‘What’re you expecting to find down here?’ asked Maddy.
Even though she spoke in little more than a tremulous whisper, her voice seemed to echo endlessly down the station’s walls and curved ceiling and off into the dark tunnel beyond.
‘An emergency storeroom of some sort,’ whispered Foster. ‘I remember reading that most of New York’s subway stations had back-up generators installed during the Second World War. Hopefully we’ll find one and, along with it, some containers of fuel.’ Foster looked back at them. ‘I know. It’s a long shot.’
‘I never knew they had an underground system back then,’ said Sal.
‘Yeah, of course they did,’ said Maddy. ‘I did a school project on the New York subway once. They started digging out the tunnels as early as 1904, I think.’
Foster nodded. ‘That’s right. Brought in Irish workers by the tens of thousands to work on it…’ Foster was about to say more, but stopped himself.
So far, mercifully, they’d yet to encounter a single one of those creatures. They’d come across signs of them on the streets above: clusters of small bones, rat carcasses, remains of cats and even dog carcasses. And of course, more ominously, here and there discarded piles of larger bones, sometimes carefully stacked or arranged by size. Sal found that even more unsettling – the thought of several of those creatures sitting down and carefully sorting through the bones of someone they’d eaten.
She shuddered.
On 5th Avenue she thought she’d seen a pale face peeking out at her before it dipped back into the dark shadows beyond a department-store window frame. And on Broadway, the faintest slither of movement among some storefront mannequins, their plastic scorched black in places, fingers and thumbs little more than melted stubs. But she was prepared to believe she was mistaken. Preferred to believe that, in fact.
Mind you, if those things were really there, watching from the darkness, then at least they were keeping their distance, still very much wary of Foster’s gun. She wondered, though, how long that would last. How long before insatiable hunger for their comparatively plump, well-fed bodies would overcome their caution.
‘Up ahead,’ whispered Foster. ‘Look!’ He swung his torch along to the end of the platform, to a small door with a faded STAFFROOM sign on it. Beneath that another sign warned of an electrical hazard.
He picked up the pace, his shoes clacking along the platform surface, kicking aside several fallen tiles that clattered noisily across the platform, over the edge and sploshed into the puddles of water below. Sal cringed as the noise echoed interminably down the tunnel.
Foster reached for the handle and tried it, rattling it hard. It came off in his hand amid a shower of rust flakes.
‘Oh, that’s just great,’ he snapped.
‘Let me have a go,’ said Maddy.
She lifted a booted leg and kicked the door by the rusted stub of the handle. With a sharp crack, the door rattled inwards on its hinges, shards of rusted lock and splinters of wood cascading to the floor.
Foster waved a cloud of dust away from his face. ‘Shall we?’
‘Age before beauty,’ said Maddy.
He replied with a thin smile and the flicker of a wiry eyebrow, then stepped into the room beyond, swinging his torch quickly from side to side, the light picking out surfaces covered in half a century of dust.
Maddy stepped in behind him while Sal cast one last glance over her shoulder at the empty platform behind, now robbed of the light from Foster’s torch as he made his way further inside.
She hurried in after them.
Foster panned the flashlight around slowly. She could see a table and chairs in the middle of a small room. Several enamel mugs were on the table, along with a yellow tattered and faded copy of The New York Times opened on the funnies page and dotted with rat droppings. On the walls were coat hooks, lockers and pin-ups of beautiful movie stars, forgotten faces her mum and dad might have once been able to put a name to.
‘It looks untouched since… well… since whatever happened, happened,’ said Maddy.
Foster nodded. ‘Doomsday.’
He stepped over to the table and shone his torch down on the newspaper. ‘Wednesday, thirteenth of March 1957.’ He looked up at them. ‘I was never that keen on Wednesdays.’
Maddy snorted. Sal smiled, comforted by his lame attempt to lighten the mood. She leaned over the paper, scanning the headlines.
Terrorists Continue Attacks On Resettlement Camps
Teacher Arrested For Teaching Pre-unity History
Führer Absent at Unity Day Parade – Rumours Of Ill Health
‘Superman’ Just A Myth Spread By Troublemakers
At the far end of the room was a door with another electrical hazard warning screwed on to it. Below that, another sign read AUTHORIZED ACCESS ONLY.
‘Maybe we’ll find something useful in there,’ said Foster. He stepped around the table and tried the door handle. This time it opened without putting up a fight, although the hinges creaked drily. He pushed it open and flicked his torch from side to side in the dark void beyond.
‘See anything?’ asked Maddy.
‘I see shelves both sides… I see coils of cable… some tools… oh.’
Silence.
‘What is it?’ asked Sal.
‘Yeah,’ Maddy chorused more loudly. ‘What have you got?’
‘Just a second,’ said Foster, stepping further inside. He let the door go behind him. Maddy grabbed it before it could slam with a loud bang.
‘Foster?’
