Clockwise

by T W M Ashford

  Pierre sighed. It was a wonder he had any air left in him at all. It was all well and good being told that every action he took (or didn’t take) would spawn an infinite number of new universes, where every possible outcome would play out in its own little story. The problem with being a time-traveller of sorts was that he already knew how his story ended up - with the inspector stumbling through the hotel door and into the well-armed arms of the Yakuza. No matter what was happening in the warehouse right that very moment, that accident was going to happen. It had already happened, just from a different perspective in time. The only variable in this universe was what would happen next.

  He pushed open the door.

  There was a dull, grey corridor on the other side. Gone were the flashing lights of the video games, though closing the door behind them hardly muted their noise at all - it floated through the metal air vents that ran along the ceiling. There was a notice board on one wall and a wooden door labelled OFFICE on the right. Other than that the corridor was plain; it went on straight ahead for about ten metres before making a ninety degree turn to the right.

  Pierre gave Wesker an anxious glance. Wesker gave him a gentle shove forward in return.

  Step by step they advanced. By the time they reached the corner, they could hear the groaning.

  They peered around, their heads poking out with a pace that even a garden snail would have considered sluggish. First they saw the big double doors to the warehouse - they looked just the same as they had from the other side and Pierre’s heart began to hammer double-time. Through their small windows he could see violent shadows flickering on and off, as if the warehouse lights were on the blink.

  Then they saw the man slumped up against the wall beside it.

  He was in a black suit, and Pierre instantly recognised him as one of the Yakuza from both the warehouse and the secret market rendezvous. His jacket was torn and scuffed, and one of its sleeves had been torn straight out of its stitching. He was holding one hand against his side as if he’d been shot, but aside from a dripping cut on his forehead Pierre couldn’t see any blood on the man. He was the source of the groaning, however, and in enough pain that his eyes were shut tight.

  When he did finally open them, they grew as wide as star systems.

  ‘Kisama!’ he shouted, which Pierre guessed wasn’t a term of endearment. The recognition was mutual, it seemed. The man struggled to his feet, one hand on the wall and the other still clutching his side, and Pierre and Wesker both jerked their heads backwards. They needn’t have. Far from pulling a gun on them, the gangster hurried the other way down the short corridor as fast as his wounded body would carry him, letting a fire exit door slam shut in his wake.

  ‘That wasn’t anger in his eyes,’ muttered Wesker, concerned. ‘That was fear.’

  ‘What’s going on, guys?’ came a bright and airy voice from behind them. Pierre near enough had a heart attack and Wesker spun around with his fists clenched. ‘What’s the hold up?’

  ‘Something’s wrong,’ Pierre replied, trying not to choke on the heart which had lodged itself in his throat. ‘Something’s really wrong, I mean. By the sound of whatever’s going on in there, I think we’re too late.’

  ‘Well let’s go find out, shall we?’ said Viola, marching past them. Wesker followed. Pierre hesitated until they’d both gone through the doors, took a deep breath, and then forced himself to do the same.

  His heart sank which meant, given it had already made an unexpected trip up into his throat, that it ended up roughly where it should have been in the first place. It was safe to say that the warehouse didn’t look how he’d left it. There was a distinct lack of Ms. Rundleford, for one thing. On the other hand, there were about the same number of Japanese gangsters. They just weren’t all in the same shape, or place, or even order.

  Blood had sprayed all across the floor and walls, and over a great deal of stock, merchandise and retired arcade machines too. Some of it had even made it as far up as the concrete ceiling, though most of that was making quite an effort to get back down. The air was thick with that familiar, coppery smell. Strangely, the least grizzly part of the whole scene was in the far corner, beside a door that had been shredded with bullets. The man the trio had seen being dragged away from the secret market meeting was tied to a wooden chair, sporting a dashing bullet hole in the centre of his forehead. He was the only dead person in the warehouse who could at least boast of still being in one piece.

  Viola was standing in the centre of the room, staring around at the severed limbs and lumps of bone in stunned silence. Eventually she spluttered out, ‘What in God’s name happened here?’

