Simon Clark - The Fall

The vehicles in the barn had taken on the appearance of those ‘wacky inventions’. Most had stubby wings made of lightweight timber torn up from the farmhouse floors. (Did Carswell in some mad flight of fancy believe those machines would actually fly?) The only seat on the bus was the driver’s seat. When Sam had left the barn, Jud and a couple of other men had been building what looked to be a large box around the seat, using the stout wooden doors from the outbuildings to form the walls.

Carswell had said he’d explain his plans fully. But that, Sam was sure, would be in his own sweet time.

Sam reached the amphitheatre car park. Falling snow still blotted out the river, but he knew he was almost there now.

He quickened his pace.

He still felt all too vulnerable and alone out here. The gateway that the barbarians had used to enter 1865 was a mile or so upstream. Even though the Bluebeards probably wouldn’t attack again for another couple of days they might send out scouting patrols.

Sam crossed the car park. The snow there was flat, pristine.

When he reached the top of the amphitheatre he paused to look down into it.

Immediately he ducked back.

A dozen figures stood at the bottom.

Bluebeards.

That was his first thought.

Turning down the wick of the lamp until the speck of flame was so small it wouldn’t betray his position, he cautiously looked over the edge.

If this was the start of another attack, he’d have to run as hard as he could back to the farmhouse to warn everyone.

What then, he didn’t know.

He cautiously lifted his head over the rim of the amphitheatre and looked down.

Snow swirled into his face in tingling flakes.

He counted 11 figures. But they were not Bluebeards. He recognised Rolle first of all, unmistakable with his red hair and orange overalls. He seemed to be lecturing the others.

But who the hell were they?

They didn’t look like people from Casterton. And why on Earth would they travel all this way out of town, anyway?

He wiped the snowflakes from his eyes and looked again. All the figures were wrapped against the snowstorm. As his eyes adjusted to the gloom he recognised one of them.

It was the long blonde hair fluttering this way and that in the wind that did it.

Nicole Wagner. It had to be. But what on Earth… Then he recalled Lee’s strange encounter with her in the wood. He knew that she was now a Liminal – Rolle’s word for those who lived in Limbo outside the normal flow of time. And that an animal had fused with her during the last time-jump.

So she’s been hiding out here all along , Sam told himself in wonder. Living like an outlaw.

And wasn’t that heavy-set man the one with a bird fused partly inside his face?

But what were they doing here?

Why were they talking to – or rather being lectured by – Rolle in the amphitheatre in this blizzard at the dead of night?

All this made as much sense to Sam as the weird and wondrous machines taking shape in the barn back at Perseverance Farm.

After Rolle wound up the meeting he stood there shaking hands with each of the Liminals as they left.

Sam left the lamp at the top of the slope and slithered down through the snow, staying well hidden behind a line of bushes.

Concealed there, he watched the heavily-clothed figures move off, following the river upstream.

He’d been right about Nicole. She walked by, her arm linked with that of a tall young man with blond hair. They leaned forward into the driving snow.

What with the darkness and the snowflakes Sam couldn’t make out much detail of the others’ faces, although strangely he heard what sounded like a hive of bees as one of the men passed him – his face was bluey-dark and Sam couldn’t be sure whether he was bearded or not.

Last of all came what Sam at first took to be a boy of around ten riding a cow or bullock.

He looked again, then turned quickly away, his stomach fluttering queasily.

The boy had become fused with the cow.

If anything, it resembled a centaur; the half-man, half-horse of Graeco-Roman myth. The top half of the human body rose up from the neck of the cow. The cow’s head was still there but turned crookedly to the left. The bones in the neck must have locked at an awkward angle, so the head always appeared to be straining back and slightly downwards, as if trying to look back at its own hind legs.

The boy, with a mass of curly hair that had itself taken on the black and white Friesian patterning of the cow, stared impassively forward.

Sam looked back as the line headed away into darkness. Soon all he could see was the swish of the cow’s tail.

A moment later that, too, was gone.

By the time Sam Baker returned with the cable to the barn at Perseverance Farm the Reverend Hather was there.

He stood in the pools of golden lamplight, his palms lightly pressed together as if in prayer, and looked around at the bustle of activity, his eyes wide.

Sam gripped the coils of cable under an arm as he pulled the barn door shut behind him to keep out the never-ending snowfall.

Hammers still clattered down against nails or sheet metal.

Sam handed the cable to Zita. ‘How goes it?’ he asked.

‘Bizarrely,’ she said. ‘Carswell’s now got us sawing the glass ends off light bulbs.’

‘Light bulbs?’

‘They’re from the bus’s luggage shelves that you removed earlier.’

Sam shook his head, bewildered, his face too frozen to show anything other than a blank expression.

‘You know the ones? The little lights set above the passengers’ heads that they could switch on to read, do word searches or whatever.’

‘I know the ones, but hasn’t Carswell even hinted why?’

‘No. Like God, Mr Carswell prefers to move in a mysterious way. Anyway, must carry on. He’ll go ballistic if he thinks I’m standing here chatting to you.’ She threaded her arm through the spools of cable to carry them back to the workbenches, where a couple of women were carefully cutting through the light bulbs with fine saws. ‘Oh, and he goes ballistic anyway if we break a filament. Thanks for the cable; we’ll talk at the next tea break.’ Shooting him a dazzling smile despite her obvious exhaustion, she returned to work.

As Sam pulled off his overcoat and stamped the snow from his boots, the Reverend Thomas Hather walked across the barn floor towards him, still looking around in amazement. He could have been a kid who had somehow stumbled into Santa’s workshop.

Sooty marks still mottled his face from where he’d helped pull the wounded and the dying from the burning houses.

‘Lee told me something of Mr Carswell’s plan.’ Thomas’s eyes gleamed behind the spectacles. ‘But I had no idea it would involve anything like this. What has he done to your vehicles?’

‘We’re converting them.’

‘But to what?’

‘The bus is to be some kind of battleship on wheels. As for the rest?’ Sam shrugged. ‘Search me.’

‘And he thinks he can really defeat the barbarians with these machines?’

‘No, not defeat them. But, hopefully, inflict enough casualties among them to dissuade them from ever coming back here again.’

‘But I still don’t understand where those men came from. Those Bluebeards.’

‘It’s not exactly a case of where they come from, Thomas, but when .’

‘You mean to say they have travelled through time like yourselves?’

‘Yes.’

‘Good Lord.’

‘Only they’ve come from the past, not the future.’

‘But why? Why attack a law-abiding town? What harm have we ever done to them?’

‘None. These Bluebeards are nothing but bandits. What they’re looking for are easy pickings. So they travel through time looking for a vulnerable period to raid.’