Tempus: The Phoenix Man

by Matt Hilton

  Rembrandt watched the chief shrug off the feeling, check again the terrace row and its barricaded doors, then move his team forward.

  For now, Rembrandt had to let the others go.

  Phase one of his mission involved the saving of another.

  He began creeping towards the police van, making progress by increments. The chief and his team had moved on into the grounds of the museum, but Rembrandt could hear the scuttle of footsteps and understood that people were moving much closer by. He resisted the urge to look, and continued to where Jamal Dhand sat unaware of his impending beheading.

  He moved closer to the van, just as a flurry of activity broke out. Orders were shouted, hands banging on the side of the van. Rembrandt poked his head over the top of the rubble and saw five men standing around the cab of the police van, three of them aiming guns at Jamal, who’d no option but drop his sidearm and step from the van, hands held high. One of the others carried a machete, the other a sack.

  One of the men derided Jamal’s heritage. Sad to imagine that racism still existed in a world where all men had been reduced to scurrying rodents crawling through the destruction, all equally pathetic.

  At gunpoint, Jamal was forced to his knees. One of the men ripped his visor and respirator loose, taking them as the spoils of victory. Jamal peered back at his would-be slayers with no fear in his heart. His faith told him he’d be reborn again, so what had he to fear? Rembrandt thought that funny enough for a grim smile as he stepped out from the rubble and aimed his carbine at the machete-wielder. With a short burst of gunfire he tore the man to ribbons. Jamal dropped to his belly, rolled, came up with a knife from a sheath in his boot, and he rammed it tight in the guts of the man with the sack. The other three scavengers – seeing Rembrandt as the main threat – swung their guns on him, but he was ready and he plugged each like tins on a fence post. Four men were silent, and only the gutted man gave voice as he fell to his knees, trying in vain to hold in the intestines pooling out the ragged gash in his abdomen. Jamal grabbed the man by the cloths wound around his face, twisted back the head and swiped the blade across his trachea. The man gurgled, fell silent, and Jamal allowed him to flop face down in the dirt.

  Jamal turned to Rembrandt warily, still clutching his knife. ‘I don’t know who you are, mate, but thanks for saving my life.’

  ‘Put on your mask, or you’ll die yet,’ Rembrandt said.

  His voice was distorted through his breathing apparatus, but Jamal was familiar with it enough to stare.

  ‘Chief! Is that you?’ He studied the outlandish looking BDUs and spanking new carbine. ‘What’s with the get up? And how the fuck did you mange to change so quickly? Christ a minute ago you were…’

  ‘Put on your mask, goddamnit. I’ll explain everything later. Now grab your guns, the others are shit deep in trouble.’

  As Rembrandt had previously noted, Jamal was a soldier first and cop second: he didn’t dally when given an order. He leaned quickly inside the van and collected his sidearm, and a carbine from the rack behind the driver’s seat. He rammed in a clip. Turned back to Rembrandt.

  ‘You’ve many questions, but now isn’t the time for answers. Do you trust me, Jamal?’

  ‘With my life,’ Jamal grinned, with a nod to the quintet of corpses sprawled on the ground.

  ‘Then do as I say and get your fucking mask on. I didn’t save you from beheading to have you choke to death on poisonous dust.’

  Jamal retrieved his visor and respirator and slotted them back on. He wrapped a scarf pulled from his belt around his throat, sealing any gaps in his uniform and helmet.

  ‘C’mon, Jamal,’ Rembrandt said, ‘and ignore anything that doesn’t make sense.’

  Chapter 12

  Catacombs beneath the British Museum, London – Old City

  July 12th 2002

  Crystal Kwolek was thrown back by the force of the explosion, hot fragmented metal tearing a furrow along the outer side of her left shoulder. The sting of her wound made her grab at her arm, but she was more concerned with Chief Rembrandt’s welfare. Had he heard her warning cry in time?

  Juggling her carbine into position, she craned around the doorframe of the room in which she hid, and the air was full of smoke and fury. Gunfire ricocheted through the catacombs, striking the concrete floor and whizzing in wild abandon. Silhouettes bobbed in the smoke cloud, one of them limping badly. Walker, she realised, had avoided the grenade. But where were Bowlam, and - more importantly - the chief?

