Alex Scarrow - Time Riders

‘You will instruct the personnel here to leave these premises immediately or you willbe terminated!’ Bob’s deep voice thundered.

The man swallowed nervously, then, eyes still anxiously locked on the hand gun, he shoutedout in Cantonese over his shoulder at the others. Through the gaps in the hanging laundry Liamcould see fear on their faces as they spotted the gun levelled squarely at their boss. Quicklythey dropped their bars of soap and their stirring ladles, and filed out, ducking under thelaundry lines and heading for the open door.

They disappeared outside and a moment later the wooden door swung shut, leaving Liam and Bobin the faint, familiar gloom of their arch.

Bob once more consulted his internal clock. ‘Seven minutes and twenty-nine secondsuntil our specified window.’

‘And how long have we got until your brain explodes?’

Eyes fluttered. ‘Sixty-four minutes and three seconds.’

Liam pushed his way past a damp bed sheet and found a stool on which to sit down. ‘Soif this fails, if there’s no window, you and I will have less than an hour lefttogether?’

‘Affirmative.’

‘I guess that’s enough time to say our goodbyes.’

Bob cocked his head, curious. ‘You will be sad?’

‘Sad? That you’re going to be left a vegetable? Of course I flippin’ will!I mean… after all this time you’ve just about worked out how to appear less like acomplete idiot, and more like a human. It’d be a waste, to be sure.’ He sighed andshook his head. ‘Hang on. What am I saying? I guess maybe it’s the humans that arethe idiots.’

Bob shrugged, not entirely understanding what Liam was muttering on about.

Liam laughed at that. Such a human gesture.

‘Six minutes.’

2001, New York

The generator was still chugging when they got back. Foster slapped the vibratingand warm cylinder head, relieved. He’d been half expecting to find it still and silenton their return, having either become clogged up and choked to death on dodgy diesel, or thefuel tank having run dry.

He emerged from the back room to check the time machine’s charge display. They werenearly there. Two LEDs were still red. He guessed the machine had to be powered-up enough totry opening a window in about twenty minutes.

He booted up the computer system, waiting for it to finish its start-up routine properlybefore opening the geo-positioning interface software and tapping in the co-ordinates thatwere scribbled in faded ink on the yellowed page before him. He whispered a prayer that Liamhad written down the numbers correctly.

The screen zeroed in on a portion of a map of New York.

‘Oh… good lad!’ he gasped over the noisy chug coming through the open doorof the back room. ‘There’s a smart lad!’

Maddy looked up, slumped in one of the armchairs around the communal table. Her voice soundedtired and small and defeated. ‘What… what is it, Foster?’

‘Right here!’ said Foster. ‘They’re right here! Right inside thearchway! The co-ordinates… they’re saving us as much power asthey can. Opening the window right here — that might just conserve enough power for usto bring them both back!’

She smiled weakly.

He got up out of his seat to join Maddy at the table. On his way over he pulled the door tothe back room shut, reducing the deafening rattling chug of the generator, clearly strugglingon the last dregs of fuel, to a muted background rumble.

He sat down heavily in an armchair beside her. ‘It’s almost over,Madelaine.’

‘It’s over for Sal,’ she replied.

‘Not necessarily.’

She looked up at him. ‘How do you mean?’

He rubbed his face tiredly. ‘Time travel is very muddy stuff… It’s anunpredictable science. If Liam and Bob can go back and fix things second time round, then,it’s possible… just possible , that the corrective waveof time realigning, shifting everything back to normality, might also return Sal tous.’

She sat up. ‘Do you think so?’

‘It’s possible… just that.’

She grasped his hand. ‘Poor Sal.’ Tears cleaned fresh tracks down hergrime-covered cheeks. ‘I can’t bear to think what… what — ’

‘Then don’t think about it. If she comes back tous… IF… she comes back to us, those things that happened to her, well… theywon’t have happened. She’ll have absolutely no memory of what’s been goingon here these last few days, she’ll — ’

‘Foster.’

He stopped talking. Maddy’s head was cocked, her eyes narrowed, squinting as shelistened to something. ‘Did you hear that?’

‘Hear what?’

‘I thought I heard…’

Then he heard it himself — something moving in the backstreetoutside. The skittering of a loose chunk of rubble kicked carelessly across the ash anddust-covered cobblestones. The light brush of something againstthe corrugated-iron shutter door. Then tapping.

Their eyes met and both knew what it meant.

‘They’ve found us, haven’t they?’ whispered Maddy.

‘I think so.’

The tapping on the shutter door suddenly became a frustrated bang. Maddy jerked in her seatand whimpered.

‘They’re trying to find a way in,’ said Foster.

‘Can’t we open the displacement window right now?’

He looked anxiously across the floor at the row of LEDs on the time machine, eleven of themblinking together… awaiting a twelfth to turn green.

‘Not yet… we open it too soon and we could blow this one chance.’

Scratching. He could hear a scratching… scraping noise.

Maddy held her breath, listening to the soft noise slowly growing louder, more intense.‘What’re they doing?’

‘I don’t know.’

But he did.

They’re probing the walls for a weak area. Perhaps they’vealready found some loose bricks and they’re now scraping out the crumbling mortarbetween them.

He looked again at the LEDs, willing that last one to flicker over to green.

They both heard the clatter of a brick falling to the ground outside. ‘Oh Godno!’ Maddy hissed. ‘They’re coming through the walls!’

Foster reached for the shotgun on the table. Maddy snapped on a torch and studied the wallsfor a sign of their handiwork. Her breath rattled and fluttered noisily in the quietstillness.

‘I… I don’t want to go like… like S-Sal.’

‘Don’t worry,’ he said, panning a second torch along the base of the archwalls, ‘I won’t let them take us. I promise you that.’

His beam passed over a small mound of dry grey powder on the floor.

‘There!’

She moved her beam over to the pale dust, then worked it up the wall until she glimpsed ahairline crack of daylight and a solitary brick shuffling in the wall, dislodging morecrumbling mortar on to the ground.

‘Oh my God… you see that?’

‘Yes,’ Foster replied. Getting to his feet and stepping across the floor towardsthe front wall, he aimed his gun at the loose brick. The brick fidgeted again and thenshuffled inward, falling on to the floor with a heavy thud. Foster glimpsed one of theboiled-fish eyes through the hole left behind… and fired.

They heard a high-pitched scream and anguished cries of rage outside. The scratchingintensified, now coming from several other places along the wall.

‘Oh God, Foster!.. It’s everywhere! It’s — ’

There was a bang and the sound of something heavy clattering on to the floor in the backroom.

‘Jesus!’ snapped Foster. ‘They’re in!’ He ran across the floorand quickly rammed home a locking bolt on the sliding door.

‘ What? ’

‘They were distracting us at the front, meanwhile working on the brick walls at theback.’ His eyes locked on hers. ‘They’re in the back room!’