The ground, where visible, was bare, scorched to soil level. The remainder was covered by soot smothered rubble, where once there had been houses, for as far as she could see.
She looked around, trying to gain her bearings, distracted by the sickly sweet smell which lingered in the air alongside the clinging scent of charred matter.
The entrance to the bunker was buried into the side of a hill. She stepped further out and looked up. A path to the top could be clearly seen, especially with the grass gone. She moved around and followed a trodden trail until she reached the peak, where she stopped and looked around.
She had seen the effects of the bomb on her journey from Morpeth, a few days after the attack, but had abandoned her trip about five miles from the city when it became obvious she was heading into a dead zone, but now as she looked out from one of the highest points in the region, she realised she had a clear view of ground zero.
On her left she could see the Cheviot Hills framing the horizon. At a glance all would have appeared normal as the mountains were too far away to be touched by the blast, but as her eyes drew to the near distance, she saw the decimation cause by the nuclear bomb, even as far away as ten miles from the epicentre.
At first, the damage was just superficial and the external walls and roofs of some houses could still be seen from her present location. As she moved her attention closer she saw the destruction was more than just structural when she saw some buildings, although still standing, were gutted on the edge of the fireball. Then she looked right and took in the full effects of the atomic blast.
Rubble covered the ground in all directions leading from the base of the hill. Houses were smashed, lampposts twisted, cars upturned and in amongst it all she could see the occasional piece of furniture, gnarled in the debris. The closer to the city she looked the greater the devastation: bricks became scree, scree became sand, sand became dust, until eventually all that remained was a covering of white ash where once there had been a city of office blocks, highrises, road systems and a busy river network dotted with bridges.
Initially Sarah was confused when she spotted another river flowing at diagonals to the Tyne. It was exposed when the road running over it vaporised in temperatures exceeding fifteen million degrees Celsius. She looked around, landmarks now her only guide, and soon gained her bearings due to the undulation of the surrounding hills.
The path of the river had also been altered when the downward blast had punched into the ground near the northern bank, forcing it across the riverbed and opening the Tyne out to flow across the newly formed fissure.
Sarah dropped her gaze, too shocked to cry, and made her way back down the hill. She had to find a way to reverse this. She entered the tunnel, hurried to the door and, removing the wedge, allowed it to swing shut behind her as she started down the ladder. If Briggs could use the machine to stop her correcting the timeline, then she could use the machine to stop Briggs, but she could not do it alone and knew exactly who she would have to find to help her.
Chapter Two
Nuclear Bunker, Kenton Bank Foot, Newcastle
Sarah reached the bottom of the ladder and hurried down the corridor towards the small room at the far end, only slowing as she drew near to the door. A sudden wash of anxiety gripped her as she approached the barrier. She stopped and listened for any movement from within.
If Briggs had returned and was inside the room, it would all be over. With nowhere to hide, the dangerous, powerful man would quickly overwhelm her, especially in her weakened state, and she was in no doubt she would be killed. She held her breath and listened. When a few moments passed and all remained quiet inside the room, she risked a peek and was relieved to find it was still empty.
Quickly she crossed to the table and opened the report. She scanned the contents page then turned to the relevant section which detailed how to use the machine.
She carried the booklet to the device and studied the controls. It seemed simple enough. Jason’s instructions and diagrams were very clear and she could not resist a smile as she heard his ‘voice’ as she read the report. He had obviously written it as a guide for people who were not scientifically minded and he had done an excellent job of bringing what could have been very technical information down to the layman’s level. An annotated diagram gave clear explanations of the purpose of every dial and switch, and step-by-step instructions told the user how to calculate the date, time and location of the traveller along with the amount of power required to dictate the duration of their stay. Despite this, she still felt an increasing sense of apprehension as she contemplated using the machine. The idea of being disassembled, transmitted through space and time and reassembled in another location was more than a little bit daunting.
She took a deep breath, moved to the small monitor attached to the side of the unit, touched the display and the screen, previously in ‘sleep’ mode, sprang to life.
A program showed the status of the machine. ‘Journey 012 in progress. Traveller’s return in’ and a timer was counting down from fifty-five minutes.
Briggs had given himself plenty of time to carry out his deed in Germany and Sarah feared he could have done a lot more potentially irreversible damage throughout the duration of his stay.
She flicked through the report and stopped near the back. Fifty-five minutes was plenty of time to get the help she would need, especially as she knew exactly where to go.
She had no idea whether the machine would allow two separate programs to run at the same time, but there was only one way to find out.
A section, behind Jason’s recommendation to destroy the machine, contained a list of global longitudes and latitudes which would allow a traveller to journey to any location on the globe.
She returned her attention to the unit. She searched through the menus, entering and leaving several screens before finally finding the system she required.
