‘You will need to acquire a bone saw or blade with a serrated edge to remove my head,’ Bob continued. ‘Also, you may need to acquire a power drill with –’
‘Jay-zus Christ!’ Liam blurted suddenly. ‘Enough! I need some air – think I’m going to puke!’
CHAPTER 65
1957, woods outside Baltimore
Liam stood outside breathing deeply, sucking in the cold air until the sensation of nausea began to ease. He took a few steps through the undergrowth away from Bob’s shelter, trying to clear his mind of what needed to be done.
Past the slender sapling trunks and low fir tree branches he could see the flickering light of the campfire in the middle of the clearing. Around it huddled most of Bob’s little army, nearly a hundred after that last raid. He wondered how betrayed and angry all those men were going to be when he had to announce that Bob was leaving with him; that they had other more important matters to attend to.
Men don’t give up their gods or leaders lightly.
He imagined the scene was going to be nasty. Their eyes would be upon him, suspicious and accusing, wondering what poison he must have dripped into their leader’s ear. But there was no time to delay if Bob’s decoding of that message was right. Washington wasn’t so far away from here. Just over an hour of driving. But there’d undoubtedly be roadblocks and guarded perimeters to figure their way through, once they reached the city.
Why’d they have to pick a place so close to the White House?
He wondered how on earth they came to the conclusion that that was such a good idea. But then it occurred to him that Foster, Maddy and Sal could have no idea where they might be. So they were making a simple logical assumption – that they’d remained in the vicinity.
That’s one hell of a big assumption.
A lot could have happened in six months; they could have ended up on the other side of the country in that time. Or even the other side of the world.
He shook his head. It was crazy and stupid that he and Bob couldn’t communicate back. Not for the first time he cursed this insane time-travel technology. Just when you thought you’d managed to get your head round it, it just seemed to get even more complicated.
So, they had a time and a place now. At least that was something. Heading for the middle of enemy-occupied Washington DC sounded like suicidal foolishness… but it wasn’t as if they had a choice.
‘Oh well,’ he muttered to himself. He was sure Bob would enjoy himself cutting a swathe through the bad guys. It’s what he did best.
The sooner they got a move on the better, left these woods behind… and Bob’s loyal band of worshippers.
Liam decided they’d be best setting off at first light. With a nationwide curfew in place, they’d look far more suspicious if they were stopped at a checkpoint travelling around at night than they would during the day.
Meantime, Liam decided, he’d better figure out a way for Bob to extract himself politely from his devoted followers. He had visions of those men lynching him for luring their messiah away from them.
CHAPTER 66
2001, New York
Day 5? (since the power went)
So now we’re waiting. Waiting for the time machine to store up enough of a charge for us to try opening a window.
There’s no way we’ll know if they got the message we sent. No way of knowing until we open the window in Washington. If they got it, then they should step through and appear right in front of us. If they didn’t… then we’ll be wasting our energy for nothing.
Everything’s off in here. All the lights, everything.
Maddy suggested we should put the ‘field bubble’ back on so that we’d flip back in forty-eight hours’ time. If those creatures outside haven’t managed to find us by then… we’d be safe from them. Because whatever progress they made in finding out where we’re hiding would be lost when we ‘reset’. But Foster said it would drain too much power from charging up the displacement machine. He said that’s the only thing that matters right now – getting that thing charged up.
Jahulla… I’d rather have the bubble on, and have to wait a little longer. Every little noise outside makes me jump out of my skin.
‘How much longer, do you reckon?’ asked Maddy.
Foster studied the row of winking lights on the machinery’s charge display. ‘I’d guess, four or five more hours.’
‘That long?’
‘Four or five more hours… we open the window and they should pop into existence right here.’ He smiled encouragingly at her. ‘Simple as that.’
Although it’s not as simple as that… is it?
Foster really wasn’t certain the thudding generator in the back room was going to have stored up enough of a charge for them to produce a window big enough for even Liam. So many factors to consider: the distance from here, the size of the window, the mass of the persons being sent – all variables that affected how much energy would be needed. While they’d been tapped into New York’s electricity grid, these weren’t considerations that normally had to be taken into account, but now running on what meagre energy they’d managed to generate… every variable was an important factor to weigh up. And getting Liam and Bob home wasn’t the only window they needed power for – there was also sending them back to where they needed to go to fix this problem once and for all. Foster had to be sure to conserve enough of a charge to be able to do that too.
He cursed under his breath. Too many unknowns.
‘So, they may have got the message, Foster,’ said Maddy, ‘but what if they can’t make it to the location we specified? What if it’s just not possible?’ She tapped the monitor in front of her showing a street map of Washington DC. ‘The city could be completely different. There might not even be a street there in their time. It could’ve been built over by the Germans or razed to the ground… or… or submerged beneath some large rubbish tip, or –’
‘We have to take that chance.’ Foster sat tiredly back in the old office chair with squeaky castor wheels and a faded threadbare cover. ‘Liam’s a smart lad. Between them they’ll find a way, Madelaine. They’ll find a way to make it there in time.’
