Alex Scarrow - The Eternal War

The noise of the shutter cranking up echoed across to them. Sal stepped outside into the evening. ‘Looks the same!’ she called in. ‘Manhattan’s still there!’

Maddy sniffed and wiped her nose. ‘Well, that’s something, then.’

‘Jahulla!’ Sal came rushing back in.

‘What?’

She ran over to the computer desk. ‘Look! See?’ She spread the five-dollar note out on the desk. Lincoln’s face was gone and, just as Maddy had expected, in his place was another elder statesman with mutton-chop whiskers and a joyless frown.

Becks joined them, looking down at the note. ‘Lincoln’s presence has been completely removed from this timeline.’

Maddy nodded. ‘No Lincoln memorial in Washington, then … or — ’

‘STOP!’ Bob’s voice suddenly boomed. They all turned just in time to see the heels of Bob’s boots disappear out of sight through the open shutter door and out into the alley. Becks responded immediately and sprinted across the archway to join him.

Liam looked at the armchair where Lincoln had been slumped unconscious just moments ago. ‘He’s only gone and done a bleedin’ runner!’

Lincoln’s long legs carried him swiftly down the cobbled backstreet, the soles of his boots slapping the ground like an audience clapping applause at his death-defying escape into the darkness.

Behind him, two dozen yards and no more, he could hear the heavier footfall of that giant of a man moving with a quite unbelievable agility. Lincoln was a fast runner; as a boy in Coles County, Illinois, he had won every race with his friends — legs like a stallion, his father used to say.

The busy end of the street opened up in front of him. He could see mesmerizing lights of all kinds and all colours: lights on horseless carriages, lights down the sides of buildings, distant winking lights far up in the sky.

He passed a large, barrel-sized bucket of rotting garbage and yanked at it. In his wake he heard it fall, spilling a small avalanche of stinking refuse across the cobblestones. He chanced a glance over his shoulder just in time to see the giant man slip in the rotten mush and lose his footing.

‘Ha haaaa!’ he yelled triumphantly as his pounding feet now found firm tarmac, and instinctively he turned left on to the busier street, resolving not to allow the bewildering sights of the future tempt him to hesitate and lose the hard-earned lead on his pursuer.

But even with his sprinter’s legs carrying him fast and away from those mysterious travellers in time, who quite clearly were intent on taking him back to his hopeless, back-breaking and dead-end life in New Orleans, his mind continued to spin like a yarn wheel at the incredible sights and smells and sounds all around him.

This is the future of America , he told himself … the future, the future, the future … his feet slapping pavement to the rhythm of his mantra. He felt as excited as a dog with two tails.

This is the future! And, by Jove … I think I like the look of it!

2001, New York

‘Oh, come on … you’ve gotta be kidding!’ Maddy slammed her hand on the desk, exasperated. ‘You lost him? Both of you? You actually lost him?’

Becks and Bob stood side by side, both still gasping from the aborted pursuit.

‘Abraham Lincoln is very fast,’ said Becks, a hint of shame in her voice.

‘Yes, and you — and numb-nuts here — are both meant to be superhumans! You know? Super-strong? Super-fast? That kinda thing?’

‘His sudden departure was not something that could be predicted,’ muttered Bob, like a scolded schoolboy. ‘He appeared to be unconscious.’

‘Perhaps he was faking it?’ said Sal. ‘Listening to what we were saying?’

Liam nodded. ‘And didn’t fancy going back home.’

‘Well … duh,’ sighed Maddy, removing her glasses and pinching the bridge of her nose. ‘You really think?’

Liam missed the sarcasm in her voice. ‘Yup, that’s what I think.’

‘Oh crud.’ She slumped down in one of the office chairs. ‘So how’re we going to find him now? He could be anywhere in New York.’

The five of them stood in a silent tableau for a while. In the background several TV stations quietly babbled the evening news to themselves.

‘Why are we so completely rubbish?’ Maddy muttered rhetorically. ‘Super-secret time-travel-prevention agency? I’ll tell you what we are … a freakin’ joke. That’s us. Three clueless kids and a couple of trained monkeys.’ She leaned back in her chair, closed her eyes and started massaging away an emerging migraine with the tips of her fingers.

‘Well, to look at it this way,’ said Liam presently, ‘he’s a tall mouthy fella, so he is, wearing clothes from the last century. Someone’s going to notice him soon enough.’

‘And your point is?’

Liam shrugged. ‘He might cause a scene and end up on one of ’em news stations?’

‘Or get himself arrested,’ added Sal. ‘Weirdo like that.’

Maddy shook her head irritably. ‘This is New York, Sal. It’s all weirdos.’

‘But he’s got a mouth on him, so he has,’ said Liam. ‘I fancy that’ll land him in trouble with a policeman soon enough.’

An attitude. He has that all right.

Maddy suddenly opened her eyes. ‘Oh God! And lead the police right here! Right to our door!’

‘Information: we can establish an unencrypted and open link to the NYPD incident-report database,’ said Bob.

‘We could monitor this and respond to any relevant coms traffic,’ added Becks quickly. The pair of them were like two chastised children, both desperately seeking to redeem themselves.

Maddy sat forward, the chair creaking with the sudden lurch of movement. ‘OK, yeah, that’s … that’s something we can do.’

She turned towards the computer monitors and saw computer-Bob was already in the process of establishing a handshake link to the New York Police Department’s computer system.

‘Good boy, computer-Bob.’ She turned back to the others. ‘And maybe we’ll find him anyway, right? I mean he’s got no money so he can’t get a cab or a bus or a train. And he isn’t going to get a room anywhere looking the way he does. Thing is … where might he head?’

‘Over the bridge,’ said Sal. ‘Towards Manhattan … towards the bright lights.’

Liam nodded. ‘It’s what I would’ve done on me first night. You just want to see all that up close.’

‘Yeah …’ Maddy pursed her lips thoughtfully. ‘He really did seem to like the big buildings. OK, then. Right, here’s what we do. We’ll split up and search for him. Bob and Sal, you two head over the bridge and go north up Bowery, Fourth and Broadway towards Times Square. Liam and Becks, you head down towards Wall Street. Those are the two glowiest, shiniest parts of town, right? Hopefully, he’ll make like a big dumb moth and head to one of those two places. If we’re lucky.’

She fumbled among the detritus and rubbish on the desk and found what she was looking for. She tossed Liam and Sal a mobile phone each. ‘I’ll monitor the police call-ins here. If we get a likely candidate, I’ll dial it in.’

Liam frowned. ‘ Dial it in? ’

‘Call you! On the phone … the thing in your hand! I’ll call you on that!’

‘Ahh.’ He nodded. ‘Right you are.’

‘So, is that clear, everyone?’

Four nodding heads.

‘And, Sal, Liam … Bob. Get changed back into your normal clothes. Quick as you can. You look like a convention of Quakers or something.’

2001, New York

Lincoln stood in awe at the confusion of blinking, fizzing, flickering multicoloured lights, the neon signs in Chinese, pedestrian crossings blinking WALK and DON’T WALK, the cars and cabs looking to his eyes like impossible devices that shouldn’t be able to move on their own without the aid of horses in front — and yet they did.