“Yes, sir!”
Briggs strode to the stairs with Andrews immediately behind.
As they stepped out of the building an army vehicle was pulling into the car park.
The officers hurried to a jeep as the soldier emerged and called out to catch their attention.
“Sir! Captain Briggs!”
Briggs stopped.
“Sir,” he panted up, “I picked up a couple of civilians in Ponteland who claimed they were assaulted by a man and a woman who wanted something in the basement of a house they were living in. The woman said that the man beat her husband up and she was threatened with a knife. I tried to find the couple, but they disappeared through the gardens. Is it all right for me to process the two that were assaulted and to give them some food?” He stepped closer and lowered his voice. “They seem to be struggling. I don’t think they’ve had anything decent to eat in a while. They were unaware that we had set up a survival unit in Alnwick.”
Briggs smiled. “Yes, that would be fine, but first, I’d like to have a quick word with them. I need to know precisely where in Ponteland they encountered this couple.”
Chapter Twenty-One
En-route to Kenton Bank Foot
Jason glanced around at Sarah. “How are you doing?” He had noticed her pace had begun to slow as they once again passed the airport.
“I’m OK.” She looked up and forced a smile. “It’s amazing how deeply you sleep when you’re so exhausted you can hardly think. Twenty minutes resting in the car between the bunker and Morpeth did me the world of good. In fact,” she smiled again, but this time it was more genuine, “I’m sure it’ll keep me going for another couple of days at least.”
Jason laughed. “We could stop for a few minutes if you want.”
“No, it’s just the hill, I’m fine,” she insisted. “Once again running on adrenaline.” She looked back. “We can’t risk that soldier catching up with us. We have to keep moving.”
They continued walking for a few minutes in silence before Jason approached a difficult subject. “You do know there’s a risk you don’t exist in my timeline,” he said cautiously.
“I know, you explained,” she replied flatly.
Jason shook his head. “I can’t get used to the fact that you’ve done all this before.”
“It was slightly different the last time, but no less traumatic.”
“What happened when you went back?”
“There was only three minutes of power stored in the machine so you sent me to the town centre. There was a demonstration going on.”
“Yes, I passed through that as well.”
“There was very little time to assess the situation. I frantically searched for you, then I was bumped from behind and looked around and realised it was you. I tried to grab you, but was too late. Suddenly, I was surrounded by people as the crowd closed in and was trying to push through when I was grabbed from behind. I looked around and was horrified to see it was Briggs.”
Jason sighed. “There are now three overlaps in that time period. It’s getting pretty messy.”
“What do you mean by overlaps?”
“There is the original time period, where Hitler and his men attended a rally at Havelberg. Its first overlay was when I got involved. I appeared, accidentally killed him and stopped the Second World War happening, which led to,” he looked around solemnly, “this. The second overlay is the time period when you appeared to try to stop me killing Hitler and the third is the time period with Briggs. No matter what, we are all a permanent part of the 1930s Havelberg rally.”
“Even if I didn’t exist in the other timeline, I’d rather be dead than continue to live like this.”
“Life will recover.”
“Are you sure?” Sarah choked. “I go through the motions of life, but without my loved ones I feel dead inside.”
Jason turned his face away. “I know what you mean. The moment I entered Ponteland I found myself looking for Jessica.”
“Who’s Jessica?”
He looked back. “My wife. I never mentioned her to you?”
“No. When you came into the Town Hall and we met for the first time, I realised there was still some nice people left alive. We talked, you fed me my first decent meal in weeks and I fell asleep. I’d been having trouble sleeping because I was frightened of being discovered, but the food, the fire and you being there made me feel so safe, I went into such a deep sleep that I was barely aware of anything. At some point in the night I did hear crying. Now looking back I realise it was you because you’d discovered what you’d done. I vaguely heard you gasp ‘Jessica’ in amongst the sobs before I fell asleep again and I figured she was either your wife, because I did notice you were wearing a wedding ring, or maybe she could have possibly been a daughter.”
The pair went silent again as they neared the precipice of the hill. At the top, Sarah stopped, turned and looked back at the road just travelled.
“That view is spectacular,” she said as she stood admiring the peaks and dips of the Cheviot Hills straddling the horizon. “It’s been spoiled, though, because I know that monster is up there.” She turned her back to the scene and continued along the road leading to the flyover which crossed the Western Bypass over the A1.
“Is the Briggs in this timeline worse than the Briggs from my timeline?” Jason asked as the road levelled out.
“Much!” Sarah said emphatically. “He killed his own men for trying to help the weak and vulnerable. You had to work for food and if you couldn’t work, you got none. The soldiers that were supposed to kill us said that a young Private was killed by Briggs because he was caught sneaking food out to the old people in Alnwick. I think that was why they rebelled, they had certainly had enough, and decided to let us go. If you ever met him, you would know what I mean. He gives you the chills.”