‘If they’re still alive, that is,’ she added grimly.
Foster could’ve replied irritably that her doom and gloom wasn’t exactly helping things. But she was right. There were many reasons why this was just a desperate shot in the dark. If it failed…
Then this is it.
The world left forever like this – just ashes and rubble. And living within this ruined landscape, those pitiful mutated creatures feeding on the flesh of each other, scavenging like rats. In a few days’ time they’d be out of water and canned food, then have to be out there scavenging for food just like them.
And how long before those creatures found them? Found their little archway? They may mewl and babble like babies, but there was intelligence in those pale eyes. He could well imagine them slowly but surely scouring the city for them, gradually zeroing in on them. The thought of it set the grey hairs on his forearms on end.
If those things managed to find them here… they’d work out a way to get inside. After all, their humble little base was little more than a crumbling bricks-and-mortar archway. Hardly impregnable.
They’ll find a way in… and it will all be over very quickly.
He couldn’t let the girls know what he was thinking, of course. He couldn’t let them know that he suspected their plan was almost certainly doomed to failure. The chance of the message getting through was painfully slim, let alone Liam and Bob being able to make the appointed window in time. And listening to the faltering muffled chug of the generator… it sounded like it was on its last legs. Chances w
ere there wasn’t going to be enough of a charge on the displacement machine to get them out of this fix, anyway.
‘You OK, Foster?’ asked Maddy quietly. Quiet enough for Sal not to hear. ‘You don’t look so good.’
He smiled. ‘I’m fine… just a little tired.’
‘This is going to work, isn’t it?’ she asked.
He needed to put a brave face on things for now.
‘Sure, of course it is. It’s going to be fine.’
Fine?
If they failed to bring Liam and Bob home and they were stuck here alone in this ruined place forever, then he silently vowed he’d do the deed that was necessary. There were a dozen rounds of ammo in his shotgun. The first nine he’d use to defend them if those creatures found their base and decided to break in.
The last three? Well, there’d be one for each of them.
CHAPTER 67
1957, command ship above Washington DC
‘Paul? What is this?’
Kramer looked up from the workbench. He smiled when he saw his friend standing in the doorway to the lab.
‘Karl, good to see you.’
Karl stepped into the lab, his eyes darting across the assembled machinery, trying to make sense of the draping cables, the gutted machine parts strung together, the wire cage.
What is this?
‘You’ve not been available for our daily status meetings for over two weeks, Paul. Your assistant said you were unwell… not taking any meetings at all.’
Kramer looked back down at his hand-drawn schematic. ‘I have been busy, Karl. Very busy.’
‘I can see that,’ he replied, shaking his head, a bemused look on his lean soldier’s face. ‘What manner of thing are you working on now?’
Kramer answered the question with a dismissive shrug.
Karl stepped a little closer, ducking beneath a loop of power cables. ‘I have a backlog of papers for you to sign, Paul. Important matters that need discussing. We have a growing problem in the New Jersey and Maryland state areas… more of those raids on prison camps.’
Karl squeezed past a rack of acetylene cylinders to join Kramer at his workbench.
‘The American newspapers have printed stories of this superhero and his army. This isn’t good, Paul. It’s giving the American people something to rally round.’
‘So, close the printing presses,’ replied Kramer, distracted, returning to his task, scribbling amendments across his work.
‘I have already done that on my own authority. But they have underground printing presses. Not just in Washington… but in New York, in Boston, other cities.’
Kramer continued scribbling in silence.
‘Paul? This is a problem that could very quickly become serious. We don’t have the manpower over here in America to deal with a nationwide insurgency. We would need at least three, four times as many men to cope if this resistance movement catches on.’
Kramer’s eyes remained on the workbench. ‘Do what you feel is necessary, Karl… I am busy here. I do not have the time to deal with this.’
Karl studied him silently. He has not been listening to me.
Frustrated, he reached across and placed a hand on Kramer’s arm. ‘Paul. You must –’
Kramer looked up at him sharply, grabbing his hand tightly and pushing it forcefully off him. ‘You forget, Karl… that I am your Führer!’
‘I’m sorry… I meant only to –’
‘Be quiet!’
Karl flinched. He met Kramer’s eyes and realized there was a hardness there, an iron-stiff resolve, none of the warmth of friendship he’d grown accustomed to over the years.
Paul is not himself.
Kramer began to say something, then irritably shook his head. His gaze dropped impatiently back down to the papers splayed out across his workbench.