  Somewhere behind her, Benny Oxford was yelling something, but his words rose and fell like the warble of an air raid siren. Kwolek glanced back, saw the big man cradling his gun, but he wasn’t firing.

  ‘Ox! You have to do something,’ she yelled.

  ‘We can’t help him! We can’t help him!’ Ox yelled back at her. His visor was dripping with moisture inside, and all she could see of his features were a series of shadowy holes, eyes and mouth wide.

  Brent Walker staggered backwards and Kwolek grabbed at him. He almost fell inside the room with her.

  ‘Are you, OK, Brent?’ she shouted close to his ear.

  He shook his head, but she couldn’t tell if he was attempting to shake off the effects of the explosion on his hearing, or answering in the negative. Finally, he dropped to one knee, clutching at his injured leg. ‘We’re fucked, Kwolek. We’re being overrun.’

  Bowlam laid down counter fire.

  Kwolek gave Walker a last brief check over, then went to the door and braced her gun for action. Bowlam was retreating, firing wildly. From behind the barricade of the reinforced door the scavengers shot back at him. He was struck more than once, but thankfully in the chest where his ballistics vest saved his life. Kwolek stepped from cover, lifting her carbine high, and loosed a deadly hail at the scavengers coming down the stairs. She cut away knees and shins, and more than one attacker fell screaming. Bowlam slammed the wall opposite her, taking the brunt of the collision on his left shoulder. Kwolek realised he was fighting blind: she hoped the condition was only momentary, a result of the flash of the grenade.

  ‘Where’s the chief?’ she yelled at him.

  Backing up, still firing, Bowlam shook his head.

  Kwolek experienced a punch to her gut. Not that a stray round had found her, but realisation. Chief Rembrandt was gone. She didn’t want to believe, but a glance at the floor told her that her worst nightmare was true: blood and chunks of steaming flesh had sprayed the hall, the charred crater in the floor marking detonation point. One of Rembrandt’s torn boots lay up against the wall, and she could see that it still held bone and tissue.

  ‘No!’ she screamed.

  But she was no shrinking violent, and not one prone to collapse at the first sign of death. The impact of shock stoked the embers of her rage and she began prowling forward, ignoring the rounds zinging around her as she fired and fired and fired.

  ‘Kwolek! Get the hell back here!’ Walker grabbed at her harness and yanked her inside the doorway. ‘You trying to get yourself killed, you stupid bitch?’

  ‘They killed the chief,’ she argued, trying once more to plunge from the room.

  ‘Well killing yourself isn’t going to help him, and it sure as fuck isn’t going to help us. Now get a grip and start thinking straight.’

  Kwolek leaned against the wall. ‘Oh, God…they killed Rembrandt.’

  ‘And they’ll kill us next if we don’t find a way out of this bottleneck.’ Walker propped himself against the doorframe, checking on Bowlam’s position. ‘Harry! Harry? Can you see a way out of here?’

  Bowlam wiped at his visor, making quick swipes with the sleeve of his jumpsuit. ‘I can’t see shit. I’ve blood all over me.’

  Chief Rembrandt’s blood, Kwolek understood.

  ‘Ox! There a way out back there?’ Walker demanded.

  ‘No,’ Ox bellowed in reply. ‘Just rooms like where we found the painting.’

  ‘Fuck the painting,’ Walker yelled. ‘You still got the ram? Kn
ock a hole through one of those back walls will you?’

  ‘I haven’t got the ram…’

  A fresh burst of gunfire stormed through the hallway. Wood chips were shredded from the doorframe, forcing Walker into the room. He bumped Kwolek as she came to support him. On the opposite side, Bowlam had cleared his vision somewhat and shot back from a kneeling position. Smoke hung heavy in the air.

  ‘They’re coming!’ Bowlam yelled.

  A scuffle and clatter followed, and the bumping of the door as the scavengers shoved it ahead of them. Amassed at the bottom of the stairs they shot with wild abandon, shouted challenges and threats. Ox hollered a response and his carbine began a wild chatter. “Bastards…you killed the chief,’ he shouted wildly, and continued to fire.

  ‘Conserve your ammo, Ox,’ Kwolek shouted. ‘Semi-auto fire only.’

  ‘Good to hear you’re thinking straighter,’ Walker said. He gave her an affectionate pat on the shoulder.

