!” he cried out. “She’ll not listen to me any more!”

  “WAIT!” Mrs O’Driscoll called out, but too late. Beetie opened the door and walked resolutely into the room, determined to get everything over with, including quite possibly her own death.

  “BEETIE!” a deep voice called out.

  An old man’s voice, shaky, its owner tired by centuries of time-travel, but one that seemed to distil peace, purpose... and love.

  “God?” Beetie questioned.

  “NO, BEETIE! DON’T!” yelled Gary.

  He ran to the door but it got slammed in his face.

  Chapter 12: God’s Plan…

  “Those needle marks really are pretty fresh, Shruggie!” Mike stood staring at Cathy’s slender arm. “And her eyes… they’ve gone more sort of glazed over. Not like that before.”

  “Dunno what you’re talking about!”

  Mike struggled within himself. So used to having a straight-down-the-middle friend who only ever told the truth, he was lost for words.

  Blinker’s hand moved towards his pocket. No time for
words. Blinker had been playing a game. He was with the bastards all along. Well, Mike, too, could play games – soccer especially – and in a game he could not afford to lose he ran at Blinker and kicked the surprised boy full in the face, snapping his head back. Whisking out his mag-stunner, he froze Blinker with a single ZING then dragged the semi-stuporous girl from the bed. Swaying, she grinned inanely. He removed Blinker’s mag-stunner and left the blue building with Cathy, pulling her towards the only way in and out of the Hatcheries without time-specs: the shuttle-bus stop.

  “For God’s sake, Cathy, help me,” he pleaded.

  Her eyes told him she was trying. Despite that idiotic grin, she seemed to be struggling with her brain, trying to make sense of what was happening, fighting to discard the chemical blanket Blinker had used to smother her mind.

  She staggered along beside Mike. Soon, they reached the spot where the pod would always stop on its shuttle-cock journeys between the city and the Terminus.

  “We’ll do this together, Cathy. And I’m as clever as Gary, any day. Honest I am! The shuttle-bus goes to the Terminus, right? So... how do we stop the thing?”

  The girl stared at him, her smile faded, as she attempted to think with her brain. In her eyes he saw a battle – an inner battle for memory – and he patted her hand affectionately.

  “Keep trying, Miss United Kingdom! I’ll have to do the Poirot stuff for the two of us. So… um… we stand here and wait, eh?”

  He looked at the shuttle-bus run in both directions: one way, a deserted perpendicular city, the other, a tunnel disappearing into the wall surrounding the Terminus. Soon, a silver fleck appeared on the horizon from the direction of the city and rapidly grew until the large, silent, lozenge-pod stopped abruptly beside him and Cathy. A circular diaphragm door flicked open. Mike peered in; rows of empty seats with aeroplane straps. No driver. He boarded, pulling Cathy behind him, helping her into a seat and fastening her seat-belt before buckling his own. The door snapped shut and the metallic pod shot forwards like a bolt from a crossbow. Almost immediately, it stopped and the door sprang open.