Alex Scarrow: Time Riders

2001, New York

Still. Quiet… but for the rustling of a lifeless breeze across the barrenlandscape. Tall spires of rusted metal and crumbling concrete stand over the lost remnants ofa place once called Times Square.

The creak of a long-faded sign swinging from a lamp post. The squeak and bang of a windowshutter somewhere, caught and played with by the haunting wind.

A sickly yellow sun behind scudding brown irradiated clouds casts pallid beams down on toashes and dust. From the darkness inside gutted and scorched buildings, milky eyes look outhungrily for some other meagre supply of food… a rat, a dog — if any are left- perhaps another of its kind.

Not a dying world, but a dead world… just waiting for theselast pitiful skeletal survivors of mankind to realize the time has come for them to die.

But, gently at first, the breeze freshens.

That loose window shutter across the square bangs ever more heavily; small clouds of dustwhip along the ground. The wheel on a rusted and upended pram turns slowly with a click-click-click of bearings.

Then, faintly — blink and you’d miss it — the slightest shimmer. Like theripple across the hot tarmac of a motorway on a midsummer’s day, the flicker of hot airabove a bonfire.

A shimmer, flickering, undulating… changing.

The tallest dead spire overlooking Times Square now has windows, unbroken. As do the otherbuildings, one after the other. One can see clear roads and faint ghostly apparitions movingalong them. Clearer now… not ghostly but solid. Cars, buses, trams… people.

The sky has changed from an unhealthy poisoned brown to a wet-Tuesday grey and the persistentdrizzle of mean-spirited rain.

Tall crimson-coloured banners with the emblem of a snake eating its tail suddenly adorn everylamp post. Placards appear above shop entrances, featuring the face of a leader who promisesto unite the world under his rule. Soldiers in grey and black uniforms and tall leather bootspatrol soulless ordered streets full of soberly dressed civilians quietly, obediently, turningup for work.

This at least is life. Not a dead world any more.

The breeze freshens again.

The banners flutter, as if sensing something more is on its way.

Another shimmer.

Another change is coming, rippling forward through months, years, decades of time as eventsrealign, destinies change and possibilities find correct versions of themselves.

The wet grey sky slowly clears, the rain stops.

The pennants and banners vanish with a whisper, the placards disappear.

With a final flourish and twist of reality, Times Square becomes noisy, garish, busy,impatient, filled with rude people on mobile phones organizing their day ahead, jostling eachother for pavement space, queuing for breakfast bagels and Starbucks coffee.

A giant green ogre called Shrek peers out from a poster.

A homeless man pushing a shopping trolley full of cardboard boxes and topped with a tarpaulintakes a moment to sit down on a bench and watch the busy world go by.

A lovely blue sky. Unseasonably warm sun for this time of year… and the distant droneof an approaching plane on the far horizon.

2001, New York

Maddy lay on her cot in the dark. Opposite, she could hear Foster’s labouredbreathing, the wheezy rattle of an unwell man.

All was quiet in the archway save for the drip of water from the brick ceiling somewhere outin the darkness. The generator had finally stopped thudding. She had lost track of how longthat had been now.

Hours… a dozen? More?

No power, no light. They’d used their last candle as they’d sat either side ofthe table and discussed their options should Liam and Bob fail. Not many options, if truth betold. The choices available to them boiled down to just one, really.

When to do it… when to use the last two rounds in theshotgun.

When they’d both be ready to admit that all was lost.

She’d not been foolish enough to let herself think this was actually going to work.That some foggily remembered date from an autobiography that should never have been writtenwould lead Liam and Bob right to the cause of all this? No.

That was the kind of unlikely happy ending that belonged on some cheesy TV show or somerubbish FX-laden blockbuster movie, the nick-of-time last-minute reprieve for the Good Guysthat you always knew was going to happen right from the moment theopening credits rolled.

Maddy’s face was buried in the pillow when the ceiling lights in thefield office winked silently on. Half asleep, it wasn’t until her ears registered thesoft hum of the machinery that maintained the time bubble quietly initializing itself that shestirred and turned her face to one side.

It took another long moment for her to realize the power had come back on. That the archwaywas bathed in a flickering clinical light.

Is this for real? Or am I dreaming?

She sat up quickly on her cot, almost banging her head against the rough springs of the bunkabove. And smiled.

It’s not a dream.

‘Foster!’

She reached across and shook his shoulder. ‘Foster!’

His rustling breath caught and with a moan of painful discomfort he roused and opened dark,sallow eyes. ‘Whuh… what is it, Madelaine?’

She pointed up at the bulb in the wire cage above them, glowing brightly. ‘Foster, Ithink they did it.’

Several minutes later they were standing outside in their rubbish-strewn backstreet savouringthe return of a familiar world. A lovely sunny day in September, the rumble of traffic overthe Williamsburg Bridge above them, the honk of impatient horns, the distant wail of a policesiren.

Life. Impatient life.

‘I’ve never seen anything so beautiful,’ cried Maddy, her cheeksunashamedly wet.

‘Nor I,’ replied Foster.

She stretched an arm round his sloped shoulders and planted a kiss on a cheek as dry andwrinkled as parchment.

‘We made it,’ she whispered.

Foster smiled. ‘Then let’s bring them back home, shall we?’

?

The lights in the archway flickered momentarily as a result ofthe drain of power. The hum of the displacement machinery rose in pitch and then, all of asudden, there it was. Maddy could see the shimmering outline of the window in the middle ofthe floor, appearing in exactly the same place it had when they’d sent both of them backto 1941.

Within the window she could see a faint rippling image, like a reflection in a disturbed poolof water — it looked to her like a world of trees and snow. Then into view the waveringsilhouette of something dark merged into the puddle-like image. Unmistakably a human figure.Someone coming to them.

A moment later… Liam stepped alone on to the floor of the arch.

‘Liam!’ screamed Maddy with initial delight. Then she saw that his hands and armswere slick with wet and drying blood, his uniform, his neck, his face, pale like a ghost, werespattered with dark droplets.

‘Oh my God… what happened? Liam, are you OK?’

He turned to look at her, his mouth struggling to reply, searching for words.

Foster stepped forward. ‘Liam, lad… are you all right?’

He looked at the old man, frowning, struggling to take things in, blinking back thebrightness from the strip lights above him. Finally he nodded as he opened the palm of onehand and held out something metallic. It was the size of a small mobile phone and coated withclots of drying blood.

‘I… managed to…’ He took a breath and tried again. ‘Well,anyway… Here’s Bob.’

Foster reached for the object, taking it from him gently. ‘You did well, Liam,’he replied softly, knowing full well the grisly deed that Liam had just carried out.‘That’s no easy thing to do. Come sit down, lad,’ headded, leading him over to the table and chairs.