Her initial input, 55.1687°, 1.6875°, her desired destination, produced encouraging results when an icon indicated a calculation was taking place and a few seconds later a message confirmed the rotation of the Earth had been taken into consideration. Once complete, a prompt requested the length of her stay.
Her time was restricted as she would have to be back to the machine and out of the complex before Briggs returned. She set the duration to ensure she arrived at the bunker at least ten minutes before the killer came back, then initiated the program. A timer started and a countdown of twenty seconds began.
Sarah stepped up to the machine, she reached for the door and paused. A wash of panic briefly overwhelmed her and she stood a moment, her heart quickening as she battled to control her fear. She had felt the same way the first time she did this, but at least then it was Jason who had controlled the device and she was confident he knew what he was doing. She took a deep breath, stepped into the machine, closed the door behind her and waited for the sequence to commence.
She remembered the sensation was like being tickled inside, so when it came she was not at all surprised. The tingling, which travelled through her muscles all the way down to her bones, lasted only a moment before the small, brightly lit room disappeared and she found herself plunged into extremely cold darkness.
She looked around as she waited for her eyes to adjust. She could not get her bearings at first and did not recognise anything, but knew if the information she had entered into the machine was correct, she would be somewhere on the southern outskirts of Morpeth. With only forty-five minutes to do her task before she was recalled, she hoped she would not be too far away from the town centre.
As her eyes adjusted and she was able to take a better look around, she suddenly recognised her location.
A chain link fence ran off to the right of a large one-storey building opposite, and behind, another one-storey building was attached to a small two-storey house. She moved up to the fence, looked beyond and her suspicions were confirmed when she established she was standing outside of the railway station.
&
nbsp; Sarah headed for the road and a few yards further on found the familiar British Rail sign at the entrance to the compound. She looked right and saw the street swung left down a steep hill.
She turned and began down the path as fast as she dared. The darkness, all encompassing, was made worse by the black tarmaced road and the dark stone walls holding the embankment at bay.
As she reached the bend, the decline increased and rather than having to hurry, Sarah found herself trying to slow down as gravity took ahold and her pace escalated out of control. Then suddenly she slipped.
Her arms flayed as her feet shifted, but sore, stiff muscles refused to move quickly. As she felt herself falling, she shot her head forward when she caught sight of the wall rushing up to greet her and managed to get a hand hold on the stone just in time to adjust her plummet enough to land in an ungainly heap at the base.
She scrambled to her feet and carefully moved onto the road where the blackness of the tarmac allowed her to see the patches of ice and snow more clearly.
A few minutes later she passed beneath a bridge. The sound of her breathing coming in short, sharp gasps bounced off the upward-curving bricks. Then her pace slowed when a vivid image of a young woman lying on a riverbank with a knife in her chest, buried up to the handle, reminded Sarah why she had halted her search for survivors.
She suppressed the thought and forced herself on, aware that if she encountered anyone now she would only have to deal with them for a short while as she would be recalled back to the machine in about forty minutes in any case.
At the bottom of the hill the road split into two: one heading out of Morpeth and the other leading to the town centre. The decline increased slightly as she turned right, then quickly levelled out, allowing her to pick up the pace.
The biting cold ignored her clothing, despite the layers, and she knew if she was in a bad way now, she would have been a lot worse had she been caught in this weather a week ago.
Clean clothes and a clean body were an important key to keeping warm and healthy, but in the later days, just before she met Jason, her personal care had gone downhill. She knew it was a bad sign and there was a risk there was no going back, but the depression was so deep and her situation so desperate, she could see no way out.
Then along came Jason and he fed her her first decent meal in days and her first meat-based product in a month and suddenly she started to feel better.
When he begged her to help him, the following day, she had refused and he went on to Alnwick alone. This, she felt, was her lowest point. Her physical needs had improved, but her emotional state became worse.
In his bid to get her to assist him he had forced her to face up to some harsh realities and after he left, she had to make the decision to either stay put until she died or do something to possibly change what was left of her life for the better. He had promised her he would get her life back, and if only she knew how completely literal he was being when he made that statement, she would have led the way from the building.
When she finally mustered the courage to follow him that morning, for the first time in nearly two weeks, she had washed properly, dressed warmly, then hurried after Jason to Alnwick. If he had not given her the emotional shake she needed to pull herself around, two days ago, she would have probably been dying from the cold right now.
The road swung left, then curved right and as Sarah caught her first glimpse of the town up ahead, a flutter in her stomach signalled a further twang of anxiety.
She had started to feel trapped in Morpeth, only staying out of fear, and the moment she saw the town again all the bad feelings came rushing back. Her days of cowering were long gone, though, and she knew no matter what the outcome she had to press on.
Her breathing had reached a sharp hiss by the time she crossed the bridge and turned onto the main high street on the far side of the river. She would have called out, the silence was intense so sound travelled far, but she knew she would risk alerting others to her presence.
