by Tim O'Rourke
After tossing the empty noodle carton into a nearby rubbish bin, Karl wiped grease from his lips with the back of his hand. He pushed against the station door. To his surprise, the front door appeared to be locked fast. He pushed against it again, but it wouldn’t open. Making a fist with his hand, he rapped on the door. When no answer came, Karl stepped back into the street, glancing up at the building. His eyes searched the dirty windows for any signs of life, but there were none that he could see.
Perhaps there wasn’t a dayshift? Karl thought, and if there was, perhaps the officers were out on patrol and that’s why there wasn’t a patrol vehicle parked outside. Believing that to be the answer, Karl turned away and headed back along the street. He hadn’t taken more than two steps when he heard a voice call after him.
“Who are you? What you want?” the voice said.
Karl stopped dead in his tracks and turned around. He was surprised to see that the front door to the Temporal Station was now ajar. He could see the face of a man staring through the opening at him.
Instead of answering the man’s questions, Karl asked one of his own. “Who are you?”
The door was opened a little wider to reveal the man standing behind it. His uniform was entirely black, with a circular silver crest on each shoulder. He was in his mid-forties, clean-shaven, with closely cut black hair. “I’m Chief Tracer. And you are?”
Realising that he was speaking to an officer who outranked him, Karl straightened up a little and said, “I’m Officer Potter. Karl Potter.” He reached into his jacket pocket, pulled out his badge, and held it up so the chief could see it.
Chief Tracer peered from out of the narrow opening. He nodded his head as if satisfied. “You’re new here, aren’t you?”
Placing the badge back into his pocket, and sensing that the Chief wasn’t going to invite him into the station, Karl said, “I didn’t realise Outpost 71 had a Chief Officer.”
“Didn’t Sargent Shaw tell you about me?” Chief Tracer asked, his eyes narrowing as he inspected Karl from the slim opening in the doorway.
Karl shook his head. “No, she must have forgotten to mention it. But after what happened last night…”
“Look, can I help you with something? Because I’m very busy,” the chief cut in.
“I just wanted to find this place, that’s all,” Karl said with a nonchalant shrug of his shoulders.
“We’ll you’ve found it now,” Chief Tracer said. Then, narrowing his eyes further at Karl as he peered through the gap in the door, he added, “What time did Sargent Shaw tell you to arrive for duty?”
“She told me to show up tonight, after dark,” Karl said. “I thought that was a little strange.”
“Strange?” the chief asked. “Strange, how?”
“Isn’t there a dayshift to patrol this outpost?”
“I’m here, aren’t I?” Chief Tracer said. “Now, if I was you, Potter, I would do exactly as Sargent Shaw says and come back tonight.”
Before Karl could get another word out, Chief Tracer was closing the door.
Karl stood in the rain, staring at the closed door. He’d met a lot of chiefs in his time, and sure, most of them were uptight, but he’d never met a chief officer like Tracer before. He seemed to have a stick stuffed right up his arse. Perhaps the chief did have some pressing work to do and therefore couldn’t spend his time chatting idly with the new officer in town?
But surely the chief would want to get to know the new officer who had been posted to the Temporal Station, Karl wondered.
He turned his back on the closed door and strolled away through the falling rain. As he made his way back across the outpost in the direction of the Night Diner once more, he felt somewhat pissed off that Chief Tracer had been so dismissive of him. If he had been a little more welcoming and less dismissive, Karl could have explained what had just happened at the makeshift apartment block, where Lucy May’s body had been discovered the night before. Perhaps the chief could have taken the patrol car, and together, they could have undertaken an area search for the stranger who had nearly pushed Karl to his death. But Chief Tracer had seemed disinterested in anything he’d had to say.
Perhaps the chief was conducting his own enquiries into the death—murder—of Lucy May, Karl wondered as he left the outskirts of Outpost 71, heading into the derelict district. Perhaps that was the true reason Tracer had been too busy to stand talking. Though, if the chief had been more amenable, Karl could have also discussed his concerns about the lack of blood at the crime scene.
As Karl drew close to the Night Diner, he couldn’t help but notice how his car had been jacked up. It now stood about a foot above the ground. From beneath its rusty chassis, Karl could see two legs poking out. Near to where the back wheels should have been touching the ground was a black rucksack. Karl stepped beneath the corrugated roof of the vehicle port. He tapped one of the feet, which protruded from beneath it, with the toe of his boot.
“Hey, what are you doing to my car?” he asked. “What do you think you’re doing?”
Karl stepped back, as whoever was meddling beneath his beat-up old car began to crawl out from beneath it. He was more than a little surprised to discover that it was Officer Lisa Scott who had been beneath his vehicle. She was no longer wearing her uniform, but was dressed in a grey sweater, blue jeans, and running shoes. She wore her long blonde hair in a ponytail, which dangled over one shoulder.
With a smile playing across her full lips, and wiping grease, dirt, and oil from her hands, she said, “I thought I’d come by and see if I could fix your car for you.”
Karl glanced at his car, then back at her. “How do you know it needed fixing?”