Over Maddy’s shoulder Sal could see his silhouette inside, dancing shadows, the flicker of reflected light off dust-covered pipe conduits suspended from a claustrophobic low ceiling. He paced down a narrow walkway flanked on either side by racks of floor-to-ceiling shelves.
‘Useful supplies in here. Just taking a look. You stay there,’ he called back. He made his way down to the end of the racks of shelves then turned right, slipping out of view.
Sal wanted to call to him to come back, to say that they should all remain close together. But she didn’t. Maddy was right there next to her.
Light flickered over the tops of the shelves and shadows danced across the low ceiling as he moved around the end of the shelves and out of sight. They could hear his feet tapping and scraping across the cold concrete floor.
‘Come on, Foster. Is there anything we can use in there, or not?’ Maddy called out.
The sound of movement stopped and the torchlight hovered where it was for a while. ‘Just a sec,’ he replied.
Foster was taking his time. ‘What’s he doing?’ Sal whispered.
‘Checking something out, I guess.’
Sal bit her lip, trying to keep her cool.
That’s right. He’s just round the corner, not far. No need to panic, Saleena Vikram.
However, right then it occurred to her that the only gun they had was round the corner with him. What if those things were back in that tunnel leading out of the station, watching patiently from the shadows? Perhaps waiting, perhaps growing bolder with each passing second. They might be on the platform, approaching the door to the staffroom right now, standing just outside and curious to see what was going on inside. Curious to see how close they could get without being spotted.
She glanced back anxiously over her shoulder at the small room. It was almost pitch black now. She could just about make out the square edge of the table from what little light was reaching them from Foster’s bobbing torch, a faint glint from one of the mugs. One or two of the chairs were visible. But nothing else. She turned back to see how the old man was doing.
‘Foster?’ called Maddy, quieter now. ‘You gonna tell us what you got there?’
‘You find anything?’ called out Maddy.
A beam of light emerged around the end of the long racks of shelves, flashing into their faces as it approached them.
‘Foster?’
‘We’re in luck,’ his gruff voice replied. ‘There’s a generator in the back… hopefully we’ll find some fuel somewhere on these shelves –’
His voice cut off suddenly.
He’s seen something.
Sal felt her blood run cold.
Something behind me?
Quickly she turned round to look back over her shoulder again and saw two pale eyes. Milky boiled-fish eyes in a ghostly face, just a few feet away, rounding the end of the table and gliding rapidly towards her.
‘GET DOWN!’ shouted Foster.
Maddy reacted instinctively, stepping to one side and pulling Sal with her.
The small room was filled with the deafening boom of Foster’s shotgun. In the flickering instant of muzzle-flash she saw a freeze-frame image of one of the mutants as it rose up from a low stealthy crouch, one long thin arm reaching out towards her, only inches from where she’d been standing. Behind it were a dozen more of them, caught in the flash as they were filing in through the open door to the staffroom, rounding the table and closing in on them.
Darkness.
She heard something tumble on to the table and thrash noisily for a moment. Then the skittering of a host of panicked feet, the heavy clatter of a mug as it dropped and bounced, squeals of terror and snarls of frustration.
BANG!
Another blinding moment of muzzle-flash, a glimpse of a creature sprawled across the table, still twitching, a dark almost black jagged hole in its chest and a slick of liquid pooling beneath it. By the door a tangled nest of pale limbs and skeletal torsos pressing through the narrow doorframe. All of them trying to escape through the doorway at once.
And then dark again.
She heard the slap of bare feet fading as the creatures fled down the platform, mewling, crying with both anger and fear as they retreated.
Then silence except for the rasping sound of her and Maddy’s breath, the distant repetitive drip of moisture from somewhere above and the sound of an enamel mug rolling back and forth across the floor.
‘Oh my God,’ exhaled Maddy.
‘That was close,’ said Foster. The torch was on the floor at his feet. He’d dropped it in the panic. He bent down and picked it up, panning it quickly across them.
‘You – you two all right?’ he puffed.
‘Yes,’ said Sal, her voice robbed of everything but a whisper.
Maddy’s eyes met hers. ‘They were right behind us! I mean,’ she gasped for air, ‘I mean they were right behind us!’
‘We best get a move on,’ said Foster quickly. ‘They may well come back.’
CHAPTER 58
2001, New York subway
They found what they were looking for in a locked storage cupboard towards the back of the storeroom: three large metal drums of diesel fuel that sloshed encouragingly as Maddy struggled to ease them out on to the floor.
‘They’re way too heavy. I can barely move them, let alone carry one all the way back to our archway,’ she said.
Foster pulled a face. ‘You’re right.’ He considered the problem, his eyes darting along the storage shelves for inspiration. ‘All right then, we can pour the fuel into a load of smaller containers that we could carry between us.’
‘But how much will we need?’
The truth was he didn’t know. He’d never used the generator, never needed to so far. Last time it had been checked out it had chugged away quite happily for a few minutes. If he knew something about diesel generators, if he was a mechanic, he could have probably made an educated guess as to how much fuel they were going to need.