Jason looked confused. “Surely he wouldn’t want to live like this.” He shook his head. “Nobody could want to live like this.”
“It’s all about power. Why else would the Briggs from your timeline want to make sure the altered timeline was preserved? He’d rather rule in this world than be a nobody in his own.” Suddenly, she stopped, her face aghast, when she got her first glimpse of the flyover. “Oh, God!”
“This is nothing,” Jason stated. “Wait ’til you see the road underneath.”
They stepped up to the blockade of cars parked bumper to bumper, with barely enough of a gap between each vehicle to pass through.
Sarah looked right and saw the slip road leading from the motorway was clear. Instead the blockage was caused by traffic travelling away from Kenton and the areas closer to the city, to the roundabout from the west.
“They must have all been trying to head north,” she gasped.
“It’s the logical route for those from this region to follow,” Jason said as he led the way onto the roundabout and began making his way between the cars. “That, or possibly Cumbria. You have fewer cities therefore less chance of encountering bombed out areas, which equals less fallout. You also have wild deer which could be hunted for food and you’re never very far from the coast, so you could catch fish and shellfish if you’re no good at shooting.” He stopped talking long enough to shuffle across the bonnet of a car, when there was no apparent route to get around it. “Then there’s foraging and the land to grow crops. It’s understandable that people would head for hills.”
Sarah followed Jason’s moves until they drew close to the barrier protecting the traffic from the twenty metre drop onto the road below. There she stopped and peered over the edge at the rows of cars, four abreast, all heading north, completely blocking both carriageways. She scanned the embankment where bodies, their decomposition slowed in the cold weather, were sprawled on the grass. Blood, darkened with decay, soaked through clothing and in most cases established the cause of death being a bullet to the chest, a shotgun to the neck or a severed artery. She returned her attention to the road and followed the line of traffic until just
short of the horizon her eyes stopped on a mass of blackened fused metal.
She could not identify how many vehicles were involved as metal was twisted into metal and one car merged into another in the inferno that had ensued, with the only thing remotely recognisable being the turret of a tank protruding above the carnage.
She looked behind and could not comprehend, at first, what she was seeing until she identified the rolling blackened hills in the distance.
The scorched mounds on the far side of the Tyne had been home to over two hundred thousand people until the bomb hit the city of Newcastle and the Gateshead hills took the full force of the shockwave heading south when they helped to contain the blast.
Jason stepped up and took her by the hand.
She was looking faint, her eyes wide, her mouth open in horror.
“Come on. It’s best not to look,” he said softly. “We’re going to stop this thing ever happening in the first place.” He turned her away from the scene and continued through the cars until they cleared the jam on the opposite side of the roundabout.
Chapter Twenty-Two
En-route to Ponteland
“What are you going to do when you find them?” Andrews called over the roar of the engine. He was regretting not getting into the driver’s seat fast enough, before the mercenary did.
Briggs had no fear, at least none that Andrews was aware of, and would see nothing wrong with tearing down the motorway at a hundred and fifteen miles an hour simply because there was no other traffic in the way.
Andrews, on the other hand, had seen tyres overheat and blow at high speeds, bumps in the road or even stones change the course of the wheels and send a vehicle careering off into a ditch. Since the war, though, the greatest risk on the roads came from straying animals.
The local wildlife, which now included previously domesticated horses and cattle who had escaped their enclosures, had come to see the road as any other part of the landscape now there was not a constant stream of traffic ploughing the tarmac.
Briggs had spent almost all of his time in Alnwick since his arrival six weeks ago. There was a brief period when he was away checking on the safety of a loved one, during which time Captain Harrison was killed in a raid whilst distributing food, before he returned and took charge as the highest-ranking officer. Since then, it had always been Andrews and his men that had gone outside of the ancient town to search for survivors and to organise burial parties. As a result, Briggs did not have much experience of how things had changed beyond Alnwick’s borders so, a deer, horse or cow, which would cave the front of the jeep in with ease even if they were hit at half the speed they were doing, straying onto the road would not even cross his mind.
Andrews pointed at the speedo. “You might want to slow down,” he called.
Briggs scowled and glanced at the officer. “What?” he snapped.
Andrews shook his head. “Never mind.” He soon realised you only made suggestions to Briggs, you never told him what to do, especially if you wanted to stay alive. He was aware his position was stronger than just about everybody in the platoon as he was definitely trusted, and trust did not come lightly to the mercenary, but still he knew there were limits, and Briggs’ limits were a lot shorter than most.
“He’s done the job and I want it to stay done. I’m going to kill them so they can’t interfere any more. Any other changes might not be congruous with our way of life.”
“Do you really want to preserve this timeline?” Andrews asked. “In five years’ time we’ll all be dead from cancer in any case.”
“You think too small,” Briggs stated. “This is just the beginning.”