“You told me last night that the vertical thrusters were broken,” she reminded him. Then, with her smile widening, she added, “I think the exact words you used were that the vertical thrusters were fucked.”
“It’s not just the thrusters that have packed up,” Karl said, “the piece of shit wouldn’t start at all this morning.”
“Well, I think I’ve got the thrusters going again, but if you say the car won’t start, I’ll take another look,” she said, dropping to the ground again, before crawling back beneath the vehicle.
From where Karl stood beside the car, and over the thrum of rain beating against the canopy above him, he could hear the sound of metal clattering against metal coming from beneath the vehicle.
“Are you sure you know what you’re doing?” he asked.
“Why do you say that?” she called out from beneath the car. “Is it because I’m a girl?”
“That’s not what I meant at all,” Karl said, looking down and talking to her feet. “What I meant is, are you sure you know what you’re doing as you might be wasting your time. The car is only fit for the scrapheap.”
Lisa’s voice seeped up from beneath the car. “I’m sure I can get it going again.”
Over the sound of clanking and banging coming from beneath the car, Karl said, “So you know a lot about cars and stuff, then?”
“Learning how to fix things becomes a necessity in an outpost like this,” she said, still hidden beneath the vehicle. “I’ve forgotten how many times I’ve had to fix and patch up the patrol vehicle back at the office. Nothing seems to work for too long this far out from the cities, and it’s not like we can just order supplies if we need them. We’re pretty much on our own out here.”
“I’ve never known a place quite like this before,” Karl said. “I had no idea that such remote places existed.”
“So that’s what you’ve been doing this morning, is it?” she asked from beneath the car.
“Huh?” Growing tired of having a conversation with Lisa’s feet, Karl hunkered down in an attempt to peer beneath the car. But it was so dark that he could barely see her.
Lisa’s voice seeped out of the darkness. “Have you been taking a look about the outpost this morning?”
Alone with Lisa, Karl thought he might take the opportunity to see what
reaction he might get if he told her he’d been back to Lucy May’s apartment. “I went back to the crime scene. Back to where I found Lucy May’s body.”
There was a long pause of silence from beneath the car before Lisa spoke again. “Really? Why did you do that?”
Almost on his hands and knees and peering beneath the car, Karl said, “Something from last night was troubling me.”
“Oh, yeah? What was that?” she asked, over the sound of spanners and wrenches scraping against metal as she continued to work on the car.
“I didn’t see any blood last night at the scene. It was kind of odd, considering that Lucy May’s throat had been torn open,” Karl said. “Whether she had her throat ripped open by vermin or not, surely there should have been some blood.”
Lisa continued to fix the car. “It was dark in that hellhole last night. Perhaps that’s the reason why you didn’t see any blood.”
“But when I went back this morning and used my torch, I still couldn’t see any blood,” Karl told her.
“But of course you wouldn’t have seen any blood this morning,” Lisa said with a soft chuckle. “Me, the Sarge, and Selina cleaned it all up after we moved the body last night.”
Karl slowly stood up as he pondered what Lisa had just said. Even if what she had said was true, and she and the others really had mopped up the blood, surely they wouldn’t have been able to remove every single drop of it. It had been so dark in the container that it would have been impossible for them to have discovered and removed every last drop of blood. But before Karl could point that fact out to her, Lisa cried out from beneath the car.
“Holy shit!”
Karl dropped to his knees once more, bending forward at the waist and peering beneath the car. “What’s wrong?”
He watched Lisa slide out from beneath the car on her back. Reaching out with one hand, he helped Lisa up onto her feet. He could see now why she cried out. Much of her face, sweater, and hands were covered black.
“Oil leakage,” she groaned.
Feeling somewhat responsible for the mess that she was now in, as she had been trying to fix his car, Karl said, “Do you want to come up to my room and wash that crap off?”
“Sounds like a plan,” Lisa said, snatching up her rucksack with one oil-stained hand.
As Karl led her toward the Night Diner, he glanced at her. Wearing a playful smile, he said, “So you didn’t manage to fix my car, then?”
“No, it should be fine now.” She glanced down at the oily splashes that covered her sweater and hands. “It’s just me that needs fixing up.”
