Simon Clark - The Fall

‘Too bloody right I am. If Carswell’s Operation Rolling Vengeance goes up Shit Creek I’m going to get Dot and myself away from here on the river.’ He nodded to his boat, moored down by the jetty. ‘You, Zita, Lee and Ryan are welcome to join us.’

Sam nodded, thinking hard about Jud’s offer. For a lucky few a boat would be a means of escape. But what about the rest?

Jud glanced across the car park. ‘Rolle’s arrived with the Reverend Hather. Maybe that means we’ll have God on our side.’

After speaking to Rolle, Carswell walked briskly across the car park towards Jud and Sam. He shouted something to the commanding officer of the lancers. Sam didn’t catch the words. Maybe it was something about lighting fires to warm themselves as they waited.

Carswell walked up; a high red colour had flushed through his cheeks. The tremor had started again under his left eyebrow.

He spoke just two words.

‘They’re here.’

For a moment Sam thought the man was referring to the soldiers. Then, with a pricking of those two extra fingers that served as his thumbs, the penny dropped. They’re here.

He twisted to look back along the river where the strip of ground ran between water and rock face.

They’re here .

Like a solid wall of darkness he saw the figures. There was no flash of light, no pyrotechnics, no fuss, as the Bluebeards came through the time-gate. They were just there.

And they were marching this way. Thousands upon thousands of them. This was the beginning of the end.

Carswell took his position in the visitors’ centre that now served as the battlefield command post.

Sam watched Zita join Lee Burton on the bus as the soldiers clambered on board to assume their positions at the four artillery pieces: the big gun barrels jutted out from the sides of the bus where the windows had been.

Everywhere else there was a buzz of activity as people readied themselves.

‘D-Day,’ Jud said as he climbed into the passenger seat of the Range Rover.

Sam nodded. He opened the door, taking care not to knock his head on the ‘wings’ that held the rocket launchers out at either side of the car. The thing quirkily resembled a helicopter gunship without the rotors.

He belted himself into the driving seat, then turned the key in the ignition. Into the seat behind him climbed two apprentice infantrymen. Although they’d been deliberately ‘exposed’ to 20 thCentury technology, even taken for a short ride in the cars to acclimatise them, they still looked round the interior with a mixture of astonishment and suspicion.

Sam glanced back as they sat with their rifles upright between their feet. ‘Everyone ready?’

They nodded, their round eyes still scanning the interior of the car.

‘You okay, Jud?’

‘Yes, touch wood.’ He tapped a finger on the short section of plank that had been fixed to the dashboard in front of him.

Nailed to that were eight switches, rudimentary things made from strips of metal cut from food cans. When a metal strip was pressed, the circuit was completed and a jolt of electricity would run from the car battery to the rockets set in the wings.

Carswell appeared at the doorway of the visitor’s centre and made a windmilling motion with one arm. ‘He’s waving us out… Damn.’

‘Sam, what’s wrong?’

‘Back in a minute.’ Sam opened his door. ‘One of the wires has come adrift from the rocket tube.’

‘Leave it.’

‘It won’t fire unless it’s connected. It won’t take long.’

Fixing the wire back to the light-bulb terminal took only a moment, but then Sam spotted something else.

‘Jud, there’s something wrong with the van. They’re not moving.’

Sam ran across the car park, his feet making a soft padding sound on the snow. ‘Why aren’t you moving out?’ he called to the man driving the ice-cream van.

‘It won’t start… the battery’s flat.’

God Almighty . Carswell’s perfect Operation Rolling Vengeance was showing cracks already.

‘Pop the hood,’ Sam called. ‘I’ll bring up the Range Rover and we’ll jump-start her.’

Sam drove the Range Rover across the car-park to the ice-cream van. While Jud lifted the bonnet, Sam brought the jump leads from the boot. In the back seat the Victorian soldiers sat and watched, mystified.

‘At least the rest are waiting for us.’

The bus had stopped at the edge of the car park. But now people were running from vehicle to vehicle to find out the reason for the delay.

Down there on the river bank the Bluebeards were approaching, slowly but surely. Sam guessed it would take them another ten minutes to reach the car park.

Carswell hurried towards them. His barely suppressed rage was quivering to the surface.

‘What’s the hold-up? Why aren’t you moving!’

‘Engine trouble,’ Sam replied.

‘Jesus wept. The thing ran perfectly well last night.’

‘It’s no-one’s fault.’ Sam snapped the big crocodile clips onto the battery terminals of the Range Rover. ‘The van’s battery’s on its last legs.’

‘Get a move on, man! The whole strategy will fall apart unless you hit the enemy at the narrowest part of the pass!’

‘I know. Just give me 30 seconds. Right!’ He called to the van driver. ‘Try it now.’

The van’s starter motor turned. It was a weary sound, like rusty metal plates grating together.

Sam ran back to the Range Rover, swung himself behind the wheel, stamped on the accelerator pedal. Then, revving the car engine until it howled, he nodded to the van driver. Try again .

The van driver twisted the key once more. A moment later his face brightened and he gave a thumbs-up.

Carswell shouted, ‘Now, for crying out loud, move it!’

Vibrating with rage, Carswell marched back to the building.

After Sam had stowed the jump leads in the boot, he climbed back into the driver’s seat and said in a low voice, ‘Here goes.’

They left the car park in line.

Ahead was the snowy strip of land between the river and the rock face.

First in the line of vehicles rumbling at little more than walking speed was the bus.

Sam could see the heads of the soldiers on board as they manned their positions at the field guns. At the front of the bus he recognised Zita by her thick ponytail that swished from side to side as she scanned the road ahead. Lee Burton would be sitting in the driver’s seat inside his armoured compartment. Surprisingly, there were also the red corkscrew curls of Rolle.

The stubby ‘wings’ of the bus’s rocket launchers waggled at each bump in the ground, however slight, as if the bus were some huge ungainly box-shaped bird flapping its wings ready for take-off.

It occurred to Sam once more that if one of those flimsy ‘wings’ hit so much as a branch or even a mound of snow it would shear off, reducing the bus’s firepower.

Again Sam couldn’t decide if the bus resembled a pirate ship, with its guns mounted on what was after all the passenger deck, with the timber mast that served as the king post; or if it was more like one of the old wartime B-17 Flying Fortress bombers that bristled guns from every direction.

Sam wiped his forehead. Despite the cold he was sweating.

Between his vehicle and the bus was the ice-cream van. It still had its garish paintings. Surreally, the plastic ice-cream cones hadn’t been removed and sat at either side of the cannon that was lashed to the roof.

The heavy cannon of foundry-cast iron made the vehicle look top-heavy. Taking a sharp bend at anything more than a crawl would probably turn the van over.

Sam shot a glance at the ‘wings’ on his own car, the rocket tubes shining a dull yellow. They too flapped up and down over the tiniest of bumps. He could even hear the creak of the supporting cables over the roof of the car.