Alex Scarrow - Time Riders

He couldn’t let the girls know what he was thinking, of course. He couldn’t letthem know that he suspected their plan was almost certainly doomed to failure. The chance ofthe message getting through was painfully slim, let alone Liam and Bob being able to make theappointed window in time. And listening to the faltering muffled chug of the generator…it sounded like it was on its last legs. Chances were there wasn’t going to be enough ofa charge on the displacement machine to get them out of this fix, anyway.

‘You OK, Foster?’ asked Maddy quietly. Quiet enough for Sal notto hear. ‘You don’t look so good.’

He smiled. ‘I’m fine… just a little tired.’

‘This is going to work, isn’t it?’ sheasked.

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 placeforever, then he silently vowed he’d do the deed that was necessary. There were a dozenrounds of ammo in his shotgun. The first nine he’d use to defend them if those creaturesfound their base and decided to break in.

The last three? Well, there’d be one for each of them.

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 doorwayto the lab.

‘Karl, good to see you.’

Karl stepped into the lab, his eyes darting across the assembled machinery, trying to makesense 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. Verybusy.’

‘I can see that,’ he replied, shaking his head, a bemused look on his leansoldier’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 backlogof papers for you to sign, Paul. Important matters that need discussing. We have a growingproblem in the New Jersey and Maryland state areas… more of those raids on prisoncamps.’

Karl squeezed past a rack of acetylene cylinders to join Kramer at hisworkbench.

‘The American newspapers have printed stories of this superhero and his army. Thisisn’t good, Paul. It’s giving the American people something to rallyround.’

‘So, close the printing presses,’ replied Kramer, distracted, returning to histask, scribbling amendments across his work.

‘I have already done that on my own authority. But they have underground printingpresses. 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 havethe manpower over here in America to deal with a nationwide insurgency. We would need at leastthree, 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 Fuhrer !’

‘I’m sorry… I meant only to — ’

‘Be quiet!’

Karl flinched. He met Kramer’s eyes and realized there was a hardness there, aniron-stiff resolve, none of the warmth of friendship he’d grown accustomed to over theyears.

Paul is not himself .

Kramer began to say something, then irritably shook his head. His gazedropped impatiently back down to the papers splayed out across his workbench.

Karl remained standing stiffly to attention, waiting for Kramer to formally dismiss him fromthe room. As he waited, he looked around. This lab was Kramer’s thinking space aboardthe command ship. It was normally as tidy as his leader’s mind, a place of order andcalm, a place where Kramer’s mind could comfortably work on refinements to theirarmy’s weapons technology. But right now it had the look of a troubled mind. Along theworkbench, a meal started, forgotten and unfinished; a teacup half full, cold and growing askin of congealed cream. Karl’s eyes followed a loop of cables snaking across the floortowards a wire cage.

A cage.

His mind flashed an image of the museum basement… fifteen years ago. A desperate gunbattle, then hastening into a cage similar to this. Static electricity, sparks, then aterrible 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 labtowards what appeared to be a small beer keg suspended in the middle of a protective metalframe by an array of thick springs. The unfamiliar frame confused him for a moment. But thebeer 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 understandhow 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 hiseyes. Karl felt his leader — his friend — was looking through him, beyond him, not at him. The muscle tics in his face he’d firstnoticed some weeks ago, the tremor of Kramer’s jaw were more pronounced. His eyes lookeddeep, 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, somewarmth 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 nationhad 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 realizedPaul must have experienced some kind of a nervous breakdown.

‘Our actions in history, Karl, have angered them. And nowthey’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’veseen it in my nightmares. Perhaps I glimpsed his face in the gap in space-time, Karl. When wetravelled back to 1941. I must have seen his face then… in that swirling chaos betweenthe present and past.’

‘Face? Whose face?’