Chapter Thirty
The year 1973…
Annora let out a scream as the ground raced up to meet her. But before she crashed into the concrete paving slabs that covered much of the backyard, she was soaring up into the night sky tucked in Noah’s arms. She glanced up to see another truly amazing—and in some ways, terrifying spectacle. Two large black wings were protruding from Noah’s back. Annora wasn’t sure how much more she could take. No longer did Noah look like the same man she had been talking to in the kitchen, but he now appeared to not be human. Was this really the kind of adventure she had been looking for when she had left home? She had wanted to write a book. If nothing else, she now had plenty of subject matter to write about. She doubted she would ever be short of ideas or suffer from writer’s block. Although terrifying, the adventure she now found herself on was incredible. When she finally got back from wherever Noah was now taking her, she knew that she would never be the same. The old Annora Snow would be gone forever. Would she ever see her old home and town again? Would she ever see her parents again? Despite the disagreements and quarrels they’d had with her, she loved her parents without question. But if she had been happy, she wouldn’t have left. So perhaps if and when she did return home, she would be happier and more content. Her idea of happiness hadn’t been what her parents had planned for her. Annora had never been interested in working for her parents’ law firm. She couldn’t have pictured anything duller. And when she had told them that she’d wanted to be a writer, they had rolled their eyes. She knew what they had been thinking. Just another of Annora’s madcap ideas. Just another childish fantasy that would never lead to anything. Just like the time she had said she wanted to be an actress. And like the time she had said that she wanted to form a band. Her parents had pretended to be interested, but they hadn’t been—not really. If they had have been, they would have agreed to let her study either music or drama at college. But instead they had insisted that she study law and economics. Both subjects were as dull as dishwater as far as Annora was concerned. Where was the excitement and adventure in that? Racing over the town of Rock Shore, held tight in the arms of a winged man while cradling a strange umbrella—now, that was exciting. Perhaps the layers Noah had spoken about knew her better than her own parents had. But maybe her parents had been right about her, too, in their own way. They had wanted her to work in law, and if what Noah had said was true, then she had become some type of law enforcer in the future—in the year 2067.
Noah caught Annora looking up at his wings. He could see the look of amazement and wonder in her eyes. He thought he saw fear, too, so he smiled down at her.
“There’s no need to be scared,” he said over the beating of his wings. His curly black hair rippled out from beneath the peaked cap he wore on his head. “You’re quite safe.”
“What are you?” she asked, the cold whoosh of night air making her skirt and blouse billow out.
“One of many.” He smiled again.
How did she know that she wouldn’t get a straight answer from him? But perhaps the world didn’t travel along on a straight line like she had once believed it had. Perhaps there were no straight-lines? How did anyone explain the unexplainable? And wasn’t that the whole point of magic… or any illusion? The best part was in the not knowing how the trick had been performed. No one really wanted to know the magician’s secrets. And as she glanced back up at Noah and watched his wings ripple and flap on either side of him, she had no doubt that he was indeed some kind of magician or wizard. It was then that Annora noticed that at the tip of each wing there was a three-fingered claw. The bony hands opened and closed as if grabbing at the air, propelling Noah and her through the air at a heart-stopping and stomach-churning speed.
“Where are you taking me?” she shouted over the howl of the wind.
“To the station,” he said.
“What station?”
“That station,” he said, pointing down through a break in the clouds.
Peering over his arms, Annora couldn’t see very much at all. They were too high up for her to make out anything clearly. But as they dropped at speed through the clouds, Annora could see a set of railway tracks snaking away from the town of Rock Shore. They gleamed like silver serpents in the moonlight. Arching his wings behind him, and buffeting against the wind, Noah soared over Rock Shore Railway Station. Just feet above the tracks, Noah whisked Annora through the air, ballast and grit spraying up in his wake. Narrowing her eyes to slits against the wind and dirt, Annora could see that Noah was carrying her toward a remote signal box that stood beside the railway tracks.
Noah held Annora tight as he swooped around in the air, then dropped out of the night sky and landed beside the tracks that ran parallel to the signal box. Very carefully, he lifted Annora from his arms, and set her down on her feet once more.
“Come on, we don’t have a moment to waste,” he said, charging up a set of rickety stairs that were attached to the side of the signal box. “We’ve outrun the Seth brothers for now, but it won’t take them long to catch up.”
As Annora raced behind him up the stairs, she watched as Noah’s wings withdrew into his back. The fabric of his blue railwayman’s uniform didn’t show any signs of rips or tears where his wings had once been. At the top of the stairs he stood in front of a wooden door. Just like the rest of the signal box, the paint covering the door had fallen away in powdery c
hunks. There was a window set into the side of the signal box, and this was cracked and smeared with dirt. Just like the neck of the bottle that Noah had drank from back at the house, much of the signal box was covered in thick cobwebs.
Noah reached into his tunic pocket and pulled out a key. It looked very old in the moonlight. The teeth were jagged and long. Peering out from beneath the peak of his cap, Noah slid the key into the lock. With one sharp twist of his wrist, the door opened. Dust blew outwards into the night. Annora waved a hand in front of her face and made a coughing sound in the back of her throat.
“Inside,” Noah said, gesturing for her to enter the derelict signal box. As she did so, Noah glanced left and right along the tracks. Content for now that they hadn’t been followed or seen, he stepped into the signal box, locking the door behind them.
Chapter Thirty-One
The year 2067…
Officer Lisa Scott followed Karl into the Night Diner. Although the bar was deserted like it had been earlier that morning, Karl could see that the metal shutter had been raised above the bar. As Karl led Lisa across the dancefloor toward the stairs, he heard glasses clinking behind the bar. He glanced in that direction to see the bartender stand up from behind the counter, a dirty dishcloth thrown over one shoulder and a tray of glasses in his hands. Seeing Karl and Lisa, the bartender set the tray down on top of the counter
“That’s fifty credits you owe me,” he said to Karl.