  Wesker had his back pinned to the wall beside the double doors, keeping his shoes as far from the conjoining pools of blood as possible. ‘You swear you didn’t see anything like this when you looked through the door, Pierre?’

  ‘I swear,’ said Pierre, covering his mouth with the back of his hand. He coughed and fought to keep the contents of his admittedly rather empty stomach from coming up. ‘Everyone looked very much alive when I saw them before. Except him, maybe,’ he added, gesturing to the man with a bullet in his skull. ‘Jesus Christ. We can’t have turned up more than thirty or forty seconds after I pushed her through the door, either.’

  ‘Well something happened in that time, didn’t it?’ Viola crouched down. ‘What’s that?’

  ‘What’s what?’ groaned Pierre. He was trying not to look at a dismembered leg that had flopped itself over a hanging light strip.

  ‘That,’ she repeated, pointing towards something in the middle of all the offal. It was square and, for the most part, still white.

  Pierre stepped across where the blood was thinnest, gagging a little as it rippled underfoot, and pulled a clipboard out of the mess.

  ‘This was hers,’ he said, making a quick retreat towards drier land. ‘Ms. Rundleford’s, I mean. Ouch!’

  He dropped the clipboard and sucked on his fingers.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ asked Wesker, sidling along the wall towards him. ‘Oh, I hope that thing didn’t cut you. This is not the sort of place where you want an open wound.’

  ‘No, it didn’t even hurt. Not really. But it… it vibrated.’ Pierre looked up as Viola walked over to join them. ‘You know… the same way the doors do after someone’s gone through them.’

  For the first time since entering the warehouse, Pierre made himself really look at the carnage. He took in all the flesh and the brains and the gristle, and he mentally ticked off every body part he could see in a suit sleeve or trouser leg. There were grooves in the concrete floor, carved by something in a furious rage. He looked around for a pair of spectacles with thick lenses, or even a strip of a blouse, and found nothing.

  He bent down to pick up the clipboard, and this time he let its vibrations tremble through him, pulsing like sonar.

  ‘I think… I think I know what happened,’ he said, cautiously. ‘But you’re not going to like it.’

  ‘Oh, no,’ said Wesker, his eyes growing wide. He shook his head. ‘Oh, no…’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ cried Viola. ‘Will somebody tell me what the hell is going on?’

  ‘Please don’t tell me you think it’s an untangled octowürm,’ groaned Wesker, burying his head in his hands.

  ‘Do you know anything else that can tear apart half a dozen Yakuza gangsters before vanishing into thin air?’ replied Pierre, shrugging. ‘Besides, the clipboard’s still vibrating. Something tore a hole between worlds right next to it.’

  Viola punched him in the shoulder. ‘Explain!’ she shouted.

  ‘The untangled octowürm is a rare and vicious creature,’ said Pierre, rubbing his shoulder. ‘Crazy rare, actually. Unique in its ability to jump between universes like an eight-armed electron on a sugar high. Any time, any place - it can get there like that. Very smart. Completely untangled at a molecular level too, which means they can take the shape of whatever they want. Anything living, that is. Not like a
toaster or something.’

  ‘You can’t blame them for shapeshifting,’ said Wesker, shuddering. ‘Considering what they’re rumoured to look like when they’re… normal. There hasn’t been a reported sighting for centuries though, has there? I’m sure I heard they’d all been wiped out.’

  ‘With a species like a time-travelling disguise kit, who knows? That’s what made hunting them down so tricky in the first place. How do you win a fight against something that can provide its own backup five minutes before you even fire the first shot? Or has suddenly taken on the appearance of your grandmother, for that matter?’

  ‘But why would this worm thing come here?’ asked Viola.

  ‘That is a billion dollar question, Viola,’ replied Pierre. ‘But here’s an even better one: why did it take the inspector with it when it left?’

  They all looked around at the mess of the warehouse.

  ‘Aside from the clipboard, there’s nothing left of her,’ he continued. ‘And not in an eviscerated way like everyone else. In an abducted sort of way.’

  ‘Well, we’re not going after it,’ laughed Wesker, crossing his arms. ‘No goddamn way. So don’t you go getting any funny ideas.’

