Alex Scarrow: Time Riders

He grabbed another and twisted its head with a flick of his wrist. The creature flopped tothe ground like a rag doll.

The shotgun fired again, sending another one of them sprawling against a wall.

Liam realized he was doing nothing and then remembered he had a gun. He fumbled at theholster on his hip, pulled out the pistol and tried his best to aim at the confusing tangle ofpale limbs picked out by a dancing beam of torchlight.

He fired a shot into the confusing scrum, producing an exploding puff of crimson onBob’s left shoulder. The support unit glanced back at him and growled.

‘Oh Jay-zus, I’m sorry!’

Bob turned back to the task at hand and tore the limb off another one of them and proceededto swing the flopping thing like a club at the others. Their high-pitched screams made themsound like startled children and they began to scramble back to the door through whichthey’d entered.

As Bob pursued them into the back room, the sound of crashing, a heavy perspex tube rollingacross the floor and further shrill screams of terror echoed out through the doorway. Liamjoined Foster and Maddy.

‘What’s happening?’

Foster looked at him. ‘Bad things, Liam. Bad things.’

He reached down to Maddy, wide eyed and in shock on the floor.

‘You OK, Maddy? You all right?’

Her eyes drifted from the contorted pale bodies either side of the doorwayand on to Liam’s face. For a moment she seemed confused, looking at him as if he was astranger.

‘It’s me! Liam!’

Recognition flickered into her squinting eyes. Recognition… followed by graduallyrealized relief. Her mouth opened and closed. Opened and closed. ‘Oh God,’ shefinally managed to whisper. ‘Oh God… I thought I was going to… thought thosethings were… were — ’

Foster reached out and held her. ‘Shhh. It’s OK now. They made it back. Both ofthem. We’re safe now.’

The sound of struggling in the back room had ceased. Bob appeared in the doorway, his facespattered with dark droplets of blood, his SS uniform ripped and soaked with even moreblood.

‘Information: the field office is now clear,’ he said matter-of-factly.

It was then Liam registered that they were missing someone.

‘Where’s Sal?’

1957, command ship over Washington DC

Paul Kramer sat alone in his lab. Truly alone.

Karl’s dead. All those other men, Saul, Stefan, Rudy,Dieter…

Others whose faces he could remember, if not their names.

Now I’m the last.

He looked up from his lap across the messy floor, thick with snaking cables, towards the atombomb in its frame, nestling inside the small wire cage.

There you are, my little friend.

In his hand, he held a simple toggle switch wired carelessly into the complicated device. Aloosely soldered red cable descended from it, linking the switch to his jury-rigged version ofa Waldstein field-displacement cage. His thumb rested on the tip of the toggle switch.

Kramer felt so incredibly tired. A solid week now without a moment’s sleep. Not sincehe’d had Karl killed. If he’d had the courage, he would have activated his deviceright then. Joined Karl in the hereafter moments later.

Karl’s adjutant, and several other senior invasion-force generals, had petitioned tosee him, over and over. Problems mounting up, issues that needed to be resolved, paperworkthat needed signing.

He could face none of those things right now.

And there’d be no sleep either. Because the moment his eyes closedthe nightmares came. His assassin was no longer some time-policeman from the future, but somedark, formless entity from Hell… hungrily seeking his soul, ready to drag him downthrough a rip in space-time to burn for eternity for daring to step, albeit briefly, into itsdimension.

‘Burn… for eternity,’ he muttered quietly.

His thumb toyed with the toggle switch.

Paul, it’s time.

‘You’re back,’ he said flatly. The voice had been so quiet these last fewdays. Paul thought it had abandoned him.

I never left you.

‘I thought I was going to die alone.’

No. You and I, we’ll face destiny together.

Kramer gently applied pressure to the switch.

Just a little more, Paul… anounce more pressure on this tiny little switch… and all life onthis world will be gone.

He smiled weakly. There was poetry in that — to create a new world, a new history, andthen be the one to destroy it. Like a child builds a sandcastle, then in a moment of vainglorytramples all over it.

That’s right. We achieved so much, didn’t we?

The toggle switch clicked over… and the world turned white.

2001, New York

Foster finished telling Liam their story as they stood in the backstreet justoutside the open shutter door and gazed upon the ruined city.

‘My God,’ Liam whispered. ‘What do you think happened to thisworld?’

‘A nuclear war of some sort is the only thing I can think of,’ said Foster.‘I was hoping you might have a better idea, though.’

‘I don’t know,’ said Liam. ‘Kramer’s army had finished the jobof conquering America. I heard of no other wars going on. He still had Russia and China totake… but that wasn’t happening yet back where we were.’

Foster shrugged. ‘Then something must have happened not long after you left. Perhapsthis Kramer started a nuclear war. Who knows?’ Foster offered him an encouraging smile.‘We get things fixed in the past and we’ll never need to know what happened afteryou left because…’

‘Because it never will have happened,’ Liam finished.

The old man patted his arm proudly. ‘You’re getting the hang of it,lad.’

They stepped back inside and cranked down the shutter door. Inside, Bob had been busy fixingup the holes in the brickwork as best he could and hefting the bodies of the creaturesoutside.

They sat down at the table, joining Maddy, who quietly nursed a mug ofcoffee in both hands, still clearly very shaken by the attack.

‘Foster, you said it was possible we might get Sal back? If things rightthemselves?’

The old man shrugged. ‘It’s just a possibility, Liam. One of manypossibilities.’

Liam reached for a mug and sipped some of the tepid brew. ‘But right now, out theresomewhere, you’re absolutely certain she’s dead?’

Foster sighed. ‘We can only hope so. Whatever she went through…’ He shookhis head tiredly, his eyes briefly meeting Maddy’s. ‘Well, I’d like to thinkit’s over now. It’s done. She can’t suffer any more.’

‘But if we fixed things and she came back… Would she remember?’

Foster shook his head. ‘I don’t want to raise your hopes. Even if we get thetimeline corrected, she may just stay gone for good. There are no guarantees.’

‘She was so… so terrified,’ whispered Maddy. ‘I saw them carry heraway… I… I saw the look in her eyes. I — ’

‘There was nothing you could have done,’ Foster sighed. ‘Absolutelynothing. If I’d not stopped you going after her, then you’d have shared the samefate as her.’

‘But she was just a kid!’ cried Maddy angrily. ‘Just a kid! I told you weshould have gone after her!’

‘If we had, we’d be dead too,’ he replied softly. ‘I’m sorry,Madelaine, I truly am, but this is what it is. We just have to get on with it.’ Heturned back to Liam. ‘Our focus has to be on one thing now. One thing only: correctingtime. That literally is all that matters.’

A moment of silent reflection, then both Liam and Maddy nodded. He was right.

‘Now, Liam, you said you’ve identified a possible point in timefor us to send you back to?’