Karl remained standing stiffly to attention, waiting for Kramer to formally dismiss him from the room. As he waited, he looked around. This lab was Kramer’s thinking space aboard the command ship. It was normally as tidy as his leader’s mind, a place of order and calm, a place where Kramer’s mind could comfortably work on refinements to their army’s weapons technology. But right now it had the look of a troubled mind. Along the workbench, a meal started, forgotten and unfinished; a teacup half full, cold and growing a skin of congealed cream. Karl’s eyes followed a loop of cables snaking across the floor towards a wire cage.
A cage.
His mind flashed an image of the museum basement… fifteen years ago. A desperate gun battle, then hastening into a cage similar to this. Static electricity, sparks, then a terrible sensation of falling.
‘My God… you are making a time machine?’
Kramer muttered something in response.
Karl’s eyes followed another thick string of cables away from the cage, across the lab towards what appeared to be a small beer keg suspended in the middle of a protective metal frame by an array of thick springs. The unfamiliar frame confused him for a moment. But the beer keg, he suddenly recognized.
‘Paul! You have one of the atom bombs in here!’
Kramer sighed, and looked up. ‘Indeed.’
‘Is it… is it deactivated?’
‘No, Karl, it is primed and ready for use.’
Karl immediately felt his scalp begin to prickle. ‘You understand… you understand how dangerous it is to have this aboard the command ship, when it is primed for –’
Kramer’s smile was cold and lifeless. But worse than that was the vacant look in his eyes. Karl felt his leader – his friend – was looking through him, beyond him, not at him. The muscle tics in his face he’d first noticed some weeks ago, the tremor of Kramer’s jaw were more pronounced. His eyes looked deep, hooded and dark from lack of sleep.
‘Paul, what is wrong? Will you tell me what is going on here?’
Kramer’s eyes seemed to focus back on him. ‘My old friend,’ he said, some warmth finally returning to his lean face, ‘I believe it is over for us.’
‘Over? What is over?’
‘Someone has come for me, Karl.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘You saw that body. You remember it? On the day we took the White House?’
Karl cast his mind back. Yes, he remembered a curiously fused body. Remembered it had troubled him for a few nights, but then their high-powered weapons, their incendiary bombs, habitually produced all manner of twisted and unpleasant corpses. He’d had no time to reflect further on it; the business of governing a conquered nation had made sure of that.
‘Do you see, old friend… that’s them.’
‘Them?’
‘They know where we are… They know when we are. And they’re going to come.’
‘They? Who?’
Kramer shook his head, that tremor in his jaw uncomfortably exaggerated now. Karl realized Paul must have experienced some kind of a nervous breakdown.
‘Our actions in history, Karl, have angered them. And now they’re coming to exact payment. To take their pound of flesh.’
Karl frowned. ‘You are talking of other time travellers?’
Kramer’s eyes, red-rimmed and glistening, widened. ‘I’ve seen it in my nightmares. Perhaps I glimpsed his face in the gap in space-time, Karl. When we travelled back to 1941. I must have seen his face then… in that swirling chaos between the present and past.’
‘Face? Whose face?’
‘The devil, Karl… Satan. Death. Chaos.’
He regarded his leader in uncomfortable silence.
He has gone quite mad.
‘Paul, there is no such thing as the devil.’
‘Oh, but there is. You and I stepped through a gap in space-time, a gap in the laws of physics�
�� you and I may have stepped briefly, so very briefly, and placed our feet in Hell itself.’
This has to stop. Paul is not himself.
‘And Hell has our scent now, Karl. It has our scent. It is seeking us and it will punish us.’
Karl’s eyes stole away from Kramer’s intense face, and darted again to the atom bomb nestled in its metal support frame. He could kill us both with this device. Kill everyone aboard the command ship.
Kramer turned and followed his gaze. ‘Yes, Karl. This device… you want to know what it is?’
‘You have an atom bomb linked to a time machine?’
Kramer shook his head. ‘It’s not a time machine. I’d need things I can’t get my hands on in 1957 to make one of those. No… it’s a doomsday bomb. An atom bomb magnified infinitely by Waldstein’s displacement field.’ He pointed at the wire cage. ‘It will ensure a blast and gamma radiation that will wipe out every living thing.’
‘My God!’ gasped Karl.
Kramer’s face creased with a playful grin. ‘It is a God-like thing, is it not?’
Karl felt his heart thumping through his charcoal-grey tunic, through the silver eagle stitched on his left breast pocket.
‘Paul, this is… this is madness.’
‘I consider it a kindness, my old friend.’
‘What?’
‘Yes… yes, a kindness. We mistakenly let some dark force come into the past behind us. Something evil… chaos itself. It is seeking us. It will come for you and I, and will come for every other soul in this world. I can see that now.’
‘Paul… listen. There are no angels, or demons, or –’
‘It will come for every soul in this world… because this is a world that should never have been. Every person living right now is living a life that should never have been.’
Karl found his hand instinctively, slowly, reaching down for the pistol on his belt. Being merely decorative it was unloaded, but perhaps Kramer would not be aware of that.
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