“Oh!” Andrews’ attention engaged.
“We’re just getting established in Alnwick. The first crops will be planted in the next few weeks and the harvest in the autumn will allow us to take in more people. Alnwick now has the only major hospital in the region which is capable of treating a large variety of diseases and in particular cancer. Greater stocks of food will allow us to expand our farming as Northumberland is over five thousand square kilometres, a good portion of which is suitable for the growth of crops. Remember, the Romans used Corbridge as their main grain house.” He glanced smugly at the sergeant. “We’ll be like the Romans, except with heavy artillery.”
Andrews threw his head back and laughed. He remembered why he liked Briggs so much.
They travelled without speaking for a few more miles.
Briefly, a fox, then later two deer, alarmed by the sound of the engine, were glimpsed scuttling from the road before disappearing into the surrounding trees.
Andrews broke the silence. “How long do you think all of this will last?”
“What do you mean?” Briggs asked, confused.
“The road systems, the buildings,” he shrugged his shoulders, his bottom lip protruding, “you know,” he did quotation signs with his fingers, “civilisation.”
“It won’t take long for the roads to go. A few cracks and one or two bad winters later, water gets in, freezes, expands and turns them into chasms. The buildings will take a little longer, but still it’s amazing how fast the trees can reclaim. Without careful management, roots and grasses soon tear up the paths and before you know it, you have crumbling houses in the middle of a forest. Fifty years from now you’ll not recognise this place. In fact some things need constant care like the roads under rivers and I’m willing to bet, if it survived, the Tyne Tunnel is already inaccessible due to flooding.”
Andrews pointed as they passed a sign. “You might want to turn off here,” he warned, “the road up ahead is blocked.”
Briggs indicated, purely out of habit, and pulled off the motorway a short while later. His pace on the B roads was no less alarming, in fact more so due to the narrow, uneven nature of the thoroughfare and ten minutes later, when they pulled into Ponteland, Andrews breathed a silent sigh of relief.
Briggs continued with his breakneck pace through the main high street, but at least by then it was light enough to see for some distance ahead. He turned down a road running alongside a cluster of shops and continued for a further two hundred yards before turning into Willowburn Avenue and finally pulling to an abrupt halt outside of a house numbered sixty-three.
The front door stood wide open. The morning light bled into the passage enough to illuminate the bottom few steps of the stairs leading to the upper floor. Beyond the hall, the kitchen could be seen flooded in rays, but the central part of the vestibule remained gloomy and foreboding.
Briggs leapt from the car, strode up the path and entered the property with Andrews close behind.
He soon found the door leading to the basement and tried the handle. He rattled it a few times, unconvinced at first it was locked, before he instructed, “Wait here.” He went back to the jeep and returned to the hallway carrying a crowbar.
The wood squealed and groaned before suddenly there was a loud crack and the door to the basement shot open.
The mercenary retrieved a small torch from a loop on his belt and swiftly descended the stairs.
Andrews stepped beyond the door, but no further; waiting at the top of the steps, he made sure they could not be accidentally locked into the basement. He slipped into darkness, the limited light from the hall unable to lift the illumination much above a shadowy grey, and watched Briggs, his face ghastly in the bleed from the beam, come to a halt at the time machine.
“It was worth the journey because at least we now know what we’re looking for,” Briggs called. He lowered the torch and illuminated the discarded panel. “He’s definitely been here.” He crouched and looked inside to examine the internal circuitry. “He appears to have taken something from one of the boards. There’s an empty connection which looks out of place.” He stood, slipped his hand into his pocket and removed the chip retrieved from the shooter’s body. He squatted again, reached into the panels, wires and microcircuitry and popped the chip into the empty slot. Quickly, he removed it, stood, return
ed it to his pocket and hurried up the stairs. “Get to the car and get it started,” he called. “We have to be quick. There must be another machine.” He reached the hall as Andrews fired up the engine. “He’s got the missing part; we have to stop him,” Briggs said as he leapt into the jeep. He slipped on his belt as Andrews pulled away. “How fast can we get to Kenton?” he yelled.
Andrews remained silent as he flung the vehicle right. He did a rapid U turn, floored the accelerator and then sped for the main road. “We can reach the motorway in about fifteen minutes, but we might have to walk from there.”
Briggs nodded. “OK, make sure it’s a little faster.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
En-route to Kenton Bank Foot
Andrews glanced at the mercenary. “It’s really exciting.”
“What is?”
“A time machine. You could go anywhere and do anything.”
“Yeah!” Briggs snorted. “If you wanted to decimate time and come back to God knows what!” He looked at the sergeant pointedly. “You’ve seen what he’s done. There’s been a nuclear war where there shouldn’t have been one and all because he tried to go back and help his grandmother with a little bit of money.”
Andrews smiled. “You’ve got to admire how clever he is though.”
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