Thing was… what he did know was that the time-displacement machinery was going to need to charge itself up before they could use it. Since the power had been cut for quite a few hours now the charge would be flat. It was probably going to need the generator running a dozen, maybe twenty-four hours before they’d be able to do anything. He had no idea at all how much fuel they needed for that. Probably quite a lot.
The girls were looking at him, hoping he had an answer.
Come on… think. How much will we need?
That depended on what the plan of action was. As it stood, they needed to transmit a message through time to Bob to arrange a new return window. Where and when they opened the window were factors that would decide just how much of a charge the displacement machinery needed.
And even if they did manage to get Liam and Bob back they’d need enough energy to send them back to the correct time and place to try to fix history.
There were too many variables for Foster to work out precisely how much fuel they needed.
‘Foster? How much do we need?’ asked Maddy again.
‘As much as we can carry,’ he replied. And if that wasn’t enough, they would have to come back down here and get some more. A prospect he wasn’t too happy about, and the girls most certainly wouldn’t be.
He looked around. There were half a dozen jerry cans further along the bottom shelf. If they emptied those out and filled them up with diesel, then between them they’d be carrying twelve gallons of fuel.
Enough?
It would have to be.
‘See those jerry cans?’ he said, pointing towards them. ‘We’re going to fill them all up. That’ll give us twelve gallons.’
‘That going to be enough?’
Maybe. I hope so.
‘Foster?’
‘Sure,’ he replied. ‘That’ll do us fine.’
Maddy nodded, satisfied for the moment with his answer.
‘The next thing we’re going to have to figure out, though,’ he added, ‘is how we’re going to carry those jerry cans back home. Filled, they’re going to be very heavy. We’ll have to take them between us, one at a time. That’s six journeys.’
Sal turned to them both. ‘Hang on, I’ve got an idea.’
They emerged up the stairs from the subway station. Between them they lifted the pram laden with sloshing cans of fuel up off the last few steps and on to the rubble-strewn pavement. The pram’s large old-fashioned spoked wheels coped far better with the rubble and debris than some shopping trolley with tiny little castor wheels would have.
It was getting dark. Foster had intended for them to be back at base safe and sound before too much of the pallid grey daylight had gone from the sky. But things had taken them longer than expected.
Never mind. They were above ground now, and even though dusk was settling across the lifeless city, the three of them felt happier out in the open than they had down below. They eased the pram through the cluttered street, feeling those eyes upon their backs… watching and waiting.
‘We’ll be back home soon,’ said Foster quietly.
Sal nodded. It wasn’t too far now. Just down East 14th Street, a right on to 4th Avenue all the way down to Delancey Street, then left over the bridge and home.
Maddy grinned anxiously.
‘Just takin’ the little ol’ baby out for a stroll down the avenue,’ she muttered with a shaky sing-song tone. ‘Uh-huh… Just minding our business and heading home. Oh yes indeedy.’ Her eyes darted from one dark window to another.
‘How about we do those things quietly?’ said Foster.
Maddy giggled, then shut up.
Nerves.
The wheels rattled noisily over a scattering of rubble.
‘I re
ckon we’re being watched anyway, Foster,’ she replied quietly. ‘Might as well make ’em think we’re not scared.’
Foster nodded. Maybe she’s got a point.
‘Well, a good day’s work, I think,’ he announced loudly. ‘I got a feeling that the worst of this is over.’
Sal looked up at him. ‘Do you think so?’
‘Sure. We’ll get this lot back. I’ll crank up the generator, get things charging up. We’ll have a nice hot cup of coffee whilst we wait. How does that sound?’
‘Wonderful,’ she replied.
‘How long will it take until we can try bringing them back?’ asked Maddy.
Foster made a show of shrugging casually. His eyes, though, were on the lengthening evening shadows on either side of the street. ‘I’d say about twenty-four hours until we can actually try opening up a portal.’
‘Twenty-four hours!’ Maddy’s voice bounced off the nearest walls and rippled off down the deserted ruins of East 14th Street.
‘But –’ he smiled – ‘the good news is that we should be able to transmit a message through to the support unit and Liam much sooner.’
‘Bob,’ said Sal. ‘That’s what we agreed to call him.’
‘Yes, I’m sorry… Bob.’
‘So, how does that transmitting-messages-through-time thing work exactly?’
‘I’m no physicist, Madelaine, so don’t start throwing questions at me. But the explanation I was given is that it’s all to do with tachyon particles. They’re particles of matter that can travel faster than light and thus are able to travel through time. If we aim them at roughly where we expect Liam and Bob to be, then Bob’s on-board hardware will detect them and decode the message.’
‘But they can’t send a message back to us?’
Foster shook his head. ‘No. The particles can only travel back through time, not forward.’ He snapped his torch on, throwing a cone of light down the darkening street. ‘We know they’re somewhere around Washington, so we’ll aim the tachyon array in that general direction.’
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