  ‘Oh, come on,’ replied Viola. ‘Aren’t you at all interested in seeing what one of those things actually looks like? And we can’t give up now, just as things are getting interesting! What if… what if this thing eats poor Ms. Rundleford? How’s that going to reflect on our Pierre, eh?’

  ‘I know where it’s taken her,’ said Pierre.

  ‘Badly!’ replied Wesker, ignoring him. ‘But are you seriously suggesting we go chasing after a homicidal monster? We said we weren’t going to put ourselves at risk. This is the definition of the word!’

  ‘Oh, grow a pair!’ shouted Viola. ‘I’m not going to give up and let Pierre get banished to that… that Gap Between Worlds…’

  ‘Space…’

  ‘…or whatever it’s called! We’re not abandoning our friend just because things are getting a bit hairy. Pierre didn’t turn his back when I needed help, did he? You’re better than that Wesker. And besides, you’ve no way home without Pierre and his keys. So we’ll find out where they went, somehow…’

  ‘I know where it’s taken her,’ repeated Pierre, a little bit louder.

  They snapped their mouths shut and turned to look at him.

  ‘What?’ asked Wesker. ‘How?’

  ‘The vibrations,’ he replied, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. ‘Same way I can tell where someone’s headed if I’m quick enough in getting to the door they’ve used. And the vibrations the octowürm left behind in this clipboard are strong. Really strong. I’m pretty sure I could open a door to the same place it went. Or pretty close to where it’ll end up, at least.’

  ‘See!’ said Viola. ‘Pierre’s a genius. We’ll get the jump on them and snatch the inspector back before this worm thing even knows what’s happening. It’s a worm - it can’t be that smart. And if something goes wrong, we’ll shoot it. Simple as that. Pierre, you ready?’

  ‘Yeah,’ he said, reading over Ms. Rundleford’s notes. ‘Just give me a second, will you? I’ll meet you over at those doors.’

  ‘You sure you want to keep going?’ whispered Wesker, as Viola made her way back over to the entrance of the warehouse. ‘A few gangsters is one thing, but this… There’s nothing stopping us from heading back to the hotel, you know. We’ll explain everything to the Council. They’ll see reason, I’m sure of it.’

  ‘I wish I had your optimism, Wesker,’ sighed Pierre, ‘but the Council seems to want my head on their chopping block as it is. When they find out about this they’re going to have to blame somebody. And they can hardly put the octowürm on trial, can they?’

  ‘If you say so, man. I’ll be over with Viola when you’re ready.’

  As Wesker left, Pierre looked down at Ms. Rundleford’s notes again. There was something very curious about them.

  161. 271. 314. 628.

  What was she doing, taking down room numbers? And why those ones in particular? Where were her notes on Le Petit Monde’s impeccably clean staff uniforms, allergy-friendly menus and noticeable lack of cockroaches in its kitchen?

  He checked the frequency of the vibrations one last time, placed the clipboard down on one of the warehouse’s few remaining dry arcade cabinets, and dragged his feet over to where his friends stood waiting.

  Something didn’t feel right. Something didn’t feel right at all.

  Chapter Nine

  Two things hit Pierre as soon as he opened the door. The first was an intense dry heat, not unlike the rowdy blast of air that rushes out of an oven when its door is opened. It was the sort of heat one would expect when kneeling on the cracked earth of an alien planet, staring up at a huge and vengeful red sun.

  The second thing that hit Pierre was that dry, cracked earth. It hit him with a thump.

  He coughed up a lungful of sandy dirt and pushed himself back onto his feet, blinking his eyes clean of grit and wiping his hands on the legs of his trousers. Two dull thumps had followed his own, and once his eyes had cleared he could make out the shapes of Wesker and Viola as they rolled along the ground about ten metres apart from one another.

  About five or six metres further along than Viola was a fancy horse-drawn stagecoach. It had come to a rather confused stop along the side of the road.