  ‘That was nuts of me, a minute ago. You’re right; I’d have got myself killed if I’d continued like that. Thanks for saving me, Brent.’

  ‘I haven’t saved anyone yet.’ Walker joined in with Bowlam and Ox, laying down stalling fire.

  The battle raged for another minute, and there was no time for talking, until the inevitable struck. ‘I’m out,’ said Walker and he set down his carbine, and took from his holster his sidearm. ‘Fifteen rounds between death, and us, Crystal,’ he added.

  Kwolek checked her own gun. ‘A few rounds left, then I’m down to my Glock. They’re still coming, Brent. More of them than ever.’

  Bowlam threw his carbine aside, pulled out his handgun, racking the slide. He cast a glance and a shrug towards his pal, Walker.

  ‘We’re fucked,’ Walker said.

  Something rolled by the doorway.

  ‘Grenade!’ Bowlam yowled, and he hurled himself back inside his room.

  The grenade had a short timer. It detonated within two heartbeats, and the entire catacombs shook with its roar.

  ‘Ox? You still with us?’ Kwolek yelled.

  There was no reply.

  ‘No, no, no,’ Kwolek began, but Walker gripped her sleeve.

  ‘Keep it together, Crys,’ he told her. Then louder: ‘Oxford, sing out. You OK back there?’

  ‘I’m OK,’ Oxford replied, and there was a rattle of pebbles as if he was shedding himself of a landslide. ‘Got inside a room in time, thank God.’

  Kwolek echoed Oxford’s words in her mind: Thank God. But they’d little to be thankful of. Not with the chief dead and the rest of them seconds away from a similar fate.

  ‘You have to get back to Ox,’ Walker said. ‘Get his spare ammunition, or we’re not gonna last much longer.’

  ‘You go,’ she said.

  ‘I’m injured, Crys, you’re smaller and fitter. I’ll cover you. Get to Ox, then sling a couple of his clips our way.’

  ‘Ox can sling them himself. Now’s not the time for male chauvinism, Brent. I’m a cop, the same as the rest of you, and I don’t expect favouritism.’

  ‘Male chauvinism? Shit! I was just trying to do the honorable thing, trying to save you a few minutes longer.’

  ‘I know that, you dick.’ Kwolek laid an affectionate hand on his shoulder. ‘But if we’re going to go, we all go together.’

  A wild roar filled the catacombs.

  ‘They’re coming over the barricade,’ Ox yelled.

  ‘Here we go then,’ Walker whispered. ‘This is it. The end.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Kwolek said, considering saving a final round for herself, because she’d no intention of winding up a sex slave for one of the scavengers the way Laura had to Warren Frome.

  Another explosion rocked the hallway.

  This one hadn’t come from their location but towards the bottom of the stairs. Kwolek wondered if one of the grenade throwers had pulled the pin, but dropped the grenade before getting an opportunity to throw it. But immediately following the first, another blast shook the catacombs. Men and women’s screams filled the hallway. It was followed a few seconds later by the roar of machinegun fire. The scavengers’ shouts had gone from anticipated victory to panic and disarray.

  ‘What the hells’ happening?’ Kwolek demanded.

  ‘Has to be reinforcements. The Castle has come through?’

  There were more shouts, curtailing as whoever the machine gunners were cut down the few remaining fighters that the grenades had failed to kill. Across the way, Bowlam bobbed out from hiding and shot a woman fleeing the gunfire behind her. She fell and skidded into view of Kwolek and Walker, her chest pockmarked with the rounds from Bowlam’s Glock.

  ‘You inside, hold your fire! Friendlies coming in.’

  Kwolek heard the shout but didn’t believe it. Not that she thought their rescuers were trying to trick them, but that she’d recognised the voice.

  How could it be possible?

  She’d earlier heard the taunting shout that told them that reinforcements wouldn’t be coming. The scavengers had claimed that Jamal Dhand was dead, prompting Rembrandt into a rage, and her to imagine what his decapitated head might look like rolling down the steps. But unless they’d physically shown her Jamal’s dead body, she’d refused to accept their lies.

  That was Jamal Dhand’s voice.

  Undeniably he was still alive.

