Alex Scarrow - Time Riders

‘I’m not crying,’ she replied, shrugging off her hand and squatting quicklydown to the ground. She reached for the floor, her fingers splayed out in the dust, probing afaint groove in the concrete floor.

‘Sal?’

‘Give me your torch,’ she said to Maddy.

‘What is it?’

‘Just give me the torch!’ she snapped.

Maddy passed it to her and watched curiously as the young girl leaned closer to the ground,blowing the dry plaster dust away from the floor. She shone the torch at the small grooveetched into the concrete.

‘What is it?’

‘I think it’s letters… letters scratched into the floor.’ Peeringclosely, she tilted the torch’s beam so that it played obliquely across the faint, worngrooves, throwing them into much sharper relief.

Foster squatted down beside her. ‘What is it, Sal?’

‘An I and an H , it looks like.And I think it’s an… an arrow.’

Maddy dropped down beside them and studied the letters. Then she gasped. ‘That I is an L … see? The foot of theletter’s faint, but it’s there. Can you see it?’

‘My God, yes,’ said Foster.

Sal traced the second letter with her finger. ‘And that H ,’ she said, ‘that could be…?’

Maddy grinned. ‘Yes, a B …I’ll be damned. It IS a B . L and B. Liam and Bob.’

‘That’s it!’ said Foster. He pulled himself tiredly to his feet, wincingwith the effort, but grinning like a schoolboy. ‘He’s been here! That means-’

‘He has left a message for us. Oh God, Liam!’ yelpedMaddy with joy. ‘You’re a star!’

Sal jumped to her feet, her face lit up like a jack-o-lantern. ‘They’re cominghome!’ she squealed with delight.

Foster nodded. ‘OK, then,’ he said, hushing them with his hand, ‘thearrow… He’s telling us to go in and we make a left turn.’

They stepped into the basement, turning left and seeing ahead of them a wall of rusting metalbrackets and empty shelves.

‘But there’s nothing on the shelves,’ said Maddy.

‘There’ll be another message somewhere,’ said Foster. ‘Check thefloor.’

Both girls on hands and knees swept aside the light silt on the floor around the entrance tothe basement, probing the ground with their fingers for any more distinct grooves. Fostermeanwhile ran his torch slowly up the breeze-block wall to the left of the double doors. Longago painted a joyless mint green, it was now flaking off in patches where a creeping damp hadseeped down from the museum above. His beam picked out a litany of scratches and gouges,endless decades of careless knocks by careless porters wheeling the museum’s heavyexhibits in and out of storage.

Come on, Liam. Talk to us.

The paint covered over some older acts of clumsiness, and was gouged away by newer ones. Butnone of these marks, Foster guessed, had happened in recent decades. Certainly not since theworld ended sometime in the past.

His finger ran over a faint curved groove, an indistinct and incompletecurve that might once have been part of a letter or a number. He traced the curve, dislodginga fine shower of dust, exposing more of it.

C.

Lightly blowing on the wall, more dust curled away in a light cloud, revealing a string ofwhat looked like…

Numbers.

‘I think I’ve got something!’

The girls clambered to their feet and a moment later were standing beside him, peeringclosely at the faint string of figures scratched into the concrete wall.

‘It looks like… a code of some sort.’

‘C… S… P, then a dash,’ said Sal. ‘Five, three, seven…then another dash… nine, eight, one, zero… then another dash and then five, seven,nine. What does it mean?’

Foster shook his head. ‘I don’t know.’

‘We need to know,’ insisted Maddy. She stepped back from the wall, panning hertorch around. ‘If that’s Liam again, it’s got to mean something. Theanswer’s got to be something we can see as we’re standing here, right?’

‘That would make sense,’ replied Foster.

She walked a few yards along the wall, sweeping her torch along the empty shelves. ‘Butthere’s nothing here,’ she whispered under her breath, frustrated.‘Nothing.’

Her torch beam lanced up and down the rusting vertical support struts. And then came to reston a small square tag.

‘Wait a sec.’

She stepped forward, examining it more closely. A small metal frame, attached to the bracketwith screws that were now little more than flaking nubs of rust. Contained within the frame, ayellowed strip of damp-stained card, numbers, almost too faint to read, printed on it.

She flicked the torch along to the next vertical strut. Nothing. But theone after had another tag like this. She hurried over to it and found another curled vanillastrip of card with a fading sequence of numbers printed on it.

‘It’s their filing system!’ she called out. ‘Three letters, threenumbers, four numbers then three numbers.’

‘That’s right,’ said Foster, shining his torch on the wall.

Foster smiled. He’s telling us which shelf to find.

2001, New York

It took them the better part of an hour to find it. There were quite a few tagswith numbers too faded to read, and others where the cardboard insert had long ago fallenout.

But two hundred yards down from the basement entrance, on the opposite wall, on a shelf thatrequired Maddy to climb up to reach, they found the correct tag.

And nothing else.

Maddy wiped dust and sweat from her forehead, and slumped against the metal support. Itcreaked and groaned softly, dislodging flakes of rust and motes of dust.

‘Nothing here,’ she called down to them. ‘Nothing at all.’

‘There must be something ,’ said Sal. More a plea thana comment.

‘It’s bare. Somebody made a clean sweep a long time ago.’

The three sat in defeated silence for a moment, the coarse rasping of their breathing echoingdown the empty basement floor, accompanied by the sound of dripping water somewhere faroff.

‘We’ll be losing daylight soon,’ said Foster. ‘We’ve done whatwe can.’

‘I don’t want to be outside in the dark,’ whispered Sal.

‘Then I suggest we leave.’

Maddy nodded. ‘All right.’

She pulled herself up on to her feet and carefully swung one leg over theside of the wooden-slat shelf. She reached for the torch, casting a cone of light, thick withswirling, dancing motes of dust, towards the wall. As she did, she noticed within the circleof light on the wall, one particular block of concrete more clearly outlined than theothers.

No. Surely not.

‘Wait a moment,’ she said to the others, swinging her leg back on to the shelf.On all fours she crept carefully across the creaking slats of wood, mindful to place herweight where the metal support brackets passed underneath. She reached out for the block andoptimistically gave it a nudge. It shifted with a sharp gritty scrape that echoed loudly likethe lid of a stone sarcophagus shifting aside.

‘What have you found up there?’ asked Foster. He must have heard.

‘Would you believe it? There’s a loose breeze-block… I’m just…just going to pull it — ’

She eased it slowly out of the hole in the wall. Heavy, it slipped through her hands, landingon the shelf. She heard a wooden slat crack under its weight, and the entire metal framerattled and complained loudly.

‘Be careful, Maddy!’ said Sal.

‘I’m OK.’

Oh my God, this has to be it.

She ducked down, thrusting her torch towards the foot-wide hole in the wall, peering into theswirling dusty space beyond. It was a small space, just a cavity between walls littered withfossilized rat droppings and strung with webs. But nestling in the middle of it, unmistakable,was a large leather-bound book.