  ‘Er… you fellows alright down there?’ came a cautious voice from towards its front. The head from which the voice emanated was cast in shadow beneath a wide-brimmed hat. ‘Only I wasn’t aware I had quite so many passengers…’

  Pierre took stock of his surroundings. It was hard to tell if they’d ended up in the right place or not. There was a sun high up in the sky, and it was definitely one that belonged to the Earth. All else under that blue and cloudless sky was a pale, sandy brown. Big bits of brown; small bits of brown. The few clumps of anaemic green and lumps of grey speckled across the landscape only succeeded in making the brown stand out all the more.

  It looked as if they were still on track. As was the coach from which they’d fallen, just about.

  ‘Sorry about that, sir,’ Pierre replied, raising his hand to shield his eyes from the sun. ‘Didn’t mean to cause you any alarm. I think we’re all okay, aren’t we? Guys?’

  Viola groaned. Wesker gave a non-committal thumbs up.

  ‘Say, could you tell us where the nearest town is?’ Pierre asked, starting to walk towards the coach. The figure behind the reins twitched. Pierre stopped his approach.

  ‘It’s about five miles further that way,’ replied the coachman, pointing further down the dirt road. His other hand was hovering near something suspiciously gun-shaped buckled to his belt. ‘Take a left at the next turnin’, else you’ll be wanderin’ the plains for hours.’

  ‘Don’t suppose there’s much chance of a lift, is there?’ sighed Pierre.

  ‘No can do, buddy. Can’t be too careful with strangers these days, and these hills ain’t no place to be hangin’ around in. Besides, we ain’t headed that way. You and your friends ought to think twice about goin’ that direction yourselves.’

  He tipped his hat to Viola.

  ‘Y’all have yourselves a good day now,’ he said as he got his horses moving again. The wheels of his coach kicked up stones and dust as they spun back onto the road, and soon enough it was nothing but a dot growing ever smaller on the horizon.

  A fly landed on Wesker’s moustache. He swatted it away.

  ‘Looks like we’re walking then,’ he grumbled.

  ‘Does anyone have any water on them?’

  Pierre’s request went unanswered. Wesker and Viola weren’t all too pleased with him. If it wasn’t bad enough that he’d brought them to a dry, hot desert landscape completely devoid of civilisation or water fountains, the only door through which they could have potentially gone home had rolled its rickety way out of sight. They were stuck with the choice of either walking until they reached the nea
rest town (or collapsed, whichever came first), or sitting in the dirt and waiting to become carrion.

  They’d settled on the first option, but not enthusiastically. That had been almost two hours ago.

  ‘Come on, guys. It’s hardly my fault. I was working off a damn clipboard, for crying out loud.’ He hurried past Wesker to where Viola was striding ahead. ‘Hey, Viola. I don’t suppose you… What the hell is that?’

  ‘This?’ She held up something pink, round and fluffy. ‘It’s mine. I got it back at the arcade. Didn’t you notice?’

  It was a pig with eyes like mug coasters and a little plastic snout. Other than that and a curly rubber tail it was predominantly a ball of fluff.

  ‘No, I can’t say that I did.’

  ‘Well, it’s mine. Just like my drink would be, if I had one. Which I don’t. You could have told us we were going to be stuck in the middle of nowhere, you know.’

  ‘Oh, don’t be like that. How was I supposed to know where we’d end up? Besides, I’m sure somebody will be along any minute now.’

  ‘You said that ages ago. Haven’t seen so much as a bloody horse since.’

  ‘Plenty of birds though,’ came a gruff voice from behind them. There were dust marks all up the side of Wesker’s trousers. ‘Look. That there’s a vulture. Always a good sign, a vulture.’

  Pierre tried looking up into the sweltering sky and felt another trickle of sweat run into his eye. He tried blinking it away. It stung.

  ‘Hey, what’s that?’ he said, pointing further down the road. They were approaching the crest of a craggy hill. ‘The thing sticking up between the big, brown rock and the bigger, browner rock.’

  ‘It’s a sign, isn’t it?’ Viola squinted with her hand over her eyes. ‘No, wait. It’s a church spire!’

  Wesker’s eyes grew wide. He looked around at the desert as if he’d only just noticed it was there.

  ‘Oh, you bastards! I thought I recognised that buffalo skull we passed earlier!’

  ‘What on Earth are you on about?’ asked Viola. ‘Wait. Are you saying we’ve been going round in a circle or something?’