  She risked catching a bullet by poking her head around the doorframe. Through the swirling smoke and dust she could see two figures moving quickly past the collapsed barricade. One of them paused to shoot a scavenger who tried to grab at a passing leg. Walker leaned past her, and Bowlam also edged out a little further.

  ‘Jamal?’ Bowlam asked, his voice an octave higher than usual. ‘Is that really you?’

  ‘You didn’t think I’d let you kill all of these bastards yourself, do you?’ Jamal Dhand responded.

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ Walker whistled through his teeth. ‘How did you…I mean…what the fuck?’

  Dhand had paused, and he was staring down at an object half-hidden in the dust and rubble on the floor. His head had been blown off when Chief Rembrandt was caught in the detonation of a fragmentation grenade, and was torn and bloodied, but his face was still identifiable.

  The second figure, dressed in some fancy black costume and sci-fi equipment rig, placed a hand on Dhand’s shoulder. ‘Remember what I told you back there, soldier. Ignore anything that doesn’t make sense, right?’

  Dhand continued to stare at Rembrandt’s dead face. ‘I think that rates as making no sense.’

  ‘Don’t worry, things are about to get much crazier,’ said the man.

  Kwolek felt the walls closing in on her, blackness edging her vision, and a sense of vertigo flooding up from her ankles all the way to her ears.

  ‘Chief?’ she croaked.

  James Rembrandt lifted his head, and through the clear Plexiglass visor he offered her a strained smile. Kwolek staggered from the room, with Walker hanging on to her. Bowlam also shuffled out of his room, his gun down by his side as he attempted to make sense of what he was seeing.

  Ox was most vocal as he clumped down the hall towards them.

  ‘Chief! Chief! I saw you blown up.’

  ‘We all did,’ Bowlam added.

  Rembrandt didn’t offer an explanation. ‘There are more scavengers coming, I’ll explain everything later. Right now we have to move.’

  ‘Right,’ said Bowlam. ‘Let’s get the fuck out before we’re penned in here gain.’ He began moving for the stairs.

  ‘Wait,’ Rembrandt called. He took a look at a fancy wristwatch the likes of which Kwolek had never seen in her life. ‘We’re not going out the way we came in.’

  Ox shook his head. ‘There is no other way out, Chief.’

  ‘Trust me,’ Rembrandt said.

  Walker whispered loud enough for all to hear. ‘Trust a ghost, yeah, right?’

  Rembrandt grabbed him by his forearm. He flexed his fingers, digging into muscle. ‘Do I feel like a ghost to you,
Walker? Now suck it up and listen. We’re leaving but you have to do exactly as I say.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘And you must do it now.’

  Rembrandt brought them all into a circle in the centre of the hall, directly over the spot marked by the fragmentation grenade explosion that they all believed had taken his life. ‘Grab a hold of each other, and whatever you do, don’t let go.’

  They did as commanded, while sharing astonished or bemused glances.

  ‘Do. Not. Let. Go.’ Rembrandt enunciated each word clearly.

  From above came the clatter of running feet, more scavengers coming to bolster the fighters.

  Walker rolled his eyes, with a nod towards the stairwell. ‘What are we gonna do, Chief, barn dance our way out of here?’

  ‘No,’ Rembrandt said, ‘but we are going to jump. Ready?’

  ‘I’m not -’

  They blinked out of existence.

  Chapter 13

  April 2nd 2018

  Tempus Facility, England

  They blinked into existence.

  ‘- sure what I’m ready for,’ Brent Walker finished.

  His next word was an expletive, but then he wasn’t the only person to swear and demand what was going on. Rembrandt, who’d been gripping the hands of Crystal Kwolek and Jamal Dhand, loosened them, and stepped away from the group. They were turning on their heels, checking out the pure white capsule in which they had suddenly found themselves. Lambent light flickered along the walls and ceiling, and along the walkway-cum-platform on which they stood.

  ‘Take it easy. All will be explained, but it’s going to take some getting used to. All you need to understand at this moment is that you’re all safe. The scavengers can’t get at us here.’

  Rembrandt’s words rung around the chamber, but they were muffled by the continued exclamations and curses of the others. He couldn’t blame them for their bewilderment, and didn’t try to enlighten them. It was pointless, because anything he said would be met by disbelief and incredulity. Best, he thought, that they saw the proof and came to understand it in their own way and time.