After the war, she had spent as little time as possible outside. It was not just the radioactive dust which danced in beautiful, but deadly eddies whenever it was caught in the winds bouncing off the buildings lining the roads, but more so, the other survivors. She realised hunting for food could be hazardous when she found the body of the woman dead on the embankment. At first she had thought she was sleeping, until she drew near and saw the knife embedded in her chest. A couple of weeks later she witnessed a small group of young men with rifles using tins of food and then finally a live dog as target practice. This was enough to force Sarah into reclusion and her remaining scavenges were carried out at night.
Her watch had stopped at the point that the nuclear bomb exploded over the city of Newcastle, frying all electrical equipment within a twenty-mile radius. As time was no longer an issue, only night and day, she had never attempted to replace it with a mechanical device. A decision she now regretted. She was acutely aware the time was ticking by and she still had some distance to go, but she had no idea how long it would be before she would be returned back to the machine.
****
It was early evening before Jason finally arrived on the outskirts of Morpeth. Prior to reaching the old town, he had passed through a number of new housing estates which stretched at least a mile beyond the border. It was only his familiarity with the road system which offered assurance he was still on the right track.
Morpeth, for some reason, was a great deal larger in this timeline. The fields and forests south of the ancient town were now replaced by houses and new road systems which stretched away from the main street.
The journey took slightly longer than he anticipated and the day was drawing to an end as he arrived in the town centre.
A soft fog-like haze hung in the air. It was barely noticeable until the sun, low in the sky, neared the horizon. As the mist was illuminated, blue merged into orange, which slipped into blood red with a seamless ease that only an artist of light could achieve.
Jason became increasingly uncomfortable as the eerie rouge lengthened shadows, until finally, when the last rays of sun disappeared from sight, all the darkness pooled into one. He submitted frequently to the urge to look around when the noise of his shoes, echoing back, created the impression he was being followed. Greys blended into blacks and his eyes, of little use, picked up virtually nothing.
His urgency grew with the arrival of night. Even in familiar streets it would be difficult to find his way around in the dark. His journey through the outskirts of Morpeth had proved there were changes to the road systems and estates; therefore, any hope of finding the centre unaltered was becoming increasingly unlikely.
He broke into a trot. The library on the far side of town was his destination, but when he turned into Bridge Street and saw the building, his heart sank, for instead in its place he found the Town Hall.
Hungry, exhausted and bitterly disappointed, Jason decided he could do nothing more tonight. He would have to concentrate on finding somewhere warm and dry to sleep. He would continue with his search for the library in the morning.
The 11th century Norman church on his right, he thought, would be a good place to spend the night. It would give him time, he decided, to apologise for his tinkering and hopefully make his peace with God. As he turned to make his way towards the church, Jason stopped when he noticed a soft flickering glow coming from a first-floor window of the Town Hall.
“Just ignore her, Jason.”
He turned sharply and looked at the woman.
“She’s no good to you.” Sarah smiled. “It’s me you need to speak to.”
Chapter Three
Morpeth Town Hall
Jason stepped back from the woman, alarmed. “Who are you and how do you know my name?”
“I’m Sarah.” She nudged her head towards the window with the flickering light. “The same Sarah you’ll find inside that room, except I’m a little bit wiser and a lot stronger – thanks to you.”
; “Me?” He looked at the window, then back to the woman, confused.
She stepped up, closing the gap between them. “I not only know your name, but I know exactly who you are,” she said ominously.
Jason leaned back just a fraction and looked down on the small red-haired woman with the fiery green eyes. He guessed her petite frame, made smaller by the over-sized coat, was not to be underestimated; she was tough, he could tell.
“I know you’re a time traveller,” she stated.
His brown eyes narrowed and darkened. “How?” he asked sharply.
“I also know something went wrong,” she continued, ignoring the question. “This is not your world. This is not how it should be.”
His attention engaged. He knew she was right, he needed her help as he had no idea what was going on.
“You know something has gone wrong at this point, you don’t know what it is, but I do.”
“What happened?” Jason snapped, desperate to know.
“You accidentally killed Adolf Hitler. This stopped what would have been the Second World War, but as a result there was a nuclear war instead.”
His eyes widened. “I’ve caused a nuclear war?” he said slowly, almost seeming to shrink.
“Yes.” She twitched her shoulders. “In a sense.”
He looked at the window, then turned his scrutinising, scientist’s gaze back on Sarah. “So how come there are two of you?”
“That’s the problem.”
He snorted. “What, the fact there’s been a nuclear war is not the problem?”
“No, we fixed that.”
He shot out a hand. “Wait! What? We fixed it?”
“Yes. I’m surmising we fixed it, because there’s another machine, just like the one you left in Ponteland.”
Time Split - Briggs Page 2